On-demand Web applications

What is Google Attribution Modeling? Do you need it? Let's start with the definition of Attribution Modeling for those who are new to this concept: Attribution Modeling is the science of determining the value of each customer touch point leading to a conversion.  It helps you understand the customer journey and justify your...[read more]

Towards the end of last year I wrote a post on the eight variables to evaluate enterprise collaboration vendors which you should read before continuing with this post.  Today I want the vendor evaluation discussion a bit further with something that I actually wrote for CMSWire a few weeks ago on scoring and comparing...[read more]

Clear processes and metrics are even more important in the SaaS world than they are in conventional software businesses. The effect of what might seem like relatively small adjustments at key points can have a dramatic compounding effect on financial viability.[read more]

The word cloud computing is creating quite a buzz these days and although many large corporations are making the best use of it very few small business are making the switch and benefiting from this.[read more]

I just completed an interactive local media conference where some of today’s smartest minds in digital were gathered, from the likes of Google, Facebook, IdeaLab, CitiGrid, Constant Contact and dozens more. Here’s my list of the Top 20 trends (and some implications) in digital, search, social media and online marketing that emerged from...[read more]

Social media is firmly one of the most respectable forms of marketing today as many companies are engaged in it. Social media can be used as a marketing tool to discover new customers, converse with older customers, sell products and so much more. These uses make it a valuable asset to any forward looking business. However,...[read more]

Dell is now taking its social media expertise to market, launching a new range of offerings through a collaboration between its marketing and services teams.[read more]

No doubt about it. Business owners and startups are piling into social media marketing like never before. But the most successful businesses don’t go naked. They deploy a variety of digital tools to amplify and monitor their efforts. BizBest has researched over 100 social marketing tools – including some that are brand new – and came up...[read more]

Most companies offering a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution can't afford to sell it.  I'm talking here about "selling" in the traditional sense:  finding prospects and convincing them to buy a product or service.  In some cases that's done with experienced sales executives working their Rolodex (or its electronic...[read more]

Ask any successful small business owner or operator and many of them will say a key to their success is being more productive and efficient than everyone else. Businesses that are more agile and able to get more from their resources is more vital than ever in our highly competitive small business environment of today. With this in mind...[read more]

Publishing content on popular document sharing sites is a very effective content marketing technique to promote your business. Traditionally, businesses and marketers have been using article directories to promote content. However recent updates to search engine algorithms,  have led to the loss of ranking and devaluation of many...[read more]

Both Google and Microsoft invest significant resources in improvements to their search engines. But it’s not just about the information source – it’s vitally about relevance.[read more]

Last week, as part of National Small Business Week, John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing presented 5 Ways to Use Online Tools to Drive Offline Sales. If you were unable to attend the event, you can find a recap of the material covered along with a copy of John’s presentation slides.[read more]

’ve spent the majority of my career building technologies that try to do useful things with large datasets. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that there are only two ways to make useful products out of large data sets.[read more]

Earlier this week a group of UK-based software CEOs talked about their experiences of adopting a Software as a Service strategy. Some were in the process of transforming a traditional licence based software businesses - others were building a SaaS business from scratch. I believe that their lessons learned are of profound importance for...[read more]

The successful approach is simply an advance agent of the appeal, the talking points of what you have to sell. Instead of jumping right in and talking about the features or benefits of your product before you’ve won your buyer’s interest, cloak the points and present them as something the buyer would want. Then you’ve got an...[read more]

I recently read "Three Nights in August," a wonderful book about the "game inside the game" of baseball. The author, Buzz Bissinger, shadowed St. Louis Cardinal manager Tony La Russa through a three game series against the Chicago Cubs. Bissinger chronicles in detail the manager's thought processes and decision making through 27...[read more]

OpSource and the Virtual Computer Environment (VCE) Company announced an alliance today which will offer joint solutions aimed at helping service providers (xSPs) launch public cloud services more quickly. This joint initiative is the latest effort by various vendors to enable  xSPs to fulfill their promise as potent...[read more]

I'm sure the recent service outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS) had lots of engineers scurrying around, looking for a fix. I've been at a software-as-a-service (SaaS) provider when the solution's gone down. The operations and support people work through the night and weekends. Marketing people aren't completely off the hook, though...[read more]

As most nerds know, Skynet gained self-awareness last week and decided as its first act to mess with Amazon Web Services, creating havoc for anyone that wanted to check-in on the Internet to their current physical location. In hindsight Skynet eventually figured out this was a bad call on its part as it actually wants to know where every...[read more]