One of the best ways to learn how real people view your product is to ask them to complete a set of tasks that you think all customers “should” be able to do. Think of this as a directional usability…
If you talk to customers for any length of time, you’ve probably been asked, “what’s the best practice for that? And how can I get you to deliver best practices to me?” I often struggle with this question because o…
I believe the next generation address book – or contact management play – will have more in common with oAuth data providers than with the traditional rolodex. Yet it will need to be as easy to use as the existing…
If you’re like many people, when you hear the term “Agile Marketing” you might wonder if the person is talking about some new dance form or other form of stretching rather than an exciting way to improve the way that…
Online Communities are similar to and different from their physical counterparts What’s the value of community? How can you define both the idea of a community and the value of that community for a marketer? A physical community can be…
Ray Ozzie appeared out of the Seattle mist today to share a very important lesson of startups and of business in general. He shared the story of how Lotus Notes started – and it sounded a lot like other stories…
Beta Customers are the Best Test Customers You Have In Steve Blank’s excellent blog post on Startup First Principles, he describes a startup as “an organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” A key driver in…
photo by If you could have your ideal day, what would it look like? Jason Womack, an author, motivational speaker, and productivity expect, asked me to answer this question for his new site Here we go … It’s…
(photo courtesy of Flickr.com/photos/koalzymonkey) When was the last time you did something inexplicably, inevitably, and irreplaceably … dumb? (For me, about a week ago.) And chances are, it was something you’ve done before – maybe a hundred or even a…
You know the feeling – trying to explain something to someone who is not picking up what you’re putting down. So what should you do? Explain, or Listen? As a product marketer, you might often feel this emotion when you…
