add momentum to your marketing

We've moved

2010-05-11T08:04:00.001-04:00

Hello friends,

We finally moved our blog to our new shiny website. Please visit us there: http://www.marketingmomentumassociates.com/blogGroups/brenda-gelston-blog

Looking forward to your comments, ideas and feedback on everything B2B Demand Generation related.

Brenda

My $24.95 lesson in marketing in an age of empowered customer.

2010-02-25T10:21:00.000-05:00

I recently purchased Ad-Aware Plus because my computer has been acting really strange and opening random websites involuntarily. Well, I received a very nice notice from Google stating that my computer might be infected and I needed to get software to clean it up. Google listed three products; since I trust anything that comes with Google brand seal of approval I just clicked on the first one. OK, so $24.95 is not a bad deal to get this annoying problem solved.

Right? Well, wrong!

I buy it and when I go to download, it does not. So I contact their shiny online customer service agent. He comes online within seconds…I am happy as a clam. I need to get this resolved and get back to work asap. Rep tells me that I need to pay another $25.95 service fee to help with the download. Seriously? You are asking me to pay more to help me access something I already paid for? Click! I am out and on twitter ranting and raving about Ad-Aware.

Then it occurred to me, I am the empowered customer now. I have a voice.

Lessons #1:

We are living in an age of empowered customer. Same customer you just ticked off might just have 6000 twitter followers. She might be advising a $100MM company and be in charge of a multimillion dollar IT budget. More important than any of this…she now has a voice that can potentially reach thousands of YOUR customers.

Lesson #2:

One of my favorite bloggers Valeria Maltoni at Conversation Agent had a recent post that highlighted the need of customer-centeredness in budgeting for marketing as well as communication strategy and customer service. She stated “Marketing budgets need to be set on customers’ ability to pay, not marketing spend.”

The point of setting marketing budgets based on customers’ ability to pay is especially poignant for B2B service providers. When I speak to clients about marketing budgets, we often shift our thinking from setting benchmarks based on what we spend last year or what the competition spends. Instead we focus on determining measurable and predictable results based on the customers’ engagement with the service offering. For example engaging customers on social media is not necessarily a budget intensive activity but rather it is time intensive and has to be strategically administered.

In this age of customer empowerment, lines are not only blurred but completely emerged between customer service and profitability. Marketers can no longer hide in their cubicles and burry themselves in excel charts within the safety of quarterly budget meetings. Social media is the acid test for all things marketing and it is immediate. Throwing money at bad business practices is no longer effective. We have to get back to the basics and scrutinize our business models. As marketers we have to be courageous and question managements' view on marketing ROI.

After all ROI really comes from customer not from marketing activities.

Managing the Sales Prevention Department

2010-02-04T14:01:00.005-05:00

Recently I was having a conversation with Margaret Johnson of Oakwood Systems Group about the importance of removing roadblocks from the customers’ purchasing journey. She alluded to a term I really liked; she said every time we ignore removing all the roadblocks from our customers’ overall experience with our firm we essentially assign them to the Sales Prevention Department.

How true! There is such a ghostly abyss as the Sales Prevention Department. We send our customers there without even knowing unless they have the enough mojo to raise their voices and tell us what went wrong. They simply disappear into “thanks, but no thanks” land.

So what can we do to abolish this Sales Prevention Department? One simple and clear strategy is to ensure sales and marketing work in alignment. Easier said than done, right? But here is a perspective that can help us all understand each other. Sales is a transactional function so they are looking at everything in terms of numbers and quantifiable items. Marketing on the other hand is a world of perceptions, compelling messages and persuasion. I look at it as gas and motor. You can have the most sophisticated motor (sales) but without gas (marketing) it will just sit there.

As my friend Margaret pointed out mapping out the purchasing journey is not enough. We should be focused on the entire engagement process. This way each inquiry, each conversation, each download, every web visit or blog comment has a value. Perhaps not in terms of dollars and cents but in terms of business results. After all we are not working to achieve only this quarter’s sales objectives but rather for the achievement of overall business results.

2010-01-15T14:25:00.004-05:00

Everything I have to say about demand generation fades to the background in comparison to the suffering people are currently experiencing in Haiti.

So this is my only blog entry this week:

"Text HAITI to 90999 to donate $10 to @RedCross relief."

Note: Image borrowed from MoBlog

Who is afraid of negative blog comments?

2010-01-08T13:28:00.004-05:00

There is a justifiable fear out there in the B2B Professional Services space that once we allow people to comment on our blog or become a member of our LinkedIn group we will open the backdoor to negative comments circulating online “in perpetuity”. Professional service brands are built on reputation of the company, its executives and the quality of the service they provide. It is natural to want to keep weaknesses or shortcomings close to vest. Who among us has never received a complaint email from a disgruntled client? It might not even be related to the service we provide. The client might just be having a bad day. We don’t want those emails displayed on our home page. Home page is a place for shinny happy testimonials strategically placed to be found by those friendly search engine robots.

But here is another perspective to consider. Contemporary marketing strategies such as demand generation and customer engagement practices have relationship building at their core. And relationships are built around interactions. So in that sense every interaction is an opportunity to build a relationship. We have to change our thinking and start looking at negative comments as opportunities and welcome them to reside on our website, blog or fan page instead of circulating out there in cyberspace without even our knowledge.

With blogs, Facebook groups, LinkedIn discussions, YouTube, Twitter, SlideShare and many other social media outlets companies have to embrace the fact that there will be instances where the content we put out there might rub someone, somewhere the wrong way. Social media platforms give us an opportunity humanize our brand and clearly demonstrate how committed we are to solving our customers’ problems.

As we gear up for demand generation efforts it is important to get comfortable with possibility of negative comments or reactions to the content. Instead have a clear roadmap as to how the company will respond, who will be in charge of tracking and answering, what incentive to offer as a follow up and how to measure. Having a strategy is the solution, instead of last minute scrambling to respond or hiding in case we get negative feedback.

Predictions or wishful thinking...take your pick!

2010-01-04T10:25:00.004-05:00

I am not very good at predicting trends. That is why I particularly enjoy reading other experts’ end of year blogs. Throughout December each year I basically get a crash course on what worked last year and what experts predict upcoming year.

I was totally wrong last year in my prediction that mobile is finally going to make a much needed entrance to the B2B space in the US. I wonder if 2010 will be the year businesses see the potential in using mobile technology. B2B sales and lead nurturing relies heavily on relationship building so to me it makes perfect sense to include mobile as a customer retention tool especially considering advances in GSM technology. For instance, a customer might find it perfectly acceptable to share her cell phone number with a firm if she is getting location based additional perks such as opportunity to network with other executives while attending a tradeshow or access premium services through smart phone applications. Cell phone is an intimate medium and I see it as an opportunity for relationship building. We just have to orient our thinking in terms of added value to the customer rather than another outlet to “sell, sell, sell”.

The biggest dot in everyone’s radar this year is social media. Basically the sky is the limit in terms of how B2B lead generation can use social media. Blog after blog I read is stating that social media is all about conversation and great content. The major hurdle I see is to convince people who hold the purse strings to resist temptation to jump the gun and start pushing sales messages down people’s throats instead of using social outlets to listen to what people are talking about and figure out how to bring in value to the conversation related to their business.

I think the shiniest toy this year is going to be video. Video on corporate home pages, video in transit media, video in mobile, video in lead gen and video in CRM……I used to be a practitioner of multimedia when way back when we had a hard time even explaining to our parents what it is that we did at work. I am now glad to see digital technology has caught up with possibilities video represents.

I see video, email and search doing the heavy lifting in demand generation this year…..well, see I could not resist and slipped in my own prediction. I hope I am right! It will be an adventurous year for marketers.

Kick-start 2010 with demand generation best practices

2009-12-11T14:21:00.007-05:00

As this year is winding down to an end, the industry experts have started to post their year-end reviews and predictions one by one. There is a ton of great advice out there and companies are listening to these demand generation experts. Businesses large and small have become more open to strategizing and implementing nurturing and engagement programs.

This year companies have become more open to aligning their functional structures and capabilities to support demand generation programs. They devote more resources to lead generation and retention marketing strategies. This is good news for us demand generation practitioners. This means the ground work is underway and executive buy-in is easier to achieve.

According to Aberdeen Group, there are four common traits in firms that successfully deploy demand generation and nurturing programs:
1. They implement initiatives to monitor and improve lead to sales conversion
2. They instill an organizational focus on lead generation and measurement
3. They adopt technologies to automate lead generation and lead management
4. They segment and target specific geographies and demographics

An effective demand generation and lead nurturing program tracks everything from number of inquiries generated, website traffic, lead to conversion ratio, page view duration, lead to close ratios and lead to close time frame. All of these indicators are measurable therefore subject to improvement.

The direct effect of the proliferation of demand generation and nurturing practices is that sales and marketing functions move closer and closer to each other. Sales and marketing will never overlap but I look forward to the day turf wars become a non-issue. That day is closer than ever in my view.

End of the High School Football Season, the Thanksgiving turkey, inbound marketing and the rhythm of life.

2009-11-25T12:56:00.004-05:00

As I sit here in front of my computer, my son is getting ready for the last football game of his sophomore high school football season, our Thanksgiving turkey is happily thawing out on kitchen counter and I am in a very Zen mood, thinking about rhythm of life, changes in the marketing industry and how all this change reflects on the way I make my living.

This time of the year always puts me in a reflective mood. This week there were few blogs I read that sort of tied it all together for me. The first blog I want to mention is this week’s Marketo blog. Jon Miller offers a very succinct and poignant summary of how marketing evolved in the last three decades…from mass communication to internet search dominance to contemporary social media brand building. He suggests that marketers are now focusing on social media, search and content marketing to build brands. Jon states:
…”More and more information is available off the official corporate website and on social media sites ranging from LinkedIn and Twitter to YouTube and SlideShare. As buyers tire of “marketing speak” and over-aggressive marketing tactics, they search social sites as part of their research, and interact with other prospects to get and share word of mouth recommendations”.

The next blog that I want to note is posted by Shannon Sweetser to Inbound Marketer’s Blog. Shannon states:
…creating meaningful content such as whitepapers, webinars, and blog posts that “concretely describe solutions to problems” is a much more effective way to get found by your customers than sending an unsolicited sales message via email.”

Finally, one of my very favorite blogs, the Digital Buzz Blog posted a fantastic slide presentation by Aden Hepburn that talk about the Basics of Social Media ROI. The presentation is written in CEO-speak; smart, funny, interesting and very informative. Social media is not a transactional sales tactic that translates into immediate sales increases the same reporting period that you start implementing the strategy. That is like inviting people over to your house for drinks and whipping out the Tupperware catalog while people are engulfed in a conversation. Instead, what it will do is gradually enhance non-financial indicators like increased website visitors, WOM, social mentions, impressions, positive press, blog comments as well as an upsurge in click-throughs and perhaps more visitors to your brick & mortar sales floor. We just have to make sure we using the right tool and the appropriate time span to measure its effectiveness.

As I said, I am in a very reflective mood. I see the changes in our industry and I am excited for the possibilities ahead. Being a marketer and staying true to my principles as a human being sounds simplistic. But I firmly believe this is the authenticity era in marketing and I am happy to be part of it.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Demand generation and multicultural audiences.

2009-11-13T14:25:00.004-05:00

This week I want to talk about practical tips to consider when marketing to multicultural audiences. First I have to mention that I’ve always had trouble with the term “multicultural marketing.” What does that really mean? When is marketing not “multicultural?” Different cultural dynamics are prevalent even within an organization in any complex sales environment. Logistics people speak a different language than that of procurement. As marketers we have to be aware of variances in every segment we are addressing to and ensure clear communication as well as preempt any potential issues or concerns.

But let me get back to the subject in hand without attempting to boil the ocean with my ramblings. Organizations that sell to multi-language audiences encounter added challenges in successfully strategizing their marketing outreach. One of my pet peeves has always been the fact that marketing materials often get translated into different languages as an afterthought like; right before it all goes to print. And the translation might even be done by the CEO’s high school senior son’s Spanish teacher. The result is often disjointed literal translation, inappropriate visuals and stop-and-go flow in material being presented to the multicultural audiences.

Here are some practical tips to consider in designing demand generation programs for multicultural audiences:

SEO is your friend. SEO is one of the most important components of any demand generation program. When it comes to multicultural audiences search optimization even becomes more of a focal point. It is imperative that you consider working with “in country” resources when it comes to determining and maintaining keywords. Language is a living thing and every country has their own contemporary terms reflecting the local current issues, trends and consumption patterns. Your audience might use a term pertaining to a current local political regulation that your US based translator might not know about.

Cultural variations matter. Decision makers and influencers can vary dramatically from one country to the other. For instance if you are marketing to French Canada vs. EU French audience, you might need to consider different dynamics in purchasing journey of your buyers vis-à-vis the influencers. In some cultures influencers can have much more power in purchasing decisions than we might assume. It is a good idea to carefully research who the influencers are in each market and how they affect the purchase before designing your demand generation program. Lead nurturing can become treacherous if you overlook to include a particular segment of the audience.

Social media might be the secret ingredient. Many cultures are much more open to social media outreach and they might be more willing to engage in a conversation with a brand online. On the other hand, especially in EU countries privacy concerns can be an even bigger issue. Social media is definitely more forgiving medium in terms of budgeting concerns than that of traditional print/media. Because it is much cheaper to tweak the messaging as you move along. But tread gently and test, test, test before you broadcast your message out into the world. And remember to have someone who understands multicultural dynamics at the helm of your social media communications.

We live in a world of one-to-one communications and cultural sensitivity is more important than ever. No one understands this better than someone who has experience with multicultural communications. It is a very exciting time to be in the marketing field, indeed.

2009-11-10T13:38:00.002-05:00

OK, I am back. I have been neglecting my blog far too long. But the shift towards less talking and more listening served me very well these past few months. My focus is sharper and I have a clearer vision as to where the trends are heading.

I am encouraged to see the increased discussions around demand generation. I no longer have explain what it is that I do when I say: “I am a demand generation specialist.”

Last week I attended Boston session of the Silverpop -sponsored B2B Marketing University . I was surprised to hear that the discussion concentrated on the differences between CRM systems and marketing automation. When asked which marketing automation system they currently use, most people in the audience answered Salesforce.com. Clearly, that is not a marketing system. It is a great tool to keep your database online and accessible to lots of sales people at the same time. But demand generation requires whole bunch of additional levers that needs to be tweaked and adjusted throughout marketing outreach efforts.

Following the event one of the keynote speakers, David Raab offered a very useful summary in his blog. David states:

“…marketing automation and demand generation systems are built for two different situations. Demand generation is for companies where the job of marketing is to generate qualified leads and turn them over to sales. After that, the customer relationship is managed by sales and operations groups, presumably through a CRM system. Marketing automation is for companies where marketing manages the entire customer life cycle.”

I think this goes back to the necessity of human element in successful marketing. Bottom line, it is imperative to have someone with demand generation expertise run marketing. Tools are great, but at the end people buy from people they know and trust. Marketing is most successful when all of these systems, tools, gadgets are invisible and the purchasing journey offered to the customer is seamless.

Why demand generation works where traditional advertising and marketing falls short?

2009-06-15T11:51:00.003-04:00

Let’s focus on the basics. Marketing is all about selling stuff. We know this and our customers know that we keep the lights on by selling. So, why marketing has become the black sheep in the family? Why is our advertising and direct response programs are no longer bringing the results they used to?

We need to think in terms of demand generation and not simply soapbox style message distribution.

Here is why:

Interruptive marketing stopped working: We have all heard the adage that only 50% of advertising works. Well, we can actually now measure which half is working and why. It is a continuous process of testing, measuring and tweaking. Relevancy is the key and customer focus is an absolute necessity. Demand generation programs test, measure and help you develop marketing content that is sure to resonate with your target audience. The result is customer engagement and continuous flow of qualified leads.

Every sale is a complex sale: Gone are the days of marketing managers with annual marketing budgets that are only called to question at the end of the year. We live in a world where every business decision is made by a committee of executives with various priorities and business challenges. Organizations need to create messaging that speaks to various angles; many touch points with different channels.

Sharing knowledge is cool: Internet has brought the age of free content to our lives. Sharing best practices and your organization’s accumulated knowledge in your field is a sure way to bring you to the thought leadership position. The tools are out there for you to accomplish this and become a publisher of quality content in no time. Organizations that see themselves as content publishers are very successful at inbound marketing where leads come knocking at their door, instead of the other way around.

Being human is cool: The C level decision maker is a busy executive. She could fill it up with back to back 15 minute meetings if her day can be 36 hours. She does not want to be interrupted by cold calls. But this does not mean she does not want to hear from someone who is on her top 5 list. The trick is to know if you are on her list. You know this because your demand generation program has been following her activities on your website. You have been sending her truly relevant content that she forwarded to her team. She participated on your LinkedIn discussion. Three other people from the same company signed up for your webinar. You sent her tips and tricks white paper and she twittered it (or tweeted it, one or the other…but you get my point). So when you call her, all you have to do is be human and ask if she is ready to talk to you.

To summarize, demand generation programs enable marketers to work more effectively. Generating results is fun and data can be really sexy too.

Path analysis and buyer profiles can help you come up with a better process map for your demand generation program.

2009-06-02T15:18:00.008-04:00

By now in every industry marketers fully acknowledge that we are living in the age of empowered customers who will use every tool at their disposal to come and find you when they have a need. But try to push your message onto them when they are not interested and you will quickly find yourself and your precious marketing investment completely ignored or worst yet, in the spammer abyss.

The key is to use marketing tools to build relationship and only pass a lead to sales when they have expressed a need and are able to make a decision. If they are not the decision maker, marketers needs to keep nurturing that relationship. When the prospect expressed a need and they want to learn more about your product or service, then the sales teams need to know a whole lot more than name-rank-serial number to be able to close the sale. One of the methodologies used in demand generation programs to help guide the interaction around customer needs is clearly defining the path customers walk in their decision making process.

In his popular blog Brian Carroll has been repeatedly highlighting the benefits of walking in the customer’s shoes as you are setting up lead nurturing program. Brian states: “Walk IN your potential customers’ shoes means thinking like your customer and considering the questions they will have for you and your company.”

Another good tool to gain intimate understanding of your customer is to create customer profiles, we sometime refer to these as buyer personas. Groundswell blog has several of these profiles that consumer marketers use. In recent weeks Forrester also came up with B2B profiles.
The tool is called Social Technographics Profiles of business buyers. B2B marketer now can use this tool to integrate buyer behavior and social media into their marketing tool set.

Demand generation programs have come a long way from just using email and list building to create demand. With these types of tools we can now more precisely define our audience and have a better chance to influence their decision making process.

Boost your demand generation tool kit with professional references.

2009-05-20T11:56:00.007-04:00

Just came across a company called References Online that produces professional level references. The company produces customer reference collateral using our solutions integrated in the WEB 2.0/social media and networking world.

This would be a great tool for professional services firms to add to their demand generation tool-kit.

Here is a presentation that explains how the program works: http://tinyurl.com/c26rfd

Demand generation basics Part 2: Segmenting your audience (don't ignore hidden gems)

2009-05-16T09:39:00.005-04:00

Last week I talked about building a database and explained what sort of information must be collected on prospects. This week I will go into segmenting and targeting. This activity is often reduced down to slicing and dicing the database to uncover lowest hanging fruit for the picking. Well, it is a bit more complicated than that. The main purpose of segmenting your audience is to understand priorities of each group and serve relevant content so you can better engage them. Here are some basic strategies for segmenting your database to achieve just that:

-Email: Sounds simple but email is your best ally when it comes to figuring out how best to segment your list. Testing subject lines will give you a great indication about what triggers interest by each group. If you test the headline of your email message and find out that one headline performed much better with CMOs, you can customize content accordingly to better engage this particular group.

-Web analytics: Great listening and measuring tool. You can examine traffic, time of day people visit your site, what pages they spend more time, which path they follow. If you match this information with email campaign results, you can design better landing pages to bring in more qualified leads. This is achieved via behavioral targeting. Professional service firms that use behavioral targeting and web analytics in their segmentation strategies are able to generate impressive results.

-Search: Looking at what keywords people use to find your site is also a very good way to segment your prospect list. For example if you are trying to build hospitality industry client base and you find out that prospects in that industry find your site by typing in keywords like “tax attorney and hotel management” you can then generate a white paper loaded with those keywords and develop a multi-touch campaign specifically for that audience segment.

-Repurpose your content: By segmenting your audience you can repurpose your existing content according to your prospects’ criteria that you determined by analyzing all of the above tools. The idea is to custom design your marketing messages according to the needs of your audience.

-Hidden gems: As you segment your audience and learn more about their behavior you might discover that there is a specific group that is gobbling up every piece of content you put out there but are not in a position to buy your services. They download your white papers, sign up for webinars, e-newsletters and podcasts but they clearly don’t have the resources to hire you. These people can be your evangelists; don’t ignore them just because they are not likely to bring you short term revenue. Ask them to contribute to your blog or webinar. They can also be potentially a good source for referrals. Share the spotlight with them; this will only help cement your position as a thought leader in your industry.

Segmenting your target audience is one of the foundations of demand generation programs. By creating specific groups based on more than “name-rank-title” you will empower your marketing with growth opportunities, not just leads that may only bring in short term results.

Next week, I will talk about process mapping and creating content to match milestones in your customer’s decision making journey.

Demand generation basics Part 1: Consider your assets

2009-05-08T10:34:00.007-04:00

While everyone is mourning the gloomy economic climate, you can be uncovering hidden opportunities. Yes, they do exist, and they can only be revealed by implementing a deliberate, focused and systematic approach. A very effective method for uncovering opportunities is to set up a demand generation program.

You can start by looking at what you already have under your finger tips. Lori Feldman, marketing database expert, a.k.a. Database Diva has a very sensible mathematical assessment of how much your existing customer base might be worth to you. In her example she states: if you have a list of 1500 contacts, that might represent over a million dollars in terms of earning potential. The bottom line is your existing contact list is your biggest asset. But you need to cultivate it.

The first step is to clean up and segment your list. The process can be as simple as verifying name, title, contact info etc. Database clean up is also a great excuse to do lots of cold calling that will not immediately turn off the person on the other end of the line. After all, you are not trying to sell anything to them. You are just verifying information. But while you have them on the phone, you can charm them into speaking further and provide you an excuse to learn more about their business issues.

The ultimate aim of your database building & clean-up efforts is to have relevant information about your customers and prospects, right down to what keeps them up at night. Armed with this knowledge, you can customize your marketing materials accordingly.

Database building is a continuous effort and best thing to do is to have an internal champion or a consultant dedicated to regularly checking the validity of the information on your customer base. Here are some essentials of an effective database:

* Existing customers:
Company profile
Executive contact information
Company products and services
Competitor information
Sales and financial data
Marketing materials sent (what do they currently receive from you i.e. newsletter)

* Prospects
Company profile
Executives and contact info
Sales and financial data
Products and services
Status (which campaign materials they received from you and when)
Current vendor (who do they currently use)

* Your own competitors and their clients
Executive info
Trade associations they belong to
Newsletters, blogs, tweets

* Trade media (who is writing about your industry, who are the influencers)

* Bloggers in your industry

Next week we will look at aligning your Value Proposition and process mapping.

What can service marketers learn from consumer brands?

2009-05-01T11:44:00.006-04:00

Designing a demand generation program from scratch is a great opportunity to examine which best practices can be borrowed from other disciplines. I am working to develop a demand generation program for a packaging design firm and I wanted to look at successful consumer brands for ideas.

Here is a short list of ideas that struck my interest at a first glance:

Sample the goods: I had the privilege of serving P&G as an account executive many moons ago. One of the lesson’s I learned from that experience was to always consider consumer insight as the anchor of all sales and marketing related activities. For a professional service firm, having your customer at the core of your business means you need to genuinely care about solving their problems. Your new business acquisition strategy has to demonstrate that you understand their world. The way to do that is to deliver relevant content and do it consistently. Your demand generation program has to deliver value in order to build trust. This means sometimes you have to share your expertise and knowledge with your audience for free. You will become an expert in their eyes before you even pitch for their business.

Develop familiarity: I love Target stores. They are like a home away from home when I travel. I can always count on the store layout to be exactly as it is in the store near my hometown. I go there to buy few items that I might need but I come out from the store feeling grounded because everything is so familiar. Service firms are faced with the constant challenge of having to go between “feast to famine” when it comes to work flow. No matter how strapped for time you are, it is essential to keep your content consistent. You can hire a demand generation professional or run the program yourself but avoid interrupting the flow, changing look and feel or the tone of voice of the content too often.

Build an emotional bond: You may be a purchasing agent at a manufacturing firm looking to buy a multimillion dollar machine but the same relationship discipline applies as in the way you select which dentist to take your kids for their dental appointments. People like to do business with people they like. If the approach of your demand generation program is cold and calculated, you are telling your customer to treat you like a vendor instead of a trusted advisor. You must breed life into your content and make sure it reflects personality, not only expertise.

There are a number of tools and strategies out there to continuously improve performance of your marketing efforts. These few basic best practices will help keep your demand generation program humming along, generating leads while establishing your service brand.

Why include social media in your demand generation program?

2009-04-23T10:31:00.001-04:00

We all know sales is a transaction oriented discipline and its focus is on targeting efforts to close more sales. Marketing on the other hand is brand oriented so everything is around building awareness, equity and persuasion. Demand generation campaigns are perfect bond to aligning these two disciplines.

Marketing collects content ideas from search engine key words from incoming traffic, blogs, point of view articles and identifies hot button issues to highlight on the demand generation outreach campaign materials. This ensures that the content created for the demand generation program is relevant and timely. Enter social media.

Social media can be a powerful tool to include in the mix of demand generation campaigns. But, one thing to remember is that social media is best to create online communities and monitor discussions, not necessarily for generating leads. It is relationship oriented not transaction oriented. Companies have to resist the temptation to cross the line. An overzealous insurance salesman friend someone brings to the party can totally suck the air out of the room…we have all been there. Social media works just like that. However, if I can be a relevant resource for you or I can make you feel good somehow, you would like to talk to me. Similarly, social media provides an outlet for you to build powerful and long lasting relationships.

Here are some reasons why you should include social media in your demand generation and lead nurturing campaigns:

1. Left brain meets right brain: Web is a big component of demand generation efforts. It requires strong analytical ability to crunch numbers and tweak levers. However, don’t forget consumer insight and persuasion psychology when you are creating content for your demand generation program. Today’s empowered, online savvy customer can smell a sales pitch a mile away. By monitoring the discussion you can determine relevant content.

2. If you don’t claim your spot on the stage, someone else will: Social media is here to stay. If you don’t claim your voice on the forum, your competition will. You can’t afford to hide under the blankets while everyone in your space is out there, perhaps making mistakes but also learning to do it better and building online relationships. If you are out there, at least you are in the game.

3. Help sales see the value of social media: Once you have an active online community your sales team will appreciate the attention it is getting and talking points social media forums can generate. Sales people are always starving for ideas to strike up a conversation with prospects. Someone can raise a question or complain about a competitor’s offering that can help the sales reach out and start a conversation.

The best part is social media gives B2B companies opportunity to engage and listen to genuine conversations with customers in a timely fashion. It is all about relationship building and being there when the customer is ready to buy.

But don’t just take my word for it. Here is a great blog on the subject that is written by a sales guru. The subsequent discussion provides great insight into how other B2B professionals are now finding value in including social media into the mix.

PR can be an effective driver of your demand generation program.

2009-04-16T15:39:00.002-04:00

For me, one of the game changers has been when I read David Meerman Scott’s book “The New Rules of Marketing & PR”. David talks extensively about the demise of interruption strategies in the new empowered customer era. The bottom line he offers is the idea that in our blogs, press releases and in other customer advisory sites instead of heavy handed sales pitches we should more focus on providing useful information with a clear focus at the precise moment that the buyer needs it. For example if you are a caterer, create a blog and offer tips to organize a perfect wedding reception, or if you are a lawyer create podcasts or video casts talking about ins and outs of elder law. Content you generate will help establish you as a thought leader in your space.

As I explain demand generation programs to my customers, the question keeps popping up in our discussions; “Money is tighter than it has ever been in recent years…with all the tools out there, which one should I focus my marketing investment on? Which method will bring in the faster results?” My point is: Don’t ignore PR in your demand generation strategy.

Demand generation program is a multi-channel marketing tool set that offers to incorporate a multi-touch point, integrated relationship building and lead nurturing program targeting customers and prospects. The aim of the program is that when they are ready to buy they turn to you because they know and trust you as an expert in your field. PR is a very important element demand generation. It is a powerful tool of relationship building tactic and small businesses can not afford to exclude the online advisory boards, customer review sites as well as traditional approaches such as press releases that are very effective in establishing trust and credibility as well as brand building.

One of the PR outlets small business should monitor is Yelp. Recent New York Times article mentioned that starting next week, Yelp will let small-business owners publicly respond to reviews. Websites like Yelp and Angie’s list are empowering small businesses with the ability to respond to negative comments and have the opportunity to serve potential customers with relevant information improve perceptions in a timely manner.

PR is very much part of an effective demand generation campaign. Integrating public relations tactics within your demand generation strategy will enable you to deliver useful and relevant content that would help solidify your position as a thought leader in your space.

Are you in sync with your customer's purchasing journey?

2009-04-06T11:34:00.003-04:00

Here is a scenario we are all too familiar with: Sales teams follow a tried and true road map yet lately sales pipeline provides few and far in between qualified opportunities. You may have a desired product or service and your research shows your marketing message is compelling. But there is still a disconnect between the leads that marketing generates and your sales closing rate. A possible reason for the disconnect might be that your sales cycle is no longer aligned with your customers’ purchasing journey. Here are some of the reasons why this may occur:

- Customers have many tools at their disposal to get information about products and services to help them make purchasing decisions. They conduct online search, study buyer’s guides, view online customer advisory boards, sign up for webinars, monitor online chat forums, look at magazine ads and read company newsletters before they even express an interest in you. It is very likely that they may have already formed an opinion about your offering before you even get a chance to speak to them. Your sales team needs to be armed with the knowledge of all the touch points the customer interacted with before they connect with the prospect.

- My 15 year old son is the internet search guru at our house. I would not dream of making a major purchase without consulting with him. Consumer trends change. Millennials are now a powerful influencer segment in variety of categories. We recently changed our car insurance provider because he found an online comparison tool that gave us a much better rate on our car insurance. You need to be aware of who the influencers are in your category and where they get their information from.

-Sales is a transaction oriented discipline. Sales reps move on to the most closeable opportunity after few attempts. However, in today’s economic conditions most purchasing decisions are very susceptible to daily fluctuations so the decisions can stall longer than you anticipated. You may have uncovered a hidden need but did not stay in touch with a prospect long enough, only to have your competition move in to close the sale because they worked diligently to build a stronger relationship with your prospect.

The good news is that demand generation programs offer an excellent opportunity to ensure that your sales efforts are in sync with your prospect’s purchasing cycle. This is possible because of the close monitoring, content relevancy and measurement that a carefully designed demand generation program offers. At every touch-point you have the opportunity to probe, measure and adjust your next steps.

Knowing your customer’s purchasing journey will help you design content, frequency and relevancy of your marketing outreach so your sales reps can successfully walk the fine line between being annoyingly persistent and providing the right amount information to help your customers decide.

Matching the right tool to the job.

2009-03-27T12:13:00.003-04:00

Marketers use variety of methods to bring in new business. But often it is not all that clear what is really working and why. To maximize marketing efforts, not to mention hard to come by budgets, it is important to match the tool to the purpose. This is where demand generation programs are most effective. These programs include different methodologies that can be designed to serve different marketing issues.

Here is a set of specific programs to consider:

- Lead generation campaigns. The purpose of these campaigns is to attract new names to your prospect database. Lead gen campaigns are also useful to re-activate dormant leads. Before any tactical elements such as emails, search campaigns, direct mail pieces, landing pages and call scripts are produced, it is important to carefully segment your list. Once the campaign is moved to implementation phase, the key indicators like conversion rates can give you the wrong signal if the message is not delivered to the right audience. You might think your program is not working but the truth may be that you are offering an exquisite chocolate cake to someone who is just looking for a quick sandwich.

- Lead nurturing programs. These campaigns are designed to maintain continuous contact with your prospects with the purpose of moving them through the sales pipeline. After all, the objective is not to repeatedly call on people and push your sales message, but rather send them relevant content so that when they are ready to buy they turn to you. It involves sending messages to inform prospects about your company, products and services, and gathering information about their behavior so you can understand their needs better. Important element of lead nurturing programs is to provide continuous supply of fresh and relevant content.

- Lead scoring. Final element of successful demand generation program is lead scoring which is useful in managing the actual transfer of leads to sales reps because it indicates when the lead is sales ready. Typically, companies that have complex sales cycles and dedicated sales teams benefit from complimenting their demand generation programs with lead scoring and tracking element.

Demand generation programs offer variety of tools to measure, track and optimize marketing efforts. A comprehensive program will match the tool to the specific business need. But it is important to remember that this is a cyclical process that requires several trains running on time on different tracks. The good news is that results are measurable.

Turn your customers into new business evangelists.

2009-03-19T10:58:00.004-04:00

This week’s blog topic idea comes from a question that a colleague had asked me. I was explaining to her the scope of our demand generation program and I mentioned the need to address prospects and customers separately. As part of our services we suggest to our clients that they should run a targeted communication campaign to their existing customers distinct from their prospect lead nurturing efforts. She said “why would I need a targeted program to talk to my existing customers, I already talk to them on a daily basis?” This is a valid question. Demand generation programs are usually designed to uncover new leads and nurture relationships with prospects with the intent of turning them into customers. Why should you spend time and other resources to come up with a program to target existing customers?

* Customers are best referral sources. Nothing says you excel at your business better than having your existing customers endorse you. But we all know that if someone is happy they may talk to one or two people but if they have something to complain about they talk to 20+ people. You need to maximize the effect of your evangelists to help you generate more business. A targeted program like opinion pieces or industry trend reports will help you become a thought leader. Providing a way to your customers to interact with you on a regular basis will help you generate more business.

* People move around. Today someone might be working at company A but tomorrow they may move to another firm which can be a potential source of business for you. It is always a good idea to keep regular check points with your existing contacts. It is much easier and cheaper to keep your database fresh on a regular basis.

* Ensure minimum of 5 touch-points for repeat business. It is a generally an accepted fact that it takes minimum of five contacts at a company to secure repeat business. Once you sign on with a customer it is good practice to ensure more people at the same firm know about you and your services. It will help you stay top of mind and carve the path for repeat business.

These are few of the reasons why customers should be part of your demand generation program. The important thing to keep in mind is that targeted communication going out to your prospect requires different dynamics than the one you send to your customers. Customers’ priorities and information needs are different. Your expectations and success metrics from a deliberate customer communication program is also different. But they should both lead to the same overall outcome; business growth. Therefore, your demand generation outreach must include both segments. Customers are an important segment in your new business efforts and they require a deliberate and targeted outreach.

What are some of the best ways to keep nurture relationship with existing customers? Share your thoughts.

Just tell me why is it that I should buy from you.

2009-03-02T11:06:00.003-05:00

Running a small business is a rewarding yet challenging endeavor. Small businesses exist simply because someone was passionate enough about a service or a product and wanted to create value for their customers. Small businesses are run by individuals who are dedicated and committed to the quality of their offerings. Understandably their focus is on the existing customers.

Running your own business is a 24/7 activity. I know this firsthand. You have to constantly think about updating your offering to stay competitive, you have to think about accounting, taxes, regulatory environment, customer service and a lot more. Maintaining a sales funnel of qualified leads often takes a second seat until some crisis hits or an existing customer pulls their business away from your firm for one reason or another. Sure, we all have a “database” that we spam….ehhem! pardon me…email once in a while when we have some news to tell about our product or a service. But demand generation and lead nurturing programs are a whole lot more than that.

The main challenge of a successful demand generation program is reaching the decision makers with relevant content on a regular basis. This means that you have an intimate knowledge of their issues and you know what is keeping them up at night. How do you know this? Because they tell you. You asked them through surveys, they clicked to the links on your emails, they forwarded your newsletter to their peers, they downloaded your white papers and podcasts, they commented on your blog…repeatedly. Demand generation is about building a relationship with your customer universe that includes existing customers, prospects and visitors. Just like any other relationship, it takes time and effort to build and nurture. The beauty of the demand generation program is that when the customer is ready to buy, they come to you because you have become a trusted advisor.

You know you have an effective demand generation program, IF:

* You can name your 20 ideal customers by company, name, title, industry, geography and business challenge.
* You have an ongoing integrated lead generation program that includes more than just email, landing page and analytics.
* Your customers are the ones coming up with list topics you should cover on your next newsletter.

I will talk more about demand generation programs on my blog upcoming weeks. This is just a quick food for thought as a start. Please tell me what topics you would like to see about demand generation programs by commenting below and I will try to address those issues on upcoming blog entries.

Until then.

Can we please communicate less?

2009-02-23T14:07:00.002-05:00

I am back to the blogosphere after a year long hiatus while I finally finished my MBA. What a tough business environment we are swimming in! But all is not completely bleak out there in the marketing land. We just have to learn to be smarter and more relevant to our customers.

Take global communications for instance, Jim Ylisela so eloquently outlined in his blog today that organizations have way too much communication, but poorly applied. Let’s remember that effective communication takes place if only the sender and the receiver are on the same page. Just because marketing department is busy churning out emails, newsletters, blog entries all over the map, does not mean the audience is influenced by what is being put out there for their reading pleasure.

Well, have we ever asked the customer what they really want to hear?

Email is one area less communication is badly needed. There is a lot of debate about email being dead, everyone complains about hundreds of emails they receive and how much time they spend cleaning up their inbox each day. Therein lays the opportunity. Email expert Jeanniey Mullen said: “The days of standalone e-mails, with no integration or support for other channels, are over.” The key is to listen…listen to your audience, learn about their world, their priorities, their worries, pain points and aspirations. Let’s not make email just another mass medium that is used to shove hordes of sales messages down people’s throats.

Listening allows marketers to become smarter and more relevant to their audiences. Thankfully with proliferation of social media, we have so many new innovative ways to listen and build strong and lasting relationships with our customers.

Here is a winning formula to boost your sales pipeline with constant stream of qualified leads:
1. Listen and learn what the customer wants to hear from you
2. Modify your value proposition and if necessary, even your offering
3. Be there when they want to hear from you with relevant content
4. Scrub, rinse and repeat

Let’s not be afraid of less communication. Less is more if we achieved relevancy.

Gaping Void

2008-04-16T14:35:00.000-04:00

My Linkedin Power Forum

2008-03-09T17:52:00.003-04:00

My Linkedin Power ForumWidgetbox

Online Community

2008-03-09T17:50:00.001-04:00

A reflection on personal branding

2008-03-07T10:47:00.000-05:00

The periods of job search or career transition are an excellent opportunity to redefine and polish one’s own brand. Notice I did not say define but rather redefine. Because even if we are not consciously working on it, everything we do still reinforces a specific brand – our personal brand. As I go to interviews, meet new people, experience different professional settings I am trying be very conscious of how I express my personal brand and ask if it is a match with what the company is looking for in considering me as a candidate. It is a rigorous exercise but one that I find extremely exciting and rewarding as it is guiding me through self-discovery and self-awareness.

Recently I have come across an excellent book titled Book Yourself Solid by Michael Port http://www.michaelport.com/. Michael is a very energizing speaker and he has several podcasts and video casts that I am totally addicted to. His book made me dish out another book from my library that I read a few years back. The title of that book was Be Your Own Brand (David McNally and Karl D. Speak) and it was one of those books that made me have a-ha moments every several pages. As I read and re-read the pages of both, I have begun to draw parallels between my professional career and personal brand.

As a marketing professional when I talk to my clients about their marketing challenges the question always comes to who is your brand…not as your CMO defines it but how it is shaped in the minds and hearts of your customer? What does your brand stand for? Who is your target audience? Why did you select that particular target audience? What problem are you solving for them? What makes your brand so different than others in the market? What are the supporting arguments for claiming that particular brand differentiator? Why should they believe you? Does your logo, corporate colors, font you selected, messaging of your ads…does all of that support your claim? When the leadership of your company talks to members of the press do they reflect your brand’s values and positioning? If you are a “fun” brand do your employees have “fun” while they work? If you are a “caring” brand, do you pay special attention to support your local community?

This is the kind of stuff you really can’t fake. This is especially true with respect to your personal brand. The stuff that you do when no one else is looking constitutes the mosaic of your personal brand that people clearly see in every interaction they have with you. By the same token stuff that people say when you are not in the room is your real brand message. It is true, you can work to improve, polish and re-emphasize your brand but you can’t fake it. It has to be authentic and relevant to your target audience to be real. As it is applicable to corporate brands the positioning of your personal brand is all about sacrifice. You can’t be everything to everyone. You have to be selective. Strong brands are distinctive, relevant and consistent.

In signing off I am going to borrow an Oprah quote from Michael’s book (that’s right, no personal brand is complete without an Oprah quote appearing somewhere visible).

Every time you suppress some part of yourself or allow others to play you small, you are in essence ignoring the owner’s manual your creator gave you and destroying your design.
Oprah Winfrey

Kum-bah-yah! We are all in this together!

2008-01-18T14:27:00.000-05:00

There is no denying that the ad industry is in a state of transition. We talk about reinventing the way we reach out to and engage and persuade consumers. Experts in the industry write about the need to have agency and client teams collaborate in an environment of mutual respect. But what does that really mean in terms of day to day, down in the trenches struggle to complete projects on time and within diminishing marketing budgets?
True, the landscape is changing but a mountain is still a mountain and one must climb over it to reach to the other side. The tools are changing, there is more traffic on the road, the map is being updated as we travel the road, the weather changes too fast and too drastically, the tires on the car are not made for this new terrain and we all want to get to the other side in one piece and prosper. Marketing and Agency teams are entrusted with the role of looking at the road ahead.
We all talk about the paradigm shift in our thinking in terms of brand equity and its direct implication on the business results. This direct relationship also brings agency-client relationships into a more intense focus. Marketing professionals and their agency counterparts, we are all on the same team and we have to act more like a team than ever before. Our team mates on the client side need their agency to demonstrate marketing thinking in everything we do. Marketing thinking requires that first of we are all aware of challenges facing each side of the table. This awareness directly results in mutual respect. The bottom line is that the working relationship is so much more productive, insightful, compelling and efficient when client and agency teams are on the same page in terms of priorities, challenges and objectives. Agency professionals yearn to create value for their clients. Clients are under intense pressure to generate results with diminishing marketing budgets and less time. Agencies truly get that. We also get that marketers are looking for agencies that demonstrate progressive marketing thinking not just execution.
Advertising is still a fun industry to work and challenges and pressures are part of the reason why we enter into it. We are not afraid of challenges; in fact it fires up our engines. Creativity and consumer insight is still the greatest value we can bring into the table. Consumers love, hate, talk about, act on and engage with advertising messages just like before. True, the landscape is changing but we are pioneers. Advertising professionals and our client counter parts make up an excellent team. OK, let’s sing.....Kum-bah-yah my Lord Kum-bah-yah!

Guerilla marketing is not zero budget marketing.

2008-01-11T13:31:00.000-05:00

A recent local workshop on guerilla marketing prompted me to scrutinize my own thinking about what guerilla marketing is and what benefit it provides to marketers. As I sat in the audience and listened to the presenter give examples of successful guerilla marketing project and the audience ooo’ing and aaa’ing about wonderfully creative sparks being presented, I just though “how much of this is about tactical solutions and how much is actually serving the overall strategy?”

Let’s get back to the basics people. Guerilla marketing is not about creating a buzz with zero budgets. It is certainly not about getting media attention for free, positive or negative. It is not about amateurishly executed activities to get people talking. It is about brand engagement, it is about energizing a communication campaign, it is about relevancy to your audience and it is about off the beaten path hands on solutions designed to get your target audience connect with your brand.

One of the essentials of any successful guerilla tactics is that the buzz generated should serve the overall brand campaign and add an element of excitement that will enhance the target audience’s engagement with that brand. The concept has to somehow compliment the brand equity. If your brand stands for safety, the guerilla campaign has to reinforce the concept of safety.

Another essential element has to be that your campaign has to be measurable. What was your campaign objective? Did you just want the media to pick up the story or did you want actual conversions or leads? How many people made the connection that it was your brand? Was the return worth your efforts? Was the guerrilla tactic able to persuade people to take some sort of action? These are the questions your agency can help you determine before creating a guerilla campaign.

I guess the word of wisdom here is that don’t do it on your own and don’t do it because you don’t have a big marketing budget. Talk to your advertising agency. Agencies love to have our clients ask us for guerilla marketing ideas. This type of request gets us all pumped up and our creative juices start flowing. Your ad agency team has the discipline to come up with on-strategy creative ideas that will totally energize your brand. Just don’t say “I want to do something guerilla because we don’t have any marketing budget this year.” That is not how guerilla marketing works.

Guerilla marketing is a low cost brand engagement tactic but it has to be on strategy and carefully executed to bring in the best business results for your brand. The best agencies that come up with brand building guerilla marketing ideas are the ones that think on strategy but also possess sharp, compelling and kick-ass creative mojo.

Talk to the consumer like you mean it.

2007-12-12T11:58:00.000-05:00

I enjoy the end of the year for many reasons. One of those reasons is that it gives me a chance to reflect back on the past year and think about what I can improve. I guess this is a rather common thing to do since almost every industry blog or newsletter I read during this time of the year has the same theme. Everyone is looking at the past 12 months and trying to compare it to their forecasted predictions. For me the biggest revelation came from a rather unexpected source. I volunteer for the Junior Achievement program. As part of my class project I talk to 8th graders about brand development. The recent session involved reviewing a couple of commercials and having the kids write brand positioning statements. The kids are such savvy consumers that I was taken aback by their ability to decipher a brand’s essence from the execution idea of the commercial. These students not only had the keen ability to identify a brand’s essence but they were also enjoying the driver’s seat in the discussion of how to develop a brand.

There is a lot of talk about consumer generated advertising and not everyone is on the same page about its effectiveness. I admit, I also have my reservations mainly because I would be worried about the possibility of eroding brand equity. However, there is something to be said about the merits of the consumer directly interacting with the brand architects. I am not talking about focus groups. I also have my reservations about overreliance on focus groups. I am talking about forming an ongoing dialog with the consumers not only to test ads but also to build brands. Consumers are eager to talk to the brands that they like. Given the forum they enjoy being a part of that brands’ world. After all, the brand only has a reason to exist to the extent that it can remain relevant to its consumer.

It might be stating the obvious but I am going to focus more and more on how to facilitate meaningful consumer dialogs. I do believe that the consumers have an important contribution to make and just as it is true in every relationship, they are willing to open up if you are genuinely interested in what they say…and perhaps have more fun in the process.

Adtech: Making sense of the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape

2007-11-09T11:23:00.000-05:00

This year Ad:tech New York was buzzing as it did during pre-dotcom burst years. For those who never attended Ad:tech, it is the event that covers the digital transformation of all media and the traditional business of marketing communications. At the show for me the biggest challenge was to select which workshop to attend and which vendor booth to visit. It was a true representation of how multitasking consumers and marketers are these days. There were simply an overwhelming number of exhibitors and interesting discussions to follow but not enough time to absorb it all. The exhibit hall was full of search engines, ad networks, mobile search and advertising companies, social media optimization and online relationship management tools. It looked like everyone sharpened their tools and even the most familiar names in the digital marketing space were upgrading their services and tools. To me this was an indication that digital marketing space is truly booming.

It was no surprise that the focus was on consumer engagement. To internet or not to internet is no longer an issue in the forefront of the discussions. The Co-CEO of Ogilvy, Carla Hendra mentioned during the panel discussion, “we hire fresh new talent right out of the best art schools and universities. They join the creative team with absolutely no preconceived ideas about how print should integrate with internet or mobile. Their thinking is simply seamless when it comes to thinking which touch-point to integrate into a communication campaign and achieve optimum degree of consumer engagement”.

This concept strongly resonated with me as I was walking the crowded exhibit hall buzzing with discussions on new and innovative techniques to reach and engage consumers out there. As Nate Winstanley, our President states, “we are just skilled story tellers”. The medium is not our real focus but rather we concentrate on telling a compelling story. As I was visiting exhibitor booths, workshop and panel discussions, I kept asking myself “how is this software, technology or medium going to help us better tell a compelling brand story?”. That was just the acid test I applied as I was navigating through an overwhelming sea of new technology.

I am sure we are going to hear more about Ad:tech discussions as clients and internet companies start publishing their predictions for 08. It will be interesting to follow the discussion.

Generational marketing - why should we care?

2007-11-02T09:48:00.000-04:00

Our industry is notorious for coming up with shiny new lingo du jour every year. I was also skeptical when I first began researching about generational marketing. How is this different then demographic and psychographic segmentation? How is it going to enhance my understanding of consumer purchasing behavior? How is it going to help me make brands more relevant to the consumer? These were the few questions running through my mind starting out.

One of the best books I read on the new generation of consumers was titled "growing up digital" written by Don Tapscott. This was back in 2000. When I read this book I was a content manager for an interactive television channel dedicated to kids ages 5 -14. One of the biggest nuggets of wisdom I got from that book was that the kids these days come into a household with wi-fi internet access and mobile phones just as our generation was born into a household with microwave oven and cable tv. Internet is a non-issue for them.

As these kids grow up, become consumers with their own coined segment, the "Millennials", they start to exhibit their own distinct consumer behavioral patterns. They are media multitaskers. They have low tolerance to advertising speak. But most importantly, they are independent thinkers with influencing power on incredible array of products and services. My 13 year old son is skeptical of any credit card commercial. He scrutinizes car commercials on warranty or standard features. He is definitely a go-to person for me for any major purchase. Why? I want his opinion, I value the perspective he brings to our decision making. It is no joke!

This is just a vivid example of how generational marketing (or segmenting) works in real life.

"Dear Ms. marketer, if you want my business (I am a tale-end Boomer), you better impress my Millennial son first. "

As a marketer, I am approaching marketing challenges landing on my desk from this perspective now.

Please click below to read the related interview published on Business West
http://www.businesswest.com/details.asp?id=1315

I wish I had worked on that campaign

2007-10-02T09:46:00.000-04:00

Us advertising agency folk are a strange bunch. Ordinarily we are in an intense competition with each other. But once in a while someone comes up with a campaign and we can't help but admit that we wish we were part of it even if it means working for the competition. I found myself in that space this week.

When I read about the recent Friendly's Restaurant iScream campaign, I felt exactly that. The campaign was put together by Valassis, an integrated marketing shop out of Michigan. According to the MediaPost article I read, the campaign integrated all the bells and whistles of Web 2.o and traditional TV, direct mail, online as well as guerilla marketing tactics such as, mobile, t-shirts and merchandising component like table tents.

What struck me about the success of this campaign is that when the idea is a brilliant one, the medium used really fades in the background. This is ideally how it should work out. Customer should be given a seamless brand experience. The ultimate component of such a successful campaign is the degree of relevancy. It does not really matter how "quirky, funny and creative" the agency is or how sophisticated the market research is....at the end of the day when you have a brilliant and compelling creative idea and you are able to integrate all the tools seamlessly, your customer awards you by engaging with your brand, becoming part of that brand universe and purchasing your product/service. And when you have brand engagement and purchase together you have brand loyalty and business growth.

A very happy nirvana for all!

Why should we all participate more online surveys?

2007-09-24T15:38:00.000-04:00

Recently we conducted an online survey to understand the world of our client counterparts. It was a very short survey and once the participant answered all eight questions they could see how everyone else responded. As a busy marketing professional I can understand why people hit the delete button way too quickly. However, there are some compelling reasons why we should all participate in more of these surveys.

"Been there done that" trap: It is all too easy to get in this frame of mind where we think it has all been done before, the question has been asked, the most profound answer has been given and we just don't have any nugget of wisdom to offer on any given subject. The fact is, in an environment of constant change the only way to stay abreast of the new trends is to have the patience and freshness of mind to ask and re-ask the same question and each time the question is asked a new facet is revealed. So don't be afraid to answer the same questions because you might just come across a new revelation.

"Yawn! This is just a marketing tool" trap: Us marketers are all on the same boat and we utilize the same tools. Of course surveys are marketing tools and we use it for the same purpose as our client counterpart uses it to build a relationship with his/her customer. However, creativity and marketing guspa add to the mix in interpreting the survey results is what sets apart the complacent from the brilliant marketer. Let's face it, we all work with the same 26 letters in the alphabet yet some of us go to Tuscany for a month for vacation and others take road trips.

More participation means a fresh outlook: Go ahead, give yourself a break and participate in more surveys, discussions, message boards...even if it means you will just be getting a confirmation of your existing point of view. At least you will be given signs of life. We can all use more ways to engage in a dialog with our peers and put each others' feet onto the fire just to see if an idea has legs.

So, next time you receive a survey from your trusted communication partner please, please, please take the time to answer. You might just benefit in ways you may not have anticipated.

Until next time....arrivederci!

No move above the line - below the line

2007-09-17T11:14:00.000-04:00

As I am pondering over the recent marketing trends survey we conducted for the agency, I realize that clients are no longer considering promotion as a below the line vehicle. It is all about consumer engagement. If the brand enjoys a solid awareness level, running a fully integrating promotion campaign can only enhance the level of engagement with that brand.

There was a time when as branding champions, we used to tell our clients not to rely too heavily on promotions fearing that it will erode the brand equity. But we now live in the day of internet. Internet is considered as one of the major promotions vehicles out there after good old direct mail, and unlike direct mail it yields nicely to enhanced imaging as well as up to the moment tracking.

I notice increasingly successful marketing campaigns out there that utilize promotion as major branding component. This tells me we should no longer look at promotion as a branding vehicle with considerable limitations but rather a essential part of the integrated marketing plan with its own brand engagement advantages. As marketers I see our main challenge is still to align each vehicle according to its functionality within the campaign. Of course, as always, it is the creative big idea that can offer the consumer a seamless brand experience despite any limitations of campaign elements.

Phew…it is even a mouthful to say at loud!

2006-11-03T17:09:00.000-05:00

Hello to all you Bloggers out there!

Just like any other blogging novice I have no idea what I am doing. Over the years I have been collecting tons of quotes, book notes, thoughts, chatter and discussion notes about branding, advertising and communication. I just want to collect them all in one place, share them with other branding enthusiasts and hopefully foster new ideas. After 17 years in marketing and advertising space I find my personal and professional identity merging into one and almost like the pregnancy experience I am feeling the anticipation of a book or a workshop content about all this material some day soon.

At the initial phases of the discussion I am going to try to decipher my own personal Brand's DNA. So I welcome suggestions, links, ideas, strategies, tactic everyone else have been implementing in establishing their own Brand. I foresee the discussion to slowly progress from personal brand to our relationship with brands.

It should be fun, stimulating and rewarding discussion, so join in!