Re-assess, Re-think, Re-imagine SEO

8 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Search Engine Optimization, Social media by JoseGuerra

A few weeks ago we were invited to talk about SEO at the Dallas-Fort Worth American Marketing Association and we took the opportunity to “de-muddle” the search and content landscape. We focused our presentation on how Search Engine Optimization is evolving into what we are calling CSO or Content Search Optimization. The concept behind CSO is that with the growth of user-generated content on social media and web 2.0 sites, along with the proliferation of blogs and their integration into search results, off-page SEO is set to become more and more relevant when optimizing for search engines results. 

Search Engine Optimization has been a cat & mouse game since its inception, marketer and web masters spent their time figuring out how to game search engine algorithms to only find out that these sites kept evolving and coming up with new criteria. The beauty of this game has been that it has evolved in the direction of making results more and more like what you would find on an offline search for a product or service. The difference though is that looking for an accountant offline could take you days or weeks to find a good one. You would probably look for one on the yellow pages, then ask your friends if they knew one, then interview several, than ask for references, to end up probably working with one that worked with someone you trust.  However, online you can do this in a matter of minutes or seconds. Product or service searches on Google (using their filters, social search features and Google buzz) or searches on Facebook (which can also be filtered for friends) will, if not already, complete the entire search and selection process.

So, the questions are: How do you optimize your web presence? How do you embrace word of mouth and user generated content around your brand? How do you grow a network built on trust and reputation? In a few words, and you can watch the presentation below to get more details, the answer is three-fold.

First, you want to establish an editorial calendar because it will help you increase content quantity, quality and your will get more subscribers. Do simple math, more content + better quality = better search engine ranking. Add a little of smart marketing and you will get more readership and that will drive more subscribers (or potential customers)

Second, become a publishing warehouse as it will help you get your target audience in the format and timing that they prefer the most. Take the topic for the day, week, month, whatever your reality is and put in your “content development process” to create blog posts, articles, presentations, tweets, white papers, questions, videos, podcasts, etc. or whatever your target audience respond best.

Third, leverage personal branding to distribute content to networks built on trust and reputation. As stated on a previous blog employees can become a great channel to distribute your content.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

2 Comments
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What does Employee Retention have to do with Social Media Marketing?

8 Mar, 2010 in General, Marketing Thoughts, Social media by JoseGuerra

Everyone talks about the importance of embracing Social Media as a marketing channel because it is free, easy to implement and everyone is doing it. But I also want to emphasize that it is a great channel to retain and engage employees. Leveraging employees, and their online networks and presence, in corporate social media initiatives helps marketing get the brand in front of the target audience via a channel and network built upon trust and reputation. Employees, on the other side,  fulfill their need to express themselves, develop their own personal brand for professional growth and get the opportunity to integrate their work life with their personal and social life more smoothly.

Employees and their families are online and using social media related sites more than ever before (I assume I don’t need to give a stat on this to make the point) and they like to share personal and professional content with their networks. The beauty is that these networks are built on trust, reputation, friendship and real business relationships. Therefore, they listen to what each other has to say making it a great word of mouth channel for a brand. However, many companies are still concerned that access to social media sites while at work could be a source of loss in productivity…well, let me say that the next outlook version integrates with Facebook and other social media tools and most of them have mobile devices. So, I would say that corporate mind-set will have to change much like it did 15 years ago when email came up. Next are six simple ways to start embracing employee social media activities to boost your marketing target reach while retaining employees.

  1. Set expectations and boundaries: Define how social media can help align employees with your business and marketing goals and what the objectives are for social media. Then be specific on what the expectations, implications and limitations are for employees. Clearly and frequently communicate this to them to make sure they are aware and accountable for their actions, but don’t force them into social media and make sure that they don’t feel that they have to do it.
  2. Educate them: Create a program to coach them on the benefits and limitations of each tool for social and professional purposes.  Show them examples of what to do and what not to do. Do it frequently and embrace knowledge sharing amongst themselves. Encourage employees to try it and find their own social media style.
  3. Invite them to participate: Share with them all your news, campaigns, events, promotions, offers, etc. and ask them to share them with their networks. But don’t stop there, make them part of it by asking them to provide content and help in the creation of these initiatives
  4. Use incentives: Contest are great, I recommend setting up daily, weekly or monthly contest to rewards those that participate the most or help reach the goals of the initiative at hand.
  5. Give them feedback: This is key, no one knows how they are doing and how they can improve if they don’t get any feedback. Give them metrics, comments, ideas and feedback in general on how they are helping the company. They need to know the consequences and implications (positive and negative) of their actions to improve them, correct them or embrace them.
  6. Embrace their ideas: Social media is all about user-generated content and participation, so companies must incorporate employees ideas into their programs. Employees are the ones closer to the customers and prospects and understand better than anyone else what make prospects and customer click or engage. Create the appropriate mechanisms to incorporate their social media ideas.

By Jose Guerra
Principal

Exito

0 Comments

5+1 Attributes of Inspirational Marketing

6 Jan, 2010 in Marketing Thoughts, Social media by JoseGuerra

My wife forwarded me an article about inspirational leadership yesterday with a note saying “Bueno refrescar un poco”, which means “It is good to refresh [lessons] a little bit”.  Which reminded that, although we are always learning new  lessons all the time, we only effectively incorporate them into our actions when we practice them. Thus I went ahead to write this post, so hopefully more marketers can practice more of these lessons.  The article is from the leadership guru, John C. Maxwell and it got me thinking that any marketing strategy and program needs to follow the same 5 attributes outlined in the article (Attitude of Service, Affirmation, Attentiveness, Availability and Authenticity)  to truly engage prospect to eventually turn them into satisfied clients for life.  The article starts like this:

“The Sahara plays tricks on the eyes of its travelers. As the desert sun beats down on the sand, heat waves rise from the ground. Light bends as it passes through the superheated air, painting illusory pictures on the horizon. To thirsty travelers moving through the Sahara, it often appears as if an oasis looms in the distance. However, as the voyagers journey on, the oasis proves to be nothing more than a mirage.”

An organization that wants to effectively help its clients succeed, it must act like an inspirational leader and avoid any marketing programs that are not a true reflection of their value proposition and benefits.  The increasing adoption of social media make these attributes more relevant than ever before because it is harder and harder for organizations to control the marketing and communications channels. Here is a recommendation based on the 5 attributes from the article on how to approach your marketing communication efforts in 2010 (I had to add one of my own, I like things in six):

  1. Attitude of Service – Always deliver valuable content to your prospects and customers for free
  2. Affirmation – Clients look for expertise and thought leadership, but instead of telling them how great your are or how much you know as an organization, be humble and share ideas and tips on how to leverage resources and assets that they may already have an expertise.
  3. Attentiveness – Ask for feedback, thoughts and comments. Listen to what prospects have to say and act on their message
  4. Availability – Take care of your customers, don’t take them fro granted. Be there for them, let them know that your available and be proactive in engaging in conversations with them
  5. Authenticity – Trust is key to any lasting and fruitful relationship, make sure that you are honest on every message and action.
  6. Accountable (this is mine) – Take responsibility for your actions or the lack of thereof. This shows you care and that you want to build a long relationship with your clients.

Exito

Jose Guerra
Principal

1 Comment
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Going Beyond Traditional Lead Nurturing

30 Dec, 2009 in Uncategorized by JoseGuerra

Several studies indicate that lead nurturing is key to improve sales and marketing performance indicators. A recent post from Marketo points out a few studies that found out how much certain metrics improve when lead nurturing is implemented. However, I think that using automated lead nurturing processes to send emails with white papers, trigger calls or invite leads that are not ready (80% of them according to Rain Today) to a webinar is just the beginning and will soon become a standard practice. It probably is already for certain industries and segments. So, the question is how do you differentiate and go beyond what your competition is doing to nurture leads?

The answer is to engage them in real conversations that are not automated and based on “sending” valuable information. Don’t get me wrong, you should do the standard automated lead nurturing explained above in parallel with having real conversations with prospects. You need to do this to play in the same field, but there are many other channels to nurture leads in a two-way communication channel. Here are 6 recommendations to start doing it:

  • Find the prospect on Twitter and start following them. Make sure to tweet content that is aligned to what he/she is tweeting about and re-tweet their content also.
  • Find if he/she has a blog and comment on their posts.
  • Find him/her on LinkedIn and join the groups he/she participates in. Post questions and comments on those groups. Answer and comments his/her posts.
  • Find them on other industry relevant online communities and engage with them there.
  • Don’t invite them to become friends/contacts right away, engage in a conversation first and then connect with them.
  • Once you connect with them in LinkedIn,  forward them profiles of people that could become their customers and offer them to make an inintroduction

Happy New Year!!!

Jose Guerra
Principal

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B2B marketing in 2010 it is all about simplicity…or you may get lost

9 Dec, 2009 in Uncategorized by JoseGuerra

What is the ultimate goal of B2B marketing? Many could argue that it is lead management; starting with lead generation, then lead nurturing, to finally closing more deals. I think that this is an extreme simplification, but if you are a medium size business with limited resources and ambitious goals for 2010 you need simplification. Most small and medium size businesses fail to grow fast enough and accomplish their business goals because they work on too many projects. There is always that great idea, or that new technology to implement, or that event to attend. It is easy to get excited during the marketing planning sessions to then lack the focus and alignment that is required to execute on the few critical and simple initiatives that drive success.

My recommendation is to pick three objectives for 2010 and create an appropriate mix of marketing activities and programs around them.  Start by taking the time to identify 2010 business goals, then look at your resources and constraints to identify the marketing programs you need and have the capacity to work on. You will probably have more ideas and initiatives that you ca handle , so pay attention to the three main objectives an make tough decisions. You may not get to go to your favorite trade show, or have enough budget to sponsor that golf tournament, or have enough people to effectively do some social media marketing.   But all that is ok, thanks to the nature of social media and many other online marketing programs you may now shift some marketing resources to these activities that will allow you to do more, accomplish more and spend less. You will probably be pushed to prove ROI for these initiatives, which is fine and should not hold you back because most online and social media marketing initiatives can easily be tracked and proved to be more profitable that many other traditional marketing programs. Below are 6 links to B2B marketing news, online marketing tips and resources related to social media ROI to consider in your 2010 plan:

Check out this video, it is a must watch if you want to understand how to address Social media ROI.

Exito

Jose Guerra
Principal

0 Comments

6 Easy Marketing Tips To Survive 2010

7 Dec, 2009 in Marketing Thoughts, Rants & Raves, Social media by JoseGuerra

The last couple of years have been tough and hopefully you and your company managed to survive it. In 2010 we expect that things will start getting better, at least in certain industries; however you should be smart and don’t get all excited. There are great opportunities for those that are brave, innovative and agile, is that you?

survive-homeownership-00

If yes, then call us. If not, then you are just probably finding ways to keep your job and we recommend you to read the 6 tips below and then tell us how they worked for you.

  1. Don’t Spend Your Entire Marketing Budget. Costs saving initiatives have been more popular than ever before. If you can manage to not spend your entire marketing budget you will be rewarded. Showing savings is always a good thing these days, and who cares if you hurt your lead generation volume and quality or stall your brand building efforts. What is more important though is to get a tap on your back from your boss for finishing the year strong. Nobody will hunt you down if you don’t continue your efforts to capitalize on the upturn of the economy we will see in 2010, right?
  2. Keep Reducing Headcounts. Everyone had been letting people go and most have successfully managed to survive this economic crisis based on these decisions. These types of initiatives are effective and opportune to let go of low performing employees. You can always hire top performers later in the year; although you may not have enough budget. Remember you saved so much money by not spending your entire marketing budget that your boss will probably decide that you could do a great job with a smaller budget in 2010.
  3. New Market Segments are Not Worthwhile. Although, trends such as the high broadband Internet penetration, the surge of web 2.0 tools and the social media boom are making it easier and easier to reach out to smaller segments in very cost effective manners, many people would argue that is not enough. Segments based on race, language, gender, age or sexual preferences are not big enough yet to allocate enough resources. No one cares that one of every five young adults today (ages 18 – 34) are Hispanic, which are ONLY about 50 million people. And nobody believes in Forrester estimates that Hispanic disposable income as a group will grow to $1.4 trillion by 2013 from $951 billion in 2008.
  4. Search Engine Optimization is Overrated. People justify SEO investment with arguments such as that more than 1 billion people worldwide, ages 15 years and older are Internet users or that more than 74% of the US population uses the Internet. Also that organic search drives 75%+ of all search traffic. What value does all that have? How many people really use the Internet to purchase or influence product purchases? Not many really, the penetration of ecommerce, on product categories such as computer electronics and media (books, music and videos) is ONLY 25%. There are still lots of people that you can reach out to without using the Internet, so why bother reaching out to these demographics, right?
  5. Email Marketing is From the Past. Email marketing started in the mid and late 1990’s, which is a long time ago in Internet history. It boomed in the early part of this decade, but as of a couple of years ago many argue it is being replaced by social media marketing and other new media channels. Companies used to BLAST emails because it was easy and cheap, but CAN-SPAM laws, anti-spam software and other tools are allowing people to hide from email marketing messages. Let’s look at some stats again to support this argument. Email open rates are above 30% in many industries and click rates get up to 6% or higher. So if you are a small or medium size business and you have an opted-in list of prospects and customers of let’s say 10,000 emails, you are directly reaching ONLY 3,000 people and building strong relationship via your content or offers with ONLY 600 people… EVERY TIME YOU SEND EMAIL CAMPAIGNS.
  6. Social Media is a Fad, Let Your Competitors Go There First. Much has been said about the reach of social media, the engagement capabilities it adds to the mix, that is taking Word-of-Mouth marketing to the next level and that is incredibly more cost effective than other tools. But, it is so new that many marketers feel threatened or not knowledgeable enough to jump into it, so they are waiting for others in the industry to lead the path to figure out how to use it. Let your competitors work with “social media” marketing firms and create some success first before you join. Why take any risks? We still need to survive 2010, right?

We like to share ideas, thoughts, best practices or whatever we feel like writing about in lists of 6. But, you can add to it…so, If you are going to take one risk, make it sharing your thought and believes with others. Feel free to comment, tweet, share or do whatever you want to do with this.

Jose Guerra
Principal

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What’s gonna happen with social media in 2010 and some other rants from SMCDallas Holiday Mixer

3 Dec, 2009 in General, Marketing Thoughts, corner6labs stories by JoseGuerra

49.1 million people in the U.S. are living in food insecure households , 32.4 million are adults (14.4 percent of all adults) and 16.7 million are children (22.5 percent of all children)1. However, thanks to organization like the Dallas Social Media Club ,the North Texas Food Bank, and last but definitely not least, Nomee (One B.A. social media app you shouldn’t live without),  people are uniting to kick hunger in the junk.

Last night corner6labs attended the DallasSMC holiday mixer, to help support the cause of stopping hunger in the U.S. While we were at it,  we thought we would do a little experiment. With lab coats donned and markers in hand, we asked the simple question…”What will 2010 bring for social media?”. We knew that after a few drinks, we would get some pretty interesting responses and that we did.  BTW, did anyone count the cans? we took a couple cans of beans but we were hungry at the time. Don’t judge us. Just kidding.

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Below is a list of what people had to say on our “Twitter Coats”. Wanna see some pictures? CLICK HERE

We are not sure if their are any trends, we will leave that to you.

  • @ntfb - “In 2010 social media will help feed millions”
  • Anonymous - “I’d like a quarter pounder w/cheese. No lettuce. With a large diet coke. Extra salt on the fries. Big size it!”
  • @StephanieDM88 - “MySpace will rise again! NOT!”
  • @boxcarcreative - “HOT OR NOT”
  • Anonymous - “Facebook will buy a country”
  • Anonymous - “Social media is the future of marketing and sales”
  • @cgawley - “What is social media ROI?
  • Anonymouss - “People will be overwhelmed by 1000s of FB friends”
  • @mikedmerrill - “Location-Based Apps will take wings”
  • @LevelTen_Colin - “Abandoning term “social media” rolls into Internet marketing”
  • @OhSoCynthia - “SMCDallas Rocks!”
  • “Guru is so 2008, Expert is so 2009, Consultant is so 2010″ – I couldn’t understand the twitter handle
  • @mverver - “People will want more centralized apps to organize their SM channels”
  • Anonymous - “We rock!”
  • @imaginesolution -  “Will email soon be a thing of the past?”
  • “Twitter made me do it” – Anonymous
  • @financeanswers
  • @alejandrasy -  “I hope it could end war”
  • Anonymous Kinda – “Get ready!…GPS based apps are coming!”
  • @companydallas - “140 characters will become a mainstay of the social languages”
  • @imaginesolution – “Will you have to pay for social media/will content be limited?”
  • @jordan_jah – “Bringing together all thoughts, ideas, and news in one second”
  • @sherbriggs – “Social Media will become the “pristine” source for communicating in life/business” Sher-Sherbee Media
  • @runningcouple – “twitter will “run” the world
  • RT@Hargrave @runningcouple – “twitter will “run” the world
  • X@ros624 – (saved space on left hand side of coat right below breast pocket for future events)
  • @eloisewright – “Amazing! Exploding in 2010!!!”
  • @stephaniedm88 – “Convergence media to the max!”
  • Zack and Joshua – 360Dallas.com
  • @chershberger – “2010-Exploding”
  • Global Bob Now – “customer service”
  • @agardina – “mobile catches up to ASIA & Europe.  Analytics become mainstream and expected”
  • @fishdogs – “mobile, mobile, mobile”
  • @mvever RT @fishdogs – “mobile, mobile, mobile”
  • @nogueiradiana RT @mvever RT @fishdogs – “mobile, mobile, mobile”
  • @wrsol RT @nogueiradiana RT @mvever RT @fishdogs – “mobile, mobile, mobile”
  • @ros624 – “2010 sm prediction all about business! fan pages become more open, twitter rules!
  • @mikedmerrill - “Enterprise social networkers will become standard”
  • @ntfb – “in 2010, social media will feed millions!”
  • @ohsocynthia – “Blog Tweet fan follow”
  • Anonymous – “Nomee Rocks!”
  • @angelatida – “follow me on Nomee”
  • Anonymous - “In 2009, Travis will bring sexy back!”
  • @PaparazziDallas – “Red & Blondie get a job!”
  • @communicatorklc – “Bigger and Better”
  • @covalentmedia – “*Thru D Roof*”
  • @cgawley – “Social Media in 2010=monetization & real time search”
  • @prnewswire - “make more friends”
  • @nomee – “add “in bed” to every tweet”
  • @corner6Labs – Bringing marketing sexy back! … “in bed!”

Any trends, thoughts or more predictions?

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Inside-out Creative, a Strategic Advantage in a Crowded Marketing Field

13 Nov, 2009 in Uncategorized by JoseGuerra

This is a second in a series of posts based on the findings of the IBM study titled “The end of advertising as we know it”. The first post titled “The End of Advertising as We Know It…I am Small Business, so Why do I Care?” was based on the changes in consumer behavior, how they consume advertising and the usage of Internet.

In this installment I will discuss “User Generated Content.” User generated content is arguably as appealing to consumers as versions created by agencies. According to the IBM study, It is a trend that will continue to grow. This is great news for small and medium businesses because they can leverage their networks of costumers, partners, employees and professional networks to ignite and embrace a dialog around common interests. This is why it is important for companies and other organizations to closely monitor what is being said about their brands and making sure they participate in the conversation. However, many entrepreneurs, start-ups, local businesses, local non-profits and other smaller companies don’t have strong brands that people talk about, thus they have a great opportunity to guide and influence future online dialogs as their brands grow.

Inside-outMore than 25% of US consumers have contributed content on social sites according to the IBM study, and according to the data from the Social Technographics profile study done by Forrester Research, this trend will only keep growing as it has in the last few years. The beauty of this trend, along with social technologies that embrace sharing, rating and bookmarking, is that it is paving the path to a larger movement around online word-of-mouth (WOM).

WOM, is based on consumer experience, and in this case digital consumer experience. A recent study by Razorfish titled “Feed: The Rasorfish Digital Experience Report 2009″ suggests that digital brand experiences are not just “awareness” or “conversion” plays, but customer-creation plays and that digital brand experiences create customers. So, if your target audience is online on a daily basis, participates in social media sites and spends money online for business or personal purchases, then you must pay close attention to your digital brand experience.

An article titled “Why It’s Time to Do Away With the Brand Manager” published by Advertising Age argues, based on a research study titled “Adaptive Brand Marketing: Rethinking Your Approach to Branding in the Digital Age,” conducted by Forrester Research, that brand managers should turn into brand advocates. They need to be more powerful and consumer-centric, much nimbler, and more real-time-oriented than the brand manager of today. They need to let go some of the control they had in the past, users want and will interact with your brand from a message and positioning perspective.

It’s not only consumers that will drive your digital brand experience, your partners and employees can also make a difference. Small and medium size firms have a unique opportunity to create a strategic advantage over larger organizations, by engaging partners and employees. To illustrate how employees can help create appealing content, think of all the knowledge that is within the employees of your company. Nobody knows your customers, prospects, products, competitors and the dynamics of your market segment better than your own employees. What are you going to do about it?

Below are 6 questions to ask yourself before starting any marketing initiative the involves employees:

  1. Does the culture of the company support an initiative like this?
  2. Will the executive team listen to and allow employee generated content?
  3. Should you utilize behavioral and team building tools and techniques to get employees from different backgrounds and communication styles to effectively work with others?
  4. Is my employee base active on social media? What is their online behavior?
  5. Have other similar initiatives that include employee input been successful in the past?
  6. Will I need help or support from HR and the executive team?


3 Comments

Small and Medium Size Business Social Media Success Stories

4 Nov, 2009 in Marketing Thoughts, Social media by JoseGuerra

success-story-contest-winnersI have been hearing more and more the need of small and medium size business to not only learn about success stories from national brands and other large organizations, but also from businesses of their characteristics. In many cases these businesses don’t have a well recognized brand and find it hard to believe that prospects and customers will engage with them on social media. Below is a selection of small and medium size business social media success stories. I hope you enjoy and learn something from them.

(No corner6labs clients included)

  1. Twitter To Go: One Houston Coffee Shop Makes its Mark. Today, he credits Twitter with almost doubling his clientele and with opening his eyes to a whole new way to build Community.
  2. Real Estate Consultant & Realtor Danilo Bogdanovic. This small business relied solely on word-of-mouth and personal referrals until three years ago, when it first diversified into the world of social media and quickly found cost-effective marketing success online.
  3. myFICO: Online Customer Community Drives Accomplishment of Support, Marketing, and Sales Goals. As a company operating within a heavily regulated industry, FICO is limited in the information it can provide to customers.
  4. 5 stories in one. Kogi BBQ, Marsh Cafe, Kogi BBQ, Duke of York’s Cinema, Wiggly Wigglers and Howies
  5. Lion Brand Yarn Drives Measurable ROI with Social Media: Lion Brand Yarn was not sure if its customer demographic would be likely to engage in social media but was willing to experiment with.
  6. Pink Cake Box is a specialty cake shop in northern New Jersey with 10 employees. They opened for business in 2005.
  7. UNLEASH 2009, the Mediasite User Conference: Energizing Users On-site and Online. A campaign to increase conference attendance that resulted in a 15% increase in conference attendees
  8. Sweetriot, a small business out of New York City has gotten a lot of buzz over the past several years for their mouth-watering, fair trade dark chocolate. CEO Sarah Endline explains in the short video above (click on the image) on how she engages in the social media space.
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Is Free a Good Pricing Strategy?

3 Nov, 2009 in Uncategorized by JoseGuerra

free-gratisI was reading a question posted by Harlan Beverly on LinkedIn about whether FREE was a good pricing strategy for a new SaaS offering or not, and it was interesting to read all the arguments and realize that there seems to be no consensus about it. For those in favor or open to a free pricing strategy, a good book on the topic is FREE by Chris Anderson. However, I wanted to tackle the discussion from a different angle and provide a framework to analyze if FREE is a good pricing strategy for a SaaS offering or not. Disclaimer: if you have funds to do expensive but effective pricing research, then do it. If you are a small and medium size business trying to go to market ASAP, take a look at this approach based on the RBV (resource based view of the firm):

This theory is based on four criteria to determine if a resource could be a source of competitive advantage: Valuable, Rare, In-Imitable and Non-substitutable. In the case of a product or service, if it meets all these criteria then I would argue that FREE IS NOT A GOOD PRICING STRATEGY and that there are opportunities to maximize profits by charging an appropriate price that could be determined with the help of adequate research.

Valuable

This is all about prospects and clients willing to pay for the product of service because it either makes things easier, faster, cheaper or it can help generate more revenue. I think that it is prudent to assume that all products are developed with the assumption that there is a need for them and thus willingness to pay for them. But, this does not mean that you may capture that potential source of revenue.

Rare

If the product or service has enough unique benefits and features, then it is rare and has the potential to be valuable. So, many new SaaS offerings are good candidates to command a price above zero. If one finds a combination of a big enough niche market that cares about the unique set of benefits and features of your product or service, then there is a business opportunity obviously.

In-Imitable

This is a key criteria as it relates to the sustainability of the source of value. If the offering was easy to replicate, then it would be hard to sustain value over time. This criteria is closely related to FREE pricing, when SaaS providers strip down their software versions to offer it for free they are embracing the fact that their upgraded version is hard to imitate. Also, in many cases, having a free version of the product is the source of in-imitability. If the size of the user base positively influences the value of the premium service, having a FREE version may help to generate a large user base that make the benefits and features hard to imitate. Think of what would be the value of the premium services of SaaS firms such as LinkedIn, job aggregators or even Google, with Google Free search services and Google AdWords, AdSense and other revenue models they have.

Non-Substitutable

The previous three criteria are a must in order to create sustainable value and thus be able to command a profitable price, but if one could achieve similar results with a more cost effective SaaS offering then it will be hard to charge a profitable price. The market dynamics will overtime drive prices and margins down. These changes in the market could take a long time or very little time, but that’s for another post.

Social media practices, web 2.0 tools, open source and online collaboration in general are supporting the development of more and more free tools and SaaS offerings, and thus putting more pressure on firms to create offerings that are valuable, rare, in-imitable and non-substitutable, so they can charge for them. There is much to be discovered as these forces develop at different pace, what they have in common is that all of them are growing their user base faster than other marketing practices.

I can think to a couple of scenarios where free could be a good strategy even if the offering meets all the RBV criteria: When the offering’s benefits and features grows with the company, think of Quickbooks, Email transmission solutions, Job-posting solutions, CRM solutions, etc. The other scenario is when a service needs a large user base to then put on top of the user base premium services, think of LinkedIn, Google and Facebook. Twitter is next.

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