The Marketing Plaza

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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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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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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The name of today’s marketing warfare game is Search and Be Found. It’s counter-intuitive to those of us brought up on the old game Battleship, where the goal was not to be found while you uncovered and destroyed your opponent’s ship. The game was based on the Cold War mentality that subterfuge keeps you alive; being open about where you are will get you sunk.

Fast forward to today’s world. Marketing Warfare is very different from Battlefield War Tactics.  Your primary guru should  no longer  be Sun Tzu, author of  The Art of War,  but perhaps Chris Anderson, Seth Godin, or even wine merchant Gary Vaynerchuk.  Google them.  Then, Google something about your company.  Can you be easily found?

In the military, camouflage is still an important and vital tactic.  In marketing, tactics have changed. It’s not about boldly going where no one has before — although that’s not bad.  It’s about bolding letting everyone know where you are from being found to being found frequently and being found whenever the consumer chooses to seek you out — not just during the hours you happen to be open. The web world no longer supplements, but leads all other marketing efforts. Find the new warfare gurus and learn from them … fast.

So why are so many companies so far behind in the web arena? Ironically, the more entrenched a company is either with a strong IT department, politically timid (meaning has a board of directors), or is from an industry that is trained to be close-lipped (read legal and health), the more likely it is behind the times in web marketing.

Here’s a case in point: This week an associate wrote me to to ask why a local newspaper never showed up on Google alerts about a famous and well-known local politician. Certainly the newspaper had more news items online about the politician than any other site except perhaps the politician’s own web site. The answer likely lies in many places – keywords, page branding, site mapping – but one place, for sure, is the IT (Information Technology) department.

Assumption: Many companies, newspapers included, still believe that everthing computer-related belongs with the IT department — web sites among them. Wrong.

Truth: Web sites belong with the marketing department.  Why?  For one reason — only marketing people care about Search and SEO.  And here’s the real conundrum – SEO is largely a programming function, but a function that even though technical should report to marketing.  It is not an operational concern, but a marketing issue. The website can run without it, and run well from an operational standpoint.  It’s just that no one will ever find it — failure from a marketing perspective.

IT people are trained to keep people out — from hackers to hucksters.  Marketing people and the web are geared to let people in.  If you want a web site that gets you listed, lets you get found, and is invites participation, think long and hard about who controls your website.  If it’s your IT department, you have a problem.

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Newspapers are crashing and burning. I’m not talking about in their own medium — although there’s sad news on that front.  No, I mean in the social media world.  Why?  Because they refuse to modify their message to the medium. It’s an odd commentary for a medium built solidly in the communications world, but one thing newspaper publishers, editors and writers don’t understand is how to use a blog to their best advantage (not to mention Twitter and other social media).

Publishers. Publishers care about publishing. They want the funds to print another day.  Hence, they are concerned with revenue.  Guess what? Blogs are not great revenue producers — at least at first — and publishers are not patient people. They want the ads in today for tomorrow’s edition.  The result?  They are looking for posts that will bring in advertisers. They keep trying to develop content that the Advertising department can sell, rather than content the community wants to read or engage in.  It’s not a good model and it hasn’t worked.

Editors. Editors are a bit better, but also don’t understand the medium.  Great editors understand the need for personality and the public thirst for the news behind the news.  One of my favorite Sunday columns was a local editor’s post on how his reporters got the latest, greatest story — literally the story behind the news. However, the insights were saved for the precious Sunday paper and not posted on the paper’s website.

Another young editor at a different local paper, started a community blog. She inherently understood the need for community voice on the paper’s website, but didn’t understand that community in the blogging world means individuals not organizations.  She approached non-profits in the State with the opportunity to post on a blog set up for local causes. The result is a series of mini-press releases on golf outings and benefactor and grant news rather than insights into the causes.  I can guarantee you that the only people reading the blog are the marketing folks at other non-profits.  The real community isn’t interested.

Writers. Writers understand writing and followings, but newspaper writers are in competition with themselves. They are saving their stories for the paper, hoping to get in the Sunday edition. Their blog posts are bland and again, tend not to tell the story behind the story.  Why was it a difficult story to write?  How did they get a crying mother to admit her son had gone sour? How did they learn about the story in the first place?  Don’t just tell me you wrote a great story. Tell me why you felt it was worthy of the newspaper. Then, you might draw me to your story in the paper, but mostly, I’m not going to bother to read your current blog. It’s not giving me any insight into your craft.

Newspapers are built for blogging.  They just haven’t realized it yet, or approached it in the right way. I wish they would. I’m a news junkie at heart and would eat it up — as would a huge segment of the online world.

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No matter where I turn, I bump into Charles Darwin.  Today, a friend sent me a link to a New York Times article on how the publishing industry has been affected by evolution. Then, I stumbled on a SlideShare presentation by another Charles — Charlie Hoehn, a recent college graduate making his mark on the world.  He quoted Darwin while providing his peers with job hunting advice.

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.  It’s the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

Is your marketing Darwin proof?
Is your business?
Are you adaptable to change?

Really?  I kind of doubt it because change requires more than just changing tactics.

Today’s marketing pros have to be true Change Management artists.  I’ll continue to argue that the fundamentals of marketing remain the same, but the techniques have clearly changed.  One by one, clients are finally admitting they have to learn how to communicate in the social media age, and want to go from 0- 100 in Superhuman speed. It won’t work unless the companies fundamentally change the marketing behind the communications techniques not just the communications channels themselves.

A TV ad doesn’t work in print. A print ad doesn’t work on a billboard – -not without some changes. They are fundamentally different medium and require different approaches within a campaign. The same is true of social media. If you are planning on just repurposing existing material on a social media platform, abandon ship before you leave port. The tone, value and approach in social media are all inherently different from traditional mass market messaging.

I encourage you to enter the social media world.  Just don’t do it without changing yourself first – from the inside out.  That includes corporate culture, marketing plans, and studying a bit of Darwin and Marshall McCluhan. After all, the medium is still the message.

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