June 18th, 2010
by Eric Larson

Recently, we’ve been helping a client assess sales materials to figure out how they can improve relevance and quality. In talking to the product marketers and sales people, we discovered a few gaps.

Often, sales people modify materials to fit their prospects, presentation lengths, or personal styles—not to mention adjusting according to what works well and what falls flat. For marketing teams to capture what the sales people are learning and improve the materials over time, you need to build in a feedback loop.

Because everyone—not just customers, but sales people and marketers too—is getting used to interacting more directly through online networking and social media, our expectations have changed; we expect to be able to speak back, rate, and comment on things, whether they’re products, experiences, or even sales assets.

How might a product marketer enable that feedback and create the tools to capture it?

• Assign a contact person or owner for each piece of material. Even if it’s not the perfect person, or several people should be involved, having someone “own” the material will prevent “not-my-job” and help ensure that there’s some accountability.
• Create a central repository for the materials (many organizations already have something like this), but allow for commenting or rating of each asset. Think of how easy it is for people to “like,” “upvote,” or “downvote” something on Facebook, Reddit, or Digg – aim to create a frictionless way of communicating effectiveness.
• Have the sales team nominate their most effective colleagues in the field, then ask those people to share the collateral that works for them. Ideally, they could also provide trainings or even example presentations, so that both product marketers and sales colleagues could see the sales assets in action.
• Bring together some of those field champions to review content as it becomes available, using their experience to provide some initial improvements so the content can perform better right off the bat.
• As a product marketer, don’t get too attached to your material. If you feel personally invested in the materials instead of the materials’ success, your pride can stand in the way of getting the best content for your audience. Your job is to shepherd the content to its best result, not to guard its wording.

Most of all, keep in mind that any solution needs to save time, not create more steps and tasks. Be respectful of your colleagues’ time—anything that costs them sales time won’t be sustainable beyond a few weeks.

tags: marketing, sales

January 8th, 2010
by Corey Mahoney

With the last few years’ escalation of conversation about customer engagement, it’s more than a little odd to note that some of the biggest marketing stories in the first week of this new year (and decade!) are actually about very traditional one-way marketing—or even customer dis-engagement. Case in point:

• Last week dating site beautifulpeople.com made a PR splash by culling its ranks of singles who’d gained a little holiday weight. Seems like the exact opposite of customer engagement, right?
• Polaroid named Lady Gaga as its new creative director: a perfect example of celebrity-centric splash-making.
• Today, as CES hit its stride in day two, more and more of its live tweet-stream is mentioning iPhone trouble. With thousands of gadget fans, marketers, and tech bloggers in one place, the overload on AT&T’s network means they can’t engage the way they want to engage—online.
• All the tech chatter is about tablets-to-be. They aren’t in consumers’ hands yet, so for now the chatter is confined to generalized hype and tech bloggers’ speculation.

What does this mean for those of use trying to engage customers in the longer term—those of us who care more about gathering customers’ reactions and responses throughout the product lifecycle than about an isolated PR splash?

Well, it seems like a great reminder that in getting customers’ attention, fun, surprising, and entertaining stunts still matter as much as ever. Creative diversions (like Lady Gaga), surprising moves (or even obnoxious ones, like beautifulpeople.com’s rejection spree), and big events (#CES) can kick-start the conversation. The trick is to make sure the tools are in place to support it, respond to it, and deliver on the promise—which is where the challenges lie for AT&T and tablets.

tags: customer engagement, events, marketing, PR

July 6th, 2009
by Corey Mahoney

Whether or not Twitter made an impact on the outcomes of the Iranian protests—something we may not know for a while yet—the protests certainly made an impact on Twitter. As the election news and its aftermath unfolded in tweets and trending topics, people jumped at what looked like real chances to help: changing profile location settings, attempting to overload Iranian government websites, and even setting up proxy servers for Iranian users to maintain internet access. Some of it may have been good new-fashioned “slacktivism,” but it at least hinted at the possibility of more serious engagement with the events unfolding halfway around the world.

What didn’t show any engagement with those events, though, was Habitat UK’s tonedeaf marketing. (more…)

tags: customer engagement, marketing, social media, twitter

June 16th, 2009
by Ben Hawken

Last week Microsoft launched its new search decision engine, Bing.

Bing comes equipped with some very cool features, and offers citizens of the intrawebs a unique, impressive web experience.

Although it’ll be quite a while before we can see the lasting impact of this effort from Microsoft, there are several features that do bode well for the future.

First and foremost, Bing is a quality product, and Microsoft has the resources and energy to maintain and refine it.

Second, Bing’s advertising has taken a decidedly positive tone, focusing on the product’s features rather than calling out any direct competitors by name. (more…)

tags: advertising, marketing

March 21st, 2009
by Julia MacCracken

We asked a couple of Projectliners in our customer programs division what their work and life philosophies are, why they come to work each day, what motivates them: this is what they had to say.

tags: awesome, marketing

March 20th, 2009
by Corey Mahoney

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: (more…)

tags: audience perception, Facebook, marketing, social media, twitter

March 20th, 2009
by Projectline

Projectline Services is looking for an enthusiastic marketing professional to manage customer reference programs such as case study development, press relations, analyst engagement, video production, and more. The ideal candidate will be passionate about technology, and thrive in an entrepreneurial and energetic environment. This is a part-time opportunity with potential of going full time. We’re looking for people who take their work very seriously – but not themselves! [read more]

tags: awesome, case studies, customer reference, marketing

March 17th, 2009
by Projectline

Do you pride yourself of being ahead of the game in social networking?  Does ‘digital life’ mean something to you?  Does your expertise go beyond the already well know sites such as Facebook and Twitter?  Is your ultimate goal to find new ways to get in and influence various communities and conversations?  Do you like to track the success of your efforts?  Are you the person that everyone goes to when wanting to learn how to use the tools of social networking sites?  Do you like being given a direction or task and then over achieving on execution?  If so, then keep reading.

Projectline is hiring a contract online community manager to work with talented strategist that values continuous evolution and innovation.   Join a fun team in a fast-paced, creative environment that is utilizing social media to execute social marketing programs.  To assist in both the launching of new businesses and helping improve campaigns by the collecting and reporting on customer/community chatter.  Your dream job should be researching and finding new communities to influence online conversations by understanding the community’s needs, where to find them and the roles they will play with each marketing strategy.  [read more]

tags: blogging, marketing, online communities, social media, social networking, user generated content

March 6th, 2009
by Tena West

What do you do if you’re walking down the street and you see an advertisement for something you’re interested in? Do you take a mental picture of the website address and try to remember to check it out later? Or perhaps you quickly type the URL address into your phone? What if you could simply point your phone’s camera at the advertisement and have it automatically take you to the website? Would you consider that a huge step forward in the continually evolving marriage between advertising and technology, or just another ease-of-use phenomenon that may never catch on?

Recently, on Jimm Wagner’s blog, he proclaimed that “Text URLs Are So Last Year” due to Microsoft’s new Tag Technology. There’s a lot of buzz – both positive and negative – about Tag on other industry blogs such as i started something and TechCrunch.

What the heck is a Tag, you ask?

(more…)

tags: advertising, marketing

February 25th, 2009
by Projectline

So why do people forget the value of a good cover letter? Not really a question to be answered… more one to be acted upon. In this day and age of hard times and trying to set ourselves apart from the rest, why do we miss this opportunity to shine? One good cover letter can make the difference in the eyes of a recruiter that has been looking at the same thing for hours/days (heck, I have been recruiting for well over 13 years).

Think about it? You have taken all this time to create the resume to show your best side. You have created the one-page, two-page and even a bullet point version of it just in case. Some of you have even paid good money to have someone else create these pieces of perfection. …but yet you spend so little time or no time at all writing something that is meant to tell your story between the lines of your resume. It is a chance to actually make your resume sing out. I’m telling you it happens. (more…)

tags: marketing