How Do You Market an Intangible Product?

Some products, especially intangible products such as legal or health services, marketing advice, crisis management and other services, are very hard for buyers to evaluate, in advance of purchase. There is no physical object to inspect, so a potential buyer has to try and determine value some other way.

That's why credentials, furniture, street address, references and "experience" become proxies for value and competence where an intangible product is concerned. Even tangible products such as fashion items or vacation resorts have a huge and similar problem, namely creating a brand or mystique that helps potential buyers evaluate the product, which either is a means to another end, or an "experience."

Those are reasons why content marketing can be effective. Content marketing can help establish credentials, provide evidence of experience and knowledge and thereby reduce the "risk" a prospect faces when buying an intangible product they might not ever have used before, or which gets used infrequently.

By creating great, valuable content you are setting up your brand as a trusted expert, someone your target audience can count on. They learn that your company is one of the real experts in your industry. This helps builds your authority and trust level. Those are proxies for the product attributes potential buyers otherwise evaluate directly, in the case of tangible goods.

Content Marketing Tip: Focus on Educating Your Target Audience

Consumer Ratings, Reviews are Preferred Product Information Sources

Consumers are spending more time than ever using social media, according to Nielsen and NM Incite, a Nielsen/McKinsey company. And social media seem to be quite  influential. In fact, 63 percent of survey respondents say their "preferred" way of learning about products and services is from consumer ratings. 


Some 62 percent say their preferred method of learning about products is from consumer reviews. 


About 60 percent of consumers researching products through multiple online sources learned about a specific brand or retailer through social networking sites, Nielsen says. 


Active social media users are more likely to read product reviews online, and three out of five create their own reviews of products and services. Women are more likely than men to tell others about products that they like (81 percent of females vs. 72 percent of males). Overall, consumer-generated reviews and product ratings are the most preferred sources of product information among social media users.

How Social Media Impacts Brand Marketing

Only a Handful of Firms "Really Matter" in U.S. Telecom

If you want to know what is happening in the U.S. communications business, there really are only a handful of companies one has to follow. That doesn't mean the thousands of firms selling communication services do not matter, only that just a small number of companies represent the overwhelming number of customer accounts and revenue.

AT&T, for example, alone has more than 100 million mobile subscribers and 42 million fixed-line accounts, for a total of 142 million. AT&T has 142 Million Consumer Accounts


Verizon has about 106 million mobile customers and something in excess of 15 million voice customers, for a total somewhere in excess of 121 million. The issue is that Verizon has many customers who may buy only FiOS Internet access or FiOS video but not voice. 


Sprint has perhaps 50 million subscribers, T-Mobile USA 33 million. 

Comcast has perhaps 23 million customers, DirecTV 19 million, Dish Network 14 million and Time Warner Cable perhaps 12 million. 


The point is that one doesn't have to track many firms to capture sufficient data on where the market is going. 

IaaS Will Count for a Third of IT Resources in 2014

About 77 percent of enterprises respondents surveyed by PwC have a plan to adopt some form of cloud computing, and 64 percent said some type of cloud, including private and public, would be the best way to manage IT infrastructure in three years.


Precisely what that means for would-be providers is not quite so clear, though. 


PwC surveyed 489 business executives in an effort to understand the real state of data center management, and the results suggest both increases in traditional data center operations, "private" cloud operations and some increase in public cloud activities. But there will be a huge decline in use of traditional data center services managed by service providers. 


Traditional IT outsourcing service providers are about to see their business models and customer value propositions disrupted. 


But the essence of cloud computing is a move towards highly standardized racks of commodity servers and a software environment that together make for a highly efficient use of resources. Who needs to outsource to a third party when such capabilities are available?

"We have seen major technology shifts in the data center in the past," says David Stuckey, PwC's US leader of its data center infrastructure practice. "These shifts in reality have just added to the mix in the data center, increasing complexity and cost."

Cloud computing, when done right, has the potential to actually replace, and not just augment, legacy environments while adding value by reducing costs and increasing agility," says Stuckey. 

Private cloud is infrastructure operated solely for a single organization, whether managed internally or by a third-party and hosted internally or externally.^[43]

They have attracted criticism because users "still have to buy, build, and manage them" and thus do not benefit from lower up-front capital costs and less hands-on management,^[44] essentially "[lacking] the economic model that makes cloud computing such an intriguing concept".

IaaS Will Count for a Third of IT Resources in 2014

Coca Cola "Rules" Social Media

Coca-Cola ranked as the world’s top brand, with a following on Facebook of 34 million fans, growing at a monthly rate of nearly three percent, posting seven times a month, each garnering more than 235 comments and nearly 1,750 “likes,” according to Covario.

The top 100 leading brands on Facebook includes Hyundai, Disney, Bayer, HP, Victoria’s Secret, Best Buy, Samsung Mobile, Dr. Pepper and Macy’s among the top 10 brands using Facebook effectively.

Perhaps significantly, 35 percent of respondents say “driving sales” is the number one priority for social media programs, but 47 percent see the goal as driving engagement and driving brand awareness, and another 14 percent say they are “driving friends.”

Overall,  65 percent are using their social media programs, and their Facebook pages, to drive “soft” conversions, not explicit sales. Those results point up the fact that social media programs can have multiple goals. But the findings also illustrate the tension posed by social media. To the extent that the purpose is “community” or “socializing” or “fun,” does lead generation interfere with those purposes? If not, how can lead generation be reconciled with the other values? 

The study also has other implications. Traditionally, media efforts by brands have come in clear buckets: paid media (advertising), earned media (public relations, media relations, press relations) and owned media (brands acting as publishers and content creators on their own sites). 

The Covario study suggests top brands fund social media programs partly out of advertising budgets, partly out of PR budgets and partly out of new budgets. Both in terms of practice and internal thinking and budgets, social media is a new mix of outbound communications, marketing and sales promotion.

In many ways social media is a replacement for traditional advertising, public relations and marketing. In other ways it is a new blend of tactics. The rather clear implication is that competencies and skills also will have to change, both on the part of brands and other practitioners in the ecosystem.

At one level, the changes are "merely" about the ways brands spend money. At another level, the changes also reflect and contribute to a change in our understanding and practice of media. 

Historically, the growth of media has been fueled by advertising. If advertising support changes, so will media. In simplest terms, if traditional media has been supported by advertising, and advertising spending shifts to social media, there will be less traditional media and more social media.

Facebook users are “active” users, or using the application  more than four times per week. Less than 40 percent of Twitter users are considered active users, by way of comparison.

Facebook counts nearly 50 percent of its user base as power users (use the site at least once per day). A study done by comScore last year showed that Facebook occupies nearly 10 percent of the user time online globally. Users were spending an average of 450 minutes per month on the platform, compared to 230 minutes on Google, for example.

Facebook users number 800 million as of the time of the writing, more than any other social media platform. Twitter is estimated at 245 million users and LinkedIn, the key professional social platform, 120 million users.

Facebook tips for brands

U.S. SMB Spending on UC up 16% Annually Through 2015

U.S. small and mid-sized business spending on unified communication will grow at a 16-percent compound annual growth rate through 2015, from its current total of about $1.8 billion, according to AMI-Partners. At those rates, U.S. small and medium businesses will be spending about $3 billion on UC in 2015. SMB UC spendiing up by 16% annually through 2015?

More than one-third of small businesses (firms with less than 100 employees) and nearly three quarters of medium-sized companies (firms with 100–999 employees) currently own at least one unified communications component technology, according to IDC.

More than 30 percent of small firms and 55 percent of mid-size firms cite plans to add at least one UC component in the next 12 months, IDC said. VoIP technology has established a solid foothold in the medium-sized business segment, and more than 30 percent of firms with 100 to 999 employees use it. Also, approximately 45 percent of medium-sized businesses currently use some type of conferencing technology.

But what does that mean? At one level, it might mean that there is some use of one UC tool, but not completely unified communications. It might mean Skype gets used. It might also mean that the entire communications platform is completely unified in terms of messaging functions, call delivery or device support. UC growth rates

How Steve Jobs Influenced Google

Steve Jobs apparently gave Larry Page, Google CEO, some advice recently:

"We talked a lot about focus. And choosing people. How to know who to trust, and how to build a team of lieutenants he can count on. I described the blocking and tackling he would have to do to keep the company from getting flabby and being larded with B players. The main thing I stressed was focus. Figure out what Google wants to be when it grows up. It's now all over the map. What are the five products you want to focus on? Get rid of the rest, because they're dragging you down. They're turning you into Microsoft. They're causing you to turn out products that are adequate but not great."

How Steve Jobs Influenced Google's Restructuring