Freemium Business Model

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Ever scratch your head and wonder why you can use your favorite application for free? How can a business actually make money (and stay in business) when they offer their product for free? This article looks at the freemium business model, to see when it makes sense for a company […]

Losing Your Current Customers

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We just wrote about the importance of understanding your non-customers. That doesn’t mean you should neglect your current customers. If you do, you’re in world of trouble. Even if you don’t abuse your customers, maybe you’re taking them for granted. You’re losing some of them every year.

Buyer Personas And User Personas

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A lot of people stand up a variation of “If you build it, he will come” (from Field of Dreams) as a copy-writing hook for whatever they are about to tell you about creating products/services/whatever. We’re no better. We’re going to tell you that there is a big difference between […]

Fast Follower Product Strategy: Microsoft Zune

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Microsoft has a product called Zune that is a competitor to the Apple iPod. They just recently announced their second release – the new version of the Zune. Since Apple already dominates that market, Microsoft qualifies as a follower – how are they approaching the introduction of a new product […]

Maximize Your Word of Mouth Marketing

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It isn’t just about finding customers anymore. You have to build fans. Take a look at the dynamics of word of mouth marketing and how they can cause your product to succeed. This article includes tips and references for helping you move through each stage in the cycle of fans, […]

Product Manager Role Details and Survey Results

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Pragmatic Marketing runs an annual survey of product managers. We looked at 440 results from the 2006 Product Manager Survey to uncover the trends in how different product manager roles are defined. The survey involved questions breaking down the allocation of time to different activities. In this article we look at how those activities varied for product managers, product marketing managers, segment / market managers, and technical product managers.

How To Apply Market Research Better

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Mike Mace provides us with some great insight about market research – helping us to avoid ‘the blender’ and ‘the gap’. The gap is a reflection of the inability of most customers to innovate. The blender is the loss of useful market information into a homogenized input that pushes only the lowest common denominator – again stifling innovation. We have to avoid the blender and the gap to get useful data from our research.