Happy New Year

December 31, 2005 | Douglas/Dogs

Best wishes to all for safe, happy and healthy New Year.

I’ll leave you with this picture of my son Douglas who lost his first baby tooth late Thursday night:

Grab bag: Good Marketing Stuff

December 28, 2005 | Blogging, Integrated Sales & Marketing, Marketing, PR

And for the final grab bag entry this week, a few posts that caught my eye:

Toby Bloomberg on 5 ways to combat negative blog comments. I particularly liked this reminder:

"One of the benefits of a marketing blog is the opportunity to dialogue with customers, prospects and stakeholders.  Sorry y’all, no comments does not make a conversation. It’s called a monologue. [...] One person takes center stage with no opportunity for direct feedback. For my money, a blog without comments and trackbacks is an on-line newsletter.  And that’s not a negative comment."

She’s absolutely right (that’s why she’s the diva) — there are places for both sorts of things, blogs and blog-like newsletters without comments.

The way I see it, companies just have to decide which thing they want to have and make sure it fits their culture and yes,their marketing plan. If you REALLY can’t handle the comments, don’t put up a blog with comments and then selectively delete the ones you don’t like. You WILL get caught out, and you would have been better off doing a monologue.

I have commented in the past that I (like Toby) do not recommend turning off comments. Rather, use the comments on a blog to have a conversation with the reader. Even negative comments. As we all well know, your BEST customer often is the formerly unhappy customer who you turned around. Of course… you DO have to be willing to do what it takes to turn the customer around….

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If you use TypePad, archive this post from Neville Hobson on how to republish and back-up your blog.

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Two thought provoking posts from John Wagner: Open your eyes to the next wave of PR bloggers and Can the big agencies be thought leaders in a changing marketplace?  John has links to commentary by Shel Israel and Trevor Cook among others. Start from his post and follow the trail. I think John is on to something. It is very hard for the big guns, in any industry, to open the country club doors and let the "rest of us" in. The minute they do, they have lost the cachet of their leadership position. They aren’t "special" any more. However, more disturbing to me than the old school leaders having this "club" attitude is when I see similar behavior cropping up in the blogosphere…. Isn’t it a bit soon (and contrary to the spirit of the blogosphere) for there to be authoritative voices on anything?  To identify anyone as "So and So, the voice of X in the blogosphere" strikes me as odd.

Just my .02.

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A great post by Jill Konrath on the Selling to Big Companies Blog: Why this voicemail failed. Follow her advice and I’ll bet you’ll have more of your calls returned.

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And finally, from Elisa Camahort at Worker Bees (one of my must-read blogs by the way), some additional commentary on conferences. We’ve both noted a trend where conferences are becoming less about the content and more about the contacts. Which may be okay for dot-com millionaires and folks who don’t pay their own way to these things, but as a small business owner who funds myself (whether I am a speaker or an attendee), I need to find value in the program as well as the people. I can’t afford to attend a conference where I already know most of the content and my only takeaway is to have a few meals with people I already know. And much as I’d love to submit my name as a speaker for some of these things, well,  I’m not as well known as others in my field, and can’t afford to pay my own way (or take the time out from billable work) to the extent that others can, so I guess I’ll remain not as well known.  So it goes.

And, yeah, I guess I’ll be staying home a lot too!

That’s it for the grab bag. Next up for the marketing plan series of posts are some words about channel marketing.

Grab bag: Web 2.0

December 27, 2005 | Blogging, Web Marketing

As many of you know, I am confused about this Web 2.0 thing. I get that the Internet is evolving and social media have really changed the landscape, but do we really need a version number ?

Here are some more opinions for your reading pleasure:

Amy Gahran, Contentious: What is This “Web 2.0″ Thing, Anyway?

Creating Passionate Users, Have you updated your buzzwords?  (tip of the hat to Emergence Marketing for the link)

Stowe Boyd, Traitors in our midst: Web 2.0 anti-hype (thanks to gapingvoid for the link)

Grab bag: PR Measurement

Blogging, Marketing, PR

It’s been a little hectic here, with Christmas, client work, catching up from vacation and 2-week old puppies, so the blog has suffered a bit. I’m not in the habit of making New Year’s resolutions (talk about setting oneself up for failure) but I expect to be back to my regular blogging schedule of at least 3 times per week, starting this week.

To catch up I am starting with the grab bag of stuff in my RSS reader that I’ve just now had a chance to catch up with. I’m sure many of you have already seen these posts, but humour me

First, Shel Holtz and Andy Lark on PR Measurement. I think Andy has it right when he says the barrier to PR measurement isn’t the availability of tools:

"The barrier however remains a lack  of commitment at the top. Too many organizations I talk to are only looking to measure where Executives demand it. "

Shel’s post talks about some of the folks who are measuring PR… successfully. Problem is, these are the already converted…

The first step in solving a problem is realizing you have one, and I believe that many PR agencies don’t want to acknowledge that there IS a problem. The fallacy is that PR is about some intangible called "brand awareness" which cannot be measured. And on the client side, often the marketing teams either can’t (because they don’t get the support from sales teams) or won’t (because they are afraid) tie their PR efforts to sales results. 

For my part, I think we absolutely have to look at PR as part of our revenue generation toolkit, and expect as good, or better, results from it as we get from other marketing activities. If your PR agency won’t support the measurements you, the client, want, then get another agency. And agencies, if your client won’t support your desire to measure your results, understand that this is an account in jeopardy. Anyone can come in and attack you on qualitative terms, and you don’t have the ammo to fight back.

Measurement is in all our interests. I’ve written about this in the past here and here. It’s also not that hard. You just have to make the commitment.

Marketing Plan: Trade Shows

Business Management, Integrated Sales & Marketing, Marketing

Hope everyone is having a spectacular holiday season, whichever holidays you celebrate. We will now resume the regular programming that was interrupted by puppies and Christmas.

Puppies and Christmas… wasn’t that the call to arms issued by a favorite television character a few years ago…. mmm. I know at least one of my readers will get this pop culture reference

But I digress. Today’s promised marketing plan topic is trade shows — how and when DO they fit into a marketing plan?  When I began my career 20+ years ago (ouch), big annual trade shows were a large part of the plan. One big event per quarter (sometimes two), where you pulled out all the stops, booth, giveways, contests etc., was not unusual. This is still true in some industries, particularly business to consumer products on a regional basis, but for many B2B marketers, the trade show is far less a fixture in the plan than it used to be.

Why? Unless your product REALLY needs to be seen and is too cumbersome to ship out for trial — for example capital equipment like printing presses — trade shows often are not as cost effective as other tools at our disposal. With the Internet to provide pre-purchase information and all the options for fast shipping if a product does need to be sent out for physical trial, signing up for a big expensive trade show is far less attractive. If the product can be delivered through the Internet itself in a form acceptable to the buyer, trade shows are a very hard sell. In my opinion, that is one of the reasons for the demise of big computer shows like Comdex, and why I don’t think Internet World ever caught on. Too much money, too much investment of human capital and far too little return.

Now there are some exceptions to this phenomenon, even for computer products. Trade shows can still be an attractive venue if they are associated with an association meeting/convention. And I mean a real association meeting, with an active membership and a real education program that provides tangible value to the attendees. Big trade shows that stand apart from a real convention, even if they have the trappings of one, will not attract attendees the way the real thing does. Comdex. It started as a dealer show, morphed into an end user show, and eventually died (and IMO it was code blue for a few years before it was called.)

So trade show rule number one: unless a trade show is still the only option you have to show your product to potential buyers and dealers, make absolutely sure a BIG show is associated with an association meeting that will truly attract the attendees. [BTW, for these big capital products, the most popular trade shows do usually meet this criteria. Budget is ALWAYS an issue. In order to attract the big equipment manufacturers for whom drayage is a BIG BIG BIG expense, shows really need to pull the attendees, or the companies would find another way.]

Word of caution: affinity is not enough (example: Macworld) to develop a sustainable "big show." In my opinion, you must have an actual association connected to the show to guarantee the attendance, year in, year out.

In addition to the "really big show," there have always been a number of smaller shows, meetings and conferences to consider. Often held on a regional basis. These have proliferated in the past few years, even as the big big shows have somewhat declined. These may or may not be affiliated with an association meeting, and given that the investment is much less, it is much less critical as well.  I prefer events that are affiliated but I have seen some good independent ones as well.

Here affinity and solid programming are often enough to get the audience necessary for a decent ROI. Your display, if any, is a tabletop that can be staffed by a couple of people. Sometimes, it is just a sponsorship — coffee break, tote bag etc. — with a corresponding lower total cost.

The audience may be small, but is usually highly selected. So the challenge here is to pick carefully, and sign up for the conferences that will actually deliver YOUR prospects. Don’t do a conference aimed at C-level executives if your principal buyer is an IT director. Yes, you want to talk to the C-level guy, but guaranteed, the conference isn’t the most cost effective place for you to do it. The president of the prospect company may be interested in meeting your CEO, but she doesn’t want the sales pitch.

So my trade show rule number two is look for these smaller, more targeted events. If you can find the right audience for your value proposition and you have adequate staff to work the show, they are an excellent addition to the marketing plan. However, no matter how cheap the event is, if you can’t give it sufficient resources, both promotional and staff, I still say, don’t bother.  It is not worth doing if you aren’t going to do it right.

And that is our final rule: whatever you decide to do about integrating trade shows into your marketing plan, make sure you allocate sufficient resources to do it right. It is better to stay home and figure out another way to reach your targets than to go to a show and look like shit.

Blog withdrawal and Back up your Blog!!!

December 20, 2005 | Blogging

So TypePad had some more problems over the weekend. Since I don’t tend to blog over the weekend, I didn’t even notice, except my Mom asked me about two disappearing posts…

Apparently I was in the minority, as quite a storm ensued in the blogosphere. Many folks experienced severe withdrawal and high anxiety at not being able to blog and lost posts. Lots of criticism of Six Apart (constructive and otherwise).

While I agree that there really is no good excuse for so many problems in such a short period of time, and hope that Six Apart gets its act together, it occurs to me that folks need to remember three basic things about computing.

1. We have choices. We can switch platforms — blogging, browser, whatever — if we don’t like what we’ve got. May not be easy but so it goes.
2. When a system goes down, and they do, just go do something else for awhile. There is a world beyond blogging :-) 
3. Back up your blog. It’s that simple. Then it won’t matter so much if/when your blog service has a problem.

Backchannels at conferences. Huh? Why?

December 15, 2005 | Blogging, Marketing

A little behind in my schedule for the year end blog posts, but the promised trade shows post should be tomorrow. The puppies ARE really cute!

In the meantime, my thoughts about official backchannels at conferences.

I would not want to be a speaker at a conference that broadcasts an official "backchannel" behind the speakers. When I speak in public, I want the audience to be paying attention to me. I work very hard to create a memorable, interesting, usually interactive session so they will. If someone in the audience is bored, I’d prefer it if they just left. If more than one person in the audience is bored, they can leave together. And if everyone is bored, well then, I haven’t really done my job, have I? And I won’t get a lot of speaking invites.

I know this "backchannel" is the "in thing" these days, but why go to the conference if all you are going to do is chat with your friends? You can do that at home for a LOT LESS money. Unless of course the point of going to the conference isn’t to learn something or share something, but rather to be seen…..MMMM?

I realize that even without a sponsored, official chat, people at a tech conference will be emailing, chatting, using their crackberries etc. Bad enough, in my opinion. I don’t even like to hand out copies of my presentations in advance because I hate it when people read ahead.   

And I suppose since we know people are going to be doing it anyway, better to have a sponsored chat room so all attendees are included rather than private little cliquey things of just the "in" people. I know, you are flabbergasted that cliques can develop in an industry.

But broadcasting the backchannel chat behind the speaker. Nope, not for me. Can’t think of a single good reason to do it.

Check out Elisa Camahort’s post Backchannel Smackdown. She makes a number of excellent points about backchannels, and has links to most of the relevant blogs involved in the Trott/Metcalfe les blogs incident — if you aren’t already bored with it, that is

Probably will write more on backchannels when I write about trade shows. And please, if there is a good reason to broadcast the backchannel behind the speaker, I’d love to hear it.  Have one if you must, but don’t force it on the speaker and those in the audience who came to hear what the speaker has to say.

Puppies

December 12, 2005 | Douglas/Dogs

The promised post on trade shows in the marketing plan has been delayed due to the arrival today of new puppies. As many of you know, I breed and show Scottish Terriers. Up until now, all the puppy litters have been born at my co-owner’s house, and I get them at about 3 weeks. Well, we swapped on this litter, so the puppies were born at my house this morning. Maybe by tomorrow I will be sort of back on schedule, but today is all about puppies.

Holiday Just For Fun

December 10, 2005 | Holiday

Yes, it’s that time of year again. Here’s my contribution to the Santa round-up

NORAD Tracks Santa. Always fun, and proof that the government CAN be human

Santa Badger Style (for Sandy)

More on advertising

December 7, 2005 | Advertising

Advertising seems to be the topic de la semaine.

Bob Bly posted Is Madison Avenue Advertising a Total Fraud. While I am not sure I’d say total fraud, one of the points he makes is that agencies value creativity more than sales, which is not in the best interests of the client. Now, not all agencies are clueless about the need for actual SALES RESULTS, but I do agree that awards and "cool ads" seem to be more valued than the perhaps less exciting but maybe more effective ad that actually drives response. As I said in my earlier post this week, the message and getting the prospect to take action are the important elements. Art and design help get the message across, they aren’t the goal.

Jennifer Rice (What’s Your Brand Mantra), commenting on an earlier Bly post about the Madison Avenue Branding Rip-Off, makes some excellent points about advertising and branding:

IMO, there are two core issues here: first is the fallacy of ‘brand advertising’, and the second is that agencies are usually not well-suited to do brand strategy.

The brand-advertising fallacy:
As a client, I was told by my (nationally recognized) ad agency: "no, we cannot do response-oriented advertising until we’ve run ‘brand’ advertising for at least 3 months." Sorry, but that sets off my bullsh*t meter. The imagery, tone of voice, tag line, copy… there are plenty of elements that can deliver the brand message in conjunction with a sales promotion. CFOs don’t have the patience for so-called ‘brand advertising’ anymore, and marketing is now accountable for results.

Absolutely!! Your advertising is ALWAYS brand advertising (even if you don’t realize it). Best to do a little selling as well. As well as realize that everything in the business impacts the brand. You can’t create a brand image separate from the reality of the organization or the product. It won’t work.

Which I suppose bring us back full circle. So much advertising DOES seem to try to create a brand image not grounded in reality that it is ineffective, leading to a conclusion that advertising doesn’t work.

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On a completely different note, thanks to David Parmet (Marketing Begins At Home) for posting about this non-Christmas carol. If you are getting sick of Jingle Bells and Drummer Boys, you’ll get a kick out of it (even if the music itself isn’t your favorite genre).