Marketing-Gimbal

Infusionsoft: More Than Culture

A few weeks ago Greg Head, the CMO of Infusionsoft, invited me out to visit him, and to take a tour of his company. It’s rare that I ever get to have an opportunity to meet other professional colleagues, and simply spend some time learning more about what, and how they do things so I quickly jumped at the opportunity.

  

Infusionsoft is one of the few Valley (Phoenix, Az Metro) tech companies to hit some serious stride in its growth. Most recently they completed another round of investment, and to date have raised over $125M. Infusionsoft makes, what I would call,  a front office (sales and marketing) platform for small companies.

Now when I say small I’m not referencing the 0-100 employees segment we mostly think of when someone says small business. Infusionsoft is very quick to point out that they focus on the 1-25 employees as their bread and butter market segment. What is particularly amazing is that they seem to have cracked the code of delivering solutions to this segment in a scalable, and efficient way.

A Culture First Company

One of things that the management of Infusionsoft will be quick to speak to is their culture, and how that is the core to their business success. The company’s core mission and values are front and center in the main gathering area, and Infusionsoft is so committed to this core mission that they have started offering education beyond just how to work their software, to that of teaching entrepreneurs how to run their business better. 

Long term plans even call for an entrepreneurial university of sorts, where small business leaders can get coaching on all facets of starting, and growing a business to success.  When one reads about Infusionsoft in the media, the company’s culture and Esprit de corps is usually the lead story. 

  

 

Now we all love reading about companies with strong cultures and morale; however that can sometimes be a problem. The CEO of many companies will read these articles and say “We need to have culture like those guys”, and then proceed to call the marketing team in and start drawing cool poster designs, or ordering scooters, and replacing chairs with rubber bouncy things.

We’ve all been there, and the one thing we all know is that culture is something that cannot be created overnight, and in fact it usually starts with employee #1, and no matter what posters, speeches, or t-shirts are given away you either have it or you don’t.

 

While the majority of us may not ever work in as “vibrant” of a company culture as Infusionsoft, we can still be very successful in our businesses providing we adopt some other key success factors that I saw very much alive during my brief visit.

A Commitment to Strategic Execution

One of the biggest surprises I had was the company’s absolute commitment to strategic planning and the operationalization of these plans. There wasn’t anything fancy or trendy here. It is the simple x’s and o’s of planning and execution. What was different was the transparency and ownership associated with these plans and all were out in the open for everyone to see.

 

In the main gathering area the companies annual and long range plans are emblazoned on the walls. The long-range plan for the company goes by the moniker of “The Everest Mission” and it’s what I would call a long/mid range plan. These are goals needed to be achieved over several years in order to reach a longer-term business objective.

 

What’s nice to see on the “Everest Mission” is that in addition to mission and vision the target market of the company is defined. How many business fail because of a lack of definition as to who the core customer is? We also see brand and positioning appear on the long-range plan, as well as, the most important vital signs that the company will track on its way to goal achievement.

How many companies fail to succeed because they spend or invest foolishly, and fail to track core KPI’s? What’s also nice is that every one knows the core KPI’s, and I like that fact that one of the vitals is a Net Promoter Score (NPS), that reinforces the importance of the customer in this goal attainment.

On either side of the “Everest Mission” the company has its annual priories stated along with that quarters priorities and goals.

 

The annual plan consists of 3-5 key priorities, and each quarter breaks these annual priorities down into several core projects, each with an owner and a sponsor. Evidence of success are identified for each project, and each projects key quarterly milestones are identified, all with an owner and due date.

There is nothing fancy about their planning process as I said before, but strategy is about sacrifice and unfortunately that’s a lesson that the majority of smaller businesses never understand. As a result these businesses will never drive the growth they want as not everything can be a priority when resources are limited. 

 

Your Future is Greater Than Your Past

Aside from culture and planning there is something that I believe is even more core to the Infusionsoft’s success, and that is in how their management team views their business as a way of enriching the lives of their employees, and in helping them to achieve personal goals outside of work. One of the more innovative ways I saw in how the company was embodying this principle was in the creation of a “Dream Library”.

 The space is a quiet, and meditative place for people to come and rest, think, and dream, and where employees are encouraged to write a dream on the wall. The company even maintains a full time employee dedciated to helping people achieve their pursuits outside of work.

This commitment to people is something that all of us can do whether a CEO or a department manager. How much effort does it take to send an employee to a conference, or to get more education and training? Not a lot. This effort builds a stronger bond between company mission and employee that become seeds to building a dynamic culture in the future.

So we can all support our people in many different and fundamental ways, even without having a “Dream Library”. At the end of the day its people that are the differentiating advantage for any business.

Customer Focus

Customer Focus. It’s one of the most overused yet most misunderstood catch phrases there is. How many businesses truly know their customers? Or converse with their customers on topics outside the context of what the company sells? And really gain insight into what the customers core needs are. While many of us say it, few us really internalize and operationalize it.

At Infusionsoft I saw a unique focus on the customer that I believe inherently gives the company a leg up on its competitors while being able to create an emotional bond between the brand, and customer. One of the things I really liked was the major display of customer personas in company that took on the metaphor of cereal boxes, each representing a core persona of the company’s customer segment.

This effort on persona development no doubt helps the companies development stay on track, and ensures delivery of a product that is right for that particular customer segment.

 

 

The other area where I think the company’s customer centricity really manifests itself is in providing education to its customers beyond just showing them how to implement and work Infusionsoft software. This effort, I believe, will strengthen the emotional brand relationship with their customers and in turn fuel a channel of customer driven insights straight into the development team thus sparking a continued innovation engine.

Education after all is core to the mission of helping Infusionsoft customers be successful, and that mission has expanded the headroom managerially to support increased investment in customer education.

Role of Marketing

One of the challenges in marketing to this customer segment is the potential size of the market is overwhelming, and to be successful as a tech company you must find a way to efficiently and effectively scale business operations around service, marketing, and sales. As a result Infusionsoft really views its marketing function as its most successful sales person. Marketing is tasked with delivering 80% of the companies’ revenue targets, and does this efficiently by focusing on a scalable and metrics led online demand generation engine.

In addition to delivering the annual demand plan marketing is tasked with optimizing the other areas such as the churn rate, and in building an ecosystem of channel and development partners. Again there is no fancy secrete sauce other than a focus on metrics, continual optimization of the model and growing and developing the marketing team. What is refreshing is the importance on marketing that the company has in viewing the function as far more than just a cake and cookies role.

So while many of us will envy the culture of Infusionsoft, while others will be wary let us take away some of the core lessons behind this company’s early success. A focus on strategy and execution, a focus on people, and a focus on customers are all things we can do better and deploy with greater vigor tomorrow vs today. In doing so our endeavors in both business, and personal goals will be more successful in the future.

Nuff Said

 

 

 

 

 

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The Best Socially Connected Marketing Campaign of 2011: Museum of Me

I recently tried Intel’s interactive brand campaign, in support of launching their Icore5 processors, and was blown away by the creativity, and the personal level of engagement their brand had with me for 2 minuets.

 
 
This is what socially connected marketing is all about, in that you want your brand to have a personal, sustained, and meaningful engagement with the consumer. What’s amazing is that Intel did this in support of a computer chip.

The concept of the Museum of Me is brilliant in my view, in that the application harvests your Facebook information (only after you give it permission, and noting that the data is not shared with anyone else) to create the context of a museum exhibit that showcases the visual aspect of your social life. How much more personal and engaging can a brand be.

 

The visual context is spot on, as the chipset is optimized for visual media, and the brand is positioned as an innovator in the space. Intel was successful in establishing an emotional connection with the viewer due to the personal level of engagement-your visual social life.

Now what’s interesting is the media and pundits have given rise to some more controversial takes on the campaign, and along the lines of data privacy and of course a little narcissism. On some level if you haven’t already realized what information is accessible on Facebook and that you allow to be shared, The Museum of Me certainly does a good job of slapping you back to reality.

 
Data privacy is going to be a huge issue in the coming 10 years as Christina Gagnier of the Huffington Post writes “As the newest evolution in privacy warnings has moved towards icons, such as TRUSTe's "Truth in Privacy" framework, consideration should be given to visualizations that personalize the experience that someone may have on the website they are visiting or the mobile application they are using. If there was a means of prospective visualization, this may be the future of educating users on privacy in a meaningful way.”

Of course I could also look at the side bar on data privacy from the purely capitalistic side. Could Intel be looking to create a parallel discussion on data privacy as a result of this campaign? Why? You ask. Well at some level personal data privacy would need to be protected at the Chip level in our ever growing, always on, and mobile society. Intel has certainly demonstrated its intent to integrate data security at the chip level with its purchase of McAfee, so why not data privacy?

 
While any discussion on data privacy is good, and needed I look at this effort purely from a marketing point of view. In that vein, I think Intel, and their creative partners have done a masterful job at  creating a highly personal and engaging experience between me, and their brand for two minutes. The campaign even reached in at a philosophical level by ending with your visual social graph, and then scaling out to show how your graph is connected to millions of others.

Isn’t this what socially connected marketing is about? Nuff said.

The Coming Future of the Greatest Sponsorhsip Ever Sold

A fantastic TED talk by Morgan Spurlock of "SuperSize Me" about the world of big corporate advertising and  its incestuous relationship with the media channels. Morgan's new movie "POM Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold" The thought of true transparency is still somewhat of a figment of the imagination in these circles. The point this is trying to bring home, in my view, is that we are now being inundated with corporate shill 24x7. The thing that is changing the fastest, in my view, is the way in which the pitch is getting delivered, as the sponsored message is becoming ever more blended in with the content and delivery channels we consume.  

 

Today it could be a tweet or comment on a late night show from a well known celebrity mentioning how great a coke would be, or even a local mom recommending a product to her network on Facebook. Schools are selling advertsing like it nobody’s business as school buses and hallways now market to our youth. As I work in the "biz" so to speak I have a pretty good sense of what is a pitch as I know that there is no relaity in reality TV. Every thing is planned and well coordinated from late night to the fabricated drama on on Dancing With the Stars. 

How long until we see corporate messgaing and sponsorships pervade our professional spots more than what they have already. It's only a matter of time before we see corprate brands on our pro teams uniforms in the US just as they do in Europe. The WNBA has already started selling sponsorships for player’s uniforms, so how much longer before we see the Citibank Mets?  

We all talk how great social media is and how wonderful it is to be connected to one another. While there is a lot of good from that always remember that the social media platform companies need to eat, and feed their kids and that the most valuable commodity they have is your data.

Today we see the emergence of location based services that will serve as the foundation, along with trillions of lines of data about all of us, to facilitate the delivery of targeted and custom sponsored messages 24x7. It’s interesting that one of the big future mega trends will be the sheer growth of ‘screens”. Screens and displays will be all around us, pervading every facet of our lives with the purpose of delivering us commercially sponsored messaging (i.e a pitch).

 
As a smaller marketer I’m not any less guilty. I do conduct custom research with the aim of supporting a position or point of view in the market. I do develop white papers and videos with a pitch that is designed to push a viewpoint that’s favorable to my company and my product. I’m certainly not producing high quality content for humanitarian reasons alone. I do try to keep the pitch to minimum and always try to make the content of high quality, but the end goal is the same in that I’m trying to position a point of view that benefits my interests commercially.

The difference is that it’s pretty apparent when you take content from a corporate website or off a corporate advertisement your going to get some pointed messaging. What's changing is that these commercial messages will be delivered across all channels and packaged within seemingly non commercial messages and this is where we all need to be more aware and do as our parents said:

“Always question who is delivering you the news, and always ask who “they” are”

I worked with Morgan many years back, and during that time we all knew he would be very successful. Congratulations on your new movie and as a marketer I can’t wait to see it. Nuff said.

Will Super Bowl XLV Kill The Social Media Star?

 I came across a recent article in USA Today this week on how most of the major marketers who are advertising during Super Bowl XLV will unveil social media contests, as part of their campaign effort. The article noted that Mercedes and Audi will both unveil this week large scale social media contests, backed by hefty prizes for those that “tweet” or “like” the most.

The basic crux of all these social media efforts is to get people to post en-mass “likes” or “tweets” which to me sounds eerily similar to “awareness drives sales” used by many a Madmen in their day. So is ‘tweeting” and ‘Liking:” the new “awareness heroine" of the day?

 
 
Looks like it is to me. I had to laugh at the quote from Stephen Cannon, Mercedes Marketing Vice President “We're using the 2011 Super Bowl as our head-long plunge into committing to social media," at Mercedes-Benz. It's our strategic leap of faith.” W.T.F.?

Let me translate what “strategic leap of faith” really means. It means were doing this because everybody else is doing it, but we don’t have clue as to why we’re doing it, or what were going to get out of it, and oh by the way, we have more marketing budget than brains. Well that’s okay, as that same argument could probably be used against massive TV advertising budgets, applied to a 30 second spot, with no follow on support for the rest of year. Sound familiar?

Is it any wonder why then the Edelman Trust Barometer shows a remarkable 25% decline in peer/friend trust in the 2010 survey? Not really, especially when everyone is “friending” everyone else, and Big  ‘M” marketers blindly throw cash to generating “likes” and “tweets”, while social media snake oil consultants continually tout social media as the next god send for lead generation. What the Edelman Trust Barometer really indicates is that people are basically saying that the value of a “like” or ‘tweet” or number of “followers” you have is becoming worth less and less everyday as marketers spend gobs of money in blindly building a mass of “likes” and “fans” artificially.

I also had to laugh when I heard that after the much ballyhooed announcement of Pepsi leaving traditional media by spurning the Super Bowl 09 in lieu of social media, recently announced their return to the Super Bowl with the purchase of 4 slots for their Pepsi Max brand. So I guess all them “Likes” and “Tweets” didn’t pay off for you huh? Here’s another classic “Big M” marketer quote “PepsiCo is "doubling down," says Rudy Wilson, marketing chief at Frito-Lay”. You bet you’re doubling down Rudy, because social media, as a one off tactic, or communication channel is not driving the revenue needle for you buddy. Welcome to real the world.

 

Here’s a basic tenant everybody needs to remember. Social media is worthless until someone is engaging with you by leaving a comment, question, or point of view that opens an opportunity for you to converse with them. Social media is not about the leads, sales, or monologue. It’s about dialogue. Social media shouldn’t be called out as some special type of marketing campaign; it should be part of everyday business, just as using the telephone is part of everyday business.

Social media is about you engaging with your ecosystem and building an opportunity for honest, and real conversation, debate, gripes, insight or innovation to be had. Don’t waste your money on building artificial “fans” and “likes”.

Pam Moore added a good point in the article where she adds that “ Tweets” and Facebook "likes" that Super Bowl marketers all are glomming onto today will seem archaic in just a few years” Amen to that. Nuff said.

Are Mormons Better Marketer's Than Jews?

Be a Mormon and not a Jew when it comes to your viral marketing according to Jonah Peretti, CEO at Buzzfeed. Peretti posts 5 tips on how to make a message or idea go viral in todays environment:

· Create media for the Bored At Work Network: There are hundreds of millions of people around the world bored at work sitting in front of their computers connected to high speed networks.  This network is bigger than any traditional media network like CNN or ABC. Create something they will want to pass around.

· Practice The Mullet Strategy: Business up front, party on the back.  If you have a Website, keep the front page serious so as not to scare off the casuals.  Give all the crazy commenter’s and contributors space in the back, and only show them to the rest of the world when they create something that catches on.

· Try Big Seed Marketing: If you are  brand trying to create  a viral campaign, it might be hard. True viral memes are hard to reproduce.  It is much easier to make something that still gets passed around, but you might have to spend some money to seed it around the Internet.  The more seed you spread, the more chance it will grow. “Buy the seed, get the viral for free,” he says (this is basically BuzzFeed’s business model).

· Target The Maniacs: The Web is ruled by maniacs, people who get worked up about things and push their ideas out.  ”Content is more viral if it helps people express their personality disorders,” notes Peretti.

· Be A Mormon, Not A Jew. This one is tongue in cheek.  But Mormonism is a growing religion, whereas Judaism is stagnating in terms of population.  Why?  Mormons are better evangelists.  ”The problem with Jews is that they suck at marketing,” says Peretti.  ”It’s almost like they don’t want anyone else to be a Jew.” His point is that it is not just the quality of an idea that counts, it is how much effort you put into spreading it. via techcrunch.com.

 

Perriti posts some humorous stats on the difference between Mormons and Jews in the growth of their respective religions, and points out that Judaism may be relevantly stagnant when compared to the growth of the Mormon religion. His main message in this comparison is that while Judaism may be a high quality religion, in the viral and socially connected environment that we operate in that quality of message is not a growth strategy. Whereas, with the Mormon religion, they want you to be a Mormon, and make "Evangelism" central to their strategy, and mission. The key take away is that you need to focus not just on the idea or message, but more on the mechanics of how a message is spread in todays socially connected world.

When it comes to viral I have always hated the term “viral” as it conjures up terms in “managements” mind of “high-volume” for “no money” or worse “free advertsiing”. As Perriti points out the reality is that most successful viral business attempts have come on the heels of a large, well funded and integrated mixed media campaigns.

 I also believe that good social-viral attempts are those that ultimately give your target audience a chance to emotionally connect with your brand experience; a lesson that I think the recent Irish Spring campaign brought to light.

There are some interesting correlations in thought between Perrtti’s notion that you need to connect with the “maniacs” to the thoughts of Malcom Gladwell in that Connectors, Mavens, and Salesmen are key recruits in making an idea tip into the mainstream. This is interesting to note as part of the social aspect of the Irish Spring Campaign was to produce a series of near real time tweets, but the selection of, who to tweet to, in response to the campaign was made based on the tweeters “influence”. This is an interesting notion as we see the rise of “influence”  as part of an integrated campaign with a social extension, and also interesting to note that a little “science” was used in making that determination.

In today’s socially networked world strategy and planning, leverage of key influencers, a somewhat bored audience, some good old school marketing, backed up by some decent budget seem to be what is required to make the best use of viral messaging and ideas for marketing. Most attempts will be dismal but a few will be brilliant in that they will enable the audience to emotionally engage with the brand in an entertaining and fulfilling way. Now isn’t that worth a college try?

Nuff Said.

The Ultimate Business Differentiator

A reminder to everyone in business, that in the age of user generated content, world class brand experience, from 1st touch through the entire lifetime of the customer is of paramount importance and is the ultimate brand differentiator.

 

 

Soldiers Have Crappy Printer - Watch more Funny Videos Nuff Said

Forrester Consulting's Moronic Blogging Policy

 

On Friday our PR firm sent this post fromSageCirclerelating to Forrester's recent decision (some say it has been in effect since mid to late 2009) to ban all personal blogs from analysts that relate to topics they are researching for Forrester. Forrester states "We believe we can best serve our clients in their professional roles by aggregating our intellectual property in one place – at Forrester.com.

The reality behind this policy is that it is most likely due to the recent departures of several analysts to form their own venture called Altimeter Group. This company was started by Charlene Li who coauthored the book:Goundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.

For those of you in marketing, and involved in social media, Jeremiah Owyangis a very well known figure in the space who has been delivering his insights, and industry musings on social media through his blog Web Strategy. Ray Wang likewise has built up a very successful following on his blog “A Software Insiders Point of View”.

Jemimah, was who many of us turned to for insight into how social media technology was changing the landscape in which we operated in. Jemimah freely gave deep, and compelling insights, and his blog delivered lots of value to that end. His association with Forrester, in my view, really heightened the brand of that analyst company, and positioned them as a leading consulting firm in social media and marketing.

The action of Forrester limiting the blogging of their anlaysts made me recall the musings of David Armano and his “Brandividuals”: “Brandividuals are people who represent your brand and their own, balancing the two may be something we see more of, not less as companies and brands try to figure out how to engage on a web that’s become increasingly social and personal.”. David uses several examples of well known brandividules who are associated with their company, for example Scott Monty at Ford, and Frank Eliason of Comcastcares. David also pointed out last year that there were going to be some sticky issues arising out of the convergence of personal, and business brands.

Basically today when you hire someone you bring their on-line social network into your company, and when they leave they take it with them. I love to draw parallels in the context of what's old is new again, and this case really makes the point. It used to be that if you hired a well known sales guy in the industry you hired him for his skill, and his “Rolodex”. If you hired a great PR firm you hired them for their relations with relevant media in priority industries, and you generally wanted your key people to speak at conferences, as it was “good for the brand”. At those conferences they met people which would undoubtedly lead to opportunities, and in some cases that would lead to opportunities outside of your company.

Whats ultimately changed is that it used to take the leverage of a strong business brand to fuel the development of a strong personal brand in the off line centric reality of the old world. What's new today is that, in a growing number of cases, the individual has a powerful individual brand associated with them prior to coming to the company brand. These days more companies want and desire a strong personal brand coming to work for them for a variety of reasons. In many cases a strong personal brand is becoming a requirement, as the first thing that everyone does when they hear of a new hire is to Google them, to see if they know anything about what they were hired to do.

This reality is driving many individuals to become cognizant of the need to develop a reputable on-line “brand” reputation. When I say on-line brand I'm not speaking in the sense that we will become Brittany Spears.com, but that we have commentary on our industry, or have points of view relevant to our profession. What will need to change is the new set of engagement rules between business, and individuals in this will new networked environment where social-business become one.

Forrester's policy of stopping analysts from blogging on their own personal blogs about industry research is ripe with old world thinking about controlling the message and the individual. Old ways of thinking where the businesses can control the brand experience and the buying process have fallen by the wayside as a result of near frictionless way of communication and accessing information. There is no doubt in my mind that Forrester is trying to hang on to the old way of thinking by instituting a moronic policy of trying to control their analysts voices. I believe that, from Forrester's point of view, if they force analysts to only blog on Forrester-branded blogs this will then add equity to the Forrester brand and more revenue.

Why is this moronic? Because Forrester's core brand experience and value ultimately lies in the brain matter, notoriety, skill, and engagement that each individual analyst has with potential and current customers. The individual analyst is the brand, not the Forrester logo or the CEO. In an age of frictionless communication, why would you control the voice of your #1 sales person, which is your analyst. This is part of a common problem of business today.

It used to be that business knew their customers and had personal relationships with each of them. Technology and scale created a distance and ability for us to hide behind-- email, voice mail, and web sites. How many companies out there today answer their phones with a human? How many companies put pictures of their product managers and how to contact them on the website? We are moving back to the future where people buy from other people they trust, and who they think are knowledgeable.

Jeremiah was the #1 marketing machine for Forrester, and drove substantial business their way. Furthermore, if you lock your analysts only into Forrester blogs you are, by default, limiting the web surface-area that people can find these analysts on. In using the Forrester reasoning, you might as well limit their involvement in industry events or other social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, because they could build up a presence and contacts that could lead them away from Forrester at some point.

Forrester didn't realize that the equity of the on-line brand reputation of Jemimah Owyang was tightly integrated to the equity of Forrester in that space. To be honest, Forrester added a lot of equity to the personal brand of Jeremiah as many business paid a little more attention to him since he was part of a respected tier 1 analyst firm. I'm sure many of his calls were taken, as a result of the Forrester association, than if he were making calls as Jeremiah the blogger. So, the relationship is a two way street. What would have been more productive than issuing some mindless policy would be to explore ways that both brands could continue adding value to each other. For example:

1. Find ways to co-brand and co-market each other. A star analyst is like a star basket ball player. They bring in tickets.
2. The obligatory disclosure that this is my personal blog and does not reflect my employees view
3. Develop ways to funnel inquires on the personal blog directly to Forrester.
4. Co-blog on both a personal and a branded site.

The real issue here of course is money. As Jeremiah grew in notoriety more clients came to the door. Jeremiah worked triple duty in his spare time driving insight and content and building a social media practice at Forrester that in turn brought in more clients. At some point the question was asked as to what am I getting for this. Forrester obviously had a different view for the relationship than say Jeremiah. Now I'm speculating on all this, but I think its a safe bet as to how things evolved.

There wouldn't be any issue here if Jemimah never left and that is where the convergence of personal and business brands or 'Brandividuals” will continue to collide in a growing fashion. It's always been tricky when a star employee leaves for a competitor or starts his own business in your industry. That has always happened, and always will. Again whats old is new.

Just as a star sales person who has built a new line of business for you will undoubtedly ask for a larger piece of the pie so to will brandividuals. Technology and social media is bringing back the individual with a vengeance, and companies will need to realize that new engagements, and new business models are required. Not a policy that limits how you communicate. Nuff Said.

Big Ed’s Top 10 B2B Marketing Trends For 2010

 
The great global economic meltdown of 2009 has passed, and we are still here and breathing, mostly a sigh of relief. It’s been a tough year for B2B marketers as many of us had to deal with decreased budgets, staff and a return to basics. Hopefully, we focused on improving our core processes, measures, and databases so we are ready for whatever the economy and market brings our way in 2010. In 2009, I put forth my Big 10 Trends for B2B Marketing, and in keeping with tradition I thought I would do it again for 2010.

1.    Mass Adoption of Social Media in The B2B Marketing Mix

I hope that in 2010 we will finally see an end to the monotonous message of “Why Marketers Should Use Social Media” and hopefully an end to the ubiquitous “5 Ways to Use Twitter to Improve Your Marketing”.  I think we can all say that social media officially jumped the shark when Ashton tweeted all of us a picture of Demi in her underpants.

 To that end there should be only be a few of us left that do not fully understand that social media, must become part of our integrated marketing mix in order to get our message out, and to build a dialogue with our customers. While not in such large numbers yet, marketers are beginning to understand that they have lost control of the brand experience to the customer, and that they must engage if they have any desire to partake in their brand experience. 

Are there any of us left that aren’t using social media in one form or another today? Granted some of us may be using it ineffectively, but we are using it, and therefore we are learning. Unfortunately get ready for the onslaught of the a-typical social media campaign: “take a video of how you use our product and we will show it on You Tube.”

2.    Social Media ROI Remains Confusing and Elusive as Ever

 

 

With the mass adoption of social media we will now be inundated with an ever increasing amount of articles, and blog posts on how to “Increase Leads & SEO with Social Media”. The reality is almost all of us confuse “the media” with “the social” in trying to identify measures that get us to some form of ROI. Today most of us are focused on awareness, and lead generation as noted by this recent research from Sirius Decisions.

I, for one, do not believe that social media will prove an effective lead generation tool as social media is inherently about dialogue, listening and engaging. I don’t think there are too many people, customer or otherwise, that want to be sold to in every dialogue they have with a brand. Someone once said “Social Media Works Best When it is Earned and Not Paid for”.

We will see continued ROI assertions with the “media side” of social media, but I don’t think this is the relevant measure to look at as these measures are usually short-term in their focus. Social media is inherently about value creation and, as a result, much more long-term in its value add that is ultimately reflected in trust, advocacy, and sentiment towards our brands. This is where the true ROI/Value in social media lies, but it will be a long and arduous path for most of us to realize that, let alone convincing our management. In addition we are hampered by a lack of effective and efficient tool sets that can aid our measures on these more subjective value drivers.

 

I think that we must all go through an evolution of social media learning before we can truly be enlightened on the real ROI, or better yet, value generation of social media. In my view this evolutionary curve follows a distinct path of enlightenment for B2B marketers:

· Awareness: The stage where most of us begin our journey. Here the focus is on utilizing social media channels to drive market/brand awareness and SEO. Marketers confuse Social Media ROI with media measures such as page rank, organic vs. paid search, page views, and leads (we also confuse inquires & leads but that is another issue). Social media strategy is often confused with social media tools and channels (i.e. the tactics) at this stage.

· Engagement: After awareness we realize that social media can actually be used to converse in a two-way dialogue with our ecosystem. Metrics get a little more focused and try to relate to other ongoing tactics in order to monetize the value of such efforts and convince management of the need for continued investment. For example, using a blog to gain feedback on a company’s products can be monetized against the ongoing cost of focus groups.

 

 

 

· Listening: Once we are engaged we discover the power of listening. Here we start to use social media to listen to the market, and to what people are saying about our products, brands, and engaging more directly to assist with the service aspects of the company’s offerings. Social media metrics get more sophisticated, and are viewed in a much longer time frame than media measures. This new level of social media measurement is focused more on advocacy, brand sentiment, and service experience. While sentiment and advocacy are difficult to measure, as tool sets are still emerging, advancements will be made on the monetization and measuring the service aspect of social media (i.e reaching out to a compliant heard through twitter and solving the issue via social media channels).  Comcast Cable use of Twitter  is a good example of this stage of evolution.

· Innovation: At this stage we start using social media to crowd-source, and to co-innovate with our ecosystems. This is the most advanced stage of evolution where our products and services actually converge with community and social media capabilities to foster greater and faster co-innovation. At this stage the value derived from social media can be extraordinary as smaller brands can compete effectively with larger brands. SalesForce.com and Starbucks are two companies with examples of community based innovation frameworks in place.

 

3.    Focus On Database Accuracy

Last year I said that database marketing will be a major priority for us as the recession will require us to focus on cross-sell, and to leverage our database for more effective and efficient demand generation. Now we have a new issue at play in our databases, and that is the accuracy of the contacts. While we will always be searching for the holy grail of accuracy in the database, this issue has been exacerbated in 2010 due to the recession that has left many of these databases defunct due to the massive job losses seen. Efforts need to be undertaken to cleanse and update existing data bases this year versus focusing on adding more quantity to the marketing database.

 

4.    B2B Buyers Continued Shift to Online Sources of Information

As I said last year Print is dead. 2009 saw the continued demise of B2B print media and the large industry events have been called into greater question, as their real value became more suspect in an increasingly digital world. Influence of the virtual event and webcasts continues to grow as effective communication and lead generation channels for B2B marketers. Yet there remains a gap in how we, as marketers, view the channels that our prospects are using to conduct their buying research. Here is some recent Tech Target IT buyer research that I found particularly interesting.

When asked how frequently they use the internet to conduct buyer research IT buyers said the following:

 

Note the disconnect between Marketers and the people they are trying to reach. IT Buyers don’t view the Vendor Website in such high esteem as we do (imagine that), nor do they view conferences, trade shows, associations or editorial articles in evaluating technology as highly as we do.

 

 

 

The key point here is that now, more than ever, we truly have to understand our persona’s buying process and how they conduct and consume information in order to optimize our marketing mix across online and off-line channels.

5.    Understanding & Optimizing the Buying & Selling Cycle

While much has been written about how we, as marketers, have lost control of our brand experience, and the need to understand our buyer personas in a way to more effectively deliver content to support the buying process, very little has been written about the impact to the sales cycle. The reality is that sales has lost control over the selling cycle in the context that sales must control relevant information in order to force an engagement with the prospect, and to ensure that the sales is guiding the decision making process of the prospect. While that may have worked 10 years ago, nothing can be further from the truth today. How many times have you heard your sales team say “Don’t put that on the website. They need to come to me for that information”?

In today’s world, our prospects are getting their information including pricing, technical details, etc. from our past customers and, in most cases, now know more about the product, and the business terms than our own sales teams. This puts our sales teams into ever increasing positions of justifying their value add.

Note some recent B2B buyer research from Forrester where 70% of business decision makers prefer to develop their own knowledge online.

In short, they don’t want to engage with you until they are ready (I know. It’s a novel concept). This creates a few challenges for B2B marketers:

1.    Understanding the buyer process and personas of the target audience in order to develop an optimal content model and delivery channels.

2.    Extending Marketing programs to cover the sales process and understanding our sales persona in order to develop an optimal content model for sales that adds value to the customer buying process.

3.    Optimizing a cohesive content model that supports both the buying and selling process.

Ultimately this reinforces the notion that Content Is King, but if we don’t understand both the buying and selling process, as well as our buying and selling personas, we will be producing content for the sake of content and not meeting any of the true requirements of our customers or our sales teams.

6.    Content is King, but Comparative Content is The Kings Ransom

Content may be King but it is comparative content that your buyers want—

Content that compares how your solution stacks up against your competitors. Closely following comparative content is pricing information. These are the two most valued types of information and searches across buyers when using the internet for research, yet these two types of information are most resisted by marketers and sales alike, in an attempt to control information and force engagements with the brand.

 

2010 will see an increase in comparative and pricing content on vendor websites by aggressive marketers who want to define the competitive framework. First movers will gain leverage by introducing this content first. Do the following search:“enter your company/solution name here” vs  “enter your competitor’s company/solution name here” . You may be surprised at what comes up.

 

7.    Segment Based Nurturing

By now we have all learned that it is important to nurture, and most of us have put in place the Ubiquitous Newsletter that touches our base at least a few times a year or month. Some of us have even put into place some automated touches of emails that are sent out at predefined intervals to inquires in an attempt to get them to re-engage or push information to accelerate a buying process. Segment based nurturing is the next stage of this nurturing process where we put into place a very comprehensive communications flow whose message evolves over time based on actions taken.

 

In short, segment based nurturing revolves around the notion that the conversation you have today is different from the one you have next month based on level of interest, need, actions, content taken, etc. To do this well you must have the right tool sets in place (i.e. Eloqua, Marketo, Genius-I’m a customer). The tools sets are rapidly evolving and coming down in cost. If you don’t have this type of capability, you need to make 2010 the year you implement a basic marketing automation platform.

 

As I said last year, many of us that have these platforms in place are still only using them as glorified email engines, but the real power is when we leverage them as segmentation engines that happen to have email as a feature.

 

 

To realize this value we must bring together an enriched and accurate marketing database, a well designed web site, improved understanding of our content model, and its relation to the buying process, and persona requirements.  When this happens very advanced and segmented-automated nurturing can be applied. In 2010 we will see more companies move to this more advanced level of nurturing, along with increased adoption of marketing automation platforms.

 

8.    Operationalizing the Marketing Convergence of Art & Science

Is marketing an art or a science? The answer is yes. When the science meets the art in a more structured way, exciting marketing messages, creative, campaigns can and will result. More companies are realizing this benefit, and are looking to formalize the “marketing gearbox” where art meets science.

 

This may take the form of a dedicated operations role or through process where the analytics works side-by-side with the creative process. Increasingly we will see this convergence become more formalized across more and more companies in 2010.

 

9.    Social CRM Takes Root

 

 

 

The year 2009 saw Social CRM start to hit the main stage with the announcement of twitter integration into

Salesforce, Comcast Cable use of twitter to serve customers, and Best Buy’s Twelp Force. More companies, including my own, are increasingly monitoring social media channels in an effort to support customer issues, both positive and negative.  

 

2010 will see accelerated integration of these channels into CRM and service systems as it represents an ideal way for companies to have an efficient dialogue and improve overall brand and customer experience. This is one area of social media that can be quickly monetized and measured.

10.   Rise of Community Thought Leadership

Thought leadership has been around for some time as an objective for marketers to drive. In most cases thought leadership takes a more strategic approach to a company’s messaging or positioning objectives, such as “trying to educate a market”, “influence opinion makers”, “position the company’s vision as the industry vision”. In my view, thought leadership is an important part of the overall marketing mix and should be invested in.

 

However I do believe that there is a new dimension coming to thought leadership and that is “community thought leadership”. Scott Mersey of Genius.com recently blogged that the difference between Community Thought Leadership & Thought Leadership is:

“The key difference between Community Leadership and Thought Leadership is that this approach means that help and relevant content is provided freely and without strings so that any member of the community - whether or not ever a “prospect” to become a customer - comes away with actionable information and insight into how to solve their problems. It’s leadership that’s vendor agnostic and broader than a piece designed to capture leads.”

Henrik Ibsen once said that “A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm.”  This really denotes the difference, in my view, between our traditional approach to marketing thought leadership and community based thought leadership. In the traditional sense we are focused on getting our message out, and not so concerned with dialogue, or as Mersey states “Focused on Monologue”.

 

In community thought leadership we are a member of a relevant community, and focused on influencing and building advocacy for our views across many community members. In doing this we take part in meaningful dialogue, and debate where our initial thought/idea/position is subject to evolution based on input from the community.

Community thought leadership is growing more important to B2B marketers as communities are becoming increasingly important as vehicles where our ecosystem engages, and shares ideas in an increasing manner. So how does one define a successful community thought leadership effort?

1.    Become part of a relevant community.

2.    Share your ideas freely and provide information that is free of vendor speak and requirements such as registration.

3.    Have thoughtful debate and dialogue.

4.    Be willing to evolve your position.

5.    Focus on building advocacy, not monologue.

 

In 2010 we will see more push on community thought leadership as part of a comprehensive thought leadership program.

 

I wish all of you great success in 2010. Nuff Said.

Marketers Wake Up! Google’s Sidewiki Brings New Social Dimensions to Your Company's Digital Doorstep

Last week Google announced on their blog the addition of a new feature called the Google SideWiki. This new feature is being positioned as a feature that allows you to learn and get help from others.

The  Google Sidewiki, allows you to contribute comments, information, point of view directly to any webpage. The Google Sidewiki appears as a browser sidebar, where you can read and write entries along the side of the page. You can then syndicate your posts through other social media channels including Twitter and Facebook.

The ramifications for marketers, I believe, are significant if this takes off, and I have no reason to doubt that it won’t. First it makes every web page on your company web site social. That means that as prospects, customers, partners, media come to your website they can see the comments that others have left, both good and bad and post their own comments. I would imagine competitors can even leave comments now on your website if they would like to.

Why is this important? Word of Mouth is the #1 or 2 (depending on what survey you read) influencing factor on your buying cycles. Through Sidewiki Google has now brought word of mouth right to your companies door step.

This ultimately means that if you aren’t listening or monitoring what’s being said about you that you really need to start, as your website is your company’s primary communication and marketing vehicle today. If you’re not engaging, or conversing through social media channels, than you better start thinking about it.

 

Jeremiah Owyang does a great job of providing some key steps to take to help you formulate your strategy in response to this at his website. I recommend you read them.  After reading those suggestions I recommend you do two things:

1.   Download Sidewiki at google.com/sidewiki  and contribute your own entries alongside some web pages and syndicate out to some social media channels, so you see it and get it

2.   Have a meeting with your team to discuss what this means to website strategy, how you will monitor, and how you will respond to disgruntled customers, employees, and competitors.

  

Let me know your thoughts. Nuff Said…

In the Age of Social Media Brands Would Do Well to Take Every Complaint Seriously

Should you care if some irate client complains on Twitter that he wasn’t happy with your service? After all he only has a few followers. Most people look askance when you ask them if they blog, or tweet. What’s a tweet ?, is a common question I get. According to Forrester most people are really not engaged all that much across any social media channel. So does it really matter?

Here is a great example of when the power of publishing is put into the hands of a disgruntled customer. Apparently United Airlines broke this guy’s guitar and according to him after a year of going round, and round they refused to replace/repair or fix it.

Being a creative chap with creative friends he did a “protest” video, and put it on You Tube. Well 550K views later, after being picked up on national news broadcasts United’s brand is taking a hit in the world of web 2.0 and beyond and is being positioned  by a single individual as “The Brand that Breaks Guitars”.

Should brands care when people complain in social media? Granted there are only a few of us who are active and make our voices heard across social media channels. @Delatsucks tweeted that “Last Delta representative I spoke with literally said, "We do not care about social media. It has no impact on our business model."

Well social media may not have a direct impact on your ability to sell tickets and fly planes, but it can and will have an ever increasing impact on your brand, and that does have a direct impact on your business model. The change today is that a single individual could conceivably position your brand to millions of prospective customers without your knowing or control. Does United really want to be positioned across 550K people (& growing every second) that it is the airline that breaks guitars?

Perhaps the guitar carrying segment is fairly small and would have a negligible impact on United. However what about the larger population who could be influenced to think about United as a company that does not provide good customer service, or cares very little about its customer. Would United care about that?

The real question is does any brand care when anyone complains regardless of communication channel, and are they authentic in their desire to resolve the issue in a fair and amendable manner. This directly relates to the brand experience the company wants to create. In today’s environment companies big and small must take into account the frictionless word of mouth communication era that we live in, where there is unlimited publishing capacity for creative individuals. Today’s brands must begin to view complaints as an opportunity to engage and build a positive brand experience. Just as the age old adage goes” I’d rather know when someone is unhappy versus not knowing, and then I can do something about it. Nuff said.