Tag Archives: Marketing

Customer Intimacy: A Lesson In Worst Practices

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With all of the talk about social media, transparency, content relevance, and user-generated content, we most certainly have a grand vision in front of us. As marketers, we want to evolve with our customers, moving from a mindset of pushing our content out to large audiences to a mindset of collaboration and engagement.

What we truly want is the next iteration of Customer Intimacy, a term that originated over a decade ago, yet still applies well in today’s environment. The pinnacle of marketing and product success is to become not only a vendor, but a trusted partner. This can be delivered in a number of ways, from custom product delivery, to special support terms, to well-structured, data-driven marketing efforts that suggest the company truly cares about the customer.

To establish customer intimacy, we need to move past economies of scale and one-size-fits-all thinking. The qualities that matter most are flexibility, responsiveness, and engagement (sounds like social networking, doesn’t it?). And most of all, if you say you know me, you darn well better know me. Even if that’s just a mirage served up by advanced database marketing techniques.

Customer Intimacy: How to Do It Wrong

Earlier this week, I was sorting through a stack of junk mail when I came across an envelope from Domino’s Pizza. Even when sorting through junk, I take a moment to look at each piece for two reasons:

  1. To see if there are any deals of interest
  2. To review for any marketing takeaways or lessons I should take note of

Since I tend to eat more healthy, all-natural foods, I was not interested in whatever special coupon or deal the mailer included, but it caught my attention from a marketing perspective. Here is the mailer in question:

We Miss You Domino's Mailer

Okay, good start. I have in fact purchased Domino’s Pizza in the past. It’s just good database marketing to look at your customers to determine activity/inactivity over time, seasonal patterns, and other trends. It has been quite a while since we’ve ordered from them, so I naturally assumed they did their job and send a re-engagement plea.

Then I looked at how the envelope was addressed. See for yourself…

Addressed to Postal Customer

That’s right, they don’t even know my name (which I had to give to them when they took each and every order I’ve ever placed with them)! Even worse, I went ahead and opened the envelope to see if there were any other interesting gaffs, only to find a letter addressed to “Dear Domino’s Pizza Customer”.  Of course, they did explain that they noticed no activity on my part in 2011, but by the time I read that part, it was too late.

Small Errors, Big Impact

As you might guess, this mailer had exactly the opposite effect on me than they wanted. Should I get a craving for pizza, they’d be at the bottom of my wish list based on this campaign.

The lesson here is important – if you don’t have the data or the discipline to collect it, then don’t try to pretend you “know” me. Just send a generic message without all the hints that you did some analysis in it. If you can’t or won’t do it right, you simply can’t fake it. Not only will today’s consumers turn on you, but they could easily amplify their complaints online, perhaps via a blog or other outlet. Oh wait, that’s what I just did…

Got Any Examples Of Your Own?

I’d love to see any other amusing or simply awkward attempts at personalization and customer intimacy. If you have something good, share with us in the comments below!

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10 Reasons to Give Thanks

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Thanks a million!2010 has been quite a year so far, with its fair share of good developments, curve balls, and surprises. I’ve been a bit spotty on updating Return On Now, primarily because of a couple of difficult curve balls that have come my way over the past 60 days. But as they say, put that behind you and move onward and upward, so let’s get ready for 2011.

But first, let’s take a moment to reflect on some of the good things, those things which have been both fortunate and welcomed, over the most recent months. It is far too easy to focus on the most pressing concerns, and we should all take time during this celebratory week to reflect on everything that is going RIGHT in our world.

In honor of Thanksgiving, I am thankful for…

  1. All of my friends and colleagues in Austin, TX, some of whom I’ve known for a long time, and others whom I’ve met in the past several years. Austin does a great job of balancing “small town” connectedness with a bigger metro mindset, and I’m proud to call it my home.
  2. The TRUE online marketing and social media experts, most of whom are humble enough to avoid adopting the narcissistic term “expert” or “guru”, for pushing the limits of what we know, striking out on new ground and sharing what they learn, and for keeping the faith as the space continues to be overrun by snake oil salesman.
  3. Every single one of us who understands that social media is not just a list of shiny new toys, but a true evolution of how we communicate in today’s technology-heavy world.
  4. The thought leaders who are finally espousing one of my key messages more widely – it’s time to stop bandying about terms like social media, social marketing, and a list of other overhyped phrases, and to start looking at them as simple tactics that must be considered within true business strategy.
  5. The fine folks who contribute to the WordPress platform, which has revolutionized web management and brought more control and capability to the masses.
  6. All of my online colleagues who are kind enough to help me make referrals to spread the good will among others, and who are kind enough to recommend me as a contact/friend/follow for others.
  7. The brave entrepreneurs who continue to churn out new ideas that interest, excite, and stimulate our imaginations with new tools, toys, and capabilities (hey, it’s not all about the tools, but at the end of the day, I love them as much as anyone!).
  8. The fantasy sports industry as a whole. In addition to providing me hours of enjoyment on a weekly basis, it inspired me to pursue my dreams of being a writer, to start a business and learn valuable insights about entrepreneurship, and to dive into social media more aggressively.
  9. My beautiful wife, precious children, and everyone in my close circle who takes the time to support me, exchange ideas, and generally participate in the daily growth and maturation that allows us to continually make progress toward becoming the best we can be.
  10. And finally, I give thanks for each and every one of you, the faithful readers of this blog. You provide me a platform to work out new concepts, to exchange ideas, to consider new and exciting viewpoints, and to generally express myself in a productive and enjoyable way.

Life is good, and I look forward to what it has in store for us in 2011. Thank you for reading, and I look forward to sharing more with you over the coming months.

Namaste,

Tommy Landry, Return On Now

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Social Media Success With Events

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Francisco Garcia IIIThis week I offer you the first of a series of guest posts, this one focused on using social media to drive successful events IRL. Thanks to my good friend Francisco Garcia (no, not the one who plays for the Sacramento Kings) for taking time to share his experiences here on the blog.

But don’t just read his work, chime in! Please share your own experiences in this capacity so we can all learn from each other!

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In the past, I’ve had the privilege of being asked to aid in the social media efforts of a few conferences, festivals and other events in Austin and the central Texas area. Naturally, it was important with each event to keep attendees informed and engaged, and while some tactics worked better than others, for the majority of the events mentioned herein it was the first time doing anything with social media. This post is meant to show what it was like doing live social media promotion with events and organizations new to the world of social networking.

Social Media for Music and Art Events

This October, I was asked by organizers of Art Outside to help them keep their Twitter account updated. With so much going on at the 3-day camping festival involving musical acts, performance artists, multiple stages, hundreds of volunteers and thousands of attendees, it’s understandable there would be a challenge to keeping up with the online community. There were plenty of people following @ArtOutside’s account and tweeting about what artists they planned to see when they got to the festival. While going through the #ArtOutside tweet stream, I knew I needed a way to keep the Twitter audience’s attention.

Enter CoTweet. Utilizing CoTweet’s tweet scheduling function was a great way to give followers a quick reminder about what kind of performer was going on (musical, painter, visual, performance, etc.), which stage that performer would be on, and what time the performance would occur. Tweets were scheduled for release 15-20 minutes before a performance, giving festival attendees plenty of time to get from their tent, another stage, or from any one point to another within the festival grounds at Apache Pass.

Of course, we took advantage of snapping pics of art installations and music acts whenever the opportunity presented itself. If ever there were a sudden change in schedule due to an artist gone MIA or the onset of unexpected technical problems, that was easily updated. Plus, it helped to be out in the middle of the woods [literally] and still have a great wifi connection.

But with Art Outside, your audience is a good mix of modern and traditional, so it’s important to take the same approach when promoting an event like this. An online platform is great for spreading the word, but having smaller events leading up to the big one is helpful for building that excitement. Giveaways for things such as promotional items or free passes to your event are always a nice way to keep attention.

Social Media for Nonprofit’s Annual Conference

Take the Texas Veterinary Medical Association’s Annual Conference. My former employer had me manage all the social media efforts for their 3-day conference in College Station during March of 2010. The conference is geared strictly toward TVMA members and focuses on opportunities in continuing education. Various members of the veterinary industry set up booths in the exhibit hall to display their products and services, and students from the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine were also in attendance, acting as moderators for various speaking engagements.

Now, like many other industries, the veterinary profession in Texas hasn’t totally caught on to social media. There are a few tweeting veterinarians out there like @SnoopyDoc in Houston or @AllanDaleVet in Austin, but the majority of the Texas veterinary industry is still figuring out that tweeting has become more than just “for the birds”. (Sorry, I had to.)

So, before the TVMA annual conference, I had to think of a way to get attending TVMA members to realize @TVMA was on Twitter and Facebook in the first place. Once we had a steady following on these sites, I started with the giveaways. The most successful was a giveaway for 2 pairs of tickets to the conference’s Casino Night.

The rules were simple, be the first to complete this sentence: “A legacy of ___.” TVMA’s slogan is “A legacy of service,” so this was a quick and easy one to win. The incomplete phrase was posted on Twitter and Facebook and both received responses quickly. One TAMU veterinary student responded on Twitter in less than a minute from the original tweet, and another student responded on Facebook within five minutes of the status update. Each winner came to the TVMA booth at the conference to pick up their tickets and take a photo with the prize, which was to be posted on the social networking sites. The contest actually led to a steady rise in followers on Facebook and Twitter during the first few weeks after the conference. Also, members of the veterinary industry started to follow in the footsteps of TVMA.

Social Media for Industry Association Symposium

Finally, there is the Southwest Veterinary Symposium (SWVS), who hired me to do some social media work for their September 2010 event in Fort Worth. There, I monitored both of TVMA’s social networking accounts, since the association is a partner in the conference, with updates on times and room numbers to continuing education opportunities for members. I also updated SWVS’s Twitter account with information on the day’s scheduled events.

The biggest draw here was SWVS’s collaboration with Rumr Marketing. The Rumr reps wandered the exhibit hall at SWVS with t-shirts promoting SWVS’s social networking presence: http://twitpic.com/2risvu. There was a contest giving away a free shirt to attendees who followed SWVS on Facebook or Twitter after spotting the reps. Once again, the freebies are what drew the conference attendees to social media. That, and it helped a bit that a 50” plasma television was placed at my social media station to display real-time tweets and status updates.

When passers-by saw the screen with a Facebook page or Twitter stream, it was a chance to approach them and ask how familiar they were with social networking and how they thought it might help their business in the veterinary profession. Some admitted to hardly ever being active online, some only used Facebook, and very few were familiar with Twitter.  This all gave me and the people at Rumr Marketing a better understanding of who and what was working in terms of active online users.

Conclusion

Like the veterinary profession, there are plenty of industries out there that are trying to get a handle on how social media can benefit them. What challenges have you come across when doing social media marketing and promotion for a small business or event? How did you overcome those challenges? How might you handle working social media for an event or industry new to the platform?

Read more posts from Return On Now about Social Media.

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Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Software Vendors: Starring the ‘New’ White Paper

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Since I have been unable to generate any new content for two weeks due to a personal situation that has taken up nearly all of my attention, I share with you another fine writeup by my friend and colleague Julie Hunt. The following post originally appeared on Highly Competitive just last month.

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For the past several years, multiple studies by different research firms have been conducted to evaluate the most sought-out and influential content for B2B technology customers during decision-making buying cycles, and every time, in every study, the #1 preferred content is the White Paper.

The white paper is the #1 most influential piece of collateral that technology purchasers consult when making or influencing a buying decision for their company, according to a recent survey by Eccolo Media

However, many B2B software vendors still are missing the boat with their use of white papers and have not employed them in ways to engage potential buyers, let alone convert them to customers.

In The Beginning…

Technology white papers find their origins in government briefs that were called white books, alluding to the plain white binding that was used. With the transformation to the technology white paper, experts, lead architects, systems designers used these documents to provide authoritative discussions of key ideas or technologies to show thought leadership and future direction. The classic white paper was very technical and dissertation-like, rich with in-depth details and research results.

Then something happened to white papers when many software companies began to generate them as “product collateral”. White papers were hijacked by many product marketing and marketing groups to directly promote products. Content became thinly veiled product brochures extolling the virtues of the software offerings, highlighting information favorable to the vendor. White papers became just another item in the checklist of collateral to generate for a product launch. Little strategic thinking or advance planning went into creating white papers, including the recruitment of a top tech professional to write the white paper. Well, guess what: software solution buyers do not like that kind of white paper.

When asked what most disappointed in a white paper, poor writing ranked number one.

One surprise in the findings – the respondents said they’re more disappointed when a white paper doesn’t contain enough technical information rather than when a paper contains too much.

What Potential Buyers Want In Effective White Papers

Quality Quality Quality

Customers continue to call out high quality writing with accurate and useful content as top values for the white papers that they want to read and use. They want plenty of details (tech / business), which means content has to be: tight, clear, compelling, authentic.

The survey also found that the quality of report writing gets noticed. Some 86% of respondents felt that high-quality writing was at least moderately influential and 51% ranked good writing as either very or extremely influential. By contrast, poor quality writing was the most frequent reason respondents gave for decreasing the influence of a white paper.

Less Time to Consume Content

A lot of great content is constantly published on the web, due largely to constant brisk evolution of business needs and corresponding software solutions. Customers would like to consume a large variety of content, so they prefer shorter lengths for white papers. Shorter white papers also allow vendors to generate a constant flow of new content that also keeps pace with business and tech changes. According to most of the studies cited in this article, the ideal length of a white paper is 4-8 pages. (Tech Marketing Best Practices Research Series on white papers states that 86% of tech buyers want white papers under 10 pages.)

Buyers are proactive in the use of white papers:

How to Maximize the Use of White Papers in Your B2B Marketing and Sales Process, released by InformationWeek in February 2009. Its survey of 542 professional buyers found that 93% of IT buyers pass along up to half of the white papers they read/download, and that 54% of those surveyed contacted a vendor for more information after reading a white paper.

No Registration Please

When marketing groups co-opted the white paper another marketing staple was added: requiring buyer registration to be able to download the white paper. There is a strong buyer sentiment that vendor websites should not require any information from the buyer for any content downloads.  After all, the sales engagement is buyer-driven, with the buyer deciding when and if next steps will be taken.

A recent survey done by Spiceworks (SMB IT management resource site) addressed the issue of having to register for white papers:

We also found a lot of people – more than 75% – DON’T sign up for papers requiring registration, which means the vendor is missing the opportunity to share and disseminate their knowledge.

How many (vendors) stopped requiring registration as the result of your survey?

A handful so far. The results are pretty staggering. When you remove the “registration wall,” downloads go way up. One white paper that was offered without registration was downloaded 500 times in three days!

White Papers and Content Marketing Strategies

Potential buyers visit B2B corporate websites with the intent of finding all kinds of information that will help with purchase decisions. Buyers also look for vendor information on other web venues. It is critical for any vendors who see web presence as a key to success to build a strategy for content marketing. A content marketing strategy for B2B software vendors should focus on providing relevant, compelling, and frequently updated information for target markets and customers/buyers. A high quality white paper is a significant business asset for content marketing: quality content holds its value for reusability, engagement, impact, and vendor credibility.

Adam Needles: Content marketing is the architecture behind information exchanged with the buyer before we can get them to ’sales ready’; it is the rationalization of what content that our prospective buyers need at various stages of the buying cycle and via what media and channels; and it is integral to the nurturing process.  Content thus has moved from tactical to strategic.

Many B2B software vendors could benefit greatly from building a content marketing strategy around white papers. Don’t just produce single white papers in a reactive fashion, as a product launch checklist item done in a hurry. Plan, create and publish excellent white papers well in advance of any product launches.  B2B software vendors should be publishing white papers with high frequency (since customers want shorter white papers): set the stage for what your company does now and will do in future. Show authentic thought leadership, clear understanding of various customer needs and real problem-solving.

Publishing sets of “companion” white papers is a good idea for vendors targeting buyers with different perspectives such as business and tech buyers, and biz-tech composites. Some white papers can be created to bridge the gap between business and tech, to encourage collaborative definition of needs and problem-solving. Series of white papers that break down a complex topic can be an interesting approach as well. These approaches will show vendor commitment to helping customers understand current technology trends as well as provide guidance for solving problems or for becoming more competitive.

Beyond publishing great white papers is the opportunity for vendors to engage customers in conversations through social media, wherever customers participate. There already is a social aspect to downloaded white papers – customers have a high rate of sharing white papers. Tap into social media for interactive conversations with potential buyers and industry writers. On download pages include links to communities and forums to encourage discussion. Schedule Tweetjams for topics covered in white papers. Comment on blogs that address the topics of vendor white papers, not to directly promote the white paper, but to add to the brainstorm and show command of the topic.

Value of white papers for B2B software vendors:

Value of white papers for B2B software vendors

The Right Industry Professional to Create White Papers for B2B Software Vendors

Keeping in mind that customers have made clear that they want high quality content with extensive tech details, it would make sense to work with a software industry professional with strong tech experience, business smarts, and who can articulate complex ideas clearly and authentically. This would be a professional who has worked with customers, understands both business and tech, has the ability to hold the interest of these readers. And of course, this professional has to be a really good writer.

White papers will benefit from a professional who has decent smarts for several software solution categories and who has good hands-on experience on the tech side of software. The business-technology professional should contribute rich insight, produce creative content and original thinking, see unexpected connections and future trends. Direct customer experience enhances an understanding of how tech will help customer competitiveness, and will enable writing from the customer POV.

Another very useful attribute of the right professional would be one who is inter-connected to individuals throughout the software industry: analysts, practitioners, consultants, writers, vendors. A professional who is in constant conversations with other industry SMEs will be up-to-date on key topics and trends, and will have resources at hand for research and confirmation. Quality white papers will result if the professional regularly writes software industry-related articles and blog posts, participates in new product briefings from various vendors and start-ups, and continually monitors several software solution spaces. A business-technology professional who is well-connected in social media can also provide guidance to vendors for content marketing strategies that target white papers and social media.

The ‘New’ White Paper:

  • Reflecting studies cited: high quality and accurate content, plenty of deep details (tech / business), 8 pages or less which engenders content that is tight, engaging, well-written, inspiring
  • Often written from the customer POV, using customer language
  • Covers trends that matter: new solution segments – transitions of solutions
  • Real takeaways that benefit customers whether they buy the vendor solution or not – vendor is associated with insight to solving problem, doing things in new way that is useful
  • Inform, educate at sophisticated level to provide real depth
  • Create companion white papers when different customer roles come into play for the topic (business, tech, hybrid/composite)
  • Passion in the treatment: blogging has shown that writing about software solutions is more engaging if the writer inserts personality into the work – apply this to white papers when appropriate
  • Provoke thought about the solution space: new thinking for addressing needs; provoke desire to find out more;  provoke a conversation that will lead back to the vendor
  • Look into employing variety of buyer scenarios to connect customers to relevance of topic
  • Infographics, tech details, guidelines, suggested reading, links to other resources (not necessarily on vendor site) – all add to value in buyer eyes
  • Format for readability, flow, quick-scanning, engagement
  • Publish on the distributed web – not just on corporate site but share on sites frequented by buyers
  • Stir the pot: encourage social media conversations through blogs, Twitter, forums, communities, Facebook; also actively contribute comments on relevant blogs
  • Not self-serving brochure-ware solely touting vendor offering – but can address issues that matter to buyers that generally could be solved with vendor’s offering

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Contact the author, Julie Hunt, on Twitter at http://twitter.com/juliebhunt

Marketing: 4 Scenarios for Hiring an Outside Consulting Resource

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The past couple of years have changed things in our modern work world quite a bit. Generation X was raised to believe that, if we just get an education and land a corporate job, we’d have security for years to come. Think again my friends, because those days are long gone.

With our economy running on life support, the dollar in the tank, and fast-rising inflation, companies had to pinch pennies wherever possible to keep the ship afloat. The results have been widespread and severe…significant loss of jobs, budgets slashed to levels we haven’t seen in years, and even a slew of companies going belly up during the prolonged recession.

Now we find ourselves with an unemployment rate higher than we’ve seen in at least couple of decades, if not longer. All companies want to do “more with less”. But business must go on, so we have to work within the current constraints placed before us.

As marketers, there comes a time when you have to consider outsourcing some or all of key programs. Let’s look at the most common situations where you should consider an outside consulting resource.

Work Overload

Doing more with less essentially means your company has decided to squeeze lemon juice out of a turnip, and you’re the turnip. Work/Life balance? Fat chance. This is typically a situation where the company has lopped off as many limbs as possible in hopes of surviving, and all of their work either goes away, or more likely, falls squarely on your “to-do” list. If you have been working so many hours that it takes more than a split second to remember your kid’s middle name or birthday, draw a line in the sand and sign up some help.

Missing Skillsets or Experience

I’ve spent a great deal of my career in startup environments, and there always comes a time when you need to do something that no one on the team has done before. There are two answers to this situation – invest your own valuable time and effort into figuring out how to band-aid a solution together, or pony up the dough to hire someone who already knows what they are doing. Having taken both approaches, I can speak from experience on this one. Bring in a consultant for the execution, and spend your valuable time working with them on fitting it into your overall strategy and vision.

Short-Term Needs or Projects

This is the situation where you most need to look outside. It’s one thing to have a new ongoing need, which is the only time you’d really want to invest the time and energy in ramping on a complex new skill. If you have a time-limited project where you need specialized technical or execution resources, save yourself the hassle, and budget for hiring some help. You can do a quick ROI analysis by taking your hourly rate, estimating how long you have to work to learn the skill, calculating how much slower you’d actually do it than an expert would, and comparing that to their quote. If you are still ROI positive, what other non-financial tradeoffs are you making, such as opportunity costs (i.e. other important projects that go into a queue instead of getting done), your stress level (and how that affects your ability to properly address other priorities), and whether you are getting enough time to recharge personally.

Building a “Virtual Support Team”

Maybe you’ve determined you do need to do a large volume of work, you are missing skillsets for managing the work, and you have frequent needs for short-term project assistance. Great! You may not be able to get a permanent job req for hiring new direct reports, but you can likely plan around setting budgets for your extended team. I’ve run entire virtual marketing groups myself by hiring outside professionals for web design, PPC strategy/execution, trade show support, writing, graphic design, etc. This is a valid and proven model, particularly in the startup world where you have to do the work of an army by yourself.

Conclusion

Your company may expect you to do the work of a small army, but is that truly reasonable? You can do financial calculations to justify outsourcing rather simply. Use those numbers as ammo to negotiate funding for outside help or to persuade the company to de-prioritize activities that aren’t worth the investment. After all, if it isn’t worth a few grand to get it right, is it even worth doing in the first place?

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This work originally appeared as a guest post for the As-Such Communications blog.

Goodbye Corporate Website – Hello Web Presence Management Framework?

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The following article was written by my colleague Julie Hunt, after we had quite a few conversations about the ongoing CMS / WEM evaluation project I’ve mentioned here previously. I really enjoyed the opportunity to exchange ideas with her, particularly given her vast understanding of the global B2B software market as a whole. this post is well worth sharing.

Prior to my syndication of the content here on Return On Now, it has appeared on Highly Competitive and CMS Wire, and it was received very well in both places. Please take some time to consider Julie’s thoughts.

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Recently a colleague was exploring options for improving the web marketing capabilities of the company that he works for. He started his efforts by looking at “traditional” Web Content Management (WCM) software, with an eye to Web Experience (Engagement) Management platforms. But since his company is itself a mid-market-sized company, he was very uncomfortable with the options – and not just because of cost and time to implement. As conversations with his company management evolved, my colleague realized that he was not satisfied with a WCM / WEM solution because it didn’t seem to be the right platform for their web marketing strategy and business goals.

These days, companies of all sizes have tired of the expense and complexity of many WCM / WEM solutions, and would dearly love agile alternatives. And, yes, there are lesser expensive options. But what may be the most important factor for a lot of companies, is a strong emphasis on the customer-focused web presence for the company. And this may mean that company web presence will show up on other websites, instead of on the corporate website — which leads to the notion of whether or not the “corporate website” is becoming obsolete for many types of companies.

Web marketing and customer relationship strategies are changing (and improving) – companies need new solutions and practices to manage the new world. More companies have come to understand that first they must build the web marketing / presence strategy that will accomplish their goals. Then they have to figure out how to achieve the goals of the marketing strategy, which will involve preferred practices and processes, as well as technology.  With web presence evolution, marketing strategies should include orchestration of web presence via other sites, and how to integrate with conversations and content from those external sites.

B2C or B2B – Which Organization Needs A Corporate Website?

Whether or not a company should have a corporate website can depend on many factors. For both B2C and B2B companies, content still matters and has to be located somewhere. The B2B company has the greater need for a corporate website, but must now evolve the corporate website to a social / customer hub. B2C sales and marketing goals might be less about content per se and much more about customer conversations and brand awareness that take place anywhere on the web. Jeremiah Owyang points out that the corporate website is less and less the most likely place to connect with customers.

B2C – Time to Get Rid of the Monolithic Corporate Website?

Is the corporate website obsolete? Most corporate websites do not work well for customers. The sites are designed from the corporate POV, with too much useless content that is hard to find anyway. Frequently corporate websites become money pits, requiring too many resources over time compared to the benefits received.

Particularly for B2C businesses, new thinking is that the corporate website might be completely unnecessary for customer interactions and brand promotion.  Going where the customers are, i.e. social sites, seems to be an effective way to better connect. Monitoring web presence and participating in conversations on other sites help companies reach out to current and new customers in ways that matter to these customers and can bring effective results to companies.

Current thinking is that social sites are taking sales endeavors to a new place since customers can now participate in spreading the word to potential customers through forums, communities, ratings, reviews. On the flip side, corporations have the responsibility of finding and responding to concerns, complaints, feedback, and requests posted on social sites, hopefully to resolve problems, to engage and attract customers through answers, and to learn from customer POVs.

B2B Companies Still Benefit from Corporate Websites, With Social Improvements

One approach to introducing more web presence into corporate websites is to add improved social capabilities that interact well with customers and potential buyers. This approach appeals to companies that want a measure of control over customer “conversations” and also makes sense if the company is using social capabilities as part of a customer relationship and support strategy. Content still matters for B2B websites – B2B are customers still looking for a lot of different kinds of content that they want to easily find on the corporate website.  However, many potential B2B customers are also influenced by interactions and content on external social sites – the savvy B2B company had better understand the importance of such sites.  Integration with and monitoring of social sites are key.

Hubspot – inbound marketing and social media advisors:

Your website may very well be the most powerful tool in your marketing kit. Not only is it the place prospects and clients go to learn more about you and your services, but it has a huge impact on their ultimate purchase decision.

The Hubspot post goes on to discuss a survey conducted by RainToday.com that looked at buyers of professional services and the amount of influence that corporate websites exerted on the purchase decision:

According to the survey, 74% of buyers report the service provider’s website holds at least “some influence” over their ultimate decision to buy services from the provider. This is 23 percentage points higher than in 2005 and represents a significant increase in the importance of websites.

B2B corporate websites need web management solutions not only for creating and maintaining more social and interactive experiences for customers visiting the site, but to monitor and participate in the conversations that take place on other sites. Other sorts of off-site social-related analytics need to take place, such as sentiment analysis. The results of monitoring and analytics must be used to fine-tune product and marketing strategies, and to help corporations better serve customers.

Jeremiah Owyang on the Future of Corporate Web Presence

Owyang throws out some compelling assertions: In the not-so-distant future, he states that there will be no “old school” corporate sites. There will only be sites assembled on the fly based on social data, a sort of dynamic personalization mashup of content and social engagement.

Today, I’m pleased to see that the thinking –and technology, has emerged, where we’re finding a variety of companies that are integrating social technologies right into the corporate website, bringing the trusted discussions closer to the corporate site.

Although the highest state of nirvana (seamless integration) doesn’t yet exist, we should expect there to be very little difference between social technologies and corporate websites as content will assemble on the fly.  I predict URLs won’t matter, as content will be dynamically assembled around the buyer and their context in a variety of devices.  Sure, that’s far out thinking now, but that’s why we have several other stage gates that companies must first go through.

Owyang continues on the new social web presence:

  1. Although it’s a new and experimental medium, brands should plan a roadmap.
  2. The future of web experiences will be based around people – not products.
  3. Take inventory of all corporate web assets and identify where they are in the framework.
  4. Next, identify the desired state, and then build a plan against it. Start small and slow, and be sure to have a strategy.
  5. Don’t arbitrarily jump into the social marketing space without measurable KPIs. Be deliberate in your actions.

Owyang’s thinking is important especially for vendors of WCM / WEM software solutions since he may be pointing the way to future web presence solutions (a future that is not that distant).

Should WCM / WEM Software be The Hub — or one of the components?

Some vendors of “traditional” web content management solutions have been transitioning their offerings to WEM platforms where managing and enhancing the web experience or engagement of the customer is the central purpose. The current WEM platforms focus mainly on customer and social capabilities existing in the corporate website, and are in very early stages of supporting integrations with external social sites.

Those supporting the notion that WCM/WEM Platforms should manage web presence and continuation of corporate websites include:

Brice Dunwoodie of CMSWire is What is Web Engagement Management:
It’s how you create and manage content, including primary web content, multi-device content, blogs, forums and wikis. Your WCM platform is also the hub of your social media integrations and increasingly the dashboard by which you view your brand’s conversational world.

Further expansion on the WEM platform from Barb Mosher, CMSWire: The 5 Pillars of Web Engagement Management

  1. Content Optimization: analytics, content and experience personalization, multi-variate testing, optimization and SEO.
  2. Multi-channel Management: delivering same message/experience to customers across devices and channels both online and offline – new mobile web
  3. Conversational Engagement:  corporate website-based communities, UGC, commenting, trackbacks, micro-blogging, social media integration, analytics, social media monitoring and sentiment analysis.
  4. Demand Generation: customer engagement/experience through targeted marketing – increasing the number and quality of relationships, through need recognition, relevancy enhancements and engagement triggers.
  5. Sales Automation: two-way CRM integration, social CRM; e-mail or other campaign integration with the content platform.

As described by CMSWire, WEM platforms would provide capabilities and monitoring of brand and customer conversations on corporate websites, as well as bi-directional communication extensions to external social sites.

On the other hand:

If the customer experience of a particular brand is taking place on external social sites, then there is now a distributed model for managing a brand’s web presence; the web experience/engagement for the customer is now remote from the corporate website.  So there is even more need for tools/solutions to monitor, listen, act, engage…for customer-focused purposes, as well as for corporate business goals (which should lean heavily towards the customer).

A WCM/WEM platform may not be the hub for the overall solution, but instead one of the components of a new management framework for all web presence (management of web content is still important but may not be tied to a specific website anymore).  But content is also integral to a lot of web marketing plans and strategies, and content is the meat of most social sites, whether it is a conversation thread, a video, a blog post, and so on. So look for WCM/WEM solutions themselves to continue to evolve as the means of managing and delivering any kind of content for sites anywhere on the web, through any channel.

Future Web Presence Management Solutions – What Could They Look Like?

A Web Presence Management Framework may be the best approach for monitoring and supporting a distributed web presence. With an emphasis on Management: the orchestration of all pertinent activities on social sites external to a corporate site. And the management of: marketing to / connecting with customers, monitoring and listening, responding, acting, analyzing, more acting. The Management Framework would be agile, timely, dynamic, flexible, open.

A starter list (high level) of potential capabilities and attributes for a Distributed Web Presence Management Framework:

  • Sophisticated, agile management / orchestration capabilities
  • Web presence “mashups”: dynamically creating personalized sites for each customer
  • An evolved WCM/WEM component: delivery to external sites, advanced support of corporate site if still in play, handling of relevant content/conversations published on external sites
  • Support / interoperability for content curation as well as content management
  • Management of all types of “conversations”: Auditing – Listening – Capturing – Integrating
  • Multiple kinds of analytics, including convergence with “traditional” data analytics
  • Dashboards for different internal roles
  • Agile, context-sensitive Search / recommendations-like technology to contextually filter content/search
  • Integration is big (lots of API support)
  • Orchestration and Integration with multiple kinds of “external solutions” that are in play for distributed web presence
  • Usability for business as well as tech teams
  • Workflow and automated processes for WCM, CRM, SCRM practices, other corporate systems
  • Company roles will also evolve:  we’ll see new marketing technology roles, product marketing and product management roles for “caretakers” of company web presence on external social sites, among the possibilities
  • Segmented customer advisory groups will also play much more interactive roles with management of distributed web presence
  • Eventual alignment with semantic web, link management – for reach throughout the web. Here is a current view of opening up content to anywhere on the web:

Forget the fancy names of “semantic web” or “linked data.” Associating structured data with your content assets lets you take advantage of Open Graph, Google RichSnippets, Yahoo Search Monkey, and a new generation of agents such as Siri. Disseminating your content with metadata through APIs enables developers to spread the seeds of your brand in a variety of mash-ups and apps. Sharing your data sets in collaborative venues such as Factual and Infochimps helps build relationships with the world of analytic power users, improve your data quality, and turn those dusty data silos into tools for advocating ideas and brands. (from Chief Marketing Technologist blog)

OK, WCM / WEM vendors of all sizes: should your current plans for your solution for corporate websites go forward unchanged, or should you start now to create a Management Framework for distributed web presence?

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Related Posts on Highly Competitive:

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors – Findability + web presence + social: attracting the “customer as buyer”

B2B Social CRM for Software Vendors and the Lifecycle of Customer Experience

Moving beyond WCM – Web Experience Management software solutions and markets

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished market intelligence analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights for the software industry. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side  to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services

Marketing Automation: The Importance of Lead Scoring in B2B

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As I’ve mentioned in this space previously, I have spent a great deal of time of late evaluating various marketing related technologies to build out some efficiencies and adopt some of the newer tricks out there. Last month I dug into my view on the content management space. As it turns out, several of the content management and WEM vendors also include Marketing Automation. So I thought I’d talk a little how to use it to nurture leads.

Marketing Automation: What Is It?

If you already work in Marketing, there’s a good chance you already know what this means. Just to be certain we’re all on the same page, let’s put out there a quick definition to get on common ground.

Marketing Automation is a software-based solution that offers advanced email marketing functionality such as drip marketing, multi-step campaigns, landing page generation, and full analytical tracking. It also can include more advanced message testing and targeting features not commonly found in simple email marketing products.

Essentially, these products exist to help marketing teams better nurture and qualify leads in the early stages of the sales funnel. That way, once a lead makes it to sales, the person is more likely to be qualified, interested, and ready to dig in to consider the product in detail. They likely have a real project and budget, maybe even a desired time line, leading to a true opportunity waiting and ready for your sales team.

Lead Scoring: The Key to Nurturing and Qualifying

In order to achieve that vision just described, it is absolutely critical that you think carefully about how you want to designate what a qualified lead is. This can be done very simply, or it can be quite complicated in larger enterprises or businesses with a broad product portfolio.

Simple Version: Response Indicates Interest

The simplest example of how to implement lead scoring is to start with a multi-step campaign. Let’s say that, once you identify a new lead, they go into an automated campaign that sends the following emails:

  1. A welcome email with links to free information about your product and the problems it solves
  2. (Two weeks later) A second message including a little more product information, as well as contact info should they wish to demo a product
  3. (Four weeks later) A third message leading with a more focused offer centering around a demo
  4. (Eight weeks later) A fourth and final message extending a more premium or urgent, time-limited offer that moves them along the sales cycle

Like I said, this is very simple. Basically, you are providing a little more motivation to respond each time. If this does not get a response, then perhaps they are not ready to buy quite yet. Or maybe they haven’t gotten the project approved, even though they will. But one way or the other, they were willing to let you be in touch with them. Unless they unsubscribe, you still have a reason to push on.

Long-Term Plan: Poised For The Right Time

If you try the simple approach above, a certain minority of the contacts added to the database will convert. But you will still have quite a lot of names who did not respond, but who may one day still be a potential customer. For these contacts, you need to have a long-term drip marketing approach in your back pocket.

Drip marketing works similar to multi-step campaigns, except it loops in analytics and progressive profiling. That way, you can build an understanding of who they are, what they care about (particularly content and offers on your website and in emails), and how likely a true purchase is in the future. In most cases, it is absolutely crucial that email open and click data, web site paths and behaviors, and any dripped data fields be aggregated in a single Marketing Automation product.

Going into much more detail here would make this blog post a candidate for splitting into multiple entries, so I may take a moment in the future to dig into specifics. For now, just know who you want to sell to, know how to understand when they are ready to consider your product, and have a concrete set of standards for identifying true opportunities, then build your web content, site map, and email campaigns to “lead the horse to water”, to coin a tired-but -appropriate cliche.

Lead-Scoring Holds It All Together

In case it didn’t jump out at you, lead-scoring is the key to this whole approach. Sales teams have been scoring leads for years, so if you find yourself struggling to figure out how to score prospects, get some face time with whomever it is who does your sales pipeline management. Their model may or may not be ideal for you since it’s focused on actually closing the deals, but seeing how they build from first contact through a closed deal or lost deal is something you can extend out to earlier stages of the life cycle. That’s the part Marketing should be managing on behalf of sales anyway, and if frees up your sales team to generate revenue more quickly once leads and opportunities do make it to them.

Do you use a solid lead-scoring system? What works for you?

Social Media: 3 Situations Where It Is NOT Right For Your Business

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Judging by the pageview stats and general response, it is pretty clear that my last post, Social Media is NOT a Strategy, really caught your attention. Since I’m on a roll with the whole “not” thing, let’s come at it from another angle.

Like I said last week, I am a huge proponent of using social media for specific business purposes, particularly when you can measure it.  This is in addition to my “doesn’t have to be said” stance that everyone with an online identity should be using it for personal reasons. But just because it’s a no-brainer for personal use and is a great new tool for business, that doesn’t say it is right for YOUR business.

When is Social Media Not Right for Your Business?

Keep in mind what I said last week about getting your objectives figured out prior to attacking social media without any direction. That’s always the first critical step. However, even if your objectives might suggest that social media could provide value for you, that might not always be the case. Here are 3 situations where you might want to try other avenues first.

Your Target Audience Is Not Online

This is one area where my previous post should ring most relevant to you. Obviously, you want to make sure your customers and prospects can actually be found through whatever mediums you select upon which to execute any of your most critical strategies. For example, Facebook stats show that there are precious few elderly folks with profiles. The same holds true across most platforms.

I had someone approach me a while back about whether they needed to be on Facebook. Guess what they were selling…hearing aids! ["Um, lemme think for a sec, NO!"] In fact, the oldest demographic of our population is least likely to be computer literate at all, let alone actually savvy enough to move beyond games and email to social media. It’s not hard to find them…just rely on the established mass media and direct marketing techniques that they grew up knowing and understanding.

You Have Not Gotten The Basics In Order First

Not to harp on the topic, but the OST (Objectives, Strategies, Tactics) approach can help prioritize what the most important business objectives are. Then you designate the strategies and align against it. The next step, which should most certainly be undertaken prior to experimentation with new technologies and tools, is to get the actual PR, marketing, networking, etc. activities figured out using the tools that you already know and understand.

Granted, some of these don’t work like they once did, but I’m a staunch believer that you need to understand the past to move on into the future. Make sure you establish operating procedures, processes, and other business critical variables first. Then and only then should you start to throw darts at a wall to see what sticks.

Your Team Cannot Commit To It

Regardless what anyone says, social media is in no way free. Sure, you can throw together a profile on the various social media properties at no cost. You can start posting content to a blog or Twitter daily, hourly, whatever you deem appropriate. Is that free? What is your time worth? Who will do it for you?

If you or your team has to spend time on something, it is crucial to consider the opportunity cost associated with that activity. What would you or your marketing team be doing with that time otherwise? Will social media get the level of attention and effort it deserves? I hope so. The worst thing you can do is jump in with a head of steam and then drop it mid-stream, as soon as other priorities start to interfere. Just look at the trail of dead blogs out there and you’ll see what I mean.

If you intend to do it, you simply cannot cut corners. There is a real time and effort “fee” associated with social media. Do the calculation of your expected manhours, the cost for that time investment, and what you are leaving by the wayside to do so. Then decide if that number is large enough to hire someone full-time or as an outside consultant to execute on your behalf. If you aren’t willing to invest in it at some level, you’re better off sticking to your established methods of doing business.

Conclusion

Social media is a major shift in the way we can interact and market ourselves. It finally uses the internet as intended…in a fully interactive and organic fashion. But you simply cannot get so excited about it that you jump in without considering if it is actually relevant to your business. Surely there are other situations where you are better off delaying or ignoring social media as a communication medium, but here are three biggie’s that I see overlooked frequently.

Have you seen any other situations I’m missing? Did you experiment with social media and find that it is not a fit? How did that impact your business? I’d love to hear some real-world accounts of this, so please share your thoughts.

Read more posts from Return On Now about Social Media.

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Marketing to the “Inner Animal”

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Old Marketing
Good marketing or old and dated?

It amazes me to see so much dry, ineffective marketing out there, much of it brought to market with large budgets and huge teams of professionals executing on it. And really, it’s quite easy to fall into groupthink when so many cooks are at play in the proverbial kitchen.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying you can’t execute effective marketing messaging, campaigns, etc. with a team-based approach. Quite the contrary, I’m actually saying a couple of things.

First, marketers simply fall into bad habits, at least those of us who are well-trained in the first place. Probably the worst bad habit is sitting on your laurels while new techniques and media emerge, assuming that you know “enough” based on experience and gut. With the pace of change and availability of unprecedented communications vehicles, that is, at best, naive.

Second, to quote Rodney Dangerfield, “marketers don’t get no respect” in a lot of cases. With tight budgets, a prevalence of micromanaging executives, and the folks I mentioned in the previous paragraph all playing roles in our success or failure, it’s easy to just agree to a bad idea in the sake of meeting a dreadline or getting another arduous piece of busy work off your plate.

You could just say, “Well, said marketers just need to get ‘back to the basics’.” But what the heck are the basics? The Four P’s, which were already outdated when I last took a Marketing course in the late 90s? Mass media driven advertising? What is this, 1975?

And don’t tell me the answer is to put in more hours, because quantity has always been and is still inferior to quality.

We need a better way to manage all this. As much as humans like to elevate themselves to some superior level to other living organisms on this planet, the hard truth is that we’re just another species of animal. Sure, we can talk, walk upright, surf the internet, and do a slew of other things that are only possible with our advanced brain structure. But we all still have basic needs like safety, food, shelter…y’know, all that stuff at the bottom of Maslow’s Triangle.

I just spent the better part of three days in Las Vegas, NV for Interop 2010, managing the set up for Anue Systems and then manning the booth for most of the first day. In my career, I’ve managed many dozens of trade shows. Most of those were for small companies, and across the various  companies we consistently struggled to drive sufficient booth traffic with various giveaways, in-booth talent, live demos,  contests…you name it; we probably tried it.

marketing inner animal
Not quite what I had in mind, but it’s a cool image, so here it is for your viewing pleasure.

This time, we decided to try one of the few things that I’ve seen work in the past: Free Coffee. I must say, the results were overwhelming through the first day. Why did it work? We marketed to the “Inner Animal”, as I like to call it.

I’ve been reading a wonderful book lately, Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in your Customer’s Brain (kudos to @AustinGunter, Community Manager for Tech Ranch Austin, for turning me onto it). In it, the authors expound at length about how to identify the differences between the new brain, which is logical, the middle brain, which is emotional, and the old brain, which is what breaks the ties between the other two subconsciously, so to say. I liken the old brain to what you might call “going with your gut”, where you don’t make a decision for either emotional or logical reasons, but something else.

In the past, I’ve talked about how to reach the “Inner Animal”, and this publication comes the closest I’ve seen to providing an actionable approach to it. This isn’t another how-to about social media or similar topics. It’s a great strategic approach to how you speak to your target audience, regardless of where you speak to them. Some of it’s content is old news if you’ve been in the marketing game for 10+ years, but even with my 20 years of experience, I’ve been pulling some valuable nuggets out.

So go pick up the book, give it a read, and start talking to the “Inner Animal”. For many of you, your long term success very well may depend on it. Let me know if you also find it useful, or have seen other similar materials that are worth all of our time.

Have you tried anything like this? Did it work? What do you call it? Are there any books you’ve read in the past two years that have impacted how you operate in a major way? Please share!

Value of Planning Ahead (Avoiding the Dreadline)

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Last night at the February Austin Tweetup (Big Ass Twitter Happy Hour, actually), I had a very interesting conversation with @andreaschulle about the different ways that marketing professionals are motivated. You see, 2010 looks to be a heavy trade show and regional event year for Anue Systems, and it has been keeping me on my toes of late, to say the least.

Andrea is one of us who is very comfortable being driven by deadlines. In fact, it motivates her; she even thrives on it in a way. I, on the other hand, am very much the opposite. Deadline? More like dreadline.

Yeah, we laughed a bit when that word organically emerged into the conversation. But this illustrates a very important fact that we all need to keep in mind. Everyone works differently. What motivates one of us can really drag down others. The only thing we have in our arsenal of tools to offset the “dread” feeling comes in the form of planning.

Planning in advance can really help benefit both sorts of folks. For those of us who really thrive by having deadlines toward which to work, planning ahead is a great way to prioritize and schedule those events and activities in a strategic manner. For those of us who prefer to operate more progressively, spreading out the various tasks and requirements over several days or weeks, advanced planning can really turn a dreadline into a more comfortable execution process.

I guess the gist of this post is simple: No matter how you work, plan ahead. Don’t wait until the last minute. We are not all alike. While you may thrive at the adrenaline rush of the last minute charge for the finish, others are more methodical and calculated. Or maybe you see other procrastinating until the last minute and it makes you worry that things will never get done in time. Regardless which of these profiles suits you, planning helps everyone work together while still getting everything done.

How do you operate? Are you a deadline person, or do you see impending due dates as dreadlines? Have you seen the benefits of planning, or does it just seem like additional busy work?