UI’s can be critical in successful conversion of folks on your website and not all designers have the best intentions and allow for choice as this presentation outlines. Instead some UI designers prey on mis-clicks and the order of operations/presentation of complex forms and alike to get you on their mailing list or worst yet, get you into a transaction which is not as easy to get out of. This presentation provides insight into design elements that once we know about them, we are all better off. Wouldn’t be great if there were standards around promotions, opting in and other conversion related activities?
While this Dilbert strip is supposed to be fiction, I suspect it’s more real for some folks than it should be. Social isn’t something you can do half way, you need to empower/trust your team members to get out into the marketplace to actively participate and learn from the people in the market. It’s not just a marketing exercise either, you need to ask yourself additional questions and help the rest of the organization to support your products in the marketplace to improve traction from a new sales perspective and to increase the quality of service you deliver. The questions I start with are:
How is sales using social media to better understand their prospects?
How is support using social to improve service delivery, knowledge of our customers business and their own processes?
How can other parts of the organization use social?
What can Finance, Professional Services, Development and QA do to improve how they perform their craft and improve the customer experience?
Social Media isn’t just something for marketing, it’s something the whole organization need to embrace to better serve the market. The emergence of the social organization is not a trend, it’s a competitive requirement.
The role of product management and marketing typically different from one organization to another, which isn’t new per se, but it is a topic that continuously comes up in the in the industry. Every role I’ve had, every new CMO I reported to and every company I worked for required something different, it’s just the reality. The challenge for most of us to how to deal with different definitions of the role and the evolving expectations of product management over time.
Technology Association of Georgia’s Product Management group met this week to tackle this issue. A panel of folks participated that provided some real insight into how to implement a strategic approach to product management and change organizations. The panelist addressed “Selling Product Management to an Organization That Doesn’t Use It or Understand It”, here is the abstract from the event to provide more context:
While many companies have embraced product management as a key strategic role within their organization others are still unsure of the value that a product management team can bring. Many companies are building product management organizations but these groups are facing internal hurdles in establishing their place within the organization and becoming truly effective. This panel discussion will give you perspective on selling product management internally as well as strategies for addressing the challenges you will face building a team.
Eric Christ, Former President of Patient Placement Systems
Steve Ely, SVP Equifax
The discussion took three very different approaches to the challenge of successfully selling product management as the leaders of the business and sparked a good deal of discussion afterwards as well in halls. I was lucky enough to have a camera with me, so I had some side conversations and interviewed some additional folks and edited in some of the high lights of the talk. The whole panel discussion will be online as well for TAG members, but here are the cliff notes of the TAG PM panel and some additional interviews around the role of product management which might be of interest for folks outside of the southeast as well. Unfortunately the video from Cate was not clear, so I didn’t get any clips from her great drill-down on the importance of deliverables and ownership.
Thanks to everyone that spent some time chatting with me, the panel members and the TAG Product Management Society for putting on another insightful event for the local marketing community.
On another note…
A big thank you goes out to Tom Chmielewski, not for being in the video, but for all of his contributions to the product management and marketing community in Atlanta. Tom helped develop/co-found the first PM group in ATL, the TAG Product Management Society. Tom has also been active in numerous tech groups in Atlanta and most recently helped drive the sponsor efforts for the latest Product Camp ATL. He has been instrumental over the last decade + in Atlanta tech, but he’s leaving to do new stuff elsewhere.
Tom has landed a great gig out of state and will be taking his PM acumen on the road in the coming weeks. I wish Tom the best of luck and the greatest success in his next gig. Tom’s contributions have been big for Atlanta and I’m sure Tampa will soon benefit from having him in the community. Cheers!
Whew… that was a long title, so is the presentation, but it is spot on. Marketing content isn’t a haphazard “get it done set of tasks” for us as marketeers and brand folk. Mark Fidelman from Seek Omega nails in 74 slides.
