We Build Pages

---

Why Product & Marketing Need To Be One Team (Part 2) Posted: 06 Jan 2014 07:10 AM PST How many times have you researched the competition only to discover that a huge driver for their marketing is their awesome product? It’s happened to me more times than I can count. You need to pull together for optimal results. (Cornell Rowing Team by Chris Waits) The fundamental lesson to take away from this is that you must integrate the product and marketing teams. There are many reasons to do so, including: What we saw in part 1 of this series, namely that Facebook is becoming a search engine for personal, trusted recommendations. By integrating product and marketing, you maximize the amount and enthusiasm of the word of mouth referrals you get. Both product and marketing are based on the same input - the question, “what do customers need?” – so you combine the R&D with marketing to provide the most efficient and effective ouput – your answer in the form of product and marketing). If you don’t combine the two, you’re likely to end up contradictory messages such as where the sales team promises more than the product can deliver. You then overpromise and under-deliver, a highly recommended way to ruin your reputation and avoid repeat sales. Getting more sales, because the marketing team understands the customer’s perspective as well as the product developers. This results in better copy, hero images and conversion rates. If you’re relying on a sales force, this still holds true as the ability to see the lead’s perspective enables the salesperson to offer more relatable benefits and case studies. For the purposes of this article, the product team is what others call the operations team, a more common name in service industries like hospitality or telecoms. The product team also includes customer service and support, since these are obviously part of how your customer experiences the product/service your company offer. So too any other team that affects the customer experience – they also need to be integrated into one with the marketing team. Here are some examples of cases where product has driven marketing… and vice versa. An IMN client’s competitors were increasingly selling the digital form of the product, while the analog form was fighting super-cheap competitors. (I hope to write a post about this “Chinafication” of our product and service marketplaces in the future, addressing the result of these dramatically cheaper (in price and quality) goods and services that have invaded our markets.) We could give all the link building and SEO advice in the world, but if this client doesn’t evolve their product line, their business will eventually shrink painfully due to loss of market share and margin. We told them as much. (In fact, I could list this point twice since very similar patterns happened in two disparate markets.) Another IMN client had pages for products he no longer carried because they were discontinued by the manufacturer, a risk from the perspective of Google’s quality-user-experience algorithms. Again, the solution involved changes to the product line that dovetailed with changes to the site and business operations/strategy. One of my very first clients in SEO was a hotel. They had some negative reviews online to do with maintenance problems. I informed them of that and they said the problem was fixed, so I was able to respond accordingly online. Conversely, this hotel’s great customer service and location (the product, i.e. unique value proposition) earned it links from people who had visited in the past. Toy commercials are a primary market research tool for toy makers (pic via Youtube) A company selling their own SAAS for IT was competing against a company that offered a free SAAS. (The latter company sold services, integration, support and consulting around their product.) Guess who had gotten radically better links in huge numbers? The free SAAS company had links from some of the biggest tech sites and brands in the world, such as Mozilla. Mobile apps obviously require mobile marketing. Seth Godin, in his book Meatball Sundae, cites the toy industry as having a big conference in February to watch ads for new toys. The toys with the most compelling ads are the toys that then get made and sold at Christmas. Tim Ferriss’ book The Four Hour Workweek also advises trying to sell your product first, and only creating it if the sales effort succeeds. This is a rapid way to validate/invalidate unique value propositions as well as angles of framing it. Note that doing this for a brand new category of product is very risky, because you may develop a solution to a problem that no one has (or you may not know who has the problem, nor find out before you go bankrupt). This approach works best for industries where an existing demand exists and the new product is more of an iteration on previous toys than something completely new in itself. E.g. Tickle Me Elmo is an iteration on teddy bears… not so risky. In the book The Knack, by Norm Brodsky and Bo Burlingham, there’s a case cited of a fishmonger who explains that he’s really in the lending business. He extends credit to restaurants in the form of fish, and gets paid when they have better weeks/it’s high season. Fish on credit is a fundamentally different product (including different pricing) than fish paid for immediately. A friend of mine selling a high-priced, high-quality product to SMBs similarly realized that allowing them to pay in installements was the key to unlocking their purses. He’s also making in-kind loans, combining sales technique (overcoming price objection) with product development (he’s selling them product on credit, like the fishmonger). In an IMN competitive analysis, we found that some competitors had a key advantage in that they gave customers more information. This greater empowerment was a very unique selling point, attracting both customers and press … we encouraged our customer to replicate and improve on this information sharing. A linkbait brainstorming report helped us realize that an industry was getting a bad reputation online for negative impact on third parties. We suggested ways they could partner with those parties to prevent negative impacts, and mitigate them when they happened. This involved product development suggestions involving motivating buyer and seller to behave better towards the third parties. Also in that report, we gave branding guidance to another client that would make them a dramatic change catalyst in their market. By talking about how members of their target audience were doing wonderful things, and associating their brand with ads touting these positive stories, they could become not just a company but a beloved icon of their audience. This would give them massive market share, and make it exponentially harder for competitors to take market share when people would feel such strongly positive emotions towards this company. So if I’m suggesting merging product and marketing, the natural question is – how do you go about doing this integration? That’s a never-ending process, but you can get started by reading and implementing The E-Myth Revisited as well as Running Lean. To similar effect, the Customer Development Labs blog is fantastic and I recommend subscribing. My brother-in-law pointed out these Michael Gerber (E-Myth author) videos on Youtube, as well. Michael Gerber, author of the E-Myth revisited, is THE guru of systematizing your business and many of his ideas lead to the conclusion that you should integrate product and marketing. This conclusion is explicitly obvious in Ash Maurya’s book Running Lean, about the lean startup method to product creation and marketing. Video on Youtube I’ll write more about integrating the two teams in my next post for the IMN blog. The point of the above references is that you need systems to do market research, and what you find out will inform your product development and marketing development How so? These systems will help you to find out: What problems the audience faces, Who the various segments of that audience are, How you’re going to reach the audience, Why your solution matches the audience (i.e. what benefits are you selling – what’s your product). Subscribe to the IMN blog so you see my next posts on the topic of combining the product and marketing teams. The post Why Product & Marketing Need To Be One Team (Part 2) appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

The Huge List of Google Employees at Google Plus to Follow Posted: 06 Jan 2014 07:00 AM PST Say what you like about Google Plus, it has one serious advantage: the people involved in Google are on it. Now only are they on the platform, but they are avid users of it. They are also remarkably welcoming to others who want to add them to their circles, and great about keeping up with discussions. If you are eagerly tracking Google’s trends and want to get an inside look, add these people to a separate circle and check back often! Sergey Brin: co-founder The co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin was there from the starting point as a simple search engine on a Stanford University server, and moving on to provide multiple services that we know and use today. Larry Page: co-founder and CEO The other co-founder of Google. In 2011, Larry Page also became the chief executive at the company after succeeding Eric Schmidt. Vic Gundotra: Senior Vice President Former General Manager at Microsoft, Vivek Gundotra is now the Senior Vice President, Social at Google. He has been with the company since 2007. Bradley Horowitz: Vice President of Product Management Former Director of Media Search at Yahoo, and creator of Hack Yahoo. He left Yahoo in 2008 to become Vice President of Product Management at Google, working on their Google+ project. Jeff Huber: Google X Originally hired on in 2003, Jeff Huber got his start on Google Maps. But in March of 2013, it was announced that he had been moved to Google X. The department deals with secret projects not yet disclosed to the media. Melissa Daniels: Program Manager for Google Play Describing herself as an “online community manager”, you may assume that Melissa Daniels is a social media guru. But she is actually the Program Manager for Google Play. Vanessa Schneider: Geo Media Program Manager A former reporter and researcher for Time Inc and The New York Times, Vanessa Schneider has since moved on through Hot Potato and to Google. She has worked two positions during her time at Google, including Community Manager for Maps and Local, and now Geo Media Program Manager. Natalie Villalobos: Community Manager for Google Plus A Community Manager for Google+, Natalie Villalobos has been on a number of projects from the company in her time there. This includes being a member of the Google Earth Outrach Team, and founding the 300 Arcres Project, which led to the protection of 300 acres of rainforest in Ecuador. Anish Acharya: Product Manager for Google Plus Mobile Getting his start at Amazon as a Software Engineer in 2004, Anish Acharya really hit the technology scene in 2009 when he founded the popular SocialDeck. In 2010, he joined the Google team as Product Manager for Google+ Mobile. Shimrit Ben-Yair: Product Manager at Google Plus Formerly a employee at Apple, working in marketing and the development of the Apple online store, Shimrit Ben-Yair is now a Product Manager at Google+. She has retained the position since 2009. Frances Haugen: Product Manager Having moved through a couple of positions in Google, Frances Haugen started there as a n Associate Product Manager, moved on to become a Product Manager, switched over to software engineer, and has since become a Product Manager once again. She has been at Google since 2006, following her graduation from Olin College of Engineering. Jonathan McPhie: Product Manager Beginning at Microsoft as a software design engineer, Jonathan McPhie left the company to join Google in 2007. He has been there ever since, working as a Product Manager. Punit Soni: Vice President and Product Manager for the Motorola Mobility of Google Currently the Vice President and Product Manager for the Motorola Mobility sector of Google, Punit Soni is one of the team members who also helped to launch Google+. Chee Chew: Vice President of Engineering Starting out at HP Labs, Chee Chew describes his position there as “Grunt”. He was hired on at Microsoft was a General Manager and Developer in 1993, but left in 2007 to join Google. He is Vice President of Engineering, and has been a part of several Google projects. These include Hangouts and Chrome. Dave Besbris: Vice President of of Engineering for Google Plus You have Dave Besbris and his team to thank for building Google+. He is currently the Vice President of of Engineering for the social network. Chris Millikin: System Operation Engineering Manager at Google Former Marine Chris Millikin is the System Operation Engineering Manager at Google. He doesn’t say much about his work on his G+ profile, but he does admit he is only OK at math. Eric W. Barndollar: Software Engineer Since 2010, Eric Barndollar has been working as a software engineer at Google. However, he went to school majoring in both computer science and music compositiion. He is a composer as well as an engineer, an interesting combination. James Bogosian: Engineer Manager In 2002, James Borosian was hired on at Merck & Co as a software engineer. In 2005, he left to join Vorsite as a sales engineer. But in 2007, he was offered a position at Google as an Engineer Manager, and has been working there ever since. Andrew Bunner: Software Engineer Building multiple software projects for Google as a software engineer, Andrew Bunner’s biggest project to date has been Google+ as one of the original team members. Eric Cattell: Engineer Manager In 2000, Eric Cattell began working for Collegeclub, before moving on to Akonix in 2002. In 2005, he was hired by Google as an Engineer Manager. His focus is social projects, working as a technical lead for Google+ frontend. John Costigan: Senior Software Engineer You may have heard of John Costigan under his psudonym, gnuite. He is a graudate of Virginia Tech, where he was an undergrad and grad researcher until moving to SAIC in 2002. He has since worked for Argon ST, and was hired by Google in 2009 as a Senior Software Engineer. Matt Cutts: Head of Google’s Webspam Team Everyone has used SafeSearch, even if it is just to turn the filter off on Google’s search engine. That first version was written by Matt Cutts, who has been working for Google since 2000 as a software engineer. He is head of Google’s Webspam team. John Mueller: Webmaster Trends Analyst John doesn’t talk a lot about his life before Google but he is one of the most helpful Googlers! Pavan Desikan: Software Engineer With a PhD in computer science, Pavan Desikan has been on projects all across the board at Google. He is a software engineer who has been a part of Google Search, AdWords, AdSense and Google+. Kelly Ellis: Software Engineer Describing her past work experience as being a software engineer at “Some Places”, Kelly Ellis doesn’t provide much information on her time before Google. However, she joined the company in 2010 working on Google+ frontend. She has since moved on to storage and infrastructure. Trey Harris: Site Reliability Engineer Having one of the more extensive resumes on the Google team, Trey Harris has worked for Mail.com, VA Linux, Morgan Stanley, Amazon, Merrill Lynch, LOPSA (of which he is a co-founder), and finally Google. He has since left his position as the Site Reliability Engineer. Griff Hazen: Software Engineer Leaving Alaska for California had to be quite the drastic change for Griff Hazen. But that is just what he did, after becoming a software engineer at Google. He maintains that position today. Matt Keoshkerian: Software Engineer Recieving his internship at Amazon Japan, he moved on to continue in software development at Amazon under 2010. That is when he joined Google and a software engineer, and has been ever since. Todd Knight: Engineer An engineer who started at Chapman Net Systems, Todd Knight has worked for YouTube (pre-Google days), AdMob, and now Google. He also has a picture of himself wearing a snorkel as his profile pic at the time of this writing. Lan Liu: Software Engineer As a software engineer with Google, she has worked in that position since joining the company in 2007. Lan Liu has no other work experience, but announces proudly on her G+ profile that she loves watermellon. Vincent Mo: Software Engineer In 2007, Vincent Mo joined Google as a software engineer on the Google+ Photos project. He currently maintains that role, though he is also a photographer in his off-time. He has worked for IBM, FexEx, and Lymba. Dobromir Montauk: Software Engineer Working backend tech lead for Google+, Dobromit Montauk has been with Google for several years. Before that he worked for Beres & Baron Media Productions as a Creative Assistant, and was founder of Salsa! Krakow. He is also a startup partner for QuizPro. Stephen Ng: Software Engineer (Gmail) Working in the tech industry since starting out at Lotus Software in 1987, Stephen Ng has been a member of many teams. Including those at ProfitLogic, Lumigent, and now Google. He joined up in 2006, and is now a software engineer working in Test for Gmail. Owen Prater: Software Engineer Describing himself as a “chair warmer” during his time at Accenture, he left there in 2005. But before that, he was also working for OP-Design, where he has been since 2000. He is also a software engineer for Google, and has been since 2007. Joseph Smarr: Engineer Having worked for Sigma Digital Design, WebEx, MedExpert and Plaxo, Joseph Smarr has had his share of experience. Now he is a member of the technical staff for Google, where he codes social media platforms. Martin Strauss: Engineer Working in the past for both the Deutsche Forschungszentrum fur Kunstliche Intelligenz, and Defence Science and Technology Organisation, Martin Strauss is now an engineer at Google. Na Tang: Software Engineer Na Tang is currently a software engineer at Google. She doesn’t share much information on her G+ profile, and has not updated for a year. Yonatan Zunger: Chief Architect of Google Plus As the Chief Architect of Google+, Yonatan Zunger oversaw the general design and technical aspects for the social media platform. He has been at the company since 2003, doing backend work on various projects, such as search ranking and storage. Michael Hermeston: Global Operations Lead for Web Services Once upon a time, Michawl Hermeston was a Systems Project Manager at Hewitt Associates. But in 2007 he joined Google, and has worked in Online Sales and Operations, Google+ Consumer Operations, and is now Global Operations Lead for Web Services. Timothy Jordan: Senior Developer Advocate at Google With an interesting resume behind him, Timothy Jordan has done everything from teach design and art, to freelancing, to being a talk show host in Santa Cruz as part of KZSC. But now he is Senior Developer Advocate at Google. Brett Lider: User Experience Designer As Product and User Experience Designer, Brett Lider is a big reason for the current design and function of Google+ as it is today. He translates user needs and experience into changes made at the site. Jonathan Terleski: Designer at Google Plus Staff Designer Jonathan Terleski is currently working on the Google+ project. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. Julian Harris: Product Manager and Software Developer Inventor of ShadowHarp, Julian Harris is a Product Manager and software developer at Google. Adam Lasnik: Program Manager Adam Lasnik spent a fair amount of time self employed as a consultant, until he was hired by Google as a Search Evangelist in 2006. In 2010, he was promoted to Program Manager. Natalie Glance: Tech Lead and Manager for Google Shopping Having worked at Intelliseek, Nielsen BuzzMetrics, BlogPulse, Whizbang! Labs and Xerox, Natalie Glance had a lot of experience as a researcher by the time she was hired on by Google. She is now the Tech Lead and Manager for Google Shopping. Erick Fejta: Test Engineering Manager Test Engineering Manager Erck Fejta works on the Google Cloud Storage project. Before that he worked for Microsoft, as well as Volt Technical Resources and Intel. Dave Miller: Sales & Production Strategy After spending a year at Red Bull, Dave Miller was hired by Google for Global Mobile Ads, as well as Sales & Production Strategy. He has been there ever since. Are there any current employees I am missing? Please share! The post The Huge List of Google Employees at Google Plus to Follow appeared first on Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog.

You are subscribed to email updates from Internet Marketing Ninjas Blog To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610