Category: The Marketeer

Categories
Great Marketing

23rd Annual Marketing Over Coffee Awards

Nominations close in 1 hour for the 23rd Annual Marketing Over Coffee Awards! This is the last chance to show the world your greatest marketing accomplishments for 2008. Finalists will be announced on the podcast tomorrow, and winners announced next week – only 5 will be honored!

Just comment here, or over at Marketing Over Coffee, all it takes is a link.

One other thing – now that I have cleaned up all of the infrastructure problems I’d really appreciate it if you would be willing to favorite me on Technorati. If you have any link scams that you want help with, I’m willing to barter! (Just kidding… no evil scams here.)

Add to Technorati Favorites

Categories
Great Marketing

Google Friend Connect in Action

I had a Google alert trip this morning, Neville Hobson interviewed Scott Monty and Scott’s bio mentioned that he has been a co-host on Marketing Over Coffee (although I thought it went great, Chris Brogan referred to that episode as adding not only a 5th Beatle, but one with a Tuba).

Regardless of your opinion on past content, the reason I’m posting is that Neville has implemented Google’s Friend Connect. As opposed to joining a Ning group or any other closed network where you have to fill out a bunch of stuff, if you are already signed into your Google account you can join in two clicks. It’s very cool, check it out.

Categories
Lead Generation

Lead Scoring

Yesterday I read a post on lead scoring that got me thinking more about how this process progresses.

I like Sirius’ approach in defining 3 major scoring criteria, but I would change the order:

  • Demographics – Although I would argue that if the demographics are wrong, they shouldn’t be in the database.
  • Behavior -A critical factor, when a suspect downloads a white paper or a demo that needs to trigger alarms.
  • BANT – This is an IBM software selling technique – Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline. I’d argue here that the sales guy needs to run with some of this

I’ve thought often about this table of information, but the post above introduced the idea of now scoring for multiple products – add changes over time and you have a full data cube. Who said marketing is a cake job?

There’s also one point not mentioned that is critical – your system also has to automate depreciation. It’s fine to start scoring everyone but if the same system fails to ratchet down the losers, eventually they are going to pile up.

For now, there’s only one way to do it – build it brick by brick. There are many decent tools out there (in fact I think I can see the path to get there as I’m going now), but it takes a lot of field testing to get to an automated system that can handle the load.

Categories
Marketing IT Dept.

Reviewing Marketing Automation Software

I spent most of my day today reviewing software tools for marketing. Over the past two months I’ve seen many examples of why it’s so difficult to choose the right product in this space. Unfortunately it’s the wild west out here right now. I went to Dreamforce last month and came back with a list of 8 vendors that claim to have a business intelligence application.From looking at my checklist, yes they do all do some kind of BI, but as you dig in you find out how the checklist is completely inadequate when selecting a tool.

Four of them did a lot of pipeline analysis, which would be great if I was a VP of Sales, but I’m not. I’m more interested in spending marketing program dollars wisely.The tool that looks to be the best fit for what I am trying to do is InetSoft’s Style Intelligence for Salesforce. They’ve been doing reporting for over 10 years and are now plugging into Salesforce. Ultimately I’m trying to automate the reports I’m running manually right now. I had a demo and tour today, and will continue to give it a test drive.

Categories
Great Marketing

Finding Relevance

Making your message relevant puts you above the crowd, I thought this was great when I got it:

Categories
The Marketeer

Not Strategy, Not Analysis – Execution

Seth Godin had a link to a Business Week article that had him taking some shots from academics. I had to laugh at criticsm leveled by those who have a vested interest in maintaining the impression that what’s important is analysis and strategy. There’s no shortage of armchair quarterbacks.

Execution. That’s the hard part. Building a product, leading a team, being profitable – you can’t just talk about it.

Categories
Graphic Design

Adobe CS4

I’m watching the Launch Broadcast right now with our video pro. They are working with the RED camera. I think I need this.

Categories
Great Marketing

The Gap Between Cool and Everything Else

This gap is clearly evident in Guy Kawasaki’s post of his Powerpoint extreme makeover.

The only issue is the classic ghetto marketing conundrum – you already need to be cool to be able to afford a graphics artist that really rocks.  But you get what you pay for… not only does it look great but it extends the message and his story. This is critical because although they downplay the importance of the slides, many people retain more information presented in a visual fashion. Why don’t more people incorporated tactile feedback in presentations? Logistics I guess….

Categories
The Marketeer

Manipulating Your Perceptions – Part 2

Over on Marketing Over Coffee a few weeks back we talked about manipulating perceptions – creating story and reality that the customer wants to see. This is nothing new, Seth Godin made the bold proclaimation “All Marketers are Liars”.

While Mr. Godin’s title embraces irony, using the word “manipulate” creates a sinister impression that is rather severe. Of course it fits well within the Red Saber attitude of the show, but is not perhaps the best marketing. For those who see the concept instead of the literal word it’s not a problem, otherwise it needs some copywriting. This becomes a guiding force during campaign times, with calculated phrases such as the more acceptable “climate change” replacing the more menacing “global warming”.

Rather than debate the semantics, this video demonstrates bending the will of others while using the power for good.[youtube]zyGEEamz7ZM[/youtube]   

Categories
Great Marketing

Crutchfield’s Dream Campaign

As a card carrying gadget geek it should be no surprise that I get the Crutchfield catalog at home. Since I buy cheap crummy cars that are good on gas since they are just going to get abused on 128 or parking in Boston, the first thing I do is upgrade the speakers. They are always knowledgeable  and accept returns, which happens frequently if stuff doesn’t fit (which doesn’t matter to them because I’ve had enough equipment stolen that they make it up).

The catalog this week had the results of their “You dream it, we’ll help you build it ™” contest. I don’t even remember seeing it before, but if I did I’m sure I thought “there’s no reason they would give me free stuff, they already know what I buy, and the wife is not about to let me put a kicker or glow neon on my sweet wheels for our quaint New England town.”

I have taken to heart many of Christopher Penn’s statements about taking time to protect your mental state. We are bombarded with trash news and celebrity crap at a relentless pace. If you into sound systems take a few minutes and check out the sound system Robert Vega built for his brother-in-law.