Marketing 2014 – what are your looming challenges?

By Mark Helfen

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And now for something completely different…..

Most months, the SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG has a knowledgeable speaker who gives a presentation on an important marketing topic.

This month you - the audience - will be the “speaker.”

In an abbreviated unconference style, the group will list the marketing issues they will face over the next year. We will break up into groups, and brainstorm ideas. Then see what ideas seem to come up most often. Finally, we can crowdsource some possible solutions from the many years and wide expertise of the marketing experts in the room. In a single evening I think we will just scratch the surface, but the discussion can continue on the MarketingSIG LinkedIn group over the next few weeks.

The meeting will be Monday, December 9, at our usual time and place. The Citrix Startup Accelerator, starting at 6:30.

The process will be managed by Kevin Cox, Vice President of Marketing, Yeti Data. He is an expert in digital marketing, awarded BtoB Magazine Top Digital Marketers 2012 & 2011, with 17 years international marketing experience.

The real list will be generated at the meeting. But to give people a few ideas to start their brains working, I polled the MarketingSIG co-chairs for their lists. Here, in no particular order, are some ideas to begin your thinking. I have taken the liberty of summarizing and paraphrasing the contributions, so I am to blame for any errors.

- Marketing technology requires more and more IT budget – possibly exceeding other IT spending. How will Marketing justify, acquire, and manage the systems, software or services used.

-  Social listening and sentiment measurement will become increasingly important. What are the best tools

- People are becoming ever more sensitized to privacy issues and how their data is stored and used. How can marketing programs both be effective and manage customer expectations.

- The rules for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keep changing. How to keep up.

= Is Facebook over? Do you need a presence on Google+? Is Instagram/Twitter/Pinterest the future or social marketing. What are the social media tools that will be useful for your marketing efforts in 2014.

- Marketing budgets are always tight. How to decide how to allocate your resources. How can you measure ROI for everything you do.

- Where should a new company start.

= Mobile continues to grow (or maybe explode.) News reports this last week talked about how much purchasing was done using mobile devices before Thanksgiving dinner was even over. How can your marketing program take advantage of mobile technology.

- Keeping up is a challenge – more technology, more social media channels, more options. Marketing is becoming more and more specialized. How can a marketing professional keep up. How broad versus deep should your expertise be.

- Communities are critical to success. How can you build communities, both for yourself, and for your customer base.


This is just a short list. Hopefully this will give you a place to start, to bring your own ideas to next Monday’s meeting.

And a big THANKS to the co-chairs for their help.

Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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You can pull a “PR-180,” engage highly influential people, and energize your content marketing strategy

By Mark Helfen

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What if you could engage with well-known and influential “thought leaders,” and in the process both develop a relationship and increase the credibility of your content production efforts. David Spark has a way. By pulling a “PR-180,” you can engage influencers, establish a relationship, and increase the reach and influence of your blog.

Spark is founder of Spark Media Solutions, a content production company. He describes himself as a “brand journalist,” and creates content of all kinds – video, written, podcasts, and more. He is about to produce his first e-book. His objective is building an editorial brand for his clients. Spark will be speaking on the topic Building Influencer Relations through Content at our next SVForum Marketing and Social Media meeting at 6:30 on Monday, November 11 at the Citrix Startup Accelerator, our usual time and location.

From Sparks perspective, content is an absolute requirement – see his post here. But attracting people who are well known influencers, who you might “never dream” could help you, increases your influence. In other words, you can create interesting content, increase its value, and develop relationships all at the same time.

The normal path is to contact the PR or media relations department at the company the influencer works for, and hope for an eventual interview. But Spark is more closely aligned to the Woody Allen quote – “Showing up is 80 percent of life.” So his interview strategy is to just show up. At trade shows, conferences, or wherever the person he wants to connect with will be found.

Of course, it not quite so simple. You need to be totally prepared. His example is a video interview, where you need to be able to have your equipment on and operating within 10 seconds, to show professionalism and competence.

An interview with an influencer posted on your blog or YouTube channel brings three values: It’s a great reason for engagement with the influencer; the credibility of your content goes up with the implied endorsement of the person being interviewed; and you can follow up and build a professional relationship.

I asked Sparks if this strategy is easily copied. Everyone does it and eventually the idea wears out its welcome. His reply was that after 7 years, “he’s still waiting for direct competition.”

Not everyone feels that they can walk up to someone they don’t know and ask to interview them.

“The first time is really uncomfortable,” he said. But you keep trying, and it gets easier. You learn to overcome what he refers to as the “the last three feet” problem approaching people at a trade show or meeting. You can also practice in a safe environment, with friends or within your own business.

So you can editorial brand value with the help of key influencers. Learn how next Monday night.



Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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YouTube has grown up – a tool for customer engagement

By Mark Helfen

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All the cute videos of puppies and babies are still on YouTube. Lady Gaga is still there too - in fact YouTube now is included in the Billboard top 100 music tracks. Hundreds of hours of video get uploaded every minute according to Google statistics, a mix of the weird, the personal, and the important.

But YouTube has also become a way to get customer and market engagement, for you, your brand, or your business. Both business-to-consumer and business-to-business marketing can benefit.

The audience is there, the analytical tools are there, and now you need to be there.

Or so says Matt Ballek, speaker at the Monday, October 14 SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG meeting. The meeting will be at our usual time and place – 6:30 at the Citrix Startup Accelerator (map). Ballek is Director of Strategic Distribution for Magnet Media, and will be speaking on the topic Measuring Success and Engagement on YouTube. You can check out his YouTube channel here.

There are lots of people spending lots of time watching YouTube. Over 1 billion unique visitors show up every month and watch over 6 billion hours of video. Or as Google puts it, “that's almost an hour for every person on Earth, and 50% more than last year.” YouTube reaches more US adults ages 18-34 than any cable network.

Ballek points out that YouTube is now a major search engine, second only to Google’s web search. Watching his YouTube channel shows Ballek’s expertise in optimizing search results, analogous SEO for Google web search results. Similar to the web search, Google uses their own analytics to judge how much value and engagement their users place on a YouTube video and uses the results to decide search placement.

In addition to search optimization, he will talk about how to design and plan your YouTube marketing, and how to use the “excellent analytic tools” that Google provides to measure your results.

Like elsewhere, content is king. “You can’t optimize unengaging videos.”

Google measures video engagement by how long viewers watch them, how often people click through to a web page, and how often they subscribe and return. High engagement gets higher search engine placement. Because the video is actually on Google’s servers, crowdsourcing based on actual viewing can be factored in.

It’s cheap to start – your smartphone has the capability to produce a useful video, and the cost keeps decreasing. You don’t need high (and expensive) production values to engage customers. What you do need is to provide information that they find interesting or useful, and worth the time. And show up on a regular basis. One idea is to set up a schedule of status updates, so that then your business makes a major announcement your customers are already connected. You can also use YouTube’s search statistics to get an idea of what people are looking for, to give you suggestions for content.

Google+ may also be part of your YouTube engagement solution. Ballek describes Google+ as “the biggest social network you didn’t know you were already using.” Like other Google services, Google+ is getting ever more closely integrated with YouTube. It can help assure more meaningful conversations, and manage customer engagement.


Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:

 

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.
He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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The Science of Thought Leadership

By Mark Helfen

The words “thought leadership” may be overused, even cliché.

But Mitchell Levy has elevated the idea to a science as the first Thought Leadership Architect. In short, he is a thought leader on thought leadership.  Creating thought leaders in your business can help advance its marketing goals, increase ROI, and help compete effectively in a crowded market. Levy has the tools and strategy to help you become one.

Levy will be the speaker at the next SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG meeting, Monday, September 9 speaking on Learn How to Turn Yourself from Expert to Thought Leader/Guru! The meeting will begin at 6:30 at our regular location, the Citrix Startup Accelerator, 4555 Great America Parkway 3rd Floor, Santa Clara. He commits that everyone who attends will gain at least on “aha moment” on promoting their business, or them self.

Mitchel is CEO of both ThinkAha, a consulting firm focused on thought leadership, and Happy About, a book publisher. The two activities are related, since publishing a book is one of the tools that he promotes to be recognized as a thought leader.

According to Levy, before your prospect ever contacts you, they have put 60 to 80 percent of their effort into internet research. There are a huge number of messages out there; a thought leader draws attention in a crowded space. They become the “go-to guy” (or girl) for reliable information, and show your business as the source of expertise.

His consulting focus is creating thought leaders larger businesses. Employees are going to be on-line anyway. With some training, they can become “activated” to be evangelists for the business. In addition to promoting your brand, you can use the thought leadership of some part of your key people to promote the company. The combined efforts of several employees will have a greater effect than just brand promotion.

Of course, not everyone can take this role. Only a selected subset of all your people might be thought leaders. But it’s also a valuable role to power other people to get recognized as experts.

Levy has several tools in his kit to get this done. Writing books, video, and blogging are three ideas. He is a big fan of LinkedIn (his profile is here: www.linkedin.com/in/mitchelllevy.) Also Google+ seems to be a rising force. 

You may not be part of a large organization, but he commits that everyone will get an “aha moment” during the evening, and come away with two or three ideas to put to use, either for themself or their business. If you want an early preview of his thinking, download a free copy of his ebooks on his web site, mitchelllevy.com.

In our conversation, Levy had an interesting take. “The thought leaders of tomorrow are curators of the data we are browsing today.” Come by on Monday and hear more.

Be sure and sign up at the Marketing and Social Media Meetup site:

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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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By itself, mobile technology isn’t all that interesting...

By Mark Helfen

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By itself, mobile technology isn’t all that interesting.

But take data from applications, big data analytics, IT, the cloud, and social networks, and cross all the silo boundaries. Then mix with the unique capabilities of mobile devices - geographic knowledge and “at hand” immediacy – and you can delight customers and give employees the tools of efficiency.

In other words, you can create a right time experience.

Or so says Maribel Lopez, speaker at next Monday’s meeting of the SVForum Marketing and Social Media SIG. Her presentation is titled Right Experience, Right Results: Improve Profits, Engagement w/Mobile & Big Data.

We will be at our now usual place, the Citrix Startup Accelerator, at 6:30.

Lopez is Principal and Founder of Lopez Research and describes her role as an industry analyst. Her work is helping enterprises understand what technology changes mean for them, and providing guidance on deploying the changes and transforming their operations.

While she covers using technology to improve marketing, Lopez also has an operational focus on how the company’s internal function can be improved.  She has the interesting view that you should “treat employees as customers,” so that new technology not only can improve the customer experience, but also improve the employee experience. The objective is always to increase efficiency and profits.

To look at mobile just as advertising is too limiting, not to mention that people will quickly tire of having ads on their phone. But by using all of the available data and context and making mobile interaction a right time experience, and you can delight customers.

As an example, a mobile app could know from your Google mail account that you have a flight leaving at a specific time, know your current location, check the traffic patterns on the route you usually use, know how long it takes to get through airport security at the time you will arrive, and remind you exactly when it’s time to leave for the airport.

Using location based real time information combined with data from multiple sources, the mobile device provides compelling, appropriate and relevant information – a right time experience.

That doesn’t exist, yet.

Another idea is to improve company operations. If your business uses Salesforce.com, by using the phones GPS location automatically show the appropriate Salesforce information by connecting to the cloud when the rep walks into the customer office. This makes the rep’s job easier and more efficient. After the rep leaves, ask for a call report.

The idea is that mobile technology has the potential of delivering “the holy grail” of insight, but only when the technology boundaries are crossed to get a right time experience.

So come by Monday, and learn how you use right time experience to delight customers, delight your own employees, and maybe delight your business bottom line.

Security requires all to pre-register. Please do it on Meetup here. Thanks

 


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Mark Helfen is a freelance writer, journalist, and marketing consultant.

He can be reached at: mhelfen@wordpixel.com
Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/markhelfen
Facebook: facebook.com/mark.helfen
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mark_helfen

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