Chain Reaction

As a social media marketer, the recent spat between behemoth HP and struggling Kodak underscores how a small player can leverage this space to draw attention and possibly even draw larger competitors into a place that benefits the little guy.

Basically, HP is claiming that Kodak cannot stand behind its marketing claims – this complaint doesn’t draw a lot of ire from consumers, we are well-trained skeptics. Other than the iPod and The Clapper – there are precious few technology products that are truly as advertised.

So now the two companies are trading swipes on Twitter and getting covered on the newswire and the head of HPs social media effort is being quoted with comments such as “You have a fight you can’t possibly win. I am HP.”

The irony of all of this is that this from is the head of social media strategy for HP. This is sure to draw a lot of social media coverage, but not the kind she wants. In a fight like this, the underdog holds the advantage in public perception. To me it looks like Goliath has taken David’s bait and leaned down with one eye open.

On the marketing front this seems to have gone badly as well, it appears that the two have allowed things to spin into a price war. HP can surely weather this more easily than Kodak, but in the long run, it is not good news for either.

It is hard to know what sort of ill will sticks to a brand when it behaves like this, but one thing is for certain, it is better to stand up for your brand and speak proudly of what you do well. If you have to address a competitor directly, do it with challenges that play to your strengths and attack their weaknesses with benefits, not insults – you just look like a bitter, old bully – and bullies don’t do well in the social space.

The first half of 2009 has been hell for just about every industry. For a lot of people it has been about damage control, cost cutting and simply figuring out how to get through this. So it has been a tough year to try anything new.

But don’t write off 2009 just yet. There is an important opportunity in all of this that you should think about.

Marketing is changing so fast right now that most marketers have not really developed their search engine marketing and online lead generation expertise.

That means that lots of companies will be doing their 2010 planning without any real experience in potentially the most productive and measurable strategy available to them.

So once again, online will be secondary to the traditional planning model. This could prove to be a HUGE missed opportunity when the economy improves.

Your buyers research their purchases online and they start with the search engines. The easiest way to capture these searchers is through search engine marketing – Pay per click and website optimization. You can respond specifically to what they are searching for and take them to targeted online content.

It is an incredibly simple idea, but behind proper execution is a strategic, methodical, science – it is not simply buying clicks to your site. And if you do it right, it works. We see it every day with programs producing results for clients in a variety of industries b2b and consumer.

There is no question that when the economy turns up, marketers that have learned how to leverage online lead generation will steal market share from those that have not. With close to 100 million searches on Google every day, how could it be any other way?

It is not too late to run a pilot program this year and gain experience that will be critical to your 2010 planning.

A simple keyword report can tell you a great deal about the opportunity and how your competitors may be gaining ground on you. Look at your core keywords, the frequency of search on each, competitive advertisers bidding on the words and a ranking of where you currently show up.

Don’t go into next year with one arm tied behind your back – get your program started now. This could be the best thing to come out of 2009.

With several thousand advertising, marketing and PR companies in Chicago, maintaining first position in the search engines is an unrealistic objective for a tiny agency in Ravenswood – yet there we are – #1 in Yahoo! for the term “Chicago marketing agency”. Now, in the spirit of full disclosure – we are currently on page 2 in Google – down from our all time high on Google of #3. Organic search marketing can be a vexing concept. It is so much more nebulous than most forms of advertising that it often gets pushed to the back burner – or handed off to in house marketing staff person with little time or training. This is a mistake. The dynamics of marketing have changed a great deal in the past 5 years. Search marketing is the fastest growing discipline in the marketing world. And if you have not committed to a search strategy, now is the time. Most of your competitors are spending fewer dollars and will be slower to move. This gives you a time advantage that can pay dividends because organic search takes time.

About 7 months ago we were virtually invisible to the search engines. Ranking below position 100 for just about every keyword we wanted to show for. Since we were constantly pushing our clients to do a better job with their search marketing, we decided to walk the talk.

As a small shop, we maintain a lean staff, so we required lean plan for our SEO work. We redesigned our site using best practice architecture, incorporated a blog and began actively publishing highly relevant content with embedded links to our site and to other legitimate resources. We have also utilized social media such as Facebook, Linked in and Twitter to provide more traffic and visibility to our site. We have employed a few other tricks of the trade, but all has been done with a relatively modest time effort.

The key to this effort for our agency and clients is the continuous learning of our online marketing team. We have dedicated specialists for search marketing and web development. We encourage continuous development, and require that they spend time each day staying current with best practice.

The most common mistake in this part of our industry is the casual approach that many marketers take to this very important component of their marketing strategy. Search marketing is a discipline that requires distinct and separate skill sets that include web development, search engine optimization and pay per click ad management. And while it may be an anchor point, search marketing is only one component in the rapidly evolving digital marketing space.

eMarketer chart

There is great opportunity in digital marketing, but managing and executing this work is still a great challenge for many marketers and agencies. This is reflected in the active turnover of agency relationships in the digital space as recently reported by eMarketer.

As salespeople and marketers, we often make the mistake of thinking from the inside out as opposed to outside in. We get so focused on “selling” and explaining our features that we fail to realize that we are very often off-topic from our prospects standpoint. When our prospects hear a presentation about features, they consider it a “sales pitch.” And let’s face it, nothing kills a sales call like a sales pitch.

Think carefully about your customer’s point-of-view. Business buyers purchase based on need. Your prospect has a problem that he is trying to solve. If you have the solution, you are his ally, he will not only buy from you, he will thank you. If you are targeting properly, this need goes directly back to why your products were invented in the first place. Think on that for a while before you plan your sales presentation. Speak to the engineer that developed the product. Why was it invented? Why were specific features designed in to it? This shift in perspective will give you exponentially more credibility and relevance to your prospects.

Craft your sales presentation around the challenge that your product was designed to overcome. Help your prospect understand the practical genius and ingenuity that gave birth to your product in the first place. As a sales person you will be in rare company, setting yourself apart as a valuable supplier.

What’s that you say? You are selling in a commodity market where everybody’s product does the same thing? Then it is even more critical that you focus on your customer’s problems – the alternative is to sell on price. And unless you maintain the strongest cost advantage – you will never win selling on price.

Worldwide Partners, Inc. recently surveyed agency executives about the predicted direction of their clients’ advertising budgets for 2009.

It’s no surprise that many seem pessimistic, but digital marketing seems to be bucking the trend.

The next few years will be quite interesting for marketers. There will be a mad rush to learn how to make the web work harder, and agencies that understand direct response will win out.

A focus on measurement and marketing metrics along with an understanding of multi-variant testing and other direct marketing methods will provide a big advantage over traditional brand marketers.

Survey results show that digital marketing will grow for 62% of marketers in 2009. Given the economy, it is a critical year to do it right.
Don’t you think?

Video: Why Most Interactive Advertising Doesn’t Work

Click Here for Survey Results

As we’ve moved into this protracted period of slow to negative growth, we have talked a lot about how spending allocations must change and how the web has affected the landscape of marketing.

But shifting the focus of the message is equally important.

When people are hurting, they buy differently; they need more value. As marketers, it is key to recognize that value is really all about benefit, not price. The benefits our products deliver are now more important than ever.

The pie is smaller—so fewer will grow. But this is a time when the fight for market share is critically important. The companies that learn how to strengthen their story and interactive approach in 2009 will be the greatest beneficiaries when we pull out of this mess.

This is not a simple task—it requires effort on several fronts, but it is not that complicated either. Step into your customers’ shoes and look at what they need. Align your strengths with their needs and make yourself easy to find. They will be doing more research and buying more carefully. This in itself gives you opportunity.

To find the silver lining in this economy is a real challenge—but if you make the effort to find it, it’s there.

I don’t like to see any business fail – especially one that has survived for so long, but after a recent shopping experience at Circuit City, it is no surprise to me that Circuit City went down with a thud. I recently bought a laptop there and after a quick decision, the guy helping me walked over to a counter and took my credit card and rung me up. At that moment I was thinking, “That’s nice, he can ring me up and get me out of here quickly.” So then he hands me my receipt and tells me to go the Merchandise Pick-up at the front of the store. I trudge up to the front of the store to find a line of people under a sign that reads “Returns, Repairs, Customer Service and Pick-up.” This is not a joke. They were placing a brand new, satisfied customer in a line full of disgruntled people needing service and repairs. This is an absurd decision that was made by someone with considerable authority within their executive ranks. It is also an indication that they had taken their eye off of the most important ball of all, customer satisfaction.  It took me twenty five minutes to finally reach the counter. I got the machine and left, cursing the brand and swearing that I would never shop there again.

This surely wasn’t the only circumstance that lead to their demise, but it can be a reminder to the rest of us that sometimes good marketing is just plain old common sense. Put youself in the shoes of your customer and you won’t make a mistake like this one.

In a recession, people research purchases more carefully. They do this on the internet. If you don’t have a strong web marketing strategy – it should be your top priority. Period.

It baffles me that so many b2b marketers have still not recognized that they are missing the single greatest opportunity that exists today in marketing. I see it every day. People pay lip service to the internet, but they don’t do anything about it. Which of these things have you heard in your organization?

“We have to do more online!” or “We have to get our website up to date” or, my personal favorite, “We really need to tie-in the web”

All of these things mean the same thing to me. “There is no web strategy.”

Wake up and smell the coffee people. Marketing is already web centric for your customers, it is high-time you show up at the dance?

If you are guilty as charged, there is a silver lining – your competitors are probably asleep at the switch too. And since we’re entering a recession, their spending is about to dry up. Your budgets are probably not growing either, so it may seem like a tough time to address this problem. I think the opposite is true. Now is exactly the time. Put all of your resources against this problem until it is fixed. If you do, you can at least be sure of one thing - your company will evolve while most of the competitors simply limp along.

Do you agree that you could get ahead of your competitors in this way?

1. We start caring more about our existing customers. Nothing like a recession to make us appreciate the customers we already have – what a shame that it takes this to make us realize that our greatest asset is often the most ignored from a marketing standpoint.

2. We are forced to get more strategic. When asked to do more with less, most marketers prioritize differently. The things that are strategic and measurable are harder to cut than those that are not.

3. We can put our focus on growing market share by more carefully targeting the business that we are best suited to handle or where our best opportunities are. This means we focus on the business that we should have – not the just business that we wish we had or worse yet – any business out there.

4. We lose the dead weight – lets face it, just about every company can lean-up from a staff perspective. When the belt tightens companies often make cuts they should have made already.

5. We place more emphasis on marketing measurement – this is perhaps the most important point on this list. This recession is happening at a time when online marketing is coming of age. The opportunities to build highly targeted programs that are totally measurable are staring us right in the face. This is a game changing strategy that some will find because of this recession.

The recession will pass, that is for sure. The question is who will be stronger and who will be weaker when it is over?

Whether you voted for Barack Obama or John McCain, I urge you to find it within your heart to absorb this moment. Enjoy it and take pride in being an American today. This is a watershed moment in U.S. history.

If you voted for John McCain, you do not need to regret your vote to be excited about what you are a part of. You do not have to hope Obama fails to remain true to your principles. We are experiencing a tipping point in our culture. We are witnessing the power of a different type of hope that has been realized – the gravity of this election is undeniable.

This moment has been ushered in by ideals that have grown within the hearts of the people of country since its inception – brought forward by the civil rights movement. This is about our country growing beyond barriers that have hindered our global evolution as a society.

I voted for John McCain because I believe he is a great man. As a small business owner, I feel that many of his positions would be more favorable to my business, employees and clients than those advanced by the leaders in the Democratic party. I still believe those things are true as I celebrate what happened yesterday, November 4, 2008.

Today, I feel pride in country over pressure around policy.

To put this into context – from a marketing perspective, the Obama brand has won praise from our industry. His use of social media, grassroots efforts and well targeted spending is a testament to the power of good strategy. But marketing only works when you connect a good product with a market that has a need and is ready to buy. It speaks volumes that our country is ready to buy the product that is Barack Obama.

Congratulations Mr. President elect, I am proud to give your brand a chance to earn my loyalty.