Not Your Parent’s Old Company Newsletter

At the same time, Aprimo recently reintroduced eNewsletters to our customers, partners and prospects. Why? Anyone who receives information from Aprimo marketing knows we strive to provide useful tools to make marketer’s jobs more strategic and productive. Yet, in our internal marketing meetings, we always came back to a need for an interactive channel that tied all of our nurturing campaigns, thought leadership papers, resources, tools in best practices in a summarized, hyperlinked and easy-to-digest resource. We also wanted to turn up the dial on our listening meter.

Obviously I’m a big fan of social media. I’ve devoted an entire blog to it after all.

I use Facebook obsessively.  Twitter, LinkedIn, professional and personal blogs . . . I’m in with them all.  And, not only do I use these channels, I enjoy using them. I see tremendous value in the connections I have made –and continue to make each day –on social media networks.

But, I have a confession to make. I don’t feel the same way about location-based services. And, that’s why, I have to admit, I turned my nose up at this week’s long-anticipated news about Facebook Places.

Don’t get me wrong. I completely understand how valuable services such as Foursquare, Gowalla and now Places can be to a company’s marketing strategy—especially a B2C company. These platforms offer enormous potential for mobile targeted advertising and search, and I’m sure that over the next year, we’ll see an explosion of new apps and services tied to location-based approaches. And why not? The audience for location-based services is continuing to grow.

I’m just saying that although I’m an early adopter of new technologies, these LB services have left me flat thus far, and even turned me off in cases like the oft-referred to “#boresquare”, which clogs up my tweetstream with useless updates about people sitting in coffee shops in Boise and becoming the mayor of Burlingame Bakery.  Are you kidding me??? Who CARES???

I have no desire to “check in” wherever I go, and I don’t really care where you are, either.  As Adrian Chen so artfully points out at Gawker, I most definitely don’t want to be “tagged” by someone who happens to be momentarily sharing a location with me, either.

Does that mean I’ll miss out on a merchant’s coupon, news of a friend who’s just around the corner, or one of Foursquare’s coveted badges? I guess so.  The only thing that bums me out is missing the coupon.  I’d love to get a notice while walking by Bloomingdales that Manolo’s are on sale. I’ve been promised that coupon since 2000 when talk of mobile apps first burst onto the scene.  I’m still waiting…

It’s going to be interesting to see how location-based services evolve now that Facebook has joined the mix (and some think Google is soon to follow). I plan to follow these developments closely and blog on them frequently. When I do so, I’ll be writing to you, quite contentedly, from a location that –even though it’s far from secret –will remain “undisclosed.”

What’s at the heart of a successful social media marketing campaign? Are there certain attributes that make one company’s efforts sparkle a little more brightly than others do?

According to ClickZ’s Liana Evans, Ford Motor Co. is a great example of a company that has fine-tuned its social media marketing to a point where it can serve as a robust case study in how to do it right, and in her recent blog post, “5 Reasons Why Ford Continues to Kick Butt,” she outlines the key points that make the automaker’s approach “shine.”

“For a few years now, Scott Monty has headed up the social media marketing efforts at Ford with resounding success,” Evans writes. “Monty and his team do more than just "pimp" Ford's products in social media communities; they continually provide valuable content about Ford to engage enthusiastic fans of the brand.”

More specifically, she distills the company’s approach down to five main points. Ford:
1. Understands its audience.
2. Learns from past campaigns.
3. Sets goals and measures.
4. Integrates.
5. Looks forward.

I particularly like that Evans  recognizes Ford’s integrated digital approach, one that includes a variety of platforms, such as Facebook (Did you see the 2011 Ford Explorer reveal?), PPC ads, YouTube videos, e-mail and Twitter –all of which, of course, work together with more traditional campaigns on tv, radio and print. This type of integration points back to the first point and shows, again, how Ford understands its audience and is ready, willing and able to reach out to them and encourage engagement.

Is there a particular social media marketing approach that you have seen work well? Which components are essential to your strategy?
 

My aunt is an extremely successful business person, and has worked her way up to a high-level corporate position for a very large company.  I usually go to her for career and business advice if I ever find myself in a scenario I’m unfamiliar with, which is often.  She was in town last week and as usual, we started talking about my career, where I’m going, what I want to do, etc.  Obviously, I’m interested in marketing and hence the subject of marketing was brought up in conversation.  During our discourse, she casually said, “anyone can do marketing, and that marketing is the first one to go when companies begin their layoffs.”  I should point out that she received her start in Operations, so she does have a bias, but nonetheless, her comments got me thinking…

I want to start with the second point of her statement.  “Marketing is the first one to go when companies begin their layoffs.”  This statement validates the very core of Aprimo’s messaging.  As part of our new marketing initiatives, we are honing in on the point that marketers must prove their ROI.  If marketers can prove their worth, then suddenly, they’re off the chopping block.  On the flipside, her statement is telling me that we’re not doing enough.  Our message must continue to be pushed out.  So, please join our revolution and help us spread the message and the value of marketing.

Now for the first part of her statement, “anyone can do marketing.”  I’ve never thought of marketing as that truly anyone can do it.  However, I am unable to prove her wrong.  After all, we spend our lives marketing ourselves and trying to look better in the eyes of our friends, coworkers, spouses, children, and acquaintances.  Resumes are simply a whitepaper on yourself.  Interviews are a product demo.  Your social media pages represent your brand.  Every minute of every day, we spend marketing ourselves.  Looking at marketing in this light, I suppose anyone can do marketing.  However, I’m looking for some disagreements.  What are everyone else’s thoughts?   
 

PR Playbook:  Location-Based Services May be a Trap

• Let’s say you have a CEO who’s active on Twitter. Your company is in the midst of addressing a crisis and your CEO is updating the world through his/her account. What could be worse than seeing his/her updates from a golf course in the Bahamas when the crisis is happening somewhere else?
• Do you really want to broadcast locations of your executives? If your company is rumored to be in negotiations of acquiring another firm in a small town in Iowa – and your headquarters are in Florida – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or blogger) to figure out that he/she is in negotiations if they are Tweeting updates from Iowa. 
• Please rob me. Then there’s the whole “I’m traveling away from home,” privacy concern. Tell the world that you’re traveling in Paris and you’ll come home to an empty house. PleaseRobMe.com is a website that gives awareness to privacy concerns and the tools you need to know to protect yourself.  Savvy thieves know how to search people who are traveling and find their home through on-line telephone directories and other databases.

• Don’t link your home address to your account. This is the easiest way for thieves to find out where you are not. Most services either won’t make this information public or will allow you to choose what information you share. Pay special attention to ensure control of this information.
• Don’t use your full name. Robbers can easily look up your name if there is a record of your home address available anywhere online or even in the local phone book. To limit broadcast of where you are, hide your full name.
• Be selective about which services you allow to pinpoint your location. Many applications will automatically ask you if they can find out where you are so they can offer you content and services most useful to you. Allow them access only where you feel most comfortable.
•  Be selective about who sees your location. In social networking apps involving your location, set limits on who is able to see that information -- everyone, all your contacts, select contacts or no one.
•  Read the privacy policy. Above all, arm yourself with information on how each service works. Each privacy policy should indicate how the service uses any of the data it requests from you.

I’m traveling to Dallas on Monday to attend an Online Marketing Summit conference.  As that I have never traveled before for any company, this is quite an exciting opportunity for me.  Aprimo is launching a series of whitepapers as part of some of our marketing initiatives.  My job is to collect testimonials from people regarding the changes and mysteries surrounding the world of marketing.  However, I am also supposed to be tweeting during my day in Dallas, both from my personal account and the company’s account. 

Now, I do have a personal twitter account, @reinterz, but I rarely use it.  As big as I am into marketing, I should be much more affluent with twitter.  But, to put it simply, I do not make the time to properly manage all my social media accounts.  In order of importance to me, I have a linkedin page, a facebook page, and a twitter account.  I only have three accounts, and I have trouble managing them!  My inability to track all three accounts led me to ask this question: How does a company manage all of its social media accounts?  Some companies have a youtube channel, flickr account, Wikipedia, a blog, etc, etc.  They must spend hours a day properly managing all of their online channels.  I realize that many companies now have a full-time person devoted to social media, but I’m still interested in hearing from the audience regarding this blog.  How do your companies manage social media?
 

My colleague/boss (when you’re a neophyte, everyone is your boss), Jeff Chamberlain, will be posting a blog soon on mobile marketing.  Mobile marketing is a new term for me, and I find the topic intriguing.  As such, I wanted to share a few of my own thoughts:

There have been multiple marketing fashions in the past 15 years.  Email, Internet, and Social Media marketing each ruled the world at one point, and still do in many ways.  Their value to marketers and consumers alike remains formidable, yet at the same time, I believe the world is changing.  A new force is entering the world; and it’s stronger and shows more potential than any other marketing tool.  This force is mobile marketing and it could become the king of communication.  So, move over LeBron James.  Other Kings deserve a chance in the spotlight.

Here’s why I think it’ll happen.  Unlike television, internet, email, social media, and other sources of mass communication, mobile phones are literally everywhere.  Cell phones outnumber computers 20:1 in sub-saharan Africa. I imagine that the same statistic would probably hold true for parts of Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East, and South America.  Mobile phones have infiltrated every region and street corner in the world.   Toilet paper hasn’t even been able to accomplish that feat, yet.

With the prevalence of mobile phones, we have the potential to reach consumers that we previously thought unattainable, and we have the ability to increase brand awareness in more parts of the world that we could not reach before.  In essence, the mobile phone creates a new market of consumers.  No other media has been able to create a new market; they simply have allowed easier and better access to existing markets.  Being able to create a new market surely warrants a ‘King’ title, doesn’t it? 

One of my mentors here at work rightly criticized my blogging efforts, which is a good thing because I was having problems figuring out what to write for today.  I needed inspiration, and there’s no inspiration like having someone tell you that you need to do something better.  Here’s what he said, “Neophyte, your blogs need an interactive component to them.”  I spent some time adamantly trying to prove him wrong.  Clearly, a neophyte mistake.  I reread through all four of my blogs (yes, I know; there’s a plethora of them), and I came to the realization that he is in fact right.

We live in the age of social media.  If we want, we can all be reality stars in our sort of way.  We have conversations with the world, and the world has conversations with us.  Our personal lives have become interactive.  But, the same phenomenon occurs in businesses, especially in the marketing department(s).  Social media campaigns have become a standard.  What used to be ‘word of mouth’ marketing is now ‘world of mouth.’  Back in the “old days”, meaning 10 years ago, marketing was a one way street.  Businesses only communicated with customers.  Now, through a simple tweet or post, customers can communicate with businesses.  Interactive marketing at its best.

Blogging, of course, is an interactive tool.  However, in my writings, I have not engaged the audience.  Thus, this is a standing invitation to all my readers (yes, I know; there’s a plethora of them), please share your insights with me.  Specifically on this post, I would be interested how your company has used social media to engage in discussions with customers.
 

Don’t count on it. ROI in advertising and marketing was even a concept back in the 1960’s – the period that AMC’s hit series Mad Men takes place.

It’s a popular show because Mad Men strikes a chord with viewers for being factually correct with bad manners prevalent for the period: womanizing, especially by Sterling Cooper’s Don Draper; desk side chain smoking; lunch cocktails and office parties; and, the agency’s struggle with how to harness the power of the newest marketing channel: color television.

All dietary preferences aside, what I’m talking about here is planting, nurturing and tending your relationships rather than going for the quick kill. And that’s crucial in order to be taken seriously in the new “trust economy”.

People are bombarded with social media content and social media advertising these days.  From celebrities and sports stars to companies and organizations, having a Facebook page is de rigueur, tweeting the latest activity standard operating procedure.  Your audience has very tiny slivers of attention available for what you have to say, so you’d better make it count. Make it relevant and personal, and worthwhile, too, or you’re dead in the cyberwater.

You can start by being a real person. You’re not your product or service. You’re a living, breathing human being with real interests and opinions to share. Let them be known, and let yourself come through as a person. People can spot a marketing pitch a mile away, and they will block you out as fast as you can say ROI.

People turn to others whose opinions they trust when it comes time to consider a product or service. So you need to learn the skill of identifying the influencers, and develop those relationships. As Chris Brogan and Julien Smith say in Trust Economies: Investigations into the New ROI of the Web:

“The goal isn’t to roam around on social networks handpicking friends. Instead, get involved with communities of interest, and grow these experiences and relationships BEFORE you need them.”

So think long term here, people. If you’re building relationships strictly for business, they will be short-lived. But if you have a genuine interest in ongoing relationships with people, the customer part will follow. Find those people that have something to do with your product and ask them about their own interests – their projects, problems and challenges. And paramount here, you must be honest. If they have something negative to say about your product, respond and take measures to improve it. That’s establishing trust, rather than fishing around for good comments about what you’re selling. They are looking for better ways to do things...not marketing automation.  Start the relationship by listening and learning.

Everyone’s filters are on high alert these days, and it takes time and careful tending to grow your trust base. Don’t squander this opportunity to have it flourish by pressing your marketing agenda.  Get your overalls on and start farming.

A common statement inside of many organizations (especially BtoB organizations) is that they are a "sales led" organization.  Interestingly, depending on who is making this statement, this is seen as either a strength or a weakness.  If it is coming from the CEO or head of sales, in most cases, this is a considered a compliment.  They view this as an organization focused on the front lines of building a successful business vs. a business distracted by internal obstacles and debate. 

However, when spoken by leaders in marketing, this is often considered a weakness.  They see this is an organization driven by the "deal of the day" and not necessarily a holistic view of the market and the needs of the customer.  They would like to see the organization become "market led" vs. "sales led."

While this debate has raged for a long time, I believe the web is changing the face of this debate.  Rapidly, the web is becoming such a dominate force inside a company's business development process, they simply cannot ignore its' strategic importance to the lifeblood of the company.  Whether this takes the form of email marketing, social media strategies, banner ads, SEO, or search engine management, it all affects the core of how many companies are attracting their prospects today.  Given marketing is almost always the owner of these various web strategies, with the rise of web based marketing, there is also a rise in marketing's strategic position within the enterprise.

You might ask how this is different than any other marketing strategy of the past.  Didn't marketing always play a role in finding new prospects within the business development process?  There is one huge difference.  The prospects of today have dramatically different expectations of the sales process.  In mass, the prospects of today simply do not want to be sold.  They expect to find what they need, when they need it, using their desk top, a few search terms, and a trillion web pages almost all controlled by individuals outside your company.  With this expectation, they cannot be "sales led" because, at the beginning, they now expect to lead themselves to the right solution using far more resources then your sales team to make that decision. 

The group responsible for them finding the "right solution" and resources during this critical early search is marketing.  Therefore, if your new prospects cannot find you on their own terms using today’s expectations, they will probably never be around to be sales led no matter how many times you call them or have your reps send them a letter.  Hello new world.  We are all going to have to become market led or potentially become isolated to just serving our existing customers because the new prospects are leading themselves to the right solutions on their own being effectively influenced by web based marketing from other "market led" competitors.

I’m sitting on a plane somewhere over the Atlantic working feverishly to close Q4 business while working on marketing strategy and its complementary partners of marketing plans, budgets and financial management, and spend plans. I know I’m not alone in my focus or quarterly sprint. I had the opportunity to meet with several of our customers in London at our EMEA Customer Conference and I know they shared with me that they are doing the exact same thing right now.

What did I do before Aprimo and the “Single Source of Truth”  marketing software that enables us to inspect and analyze what this year’s spend was and how it performed to drive our business?  I remember all too well what I did. I muddled through 36 versions of PowerPoint decks,  flipped and paged through volumes of Excel Spreadsheets that in the end – probably brought down at least two trees. Sigh.

 
I know I’m not alone. Just this past couple days I listened to other marketers representing the largest companies on the planet talk about how they use our marketing software to truly do more with less. It, coupled with the continued optimism that 2010 will bring us better business climate, makes up the juggling act of annual planning against quarterly results.

 
So guess what? In the end – that means I have time on the plane to write this short blog and contribute to our 2009 social media strategy that I’ll then load into our digital applications that help us manage and monetize blogging. 

Are you alone with your spreadsheets or your blogs? Which ones will drive more interest in your products or services? Let us know if you want to join the marketing innovation going on at Aprimo.

Keeping up with one area of online marketing can be a tall order. Trying to stay abreast with every facet of interactive marketing can seem like an impossible task for humans.

But it is being done by people just like us.

B2B marketers, like myself, seem to be slow to utilize some social media tactics like YouTube, but for a handful of B2B marketers the results of using social media advertising are well worth the effort.

One of my favorite B2B social media advertising videos on YouTube would have to be Mr. W, the story of windpower.

It would seem getting wide-spread appeal and putting a personality to an abstract concept like windpower would be nearly impossible, but German-based Epuron nailed it with this video.

Epuron gained international interest for this YouTube clip.  The video has has been watched nearly two million times. So, before you think YouTube is not a viable social media outlet for your B2B product, you might learn something from Mr. W.   



 

• According to research conducted by the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing generated an ROI of $48.34 for every dollar spent on it in 2007. The expected figure for 2008 is $45.06, and the prediction for 2009 is $43.52. As such, it outperforms all the other direct marketing channels examined.
• The Ad Effectiveness Survey commissioned by Forbes Media in Feb/March 2009 revealed that email and e-newsletter marketing are considered the second-most effective tool for generating conversions, just behind SEO.

Jeff Baker wrote a recent post, “Autopilot for Marketing," while flying from Indianapolis to Phoenix. He wrote it in the air, and I find myself doing the same thing right now. The wonders of social media applications.

We live in such an all-access society. It doesn’t matter that I have no access to the internet (although some airlines will soon offer wireless!) or my Blackberry (gasp!) and am forced to maintain the same uncomfortable upright position for three hours. As long as I have my laptop, I can let my creative juices flow. In a moment of honesty, I will admit that I wouldn’t be writing a post right now if my only tools were a pen and paper. When I’m back online in a few hours, I can submit this post for review and it’ll soon be live on the Aprimo blog.

Automation in general is everywhere. We use automation to schedule bill payments online. Many use it in email marketing. You don’t honestly think that seconds before you received that e-newsletter from [fill in the blank company], someone in their office clicked a big, red button labeled “send,” do you? We use automation for workflow and project management. Even your favorite pizza joint automates pick-up and delivery orders online. I think the biggest benefit of this is pre-paying with a credit card. I never have cash when the pizza guy knocks, but I can fill in my tip on the receipt and… voila.

As I fly toward San Diego for the DMA09, I must be somewhere over Arizona. When I’m back on the ground and this post goes live, I’d love to hear from you. What automated process in your personal life can't you live without? Is it your washing machine (wash, rinse, spin)? Is it online bill payment?

What about in your work? What process has your team automated that gives you daily benefits? What processes do you wish you could automate? Could Aprimo provide relief?