Remember watching cartoons about Aladdin and the magic lamp? I always hoped I’d find a magic lamp on a beach somewhere and I’d be granted three wishes. Didn’t you wish you could have three wishes too?

Well today I’m setting aside my marketing hat, my BI hat, and my corporate sustainability hat. I’m putting on my customer hat and asking for three wishes I know  your marketing team can grant me.

Here are my three wishes:

1. I want a real relationship with you. I want to know that you are real people. I want to know that your company values align with mine. I want to know you are passionate about what you offer. I want to know you understand my needs and that you care about my success. I want to know how you give back to society. I will look for clues in your blog posts, Twitter tweets, forums, and other forms of social media.

2. I want you to help me be successful. I need to fully understand my challenge, including the business impacts. I need to learn better ways to do things, including best practices. I want to know how others have been able to overcome challenges and be successful. I need you to help educate me with credible and objective information. I need you to help me justify my business case. I will look for this in your white papers, case studies, data sheets, articles, webinars, e-books, and other educational content and tools.

3. I want to be able to find you when I need you. I want to easily find the information I need. I want my questions answered quickly. I want you to communicate in ways relevant to my needs. I want you to know who I am when I call. I will look for a well-designed, organized, and complete website, regular newsletters, targeted e-mails, trade show presence, search engine results, and most of all: contact information that leads me to a real person.

Rather than standing in the middle of the marketing department and looking out, I encourage you to walk over and stand in your customer’s office and look out. How do they see you and your company? Does your brand personality show through? Are you approachable? Do you offer a variety of content to help meet their educational needs?

If the magic genie could grant you three wishes (not necessarily marketing or business related), what would they be?

“It’s not easy being green.” – Kermit the Frog

In honor of Earth Day, I thought I’d write about something green—specifically, green washing. No this isn’t what happens when your three year old accidentally leaves a green crayon in his pocket and it goes through the wash.

According to Greenwashing Index, “Green washing is when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be “green” through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact.”

I found this on SourceWatch: The U.S.-based watchdog group CorpWatch defines green wash as “the phenomena of socially and environmentally destructive corporations, attempting to preserve and expand their markets or power by posing as friends of the environment.” Ouch!!

Now, as marketers, we should absolutely be letting the world know about our efforts to create environmental sustainability. But, our efforts must be in the context of our overall environmental impact. We can’t be bragging that we recycle all of our shipping cardboard when we package our own goods in non-recyclable materials.

Today’s consumers have knowledge at their fingertips. Smart consumers will be looking at your company to see what kinds of claims you make about being environmentally friendly and what you do to back up those claims. Here are some areas they will be looking for (marketers take note and test your own green marketing!):

• Is there information available on the corporate website to back up ads or press releases? Perhaps even a sustainability section?
• Research where the money is going. Does the company support lobbyists or PACs that are in conflict with their claims to be environmentally friendly?
• Search the Internet for opposing views, or those who might have a “beef” with the company.
• Do the ads mislead with words or graphics? Is the green claim vague or hard to prove? Does the ad exaggerate the claim?
• Does the ad or claim leave out information that makes the company seem greener than it is? Do they try to divert attention from something else the company does?
• Does the company backup green claims with objective information and metrics? Do they publish a sustainability report?
• Is their messaging consistent over time? Some companies make a big deal about starting an initiative only to have the funds pulled and reprioritized to other business efforts later.

Consumers will continue to educate themselves about harms to the environment and will continually push companies to become more earth friendly. Corporations will need to prove themselves just to stay competitive, but must do so with honesty—not just for shareholders and consumers, but for the ultimate stakeholder—planet earth!

Happy Earth Day!

They say content is king. But anyone with a good Internet connection can publish content. In fact, the Internet allows anyone to market themselves as an expert. This funny video mocks just how easy it is. Warning: there are a few cuss words tossed in.

So, how do you separate the “wanna-be” experts from the real thing?

Do your homework. Get to know the person or the company. Read their content and understand their motivation.
Here are a few areas that experts tend to excel in:

• Blogs – Does the expert post content regularly—at least weekly? Is it full of buzzwords or does it actually say something that provokes your thinking? Jim Harris’s OCDQ Blog does just that, as does Ted Cuzillo with his Datadoodle blog.
• Websites – Does the expert offer helpful, educational content? Teradata has one of the largest resource libraries available on their site.
• Twitter – Does the expert stay top of mind with meaningful tweets? Kognitio, Initiate, Tableau, and Composite Software have discovered the power of Twitter.

Finally, you can feel pretty certain that you’re listening to an expert if they’ve published a book. Yes, anyone can self publish, but it takes quite a bit of discipline to produce a couple hundred pages of content. Some of my favorite experts who’ve published books are:

Jill Dyche (@jilldyche) “Customer Data Integration” “CRM Handbook” and a few others!
Phil Simon (@philsimon) “Why New Systems Fail” and “The Next Wave of Technologies”
Mike Stelzner (@mike_stelzner) “Writing White Papers”
Casey Hibbard (@casey_hibbard) “Stories that Sell”

Of course, anyone who does all of these things has raised their credibility as an expert—as all of the book authors do.

As a person or company that would like to be perceived as an expert, are you publishing content (big or small) on a regular basis? Is it quality content? Do you provide supporting facts to back up your opinion? Are you committed?

Love to hear who you think are good examples of experts who know how to use the Internet as a publishing medium to share their knowledge.

White papers are still one of the most popular marketing tools for BI and high tech companies, among others. Proof positive is that I just finished my fifth white paper in almost as many weeks.

I find some long held beliefs about white papers very interesting. Like many opinions, some are held long past their expiration dates. For some, they want things a certain way because “that’s the way we’ve always done it.”

I particularly find strong opinions around whether or not to include a table of contents and executive summary, and how long the white paper should be. Here are some considerations I think should help make an objective decision:

Table of contents – Personally, I’m not a big fan of using a ToC in white papers, unless they are very long (12 or more pages). Your goal is to get your reader reading right away and keep them reading. The ToC is yet one more distraction. Having said that, I think they are very helpful in longer papers. Readers can use them to quickly find sections they want to read again. Skimmers will use them to review the flow to get a quick understanding of where the topic is going. Because of that, it’s important to use headers and subheads that alone, in the ToC, can tell the story.

Exec summary – Again, executive summaries are nice on longer papers. It can satisfy the skimmers who don’t need the full details but want to stay current with the topic. But the main reason you might want to include one is if you are hosting your paper with a syndicator or you have a number of white papers in the resources section of your website. If users find your title appealing, they can validate whether they should take the time reading the whole thing by reading the executive summary first. It’s a way of self-targeting and self-selecting.

Executive summaries should be written in a compelling way to entice your readers to want to learn more. Spend the most time on describing the problem (business or technical) that you will be addressing. Add interesting statistics and maybe throw in a small visual.

Length – There seems to be a trend toward shorter white papers. Whereas, it used to be standard that white papers were 10-12 pages. Now we’re seeing more papers in the 4-6 page range. I understand it. Busy executives have less time to read through a longer paper. But I also feel shorter papers may not do the topic justice and may not give the reader the information they need to help build their business case.

So, for thought leadership papers that describe new trends, strategies, and approaches, short papers are fine. But for solution papers, a longer format is generally required in order to thoroughly describe the problem, market drivers, high level, and detailed solution.

Curious what has worked for you, either as a reader or a marketer. What thoughts (and opinions) do you have?

…back to work, got more white papers to write!

I came across some research done by IDG spread across two different posts that was pretty interesting. They interviewed over 100 information technology buyers about their content preferences from vendors. IDG noted there has been a 60% increase in content assets over the past five years. The rush is on to get in the content game and offer information prospective and current customers will find valuable and that will ultimately drive sales.

Only 39% of those interviewed said they find relevance in links offered to vendor content (though their expectation is only 50%). These same buyers say that if they find relevant content, it increases that vendor’s success rate.

The trouble may come when, in their haste, vendors don’t make the shift from promotional to educational content. Buyers want content that is relevant to their needs, and supports their decision making process. This means the content must have “meat” behind it and not just be considered marketing hype.

IDG asked IT buyers a series of questions about their content preferences from various social conversation channels. Here’s a brief recap of the top preferences by channels:

•             Blog – case studies, ads, tutorials, seminar material
•             Forums – tutorials, free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Live Chat – free event registration, evaluation versions, white papers
•             Microblog – ads, technical knowledge base, free event registration, white
•             Social networks – free event registration, ads, ROI calculator, white papers
•             Wikis – tutorials, white papers, case studies, knowledge base

To me, these seem more like expectations than preferences, and the study is really quite small. What I did like was their takeaway message.

Winners will be vendors that build a “relevant” content bridge to draw the conversation towards their own hosted platforms and insight.

This will motivate engagement, and build a sense of interest and reliance and credibility with buyers. The wrong content will damage vendor consideration within the ongoing conversation and beyond.

Is it just me or is most marketing content for B2B pretty dry? So much of our content says, “This is our software. It enables you to do this, so that you can do that.”

I’ve been thinking about the “dry and boring” problem for a long time. Longer than I’ve been a marcom writer and even going way back to the days when I was a marcom consumer, as an IT Director. I just keep thinking there has to be a better way.

The emergence of social media has helped changed the face of B2B marketing, an improvement in my opinion. It has a way of personalizing the relationship between vendor and customer. But something still seems to be missing. So, what if we could market using more storytelling?

Don’t you love a good story? Isn’t it more fun to listen to someone tell of an event and make the story come to life? Case studies are the closest we come to incorporating stories into our marketing content and I think even these could be improved. What I’m talking about is taking case studies and other marketing content to higher levels of storytelling. I’m talking more about creative non-fiction.

Creative non-fiction takes something that is true and writes it in a way that touches our senses. It creates a visual image and stirs up emotions using dramatic openings, realistic details, and expressive dialogue. These are just three ways to make a dry story compelling.

Dramatic openings – Capture your readers from the start. Use visual and exciting openings to compel them to read further.

Old: “Company ABC was spending 8 hours backing up their servers and when backups were running, everyone else had to be off the system.”

New: “The ringing phone interrupted the silence in the data room. On the other end was the CEO, hot that he was locked out of the system as he tried to get some last minute information for the board meeting in 30 minutes.”

Realistic details - Help the story come alive by providing details that touch the one or more of the five senses with detailed descriptions of the scene.

Old: “The vendor held a kickoff meeting to get everyone familiar with the project plan.”

New: “The blue dry marker squeaked across the white board as Joe, the project manager, highlighted the details of the project plan to the VP of Marketing, IT Director, and the project team.”

Expressive dialogue - I find customer quotes within case studies to be quite helpful. They offer a change in voice from the writer to the customer. However, most quotes end with the words “says” or states” such as “states Mr. Smith” which are really expressionless. What if we used more expressive dialogue tags?

Old: “We achieved a 50% improvement on our processing time,” says Mr. Smith, Operations Manager.

New: “We achieved a 50% improvement in our processing time,” the Operations Manager Mr. Smith boasted with a smile.

These are just a few tricks taken from the creative non-fiction world and I’m no fiction author. I’m sure every one of you could come up with even better examples.

It still may be a stretch to incorporate this style into our traditional marketing content and I’m probably treading on new ground here, but I throw it out there as a new, more personal direction for B2B marketing.  What do you think?

I still remember my first Earth Day, which was also THE first Earth Day in 1970. I was in 4^th grade (go ahead, do the math… I’ll wait). Preventing littering was about as much as I understood about being environmentally responsible and its relation to Earth Day.

Since then, there has been a fair amount of progress, though not near enough, in the almost 40 years since Earth Day started. The term “green” used to primarily represent recycle and reuse, but has expanded in scope to include Corporate Sustainability, also known as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR uses a triple bottom line that measures success based on financial, environmental, and social metrics.

Many companies are embarking on sustainability programs and mostly for the right reasons, treating people and the environment with care and respect, and not just for PR. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t communicate your company’s CSR efforts.

Whether your company is involved in a formal CSR program or just embarking on various green initiatives, make sure your efforts are being communicated to your stakeholders who include customers, employees, partners, suppliers, shareholders, regulators, and local communities.

CSR Communication Benefits

In addition to increased revenues and decreased costs, CSR programs offer a number of benefits. Many of these benefits are enhanced by communication including:

·         Improved reputation – easier to hire good employees, build customer loyalty, and create shareholder value

·         Improved community relations – local involvement builds community support and makes doing business with local authorities easier

·         Improved compliance – public officials are inclined to work together with companies making efforts to meet regulations

With CSR, there are many ways to provide information and exposure regarding your company’s efforts, and all should be considered. The CSR stakeholder community is pretty diverse, so it’s to your benefit to get information out using a variety of media. Media should include all of the usual suspects such as press releases, newspaper articles, television news casts, radio public interest stories. Online mediums should also be used such as company and industry blogs, company Facebook pages, Twitter announcements, and posted podcasts.

In addition to news-type information, success stories and thought leadership from company executives can be used to create an interesting and powerful image to stakeholders.

Beware of Greenwashing

Lastly, be careful how you present your content. Information must be honest and accurate to avoid what is now being called “greenwashing” which is the act of making your company sound greener than it really is.  Don’t highlight your environmental or social improvements in one area to cover up for negative activities in another area. Companies that try and create a perception of sustainability to gain customer and stakeholder favor without backing up their claims will actually do more damage to their reputation than good.

Build up CSR Knowledge in Marketing

One way to help ensure you communicate accurately is to make sure you are knowledgeable about CSR. With recent changes in the government and an increased focus on sustainability, more and more companies will be embarking or expanding on CSR programs. Now is a great time to educate yourself on corporate sustainability, aka corporate social responsibility, so you will be ready to frame your company’s efforts in their best light. Aquinas College does a good job of explaining sustainability in layman’s terms.

Business Link says it best: “A successfully implemented corporate sustainability strategy positively impacts a company’s reputation and brand image by demonstrating that the company is taking responsibility for its actions and embracing change for the greater good.  In fact, an essential part of a company’s success is the engagement and development of strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders based on trust, respect, and cooperation.”

Another Earth Day has come and gone this year. I am grateful that it is no longer just about recycling or being green, but that it takes a larger stance, one that compels companies to take a good hard look at their impact on the earth and make the changes needed to ensure our children will enjoy the natural assets we have today.

What do you think about the role of companies as it relates to CSR?

I was reading an interview with Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere on SmartData Collective the other day and what I read and saw was “FUN!”

Improv Everywhere says they create chaos and joy in public places. First they get your attention and then they make you smile. When is the last time you did something silly? Yahoo sponsored this Improv Everywhere event where hundreds of people listened to the same MP3 on their headphones and followed the goofy instructions. How about the largest game of Twister?

On a more deliberate marketing note, watch as my alma-matter T-Mobile, takes over the Liverpool Street Station. Initially, you see the typical moving crowds. As the music begins to play, a few of them start dancing, and then as it progresses, what looked like on-lookers are now joining the dance.

No doubt it was all choreographed, but to the hundreds of people watching at the LS Station and the millions who have now seen it on YouTube, it was captivating. You could see several people using their cell phones to video what they were seeing, which was exactly what T-Mobile wanted. The viral exposure has been phenomenal. It’s been viewed over 10 million times around the world!

So my question is can B2B marketing be fun? What can we do to be more viral? What good examples have you already seen?

A few weeks ago, I told of my college daughter’s tale of woe. After 17 years of schooling, she’s about to be thrust into the real world and doesn’t feel ready. Since that post, she scored a marketing internship at a new pet insurance company called Trupanion.

As I try and help her learn more about online marketing, it occurred to me recently that we’re transitioning in a big way. We’re traveling through a wormhole, soon to be spit out on the other side—changed forever. Marketing as we know it is over and we are about to enter a whole new universe I call social media marketing.

Gone are the easy days of clever commercials, full-page printed ads, and one-way conversations. Gone are the days of addressing faceless, powerless customers from behind the creative desk. No more “build it and they will come” websites. Check your rearview mirror-these things fading fast.

As an aside, I find it interesting that there are so many other things changing at the same time. The way we manage our environment is changing, globalization has opened the doors for anyone to sell anywhere in the world, people are finding more and more ways to connect to each other, and our economy will force us to think and act differently. What I can say with relative certainty is that we will come through the wormhole soon and things will suddenly be a lot different. Are you ready?

Whereas my daughter and her generation are learning and experiencing this new world for the first time, most of us bring the baggage and resistance to change what used to work before. The “known” is so comfortable and the unknown is so scary. But, the trip through the wormhole is happening now and there’s nothing you can do to stop it, so get on board!

Social media marketing is still young and still only a small percentage of companies are giving it a try. Most are sitting back, waiting to see how it all shakes out. In these early days, there are prices to be paid but there are also dollars to be made.

There’s great payback for getting it right- Take Dell Computers. They understood that adding social media to their marketing was not as simple as it sounds. There are technologies to set up, branding to be done, and policies to put in place. But instead of dipping just one toe in the water, Dell put themselves “all in” creating a Dell community site, a number of blogs, multiple Twitter IDs, and an active Facebook account. They have been so successful that they’ve publicly claimed they’ve made $1M in revenue from social media marketing.

There can be consequences for getting it wrong – Let’s hope it’s not on the scale of Motrin and the “Motrin Moms” fiasco. In the fall of 2008, Motrin launched an ad that depicted baby slings as fashion accessories for moms. The surprising negative backlash instantly went viral on sites like YouTube, Twitter, and several blogs. That’s enough to cause full-body paralysis in any marketer. It took a few days, but eventually Motrin put up an apology on their website. To release you from your potential paralysis, just note that even “bad” buzz can be better than no buzz. Google and Twitter activity for Motrin increased significantly for a few weeks.

Social media marketing is so fluid, you can quickly right yourself – The beauty (and the beast) in the new marketing world is its dynamic nature. Mistakes can be addressed as quickly as they were made. The Ford Motor Company was able to quickly recover from a potential PR disaster where their legal department sent cease and desist letters to forum owners using Ford trademarks. As you can imagine, these forum owners were outraged and the story became even more twisted as the news spread.

Ford was able to use social media to find out what happened, who was impacted, tell the community what happened, and inform the community about the steps they took along the way to crafting a compromise.

Poking your head out of the wormhole can be frightening. The good news is many companies are in the same boat and the winners will be those who dare to step out into the brave new world.

So much buzz about social media marketing (Facebook, Ning, YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, LinkedIn), it’s almost tough to separate practical information from the hype.

In reading dozens of blogposts on the topic, I recently came across a post by Mac MacIntosh who writes the Sales Lead Insights blog that made me go “hmmm….” His post looked at the study done by Forrester that was in response to the question, Which of the following sources of information impact your decision making process?”

And here are the answers:

• Peers and colleagues – 84%
• Vendor, industry and trade Web sites – 69%
• Your direct vendor salesperson – 69%
• Technology or business magazines – 66%
• Consultants, VARs and SIs – 65%
• Industry trade shows or conferences (in person) – 59%
• Forums, online communities and social networks – 45%
• Industry analyst firms – 45%
• E-mail or electronic newsletters – 41%
• Web events or virtual trade shows – 40%
• Interactive media: podcasts, video, online demos – 30%
• Blogs – 24%

From that, he says a story in eWeek about this research states, “…while business buyers may be using social networks and other tools in their enterprise and personal lives, Web 2.0 social technology isn’t affecting their decisions when it comes to purchasing business solutions.”

Mac doesn’t offer his own conclusion, but instead asks if we agree, so here’s my take—

People do business with those they know, like, and trust. I know, it’s an old, overused statement, but it still holds true. I believe this is the major reason why social media for B2B (or even B2C) has so much value. It started with relationship selling and has now been expanded into “relationship marketing” through social media. And, given nearly half those asked said their decisions were impacted by social media, really the newest entrant on the list, how can that be ignored?

Using a B2C example, the Zappos CEO, Tony Hsieh, Twitters constantly about his customers, vendors, and employees.  One of his latest tweets said, “Busy busy day! Didn’t notice any @Zappos employees doing the robot dance at the office today – http://bit.ly/zrobot.” That got me curious, so I checked out the link. Pretty funny and I got to see some of the employees and their reactions. Looks like a fun place to work and fun to do business with.

For a B2B example, look to Lucidera, a software company specializing in business intelligence. They leverage LinkedIn, Ning, YouTube, and Twitter. Lucidera takes the opportunity to share information and product examples, and also maintains a BI community forum. Look these guys up and see how broadly they’ve used social media.

I’ll bet you’re seeing some good B2B examples as well. If the same survey is taken again in the next couple years, I think you’ll see social media rise, possibly to as high as second place. It’s hard to top those we already know, like, and trust!