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It’s a Great Time to Be a Professional Marketer

Dec 29th, 2009 by Bill Freedman

I just read an inspiring blog post by Megan Heuer at Sirius Decisions called Five B2B Marketing Surprises From 2009. It inspired me to reflect on what I learned in 2009.

The biggest take-away for me is how great the marketing tools and techniques are today compared to just a few years ago. Consider:

  • Twitter (free) to quickly inform and inspire your network
  • Wordpress (free) to quickly publish blogs and websites. Additional shout-outs to the vibrant community of Wordpress developers contributing plug-ins and themes.
  • Marketo (pricey, but valuable) which teases out the marketing automation functions and processes from general CRM/sales force automation
  • Salesforce.com (pricey, but valuable) for providing an easy to deploy, easy to manage and sales-rep-friendly tool for automating corporate processes for managing customer relationships and the sales process.
  • Microsoft Office (not free), especially Word and Excel, for creating content and managing campaigns. I certainly enjoy using many of the newer tools, but, let’s face it, most of us document the bulk of our original thinking and planning using these tools.
  • Google Analytics (free) to measure and analyze your web traffic and visitor trends.

Not as neat as the tools listed above is the emergence of multi-media publishing. The web is no longer just a medium of the written word. Podcasts, videos, photos, illustrations–even animations and web apps are increasing in popularity among prospects and customers. More on this topic at a later date…

Improved tools are important, but only when combined with a solid foundation of marketing professionalism. Great results are equally dependent on your sound (and stable) strategy, enduring processes and measurements.

The bottleneck in marketing continues to be the pace of creation of relevant, timely and persuasive content. I guess this means that the pace of marketing is limited by the imagination and creativity of the marketing team….a very nice thought.

Posted in Ideas, Observations | 3 Comments »

A Nostalgic Look at ’90s-style Mass Marketing

May 25th, 2009 by Bill Freedman

Remember when consumers used to complain about bulk mail? You know, the kind that fills your real mailbox at your real address.

This entertaining Saturday Night Live skit looks back to those simpler times. Its cute how the writer tries to appeal to the youth audience by mentioning modern concerns including the green economy and invasions of privacy. Harrumph.

http://www.vimeo.com/4192821

What a hoot! Give it a watch.

Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Say NO to Marketing Gimmicks

Apr 24th, 2009 by Bill Freedman

As a consumer and marketing professional, I’m not a fan of marketing gimmicks. In my opinion, they are the pornography of marketing: hard to define, but you know them when you see them. Teaser offers on credit cards, no money down home purchases, ROI studies that promise 400% returns.

Do you remember Joe Isuzu?

Do you remember Joe Isuzu?

If you’re like me, you make a mental accounting of businesses that overuse gimmick marketing and think twice about doing business with those companies and brands.

Before continuing my rant against gimmicks, let me acknowledge something important: sometimes gimmicks drive results. And because they can work, they deserve a place in the marketing toolbox.

Unfortunately, too many of us marketers lack the discipline to reserve gimmicks for the rare occasions when they might be effective. They are such a large part of marketing folklore that they overshadow the important long term efforts behind building sustainable brands and companies. As a result, I council my clients to take gimmicks out of the everyday toolbox and put them in the dark and dank storage room of once-in-a-blue-moon tactics.

Here’s why gimmicks can hurt more then help:

  • Gimmicks place tactical expedience ahead of strategic advantage. The products you worked hard to build over many months, that solve real problems, that create business value are trumped by  the output of a 20 minute conference room brainstorm.
  • Gimmicks attract the wrong kind of attention. Instead of demonstrating that your product has value, they showcase that you are willing to make your sales team dress up in an egg salad sandwich costume and play “Let’s Make a Deal.” All too often your silly gimmick becomes more memorable than your advantages. And desperation is hardly attractive or persuasive.
  • Gimmicks are unfocused and defocusing. By their nature, gimmicks are loud and attractive. They’ll generate measurable results like new web site visitors or crowded trade show booths. Like a sugar high, the results are short lived without setting you up for medium and long term success. Instead, you would have been better served by focusing on measuring actionable sales opportunities.

When you’re building something new, you need to persuade customers on many levels. Beyond getting attention, invest your marketing prowess into communicating your business value and establishing yourself as a trustworthy business partner. Unlike gimmicks, these efforts take time. Also unlike gimmicks, they have lasting value.

Posted in Persuasion, Sales | 2 Comments »

Google: the Local Firm that Permeates My Life

Mar 20th, 2009 by Bill Freedman

Many of you know that I’m a big supporter of local businesses. Recently I’ve noticed I’m doing a lot of business with a company that is fifteen miles from my home. That company is Google.

Google has a number of great products and employs many of my neighbors. They are also a pre-eminent global business with users and customers in every corner of cyberspace and the globe.

As I upgraded my Grand Central account to Google Voice, I took inventory of the Google Products I use every day. They include:

  • Google Adsensegoogle_logo
  • Google AdWords
  • Google Alerts
  • Google Analytics
  • Google Chrome
  • Google Mail
  • Google Maps
  • Google Reader
  • Google Search
  • Google Talk
  • Google Toolbar
  • Google Voice
  • Google Webmaster Tools
  • 800-GOOG-411

The interesting thing about my relationship with Google is that I pay them for one product (Google AdWords) they pay me for one product (Google Adsense). Everything else is no charge. Privacy advocates point out that I’m “paying” for these services by disclosing personal information about myself. My position is a bit different. I’ve accepted that there is no meaningful privacy on the Internet.  Everything we do on the Internet is closely monitored and analyzed so that someone can make an incremental buck.

In most parts of America and the world, Google is not a local business. It is a global competitor that is out-competing local institutions from newspapers to software companies with a unique business model. I’m able to reconcile my buy local bias with heavy usage of Google technology. Their products are good, they feed the local economy and they inspire innovation and excellence. I guess I’m comfortable living in a very competitive neighborhood.

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Posted in Ideas, Observations | 1 Comment »

Drilling Down on Web Marketing Statistics through Profiles

Mar 16th, 2009 by Bill Freedman

I envy the statistical information available to baseball managers. Elias Sports Bureau provides major league teams with clean and consistent data for every single pitch: who’s pitching, who’s hitting, pitch thrown, inning, count, temperature and much more.

Not so with marketing analytics statistics. The main limitation Web marketers face today is that the analysis data set available in aggregate form. I’ll leave it to others to debate merits of Internet privacy protection and marketing analytics. My focus is getting the most out of the available data.

drill_down

The antidote to aggregate data sets is to build profiles of target buyers, perform drill-down analyses on the profile’s data segment and disproportionally attract users to your site that are within your profile.

Profiles in Success

Consumer marketers have managed to profiles for years focusing on statistics like gender, age, income and geography. These profiles remain critical today for print and television advertising efficiency. They are less useful on the Web and with B2B purchases. As Peter Steiner’s New Yorker cartoon famously states, “On the Internet, no one knows you’re a dog.” In other words, you need to create profiles based on the data you have, not the data you choose.

When defining profiles, remember the goals of your analytics efforts:

  1. Ensure you are attracting a sufficient number of visitors who match your profile to your web site in a given period

    2. profile1

  2. Measure visitor satisfaction with the information on your web site.
  3. Excel at persuading visitors in your profile to provide you with contact information. In marketing parlance: convert.

For B2B enterprise software purchases, sales and executive teams have learned to appreciate profiles based on the following web statistics:

  • Geography/locale
  • Visit Source
  • New or Returning
  • Conversion

Work up-front to get consensus on your profile from the executive and sales teams. This should be an exercise in strategic success, not an internal effort by and for the marketing team. Executives in particular will have greater confidence in funding marketing programs that continue to drive measurable improvements.

Drilling into Trends

Web statistics fall into one of two categories. First are magnitude statistics. Magnitude statistics provide an accounting of outcomes. Examples include number of visitors, number of conversions, and duration of visits (pageviews or time on site).

Second are productivity statistics. Productivity statistics measure, among other things, whether you are improving at your goals. Among the most important productivity statistics are % of visitors who fit a profile and conversion rate.

Both types of statistics are important. It’s a rare company that grows through a singular focus on one statistic. Good marketers, like good baseball players are (at least) five-tool players.

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Posted in Persuasion, Sales, Web | No Comments »

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