The Marketing Plaza

Several services, podcasts and consultants are dedicated to teaching people how to make money on the net.  Here’s the bottom line: They are taking your money and making money on the net by getting you to pay for their services, podcasts and consulting assistance.  That sounds harsh, and is not meant to be. It’s just a reality check. These e-gurus are making an honest dollar and charging for their expertise. However, in most cases, what they are serving up is how they are making money, not how you can.  It’s no different than when Carlton Sheets sold how to make money in real estate on Info-mercials.

The point is there is no rule to how to make money on the Internet. It’s just like any other business. If you have the right product, service, niche, marketing, and put in the sweat equity, you, too, can foster a business online just as you could offline.  The advantage is that your start-up costs are lower online.  The disadvantage is that it’s hard to cut through the clutter, smoke and mirrors.

Basically, monetizing content (as it’s called) is no different than the older term of e-commerce, except that it refers more to the selling of knowledge rather than products. Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., in his book “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround,” gives IBM credit for inventing the term e-business, which he prefers over e-commerce.

Deep in the book Gerstner writes: “I think for a lot of people, the ‘e’ in e-business came to stand for ‘easy’.  Easy money. Easy success. Easy life.  When you strip it doewn to bare metal, e-business is just business. And real business is serious work.”

That’s why today’s e-trepreneurs will honestly admit that they make $100 from Google Ads, if lucky, a bit more from affiliate marketing if aggressive, and the real money is made by the stars who have made real names for themselves ultimately through old-fashioned books and speaking engagements arising out of blogs, and e-communications.

If you’re not looking to promote yourself, but your business, the Internet is a great marketing tool – a key communication channel for letting people know about your product, service or offering. It never was a get rich quick vehicle.  Few marketing channels are, but each does help build the brand – even if the brand is you.

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Recently I was asked my definition of marketing. I hate the question, even though it’s a very legitimate thing to ask a marketing person.  There are so many definitions and for a field that specializes in making things memorable and compelling, none of the definitions are memorable or compelling.

Finally, I’ve condensed my personal definition into something easier for me to remember.  Marketing, I said, is “Honing the brand and expanding its reach.”  That’s it.  I have longer definitions that deal with company vision, but they get too convoluted.

Bottom line – it’s about honing the brand and expanding reach. Sure, in expanding reach, there should be a way to monetize the brand – if that’s your goal. If you’re running for president, the goal is to motivate votes.  Either way, the goal is to create audience, action, or affection (loyalty).

OK, so the real definition of marketing is that which “hones the brand and expands its reach to create audience, action or affection.”  The Three A’s!

The problem is the definition keeps getting longer and less memorable. I recently completed the audio book “Made to Stick.” I had read it once before, but it’s a great book to revisit for marketing, editorial, educational and advertising types. The book discusses how to make ideas stick from campaign slogans to mathematical formulas.

The key, according to the authors, Chip and Dan Heath, is storytelling. None of us, it turns out, remembers data or love facts. We love and remember stories. But sometimes definitions are required. When your CEO or CFO asks “Why is marketing important,” you need to be able to answer – quickly and succinctly.  Our inability as a discipline to do just that has been just one reason for the demise of many of much needed marketing groups.

In effectively telling company stories, we marketing types frequently fail in one key area. We neglect to tell our own stories – how marketing has functioned as part of solutions. It’s the classic shoemaker’s children going without shoes.  Going forward, as marketing people, one of our key goals must be promoting our own proof of performance. Our performance as well as our very existence on the team is key to a company’s long-term survival.

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Content is king, but too much content can be like too much e-mail- spam.  The key is to provide content of value and in enough quantity that it can be digested.

Recently I was at a newspaper conference where we evaluated how well various papers were engaging in the social media world. The irony is that no one has better or more content than newspapers – so much so that many tweets, Facebook posts and blogs take you to various newspaper stories around the country.   So what are newspapers doing wrong?

I think it comes down to two key things:

1. They provide too much content. A news stream is almost like a wire service firing off story after story until hundreds of stories are posted almost within the hour that the news has gone to press.  As a reader, I’d much prefer perhaps one story an hour, or the story of the day, or the story that’s the funkiest, or even a story from the food section, rather than every story being printed in the main section that day.

2. They are too automated.  Precisely because they have so much content, and because they won’t invest in staff or resources to enter the online arena, the newspapers I’ve seen have automated the process.  Too much of any good thing is too much, and the same is true of automation.

I follow social media sites to get the best ideas a business or marketing guru has to offer. I don’t want every line from every book, or every chapter capsulized.  I want a tidbit for the day that I can remember, think about and take with me on my own business travels.  I also follow a person because of the personal touch.

When the tweets put out by a paper are so highly automated that they have no humor, no irony, no personal touch—well, then I might as well be following CNN.  Even if the news is local, I want some sense that a person has decided to put this particular news item out on the internet because it’s special and not just one item out of a thousand for the day.

Social media is best done consistently and regularly, but is not better served by being over served.  Ironically as newspapers moan that their copy is being stolen for free by the Googles of the world, they have entered the social media arena without editing themselves.  And, editing is their strength!

Yes, give some content for free, but learn the art of the tease.  Stop flooding the market with all the news all the time.  Go back to the art of the headline and tell me what’s most important, most humorous, most worthwhile for today rather than flooding me with everything. It’s just too much information.

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In sales and marketing, lead generation is an ongoing hot button – and, no wonder. According to one data set, the top 20% of customers yield 150% of a company’s profits. Who wouldn’t want more of those?  The proverbial struggle is not just to find customers, but the right ones who can be in your top 20%.

The same data set, reported in a 2009 AMA webinar on customer growth, noted that the bottom 20% of your customers usually cost you money.  In those cases, you might be better off without the added customer base. And that’s the moral of the lead generation story: you never need to find or generate those customers who won’t be profitable.

Timely Leads

Marketing Sherpa reports that “an estimated 70-90% of leads generated by marketing are never followed up by sales.” One reason is that leads are frequently turned over to sales before they  have been fully qualified. That’s not an indictment of marketing. It’s an indictment of the process. It likely took an enormous marketing effort to get the leads and prepare them in a way that they could be seen, sorted, and sent to sales in the required timely fashion.

Time is the enemy of all leads, but time is also exactly what leads need in order to be developed into full-fledged prospects.  Loren McDonald of Silverpop, a marketing engagement firm, notes that there’s a “7 times improvement in sales if leads are responded within 48 hours.” But the flip side of the time equation is that sales generally won’t follow-up on leads that haven’t been qualified more thoroughly. They also don’t have the time.

The Missing Step

There’s a missing step between classic marketing and sales that is too rarely defined or assigned – lead incubation.  Some call it lead nurturing.  Whatever the term, the key is to find a safe haven for all leads where they can be tested, nurtured, warmed and then adopted out to sales.  Part of the problem is short-term sales thinking — a request to marketing to get leads no later than “tomorrow” for a new sales burst effort.

The real problem in lead generation is a lack of planning and process. If either one is missing in a lead program, there will be wasted time, or worse – wasted leads.

Put Time on Your Side

Silverpop and other firms would argue that the solution to the time problem is software. New and improved software solutions score data to prioritize hotter prospects from colder ones. Others argue that the answer lies in creating lead midwives – real people either on the marketing or sales side who can engage the leads earlier enough to establish preliminary relationships and determine their fit with a company’s services.

Neither is an exclusive solution.  Progressive firms are known to use both — scoring software and assigning staff dedicated to lead development. The problem with both is that they frequently miss the point. Both may be geared toward looking for the short-term sales potential of a lead rather than the greater opportunity of developing a loyal and long-term customer.

Some call this “customer equity.” In essence, it’s a move to get away from meeting the short-term goals frequently desired by Wall Street for the benefit of the longer-term health of the company and its other stakeholders. In the new digital world, it is simply called “building community” or “relationships.”

It’s a New Social World

All social media today is about community building. It’s a nicer label for someone who follows you on LinkedIn,Twitter, or Facebook as part of your lead group.  Social media is based on the premise that there’s value in the time spent developing a community. In fact, if a sale pitch is made too soon, or too obviously in the social media realm, the community will literally shun or cast out the participant.

As the world is getting increasingly digital, the need for community relationship building is also increasing. Savvy sales and marketing people were among the earliest adopters of LinkedIn.  They quickly realized the rationale behind building a digital Rolodex. And, the successful ones also saw the value in answering questions, joining groups, and leading groups rather than just “fishing” for a quick close.

Change Partners and Dance

Fishing, in general, is a horrible analogy for sales and marketing programs. Whether you believe in Catch & Release or landing the big one, no customer wants to be likened to a wet fish.  Instead, lead generation, nurturing, incubation and development can be likened to a long, slow dance with sometimes difficult dance partners.  It sometimes feels like a hip hopper paired with a ballroom waltz partner.

My recommendation for any organization – change the music.  Find a drum beat everyone can live with, and determine the dance steps in advance. That’s called setting a process in which everyone knows who’s leading, who’s following, and when specific moves are required.  Then, it’s time to Tango. If specific dancers still can’t cut it on the dance floor, it’s no longer a lead problem. It’s the dancer, and time to change partners.

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Question: Our CEO was recently featured on a broadcast TV talk show to discuss his topic of expertise.  The show ended up on YouTube, so we can post a copy on our company web site, right?

Answer: Nothing is that simple.  Even if you are in the video as a featured guest, you don’t have rights to the segment.  The copyright is owned by the TV station.

On more than one occasion, after successfully getting a client placed as a guest expert on a broadcast or cable statione, we’ve asked on behalf of the client for rights to post interviews on a company web site. Almost 100% of the time, the answer has been “no.”  The TV stations will allow you to link to their site, but rarely will give rights to repost the interview even if abridged.

The reason is simple. The TV station is in the business of driving traffic to its own site and sells advertisers to the broadcast station as well as to the online page based on eyeballs – the documented number of people who view the segment.

Posting a video on YouTube muddies the waters a bit. Some fine print has suggested that you are giving up your rights to your own material when you upload to YouTube. It’s the reason some purists use other channels, even though YouTube is clearly the leader.  If you’re posting a video in hopes of being found, YouTube may be your clear choice. But, if you’re merely using the service as a way to get a video posted for use on your own web site, other services may be preferable.

As more and more small businesses go online with Facebook or work to make their web site more dynamic in the web 2.0 world, the issue of video posts is being questioned more often. It’s considered the competing rights of publicity versus the rights of privacy.  For a great, commonsense review of the topic, check out this short primer and accompanying video by intellectual property attorney Mark Rosenberg of Sills Cummis & Gross P.C.

Tip: If you still want a video interview of your CEO on your web site, there’s one easy way to make it happen without worrying about copyright.  Hire your own videographer, have him or her sign a work for hire agreement, use your marketing consultant or staff person as the interviewer and create your own online video show. You’ll own the rights, keep the questions to one the CEO can answer, and have some great multi-media additions to your online sites.

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Business and marketing always love acronyms. It’s the reason we have 3Ms, IBMs as brand names not to mention ROIs and KPIs in strategy discussions.*  Sometimes the names are used to mask an original identity, allowing a brand to move into a new era with a new persona. Other times acronyms are used as field jargon to make the presenter appear brilliant and in-the-know.  Other times, and less surreptitiously, the acronyms are just a quick shorthand for fast communications particularly in an increasing digital world limited by character counts. OMG, LOL!

Another use of acronyms is to help people remember things, particularly students studying for tests.  For middle schoolers trying to name the Great Lakes for a social studies test, the acronym HOMES helps them recall Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and Superior. Not all acronyms work for everyone, but one acronym does suffice for all marketing endeavors.  It takes you back to basics on the ABCs of Marketing – for Always Be Communicating.

There are great debates in the marketing world about what media to use when, and the value return of a broadcast spot on The Daily Show versus a Tweet on Twitter. With aplogies to Marshall McLuhan, the ABCs of marketing remind us that the medium is not the message. The message is the message  and whatever medium allows you to communicate consistently to the right audience is the right medium for you.

If the cost-effectiveness of a blog allows you to communicate more than a broadcast commercial, then a blog is your better bet.  In contrast, if you don’t have the wherewithal to blog and do have the funds to produce a broadcast spot and air it consistently, then the spot hits the spot for your needs.

Marketing plans by definition admit that there is no one solution for everyone, which is why plans need to be carefully crafted based on time, budget, resources, needs, mission and skill sets. But any plan that doesn’t account for the ABCs and gives you great one-time hits, is not a marketing plan at all.  If you are not communicating, you are not marketing.  It’s as basic as it gets; as basic as the ABCs.

*For those who don’t remember or are intimidated by jargon:
3M originally stood for Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company
IBM was International Business Machines
ROI is Return on Investment
KPI is Key Performance Indicator

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A common tab on a web site is “contact us,” but is it really an invitation to contact?  More times than not, the button is used to collect information about you and doesn’t help you, as the consumer, one iota in contacting the company or service. It’s a perfect example of how most companies still hide before an Internet shield and are not personal, or consumer friendly. Instead, their thinly masked veils of friendliness smack of their real intention of building a e-mail database.

If I am frustrated enough to hit the “constact us” button, the truth is I want to contact you, not be contacted by you.  I want to know when I can call to reach a real person and get a real answer.

Recently, I was on the Continental Airlines web site.  Their contact us service is truly frustrating.  During recent snow storms, their listed phone numbers didn’t work. Their comic book customer service person just kept giving me the same wrong answer to my typed question, no matter how many times I changed how I phrased my query.

But, Continental should not be singled out.  Almost every company on the web has poor contact us protocol, making it hard for the customer to do just that – contact them.  Here’s a tip:  Don’t label the web site tab “contact us” if you aren’t posting the information about how to contact you.  Just giving me a form to give you info about me is not helpful.  I don’t want to give you info about me.  I need your phone number, hours of operation and customer service e-mail.  It’s that simple.

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It’s a new year and a new decade.  No better time to take stock of your marketing commitments and make some serious resolutions. Here are 10 to consider for 2010.

1. Commit to some marketing.  Really, any marketing.  Doing no marketing is called “going black.”  Occasionally there are legitimate reasons to go black, but not now.  The goal for 2010 is to get into the “Black” on your balance sheet and income statement, and that doesn’t happen by going black in marketing.
2. Test something new. Same old, same old doesn’t work.  It’s time to break out and try a new marketing vehicle, be it Twitter or a billboard.  It doesn’t have to be a new fangled social media outlet, it just has to be something you haven’t tried before so you can test its effectiveness.
3. Re-test something old. If you stopped doing print ads because they stopped pulling for you, reconsider the medium with a changed message in a different publication. For instance, move from a trade magazine ad to a consumer newspaper ad, or stop a newspaper ad and move to a biz journal ad.  Don’t throw the baby out with bath water.  Print ads may still work, just in a different pub or with a different message or creative treatment.
4. Go social. Yes, it’s time to do something in the social media world. Create a personal Facebook page, create a Facebook business page, start a Twitter account on a topic of expertise, consider blogging.  Don’t do it all, just get a toe-hold so you’re in the game and can talk the talk.
5. Fish where the fish are. Take a fresh look at your intended audience or market.  Where do they congregate?  If your market is on Facebook, then that’s where you need to be, but if they are meeting regularly at a club hall or in the back of a restaurant every Tuesday, get old-fashioned and show your face at the real-live networking event.
6. Rethink your audience. If sales are flat, is there a new audience out there for your old product?  The classic example is Arm & Hammer’s baking soda being reintroduced as a refrigerator de-odorizer rather than just a baking ingredient.  Does your product have a new audience waiting to discover it for their own special needs?
7. Get back to benefits basics. Stop thinking about what your company or product does, and remember why it’s important to a customer.  What do you really provide? If it’s tires, are you providing reliable safety or wheels that define a personality, rather than just rubber that hits the road?  Remember Harley Davidson doesn’t sell motorcycles. They sell virility to men going through a mid-life crisis.
8. Get help. Marketing takes talent.  From writers to designers to media planners, don’t try to go it alone. You may need staff, but you likely just need an ongoing consultant, ad agency, or marketing service.  Get the help you need at the price you can afford. You can always trade up to full-time staff, or a more creative agency later. It’s more important to get started and learn what works and what doesn’t than wait for the perfect help to come your way, or for the day you can afford the fancy agency.
9. Start early. Marketing takes time. Brochures done on the spur of the moment rarely hit the mark. You want sustained sales not short-term sales. You don’t want to be a one-hit wonder.  Give yourself and your team time to get the message and tone right.  Start now, in January, but don’t look for results in February. Look for results by the half-year mark, year-end, and ever onward.
10. Stay on strategy. Marketing is like exercise. It only works if you continually work at it with a goal in mind and a strategy for getting there.  So don’t start marketing in January and quit by February.  Marketing is not a treadmill.  It ‘s a path to the future. You should never get off it.

If you want help with any step, feel free to call the strategists at Plaza Communications and Consulting Group (www.plazaconsultinggroup.com).  We’d love to help you start the year off right!  Happy New Year to all and Merry Marketing for a Prosperous New Year.

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In the social media world people like to talk about interactive two-way information, but I believe the analogy is limited.  Information is like water.  It flows downstream. Through a strong eco-system that includes evaporation and precipitation, water returns to rivers and streams to reflow.  Information is the same.

Instead of the proverbial two-way arrow presented in so many social media seminars, I see info flow as more circular. I see it flowing downstream from a blogger to the world, then sprinkled out through Tweets and e-mail, blown through the Internet  clouds through link-backs and retweets, filtered through feedback and comments, and only then refined back to the writer for reconsideration.

In the marketing world, we call it  “getting the message out.”  In today’s society, getting out a message is considered a somewhat ‘interruptive” outdated concept, but is it?  The bottom line is that communication starts with sending out a message.

Study after study in the newspaper world showed readers valued the ads as much if not more than the news.  Considered classic interruptive advertising, these newspaper ads had defined, measurable value to the very people they were designed to reach.

In this new social media world, not as much has changed as people would have you believe. People like communities. People like communication. People like to be listened to and valued.  In return, they may prefer you as vendor, product, relationship or brand. Or, they may not.  Yet, it still all begins with communication.

Hence, those companies who have stopped marketing due to the recession, are truly in for a longer drought than those who continue to outpour thoughts, ideas and ongoing communications with prospective partners, stakeholders and customers. The thought economy is like any other. It requires transactions that begin with someone wanting to impart or part with something and someone else willing to access it.

In today’s social media economy, make sure to water your thoughts.  Send them downstream, have patience and continue watering.  Flowers will bloom as well as business, relationships, and expanded thinking.

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