I love January 1^st! The noise of Christmas settles down and life promises to get back to normal— whatever that is! But the New Year brings new possibilities. It brings hope and the promises of new and not so new passions.

Flowers bring hope and promise too. Somehow, every January my flowers push their little buds through the soil once again. They reach out with tender green shoots, testing the air for readiness. Each minute of sunlight brings them more strength to push on, yet they are patient, knowing that it takes time to reach the prize of a beautiful blossom.

Sometimes, they experience setbacks along the way. An early frost, a hungry bug, or a misplaced foot can cripple the tender shoot. But, that doesn’t stop the journey. Never missing a step, the bud heals its injury and keeps growing towards that eventful day when it can explode in full bloom.

What lessons can we learn by watching the flower?

1. Have goals you can reach for. Blossoms come in all sizes and goals do to. Not every goal has to be a stretch goal, sometimes it’s just as important to knock things off the to-do list. How about finally writing that white paper sales has been clamoring for?

2.  Take a risk. It’s easy to talk ourselves into waiting for just the “right” moment. But the flower pushes its new shoot into the crisp January air, braving the possibility of frost. What new marketing tactic will you try?

3.  Start small and grow. If a flower waited until it had a blossom before it broke ground, it would never happen. Don’t put off the journey until you know everything. The joy is in the discovery. Look for simple things you can do to improve the effectiveness of your marketing program.

4.  Announce your journey. Just as the flower pushes through the soil to let us know it will bloom again, a good marketing team will collaborate on the marketing strategy and share in the goals. Announce your team’s intentions by publishing your marketing collateral assignments on a shared calendar.

5.  Plan for setbacks. Sometimes the soil isn’t right, the rains don’t come, the tender shoot gets bumped and broken. Though the growth may be slowed temporarily, it rarely stops. The flower works on healing the wound and getting back on track. Take actionable steps with you lessons learn.

6.  Celebrate accomplishments! The long journey finally produces the ultimate reward – the beautiful blossom. The flower shows off his accomplishment in all its glory with color and fragrance, encouraging other flowers to do the same. Don’t be afraid to share your victory – you just might inspire someone else.

7.  Give something to others. With your cup filled, it’s so much easier to give of yourself to others. Having reached the blossom, the flower produces seeds and fruits that give life to other creatures and spawn new flowers! To date, I have developed eight websites for no cost to some of my favorite non-profits, including Friends of Gold Butte. Some have since generated paid work!

Take a lesson from the flower and set your marketing program in motion now so that it can bloom and bring you rewarding results in 2012. Happy New year readers and be sure to have a little fun while you’re at it!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Think you won’t reach IT decision makers with social media? Think again! UBM’s 2011 Social Media and IT Marketing research shows that 69% of IT decision makers use LinkedIn and 44% use Twitter for professional use. And, 84% visit corporate blogs for professional purposes and one-third of those contacted the technology vendor for more information after visiting.

Turns out IT decision makers are social too! The majority use social networking to stay connected to co-workers and maintain their professional relationships, which are down slightly from last year. However, one of the largest and growing reasons is around their desire to make informed technology purchasing decisions.

For B2B marketers in the high-tech/software industry, this information is key in creating a social media strategy that addresses what these IT decision makers are looking for. Unfortunately, many B2B companies are still struggling to embrace social media as a marketing and lead generation tool. Additional studies show that over 60% say they have no staff dedicated to managing social media activities.

Social media activities such as blogging and the use of Twitter require almost daily attention. B2B marketers need to incorporate them into the overall strategy including the editorial calendar, yet be flexible enough to know when to change direction when business or technical trends shift.
Most marketers and content producers have a good understanding of what the IT decision maker needs in order to make influence the purchasing decision. However, many have not fully utilized the social media channel for distributing that content.

For those that don’t yet have the content that the IT decision makers are looking for, like data sheets, case studies, and white papers, social media may take a much lower priority. The IT decision maker is out there, already engaging with vendors, both passively and actively. B2B marketers cannot wait until all of the content is complete before incorporating social media into their marketing activities. They need to start where they are and grow both their social media channel experience and marketing content at the same time. They need to be available and found when IT decision makers go looking.

These geeks have gone social and they’re looking for you. Are you there?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I’ve been seeing QR codes more and more and wondered how I might incorporate them into my own marketing content and activities for B2B companies. After doing much research, testing, and my own brainstorming, I came up with this infographic to help pull it all together. Hope you enjoy it!

You can also download the PDF version here.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

It used to be that if you were selling technology, you talked to IT. They were the ones who understood and controlled the role of technology, and they knew how to select a product that would support the business needs and still fit within the technical architecture. Technology vendors typically only called on IT with messaging focused mostly on technology and not so much the business value.

Then things began to shift. The “consumerization of IT” put technology in the hands of everyone. Apps and technology crossed the barrier from consumer to enterprise. Employees use their personal devices for work productivity. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps meant for consumers are now being brought into the workplace.

Business users have become savvy about how to meet their own needs. At the same time, they were given budget responsibility for projects that included technology. Business users began to select and implement technology outside of IT—many doing so without even letting their IT department know until they were ready to toss it over to production. Technology vendors were quick to respond to this shift by changing their message to support business value instead of IT integration.

This made the divide between IT and the business grow even further.

While much has been said about closing the gap between the business and IT, not much has been said about creating a marketing message that does so. As proof, I’m writing a white paper right now, geared ONLY to the IT reader that addresses only architecture, data, and security topics. The goal is to get IT on board with a product that the business already wants or even has.

It’s come to the point that the real customer is a blend of business and IT. It’s not an either/or. They should no longer be thought of as separate and in some cases may even be one in the same. The sales force needs to make sure that both teams are at the table together.

It’s not an easy job for marketing. They need to provide sales with information that supports both the business value and functionality, as well as providing the technical assurance that IT needs.  Marketing assets should include content with a combined message and deeper content that provides more specific information, geared specifically towards business function and value or technical features.

IT is not a necessary evil as some say. Nor are business users ignorant about technology. IT is an integral part of making the business successful, yet IT wouldn’t exist if the business didn’t see value in their services. While it may be easier to sell to just one side, technology marketers need to acknowledge that harmony between both will help their product be successful in the organization for the long run.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

As the New Year approaches, it’s a good time to take a step back and ask a fundamental question, “Who am I?” I don’t mean this from a personal perspective, though that is always helpful, too. It’s important to understand this from a business perspective. Some of my clients come to me without ever having done this, but it is fundamental to have before starting any marketing program.

The business climate is in perpetual motion. Customers’ needs change. Organizations change. Budgets change. Technologies change. Competitors change.

When was the last time you refreshed your own branding profile? Let’s take a look at the basic building blocks that need to be in place.

Vision – People often get vision and mission confused. Your corporate vision is about who you want to be, while your mission is how you’re going to get there. A vision statement should give all your stakeholders (employees, investors, customers) a good mental image of your desired future state. The statement can be as little as one sentence but not longer than four.

For example, Amazon’s vision statement is: “Our vision is to be earth’s most customer centric company; to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online.” McDonald’s is: “McDonald’s vision is to be the world’s best quick service restaurant experience. Being the best means providing outstanding quality, service, cleanliness, and value, so that we make every customer in every restaurant smile.”

Mission – A mission is all about meeting your customers’ needs. You must first understand what they value in order to craft a good mission statement, and then use that to help define what you offer your customers and subsequently, help set your goals for achieving your mission.

For example, Google’s mission statement is:  “Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” The first few words, “organize the world’s information” speaks to what Google will do to meet customer needs, and “universally accessible” and useful are the goals that can ultimately be measured.  Google takes it a step further and offers a full page on their corporate philosophy.

USP – A universal selling proposition (USP) is a short statement that is easy to remember and describes the benefits your customers will receive as a result of doing business with you – hence the word “proposition”. This short statement should demonstrate your competitive difference and the emotional needs you meet (fears, frustrations, desires).  Your USP can also be used as your tagline.

For example, FedEx: “When it absolutely has to be there overnight.”  And, of course, the comprehensive USP by Nyquil: “The nighttime, coughing, achy, sniffling, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest medicine.”

Ideal Customer – Certainly, you have an idea of who your ideal customer is, but have you actually taken the time to describe them? And, there might be more than one! These descriptions are also known as personas. It’s extremely helpful to have a persona description for every type of buyer AND influencer.

Start by jotting down your primary ideal customer’s title. Now describe the role they play in their workplace. List the struggles they face every day. What do they need in order to be successful? How do they like to do business? What motivates them in their business or career? Describe their line of business. If you sell to a variety of industries and different business sizes, create a persona for each one. Lastly, create a pithy name for each persona.

Competitors – You should be assessing the competitive landscape on a regular basis. These days, that might need to be more frequent than it has in the past. The unstable economy has led some companies to close their doors and others to be acquired. How does this change competition in your industry? What about the new players in the market?

One structured way to do this assessment is to perform a SWOT analysis. This lets you define a competitors’ strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. You can read more about this in my post, “Time to SWOT Your Competitor.”

Personality Attributes – Finally, you need to be clear about how you are perceived in the market. Defining your personality attributes will give a greater dimension to your image and should help differentiate your brand. Go find a list of personality traits and look for words you’d like to be used to describe your company. Are you: Sophisticated and educated? Cool and hip? Strong and stable? Corporate and professional? Fun and innovative?

Once you’ve answered that question, check to see that your visual design matches your personality. There are many color wheels online that show the personality of colors. Red can be bold, aggressive, and professional, while blue can be stable, comfortable, and peaceful. Do your design and colors work?

I would love to find examples you think exemplify a good brand definition – and would love to see examples you think don’t work and why!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I was recently reading the latest B2B Content Marketing: 2010 Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends survey by MarketingProfs and Junta42. I like seeing where content marketing is headed, how budgets are being reshaped to support it, and what kinds of challenges still remain.

Seemed like your typical stuff. Larger companies were greater adopters of a broader content marketing strategy, spent more money, and did more in house. Smaller companies—less so. Then I came upon the survey question that asked, “What is your biggest content marketing challenge?” The answers also weren’t totally shocking. The largest response was, “Producing engaging content.”

However! What did surprise me most was one of the comments by a survey-taker. The comment said this,

“Our biggest challenge is finding things for our potential customers to get excited about. The products we sell are not easy to get excited about.”

Wow. Either you need to find another product at another company to market—or give up marketing all together.

I tried to think of some products this survey-taker might be referring to. Maybe it’s data center racks and shelving. No, that allows data centers to expand and companies to defer building new, expensive centers. Maybe it’s an automated payroll system. No, that reduces the time and staff needed to process payroll, while reducing errors. Maybe it’s the grey paint they use on manufacturing plant floors. Certainly customers won’t get excited about that? No, it can extend the life of the floor, prevent moisture wicking or cement dust particulates, and is easy to clean. Couldn’t possibly be that either.

My point is every product – EVERY PRODUCT – should either fill a need or create an opportunity. Granted, they aren’t always sexy, fun, slick, cool, or whatever. But, there should be a reason your potential customer should care – and care enough to consider you.

If you’re still wondering how to get your customers excited about your product, it’s time to go back and do some homework. Start here:

1. Create  a USP – unique selling proposition. It’s your value statement. It’s the reason why you do what you do and why it’s better than the rest (or doing nothing). What is the need or opportunity your product fulfills?

2. Make a list of all your features. Then next to each feature, write, “so that you can…” Complete the “so that you can” statements and make a list of benefits based on the answers.

3. Step into your prospects shoes and make a list of the challenges they face by doing nothing, or using a competitor’s product. Will there be increased costs (staffing, time, liability, asset lifespan)? Will there be missed opportunities (new revenue streams, new customer segment, first to market)? Maybe serious issues (regulatory fines, lawsuits, negative PR)?

If you just do these three simple things and still can’t figure out why your prospects would not be excited by your product, I want to hear about it! Drop me a line. Let’s figure this thing out.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I just finished reading this year’s latest marketing survey results over at the Junta42 site. It’s interesting to see the popularity of different marketing content pieces as part of the overall marketing strategy. You can download the report for yourself here.

Social media marketing (with the exception of blogs) is now in the number one spot. 72% of those polled have now incorporated social media into their marketing activities. What I’d be even more curious to know though, is have they seen and improvements? More hits to the website? More inquiries? Even more sales?

The next five things on the list are what I consider to be the new marketing sweet spot. They are the heart of content marketing. When done well, they cover the full spectrum of the AIDA (attention, interest, desire, action) marketing concept. Each piece can serve one or more AIDA goals, but the suite should include pieces that cover the complete AIDA spectrum.

From the 2010 Content Marketing Spending Research by Junta42

Each of these content terms mean different things to different marketers. Personally, I’ve seen each term over-used and under developed. Too many times, companies will label the content with a term below and not fully back it up with meaningful content. These are the way I see each piece

1. E-newsletters – Publish monthly and include product and company news, customer success stories, technical “how-to’s”, and business ideas. Combination of short (100 words or less) and longer (up to 1000 words) articles.
2. Blogs – Keep topics fresh, at least weekly, and relatively short (less than 500 words)
3. White Papers – Don’t fall for the short attention span, 2-pager. Do your topic justice by demonstrating a business problem and how it can be solved. Typically 6-10 pages.
4. Articles – These might be in your own publications or industry publications and are probably best as a deep dive on a topic at between 1000 and 2000 words.
5. Case Studies – These can be as short as two pages, but make sure you provide concrete information about the customer’s initial challenge, how it was solved, and lessons learned.

Effective marketers take the time to do it right. It’s not an area you want to hand off to your already busy product managers or the new marketing coordinator you just hired. Make sure the topics are well researched, the “story” told is coherent and professional, and that you accomplish your goal of what you want them to think and do after they’ve read it.

Content marketing is not an easy task and not every company has the resources in house to get the job done well. This is probably why the Junta42 survey also shows that smaller companies are spending twice the amount (as a percentage) on content marketing as their larger counterparts. Find yourself a content marketing professional you can trust and start building your content library, making sure you get the marketing assets you need to be successful.

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

I recently watched a Ted Talk video of Seth Godin discussing tribes. As Seth so clearly describes it, we are at a pivotal moment in time, where we are changing the way ideas are spread.

No longer is it about money or power. It’s about leadership—the ability to organize passion. And, social technologies allow us to do that quite easily. We can now find and align large numbers of people and create our own movement.

Being the serious animal lover I am, I was particularly drawn to his example of Nathan Winograd, a former animal control officer in San Francisco. According to Godin, the SPCA’s original charter was to rid the city of stray dogs and cats. This meant picking them up and killing them, often within 24 hours.

Nathan could no longer tolerate this, so together with his boss, set out to make San Francisco a no-kill city. They went to the city council meeting but were met with people from SPCA shelters across the country who successfully shot the idea down. But Nathan didn’t give up. He found power in organized passion. Within just a couple years, San Francisco became the first no-kill city. Since then, he did it again in Tompkins County, NY, North Carolina, and Reno.

If you want to see Seth Godin’s complete Ted Talk, take 18 minutes and watch this video.

The beauty of organizing passion to create a movement is that it can work for both non-profit and for-profit causes. Essentially, it works like this:

1. Tell a story that resonates with people who want to hear it
2. Use that story to connect a group of people who share the same passion
3. Combine social technologies and passion to lead a movement
4. Harness the power to create change

If your passion is your product, find a way to tell a story that people will repeat. Initially, it won’t be as easy as producing mass marketing, but once you’ve found that connection, it will definitely be much more fruitful!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Social media is on the tip of most every B2B marketer’s tongue these days. They’re wondering which activities they should be participating in. “Should we be blogging and tweeting?” “Should we have a Facebook page?” “What about LinkedIn? Should we be there too?” These are typical of the types of questions that are heard whenever new techniques are introduced.

Laura Ramos of Forrester recently published the 2010 B2B Marketing Budgets and Mix Trends Research. The study looks both at marketing activities and how the marketing spend is split amongst those activities. Of course, it’s no surprise that Forrester finds social media to be the hot new marketing tool.

Looking at B2B social media efforts in 2009, the study shows:

• 68% have set up group pages on social networking sites
• 55% use Twitter for marketing
• 49% are active with corporate blogging (up from 32% in 2008)

While these statistics are interesting, even surprising in some cases, she cautions that they represent what marketers are doing—not necessarily what is working. In fact, she says that, on average, fewer than one in five say social media has been highly effective for branding and lead generation. What isn’t defined is the term “highly effective.” But I think the point made is that social media tactics still have a ways to go before they produce the returns of more traditional marketing tactics such as e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales.

Forrester’s 2010 study did show that e-mail, search marketing, and inside sales were the only tactics to show steady upward trends in both branding and lead generation. She states pretty strongly that marketers must get these right before adding social media to the mix.

As for marketing spend, most marketers cut spending across all activities, and their 2009 budgets looked the same as 2008. Not a huge surprise given the sting of the recession. She mentions that while trade show activities are down, these types of events still take up an average of 20% of the marketing spend. This is followed by traditional tactics like print ads, executive events, direct mail, and PR, which consumed between 10% and 13% of the budget.

Boiling this all down, she advises marketers to rethink their marketing mix and take bigger risks when allocating marketing budget for online efforts. She says that even though digital and social media efforts will not overtake traditional outbound communications anytime soon, marketers can no longer ignore the shift as customers move more into the social media space.

Personally, I expect to see even more of this marketing shift as 2010 sees a lift out of the recession and business returns to a (new) normal. Also contributing to this shift will be the increased ability to measure and see positive results. Something that has been slow to come.

What does your company think about social media marketing? Have they dipped a toe in the water? Have they seen positive results? Love to hear from you!

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI

Read a great post by IDC’s Michael Gerard about solution selling. I was fortunate to experience that for the first time several years ago by a very successful vendor rep who has since become a good friend. I thought by now, every sales organization practiced solution selling-but I was wrong.

Michael’s post says, “For nearly 10 years, sales organizations have emphasized the desire to become “trusted partners” with their B2B customers. However, only one in five buyers will tell you that he/she is generally approached by sales reps prepared to discuss solutions.” He goes on to say that most sales engagements are still product led.

Given the stiff competition in the marketplace and all we know about the psychology of selling, why is this still the case and what can we do about it?

It’s been around for a long time. People do business with those they know, like, and trust. To me, anything else is either luck or desperation. With B2B’s extended sales cycle, relationship building becomes even more important. IDC finds that buyers are saying the pre-purchase experience is becoming a more important indicator of post-purchase value. They also say buyers are increasingly considering “relationship ROI” while considering product ROI.

So, what are we marketers doing to help facilitate relationship building? What are we doing to help build trust and likeability?

I’m working with a client and made a suggestion to him that I think was a completely foreign concept: offer some valuable content or tool that has absolutely no mention of your product. In this case, I suggested an e-book on competitive analysis best practices, since they provide a service that consolidates competitive and market information.

As marketers, what research can we provide our sales team? Have we read the latest news and annual reports to find out what is happening now or where they want to go in the future? Have we researched both the decision makers and influencers to find out what roles they have had in the past and any accomplishments they’ve had? By the way, LinkedIn is great for that type of research.

Michael goes on to say, “Buyers will tell you that, in this economy, they no longer have tolerance for uninformed vendor representatives who come through their doors.”  Heck, I never did!

Prospects don’t want your products; they want solutions to their problems. They want to find those solutions with people they know, like, and trust. Does your marketing plan support that?

AMC - Content Marketing for BI and High Tech - Freelance Marketer for High Tech with a focus on BI