I had the opportunity to speak to a couple of hundred business owners and decision makers at the Digital Summit 2011 (Twitter #DSUMM11) this week, and I came away with some invigorating impressions. First, small businesses are aggressively embracing online video, in many cases more so than their larger enterprise counterparts. Small to mid-sized firms (SMB) realize the need to execute lean, effective and innovative strategies to connect with their customers, and virtually all the SMB’s I talked to see online video as the critical Read more »

Messaging matters, as this sign from an entrepreneur clearly shows.  But do your clients clearly understand what you’re saying?  What we think we say isn’t always what the consumer hears; what we write isn’t always what a consumer reads.  When a meat market advertises a special on “ground hog meat,” will a consumer think that it’s advertising “groundhog meat”?   Often times what you need to do is connect visually and verbally with your customers – ask them to take a look at your own Read more »

Belly Buds realized they needed unbiased qualitative insights from potential customers to determine necessary product refinements, and strategies to optimize their messaging. Qualvu DIY seemed to be the perfect fit to meet their challenges. The pricing was affordable, and it would allow them to go right into expectant parents’ homes, and the Belly Buds team would be able to watch as potential customers reacted to the product and packaging, and talked candidly about product expectations and usage.

We all admire people who want to defy the odds:  the athlete whose dream it is to compete in the Olympics, the civic-minded student who hopes someday to become President, the struggling writer whose dream is to write the Great American Novel.  And to that group who want to defy the odds you have to add product developers, because the daunting fact is that 95% of new products fail, according to research agency AcuPoll.   New products fail for different reasons, but there’s no reason Read more »

One thing all successful businesses share is that they’re built on a solid foundation.  That foundation is built on information and intelligence – information about your potential market, and intelligence about how potential customers will perceive your product or service.   Often, cash-strapped start-ups rely on hunches or perception to give them insight into consumers, but doing so presents risks that usually turn out to be formidable.  This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as a “sample of one.”  It works this way:  Your brother-in-law or Read more »