Photo courtesy of Christian Sann, SCVNGR

By Barbara Bix

To one side of me sat a business development professional from a detective agency. To the other side, was an owner of an eye glass store in a downtown mall that seeks to make his store a “destination”. Both had come to learn about how to use social media to market their businesses. Moreover, the packed ball room was standing room only.

“All star” panel on social media

This morning,WBZ radio hosted a fantastic panel on social media. One of the things that made it fantastic was the all star panel: Anthony Silva (moderator), Paul Gillin, Laura Fitton, Mike Troiano, and Seth Priestbatch (left to right as they sat on the stage).

Their individual and combined knowledge of social media is incredible and the meeting was packed with great soundbites and case examples. In fact, many of these gems were grist for individual blog posts–even for an experienced user of social media.

Social panel about social media

The other thing that made it fantastic is that most of the panel was Q and A–that is a social panel about social media. In fact, it is this short answer format that may have engendered so many great soundbites from the incredibly articulate panelists.

Leveraging the Twitter Stream

Since I do want to return to these soundbites at a later date, I wanted to capture them for posterity. I took my own notes but captured the Twitter Stream as insurance by searching Twitter on the hashtag #wbzbreakfast–and then editing the stream to include the soundbites that most resonated for me.

Soundbites courtesy of the audience

You’ll find some of these hashtags below. I’ll be back in later today to update this post with my notes and to add pics and speaker links. Thank you to WBZ, Anthony Silva, the panelists, the #tag tweeters, and all who attended for making this such a valuable meeting!

motgnarom Tom Morang
#wbzbreakfast @Pistachio listen, learn, care, and serve

Steve Garfield
stevegarfield Steve Garfield
Interesting. RT @Bobbiec: #wbzbreakfast @pgillin “we can’t just be on social media, we need to be interesting”

Matt_Sully Matthew Sullivan ?
By a show of hands, over 90% of the #WBZbreakfast audience heard about the event from radio, the others from #socialmedia
57 minutes ago

ChrisMLindgren
ChrisMLindgren ChrisMLindgren
Be creative @pistachio Bakery in London sends a Tweet when latest item has just come out of oven #WBZbreakfast #HotBlueberrymuffins

Chris Requena
CERequena Chris Requena
#WBZBreakfast @SethPriebatsch: Easier to lead a clean,wholesome life & share everything on facebook than to understand the privacy settings!

Bobbie Carlton
BobbieC Bobbie Carlton
#wbzbreakfast for your information Twitter handles for the panel @Pistachio @miketrap @pgillin @sethpriebatsch
1 hour ago

ChrisMLindgren
ChrisMLindgren ChrisMLindgren
Tying engagement activity to transactions, swipes #WBZbreakfast See Social Sales Exceed Social Traffic marketingcharts.com/direct/social-… #WBZbreakfast

ChrisMLindgren
ChrisMLindgren ChrisMLindgren
On negative feedback: Walking around w/ spinach in teeth; If you don’t know what’s wrong you can’t fix it #WBZbreakfast #Socialmedia
1 hour ago

Whole Foods Dedham
WFM_Dedham Whole Foods Dedham
And @pgillin explains that acknowledging the negative is important because it engages and can head off a crisis #wbzbreakfast #socialmedia

Steve Garfield
stevegarfield Steve Garfield
Right. RT @GrahamSpector There will be #Socialmedia comments you shouldn’t respond to #wbzbreakfast

Bobbie Carlton
BobbieC Bobbie Carlton
#wbzbreakfast @sethpriebatsch shares “never feed the trolls” truism. @Pistachio advocates pixie dust so others will rush to your defense.
1 hour ago

Karen Covey
KarenCovey Karen Covey
ditto! WFM_Dedham Love the cooking analogy! @pistachio explains the ‘mise en place’ you need to be effective with #socialmedia #wbzbreakfast

Kristin Bedard
kristinbedard Kristin Bedard
anonymity is gone, with #socialmedia we’ve returned to accountability. it’s refreshing, healthy. – @pistachio #wbzbreakfast

Graham Spector
GrahamSpector Graham Spector
Good spin on privacy issues. #wbzbreakfast

Chris Requena
CERequena Chris Requena
#WBZBreakfast @pistachio Emotional connections are stronger b/w people than b/w people & brands. Get your customers to connect w/each other!

Meg McDevitt
OhThatMeg Meg McDevitt
Strong emotional connection brand is rare. Get your consumer & brand to connect on an emotional level. #wbzbreakfast

ChrisMLindgren
ChrisMLindgren ChrisMLindgren
Game mechanics as means of engagement in social media #WBZbreakfast

schneidermike
schneidermike schneidermike
Turning the police dept home page into Mafia Wars would be awesome -@sethpriebatsch #WBZbreakfast

ChrisMLindgren
ChrisMLindgren ChrisMLindgren
Social media has made us microprocessors; figure out how you can add value #WBZbreakfast
2 hours ago

Graham Spector

ChrisMLindgren
ChrisMLindgren ChrisMLindgren
Customer is in control; social coming to every desktop; build literacy thruout orgs; #wbzbreakfast at www.cbsboston.com/breakfast

Whole Foods Dedham
WFM_Dedham Whole Foods Dedham
Tidbit from #wbzbreakfast from @pgillin: social media is forcing businesses to react & change. There is no going back.

Christian Sann
csann Christian Sann
I just snapped a pic at Sheraton Boston Hotel. #SCVNGR http://scvn.gr/leJOXk (@sethpriebatsch on a social media panel for #wbzbreakfast. )
2 hours ago

Innovation Nights
MassInno Innovation Nights
#wbzbreakfast @pgillin “social media is a huge global campfire” and “the customer is in control”

rt @miketrap: Social Marketing panel w @Pistachio, @sethpriebatsch @pgillin. Livecast at www.cbsboston.com/breakfast #WBZbreakfast

Additional soundbites that caught my ear

Here are some of the soundbites I scribbled down.  Unfortunately, I didn’t always catch who said what.  But if you were there, please add attribution n the comments:

“You can’t market your way out of bad reviews”

“Build literacy throughout your organization: anyone can screw up” @pistachio

“We add a game layer  on top of the world” @sethpriestbatch

“Get people to meet in the context of your brand” @paulgillin  (?)

In referring to static websites “You were the czar of your content museum” @miketrap

“A negative review legitimizes positive reviews” @paulgillin

“A good measure is when the check (money) is a transaction” @sethpriestbatch

“Give yourself permission to experiment”  @miketrap (?) @priestbatch (?)

“Get involved, Twitter (?) Social Media (?) is hard to master from afar”

Looking to learn how you can use social media to market your business?  View our social media marketing services.

Related posts:

1. Twitter tidbits

Background

This morning, I had the good fortune to attend Building the Future: Opportunities for Energy Innovation and Efficiency hosted by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council at Foley Hoag’s Emerging Enterprise Center. The keynote speaker was Dr. Joan Fitzgerald, Northeastern University Professor and author of Emerald Cities: Urban Sustainability and Development. The other panelists were Cambridge, MA urban planner Iram Farooq, Architect and Autodesk Industry Programs Manager Erin Rae Hoffer, and entrepreneur and developer Kenneth H. Smith. Attorney Adam Wade from Foley Hoag moderated the discussion.

Summary

Drawing on her research, her book, and recent articles, Dr. Fitzgerald pointed to municipal, state, and national governments that have developed smarter greener cities, green manufacturing jobs, or both. If I understood her correctly, she attributed success to a commitment to creating jobs, government subsidies, and favorable public policy/regulation–although there were often other factors present.

Examples of favorable policies included creating demand for green energy through feed in tariffs or portfolio standards, sustainability requirements for new construction and building upgrades, and prohibitions against driving and parking. Examples of subsidies included grants for green manufacturing plants and green energy production, free parking passes, and building retrofits.

Dr. Fitzgerald concluded with several observations. Retaining manufacturing jobs given will be challenging. Business coalitions will need to lead the charge, presumably since they will grasp economic necessity faster than voters. Americans may need to start at the municipal level since national and state regulation seems unlikely.

Smith took a different perspective. He said regulation was not the answer. Pointing out that many of the community-based projects he was developing prior to 2009 stalled with the recession, he said we needed more financing for small projects. He raised several other good points in the discussion that ensued (see bullets below).

Farooq’s presentation clarified why change may need to occur at the local level. For one, locales have different needs. For another, they have different priorities.

A lot of Cambridge’s initiatives focus on seeking solutions that will work in dense urban environments. Examples include technology that takes advantage of wind turbulence rather than unfettered wind energy–and regulations that take into account that the possibility that a neighbor’s building addition may render a building owner’s solar panel useless.

Hoffer demonstrated some of the tools architects and engineers use to ensure that the buildings they design will produce the desired results.

Discussion

One of the exciting things about going to a presentation in the Boston area is that there are often as many experts in the audience as there are on the panels. Knowing this, the Massachusetts Technology Council left plenty of time for discussion. Here are some of the points the audience and panel raised:

• Recapturing manufacturing jobs depends on Americans deciding they will work for lower wages
• We can develop an economy on services
• Proliferation of services is an early warning sign of the end of a great economy
• We need to change the conversation from advocating consumerism to advocating citizenship
• The necessary regulations exist, but they don’t apply to the powerful. A utility can drop a line across a farmer’s land but a powerful senator can stop Cape Wind
• Anyone can sue. What good are regulations when lawsuits can delay actions for years?
• Of course, the US believes in industrial policy. How else did we build yesteryear’s mills and railroads?
• Change will happen when people connect energy policy to their children’s future
• We can’t make people buy US products. Of course, we can. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, contains “Buy America” provisions.
• Is anyone looking at the cost of externalities from events such as the BP malfunction this year?
• The utilities can collect revenues from ratepayers to provide financing
• Why can’t the Boston municipality prohibit cars downtown where we have great public transit?
• Special interests block green initiatives that aren’t in their interest (e.g. utilities/green energy, retailers need for parking/ adding bike paths, etc.)
• Why did everyone drive to the suburbs for a meeting that we could have had downtown? How do you get downtown when connecting transit runs infrequently, except at rush hour?
• We’re building a sustainable food industry on low wages, we should be able to do the same for clean energy

Conclusion

I’ll preface my comments by saying I was not one of the energy experts in the audience. I work as a B2B marketing consultant.

What impressed me was that with so many experts in the room, there were lots of solutions that sounded worth exploring. For every potential obstacle someone raised, someone else cited an example where it didn’t apply.

Listening to the audience, I learned that there are a number of competing entities–none of which wants to yield ground. I also learned that throughout history the US has succeeded in aligning competing interests to accomplish the common good–even when the underlying issues were complex and difficult to parse.

The end goal is achievable but it requires a shared vision of the common good. Arriving at that shared vision will depend on the following steps:

1. Convening experts, like those in the room today, to surface the obstacles and options
2. Gaining deep insights into the electorates’ concerns (one audience member today recommended focusing on the fate of voters’ children and grandchildren)
3. Clearly communicating options that will address those concerns–and consequences of inaction
4. Making the connection for the electorate between current policies and future outcomes, perhaps with the help of data or case examples
5. Putting these messages where voters will see them, consistently and frequently.
6. Developing political candidates who can then “close the deal”

In short, this expert thinks the solution lies in effective marketing. (Of course, “if you have hammer, everything looks like a nail).  Nevertheless, marketing to the American public is much more challenging than it’s been in the past.

Our population is more diverse. So, we will need more marketing messages that appeal to each major segment.

We may need an incremental approach. There is strong competition from well-funded special interests for voters’ share of mind. So, we may need to begin with raising voters’ awareness of how PACs are affecting their long-term interests.

There is also no easy way to reach voters. Gone are the days of the fireside chat, three major TV broadcasters, or even 50 major print publications. Now that there is a proliferation of conventional and online media, voters are harder to reach.

Can we do it? I don’t know, but consumer marketing must be part of the solution. Success will depend on developing a compelling message–and communicating it frequently and consistently where voters will see it. Perhaps social media can aid in the dissemination….

Related posts:

1. Clean energy technology: Building an ecosystem in New England

TopRank used Twitter to promote the poll–and did so on multiple occasions.  Presumably, a lot of people received notice of the poll:  @TopRank has 6061 followers, the update was retweeted 262 times, “liked” by 45, and likely got additional visibility through other social sharing media*.

How Odden attracted responses

Odden followed all the recommended steps to motivate engagement:

1. He posted the poll in a blog that attracts a highly targeted audience–online marketers interested in obtaining high search engine ranks.
2. The post’s topic is highly relevant to the target audience, a group whose success depends upon selecting cost-effective marketing tactics that will elevate their messages above the noise.
3. The post is even more valuable because it promises timely data that is not readily available.
4. Odden heightened readers’ awareness of the challenges they face by asking questions such as “Are social media and content marketing the glue that brings multi-channel marketing together?”, “Is 2011 finally the year for mobile?”, and “Will companies focus on more holistic online marketing?”
5. He also encouraged engagement by soliciting readers’ advice on whether he focused on the right areas.
6. He offered a “Top 10″ list–something all the pundits recommend to engage interest–and delivered by providing a running tally of the poll’s findings.
7. Following best practice, Odden promoted the poll a number of times–which is an important factor in increasing response rates since not everyone responds the first time they get a post.

Calculating success: the response rate and conversion rate

Odden’s stated goal was to get 200 respondents.  At first glance, this seems conservative; however, it is well in line with industry statistics.  Consider the following loose assumptions for demonstration purposes:

• 6000 people received the initial tweet from TopRank when the blog was posted
• Retweeters and Facebook followers average 10 followers (feel free to use your own numbers)
  • 2000 (262 x 10) received the post via retweet
  • 450 (45 x 10) received the post via Facebook
  • 500 saw the post on social bookmarking sites (again, my swag)
  • None of the indirect respondents forwarded the link
  • Twitter follower response rates (assumptions, once again)
    • 5% the first time TopRank tweeted the post
    • 2.5% the second time TopRank tweeted the post
    • 1.25% the third time TopRank tweeted the post
    • 1% response rate from indirect recipients

The logic underlying the assumptions

Most direct response campaigns, of which this is one, anticipate getting response rates of less than 1%, more if the list is as highly targeted as the @TopRank list is.  Direct marketing typically yield low response rates since most people only attend to messages that they see as relevant when they receive them.

Resending messages increases the number of responses because recipients’ views of what is relevant depend on what they are doing at the time.  Nevertheless, each subsequent communication gets a significantly smaller response rate than the one preceding it.

Response rates, however, are not conversion rates.  Here the response rate would be the number of people who clicked through to the poll.  The conversion rate is the number that chose to participate in the poll.

The result of using best practices

Using these assumptions, TopRank would receive 1230 responses (plugged the above assumptions into Excel) and the 232 people that completed the poll would represent a 20% conversion rate of those responses.  That said, the assumptions are just guesses, so feel free to recalculate using your own inputs.

So what’s my point?

What struck me about the response rate is that it is a clear demonstration of how difficult it is to convert others.  Odden is well-known, well-respected, offers high value, and in short, did everything right.  Yet, even he didn’t draw enough responses to perform the cross-tabulations it would require to answer questions about the applicability of his information.

What does this mean for the rest of us who are trying to sell a product or a service?  Here are my thoughts.  We need to:

• Do everything that Lee Odden did
• Find a way to reach many more prospects, all of whom are ideally as qualified as Odden’s are
• We also need to articulate the value of our offer in a number of ways in an attempt to increase the percentage of our highly qualified prospects that will find the messages relevant
• We need to communicate our messages more often than Odden did, which translates into running our campaigns over much longer periods.
• Then, once we achieve the first conversion, we need to do it over again; since unlike Odden, we are selling a product or a service and require more interim conversions than Odden did.

The paradox of search and social media

In short, search and social media can help marketers identify more qualified prospects and accelerate the process, still it’s as challenging as ever to achieve our goal: getting the most qualified prospects to “raise their hands” when they’re ready to buy.  Everyone says that social media is the answer, but what if–no matter how trusted the source is–others still don’t have time to attend to the message?

What are your thoughts about this analysis?  Is it on target?  Does it address the right questions?  Reach the right conclusion?  More important, what are your perspectives about where marketers should spend their resources to elevate their messages and accelerate conversions?

* Numbers on the day I wrote this post.

Make the most of your social media opportunities

Interested in learning how your company can get more value from social media?  Download the social media primer: What’s the best use of social media for your organization?

Related posts:

1. How search and social media will shorten the B2B sales cycle.
2. Will social media increase users’ influence over product development?
3. Social Media Marketing for Job Search
4. Social media adoption: How will marketing spending patterns change?

Press release lead paragraph

“Simmons College’s Department of Health Care Administration launched a new website that will gauge the experiences of Boston-area healthcare users who have their services paid for by public programs. USisUS.net, which stands for the United States is Us, aims to reach out to minority populations and healthcare users who receive aid through programs such as Medicaid, VA, Commonwealth Care and others.  Users of the site can review these comments and ratings about particular health care providers.”

The many faces of Barbara Bix, Managing Principal, BB Marketing Plus

This post discusses my observations from several perspectives including that of a health care marketing consultant, a social media marketing consultant, a user of services, a citizen, and a taxpayer.  So, please join me now as I switch hats and weigh in from each of these roles.

Health care marketing consultant

The topic was also of particular interest to me as a health care marketing consultant.  There’s a lot of debate about what constitutes health care quality.  It’s hard to measure since we’re not widgets.  Each of us comes to our health through a unique combination of genes and behavior–and at different stages of wellness/illness–before health care providers even begin administering care.  For another, most of us don’t have the medical knowledge to assess the relative quality of our treatment regimes or outcomes.

Nevertheless, user perspectives are important; and health care providers have begun to seek them out over the last decade or so.  For one, we’re the only ones who know how we feel.  For another, we are qualified to rate some of the more visible aspects of our care–as well as our overall experience during the care process.

User of services

I see this site as a “Yelp” for government services.  The interesting twist is that citizen reviewers are not only users of the services and prospective users of the services, but also citizens who pay for the services–whether they ultimately use them or not.

As soon as I heard about this concept, my first reaction was, “We need this for our town”.  As a user, I think it’s a great way to hear from trusted citizens about new services of which I might otherwise have not been aware–as well as to get recommendations for which services to use when I have a choice.

Taxpayer

As a taxpayer, I’d find it useful to have information that helps me evaluate our programs and help me determine for which enhancements to advocate.  Today, I read about controversial decisions in the local newspaper and wish I could get a better understanding of the pros and cons from the people these decisions will most affect.  I also love the idea that administrators of those programs have a way to get specific actionable feedback on services without extra effort.

Social media marketing consultant

One of the best ways to develop superior offerings is to collaborate with clients, and prospective clients, to design and then improve the services you deliver.  A frequent “unintended consequence” is that users then feel more engaged and more involved, just because someone sought their feedback.  This engagement often leads to even greater satisfaction.

The magic of social media is that you can so easily, and inexpensively, reach so many of the people you aim to serve, get instant feedback, and have a forum where they can work as a group to refine that feedback.  This aspect is often referred to as the “wisdom of the crowd”.

Bias

Yes, there will be bias.  You’re most likely only to hear from those who are “high responders”, extremely satisfied, or extremely dissatisfied.  The hope is that, as with many other social media, “the crowd” keeps the conversation centered and useful.  I know that when I’m the user, I look to the crowd for overall sentiment, and to individual reviewers’ comments only for the details that they will bring to my attention.

Your perspectives, please

What’s your take?  Have you used any programs that evaluate public services?  If so, what value have you derived?  What reservations do you have?  What feedback do you have for USisus.net as they start to spread the word?

Find out how to make the most of your social media opportunities

Interested in learning more about how social media can add value to your organization?  Download the social media primer.

Related posts:

1. Social media works—more than 600 attend Boston health care conference
2. Will social media increase users’ influence over product development?
3. Health care social media is in its infancy says panel
4. Health care reform: people, processes, data, oh my!

B2B transactions are “bet the company” decisions

As I was reading, however, it occurred to me that the characteristics that both Paul and I ascribe to B2B businesses may be a function of scale and complexity, rather than just the target audience.  After all, most consumer acquisitions are not “bet the company decisions”.  Notable exceptions include real estate, new jobs, mates, and the most major of surgeries.  In each of these situations, individuals’ buying behavior is more like that of businesses than consumers.

Nevertheless, I still think the points that Paul outlines are what distinguishes most B2B from most B2C transactions.  Even those B2B purchases that are not “bet the company” decisions, occur in the spotlight, are ones for which the buyer is held accountable by others, and are therefore “bet the job” decisions.

Long sales cycles are expensive

Of the points Paul mentioned, my own focus as a B2B marketing consultant has always been on shortening the sales cycle.  As he notes, B2B sales cycles stretch out because success depends on addressing the needs of multiple people at multiples stages of the buying process, each of which have different priorities.

Long sales cycles are expensive.  Ironically, any time that salespeople spend on prospecting for new business, building relationships, pointing out the benefits of the company’s wares, or ensuring that each stakeholder gets satisfactory answers to the questions she or he has is relatively unproductive.  The company only makes money when its salespeople are closing deals or negotiating their terms.  Any time spent on the activities leading up to a sale has a huge opportunity cost, because that’s time that the salesperson isn’t closing other deals.

Advance preparation is the secret to accelerating the sale

Advance preparation is the secret to shortening the sales cycle.  Salespeople tend to only have messages for a few of the audiences that they need to reach.  Because they are under pressure to close the transaction, salespeople don’t have the time it takes to research and prepare the nuanced responses that others who influence the buying decision often require.  Consequently, their communications are not as powerful as they could be–and the sales cycle stretches out as prospects continue to shop.

This is where B2B marketers, and B2B marketing consultants like me, make their greatest contribution.  Our job is to anticipate who will be involved in the buying process, what they’ll need at each stage, and how they prefer that the company meet these needs–with the goal of developing targeted communications and tools well before Sales needs them.

B2B marketers are at a disadvantage

Unfortunately, we can’t take advantage of many of the tools that B2C marketers have at their disposal.  They get reams of data gathered through surveys and via scanners at the point-of purchase.  They also have many media in which they can cost-effectively place highly-targeted ads.

Our audiences are smaller and buy less frequently.  They are also less homogenous both due to the greater complexity of the B2B buying decision–and because our total available markets aren’t generally large enough to divide into sizable segments.

It’s, therefore, hard for us to get relevant survey data.  For one, it’s hard to capture the nuances of complex buying decisions in a survey that’s limited to forced choice answers.  For another, there aren’t enough of us, targeting any given market segment, to justify third-party investments in any but the most general survey data.

Historically, our best alternative, for getting at the heart of the buying process, has been to gather information from decision makers through one-to-one interviews, or in small groups.  Doing so requires special skills to avoid predetermining the answers by the way we pose our questions.  Moreover, because the available data collection methods were expensive, we could only speak with relatively small samples of the population.

From a communications perspective, we’ve never had a cost-effective media.  As Paul notes, our goal is to reach multiple audiences that buy relatively infrequently–and whose needs vary depending on where they are in the buying process.  If we purchase spots in broadcast media, we’re paying to reach too many people we don’t care about.  On the other hand, direct marketing, which allows for more targeted messaging is also expensive–since we still don’t know which prospects will be receptive to our messages at any point in time.

Search and social media promise to be a tremendous boon

Search and social media have the potential to make us both more efficient and more cost-effective.  They promise to improve both the quality and quantity of the information we can obtain.

By searching on germane keywords, we can find out what prospects have to say, unaided, on relevant topics.  This information will add value, since discussants are likely speaking about what matters to them– rather than just responding to questions about the dimensions that we think to ask about.  Search and social media also provide access to the crowd, decreasing our reliance on the insights of a few available individuals.

The news is even better from a communications perspective.  Organic search and pay per click dramatically reduce our costs.  One is free and the other only requires us to pay for audiences that are likely receptive to our messages.  We also can reach members of our target audience through social media via the online peer groups in which they participate or the lists members make of their peers using tools such as Listorious.

The availability of better tools is a double-edged sword

The good news is that search and social media have made getting the right message to the right person at the right time easier and less expensive than ever–and should enable us to significantly shrink the sales cycle.  The bad news is that customers will be less forgiving of companies whose marketing messages still  do not anticipate and address their needs.

Thinking about using social media? Learn how to make the most of your social media investments.

Related posts:

1. Social media for B2B Marketers via Paul Gillin
2. Shorten the sales cycle: one marketing message at a time
3. The search and social media paradox
4. Shorten the sales cycle next year: Year end marketing planning

Typical topics include content strategy, search engine optimization (SEO), social media, inbound marketing, marketing automation, and of course email marketing.  Spending in all of these areas is up–often at the expense of conventional advertising and PR.

There are several trends driving this transition.  One is that prospects are moving online so the marketers that wish to reach them must also move online.  Another is that advances in marketing technology have made it relatively easy for non-professionals to produce content that attracts and engages their audiences.

A third is that many online marketing programs are direct marketing initiatives and therefore highly measurable–even more so now that respondents leave digital footprints in their wake.  A fourth is that in a down economy, companies are more concerned about short term revenue.  This causes them to focus more on demand generation and less on longer term strategies such as branding.

If content is king, will marketing organizations change to serve the new master?

In attending these conferences, one of the things that has struck me is that most of the marketing strategies under discussion require generating a lot of content–a task which many companies have historically outsourced to advertising and PR agencies or independent copywriters.  So, this has made me wonder whether organizations, particularly small organizations, are restructuring to make the most of their marketing resources.

That is, now that most of the marketing resources are going to content production and analytics–are companies retaining these functions in house?  And, if so, are these businesses outsourcing marketing strategy work–since it tends to be front-loaded and then intermittent–and requires far fewer resources on an ongoing basis in today’s digital world?

What are you seeing at your company and those companies that you serve?

Related posts:

1. Social media: Insights from an in-house specialist
2. Digital marketing: How B2B marketers can use it to pick the best marketing strategies
3. B2B marketing insights and tips compliments of MarketingProfs
4. Digital marketing: How B2B marketers can use it to improve their performance against goals

B2B digital marketing best practices

Over two jam-packed days, we heard about best practices in areas like search engine optimization (SEO), content strategy, lead generation and lead nurturing, and social media.  We learned about what’s worked, what hasn’t, and why from Marketing VPs that have been there, tried that.

Now, a day later, I’m summing up my notes and thought I’d share some of what I learned with those of you who couldn’t get away.  These insights just a sampling of all I took away from this great conference.

Three insights + three tips

For each session I attended you’ll find three things I found interesting and three tips I found useful.  The biggest “aha” was that sometimes the things that were the most interesting were also the things that should have been obvious…

“Higher Conversions, Better ROI: Advanced Landing Pages that Improve Campaign ROI” with Anna Talerico, Scott Brandt, and Michael Burgis.

Interesting:

• The ability to customize landing pages to specific targets can dramatically boost conversions.
• Having an automated tool makes customization much easier (and appears to be a “must” if you want to use your website for lead gen)
• Match expectations:  ensure that landing page uses images and phrases consistent with the invitation to click through

Tips:

• Want visitors to click through?  Offer reports on market trends or price quotes
• Want to ensure prompt follow up?  Pull leads that Sales hasn’t called (within a pre-specified time
• Add social icons to your “thank you” page to encourage further interaction

“Content SEO- Best Practices and What to Avoid” with Lee Odden and Jiyan Wei

Note: Due to a previous commitment, I only caught the last half hour of this session.

Interesting:

• Google’s webmaster tools/blog is a treasure trove of useful information
• There’s no tool yet that enables you to look up social keyword usage/trends
• Google is starting to penalize sites with long load times

Tips:

• Want to increase the chances that Google will index all your pages?  Submit your HTML and XML site maps to Google directly.
• Do you syndicate your content?  Let Google know which page is original to avoid penalties
• Need a proxy for a social keyword tool? Look at tag clouds on relevant blogs and social bookmarking sites.

“Drowning in Data, Starved for Knowledge?” with Devyani Sadh, PhD

Note: The recommendations offered in this session appear to require consultants, several tightly integrated software packages and teams of data analysts to implement and therefore may be beyond the reach of most small companies.

Interesting:

• Marketing 101 rules still apply, but analytics are key to concentrating your firepower where it will have the greatest impact.
• Larger companies that fail to invest in these resources may find themselves at a competitive disadvantage
• Where are the dashboards that will make the data presented in this session useful to the less technical users of the data?

Tips:

• Strategy before tactics:  Identify your target market and focus on them because there aren’t enough resources to do everything.  Then don’t forget retention which is far more profitable than acquisition.
• Critical success factors:  objectives and a plan, database strategy, metrics strategy, data mining strategy, integration strategy (of various online systems and of online and other data)
• Data sources in order of priority: customer contact data, preferred means and frequency of contact, purchase history, web transaction history, third-party demographic data (e.g. D&B), Campaign responses, survey data

“Blogging for Business Roundtable” with Galen DeYoung

Since this was a Q and A session, I’ve just included tips:

Tips:

• Use WordPress as your blogging platform because it has the most plugins
• Recommended WordPress plug ins:  All in One SEO Pack, Sexy bookmarks, Robots Meta
• Use Google URL Builder to help you track analytics that are otherwise lost when you use URL shortening tools

“Unleash the Power of Content to Engage Your Prospects” with Stephanie Tilton, Michele Linn, Amy Black, Pam O’Neal

Interesting:

• People forget to be interested in you, you need to remind them (sad, but true)
• Your content strategy needs to outline goals at every stage of the buying process and content that will help you achieve those goals.
• Content attracts more qualified leads, because searchers are often in “shopping” mode

Tips:

• Add “best practices” to your case studies
• Teach your sales people how to write LinkedIn profiles that sell and use SlideShare to embed your sales presentations in their profiles
• Update the offers on your blog post

“How B2B Marketers are Using Mobile Marketing to Increase Revenue” with  Chris Koch, Bob Gold, Jeannine Rossignol, and Dawn Cochran

Interesting:

• Shoots off plants have a better chance of surviving than their seeds do.  The success of mobile apps depends on branding done in other spheres.  Self-contained apps are not likely to succeed.
• Your app needs to work on all phones since even the company with the largest share only has a small percentage of the market.
• Tools now exist to port applications built on one platform to another, although additional development work is still needed.

Tips:

• Opt-in is mandatory.  People are very protective of what they allow on their phones.
• Provide Sales with mobile versions of all sales aids for easy access.  Make everything printable to a queue so that they can easily obtain hard copies when needed.
• Want to build a community?  Use mobile because it’s available 24 x 7.

“Six Pixels of Separation – How B2B Connects In a Connected World” with Mitch Joel

Interesting:

• Google bought YouTube for its community
• 20% of searches have never been done before (opportunity for you to “claim” those terms!)
• The average Canadian spends 16 hours/month on YouTube and the average segment is just 4 minutes (American stats are comparable or higher)

Tips:

• Become active in communities where your target audience lives
• Publish or Perish
• Invest heavily in Search

“Websites that Convert More Customers” with David Reske and Jay Kramer

Interesting:

• Many of the pages the speakers presented were dense with text, consistent with their recommendation to ensure you have a lot of content
• Usability /Navigability is key
• Sepaton, a provider of high-speed data backup solutions,  reminds visitors of its value proposition with flash images of trains, runners, and speedboats.

Tips:

• Ensure that it’s obvious what problem you solve on every page you publish
• Consider integrating what others are saying about you in social media on your site so visitors can validate your claims
• Include a call for action on every page

Now, here’s the irony.  You take two days out of your busy schedule to attend a conference–and then come back with many more things to add to the “to do” list.

Of course, the hope is that they’ll pay for themselves over time–which I believe they will.  Thanks  to all the folks at Marketing Profs for a great conference!  Looking forward to next year.

Added 5/10/10

One reader asked for more clarification/examples.  Please see below.  If you require additional clarification, please let me know.

1. An automated tool for landing pages is helpful because many companies end up adding or customizing multiple landing pages each day.

2. The speaker that mentioned that  “shoots off trees do better than seeds” referenced Dragon as an example of an application that’s already branded and would benefit from a mobile extension.

Related posts:

1. Internet Marketing Tips: A Marketing Consultant’s Perspective
2. Social media: Insights from an in-house specialist
3. Will marketing consultants and agencies switch places with in-house staff in a digital world?
4. Inbound marketing starts with deep customer insights

This is perhaps the main reason I was looking forward to Paul Gillin’s breakfast seminar at the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council last week. The other reason is that Paul has an uncanny ability to connect the dots in ways that add new meaning to any topic that he addresses.

B2B Marketing differs from B2C marketing

Paul distinguished between B2B marketing and B2C marketing by noting that because B2B purchases are often bigger, more complex, and ultimately “bet the company” decisions.  Therefore, the focus is on value, and then service and support.

Most buyers have a rigorous process for ascertaining value because they know that they will have to live with their decisions for a long time.   This process includes seeking expert advice.

Winning depends on influencing the experts

As validated by a 2008 Marketing Research study that Paul cites, the experts they rely on include employees who have experience with the product or vendor, analysts, and peers in that order.  Although the decision makers don’t ignore vendors’ marketing materials, personal recommendations carry much greater authority.

Winning therefore depends on building relationships with the experts–and those that influence them.  Today, much of that influence is happening through social media, so that’s where vendors need to be.

Strategies for determining who is influential and what interests them

Paul outlined a number of strategies for figuring out who wields the most social influence and what will engage them.  He recommended turning to peer validation sites such as Technorati to identify candidates and then looking to sources such as presence in the mainstream media, traffic rank, number of inbound links, Hubspot’s website and Twitter graders, and the number and quality of Twitter followers and LinkedIn connections to assess each individual’s level of influence. To learn what interests them most, Paul suggested checking their blog rolls and tag clouds.

It’s about engagement, not merely circulation

As Paul points out, it’s all about engagement, not merely circulation.  Once you’ve identified whom you need to reach you’ll want to treat them like reporters and reach out to them with news that they’ll find interesting.

Nevertheless, it’s important to remember that they’re not the reporters of old–and therefore will have different questions and concerns.  Paul provided a number of examples of engineers that blogged on their technical specialties, CEOs that blog about the issues that face their organization, and others who are passionate about the niches they cover.

Case studies, tips, and more!

Then there were case studies to illustrate each point.  Paul showed examples of how companies used social media to attract attention, save money, get rid of excess inventory, and generate revenues.  He also discussed which social media tactics work best at each stage of the sales cycle.  It will come as no surprise to readers of his earlier book The New Influencers that blogging remains a favorite.

Next were tips for would-be publishers.  Chief among them was the importance of having clear business goals and a strategy for achieving them–at every stage of the sales cycle.  Paul noted that he feels that small business can really excel at social media because they know their niche, are nimble, and are less likely to get caught up in politics.

Another important piece of advice was to “fish where the fish are”.  With Twitter and posts on group discussions linking to blogs–and Facebook’s new “Like” button–the walls around each platform are continuing to come down.

Find out where your audiences congregate and go there to communicate.  Answer questions on LinkedIn.  Post presentations on SlideShare.  Then, you can link back to your site so the engaged can learn more about you and your company.

Finally, recycle and extend.  The same content can serve as a foundation for a blog, a podcast, and even a video.  You can reference it in a LinkedIn group on Twitter or in a comment on someone else’s post.

Read the book

Lots of good advice–but this blog post is just a teaser.  To get the full scoop, you’ll need to wait for the book–due out next January.  For a sneak preview, see Paul’s slideshow entitled B-to-B Social Media–Really.

Get the social media primer

In the meantime, find out how your company can derive the greatest value from social media.  Download the primer: Social media:  Creating value for you and your prospects.

Related posts:

1. How search and social media will shorten the B2B sales cycle.
2. Social Media Marketing for Job Search
3. Social media adoption: How will marketing spending patterns change?
4. Social Media Overload–How to make sense of it all

Google Buzz users “organize” to advocate for new features within days of product launch

Google announced Google Buzz earlier this week.  Today, Mashable reported that it had received “just shy of 500 responses” within several hours of  asking followers: “What features would you like to see in Google Buzz?”.

Just think about it.  This is an incredibly inexpensive way to capture market reaction and present supporting evidence to a vendor you’re trying to influence.  Let’s look at two alternatives.

Alternatives for capturing market response to a new product

Before social media, users desiring to influence product development may have chosen to conduct a survey by mail, email, or phone.  To  do so, they’d need to know who had experience with the product and how to reach them.  Of these alternatives, only email has the potential to promise rapid turnaround time.  Nevertheless,  it would be difficult to obtain a large enough list to get this high a response rate.  It also would have taken considerable time and effort to assemble the list and use it to get the message out.

Another alternative would have been to use some sort of broadcast media to get the message out.  This would have obviated the need to get names, but broadcast media–such as print, radio and TV advertising– is generally expensive for that very reason.  Even placements in highly targeted publications are rarely free.

Will blogs that can speak for many succeed in influencing product development?

Using a blog to find out what others want–and letting the world know seems an awfully effective way to influence product developers.  I know that developing a blog capable of attracting 500 responses isn’t free either.  It takes a lot of work to build a following large enough to draw that many responses.   Moreover, only a small percentage of readers of any post tend to actively contribute; and not every follower reads every post.

Still, using a blog to rally support for new features is a lot quicker and cheaper way to influence product developers than the alternatives–and pretty cool.

How do you think Google Buzz will respond?

Related posts:

1. New social media site invites users to review public health care services
2. The search and social media paradox
3. Is social media an oxymoron?
4. How search and social media will shorten the B2B sales cycle.

My questions appear in bold followed by his answers.  Here’s what he had to say:

Why did PTC create your position?

Twelve to eighteen months ago, the company’s senior marketing executives realized that conversations happen online whether or not PTC participates–and determined the company needed to take a more active role.  They considered various approaches but ultimately decided they needed a full-time resource.  For one thing, PTC is a large organization with almost $1 billion in revenues. For another, it was clear that social media was here to stay.

What does PTC hope you’ll achieve?

Better engagement with customers.  People that participate online tend to be more engaged than those that don’t.

Engagement is the name of the game.  Engagement equals a valuable brand.  Valuable brands attract more customers.

My job is helping PTC marketers determine where to spend time and how to spend it.  The key is figuring out how to create and promote good content.  If you pump out seven blogs in a week, you run the risk of overwhelming your audience.

How does your company view social media complementing other initiatives?

There are several ways.  For one, social media will augment other marketing activities.

Because of the nature of social media, perhaps it will reduce spend.  I use the word “perhaps” intentionally as it will only reduce costs if we can get more data for less money.

Social media can also help you get better qualified leads.  At a recent Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council meeting, Amy Black from Kadient said something along the lines of “A discussion through social media beats a cold call every day.”  If you do something that causes someone to take action–and let you know they’re interested–that’s better than pursuing them.

Today, the focus is on marketing.  In the future, my personal hope is that the entire corporation will incorporate social media into their operations.

What are your primary responsibilities as Director of Social Media Marketing?

My primary responsibility is to help the company leverage social media in its marketing efforts.  I consult with marketers about how they can integrate social media into campaigns they are planning, and how they can put more power behind existing programs.

I also monitor social communications, “separating the signal from the noise”, to identify opportunities for PTC to take a more active role.  For example, I look for mentions of PTC, our products, and keywords, such as “PLM software” (product lifecycle management) that relate to our business.

Because we’re a global company, I also determine what tools to use in other countries by reviewing third-party research, interviewing local marketing experts, and traveling to other countries to learn more about what people are using there. Different cultures consume information in different ways.  For example, some countries, such as Germany, place a different value on face-to-face conversations than others.  If online activity doesn’t influence the conversation, then it doesn’t make sense to invest heavily in social media in those places.

What listening tools are you using?

I’m glad you asked that, because listening is so important.  We use a number of free tools such as Twitter’s advanced search, BackTweets (which effectively reverses “the shorten URL process” to find terms that were in the original URL but are no longer visible), Social Mention, and OMGILI (an aggregator that displays results visually).  We also use BoardTracker to search discussion boards.

In addition, it’s important to search on sites that are specific to your industry–and look through the sites themselves.  For example, I bookmark PLM–and CAD-related websites and then enter my keywords in their search bars.

We listen to traffic on three large networks:  Facebook, Linked In and Twitter; because that’s where audiences have conversations about business–or blur the line between business and personal.  When it comes to Twitter, my main interest is the links that people share.

You need to use a suite of tools.  You can’t rely on a single tool, because none of them do everything. You also need to accept that, initially, you will get overwhelmed–but you need to get over it.  You can refine your process over time–and use aggregators like Social Mention.

You want to get a rough sense of where things are happening.  If you record all the mentions of your search terms, you’ll go batty.

You just want to understand where the conversation is happening, what people are saying about you:  the questions they have, the tips they offer others, how they feel about you) and the media they use (audio, visual, file exchanges), etc.  If we can answer those questions, then we know where to focus our time, what content we are seeking, and how to deliver it.

I also should add that not all the information we get is free.  Our PR agency uses a third-party tool to produce a thick report of all the times that our company gets mentioned and nice-looking graphs.

We pay for this service to leverage our time.  They search many sites (both relevant and less relevant); and we use this data to understand trends, such as where certain types of conversations are happening, and the general content of those conversations (such as the media they use, as mentioned previously).

Where are you focusing your initial efforts and why?

We are listening to hear where the conversations happen so we know where and how to engage: what channels to use, what content to create, who to follow, what media to use.  I’m also teaching the corporation how to engage with social media.

How will PTC know if you’re successful?

The first indication will be 1.0 metrics such as page views over time and unique visitors. Moving forward, though, you need to change what you measure, and measure what you change.

To bridge the gap to 2.0 metrics, we’ll look at better forms of engagement (such as the ratio of comments to posts to measure how deep the conversation is and average unique comment per post that tells you how many people you’ve engaged).

Then, there are intermediary measures.  For example, Facebook now allows users who won’t comment to just click to indicate that they “like” a particular post.

Initially, you’ll want to look at the aggregate, rather than the specific.  There are no widely agreed-upon metrics that I’ve found — but since everything is online, it’s still easier to measure the ROI of social media than the ROI of a billboard.

What’s been the biggest surprise in your new role?

Although there is a general awareness of social media, inside our company, it is very new to most people and initially, they weren’t clear as to how to apply it in their day-to-day marketing efforts. As I’ve dug into this role, I’ve learned that this is not uncommon amongst B2B companies.  Social media is so new that there is a lot of education needed inside a company to aid adoption.

Why do you think that is?

The adoption of online social networking was very rapid, likely attributable to Facebook (and others).  Since Facebook is primarily seen as a casual or truly social site (as in, non-professional), I think people associated it with kids and socializing.  They likely extended this thinking into other forms of online social networking.  However, Facebook is just one form of online social networking.

Other forms of social networking (online and offline) exist, too – for example, moving into a new neighborhood and asking for a good plumber – that’s an example of and ‘old fashioned’ offline social network.  But the social mores and rules are the same.

In addition, some people may have tried something small in one or two social arenas (for example, purchasing ads or trying a reach-out campaign), and may not have gotten the results they were seeking.  In doing so, they may ascribe their less-than-desirable results in one social arena to all social arenas.  For example, I thought that a recent article in the New York Times about how people often base their impressions on a single data point was a great take on this phenomenon.

What’s your largest unanswered question about social media at PTC?

How long until it “pays off”?  By that I mean, “When will I be able to make a stronger correlation between our marketing efforts to stimulate engagement, and its ultimate effect on sales, revenue, and profit?”.

Altimeter produced a report that shows that the more engaged a brand is with customers, the greater their annual revenues are.  Companies that do participate online are more engaged with their customers.

Customer engagement equals a valuable brand.  A valuable brand leads to increased sales.  It also goes without saying that this leads to happier customers.

We’ve covered a lot of ground about your perspectives on social media.  What else should we cover?

I’m glad that you asked about listening platforms earlier.  That’s where it starts.

One of the greatest challenges is getting people to listen before acting.  I wrote a fairly comprehensive strategy from scratch.  You need to figure out what you want to accomplish first. Else, the first time you fail, someone will ask, “Why did you do that?  It doesn’t make sense.”

My own research shows that people who want a social media strategy often want to jump into interaction.  If you don’t know what’s important to your customers, prospects, or users, or where the conversations are happening, how can you have an impact?

I liken this to a cocktail party…You don’t show up at someone’s house and say, “buy my stuff”.  You show up, survey the landscape, and maybe find someone you know.  You listen in on a few conversations before you add a comment or two.  As the evening progresses, in addition to adding comments into conversations, you strike up your own conversation.  Before the night is over, people are joining your conversations and looking to you for what you have to say.

Online social networking and the use of social media is similar.  Starting by listening and offering comments is a better bet than jumping into a sales pitch or a “go look at our stuff” mentality with respect to a web presence.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I love my job.  I appreciate that PTC gave me this opportunity and admire the company for being so forward thinking.

Also, I’d be remiss to talk about social media and not provide people additional ways to find me online.  My Twitter ID is abelniak (@abelniak ; http://www.twitter.com/abelniak), and my blog address is http://www.SubjectivelySpeaking.net

Hear more from Alan this Thursday morning when he’ll be speaking on Social Media: What’s In It For You? in Cambridge, MA at a NEDMA event.  Click here to learn more about concrete steps you can take to succeed with Social media marketing.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Breakfast (SMB15) serves up great insights and recommendations
2. Social media adoption: How will marketing spending patterns change?
3. Social Media Marketing for Job Search
4. Social Media Overload–How to make sense of it all