Posts Tagged ‘technology’
With the ever-changing economy, today’s businesses are looking to make sure the choices that they make are the best ones possible for the long term. More often than ever, this means planning far into the future, making smart financial investments. But the term financial investment can be loosely interpreted.
In order to ensure that the future your business is as secure as possible, you must look at both existing assets for the company in addition to considering looking into technology based investments for the good of your business. But before jumping into this arena, consider that you must do your research first in order to sure that your choices are providing investment that is future-proofing your company. Some examples are provided below.
Long term vs. short term software investments – A short term investment is a license to run a certain number of software titles according to its licensing agreement. A wiser and longer term investment is hiring a company to come up with an open source software solution that can be crafted to meet your company’s needs to the letter. An example of this is live chat software for the company website. It will require a bigger initial investment, but will cost much less in the long run as it prevents any sort of vendor lock-in headaches. This alone can save your firm thousands of dollars down the road and will also provide you with real security knowing that your software can be updated anytime you need it to be.
Long term vs. short term hardware investments – One common misconception is that investing in lots of the latest in notebooks and smart phones is a solid long term investment. Nothing could be further from the truth, as both have a relatively short shelf life in the long term value department. While there is nothing wrong with a limited number of both items listed previously, I’d suggest putting the bulk of a company’s long term hardware investment into virtualization and server access. Both of these can help your company grow without significant hardware investment later on. Bundle this with the software investment of open source software, it’s easy to see how long term investments that will benefit your business for years to come can be put into play pretty easily.
Looking at developing trends can help you position your business for sale at the right time and at a higher price.
Today it’s surprising we thought it was a big breakthrough but when I wrote the first business plan to get the AOL franchise, it was considered breakthrough. That’s quite comical given that I wasn’t a great market researcher and had a zero technology bent. I just realized that you could ask questions of anybody anywhere by talking through type.
So it’s a great application of using what you know and doing it in a new way before anyone else had ever thought of it.
I think a great lesson to be learned is to be fearless in trying new things. Figure out how to hedge your risks, but then plunge forward. I wouldn’t advise diving head first into a shallow pool, but I certainly would encourage walking into a shallow pool and trying to figure out how to make best of the water.
So what is a trend spotter and what was my path to become one?
Actually, to me the word ‘trend spotting’ is anomaly. It doesn’t really apply to anything except how we go about entertaining the conversation.
I was just a sophisticated market researcher who is very good at extrapolating medium range trends – what I was seeing in society and how it was playing out numerically from survey data and our quantitative data points.
Then I would add in what I was seeing qualitatively doing journalistic interviews and ethnographic work. What was I seeing and learning that could be put to good use and every day life for business?
My objective has never been to be the kind of a crystal ball person. It’s really to build businesses; to know when to get in and when to get out.
So what I’m talking about is feet on the ground work, grabbing a lot of data from different sources and then pulling that together and connecting the dots in order to figure out what’s going on out there.
The only other piece that is really critical is timing.
Look at George Magazine, which John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Michael Berman started more than a decade ago. In those days, politics was not pop culture. It was an idea before it’s time.
If a magazine like that would have been launched around the rise of Obama culture, it would have had a very different place, much more mainstream, and the timing would have been even more right for it.
It’s medium term trending. It’s not going out too far or too far fetched.
I don’t write science fiction, and I can’t make accurate predictions about the stock market. My work is usually oriented to what’s going to happen the next 12 to 18 months from a political standpoint, from a commercial standpoint, from a consumerism standpoint, that’s going to really create business opportunity.
How did I get to do what I’m doing now?
It was a combination of having great bosses, having a lot of guts to go in and out of entrepreneurial life back into corporate life; and then really understanding how to take these ideas, the major observations that I had developed, and translate them into positive commercial events.
It sounds very multiple disciplinary.
I’m not an economist. I’m not just a hard core advertising, hard core PR person. I’m really a marketer, looking to identify a desire and how do you put product in that fulfills that desire.
Niche marketing has always been a discipline of rules and principles. In fact, the success or failure of a niche marketing strategy can be predicted based on fundamental principles. Failure could also be predicted based on how many principles were not applied and how many outdated rules they kept doing.
But unlike principles or laws, rules are subject to change. For example, rules often change in sports, politics as well as marketing. Better rules are created to adapt to changing times, technologies and circumstances. As the saying goes, “man was not made to serve rules, but rules were made to serve man.” This also applies to niche marketing.
A fundamental under-the-radar shift in niche marketing has happened. The changing economy has also changed the way successful businesses market to consumers. Social networks, mobile marketing and computer software has changed the game forever.
Keep in mind, the principles of niche marketing hasn’t changed but the rules have. As with any rules, the ones who master them first will win the biggest share of the market. The last ones to apply the new rules often finish last or not at all.
Here’s 3 niche marketing rules you should avoid in 2011.
1. The More Unique The Better:
Many niche marketing books have stressed the importance of uniqueness in a product or service. However, this is a major risk, especially in a slow economy.
The secret now is to offer what people are already buying with a slight uniqueness or twist. Because of technology finding out what people are buying is now easier to do than ever before. Experience proves risk can be reduced by following this new rule and avoiding the temptation to reinvent the wheel so-to-speak.
People are creatures of habit, we have a tendency to make similar purchases at similar prices and at similar times. By remembering this and avoiding the risk of trying to be too unique can increase the chance of success.
2. The Less Competition The Better:
One of the hallmark rules of niche marketing was to find a section or area of the market that had little or no competition. Now the key is finding markets with competition, the more the better. Why? Because this always signals a vibrant market with people who are spending money. Having an exclusive market does little good if no one is spending money.
The key to finding a market where people are currently spending money is to look for competition. Why? Because 9 times out of 10 people are spending money. After the vibrant market is discovered next apply solid niche marketing principles that separate your business, product or yourself from the competition.
3. Narrow Target As Much As Possible:
Excessive targeting can result in running out of prospects quicker, especially in a slow economy. That’s why good judgment must come into play when deciding how narrow to target prospects.
It’s better to cast a big net and narrow it down as time and sales increase, as opposed to narrowing target prospects too much and too soon. The key here is moderation. Beware of going to the other extreme and not targeting prospects enough. This can give worse results than over targeting.
Today, while I was brushing my teeth (bizarre moment to create a concept), I started thinking about a possible application of technology, electronics and the living space / concurred by the prospect, or potential client-based marketing product. It is thanks to the space that is used for promotion, is virtual, television, graphic, etc., where the customer is the message that he wants to convey. The proliferation of technology in marketing methodologies has helped the product gain a fuller and varied, with improved results. The almost voracious need to achieve ubiquity has expanded the boundaries of campaigns beyond traditional boundaries. Thus, the Internet has become more interesting in the field to determine the market niches and generate segregating special campaigns.
But in this search scope omnipresence, the living space is “relegated” to the traditional methodologies. Thus the results, leaving the field of Web, become more diffuse and difficult to measure results. Because of this, I analyzed the possibility of generating the concept of “Marketing Physical”. He thus called on all those product actions using measurable technological resources, customer input through touch sensors, sound, movement, etc-or-provoking resource utilization that alter the senses in the living space by the potential customer and their response to such stimuli. You may recall campaigns such as Camel, where a device POV (Persistence of Vision) “draw” on air “logo mark if the user decides to interact with it. O, and more for these days, the campaign Cofler Mint chocolate using the suggestive appeal of the smell of mint so that the client off to buy one. Such campaigns are fairly rare, but with great power of impact.
In conclusion the use of technology resources in the field of Marketing and Advertising may need a creative push the agencies that focus on these techniques. That’s why since our humble place and impart the knowledge we offer to help in their projects.
Have you heard about forex trading platforms before? Forex trading platform is software especially designed for online brokers and investors to monitor daily forex trading from any place around the world. These professional trading platform is now come in new version offering us unique and new advanced features that can actually help us to increase our profit in online trading. These latest trading platforms present the blend of functional usage that easily to use.
Forex trading software is especially designed to help the investor to make decision and executing the trading more effectively to maximize the return. Almost every forex trading platforms have unique analysis and strategy testing to test the rules, both buy and sell. To use this software you can simply click your mouse and access strategy performance report, there you will be provided simulated results like annual rate of return, profit versus loan, etc. From these we can modify the trading strategies to get profit without incurring losses.
If you are looking for forex trading platform find one that connects your monitor to the market. This forex trading software should be come with automated real time online streaming data from the market so you can take advantage of the liquidity of the market. Besides that most importantly good forex trading software should provide the robust backbone to handle many transactions with heavy information traffic and data. It is must be reliable. This multi asset broker software also must be offering more than one account type such us institutional, standard or mini. Usually you will find these software come in different operating programs like Java, Flash or WAP. Make sure this software also have firewall protection to get security and integrity of your trading. In order to presents perfect mobility for their traders or investors some forex trading platforms facilitate us with system without downloading any programs. We can perform this trading activities right from our home, home, notebook or even by going to the nearest internet cafe with equal ease from our location. These days even advance mobile forex trading platform is also available so you still can operate your trading when you are away from your computer. Besides that you are able to trade and monitor your forex account from anywhere by using your mobile phone. As one of forex trading software provider Protrader is offering us wide variety of trading software services. If you need more information about this forex trading software you can check it directly to its website.