Marketing Today

Who's Doing Social Media in the ProductCamp Crowd?

Steve Robins led a great session on Social Mediaat ProductCamp this past Saturday in Cambridge, MA.  I found it interesting to be in a crowd of product marketing folks from organizations of all sizes with the opportunity to see where they were with social media.  Its fascinating to see social media programs start in "old school" organizations and that attitude of employees towards adopting change or hiding from it.  Here are my notes from this session.

We all agreed that an effective social media program begins with your organization’s goals.  But, when the group was asked what their goals were, there were a variety of answers that included:

• We want to gather market requirements
• We want to gather leads
• We want to make sure that we aren't getting burned "out there"
• We want to hear what people are saying about our competition
• We know people are doing their research online so we want to make sure our information is there
• We want more evangelists for our products

These are all good goals, but in a big organization (or even a mid-size one), chances are these goals fall under different departments and no one stepped up to say that they were coordinated across their organization with a company-wide social media strategy.

So where should an organization start?  How about by listening before you start talking?  Everyone agreed that "Frank" at Comcast Cares on Twitter was doing a great job at staying ahead of the pack on customer complaints online. Why?  Because he asks "how can I help?" to diffuse the emotion and to change the conversation. 

We also agreed that just because the world is on Twitter doesn't mean that your company belongs on Twitter.  There's nothing worse that jumping into social media without a strategy so that when some sort of action occurs, you're not prepared to respond.  An example that Joseline Manebrought up was with Sprint. Last spring, there new CEO ran ads with his e-mail address on it asking for customer response.  When folks accepted his invitation and start writing in, they received an auto-response e-mail.  Talk about a way to backfire your campaign!

In all, about a third of the crowd said that they were using social media in some fashion within their organizations.  When asked how it was working, no one jumped up and said "Fantastic!"  Instead, we heard that it takes a financial and resource commitment and until my company is ready to commit to that, we can't start a social media program.  And, that social media is something that you need to measure so that you can demonstrate success to senior management for buy-in. 

While I think that the ProductCamp crowd was conservative, I think their approach towards adopting social media is typical of many organizations today.  They get that they need to be doing it and they want to learn more, but they are hoping that someone else will figure it out for them and tell them what to do.

Headed to ProductCamp Today!

This morning (yup, Saturday morning!), I'm headed over to Microsoft's Cambridge offices for the ProductCamp unconference which will cover user-driven topics related to Product Marketing and Management.  Having spent most of my career in product marketing for high-tech firms in the Greater Boston area, I'm interested to see where the day takes us and who the crowd will be made up of.

ProductCamp has no attendees, only participants. Everyone is expected to actively participate in leading a session, round table discussion, speaking on the topic at hand, or volunteering.   Last February’s ProductCamp Boston event brought over 120 Product Management and Marketing professionals together to learn, share, and network with their peers.  Today's event looks like it bring 200 people together.

The list of participants, scheduled speakers, and events are posted on the ProductCamp Boston Website: http://barcamp.org/ProductCampBost.  Want to see what we're up to?

Take a look at:  

ProductCamp Boston website/wiki

Join the LinkedIn Group

Join the Facebook Group.

Follow ProductCamp Boston on Twitter.

More news on how the Product Camp Unconference went tomorrow.

Sesame Street Celebrates 40th Birthday Starting with the Google Homepage

Sesame Street's40th year brings Big Bird to the Google homepage today.  But, that is just part of the big birthday celebration which really takes place on November 11th and appeals to all of us who grew up with the show.

Created by Children's Television Workshop (CTW), Sesame Streetpremiered on November 10, 1969.  It combined education with entertainment on a television show that was originally developed especially for low-income families to help their children learn and prepare for school.

The show brought us the Muppets and many other lovable characters.  It spawned movies, toys, and games.  It has kept up with the times by introducing new characters like H. Ross Parrot when H. Ross Perot came onto the presidential election scene.  And, has brought the most popular actors and singers onto the show in their prime.  The show has continued to innovate while continuing to make learning fun for kids and the adults who sit down to watch the show with them.
 

What's happening on November 10th?

On November 10th, First Lady, Michelle Obama, will be on the show interacting with some talking vegetables to teach children about good nutrition and staying active.  There will also be a new DVD entitled Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days for sale as well.  To see a preview of the 40th Anniversary show, head to the Sesame Street website.  And, run a search on Google for the latest Sesame Street news from the media and bloggers.  Happy birthday, Sesame Street!

 

Make the Robocalls Stop Already!

I sure hope that you're not getting all of the political robocalls that I've been getting for the last week.  Here in Boston, we're heading into a competitive election for mayor as our current mayor runs for his fifth term.  With highly competitive races in New Jersey, Virginia, and other states across the U.S., I'm sure there are many others out there who feel my pain.

How Do Politicians Get Away With This?

Robocalls are made by all political parties in the United States, because they are exempt from the United States National Do Not Call Registry.  Political groups are excluded from the FTC definition of telemarketer, so robocalls from or on behalf of political organizations are still permitted on the federal level.

Robocalls Can't Be Effective, Can They?

Telemarketing on the whole is often looked at as unethical because of the high-pressure sales techniques during unsolicited calls.  More importantly, robocalls are considered annoying, especially when they occur during the dinner hour, early in the morning, or late in the evening.

I'll bet that in the case of the calls that I've been getting, no one even takes the time to check whether the calls are effective or not.  Because all of the candidates are employing telemarketing tactics, the campaigns probably just feel that it's a competitive necessity to make sure that every candidate is doing the same thing and being equally annoying.

By the time the votes are counted on election day, we'll know who the winner of each election is.  With all campaigns disbanding immediately after the winner/loser parties on election night, I doubt there's a team of marketers around performing any analysis on which marketing tactics worked best for each candidate after the election.

Try Stopping the Insanity!

Before we all just breathe a sign of relief the day after the elections, let's work to stop these calls from politicians for the next election.  Former John Kerry campaigner, Shaun Dakin has started the National Political Do Not Contact Registry a non-partisan grass-roots movement to take control back by asking our elected representatives to stop calling us at home.  This is more of an Internet petition with no guarantee that any robocallers are actually paying attention, but you might feel better for trying.

Read Inbound Marketing Because The Rules of Marketing Have Changed

The rules of marketing have changed.  Marketing today is a combination of traditional marketing methods strategically pushing the message out coupled with online marketing methods that strategically reel in your prospects.  So, how do you build and execute a marketing plan that best meets your business goals?  Get your hands on Inbound Marketing for starters.

Hubspot co-founders, Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, have written THE book on how to get found using Google, social media, and blogs.  Inbound Marketing begins with a refresher on how customers shopping behavior has changed.  It goes on to discuss how your website needs to be a marketing hub that attracts your customers rather than an online marketing brochure that talks at your customers.  The book moves on to give ideas on how to get found online and then how to convert prospects into customers.

By reading Inbound Marketing, you will be able to: 

• Hire the right people to market your organization most effectively
• Improve your rankings in Google and other search engines to get more traffic
• Build and promote a blog for your business that is integrated into other your online marketing
• Grow and nurture a community in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
• Measure what matters and learn to do more of what works online

My Inbound Marketing Experience

As for me, I've learned a lot reading the book.  And, I've already been to two Inbound Marketing Summits and I put online marketing methods into practice every day for myself and my clients.  I am constantly learning about inbound marketing all because a) there are so many new tools that seem to come out every day, and b) I have to constantly test what's working and what's not in order to readjust my online marketing to keep it effective.

More interesting than what I've learned from this book, watching my friend Jennifer, who runs a local gift shop, learn as she reads her copy of Inbound Marketing.  Everything she learns is immediately put into use on her website, her Facebook page, and her Twitter account.  She's found the Hubspot site and has been running Graders on everything!  (I probably shouldn't confess this, but now we both talk online stats, stats, and more stats until we realize that anyone else who tried to join our conversation walked off about five minutes before we noticed.) 

Inbound Marketing book specs:

Hardcover: 256 pages

Publisher: Wiley (October 19, 2009)

Language: English

Price (on Amazon):  $16.47 (discounted from $24.95)

Landing Pages I Like: Dragon NaturallySpeaking

I found a great example of some non-traditional marketing - an ad for a software product on the top of a taxi cab - that led me to a really effective landing page which sells the product being advertised in three easy steps.

The www.getdragon.com/taxi URL is part of a marketing campaign testing which forms of marketing are generating traffic to a landing page (see below) which gives a simple explanation of what Dragon NaturallySpeakingvoice recognition software is and what it can do for you.  There is a special price offer with a money back guarantee right up front.  There are three options for purchasing the software right now.  And, if you want additional information about the product, there are several links to good supporting information at the bottom of the page.  The only thing that they could have left off this page is the video that seems to automatically start up every time you hit the page. 

I give this two thumbs up for effectiveness and I'm impressed the folks at Nuance for trying some unconventional types of marketing to generate leads and sell product.  Earlier this year, I wrote "Is That Dragon NaturallySpeaking on the Radio?" congratulating the team marketing the product that I used to market on trying new things like local market radio and TV.  It's great to see my old product being promoted in new ways as the new team tests what works best for sales.

When Madeleine Albright Does Your Marketing For You

If you ever get a chance to hear Madeleine Albright speak, take it!  I just got to hear her at a recent Commonwealth Institute event in Boston coordinated with the publication of her new book "Read My Pins:  Stories from a Diplomat's Jewel Box." Her stories about how her jewelry collection was used to make diplomatic history during her time as Ambassador to the United Nations and Secretary of State during the Clinton administration are both funny and fascinating. 

A few lines from her book tell it best: "Before long, and without intending it, I found that jewelry had become part of my personal diplomatic arsenal. Former president George H. W. Bush had been known for saying "Read my lips." I began urging colleagues and reporters to "Read my pins."

Talking About Your Pins Means Big Business for Ann Hand

I was inspired by my autographed copy of Read My Pins and its more than 200 photographs combined with the wonderful stories about jewelry and it's place amongst global politics.  So, when I was in Washington, DC this week, I set out to visit the Ann Hand Jewelry store were several of the pins and diplomatic gifts featured in Albright's book are sold. One pin in particular, the Liberty Eagle, was on my acquisition list.  

The first thing I saw upon walking into the Ann Hand salon was a copy of Read My Pins cracked open to page 68 where the pin is magnified on a black velvet background.  Featured on the next page is the pin as part of a necklace worn by Madeleine Albright in a photo with President Clinton.  When I asked to purchase the pin, I was told that they had sold out right after the book came out and that they were back-ordered.  So, I placed an order.  Sure enough, while I was looking around the rest of the store, a lady walked in wanting the Liberty Eagle pin because she had just seen Madeleine Albright giving an interview about her pins on TV.

Riding the Wave with Celebrity Endorsements

Unsolicited celebrity endorsements or simple word of mouth endorsements from happy customers are one of the best ways to market your product.  You get them by a) having a great product or service, and b) attracting customers to what you're offering.  Sometimes you can help get endorsements by promoting photos of celebrities with your product or developing case studies that you publish or generating press featuring your customers and your product.  But, when you get someone like Madeleine Albright for customer because she just plain likes your jewelry and wears it proudly, you know that  you've done your job well.  The sales that roll in from a happy customer endorsement just reinforce that, so enjoy the success. 

Personally, I can't wait for my pin to arrive and here I am blogging about the Liberty Eagle and the Ann Hand shopping experience when I didn't even get to wear my purchase home.  Even worse, I'm thinking about my next trip back to the store and what I'll buy then!

Lots to Learn from the 2009 Inbound Marketing Summit

I just got back from the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston.  This was my second year to attend. Except for the part where I got food poisoning on Day 2, I learned an awful lot and had fun doing it.  There were 21 sessions crammed into two days and while some sessions were naturally better than others, there was something to take away from all of them.  Here are a few things I learned:

What Hash Jacking Is

Like any tech conference these days, the event had a hashtage - #IMS09 - so that we could all tweet about the event and see our comments all in one place on Twitter.  As the event started trending high for tweets, a porn site found us and began using our hash tag to post their images and 140-character messages too.  This, I learned is called "hash jacking" and made for some interesting tweets!

Case Studies Still Make A Subject Real

The most interesting presentations for me where real world examples of how folks are integrating new social media tools into their traditional marketing programs.  We had some great presentations from Gary Vaynerchuck, author of Crush It!, on how to turn your ideas into business using the Internet the way he did for his wine business.  Greg Matthewsof Humana Consumer Innovation gave a presentation on who Humana is using social media to execute their strategy of changing health care from a focus on sickness to a focus on wellness.  It is an example of a social business from the inside out.  Most fun of the case studies was Paula Berg of Southwest Airlines who is "nuts about online communication."  From the video of the rapping flight attendant to stories of the highs and lows Southwest has had with social media, Paula showed how Southwest Airlines has learned to leverage social media to support company initiatives.

Why Online Marketers Publish Dead Tree Books

After listening to purposely controversial presentations by online marketers stating that PR is dead; advertising is dead; within 10 years face-to-face meetings will be dead, I tweeted " Why is it that everyone making a name for themselves in online social media comes out with a dead tree book? #ims09"  Shortly, there after, I heard from my friend W. Curtis Preston (known in the computer storage world as "Mr. Backup") who tweeted back "@cgunst bcs deadtree books are still where the money is (I have both & the $ from paper exceeds online by at least ordr of mag.)".  PR, advertising, and conferences are not dead, they are evolving.  Curtis is right in that the money is with the printed word not the blog although Twitter, blogs, online videos, etc. are a great way to build relationships with your base and spread the word.

Will I Go Again Next Year?

Inbound marketing has come a long way even in the last year as it becomes more mainstream and is more widely integrated into the marketing mix.  I left the conference with enough dead tree reading materials in the form of:  101 Content Marketing Tips, Putting the Public Back Into Public Relations, Inbound Marketing, and Trust Agents that I'll still be reading by next year's conference.  Seriously, we'll see were marketing is at this time next year.  With luck, my marketing consulting business, Gunst & Associates will take off and I'll get called in as a speaker!  Now, that would be fun! 

Marketing A High-Tech History Book Using Today's Marketing Tools

I'm marketing the autobiography of Harlan Anderson, the co-founder of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and I'm having so much fun doing it.  It's so nice to have a client with a great story to tell who is a joy to work with and who appreciates the marketing initiatives that we're doing. 

To start, we've built a website and a blog.  I just started a Twitter account today and am starting to tweet while building up a list of followers.  Later today, I need to beef up the wikipedia entry with all of our links and a little more information.  And, we're utilizing relationships - like the link to DEC alumni and the Massachusetts high-tech community - to generate speaking opportunities, book reviews, and hyperlinks to our website.  We're offering autographed, custom bookplates to folks who pre-order the book.  If we achieve success with all this, we're moving on to Google readers, Amazon.com and other electronic sales venues. 

While I'm seriously starting to wonder about who really needs a book agent or a publishing house, when you publish your own book and market straight to your audience, I just want to share a few facts about what it was like in 1957 when Harlan Anderson and Ken Olsen founded DEC.

• There were no word processors, so the original business plan for DEC was typed up on a rental typewriter that cost $10 for thee months by Harlan Anderson's wife, Lois.
• The original company name was Digital Computer Corporation, but since there hadn't been a lot of success selling computers, the name was changed to Digital Equipment Corporation
• The initial idea for funding DEC was to make a proposal to the Boston office of the Small Business Association to ask for a loan. While that didn't work, the SBA suggested that Olsen and Anderson look into venture capital which was in its infancy then.
• Boston-based American Research and Development (ARD) corporation put up $70,000 to start Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in exchange for 70% of the start-up’s equity. (The rest of the equity was 20% to Olsen and Anderson and 10% reserved for additional businessmen to join the team.) If things were going well by the end of the first year, ARD offered to put in an additional $30,000 to round out the initial request for $100,000 to get DEC started.
• When ARD finally liquidated its stake in Digital, the company was worth more than $400 million – yielding a return on the original investment of more than 70,000 percent.
• DEC, at its peak, was the second largest computer company in the world. (IBM being the first.)
• In 1966, the year that Harlan Anderson left DEC, the company went public. The DEC IPO was one of the most profitable initial public offerings in Wall Street’s history.

It's amazing to me how far technology has come in 50 years and how rapidly things change. Many of the tools that we're using to market the book and get the word out - like Twitter - didn't even exist five years ago. There's no replacement for good, honest hard work and building relationships that matter on your path to success, but using today's marketing tools, you can get there a lot faster.

Targeting Your Market: The Shotgun v. Rifleshot Approach

Would you educate a marketing director on how to manage software engineers?  Would you e-mail a marketing director about an exciting new accounts payable position that requires no relocation?  If you asked someone if they were happy with the way their money was being managed and they said "yes", would you ask for their business card so that you could contact him/her any way?

Hopefully, you answered "no" to all of these questions.  Unfortunately, for me, these are all examples of real scenarios I've gotten myself into over the last month.  It's amazing to me that with all of the focus on the bottom line, that people are wasting so much time by not qualifying their audiences before they plow right into their pitch while their audience is spending their time plotting an escape plan.

Shotgun v. Rifle shot Approach

I know that the shotgun v. rifle shot approach to targeting your market is at least 20 years old, but should the people pitching me on things that I don't want take the step of checking out my blog to learn more about me, here's how it works.

The Shotgun Approach - a shotgun covers a wide range in a haphazard or ineffective manner with the hope that something will hit the target.  Examples of shotgun marketing include cold calling, bulk mailings, banner advertising on big with random visitors and e-mail spam.

The Rifle shot Approach-  a rifle brings things into focus so that you can take aim before pulling the trigger.  Taking the time at a trade show to ask a few questions of the person you are speaking with to see if they have any interest in what you're selling is rifle shot marketing.  Other examples would be use of targeted ad words, buying qualified lists for a direct mail, or conducting public relations to a small group of publications who share the same audience as you.

Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, both the shotgun approach and the rifle shot approach have their place in the marketing mix.  For most of us, it's best to take a more targeted approach when we are marketing our products and services so that we aren't driving away an audience that is uninterested.  It's bad for a company's reputation and it's just ineffective use of marketing resources.  Once you've driven someone off, it's hard to get a second chance to make another impression.