California Channel Lean PR 
Steve Blank
APRIL 9, 2009
Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. The same was true for PR. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.
Steve Blank
APRIL 2, 2009
Finally, since no one would believe a set of benchmarks named after our company, we needed a façade of independence, so we named them after the street the company was headquartered on in Sunnyvale California – they became known as the Potrero Benchmarks. Now as VP of Marketing, I could have sat back and let my PR agency handle the press.
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Steve Blank
APRIL 30, 2009
SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Or blame my MarCom department who approved it. Worry about the sales results. What did we learn?
Steve Blank
MAY 22, 2009
While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. You are correct all channels, web or otherwise, need to generate awareness and leads.
Steve Blank
AUGUST 27, 2009
This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. After that there’s a discussion of how the product will reach the customer and the potential distribution channel. Marketing is at its peak.
Steve Blank
MARCH 19, 2009
I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. Market messages to indirect sales channels are just like that. They said the product reviews in these publications were by far the biggest influence on which card to buy. (This made our PR problem manageable and focused. The result is usually hilarious.
Steve Blank
JULY 13, 2009
Given the lukewarm feedback we were getting from potential customers and channel buyers we should have dramatically dialed back the hype until the follow-on games could match it. The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here.
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