Whiteboard Fridays - 3 Ways Deliver Voice, from West IP Communications

CIO of the Future presented by West IP Communication - ZS Associates

The Value of Verticality

When selling a product or service, what's the value in verticality? That is, why orient marketing around specific "vertical markets", i.e. those that share a number of specific characteristics like mission, products, customers, etc.?  Your product is your product, it probably doesn't significantly change from one market to the next.  Shouldn't that be the most important thing?

Since I asked the question, obviously the answer is "No".  Sure, the product's stability across markets is fine, but is ultimately irrelevant.  What matters far more is how the product is perceived by the potential customers out there.  How does it (the product) address their key issues? What are their key issues anyway? Are those issues always homogeneous? 

Verticality acknowledges that the filters that otherwise similar prospects use to gauge the utility of your product is of fundamental importance and that by segmenting by these filters, you can provide more useful and persuasive information.  What one group sees as the best feature ever may be of little consequence to another, even though both might find the overall solution to be perfect for their needs.  But if I use messaging intended for one to change the behavior of the other I will likely be sorely disappointed at the end of the quarter.

Going vertical is all about gaining more intimacy and immediacy with important cohorts and recognizing those differences, which is what we're supposed to be doing in marketing anyway.

Happy Marketing!

A Better Way to Qualify Prospects

When gathering data about recent visitors to your site, it's often helpful to ask about how they came to your site.  But as we're finding more and more, folks are growing tired of answering these sorts of qualifying questions.  So do keep them to an absolute minimum.  But that doesn't mean you can't learn something about how they came to you.  Here's what you do:  Create customized landing pages for your site visitors.
By creating a page upon which your visitors land that relates to the link they used to find you, you can accomplish a number of different things. First, of course, you can know where they came from.  An advert on espn.com?  A link from a blog posting?  All can be tailored, tweeked, and otherwise crafted to allow you to gain some insight into which entry points drive the best/most traffic.

Second, you can tailor the arrival message to better match the expectations created by the link that the prospect followed. That is, if you created an ad talking up a special deal on your product, then the first thing the prospect should see is information related to that offer.  This will do wonders to improve your conversion rate and reduce your bounce rate since the prospect is immediately provided with the information they came in search of.  Don't think for a minute that people will spend much time searching for the information you promised them.  Adding even one more click will have a double digit negative impact on conversion and bounce rate. 

Third, by minimizing the number of questions that don't directly lead to benefit for the prospect, they'll be more likely to provide reasonably good data for the questions that remain.  I don't know about you, but I've seen more than a few email addresses that belong to asdf@abc.com.  Make life easier and more value-laden for your visitors and you'll be more likely to find out that asdf is actually Tom D.  You're more likely to close the deal with Tom than with asdf.

Keep it short, keep it critical, and think how you can gather the information you really need from the prospect's behavior and you'll have taken an important step on the road to optimizing your site's performance.

How is Triathlon Like Marketing? Part III - the Transition

As part of an ongoing series of posts likening marketing to triathlon, I've been reviewing some key similarities and how this analogy can help your marketing team perform like an Ironman.

In triathlon, transitions are those parts of the race where the athlete moves from one discipline to another - from swim to bike or bike to run (or the all-important from run to ambulance to beer truck!).  Races can be won or lost during these changeovers, with precious seconds ticking by as helmets get donned or swim goggles doffed.  In marketing, transitions are those phases where we implement significant changes to a key element of the marketing mix - perhaps a product introduction/deletion, a new distribution channel added, or an old sponsorship dropped in favor of a new one.  As with the sport, transitions are where you're most likely to see costly bobbles that change the leader board in significant ways.

The key to a successful transition is focus.  As we look forward to the next activity, it's easy to shift our attention to what comes next.  After all, if we've done well so far, we want to press home our advantage.  If we're behind, we want to make up ground and show that we can win.  But this desire to "get on with it" leaves us vulnerable to failing to close loops that are critical for moving ahead. This could be a simple failure to talk with an existing customer about how their future purchases might be impacted by the launch of a new product designed to replace the item they currently use.  Where a proactive call or visit might smooth the way for adoption of the new, playing catch up just means lots of unnecessary angst and an opportunity to competitors to move in.

How do you ensure that the transition goes smoothly, then?  First, take the time to plan in in/out phases.  Practice the plan (set up your bike and stuff on the ground and pretend to transition from swim to bike, for example) or virtually (get the critical staff together and have a walk through on who does what, when, who communicates updates, etc.).  Second, look for opportunities to reduce the complexity of the changeover. That is, remove unnecessary steps. Avoid scheduling other priority activities at the same time, and be sure everyone with a role to play will be available.  And lastly, design the change to take as little time as possible.  A condensed timeline means less opportunity for distraction.  Don't accelerate faster than the market allows, of course, just don't dilly-dally around.

A well-executed transition means you can add significant competitive pressure and increase the duration and effectiveness of your advantage.  As with all things, go in with a well-considered plan, execute according to your rehearsal, and keep your attention firmly focused on the here and now, even as you look around to make sure no one is getting away while you put on your socks.

Transitions - not glamorous or sexy, but absolutely important in maintaining and building competitive advantage. 

How is Triathlon like Marketing? Part II

With all the prep and planning that underlie success in both marketing or triathlon, the rubber really meets the road once the gun goes off.  The first portion of a triathlon is a swim.  The frenzy of arms and legs thrashing about is not too dissimilar to those first moments of a new product hitting the market.  There's confusion, relief at getting started, some blows to the head, and an understanding the critical mistakes made at this point will have a lasting impact, but may not be ultimately fatal - if you keep your wits about you.

Practically, there are some other similarities.  For instance, many times the swim takes place in a river or lake and involves a couple of changes in direction.  This requires that the athlete actually break form and look up once in a while to make sure they're on course.  In marketing, sometimes we're so busy executing our plans that we fail to look around and see what's happening - and by this I mean check the data that can provide real-time feedback so that we can, like the swimmer, alter our course if needed.  I've noticed that many companies have "swum" themselves into a giant pickle by not planning to look around and check the data periodically. They are simply committed to executing the plan, one step at a time, so they can check action items off the to-do list.  Bad idea.

For the triathlete, the data is simple - look up and see if the big orange buoy is directly ahead of you. For marketers, it isn't usually quite so easy.  Examples might include sales (duh), the number and quality of prospects at certain gateway points, conversion rates, press/review mentions, etc.  All in all, a combination of several data elements is typically the best idea.  The best part is that, unlike the swimmer, who when she checks her position she'll become less mechanically efficient for a short moment, marketers shouldn't see a measurable loss of momentum if they lift their heads up to look around - at least not if they've begun the process of execution with the thought of periodic position checks in mind.

The triathlon swim also presents another interesting similarity.  The muscles used in swimming are not, by and large, the same as those required for the bike and run.  Driving especially hard during the swim will require some amount of our energy reserves, sure, but tired arms and shoulders shouldn't keep you from running or biking fast.  Different muscles, different disciplines.  Marketing, especially for new product introductions, is similar in that the critical early efforts to build buzz, engage the thought leaders within the community, etc. require a different emphasis early than they will later on, once the product is fully established. 

The best marketers, then, are those that know a transition is coming as well as what the upcoming key activities will be and will prepare for them.  Transitions - the topic for next time.  Till then, keep the pedals turning and attack every hill like it wants to hurt your mama!

How Marketing is Like a Triathlon, Part 1

Perhaps more than any other discipline in business, marketing requires a multidisciplinary world view and tool-kit. I think this accounts for my observation, admittedly unscientifically founded, that marketers represent a disproportionately high percentage of triathletes. This may be due more to a form of brain damage, though I think that it may instead lie in the similarities between marketing and triathlon.

First, success in both requires a commitment to the long term. Both require a multiyear planning horizon, each broken into shorter mesocycles, each with a different emphasis. Building strength, endurance, technique take as long as building brand recognition, customer loyalty, and market share.  Each also requires a number of tools and disciplines to achieve, so comfort with complexity are the norm for marketer and triathletes.  This complexity can diffuse effort and focus on end results, so a strong sense of the goal and where we are in the training/business cycle are critical.

Marketers and triathletes are also subject to a continuing, almost overwhelming barrage of new tools and technologies that purport to help them reach their goals faster/easier/cheaper than ever before.  So the ability to separate value from hype are critical for saving the time, money, and energy that might otherwise be spent on shiny new, useless, junk.  Between the two, I'm not sure who's subjected to more unsubstantiated new product introductions, but it's pretty close to a dead heat.  There's quite a lot of hype about social networking now that promises to radically change marketing (true) and make every other tool obsolete (not very likely).  Much of that hype sounds like the promises of equipment manufacturers extolling the virtues of aerodynamic triathlon stuff - from bikes to helmets to water bottles.  The ability to avoid getting swept away by the promise of an easier life is critical, just as important as recognizing a new tool/technique that can in fact act as a game changer.  In either case, marketers and triathletes (the successful ones, anyway) are especially good at discerning the difference.

Next time: Part II - Marketing is like swimming in a muddy, debris-filled river

Most Marketing Chiefs Managing to Wrong Site Metric

The folks at eMarketing recently released survey data showing that the majority of marketing heads say that time-on-site is the Most Important performance metric they're watching. (Thanks, nice work, and Yikes!) The chart below shows that, terrifyingly, Time-on-Site (TOS) was more important than unique page views, click through rates, page views, CPM or other, which included CPC, conversion, and ROI.

 

This, in many ways, indicates that marketing leadership is still confused about what they want their web assets to do. They are still captivated by the shiny lights and chrome-plated doo-dads that allow them to show the market that they have "it" and that the competition is nothing but tech dullards.

But at the core of it, and to put a very fine point on it, our job in marketing is to make the cash register ring, to make it ring more often for more profitable stuff, and to position the company to do this again and again and again.  And that activity is reflected in our sites' conversion rate - one of the last things with which marketing leaders concerned themselves.

Conversions can take many forms, it doesn't have to be all about online commerce and selling some bauble.  Perhaps a conversion is downloading a useful PDF or requesting a presentation.  But Time-on-Site and it's twin Pageviews tell me relatively little, by themselves.  For instance, TOS provides no insight into whether or not visitors find their visit experience to be rewarding, frustrating, or just inconvenient.  Perhaps they're on site for sixteen minutes because the marketing team has done a poor job of providing key information.  Or maybe the visitor went to lunch while visiting the site and just left the browser open to this page.  Who knows?  But because we know nothing about the user's experience or their future intentions, we have no data with which to improve our chances of making a sale.

I tell my clients to think of their site as another channel through which they can reach out to the customer, much like a brick and mortar channel partner might have been twenty years ago - but with far more control and responsiveness.  Now, would we want to spend money supporting a distributor-funded event that did nothing to bring us closer to converting prospects into customers? Or even keeping customers as customers for as long as possible?  We'd be hard pressed to justify large expenditures for that sort of nebulous activity.  So why would we be so cavalier with our site?  

So keep your eye on the prize and don't get conned into looking at metrics that might be easier to manipulate but don't necessarily relate to making more money.  After all, increasing TOS is easy, increasing revenue, not so much. 

Intuit's Small Business Product Failure

Perhaps you've seen the recent spate of commercials from Intuit touting its new website template and hosting offering on television. Designed to appeal to small business owners, the service is affordable, flexible, and provides a wide selection of prefab templates from which to choose. Sounds terrific and very appealing, indeed.

Because many of my customers are start ups and they might not be very web savvy, I thought I'd check out the offering myself. With a spare URL or two and an interest in kicking the tires of this sort of offering as a testbed, I went to intuit.com to sign up. Great looking site. A nice piece of video demonstrating many of the main features of the service. Sold. I selected a user name and password, hit continue and "Server Error, Try again later" hit me right back. "Huh", I said to no one in particular. Not the kind of message you want from someone who'll be hosting your site. "I'll try again", I said. After all, the web is still pretty fickle sometimes, I reasoned. Same drill, same answer.

Couple of hours later I did indeed try yet again. I input the fields for user name and password and hit enter with great anticipation. This was going to be cool. "User name already in use". "Huh", said I. I guess I must have managed to get the account set up in spite of the earlier error message. So I tried to log on as a regular account holder. Things took a turn for the especially odd when Intuit said it didn't recognize me. On the one hand it knew me because it recognized my user name but on the other it wouldn't let me in.

Being the helpful company they are, Intuit puts their toll-free number on the page. So I called. To make the long play by play a little less long, we got to the bottom of the issue after just a few minutes. I was flabbergasted to learn that users of Mac computers can't use this service. That's right, some 10% plus of the world's entrepreneurs can't use this web-based service with a web browser interface because we're using the wrong operating system on our computers.

So beyond simply recounting my frustrating afternoon, here's the marketing upshot of all this. First, the days of tying your software product to either a Mac or to a PC are over. People have no patience for this Red State/Blue State bigotry any more. Especially if your product is software as a service (SaaS) funneled to the waiting world via the agnostic web.

Second, if you're going to exclude large numbers of prospects from buying your product, make sure that tidbit is not buried deep within some FAQ somewhere. I'll make you a deal, Intuit - Don't waste my time and I won't blog about how you are likely wasting the time of hundreds of thousands of small business people.

Third, and this applies to everyone, when you're entering a highly fragmented and competitive market, don't come half-armed. Just because it might be hard doesn't mean you can punt on major criteria. When you're operating on the web, be sure that users of different browsers can access your site and have a seamless experience, for example. Or if you're a restaurant serving only vegan dishes, don't name yourself "Pete's House of Every Food" because somebody's gonna get miffed.

The other marketing lesson is that no matter how good a job you do with ads, sites, and the other things that bring prospects in, if your product managers or operations folks can't deliver the goods, you've done nothing good for your company. Intuit will take some significant hits for this sloppy roll out and ironically, the better the marketers are in driving traffic, the worse the impact on the Intuit brand will be.

As for me, I'll be testing another firm's web template/hosting service and reporting on that effort in a future post.

Social Marketing Coming of Age

Social marketing is real, it is effective, and it is here to stay. That's what I tell all of my clients today. Not news to you? Well, the reality is that companies have only just begun to leverage social media networks with any skill at all. Though it seems like we've been hearing about this new fangled thing for a long time, it remains a shiny new and generally misunderstood area of marketing.

In large measure, that's because the people executing social marketing strategies are not very good marketers. They are born-again tech people jumping onto what they rightly perceive to be a profitable bandwagon. But as I've mentioned before in earlier posts, social media "specialists" tend to be intentionally vague about the activities in which they'll engage, hoping to maintain pricing premiums by making the field an art - more magic than science. But as business people are finding, it's not so awfully difficult after all.

So on a practical level, what should you, a business owner, do? First, recognize that social marketing is simply a new set of tools that allow you to reach out to prospects in new ways. You can use these tools to help prospects and customers advocate on your behalf. You can reinforce your brand, you can develop out of this world testimonials, you can empower customers in ways never before possible.

Second, set up a Facebook page for your company and invite customers to join your group. Buy any one of the zillion books on leveraging Facebook, like Facebook for Dummies. Quick read and full of useful little tips for getting started.

Third, set up a Twitter account, and begin "tweeting" regularly. Be brief, be value-focused, and have fun.

Fourth, listen. See what people are saying not just about your company, but your competitors, your industry, and about completely unrelated businesses - that'll give you the chance to learn about what other companies are doing to good or bad effect.

Finally, iterate. Make participation a regular event, much like getting brochures updated and printed every quarter, you can now update your messaging once, twice, three times a week. You can address "big topics" in your business as they arise, not months later. Unlike static literature, the elements of social media are dynamic, timely, and oftentimes unexpected.

Don't let any snake oil salesmen make you think that there is any magic involved with social media marketing. Think instead that these are like sales conversations you can have with lots of customers simultaneously. You're still doing the same key thing here as you've been, hopefully, doing all along: engaging with your customers is meaningful ways to drive behavior and to gather critical information. No magic, just a new set of tools for making it happen.

Start today. Doesn't have to be anything too complicated. Just get the ball rolling and momentum will build.

Five Places Marketers Fail

When analyzing marketing catastrophes of all different kinds, for companies competing in wildly different industries, some fairly consistent underlying reasons for the failures begin to emerge. And surprisingly, the notion that marketing fails because the marketers in charge were morons is not one of the five. Though there are head-scratchingly bad decisions behind most campaign failures, more insidious reasons are the true propellant behind the epic failures we see in each day's newspaper (if there were still any being published, that is. But that's a marketing failure for another day).

Number Five: The Wrong Market. Sometimes the pressure to eke out just a bit more revenue from an existing but tapped out market drives marketing leaders to try to extend the product line just a bit further or to bring a marginally better solution to the game. All too often, the wrong market is the one in which we currently compete and draw the bulk of our revenue and profits. But in moving forward, a successful and winning leader will know when to make the jump.

Number Four: Bad Timing. Sometimes, however, a marketer's timing is off. Maybe by a little, maybe by a lot. But jumping into a new market too soon can mean years of frustrated "market building" activity while other technologies and approaches take their turns at being the "right solution at the right time". Jump too late and you'll face a nigh impenetrably entrenched set of competitors with too little firepower to shift the playing field.

Number Three: The Wrong Strategy. I often say that there is usually more than one way to get to the goal. However, not every path leads there. Some lead straight into the buzz saw. The number of ways in which a strategy might go wrong are legion. Wrong distribution channel for your product? You're dead. Run ads on billboards when a strong internet route is better? Toast. Doesn't necessarily mean the marketer in charge is a moron, but make enough egregious choices and it'll be tough to dodge the nickname.

Number Two: Disconnect Between Promise and Delivery. Imagine you've spec'd the perfect product for your customer's needs. You've built a demand generation strategy second to none. You've got leads pouring in from around the globe. You're a certifiable genius. But then the factory in China burns down. The contract coders from Russia stop returning your emails. Or perhaps operations disregarded your demand forecast because her bonus gets paid on a metric that has nothing to do with satisfying your customers. In any case, this scenario can lead to the very worst outcome for a company - jilted customers. Those whose passions were stirred and then left bitterly unfulfilled.

Number One: Serving the Wrong Master. This one, more than the others, will be likeliest to cause people on the outside to consider the folks at the wheel a bunch of morons. But chances are that the marketers were simply working to please someone other than the actual customer. Perhaps the CEO had a creative idea he loved and wanted to see executed or the senior management council thought they knew better.

The common element among these failures is a loss of focus and mastery of the customer's condition and needs. The ability to translate this knowledge into effecive action is quite common, but the knowledge itself, now that is an all-too-rare commodity. So while marketing groups quibble over effective SEO strategies and approaches to pricing, too few marketing pros are spending quality time with their customers. And that is why they will fail.

Today's WORD is Injunction

Today we learned that a US court has issued an injunction preventing Microsoft from selling uber-popular Office stalwart WORD after mid-January because the product violates patents held by others. Yikes! I would suspect that large sums of money will change hands prior to that date if MS can't get another ruling from another court overturning the injunction (perhaps they should appeal to the Brazilian Supreme Court). One way or another, I doubt that WORD is in any real, lasting jeopardy.

But the case does illustrate a problem that many marketers face from time to time. What do you do when your company management either breaks the law or does something unethical as part of its business practices? Just apologize, say oops and promise it won't happen again? But in Microsoft's case, it happens a lot. How can the MS marketers overcome this self-inflicted, never ending assault on the company rep?

Microsoft's current ad campaign depicting customers as saying they invented the new Windows doesn't really square with reality, assuming that their customers aren't unethical or anticompetitive or patent poachers. We are not Them. How closely do prospective customers want to align themselves with a supplier that's always in trouble? (Aside: Hey Microsoft, do you mean to tell us that in spite of a gajillion developers on your payroll WE have to come up with all the ideas? Maybe you need to pay us instead of the other way around?).

Microsoft is not a company led by marketers, clearly. The Sherman tank that is Steve Ballmer has never seemed overly interested in such vagueries as marketing. But if he were, he might take a bit more care with the company's very fragile rep and stop making it quite so hard for marketers to do their jobs. Then again, these are the guys who thought the Jerry Seinfeld commercials were a riot. Ugh. How did these guys come to dominate the world again?

Lord of the Pitchmen - Or When Your Brand's Face Goes South On You

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The Art of Introduction

I just received a new Apple laptop the other day and was again stunned with how well done Apple's packaging is done. Every element of the packaging is functional, elegant, and exceptionally effective. Even the cardboard corners of the box the machine came in. Just cool, from start to finish. Never mind the product inside, I like to unwrap the stuff because of the feelings the process evokes.

Introductions are important moments. Those first seconds where we find ourselves face to face with a new product, person, or whatever. We form important, lasting impressions that inform and color our reactions to this new element in our lives forevermore. Yet how often does anyone really give proper weight to this event? Most folks are concerned with cost and moving past formalities so they can "get to the good stuff". Why spend five dollars on packaging when you can do the same functional job for $4.50? Penny-wise, pound foolish. When spend another two pennies on a heater switch in a Chevy just to make the tactile interaction more pleasing?

Why? Because that stuff matters. Even Wal-Mart, kings of cheap where poor service is a badge of honor, has begun to come around, recently saying that they're going to spend more time and attention on service and on the way their stores look. Cheap prices can only sustain a consumer for so long. Less expensive is fine, especially in this economy. But there remain opportunities for real, lasting competitive advantage from implementing a more Apple-ish approach to product/service design, by the realization that the "product" includes everything that comes before and after the actual "thing", and by differentiating on dimensions other than price.

The King is dead! Long live the King!

Okay, calm down, nobody is dead. But my blog has undergone a metamorphosis, changing from High Velocity Marketing to Kinetic Spark Marketing. The reason for the change is two-fold. First, as I re-energize my consulting practice after an ill-advised return to a corporate position, I wanted to convey the energy and enthusiasm that I've regained from this change. Many of my clients are small start up scale businesses and it is becoming clear that many people are following the entrepreneur's path because they've been laid off (no euphemisms here, like "downsized" or "rightsized". puh-lease) or because they have little faith in the myth of stability within the typical corporation and have taken their fate into their own hands (bravo!). So for me, business is looking up.

The other reason for the change is that over the course of operating under the V~Squared (V2) brand I found that many people didn't get what it was supposed to mean (velocity squared...making things happen fast. Oh, never mind.) So like any good marketer, I embraced the lesson and made a change.

Of course, I also think that "Kinetic Spark" just sounds good, too. And as our mission changes slightly, now offering a full array of marketing services, in effect becoming our client's marketing department located someplace else, it was time to recast the brand. But like any good marketer, I'll keep an eye on the new brand's performance and see how it goes.

Our new site, www.kineticspark.com, should be up by the new year! Check us out when you get a sec.

I'll Show You Mine If You Show Me Yours

I was in on a rather odd meeting the other day. A client of mine was meeting with a social networking team to add this important element to his opening, prelaunch marketing mix. The client wanted to have the team put a specific plan together with likely activities, goals/outcomes, and cost so that he could manage the effort and measure success. A fair and intelligent request, or so I thought. After my client articulated his needs, a very strange thing happened. The service provider wouldn't agree to provide any specifics.

"Surely he simply doesn't understand my client's needs," I thought. So I jumped in to try and add some clarity. No dice. Instead, we heard how difficult it is to measure this stuff, and coming with a set of expectations was counterproductive. That this work was organic and lots of things would get tried along the way. "Ah!" I said. "What might some of those 'things' be?"

"Could be anything," he said.

"Instead," he suggested, "why don't you tell me what you want, and then I'll do that. Usually my clients bring me something they've seen that they like and then we make it happen," he said, confusing me further. After all, these guys are the team that specializes in social media.

"You know, ultimately you'll just have to trust us to do this." Uh-huh. And I've got this bridge in Brooklyn I'm trying to get rid of, you know, for tax reasons. I wasn't about to stop.

"So what's an example of something that a client has seen and brought to you for implementation?", I asked, employing my best Perry Mason logic. I was going to pin him down yet. I could tell by the look in his eye that he had run out of room to maneuver. "Okay, maybe something like giving a book away to one of the people who've "friended" your company on Facebook." Eureka!

Turns out that the whole "avoidance" dance was driven by two things. First, my client had not fully expressed how he was going to pay the service provider for his insight and implementation. How they'd managed to have a half-dozen meetings prior to this one without that question resolved, I don't know. But I blame the service provider - always get that stuff clear at the beginning. Always!

The second reason, I hypothesize, was that the service provider didn't want to let the client know what happened inside the "black box", for fear that the client would take the ideas and implement them himself. That is something I see all too commonly from consultants and advertising firms. They hold onto every scrap of knowledge and IP as if each bit was as valuable as the next. Here's my take on that: your client doesn't want to steal the idea and implement it themselves. Who has time? Sure, some will try to do it, there's always an exception. But in my experience, entrepreneurs and small business managers simply don't have the time to learn how to implement a good idea. They want to pay experts to make things happen (usually involving ringing cash registers!) not learn how to manage social media or write code for a cool Flash effect.

Secondly, by protecting even 'generic' ideas/content as if they were the crown jewels, you diminish the value of the really good stuff. You miss an opportunity to a) demonstrate your expertise to the client, b) get the client on board with your service, and c) strengthen your own personal brand. Not to mention coming off like you simply don't have any ideas or don't know what you're doing.

Sharing something of value - giving it away - is becoming an increasingly important competitive tool in today's marketing environment. Access to all kinds of knowledge for free via the web is the new norm. But like giving a man a physics textbook doesn't mean it's likely he can actually build a rocket, sharing a bit of something you know about your field doesn't mean your client will put you out of work, either. So wise up and identify the real value you bring to your customers. Protect that core and use the rest to build prospects, clients, and good will. And for goodness sake, make sure you know how you'll get paid upfront.

Brands in the Crosshairs: Pontiac

The loss of Pontiac, the iconic brand from General Motors is a terrible thing for the thousands of employees who'll see their paychecks disappear along with the stylized arrowhead logo. But from a brand perspective, it's the best possible move for GM - a company that long ago lost the capacity to effectively design/build/market so many different brands.

Alfred Sloan's brilliant strategy, to combine different brands under one roof, maximize synergies while meeting the needs for every conceivable market niche or category, has run its course. Pontiac for the sporty car enthusiast, Chevrolet for the working folks, Buick for those moving up, Cadillac for the truly upscale (and lately Saturn for those who'd rather own a Toyota). This brand management model helped the company to own over 50% market share - once.

But the drive for "synergy" led the company to use a very limited number of platforms and simply rebadge car models, add leather seats and call a Chevy a Buick or a Pontiac, or, gasp, a Cadillac. Simple-minded customers that we are, we eventually saw through the deception. We can't be fooled forever (Really, did some executive actually think that this strategy would be a good thing? That brands with whole different philosophical foundations could share models with no real differentiation. Really?)

The loss of Pontiac provides GM with a couple of opportunities. First, of course, it helps the company remain in business. Second, it can balance production to actual demand, and with fewer models, the company will be able to differentiate the remaining lineup better. Other benefits include reduction in the dealer force and saving millions on marketing the brand.

The lesson for the rest of us is simple. Don't phone it in. That's right, General Motors has absolutely been phoning it in for nearly forty years. If you're going to support a brand/product, then do it right from the ground up. Build your product to meet the needs of specific customers. Don't think that simple modifications to existing products shipped with a flashy new package will give you a pass into a new market segment. At best that thinking can get you into the game, but you'd better come with game changing products PDQ or you'll find yourself Pontiacked before you know what hit you. Are you listening Saturn?

Amazing how the largest company in America managed to completely fumble their advantage. If you've managed to develop a defensible competitive advantage, study it, understand it, defend it, then evolve it. But don't take it for granted.

Are You Clinging to an Outdated Distribution Strategy?

For many years I have been following the development of various distribution models. The advent of the internet has, over the last ten years, really made a significant dent in the business of distribution companies. The ease of reaching large numbers of customers, combined with a variety of automated systems for order generation and fulfillment, has undermined the industry in some startling ways. Manufacturers of products ranging from hard hats to snack foods and automobiles, always hesitant to give away margin, are looking very hard at how they are currently getting their products into the hands of customers.

And then many aren't. I'm baffled by those industries that continue to pour money into the old models with no revision. A good example is the bicycle business. Manufacturers, by and large, remain convinced that the model of 1990 is still the way to get product to customers today. Their commitment to independent bicycle dealers is commendable, but in light of new approaches to lean manufacturing, mass customization, and logistics, can it really make sense to require dealers to buy tons of inventory, in multiple sizes, months and months before the season?

Here are three signs you may be clinging to an outdated distribution strategy like our friends in the bike business:

1. Do you get rapid feedback on your products from user customers? Middlemen are touted as conduits of customer likes and dislikes. That is a part of their value to you as a manufacturer. Do your channel partners provide you with weekly summaries of customer information? If not, you may be a clinger.

2. Does your salesforce abide by the notion of "stacking deep and wide"? Moving output from your factory into the warehouses of your channel partners doesn't get the product into your customer's hands. Any step along the way where product sits and waits adds cost. Don't agree? How many calls do you take from distributors wanting to return stale merchandise? Damaged goods? Or to make room for fresher seasonal goods? If you think that you are exerting positive pressure on distributors to focus on your stuff when you've managed to fill their racks with record levels of your merchandise you are harming your own long-term ability to work productively with that distributor.

3. You are not seeing market share gains, in spite of your very hard work. Distributors act as buffers between you and the market. They absorb some of the pain when things are bad, but they also dampen your ability to reach out and directly impact your customers. The best promotions are just ideas unless your distributor executes with energy and intensity. The problem is that you can't control that - you might impact it by offering spiffs or incentives, but that's yet more money out of your pocket. If you're frustrated by your market impact, you may be a clinger!

Great distribution channel partners can be worth their weight in gold. But if you continue to use the channel in the same ways you did ten years ago you are losing money, market share, and time. Think of the connections between you and your customers as links in a value chain. Take the time to understand how the system as a whole can make money and reformat your programs to allow that to happen. Use technology to speed information up and own the chain, and engage your channel partners in an ongoing dialog about how to increase total system profits. We'll talk more about how to do that in our next post.

Television and the Art of Panicking

Whenever we try new tools for getting our message out to the world, there will be a period of uncertainty where we're not sure if we're wasting dollars. For the past 36 hours my team has been running a test in the Fresno DMA for 30 second television ads. Our goal is to demonstrate the value of mass media in bringing sufficiently large numbers to our site so that we can sell our product.

During the next few hours is when clients, bosses, and we are most likely to panic. Maybe we should alter the run schedule? Change the website landing page? Make some other substantive alteration of the site to encourage customers to spend freely?? My advice is for you to take a deep breath and go do something else for the rest of the day.

Television is indeed a powerful medium. We can reach hundreds of thousands of people every day. The expectations that come with that, though, are dangerous. Seeing isn't deciding. Seeing once isn't learning. It takes time for potential customers to become comfortable with the purchase of new products - especially if they are unfamiliar with your brand or product category. Give your customer permission to take a few days to figure things out in their mind.

Conveying your message effectively is a game of repetition. Generally, we're not selling water to lost travelers in the desert. If your price point is more than $20 or so, you're prospect might just need to do some thinking to get comfortable with the purchase decision.

While my example is TV and it is by far the most expensive media choice in absolute terms, the idea of a little patience is applicable to all the new tools you may be trying - and even some old tools. If you've done a good job in identifying your prospects, you've generated good creative, and are deploying it wisely, then sit back, relax, and keep your eyes open. You might not make a change on day two, but by day four, it might make sense to adjust around the edges.