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Opportunity Missed to Generate Demand through Influencers

This morning I read a press release from a company next door releasing new builder software. While I thought it was very engaging as you can see from the first few lines:

Boise Engineered Wood Products Introduces New Tools for Homebuilders and Building Material Retailers

Last update: 1:00 p.m. EST Feb. 16, 2009

BOISE, Idaho, Feb 16, 2009 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- Boise Cascade, LLC, headquartered in Boise, Idaho, has introduced two valuable business tools to help homebuilders construct homes with green infrastructures at lower cost, in fewer days. "21 Ways to Build Profitably and Green" is a 12-page booklet available to builders at no cost, offering new techniques for building homes in today's competitive building environment. As home prices have fallen and profit margins narrowed, one of the "21 Ways" tools uses electronic take-offs to provide fast, accurate material estimates. This enables builders to know costs more precisely and assure profitability while meeting customer pricing expectations.

They failed by making it hard to get to the next level of engagement - using their software.

I first went to their guides and was intrigued:

Then, I dug in to find their software (which should have been easier from the pdf file) and then I found out I had to go through a distributor on certain software packages and had to qualify for others.

So, you may be asking, why does this matter to me since I'm not a builder?

Well, we are in the home shopping process and I do have a builder I'm working with who has been a volume builder in healthier times and I want to send him this link and ask him if he is using these tools to keep my costs down and to build a greener home, but my interest waned when I couldn't see the immediate value in a simple-to-watch, product demo.

Come on Boise Cascade, it is as simple as setting up Camtasia for one of your software gurus and giving them 90 seconds to walk through the product.

Still better than a simple demo, give this software away for free like Google Sketchup does and you will quickly drive demand for your income generating beams and construction products from consumers like me who demand these products of their builders.

Generating demand from "influencers" can impact revenue from "core clients".

The Meaning of Missions, Visions, Goals, Objectives, Tactics and Tasks

I'm reviewing a strategy plan and fine tuning the slides and it dawned on me that I did not have a strong grasp on the difference between goals  and objectives.

Well, I did a little search and now I think I do.

I found two sources that when combined give clarity:

Bruce Kelley took a shot at defining the similarities and differences of these words: vision, mission, goal, objective, strategy, execution and tactics and this San Diego State University source does a good job distinguishing between goals and objectives.

Here is my amalgamation of these sources combined with my own take.

1. Vision - A broad, very qualitative future minded aspiration lofty in nature and often associated with an individual person fundamental to an organization (i.e. Steve Jobs)
2. Mission - Also a broad qualitative aspiration. In my experience this is a corporate processed statement attached to a larger organization that ties to a vision but includes more tangible statements. This collective processing allows individuals to feel some ownership of its meaning. (i.e. HP Invent)
3. Strategy - Lofty in nature but a representation of both qualitative and quantitative statements. I think about this as the aggregation of everything that follows, Goals, Objectives, Tactics.
4. Goals - Lofty aspirations yet again, though incremental pieces of a mission and something that an individual team or functional business area can accomplish.
5. Objectives - Measurable statements that have a discrete beginning and end that when aggregated accomplish the goals.
6. Tactics - measurable subsets of objectives that describe the "who" "what" and "how".
   
7. Actions or Tasks - The smallest statements of work that are achievable by an individual person in a relatively short period of time.
   

Execution does not fit into my taxonomy of terms and in my use is the act of delivering or progressing toward any of the above.

What do you think?
 

Mashup Custom Maps

I love the new mapping options and most recently started receiving a weekly list of foreclosed and short sale homes. I took those listings, organized the columns and then used this Geo plotting site to convert my address information into longitude and latitude information.

I then, created the following map and also exported the results to a klm file format that I then imported into this Google Map so I can see the street view and look at the front of the houses. It didn't capture the short sale or foreclosed type but the street view is very valuable.


All super cool.

Professional Moms for Hire

I came across this great placement agency today, Mom-entum. It is a professional agency located in the DC, Virginia area that matches up professional Mothers who want to remain full-time mothers that also have professional degrees and work experience with professional organizations that want to hire real talent on a contract basis at a discounted rate in exchange for giving up a little control over work hours and working geographies.

The introduction to Mom-entum couldn't come at a better time. I am looking to hire a contract writer who can also be a PR professional for Clearwater Analytics.

Interestly, I let Jennifer, the Director of Mom-entum know in my blog comment that she ought to grow the company by "virtually" moving out West. I know of great Women who have chosen to be full-time Moms and are the Professional talent she is looking for.

Who knows, perhaps I'll be a franchisee. ;-)

Awesome Firefox Add-Ins

I use Firefox and recommend it - it is a killer browser and the add-in functionality is what makes it so great. There are a lot of developers out there doing some great work which allow me to customize the browser in more ways than I would consider and the "reviews" and "download" numbers show users like me what peers think of those add-ins. It is a very smart way for the people at Firefox to enable users to choose the "best" features for the browser.

These are my current favorites:

1. ScribeFire makes it very easy to publish to my blog (I'm using it now)
2. Colorzilla makes it super simple to grab screen colors. I'm doing lots of html emails with simple fonts and colors.
3. MeasureIt makes it simple for me to measure screen elements.
   
4. Firebug lets me inspect the css and html attributes of a page very quickly.
5. Foxmarks is a bookmarking tool that synchronizes my bookmarks across multiple computers.

My one wish list - I want an add-in that helps me organize pages viewed. I never delete my history and am browsing pages that I can't seem to find again days later. I haven't seen this add-in yet. Have you?

Why Another Blog?

This is my first quick post to this new marketing blog. I've had a private blog for friends and family now for the last 5 years and post several times a month there.

But, I've chosen now to start this professional blog to start capturing some of my own tools, tips and resources. Today, this is for me, but in the near future, I expect there to be a large body of useful information.

So, on to capturing some of my favorites.

Today, I'm reminded just how valuable my marketingprofs premium account has been. I've only had it for 6 months but have read almost every email that comes in my box.

These people are geniuses when it comes to copy writing and are especially good at writing email subject lines.

Here are a few from my inbox:

• Reward Me!
• Tag -- You're It!
• Trust Me, I'm One of the Good Guys
• Sprechen-Vous Italiano?
• You've Got the Power!
• Do You Really Want a Logo That Only Costs $100?

Pretty good aren't they.

They have great content covering all basic online marketing topics.

Here is a great article discussing link building.

There are a lot more where that comes from and for $249, it was an easy decision.