Use And Misuse Of Personas In Marketing

Buyer persona is the bedrock of targeted marketing. HubSpot provides a succinct definition of the term: A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. Data includes not just demographics but behavior, emotions, wants, aspirations and other buyer attributes. A sample persona … Read more

Indian IT: Turning Crisis Into Opportunity: Part 1

At the end of my blog post entitled Indian IT – Crisis Or No Crisis?, I reflected on the zeitgeist about the looming crisis faced by the Indian IT industry due to growing automation, digital challenges, H1B restrictions and Trumpism-driven Middle America outsourcing. Even if these challenges are real, there’s no need to panic. The industry … Read more

Uber Masters Abandoner Remarketing

Uber didn’t invent targeted offers but the “world’s largest taxi company” sets itself apart from other brands by the innovative ways with which it uses the new marketing tactic to deepen customer engagement, as I’d highlighted in Mastering Targeted Offers – The Uber Way. I recently saw Uber’s mastery of another “next gen” marketing tactic, … Read more

How Relevant Is “Crossing The Chasm” After 25 Years?

As the title of our website’s WHAT WE DO page proclaims, GTM360 helps growth-stage companies in technology-intensive industries to “cross the chasm” and break into the mainstream market. In a recent MEDIUM article titled 25 Years Later, ‘Crossing the Chasm’ Has Withstood the Test of Time, author Tiffani Bova has a fireside chat with Geoffrey Moore, … Read more

Indian IT – Crisis Or No Crisis?

Wipro lays off 600 employees due to poor performance. Cognizant fires 6000 employees consequent to its annual appraisal. So on and so forth. The media is full of bad news about the Indian IT Industry. Notwithstanding that, rumors of existential crisis for the industry are grossly exagerrated. Whether you use a bell curve or a … Read more

How To Win A Deal By “Sharing An RFP Template”

“Can you give us an RFP template to share with our client?”, asked one of our customers recently. “We can Google it but you can save us the trouble if you have something readymade”. Good they didn’t use Google. There’s lot more to sharing an RFP template than finding, downloading and handing over a standard … Read more

Why Gmail When Hosting Provider Gives Free Mail Boxes?

After trying out a half-dozen hosting providers, I settled on one that I’ll call ACME. Among other things, I selected ACME for its following two features: Hosting for virtually unlimited domains on a single hosting plan Free unlimited number of mail boxes, each with virtually unlimited storage (subject only to the overall storage limit under … Read more

Uber Creates Loyalty To The Deal But Not For The Brand

In his book Loyalty 3.0, author Rajat Paharia, Founder of gamification solution provider Bunchball, says that loyalty programs of most brands generate loyalty to the deal but completely fail at their fundamental purpose of fostering loyalty for the brand. Uber is a great example of one such brand. The world’s largest rideshare company extensively uses … Read more

Mastering Targeted Offers – The Uber Way

Uber uses targeted offers as the bedrock of its customer engagement management (CEM) strategy. For the uninitiated, a targeted offer is a personalized deal for an individual customer segment – or even individual customer. It’s the antithesis of spam, where the same deal is sent to all customers. A simple example of a targeted offer … Read more

Unschackle Your Inside Sales To Make It More Aggressive

As SAAS gains traction, software companies are making greater use of inside sales. According to Salesforce, inside sales is growing 300% faster than outside sales. With more and more sales development representatives fishing in the same pond, the market is getting crowded. As a result, inside sales is finding it ever harder to get through … Read more