Have you met Skip? You know, Skip Intro, the guy who develops all those overdone flash intro’s for ad agency web sites?
Awhile back I answered the following very astute question on LinkedIn from Andrew Miller, who, according to his LinkedIn profile is now Founder and Managing Director at Capitalist, Inc.
“Why do most creative agencies’ web sites look eerily like? Should a creative shop treat itself like a client?”
My Answer:
“This is a great question. The answers are that (a) agencies are following each other instead of the market; and (b) agencies need to do a better job of looking at their businesses through the clients’ (and prospective clients’) eyes instead of indulging their creative/artistic fantasies. Ever notice how so many agencies’ sites start with a long/pointless flash intro? That is a good example of not recognizing that site visitors want to locate info not be shown a short film.”
Why am I posting this now? Because, while the problem has gotten a bit better, I notice that all to often it still exists. So next time you see a useless flash intro that is preventing you from getting to the content you want, contact the site’s owner, publisher, webmaster (whatever happened to that title anyway?) and make your feelings known!
Bob London is President of London, Ink, a B2B marketing and communications consulting firm based in the Washington, DC area. He can be reached at bob (at) londonink (dot) com.
Great info from destinationCRM.com and supports why companies should consider solutions like e.SSENTIALS from London, Ink, a fixed-price bundle of online/social marketing programs. See e.ssentials.net for more info.
Given the state of the economy, Lamba writes that social networking is a relatively low cost solution that could help in fostering, “steady communication with existing partners, and clients as well as incubating new relationships” — a function both desired by consumers networking with friends and with employees in the workplace. The aforementioned IDC social networking survey, in fact, indicates that the majority of social networking users list communication as their number one reason for usage of such sites.
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
Greetings, fellow corporate anthropologists.Today we examine the origins and behavior of the dreaded one-brained, ten-legged, five-Blackberry-wearing entity known as The Corporate Entourage.
The first documented entourage occurred immediately after the appearance of the first sycophant in the year 800 B.C.The charismatic corporate warlord, BossusOverthetopicus, began traveling with five eager underlings everywhere he went in a specially designed chariot with third row seating.
Gradually these teams of toadies began taking on the characteristics of their leaders, such as emulating the boss’s style of dress, favorite watering hole, gait, font preference and salad bar choices—practices that continue to this very day.
Today it is commonplace for executive assistants to reserve seats at an event for “one adult and five sycophants, and please make sure we get the special entourage rate.”
Here is what you need to know about having an entourage:
Building an Entourage According to the trade publication, Brown-Noser Monthly, every entourage should be composed of the following personality/skill types:
Yes Man/Woman While every entourage member must be skilled at flattery, bootlicking and general suck-uppery, it is important to have one person dedicated to this task as well as to documenting Best Practices in Brown-Nosing to help train new members.
Bag Carrier/Heavy Lifter One sycophant must be strong enough to literally carry the boss’s luggage while also mastering the delicate skill of removing metal objects from the boss’s pockets while he’s on the phone in the airport security line
Sergeant-at-Arms Another critical role is to keep other members of the retinue in line during potentially tricky or chaotic situations, such as the “which way should we pass the cookie plate” conundrum that often occurs towards the end of a business luncheon.
Subject Matter Expert (SME) Of course someone must know more than anyone else in the room–since we know that’s not the boss–and be able to quickly supply relevant factoids, sound bites and counter-arguments during critical meeting junctures or dramatic “Perry Mason” moments.
Groomer (AKA “Body Man” in political circles) This critical role keeps the boss’s person free from debris such as lint, stray eyelashes or dandruff flakes and keeps a comb and travel-size can of mousse at the ready at all times.
Joining an Entourage If you are an aspiring or budding brown-noser, you must know where to find opportunities.Look for top billing lawyers, particularly litigators who by definition require support teams to carry all those heavy files.Also well-known for having entourages are sales executives (usually VP and above—everyone else is busy actually selling).
Entourage Succession Planning The most insecure bosses will have a well-defined Entourage Succession Plan in case one of their sycophants gets killed, for instance, by a runaway luggage cart while racing another bootlicker to the curbside check in. Also check job boards for Entourage Internships, even though one can only imagine the ignominy, drudgery and humiliation of being a sycophant to other sycophants.
Faking the Entourage Bosses in the early stages of entourage-building must be resourceful.One story emerged during the 1990’s telecom run-up in which an EVP of Business Development kidnapped three bewildered mailroom staffers from their loading dock smoking break and tossed them into his black Ford Excursion (a favorite of entourages for its 12 passenger seating and resemblance to a Secret Service transport) rather than attending his meeting without the appearance of a full complement of parasites. A number of firms also offer “Rent-a-Suck-Up” services similar to the “Rent-a-Mobs” hired by public affairs firms to create the appearance of widespread support or opposition to an issue.
So the next time you see what appears to be a violent game of musical chairs breaking out in an airport lounge, don’t be alarmed.Chances are it’s just an entourage fighting over the closest seat to the boss.
Bob London is president of London, Ink LLC, 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.What is a Virtual VP of Marketing?Click on http://www.londonink.com/wordpress/?p=22 to find out more.
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
There was an interesting story recently in Business Week on heads of companies and their take on Twitter. Given the amount of information overload and the pressure on CEO’s to be efficient with time, use of Twitter makes a lot of sense given its 140 character limit and ability to give/ get instant feedback.
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.
