New Media Marketing: It’s here; it’s clear; get good at it.

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Marketing Musings

Social Media Marketing can be an enormous opportunity for businesses and marketers, but it tends to get a bad rap these days. Though it’s working daily on all the sites we depend on, companies wonder who should be taking care of it, the internet literati complain about clutter, and everyone else scrambles to figure out how to use it carefully without getting left in the dust.

There are some good reasons for skepticism when it comes to Social Media Marketing: as a new field, no one agrees on the rules, let alone what makes an expert. A few things, however, are clear: Continue reading →

The Math of Viral Marketing

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Marketing Musings

In catching up on my RSS feeds over the weekend, I found myself staring at a short New York Times article that suggested a long story left unwritten. How does anyone build a viral campaign that succeeds out of any force other than blind luck?

Believe it or not, there is an equation for just that purpose:

[Be Amazing] + [Act Amazing] = [Get Amazing]

Viral is really that simple – just be worth talking about and do something worth talking about. The only catch is you have to have both to succeed. Notice also that I’ve not mentioned timing anywhere. There is a reason for this: Great campaigns always make their own timing.

Continue reading →

Ideas Are Never Sold

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Marketing Musings

Move to an edge. Declare your edge the center. Let the world reorganize around you.

The great misconception of marketplace leadership is that success comes from saddling up and blazing a new path for all to follow. Intuitively, we all know it doesn’t work like that.

People don’t connect with an idea because some commander inspired hearts and minds – they connect with an idea because it makes sense on a fundamental level. Something works better/faster/easier/cheaper. It’s more fair or honest or viable or responsible.  It’s more exciting, or makes them more exciting.

Modern leadership is about taking a fresh idea and committing to it – and allowing people to find their way to the best solution. It isn’t push. It’s pull. The greatest successes in this generation haven’t tried to drag a marketplace with them, rather they’ve focused on building mp3 players and social networks and powertrain systems that deliver more value than the status quo.

This truism applies in equal measure to brands and marketers as it does product designs and program developers. Unforgettable work requires establishing a center apart from old Madison Avenue, rethinking the rules for engaging your audience, raising a new flag and allowing people to find their way.

Brand New Emotion

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Marketing Musings

So I, along with six other Projectline marketing consultants, attended the Puget Sound American Marketing Association’s annual conference, MarketSmart, Thursday. Great speakers, great atmosphere, great day all around.

What I found interesting, and what I hope some of you will be willing to discuss with me, is how I left the conference with mixed feelings about the content of the presentations—most of which focused on brand, brand protection,  brand as something beyond the product, brand as a lifestyle, brand as an “emotional connection” with people.  Nothing really new, but even more “emotion” speak than usual. For me, the idea of making an “emotional connection” with someone solely for sake of selling a product  seems (and maybe is) a little smarmy. Isn’t it?

This is a discussion as old as marketing itself, but one that I think should be top of mind for all marketers and consumers. As a proud professional marketer, I, of course, don’t think of myself as working in the smarmy camp. Yet, I do consider emotions and connections every day. I want empathy and genuine connections between me and my customers (and between everyone at Projectline and all of our customers). I talk about how if our customers trust us, they’ll hire us. And I want to help our global customers think of their own customers as individuals with emotions and needs beyond the features of a particular product. I want their brands and messages to be bigger than just the item being sold, and to be loved for how it makes them feel. Positive emotions.  Paul Isakson, marketing genius, says that modern marketing = making people lives better. These days this means providing addictive content and utility. For what? So they’ll buy (more) products? Am I a smarmy marketer, just providing information to make an emotional connection? Where is the line between emotional connection and emotional manipulation? I think I know where it is for me. But I am not sure where it is for the big brands, that is for sure. I hope someone is still thinking about it.

As an aside, if you haven’t checked out the Brand Tag experiment, you otta (thanks for the link Patrick).

B2B into C2C

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Marketing Musings, Social Media

For you marketers out there, the notion of using customers to carry your marketing message is not new, but the evolution of social media (AKA social networking) has taken ‘word of mouth’ marketing to a whole new level. I think about this daily in my B2B marketing work and just the other day, I experienced it first hand in a B2C (a web site and blog) turned customer-to-customer (C2C) medium (a personal email with links). A friend of mine told me about a great new store, Nau. Not only did she tell me about it, but she also sent me a link to their website and a link to the blog that introduced her to Nau. Based on her experience with their products, she became a loyal customer and a staunch customer advocate. Plus, I became a new Nau customer without ever leaving my chair. Simple, yet important and repeatable.

Basically, I think our typical B2B content now must be blended with C2C contact methods and content. Interesting, but not difficult. As marketing pros, this opens up some incredible opportunities for us to reach our audience much faster. For traditional marketers, the switch and blending of C2C messages and mediums into B2C marketing campaigns can seem daunting, so here are a few ideas that I have noted seem to help: Continue reading →

“Produce 20 case studies by end of H2″

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Customer Evidence, Marketing Musings

 So I have been thinking today (not the first time) about my least favorite approach to customer evidence, (case studies, success stories, customer testimonials, whatever you want to call them). I think it is a problem that permeates the execution of so many sales and marketing activities: goal-agnostic metrics.

What do I mean? I mean when some poor marketing manager has been given the task of “creating XX number of success stories by XX date” as the goal of a customer evidence program. This is a fine target number, but not the goal of the program. The goals of an evidence program should be more like: to create stories that are instantly readable and genuinely connect with the audience, to create testimonials that are true and informative with a reasonable call to action, to produce stories that resonate and can be passed on to your customers’ industry peers, and most importantly to create materials that actually get in the hands of buyers and influencethem at all stages of the sales and marketing life cycle.

So my quick advice, if you are ever asked to “create XX number of success stories by XX date” is to consider these 4 questions:

  • How will these materials get into the hands of potential customers, specifically? Events? Online? Sales calls? Proposals? Direct mail? Press releases? and how can I make sure that it actually happens?
  • What formats will be most useful in these channels?
  • What quantity of success stories is needed to be successful in these channels based on coverage across industry, geography, and segment?
  • If I were someone in my audience, what would I really bother to read that would make a difference in my buying decisions? (See little chat on empathy in marketing or more ideas.

Once these questions are answered, then set the best target possible for your budget, and include a few more details such as what formats will be used in what channels (online, direct mail, advertising, sales calls, events, etc). That is sure to generate more success for your company in the long run, and you’ll still likely hit hit your targets. And if any one ever asks you, “why 20?,” you’ll have an answer.

Pointing Out the Obvious (Again?)

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Company, Marketing Musings

Those of you who know me probably would not be surprised to hear me preach the value of empathy in business dealings and personal life, but you likely haven’t heard me rattle on about the importance of using empathy to help make good marketing message decisions. It always seems that I am pointing out the obvious, but if that were true in this case, we’d have a lot more resonant and genuine messages floating out there.

To be honest, I don’t think empathy is an area where most traditional marketers excel. Of course, we know how to analyze market research, review customer feedback, comprehend market perceptions and trends—but I don’t think we all explicitly ask, “How would I perceive this communication if I were in this person’s shoes?”

I posit that no matter whom your audience may be, this question should always be asked and answered. Your audience doesn’t have to be a mirror of you to make this processes work—that is precisely what the magic of empathy allows us to do—to consider how others will feel about something.

I can’t give specific examples of seriously faulty messages that were unleashed upon the world without (assumingly) having been put to the empathy test or I may inadvertently insult one or two of this blog’s readers. Instead, let me get right to the point and suggest this: next time you have any material, letter, message, mailing, headline, tag-line, advertisement, or email going into the hands of an audience you want to actually connect with, explicitly ask the question, “How would I perceive this communication if I were in this person’s shoes?” (Don’t forget the last part; if you only ask “How would I perceive this message?” you’ll only succeed if you are trying to reach marketers. Ha ha). See if your answer to this question prompts a response that you can use to improve, hone, twist, or completely transform your message. Or even better, maybe your answer gives you the confidence you sought to leave your message as-is. Either way, you’ll be less likely to be lumped in with the heap of marketing managers developing content that audiences find insincere and disingenuous (if not laughable and insulting).

What’s the worst that could happen? You’ll be branded the woo-woo hippy marketer? Yeah, that would be bad. But maybe also worth it.