Marketing Guy

Getting Clear on your Goals for your Marketing Plan in the New Year

2010-01-08T19:04:00Z

Happy New Year everyone, hope you all enjoyed the holiday and that you’re back rested and relaxed for an exciting 2010. I sure am and can’t wait to dig back into the Marketing Guy blog—so let’s get going! I had a chance to participate in some team training right off the bat this week, and while it had its typical “corporate training” moments, it really did serve to help focus a number of topics I deal with in my position, and raised an important issue that our group agreed is a huge one as it relates to successful marketing, and one that I think you’d all benefit from as well—and that is ensuring you have an “intersection” of understanding about your marketing goals and objectives before you embark on a marketing activity or campaign this year. Now you may take the word “intersection” as one of those trite marketing-speak phrases that comes out of these types of sessions, but hear me out. By “intersection,” I’m not talking about a recitation of your 2010 marketing plan to the sales group with them nodding or doing email while you’re in front of a PPT presentation, but actually taking the time to ensure you and the sales teams (for instance) have a strong commonality and understanding of what your marketing plan is intended to do and achieve—no computers, no long presentations, but a conversation about where your head is at, where your priorities and resources are positioned, and what your goals and objectives are for this year. You may say right off the bat that the goal this year is to increase revenue, and your marketing plan may reflect this stance. But what if your sales team thinks it’s not? . What if their focus is share? What if their focus is on current customer retention? Are you sure you’re in alignment with your sales counterparts on what they’re expecting from you this year? Or do you just “think” you are based on your own expectations? Well now’s the perfect time to have these conversations. Whether you’re heading into a sales-kick-off season or planning of for the 2^nd half of the current fiscal year (as we here are doing at Microsoft), it’s super important to ensure that you have this conversation, you listen to what the sales teams are telling you they need, and in turn, that they understand what you’re prepared to produce, and then you come to an agreement of our goals and objectives and metrics—an “intersection” you might say. The outcome of this conversation—the intersection—is incredibly important. Are your expectations aligned? Do they want lots of leads while you’re planning awareness events? Are they wanting to mine your customer based for cross-selling and upselling while you’re out there building pipeline? Way different marketing activities; way different sales motions; way different budget uses; way too much wasted time and money if you’re not on the same page. So as you get started this year, take some time with your constituents, with your team, with your peers, with your internal customers, and have these conversations. Listening and finding the common intersection may take some time now, but I guarantee that it will save you time down the road and make your marketing plan that much more effective this year. Happy New Year everyone and good luck out there!

Don't Get Caught in the Product Launch Trap

2009-12-07T18:16:00Z

Happy holidays Marketing Guy followers and greetings from the center of the climate-changing universe, Copenhagen Denmark--or as all the Coca-Cola ads would have you say it--HOPEnhagen. Trust me that slogan is way cuter in person.

At any rate, the marketing topic du jour on my mind right now is the focus on the ubiquitous product launch--that moment (however artificial) when you celebrate something new that you created, improved, or just changed the color on being out in the marketplace. It's long been a staple of every product and brand manager worth their salt that they have successfully "launched" a product into the marketplace. Launching is risky business--on the subject of Coke--anyone hear lately from the product manager of "New Coke" from a few decades ago? I didn't think so. Along those lines, the Windows Vista launch managers are not really so much in the picture at Microsoft right now either--BUT, you can bet the Windows 7 and Bing product managers are in a good spot--because so much attention gets put on the launch.

Well I'm here to implore those of you who have launch responsibilities in your job description or commitments to not get mesmirized by the siren song of the product launch at the expense of what comes after that amazing first day out on the market--the rest of the launch plan.

I've seen my share of non-marketers get up in arms because they want to see their product "launched," because they think that somehow launching a product validates it--makes it real--proves it made it--kind of like a company going public with an IPO. It doesn't matter so much what the stock closes at on opening day, it just matters that it officially has a ticker symbol.

The above successful product managers I alluded to from Microsoft, and let's add in products like the iPhone and The Prius (back to my Hopenhagen theme of the day), know that it's one thing to have a successful first act, but smart marketers have planned for Act 2 and Act 3 as well. They know that the hoopla, balloons, and champagne of Day 1 is only the beginning. Their launch plan is code named "rolling thunder," not "big bang."

It really is the follow-up to a launch that determines the ultimate success of a product. Now don't get me wrong, the launch event must be flawless, the press must be on message, the product has to work--all super important things. But assuming it does, then what? Those revenue projections for year 1 are not going to make themselves (except maybe for the iPhone, that is).

Issues like field and channel readiness, competitive positioning, demonstrations, distribution, customized offers by region and geography, localization timing and roll-out, V2's and service packs--just a few of the issues that don't get mentioned when they roll out the big cake. But they can kill your product if they're not in place as well.

As my father always says, "keep your eye on the donut, not the hole." Too often, the launch is the "hole"--and the goodwill you gain from pulling off that "day" is rapidly unwound when the support teams can't answer questions from irate customers; your competitor drops prices by half, and you've run out of the color red...

The moral of this story: make sure your launch plan goes beyond launch to be able to enjoy your donut. Or something.

(Sorry it's late here, there's no electricity this week except for tofu candles, and I was only alloted a hand towel for the entire week here--tough crowd these climate folks!)

The Limits of the Hallowed Press Release

2009-11-21T19:49:00Z

As technology has gone wild in the past few years and information is embedded into everything from our soda bottles to our refrigerators and even into cavity fillings (OK I *think* I’m making that one up, but would any of us be surprised if it was true?), it’s easy to forget that just a mere few years ago, the press release was the holy grail of outbound marketing communications; it determined agendas for markets and could freeze deals, stock prices, and customer confidence by its mere issuance.

But I was speaking with a friend the other day who has over 65,000 followers on Twitter right in the midst of trying to get my own press release through final edits and onto the wire, and it started a discussion about the effects of social media and what a press release really gets you in the marketplace right now.

Given the proliferation of PR from many technology vendors, it’s easy to dismiss press releases these days; there are fewer technology press writers, so fewer publications to pick up the release. Given how reluctant customer PR departments are to have their names used in print, the news has to be pretty big to be noticed; and even then, how can you guarantee that the people you *want* to read it actually will? So the question in our discussion, and I think it’s a good one for marketers to consider is “is it worth more to you to reach a smaller, yet relevant audience that is following your every Tweet, or spray the infield and hope that the right people see your hard work in action?”

Now, one can make the argument that savvy marketers don’t choose between one or the other. And while not everyone can have thousands of people following them in a community, it does highlight an important facet of marketing today, as well as the limits to traditional outbound communications. The key here for marketers is to know that we have to think of communications in a much more integrated fashion. It’s no longer just writers that help drive and influence opinion, but bloggers and analysts that have massive followings. And also services like PR newswire can get any press release out into cyberspace for a fee, the point is not the press release itself, but what the press release can get you—what behavior does it influence? Can you not put the news on your blog or preferred social media outlet and achieve the same or better results at a fraction of the time and cost? Or if you are issuing a press release, how can you ensure you extend its reach, to make sure the right people read it, and that those people take the action you want them to?

So the next time you hear the CEO yell out “we need a press release,” stop and think about not just what that entails, but if it really helps achieve the objective you’re after. Sometimes the best strategy is not the one that you’d expect.

When a Lead is not a Lead—and When it Is

2009-10-29T09:05:00Z

It’s not a lead when someone stops by your booth at a trade show and drops a business card in your fishbowl.

It’s not a lead when someone downloads a white paper from your website.

It’s not even a lead when you get a database of names that you’ve rented for a mailing that’s been scrubbed, cleaned, and categorized.

In our business we work with a lot of companies that sell Microsoft Dynamics ERP on our behalf. Many are outstanding, and some are truly best in class. But they know the difference between a lead and a nibble on the end of the fishing line. And what generally separates the really successful marketers and companies that are competing for the same customer today from the average ones is the ability to spend their valuable resources pursuing those customers that are truly a lead. Now it may seem fairly elemental, but I’ve seen a lot of marketers think they have a great pipeline of leads that they’re handing over to sales, when what they really have is a list of people who have interacted with their company and who have no intention of buying their product or service. Here’s how we look at what constitutes a lead and how you might want to think of it as well:

· They’ve expressed an interest in your product, or about learning more about your solution or offering

· They’ve responded directly to an outreach you’ve made to them—an invite to a seminar, and invitation to a webinar or to download a white paper, or a trial evaluation download of your product

· They have a budget to buy your product

· They tell you they do

· They have a timeframe in mind to purchase

· They have the authority to purchase or are on the team that has this authority

There are probably a number of other criteria that you use, but hopefully you’re getting the point. While we’ll deal with how to find these leads in another post, there is a common thread to all of the points above: they take work on your part. Very rarely do real leads fall into your lap, and those of you who *get* marketing know this as a fact. A lead must be sniffed out, worked on, nurtured, followed-up on, cajoled out of hiding, and made to reveal far more than they should, all while making them think they are in control of the process. Only then has your marketing truly paid off. Until then, you’re just dealing with a bunch of nameless, faceless companies and titles.

Marketing to Your Existing Customers

2009-10-20T23:53:00Z

With the global economy still sputtering in most parts of the world, for many companies there's not a "ton" of new pipeline out there that's closing very fast these days. Customers are either delaying purchases or making due with what they have, making prospecting an art as much as a science right now.

It's in large part due to these conditions that many companies have shifted their marketing resources to a more "captive" audience that is already familar with the vendor's brand, product offering, and way of doing business--existing customers.

Now, just ecause you already have a customer, that obviously doesn't mean that they're inherently a future customer as well. There are a lot of important metrics to consider here--did the customer have a good experience last time they bought something from you? Has it been awhile since they last purchased from you--i.e. are they ready to buy again? And perhaps most importantly, do you have anything interesting to sell them?

The relationship between marketing to new customers vs. marketing to existing customers has been likened to the difference between dating someone and staying married. One takes more up-front effort, often with a lot of promises, glitz, and unbridled hope for great things in the future. Staying married, for all its benefits, takes some work (as many of us know!).

To be effective in keeping your existing customers happy, the relationship example is a great one. You need to think of ways to keep the relationship fresh and new--like new products and offerings, upgrades, inside access, even gifts for their loyalty from time to time. it takes constant communication--you really do need an ongoing relationship model here!

How do you onboard them--the honeymoon stage--and get the relationship off to a great start? The goal of course, in this incredibly drawn out analogy, is to get to the "renewal of the vows," the point at which the customer makes a new commitment to you, and re-ups and buys your products again.

In terms of marketing tactics, there are a variety of them at your disposal during the existing customer marketing experience. From a simple welcome packet to new customer on-boarding classes, to insider briefings, to dicounts and offers on new product features, as a marketer you need to use every one of the four marketing "P's" at your disposal. New products, pricing that induces new purchases and upgrades, promotions that incentivize increased engagement and purchasing, and having products--new and existing--in the right position and place for your customers to use them--all areas you need to think about and strategize on.

So it's not easy. But ultimately, revenue is revenue in today's marketplace. And having a marketing plan to target customers already using your product is a core pillar of a successful marketing strategy today, so take it seriously and make it a strategic asset for your organization!

Having a Chat with Your Customers

2009-10-12T07:13:00Z

Marketing Guy back again, focusing on a button that I’m seeing quite often now on the Microsoft websites, and increasingly more and more other websites out there as well—the “click to chat” feature. Now in these days of the social media explosion we’re able as marketers to take the pulse on the market and our customers better than ever before. We can aggregate searches on search engines (Bing actually tells you what the top searches in its engine are on its front page), look at Twitter feeds and aggregations, and use all sorts of technology to put our pulse on the finger of our customers and the marketplace.

However, the ability to engage them in a one on one conversation is increasingly emerging as a great way to break through all of the clutter and chatter out there and help them get the answers they’re looking for in a timely manner. Several travel websites now incorporate this feature, the goal (on any website) being to keep you around—the longer you stay on the site, the more likely you are to turn your browsing into either purchasing or at least to request more information, while keeping off the competition’s site.

Now while staffing the chat feature is certainly a cost that may put your marketing budget over the top, if you engage with a large volume of customers or with prospects through a web channel, having product or support experts on staff, or even outsourcing this role to an outside firm is becoming a feature that website visitors expect to see.

For the visitor, it’s a low pressure way to get the answers to questions they may have, or find some information faster than they could on their own. They get a 1:1 experience with the vendor, and personal attention. This of course has all sorts of affinity goodness with the brand and the product—provided the visitor gets the information they’re looking for. But at a minimum, it provides an accelerated web experience that people today appreciate given the demands on their time.

But even more importantly, for the vendor, early research is showing that these 1:1 interactions not only result in increased customer satisfaction, but increased revenue as well. By getting the visitor to exactly the right page to order the product they’re after, or find the right airfare, for instance, companies ensure the customer stays with them and books the ticket vs. going onto a competitor, and as such they’re now able to provide that high-satisfaction experience missing in so much of our everyday lives. Studies are finding that these customers tend to be repeat visitors, and become ambassadors for the brand and the website.

So as you think about your website and outbound marketing strategy, be sure to think about how you can reach your customers on a 1:1 basis and have a chat with them—chances are you’ll find not just increased customer satisfaction as a result of this strategy, but increased revenue as well.

The Compelling Reason to Purchase

2009-10-04T21:23:00Z

On the first “real” post for this blog, I thought I’d touch on a facet of marketing that’s never been more important than now in this economy—providing our customers a reason to take out their check books and spend money on our product or service.

As we’re all more than well aware, companies and customers are “making due” with what they have—be with their current PC’s and servers, business applications, and especially headcount. But those companies that are ultimately going to come out of our current downturn as winners and leaders *are* spending money and budget right now—on projects that they can see will benefit them once the downturn is over.

Where a lot of companies fail in taking advantage of this opportunity is not just in prospecting and finding the companies with open checkbooks today, but helping these companies provide strong value proposition to their boards and executives on what the project they’re spending on will do to propel the company forward.

An old VC contact I used to do business with called this the “compelling reason to purchase.” It distills the fluffy value propositions, marketing materials, and snappy ads down to their essence—the value for the customer. It’s a good lesson for us all to keep in mind these days—can you say that this is for your product or service in one sentence—why should anyone buy your product today. What will it give them that they can’t get a hear from now? And why is it worth buying now?

The ability to answer these questions are fundamental to our marketing today, and ultimately will distinguish the winners not just among the customers that buy into our propositions, but us as vendors as well.

Welcome Back to The Marketing Guy

2009-10-04T21:14:00Z

Hi everyone,

Guy Weismantel here, from the Microsoft Dynamics ERP marketing team. I’m pretty new to the Dynamics organization, although not to Microsoft, and low and behold I show up here and start kicking off our own ERP social media strategy (highlighted by our new blog The Edge, go and check it out, and yes, this is a shameless plug), as well as taking over the mantle of The Marketing Guy from our own Craig Dewar (who’s welcome back anytime!)

We’re rejuvenating The Marketing Guy blog to provide a best practices forum on marketing both inside the organization, as well as around the hi-tech and consumer worlds. Looking forward to the conversation!

The times they are a changing

2008-04-24T22:42:00Z

I was recently looking at the tech preview of a site called TaskMarket. This is a marketplace recently launched by Microsoft to connect freelancers directly with businesses and it got me thinking about how internet market places are changing the way we work as marketers. Consider the case of launching a new website to be the destination in a marketing campaign for a new product or service. This is something I am sure many of you have worked on before and in fact may be doing right now. A project like this is multi disciplinary in nature. You need a combination of skills covering marketing, product management, copy writing, web development, graphic design etc

In the past there were two main approaches you might have used to assemble such a cast of characters

In house – If your company is large enough you might be lucky enough to have the resources you need for the project internally. You would bring together a team with the right skills and get cracking.
Outsource – If your company is smaller or some of your key assets dedicated to other preexisting projects you might go ahead and bid the work out to an agency. A typical agency will have a large pool of freelancers in the different disciplines and they will put together the right team and get the job done.

In many industries the internet has helped cut out the middle man and flattened the way people do business. This is also true of marketing and the emergence of labor marketplaces allows you easy direct access to free lancers. This opens up a third choice for you empowering you as marketer to crowdsource your projects. Essentially this means you can choose to easily and cost effectively bid out components of the project as you see fit. Don’t have get copy writing? Bid it to the marketplace. Don’t have web design in house? Bid it to the marketplace. You get the idea.

While TaskMarket is just taking its first baby steps there are other more established sites that have already achieved critical mass. Take a look at guru.com for a robust example of a freelancer market place. They have in excess of 100,000 free lancers across a multitude of skill areas. I will certainly be keeping my eye on the development of these marketplaces and considering them as a tool in my arsenal when it comes to cost effectively delivering my marketing projects. How about you?

The Naked Business Part III - The site update

2007-05-21T23:07:00Z

Last week we released a minor site update we have been brewing up for a while. It includes the following

The display name (screen name) and username fields have been merged. This means that you will now be able to modify your display name, and should remove some confusion in the signup process. The server settings have also been changed so that the display name is displayed instead of the username.
The old poll has been closed, and a new one started. The results of the closed poll are displayed in a separate section on the right hand side of the home page. The closure of the poll means we officially are called the Finance Forum!
The hero graphic for authenticated users has been updated to a nice shiny new graphic.
A flash demo has been added to the site, this shows you the features of the site and walks you through what can do in the community. This is linked to from three places:
a. The hero graphic for authenticated users
b. The welcome section on the top right hand side of the home page.
c. The “How do I join?” section of the Join Now page.
The layout of the forums home page has been changed to give prominence to the forums (the Shortcuts, My Discussions, Active, and Unanswered sections have been pushed to the bottom of the page).
The layout of the home page has been slightly changed with the Popular Tags section being moved above the Active and Unanswered sections, and with the addition of the previous poll results section.
We added some back end goo to enable us to do reporting on the demographics of the members so we can figure out better content etc for you

We hope you like these changes as much as we do.... more to come in July...

Naked Business Part II – The Team

2007-05-09T22:18:00Z

Continuing my behind the scenes look into the community let’s talk about who the team is and what they do. To set the stage we have a core team of 6 people working on this project spread across Redmond, WA; Fargo, ND and even Hettinger, ND! Although we are all US based today we have pretty diverse backgrounds including an Irishman, a Mexican, a Kiwi and of course a few from the USA. We meet weekly for 1 hour on a Monday at 1pm PST to talk through plans, make decisions and review progress on our individual workstreams. In terms of the roles on the team we have the following (semi official Microsoft definitions included)

· Program management (Carlos, Redmond) - Leads the technical side of a product development team, managing and defining the functional specifications and defining how the product will work.

· Software Development (Gerry, Redmond) - Codes and designs new software, often collaborating as a member of a software development team to create and build products.

· User Experience (Zach, Redmond ) – Works closely with development, usability, and visual design to create rich and useful user experiences in many forms and different mediums.

· Product Management (Shane, Fargo) - Creates the road map that takes Microsoft products from conception to launch, then monitors their impact throughout the product life cycle.

· Product Marketing (Liz, Hettinger) - Develops and implements marketing strategies that drive faster adoption and deployment of products and services.

If I had to boil it all up and deviate from the official descriptions I would say this captures it.

· Carlos –He writes the specs that make the whole world sing, manages the overall process and keeps the trains running on time in the dev side of the house

· Gerry – We feed him Guinness and he writes the code

· Zach – Designs a pretty and usable place for us to put everything (Shane helps with this too)

· Liz – Organizes content, makes sure people know the site exists and keeps the marketing folks focused

· Shane – Is a non traditional product manager and in fact does many things across all these areas including html, specs, production, UX etc

And then there is me falling into the official category of management overhead. I do also try to make sure no question goes unanswered on the community.

Next time I will dive into the outcomes of our latest weekly meeting and some of the discussions going on around future developments etc.

Naked Business – The Premise

2007-04-25T18:23:00Z

I am a long time reader of Wired magazine and they recently published a very interesting article entitled “The See-Through CEO”. It discussed the increasing trend in business today to use web 2.0 approaches including blogs and communities to get businesses closer to their customers in a very transparent way. It got me thinking about the work our team is doing here on the Finance community front and the dialog we are building together in our community. I thought it might be fun to apply the premise of the article to the process we are using to develop and enhance this community. Specifically I am going to write a series of blogs that give you insight into the team, our process and the plans and decisions that affect the community. That will allow you to follow along with what we are planning and also to provide input and thoughts via leaving comments. Hope you will find the series interesting and give us some insightful feedback.

Finance Community Coming at ya...

2007-03-10T23:26:00Z

Well here we are at a little show called Convergence 2007 with 8,500 of our closest friends. For me personally it will be my 5th and it is always so much fun to reconnect with old friends and make new ones. This year our team also has the honour and priviledge of launching this Finance Community and bringing the spirit of Convergence online 24 x 7. Communities of course are about the people that make them up and we hope those of you in Finance roles will get involved and shape it into what we know it can be. For those of you on other roles watch this space...we are planning on bringing others online later in the year.

Thanks to the team that worked with so much passion and talent to make this possible. In no particular order Shane, Gerry, Carlos, Liz, Zach, Bill, Trent, Guillermo and our friends at Telligent.