Name: Nate
Web Site: http://www.serfwerks.com
Bio: Nate has spent more than a decade providing marketing services to companies of varying industries and sizes. His specialty is developing marketing strategy and analyzing marketing performance. Prior to founding Serfwerks, he served as the director of marketing for a restaurant franchise with approximately $20 million in annual sales with restaurants in seven states. He also worked as a marketing consultant for two Salt Lake-based marketing and design agencies. He has taught marketing strategy for professionals for organizations such as the Small Business Development Center, the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce and the University of Utah. With an undergraduate degree in public relations and a graduate degree in public administration, Nate’s unique educational background complements his marketing experience by adding skills in formal research, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and organizational behavior/ psychology to his repertoire.
Posts by nate:
Serfwerks Presents at Chamber University
July 12th, 2010July 9, 2010, SALT LAKE CITY—Serfwerks has been selected by the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce to present at its monthly Chamber University series on July 15th at the Zion’s Bank branch located at 462 W. 800 North in Orem, Utah. The 90-minute presentation titled De-mytified Marketing covers the basics of developing an effective marketing strategy to help marketers and small businesses achieve significantly improved marketing results. Topics covered include, performance analysis, customer segmentation, positioning, branding, competitive analysis, and performance measurement. Chamber members and attendees will learn how to quantitatively analyze the performance of their marketing efforts, identify opportunities to compete more effectively, and use marketing tactics to significantly improve their marketing results.
To register for the event, visit the Provo • Orem Chamber of Commerce’s web site at www.thechamber.org. Breakfast will be provided.
Marketing and Brain Orientation
June 28th, 2010
One of the perennial dilemmas when approaching an organization’s marketing strategy is the type of appeal (e.g. factual/evidence-based, emotional, etc.) that should be made to the target audience. After all, the strategy can have a huge impact on the response. For example, in the early 80s Pepsi always seemed to win it’s head-to-head taste tests with Coke in its Pepsi Challenges. However, for as much as the anecdotal evidence suggested that Pepsi was preferred to Coke, it never could eclipse it in sales. According to Beverage America’s 2008 report on soft drinks, Coke has 12% more market share than Pepsi). Of course there are many issues contributing to Pepsi failure to overtake the leadership position in the Cola Wars, one of which is the wrong marketing approach.
According to Hall & Stamp’s (2002), studies suggest that facts are meaningful to left-brainers and right-brainers are best sold using energy, personal relationships and emotion.
Additional research of business executives found that left-brain people respond best to presentation where the salesperson was more serious, very knowledgeable, and highly organized, with clear command of the facts and specific recommendations…Right-brain people responded best to sales approaches where the salesperson was more humorous, animated, relationship-oriented, and focused on their personal needs more than their own company’s needs.
Forecasted Market Share
June 15th, 2010According to studies by Kalyanaram et. al., Urban et. al, and Urban et. al., forecasted market share for consumer packaged goods and prescription anti-ulcer drugs divided by the first entrant’s market share roughly equals one divided by the square root of the order of market entry.
In other words, those who aren’t first to the market have significantly less market share than the first entrant into the market/industry.
The lesson to be learned is that being first counts for a lot.
See Hanssens, D., ed. (2009). Empirical Generalizations About Marketing Impact, Marketing Science Institute. Cambridge, Mass.
Marketing Losing Its Mojo? Not So Fast
June 8th, 2010In a recent article published by Mediaweek, author Denise Lee Yohn postulated that the drive toward social media and analytics by CMOs was causing marketing to lose its creativity. Lee Lohn wrote:
All this focus on social media and analytics seems to be sucking the creativity out of marketing. Time was, brands developed big ideas and delivered and communicated them in unique and creative ways. Now it seems marketers are only interested in tactics and metrics…Certainly media and communications have changed, so a big TV spot or newspaper campaign probably isn’t the right approach for transformational marketing. But lately it seems the pursuit of breakthrough marketing creativity has taken a backseat to work on more predictable and achievable efforts.
While there is no question to Lee Lohn’s notion that creativity plays a vital role in the effectiveness of marketing, the concerning part about Lee Lohn’s article is that it positions creativity as the finality of the marketing process. Read the rest of this entry “
More on Standardized Marketing Metrics
June 1st, 2010As a follow up on our recent post about standardized marketing metrics, we explore the conversation as it progresses within the marketing community. Marketing NPV published an interesting article furthering the case for (and against) a standardized set of marketing metrics. In particular, they argue that CMOs should be spending more time asking a set of difficult, yet critical, questions about their marketing strategies and efforts then working to develop a standardized set of marketing metrics. Read the rest of this entry “
