Brant Cooper – Customer Development Half Day Workshops. 1st and 2nd May, Dublin

An entrepreneur whom I have known for a long time , Raomal Perera, is holding some great workshops as part of his Lean Startup Initiative.

The next ones are being presented by the author of The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development.

For more information on these workshops and to book click on this link.

From the author on the workshop format: “My workshops are very interactive. I’ll do some overview slides about customer development and lean startups and then we’ll go through the methods in my book to describe your business ecosystem, document assumptions, identify and prioritize risks and then discuss how you might go about testing the risks. Participants are encouraged to bring real life examples and issues we can discuss and hopefully work through.”

Keith

Stellar Presentations by @shelisrael – review

Repost of my Amazon review of Stellar Presentations:

I follow @shelisrael on twitter and occasionally chat to him there. You can see his website here.

Happened to see a tweet from him last week offering a copy of his book to anyone who would then review it so I took the opportunity. I bought and read a previous book of his – Twitterville and have also sampled his 2006 Naked Conversations.

I really enjoyed it. 71 pages (so as someone else said the price could be a little high) but on the other hand I have previously happily paid that price for really well written books which were also an hour’ish in the reading.

This is a topic I have read about and taken advice on for years and this summarises the best of that. He teases out the contradictions in the space and gives entrepreneurs the confidence to go out and win audiences over. Precious little structural stuff (you know the bullet point, image and font size kinda advice) and much more so about the tone and passion which are so essential in the delivery of a memorable pitch.

Nice one. Or as we say in Ireland “deadly”. Oh, should say it is $4.99 on Kindle for April. That hikes it nicely from 4 stars to 5. Link to the Amazon listing here.

As an addition to this I am interested to see that this is self-published using the www.createspace.com service. I know a number of entrepreneurs right now who are actively exploring the self-publishing route.

Keith

Techovate Conference 2012 – looking forward to chairing the Technology Panel

This is going to be fun – as part of a new 2 day conference coming up in Wexford this coming Wed & Thur (21st and 22nd March) I am chairing the morning session on Day 2.
Entitled Software and Services it will explore the key trends in the application of technology which businesses and organisations need to plan for in the next 18 months to 2 years and beyond. These are the 5 speakers who will then also take part in a panel discussion at the end of the morning:

Dr. Mícheál Ó Foghlú, CTO, FeedHenry

Adam Grennan, Country Manager, Cisco

Joel Wachtler, Head of Strategy, Eircom

David Walsh, Co-Founder & Group CEO, Netwatch

Stephen Moffatt, Head of Smarter Computing, IBM

For more on what each of them will be covering, together with the full conference details and booking information go to the website www.techovate.com. It is being held in the new Wexford Opera House – possibly one of the nicest venues for this kind of conference in the country.

Keith

Conversion – or getting a website user to do something

Conversion

This is an art form, not a science. It involves focusing your site on a key objective (or user journey) and clearing the path from the landing page (the first page they arrive on) through to the completion of their task.

What are typical conversion goals?

• Selling a product – that one is easy to define
• Downloading a technical product specification
• Clicking the Chat Online Now button and engaging with a sales agent
• Filling in a Contact Us form
• Signing up to an email newsletter
• Liking your Facebook Page

Whatever the goal there are a multiplicity of things on your site which impact on the conversion rate and this new site is a fun way of gathering case studies in what works and what doesn’t.You can play it here: Play the ConversionSkills.com conversion optimization case studies game

You can see a previous post of mine on conversion here.

Keith

Digital Strategy in the Pharma & Healthcare Sector

I was doing some research last week for a client project and came across something which is rare enough – a research report written by a consultancy which is actually useful.

When you are developing a digital strategy this kind of marketing report gives you valuable secondary data on which to make decisions.

This is it – the L2 Digital IQ Index Pharma

It assesses all the major US pharma brands for both their owned and earned digital media (ie websites/blogs and social media) so you get great exposure to the various elements in place on what they judge to be the leading websites in this space.

If you are curious the No.1 brand is Concerta by Johnson & Johnson.

Keith

Conversion – prompting an action from a casual website visitor

It’s not about the tools – it’s all about the visitor experience. 39 slides here from Hiten Shah in Kissmetrics and it is full of goodness on this topic which is a firm favorite of mine.

Thanks to Dave McClure for posting. He works here.

Keith

Diploma in Digital Marketing starting in Kilkenny on Tues 29th November

Digital Marketing is an integral part of a digital strategy and it can be really difficult for both entrepreneurs and also managers in businesses and organisations to find a cohesive way to at least learn enough to be able to plan and manage it.

IIA and Irish Times Training

Over the last 2 years a number of options have emerged to help people with this need and each of them take a slightly different approach to the topics covered.

In the Irish Internet Association (which I am a board member of) we have pitched it firmly at our member base – business people who are not necessarily marketing professionals.

First in Kilkenny

Starting tomorrow week (Tuesday 29th November) and running for 6 full days the Diploma in Digital Marketing comes to Kilkenny. And because it is December there is a festive discount for this one only of €205 down to €1,045.

I will be leading two of the days on the topics of Writing for Digital, Email and Social Media

What Will be Covered?

The full list areas covered is:

* Digital Marketing Strategy

* Online PR

* Writing for Digital Media

* Online Advertising

* Mobile Web

* Search Engine Optimisation

* Social Media and your Online Brand

* Email Marketing and Lead Generation

* Google Adwords/Pay Per Click

* Online Video

* Website Analytics

For the full details and booking click here. This one is great for anyone tasked with responsibility for this growing area but who feels that there are gaps in their knowledge base.

Keith

Rebranded – Life Time Value

After many years of working as a consultant under my own name (with a personal brand being a valuable asset) I decided in 2011 to rebuild my web presence (scattered across a number of areas) and took the opportunity to rebrand too.

Life Time Value is something that I have had an interest in for many years. While the context was a calculation of the potential sales to be made to a customer over the lifetime of their transactions with your business (used particularly in the context of recurring subscriptions) it can also be used in sectors with more traditional business models.

At its core it is about respecting your existing customer/client base and using a variety of communications channels to continue to develop your relationship with them.

That is what a large part of my business is about.

Keith