New article on customer intelligence: Give it a read

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Marketing Musings, Research and Insight

Earlier this week, we completed and shared an article we’re really proud of. Here’s a quick summary:

This article explores how businesses can become as agile as their customers through customer intelligence—a way of looking at business that is customer-centric and interdisciplinary. Customer intelligence helps you gain cross-departmental insight into every aspect of technology adoption—from research, to product development, customer adoption experiences, business analytics, marketing, and sales—giving your business a tremendous advantage in the marketplace.

We’ll discuss how you can become a customer advocate, focus on customer value, build an intelligence engine, and know when to engage a strategic intelligence partner. By valuing visibility into the customer experience, you have the chance to build intelligent relationships with customers that drive revenue and increase profits.

It’s totally free to read and download, so please–take a look, read it through, and let us know if it raises any questions for you. We’d love to answer them in the next installment!

News from across the pond: an update from our London office

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Company, Marketing Musings

The last time we checked in from London, we were just getting set up and announcing our expansion—it’s hard to believe that was just a few months ago, with all that’s happened.

What’s changed the most since our last update?

We’ve grown! We now have a full-time team of three in London, as well as a growing pool of fantastic local writers we’re working with to produce customer evidence. We’ve been busy with projects—from technology adoption programs to videos to online communities—as well as getting to know our local counterparts as we help kick-start the UK chapter of the Customer Reference Knowledge Sharing Network.

What about politics?

If my goal was to get a crash course in British parliamentarian government, I certainly picked the right time to move to the UK! My new British co-workers have been explaining the ins and outs of the election, the parties, and the process of resolving a ‘hung parliament’ (think: poker tournament, only the electorate votes for which cards the players have in their hands…). It’s been interesting to watch, though it’s certainly a different process than we see in American elections.

And what’s next?

Busy as we are, we’re excited for new projects and new growth. We’re looking forward to expanding how we help our clients engage with their customers to speed up their sales cycles, grow awareness within their target audiences, and make sense of their data with business intelligence. It’s exciting to be growing—no need to slow down yet!

Marketing Operations Manager

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Job Openings

The Marketing Operations Manager is a multifaceted management position in our Marketing Organization that requires excellent skills in Account, Client, and People management.

You should have a comprehensive understanding of the role of field marketing in driving business development and customer pipeline growth as leads move from marketing to sales execution. In addition, you should have a technical grasp of the marketing operations function and the software and business processes that enable accurate tracking, lead management, and reporting.

The successful manager will be adept at managing a large and diverse cross section of staff and sub-accounts and possess a proven track record in effectively hiring, developing, and retaining talented staff.

As part of a critical and rapidly growing division within Projectline, candidates must also possess a passion for business development and a successful track record of spotting opportunities and identifying the right business and staffing solutions to meet client needs and budgets.

Continue reading →

A social media aha! moment

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Marketing Musings, Social Media

Yesterday afternoon, I drove across the bridge to have lunch with a friend. The conversation (as it inevitably does) turned to Twitter. This friend is a technical guy, responsible for keeping infrastructure current, secure, and reliable. He’s not a marketer, he’s not in sales, and he doesn’t do most of his socializing online. So I was hardly surprised to hear, “I’m not a ‘twitterer’” and “it seems like such a broad audience – when we’re trying to reach people, we’re trying to reach really specific contacts.”

I’ve had this conversation once or twice (or twelve times) before, so I didn’t argue, I just explained: “Twitter—my personal account—is often the first thing I check in the morning and the last thing I look at before I go to bed. It lets me know what people are talking about and helps me find the stuff I really don’t want to miss.”

“So…Twitter is for knowing when your friends’ birthdays are and what they’re doing, right?”

“Well, let’s see: Kristina Halvorson, a business owner I really admire, tweets fantastic links about web content. My friends tweet when they try a new restaurant they love. I used Phinneywood’s Twitter feed to stay informed when there was a string of fires in Greenwood. If my website goes down, MediaTemple’s Twitter account is the first place I check to find out if there’s a widespread incident.”

I wish I had a video of what happened then: His whole expression changed, he leaned back in his chair, he said: “Oh, I could use that,” and launched into an explanation of how hard it is to communicate with all his users when there’s latency or maintenance or a need to let them know in advance when there might be an issue.

It was one of those breakthrough moments. A few specific examples turned “I don’t get it” into “I could use that.” It might be a while before he joins Twitter or finds a place for social media in his work, but it sure was fun to watch it click that social media can be as practical as it is shiny, as useful as it is new.

Be great and tell good stories: what graduation programs and marketing have in common

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Customer Evidence, Marketing Musings

Recently, I ran across something outside of work that reminded me of a lesson I know in my work life: genuine storytelling often gets the message across best.

In my non-work life, I’m lucky enough to be on the board of the Bellevue Boys & Girls Club, which does fantastic work in my neighborhood and beyond. This year, we’re working on a new program called Be Great Graduate!, which aims to find students who are likely to drop out of school and give them the support and motivation they need to graduate from high school. Of course, it’s easy to explain—but hard to actually carry out. As we got started on the program this year, we found out that we were going to need a lot of help to succeed. We’d need to earn the trust of teachers, kids, parents, community members, and donors—all of whom have different priorities, worries, and doubts.

So, for the first year, we worked with just a few kids. As they’re winding up the school year—successfully!—we are more committed than ever to making this program work for other kids. Next year, though, we’ll have an advantage: the stories and voices of this year’s students, parents, and teachers. It’s much easier to earn trust with their stories, because they are wonderful people with genuine voices; their experience means more than our intentions.

What does this have to do with marketing? Well, projects and programs—implementing new technology or trying new ways of doing things—also require a lot of trust and buy-in. In the flurry to convince people we’re right, it can be easy to focus too much on intentions when they really need to hear about experiences. A few sentences from a kid’s mouth can mean more than all our fancy plans. A quick reference or a short success story from someone who’s tried the technology already can mean more than all the features/benefits lists you’ve got.

But it’s important that we take the right lesson from this: the story has to be genuine. The storyteller’s personality has to come through. Sometimes it’s more important to have a powerful story than a powerful job title (the kids might not be President of anything, but our partners would often rather hear from them than from the Principal). Maybe the PC Support guy (or gal) is the right person to explain the new help desk tracker, instead of his (or her) boss’s boss—or maybe they can both help tell it. The story can be simple. In fact, it’ll probably get across better that way.

We’re facing a tough challenge with the Boys and Girls Club—but we know we’re better off armed with good stories.

And, of course, if you need some help telling a great story, we work on Customer Evidence and Customer Reference Programs that do just that. Rather hear it from someone else? See what our customers have to say.