Marketing | Totally Incorrect

David April 19, 2009

Back to School – Nashua Marketing

It was back to the classroom for Kathy (of LabelingNews.com) and I last week.

We were invited to speak to the Nashua High North marketing students on how Social Media is changing the way marketers communicate with their customers.

We discussed some of the challenges that organizations have when using traditional marketing methods and also looked at how it makes sense to employ inbound techniques to make it easy for potential clients to come to us.

To bring everything together, we discussed a recent seminar event we had held and how we balanced our outbound and inbound resources to make it a success.

It was a very enjoyable session with a great motivated group of young people. The session was pretty interactive which is always a good sign.

Kathy put together a nice story on the event that you can read over at Labeling News

Hey – how do you like me doing the John Travolta thing? Powerpoint with Saturday Night Fever style!!

Filed Under: Marketing 2 Comments

David April 13, 2009

Mass Innovation Nights

I learned of Mass Innovation Nights from a post at Twitter (where else!) by KC of Clean Journey.

The idea behind the concept is to get Massachusetts-based innovators together with people in the media in order to help them showcase their ideas. This is the second in the series, the first one was held back in April and was apparently pretty successful and well attended.

The event is to be held on May 13th from 6.30 – 8-30 PM at the Charles River Museum of Industry & Innovation in Waltham, Mass. This is somewhere I’ve been interested in visiting for a while, so another good reason to go.

I’ll be posting to Twitter during the event and will provide a full report here afterwards.

To get more information, please visit the Mass Innovation Nights site here.

I think this is a brilliant concept and I’m really looking forward to the event.

Filed Under: Marketing Leave a Comment

David April 11, 2009

Balanced Marketing – HubSpot

If you’ve read any of my marketing posts, you’ll know that I’m a huge believer that successful marketing today calls for a balance of traditional and new techniques – a blending of outbound and inbound marketing. Here at Totally Incorrect, I want to create an occasional series of stories that feature businesses that I believe have gotten it right.

HubSpot is a start-up business in Cambridge, MA that has developed a system for managing inbound marketing. In their own words: “HubSpot is an inbound marketing system that helps your business get found on the Internet by the right prospects and convert more of those prospects into leads and paying customers.”

Sounds good – inbound marketing is trendy right now and there are plenty of marketing managers looking for ways of integrating inbound marketing into their plans. This article is about how HubSpot sets about this.

Just a quick disclaimer, I’m not affiliated with HubSpot in any way and I’m not a customer at this time. I am a member of the Pro Marketers Group at Linkedin, which I believe was started by HubSpot.

OK, let’s get going. First of all, like most companies, HubSpot has a built a presence at Google. I did a quick Google search on “Internet marketing” and quickly found the two results you see here – one organic (I expected to see HubSpot higher on the page than I did, to be honest) and one in Sponsored Results. Note that the AdWords one is attempting to entice the viewer to click on the ad with the promise of getting something for free. Personally, I’d normally only see the organic Google result – for this story, I went to the trouble of disabling adBlock just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Normally, I’m pretty much ad-free. I also have huge doubts as to the real effectiveness of pay=per-click advertising, but that’s for a future story.

I also seem to remember reading that HubSpot buys banner ads at certain marketing sites such as marketingprofs. Because of my trusty adBlock I’ve never seen them and an unprotected visit to marketingprofs this morning revealed no HupSpot banners.

So HubSpot has done a bit of SEO work on their site and bought some Google clicks and maybe banners – good things to do, but pretty conventional. Where HubSpot sets itself apart is in the way the company and its employees have embraced Social Media marketing.

Where ever you go in the Social Media world you are going to come across HubSpot people – Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin – there they are. HubSpot does things the way I like to see it as well – a corporate account which consistently promotes the company image and individual accounts where the employees bring there own personalities to the mix.

As I already mentioned, I’m a member of the Pro Marketers group on Linkedin which is a HubSpot group. It is nicely done so that, other than the subtle branding, it works as a resource for the members – not as an ad for HubSpot.

In my opinion, good useful content is the key for successful Social Media marketing and this is the area where HubSpot stands out. The folks at the company have clearly spent a lot of time putting together some great content, all designed to be helpful to the their target customers. As a Sales and Marketing Manager with a small company, I fit the profile of a potential client and I must confess that I use the resources that HubSpot provides quite often.

I have the feed for the HubSpot Marketing Blog in Google Reader so it is one of the blogs I read every day. I’ve also taken advantage of some of the webinars on marketing topics that are provided.

To be honest, the resources that HubSpot makes freely available are better than many that I’ve paid for in the past and I would recommend anyone with an interest in modern marketing techniques to check them out.

One very novel aspect that the company produces is a weekly video podcast – www.hubspot.tv.

The podcast is pretty nicely done (although I find one of the presenters a bit irritating) and each weeks show is archived at iTunes – just go to iTunes and search on HubSpot.

So this is all very well, but how does it help to sell the company’s software?

Well first of all, the whole point of inbound marketing to to get people to your site that are likely to have an interest in what your business does. In the case of HubSpot, if you engage one of their people at Twitter, click on one of their “Free Marketing eBook” ads, watch their video podcast, you either have no life whatsoever or are involved in marketing.

Let’s assume that most visitors are interested in marketing (the no-lifers won’t stay long anyway). When you click on most of the inbound links to HubSpot you are going to arrive at one of their landing pages (another must have) and you will often have to provide some information about yourself before you are allowed to get to the webinar, white paper, marketing kit you want.

When I went through this process, I wasn’t too happy with the number of fields I had to fill in. While I don’t have an issue with providing basic info for something I want – these guys form just goes on and on. I always just play and check off the biggest numbers for employees, $$ in sales etc. Make me fill in dumb forms – you’ll get dumb info back! (There’s that anti-social twist again!)

Anyway, if you get to the end of the sign-up form; two things happen.

First you get the content which is always of the highest quality and very useful.

Next, you get out of the inbound marketing phase of engagement and into a more traditional sales cycle.

The first thing you can expect is an email thanking you for your interest and wanting to show you more about the HubSpot software. I’m pretty sure this email is automatically generated via their Salesforce.com installation. No worries though – the message is nicely put together.

You can also be confident of a follow up call (or calls) from an Inbound Marketing Consultant – HubSpot speak for inside sales person.

I would describe the followup from the HubSpot sales team as politely persistent – just what I’d expect from my own sales guys to be honest.

So far, I’ve not taken that next step – to learn more about the HubSpot system and to find out if it would appropriate for our business. Just a matter of time though.

HubSpot is a perfect example of how a Marketing 2.0 business can use a mix of traditional and contemporary marketing and sales techniques to come with a balanced marketing solution. The fact I’m discussing it shows that it works!

I must remember to reactivate adBlock now – seen enough ads for one day thank you!

Update: AAARRRGGGGGG!!!!! – I forgot to reactivate adBlock and came across this HubSpot ad on a blog

I won’t let that happen again!

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: lead generation, Marketing, sales, social media 6 Comments

David April 10, 2009

Are trade shows still relevent?

There is a great post over at Labeling News on the role of trade shows in today’s marketing world. Here it is in full:

Tradeshows – Should YOU Go?
by Linda of Labeling News

You may have read about the upcoming area tradeshows featured in Labeling News, but in this slow economy, should you bother investing the time and money to attend one of these shows?

Manufacturing a quality product, understanding your customers, and excellent customer service are all key business ingredients. But to maintain success and grow, you must also understand the changes and advancements in the technologies that can improve your processes right now. Emerging trends, different approaches, and the latest products and processes are on display at a trade show and will help you change or improve your manufacturing capabilities.

Visiting a trade show like the upcoming Electronics New England and Eastec gives you access to many new things that are happening in your industry. New products and services are on display, industry leaders are there to talk to, and ideas are there to inspire you. Making contact with suppliers, learning about new products, and attending seminars can help you plan effective strategies for your future.

To make the most of your trade show experience, be sure to plan ahead. There will be lots to see and not enough time to see it all. So sign up early. Make reservations for workshops or lectures that will give you the knowledge you need for your job responsibilities, and learn how the future is shaping up for your industry.

Take the time to talk to suppliers. As scary as that may be sometimes when they greet you in the aisle, this may lead ou to some important insights on improving your manufacturing processes. Besides finding out about a new product or service, you can get ideas about how small changes might mean big improvements to your bottom line.
Networking is another benefit of getting out of the office. You might find contacts who can offer new business opportunities. This may be a vendor or someone who attends the same seminar track.
Tradeshows are a valuable way to learn about what is changing in your industry, and gives you the knowledge to use these changes to remain competitive and strong.

Not everyone can afford a day out of the office. So look for shows in your area. When we go to a tradeshow, we always have our list in hand, who we want to see, and what we need to learn or solve and that helps make the experience worthwhile.

So if you are in manufacturing, we hope you will join us at one of the upcoming shows. Learn more here

I left this response on the site:
I believe the role of trade shows has changed in recent years. I’m old enough, even though I don’t look it to remember the days before Al Gore invented the Internet. Back then, tradeshows were an important event – the time when new products would be introduced.

Today, there is so much information available on-line to everyone, that there is no need to travel to a show to find out what is new in your industry.

I believe there are two things that contribute to trade shows still being relevant.

The first is that sometimes we tend to forget that doing business is still a people thing. It is important to meet clients, potential clients, vendors and competitors (yes over the years I’ve always had good relationships with my competitors) face to face. There is really no substitute for this and I always enjoy trade shows and seminars for this reason.

The other factor is that the on-line experience can never replace the “touch & feel” of actually seeing real solutions.

So I would encourage potential clients to do a lot of on-line research, check forums and find out what other companies are doing to solve similar problems to yours. But still make time for tradeshows and seminars to keep the personal touch in your business relationships and see real solutions first hand.

Cheers!
David

See the original post here

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: balanced plan, Marketing, sales, trade show 2 Comments

David April 5, 2009

Shades of Green – Down2Earth Expo

When I told people I know that I was thinking of going to Down2Earth, a tradeshow all about sustainable living and green products, I was met with surprised looks. I’d be the first to admit that I’m not the most tree hugging person around (actually, I’m one of the few who believe we have too many trees in New England – it takes so long to get from A – B because you are always driving past miles of trees) but Green is becoming an important part of today’s marketing and as a 21st. Century Man, I need to check out these things. I was also really interested to see how these businesses and groups went about marketing their Green credentials.

I took a few snapshots while at the show. Even though the quality is pretty poor (naughty Mr. Jobs for putting such a crappy camera in the iPhone) I hope they help give you an idea what was going on.

Heading into BOS

The rest of the family was out of town anyway so I headed out for a nice Sunday drive into town. The show was at the John B. Hynes Convention Center on Boylston Street – simple to find, although I did have to take out a mortgage to retrieve my car from the parking lot.

The show opened for business at 11.00 and I arrived about 11.20. At first it was like I’d arrived on the wrong day – there was no-one around. When I bought my ticket, the young lady told me that business was slow because it was a nice day outside. Anyway, things did get busier later on.

Here are some of my highlights from the show.

SwapTree Booth

The museum is a great building

One of the first booths at stopped at was SwapTree. Their booth consisted of a couple of laptops (with nice monitors as well) and some books. OK, so what is this all about? I thought.

Greg from SwapTree solved the mystery for me. SwapTree is an on-line service that lets users trade items – a great big barter system. He demo’d the system by showing me the 38,000 possible things I could swap a copy of the Bourne Ultimatum DVD for.

They have put a lot of work into this system – not only can you quickly get a list of things you could swap for your unwanted stuff, you can also print your shipping labels right out from the site.

I’m not sure if this is a service I’d use, but it is a pretty good idea. The service is free to users (other than shipping costs) and the site is supported my ads. I assume adBlock would take care of them

The SwapTree site is clean and looks to be easy to use – check it out here. I enjoyed chatting with these guys.

Clean Journey

Next I called on the two guys at Clean Journey. Looking at their booth, I had no idea what they did and after talking to them for a while – I still don’t!

From what I could gather, Clean Journey is some kind of business networking site. I really don’t have any additional information and checking their site only tells me that I have to wait 25 days 6 hours and 35 minutes to find out.

Since there is no information to be found, I feel quite at liberty to invent my own.

Clean Journey is the place on the web for business travelers to discuss personal hygiene. Should one use hotel shampoo or bring your own from home? What is the best deodorant to take on a trip to San Francisco? Is it OK to use the same towel two days running (to save water as the hotel suggests) or should you insist on a clean one each day?

If you are interested in finding out what it is really about, visit CleanJourney.com in a month or so, when all will be revealed.

ZipCar

I had already seen some posts on Twitter about the Zipcar exhibit so I knew what they were up to. To be honest, I knew very little about Zipcar which is a whole new concept in car rental.

They had one of their little cars on the booth and visitors were encouraged to write little messages right on it – using the supplied pens of course.

The Zipcar concept isn’t really car rental – more like fractional ownership where you only pay for what you use. Rather like NetJets but without the cost and carbon footprint. Using Zipcar would be a great alternative to car ownership if you live in an urban area and only need a car every now and again.

The Zipcar folks claim that a single Zipcar can replace up to 12 owned vehicles in urban locations. Really cool and terribly green. Zipcar gets my vote as the coolest concept I saw at the show!

Head over to the Zipcar site for more info.

Abandoned Cabot Booth

Being an English guy, I’m snobby about Cheese and it isn’t Cheddar unless it comes from Cheddar. Sorry, Cabot – your cheese does not count. Having said that, I do love your products, especially your Hunter’s Extra Sharp “Cheddar” which I use in just about every recipe calling for cheese.

I’m not sure about Cabot’s Green credentials, although I know that they support agriculture in Vermont (indeed, I believe they are a cooperative owned by VT farmers) and don’t allow genetically modified stuff in their products.

So, even though the crew from the booth had slipped out to the bar at the time of my visit, I’m a huge fan of Cabot cheese – in my opinion the best large volume cheese producer in the US!

Cabot might have had a lack of staff, but their neighbor Green Mountain Coffee Roasters was well represented.

Green Mountain Coffee Folks

I’ve chatted with Amanda from GMCR before on Twitter (she is @BrewBetterWorld on Twitter) and I know that the company is committed to great coffee and Fair Trade – see my post on Fair Trade here.

If you are in New England, you’ll be familiar with Green Mountain Coffee – everyother office these days seems to have a coffee machine that uses their little one cup packages. They also are the company that succeeded where many others have failed – making the coffee in MacDonalds actually rather good.

I don’t know what it is about Vermont, but businesses there just seem to make great stuff and Green Mountain is no exception. I bet Green Mountain is Al Gore’s coffee of choice – if not it should be!

Learn more about coffee, Fair Trade, sustainability etc at the GMCR site.

Oh, while at the booth, I sampled some coconut coffee. Sounds rather gross, but quite nice. Amanda says she prefers it iced.

Amazon Drops Ladies

Next visit was to a company called Amazon Drops. This is a Brazilian outfit, making products from ingredients native to the Amazon rain forest. Everything is Fair Trade and produced using sustainable farming.

Liz told me that everything she sells is 100% natural and made in small lots. This is great but means that availability of items could change with the seasons.

The company’s products are sold on-line and also through spa’s and through wedding planners – they have a range of favors for the wedding business.

I can see that Caren and our friend Bernadette (for her wedding planning business) would have an interest in these products.

While at the show, I did actually make a purchase.

Bill from Vermont Soap Organics

I stopped by the booth of Vermont Soap Organics and chatted with Bill. He was telling me about how the rules in Vermont have changed so that only products from the state can carry the Vermont name. Unfortunately, that nasty Vermont Maid fake maple syrup can still use the name because it is grandfathered in.

So while at the Vermont Soap booth, I bought a bottle of organic pet shampoo. Ben and Pearl (the Boston Terriers) have been a bit smelly of late so I think this will be a good investment. Thanks Bill!

The Vermont Soap site can be found here. There is lot of good clean info there. (groan!)

I did come across a few companies that didn’t seem to me to have any real Green credentials. Borders (who don’t even sell electronic books) had a booth as did Tupperware. There were several booths belonging to lame pyramid selling companies as well.

Leslie - @tkpleslie

The last call I made was to see Leslie Carothers at the Circle Furniture booth. I must confess to having very little interest in furniture, I’m the guy that waits in the car when my wife and daughter want to go furniture shopping.

However, I’m hugely interested in Social Media marketing and that is what Leslie does. Her company, The Kaleidoscope Partnership, is a Social Media Strategist which means she helps her clients use Social Media to help meet their business aims.

At Down2Earth she was representing her client BiOH (part of Cargil) that produces a soy based foam. This material can replace up to 20% of the petroleum based synthetic material used in some types of upholstery.

Leslie is very active on Twitter (@tkpleslie) – she has my tweets from the show on her laptop and she is very knowledgeable about the art of using Social Media as part of an effective marketing program. I’d recommend following her on Twitter, you’ll learn a lot and she’s a great person as well.

I really enjoyed my time at Down2Earth. I was able to chat with some interesting people and came home with a bag full of goodies.

There were not any fantastic new marketing ideas to be seen and it was clear that a lot of the small business people had no knowledge of tradeshow sales techniques. At the other extreme, there were several replacement window companies with rather aggressive sales people. One had a rather clever room heating/cooling system that goes between the two panes of the window. Because I didn’t want to have to go through the canned sales presentation I didn’t stop to find out more.

These Green type solutions are crying out for Social Media marketing.

All in all, a very nice day out. It was great to meet Amanda and Leslie in real life as well.

Filed Under: Favorites, Marketing 6 Comments

David March 29, 2009

David’s Quick BlogTip II – #blogchat

First off, the more observant of our readers might have noticed that the Quick Blog Tip has shifted categories – the previous one was in Technology. Don’t worry, there is a reason for this, I know you are thinking I messed up but it’s not the case.

This Quick Bog Tip is in marketing because that is where it belongs. Let’s face it, we’ve gone to all the trouble to set up a blog, write some award winning content and opened it to the World. We now need to know how to get it working properly, how to make it interactive and entertaining for our readers – basically how to make it great.

That’s where #blogchat comes in. #blogchat is a fast paced on-line chat session on Twitter, the subject being – well, blogs. The moderator of #blogchat is Mack Collier who not only has a very nice line in cowboy hats, but is also an expert on the subject. @blogchat is only in its second week, but already has a Worldwide audience – just shows how quickly news travels these days. The event takes place Sunday nights at 8.00 Central Time and continues into other time zones. Yesterday, the conversation was all about how to makes blogs more interactive – how to get readers more involved. Really good stuff that is helpful to everyone with an interest in blogging!

The good news is, you don’t have to wait until next Sunday to see what it’s all about: just search on Twitter for #blogchat, an you are sure to get good ideas to make your blog blogging better!

Oh, while you are on Twitter you can see what I’m up to as well: @david_unique

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: #blogchat, blogs Leave a Comment

David March 29, 2009

David’s Quick Marketing Tip

Social Media Marketing takes time and effort.

It is trendy right now to rush into Social Media. Set up a blog, chat on Twitter, dust off that old Linked-In profile. All these things can certainly help with your overall marking effort, but Social Media isn’t a quick fix.

To quote Donald Rumsfeld: “it is a process, not an event”. While Social Media Marketing can be budget friendly, it does have a cost – that being the time you need to invest. For example we have been working on our Labeling News on-line news site for a year and it is still a work in process.

So by all means jump onto the Social Media bandwagon. Just be prepared to have to work hard to get good results.

Oh, if you are wondering – Donald Rumsfeld did say this. To be fair he was talking about reforming the Department of Defense at the time, but it’s a great quote!

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David March 27, 2009

Social Media – you call this marketing?

Let me be clear here, I have a lot of experience in Social Media. Let’s see, I’ve been active on Twitter for about 3 or 4 weeks already – I must be some kind of guru by now surely.

I’d always thought that Social Media was simply a way to let kids waste time that should be spent on homework or something else useful.

Wow was I wrong. Since the owners of my company were brave enough to let me loose in the marketing world, I’ve quickly discovered that there is no room for kids in Social Media these days. The space is occupied by marketing and techie types, most of them offering to make you a Twitter expert in 2 hours or to show how to make your lame website the top search result in Google.

OK this is an exaggeration, but it does seem that to get anywhere in marketing, one has to be seen to be “doing Social Media”.

So why have we thrown our kids off line so we can take over some cool web properties? A lot of the reason is people like me.

In my post on how to market to me, I listed a lot of the ways I successfully avoid traditional marketing and advertising. Quite honestly, I’m sick of it and I’m not alone.

Making marketing more of a two-way conversation, rather than one-way blasting of messages is fast becoming a cult. Heck it even has its own Bible, The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott. This is probably the best guide to conversational marketing yet written.
Traditional marketing basically consists of attempting to get one’s message out to the potential client base. There are many ways of doing this, TV, radio and print ads, E-mail blasts, mass mailing, PR, on-line banner ads and paid Internet search advertising are all good examples – I’m sure you could come up with a lot more. Let’s be fair, none of these marketing techniques is going to go away anytime soon; there didn’t seem to be any problem with selling ad time for the most recent Super Bowl if I remember correctly.

What all the traditional marketing methods have in common is that they are interruption based – the potential client (along with many who are just not potential clients) gets the message regardless of whether they want to. This is the main reason I put some effort into be advertising free – I’m just not interested in constantly being told I need to buy lame products I have zero interest in.

Conversational marketing (or inbound marketing, marketing 2.0. social media marketing – call it what you want) is a refreshing alternative. At its core is the production of good content that is completely relevant to the intended client base.

The next step is to get motivated members of the potential client base to be able to find the great content, when they are looking to answers to questions or for solutions to problems.

There are many ways to get interested clients to the content. The traditional marketing methods have a great role to play in this – mailings, telemarketing, paid search marketing, along with more Web 2.0 methods such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Social sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

The key is to drive this inbound traffic not to a boring static web page, but to an interactive blog post or a specially designed landing page.

Our potential customers are empowered with more information than at any time in the past. They are not likely to be satisfied with following a link to a site that is just the on-line version of the product catalog. It is up to us as marketers to provide content that will help our clients solve their specific problems, have links that allow them to do more research and to allow them (if they choose) to interact with us directly.

I recall Mike Volpe of HubSpot saying that inbound marketing is all about brains beating budgets. Marketing is no longer about having the biggest budget to send more stuff. It’s all about using our brains to make sure that clients with a need for our solutions are able to find and engage us.

It’s a fun time to be in marketing – that’s for sure.
Oh – make sure you follow my adventures in Twitter – @DavidUnique

Filed Under: Marketing 1 Comment

David March 24, 2009

Internet ads are dead – thank goodness!

Yesterday I read an article by Eric Clemons on the subject of Internet advertising. Prof. Clemons is Professor of Operations and Information Management and Management at the University of Pennsylvania.

Prof. Clemons that Internet advertising is going to lose its effectiveness for reasons he feels are easily understood. While advertising revenue is falling generally, it would be wrong to look to on-line ads as a replacement.

There are according to Prof. Clemons, three main reasons behind the decline in Internet advertising:

Consumers don’t trust advertising in general.
They don’t want it, consumers will avoid ads if they possibly can.
Consumers don’t need advertising – there are so many ways to research ones interests that consumers can get all the information they need without the help of advertising.

In one of my earlier post, I mentioned how I avoid advertising as much as I possible can – I just don’t feel the need for any company to be trying to tell me what I need. Needless to say, I agree with what Prof. Clemons is saying – indeed thanks to Firefox and adBlock, I live in a pretty ad-free world anyway.

The professor feels that on-line entities are going to have to find other ways to raise revenue – charging for content, subscriptions to take part (FaceBook, Titter, etc) rather than just try to pay their way with advertising.

To be honest, although I certainly see the ongoing decline in the effectiveness of Internet advertising, I do believe we are stuck with it for some time to come.

Here is a link to Prof. Clemons article. What do you think?

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: advertising, internet Leave a Comment

David March 16, 2009

David’s Quick Marketing Tip

Want to keep up with what’s hot and exciting in the world of media and PR?

If you use Twitter (of course you do!), it’s easy. Just do a search on #journchat and follow the conversation.

#journchat takes place each Monday evening 8 – 11 PM Eastern.

There is more information to be found here.

It is very interesting to see how people in the PR business are getting to grips with social media and other changes. It seems to me that the world of print media is going to be in for a rough time unless they can find a way to actually build profits from their on-line efforts.

Filed Under: Marketing Tagged With: #journchat, Marketing, twitter Leave a Comment