How to Outwit Your Competition Decades of experience have taught me that making thoughtful improvements to existing products is a consistently profitable way to innovate. An effective way to come up with ideas is to start by surveying the market in a familiar industry and asking: What's missing? Maybe a potential demographic has been completely overlooked by industry leaders. Maybe there's been a lack of innovation for years. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to create a winning innovation. The question to ask is: How can the products already out on the market be made better? 1. Choose a specific market that intrigues you. Related: A Startup Aims to Fill a Hole in the Housekeeping Market 2. Take my guitar pick business. Related: Fresh Idea: The Unlikely Inspiration Behind Food-Saver FreshPaper 3. My interactions with consumers confirmed that there was an untapped market for unique, fun picks. Innovations can come from anywhere. Related: Forget What Your Customers Need; Branding Is About What They Want
Business Terms of Service Thank you for using Pinterest! Pinterest’s products and services are provided by Pinterest, Inc. These Business Terms of Service (“Business Terms”) govern your access to and use of Pinterest’s website, products, and services (“Products”) for commercial purposes. 1. a. You may use our Products only if you can form a binding contract with Pinterest, and only in compliance with these Terms and all applicable laws. b. Subject to these Terms and our policies (including our Acceptable Usage Policy), we grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and revocable license to use our Products. 2. a. Pinterest allows you to post content, including photos, comments, links, and other materials. b. c. Following termination or deactivation of your account, or if you remove any User Content from Pinterest, we may retain your User Content for a commercially reasonable period of time for backup, archival, or audit purposes. d. i. ii. e. 3. a. b. i. ii. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. No Waiver.
Forget What Your Customers Need; Branding Is About What They Want The following is the second in the series "Marketing Like the Big Brands," running every other week in which marketing expert Jim Joseph shows entrepreneurs on a small-business budget how to apply marketing strategies used by big brands. Being a brand is what separates you from your competitors and creates a much stronger connection with your customers. There's a major distinction between advancing your marketing efforts and actually transforming yourself into a brand. If you want to be a brand -- which should be your ultimate goal -- you need to understand the difference between what your customers "need" and what they "want." Need. Our customers need certain things from our business. Want. Related: Why Startups Should Take a Big-Brand Approach to Marketing "Want" is an emotion, and therefore represents the more connective benefits your business and brand offers. Let me illustrate. But let's say you personally choose a shirt brand that targets a younger more stylish consumer.
New Tools for Businesses in the Pinterest Community Thousands of businesses have become part of our community, giving great ideas, content and inspiration to people on Pinterest. Whether it’s Anthropologie sharing awesome clothes, Whole Foods sharing tasty recipes, the Smithsonian sharing fascinating collections, or Amazon making products easy to pin, many of us have been inspired on Pinterest by businesses. We want to help more businesses provide great content on Pinterest and make it easy to pin from their websites. Today, we’re taking a first step toward that goal with some free tools and resources. New business terms We now have two sets of terms—one for people and one for businesses. Getting to know businesses better Whether you’re a publication, brand, designer, blogger, retailer, online merchant, non-profit organization, institution, or local business, we’d like to get to know you better so that we can provide the right tools and support to help you inspire people on Pinterest. Verify your website. Case Studies.
The Secret to a Strong Branding Message? Focus. Entrepreneurs are hustlers. We wear many hats. We're like the chameleons of the business world, adapting to whatever we need to be at any given moment in time. It is no wonder so many of us struggle when our ventures gain critical mass and it comes time to focus our brand. In the mind of the customer, you get to be one thing. One. You don't get to be five things. Your one thing is the unique value that your brand delivers. Related: Why Startups Should Take a Big-Brand Approach to Marketing Your customer doesn't care what you want to be. It's very tempting to try to be everything to everyone. Positioning is the art of sacrifice -- of sacrificing the things you could be to uncover the one thing you should be. I know what you're going to say next: "But we do more than one thing! You think IBM doesn't? That's OK. Related: Grow Your Business By Getting Back to Basics What makes a powerful one thing? First, your core message needs to have an emotional and rational side.
Pinterest lance des pages spéciales pour les marques Le réseau social de partage de photos amorce sa stratégie de monétisation en permettant aux marques d'ouvrir des comptes et de disposer d'outils dédiés. Six mois après avoir levé 100 millions de dollars notamment auprès de Rakuten (lire l'article "Rakutent mène la levée de 100 millions de dollars de Pinterest", du 21/05/12), Pinterest amorce sa stratégie de monétisation en ouvrant une nouvelle catégorie de pages dédiées aux marques. Ces dernières n'étaient jusque là pas les bienvenues sur Pinterest. Le réseau social vient finalement de modifier ses conditions d'utilisation offrant la possibilité aux marques de créer des pages pour promouvoir leurs produits. Elles disposent également de la possibilité de convertir leur ancien compte en compte "business". Ces pages n'ont toutefois pas les mêmes caractéristiques que celles des internautes : les entreprises peuvent disposer d'un badge certifiant l'aspect officiel de leur page de manière à être mieux référencées et identifiées.
Whats In Your Bag: Colleen 1. Sunglasses 2. Keys. 3. Rume Pouch 4. Metro Card 5. What’s your biggest accomplishment? What’s the biggest lesson you have learned since starting your career? What’s the worst pitch you have ever heard? How does someone get on the radar of Entrepreneur Magazine for a feature on the site or in the magazine? Colleen’s Louis Vuitton Neverfull Where do you receive your inspiration? If you weren’t Special Projects Director, what would you do? Do you feel your life is balanced between work life + personal life? Soundbytes: What is your most indispensable gadget:My iPhone 5 – I can take beautiful photos of the curries I make with its camera. What’s your favorite app?
Pinterest lance les comptes entreprises 2012 aura été l’année de la croissance assez remarquable de Pinterest : cet outil de collection d’images, outre sa percée chez les particuliers, est également utilisé par des entreprises, qui y voient un bon moyen de mettre en avant leurs produits de manières très visuelle. Un espace supplémentaire pertinent pour certaines marques, peut-être un peu moins pour d’autres. Pour bien finir cette année décisive pour Pinterest, le réseau social s’est tout d’abord enrichi de la possibilité de créer des tableaux secrets il y a quelques jours. Mais aujourd’hui, c’est une nouvelle bien plus importante pour son avenir que Pinterest a annoncé : les comptes entreprises. Désormais, les marques auront des profils différenciés des particuliers, tout comme il existe une distinction entre comptes perso et pages pro sur Facebook. Pinterest for Businesses permet quelques petites choses non disponibles pour les comptes particuliers. Est-ce que cela va conduire les entreprises à se lancer sur Pinterest ?
Apple's New iPhone 5C and 5S: the Results of Creativity or Innovation? - Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere by Alan Iny and Luc de Brabandere | 8:00 AM September 10, 2013 Every idea, no matter how ingenious or successful, will eventually need to be replaced with a new one. But business leaders, as human beings above all, tend to cling to their existing ideas, beliefs, and other mental models — or what we call boxes — longer than they should. For instance, Henry Ford famously insisted on continuing to manufacture the Model T long after his competitors were creating dazzling new automobiles that significantly cannibalized sales of his once bestselling car. When Apple first created its highly disruptive, history-making iPhone, the company unleashed years of innovation not just in its phone offerings, but in a seemingly infinite stream of related accessories and applications. Creativity can be defined as people’s ability to change their perception of reality; by doing so, they can then create new ideas, hypotheses, approaches, and other “boxes.” Innovation can be defined as a change in reality.
The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking What is Growth Hacking? Growth hacking is so misunderstood that there is a desperate need for this chapter. Few concepts have been as polarizing and revolutionary, simultaneously. Two chasms have already been crossed.