Marketing in Real Life

Wait, when did I become the "slow down" guy? Fast, not flawless. Get shit done. Ship it. Sell it.  All common startup expressions. And I love them all. It's why I began working at startups and something I always prided myself on before I even entered the startup world.  So, why do I feel like I've become the guy who keeps saying "can we just slow down a little?" Other than simply getting older and grayer (I mean more experienced), here are three reasons I've been pumping the brakes a little.  Some things need to simmer to be properly cooked: discuss over coffee, have a conversation without a decision, really listen, think bigger or wider. Big time customers expect more: whether you've officially crossed the chasm or not, when you get those awesome logos that your sales team loves it means you need to treat  them like the enterprises that they are. They didn't buy you because you're a startup, they bought from you to solve a pr...

I’ve been selling a lot lately…  not software or services but things like getting in the car, going to bed, or eating a vegetable.  Clearly I have a two year old. And in thinking about what works three universally applicable lessons have come to the top: Think about your audience:  Tell people why it’s good for them, not why it’s good for you… they don’t care. Speak clearly: There’s no faster way to have a bad interaction than by not being clear about what you are offering and what is expected in return. Once the deal is done, stop talking:   There is no faster way to derail a decision than by introducing another option, take the victory and move on. Are you making things harder by being unclear?

Throughout my career I have never really had anyone telling me exactly what to do, so I have paved my own way and set goals that I thought were important. And at times I have valued my work more than others for one reason: I was never told what I should try to achieve and never forced an answer to the question. As a brash young marketer I always felt like I knew the best way and it didn’t matter what anyone else thought. But now I know that I needed to fight for more clear direction from my managers… and with direction I would have been happier and more effective. Simply put, good management provides direction that creates: - Alignment between your activities and the company’s goals - Agreed upon, clear check in points to measure success and determine if you are on the right path - Clear value of your work to the organization if/when you want to be promoted or need other people’s time - Room to breathe and be creative within a larger framework for success; and - A sense ...

As someone who talks and writes and thinks about social media a lot nothing makes my blood boil quite like people saying that Facebook doesn't work for B2Bs. I know people talk about Linkedin being better but I really haven't seen it myself (send me any successes if you have them - I'm willing to be convinced). The thing is that social media is blurring the lines between personal and professional and people buy from people regardless of the industry. So unless your are selling on price alone you can use Facebook to showcas your expertise, capture leads, and give people a sense of what it's like to business with you. Sure, lots of B2Bs struggle with Facebook, but that is because they aren't doing it well. And that's user error, not platform failure.

We've been interviewing lots of people at my job lately and I often wonder if we all over think the process. We look for specific skills. We scour resumes for companies we admire. We ask thoughtful questions and hope for great responses. But are we really using the right measuring sticks? I'm not so sure. We all spend so much time with our co-workers - more than with our families - and yet we often use impersonal methods for evaluating job candidates. The truth is that you know pretty quickly if someone is close to right. If the conversation is easy, enthusiastic, and enjoyable and they have a background close to what you need the details can always be taught. I mean, how many skills truly transfer directly from one company to another? So, my advice is to not think so hard. You know when a candidate is right. And that may mean placing more value on the personal connection than the resume.

Right now I am in the process of wrapping up both buying and selling a house.  As most people who have gone through this process can attest, it’s not easy and you often feel pretty helpless.  For me, it was even harder as a new age marketer who can’t stop thinking about things like inbound strategies, calls to action, and real-time insights.   Here are three relatively simple things that realtors could do to make the process easier and more effective for themselves and their clients. Narrow the Calls to Action.   As marketers, we know that too many choices are a bad thing.  As are calls to action that don’t have a reason to act attached. Yet every day I walked outside of my front door to a “For Sale” sign with five calls to action and no reason to choose one or the other.  A phone number for my realtor.  A phone number and a web site for my realtor’s office.  A phone number for my realtor’s partner. And finally the URL for a dedicated websi...

One of my big pet peeves is when men and women who work within a company insist on using terms that de-humanize the people on the other end of the product or service they offer. I'm not saying that they use demeaning terms, but they choose words that make it okay to treat your best customers as abstract numbers or demographics. In the world of market research, the term most often applied to people like you and I who take surveys is "respondents." It's okay to give respondents a 30 minute questionnaire to complete. It's okay to ask respondents to go though numerous and repetitive choice sets. It's okay to speak to respondents in formal, stilted language. But would you do any of that to your college roommate? Your grandmother? Your child? Your neighbor? Probably not. In fact, most researchers cringe at the idea of even testing their own questionnaires. So before you put a new research study or product implementation or marketing campaign into the world...

This year was my first visit to SXSW Interactive, the annual tech and social media geek convention (wait, is it marketed differently than this?) in Austin, Texas that overlaps with an amazing film and equally amazing festival. I have been to a lot of conferences in the past ten years, but this one was definitely less about the presentation content (although some of that was good too) and more about the people you meet and the conversations you have. Part of team’s mission at “South By,” as it’s known among the SXSW veterans, was to interview interesting people on the state of social media marketing and email marketing for small businesses. We got lots of great interviews, but here are 4 of my favorites. Enjoy!  (I have more content related summaries on social media marketing and monitoring for small businesses that you can check out on the Constant Contact Blog here , here , and here .)

After spending over 10 years working primarily on the supplier side of the client/supplier relationship it is a very different view I am experiencing now. Especially as it pertains to working with market research firms, I have three Observations that I feel the need to share and offer as advice to my supplier side friends. 1) Ask questions when you get an RFP, even if you know the business. The fact is that RFPs while well intentioned, can not possibly explain the entire situation that has led to a market research project. Amd even more importantly, they are not always as fully thought out as suppliers might assume. By asking a few questions before you write a proposal you are investing in you chance to win, building rapport, making it possible to have creative ideas, and confirming your assumptions. All important pieces to winning and successfully executing a project. 2) Don't show mostly numbers in a qualitative presentation. Honestly, I can't believe this even needs to...

As a blogger, I feel like I have no choice but to write a predictions post for 2011.  Or at least what I hope will happen in 2011! So here are three things I see sitting right here, waiting to happen. 1) Data integration reaches a tipping point:  whether it's the combination of internal and external behavioral data, social media and primary research data, or even just sales and marketing data, it is time for departments to break down the walls and share what they know and work together to make smart decisions based on that data. 2) Real time will become more real. As with the DVR and the touch screen before it, much of the talk about real time data access was years ahead of the reality.  Pushed in part by the real time nature of social media and it's explosion, but also by the true integration between marketing, sales, and support systems, real time is becoming a reality at more and more companies.  And your internal and external customers are beginning to e...

I spent two days this week at the Inbound Marketing Summit and have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it.  As an avid podcast/webcast viewer, I am not sure how much new I learned (except the brilliance of unmarketing’s Scott Stratte n), but as someone who works in the market research, and more broadly professional services industry, I had three big takeaways. 1. As an industry, most marketers in the professional services world are behind the times.  Marketing today needs to not only support sales, but bring in leads and play an active role in engaging buyers, partners, and potential employees.  It is no longer enough to simply put out an e-newsletter, stand in your booth at some conferences, and make up some pretty collateral.  Smart marketers are producing regular sharable content, participating in discussions, and using their position as a company learning post. 2. Corporate marketers are talking about measurement, but not market research.  Granted this was a c...

As a regular buyer of business technology and services I am continually shocked at some of the mistakes made by people trying to sell to me. And while I understand how many of the mistakes happen having done the job and read numerous selling books and white papers on the topic, many of those people I encounter would be far more successful if they made a few minor changes by thinking from the buyer perspective. The truth is that anyone who sells any product or service should spend some time on the buying side and anyone who buys should take a turn selling. Or as I always say to anyone who likes to eat out at restaurants, spend some time waiting tables and you'll quickly learn how to get better service and appreciate the value of the slight over tip. Sticking with the dining out metaphor, here are three tips to make buying and selling easier for everyone: 1. Create a comfortable environment: Remember that your job is not to “sell me something,” it is to help the buyer buy. Th...

In today’s edition of eMarketer there is an article stating that most business to business referrals from social sites are uninterested in products and services. The article, however, goes on to state that visitors from Facebook were most likely to check out a company’s “about” page or blog posts. As a B2B services marketer those are exactly the desired effects of social media that feed our sales process. While it would be great if potential clients saw something we posted on Twitter , LinkedIn , or Facebook and rushed to buy a project from my firm, the reality is that our sales process is not short or direct. Our value proposition is made up of the smarts, personalities, and creativity of our people and our sales cycle can take months (and occasionally years.) Barring the rare immediate project opportunity, our goal is to drive prospects to the elements of our site that let us different ourselves – the blog, the about us, the leadership team, etc. and encourage prospects to contact ...