10 marketing resolutions for 2008

****From the Church of the Customer Blog****

1. Vow to do more attracting than selling.
To use a high school analogy: Be the charismatic kid with a winning smile, a charming personality and a good dose of humility. Don’t be the tard who farts and throws firecrackers at cats in that desperate vein of “Look at me! Look at me!”

2. Adopt the 5th P.
If your company relies on the classic marketing model of the four P’s, add a fifth one: Participation. Build a model of how customers, partners and employees can meet, share and participate with the company or with one another.

3. Build a niche.
The future is micro-specific. It starts with people who share highly specific characteristics that defy traditional demographics. Define an ideal customer to the n’th degree, like unemployed college professors who wear corduroy sport coats (with elbow patches) and drive old Volvos.

4. Conduct a word of mouth audit.
Put every customer-facing experience up for review, from reception to the floor person, to accounts payable. Does the customer experience generate good word of mouth, or bad word of mouth? Adjust then measure again.

5. Create a social network.
Do it on Facebook, or Ning or the good ol’ analog way: a customer advisory board. Any form of social network among customers, partners or employees (current or former) is a tangible asset. Treat it as you would your grandparents (respectfully), not as you would your younger brother whom you randomly punch in the head.

6. Vow to eliminate a stupid rule.
You know what it is. Customers (or bloggers) have already told you. So eliminate it already. For extra points, give it a funeral.

7. Create a social media training program.
In 2008, expect word of mouth and customer evangelism to be accelerated by social media considerably more than it was in 2007. What people say online will reach deeper into the B2B world, too, like long-term services contracts and enterprise-wide computer systems. Understanding the basics of social media, how it works and the effects it can have on reputation and sales should be part of annual training programs.

8. Ban use of the word “consumer.”
Nothing says “I’m like Borat” more than using “consumers” to describe your customers, or end-customers. If you call the sales channel your customers, then their customers are your end-customers. To call them consumers is so Borat-like.

9. Raise the ethics bar.
Be a hero to people who still believe in ethics. Make 2008 the year you set higher standards for ethical behavior. Make the standards clear to employees, partners and vendors. Enforce them. Gaming the system is for congressmen and crooked military contractors.

10. Do what you love.
It may be trite but if you don’t love what you’re doing, how can you expect anyone else to?

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Spice up your touchpoint emails

I am working on a project with a certain business unit in my organization whereby we are re-writing all of our auto-respond emails for our most popular assets. Right now, they are boring, unorganized and cannot be measured.

I view auto-respond emails (or touchpoint emails as I like to call them) as a vital or first lifeline to your customer. Its the first interaction that the client has with your org and if your touchpoint communication sucks or looks funny, imagine the impression that you give to the outside world. Most marketers would not even think to use this platform as a way to engage in a conversation with the client. Most don’t see it as an opportunity to begin a nurturing relationship with them. Most see it as a nuisance or necessary evil to business. Heck some marketers are so focused on “getting more leads” that they miss this as an opportunity to fulfill that requirement.

If you take the time to provide a useful and relevant experience for the user via touchpoint marketing, people will want to come back. If you think of them as just another lead and don’t see this as a viable marketing activity, then quit your job as a professional marketer.

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Don’t pay any attention to this post…….

How often do you pay attention to industry sites ads? Ya…I thought so………I have been hearing alot lately about how online ad budgets are either flat or slightly increasing next year and I am wondering if the money that software companies pour into online advertising is worth it? Do they have an hard ROI on the leads that they generate or are they pie in the sky numbers? What if a company were to find out that they poured $500k into ads for a particular product, generated a ton of leads, but the sales folks got no where with them? I wonder how much the company would be willing to invest in more ads the following go around.

Often marketing departments are so focused on bringing in the leads and looking that the CPL that they tend to lose site of the big picture of what it truly cost them to get that lead in and what happened once it got there. Yea yea yea…age old closed looped issue right?

How about instead of sitting around and talking about it, more companies begin to put a plan of action in place to either eliminate or curb the spend of online ads until they can be truly measured. Sounds deceptively simple huh?

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Branding For a Software Company

John at Duct Tape Marketing has a great definition of branding that I would like to share:

“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

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The abuse of email in software companies

Hi..I am Joe Blow and I recently downloaded a piece of trial software from your company. Within minutes, I got a crappy autorespond email thanking me for the download as well as my trial key. (some other software companies say in the crappy autorespond email that I will be contacted by a salesperson in order to get my key). Within the next few hours, I get a phone call and email from my sales rep asking me if there is anything they can do for me. I politely decline as I have not even unzipped the file yet.

Every so often I get a ping either from the sales rep by phone or an email asking me what is going on with my trial as it nears the end of the trial period. I get emails to go to demo’s, take part in surveys and go to seminars all from the same company. In fact I just got an email the other day indicating that since I download the XYZ product trial, I might be interested in this FGH trial….and since I have not finished XYZ trial yet…it all seems a waste.

Wow..then I noticed from this software company a really cool white paper on the same subject matter as XYZ product and decided to download it. Another crappy text autorespond, another follow up from the rep both by phone and by email and more emails I am sure to come. When I finally decide that the XYZ product has some legs, I get contacted by the sales rep to do a demo and I get scheduled for a demo, get more crappy emails confirming the confirmation of the demo. I then get a form crappy email thanking me for the demo when its done, another crappy email to fill out a survey about the demo and a thank you email thanking me for taking the survey.

Too bad….I lost budget and cant buy XYZ product…but I get an email once a month from the sales person, who has now switched twice since downloading it. I get about 2 or 3 emails a month asking me to download other white papers and other trials and of course to attend that precious breakfast seminar to talk about how the XYZ product, that I cant have can solve all of my problems.

This fictitious company and email onslaught depiction was brought to you today by a concerned software marketer who knows your pain and understands that in today’s world email can be abused by all. It can be used as a shroud, a wall, a sales tool and even an abuse tactic not only by overzealous software folks, but by many companies in general.

We live in a digital world where email is king. We live in a world where marketers use email to promote everything and anything. We live in a world where marketers dont treat the customer base or prospect internal database as a precious resource that needs to be nurtured with relevant content. We live in world where marketers need to come to grips that the user is in control of what they see and want to see. We live in a world where Marketing 3.0 is taking over.

Marketing 3.0 lesson 1 - The User is In Control. Identify, adapt and overcome……or be left behind.

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Bring on gifts…not

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.

Who is with me?

 

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TechTarget Online ROI Summit

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.

Look out.

Eventgain.net - A Fraud Email?

On 2 separate instances I received complaints from customers yesterday after having received and email from a company eventgain.net. The reason for the complaints from these customers is that they use custom email address’ when downloading products from my current company. They then received email from this eventgain.net soliciting them for list append services. Both complaints indicated that we as a company were in violation of our privacy policy. I have since launched an investigation and notified our legal team.

When I went to visit eventgain.net and tried to call them, all I received was a voicemail. Then when I tried to send an instant message it took 3 minutes to connect and after sending it, it does not appear that it was even sent. So, if for some reason you get an email from a Justin Wilson at eventgain.net, I would strongly advise that you proceed with caution. Something is fishy about them and I will post more once I know.

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Lead Nuturing is important.

The recent release of these findings from Knowledgestorm and MarketingSherpa certainly gives some validation to have a lead nurturing process in place.

Alot of companies use outbound telesales to qualified inbound leads, but it appears that users want more control and so we as marketers need to respond to that. Again..simplicity, relevant content and microsegementation are all apart of that.

What sort of lead nurturing process do you have?

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