Bad Marketing

Managing Your Online Reputation

The "Ugly" - not realizing that consumers now control your reputation

United Airlines is the latest in a string of corporations who have found out the hard way that the web has shifted power to the consumer. Businesses, large and small, no longer unilaterally control their reputation.  Consumers post comments and reviews online about every interaction with a company and typically they are about negative experiences...probably because they only get motivated enough to post when they are really ticked off.  Unfortunately for United Airlines, the Sons of Maxwell band had the skill and platform to make this music video about their bad experience that has spread virally. While this one and been written about all over the web, most businesses (especially small businesses) are ignorant of the fact that there are dozens/hundreds of online comments and reviews that comprise their online reputation. 

I see this all the time with the small business customers of my company.  They spend their precious few marketing dollars on a search or display advertising campaign and wonder why the results weren't as strong as they expected.  We advise them to "Google" their business name and sure enough they see some negative comments/reviews that turned off potential customers who researched them before buying.  While the consumer now has control, businesses can take steps to manage their reputation online.

1.  They can directly address negative reviewers by politely replying online and offering to rectify the issue.  This can be dangerous so the reply must be a sincere, well-written apology and offer (never argue with or flame the reviewer - it just looks like sour grapes).

2.  They can offset the negative reviews by getting lots of positive reviews from their happy/loyal customers.  It's pretty simple to hand customers a flyer or send them an email that says "If you had a good experience with our company please share it on x, y, and z review sites."

3.  They can try to push negative reviews down to the 2nd or 3rd page of search results by creating and posting more of their own content (blog, syndicated videos, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) such that it gets indexed on page one by the search engine.  Research says that most people don't look past the first page of search results so if they can own the content on that page then consumers might not get down to the negative stuff.

Cooking up a new brand

The "Bad" - allowing too many cooks in the kitchen while you are redefining and redesigning your brand

Just a few weeks ago I left Entrust and joined a great VC-backed company called ReachLocal.  We are one of the biggest/best local search marketing companies you never heard of.  Hence the reason they needed a new VP of marketing.  On my 5th day we held a two day brand summit with 20+ execs, salespeople and product experts.  It was an excellent way for me to get up to speed on the company strategy, our core values, competitive advantages and persona.  As you would imagine the discussion was lively with lots of points/counterpoints but ultimately we locked down a brand pyramid that everyone agreed with.

Wary of design by committee we commissioned a small core creative team to develop the brand concepts with creative and copy points, as well as an updated logo treatment (always a risky thing to do but it really needs it).  In just a little over a week we developed 5 concepts, pitched them to the execs, selected the best one and got approval to move forward to execution. 

I write this post not to brag about achieving a quality brand makeover so quickly (though it is pretty amazing) but more to say that you don't have to pay an outside agency millions and take 4 months to achieve great results. I'll write another post in a few weeks when we take the site live and you can see for yourself.  At the risk of being stupidly obvious, I'll point out that you absolutely cannot allow design by committee -- and must shield your creative SWAT team from the interlopers who want to offer their commentary about liking/disliking certain colors.  I used the analogy of an award winning chili recipe with all the interlopers and it seemed to work...i.e. if a chef lets each of 20 chili experts add their favorite ingredients the chili is totally ruined.  Here's a great video that shows the disastrous consequences if you don't heed this warning.

MarketingSherpa does it again!

The "Good" - collecting and assembling hundreds of marketing best practices and lessons learned, then sharing them for free

 The good folks at MarketingSherpa just released their 7th annual edition of the 'Wisdom Report'.  Quoting their intro, "...this report compiles the shiniest gems of wisdom chosen by Sherpa's editorial team from hundreds of submissions by your colleagues. Many of these words of wisdom are not big-sky ideas.  Many are simple and straightforward tips you can plug into your marketing plans right now."

I am honored that they selected one of my submissions on building a simple, inexpensive dashboard to measure PR and Media Relations effectiveness (page 70). I originally wrote about our homegrown dashboard in this post last year. It has been a very useful tool that I would be happy to share so shoot me an email if you'd like a copy.

To push or not to push, that is the question

The “Good”– shifting from “push” marketing to “missing link” marketing – meeting the modern customer’s expectation of finding the right information at the right place at the right time.

 

Check out the article “Beyond Targeting in the Age of the Modern Consumer” by Augustine Fouin ClickZ.   It focuses on consumer advertising and targeting but the lessons definitely apply in the B2B space.   Fou points out the futility of the push or interruption model, even when the target is very narrowly defined. 

 

“So in a simple game of odds, if the advertiser starts with a small target and intersects that with near zero recall or very low response rates, the probability of success (driving the sale) is a rounding error to zero.”

 

This point really hit home with me since a while back we realized our team’s traditional direct marketing model was no longer working.  We sell enterprise security to a very select group of IT executives in F1000 companies (e.g. CIOs in top banks).  While we created some very strong integrated marketing campaigns to reach these highly sought after customers, the messages were probably never received  since our targets have stopped reading emails, answering calls, attending events, reading trade journals and opening mail.  Even in the few cases where we did get their attention, I’m sure we were quickly forgotten in the crush of other marketing messages.  Given this new market reality we shifted the majority of our marketing efforts from traditional direct marketing to what Fou calls missing link marketing-- delivering the right bit of information to the right person at the right time through the right medium (when they're searching for it). This solves many of push marketing’s shortcomings since the customer finds information that is relevant to them at their particular stage of the buying cycle. 

 

For example, we put this approach into practice in our marketing efforts to the aforementioned IT execs in large banks.  One of their primary pain points is compliance with identity theft regulations (FFIEC, Red Flags, etc.).  Rather than bombarding them with direct mail/email/calls about our products, we created unique content for each stage of the decision-making process:  a whitepaper on the issue, a podcast, a buyer’s guide to help customers write their RFP, and a webinar with a customer testimonial.  We placed that content on our websiteand on key banking industry portals.   Of course we drove visibility of the content with PR, blogging, SEO, Google Adwords and sponsored links on keywords associated with those regulations.

 

Now we aren’t hitting every single prospect over the head with our messages, but instead are getting the right information to the few who are actively researching solutions in our space.  And I’ll take quality over quantity any day!

The simple things pay off

The “Good” – reinvigorating online sales through web design

The other day I was summarizing my team’s accomplishments in 2008 and realized that this was one of the most satisfying.  Not because it involved some incredible strategic plan or creative idea on my part, but rather because it validated that focusing on the simple things can have a big impact on results.

What I’m referring to is a site makeover project for my company’s SSL certificate product line.  Certs are what organizations use to create secure (encrypted) sessions with users…i.e. the user sees https and the little yellow browser lock.  Anyway, we are a smaller player in the market (VeriSign is the 800 pound gorilla) and primarily sell certs the same way we sell our enterprise security software -- through our direct sales force. 

During strategic planning last year we identified a significant opportunity to grow the business via the online channel.  The problem was that our site was designed to mimic our enterprise site (www.entrust.com) and was NOT at all ecommerce friendly (i.e. “bad marketing”).  So we executed a plan to completely overhaul the site design and buy process in order to make it easy to buy a cert in just a few clicks.   

Here are the before and after screen captures.

It’s easy to see the huge improvement in design that came from our clear-cut focus on the user and their buying experience.  Of course we also added in lots of SEO, Google Adwords and display ads to drive traffic to the new site.

Our results have been great with substantial increases in unique site visits, conversion rate and most importantly, sales (we’re publicly held so I can’t share specifics).

The key takeaway for me is that you don’t always have to shoot for the stars in your marketing plan – launching an innovative new product, making a big splash at the huge trade show, etc.  Instead, it pays to focus on the simple projects like improving the web design for one of your smaller products.

B2B Marketing Then and Now

The "Good" - looking back to see how you've evolved and learned over the years

In the spirit of New Year's and being retrospective, I took a quick look back at my 8 years at Entrust and how we approached marketing then and now.  We've certainly learned a lot since 2001 and are more effective than ever...I just wish we had the same budget as back then ;)  I couldn't figure out how to create a table in this new TypePad editor so you'll need to click on the graphic to view the lessons in larger format.

 

More fun with Holiday eCards

The "GBU" - compiling a giant list of holiday eCards for all to enjoy

Kuddos to bannerblog for sharing this compilation of 120 holiday eCards they gathered from many different agencies.   As you would expect some are good, some are bad and some are downright ugly.  Enjoy.

Holiday eCards - the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

It's that time of year again when we are inundated with the the good, the bad, and the ugly Holiday eCards.  Here are some I've received in reverse order....

The "Ugly" – creating negative brand perception with a holiday eCard so unimaginative and uninspired that it turns people off.  I’ve received a lot of these this year so maybe the cost-cutting started with creative departments.  I’ll spare you the pain of seeing all of them and use MS&L’s card as the poster child for “ugly” marketing.  Clearly they get paid by the word, but do people really want to read about arcane renaming updates in a holiday card.  I expect a top tier global PR firm to be savvier than this.

 

The "Bad" – wasting the time and money to produce a boring holiday eCard.  The companies in this group at least put some effort into their cards, but clearly not enough to make them enjoyable.  They want to do a nice card but just don’t put enough creative energy into making it a positive brand experience for the recipient.  The card from lead-gen firm Madison Logic exemplifies a “bad” card with no music and some scrolling images of the staff…yawn!  Check out the screen shot below, or if for some masochistic reason, you want to see the “live” card then click here.

The "Good" – using imagination and creativity to make a holiday eCard that entertains the recipients and conveys a good impression of your company.  My favorite in this group is the one from The Loomis Agency which uses sock puppets singing a parody of The Carol of Bells.  PMSI created a cool card by mixing holiday tunes and a sketch artist drawing Santa. Check it out here.   And Eisenberg Associates offers up a simple but fun game in their card. 

The folly of the old B2B marketing approach

The "Good" -  using a song parody to explain that old ways of marketing don't work

Credit to HubSpot and Rebecca Corliss for this highly entertaining parody of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know."  Check out the video on YouTube and the lyrics below.

 

If I make one more call
I might go punch a wall.
No one understands
That this doesn't work.

They hang up cause I'm a creep.
The mail I send they don't read.
They always find a way to
Ignore me.
I'm interrupting their lives
So they threaten me with knives.
I didn't think that marketing was like torture.

Cause the calls, direct mail
TV ads, they all fail.
And they aren't getting me anywhere. They don't work.
No!
And every time I try to sell
'Didja know that I'm told I should go to hell?
Then I cry. Then I cry.
And you wonder why.

I want leads
To come to me.
Fix our SEO
Get some inbound links.
RSS
Let's get blogging.
Why don't we just use inbound marketing?
You. You. You. Oughta know.

Get my page rank up.
Tag my content.
Fix my landing page.
Let them come to me.

Now I can blog I can tweet
Publish things you will read.
Won't have to bug you in the middle of dinner.
Google me organically
Search results one two and three.
You need my products? Uh huh. Yeah you'll find me.

Cause the calls, direct mail
TV ads, they all failed.
And they weren't getting me anywhere. They don't work.
No!
And every time I tried to sell
'Didja know I was told I should go to hell.
Then I cried. Then I cried.
And you wondered why.

Now my leads
They come to me
Fixed our SEO
Got some inbound links
RSS
Now we're blogging
Thank god now we use inbound marketing.
You. You. You. Oughta know.

CMO Council research: 2/3rds of us are not effective

The "Bad" - trying to compete with half a team

The CMO Council released research, "Driving the Bottom Line from the Front Line" (exec summary here and Marketing Charts summary here), that shows most companies still don't get it when it comes to Sales and Marketing effectiveness and go-to-market strategy.  While the study covers multiple issues with companies' go-to-market capabilities, I was particularly interested/saddened to see that less than 20% say their sales and marketing organizations are extremely collaborative, and moreover less than half have taken any steps to integrate and align the two functions.  That strikes me as a huge opportunity to improve effectiveness and hence competitiveness which ultimately translates into improved market share/revenue/profit/stock price. 

Note the image of the Indy car team on the cover of the CMO Council report.    Per my prior post on this subject (Marketing is a Pit Crew), the pit crew (Marketing) and the driver (Sales) must work seamlessly as one unit in order to get around the track faster than the other teams.  Its a simple concept but takes a lot of planning and hard work to accomplish (otherwise there would be ties every week in NASCAR).  It might be heresy to suggest, but in order to win the race for revenue Sales and Marketing need to be structured, measured and incented as one team, not two.  This idea scares both sides (each fearing subservience to the other) which is probably why so few have taken any steps to formally integrate the functions.

Cool PR Tool

The "Good" - using a tool to assess your press releases

I've got a PR team that does a super job of cranking out press releases and pitching stories.  The problem is that we have a press hungry executive team and therefore we don't always have enough time to perfect a release before we have to write/pitch the next one.  I'm in the same boat when it comes to having enough time to review all the content.  Therefore I thought it was cool when I saw this free Press Release Grader tool by HubSpot.  It's not perfect but does enable us to do quick checks of our releases for common mistakes such as too few links, too much content and "gobbledygook" words.  I know we're definitely guilty of using too much generic IT jargon like "scalable" and "flexible" in all our content so it's nice to have the tool point it out.  While we're on the subject, check out "The Gobbledygook Manifesto" by David Meerman Scott and his blog too.    Sadly, we regularly use 8 of the top 20 gobbledygook terms.  Maybe I should have labelled this as a "The Bad" post ;)

More mindless marketing

The "Bad" - capturing interest, raising expectations and then not delivering

I know this isn't a B2B example but I had to share it given my last post on mindless marketing. I got this email from CitiBank last week.

The subject line caught my attention..."A Message from Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citi" and got me to open the email which I rarely do.  It must be important if the CEO is sending it to me.

The first sentence kept me interested ..."I want you to be among the first to know about the bold steps we are taking at Citi to be the premier, global, fully integrated financial services firm."   Wow, this really must be good stuff to follow.  I can't wait to hear what bold things they are going to do for me the customer!

Oooooops, no bold steps, just their lame marketing drivel ...  "Our objective is to create for our customers an experience in which services are seamless, payments and transfers effortless, and distances meaningless."  Truly inspirational stuff ;)  I'm so happy to be a customer of a company that delivers bold services like seamless payments and transfers! 

Seriously, what was the Citi email marketing team thinking when they put this together?  Why in the world would they use their precious CEO equity to send this type of lame message?  What did they want me to take away from this?  Where are the calls to action?  Even assuming they thought this was a meaningful customer communication, why waste the opportunity to take me to a landing page with some cross-sell / upsell offers?  Or, at the very least a customer feedback survey on what services I'd like more info on.  So instead of the intended effect, this email actually gave me a worse impression of the company.

It just goes to show you that even the big companies with the best dedicated staff and agencies can practice mindless marketing. 

Are you a mindless marketer?

The “Good” and the “Ugly” – sending an educational guide to prospects vs. sending a press release

As a marketing leader at my company I receive dozens of email and direct mail vendor communications every day.  Most are just average, many are awful and a select few are excellent.  Usually I give each a 5 second review and toss them before I even leave the mailroom.  One day last week I got two marketing pieces that I thought I’d share. As background, I’ve never heard of either company.

The first was a direct mail piece with a press release from BZ Media that explained in detail the executive  moves/appointments at their publication Systems Management News.  Several questions came to mind as I opened the letter.  Who is the publication and why/how did I get on their database?  Why in the world would they go to the trouble and cost to print a press release and send it to me via snail mail when an email would have been free? [ They have my email address since I also get numerous emails from their sales rep but to my knowledge I have never opted-in.] Why, since I’ve never been a customer would they assume I know who they are?  Why would they think that I would remotely care about their internal management shuffle?    This is classic brainless marketing on so many levels.  Hopefully someone at BZ Media comes to their senses and actually engages me with some type of marketing of value…how about starting with a brief email or letter explaining who they are and how their service would benefit me?  I guess they, and a lot of others, forgot the first lesson of Marketing 101 which is always, always remember to answer the WIFM question!  If a reader can’t discern the value you provide or problem you solve in the first 5 seconds you’ve lost them.

  In contrast, the same day I opened a direct mail package with a 40-page full color guide to direct marketing sponsored/written by MetricaDirect.  It immediately caught my attention as a high-end piece worthy of more than the usual 5 second review and toss.  They rightly assumed that I did not know who they were, so rather than just sending me info on their services they started with a thought-leadership approach to build credibility.  The cover letter was well written and succinctly reviewed WIFM...explaining how the guide would provide proven strategies for solving some of my most pressing marketing pain points.  I’m usually a skeptic when it comes to guides as they typically are company brochures in disguise, but this one is excellent….full of very useful information on demand generation strategy and tactics.  You can download it here.  I was left with a great impression of their company, checked out their website and bookmarked it in my “good vendor” folder (where I keep the only the few vendors I would call when I have a project).

Unfortunately, many in our profession either aren’t trained properly in direct marketing, or are too lazy to do the job right, preferring the spray and pray approach which is a total waste of their budget, and worse, creates a negative brand impression.    It may seem obvious to say, but we need to take the time to understand the prospect’s pain points and quickly communicate how our product helps them relieve the pain (i.e. the value of our solution).  Why do so many people forget/skip this basic tenet of marketing?

How do you measure PR - objectively?

The "Good" - building a simple PR dashboard that measures your effectiveness without costing a lot

We've been challenged by our CEO to ramp up the effectiveness of our PR efforts. Given that many execs view PR effectiveness subjectively, and with a recency bias as to whether we/they got good coverage, the team decided to create an objective-based dashboard.   We've used outsourced PR metrics in the past, but given our given our limited resources we wanted to spend our budget on coverage producing tactics instead of tools. 

That said, you can't manage what you don't measure so the PR team came up with a simple homemade dashboard (see graphic) that tracks interviews, bylined articles secured, coverage, press releases, speaking engagements, and pitches across the business, government and trade press.  The first tab provides a summary of all activity and each subsequent tab contains the underlying details.  For example, the feature coverage tab contains the details of all coverage including publication, headline, reporter, spokesperson quoted and URL of the article.

We're just getting started with this tool but I find it to be a great way to set goals for each tactical area of PR and then track the effectiveness of our efforts...all without costing us much except for some staff time.  Now we can measure our effectiveness on a week to week basis and make course corrections more rapidly. 

I'm interested in what metrics you use so please shoot me an email with any suggestions.

Email Newsletters: Calling a Foul on My Own Team

The "Bad" -  sending a newsletter to your customers/prospects that is all about you instead of them

I just reviewed our corporate newsletter today and was disappointed in the approach we are taking so I'm calling a "Bad Marketing" foul on my own group.  This problem is that it is a one-way push of news about us with little useful content for the reader. Here's the link so you can see for yourself, and below is my email to the project manager of the newsletter.

"The formatting looks good but I question the content plan.  I didn't realize you were going with captions from press releases, awards, white-papers, etc. versus writing new content/articles.   We need to re-evaluate the objective of the newsletter.  I think it makes more sense to have customer-focused content on how we help them solve business issues/pains.  We want/need to be perceived as thought leaders and I don't think we'll get there by just pushing out updates on our news releases and white-papers.  Sorry to be so harsh, but these articles beg the questions "so what" and "what’s in it for me" by the reader.   Once they have that reaction I doubt they will open our next communication.

 

Let's discuss the content strategy of the next newsletter and work toward a more educational/thought leadership approach.  For example, we could have done a lot more on the TreasuryDirect story, explaining the pain/solution/results in a way that would have helped others see how they could apply the strong authentication in their businesses.  Another example would be to build a story around the pain point of data leakage and explain how one or several of our customers solved it with our technology.  Then the reader can resonate with the pain and get tips on how they might address it...hopefully contacting us to find out more.  We should have 2-3 of these customer pain stories and then the sidebars can be used for updates on press releases, awards, and calls to action.

 

Make sense?  I think a good first step would be for you to identify the couple of newsletters you really like to read and ask yourself why?  Then take it from there."

Coincidentally, I just received the MarketingSherpa report "Dirty Dozen:  Email Newsletter Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes."  Mistake 5, "Institution to One Messaging," really hit home with me given my recent post "Its about the relationship stupid."  We are definitely need to change the voice of our newsletter and write as an individual to an individual.   There are other great tips in the Sherpa study so be sure to check it out and optimize your own email campaigns.  Also, I'd appreciate if you could send me some B2B newsletters you think have a customer-focused content approach and tone.  It will help my team with our makeover project.