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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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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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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Is Shakespeare finally obsolete?  Is it no longer true that a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet?

In marketing, names are the brand, and not naming a company or product correctly can make the road to success all that much harder to travel. Given enough time, money and talent any name can become a household brand, but not everyone has the deep pockets of Apple, Google, Cher or Madonna.

In today’s hyper-connected world, naming protocols are all that more complicated and need to take into account Internet compatibilities among other things.  A new company, for instance, needs to be registered with the correct state authority, but if the corresponding name is not available as a url, even the best name can prove troublesome with online brand congruity.

Initials, once popular in the Fortune 500 realm, from IBM to ATT&T, are difficult for smaller companies.  Initials tent to be hard to remember, don’t help in SEO searches, and feel cold in the ever-funky social media world.  In the digital-sphere, better to have a name that means nothing such as Starbucks for coffee rather than initials that reek of corporate culture.

Unfortunately, small businesses, in particular, sometimes have to just get started with a less than perfect name and deal with the consequences later. But without the deep pockets of larger corporations, rebranding at a later date is not always an option.

The answer?  When starting up – get as  close to the perfect name as soon as possible, but don’t invest too much in it until you’ve completed your due diligence, which includes:

1. A check of state records in any state in which you think you’ll do business.
2. A check of available urls  in the .com arena.
3. A check of alternative url choices in the .com arena.
4. A review of similar names with minor misspellings.
5. A gut check on the look and feel of the name with not only company principals and close loved ones, but a decent designer.

It takes most people nine months, the full gestation period, to choose a name for a new baby.  Businesses frequently  launch in far less time, which can result in some odd or oddly uncreative names, frequently named after the business owner.  If you just want to send out an invoice, any name will do, but if you want to build a brand, get a marketing person on your team to give you a broader view of options.

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It’s well known the average CMO, meaning Chief Marketing Officer, doesn’t last even two years. No wonder. Despite all the other challenges facing a top marketing person, here’s one more: the job doesn’t exist in the new social media world!  It’s hard to hold on to a phantom job in an ever-disappearing traditional field.

The new CMO, according to social media modernist Brian Solis is a Community Management Officer.  Not responsible for getting messages out, this new position is one of engagement and relationship-building.   As Solis states in his new e-book The Art and Science of Blogger Relations: “they are on the front lines of listening and engaging in conversations across the web.”  If you don’t have a Kindle, you may not be able to read it. Solis is totally dedicated to engaging via new media replete with typos throughout the copy and all.

Unlike ivory tower Chief Marketing Officers with big corner offices in corporate complexes, the Community Management Officer is down in the trenches, trolling the web and providing valuable content in key areas.  It’s a person who tends to be ahead of the times, much like Solis who blog published his Social Media Manifesto in June 2007!

Warning: It’s not a short read — at least 11 pdf pages, in direct contrast to the average blog post.

Recommendation: Read it. It foretells the future of communication.

Since the social media world is all about making the world smaller, I was not surprised to see that Solis had co-authored a book on PR with Deidre Breckenridge, a Jersey girl who heads the PR for PFS Marketwyse, an ad agency that pitched me at the newspaper almost a decade ago.  We didn’t hire them, but they had amazing work.  They showed us an ad campaign for positioning the newspaper that I remember to this day.  We didn’t buy it , but  it was a campaign the newspaper industry as a whole through the NAA (Newspaper Association of America) should have adopted. Perhaps if they had, they’d be in better shape today.

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Q: What do marketing people and therapists have in common?

A: They both deal with insecurities.

Q: Is marketing a discipline that belongs in a business school, communications school, or in the school of social sciences?

A: Yes.

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In his book In Search of the Obvious: The Antidote for Today’s Marketing Mess,” marketing guru Jack Trout states the obvious: “…the human mind tends to be insecure when it comes to purchasing things.” The role of marketing, he argues, is simply to make people feel more secure with a purchasing decision.  It’s also the reason, Trout notes, that a leadership is so important and should be utilized whenever possible in a marketing campaign.

In psychology, he states, it’s called the “herd mentality.” The consumer assumes that others know better and are willing to lessen their psychological risk by following others in the marketplace. If a brand is number one, it must be number one for a reason.

Ironically, many company CEOs, CMOs and Communications VPs get humble when they hold a leadership position. From watching too many Greek Tragedies, they fear corporate Hubris and being toppled from the mountaintop should their position be discovered.

Odd, isn’t it?  Marketing is about helping a company be discovered and differentiating itself in the marketplace to make a consumer’s choice fsst, easy and obvious. Nevertheless, Trout has example after example of companies who go quiet when they are, in fact, number one in their profession.

I’m facing a similar challenge with a current client, who is clearly number one in its field.  Others, with a longer history with the account, emphatically state that the client will not admit in public that they are number one in their industry. They will say the are an industry leader, have the largest network, and make many other claims that imply number one, but will not use the term. “We’re number one!”

In the recent movie Whip It, starring Drew Barrymore, the featured roller derby team consistently comes in Number Two.  They even take up the chant, “We’re number two,” after every game. Roller Derby becomes about “attitude” as is “marketing.”  I won’t tell you the end of the movie. It isn’t a formula and may not be what you expect.

Here’s an interesting fact: Roller Derby is one of three major league sports invented in the U.S.  If you count marketing as a major league sport, perhaps it’s one of four.  However, it’s no secret that there are tons of sports analogies used in business. Perhaps it’s time, we stole a few from Roller Derby.  Attitude Matters and it’s not about just going around in circles.  The goal is to come in first.

Here’s a takeaway from yet another sport – horse racing – not invented in the U.S. You can be a leader and not be number one. You can be a leader in a Win, Place or Show position. You can only be number one in the Winner’s Circle.

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Marketing is a long-distance sport.  It’s meant to carry you over the finish line not just for today or tomorrow, but for the long term.  Unfortunately, many business owners look at Marketing as a sprint – a quick run to help when the team is down and sales are already challenged.

As in any great sport, practice and diligence is required long before the actual event or big race.  Marketing is not something that is pulled out at the last minute like a steroid drug.  Instead, it takes ongoing conditioning where a company continuing practices what it preaches, fine tunes its messages through self-examination and monitors itself against previous performances.

It’s the reason great marketing is consistent similar to a Michael Phelps swim relay.  It would be surprising for the swim not to go smoothly because he is consistent in his practicing, strokes, techniques and doing what it takes to efficiently cross the pool.

Most companies like most individuals have a hard time staying committed to a long-term routine for better health.  For people it’s frequently called exercise and good eating habits.  For companies, it involves marketing.

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