The winners are…..(Australia only)
Ok, this was hard.Before I announce the winners, I'd like to acknowledge the contribution of all participants in helping me focus this blog. Thank you very much and I'm sorry there could only be three winners.
The winners are:
- Jen Clark
- Scott Middleton
- Mandy
Congratulations, thanks HP for donating your wireless HP officejet pro 8500 a909.
I'll contact you via email to get your delivery addresses.
This was fun.
Accident or marketing strategy?
Google's Chrome browser needs more polish - BizTech - Technology - theage.com.au
"The browser was released this week after Google accidentally sent a comic book explaining Chrome's features to a blogger a day early."
Really? accidentally? Some online marketing strategist would see "leaking" a release to a blogger as the most effective way to ensure that the rest of the blogosphere would jump on board. Instantly reaching a hard core of "amplifiers" who like nothing more than a scoop. I'm a little surprised that this journalist didn't consider this scenario to be honest.
By the way, how smart is it to use a comic to explain utterly boring and dry stuff like Multi Process Architecture? How is that for an alternative to a press release and a brochure?
Time to sound out your advisors – online or on leave?
Overall, marketing and PR agencies and professionals haven't come to grips with the online world. Media and communications people believe that "online" and "digital" is about technology rather than media and simply haven't got their nut around it. Why is this important? Because it takes time to learn. Marketing professionals who wait until their clients demand it from them before they do are in trouble.
There are digital specialists of course. But try and find a PR agency that demonstrates an understanding of current online media. Try and find leading advertising agencies that demonstrate an understanding of online media not through words, but through their own presence and behaviour online.
Speak to them about online and they are likely to refer you to their "web guy" who "is really smart"" and gets all this "technical stuff" or "their specialist partner". Just don't ask me. Ask about social media and web 2.0 and it gets worse.
Greg Verdino is is not shocked to read the result of a survey by "TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony that "agencies don't get it". Nor am I. (After all, even newspapers put anything to do with online media under their technology section, here in The Age and here in the "Tech&Web" section of The Times).
Why is this so? Everything they ever need to know is a mouse click away. All I can think of is that it is either laziness or arrogance.
If they had a poke around and took an interest, they would found that understanding and participating in online media is not about technology. It hasn't been for quite a while. They would see that it is all about media and communications. Which, after all, is their world.
Joseph Jaffe thinks it is almost too easy to lay into agencies, but they are the external marketing advisors to most companies so I think it is warranted. Over to Joseph with a few tips to marketing professional regarding social media:
To help you in your quest, here are 3 pieces of advice:
- Stop being so damn arrogant and deluded to think you can do this yourselves. You can't. This is all about humility.
- Stop trying to automate the whole process and solving your problems by a quick technology acquisition fix. You're drowning in your own data and laziness. This is labor intensive.
- Stop trying to scale the whole process and replicate your old bad habits. This is about planting seeds and sticking around long enough to reap the rewards of care, consideration and hard work.
Clients deserve better. If you are a client, you deserve better. The people I am ranting at here are unlikely to read this of course, because it's a blog. But if you are a client, expect more. There is no excuse for PR or marketing people not to have a solid grip on digital media. And I mean everyone, not a dedicated "Geek". It is no longer something for tomorrow or for other people. Media and communications people should be leading the way.
(image source as far as I can track it: http://www.oneletterwords.com/weblog/)
B2B + social media = natural fit
For business, words like "social media", blogging, or Youtube don't often inspire a great deal of confidence. Really, they are mostly associated with staff wasting time on "socialising".
At best, social media is seen as an interesting experiment for consumer brands, but hardly a useful strategy for business to business marketing. But if you have a closer look, you might find a very different opportunity.
Social media : "Social Media is the democratization of information, transforming people from content readers into content publishers. It is the shift from a broadcast mechanism to a many-to-many model, rooted in conversations between authors, people, and peers" (source:Wikipedia)
What are the most defining features of B2B marketing? Deep, one-to-one relationships, often built through personal interaction between individuals. We build these through face-to-face meetings, telephone contact, mail and email. We network at events designed just for that purpose. We present our ideas and innovations at industry seminars, and we know the incredible value of word-of-mouth in B2B marketing, so PR is often at the top of our list in terms of promotion.
So what is the strength of "social media"? One-to-one conversations and deep relationships. Word of mouth. PR. networking. Sharing and presenting ideas. A significantly higher profile online through improved search results.
Debbie Weil, (subscribe to her blog; it's fantastic) author and speaker on the use of social media and blogs for corporate organisations, wrote a little manifesto that sums it up nicely:
The Inflection Point of Corporate Blogging
- Blogs and other social media tools are here to stay
- Blogs are just next-generation Web sites
- Social media tools (RSS, blogs, podcasts, video, wikis, etc.) can be used by any company, large or small, B2C or B2B
- They symbolize community, conversation, mutual respect between users and an ethos of sharing
- These tools are more powerful at informing/influencing/persuading than traditional forms of marketing, advertising and corporate communications
- They help you get found online
- If you can't be found, you don't exist
Conclusion: This isn't optional
You gotta start using blogs, podcasts, online video (social media) today!
The opportunity: Carving out your niche is easier when you've got fewer competitors. When it comes to using social media in B2B marketing, there is still plenty of opportunity for you to be take the jump on your competitors. So don't wait. Get in now.
Looking for more ideas? Check out these blogs: Web Ink Now, by David Meerman Scott, his guest post on "The New Rules of B2B Marketing and PR", and Publishing 2.0, by Scott Karp.
Update: Hat tip to Bruce Nussbaum for highlighting this Business Week article by Stephen Baker and Heather Green: "Social Media Will Change Your Business"
Does digital marketing work for professional services firms?
Professional services firms should in theory be one of the most prolific users of the internet and digital media. Their business is about knowledge, ideas and relationships; perfect.
From my observations, they lag behind as an industry online, instead of leading the pack. I asked David Maister, one of the leading international business strategist focused on professional services what he thinks the role of digital marketing is in this industry, and he wrote a blog post that received a great response.
In the post, he notes although the opportunity to demonstrate expertise is there, he wonders how much hard evidence there is that it works for prof services, firms: "I’m not sure how much hard evidence there really is about the benefits of the web in marketing professional services" and; "It’s still early days for blogging, podcasting and videocasting, but I’d have to guess that, for most professional service firms, these are not high return activities – again, because I’m not sure that the “high-level” buyers are listening and watching."
After reading the comments from people who are in the industry and who consult on this topic (like Michelle Golden and James Cherkoff), I had a few thought about this.
Top tier firms vs mid tier and small business
Firstly, I asked an incomplete question. A small business local accountant is a completely different beast from a top tier, multi-billion dollar turn over business and their objectives will be different. For example, where everyone knows the top tier brands, one of the key objectives of small brands is simply getting on the radar of potential clients.
David wonders if the "high level" buyers are listening and watching online. He's probably right, but I think the real opportunity is in that the traditional media increasingly sources their ideas and content online. What if Bill D. Green CEO of Accenture wrote a blog? Would Wall Street Journal editors keep an eye out? You bet. David Meerman Scott's book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR offers some wonderful ideas about how to drive PR using the web.
Budget vs time
David Maister wonders how much of their budget he would advise his customers to dedicate. I think it is more about time than money. For most firms this is a greater constraint than money. Although the cost of distribution of ideas is cheap online, capturing and developing the sort of content that clients want to read is time consuming.
Marketing for talent
For many services firms, the "war for talent" may be a greater incentive to market online than anything else. Now, this audience will go online to listen and look and I know of many companies who spend most of their marketing budget on getting talent, rather than clients.
Opportunities
One of the key issues with professional services brands is that what is offered is really not that differentiated. The differentiation needs to be about how they do things; how their people are more accessible, more interested, more capable. How do you break down the barriers?
A nice example is Clayton Utz, a local Australian law firm using video in a very simple but effective way; two partners having a discussion about a specific topic of expertise. Apart from meeting these guys in person, there is nothing that will get me closer at a human, emotional level than watching them on video. It is exactly at this human, emotional level that business is won and lost when all else is equal.
Although the point David Maister makes about "proof that it works" is valid, if implemented properly, there is probably more metrics around online activity than say, sponsoring a yacht for a few million a year. To some extent it is also a chicken and egg question; if you don't invest in digital marketing you're probably not tracking it's performance either.
Now, where are the prof services firms with the hard facts?
PS: KPMG outperformed everyone this year and turned over $US 19 Billion. Judging by their website, their digital effort wasn't the one that delivered that growth:)
With thanks to David Maister for starting this discussion.
“Director, Differentiation Strategy” is a title at Boeing
Randy Baseler, CEO of Boeing and noted CEO blogger writes: "My colleague Blake Emery, who has the unique title of Director, Differentiation Strategy..."
What a great idea. A person whose sole focus is to differentiate the brand, the products and the services from competitors. It's explicit, it's on the agenda. I understand that on the average payroll there may not be room for a "Director of Differentiation" but there is still something really valuable in the idea.
Maybe rather than having a Director of Differentiation, you could have a loose team of people consisting of customer service, sales, product, services, operations, finance and marketing.
Marketing might take the initiative, but you rotate the chair between the participants to ensure everyone is engaged and committed. The agenda is clear from the start: "what can we do, what do we need to do, to improve our differentiation."
Many marketing thinkers now believe that marketing success in the future will rely more on "baking in" the interest, i.e. doing things that are of interest to your customers. (see Mark Earls post here and my follow up here)
In my post I wondered aloud about how to get this type of new thinking implemented under the pressure of delivering day-to-day results. If you believe that this is the way of the future for marketing and branding, then maybe a Differentiation Task Force is a great first step.
Guest post by David Meerman Scott – The New Rules of B2B Marketing
This is a guest post from David Meerman Scott, thought leadership and viral marketing strategist and the author of "The New Rules of Marketing and PR: How to use news releases, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and online media to reach your buyers directly".
For decades, B2B marketing and PR has focused on only two ways to get noticed, buy your way in with advertising or beg your way in with PR. B2B marketing and PR people have operated under the assumption that you either had to pay big bucks for ads, tradeshows, and direct mail, or rely on magazines, newspapers, radio, and TV to tell your story. That approach might have worked fine when the only way that people found answers to problems was to search tradeshows, Read industry journals, rely on “experts” (analysts) advice and opinions, and interact with company salespeople.
But now buyers are finding answers to their problems online. They search Google, read online portals and news sites, listen to bloggers’ advice and opinions, pay attention to word-of-mouse from peers and friends, and visit company websites
So what’s a marketer to do? The answer is to think like a publisher and create compelling online content in the form of YouTube videos, online news releases, blogs, podcasts, and online media to reach your buyers directly. Each of these things also has an opportunity to go viral, with others telling your story.
Being successful means, as Yoda said in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back: “You must unlearn what you have learned.”
Old rule: Buy your way in with advertising
As marketing people, we’ve all learned rules that worked in the offline world. But to succeed on the Web using the new rules, old habits must be unlearned.
“Stop shouting BUY MY PRODUCT” (people turn off overt advertising, especially online). You need to unlearn the marketing habit of constantly pitching your product. Instead create content to help people answer their problems.
Old rule: Beg your way in with PR
- Your buyers are not nameless faceless metrics. They are people like you and me who want to consume valuable content.
- You must unlearn the idea that media and analysts are the only ones who can tell your story. Instead, the web has made PR public again.
New Rule: Publish your way in with great content that your buyers want to consume.
- You must unlearn interrupting people with “messages.” Instead, publish online content they want to consume
- You must unlearn the use of gobbledygook about your products and services. Instead start from the problems and needs of your buyer personas.
- You must unlearn spin. Instead, understand that people crave authenticity and transparency.
- You must unlearn being egotistical and trying to force people to adapt to your terms. Instead create online content people want to consume
- You must unlearn the assumption that you must buy access. Instead, create something that goes viral and let millions of people tell your story for you.
- You must unlearn the idea that the “clip book” is the only way to measure your communications efforts. Instead, consider how you can reach people directly.
- You must unlearn the idea that “leads” are the only way to measure your marketing efforts. Instead, consider how you are engaging your buyers and building a position as a trusted resource.
The problem with the latest
Most marketers love the latest idea, strategy or tool. Yes, you too I suspect. There is a good reason for it, we are constantly looking for a competitive edge, either for our company or for our clients. Agencies and consultants are hired for their expertise, their ideas and their ability to execute after all.
The problem is the silver bullet syndrome. Something new comes along (CRM, email marketing, social media marketing; you fill in the rest) and suddenly this is the panacea to all marketing problems. So everyone is an instant expert and the currency of the latest idea quickly devalues to the latest fad.
Spike Jones from Brains On Fire laments the fact that Word of Mouth Marketing is going that way:
I’m over it (the term, not the practice). And I guess I knew it would happen sooner or later: every marketer in the free world is either trying to give advice on word of mouth marketing or says that they are practicing it. From big ad agencies to the guy working out of his garage.
I don’t buy it.
And a bit further down:
The words “word of mouth marketing” are becoming watered-down and sucked into the vast nothingness that is marketing-speak. And while it saddens me, I guess it was to be expected.
Word of Mouth is not new of course. Cavemen used it I'm sure. But talking about Word of Mouth marketing makes you sound as though you are in touch with the latest. Actually making it work for a client is a very different story of course. "Because big ideas are easy doing stuff is hard".
So in time, everyone moves on to the next silver bullet and the people who actually execute something like a word of mouth campaign do what they have always done; make sure their clients talk about the results they have achieved. Sounds like word of mouth.
The problem with Australian media
Thanks to Gavin Heaton of ServantofChaos (a top 25 global marketing blog) for the inspiration to this post.
We're a small country when it comes to media; traditional Australian media is owned by (less than) a handful of companies, and as a result, a relatively small group of people influence opinion and provide the "expert opinion" the public relies on. So you would expect that editors would have access to the best talent, all fighting for one of only a few opportunities to write for them.
Fairfax is one of these companies and they recently offered up a piece by Graeme Philipson "The lost art of blogging", an article so devoid of "expert" opinion, it makes you scratch you head in wonder. (also read Gavin's post on the topic).
Here is what is wrong. The man writes an article about blogging, but confesses that he neither reads, nor writes them. His field of expertise is IT. publishing thoughts online is about media, and essentially has nothing to do with IT.
The reason people participate in online communication at the rate they are doing is because the web is now a place where you don't need an understanding of technology to participate. Only your ideas count, and if they are no good, nobody reads them. Imagine that kind of accountability in the printed press.
Graeme's writes:
I don't blog. Can't see the point, when I write this column and others. I also rarely read them - the letters page of this newspaper and the many emails I receive is for me more than enough exposure to the unfiltered opinion of the common man.
I can write a list of 50 people who are certified experts in their field, who write online. Let's call them blogs. However, they are not "bloggers"; they are experts, who share their expert thoughts via the internet. I wonder if Graeme would consider the Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz's writing "the unfiltered opinion of the common man".
On top of that, this is from Chris Newlan's post , discussing the promotion of "The Age of Conversation"
"a Fairfax journalist told a fellow contributor that they could not promote the work of bloggers because management saw them as competitors."
So what does it mean?
Nobody will argue that there is a tremendous amount of rubbish being published in the world. I think we all agree that this is not contained to self publishing (or blogging, if you want to call it that). Graeme's article is a good case in point.
“The new rules of Marketing & PR”…and book reviews
I must admit, when I was first linked to and offered a copy of "The new rules of Marketing and PR" for review, I was more impressed with David Meerman Scott's clever strategy to create buzz than anything else. I guess it is fair to say that he is "walking the walk" of "the new rules".
Having said that, "The new rules of Marketing and PR" proved to be a surprising read, as it offers both a compelling argument why the rules have changed, and then offers a comprehensive guide how to go to work with these rules.
The point about the "new rules"
The central argument is that now that you have the opportunity to market directly to people online (without having to buy media or influence journalists, under the "old" rules) you can tell your own story and you should.
The style is blog-like, without being light on, and the real-world examples of how various business have applied the rules are interesting and credible.
No shortcuts
When you read David's book you are reminded of the fact that are no shortcuts in good communication; if anything, he advises to invest more time and more effort in what you write, and who you write it for.
For example, David highlights that collectively, as marketers, we still too often fill pages with meaningless or internally focused, egocentric content. Sometimes because it is quicker, sometimes because that is what we believe the CEO wants to read. Instead, he advises, spend some time and find out from the people that matter; your audience of prospects/customers/members etc.
"When I see words like "flexible", "scalable", "ground-breaking" or cutting-edge" my eyes glaze over." he writes. I think we all know that feeling.
The challenges I can see
The biggest challenge is that with this explosion of self-generated media will do to the people we aim to reach. Will they suffer from overload and simply go back to reading a few, leading publications? Like a newspaper? I fear that unless we figure out a way to filter online information, people may simply turn off.
The rules at work
Finally, I think it is fair to say that the fact that I am writing a book review is illustrates that the "new rules" are here. A marketer in Australia, writing a blog with readers around the globe, about an American book I can only buy online.
Hard to argue his point, isn't it? Would I recommend this book to my friends? Yes. So that includes you, and if you have read the book, tell me what you think.
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