Applying Agile Marketing Principles to Non-IT High-Tech Domain

Agile marketing term is coined recently by IT marketers at the “Agile Marketing Manifesto”. This implies that agile marketing concept belongs to high-tech domain. But what about other high-tech sectors? How are agile marketing principles applicable there? What process areas of high-tech marketing are affected? And what are the first lessons that can be learned from those pioneers who try to implement Agile marketing principles in non-IT areas?

New Updates to High-Tech B2B Marketing Capabilities Model: Customer Community Management, Sales and Channel Enablement

Please, welcome the new entrants to  High-Tech B2B Marketing Capabilities Model. They are:
(1) Customer Community Management; 
(2) Sales Enablement; and 
(3) Channel Enablement.

According to Edward Hadley who cites the Forrester Research, Inc. report released in June 2012 customer community management accounted for 9 percent of all high-tech marketing expenditures in 2012, while channel and sales/field enablement - for 8 percent correspondingly. Backed by the money they are no more the buzzwords only, sir!

Those terms are not coined in Wikipedia yet. You will scarcely find scholar papers on them. Several years will pass until you will read about them in the textbook. But companies allocate budgets,  hire people and develop job descriptions for them. They are part of volatile competitive landscape already. And let's review them with all due respect. 

In Which Industries are Startups Blossoming?

High-tech industries are not equally friendly for establishing startups. Red Herrings Top 100 Lists provide good evidence for such notion. Rough analysis of the lists compiled for 2012 shows that 9 out of 27 featured industries were accountable for 80% of mentioned startups. Computers, software, internet, SaaS, and mobile are at the top.

Below see the table with the detailed results.

Top Trends in New High-Tech Product Design and Development Practices

Agile innovation, trend watch, customer collaboration – those are some of the widely discussed approaches that are believed to boost high-tech product development. To get higher rates of idea generation and idea conversion into successful products high-tech companies experiment with their new product development (NPD) processes. Here is a brief look at some currently emerging and maturing NPD trends screened by twitter hash-tags. 

Twitter tags to discover what's happening in this field on the general level are: #prodmgmt #npd #newproduct #innovation #RandD

More precise understanding of what’s hot in high-tech product development practices can be achieved by the narrow watch of the discussions in five trendy areas that are listed below.

Top 10 Chemical Manufacturing Companies: Facebook and Twitter Penetration, October 2012

What are the current achievements of top global chemical manufacturers in the penetration of social media?

See the results of screening the biggest chemical manufacturers in terms of market capitalization against the criteria of their relations with markets via Facebook and Twitter. Only those companies that have both Facebook page and Twitter account and use them for communications with clients are considered.

Total market capitalization of companies included into the list reaches 263 billion dollars. Overall, featured chemical companies attracted 173607 likes on Facebook and 77136 followers on Twitter so far.

The ultimate leaders in this October 2012 rating are Sherwin-Williams, Du Pont, Monsanto, and Syngenta.  

High-Tech B2B Marketing Capabilities Model v 1.1

This is a new release of High-Tech B2B Marketing Capabilities Model that encompasses the recent results of professional discussion at B2B Technology Marketing Community on LinkedIn. This discussion sparkled in the response to the question "How are you finding NEW customers today?" suggested by Barbara Kuntz from Miyachi Unitek. More than 50 marketing executives and experts shared their views and experiences on the topic. They have mentioned 31 marketing capabilities that high-tech companies might consider to develop and incorporate at B2B markets.

Would You Call Your Industry High-Tech?

What industry does your high-tech firm belong to? Is it high-tech, medium-tech or low-tech industry? The paradox is that you can find high-tech companies in every industry, but you can hardly call every industry high-tech. 

Is this really important? Yes, it is. Because your high-tech marketing strategy should be different for each case. 

The major difference will be in customers, competitors and technology development patterns. Moreover, your high-tech industry might turn out to be mature or emerging. 

By definition, high technology industries are intensive in terms of science, research and innovation. Mature industries are high-tech when they rely heavily on knowledge-intensive technologies, for instance, biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, nuclear physics, optics and photonics, materials engineering, mechatronics, electronics, artificial intelligence. Among such mature high-tech industries are aerospace, automotive, energy, software, computers, office machinery, electrical engineering, electronics, electrical equipment, ICT, telecommunications, scientific instruments, environment/green technologies, health care/medical devices, and pharmaceutics. At the same time new technologies can emerge independently into new industries, as well. This might be the case for nano-technology that can give a thrust to nanorobotics, for example.