Use "gutsy, scrappy" marketing to bend Facebook to your will....

By Mark Helfen

Can you get rich using Facebook? How about not just get rich, but get rich quickly?

Well, maybe not. But Facebook can be a low cost but very effective part of your marketing strategy. You can connect to a large number of very targeted Facebook "friends," with little cash investment, and make a real bottom-line difference in your small company's finances.

So says Evan Bailyn, speaker at the next SDForum MarketingSIG meeting, June 13 at our regular meeting location, EMC. His talk is titled "How to Build a Massive Facebook Audience that Converts to Profits," which is a pretty clear explanation of what you will learn.

Bailyn, CEO and founder of First Page Sage, has shown it can be done. When I interviewed him, he said that he had started eight internet-based businesses and sold five of them, some for multiple millions. The businesses were of different types and products, but all used his expertise in Google and Facebook to find and communicate with his market.

His strategy is to "beat the system" - to go right up to the edge of Facebook or Google rules, but not cross the line. Definitely an example of guerrilla marketing. But what would you expect from someone who wrote a book called Outsmarting Google: SEO Secrets to Winning New Business. The Facebook version is in the works.

Marketing Operations can save your life. Or at least your marketing sanity.

By Mark Helfen

If you've been in marketing for a while, you know that the job can range from merely difficult, to completely impossible.

• It's hard to manage the individual parts of the marketing mix.
• It's very hard to do well
• It can range from hard to beyond hope to control, or even influence all of the other parts of your organization that have to work in sync to make your marketing strategy effective.

Or to paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, marketing gets no respect.

Successful marketing operations is "a much bigger hairball than meets the eye."

By Mark Helfen

Mastery of marketing operations is key to the success of your business, and may be a key to your own career success.

Or so says Gary Katz, President, CEO, and founder of Marketing Operations Partners, a consulting group that helps companies get their marketing operations in shape.

Katz will be the speaker at the May 9 SDForum MarketingSIG, with a talk titled Marketing ROI: It's Simpler... and Way Harder...Than You Think.

His history includes more than 20 years of experience with marketing, change management, and public relations. In various roles, he has directed or managed corporate marketing, communications, public relations, lead generation and qualification programs, investor relations, and employee communication programs. He is a past president of the Silicon Valley chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA).

Panel forecasts explosive growth for cloud computing

By Mark Helfen

Cloud computing has an "explosive" growth forecast, driven by a better economic model, faster implementation time, and less risk. But along with the upsides, security is still an issue that requires close attention.

These were some of the conclusions or the panel discussion at last Monday's (4/11) Marketing SIG. Included on our expert panel were:

Bernard Golden - CEO of HyperStatus, a Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Consultancy.
Mathew Lodge - Senior Director of Cloud Product Marketing at VMware.
John Morley - Director of EMC's West Coast Executive Briefing Center.
Chenxi Wang, PhD - Vice President and Principal Analyst for Security and Risk at Forrester Research.
The panel was moderated by Sheryl Chamberlain, EMC's Senior Director for Technology Alliances. (More detailed biographies for the panelists are in the SDForum Marketing SIG meeting preview.)

The panel forecast rapid growth in the cloud computing market. In response to a question about which segments will grow the fastest, Golden's answer was that all segments were growing.

Have your head in the cloud? Hear expert insights on marketing Cloud Computing at the SDForum Marketing SIG

By Mark Helfen

Which part of the cloud market is growing the fastest?

Does cloud computing make it easier to launch a new product?

Clouds computing, along with mobile applications, are two of the top technologies getting both media and industry attention. Both are new concepts, not fully defined. Both seem disruptive, changing the competitive landscape. If you are responsible for developing or implementing marketing programs, the disruption offers both advantages and challenges.