Biznology Blog: February 2008

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February 29, 2008

How the Web Is Like Cable TV

Some of you veteran marketers know TV advertising very well. You might have spent years buying network television spots and, in recent years, you've made the transition to cable. You learned a lot about how TV commercials work on cable, how some commercials are broadcast over the entire cable network while others are overlaid by local cable systems. Well, don't look now, but industry luminary Esther Dyson says we might be about to see the same thing play out on the Web.

Until now, there have been two basic types of display (banner) ads—those rendered by the Web site itself and those distributed by an advertising network, such as DoubleClick. Advertisers had their choice of going directly to the content provider or using an ad network.

Advertisers who work directly with a content provider (such as ESPN or CNN) negotiate a price for an ad to be displayed on that provider's Web site. Typically, your ad would be shown as part of a rotation of several ads, but you'd always know which site would display it—perhaps even what page it would be on.

Advertisers who work with an ad network know a lot less about where their ad will appear. That ad might appear on any Web site that works with that ad network. The advertiser might request certain demographic profiles for the Web site, and will be shown reports describing how many impressions and clicks the ad received, but often not exactly where it was shown.

Despite the lack of information, the content Web site is largely in control, getting to choose whether their own ad or the network's ad shows up in any particular spot on their Web page. That might be changing.

Esther Dyson had a very interesting article recently in the Wall Street Journal explaining how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) might be personalizing ads. She did not name any ISPs currently doing so, but she named several technology companies that can personalize ads by IP address based on individual user Web activity.

The question is, where do these ads go?

Are they presented at the top of the screen above the content site's regular masthead, pushing some of the content below the fold? Or would it work like cable TV, where the ISP puts an ad on top of a content site's existing ad, overlaying it with its own? Either way would strain relations between content sites and ISPs and add fuel to the net neutrality fire.

I'm not surprised to see advertisers wanting to personalize their ads more and more. This technique that uses Web surfers' activity information, known as behavioral targeting, is a big reason that Google bought DoubleClick, and the other search engines have made similar acquisitions. But I frankly wasn't expecting the ISPs to be at the forefront here. The ISPs have a stronger hand for personalizing than the ad networks because they don't have as much need for cookies or registration to identify people. Some ISPs literally know where you live, as well as your name and credit card number. Others at least can use your IP address (even a dynamic one) to roll up your activity.

I suspect that advertisers will buy ads as easily from an ISP as from DoubleClick, but I wonder where those ads will be displayed. Keep an eye on this one.

Posted by mikemoran at 7:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 28, 2008

How Do You Do It Wrong Quickly?

While I was at the Software 2008 conference in Oslo (organized by the Norwegian Computer Society), MediaPlanet asked me a series of questions and taped the results. They've been posted now, so you might be interested in seeing what I had to say. It's a bit tricky to navigate, especially if you don't speak English. From the main Do It Wrong Quickly interview page, you can mouse over the "og Innovasjon" category to see the rest of the videos with me—the interviews themselves are in English. Enjoy!

Posted by mikemoran at 6:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

How Do You Keep Up with Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing changes quickly, so we all need to keep up. I attend a lot of conferences, but one stands out for me as a place to stay on top of what's happening. For me, I need a combination of some top practitioners, top bloggers and speakers, and top academics. And I want it to be small. I don't want a thousand attendees.

In October, I was honored to speak at the first Online Marketing Update at the University of Virginia's Darden School for Business in Charlottesville. It was a venue unlike any other I've seen, mixing well-known speakers with experienced marketing professors from one of America's finest schools—all in an environment more like a classroom than an impersonal conference.

That conference was a huge success and I am lucky enough to be invited back for the second Online Marketing Update, coming up April 28th through 30th. Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! stand alongside Hugh McLeod, Heather Lloyd-Martin, and Alan Rimm-Kaufman, not to mention that outstanding Darden faculty. The last one sold out, so don't wait too long if this is the kind of conference you are looking for, too.

Posted by mikemoran at 2:02 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 26, 2008

Search Marketing for Pharmaceuticals

It's nice to be back after a long vacation. My vacation actually ended yesterday, when I spent the day in Philadelphia at the ExL Pharma conference for search marketing. I gave the opening keynote speech, helping savvy pharmaceutical industry marketers get a better handle on the changes happening in search marketing, but I always would rather write about the great question I got from the audience and today is no exception.

Several audience members asked questions all revolving around the same problem—"How can you implement all this great search marketing advice in such a heavily-regulated industry?"

It is a problem. I heard horror stories of weeks spent getting approval to change the title of a page. Others recounted that their lawyers don't allow common misspellings, even in the keyword metatag. Clearly, it's not simple to operate in regulated environments.

I think there are two answers to the regulatory stranglehold. First, you need to be willing to do more work up front in order to be flexible later. So, the typical advice I give to "do it wrong quickly" doesn't work if you are allowed to use only the one marketing message that got approved. If that message does not work, you're sunk—you've managed to do it wrong slowly. Instead, you must put in the effort to get multiple marketing messages approved, even though you aren't sure which ones will resonate. You should get different marketing modules approved so that you can swap in the ones that work and drop the ones you don't. (Moreover, when you want to personalize your site, you might find that some of them work for one target segment and others for another.)

The second answer is one that the audience was not expecting. You need to stop thinking about marketing as something only you and your company can do. You need to let your customers say things that you can't. Perhaps you must get regulatory approval for everything you say about your product, but your customers don't. If you can share with your customers the factual information about your products, some of them will pass the message along for you. This always happened with word-of-mouth, but social media marketing makes it easier and faster to pass on messages than before. Think about how you can empower your customers to be your ambassadors.

I know that both of these answers go against the buttoned-down culture of most regulated industries, but that is why they could be so powerful. If your company is the first one in your industry to unlock the secret of Internet marketing, other companies will find it very hard to copy, because they would be just at the start of the cultural changes you've completed.

Sometimes, doing the hard thing is exactly the way to differentiate. Is your company making the hard decisions that mark it as a leader in your industry, or is it just going along with the rest of the crowd? You can't stand out by doing what everyone else does, so ask yourself if there is something difficult you've been avoiding that would make your company the one to emulate.

Posted by mikemoran at 3:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 15, 2008

What Outcome Are You Negotiating For?

I remember working with a software vendor a few years ago to negotiate a license agreement. I don't think I am a push-over, but I know what I want and I do my best to make sure I get it. I was at the end of this negotiation, when the vendor salesman suddenly decided to go over my head and negotiate with my boss on some sticking point we had. My boss quickly caved and the salesman, I am sure, gloated privately that he had beaten me. But what outcome was he negotiating for?

Sometimes I think that competitive fire is misused, because we have our eyes on the wrong outcome. This salesman was looking at this deal as the outcome—he wanted to ensure that he got the most he could out of this contract. I, on the other hand, wanted to get the most out of the relationship, one that it turned out could have been much bigger than that one contract.

So, after the contract was signed, I took the salesman aside and made sure that he understood what he had done:

• He permanently made my boss the negotiator. We had struggled over one sticking point. He found in the future that my boss made everything a sticking point. Ouch.


• He had broken my trust. From then on, I made sure that I was always ready for him. My boss was prepared for a call from him at any time and I never laid even a few of my cards on the table.


• He had made me realize I needed a second source. And I went out and got one. Holy profit margins, Batman!

I "won" every negotiation from then on. But I never felt good about it. I had always hoped to have a close relationship with this company—I think it would have been better for both if us.

That wasn't possible, because we weren't both negotiating for the same outcome. In your marketing, are you trying to win a sale or a customer?

I'll be on a blog-free vacation until February 26, so look for a new post when I get back.

Posted by mikemoran at 1:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 14, 2008

A Do It Wrong Quickly Intranet

I gave a speech Monday in Oslo on Do It Wrong Quickly and, as usual, the best parts of the speech for me were the audience questions. One question in particular came up that I am asked frequently, so I thought you might like to hear the answer here. I speak frequently about how to transform your marketing and your customer Web sites based on experimentation and feedback metrics, but I am often asked if you can take the same approach on your intranet for your employees. My answer is, for the most part, yes!

That "for the most part" is a hedge, but overall I think it is the right approach to use with any intranet. Let's look at how to do it.

Experimental marketing to customers is simpler in many ways than the same approach applied to employee intranets, in part because we know what the goal is of our marketing efforts—to sell stuff. We want to improve our Web site so that we sell more, but is that all there is to it? No.

The reason that it works is two-fold. Part of the secret is that we want to sell stuff but the other part is that our customers want to buy stuff. They are as motivated to make the purchase as we are to sell. They might have a problem to solve that requires the purchase, or maybe they just plain want it. (OMG, the new iPod just came out..)

Purchasing the product is what the customers are trying to do—it's their task. We can apply many of the same "experiment with feedback" techniques to other tasks, whether they are performed by customers, employees, or someone else.

Let's apply the same kind of thinking to technical support. It doesn't matter whether you are a computer company helping customers with their laptops or you are an IT department providing a Help Desk for employees, the tasks are the same. How can you use experimentation and feedback to improve your Web site?

• Identify existing conversions. Find a set of tasks that have clear completion actions you can count, such as downloading a new driver for a laptop. If someone starts out searching for a new driver or navigates to the part of the site to download drivers, it's clear what they are trying do. Count how often they succeed and then keep experimenting to improve that metric over time.


• Create new conversions. A lot of technical support questions don't have clear success actions—it's hard to tell whether people got the right answer to a problem just because they landed on an answer page—maybe it wasn't the right answer and they just gave up. Create a conversion by surveying people as to whether the page was helpful and experiment to raise the results. Don't worry about whether more negative people answer than positive ones—just focus on the trend from month to month being positive as you make changes.


• Use a negative conversion. Place a button on that same page that offers more help if the problem wasn't solved (and focus on the pages that require the most extra help). Or track the number of people attempting to solve their problems on the Web versus those who call on the phone. See if you can lower the more expensive phone calls by solving more problems on the Web.

It's not always easy to do these things—it's often harder than tracking customer conversions from your experimental marketing—but it can be done. Not convinced? Let's look at another example, the human resources part of your site.

You can identify many existing conversions for employee HR tasks, such as downloading the right form, signing up for employee health benefits, changing your 401(k)—you get the idea. There are myriad common tasks that can be tracked to completion. You can look at how many people search or navigate for these items and see how many succeed. Change it a bit and then see if the numbers are getting better.

You can also identify new conversions for some HR tasks. Think about the annual task of finding out which exact days are company holidays this year. Instead of just sticking them on a Web page that displays them, why not put a button on that page that automatically updates the employee's personal calendar? When someone presses the button, you now know they got the answer.

And you can use the same kinds of negative conversions you did for tech support, by monitoring the number of e-mails and phone calls you receive for HR questions. Again it's less important that these numbers be exact than that you observe the trends are going in the right direction.

Can you measure a conversion for every task your employees undertake on your intranet? Probably not. You'll always have tasks that defy measurement. But if you apply the lessons you learn from the tasks you can measure to all your tasks, you have the best chance of improving your intranet globally.

It's not easy to apply the "do it wrong quickly" approach to intranets, but I think it beats the alternative. Right now, what is a better way to improve intranets? I haven't seen it.

Posted by mikemoran at 7:57 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 13, 2008

"Disintermediation Never Happened"

I posted yesterday on the Software 2008 talk by JupiterResearch's Edward O'Hara on the Key Trends in 2008, but those trends weren't the most interesting thing he had to say. Edward is a colorful speaker, so he had plenty of great lines, but my favorite was "Disintermediation never happened." And he went on to not only back up his claim, but to explain how the big news is the exact opposite of disintermediation is the trend to watch.

For Internet old-timers, like me, "disintermediation" was a much bandied-about term in the '90s, referring to the expectation that the Internet could banish the gulf between manufacturers and consumers occupied by distributors and retailers—the intermediaries. The theory went that the Internet made it cost effective for manufacturers to reach their customers directly without the inefficiencies of the long distribution channel that kept marking up the product.

Despite Edward's claim, some disintermediation did happen. Dell led the way for PC makers to sell direct to customers, which remains disintermediation's most visible and successful example. But Edward showed how the Internet has actually ushered in the age of what JupiterResearch calls "Complex Intermediation."

Edward showed a slide that contained all number of new intermediaries that get between the originator of a product (or of content) and the eventual consumer:

• search engines
• online retailers
• online portals
• social networks
• video networks
• blogs
• instant messages

He could have thrown in affiliate marketers, too. Every time marketers start thinking about syndicating a message, or fomenting viral marketing pass-along, or posting content in a public place, they are introducing an intermediary into the conversation between them and their customers.

Edward makes the telling point that far from disintermediation, most companies ought to be working with as many intermediaries as possible.

Have you ever understood something, but had someone come along that explained it better so that it deepened your understanding? Thanks, Edward.

Posted by mikemoran at 5:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 12, 2008

JupiterMedia's Key Trends in 2008

I gave a speech yesterday in Oslo on Do It Wrong Quickly and you can download the slides for the talk if you are interested. But I hung around to hear Edward O'Hara talk about the Key Trends in 2008 and thought you might be interested in hearing what he had to say, also. Edward leads JupiterMedia's Nordic group and is a frequent speaker on Internet trends, especially as they affect marketing and media. I've heard Edward talk before, and have always been struck by his ability to sum up current goings-on without making the kind of showy and extreme predictions that make headlines but have the inconvenient quality of not coming true.

Here are the top trends, according to Edward:

• Media Fragmentation Continues. Media will continue to fragment by content, by time, and by audience, Edward says. He made the interesting point that the media provider (NBC, The New York Times) is no longer the brand—"the story is the brand." People want to read the stories they care about and don't care as much about who gives them the information.


• The Rise of Social Media Marketing. Edward says 2008 is the year everyone realizes how important this is: "14% of Europeans use social media today—that will rise to 40% in two years." And he adds that it is a deep involvement: "40% of social media users use it every day" and "Networking sites generate more pages views than any other category."


• Internet Video Arrives. 25% of the audience indicated they use Internet video every day. Edward says that broadband is driving huge increases in usage. He noted that 154 million Americans have broadband access and that the number of Chinese will surpass that in two years. So far, Internet video is complementing traditional TV, but eventually "it will become a cannibalizer," according to Edward.


• Mobile Media Marketing Emerges. Pundits have been predicting this for years, but Edward says that within two years, most European Telecoms will move to reasonable flat-rate pricing that will change the reticent behavior most people have to use mobile phone services. "People have been taught that using the phone is expensive," Edward told the audience. He cited statistics that the same people are using PCs and mobile phones, but that they use an average of 7.8 computer applications versus only voice and text messaging on phones. When Telecoms take away the difficulty of knowing what it will cost, Edward predicts usage patterns will skyrocket.


• Globalization. We all know this one is coming, but Edward reminds us that we'll have 1.5 billion to 2 billion new Web users by 2011, placing nearly 25% of the world's population on-line.

None of Edward's predictions are earth-shattering, which is why I tend to think they might come true. It's helpful for all of us to remind ourselves of what is going in with the Internet marketing revolution that is underway. It's not stopping anytime soon.

Posted by mikemoran at 2:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 11, 2008

Internet Marketing and the Kon-Tiki

Most people don't know who Thor Heyerdahl was. I'm old, so I do, but I have to admit that I hadn't thought about him much until today. I am in Oslo because I am speaking at a conference tomorrow, and my kind host treated me to the Thor Heyerdahl museum that shows off the exploits of the Norwegian explorer. It got me to thinking about what Internet marketers need to learn from him.

For those that don't know, Heyerdahl was an anthropologist who believed that the Polynesian islands might have been settled by people from South America. Most scoffed at his theory because they felt that no ancient boat could have made it that distance.

Heyerdahl set out to prove them wrong, by constructing a boat (called the Kon-Tiki) fashioned after ancient Incan rafts, using the same techniques and materials. He put together a small crew and made the voyage in a bit over three months.

Yes, he made it. And yes, he had a crew. Somehow he convinced several other people that this was worth trying. Remember, he was an anthropologist, not a marketer.

So how come you can't convince the people you work with to try out your ideas in Internet marketing? Why is it that you give up so easily when people say "no"? Do you think that the first five people Thor Heyerdahl asked to go replied, "Alone on an ancient raft for three months on the open sea? Where do I sign? Can we raft back to Peru, also?"

You might have to work hard to be persuasive. You might need to ask a lot more people than you want to. Perhaps you'll need to pass up a few ideas to get agreement on others. But if you can't convince people to experiment with Internet marketing, maybe you don't belong in marketing.

Uh, and maybe you shouldn't try anthropology, either.

Posted by mikemoran at 1:19 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 8, 2008

How Do You Make Internet Marketing Vital?

I often write about what to do in the face of management who just don't "get" Internet marketing—a whole chapter in Do It Wrong Quickly is devoted to helping your organization adapt—but I am noticing a more subtle problem emerging. Some of you Internet marketing experts are no longer facing outright resistance to your efforts, but rather benign neglect. While it doesn't attack your day-to-day efforts, management neglect eats away at your success a little at a time. If your management knows what you do, but is not engaged with its value, you are missing a big opportunity. Have you made your Internet marketing efforts vital to your company?

We're entering a new phase of Internet marketing. No longer are we constantly faced with a "Dr. No" who tries to block our efforts (although there are still significant pockets of naysayers to be found). Now, it is more likely that we are being tolerated in the organization, almost as a necessary evil. Most people don't understand what we do but they are afraid to actively block our efforts because they are afraid to be seen as antique marketers—so they at least give lip service to its importance, even if they don't understand and don't believe.

I've spoken to several marketers in this organizational predicament recently, and to my surprise, they are quite comfortable with it. "It's so much better than it used to be," they tell themselves. "I don't need them to buy in, I just need them to stay out of my way," they say.

They are wrong.

Jim Collins' perceptive bromide, "Good is the enemy of great," tells us why it is so important to keep pressing for more, even when things are going smoothly. I know that Internet marketers are finding it easier to do their jobs then they did a few years ago, when every day was a battle against the traditional marketers. And it's hard for us to keep at organizational change when the status quo causes us no daily pain. But it's important.

If we don't, we risk falling into the same trap that has bedeviled traditional marketers—top executives do not understand our value to their business. eMarketer's Geoff Ramsey tells a great story about a CEO that gathers his lieutenants around the board room table to explain why he needs to cut their budgets. He turns to each one, demanding a 10% cut, but the CIO explains that critical projects would be canceled and what that will cost the business. The head of manufacturing talks about the new products that would be delayed. The CFO explains that the company would be exposed to audit risks. Then the CEO turns to the Chief Marketing Officer, asking what happens if he cuts marketing 10%. The CMO stammers, "Uh, our brand awareness will really take a hit." The CEO then says, "Good. I'll cut you 20%."

That's been life in marketing, up until now. It has been challenging to show the value of TV commercials or billboards because you usually can't directly tie the results of these tactics to what CEOs understand—sales. Of course, many marketers have succeeded in explaining the value of traditional marketing to top management, but most have not. In most companies, marketing is vaguely considered important, but in bad times it was hard to know how much to spend on it. You need to be ready to answer those questions when bad times come.

Internet marketing is easier to tie to sales, whether you sell online or offline. E-mail marketing, search marketing, and many other early forms of Internet marketing have their roots in direct marketing, where every move you make can be measured by its results. It's important that you communicate with senior management to ensure that they understand the value of what you do. It's even more important that you engage with your company's leaders as Internet marketing becomes more like public relations—blogs and social media marketing are much harder to tie directly to sales.

But it goes both ways. Not only must you communicate your value to your CEO, but you must also realize that you are a cog in a larger machine. What is your company's strategy? How does your firm stand up to competitors? What marketing messages can bolster your company's larger (and longer-term) goals?

The only way you get answers to these questions is to engage with people at your company's highest levels. It can be a bit intimidating. It can be uncomfortable. But it is important. Sure, you could have a less stressful day today if you accepted the benign neglect and avoided these difficult meetings, but you lose in the long run. You are just waiting for the day when you are questioned and it will be harder to defend yourself then.

When you reach out to engage with your company's leaders, expect to be challenged about why what you are doing is important. Expect your company president to question your decisions and the value of your results. But you should also expect to learn a lot. You should expect to have your eyes opened about what is important to your company.

It will permanently change the way you do your job for the better.

Posted by mikemoran at 1:10 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 7, 2008

Is Search Marketing Different for Multinationals?

I got an e-mail recently from someone at a large, multinational company who is in a quandary. They've had some success with their U.S. Web marketing, but now each of the country teams in the company are demanding help. What are the best ways to manage a multinational Web site presence? My correspondent was concerned about how hard it is to do and what unwanted impacts might await.

She wrote, in part, "We know that to rank highly on Google.au our site really needs [an AU] domain name. However, the concern is how to manage this for all the other offices then? (If we do it for one, they all will want it.)" She's right, and it can be hard to manage. Search engines include sites in their country search engines that have country domains (as she notes) or are hosted within that country. Many companies find both of these solutions difficult to manage.

Many companies prefer to host all country sites under ".com" and use the country identifier in a directory within the URL (www.ibm.com/au), rather than setting up dozens of country domains. Similarly, it's usually more expensive to host country sites within each country—you save money with regional hosting centers for multiple countries. Search engines are getting smarter, however. In some cases, pages that are heavily linked from other country pages seem to be included in country indexes even without the right domain name or server address.

Our writer went on, "Also, from what I understand, search engines tend to filter out duplicate content pages. So having different domain names with the same content doesn't seem like a good solution to me?" Typically, the content wouldn't be duplicated precisely, because language, dialect, messaging, and currency differences make each country's content unique, even if the products are the same.

She also asked, "How about IBM? How do they handle this?" Glad you asked. I did a presentation at Search Engine Strategies in Toronto back in 2005 on just that question. Check out "Multi-Country Search Campaigns."

Posted by mikemoran at 4:36 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 6, 2008

Is Paid Search Wrong for You?

Everyone hears the stories about zillionaires minted through Google AdWords and other paid search programs. But is paid search wrong for some kinds of businesses? I've always told people that paid search is not for everyone, but it took a conversation with a professor from Lehigh University to get me to think about why.

I was meeting with a professor at Lehigh before a talk I gave to the local IEEE chapter, Lehigh faculty, and students last week. She was visibly excited about a contest that Google is running for students to find a business that is not using AdWords and create a successful campaign. She showed me several local businesses that were volunteering to work with students in the contest.

She showed me an interesting business that creates nitrogen and other gases using a machine that separates regular air. She showed me a business that throws parties and corporate events around race car driving. Then she showed me an old-fashioned General Store.

At first, I was completely thrown for a loop. Being a city boy, I wasn't entirely sure what a General Store was in this day and age. Turns out that it is a cross between a convenience store and a fancy delicatessen that serves specialty foods. Fair enough.

The ostensible attraction for this business is that it is located near a local tourist attraction and the tourist train stops for 20 minutes right in front of it several times a day. "Great, but why do you need search for a business like that?" I wondered. The professor replied, "Tourists might plan ahead to make sure there's food before they take the trip." I was dubious, wondering if anyone that methodical might instead pack a lunch.

The professor persisted, asking if people might want to search for the name of the tourist attraction and get some information about the General Store. I remained skeptical, and suggested that they might be better off paying for search terms around the specialty food they sell, as long as it is really special. If it is the same stuff everyone else sells, however, then who cares?

It got me to thinking, "What marks a business that should stay away from paid search?" I think there are three broad categories:

• You don't have a specialty or a brand reputation. If you have known brand name or a unique selling proposition, paid search can work very well, because people will click and buy when they find you. But if you sound a lot like your competitors, it's less likely you'll do well.


• The return is too low. If your product sells for a very low profit margin, paid search might cost more profits than you'd make. Likewise, if your Customer Lifetime Value is low (possibly because you get few repeat customers), don't expect paid search to rescue you.


• You can't track your purchases back to the Web. If you don't know what each additional visitor to your site is worth to you, you aren't ready for paid search, because you won't know what to bid. You must be able to track sales back to your Web visitors, whether those sales are online or offline.

Coca Cola has a great brand, but it is a horrible candidate for paid search. Coke can't tell whether purchases resulted from anything on its Web site and its profit per sale is quite low.

The General Store from Lehigh Valley had those problems, plus the lack of a known brand. A few days later the professor e-mailed me to say that she had talked them out of participating in Google's contest. I was glad, because that is not the Internet marketing tactic that will work for them. E-mail lists, social media, a blog—there might be many ways for them to get their message out—but not paid search. It's wrong for them and I am glad they didn't waste money trying. They are far better off experimenting in several other ways.

Is paid search wrong for your business? Are you using paid search just because all the cool kids are doing it? Take a careful look at the characteristics of your business model and see if there might be better ways to spend the money.

Posted by mikemoran at 4:01 PM

February 5, 2008

Talking Social Media with Steve Mann of SAP

Social media is taking off, and marketers are sitting up and taking notice. Small companies have stolen most of the headlines with viral marketing, possibly because small businesses are always looking out for something effective and free. But big companies are working on social media, too. Check out this interview with Steve Mann, Social Media Strategist & Customer Experience Evangelist and business software giant SAP, and author of the popular AbleBrains blog.

Me: Can you describe your role at SAP? Working on social media certainly seems exciting.

SM: SAP has a deep conversational history with our customers and partners. While it hasn't always been visible, the tools of social media are helping us expose those conversations as well as uncovering new ways to deepen those conversations. Our SDN (SAP Developer Network) and BPX (Business Process Expert) Communities have over one million members today; and these are just two of our most visible communities, together with our Industry value networks and the enterprise services communities.

We want to leverage and build on that great success to create a social media strategy to help drive our marketing efforts, so that we can enjoy greater intimacy and engagement between SAP and our customers. These conversations in turn will promote greater customer loyalty. At the end of the day, the experience a customer has with SAP is a critical competitive differentiator for the company. We believe that the appropriate application of Social Media and Social Networking can enhance that customer experience and deepen the already strong relationships we have with them. In essence, we want to develop an extensive business-to-business social graph for SAP.

To do this, we are focused on developing a business-aligned social media strategy. That is to say, talking to key internal stakeholders who lead various functional groups and developing a strategy on how to leverage social media in a way that drives the business forward and clearly ties to both current SAP business objectives and to market needs—now and and in the future. And we are talking to customers, because no customer-centric strategy can be developed without their input. We are focused on the marketing function primarily but since Social Media by its very nature spans the chasm between functional groups we need to align this strategy with what is planned from a corporate communications, product development, field sales and marketing and service and support perspective. We all have a vested interest in doing this well.

Me: What kind of challenges have you run into at a large company when introducing such new marketing tactics? Can you relate an anecdote or two of situations you had to work through?

SM: Well, its too early to provide anecdotes as we are in the preliminary stages of this strategy formulation process but I can say this relative to your first question about challenges. Change management is always a top of mind issue when it comes to broad implementations of strategy. So having a detailed communications and change management plan in place is critical.

Me: How do you get SAP customers to pass your message along? How do you get SAP marketers to be willing to change the way they do messaging so that customers might pass it along?

SM: It's my personal opinion and I may be wrong about this but the notion of message control is largely a myth. I think that enterprises can shape a position for conversation initially but then what happens to it once its in the market is up to those participating in the conversation. But that's the beauty of Social Media isn't it? Once the conversation has begun, we have the opportunity to join in, provide our perspective, as well as listen to perspectives of others. In that way we can refine our conversational approach to be more impactful for our target markets. It's become a conversational economy and if you are not in the conversation you'll be left behind. To me, it's not about passing "the message" along, its about getting out there, being transparent and having conversations with your customers, your partners and your critics. How else can we get better if we don't receive and act on feedback?

We don't have to get marketers to change their discussion strategies—what we need is to become more conversational in our storytelling. SAP marketers and communication professionals get it. They understand the value that a conversational dynamic has in Influence and in funnel conversion. Trusted referral marketing in a 1:1 model is very powerful. And Social Media enables that type of marketing. Imagine when a potential customer talks to an existing customer and that customer has an open honest conversation about SAP and recommends us to them. There's no more powerful way to promote your products and services. This is what we are after. This is what we will accomplish.

Me: What have been your biggest successes in new marketing tactics at SAP?

A few big things:

• I'd say the SDN and BPX communities.


• Our world class Blogger Relations program which we started back in 2005 is a model for the rest of the High Tech Industry.


• The smart integration of search into our overall marketing campaign strategy is something that we've derived a lot of value from. From a personal perspective, I'm very proud of the attitudinal segmentation work we've done to truly understand our buyers from a needs, attitudes and behaviors perspective.

Me: Have you gotten traditional marketers to adapt to social media?

SM: Yes. The fact that we are engaged in this project and that the company up and down the line is extremely interested in Web 2.0 no matter the line of business is a testament to that interest. We all know that these tools are fast becoming mainstream and we are adapting to leverage these new tools.

Me: What are the best tips you'd give other corporate marketers when dealing with an organization that doesn't always take new marketing ideas seriously?

SM: Look to your ecosystem, both internal and external. I guarantee you that you will find some sort of grass roots Social Media implementation in a variety of functional areas. That's what we found at SAP. Folks were implementing Social Media all over the place. Really good work as well, like Harmony—our internal Social Network—or myventurepad.com—a blog aggregation site focused on SMBs and sponsored by SAP. Build on those grass roots projects and use them to demonstrate the effectiveness of Web 2.0 in your business strategies.

Me: Do you find that the kind of feedback that Web 2.0 provides is being taken seriously in a large corporation? Do you find that decisions are being made differently based on not only how the analysts or the media will react, but how customers on blogs, message boards, and other places will respond in public?

SM: I think whether a company takes feedback seriously depends on its corporate culture. Corporate culture is very difficult to change and companies that don't readily engage with the market for feedback will have problems adapting to the tremendous amount of information both wanted and unwanted that Web 2.0 delivers. SAP falls into the "gimme more" category. We have numerous Voice of the Customer initiatives and engage with our customers to co-create and co-innovate on products, services and content. To us, Web 2.0 is an enabler to a strategy which is already in place.

Me: Thanks, Steve for sharing this perspective on social media with my readers.

Posted by mikemoran at 12:06 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

February 4, 2008

Is Verizon Taking Lessons from AOL?

I only wish that I had taped it. (They told me they were taping the call for quality control, so I hope they listen to it.) I remember a couple of years ago when AOL's phone reps were taped trying to weasel out of a service cancellation, but I really expected more from Verizon.

It started a few years ago, when my cable company offered the "triple play"—where we got phone service, Internet access, and cable television all for $100. I was a bit nervous about how the phone service would work, and within the first couple of weeks we had an outage. They told me they'd come the next day to fix it until I told them that Verizon would come immediately. They came immediately.

Now I had no great love for my cable company, and when Verizon announced its FIOS Triple Play offering, I took a look. It turned out that it wasn't any faster or any cheaper than my cable offer, so I let it go by.

And it turned out that we haven't had a cable outage since, more than a year later. So I decided it was time to switch my business lines to cable, which would save my company about $40 a month. So they came in and installed it and I was all set. All I had to do now was cancel my two lines with Verizon.

Easier said than done.

I started by going to Verizon's Web site. It took a while, but I finally found a place where you could disconnect your service, and I filled out a form with the information. Several days later, I got an e-mail explaining that I could not disconnect unless I called Verizon.

That's frustrating, but I was willing to do it. I was on the road when I got the e-mail, in a different time zone, so it wasn't easy to call within Verizon's business hours. I waited until I got home and Friday I finally had a chance to call.

Boy, was that an experience. I reached the now ubiquitous voice response system that asked me several questions that it had a tough time understanding my responses for, which was a bit frustrating. It asked me my phone number and then put me on hold in complete silence. After a few minutes of this, I lost faith and hung up.

I tried calling back and this time the voice response system understood almost nothing I was saying. I tried saying "operator" to be connected with a person, but had no luck. No matter what it misinterpreted, I had no way to go back. At the point that it announced that I was being transferred to "Verizon Wireless," I decided to start over once again by hanging up and calling back.

This time the voice response system worked. Until this point, it was frustrating, it had wasted my time, but now things got worse. I finally got to speak to a person who asked me my phone number and why I was calling even though the voice response system had asked me the same things. But, we've all seen that before.

Then the Verizon rep started asking me why I was canceling, so I explained it. I was switching to my cable company. "How much are they charging you?" I told her. "How much do you pay for all of your cable services?" I told her that I had been on the phone for 25 minutes trying to disconnect my service and that I really didn't want to answer any more questions.

So she transferred me to someone else who asked all the same questions. It was like I had dropped into an endless loop. Now I was starting to get irritated. I pointedly explained that I did not see why I needed to answer the same questions over and over again when all I want is to disconnect my service. He told me he was going to transfer me to the department that could disconnect my service.

So, now we were getting somewhere. The disconnect person began by asking me for my phone number (again) and then began asking me why I was disconnecting. And how much I am paying for cable—you get the idea. At this point, I decided that was enough. I let him know in no uncertain terms that there was no reason for people to ask me the same questions repeatedly when all I want is to disconnect my service.

At this point, he professed shock that I could be so upset when he was just having a conversation. He told me he just wanted to ask me some simple questions. So I told him, "You can ask all the questions you want, but I am not answering them." Still, he persisted. When I just said, "Next question" in response to each one, he started to get the idea.

Now he was annoyed with me. He told me in an irritated voice that he was completing the disconnect order for me. I think I am a nice guy, and I started feeling bad for being annoyed, so I apologized for being so gruff with him, but that he should know that it had taken me 40 minutes to disconnect my service. At this point, he cut me off and said, "I know how long it takes, sir." He then gave me my confirmation number and we hung up.

I was extremely surprised that this is how Verizon treats its customers. I was even more surprised that Verizon seems to know that this is how their various systems and representatives work. Why would you treat people like this?

I am a very happy Verizon Wireless customer, and found great contrast on Saturday, when I called Verizon Wireless to retroactively increase my daughter's instant messaging plan so she would avoid (some) of the consequences of her relentless texting. They were incredibly helpful, even though they could have said that they can only change the plan for this day forward (costing my daughter $18 she would struggle to pay me). It was hard to believe these two conversations were with the same company.

I don't have any great loyalty to my cable company, but they have never treated me like Verizon did on Friday. I always thought that if Verizon came up with faster Internet access speeds or lower prices, that someday I might switch back to them from cable, but this incident has given me pause.

Why don't companies understand that treating people well when they cancel makes it more likely that they will consider them again someday? I don't understand why I can do almost anything with my Verizon account online, except to cancel it. And then it takes 40 minutes to do it by phone, with repeated badgering about why I am canceling.

I've always thought highly of Verizon, but they seem to be taking a page out of the AOL cancellation play book today. Now maybe this was an isolated incident—I hope it was. Whether it is isolated or not, it happened to me and it made an impression. We need to remember that every impression we make on a customer is important.

Posted by mikemoran at 2:47 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

February 1, 2008

Do You Pass the Web Marketing Ethics Test?

In recent years, companies have become hyper-aware of the increased scrutiny on corporate ethics. Enron and other poster children for bad behavior have dominated headlines and attracted unwanted government attention. But, as famous marketer Al Jolson once put it, "You ain't seen nothin' yet." Web 2.0 is bringing the public's watchful eye on everything companies do, and marketing is no exception.

You know by now not to send unsolicited e-mail to anyone, which is illegal in many countries. You similarly should not compromise your customers' privacy, by selling e-mail addresses or revealing other personal information. Post your privacy policy and stick to it. And, on the off-chance that you do send something that someone doesn't want, make it incredibly easy to opt out.

But that advice is so 20th century. Sure, you should obey the law, but your customers are demanding far more from you these days. You must go beyond what's required by the letter of the law to gain the trust of increasingly savvy and suspicious customers. Take this quiz to see how you stack up.

1. Do you ever misrepresent who you are?

A famous New Yorker cartoon was once captioned, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog." True enough, but your customers expect you to be open about who you are, if you want to gain their trust.

If you misrepresent your identity, expect that it will eventually be found out. When it is, you'll become the new unethical behavior story to sweep the blogosphere. (It might also violate the law in some countries, including the U.S.)

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was caught posting on Yahoo! message boards under a pseudonym, praising his company and trashing the performance of Wild Oats, a company eventually acquired by Whole Foods. In addition to the bad publicity generated when this was revealed, it provoked an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission that delayed the eventual acquisition. Mackey was unrepentant, claiming he was just having some fun.

You might consider engaging in hobbies less detrimental to your business. Put your company's name in the "from" line of your e-mails. Make sure your message includes both your address and phone number, so recipients can verify it's really you. Just be yourself, and your customers will love you for who you really are.

2. Do you ever misrepresent who you represent?

A few of our ethically-challenged marketing brethren are fomenting conversation by planting stories and comments without revealing their true sources. "Astroturfing" is so named because it is a "fake grass roots" uprising. The situation resembles a public outcry when it is actually carefully staged by an interested party.

If you have a relationship that customers should know about, reveal it. If you're being paid to provide a link to another company, or you're providing an affiliate link, it's best to say so. And make sure your partners follow the same code of ethics when they recommend you. Everyone's reputation is at stake.

3. Do you secretly pay others to praise you?

Advertising has always used paid spokespersons to boost products, so why can't you pay people to write nice things about you on the Web? You can, so long as the monetary relationship is part of the story. But if your public relations firm suggests starting a blog to criticize your main competitor or to boost your own products, without revealing your involvement, it's up to you to have the morals to say no.

Famous brands, such as Wal-Mart and Sony, have been caught creating "flogs" for their products. In Wal-Mart's case, a highly complimentary blog penned by a couple of of travelers identified themselves only as "Jim and Laura" on their blog, but they were eventually identified as professional writers sponsored by Working Families for Wal-Mart, an organization run by Wal-Mart's public relations firm.

In the same vein, Payperpost.com features a service where companies pay bloggers to shill their products. When you pay people to post good reviews (sometimes called "feeviews"), or when your sales team brags about giving your competitors' products bad reviews online, you need to put a stop to it. Microsoft ended up embarrassed when they gave top bloggers laptop computers with their new Windows Vista operating system--it looked like they were trying to buy favorable reviews.

You can imagine that the publicity these gambits produced were worse than no attention at all.

So, did your company pass the test? If three questions are too many for you, here's the simple one-question test: Are you about to do is something you don't want everyone to know about? If so, it's probably a dumb idea. The Web is the greatest investigative journalism force in history, and you don't want to be its next target. And Web 2.0 techniques, such as social media, ensure that your transgression will be widely circulated. So, if you're almost certain to get caught and publicly vilified, why take the risk?

If you receive this newsletter once per month but are left wanting more, you could be reading these rants every day. Sign up for the daily Biznology blog as an RSS feed or by e-mail and other options.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:39 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack