Marketing Roadmaps

Susan Getgood

Grab bag: Web 2.0

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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

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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

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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!!!

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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?

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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.