The Disruption Tour - Run To Survive A Social Media Revolution

Competing with the singleminded

by Seth Godin

I was talking with a few executives from one of the biggest technology companies in Europe, and they were explaining how their hands were tied in moving forward on the internet. They were doing the best they could under the circumstances, of course, but there were units in their organization that needed to be protected, prices that needed to be supported, sacred cows that couldn't be touched. After all, they argued, how could they wipe out their current business just to succeed online?

This conversation happens every single day at organizations large and small. You want to do the new thing, but of course you must do it in a measured, rational way.

Which is great, unless your competition doesn't agree.

When you have someone who is willing to accomplish A without worrying about B and C, they will almost always defeat you in accomplishing A. Online, of course, this often leads to doom, since there are many organizations that are willing to get big at the expense of revenue, or writers willing to be noticed at the expense of ethics or reputation. But in the short run, the singleminded have a fantastic advantage. And sometimes, their singleminded focus on accomplishing just that one thing (whatever it is) pushes them through the Dip far ahead of you and then yes, they make a ton of money and you've lost forever.

Newspapers, magazines, TV stations, hardware companies, real estate brokers, travel agents, bookstores, insurance agents, art galleries and five hundred other industries need to think hard about this before it's too late.

A call out to Newspaper Advertising Executives...Is your ad revenue in decline?

TO: Newspaper Advertising Executives

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Newspaper ad sales shrank by 29 percent in the second quarter, a hit executives blame on both the recession and Web advertising's encroachment on print ad spending. They hope ad sales might buck back up during the holidays, but even if the recession abates soon, newspapers will still likely feel the pinch from Web ad sales that don't pay as well as print and the continuing decline of classified ads. source: Newspaper Association of America

The law of the little shovel

by Seth Godin

If you want to dig a big hole, you need to stay in one place.

If you walk around town with a little shovel, you'll just end up digging thousands of little holes, not one big one.

Call on one person ten times and you might make the sale. Call on ten people once each and you will likely get ten rejections.

The important thing to remember is that separate events are often separate. If you use the same ineffective approach on one thousand people, it's not going to start working better just because you use it more often.

Connected events, on the other hand, often benefit from frequency and trust.

Which leads to two viable strategies:
1. If you can stay still, stay still. Earn the trust, earn the sale by repeatedly demonstrating value and authority.

2. If you can't stay still, get a bigger shovel. Your marketing and your sales pitch has to be so refined and focused that it works the first time, because you don't get a second time.

Analog, Digital, Social

by Kevin Hilstom Minethedata.com

Folks seem to be self-selecting themselves into three camps.

The first camp is the classic direct marketing crowd, rebranded as the "multichannel marketing" audience. I call this audience the "Analog" audience. This camp knows more about strategic direct marketing than anybody else in direct marketing, having been introduced to direct marketing as the credit card, the 1-800 number, and the database took prominence. This crowd reads Catalog Success and DMNews. This crowd attends ACCM and Internet Retailer. Ask this crowd to launch a new product or service, and they'll have a business plan for you in a couple of hours, one that spans multiple channels.

The second camp is what I'd call the "Digital" crowd, online marketers who burst onto the scene during the late 1990s and early part of this decade. This crowd knows more about classic online marketing than anybody. They can tell you that shopping cart abandonment is 43.84830048% if various criteria are met. They're great at SEO and Paid Search and Banner Ads, they know that the open rate on the last e-mail campaign was 22.438%. They know and love tactics. They can be strategic direct marketers, but seem to adore their form of marketing, are are willing to forego bigger opportunities to stay loyal to their niche. This crowd attends Shop.org. Ask this crowd to launch a new product or service, and they'll have your Google marketing plan coupled with an e-mail campaign strategy ready to go in just a few hours.

The third camp is what I'd call the "Social" crowd. This crowd is motivated by technology, the "shiny new toy", if you will. The shiny new toy might be an iPhone app, it might be getting 11,000 followers on Twitter, or it might be creating a viral campaign using Facebook. This person might be 55 years old, this person might be 25 years old. Ask this crowd to launch a new product or service, and you'll have your new product or service in a few hours!

What seems to be missing from the marketing departments of 2009 is a balanced representation of Analog, Digital, and Social strategy.

The traditional catalog brand spends 50 minutes of a 60 minute meeting debating whether 124 pages is better than 116, wondering if an 8 page insert will boost demand, considering whether a Wed-Fri in-home window might work better than Mon-Wed. Analog topics dominate the meeting.

The online brand struggles with driving traffic ... we'll over-think an e-mail campaign that will cause only 1 in 700 recipients to purchase, or we'll dig into our pile of 74,000 keywords to come up with micro-copy that will stimulate clicks. Digital marketers often need analog tools to drive traffic, but there's a fierce independence among this audience.

And then we have the social crowd --- everything is viral! If the product is good enough, it will stand out on its own and will create its own audience ... so let's make it free and social and then things will work. The wisdom of the digital crowd is missing, the strategy of the analog audience seldom surfaces.

In the 2010s, the opportunity exists for a leader to straddle each frontier ... analog, digital, and social. The leader doesn't have to be an expert in each area, but the leader has to hire folks proficient in each realm.

In the 2010s, the best strategies will incorporate percentages of Analog, Digital, and Social strategy.

In 2009, I sit in too many meetings where a faction with Analog, Digital, or Social experience dominates the meeting. Knowledge of the target customer, coupled with a strong mixture of varied experience, will yield positive results.

The consumer's preferred inbox is changing.

Shift 3

You may not agree that you need a messaging strategy outside of email marketing, but you must adapt to the reality that how consumers get their content, promotions, and updates has changed. Most online users don't just rely on their work and home email address for these communications anymore.

Yahoo! in a white paper published in 2009 indicated more then 50% of consumers are now using Readers and My Home pages to aggregated information they want when they want it.

As discussed earlier, some consumers prefer to get special offers via SMS messaging, while others may ignore their Hotmail or Gmail accounts and head right to Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter for all of their communications -- whether from their old college girlfriends or their favorite restaurants.

The next revolution is to download a Reader application to your browser enabled phone/IPhone and you then take your promotional coupons with you right into the store. Wouldn't it be cool to scan your coupons right off your IPhone at Point of Sale. Check out RSSCheck.com for a demo of this capability.

You may be fortunate to build what amounts to subscriber communication preference segments based on all of these, whether you know you are doing so or not. Most companies won't thrive if the only way of opting in with the company is through a website-based email signup form that captures only an email address. Establishing ways to capture preferences and points of communication is crucial as your customers' habits evolve and migrate to other digital channels. This leads us to the next item.

2009 is the year of the preference center. 

With this sea change happening in front of us, companies that fail to offer their customers more choices will be in trouble. So this fundamental digital principle -- offering the user more choices -- is the right place to focus in 2009.

Over the years, companies have offered an email signup page and/or website registration form (albeit sometimes mutually exclusive of each other) to capture consumers' opt-ins, which are arguably one of the most valuable commodities in the digital world. Remember, these are customers and would-be customers raising their hands to say, "Yes, please market to me." That doesn't happen in all media and marketing, so elevate the value of these opt-ins within your marketing strategy.

In 2009, marketers need to offer a clear and seamless user experience through which interested parties can sign up for communications (B2C promotions or sale, B2B  coop-dollars or special offers. You may be saying, "Should we have that yes you consumer is asking you for it...they are demanding that you provide it to them." So do you provide the following?

·    Ability to receive communications in multiple platforms (Transactional RSS, email, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

·    Ability to allow consumers to pre-select their preferences, formats, devices, languages, etc.

·    Ability to give your consumers complete control over the frequency of promotons they recieve

·    Ability to choose types of communications and adjust as you go, as opposed to unsubscribing from all

·    Ability to get a sneak peak of any offered communications

·    Ability to understand that consumers what their data to be completely private and they want to exchange their digital rights for a monetary amount. 

Trade Shows Go Virtual

markegingpligrim.com

Companies like IBM, Cisco, and others are taking their trade shows and conferences virtual. Some, like IBM have used the virtual world Second Life for such events, but virtual trade shows take it a step further. Also, the events are more professional and created for a business environment - there are no actual avatars. However, you can upload a picture, chat with booth representatives, and attend sessions.

Businesses of all sizes are trying out the concept. According to Tradeshow Week magazine, mid-to-large-sized companies spend about $550,000 every year on trade shows.

Online marketers are fans of virtual events because it costs less and often results in more targeted leads. The virtual version of trade shows don’t usually completely replace regular trade shows but are a way to cut costs or add value. Perhaps the biggest advantage of a virtual trade show is that you can track what people at your event do. Since attendees are anonymous they are free to linger and engage with the vendor as much or as little as they choose.

Recent research by The FactPoint Group, in behalf of Unisfair found that virtual events like trade shows attract an average of 1,587 attendees which deliver an average of 348 qualified leads per vendor.

Founded in 2002, Unisfair has developed a virtual world for tradeshows. It’s a 3-D collection of booths, live and recorded presentations and most importantly for marketers, it tracks what attendees are interested in.

I chatted with Don at Unisfair today. The company was founded in 2000 in Israel and was funded by Sequoia Capital. Based in Menlo Park, they combine online collaboration tools with social networking and virtual environments. They’ve hosted everything from job fairs to user groups and sales training.

The numbers look pretty good. Most events are free to attendees and average over 3,000 people registering, and just over half (52%) actually attend. Most people spend 2.5 hours at the event, visit 16 locations and download five resources. Most virtual tradeshows run 1.5 days but are still accessible for three months following the event. You can test out a demo of a virtual trade show at Unisfair’s showcase here.

Holiday Returns: Ready or Not, Here They Come

 

The holiday season may bring joy to consumers and retailers alike, but
hand in hand with that joy comes the inevitable pain of post-holiday
returns. Gift returns can be a hassle for consumers, but for retailers
they pose a daunting logistical challenge, requiring speedy adjustments
throughout the pipeline as consumers are reimbursed and products are
returned to inventory.

See the Full Story:
http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/60249.html

Why salespeople should NEVER perform telephone follow-up!

ballistix.com

Why salespeople should NEVER perform telephone follow-up!

When I insist that Sales Coordinators -- and never Salespeople -- should make follow-up calls, there's always a howl of protest from Salespeople.

"What about the relationship?" is the instinctive response, followed by, "but Sales Coordinators don't have technical skills -- or sales skills".

Of course we can immediately discount the instinctive response (Executives have PA's don't they?), but it *is* worth considering the implications of a non-technical, non-salesperson performing follow-up calls.

Obviously, if the salesperson's assistant performs all follow-up calls, the content of these calls cannot be of a technical or sales nature.

And that's a very good thing!

To understand why, consider why we're making a follow-up call.

The purpose of a follow-up call is simply to schedule (and sometimes to confirm) the next activity in the opportunity-management process.

The call is not -- and should never be -- a sales call. The thing is, if you have (field-based) salespeople, we must assume that your product can't (or shouldn't) be sold on the phone. (If you can sell on the phone, get rid of your field-based salespeople and do just that.)

Accordingly, we want to quarantine salesmanship (and technical discussions) in face-to-face meetings where they belong. If we fail to do this, there's a very real danger that the opportunity-management process will devolve into an ongoing conversation!

Now, consider what happens to the salesperson when she knows that her sales coordinator will make all follow-up calls. This forces her to ensure that she has closure at the end of each meeting.

In practice, this means that she must get her client to agree to one of the three possible outcomes from each meeting (to proceed to the next activity in the opportunity management process, to repeat the current activity, or to abandon the opportunity).

This means that the purpose of the follow-up call is simply to schedule this next activity.

On occasion it will be necessary for the Sales Coordinator to confirm the next step in the opportunity-management process. (This might be because the prospect has to confer with another person before committing to the next step.) In this case, it is the responsibility of the salesperson to explain the various options open to the prospect and advise him that purpose of the Sales Coordinator's follow-up call will simply be to confirm the appropriate option and then schedule it.

This ensures that the Sales Coordinator maintains control over the opportunity-management process and is, of course, in keeping with our primary sales management objective: to maximise opportunity flow.

Online receipt organizer thinks inside the box

  

Shoeboxed offers safe and searchable online storage of email
receipts. Users are assigned an email address to give merchants
when buying online, with receipts going directly to their virtual shoebox.
Online receipt organizer thinks inside the box

The Trouble with Expenses

Paul Kedosky InfectousGreed.com

 

If you're anything like me -- and my apologies if you are -- then you struggle daily under the weight of expenses. Too many of them to track, too many places to which to submit them, and no easy way to track 'em as you incur 'em.

I usually return from trips with clothes pockets ballooning with expense receipts, plus a bunch more in random luggage locations where I don't remember putting them in the first place. And then, of course, the real adventure begins: Trying to figure out if I actually kept all the receipts in my hustling from airport, to cab, to hotel, to meeting, to cab, to airport again.

Until now, that is. My friend Tony Darugar has launched the nifty Xpenser, a tool/service that allows you track your expenses as they happen via the magic of SMS, email, IM, or voice (via Jott). Whatever way you want to note that you just paid $86.41 for dinner for one in Manhattan, or that you paid $120 to cab from Heathrow downtown, you can now do track it as it happens.

Downsides? Yes, you'll still have all those darn receipts to keep track of, but at least now you'll know much sooner which ones you're missing.