B2Blog

Here is another voice putting to words the paradigm shifts we have been witnessing in the last few years. But the important point is noting that things HAVE changed, and that we need to act accordingly.

Tom Pick at WebMarketCentral Blog asks rhetorically Will Content Marketing Kill Trade Publications?:

“The challenges faced by trade publications go far beyond the current economic slowdown. Trade pubs traditionally flourished due to five conditions which simply no longer exist.”

1. Audience
2. Authority and independence
3. Expertise
4. Advertising
5. Aggregation

For each of these bullets, he basically explains how we can do it (or are doing it) ourselves, without the trade publication’s help. So please go read Tom’s post for the detail.

Wow, he just made my job harder. Now I need to be a writer and publisher of content, bypassing the trade publications.

In truth, my niche marketplace moved me away from trade publications as soon as the web became viable for lead generation. But I haven’t worked the content part as a strategic approach to attracting my own audience.

The InfoCommerce Group just wrapped up their annual “Data Content” conference. In their weekly email, a list of new key words for the online database industry was offered up:

• Embedment
• Aggregation
• Good Enough
• Curation
• Platforms
• Humans

At the end of that list was this zinger:

“There are other keywords that came out of DC09, but, surprisingly, one keyword was barely heard at all:

Google.

While anything but irrelevant, Google has ceased to be an existential threat to the industry. Data publishers have largely made their peace with Google, and it doesn’t dominate their thoughts the way it once did. Google is a tool that can be profitably leveraged, and Google is no longer the enemy. This is likely due in no small part to Google maturing as a business enterprise, and its recent focus on opportunities far less threatening to those of us in the data business.”

It’s been four years since I was at InfoCommerce’s event as a speaker, with the talk Google Rules, Directories Drool. So the data/content world has adjusted to the scary monster that Google was then. Now, the relationship is more symbiotic.

What does this mean to B2B marketers?
Now we, as clients of data/content/directory services, should be looking beyond the threat to these services posed by Google, and be looking on how they might be delivering on those new key words I started this post with:

• Embedment-are they a part of our way of doing business.
• Aggregation- how deep is their info, how specialized?
• Good Enough- data is hard to keep current, how well are they doing?
• Curation- are they avoiding overloading their audience?
• Platforms- are they leveraging popular platforms (google, salesforce, facebook, etc.)
• Humans- are they using people to ensure quality content?

It’s a new ruler for the database people. How well are your suppliers doing?

Last week we were at an trade show for automotive test market. Sounds like a scary place to be in 2009. Or more likely, a scary place to be spending your marketing money. The show floor was probably 20-25% smaller, and our booth became the last booth in the far corner. And who wants to be in the far corner of the show?

And nothing can be as scary for a marketing manager as pulling into an show site and NOT having to wait to park.

But it was a great event to be at. I told several people that if this was my first time at the show, despite the very weak automotive industry, I would re-sign for 2010 in a heart-beat.

Here are some random observations:

• I brought out our box of Bic pens for give-aways. And my guess was right … on an off year, even those would be popular for visitors to grab. We were cleaned out by 2pm the second day. (And for you nay-sayers, it also encouraged them to stop and talk … awesome results for 58 cents.)
• Certain automotive companies were at the event in force. These are companies I’d bet are going to recover from the recession stronger. And we need to be prepared to market to them.
• A lot of attendees were asking about solutions for testing the up-and-coming technologies. Now I have a better gauge of how strong certain needs are.

But mostly, the human element was the most powerful at the event. Customers dropped by the booth. Salespeople were actively engaged. Relationships between ‘players’ in our industry were strengthened. Sure there were slow points, but it never felt ‘dead’. Some would say we had too many people at the show, but it only added to the value of the event, and the buzz for our company.

Most important, we were acting as a market leader and being treated as such. That’s a vibe you can’t get on a Google search results, or even in a normal sales situation. The right show is truly a marketplace!

Wow, seven years of B2Blog.com, and my first guest post!

One of my regular readers, Adam Oakley, was recently downsized out of his B2B marketing position. As much as I was concerned for him, I was also curious as to his experience looking for a new job. Now he has a new job marketing software, a big jump from nuts & bolts (really!). Like you, as a reader of B2Blog, he has demonstrated his smarts and savvy and bridged the gap from job to job and landed on his feet. I’ll let him introduce himself:

I recently found myself without regular employment. In response to economic pressures the company I was working for cut marketing efforts and my position was eliminated. It was good company with a great group of people and I enjoy the seven years I worked there. Even though the decision was a shock it did not put our family in any tragic financial position. In fact it has given us a chance to look at our future and decide the best direction. Here are five steps you can take right now if you are or suspect you might be job hunting soon.

Five Things to do While Looking for a Job

Talk

It’s clear that the most effective way to find new employment is through personal relationships. Ask for introductions to other individuals who might be of assistance to find new work. It is important to be clear how your network can help. Build a list of possible contacts and start getting in touch. Have coffee or go out lunch. Do whatever it takes to get in front of people.

Evaluate

One common theme I have noticed while going through the process of finding a new job, there are very few “exact fits” when it comes to new job opportunities. This is especially true for marketing professionals. It is unlikely you will take a role at a new company doing the same as your previous employer. This may sound obvious, but it creates unique challenges to address while exploring possible jobs. It is crucial to clearly identify the specific skills you excel in, back them up with past accomplishments, and find the best way to communicate it. Are you a traditional marketer, digital strategist, or a SEO expert? Do you enjoy sales, analysis, or creative thinking? All these factor into what type of job to target and how you pitch yourself to prospective employers.

Update

One habit that helped me tremendously was keeping a list of achievements or completed projects that I would update weekly. I was able to review this list to quickly identify accomplishments while updating my resume. It is also important to keep LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks updated with the most current version of your career path.

Learn

As marketers, you most likely have a tendency to desire to be up to date on latest trends, best practices, and emerging platforms. If you’re like me then you’ve probably focused on the day-to-day tasks of your specific role. It’s easy to get into a routine and forget the importance of learning. This time of transition is a great chance to brush up on Photoshop, become an AdWords professional, or sign-up for a writing class at your local community college. Be careful though, it’s easy to use continuing education as a crutch and ignore your search.

Perspective

Searching for a new job can be hard. It can take its toll mentally and physically. A healthy balance of work and relaxation is necessary. Take it seriously, but don’t try to put a square peg into a circular hole. That’s a good way to find the wrong job and be back at this process sooner than you want. Have fun, go to the gym, try to get some fresh air. There are only so many job postings, networking groups, or emails you can send in a day. Set goals and stick to them, but don’t obsess over the process.

Resources

The amount of information on the web regarding the best way to find a job is daunting. I would certainly recommend talking to people in your area and see what they’ve found helpful. In some places, Craigslist might have the best postings, others it could be the (gasp!) newspaper. In the end, I’ve found the best resource – is your personal network. Trusted friends, have the best insight and knowledge to help guide you the along.

Social

• Twitter – Update your followers on yourcurrent status, connect, and get help. Some of my most productive connections have come from DMs on Twitter.
• LinkedIn – Be sure to use this to highlight accomplishments, tap your connections, and look for opportunities.
• Facebook – I’ve this is the best place to communicate with my personal group friends.

Job Search Engines

• Indeed – This site allows you toset wide keyword parameters and apply to all job sites.
• The Ladders– Billed as place to find $100k+ jobs, it really is a paid (~$25/month) job site with good information, resume editing, and filtered lists of jobs and recruiters for positions $75,000 and up.

Bonus Tip:
One last reminder. Don’t wait to create your network, be fostering those relationships today–it will be the best investment you can make in your future.

Seth was swinging his guru-hammer awfully close to me today: Seth’s Blog: Promiscuous dispersal of your email address:

“I just went through the hassle of trying to get some B2B firms the details needed to give me an informed quote on a project.

I visited eight sites. Six of them hide their email address. They use forms of one sort of another. …

Email contact is like a first date. If you show up with a clipboard and a questionnaire, it’s not going to go well, I’m afraid. The object is to earn permission to respond.”

Sure, we B2B companies hide behind registration forms instead of a very public email address. And as a guru, Seth has a right to question why.

The most direct response is that it IS a lot like a first date. (I’ve actually blogged on that before.) But if I act like a slut, and let any prospect contact me nilly-willy, it only lowers expectations and makes for poor starting relationship. And a risk of wasting my salespeople’s time trying to clarify the prospects requirements (and figuring out who they really are).

In the end, B2B marketing is about the niches. There is a higher loss-factor in putting up a form to fill out. But that is a necessary filter to help keep you within that niche.

I’ve made it very easy for my site’s visitors to find what they want. That helps qualify them. And by that time they are willing to fill out the form. More than willing. They even call us, which is even better than an email or form-filling.

There are two new technologies that professional marketing types are all a-buzz about:

1. Social media
2. Marketing automation

Social media is something you can experience for yourself and decide where you fit in.

Marketing automation is a bit more vague. What am I automating? How does this replace what I already do? Or is it a whole new strategy? And most importantly, why would I try it?

Tom Pick over at the WebMarketCentral blog posts a helpful review of the whys, titled: Marketing Automation: Bringing a Gun to a Knife Fight :

“Those are the types of questions marketing automation / demand generation software vendors seek to address with their offerings. They apply technology to a difficult process. For b2b companies who are able to use such software effectively, the competitive advantage is akin to Indiana Jones taking on his would-be assassin in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

(Go to Tom’s full blog post to see the video, if you can’t remember the scene where Indiana wins a challenge with a sword-wielding assassin.)

The challenge for b2b marketers in adopting marketing automation / demand gen systems isn’t with the technology, which is stable and reasonably easy to use. It’s with internal processes, office politics and other issues. In the scene above, although Indy clearly had the technology advantage, if he’d been a lousy shot, or didn’t have his gun loaded properly, he’d have ended up as shredded professor in a hurry.”

His bullet points:

1. “Marketing automation” is a misleading term.
2. The buying process has fundamentally changed. Many marketers are starting to get this. Most sales people still don’t.
3. Customers are those who’ve advanced from email service providers (ESPs).
4. Building the logic behind the nurturing process is the hard part.
5. It won’t work if the processes and incentives between sales and marketing aren’t aligned.
6. There is a crying need for this.

#4 seems to be the especially difficult step: what can the marketing automation tool be used to do to make it effective?

Like my efforts creating product-videos earlier this year, marketing automation takes a lot of work, especially because you are developing new skills and processes.

But to those who take it on, I think there is going to be a distinct competitive advantage. They just need to be careful in making sure it is communicating with customers & prospects properly, otherwise they’ll just be shooting themselves in the foot.

Have you switched to marketing automation? What do you think?

Maybe these are useful to some readers:

1. Trade your contacts with others with the Reach Lead Network ala Jigsaw. Cool feature is that they can resolve ‘social media’ contacts (i.e. Twitter followers) into real contact info.

2. If you are looking for new product/brand/company names to trademark, searching out conflicts is a pain. Well, until you’ve used Trademarkia. Very fast, slick, and loaded with data. Looks like they want to monetize Trademarks the way some folks do with domain names.

If you use these, leave a comment and let me know what you think.

I’ve found that certain words can garner Google-gold.

Having trouble with your computer? Be sure to add the word ‘problem’ to your search.
Have a cold-caller on the line, add the word ‘scam’ to your search of their company.

Here’s an experience with a directory-service company…

Second run-in:
Two months ago I received a call to renew my vendor-directory listing with a major industry association. $395 to renew. And I’m pretty sure I actually said yes to this the first time, so I didn’t flinch, but wanted to look at results.

The telemarketer sent me the following stats per their records:

Results Page Views	Landing Page Views	Website Clicks
6,902	642	1,059

So I looked at my Google Analytic stats and saw … 16 click-thrus … for the year!

I declined a renewal, and figured it was just poor traffic and poor data collection.

Today, a new call:
Today I received another call for for a different trade association, one I hadn’t dealt with in ten years. It’s then that I googled the now-obvious 3rd-party directory service and the word ‘scam’.

I came up with this post by a former employee of the directory service: Rip Off Report: MultiView Mislead advertisers. Here is just one snip of a very rational and seemingly factual report:

“After talking to a few people in the company about the difference, I learned that our tracking software counts any click to their listing. I found out that search engines routinely visit the online buyers guides and spider through the listings. Each time a search engine spiders a listing, it counts as a hit in our tracking software. The other tracking software packages including Googel Analytics only count the actualy clicks that a human performs to open a Website.”

Wow, that explains why the stats were so far off–spiders generate hits, not page-views or click-thrus. I learned that in 1997–most marketing managers know that by now, too. So, obviously my cut/paste of the stats I received, shown above, didn’t tell the truth.

While my experience dealing with their salespeople makes me want to avoid calling the company a ‘scam’, using that term helped me turn up this crucial info to help me make a decision.

Almost certainly the value of what they have to sell is very low. The associations they work with have little incentive to drive traffic to the directories Multiview develops on their behalf, but with only 10% of the listing-revenue, it certainly won’t be a priority to them. But to the directory company, it is apparently worth lying about.

Okay, I keep coming back to the discussion about whether it is advantageous to have pricing on your website. High-minded folks say you should because that is the #1 thing visitors are looking for, and will leave if they don’t find it.

But what would really happen? Brendon Sinclair, in the latest Sitepoint Tribune newsletter, tells his tale:

“In my efforts to improve the quality of the leads being generated I had the client approve a new Fees page. The page now documented the different price points, with an explanation of what a customer could expect to receive.

My reasoning was that this would result in far better qualified leads because the prospect would be aware of the price and value before they called. This would, I believed, result in higher-quality prospects in terms of likelihood to purchase and a greater conversion rate.

What happened is this: nothing. Absolutely nothing. No calls, no emails. Nothing.”