Marketing Trenches

“I hear you guys are the social media gurus in this area. Can you help us blow out our efforts on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook?”

These were seemingly innocent words from a prospective client, spoken just last week. As we dug a bit deeper, the red flags started flying. He wants help with social media only, and wants to address only those three properties. He doesn’t want us to worry about how the website, blog, search, email or other areas might impact social media. He is concerned about tracking the effort, but his tracking and measurement will focus on volume of followers, friends and connections.

Ummmm…no thanks.

He wants a Social Media Superhero. The superhero he wants doesn’t possess super human powers and is not dedicated to protecting the public. The superhero he is after is the type that can make his company look “hip” and “in the know”.  He is convinced this is what he needs because he read a book by a Social Media Superhero, a book that - not surprisingly - offered subtle plugs for the idea of hiring a Social Media Superhero.

He doesn’t need a Social Media Superhero. He needs a Marketing Superhero who possesses social media powers and skills, or who can access people with those powers and skills.

I’d say that over half the companies we talk to start with this Social Media Superhero mindset. They view social media as a set of properties that they need to address one-by-one, and they are focused on establishing a “presence” on each of those properties. If no one challenges that viewpoint successfully, they decide to hire a Twitter guy. Or a Facebook gal. Or my favorite - a LinkedIn optimization firm. With Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and Batman on board, how can this social media thing fail?

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Some call it interactive marketing.  Others call it digital marketing.   Still others use internet marketing, web marketing or online marketing.  Frankly, the terminology doesn’t matter.  What matters is that companies need to and want to address this function, and are becoming more and more open to exploring the different ways of doing it.

Occasionally we get a request from a company that has already decided that they’d like to build this function up in-house, using primarily employees as opposed to agencies, consultants and contractors.  The company typically has plenty of reasons for this approach, and while we often present scenarios that represent an alternative option, we do that to help the client arrive at the right decision for the organization.  After all, we call ourselves Right Source Marketing.  We recognize that there are many ways to build a gameplan, and our concern is finding the right gameplan for each individual company.

I like to put myself in the shoes of the person building this Interactive Marketing All-Star Team.  I don’t want to make too many assumptions because that takes the fun out of it, but let’s assume that the company is large enough and places a high enough value on marketing to consider building out this function in-house.  I’ve seen both B2C and B2B-oriented companies that fit this profile, so let’s not restrict ourselves there.

Let’s get started.  Before we get into structure, here’s the qualities I want from every single person that is hired for this team (beyond the typical responsible, detail-oriented, easy to work with type qualities):

• I want versatility.  Specialists are great, but the most effective specialists I know are the ones that at least understand how other areas impact their area.

• I want writers.  Everyone on this team will have to write and write well.  Everyone will be responsible for some form of content production, so poor writers need not apply.

• I want users of social media, but users that understand its business use.  It’s nice that you have 800 Facebook friends, 5000 Twitter followers and 1000 LinkedIn connections, but do you understand how those properties are used for business purposes?

• I want folks that are metrics-focused, but not at the expense of creativity.  Ok, so I want the best of both worlds.  Give me someone that can write an engaging blog post then turn around and build a financial model for a new product.  Those folks are out there; I know because I work with some.

• This one is personal, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting the opposite.  I want people that are ultra-organized.  If we’re going to create a marketing machine that spits out campaigns, programs and materials at a rapid pace, we can’t afford to work with slackers.

Let’s move on the specific roles.  Again, these roles are going to look different in every company and in every scenario, but most of these roles are relevant to the average marketing-centric company.

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Last week, we were excited and honored to be part of a group of presenters at a Greater Baltimore Technology Council event, Digital Media in Action: Engaging, Implementing & Creating Tangible Outcomes.

For our portion of the program, Mike and I discussed Why Blogging Should be the Hub of your Social Media Efforts.  While I’ve included our presentation below for those of you that want to dig in slide by slide, from a big picture perspective our focus was on the benefits of blogging as a component of your overall B2B marketing strategy.  And though many of the same approaches — and the results - do carry over in a B2C world, our presentation was primarily for the B2B audience.

The goal was to provide insights on how to use a blog for branding, communications and prospecting purposes.  Specifically, we covered:

• Building a blog strategy
• Options for creating a blog
• Benefits of corporate blogging
• Common blogging objections and appropriate responses
• Marketing a blog
• Writing blog posts to maximize readership
• How to get started on a post when you seem “stuck”
• How a blog drives the rest of your social media efforts
• Tracking the ROI of blogging
• Using your blog, and social media presence, to “Skip the First Meeting”

In particular, for B2B marketers it is nearly impossible to be involved in the vast amount of social media properties out there.  By using your blog as the hub, you are able to then use that content as the anchor for your social media efforts.  Mike made a great point during the presentation on why people read our blog: they know what we do, they want to know how we think (thanks to Will Burns for reminding me of this via Twitter).

Without great content - and the blog can serve as that content source of how you think - your social media presence is likely to be just a bunch of 140 character headlines with no story behind them.   It’s tough to really make an impact that way.

We thoroughly enjoyed our chance to speak at the event, to meet and do Q&A with so many people, and the feedback we received via Twitter.  We’re looking forward to the opportunity to do so again soon.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

I was speaking with a few colleagues the other day about the different benefits of social media as a whole, and blogging in particular.  The folks in the room had varying levels of social media involvement, from no involvement at all to heavy involvement.  Each of us discussed what we hope to get out of social media, why we blog or might consider it, and how businesses can benefit from blogging.  The discussion went on for some time, covering the wide ranging benefits from SEO opportunities to more frequent customer touch points and everything in between.  After a while, it quieted down a bit and somebody asked me if they had missed anything on the list.

Skip the First Meeting

While our blog serves many purposes, one of them I hadn’t heard mentioned by the group was one of the things that I find most useful.  Having a well planned blog and social media presence, with what we hope is interesting and insightful content, allows us to Skip the First Meeting.

So what do I mean when I say Skip the First Meeting?  Unfortunately, despite how well you may try to vet things ahead of time, inevitably in our business you run into an opportunity that 5 minutes into that first meeting, after you’ve sniffed each other and gotten a bit more of a sense of your businesses –  you both know isn’t a fit.  You don’t think alike, you don’t value the same things, really whatever those components may be.  Of course generally by this time somebody has ordered food, or driven out of their way, or fired up a PowerPoint or laser lights show, or something else entirely, and it’s too late to do anything but spend the next 45-60 minutes or more there despite you each knowing this isn’t going to work out.

Now, we often head this meeting off at the pass.  We’ll send a contact or prospect a link to our blog ahead of time, and also encourage them to connect with and follow us on social networks, and ask them to read through these pieces ahead of time before scheduling that first get together.  By doing this, we make much more efficient use of their time and ours.  We try to convey the idea here that we want to be involved in strategy and planning and believe in taking a holistic view of marketing, and that shines through in our posts.

When we discover the poor fit, we each save ourselves the time of an unproductive meeting where we just won’t be a fit for each other (although sometimes we do miss those laser light shows).  And just as importantly, for those that could be a fit, we’ve fast forwarded over the glossy part of the first meeting and are digging right into the important and meaningful parts that are usually saved for a second meeting.

So while there are probably 100s of reasons to blog and to get involved in social media, if it works for your business you may want to try to Skip the First Meeting.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

Software is ubiquitous these days, and there are so many flavors to choose from.  We have business software as well as personal/consumer software.  We have software that barely dents the wallet as well as software that requires a complex business decision-making process and millions of dollars.  We see Software as a Service (SaaS) models as well as Software as a Product (SaaP) models.  ERP, CRM, CMS, MAM, IVR, SFA…the list of software acronyms is dizzying at times.

The broad range of software types makes it difficult to identify the most common marketing mistakes, but not impossible.  Having worked as employee, consultant and agency for multiple software companies, I possess a somewhat unique perspective on what often goes wrong on the marketing side of the house.  Let’s take a look at 7 common software marketing errors and offer some quick mindset fixes:

1) Allocating marketing resources and dollars to the big product launch and leaving virtually nothing for ongoing marketing.

The launch, and the buzz generated in anticipation of a launch, is obviously very important.  That being said, unless your product is inherently viral to the nth degree (there’s not many of these), you’re going to need to support it and your sales force (if you have one) with ongoing marketing programs.

Quick Fix: Consider the ongoing marketing resources and dollars when you’re asking angel investors or VCs for some initial capital, and build it into your initial 12-month plan.  The initial launch buzz typically lasts no more than 1 - 6 weeks, after which you’d still like to acquire more customers, right?

2) Underestimating customer acquisition costs.

We’re in a new decade.  It’s not 2005 anymore.  Back then, between the “newness” of certain marketing vehicles, low barriers to entry and the relative lack of clutter, software companies could bank on certain tactics to drive leads and/or customers in a consistently cost-efficient manner.  That’s not the case anymore - software marketing requires a much more holistic strategy.

Quick Fix: There’s no quick fix here, other than trying to be realistic with your metrics projections from the onset.  Focus on lifetime value of the customer instead of the one-time license or subscription fee, then make sure you’re allocating dollars to different forms of customer retention.  If you look at potential lifetime value, it will get you far more comfortable with a high customer acquisition cost.

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For those of you who read Marketing Trenches regularly, I promise this is the last time I will post something about Twitter for at least one month.  There are more pressing topics to cover, topics that are more relevant to your various business missions.  That being said, given the relative popularity of my last post - The Only Rule of Twitter: Be True To Yourself - I decided to finish a post that I started conceptualizing weeks ago.

I am a small business owner, and from what I can gather from sources like Entrepreneur or Inc. Magazine, that makes me about as unique as a White House party crasher these days.  Being a small business owner means a lot of fun and exciting things, but it also means you wear many hats, and you often wear all those hats in the span of your 10 - 20 hour (come on, only college football coaches work 24/7) work day.

One important hat that I wear is that of a marketer, for both my own business and my clients.  Part of that marketing hat at the moment typically includes using Twitter.  And part of my usage of Twitter involves finding ways to cut through the clutter in order to give and receive useful information.

Here’s how I handle the clutter - I unfollow people on a daily basis, and I consider it an art.  Here’s how and why I unfollow:

• If you read my last post, you know I use Twitter for business only and I only tweet when I feel compelled to.
• I typically scan Twitter, either in Hootsuite, Ubertwitter or Twitter itself (gasp!) a minimum of once a day, maximum of 3-4 times.
• When I do these scans, I spend no more than 5 minutes scrolling through tweets, in the hopes of finding 1 or 2 pieces of useful material.
• When I find this useful material (and sometimes I don’t), I read the linked article, reply to the request for information, send a direct message, retweet, or some other action.
• I then proceed to unfollow at least 2-3 people or companies that have consistently contributed to the clutter.  I know which ones contribute to the clutter, because I don’t follow a lot of people.

The why part should be obvious.  If I have 10 - 40 minutes to spend on Twitter daily, I’d rather spend my time paying attention to a group of people that have been vetted than wasting that limited time trying to fight through clutter.  Think about it - is it all that different than choosing which sessions to attend at a conference, which companies to target with a business development strategy, or which industry publications to read?  Last I checked, there are still 24 hours in each day, 7 days in each week, and 52 weeks in each year…and you can’t possibly pay attention to everything and everyone.

Talk to anyone who uses Twitter on even a semi-regular basis, and they (if they’re being honest) will admit that there is a LOT of clutter to cut through.  I have a mere 174 people that I follow, which is about 4,826 less than some of my Twitter followers.  I can’t even begin to imagine how someone following 5,000 people fliters the clutter, and if you are one of those people I encourage you to leave a comment at the end of this post and tell me how you do it and why you do it.

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post.  Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

It’s been exactly 3 months since the  October 12, 2009 Wall Street Journal article Why Email No Longer Rules…And what that means for the way we communicate touched off a mini-firestorm in the marketing world.  This article wasn’t the first on the topic but really more of a culmination.  It seems for much of 2008 and 2009 there were many similar articles, in newspapers, industry pubs, blogs, etc.  And yet, if my inbox since then, the back-end analytics results we see, and the accompanying graph from Forrester Research here are indicators –- The rumors of email’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Before we get too far, let’s start with a couple numbers.  According to The Direct Marketing Association’s Power of Direct Report, Email marketing continues to demonstrate the highest ROI of all direct marketing channels, including search.  According to the report, email returned $43.62 for every dollar spent on it in 2009. While that is down $1.31 from 2008, it still far outpaces the ROI of PPC search advertising, which with an ROI of $21.85 is the next most effective.

So what does this mean to you?  Well if you have read anything on Marketing Trenches you’ll know that I’m probably going to work the word strategy into this post a half dozen times before I’m through (OK, maybe that is a slight exaggeration).  But, email deserves strong consideration as a part of that strategy.  Notice I say a part, because your other components are critical as well, and the most successful approaches are truly integrated.

Instead of choosing one channel over another because it has the highest surveyed ROI metrics, look at ways to use these together.  As an example, many of the top Email Service Providers (ESPs) offer Share With Your Network (SWYN) features now, integrating social network sharing tools into your email marketing.  If you aren’t working with a top ESP right now you should be – the half a penny you may save on a send just isn’t worth what you are sacrificing.

From an integrated marketing perspective, your email subscriber base and ROI from that base is likely to grow when you are using marketing channels like search (both Paid and Organic/SEO), social media and other online and offline marketing in a more holistic, integrated way, reaching your prospects and customers in multiple places and increasing your overall marketing ROI.

With the recent flip of the calendar, now is as good a time as any to reevaluate how email fits into your interactive and overall marketing plan.  Because trust me, email is alive and kicking.

What are your recent experiences with email marketing?  I’d love for you to add them in the comments below.

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow@willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

It’s been three weeks since I wrapped up teaching a course covering Interactive Marketing at Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies.  The topic for our last session was a doozy - social media, and in particular how social media can be used to achieve business or career-related objectives.

I saved Twitter for the latter part of the lecture, thinking that its stature as the hottest and yet most misunderstood social media property would generate some lively discussion.  I started with a very simple question:

Who here uses Twitter either personally or professionally?

Of the 18 students, 6 hands went up.  That’s it.  Only one-third of a group of mostly young professionals using Twitter?  And here I thought Twitter, much like an iPhone, was a status badge for the 20 - 40 something marketing professional crowd.  The follow-up question was an obvious one:

OK.  For those of you who don’t use Twitter, why not?

And the responses:

Student 1:  I already have Facebook, I don’t need another one. (I don’t even need the first Facebook.)

Student 2:  I don’t need to know what everyone is eating for breakfast. (Ah…the most common refrain from anti-Twitter folks.)

Student 3: I don’t have the time.  Who does? (As it turns out, quite a few…like in the millions.)

Student 4: I see these people - professionals - that tweet all day.  Sometimes every half hour, sometimes every 5 minutes.  How the hell does a person generate income when they’re tweeting their day away?  (I love this one, and often wonder the same thing.)

These responses generated a lot of side chatter and giggles.  As the Twitter-bashing calmed, I made the following statement:

You guys are absolutely right.  Twitter is not for everyone, and not built for every purpose.  However, at this moment, the business value of Twitter - if used appropriately - is indisputable.  That may change as Twitter goes through the typical flooding stage, but again right now the business value is indisputable.

Wow, I just got queasy writing that.  Did I really just represent that a business or a businessperson using Twitter is the proverbial “no brainer”?

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In my initial post on the B2B lead generation topic, I wrote:

This is the first in a series of posts that will address the creation and execution of a B2B lead generation program in a step-by-step manner.  We’ll post another tip each week, and when the series is complete we’ll compile all the tips into one document and distribute.

That was October 16^th, 2009.  Oops.

My apologies for the programming interruption, but we’re back on track.  For those that missed the first few posts in this series, here they are:

B2B Lead Generation Step #1: Start With the Right Mindset

B2B Lead Generation Step #2: Build a Strong Roster of Stakeholders

B2B Lead Generation Step #3: Identify the Metrics that Matter

Let’s get into the 4^th step, which involves messaging.  The good news is that we’re seeing a healthy shift to a metrics-focused mindset amongst B2B lead generation marketers.  While that mindset may elicit a “No duh Mike, lead generation is all about the numbers” response from some, the truth of the matter is that until a few years ago, the metrics-centric mindset wasn’t that prevalent.

That brings us to the bad news.  Somewhere along the way, many lead generation marketers forget about the importance of the core message and the value it brings to lead generation efforts.  While the message is only one of many moving parts in B2B lead generation, it’s a critical piece that must be addressed.

When messaging is ignored in the lead generation program building process, the most common cause is an impatient executive with a “no one cares about the message” attitude, and of course the program administrator/leader who accepts that attitude and proceeds to ignore the messaging component.

Given that the executive we’re referring to is often times a strong and influential stakeholder in the process, let’s figure out a way to address messaging without offering the impression that you want to overhaul every web page, press release, brochure, video and tweet ever created.

My guess is that there are hundreds if not thousands of approaches to message development.  I’ll offer up the two that work best in the circles we travel in.

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I used to love lists.  I have been a card-carrying list maker since 1980.  I still prefer a good pen-and-paper list on a notepad to a Word doc, wiki, or whiteboard.

List-makers used to be somewhat unique, and kind of freaky types.  Now, everyone makes lists.  People Magazine publishes the Most Beautiful People list.  ESPN publishes the Top Athletes of the Century list.  Less known publishers distribute some really fascinating material, like the 50 Best SEO Blog Posts of 2009 or the Top 10 Most Important Tweets of 2009.

I am taking a stance against lists, if only for about one week.  My only prediction for 2010 is this: marketers will publish lots of lists in 2010.  They will do this (and the “they” includes me) because:

• Everyone loves a good list

• Everyone loves predictions

• Everyone loves being right

However, I will use this post to comment on the lists that have already been published.  I used this magical tool (and it is a tool, and just a tool) called Twitter to pull down a search of 2010 marketing prediction lists.  Not unlike holiday shopping or holiday greeting cards, the 2010 predictions lists start earlier every year.  If I weren’t taking a break from lists for a week, I’d just go ahead and write my 2011 marketing predictions now to get ahead of everyone else.

So after reading 6 or 7 2010 marketing prediction lists, here are some predictions I agree with and disagree with:

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