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: , , , , , , , , , ,

Active Tense

Apr 13
2009
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Marketing is a verb.  Seth Godin points it out in his book Tribes, but the fact is any dictionary will tell you the same thing.  The point is that, as a verb, marketing is about doing something. 

As with anything in life, action creates reaction.  It's a basic law of physics that also applies to51drpze7irL._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA115_ marketing. Not all marketing gets the reaction you want.  Some seems to fall on totally deaf ears, but in reality, may be softening a final sale. It's what makes marketing maddening.  Sometimes you can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what works, but you do know what doesn't.  Doing nothing doesn't work.  

The goal of marketing is to get your company into the customer's conversation zone.  If you're not talked about, considered, or part of the discussion, you're invisible.  That's not a good marketing strategy, and yet it's the summary of most marketing plans in the industry.  

In the days of yore (probably only 10 years ago), marketing was thought to be reserved for big companies with big budgets.  The world has changed, and some of the most effective marketing is not expensive, close to free, does take time and thought, and has flattened access to all companies big and small.  In fact, smaller companies may be able to do modern marketing better. 

"Big budgets may be more of a hindrance than a help for many package-goods brands coming up with ideas that resonate with consumers, " stated Unilever's Chief Marketing Officer Simon Clift at the Advertising Age Digital Conference.  As one of the largest companies in the world, Unilever still has a decent marketing budget, but Clift implied the healthy budget may make it too easy for Unilever's team to fall back on old ways rather than come up with innovative marketing ideas.  Necessity continues to be the mother of invention, and even if your budget is small to nonexistent it doesn't mean your marketing should be as well.  Rather, it means you need to be smarter about how you market, but market you must. 

Full disclosure: I used to work for a Unilever company.  It was a great experience, and probably gave me my first taste of the power and importance of marketing. If there's one thing consumer goods companies don't take for granted, it's marketing.  You shouldn't either.  B:B can learn much from B:C companies, not the least of which is the importance of being front of mind with a consumer, client or prospect long before the sale is made.  

Don't have time or the desire to do a marketing plan?  Just start by asking yourself one simple question: "What do you need to do be more top of mind with your ideal customer?"   Whatever the answer, that is your first marketing action step. Get started today. Remember action creates reaction, so just get moving, or as marketing genius company Nike would advise: "Just do it."
Written by Rhona Bronson in: Books, Budgets, Marketing | 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: , , , , , , ,