Marketing Talk

Do you ever stop to think about how much blending we do? We wear clothes so that we can blend in with others in our profession (I wonder how many business people have begun wearing hoodies thanks to Zuckerberg). We blend make up into our faces so that it looks like we’re not wearing make up. We blend different kinds of alcohol to make drinks (or so I hear). Indeed, we are all blending machines. So why is it that we are not successfully blending our marketing efforts?

Blending requires more than one ingredient

A lot of people have begun talking about blending different marketing solutions, but the questions that I am seeing reflect a lack of understanding about what blending means, exactly. I see questions like, “How can I blend Social Media with email?” “How can I blend efforts on different Social Media sites?” “How can I blend Social Media with SEO?”

Notice a problem? The questions aren’t really asking how to blend. The questions are about how to make Social Media 100% successful as a stand-alone tactic or how other “subservient” channels can be used to support Social Media efforts. This is comparable to saying that you want to learn how to make cookies, then asking if it’s possible to make cookies with just chocolate chips and maybe a little bit of flour. Some people do indeed believe that Social Media is now the most important part of any marketing campaign, but the whole cookie is what the experience should really about.

Update Twitter and do other stuff? I’m overwhelmed.

For some, the idea of trying to mix anything with Social Media is terrifying. Indeed, some find this concept so intimidating that they wait to jump into the Social Media pool. The way that Social Media experts can get around this, in part, is to point out a lot of automation techniques. That’s not auto-posting or auto-direct messages, mind you, but there are ways to kill multiple birds with one post. FriendFeed, Tumblr, Networked Blogs — all of these things sell the idea of posting once, and then, just like when you blow on the fuzzy white petals of a dandelion, your ideas will float everywhere.

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately since I love my job) there is no easy way to integrate an entire marketing campaign, not to mention an entire company. There is no “IMCFeed.” There is no magic button (Sorry Staples). This is not a reason to despair, however, or to limit yourself or your company to one channel and one channel only. There are ways to save time. There are ways to make it all happen. You just need to make sure you have your eyes and your ears open, right along with your mind.

I’ve talked a lot about ways to maximize concepts and creative input. To get your engines going, take a gander at this post outlining 30 ways to use a single paragraph of copy.

Blending Thoughts and Philosophy

Equally troubling is that there seems to be more, not less, of a tendency to separate people, positions, or departments that should really be blended together. In part, I think this is because all of us have so much more access to information tied specifically, in a niche kind of way, to what we do. Customer Service specialists can immerse themselves in books about customer service. Social Media managers have a treasure trove of books they can read about any number of facets to the Social Media story. We are building each facet of marketing as its own fortress where no one else may enter, and that fortress is built upon beliefs regarding how we should do things.

This is something we must put a stop to immediately as marketers, as business people.

There are lots of ways to begin this process. Have a marketing person (yes, even an agency person could do this) shadow sales for a day or customer service for a day. If your PR department is separate from your advertising department, have a couple of people shift positions for a week. One of the easiest ways to build barriers is failing to grow understanding. If marketing has no idea what the sales department is facing, and if the opposite is true as well, how are they ever going to be able to meet and move forward as a single unit? Answer: Can’t be done. Sales needs to understand why some marketing concepts may be more about branding and less about lead driving. Marketing needs to understand that ROI is what makes the world go round. On and on it goes.

As we experience each others’ problems and obstacles, as we familiarize ourselves with what our peers experience on a day-to-day basis, we will be able to offer a fresh perspective. From that point, where thoughts are geared towards productivity and efficiency, blending, leading to integration, can begin.

Time to blow someone’s mind

The next time someone asks you how to integrate Facebook with Twitter, Social Media with SEO, or Social Media with email, consider answering the question in an unexpected way. You could say, for example, “I have no idea, but I’m integrating my print campaign with email, my trade show presence with Social Media, and my product development department with customer service.” They’ll never see it coming.

Image by kasey albano. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/superfloss

A little after I joined my family’s advertising agency, I came upon a diagram that illustrated integrated marketing. There were two charts, actually, one more simplistic than the other. The simple chart showed how online advertising, email campaigns, direct mail, print advertising, and literature (along with a few other things) should all work together to create a brand. The other chart added more to the soup, including employee training sessions. In neither chart was there much mention of the customer. Oh how times have changed. In fact, Beth Harte, Integrated Marketing expert, details this change in her blog post titled Failed Icon.

To put it simply, the charts that I learned from way back when (five years ago) are no longer relevant. Brand is not at the center of the chart. Your customer is.

Problem Number One: We don’t have step one down yet

Have you ever heard the story about the plumber whose sink is always leaking? The electrician who barely has workable light in her house? The teacher whose children do poorly in school? This kind of problem is a perpetual plague to business of all types. We get bogged down in our day-to-day routines, whatever those may be. We prioritize problems, and our customers’ problems must come first. That’s how we stay in business. This is not the same thing, by the way, as focusing your marketing campaign on the customer, but I’ll get to that in a moment. In all of this rushing around, we tend to overlook ideas, strategies, or helpful tips for ourselves. Marketing firms seldom do a good job of promoting themselves. A manufacturer may promote the sales force, forgetting that the company itself needs to be promoted.

Because of this pattern of behavior in the business world, a lot of companies are still struggling to get the basic definition of integrated marketing, as defined in those charts of mine. I am seeing a preponderance of questions like these:

– Which is more important, Social Media or print advertising?
– Who should be the dominant force in Social Media, sales, PR, marketing, or customer service?
– Is going to a trade show more or less important than creating a new brochure?

This tells me that companies are still approaching marketing the way people build tacos. You put some onions on, then maybe some tomato, olives, 5 pounds of cheese, 3 pounds of lettuce. You don’t really keep track of what you’re doing. You’re just grabbing stuff that looks good and you are trying to make it work as a meal. But what do we know about overstuffed tacos? They fall apart. They create a big mess.

Now, approaching marketing piece-meal might work some of the time. The temptation will be to not do anything to the max so as not to to tip the delicate balance between “full” and “mess.” But it can work. However, do you want your marketing campaign to be something that “could work” or do you want it to be delicious?

Problem Number Two: Step two is a revolution

One of the results that occurs when companies (or people) approach marketing in a truly integrated way is that divisions, departments, barriers to cooperation, and lots of other annoyances fall by the wayside. This is why we really need to master step one before we can move on to what the new integrated marketing is all about.

Why is that so? Consider the question that people are bantering about quite a bit these days: “Who owns Social Media?” Now, if a company is engaged in a fully integrated marketing campaign, this question would not even register as sensible. “We all own Social Media just like we all own all facets of our marketing campaign and corporate identity.” But if a company is not strung together that way, debates erupt. “Well, I think PR owns Social Media.” “Oh no no no, customer service does.”

Now extrapolate those kinds of arguments to customer care. If your company is not used to approaching things as a single cooperative force, who is going to answer the call when a customer needs support or when a prospect needs to be nurtured into a lead? You run the risk of bickering over exactly what kind of call it is, whose fault it is that the customer needs support, or who should get the credit for bringing that lead in. It’s entirely possible, in fact, that your multiple identity syndrome may chase your lead or customer away entirely. It is not possible to create a customer-centric integrated marketing campaign when everything is a struggle.

What a customer-centric integrated marketing campaign might look like

So what kind of revolution are we talking about here? Well, it would be kind of like the French Revolution in that the entire society of the company would have to change from the top down (hopefully no beheadings, however). It would be kind of like the American Revolution in that the company would need to collaborate, declare independence from departments and silos, and create new ways of doing things that had not been tried before. It would be like the revolution that resulted in the Berlin Wall crumbling to pieces because barriers would be torn down in a like fashion.

A customer-centric integrated marketing campaign would begin with PR, Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, the C-suite, creative, and other relevant parties sitting down together and asking one question in unison: “What do our customers need?” Sales would learn how marketing and PR would be delivering leads to the company. Customer Service would learn the branding and messaging that customers would be receiving. The C-Suite would learn how the entire company was going to present itself to the industry and to customers and would sign off on the plan from the foundation up. The campaign would incorporate behind the scenes communication that would be ongoing between all of the facets of the company and between the company and its customers. Did that lead turn into a sale? Where did the lead come from? Tell marketing to hit that place harder. Did one of your CSRs receive a raving review or a raving mad string of obscene complaints? Sales, marketing, PR, and the c-suite should know.

Keep the car but drive it in a different direction

The one thing that remains the same in this new era of customer-focused integrated marketing is that all of your marketing tactics and indeed, all of your corporate functions, must work together to achieve the same goals and to present the same message. This extends beyond but also includes the aesthetic. You should have a company-wide tagline, but it should be a message that the customer would value and appreciate. You should have a comm
on look to your marketing materials, but perhaps it is a look you decided on after receiving reader study results or feedback from a customer think tank. Everything you send out should make it easy for customers to understand why and when they might need your products or services. They should not have to struggle to find you. You should be at the trade shows your customers go to. You should be in the print publications they read (and yes, people do still read print publications tied to their profession). When they want to refer you, you should line their path with rose petals. When they have a concern, you should be available 24/7.

Where are you?

Are you working on step one, which is to approach marketing with an integrated mindset? Are you viewing Social Media and trade shows as 2 peas in a pod or as two entirely different plants? Are you mindful of your customers? Do you know where your customers are coming from, why they are staying, or (hopefully not) why they are leaving?

Regardless of your answer, which may take some to think about, your customers are on the move, and make no mistake, they have their drivers’ licenses and they have power steering. If you do not begin to market in the way that your customers demand and need, you will not be applauded for standing your ground or staying true to the old ways. You’ll just find yourself short on the customer end of your business, which means you could end up with no business at all.

1st Image by Gabriella Fabbri. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/duchesssa
2nd Image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001
3rd image by Lize Rixt. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/lizerixt
4th Image by SsJ Toma. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/ssjtoma

There’s a lot of talk regarding integrated marketing floating around. Maybe more specifically integraTING marketing. I feel like we are drifting further and further away from what integrated marketing is all about as we try to incorporate more and more technologies, sites, and methodologies into our marketing efforts. Really, this should not be. Integrated Marketing is as easy as your ABCs.

To conduct a successful Integrated Marketing campaign, just remember…

Always focus on the customer.
Blend traditional media, new media, departments, and people.
Consider how someone new to your company or brand would view any facet of your campaign.
Departments are obstacles. A campaign cannot be integrated until the people are.
Extend beyond the same aesthetic. What is your unique message?
Follow through on everything with everyone, most especially your customers.
Go where your customers and competition are. Meet them where they are comfortable.
Have a plan based on research and strategy.
Include everyone in the plan, from customers to sales to your C-Suite.
Jousting over who generated new business is the best way to kill a company.
Kick the “this or that” mentality. Almost always, “both” is the right answer.
Lead nurturing is the only path to make your marketing efforts matter.
Making leads is marketing’s responsibility. Managing leads belongs to everyone.
Never assume that someone has heard of you or cares about what you do.
Overselling through any channel is the best way to kill your campaign.
People want to learn. Everything in your campaign should assist them.
Quit wondering who owns Social Media. Everybody does.
Random acts of kindness should be integrated with everything else.
Strategy should incorporate everyone. Also, silos are signs of disease.
Tactics should support each other, not work against each other or overpower each other.
Understand what your customers need, even if they don’t. Then educate.
Very few companies are maximizing integration of Social Media with other channels. Pounce.
Whatever you do, be real, authentic, genuine, and human.
Xenophobia when faced with new technologies, trends, or opportunities no longer cuts the mustard.
You have to know your corporate soul before you can integrate your marketing successfully.
Zappos didn’t find success accidentally. They are integrating customer service into their marketing.

See? Easy as your ABCs.

Image by Josh Klute. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/Onatos

For the last at least couple of years, there have been two sayings that I’ve heard ad nauseam. The first is that one about Wall Street and Main Street — that’s a topic for an entirely different post. But the one that is relevant for this blog is “Content is King.” In a time when the internet is making everything seem kind of fluffy and “of the ether,” content has been our anchor. How do you make a blog really good? Good content. How do you become a thought leader? You provide good content. Content is to Social Media users like blanket was to Linus. So I am going to lay this news on you gently.

I don’t think content is king anymore. Ideas are King.

What’s the Difference?

Let me define my terms. To me, content is the meat on the bones of a blog, a white paper, a Twitter update, or a talk. It is something you can point to and say, “Here is my content.” An idea may be verbalized via content, but sometimes an idea is something more mushy like a concept or the beginning of a concept or idea that isn’t fully formed yet. An idea is a thought that has some direction and knows what it wants to be when it grows up.

What’s with the Coup d’etat?

As I was signing out of Twitter last night, I saw a post from Ray W. Johnson. For those of you who don’t know (because I didn’t), Ray W. Johnson has made a name for himself over the last year via twice-weekly YouTube shows that review viral YouTube videos. He’s funny. He’s authentic. He provides a lot of content. He’s become a success, in fact. Would connecting with this fellow do any good for me or other marketers or companies? Probably not.

Now look at some of the thought leaders that I have mentioned here a million trillion times (or even some of the ones I have only mentioned 999,999 times). They also generate a ton of content. They also have done well for themselves. But what do I gain by associating with them and learning from them? Ideas, my friend.

Content is important. It’s how you verbalize what’s going on with you or your company. But now, with technology and social networking the way it is, anyone, truthfully, can generate “content.” If you don’t think you are a good writer or blogger or vlogger or Twitterer, you can find people who will do those things for you for a small fee. Content is no longer the mysterious wonder that it used to be. In fact, even if you want to just wing it as a writer, you can do alright for yourself if you know a little about keywords and if you know how to play the game.

But what makes content really visible and unique? The idea behind it. Ray’s content may not be stellar or useful, but his idea — his concept — that’s what makes him really stand out. What makes certain blogs and websites common resources for people in the marketing biz? Ideas. New ideas, ideas about how to do things, sharing ideas.

Ideas in the wind

I had a very interesting exchange this morning with Cindy Bagwell Chrysler and Glenn Le Santo, 2 Facebookers who also hang on Chris Brogan’s FB page. Essentially, we talked about how to share ideas. Both Cindy and Glenn feel that if you are a person who has tons of ideas, some of which you are not using, you should voluntarily give unto others the ideas that are kind of waxing and waning in your brain. As Glenn said, ideas do have a time stamp on them. Is it better to let the idea just die, or is it better to give it to someone who can run with it right now?

I entered the conversation from a bit of a different point of view. I am all for sharing ideas. I wouldn’t know a lot of what I know if people more experienced and smarter than me hadn’t been willing to share ideas. I’ve also given a lot of ideas to other people and I think the ideas have served them well.

However, I have also seen numerous scenarios where ideas are simply not valued. A lot of the thought leaders are experiencing this and I have witnessed it at times. They share tons of ideas. Then someone comes and says something like, “Can you give me an idea for…” or “Can I have your book for free?” At that point, if the thought leader says no, people seem to get kind of … itchy. A lot of people seem to have a sense of entitlement when it comes to ideas. That’s a big problem.

Farnsworth vs. RCA

What I worry about is scenarios like that which resulted in us all receiving the invention of television. Philo Farnsworth filed the patent for what eventually became television technology. Immediately, RCA said, “Wait, that was our idea!” RCA then made improvements to Farnsworth’s invention, claiming it as yet another patent. Farnsworth said, “Wait, that was my idea!” The debate still rages on.

Because we are not being reminded that ideas rather than content are king, we are not valuing our ideas enough. When David Meerman Scott talks about losing control, he is not necessarily talking about letting your creativity or your genius or your ideas run wild. He is talking about your content getting out there, finding a job, and starting a family. Your ideas are what make you and your company who you are. They are what will define the paths you take or don’t take. They will be behind your new service, your new product.

If we are careless with our ideas in this day and age, there’s no telling who could take ownership of them. Proving that you had the idea first and did not intend on “giving” it to other people will be extremely difficult if you are giving your ideas away, essentially, on Facebook, Twitter, and your blog. On the other side of the coin, if we solely depend on “idea people” for our ideas, we will be doomed once that faucet gets turned off.

That’s why Ideas are king

The thing that a lot of people will never be able to fake is ideas. A lot of musicians say, “Ugh, the Beatles…all of their songs are so simplistic. Rarely do they stray from a single chord progression.” People say, “Ugh, these Social Media experts. They say completely obvious things in different ways and get applauded for it.” The thing that makes these kinds of folks different is that they have ideas on how to use things in different ways. Just like many musicians can play a C chord, many of us can understand right from wrong, sharing, and other basic principles. But not all of us can create music like the Beatles did. Not all of us can apply basic principles from other facets of life and make them work for business. Ideas are what separate us. Ideas are pieces of our soul that go off and plant themselves into something new.

Do you really want to part from that just because you can’t get to everything NOW NOW NOW? I don’t know. I enjoy helping people. I enjoy sharing. But to give all of my ideas away now rather than saving them for a rainy day? That makes *me* kind of itchy.

What do you think? Tell me what your belief is. Do you agree with Glenn and Cindy or do you see things more like me, or are you in a totally different park?

1st Image by Fab
rizio Ginesi. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/fabridea
2nd Image by Milan Jurek. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/milan6
3rd Image by Julia Freeman-Woolpert. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/juliaf

So, I have been hearing about all of this Vlogging now. My blogging wasn’t enough for you, Social Media World!! (I am raising my fist right now).

Anyway, it’s not exactly a Spielberg or a Lucas, but it’s a first! The quality is not very good, which I don’t really understand. Ready to learn!

I went to the mall today (I took a day off) and was generally horrified by the experience on many levels. There were so many overly fragrant smells that my allergies clicked into full gear. The whole experience was made more strange by the fact that the mall’s general sound system was playing some sort of ambient music that made me feel like I was an extra walking around in a movie. But what really bothered me…what really stuck with me…is that I saw two little boys playing on one of those little toy car rides. Neither could have been much over 8. And they were completely unattended. Now I am not a parent. I do understand that 2 young boys can be quite a handful when you are trying to shop. But I can’t really think of a good reason to find this acceptable.

Paranoid Android

I had always been really sensitive to the “stranger danger” approach. My parents trained me very well. Even so, in fifth grade, I was left unattended on a field trip to a nursing home (we had to “adopt” grandparents for class) and the son of my “grandmother” took me to see the nursing home chapel. No harm came to me, but when I related the story to my mom, you can imagine her response. It ended okay for me. It easily could have been otherwise. I wasn’t a dumb kid. I just felt secure and didn’t give it a second’s thought.

Then, in 2004, I saw something that drew even more attention about the dangers for children out there. I was watching the news and saw a video of a young girl named Carlie Brucia actually being led off by the man who would eventually kill her. Conversations sprang up everywhere. Did she know the man from a chatroom? Look at all of the other kids who were being kidnapped by people whom they thought they knew through the online world. Spotlight on.

Fast Forward to Now

About a year ago, I guess, I started seeing Foursquare updates. As I learned more about it through my job in marketing, I had red alarms flashing on and off in my head. Then I saw foursquare updates showing up in my Twitter stream. And now, this week, there is the news about Facebook Places.

Now, as a friend of mine would say, I don’t want to be a Debbie Downer here. I am all in favor of continuing to advance new technologies, and the marketer in me sometimes drools at the thought of what geo-location technology could mean for companies. But…

I have an 8-year-old cousin who knows how to text. Kids younger than that are getting on the web to play Webkins. Kids are growing up immersed with this stuff, and it’s all part of the fabric of their lives. Who is making sure that they know about the dangers of the online world?

Not even ten years ago, the big danger was awful people who would go to chatrooms, befriend kids, lure the kids to a meeting place, and often the story would not end well. What I am finding so troublesome right now is that if a person wants to cause harm, all they have to do is go on Twitter and search for terms that would help them out. They don’t have to have an account. They don’t have to sign in. Even Facebook is searchable if accounts aren’t locked down, and guess what? When I went into my account yesterday, all of the permissions were turned OFF for Facebook places. Are we making sure our kids and teens know about this stuff?

Maybe we could consider this before the first big tragedy happens.

You could say this all seems pretty obvious. Of course parents are going to monitor their kids’ accounts. And I’m sure YOU would. But I saw two kids unattended at the mall today. Do you think those 2 boys are going to be educated about the dangers of things like Foursquare?

Think about it?

Image by Svilen Milev. http://www.sxc.hu/profile/svilen001