Manhattan Marketing Maven

B2B Social Media Schizophrenia

B2B marketers are schizophrenic about social media. On one hand they've been doing social media, offline and using older technology for years. On the other hand they are standing on the sidelines watching the action and trying to decide if or when to join the fray.

The fundamentals of social media -- networking, user generated content, content sharing and real-time interaction -- has been going on in Listservs, user groups, chat rooms and branded and industry publication and association sites for years. Some of the earliest users of the web, were B2B marketers eager to use the new technology to automate and accelerate conversations and discussions among experts and specialists. so its surprising that they have been reluctant to embrace the new players. 

But I suspect there will be an explosion of private and gated online communities in the B2B space soon. Pioneers like Sermo and VuMedi are gathering doctors, vetting them and offering platforms for robust, specialized conversations away from public eyes and ears. This pattern will be repeated over and over again in the next few years augmented by bandwidth to support video, animations, limitless numbers of real-time interactions and enhanced security. 

This will continue the migration of offline B2B communications from conventions and trade magazines or journals to webinars, podcasts and specialized community sites. The first wave of this transformational shift is documented in Business.com's 2009 Business Social Media Benchmarking Survey. Sixty-nine percent of those responding participated in webinars. 62 percent read user-generated reviews or ratings and checked out prospective partners, vendors and competitors' web sites or company blogs. More than half searched for company information on social media sites, participated in an online B2B forum or read or downloaded content on a 3rd party content site.

This survey of 2948 business-to-business executives discovered that 65 percent of respondents use social  media as part of their normal work routine, even though 54 percent of the companies surveyed block Twitter and Facebook in the workplace. The usage of social media runs up and down the corporate food chain from line managers to C-levels and spans virtually every department, not just the marketing and external facing guys in organizations of every size from micro start-ups to global MNCs. The average respondent used six different social media resources in the course of doing business.

So why are these guys so antsy about using social media to marketer their goods or services?

Three reasons: 1) Its new and its not worth fighting over. Its not in the budget, it's hard to compare with either conventional best practices or existing programs and there's no percentage in risking your neck for social media.

2) There's little evidence that social media buzz yields sales. In a B2B environment where lead generation and nurturing shepherd groups of prospects through an extended buying cycle, there's little reason to believe that social media help close. The value, or so it seems, lies on the front end of building awareness or preference or maybe validating an initial shirt list. So this makes social media a "nice-to-have: but not a necessity.

3) Lack of Control. Anyone can comment, add ,edit or pipe up. This takes a tailored sales process and turns it into a free-for-all where marketers can no longer control the ball, the pace of play or the sequence of activities. Social media is way outside the comfort zone of B2B sales and marketing people.

But the good news is that B2B players are experimenting with these emerging media. Seventy percent maintain accounts or profiles in social media spaces. and sixty percent maintain blogs or monitor their firms online reputation. More than half, of the respondents, use Twitter, monitor reviews, advertise on social media sites, comment on social media sites or answer questions in online forums. 

As a rule the smaller companies are the early adapters, but everyone is pretty much making it up as they go along. The dominant expectation is that social media will produce web site traffic; prospects who are open to engaging with business-to-business brands. The B2B arena is a rich landscape for social media. In the New Year look for several breakout efforts to harness and use these channels which will be copied extensively.  

Mobile Marketing on the Move

The gap between the hype and the reality of mobile advertising and marketing is narrowing thanks to consumer uptake of smart phones, 3G technology and adoption of technical standards that will make provisioning and creating campaigns easier. And while there's no doubt that mobile is the next disruptive technology, the battle for control and the quest to find the nexus between targeting, formats and offers has yet to be decided.

The antagonists are carriers who control the pipes and the pricing, marketers who need to decide what to sell and determine consumer tolerances, content providers looking to monetize their efforts, browser developers seeking to improve their capabilities to enrich the mobile experience and advertisers looking to leverage mountains of potentially useful targeting data. Into this mix add the Mobile Marketing Association touting the latest revision of its technical and creative standards and mobile ad specialists, like Ping Mobile, looking to expedite the process and accelerate ad agency acceptance of mobile as a viable medium worthy of integration into big brand budgets.

Consider these signs of progress, mostly surfaced in a new report from ContentNext Media entitled:" The Changing Mobile Industry: What it Means for Media Executives" written by Lauren Rich Fine and Galen Vaisman.

• AT&T, Sprint, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, who control roughly 80 percent of the 270 million US mobile subscribers, 84 percent of the population, agreed to new standardized marketing guidelines which should make widescale campaigns easier to do

• Mobile ad revenue is expected to grow to $200 million globally according to the Yankee Group. We are getting closer to a critical mass of early adopters who can convince the next wave of marketers to give mobile a try.

• The number of mobile banner ads served by BuzzCIty in Q1 2009 was UP 38 percent over Q4 2008. We are getting traction on banners, experience in couponing and launching significant numbers of text/SMS campaigns. We are getting pretty good at quizzes, polls and contests and synching mobile media with print, broadcast and online messaging efficiently.

• The US mobile content market grew 38 percent in 2008 and mobile entertainment (gambling, porn, games, music, TV) was up 28 percent. This evidences a big change n how people think about and use their phones.

• Smartphone sales will reach 13.5 percent of new handsets sold this year with new introductions from Apple,RIM,Nokia and Google capturing the attention of the marketplace.iPhones and Blackberries have dramatically changed the way consumers think about and use mobile phones and they have accelerated consumers' trust in mobile media. The 27,000 iPhone and iPod applications have created a new market for content, especially games which account for 1 in 4 downloads.The next step is to leverage this trust and the "cool" factor to better understand what customers want, when they want it and how best to give it to them.

• 40-45 percent of mobile phone customers access the Internet on their device, a number that should steadily increase as the experience improves, costs come down and Obama's infrastructure plans get going. As browsers get better and bandwidth becomes more accessible, video will bloom and location based targeting will take hold

But in spite of these hopeful signs, there are still significant challenges to realizing the dream of having your life in your pocket. And these gating factors are serious:

1. Carriers Control. They own the pipes; they decide what gets sold, they do the billing and compile the data. They have their own agendas in terms of public policy and revenue generation. They promise highly selective targeting but don't really have the systems in place to dice and slice the data. They are big robber barons with key allies on Wall Street and Capital Hill so there's no avoiding them.

2. Seeking Standardization. Markets blossom and explode when devices, applications and services are inter-operable. That means everybody uses the same standards and infrastructure so that anyone can send or sell anything to anyone. At the moment and for the foreseeable future, the players have divergent economic interests that will prevent this. And while we are seeing parallel app stores springing up, we won't get a hockey stick uptake until all apps are available to all customers using all devices. This will be several big battles and several years hence.

So what do we do till then?

Learn from Shira Simmonds, president of Ping Mobile, a leading mobile campaign management firm. She argues that using a middleman allows marketers to finesse carriers' provisioning issues and accelerate the process of getting and using branded short codes. She also argues that keeping it simple, using proven formats and taking a test-and-learn approach will ease brands into the medium and give them the leeway to explore different creative strategies while they gauge the interests and tolerances of their customers.

For Shira, mobile advertising begins with the 6 "Do Nots"...

Do NOT be sneaky. Be open and transparent in all your mobile identification. There is nothing to be gained by attracting customers under a false flag.

Do NOT spam. Use double-opt-in names and be aggressively CAN SPAM compliant

Do NOT under estimate potential security issues. Mobile media is the Wild West. Hackers and malevolent players are abundant. Assume that someone will attempt to hack you and prevent it.

Do NOT over complicate things. Consumers are good for 2 interactions. Use them wisely. Test variations on sweepstakes, contests, polls, quizzes, games and couponing; all of which have proven themselves effective. Assume that smart campaign planning requires a 6 month ramp-up and a thoughtful integration with other media channels.

Do NOT expect too much from mobile micro-payments or location based and GPS targeting anytime soon because of the legal and technical issues yet to be resolved. 

Do NOT be put off by Shira's commandments.

An aggressive advocate of mobile advertising she sites great response rates  for travel, retail, food and restaurant clients and expects real estate, automotive and CPG accounts to embrace mobile campaigns before too long. She is seeing mobile experimentation with older demographics, even while younger people dominate current campaigns and she cites the low cost of mobile as a reason to test-and-learn sooner rather than later.

Mobile media is on the move --. not quite zero to sixty in 8 seconds -- but these developments are making consumer acceptance and campaign execution much easier day by day. With available Sherpa's like Shira, its well worth looking into mounting your maiden mobile marketing campaign.

User Generated Content: Newsweek's Rabbi Rankings

The exclusive online publication of Newsweek.com’s third annual list of the 50 Most Influential US Rabbis pushes a lot of buttons for me. Simultaneously captivating and gross, like a car wreck, it’s a great example of the power of user generated content to drive traffic and create controversy.

 

This morbid fascination with rankings and horse races connects directly to our limbic brains; an evergreen way to capture attention. Like watching an accident, we are almost incapable of ignoring a ranking list no matter what it is or who compiled it. Even though this rump rotisserie rabbi league, conceived and continued by a handful of Jewish Hollywood types, unsettles anyone raised religiously on the notion that rabbis are learned, modest and ranked on piety rather than publicity.

 

Our need to turn rabbis into rock stars, facilitated by Newsweek’s need for content, and probably better Hollywood access, drives this pre-Passover gift to the chosen people. You can just image these smart-alecks sitting around and talking rabbi trash talk, the way millions of kids talk about their baseball cards, their favorite teams or players and their rotisserie league line-ups.

 

In some ways it’s a sin. In other ways, especially since I know a lot of the rabbis, it’s a guilty pleasure to dissect the list and the changes in rankings from year-to-year. I guess that’s what Newsweek is counting on.

 

Ranked on eight criteria that read more like a shipping list for political candidates, highly ranked rabbi’s must be known, have political influence, media chops, be perceived as leaders and have sizable flocks. Ranks are influenced also if a rabbi has “made an impact on Judaism and made a ‘greater’ impact,” whatever that is, in the judgment of the

Hollywood

Ha-hamim (wise men). It’s either a testament to or a sad commentary on the evolution of the American Jewish community, from striving immigrants to well-heeled power brokers, that anyone even has the chutzpah to undertake this exercise.

 

Nonetheless you can feel the influence of different players and denominations on this year’s list. The number one rabbi, David Saperstein, a DC-insider, is called out as a friend of Obama. Number two, down a notch from last year is Marvin Hier, of the

Wiesenthal

Center

, the holocaust whisperer. Breaking onto the list for the first time at number 20 was Steve Gutow of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

 

The rabbis moving up the ranks the fastest represent dominant movements, probably slighted in previous years. Norman Lamm, Chancellor of Yeshiva University and leader of the modern orthodox jumped up 29 places from number 43 in 2008 to number 14 in 2009. I guess the rankers aren’t orthodox or underplay the role of the orthodox movement. The second biggest jump up was Stephen Pearce who leads reform Congregation Emanuel with 2700 families in

San Francisco

.  And the third biggest jump was Michael Greenbaum, the

COO

of the Jewish Theological Seminary, fountainhead of conservative Judaism. I’m guessing they picked the number two guy because Arnie Eisen, the Chancellor, isn’t a rabbi.

 

Also up significantly were rabbis involved in next generation activities. Author Joe Telushkin jumped 6 spots, as if they’ve just discovered all his books, as did Mark Charendoff, leader of the Jewish Funders Network, the next generation of big time donors.  Efraim Buchwald of the National Jewish Outreach program went from number 44 to number 39 while the number two newcomer was Daniel Brenner of Birthright Next, the free program that introduces young people to

Israel

.

 

Rabbis falling in rank also fell down along the ideological spectrum. The number one loser, down eighteen (chai) slots is the founder of the Jewish renewal movement Zalman Schacxter-Shalomi. Down 9 slots was Bradley Shavit Artson of the

Ziegler

School

at the American Jewish University. Third down was orthodox rabbi Arthur Schneider of Park East Synagogue in

New York

, the rabbi who hosted the Pope Benedict; a lot of good it did him.

 

Also down significantly was Eric Yoffe, leader of the reform movement, Sharon Kleinbaum, pioneering gay rabbi and Elliot Dorf, who leader of the law-making committee of the Conservative Rabbinic Assembly.

 

You’ve got to wonder what these guys were thinking in making the list and how much lobbying, pressure and wheedling they are subject to. You can almost discern a liberal bias corrected or balanced to be as inclusive and politically correct as possible. But that’s the beauty of user-generated content launched into a social community. It creates, heat, engagement and guilty pleasure.  

 

What Tactics Work Best in a Recession?

The budget axe is falling. Marketers everywhere have to choose which campaigns and which channels survive. As a result there is a robust debate about which tactics work best and which channels are "must haves" versus the fun but expendable "nice-to-haves."

As usual, the decision often depends on the objectives marketers seek to achieve. In this environment, management wants low-cost, fast-acting and dependable ways to get attention, traffic, interaction and sales. Many branding and positioning initiatives get quickly sacrificed when cash runs short, even though the media for accomplishing these objectives is heavily discounted and subject to aggressive negotiation.

A key decision criterion seems to be the ability of a campaign or a media channel to convert a prospect into either an active lead or a sale. Viewed through this lens countless blog readers and Facebook friends become more of an abstraction and less of a measurable means to deliver business value. Ironically many of the highly hyped tactics -- online PR, web video marketing, Twitter and social media marketing --  are sorted OUT because of their limited track record in delivering quantifiable results. Though today they are cheap enough and accessible enough for marketers with a few extra bucks and some extra imagination to use creatively and break through to hard-to-reach customer or prospect segments.

Search (both SEO and PPC) and e-mail are the work horses in a recession. The costs are containable, the targeting can be quickly and effectively tweaked plus the ROI has been proven again and again.They are sufficiently interactive to meet "social" marketing needs and can be deployed almost on-demand to suit anxious CFOs.

Another recession-centric focus is on current customer bases and CRM tools. This starts with the notion that its easier and cheaper to sell more to existing customers than to seek out and persuade new ones. But a farming versus hunting orientation depends on the agile use of data, since one-size-fits-all campaigns against a house list rarely meet expectations. In looking to upgrade CRM capabilities marketers have to assess the incremental lift of improved data mining versus the incremental cost and total ownership costs of systems or software.

As more and more marketers hunker down, look for inventive uses of the tactics that work. And keep an eye out for wacky experiments to try to break through to new audiences or to road test emerging channels. 

Ten Things NOT to Do in 2009

 

Don’t Panic. The earth will keep spinning on its axis and marketers of all stripes will need to communicate and persuade customers and prospects. Focus on the meat-and-potatoes issues in your business. Invest extra time and energy to find new ways to conceive, craft and transmit messages that better differentiate and more clearly communicate the value and the urgency of your brand.

 

Don’t Get Distracted. The economy is in a free fall. Most of us hope Obama knows more than we do. We pray that he and all those new appointees have a really good plan. He might. But whatever he’s got won’t make things better on January 22^nd. So focus on the stuff you can affect. Ignore things you have no control over. We all have to assume an  AA mentality by grasping the notion that most things are out of our control so we have to use our time and energy wisely to impact the handful of things we actually can exert control over; mostly ourselves. Take a short term focus. Cover each month’s bills. Take one step forward after the next. Try to ignore the daily doomsday screeching and then endless warnings that the sky is falling down.  

 

Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. Great relationships are forged in adversity. Now is the time to stick close to your clients and your people. Mine and harness the energy, the goodwill, the advocacy, the insights and the and ideas that often go uncollected or unexploited during the normal course of business. Invest in each other. Hold up your value proposition to a 360 SWOT analysis. Find new and better ways to reach out your customers.

 

Don’t Ignore Your Network. Social networking demonstrates that we are linked together. We are navigating this life together. So leverage your connections. Reach out to others. Ask questions, share ideas and share resources. The whole is stronger than the sum of the parts, so leverage the whole. Remember that the value of a network expands exponentially with use. An unused network degrades rapidly.

 

Don’t Bring Coupons to a Party. Social media is evolving, emerging and morphing everyday. You wouldn’t come to a party at my house and pass out coupons. We’d think you were rude and gross. Facebook, MySpace and others are the digital online equivalents of that party. Understand the milieu and enter cautiously recognizing that the brand is NOT in control, consumers are. Take your cues from them and respect their sensibilities.

 

Don’t Stop Experimenting. We are in the “wild west” phase of social, mobile and online video media. There are no ideas that are too crazy especially since our technologists are inventing, extending and mashing up new things daily. The recession makes these platforms and the creative content to fuel them affordable and measurable. So get below your competitor’s radar and play around with images, messages and media. Who knows maybe your nutty idea will become the new “best practices”?

 

Don’t Ignore

Mobile

Media. The new generation of Blackberries and the iPhone are important steps on the evolutionary path toward a single multi-purpose device that combines, integrates, synchronizes and aggregates computers, the Internet, telephony, credit and debit cards, digital photography, Swiss Army knives and who knows what else. And while it might take a few years for the number of daily users to reach hundreds of millions, this phenomenon will be upon us before you can say “Tim Berners Lee.” That means now is the time to get familiar with mobile media. Begin thinking about the idea of constant access to the Net and constant consumer motion and communication. This development will forever change they way we stimulate brand awareness, preference and purchase and change shopping expectations and behavior in ways we can’t yet predict..

 

Don’t Write Off Direct Marketing. When marketing money gets tight, bean counters rule. Direct marketing continues to enjoy great public acceptance, strong ROI, measurability and an under-exposed degree of creativity and inventiveness. Direct mail, DRTV, telemarketing and other DM tactics are proven result-getters which can be pulsed or turned off and on at will. Expect smart marketers to default to direct marketing and look for smart DM players to do well in hard times.

 

Don’t Forget to Measure What Matters. Most marketing is assessed two ways. We measure effectiveness in returning profitable business results and we count efficiency in terms of the value received compared to the cost, usually expressed in some form of ROI calculation. There are millions of other distracting and partially relevant things to count, sort and calculate. But in a recession focus on two simple questions; “How much profitable new business did this drive?” and “Was it worth it?”

 

Don’t Abandon Customer Satisfaction.  Acquiring new customers costs a multiple of delighting and retaining existing ones. In tough times you need the efficiency of happy customers referring their friends. Focus on customer service. Talk to customers. Listen to them too. Solicit their ideas and feedback. Institute loyalty and reward programs. Do whatever you can to encourage them to buy more. Emphasize customer service and include the voice of your customer in your product and marketing plans.

Marketing Yourself in a Recession

Layoffs are a daily occurrence in this recession.  Too many of my friends and colleagues have found themselves involuntarily benched. If thousands in each industry are on the street finding a new job requires a personal Zen that’s comprised of patience, routine, sustained confidence, steady action and considered risk-taking. 

To effectively seek work – you have to think like a marketer and market yourself as a brand.  Identify your unique selling proposition, carefully target your potential new employers, craft persuasive messages and determine ways to get the attention and consideration you deserve.  But be realistic. The toughest part of job hunting is managing your nerves and marshaling your resources. 

The good news is that thousands of others are in the same boat.  There’s no embarrassment to being out of work.  But that’s also the bad news; thousands are competing for hundreds of jobs.  It’s a buyers market where some employers are trading up.

Here are ten must-do steps to keep you sane and on track toward your next job:

Create a Routine.  Job hunting isn’t a full-time job, especially when the jobs you want are few and far between.  Set up a daily routine.  Check email, surf job boards, then walk the dog, exercise, meet friends for lunch and watch Oprah. Structure your day so that you do what you need to and reduce the likelihood that you’ll obsess about your circumstances.

Prepare Your Pitch. You’ll need a killer resume with several variations, cover letters summarizing your greatest hits, references and selling points to acquaint headhunters with your strengths. These are messages you can control and shape. Writing and rewriting them gives you a sense of control and comfort and is something you can actually work on while you are waiting for the right opportunity. Anticipate the questions an interviewer might ask and prepare the answers. Make a list of people you worked with and your role in each assignment so you can quickly cite an example of how you fit the job specification. Spend time wordsmithing, be introspective and write like a journalist -- don’t bury the headline. You’ll have 5-10 seconds to grab somebody’s attention so pick your words carefully and be sure you are accenting your strongest selling points.

Don’t Pitch Every Job.  You are anxious with one eye on bills and the other on your savings account.  But restrain yourself.  Many of the jobs posted aren’t real.  Many aren’t right for you no matter how much you’re worried about cash flow.  Pick your shots.  Take the time to craft a short, punchy cover letter that translates and matches your experience to the job requirements.  Doing this math for an HR person will dramatically improve your chances of making a short list.

  

Stutter Step Your Submission.  The vast majority of online applications come in during the first 24 hours after a job is posted.  Huge numbers of people are applying automatically to all kinds of jobs that they aren’t remotely qualified for.  Many employers can’t handle the numbers so they dump the first response wave because nobody is willing to wade through 500 or 1000 resumes.  So pick your shot, wait a day and then apply.  There is a reasonable chance that patience and timing will earn you more consideration.

Set Alerts.  Let jobs find you. Do a search using the keywords that fit your ideal position or your dominant skill set.  Save the search as an alert.  You can do this in 45 seconds on Craig’s List or at www.indeed.com, www.simplyhired.com, www.trovix.com, or www.jobster.com.  Each day the jobs most interesting to you will end up in your Inbox.  If you like, set more than one using keywords for different titles or different industry sectors.  All you have to do is sort out the duplicates and decide where to click to apply.

Surf Social Networks.  Let you r Facebook and MySpace friends know you are looking and sign up for professional groups or forums on Ning, Naymz and LinkedIn where many jobs are posted and many recruiters are lurking.  Also check trade association and trade publication sites and industry newsletters many of which either have job listings or report on openings, new positions and employer’s plans.

Don’t Be Bashful.  You can’t win if you don’t play.  Tell people you are looking and what you are looking for.  Most people assume that friends and family know their situation and will do the math for them. This is usually NOT true.  And, while it might make you blush, you never know who knows whom.  Tell your maiden aunt, your cousin in Boise and your neighbor. Be specific about what you do and what you are looking for because who knows? Maybe their cousin, high school BFF or sister-in-law just might be hiring.

Publish.  In an interactive world, employers will search the web or prospective employees either to identify people in companies or industries of interest or to check out candidates they’ve heard about or talked to. In some cases the players they want to poach from the competition aren’t there anymore so publishing helps them find you. So while you’ve got the time share your expertise by publishing a blog or positing thoughts, comments, opinions or advice on blogs, portals, professional communities, media sites or job boards. You never know if your clever response to a news story our your nuts-and-bolts advice to an industry peer will send an employer in your direction.  Remember many more people read this stuff than write posts, so consider it a form of advertising.

Engage Recruiters Gingerly.  Most recruiters are actively trying to find the needle in the haystack; the perfect candidate that meets all the requirements and nice-to-haves that employers fantasize about.  These guys work for employers. You are just fuel for their revenue stream. If you fit the profile, these guys become your new best friend. If you connect on a real job prospect immediately find out if they have an exclusive retainer or if they are pitching you on contingency. Their status with the hiring organization will drive their behavior towards you.

If you don’t, they don’t hate you, but don’t expect a return call.  Every recruiter keeps some kind of database and almost everyone remembers individuals with interesting stories, unique expertise or even odd-sounding names.  Many allow you to upload your resume to their sites, others are happy to collect resumes by e-mail and many post openings on their own sites and larger job boards trolling for candidates.

Try to find the recruiters who specialize in your industry or your functional specialty. Expect that recruiters will be a mixed bag ranging from skilled, understanding conversant professionals to half-wit jerks looking to score a quick commission.  And you never know… tomorrow they can get a new assignment where you fit the bill and you go from being a nobody to being the leading candidate.

Seek Out Context. Every job you get considered for is at a different stage in the search process. In some cases you are the first person they’re seeing. In other cases they already love somebody else and you are search chum or a comfortable second string player. And more times than you can imagine, the one they truly loved turned them down so they’re back in the market reluctantly fishing again.

Get as much information as you can about where the hiring managers are in the process, their style, their formal and informal process and the culture of the organization. This will require you to dig, ping your network, ask around and to push the recruiters; who often don’t know this stuff themselves. But be persistent. These critical elements vary widely within industries and even under corporate or holding company umbrellas. Understanding how and when you intersect with the on-going search is the most important piece of intelligence you can get because it will shape the way you position yourself and cue you about how to persuade them to hire you.

 

 

5 Ways to Jumpstart Mobile Marketing

The prudent forward-looking professionally paranoid marketer will get started and get smarter about mobile media and marketing now, during the ascent phase while prices are low, content and merchant partners are flexible and open to experimentation and before anybody gets a lock on a killer app, game-changing technology or critical market segments.

The holiday appeal and uptake of smartphones should be enough to convince you to try a mobile marketing test Here are 5 tips to get started in framing your own mobile marketing program.

Focus on Core Apps. Lead with your long suit. Decide which of your core products or services are most useful while customers are on the go and start there. Don’t try everything at once. Try one thing; the service most in-demand by customers or prospects, the items that is most closely identified with your brand identity or your unique selling proposition.

Start Small. The first step puts you squarely in  test- and-learn mode. Ask customers to do one thing. Ask them to choose, vote, get a coupon, set an alert, or take an exclusive offer. The idea is to validate the channel and test your ability to influence incremental changes in behavior. You want to get them to do one thing, easily and quickly so that they like it it, appreciate the effort and add to their warm and fuzzy feelings about your brand.

Market Across Platforms. Mobile apps are critical for a few but the real value-add for customers and prospects is in rounding out the brand experience. Use a mobile test to get customers to respond to an e-mail or to an ad, to view and vote or to offer opinions about something they see or hear in another media channel.

Make an Offer. In return for taking a mobile action within a fixed time frame customers should get a reward. Rewards can take the form of contest entries, discounts, and exclusive access to people, places or things or things of value like freebies or coupons. Mobile media is a direct response platform. Many customers come to it with expectations set by DR marketers.

Ask About It. Do a post-action customer satisfaction survey using e-mail and mobile media to gauge customer reactions and gather customer input and feedback. Mobile marketing is evolving and who better to help you plan step number two than the folks who responded to your initial foray?     

Web 3.0: Brand Strategy Must Drive Integrated Interactive Marketing

Web 2.0 was about finding, developing and embracing interactive technologies to engage customers, prospects and other constituencies. Web 3.0, says Clark Kokich of Razorfish, is about integrating these cool new toys to work together to achieve business results. 

While Michael Leis jokes about the nomenclature, Clark’s underlying thought is spot on; the holy grail of integrated digital marketing is to frame a vision of a fully realized multi-dimensional interactive relationship between a brand and its customer base and then implement that vision using the latest and greatest tools we can find to achieve predictable business results.

It’s a grand and very difficult to achieve grail. Why?

Four reasons. 1. Because it forces us to get past the “amazing” features of each new tool and focus on end-user benefits rather than first user bragging rights. 2. Because the tools are constantly evolving and we are unlikely to settle on a few at the risk of missing the next big thing. 3. Because it requires both agencies and clients to overcome organizational and attitudinal silos with their attendant politics of self-interest in service to a greater goal. 4. Because it requires marketers to balance measurable business effectiveness against probable marketing efficiencies which demand a combination of proven tactics and carefully considered experiments; risks that both agencies and clients are generally afraid of.

But there is a way forward, if marketers would adopt these four tactics:

Follow a Boss. Altitude is the only predictor of successful marketing integration. Somebody at the top of the organization (possibly a

CMO

) has to be the boss, make decisions, broker arguments, set the direction and establish the party line. It’s a stick-your-neck-out posture that requires vision, guts and political savvy. Too many post-modern, post-industrialist MBA-trained managers publicly shrink from the very notion of a boss, but without it, the natural politics of bureaucracies will overwhelm and undermine any effort.

Build Consensus Goals. The most effective marketers have a vision that sets a goal which then determines a logical series of priorities that drive creative, channel and spending decisions. This is that big strategy piece that everyone talks about and aspires to but few actually accomplish. A broad but quantifiable goal gives context to all the varied tactics and lays out hypotheses for finding synergy within an organization and its marketing partners which can be mapped out as tactics and executed in a coordinated and thoughtful way through a set of channels. The game is won on the choice of strategy not on the choice of channels.

Harness the Mule Team. Nothing great ever gets done unless everyone is in-harness and pulling in the same direction. This requires the greatest application of energy and force and is most affected by staffing choices and vendor selection. Nobody sets out to create a dysfunctional operation, but too many of us end up with one because we don’t have the discipline or the appetite to harness, direct and motivate our team in a single direction.  

Picture & Measure an

End

State

. Too many marketing efforts attack immediate pain points or address immediate problem areas. Not enough start with an understanding of what the brand needs and wants in terms of its relationship with clients and their identification with the brand that drives adoption and purchase of its products or services. Brands need to set awareness, preference, attitudinal, purchase, loyalty and interactive goals, and then deploy marketing programs to engage customers to achieve the stated objectives. Then measurements of business effectiveness and internal efficiencies can be used to genuinely steer the ship.       

Mobile Marketing Gets Mojo

Mobile marketing is on the cusp of moving markets and deserves consideration as part of the marketing mix for a wide variety of products and services. No longer the province of teenagersor a parlor trick prepetrated by a nerdy early adopter, mobile media is gaining widespread use as new phones and new software make the Internet accessible everywhere. In no time we'll all be tethered to the digital grid; connected by a single multi-functional device. 

Consider several recent developments:

Almost two-thirds (63%) of cellphone users have received e-mail, used text messaging or obtained news and sports information on their phones.

More than one-third (38%) of mobile phone users access the Internet from their phone. There are 40 million smart phones in use, closing in on 20 percent of the cell phones in use and the market is growing; driven by iPhones and Blackberry Pearls and Curves. 130 million phones have "highly capable Internet browsers" and the IBM Institute for Business Value survey recently found that 40%  of those surveyed had Internet data plans in-use and that a third of those had already watched a video on their phones.

Once you start watching video on your phone, 45% begin to do it regularly which according to Black Arrow cumes up to 800 million hours of mobile video viewing, still a tiny slice of the 389 billion hours of broadcast TV watched, but a bell weather nonetheless.

Evidently we have begun to solve the technical issues of compression, design and compatibility that bring the Internet off the desktop and out of the laptop and into our on-the-go daily lives. You can bet this trend will continue. Continuous improvements in speed, signal clarity and software integration will lead to a single compact, personalized device that becomes an indispensable tool for managing communication, interaction, commerce and most practical aspects of our lives. Dick Tracy's wrist watch video phone and the Star Trek communicator already exist. Soon we'll all be using their progeny.

Think about the mobile applications that people we know have already rely on. Many people use their phones to search, get news alerts or sports scores, interact with TV shows, vote or take surveys, play games, send or view photos,get directions or actually talk or text with other humans. Facebook access from mobile devices has grown 3X in the last year to 15 million users and who knows how many other social networks are making similar claims as we get used to the idea of telling everybody what we're doing in real time and sharing everything we find, like or do with a gang of unseen others.

The NFL streams video of games to mobile phones, Sears2Go.com allows you to buy Craftsman tools using a phone and a Disney-Verizon alliance will use cell phones to interact with kids and families while they're in the parks as early as next year. Progress in m-commerce is making the interfaces and downloads between websites and phones easier, smoother and less kluge-y day by day. Soon mobile wallet applications will allow us to use our phones to fill up parking meters, buy from vending machines, purchase movie tickets, check out quickly at retail stores and complete complex financial transactions from a phone keypad.  

And while there are a few indications that consumers expect and will tolerate advertising surrounding these nifty new tricks, its not really clear how much and what kind of messaging will resonate.Therefore the prudent forward-looking professionally paranoid marketer will get started and get smarter about mobile media and marketing now, during the ascent phase while prices are low, content and merchant partners are flexible and open to experimentation and before anybody develops a killer app, gets a lock on game-changing technology or establishes a beachhead in critical market segments.

After the Fall: Salvaging Financial Services Marketing

The Wall Street meltdown upended the positioning and customer credibility of most financial institutions. Catastrophic loss and universal shock forces an almost complete re-positioning and messaging to consumers by the surviving banks, brokerages and insurance companies.

Rethinking fundamental marketing concepts and messages come in the wake of widespread feelings of helplessness, fear and loss which are frequently followed by anger, resentment, finger-pointing, name-calling and blame. Every financial services advertiser who promised safety and security was found wanting. Those offering growth and insight were caught flat-footed. And those promising customized service were either overwhelmed or on radio silence. Nobody really knew what was happening, when or what to do about it and consumers were basically on their own; adrift in a turbulent sea..

Now with personal finances and macro-structures in disarray consumers are reeling over losses and struggling to salvage savings or portfolios. The task of rebuilding trust and growth will require much more than a snappy new tagline or a shiny new spokesperson. It will demand a basic change in how financial services firms address customers. Since 9/15 nobody believes that a banker, a broker or an insurance agent can protect them. And many consumers blame their trusted advisor's for getting them into trouble.

Financial service marketers have to take these five steps to have even a shot at rebuilding credibility and reducing defections.

1. Face Facts. Admit that the cascade of actions overwhelmed you and apologize. Don't try to stonewall. Don't whine about your own losses. Don't try to appear to be fellow victims. Your customers see you as the bad guy worthy of blame regardless of the facts or your perspective. 9/15 was an emotional flashback to 9/11 with more, personal consequences for more of the population.You cannot swim against this perceptual tsunami. Think like a Japanese -- bow deeply and apologize.

2. Place Yourself in the Food Chain. Explain clearly to customers where you fit in the bigger picture and explain which stressors on the system (sub-prime debt, credit default swaps, low liquidity) affect your operations. As soon as the Feds figure out their plan, map your services and offerings to it. Present yourself in the new marketplace context. And it wouldn't hurt to offer free consultations or services, extended hours and financing planning resources aimed at retirees, parents paying for college, newlyweds, new homeowners and other segments with common anxieties and needs.

3. Don't Make Excuses. I'm sorry will work best. Nobody will buy the reasons why you didn't know what was going on or the reasons why you didn't proactively warn your customers or advise them to move earlier, faster or smarter. The damage is done. Focus on digging out. Credibility will rest on the degree to which you acknowledge it and the number and quality of ideas you have for helping people get back on their feet and back on track.

4. Show the Way Forward. Map your offerings and services toward the common goal -- rebuilding, growth and safety. Don't look back look ahead. Present your offers in terms that directly align with customer goals which are to recover as much as they can and protect whatever they've got left. Incentives, special offers and clear education and direction on what to do will be appreciated.

5. Be Part of the Solution. Offer direct pro-active advice. Do what your customers think you should have been doing all along. The biggest element driving the panic was the sense that individuals and even institutions could do nothing but watch the dominoes fall. As the pundits and the media struggle to offer solutions, proactively take a position. Offer clear advice on what to do based on distinct investment objectives. Don't hedge. Don't equivocate. Pick a few smart things to do and push them loud, clear and often.