In Marketing We Trust! Or at least a little bit...

One of the challenges that most professional marketing folks have is limited resources.  Limited time, limited budget but an UN-limited amount of work to do.  Think about it.  When it comes to driving sales and improving your business opportunities does anyone really ever say, "That's plenty, go home!"  There's always one more thing to do, one item to cross of your list and then tomorrow's another day.  That's a marketing truism that has held true no matter where I've worked. 

So why the need for trust?  Because the marketing discipline is one more step disconnected from the customer versus Sales or Product management.  Sales people are on the phone or visiting their customers directly so it's easy to measure what they do.  Product managers should also be directly engaged with their customers to identify upgrades, feature and products that will bring value to their customers so easy to measure their value there.  Product marketing folks (and marketing in general) sit one level further away from the customer in between sales and product management.  So it's more challenging to directly measure results and develop KPI's (key performance indicators) that accurately measure marketing impact.

So back to that trust story.  If your sales group or product management don't trust the marketing department or efficacy of their programs and efforts, guess what happens?  They start asking for more "concrete proof" of your marketing work.  Which means finding semi-accurate measures (or proxies) that tell your marketing efficiency story.  But as you can guess, those numbers are never that easy to pull together and unless your have a great CRM tool and a way to automate those reports, you're digging up information from multiple sources, slamming it into a spreadsheet and then creating a purty Powerpoint to present to the team.  Sigh.  And that of course, is a LOT of work.  Every single bit of time spent pulling up metrics and reporting back to the team to reassure them means you have less time to work on outbound activities and campaigns to influence and engage your customers. 

When your business is in good shape and you've got well-differentiated product or service, the above scenario is not an issue.  But if you're on a struggling product line, you can guess that fingers will get pointed back to marketing.  It can be easier to do that then fix a product or add an additional salesperson to the team.  So as a professional marketer you HAVE to maintain that trust with both teams to ensure you'll be given the latitude and time to get your work done the way it needs to be done because time is limited. 

I've been down that rat-hole where trust is lost and you can end up in a death-spiral of trying to show the efficacy of your efforts which then puts more pressure on you and your outbound activities.  The key is to keep your teams engaged and aware of your marketing activities and be transparent about their impact.  While you can not measure every single bit of your work, there needs to be enough hard metrics to show your value and impact.  Or maybe you can blow enough hot air and use words with lots of syllables to assuage their concerns.  Me, I'd rather just show the Product Management team and Sales team how effective I am.  Because even if you're a marketing professional, you're better off spending more time marketing to your customers than marketing to your internal teammates.  

Between a Rock- Product Management and a Hard Place- Brand: The Challenge for Product Marketing

Product marketing is often one of the first roles to get cut during a business downturn and I've often wondered why.  In reality the juggling act that product marketers must play is a challenging act of managing peers, executives, expectations and delivering marketing assets and programs that impact and enhance, product revenue.  At the center of the Product marketing role, from what I've seen, is a constant balance and tension between Product Management and Creative/Marketing Services.  One team designing and creating services and products for end-customers, the other a creative team designing assets, images and providing editorial services for the Product Market to go outbound with.  And why is there a natural tension between these two groups and Product Marketing?  It's pretty easy to see.

Given product marketing's role to deliver information to customers in an engaging an easily consumable fashion, we walk a tightrope between Product Management and Creative.  Product Management ideally has created features and offerings that will resonate in the market.  And they want to tell the whole world about it in a kitchen sink fashion.  But in the end, feeding features and benefits in a customer-friendly voice means bringing a prospect down a path that may take some time.  Telling your product story in a world filled with content, advertisements and social media means trying to get the attention of somebody who's nearly in ADD-mode.  So you must be succinct, you must be memorable and craft marketing content and copy that hits the mark and stays with your targeted audience.  Basically it's taking a big bag of "stuff" and ideas, and distilling it down to impactful ideas and imagery.

Once you have your content and copy, you need to get it produced in a variety of different assets within print and online.  You have to get it edited to make sure it stays within your brand voice and fits into the broader, corporate marketing umbrella.  And that line with Creative often gets blurry.  In their attempts to "clean up" or make the copy more "brand compliant", you often lose specific ideas, features and details that they think may be extraneous.  They may nix non-standard ideas and phraseology to toe the corporate line and in an attempt to keep content within brand.  And this line is often fuzzy and hard to define leading to content and ideas that have been inoculated and have lost their edge and effectiveness.  And when you've got 80 things to do today, you can't over-work and perfect any one project so you accept wants been returned to you and move on.

So that fine line between the kitchen sink approach of Product Management and perfectionist behavior of Creative often leaves Product Marketing in the precarious position of driving content and assets through the system in the most expedient and effective manner.  It's not about being perfect, it's about getting a compelling story to your audience in a multitude of ways.  And walking that tight-rope between these two key collaborators can be a huge challenge.  Just try not to fall off that tight-rope because as you can guess, doing so will lead to really unpleasant results! 

Doing More with Less, the Crux of Marketing and Limited Resources

When I was in business school, one of the questions I was always asked during interviews was: What did you do in this situation with limited resources.  And I always wondered about that question, limited resources?  Don't marketing groups have these large budgets to go do what they need to do?  Don't they have service groups and external companies to help them with what they need to do?  But after six years in corporate B2B marketing, I clearly understand what they mean.

One example of limited resources is limited time and bandwidth as an individual.  Even when you have teams that are supporting you.  Whether it's email marketing, design services, editors, videographers and advertising firms, even with an imaginary unlimited budget, the key bottleneck will be the product marketing person.  In the end, someone has to have the vision, the responsibility of executing on a specific initiative or program. And there's only so much you can outsource out. Eventually the responsibility ends with you as a professional marketing person which means meetings to report on milestones, direction and then a post-mortem to understand what was accomplished, what could have been done better and how to improve things next time.

And let's just say you are burning the midnight oil, creating assets, copy and programs that are innovative and interesting for your prospects.  In the end, one person can only do so much so you end up driving the work through your service groups.  The reality is that once you get past yourself as a bottleneck, there may be another one downstream.  Maybe your editors are backed up with all sorts of work and special projects.  Maybe people are on vacation a lot.  In the end, you are only as good as your downstream resource groups.  If they are unable to keep up with your output, there's going to be trouble.

The final part of this limited resources question is the input. As the product marketing person you quickly learn that everyone thinks they can do your job.  Engineers, Brand, Product Management, everyone.  And everyone, of course, has advice and suggestions on something cool and new to do which will absolutely work. Or they will absolutely need to have.  New ideas are really dime-a-dozen.  What matters in marketing is what you can execute on and get over the line.  When I say get over the line, it doesn't mean an automatic success.  But it means completing the task or program to the point where either you have a success, a failure or something in between to learn from in concrete ways.  There are a million ideas out there, don't get overwhelmed trying to deliver them all.

In the end, one of the key skills any product marketing person will have is balancing expectations, reporting and results to all involved to effectively meet goals for your product lines.  And that line moves over time and is often fuzzy. Without the innate instincts of where to put your efforts and what's most important to execute on from a financial, business and political standpoint, you'll sink your time and energy into endeavours that will not benefit your team, your product line or yourself.

So what would you do with limited resources?  Unfortunately that's an answer any professional marketing person must answer every day, every hour that they are working.  Yes, I totally understand that question now! 

From Spam to Scam, Text Message "Marketing"

Recently I began receiving oddball text messages from 452-44.  Odd messages such as "A dragonfly has a lifespan of 24 hours", "IQ Power: Welcome to Trivia Alerts!  3xmsgs/wk Monthly charge billed.." and " Frogs cannot swallow without blinking".  With all the text messages I typically get, I ignored the first couple but finally noticed the stream.  Some research on the net showed that scammers are now capturing your cellphone number online, auto-billing you for unknown services.  A quick check of my iPhone bill showed the $9.99 charge and I knew for sure I was being scammed since I had never signed up for any text services. 


Given the nature of this thievery, I had no interest in trying to contact this organization to stop the charge.  Apparently their website re-directs to a password protected site and any calls are fruitless, you either get hung up on or validation that you will be charged AGAIN.  No need to play by the rules when dealing with crooks.  Calling up AT&T, I had the charge reversed and put a block on my account for text purchases. And further research showed that the common denominator may be Vistaprint, a printing service that provides free business cards.  But I am just totally amazed how easy it was to scam me for $9.99, very hard to pick it up since my cellphone billing is primarily done online and electronically.  

But it also made me think about the future of text-message advertising and marketing which is in its infancy.  When one of your first experiences with text-message marketing is a scam, do you start to distrust the medium?  I mean email survived all the Nigerian prince scams but those were plainly criminal and no money was lost without interaction.  In this text-message case, I've lost $10 just due to the fact I didn't pay close enough attention to my texts and my electronic billing.  


All I know is that companies who are at the early wave of text-message marketing really need to make sure these rogue companies and communication legislation with regards to e-commerce and texting are handled properly.  Because without trust and credibility, these thieves can taint the entire industry.  And while I don't think these scammers are common, one bad experience has made my cellphone off-limits to future purchases.  I recently read an article about how your cellphone number is your most guarded piece of information after your social-security number. After this experience, I'd have to say I totally agree!  

Fiat USA's Score a Scorpion: Social Media with a Sting

I recently stumbled upon Fiat USA's "Score a Scorpion" social media campaign and let's just say I was a little impressed. For those of you who are into cars, Fiat is an Italian marque that has recently returned to the US. Known for stylish but unreliable cars, Fiat's return after 27 years out of the market presents some unusual challenges. Especially given that Fiat specializes in small, gas-sipping compacts that Americans are typically not fond of.

The first Fiat advertising campaign that I ran into featured the Fiat 500 with J-Lo driving into her old hood. As she steps out of the Fiat 500 all I could think of was that J-Lo would NEVER be seen in a $16,000 car and driving herself. Her shoes probably cost more than that car! But yes, the Fiat 500 is a "cute" car, one better fit for the urban scene and more likely for women so this advert was probably on target for its audience. Nevertheless I wasn't sure how effective this campaign would be, at least for me.

Roll forward three months later and I get an update from Fiat USA on Facebook and it's titled, "Score a Scorpion". Total exact opposite of the J-Lo campaign. You've got a bad looking, special edition Fiat 500 decked out in black and red. Pumped up to 160 horsepower and built for performance, Abarth has been a high-performance tuner whose insignia is the Scorpion. Fiat USA puts out one clue every 3 or 4 days and your job is to find the Scorpion online. The first four clues are sort of simple and are good for entries into a branded merchandise giveaway. The last four are much harder and are for the Fiat 500 Abarth sweepstakes. The clues bring you to several of Fiat's social media profiles like the Tumblr blog, Twitter feed, Google+ page and their website to learn more about the history of the vehicle. And the clues will bring you to more entertaining websites like Top Speed, 0-60 Magazine and National Geographic. As you find and click on each scorpion, your "Score a Scorpion" registers the found clue and gives you another entry in the sweepstakes.

But yes, as people are looking for clues, their was a lot of online activity within their Facebook page, Fiat enthusiasts online and what have you. What I liked about this marketing campaign was:

* Fiat USA used the excitement of a limited edition product and giveaway, magnified by social media to generate online buzz and create long-term engagement for repeated exposure (one month).

* Fiat USA targeted Facebook users who had already shown some interest and were most likely to engage in the online scavenger hunt, and amplify the giveaway activities.

* The campaign was a nice mix of education and entertainment, requiring people to search for Fiat all over the Internet. And their partners also got great online exposure with the contest activities.

* Participants were led to Fiat USA's social media streams across Tumblr, Twitter, and Google+ and I'm sure some people subscribed to these properties for cross-marketing purposes.

* Fiat USA switched gears to show another side of their vehicle. From the stylish, female-centric J-Lo 500 to the hard-nosed, performance based Fiat 500, great re-positioning.

So what's the final tally? Fiat USA's Facebook page (as of February 2012) is showing 453,000+ Likes, 19,000+ Talking About's and for the Score a Scorpion app, 100,000 monthly users. If I had to guess at the cost of this campaign, we're looking at three Fiat 500 Abarth's ($22,000 MSRP), Fiat Abarth shwag (guessing $20,000) plus design costs for the Facebook app and leaving clues (guessing $25,000). Given that there was probably existing promotional materials for the Fiat Abarth, I doubt that they had create much new media/design for this online campaign.

Estimating a high-end cost of $150K for this month-long contest, you're talking about maybe a $1.50/engaged user, i.e. Score a Scorpion contestant. Not to mention all the other people who are seeing and hearing about Fiat and the contest in general. Plus the long-term activity generated by people who have subscribed to Fiat USA's other social media streams, and exposure for partners.

All-in-all not a bad deal for the price, don't you think? And while B2B certainly can not match the sexiness of a limited-edition sports car, I certainly think there are lessons to be learned here about how to leverage social media. Signing up for a booth at a tech event and sending three or four employees to man it would typically cost $50 - $100K and maybe generate 300 random email addresses. So where would you rather spend your money?

Removing the Fear in Enterprise Software Deployments

During a recent stretch of interviews with a top 5 enterprise technology company, I was asked to put together a presentation on my approach to product marketing for one of the their ITSM management offerings. It was a short deck and focused on inbound-content marketing with the main underlying theme:

Remove the Fear.
Create Reassurance.

Now what do I mean by that? Over the course of my 10 year IT career, I covered a lot of ground. But nothing was more challenging than being asked to lead an Enterprise management software deployment from one of the big vendors. It's the type of software tool that has tendrils and connections into many aspects of your environment. AND requires coordination and cooperation from multiple IT technology silos. When you invest $75K to $150K in one of these tools, you're making a commitment and your job is somewhat on the line. And when you've got a slew of work just maintaining your network and fighting fires, you often don't have the internal expertise or resources to launch an additional project like Enterprise management.

And what support do the big Enterprise management vendors provide you online? The answer is: not much. As I perused the competitor websites, the ability to get substantive, helpful content to help me truly learn and evaluate this ITSM product was difficult to find. The ability to download a trial copy of software was buried in the online content. And it made me realized that not much has changed in this domain since my own deployment in 2004.

And given the changes in online marketing and the web 2.0, I really scratched my head as to why things had not moved forward. Why wouldn't you want your customer to have as much information at their disposal for making an educated evaluation and decision? How does an IT manager make an objective apples to apples comparison between competing products? And why wouldn't IT vendors make this whole education and evaluation process easier? I can't imagine many professionals who would invest $100K based upon a couple of sales demos and product sheets.

Then during a conversation with a pre-sales Engagement Manager, I got some insight. He mentioned that in his role, he is asked to educate and counsel IT customers through the purchase process. He described them as having the "deer in headlights" look and the need to help facilitate the purchase with enterprise architects, line of business and financial people. Reassuring the customer on both the technical feasibility AND the political feasibility of an IT enterprise software deployment.

And it really makes me wonder why technology marketers don't take some of this readily made content, that's already available, and provide it to customers earlier on in the purchase cycle. Admittedly, pre-Sales needs to hold back some value-add assets in their toolbox for their discussion but wouldn't providing some of this information earlier help the sales rep get the conversation started? Is marketing so fixated on giving away $10 Starbucks gift-cards and mugs for events that they don't have time to make this extremely valuable information available to prospects?

I don't know but if my IT job and career was on the line, I'd say please keep your mug and help me make the right IT enterprise management software decision. And the vendor that provided me with more valuable information to help me evaluate choices, would have a leg up on the rest. But that's just me...

Vee is for Vaynerchuk

If you've never seen Gary Vaynerchuk speak before, be prepared for some cussing, swearing and F-bombs. Luckily I got to catch his keynote at Raleigh's Internet Summit, what a great speaker! As the author of "Crush It!", "The Thank You Economy" and one of the leading entrepreneurs in Social Media, Gary has earned that verbal latitude. But guess what? He keeps your attention and drills his ideas into your head with ease and ferocity. As he paced and danced across the stage at the Internet Summit last month, there was no doubt in my mind that most every eyeball in the room was focused on this man. And while his domain of expertise is in B2C, it makes me wonder how much of his premonitions and expectations will be leveraged and impact the B2B world? Here are some of Gary's thoughts on how social media is changing the business and marketing landscape:

* Marketing for 150 years has been push-based, now shifting to pull

* Traditional outbound marketing no longer effective, marketing should be a conversation

* Social media and the word of mouth ecosystem carries further than ever before and has disrupted communications and marketing

* Content is king but context (relationships) will be king, we are at the dawn of 1 on 1 marketing

* Companies struggle with social media because they act like 19 year old dudes, they try to close on the first move

* The majority of corporate CEO's and entrepreneurs twenty years from today will be women: marketing will become more emotional, nurturing, intuitive

* We are in a world of transparency where nobody and no business can hide

* We are on the cusp of the humanization of business, put your money into people

Now I do believe that often enough or not, B2C marketing and trends seep into B2B marketing over time. While the B2B marketplace is more factual, less emotional and risk-intolerant, will some of these ideas from Vaynerchuk impact B2B marketing? Or is the B2B market so different that these concepts stay rooted in the B2C world?

While it still remains to be seen how, exactly, social media and inbound marketing will impact the B2B world, we are already seeing some disruption. Transparency on the internet is clearly out there already. LinkedIn allows business ideas and experiences to be shared easily and readily. Will we need to shift the sales model and have sales reps work with prospects in more early-stage relationships? No more marketing-qualified leads or sales-qualified leads. Just focus on establishing connections with people using relevant, value-add content and information?

What I do know for sure is that technology platforms online and offline are transforming marketing as we know it today. While we may not have the definitive B2B platform to bring Gary's beliefs to fruition right now, who knows what tomorrow brings? And yes, maybe Gary is a bit closer to the truth than we'd all care to believe...

Catch Gary on Twitter @garyvee

The Mystery of QR Codes in Marketing

You know what I'm talking about, those little square Rorschach tests that have been popping up on advertisements and signage everywhere. They're called QR codes and one of the latest trends out there for savvy, hi-tech, marketing assets. And yet, I have this unsettling feeling that QR codes will soon disappear into the mental ether along with cue-cat and spam e-mail. I was chatting with my realtor about the value of printing hand-out's with the QR code he now had available to link to his listings and my immediate thought was uhm, no. Don't even bother Paul. Why's that you say?

1.) While the QR code is relatively compact, it still requires a bit of real estate on the printed material. A 2" x 2" square could be used for other things, say a picture, graphic image and web link. Is it any eye-catcher? Yes. But how often does it really get scanned? Read on...

2.) To read the QR code, you'll need a specialized reader or a smartphone enabled with a QR reader. Think about what you need to do: pull out phone, start up the QR app, snap a picture and then let it do it's thing. We're talking 15 - 30 seconds, give or take. And the result? Most likely a special web landing page with an offer or more content. Wouldn't a shortened weblink work as well? And given that only 35% of adults own a smartphone and only 3% of that group is using a QR code reader more than weekly, we're talking about a very narrow and small target group.

3.) And finally one of the most interesting aspects of a QR code is also one of the most unsettling: the mystery of the QR code! Where will scanning this QR code lead me to? What special online offer can I get? The danger of somebody potentially embedding a malicious QR code on the re-direct seems very possible. And do you just click on any weblinks that you see online? Not a good idea and certainly not a safe one. Practice safe-computing, people!

So in the end, while the QR code fad may be around a bit longer, I can't imagine it will be much longer. They were initially developed for high-speed, automated scanning in the auto industry. Given its current deployment and use by a slow-speed, non-automated human being, I'd say that QR codes are misplaced and ineffective in most printed assets. Just scratch one up for tech-geekiness gone wild in the marketing space.

Inbound, Outbound Marketing and Quality Content The Power of Three in Marketing

Given the impact of Web 2.0 and social media in the online world, it was inevitable that the changes unleashed on the public would eventually find its way to the business world. I've sat in on webinars touting the benefits of inbound marketing with titles like, "The Marketing Playbook is Broken" - Hubspot. And it's a scary thought, isn't it? Do our customers finally have the upper hand with all this online information at their disposal?

As marketers we want to actively influence and impact customer purchasing decisions. Set up a compelling marketing program, create some assets, push out the assets with a call-to-action (CTA), measure the results, re-calibrate. But is the average person so overwhelmed with information that they prefer to research purchase decisions themselves, guaranteeing the quantity AND quality of information they get? Think about it, how many complaints have you heard from prospects and customers about marketing fluff? The reality is on the B2B software side of the world, you may move through a path of software developers, product managers, product marketing, marketing programs and marcomm people before your outbound content reaches the ears of your prospect. And like a game of Telephone, the further down this path the information takes, the more diluted the marketing copy becomes.

I personally have written up many pieces of marketing collateral that absolutely HAD to go through the brand team for edits before being approved. Having been an IT manager, I like to think I have a pretty good idea of what needs to get communicated and with my marketing background, how it needs to be communicated. When the final document was approved by my brand team, the verbiage had changed a bit. In all honesty, I don't think much value was added and some of the sharpness had been lost along with three weeks of time. But if you need to get your assets blessed and printed, you don't have much of a choice.

When you talk to technology people from administrators to executives, losing the authenticity and credibility in your voice isn't a wise idea. So how can you blame B2B technology folks for putting your emails aside and going online to search for more unbiased and accurate information? IT people are as busy as anyone else in the building with little time to spare and guess what? They're also pretty darn bright and understand what marketers are trying to do, regardless of any social awkwardness.

The reality is that certainly, marketing focus may be shifting towards inbound (passive) marketing versus the more traditional playbooks that focus on emails, direct mail, events, roadshows and sales enablement materials. But regardless of which marketing vehicles you use, inbound, outbound or otherwise, you need to have quality content! Content that reassures and validates concerns of all technology stakeholders as they go through the awareness, evaluation, consideration and purchase cycle. The ability to provide needed and credible information to your prospects ultimately relies on the same item: quality content. Whether that content is sourced internally, crowd-sourced or through analysts and third-party groups is another question.

So let's not argue about whether or not inbound or outbound marketing is the way to go for your customers. As usual, you need to find the right marketing mix and vehicles to communicate your value prop and message at the right time. Just make sure you've got informative, interesting content, regardless of how it gets delivered. If you do, your marketing efforts will be rolling downhill and driving your business to the next level.

The Danger of Trusting Your Sales Rep Too Much...

When making a technology decision, your vendor sales rep can be a mixed relationship. On one hand, you rely on them to provide you with detailed information on pricing, service options and technical expertise. And on the other hand, let's face it, they've got quotas and commissions to worry about. So while it's important to have a good relationship with your sales rep, you really have to be careful to make any decisions as objectively as possible, outside of the framework of that relationship.

Looking back to my days as a network manager, I had a relationship with a Lucent rep that was pretty comfortable. We had purchased some remote access boxes that had performed well and Lucent was a high-flyer in the networking side of the world in the late 90's. My company needed to expand their network capacity and bandwidth so I led an initiative to put in a new core switch. Research and familiarity brought me to the Lucent Cajun P550 switch, a workhorse that had performed well in head to head comparisons with competitors. Our rep brought in a sample switch that we tested on in the IT lab. My sales rep assured me it was a simple and basic operation to drop in a new switch. Everything looked good during testing and yes, I trusted my Lucent rep! So we schedule a long weekend outage and ask 350 workers not to plan on being in the office over the weekend (oh the horrors!). And yes, I promised the entire office improved file transfer and application performance once the work was complete.

On Friday night, I'm breaking down the networking rack and cabling of our old switch. Re-labeling mystery cables, pulling out power cables and FINALLY installing the Lucent switch. It's tedious, physical labor but important since no switch means no desktop connectivity. Late Saturday, cables are plugged back in and the switch is turned on, voila! It's time to do some desktop testing and hopefully call it a night. Or so I hoped. Out on the floor I turn on some PC's and do some file transfers. Gosh, boot-up times seem to be sluggish and the file transfers shows that we're now running slower than the old switch. Checking several additional desktops show the same problem, uh-oh. I go home late Saturday scratching my head and hoping that what I saw was just late-night fatigue.

The next morning there's still the same problem: slow network performance. Reviewing the documentations for the switches, I'm trying all sorts of configuration settings in vain to improve the performance. I try upgrading the firmware on the PC's to see if that helps, no go. By late Sunday afternoon, I'm re-installing the old network hubs in an attempt to jury-rig a hybrid network of new and old devices in an attempt to just get performance to where I had started. Two and a half long days of work over the weekend, just to end up, maybe where you started. On Sunday night, a notice was sent out that the work was complete but yes, you might not notice an increase in performance. In ten years of working as an IT administrator, I had rarely needed to eat crow and I can tell you for sure, it didn't taste good on Monday morning.

What's the lesson here? That even after doing my due diligence and research, even after having a good and trusted relationship with my sales rep, I had made a professional misstep that cost me the entire weekend and set my technology environment back $75K. Now I don't know if my Lucent rep really knew how good or bad the Cajun P550 switch really was and if it was problematic but I do know she wasn't there suffering with me over that long weekend. Definitely a hard lesson to learn.

Vendor reps are there to support you the best way they can, within their product lines. They have a vested interest in solving your problems but only within their solution offerings. Knowing what I know now and how the world has changed, the use of online forums, social media and the internet may have revealed this potential issue earlier as a technology buyer. And I would never make the mistake of trusting my sales rep and the relationship, more than I should. An empowered buyer can be a challenge from the Marketing and Sales side of the world but in the end, if you've got the right solution, content and messaging, it can only strengthen your business relationship. Your prospect not only becomes your customer, but also your ally and supporter over the long-run.

If You Want the Truth, Trust the Techie!

Over the years I spent in IT administration and as an IT manager, you often learn the hard way about technology implementations. Products over-promise and sales people often under-deliver. And if you really want to know how good a product is, talk to an engineer or support person who knows the product intimately! Sometimes I was the tech person and I would be cornered by one of the business folks to get to the truth of the matter. Techies don't think in shades of gray, it's pretty black and white and binary for us. Truth is our mantra and we're not very good liars, white or otherwise.

Now that I've moved into the marketing side of the world, I'll admit that my speech has become quite flowery and yes, I certainly do see shades of gray now. But not always in a bad way! And there are definitely some lessons I learned on the tech side that have been applicable to my marketing activities and philosophy. Going back many years ago, I was working as a Senior IT Analyst for a large specialty retailer out in San Francisco. We had a monitoring tool deployed called Sitescope that was extremely reliable, flexible and accurate. In comes a team of consultants from Deloitte on a technology project and they unfortunately, recommend deploying an enterprise management system (EMS), a la HP, IBM, CA or BMC software. Budget is limited (about 100K), we have our check-box list and end up with two primary EMS candidates. Time to bring in the main players for some testing!

Company 1 comes in for their one week onsite trial to set up a test-bed. They bring in a slew of consultants, all dressed sharply in blue suits. I get introduced to each one over the course of the week, even though I really have no understanding of their importance and role with regards to the onsite trial. Over time, the sales rep lets me know that he has a VERY comfortable relationship with our VP of IT (golf buddies) and promises to take care of everything for a quarter million. Of course, even with all these suits and brainpower, there's nothing to show for at the end of the one week implementation. No integration between tools, no data being collected, agents crashing on machines, the single pane of glass isn't showing much, not a very good show.

Company 2 sends one youngish Solutions Architect. He installs the product and has it running and collecting data in two hours. We spend the next day and a half going over my questions and concerns. Integration with our existing tools, deploying agents to our AIX platforms and Oracle DB's. Review of tech resources and maintenance questions. We reviewed pricing and came up with a solution for a bare-bones deployment with a small consulting package attached. And after 48 hours Sergey is done and traveling to his next client. Can you guess which product I went with?

Understand that I personally wanted to extend our existing monitoring platform but was over-ridden based upon the consultant's recommendations. I had concerns over both tested EMS systems and the political ramifications over deploying an enterprise tool in our environment. But in the end I was in the mode of risk mitigation with my EMS project. I HAD to make a decision, even if the project would be swimming upstream (limited budget, political concerns). So I sat down with my VP and carefully showed him our existing monitoring platform and carefully laid out the results of the two trials. I made it very clear that Company 1 had failed to show any significant progress or met their promises and that a technology implementation with them would be very high-risk. He accepted my recommendation and we did the purchase and deployment with Company 2.

So what's the takeaway? That technology buyers and decision-makers come at all different levels and are often, driven by risk management. While Company 1 thought they had a done deal given their relationship with the VP, there was NO way I was putting my job on the line by choosing a platform that was driven by political relationships, sales-speak and smoke and mirrors. My relationship with sales reps were driven by my primary need to get access to pricing information and technical resources where the truth could be uncovered. And while the sales reps may drive the deal for the final 20% of the purchase process, the other 80% of the real legwork was done online through individual research and with their tech resources.

Enterprise IT buyers and decision-makers are bright people and more than capable of seeing through traditional marketing efforts, CTA's and the transactional nature of sales relationships. They're busy people and can sometimes barely keep their heads above water, fighting fires and keeping their businesses running. Their technology purchases must bring some level of reassurance to their world and that reassurance can be delivered through your tech resources, online information and forums. Developing that trust and re-assurance with your decision-makers through easily accessible, unbiased information is key to influencing them and the process properly. And there's no better to way to deliver that information then through the mouths of one techie to another to keep things real. Plus just maybe a LITTLE bit of marketing...

Google+, A Social Media Contender and More

While Facebook may be the 800+ pound gorilla in the social networking and media arena, it would never be wise to count out Google! Recently Google rolled out their latest social networking effort, Google+ and after dabbling with it a bit, I am impressed. It's an incomplete effort but one that does a nice job integrating several Google services and doing so with a clean, uncluttered interface. On top of Google+ is an aggregator bar that gives you access to your Gmail, Calendar, Documents and more. The rest of the interface looks remarkably similar to Facebook with chat/messaging on the left and your network updates stream down the center. One key difference for Google+ is the ability to create "circles" of people allow you to control sharing and viewing of information. Similar to twitter lists, circles give you the ability to segment your updates based upon the intimacy and type of social relationship you have with people.

Status updates are identical to Facebook with text, pictures, videos, weblinks and location (comparable to Facebook places). "+1's" are available as an alternative to Facebook likes, allowing you to interact and recommend items. While Gchat messaging plays a central role in Google+, they've also added hangouts which allow for group webcam sessions. Your webcam sessions now become part of a stream that your circles can take part in, pretty cool! Sparks are also available, topical and special interest feeds of articles culled from the web and blogs.

One additional feature I really like is Google+'s Data Liberation option which allows you to download copies of the status update streams, Picasa photos and contacts in your circle. With Facebook, all your information is mostly locked up in the cloud. Google+ has a mobile app only available on Android (as expected) but I imagine they may some day port an app for iPhone. Some glaring gaps include a lack of events and business pages in Google+ And while there is pretty tight integration with Gchat, there is little to none with Gmail which is a bit surprising.

Perhaps if Google had delivered this effort a couple of years back, it could have made significant inroads on Facebook. But given the weight of Facebook's massive network and user base, even the best service is going to have a difficult time making headway. For those who already spend significant time on Facebook, do you really have additional cycles to explore on Google+? But a definite +1 for Google+, competition is always a good thing whether you're talking about social networking, marketing or business in general...

B2B or B2C, the Line is Getting Fuzzy

Over the past decade or so, lines have become blurry in the US as to when work ends and your personal life begins. If you've ever carried a pager or responded to a late night text or email, you know what I mean. Work encroaches on your personal life if you're a committed professional. And the same goes for the other way. With all the time spent at work, sometimes you have to cover personal items at the workplace. Sometimes technology sneaks into the office from the home whether you're talking about Linux hobbyists or iPhone fanatics. In all honesty, the line between work and play has become increasingly blurred.

So of course there should be no surprise that marketing techniques and tactics are starting to overlap in the B2B and B2C provinces. While the purchase cycle may be longer and the dollar amounts larger, marketing an enterprise or corporate solution is increasingly reliant on vehicles and mediums that have been more B2C specific. Social media, twitter, online forums and communities, hitting the event and trade show circuits never seemed more anachronistic or inefficient. Giving up control of your brand and relying more on inbound marketing is shifting marketing efforts all over.

And the reason is simple, the same person making B2B purchase decisions is the same person making B2C purchases. While the purchasing cycle and stakeholders in corporate environments are more complex, the tools and rationale for choosing one product or service over another is no different. Does the product do what I need it to do? Is the product competitively priced in the marketplace? Is there any risk in purchasing and deploying this product? And ideally, will this product improve my day to day business and take it to the next level?

Whether you're purchasing a 46" LED TV or a $50K core routing switch, the need for unbiased and unvarnished information is critical to making the most effective decision. The digital tools to present and find this 3rd party information is now readily available out there on blogs, forums and the web. And for those organizations that don't respond to this shift in the market? Well before you know it the information and opinions will be out there about your product and services. Perhaps too late for you to influence the course the online conversation will take.

It's a brave new world, learn it, embrace it and live with it...

A New Day, A New Dawn for Marketing

Over the past 10 years with the advent of the Internet and Web 2.0, there has been a profound change in how business and marketing are done and how they succeed. The interconnected nature of our new world has meant a wave of change sweeping around the globe. Tried and true practices are no longer guaranteed to be effective and the new rules of the game mean adjustments across the board.

Distrust of mass media and broadband marketing has meant a shift away from TV and to customized, on-demand media streams over the internet. Near instantaneous tweets, images and videos delivered from smartphones in the hands of the average individual. Micro-segmentation, crowd-sourcing and self-publishing online now become the norm. Google's search engine makes ALL this content available to you at a click of your mouse but what information do you believe? Who do you trust? Leading to social networks, social media and trusted relationships, 1st degree relationships.

Because while the tools and technology have changed the game, the human connection of whom we believe and trust hasn't changed at all. Marketing must have a voice that rings clear and true or else it will fall on deaf ears. So the need to reality check your marketing and message has never been more important. Because your audience is more savvy and demanding than ever before, and you need to be too, Marketer... Whether you're B2B, B2C, working direct or through channels, the ability to touch and influence your audience through all this electronic chaff has never been more important.