I’ve always thought that I know pretty well how to navigate media. That I can immediately tell if a piece of content is an advertisement. After all, understanding the difference between ads and journalism is a crucial part of media literacy, right? Then I read Wired’s story “How BuzzFeed mastered social sharing to become a …
True customer centricity is still rare. This is news to me because these days you’re supposed to be customer centric. I hear many entrepreneurs describe their business as customer centric. Their product is customizable and totally flexible; they know their would-be customers thoroughly; their product utilizes big data to adapt to users’ needs; and so …
Last Sunday I leisurely browsed through home-for-sale classified ads. Soon I noticed that the house descriptions fall in one of three categories: Short, focus on facts. Boring and not memorable. Vivid, descriptive language with focus on feelings. Unconvincing, pushy, and makes you want to come up with negative counter-arguments. Facts with adjectives including pros and cons. …
Continue reading ‘How I Learned Better Writing from Oikotie.fi’ »
I like to compete. When we’re cycling with a friend, it turns out to be a competition of who’s first up the hill. When we are shooting hoops, we always count the score. It’s fun, makes the game more interesting, and provides a solid measure for development. We are competing to be better. But when …
Google is rolling out AdWords enhanced campaigns. Starting on July 22nd, all legacy campaigns begin to get automatically upgraded. Enhanced campaigns raise focus on mobile: it gets easier to customize, target and bid for mobile users. I learned about enhanced campaigns the hard way. When setting up a new campaign last week, I accepted the …
Google Adwords offers no more quick win to small-time advertisers. The pioneers of online marketing have already moved on from Adwords, while the masses and big brands are getting onboard. In Adwords, the keywords are much more expensive and there’s a lot more competition all around. This trend was well presented by Andy Brice on …
Continue reading ‘The Increasing Profitability of Google AdSense’ »
How many Finnish online products are targeting European markets? More specifically, consumer oriented online products? If I’m not wrong, there are very few. Overall, the number and scale of B2C product businesses in Finland is much less than in the neighboring countries. Among these few are some that are “born global”. As a rule, their target market …
The most underrated feature affecting user experience is speed. Fast page load must be a priority, along with great concept design. We’ve all heard the classic case: Amazon generated 1% more sales for every 100ms they shaved off the page load time (the original slide deck by Greg Linden). That was almost a decade ago, but …
Continue reading ‘Online Business Requires Fast Page Load’ »
Many online publishers in Finland have asked me who’d be the best partner for selling their ad inventory. It’s a crucial question. The right media sales partner can multiply the value of your ad space, and help you in developing an offering that adds value to both the big brand advertisers and your audience. Here’s …
Continue reading ‘Who’s the Best to Sell Your Online Ad Space in Finland?’ »
How to go to new markets with a startup product and minimal marketing budget? Here are a few notes based on what I found on the web. What is your market type? Steve Blank writes well about market type as a part of his Customer Development Manifesto. Does your product enable people to do something …