Marketing technology

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There's a point in a successful business where you shift into liftoff mode. Looking back, you can tell where it started, but it's tough to identify when you're in the middle of it.

If you're just starting out, or if you know you haven't lifted off yet, take heart. No matter how hard you're struggling now, you can get to the liftoff stage, and continue to climb.

To stay within our flight analogy, the first thing you have to figure out is where your customers want to go. You already have some idea of where you think they want to go, and you already may be trying to take them there.

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Just because you can - doesn't mean you should.

Keep this advice in mind as you consider using social media to grow your revenue. There is a lot of hype in this space now, and it will continue for a while. You will lose revenue, not gain it, if you focus too much of your time and resources on vehicles and methods that won't move the revenue needle in the right direction.

If you want to make sure your efforts DO move the revenue needle, here are some guidelines: 

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Imagine you are in a physical store. You've just put an item into your cart. As you do so, a store clerk comes along and grips your head with his hands and turns your head so that you are forced to stare at your cart.

"Look in your cart. See what you've bought? So far, you've bought one container of sour cream."

You murmur in agreement, amazed that this is happening.

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If the business world were a neighborhood, marketers would be the ones with the nice house and a manicured garden. They would be social, but in a well-dressed, somewhat formal kind of way. Marketers are, on the whole, somewhat reserved. Their job is to show the good sides of a company, and control the "messaging" associated with the company. The public face.

It was pretty easy to control that message back in the stone age of traditional one-way marketing, before the web. It was even pretty easy to control that message after the web and email marketing settled in. If marketing was a party, the party was still dignified and respectable.

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I admit it. I'm proud to have identified the question that ALL software buyers ask as they are trying to decide if they want to buy some software: "What's going to happen to me after I buy?"

Actually, this question is asked by ALL buyers for ALL products, but it's especially acute with software buyers, because the post-purchase experience can be so traumatic - and so far from the promised and hoped-for experience.

Janet, an ex-programmer who is no slouch when it comes to technology, is a trusted vendor and someone I respect. She has a DSL connection to the Internet. This is what happened to her in her recent quest to purchase Adobe Photoshop.