As most of you know, I don’t do alot of promotion on my blog, but thought it might be prudent given the fact that this is a really neat event that we have coming up. As most of you know, I work for Quest Software and on February 6th, we are having a Notes to Exchange Migration Virtual Conference. Its completely online and geared to those folks who are interested in moving from Lotus Notes to Exchange and Sharepoint.
I think virtual conferences or trade shows are great since you can do it from the comfort of your desk and really have no “sales” interaction which on some level is a good thing. Anyway if you or someone you know is interested in attending, I would encourage you to register and attend this great event. As always, let me know if you have any questions.
There was a an article today in Daily Mail about lying. It says that everyone tells an average of 4 little lies a day or 88,000 over a lifetime. So without further adieu, I bring you the top 10 enterprise software marketing lies overheard at recent meetings.
10. No.I really think that storyboard where that pygmy is drinking carrot juice totally represents comprehensive dynamic reduction on the server level
9. The customer is completely happy with the recent patch and will be easy to get a reference out of.
8. Version 8.0 is way better than 7.5
7. Pop up banner ads really work
6. I don’t think scrolling down 15 times on our newsletter with 37 links is too much information for people to read.
5. Dude….viral campaigns are easy..we can bust one out by the end of the week!!!
4. No one ever told me I need to create a tactical plan to run a campaign.
3. I think a great way to gain awareness is to create a community….no a discussion group….wait….how about a Community Discussion Group with a blog where we have people talk about the product? Yea..thats great…will totally build awareness man!!
Barry Harrigan over at Accelerating IT Sales has an interesting post about what IT Marketing folks can learn from the personalization feature of Guitar Hero. While his logic seems simple enough, getting web folks into a development cycle to produce something like this is hard, especially in a large organization. Tell me what you think
Is 2008 going to be more of the same for you in marketing?
Is the lure of communities and new media marketing speaking to you in a special way?
Are you going to continue down the same path as you have for the last several years of rinse and repeat marketing?
As the new year has come and you begin to solidify your 08 marketing plans, try to think a little bit outside the box and talk to those folks who can bring in a fresh perspective to perhaps your stale ways. Don’t get caught in a marketing rut and don’t think for a moment that what you did in 2007 or 2006 will work again in 2008.
My good friends over at Webbed Marketing have this funny as heck holiday SEO poem that is a must read. It’s scary to think that my inner dork comes out and laughs at this stuff. For all you SEO nuts out there this is for you.
Twas the night before an algo change and I’m at my house
My laptop is on and I’m clicking my mouse
My title tags are crafted from keywords with care
In hopes that the Googlebot soon would be there
My keyword density was optimized to the specs
While my homepage featured rich visible text
With ma pouring link juice and me in whitehat
I’d just uploaded a new Google site map.
When out on the web there arose such a clatter
I checked my page serve time to see what was the matter
Away to my toolbar I typed on a mission
Searched on my keywords and checked my position
My site pages were slipping – it must be a new algo
Page two, three, four and five, and some further below,
When, what to my site should suddenly crawl
But an indexer, a bot, spider, a combination of them all
Rolling across the web with a new algo so hot
I knew in a moment it must be Googlebot
More rapid than eagles the SEOs they came,
And he crawled, and indexed, and called them by name;
Cord has a great post today about explaining what Social Media is all about. Glad to see he is going back to the basics as we all could use a good “101″ class again. Great stuff Cord.
If you are involved in SQL Server in anyway, my current organization is asking for 2 minutes of your time to fill out a survey to shape the future of our SQL Server offerings.
Alas….if you fill out the survey you will be entered into a drawing for a BenQ 20 inch monitor. Please take the time if you are working with SQL Server to fill out the survey as I know that it will be valuable to our development teams.
“Branding is the art of becoming knowable, likable and trustable”
So with this definition in mind, how can something like this statement above apply to any software company of any size? Does Microsoft or Oracle need to brand their software anymore than they already have? Some people trust and like Microsoft and Oracle and some people don’t. I think more where this applies to is company’s who have a multitude of products or services and are well known in the marketplace for some piece of software.
Branding takes alot of patience, time, money and creativity. You cant just buy a Super Bowl Commercial and expect that it will instantly brand you. (ok..maybe GoDaddy is a bit of an exception) Buying the back cover of trade magazine is a good start but for some is expensive. I feel that in todays transparent world, a great way to brand yourself is to open up the doors, knock down the walls and show the IT community that you are all about collaborating and solving the pains of their world as well as being a thought leader in your respective marketplace. You can have the best products in the world, but if you play the secracy game with the public, branding will be difficult.
Here are a few (yes a few) ways to build a good brand in software
1. Start a blog. A good blog..not a chest pounding advertisement, but one which adds value to your expertise
2. Hire an evangelist.
3. Build a wiki or a community centered around pain and have that evangelist dedicated to fostering both
4. Educate educate educate through as many new mediums as you can (podcasts, video, white boarding sessions etc….)
5. Do a super bowl commercial (kidding)
6. Do things that are fun for your audience…show them that you are real
7. Monitor your reputation online and comment and acknowledge people that talk about you and your industry.
This is just a start, but if you manage to do the above you are well on your way to branding your organization
I was speaking with a close colleague yesterday and she is faced with an interesting situation in her organization. Her organization is a medium sized software company with about 5 online communities. There is a raging debate within her organization about who should own the online communities: IT/R&D or Marketing. Marketing has a clear path for growth of the communities in that they want to make them more issue based as well less branded (yea…go figure..a marketing person who wants to brand what they do less). She would not disclose with me what the goal/future plans are of the IT organization.
There have been numerous meetings with management of both sides and no decision has come as a result. I have done some preliminary research on this subject and have my own opinion, but curious as to what you have to say. Let me know what you think.
Want to build an online community in your organization? Great….do you have a plan?
Many companies jump into building an online community but have no idea what they hope to accomplish with it. Some companies are so product focused that they feel that building a community centered around talking about their products will draw tens of thousands of people to it. Others want to build a community on the assumption that its what the customer wants. Others want to build a community cause its the “in” or “latest buzzword” and they must have one.
Step 1 - Define what you want with clear cut goals and expectations. Organizations need to answer some tough questions when building out a community
1. How will an online community further our companies mission?
2. Will there be an evangelist for this community? In other words, will there be one person or a team of people with the same goal in mind and that is to be nothing more than figure head for this thing?
3. How do you envision the community growing over a 10-18 month period? How will you keep the community vibrat and full of energy?
4. How will you empower the users of the community to feel they are the owners and not you the organization?
5. Are you wanting to start big and have a promotional strategy around it or are you wanting to start small and gradually build your base?
Once some of these questions are answered, companies then need to move into Step 2. (Step 2 tomorrow)
There was an excellent article written by Janet Kornblum in today’s USA Today about how young people are not necessarily that concerned with their online privacy. With the increase in popularity of social networking sites, Janet talks about how reaching out and being transparent over the net is easily down for those folks in the sub 35 age category.
I find that this attitude is pervasive at some of the highest levels of companies that I am a part of and engage with. The feeling of transparency or lack thereof resonates to their activities and disclosure both in marketing, PR and in some cases throughout the organization. The “I don’t want to reveal anything attitude” is old school and with the Internet Generation now starting and indeed being involved in the workforce, its high time companies begin to rethink their strategy of marketing or branding.
Time to reinvent the way we think again ladies and gentleman. Transparency is the new privacy.
Wanted to share with all of you a piece of marketing goodness that my company produced. Our theme is that if you want to be a SQL Server Rock Star, use our tools which I think is pretty compelling as well as kinda uber-geek cool.
We hear alot of things today relating to Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 or even Web 3.0. I think its time that marketers wake up and realize that we don’t have a choice in marketing anymore to want to relate to New Media or Web 2.0 technologies etc…..
Its a new era for technology marketers and we need to stay ahead of the game that is out there. We need to somewhat abandon traditional methods of marketing and look for inventive ways to build brand, awareness and of course leads for the sales folks. Marketing 3.0 is knowing the marketplace, the technologies available: harnessing and executing on all of the above to win the end game. As a marketing professional we should always think and be ahead of the world around us.
Marketing 3.0 - Thinking and executing ahead of everything else.
Whether you work in a small or a large organization, there always is that person, group, department or even large business unit which is labeled the problem child.
This problem child does stuff with a complete disregard for others. They question other groups about their value and worth with out really looking at themselves first.They don’t involve the right groups when doing projects or bring you into the fold at the last minute.They create work for others and then ask your opinion or advice and never take it (even if you are the known company experts in that area).They are the problem child.
Most groups that deal with the problem child sit silently talking about their operational inefficiencies and bash them with out really trying to understand who/what they really are.They don’t want to be controversial and take a stand and tell this problem child about where to stick it. They just go along with them and there inefficient and ineffective ways.
In technology marketing, I have found that in order for things to work, most groups need to be in a constant state of cohesion.All of the cylinders need to revving at the same time, because things change fast.
Here is what I have learned about dealing with the problem child.Get down to their level, understand their pain, listen and learn.Then in as inconspicuous as you can, tell them how you feel and offer to work together to become better. Give them 2 chances to hose you over, then if all else fails punish them.
No one is perfect and I will never claim to be, but the problem child is there. Don’t be afraid to tackle them head on and with maturity.They will either thank you or bash you, but you can walk away from it with your head held high as opposed to sand.
About 14 months ago we tried our first giveaway at my organization.It was met with some trepidation and some folks flat out were against it citing as to why we should give someone incentive to download an asset.It was a huge success and has since been duplicated many different ways across the company.We have given away Zunes, Xbox’s, monitors, soundocks, iPods, T-shirts and even gift certificates to people just to either try our stuff or read a darn white paper.
I say no more.Stop. I have since see some people in our company that treat this sort of incentive as cocaine and are wanting to give away some trinket or toy just for the sake of getting more leads with a complete disregard for the quality of the lead.
I agree that every once in a while we should give something fun away to give incentive to people and to let the marketplace know that we are a fun and vibrant company, but enough is enough.I have this strange feeling that the marketplace is either getting sick of our gimmick giveaways and in some strange ways almost expecting it.I have a feeling the some marketing people are the crack addicts want to give away this sweet thing just to boost lead count. I think its time that we stop being the dealers and start to be innovators again.
What is wrong with giving away something that the client is not only going to gain value from but also give them something that shows our commitment to that particular space?Sure, a book or a subscription is not as sexy as an Xbox, but we need to start giving out all of our candy all of time and give the marketplace a time to WANT to see something from us as opposed to the fat kid hanging outside your house everyday, cause they know you throw out a pound of chocolate every day.
It sure is fun to work on a program where we are giving away something for fun, but it might be even more rewarding to go back to the basics of marketing again and make something that is traditionally not appealing sexy again.
I am attending the TechTarget online ROI summit today and tomorrow in San Francisco and have been sitting through a number of sessions where alot of industry experts are talking about things from lead nurturing, new media, marketing to CIO’s and predictions for 2008 in online advertising.
After sitting through several sessions and talking with a few vendors today something has become abundantly clear to me. It has occurred that the IT marketing landscape is in a state of change and either you as a marketer adapt to this change or be prepared to face some tough realities in the marketplace. I work in an organization which has 100+ people dedicated to marketing and while some of these folks have a decent vision of the current marketing landscape and what it will take going forward, I am becoming increasingly disturbed at the fact that some people are not aware, (nor do they care to be) that this IT marketing landscape is becoming more collaborative, transparent and nimble. That marketing in IT is not about how many “leads” we can give sales. Its not about feeding the funnel and writing a white paper with substandard content and a huge product pitch. Its not pitching the latest buzz coined thing of “aligning business to IT”. Its not about giving things away to feed the sales beast with unqualified leads. Its not about alot of things…….and yet IT marketing organizations still believe that what we did back in 2004 to get business will work today.
To me its so much more……its about identifying the customers pain points and offering a solution to solve that pain point. Its about subscribing to the new media platform such as videos and podcasts to produce relevant and meaningful content so that the audience can identify you as a thought leader. Its not about quantity, its about quality. Its giving things away such as knowledge so that organizations can leverage your expertise to their business and not a particular solution set.
I can go on and on and on, but one thing that has come about in my one of being here, that my philosophy of openness, transparency, collaboration, nurturing, new media and relevancy has never been stronger. It was strong before I came here, and I will leave with an even bigger mantra to transform how IT marketing departments approach the world of marketing to IT professionals.
Today in 1984 RIM was founded by Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin. Most notably they created the Blackberry which I am sure most of us use. So thanks RIM and Happy Birthday…..
