New Year…New Marketing

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.

Branch out and fly young one….don’t be afraid.

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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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Holiday SEO Poem

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.

I will reprint some of it for you guys, but its best to go to their site and check it out for yourselves:

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;

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Social Media: Online Marketing 101 by Cord

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.

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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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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.

A complete list of Web 2.0 Offerings

Do you have some time to kill? I mean..do you have like the next 3 months straight to do nothing but explore Web 2.0 technologies? If so or if you want to see a really complete list of just about everything out there nicely laid out in a directory style, then visit GO2Web20.net

Crazy long list, but worth the visit.

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# 64 in the Cluetrain Manifesto

I have blogged about this before, so I thought I would bring up another favorite of the 95 theses from the Cluetrain Manifesto.

64. We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block with eye candy but lacking any substance.

How many software companies can claim to do this today? Ummmm none…..I don’t see it and if you do, please let me know. When are companies going to wake up and smell the coffee and learn about transparency? When are some going to learn that collaboration works and without some companies will wither and die?

The average IT software buyer doesn’t care or want to know how great you think you are. They want to know what you can do to solve their problems. They want to know if your solution won’t cause them anymore problems. They want/need to hear from those on the inside in a genuine sort of way. They want a trusted vendor, one who is willing to stick with them thru thick and thin. Sorta like a way a marriage should work…communication being the key and most important aspect to a marriage. Sure…your stuff may look all sexy on the web, but talking is one thing.

Some of the best software out there comes from companies who don’t pound their chest about every little thing. They give me access to their folks and let me participate in a real honest to goodness dialogue with them. They don’t frown on me when I mention their competition, they give me a plain and simple answer.

Wake up software vendors..the alarm has been ringing…don’t press the snooze button anymore cause soon you will be late for the party.

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Expand your senses in marketing…

I was driving my son this morning to summer camp and noticed something that perplexes me. First off, this morning in the Chicago area it was 70 degrees and sunny, which I would consider a darn near perfect morning. On my short drive, I saw 5 convertibles all of which had their tops and windows rolled up. Great weather mornings in Chicago are not as prevalent as in Southern California, so I am totally confused as to why someone would invest in a convertible and not bother to put the top down on such a gorgeous morning. On a day like today, I would love to feel the warmth of the sun and the cool breeze.

In software marketing its the same thing. Why use stale techniques and close yourself off from the rest of the world when the landscape and environment is so beautiful. In marketing, you need to try something new and smell the smells and experience the warmth and excitement of something fresh. Sure, sometimes you might get burned..but it pains me to no end when people in marketing do not want to put the top or windows down to experience something new.

Don’t buy your car if your not going to use it the way it was intended. Consequently, don’t sit around a marketing meeting wondering why your latest campaign didn’t work cause you failed to let in fresh air or fresh new ideas.

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marketing, software marketing, fresh ideas, convertibles,

Web 2.0 Marketing is not a bunch of things

Web 2.0 or marketing in Web 2.0 is not just doing a bunch of things: collaborating, community, blogging, youtubing, wikis etc……

It is a state of mind and an evolution that your company is going to need to adopt. Its being vulnerable, transparent and giving open access to those people you deal with. Its alot more than that, but this is a start. Web 2.0 first needs to be recognized in a companies marketing department and then the entire culture where this organization lives needs to adopt a new way of thinking to gain access to the marketplace.

I had several discussions recently about Web 2.0 and marketing within it. One conversation began like this “So…this Web 2.0 thing..can we get into it?” I almost lost it.

Starting a blog isn’t web 2.0 marketing. Starting a “community” (ugh…I hate that word) isn’t web 2.0 marketing. Heck..web 2.0 marketing shouldn’t even be in your vocabulary…just eliminate it from your brain.

Its too bad that alot of people don’t get it or want to get it…..but I am here to change one mind at a time…..its ok….you wont get harmed in the process.

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web 2.0, marketing, youtube, wiki, blogging, community, software

The dumbest marketing speak to date.

What the hell does this mean?

“XXXXX service-oriented management solutions provide a modular and future-proof approach to managing highly diverse and widely distributed IT infrastructures”

This is by far the dumbest thing I have ever read. What the hell does it mean to be “future-proof”? Does it mean that their software can defy all of the technology still to come. The wiktionary defines “future proof” as “designed not to be obsolete in the future” Well howdy doody..thank god for that….they are making something that wont be shelf ware in like 12 months. Of course, that is when I will have implemented this software.

I looked up in wikipedia what modular means, cause again I am not that smart. Here is the definition:

“something is modular if it includes or uses modules which can be interchanged as units without disassembly of the module.” it also defines it as “A module is a self-contained component of a system“

Huh?

Again..what in the world are people thinking when they write this stuff?

This company makes a big claim and I sure hope they have the goods to back it up…..but I doubt it.

Buzzbarf score: 9.75 (I have not found a 10 yet…but I will)

****NAME OF COMPANY DELETED TO PROTECT THE GUILTY****

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soa, SOA, ITIL, IT infrastructure, marketing, software marketing, technology, buzzmarketing, application monitoring, BSM, business service management

Employees and Word of Mouth Advocates

A recent article on the WOMMA site talks about how Ford in a recent webcast urged it employees to become avid advocates. Now, I am all for word of mouth marketing, but if I were an employee of Ford I think I would react with a bit of negativity towards what they are asking to do. I truly don’t think that a company should have to ask its employees to become advocates, they should want to do it on their own. Lets face it, Ford is in trouble and they need people to become advocates for their products and what better way to start is with their employees. Sounds simple enough huh? Well I disagree.

I had a post back in February about Volvo which is owned by Ford on just how stupid their pitch is for the new S80. Coincidentally, I own a Mazda and am totally happy with it so far, but when I bought it 2 years ago, I received a 4 year warranty. Now that Ford has infected that brand, they have pushed their current Mazda warranties back to 3 years. I know this as my wife is currently considering purchasing their CX-7.

In my heart of hearts, I don’t think any company should ask their employees to be advocates for their brand…it should be either just a part of their job because they enjoy working there or because they are proud of the organization that they work for. Perhaps I am naive and perhaps it is because I enjoy my current position and I don’t need to be asked to do it and/or its because I am a marketing person at heart and I know that value of pushing brand via WOM and truly becoming an advocate.

Here is a off the wall suggestion…..make better cars, stand behind your products with longer warranties and people will begin to trust and or talk about your brand more often. This goes beyond Ford…I think we can all learn a lesson here in any company that we work in.

Curious to know what your thoughts are.

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ford, volvo, word of mouth, WOMMA, buzz, mazda, branding, advocacy

Are you influential people?

Ron McDaniel has an awesome post about looking within yourself to be an influential person.

Thanks Ron for your insight.

Do you use Toad?

Do you use Toad for Oracle? Are you an oracle developer? Are you an Oracle DBA?

If you answered yes to any one of these questions above……just wait…in 30 days or less we have something ultra cool for you coming.

Nope..not gonna tell ya..but it is way cool and its a secret..but just watch……

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toad, toad for oracle, oracle, developer, dba

Word of Mouth Marketing…whats the latest…

Ron McDaniel points me to a worthwhile posting on the latest word on word of mouth marketing.

Good read.