Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

Marketing

Battle of the Bells

November 25, 2009

On the ChannelVision LinkedIn Group, there is a discussion about the ad wars between VZW and AT&T Mobility. Ho hum. Who cares? One Bell battling another like two children.  Every time I see the AT&T ads, I think, "Weak!"

Doesn't AT&T listen to its customer base?

The Niche Game

November 19, 2009

"Niche groups are emerging as cultural creators" - Frank Cooper of PepsiCo at AMEX Innovation Summit.

Tom Peters has been talking about businesses aiming at the explosively growing Hispanic market as well as targeting female shoppers for years. I guess Pepsi finally listened.

At Broadsoft Connections I made the comment that a Bundle will need to be created to target a specific vertical (or niche).

Unsubscribe and Permission

November 17, 2009

Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing in 1999. Ten years later, most media companies don't understand the concept still. As Seth explains in the book and in his blog numerous times, when I give you my email address, it is a trust issue. I trust that you will not spam me; inundate me with off-topic email; and most importantly not sell my email address to third parties -- even if they are your partners. 

All too often, when I sign up for an event, I get inundated with email from the vendors of the event.

A Profitable Bundle

October 30, 2009

This PowerPoint presentation represents the outline of what my panel was going to discuss at Broadsoft Connections. We were going to make 3 points about Marketing a Profitable UC Bundle: 

  1. Does Bundling Work;
  2. How do you sell it;
  3. What makes a successful bundle

Does Bundling Work? It depends. Are you using a Bundle for Customer Retention or Customer Acquisition?



Personal Branding for Agents

October 5, 2009

I'm in Atlanta at the Microcorp event to moderate a round table for agents centered around sales and marketing. The title is Personal Branding. How do you promote your personal brand? 

When selling replacement commodity items, your brand may not be that important. However, when using the Consultative Sales approach or looking for the sweet spot in the role of Trusted Advisor, it is about your knowledge, skills, and reputation.

People Won't Pay

August 14, 2009

If your model is free, how do you pay the bills? How do you pay for the infrastructure - the servers, switches, collocation, bandwidth, labor, etc.? How do you pay developers and engineers to scale it and keep it up?

Twitter is still free and so is Facebook. Popular too.

Social Media is Like Dating

August 4, 2009

Last night was the WITI Tampa meeting with two social media experts - IBM's VP Sandy Carter and Tampa Bay's own Shawna Vercher.  

Sandy walked the audience through some social media lessons, including some homework on your Brand 2.0: Post 2 presentations to SlideShare; join LinkedIn and Facebook and connect with 50 people; and join twitter and tweet. Your brand is about experience, connection, promise and interaction. Social media helps you to give your audience (or marketplace) that. It can't replace face-to-face, but, as Shawna put it, it's a nice placeholder for you until you see them again. It's a way to stay top of mind. It's all about what you want your brand to be - offline and online. 

Other ways to utilize social networks to boost your brand are becoming an expert on LinkedIn Answers; creating how-to videos on YouTube; and increasing your search engine results with tagged video and photos (especially with a Flickr account).



Verizon Profits Down

July 27, 2009

After dumping New England on Fairpoint and cashing in on that garage sale, Verizon bought Alltel. Now it is dumping more rural lines on Frontier. All of this is just Verizon's way of shoring up its stock report. Without the kickers from the Fairpoint transaction and the spurt from Alltel, my bet is that the company would be showing a loss.

Google Giving Voice to Startups

July 8, 2009

In a short article in INC magazine, one entrepreneur explains how he uses Google Voice for his startup business. He is a straddler - he has a full-time job while launching his own business. 

As noted by Ring Central, many of the features in Google Voice have been available for a while from VoIP Providers. However, it's partially the brand (it's Google) and partially the price (um, free). Once Google allows number portability, it will be tough to beat. Why?

For one thing, Raving Fans. Google has a lot of Raving Fans. And those fans tell stories about the service - even better than a testimonial.



What Are You Selling?

June 26, 2009

While speaking at the FISPA meeting this week, I kind of focused on sales and marketing. Why? Mainly the E-Myth. Most of the ISP owners are technical but are very uncomfortable talking about business, marketing and especially sales. One point that is important is that ISP's are NOT selling Internet Access.

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