Veteran marketer and entrepreneur Chris Jacobs joins London, Ink consulting team
Potomac, MD – September, 2009, London, Ink, a marketing and communications consulting and services firm headquartered outside of Washington, DC, announced the addition of Christina Jacobs to its team of marketing consultants and project managers to meet the demands of the company’s growing client base.
Jacobs, whose background includes marketing management posts at Nextel, MCI and CoStar Group and AMS, is also co-founder of Girls in the Know, the popular and fast-growing online service that provides subscribers with exclusive offers from premier spas, salons, restaurants, designers and events.
“Chris has been a great addition to the London, Ink team,” said London, Ink founder and President Bob London.“Not many people combine such deep practical marketing experience and expertise with an entrepreneur’s sense of innovation and resourcefulness.”
Jacobs provides on-demand marketing consulting, project management and implementation for a range of London, Ink clients—which supports the company’s lean, on-demand business model and enables clients to receive top-notch, cost-effective marketing support.
“Working with London, Ink gives me a combination of an interesting and engaging work experience with a high degree of flexibility, schedule-wise,” said Jacobs.“It’s clear that the on-demand model works for clients as well to help them focus their budgets on the right priorities.”
“London, Ink is already known for pioneering the ‘Virtual VP of Marketing’ concept which provides experienced project-based resources on-demand for organizations that need an injection of strategic marketing horsepower,” continued Bob London.“Having more consultants like Chris means that London, Ink can serve a broader range of client needs with various levels, areas of specialization and price points.”
About London, Ink
London, Ink (http://www.londonink.com) is a marketing and communications consulting firm that helps early-stage and established organizations define and prioritize their products, services and marketing initiatives based on what the market needs–or doesn’t need.
In pioneering the Virtual VP of Marketing concept, London, Ink president and founder Bob London works with companies who aren’t ready for the cost and commitment of a full-time marketing executive to assess their market opportunity, determine the strategic options and develop a practical go-to-market plan, including market awareness, customer acquisition and retention, prospect “nurture” campaigns and targeted education programs.
Bob London has successfully managed marketing initiatives with annual budgets ranging from the $150 million network television launch of MCI Friends & Family (back when network tv really meant something) to under $25,000.His work and writing has been profiled or covered by the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the Miami Herald, USA Today and Marketing News (the AMA’s flagship magazine).Bob recently spoke at the nationwide Unintentional Entrepreneur series.
London, Ink is proud to sponsor an exciting event on March 27 – 28: Government 2.0 Camp (http://gov20camp.eventbrite.com/). Here’s a brief description of the event and the “camp” concept:
What is Government 2.0 Camp?
Government 2.0 Camp is the unconference about using social technologies (aka web 2.0/social media tools) to create a more effective, efficient and collaborative U.S. government on all levels (local, state and federal).
Government 2.0 Camp will bring together the leading thinkers from government, academia and industry to share Government 2.0 initiatives that are already in process and collaborate about Government 2.0 ideas that are currently just visions.
I’m very dissatisfied–to the point of taking action–with the lack of efficiency and abundance of waste in government and am a big believer that new Web technologies, Web 2.0 applications and social media/networking applications can help. Trimming the Federal budget by a quarter of one percent over the next five years could pay for a lot of fixes (long-term) to our educational system or seed the nascent but promising field of alternative energy.
I fully support transparency in government, particularly government spending–it’s our money after all–and again believe that Web 2.0 technologies and social media/networking apps can enable this.
I believe the Gov 2.0 arena will yield good business opportunities for London, Ink, long-term.
Sounds like a great event! (I like the participatory BarCamp approach.)
An Inside-Out Branding Guest Post by David Frankil, President of NAFCU Services Corp. (bio)
About NAFCU Services
The National Association of Federal Credit Unions (NAFCU) represents approximately 800 Federal credit unions. NAFCU Services Corporation is the for-profit, independent subsidiary of NAFCU that works with leading companies including American Express, Securian, Deluxe, Affinion and others, that provide services that help credit unions increase efficiency and productivity in areas such as member retention and acquisition, information security, new products and services and investment advisory services.
Background
NAFCU Services has 28 ‘Preferred Partners,’ including American Express, NCR and SAS Institute, that are focused on financial services in general and credit unions in particular. Program participation requires a fee from Partners, and they have a choice of levels (Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum) with fees and activities scaled proportionately. All profits from NAFCU Services go to the parent association to support their programs.
When I became President of NAFCU Services in July, 2006, it was being run as a typical trade association affinity program, which is to say it was (essentially) a mechanism for giving select vendors an opportunity to support NAFCU programs . In exchange Partners received the right to use a logo, great space at the annual trade show, some networking opportunities with Board Members, and that’s about it – best of luck with sales and marketing. Clearly not a balancing of value from the vendor perspective, and a major reason why many of these programs have high turnover rates and lagging revenues.
Priority One: Create a Solutions Mindset
Turning the program around required a shift in philosophy and strategy to a solutions mindset, making it more effective for all parties involved. The goal: positioning our Partners as thought leaders in their respective areas and leveraging marketing activities to open dialogue and create relationships with prospects.
So the first and foremost responsibility is for NAFCU Services to understand the challenges faced by credit unions every day for growth and productivity. Where is the next round of profitable revenue coming from, how to cross-sell and up-sell Members, how to attract new Members, and so on. And how to run operations more efficiently, more effectively, more securely, at lower cost, etc.
The Marketing MRI
We call the process of understanding and pinpointing credit unions’ challenges—from their point of view—the Marketing MRI.This involves in depth interviews with credit union executives, fine tuned with surveys and of course ongoing discussions with our board.Most importantly we synthesize what we’re hearing and learning based on our experience in the marketplace.
Once we understand credit unions’ challenges in a particular area—say member retention, we look for a solution from within our current roster of Preferred Partners. If not, then we look to recruit a top quality, market leader to join the program, following a competitive RFP process that includes an evaluation by an Advisory Committee of credit union executives.
At that point, we have credit unions A, B, C perhaps even through credit union Z that need a solution, and Preferred Partner B that has one. Here’s where that Marketing MRI comes in again.Sharing what we know about the needs of the credit unions with the Preferred Partners, we help distill the partner’s value proposition to a laser beam, and then – call it multi-modal or multi-channel marketing – using all the tools at our disposal to communicate the value proposition and establish thought leadership for the Partner.
Many trade associations have the first part of this equation, a Preferred Partner-type program with the association’s stamp of approval. What differentiates NAFCU Services is the second part, where we (in essence) become a marketing consulting services firm for our Partners, generating webcasts, podcasts, articles, speaking opportunities, direct marketing initiatives, recommendation letters, credits for advertising and sponsorship, and much more. So from a Partner perspective, the value equation (investment in the program versus value received) is much more attractive.
Results
Since I joined NAFCU Services in July, 2006, we have grown revenue by 14%, 15%, and this year an expected 33%. We’ve significantly upsized deal size, and more important, have made our existing relationships far more effective. Key to the success has been instilling that solutions mindset throughout our partners’ marketing and sales teams by developing and leveraging the Marketing MRI approach.
Great question–which begs several precursors: (a) what are the goals? (b) how are “results” defined? (c) what measurement tools are in place today?
Probably safe to assume a B2B marketing department is charged with generating demand (leads) and in many cases educating/priming the market while positioning the company as a thought leader.
Here are some ways in which a B2B marketing department can improve results and not get lost in the characterization that “we’re not sure what marketing does relative to the business.”
*Philosophical/Management*
Commit to the challenge of contributing ROI for the overall marketing budget–so that the department pays for itself at least 15 – 20 times over each year.
Exert internal marketing leadership–take on the business’s longstanding challenges/dilemmas, whether it’s “why do we churn customers?” or “why don’t we know which marketing programs work and which don’t? or “where is our most profitable 3-year growth going to come from?”
Improve accountability–measure everything that moves (and everything that doesn’t for that matter). Every weekly update should include a review of 30 days previous results and forward projections. Integrate all systems (CRM, marketing automation, accounting) that will provide an end to end view of the data.
Assume a budget of zero (regardless of how uncomfortable this may feel)–then implement programs in order of priority and results. This will force you to orient the marketing budget and department around the company’s goals.
Listen to the rest of the organization–don’t bump heads with it.
*Tactical Suggestions*
Devote/redirect as much budget as possible towards lower cost, online lead gen and thought leadership initiatives. For each business challenge, ask the question: how can we address this via online strategies and channels vs. traditional. This will make the entire budget work harder on a dollar for dollar basis since it will be easier to track results.
Every B2B marketer should use Google AdWords; at least do a significant test using .05% of your total annual marketing budget. Do not run a generic ad pointing to your home page; rather offer a white paper or other valuable subject matter content, and point the ad to a specific landing page dedicated to that offer.
Optimize your site content so that it shows up in targeted searches for whatever you are marketing.
Make sure you are using some form of prospecting/hunting to bridge the gap between lead gen programs and sales. Prospecting (i.e. outsourced or in-house telemarketing) serves as a lower cost way to qualify leads as well as gather market data on prospect hot buttons and what competitors/ substitutes/alternatives your prospects are using.
Implement a simple but formal prospect nurture process whereby you treat every inbound inquiry as a long-term suspect and stay in touch via e-newsletters, white paper offers and webinars.
Have an intern or staffer collect all stray business cards that have not been entered into the marketing database and enter them as part of your nurture process.
Have an intern or staffer mine LinkedIn for prospect names using company names and job titles. Relevant contacts should be fed into an outbound teleprospecting process to qualify; interested contacts should then be added to the nurture process.
Add a “living” FAQ section to your site and regularly publish your answers to client/customer questions. Your answers will invariably include relevant keywords that can bolster your natural/organic page rankings on Google, et al. Also, we all tend to get the same questions from multiple people, so rather than rewriting the answer each time or searching your hard drive, just send the link to your blog/site where your answer already resides.
Hope this proves helpful!
Best regards,
- Bob London
Bob London
President
London, Ink
On Target. On Site. On Demand.
www.londonink.com
Anyone who is lonely or bored enough enough to notice would have seen that, a few months ago, my LinkedIn contacts recently went from over 300 to below 270.
Was I suddenly abandoned by almost three dozen contacts? No, I did something we should all do 2x per year: LinkedIn Pruning. (Note: I’ve since climbed back over my original “unpruned” total.)
As a “Virtual VP of Marketing” (a/k/a outsourced CMO or, if you prefer, “marketing consultant”) for growing companies, my policy is to use LinkedIn and Facebook for “knowing” not for “showing.” My criteria for adding/keeping someone on my list is that I know them well enough to reach out to them with a question, introduction or even a favor. With rare exceptions, I do not put people on my list simply because they are well known or have 500+ contacts themselves. (See a tongue in cheek riff on “professional networkers” by clicking the graphic below.)
So from time to time I look at my LinkedIn list specifically with the goal of pruning those with whom I have lost touch or with whom relationships simply did not develop over time as expected.
Try it, it’s quite refreshing!
(By the way I unintentionally coined the term pruning to apply to the act of occasionally trimming one’s social networks. Commenting on a recent Jeff Pulver note about the limits of Facebook friend lists, people used a variation of the word “pruning” eight times after I used it. See http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=25322506668&)
Once again, John Quelch with Harvard Business Publishing, strikes at the heart of the CMO/CEO issue with this post on “How CEOs should work with customers.”
Posted by John Quelch on September 22, 2008 11:43 AM
Customers are the source of all cash flow. Organic growth depends on developing relationships with new and existing customers. And future growth prospects are baked into stock market valuations of companies.
Yet an increasingly high percentage of Fortune 500 CEOs have not come up the ranks through marketing or sales. At the same time, in many companies, the chief marketing officer position turns over every two years. Facing the current economic downturn, companies need marketing skills more than ever. But while every corporate mission statement pays lip service to respecting customer needs, actual customer expertise is typically a mile wide and an inch deep.http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/2835
Your Networking is Notworking. (Or How Not to Work a Room)
There’s a highly recommended book called, “The Wisdom of Crowds,” that I have not read.
But hearing “The Wisdom of Crowds,” reminds me of the unwise things people sometimes do at crowded business functions.
Your average business networking breakfast or company event is basically full of insecure people who are forced either by their bosses or by the mortgage on their second homes to show up and attempt something called “schmoozing” with a room full of other insecure people, many of whom are armed with a dangerous thing called a quota.
So understand that no one-repeat no one—is there of his or her own volition. This forced yet totally unnatural dynamic results in a veritable Petri dish of strange and often boorish behaviors, some of which I will now attempt to describe.
I have overheard hotel lobby cellphone conversations where full-grown professionals beg their bosses or spouses for permission to return to the comfort of their Lexus sedans rather than through those dreaded fake-wood paneled double doors.
I have witnessed well-dressed and otherwise polished individuals whisper pep talks into bathroom mirrors.
I have observed semi-articulate, regionally-accented executives rise to ask a question of a panelist and proceed to deliver a nine-minute preface/soliloquy containing his views on Net Neutrality, Sarbanes-Oxley, the coming of another Cold War and Dilbert, all without taking a breath.
I have experienced a phenomenon known as Java-Blocking, where someone decides that the coffee station is the perfect place to set up shop and begin to network, thus creating a backup of which the WoodrowWilsonBridge would be proud.
I have smelled Nuclear Coffee Breath so intense, even at a distance of ten paces, that it caused carbon dioxide detectors to sound and the fire department to show up.
I have consoled a colleague who was deemed by a fellow networker not to be Cardworthy—she only had four cards left and didn’t think he merited one.
I have talked to people who spent the entire 12-minute conversation looking past my shoulder as if they expected one of the Steves (Ballmer, Jobs, Case, Seagall) to enter the room at any moment.
I have picked up distress signals from associates trapped in an interminable conversation known as a Verbal Bear Hug, desperately seeking a knight in shining wing-tips to come to the rescue.
I hope this column will, in some small way, build awareness of these all-too-common dysfunctional behaviors and contribute to their ultimate demise.Wishful thinking, I know.
Bob London is president of London, Ink LLC (www.londonink.com), a full-service marketing and communications firm, and serves as a Virtual VP of Marketing for growth-stage companies that need hands-on project-based leadership in marketing strategy and planning.
We received a very nice DVD from our son’s sleepaway camp in the Poconos (Lake Owego Camp, if you’re interested) which had a lot of great photos, footage and interviews of kids, counselors, administrators from this past summer.
From the perspective of a CEO interested in marketing, the most notable element of the DVD was the timing of its arrival: Right after we received the bill for next summer’s experience.
One of the best ways to get a free bump in your marketing output is by coordinating the timing of various activities. You would assume, in the above example, that the camp’s renewal and sign-up rates are higher among people who view the DVD and get the emotional lift during the time they receive the bills.
Here is a simple way that I have applied this principal to my business. When I do an e-newsletter, I can either send it when it’s ready and when I have the bandwidth to edit/proof it to within an inch of its life (!), or send it one or two days before a big networking event where I know I will be seeing many of the people on my house list.
The cost of executing the e-newsletter is the same either way. But by coordinating the timing with the event I get the combined impact of (a) seeing someone in person, (b) having them mention “hey, I just saw your email,” and (c) having something else to talk about that demonstrates I practice what I preach regarding nurture marketing.
Bob London is president of London, Ink LLC (www.londonink.com), a full-service marketing and communications firm, and serves as a Virtual VP of Marketing for growth-stage companies that need hands-on project-based leadership in marketing strategy and planning.
Another good POV for CEOs on increasing marketing spending during a recession…
Savvy marketers realize that it is because many marketers cut advertising spending during a recession that a recession is the best and least expensive time to gain market share through advertising. Publishers are more open to negotiating deals. Plus, there is less competition as other companies reduce budgets or drop out completely. This is the time to brand yourself as the leader in your category.
Bob London is president of London, Ink, a full-service marketing and communications consulting and services firm. Bob serves as a “Virtual VP of Marketing” for growth-stage companies that need marketing strategy and execution but can’t justify the cost and commitment of a full-time executive.
Nextel, MCI and CoStar Group and AMS, is also co-founder of Girls in the Know, the popular and fast-growing online service that provides subscribers with exclusive offers from premier spas, salons, restaurants, designers and events.
