Marketing Strategy

I just noticed the other day that the operating system has become the lead message in mobile phone advertising. I’m not sure exactly when that transition happened, but I suspect it was about the time that the iPhone came out.

You punk kids! Where's the love?

It used to be that the actual phone handset was something from Motorola, Samsung, etc. – or a least a brand that those companies owned. These days, I see ads focusing on the operating system – Windows, Android, etc.

It’s almost as if the designer and manufacturer of the physical handset is irrelevant. Look at all those Android phones out there. Someone makes them. Is it Motorola? Samsung? Some new player? I have no idea.

That’s a pretty clear indication of the decline of the Motorola brand. At one point, Motorola was closely associated with mobile phone service. It meant quality, innovation, technology. Today, they hardly seem to exist in the marcom space.

Verizon, AT&T and everyone else are promoting the fact that their phones are on Android. They company that makes the phone is irrelevant.

I’ve been using Clear.com for my home Internet, VOIP and a mobile account for my PC for about 9 months now. I’m almost universally happy with the service and the price I pay for it.

Will accept free T-shirts for this logo

I was on the Clear site earlier today (ok, for a tech support issue, but they’re still great) and saw a link comparing Clear.com to Verizon, who apparently is rolling out a 4G network.

The resulting page offered a side-by-side comparison between the two services. Not surprisingly, Clear was pretty clear that they think their service is better.

It was the conclusion of the comparison that caught my attention. Clear offered a link to the Verizon website with a call to action – “Check for Yourself”.

That takes guts, and some confidence in the quality of your offering. It’s one thing to claim you’re better. It’s another to claim you’re better, then offer to hold the door for your prospect so they can check out your competitor.

Did you know Verizon can hunt you by the smell of fear alone?

As a happy Clear.com customer I can’t tell you if this is an effective sales strategy, but it definitely shows some guts.

If you’re going to make a brand claim, make a big one. Make one that people will remember. It’s tempting to hedge your bets, but often the payoff is much better by choosing to be bold.

I read an article the other day in the Wall Street Journal about an extension of the Google Chrome operating system that will compete head-to-head with Microsoft Windows.

The logo stares at you from any angle. Try it!

I think the Chrome browser is awesome (despite a recent crashing tendency). I switched to it about six months ago because of its far greater speed and simplicity.

I have to say I’m skeptical about the viability of a Chrome operating system. At the inauguration Google presented it as a platform that just provides the Internet. That’s great, but the Internet isn’t everywhere.

I have a mobile account with Clear, which has some geographic limits for now, and I’ve had one in the past with AT&T that was nationwide so I’m plenty comfortable with remote Internet access. Even with that, there are often times when I just don’t have a connection and having a computer that is useless unless online just seems like a major limitation.

They also suggested that people can use tools like Google Docs to get the work done that used to be on Microsoft Office. Google Docs has a long way to go before it gets to that point.

For all Microsoft’s flaws, it does provide a consistent, common backbone to the business world.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all plays out in the next few years.

Almost 10 years ago, the American Marketing Association faced a dilemma similar to that faced by many professional associations.

Hey you! DMA! What are you up do down there?

Non-dues revenue had the potential to provide a cushion against variations in the organizations core offerings, but the online job board was stubbornly refusing to cooperate.

It did generate money. It could even be argued that it generated a significant volume of money – just not quite enough to provide that cushion.

The answer turned out to be teaming up with rivals.

I got my eye on you AMA!

Many associations faced this exact dilemma, and through the leadership of their common job board technology vendor – Boxwood – AMA led in the creation of the Marketing Careers Network.

The Network allowed a group of rival associations to maintain individual branding and databases, but still share resources and drive each other’s online job boards to amazing levels of success.

Read the details in a new Case Study – Winning Job Board Glory.

I had a consulting meeting with a startup firm last week where we started shaping out the marketing plan for the company. This is a firm entering a crowded marketplace with several established competitors, although none of the 800-pound gorilla type.

The company is led by a long-time salesman. He’s a good one. Long track record of success. Conscious of the habits he’s built that made him successful and will continue to do so in the future.

The difference is that he’s responsible for more now than just sales.

I am carrying you people

Like many salesmen, he has the attitude that marketing is what those semi-useless people over there do to generate sales leads. He’s polite about it, and to be honest only about half wrong judging from how I’ve seen marketing operate in many other organizations.

The attitude is going to lead to trouble, however. A company built on sales and … other stuff … is an inherently unstable beast. The only thing that will drive success in such an organization is raw muscle work. It’s simply a question of out selling the competition (note that I said outselling, not chopping prices).

Based on what I’ve seen of his sales skills, I believe he’ll be able to take the new firm to a respectable level of success. However, he’s not going to get further than that because sales can only go so far. You can’t always assume that you’ll have a superstar on staff to pull everything else through. If you’re the CEO, you can’t always be the superstar because you have too many other decidedly non-superstar duties to attend to during the day.

That’s why marketing matters. Yes, we generate leads and that is critical to the company’s growth. However, what’s really important is for us to fill in the institutional gaps that sales alone can’t fill.

If you have a marketing program, you can flub a sales call and still get that customer later because next month’s white paper will click in a way that you didn’t. If you have a brand, you can survive a goof-up in the service area. Assuming that those two scenarios are relatively rare events,

On a semi-regular basis I work with clients to develop content-based, thought leadership marketing programs. That’s a really fancy way of saying that I help them regularly write articles, deliver presentations and share their ideas.

You know what I tell them?

Consistency beats perfection every time.

I declare a Do Over!

You are much better off producing something of acceptable quality once per week than you are producing something of unparalleled perfection once in a blue moon. Write out an editorial calendar. Keep your publishing commitments.

As you may notice, I’ve written nothing in this blog for over a month.

So here’s the other half of that lesson that I teach my clients:

You can always declare a Do Over.

Coincidentally, that’s what I tell salespeople as well. They’re supposed to set goals – calls, meetings, close deals, etc. Sometimes, they miss those goals and sometimes, they miss those goals for unacceptable reasons like just being lazy.

The choice at that point is to deliver a regular round of self beatings … or simply declare a Do Over and begin fresh.

One of those options is productive. The other is not.

I declare a Do Over!

I’ve been doing some biz dev work lately that involved calling on marketing and advertising agencies. Try to identify this one:

“We’re refugees from the typical ad agency because we just wanted to work our own way”

Stumped? Try this one:

“We’re passionate about the client work, not the ladder climbing, so we founded … “

Ok, I’ll make it easy:

“[Fill in the blank] years ago our team ditched the typical agency world to chart our own path.”

Yeah, tricked you. Those are boilerplate descriptions of the unique industry rebels that seem to have founded every independent ad agency in the country. That includes the ones founded as a spinoff of the great ad agency behemoths of the world.

I don’t think its the sort of thing you’d notice unless you found yourself reading the same About Us page over and over and over. For some reason, our UNIQUE, INDEPENDENT, PASSIONATE ABOUT THE WORK ONLY friends all look, act and talk exactly the same.

Remember those Deadheads back in college?

The ones who pretended to be hippies (on daddy’s credit card – well, actually, that describes the real hippies too). They were rebels. They didn’t follow the rules. Tie-dye every day. Baggy jeans. Some attempted the white guy dreadlock look.

This is what your creative, freethinking ad agency looks like to me

They really stood out, didn’t they?

Well, until you went to a Grateful Dead concert.

Then all those free-thinker individuals who tried soooooo hard to be individuals looked like they were walking around in uniforms. Snappy, impressive uniforms with big Cat in the Hat top hats on their stringy hair.

The lesson here is that before you strike out into the world with your unique identity, you might want to sneak a peak at your competitors to see if they’ve already staked out the exact same territory. If so, maybe some deeper thinking is in order.

In answer to your next question …

No, I will not be naming names.

I’m doing biz dev work and I’d like to sell something to these free-thinking, creative, unique agencies. I’m only making fun of the ones who don’t book meetings.

I’m in the market for a Bluetooth headset and a computer mouse. I know … the nation’s GDP owes me a debt of gratitude.

The point is that I know exactly what I want (product if not a specific brand). I know exactly where to get it – Office Depot or OfficeMax. I have cash in my hands. Well … I have a debit card in my hands at least. I’m simply looking for which of these two fine establishments will get my money.

But first – I want a deal. Give me a coupon. Give me an offer. I demand the illusion that I’ve conned your retail store out of a few dollars.

I had a coupon that would have been perfect, but it expired yesterday. Damn.

I’ll go to each company’s website and look for coupons or offers. The products and prices are pretty much the same. Whomever woos me with the greatest ardor (is that a word?) gets my cash.

Oh Office Depot, why do you torment me so?

Hmm, Office Depot intrigues me with their offer of a mobile text coupon. I’m an Internet Marketing guy (because I capitalize those words) and you offer to let me live by what I do! I send the text message. I get the reply. And nothing else.

Office Depot just got a text from someone looking for a coupon – a sure sign of an impending purchase – and they don’t have the system primed to send me a coupon. I have to wait around for the “up to 5 a week” I’ll be receiving now. Well, I’m irritated and the first of those 5 had better be good or I’m going to slap you with a STOP reply. Because I’m a badass.

OfficeMax, you have your opening. Impress me.

Hmm, nothing in the online flyer fits my need, but it is fun to pretend to be flipping pages with their little Flash app. Wheeee!

Ah, here we go. All I have to do is give them my email and zip code and they’ll give me offers exclusive to my local store. Small price to pay. I enter my info and …

Um. There are no offers. No coupons. I gave away the store (or my email) and got nothing. You promised you’d call me the next day! I feel so dirty now.

The lesson here is to make sure you think through processes from your customers’ perspective. Yes, both OfficeMax and Office Depot have online couponing programs to drive traffic and business. My snark aside, I’m sure those programs drive a significant volume of track-able revenue.

However, a new prospect doesn’t live according to your publishing schedule. I want to purchase now. I want my coupon now. You are free to pop me into your regular outbound marketing schedule, but don’t forget to feed the need that drove me to your website in the first place. I came there to buy something.

Maybe the direct mail marketers will treat me better. I think I hear the mail truck.

There are about 1,001 different opinions on how to design and build a website.

In my opinion, which I assume the world is waiting for, there are three elements to worry about, and most people start off by focusing on the wrong two.

The three elements:

1. Content
2. Technology
3. Appearance

Yes. I do mean to imply that the correct order puts appearance in last place.

There is no point to a website that looks pretty and runs on the most amazing technology ever if it doesn’t have anything to say. The prettiness wow will last for 0.5 seconds. The technology can either get in your way or help, but no one is coming to the website because it has a keyword cloud.

Start with the content. What do you have to say? How can you communicate that message?

That second question is actually a fairly new addition to the philosophy. It used to be that the Internet was a text place with pretty pictures. Now, we can clearly communicate with video, audio, graphics, presentations and text. Or all of the above at the same time.

If you’re going to spend time on building a website, invest the most in the content and ideas.

I’ve decided to take the opportunity of a relatively light week and practice what I preach – the business plan for Little Wolf is being revised.

As I think is the goal of this process, I’ve discovered a lot of silly assumptions that I made four years ago when I started this whole entrepreneurial adventure.

First and foremost – it’s all about measurement and numbers. I’ll be running Little Wolf more like an agency by distinguishing between billable hours and non-billable hours, and client work needs to be evaluated on that basis. The focus needs to be on doing profitable work well, not just deriving profit by doing a LOT of work.

I’ve always known sales is about numbers. If you make the contacts, the sales will come. It’s entirely predictable. However, I’m not just in sales. I’m also delivering services and those services need to be measured as well. I need to know that the work I’m doing is profitable (for me). My clients need to know that the services I provide are profitable (for them).

I guess my new favorite word for 2010 is “measure”.