3 DIY Facebook Design Services. Social Media Dashboard for Teams using Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin. Venture Hacks - Good advice for startups. Startup_Genome_Report.pdf (application/pdf Object) Market Research Guide. Research Primer What's market research? And why must you do it? Here are two articles that offer a general overview on the topic. Sources and Techniques for Your Strategic Planning Efforts Perform the market and competitive studies that are necessary to equip your team with the information it needs to make good decisions.
New to the Market Research plays a key part in knowing which of your new business ideas will fly in the marketplace. Hitting the Market To be successful, you have to know your potential customers inside out. Introducing New Products Increase the odds of a successful launch for your product. High Concept: Tapping a New Market Will new features and pumped-up distribution enable a niche product to reach the masses? Bootstrapping You don't need big bucks to do a little research. Market Research on the Cheap Using students to determine whether to launch a new product was a cheap and effective form of research for this bootstrapping entrepreneur. Feedback A Do-It-Yourself Customer Panel. Startup Genome - Our mission is to amplify the power of entrepreneurs. With the Startup Genome Project we want to do for startups what Pandora did for Music in order to understand how innovation happens at a fundamental level and the spread the knowledge.
Mobile News | Mobile Technology. Entrepreneur Guide | Startup Advice. Scriblink - Your Online Whiteboard. On Startups by Dharmesh Shah. Small Business and Small Business Information for the Entrepreneur. Founders at Work: Stories of ... IPhones, iPads to Gain NFC Payment Features. (Bloomberg) — Apple Inc. plans to introduce services that would let customers use its iPhone and iPad computer to make purchases, said Richard Doherty, director of consulting firm Envisioneering Group. The services are based on "Near-Field Communication," a technology that can beam and receive information at a distance of up to 4 inches, due to be embedded in the next iteration of the iPhone for AT&T Inc. and the iPad 2, Doherty said.
Both products are likely to be introduced this year, he said, citing engineers who are working on hardware for the Apple project. Apple's service may be able to tap into user information already on file, including credit-card numbers, iTunes gift-card balance and bank data, said Richard Crone, who leads financial industry adviser Crone Consulting LLC in San Carlos, California. That could make it an alternative to programs offered by such companies as Visa Inc., MasterCard Inc. and EBay Inc.' Natalie Harrison, a spokeswoman for Apple, declined to comment. Stops Identity Theft. How to Use Game Mechanics to Reward Your Customers. There's a green card.
Then there's silver, gold, and platinum. And then there's the Centurion—the black American Express card. Which do you want in your wallet? A handful of luxury brands have for decades used promises of status to encourage customers to spend more through loyalty to their brands. Today, brands of all stripes are experimenting with the psychology of status and power in rewarding customers. A generation raised on video games is wired to love incentives—and that doesn't just mean freebies.
Consider Foursquare, a company built entirely on a game-design model. The new rewards ecosystem is a marketer's dream. "Historically, customer engagement was something big brands did a lot better due to full scale loyalty programs," says Gabe Zichermann, a blogger who authored Game-Based Marketing and who hosts of the Gamification Summit. That's changing. Rewarding Customers Through Gamification: Why Game Mechanics? People are hard-wired to enjoy positive reinforcement.