Marketing Warfare: Why IT Doesn’t Get It

Sep 27
2009
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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.

Written by Rhona in: General Business, Marketing, Newspaper Marketing, Social Media, Web/Tech | Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

No Free Lunches or Media

Aug 20
2009
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Despite the obvious implication in Chris Anderson’s new business bestseller Free, there is no such thing as Free Marketing.  Not really.  I know CEOs and CFOs want low cost/no cost Marketing, but the saying “You get what you pay for,” is true across all marketing channels including social media.

On the surface, social media appears free. You can get a Twitter site or Facebook page for free. You can even set up a blog for free. But, consider this:

  • Some blog services are free but limited. Free blog services don’t allow you to monitor stats to see how many visitors you may be attracting, or enter key words to maximize search.
  • Facebook is free, but ads are not. If you are using Facebook for business, you should have a business page, be building a fan base, and considering targeted ads. I read somewhere that Starbucks, a leader in the use of a Facebook business page, has six people on its social media staff.  As of July 09, they were reported to have 3.5 million registered Facebook fans.  They may be closing stores, but they aren’t closing down Facebook pages anytime soon.
  • Twitter is free, but your time isn’t. You have to post, research posts, and monitor inbox requests. Social media guru Guy Kawasaki has a team of 2-3 twitter ghost writers.  Ever wonder why?

Speaking of Twitter, according to WACO (the World Advertising Research Center, not the city in Texas), earlier this year Dell computer reported that it generated $3 million in sales through microblogging services, and that’s after it had to recover from previously  bad press in the blogosphere!  That kind of revenue potential deserves some investment, wouldn’t you say?

A Marketing Truth: Media costs. We always knew it costs money to take out a TV ad. Why do we suddenly think other marketing channels are free?  There are hard costs and soft costs, but getting your message in front of the right people is a science that takes talent, effort, staff time, creativity, and execution according to plan.  That science, by the way, is  called Marketing.

Another Truth: Planning Saves Time and Money. There are ever-increasing low cost (ahem free) channels for getting your message out to the right people, but the cacophony of choices means you need to wisely invest your time and resources on those outlets that maximize your positioning.  Guess what?  That’s what an executed Marketing Plan is!

Bottom line: Make sure you have the resources at your disposal to make the right choices, keep your messaging consistent in your chosen medium, and measure response.  It takes time, effort and potentially staff resources unless you really want to do it all.  But your time is valuable isn’t it?  I assume you’re “not free.”

P.S. I’m currently working my way through Anderson’s Free. It’s a must read for all business and marketing types. Lot’s of good food for thought.  In keeping with the spirit of the book, I took it out for free from the library.

Written by Rhona in: Budgets, Marketing, Measurements, Planning, Social Media | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Land of the Free

Feb 01
2009
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If you think Land of the Free refers to the U.S.A., you are showing your age.  Land of the Free is the Internet.  In the January 31 edition of the WSJ's Weekend Journal, author Chris Anderson wrote a thoughtful piece on "The Economics of Giving it Away."   If I can, I'll post the article on the news section of the group.  I posted a NY Times article there earlier in the month, and if you come across a great news story or other material from your neck of the woods, please try to post it on the news section of the our Linked In group so we can continue to gain from our collective experience. Unfortunately, the news posts get buried quickly so you have to dig a bit to get to older uploads.

The gist of the Anderson WSJ article is that the price of goods and services is continually going down, courtesy of innovation and the Internet.  The question for all businesses — mature and start-ups — is how to make money in an increasingly "free" world. Anderson writes: "It's now time for entrepreneurs to innovate, not just with new products, but new business models."  Easy to write — harder to implement, eh?

Even Microsoft, he writes, is feeling the pinch but is responding by providing free services to a segment of the market in hopes that when they mature to larger companies they will already be loyal to Microsoft branded products.  What does that mean for you?  It means finding a model that allows you to provide something free to provide outreach to potential and future customers.  You can't do free forever, but you can rob a page from the supermarket industry and provide some things as a loss-leader.  If you haven't figured it out yet — here's my dirty little secret – that's where Linked In fits in my NAPL marketing strategy.  Now, I've broken a marketing rule here — don't tell people when  you're marketing to them, but you're the Linked In Group and, by definition, a bit more hip than the rest of the industry so there it is… my secret.

This is why I believe so strongly in NAPL. As an association, we are supported by dues, but much of what we provide is value added or "free."  In January, alone, we sent out six different free e-newsletters (four exclusive to members, two open to the general industry), posted more than a half dozen free blogs, and took on the US Postal service on a proposed new regulation.  That's in addition to our member services, economics research, magazine and events.  If you'd like to subscribe to any of the free newsletters, go to our special request page. If you'd like to sample any of the management blogs (giving you a free sampling of some of the best thinking of our brightest consulting minds) go to NAPL's web site (www.napl.org) and click on the blog links.

This past weekend was the amazing Super Bowl XLIII between Pittsburgh and Arizona.  And, as with all Super Bowls, the commercials are almost as important as the game. In that tradition, I hope you'll indulge me with this mini-commercial for NAPL as a real-life example of how free can play out in today's economy.  For more on this business model, I strongly suggest Seth Godin's book Free Prize Inside. Written in 2004, it again shows why he's ahead of his time. To save you time, here's what it's about: We all loved getting the free prize in the Cracker Jacks box, didn't we?  Studies showed kids wanted the box as much, if not more, for the prize than the Cracker Jacks themselves. People still love to be surprised. So, don't just give what you have away… give it in a way that surprises and delights your audience, and make it part of your business model to turn that audience into paying customers.
Written by Rhona Bronson in: Books, Marketing, Trends, Web/Tech | Tags: , , , , , , ,