Conversation Agent

Do you Have Staying Power?

Since reading The Dip I've been thinking about several new questions. Well, the questions are not really new; they just keep resurfacing so I'm thinking about them from a different angle. On the surface, wondering if you have staying power may seem simple. You either do or you don't. As Seth writes in his new blog:

"...the thesis is that being seen as best in the world, whatever 'best' and whatever 'world' means, is the single greatest contributor to success in marketing."

Seth talks about three reasons why this is important and offers some examples. I can add a few from these last couple of weeks:

Selection -- Recently Conversation Agent was recommended by popular vote to participate in Jaffe Juice's most valuable blog contest. Joe's readers vote and, by elimination, there will be one final lucky winner. What are the chances you will read the blogs that did not get picked? Does that mean they have no staying power?

Access -- thanks to the Internet and to many other technologies we have today, there are many ways to find information about a product and service. If we look at access also as who knows you, there are many more word of mouth opportunities to make it into someone's top of mind category. If you have a blog, or a web site or a book with ideas that people want to spread, you win. If your information is disseminated not only by your neighbors, but also by a global community, you win. Does this mean that if you don't have a blog or somehow use Web 2.0 technology you have no staying power?

Pyramids -- if you think you're never going to play this game, think again. You already are. Chances are that you have linked to several blogs in the last couple of weeks. To gain credibility for your writing and content you might even have linked to top ranking blogs in the hopes to be linked back or gain more traffic for your blog. After all, if nobody sees what you're writing, how are you going to establish yourself? 

We live in a winner-take-all environment. Think of American Idol, Survivor, etc. It's the people who get voted off the show or the island that create the buzz and publicity for the program and eventually help launch the career of the winners.

So what are your options? You could:

• Change the game -- this is another way of escaping competition by not entering the game by someone else's definition. How else can you look at a problem? Zig when everyone else is zagging.
• Create a new category -- What is missing in the marketplace? Is there a need or want that people could discover if you presented it to them in a compelling fashion? If you're smart enough, and do this right, this will allow you to be first. Think about a niche business, an underserved market segment. Ask your customers, or even better your competitor's customers. Note that the action verb is: create.
• Push through your challenges -- resilience can be good. It will help you develop certain muscles and train them so that next time you are facing a challenge, you have that memory to leverage. I'm talking about determination, perseverance, and faith in yourself. The bigger the challenge, the sweeter the reward. As long as you also learn to figure out whether it is time to invest more energy to continue your efforts, or it is best to let it go.

The secret is that you get to decide and plan your moves. Do you want to have staying power?

Je suis désolé. Sono Spiacente.

Learning how to say "I'm sorry" when you don't know something or when your actions have caused an unintended upset is important.

Yet the expression is not a substitute for thoughtful action. There are instances when the expression is used automatically and possibly to give yourself permission not to follow through with your customer's inquiry.

Why would anyone behave that way? Most importantly, why would a company behave that way when we're more anxious than ever about losing touch with our customers? [For an interesting set of stats see Logic+Emotion, where David Armano reports on a Bain & Company survey results.]

The best place to keep a customer is usually when they need you. And the best way for customers to need you is to make yourself indispensable or irreplaceable. There are many ways to do that, from adding value to providing a product that nobody else has. The most obvious and seemingly difficult area to conquer is on the customer service side.

As I said in my comment to David's post: CRM and all the other acronyms are tools. What matters is who is using them. We should learn to ask the right questions. If I do sound passionate about the human side of work, it's because I am. So many times I have met exceptional individuals -- gifted and amazing on a personal level -- who get left behind.

There are many ways to be discouraged from doing what's best in an organization. A customer service manager who gets it and behaves accordingly with customers is only one person. She can honestly say "we're in this together" and let your customers guide her, yet your company may still not come through.

In my weekly post at FC Expert blogs I ask a simple question: can you teach service? What do you think -- can you?

What Does Direct Mean?

It's all Drew's fault if I'm thinking about this.

In his 99.3 Random Acts of Marketing, Drew McLellan reminded me that many of the things I've been doing well over the years are still worth doing. Even in this new age of social media.

"You know too much", he writes in one of his short articles; "you get tired of your message much quicker than your audience does," he says somewhere else. The book is easy to read, a must for recent graduates and young marketers, and a very good refresher for those of us who have been at it for years. For several days after I read it I was buzzing with ideas.

Because direct has been a staple in our marketing mix for years, we tend to forget how valuable a tool it can be, when harnessed properly. But before I delve into my experience with this tactic, a short paragraph on definition. What does direct mean? Larry Kimmel, CEO of G2 Direct & Digital says that:

Direct marketing is a method that seeks to implement the most efficient and effective marketing communications initiatives. It's not a channel, or even a series of channels, but rather an approach: accountable communications that are designed to measure return on investment (ROI).

This according to Kimmel includes many of the people who are in interactive marketing and those who work in search. What response does your communication drive? What percentage or number of sales? What is the lifetime value of those sales? These are some the questions you can answer to qualify the contribution that direct makes to the company's profit. There are many kinds of direct marketing initiatives.

1. The branding campaign -- Back in December, I shared first the genesis and then the results of a customer gift campaign we ran. It was designed to thank our customers for a good year of business together and to continue building on our reputation of sharing expertise. Another example of that is our yearly wall calendar. We produce one designed by us for customers of a specific line of products -- fun stickers with anniversaries, trade conferences and fishing days included.
2. The announcement mailer -- we have done several over the years. Our latest one was a dimensional piece that had a fishing lure included with it. Because the audience was people who enjoy recreational outdoors activities, that was very appropriate. The lures generated great buzz about the anticipated changes in our products' use and was coordinated with a press release on trade publications. We projected a conservative growth of between 10-20%.
3. The in-season product or service reminders -- we design these with our audience in mind. Depending on the needs of the buyers of our products, we share data and information on benefits that is timely to our customers. We are a B2B company, and we have used direct mailers as tactics to build conversations around our products with our customers' customers. It reads like a riddle, but it works. By supporting the sales of our customers, we strengthen our relationship. And that is good for top line growth.

These are just some examples, of course. Direct means getting into the hands and minds of your prospects and customers. There is an element of permission you should consider. Whenever I work with lists, I incorporate the feedback of the people who receive our mail into my thinking. If someone wrote to me asking to change their address, or to opt out of the list, I do what they ask.

When I can talk with the addressee I am very lucky, as I often gather invaluable information about how they see our mailers and why they do not want to receive them. Feedback is good. We rent our lists, so I take great care to develop relationships with the people who do that with us: publications and database companies get my help to clean up their files every time we measure the results of a mailing and campaign.

As for our customers, they usually can't wait for the next year to see what we come up with for a gift. They give us their new mailing address in anticipation. I thank Drew for sending me a free copy of his book: this was indeed a benefit. What types of direct marketing have you used successfully?

FREE is not a Benefit

It’s a feature. We think it’s a benefit because we know what we offer has value. It benefits from our experience and it’s designed to get someone to act on something. Yet our prospects and users have not discovered any of that yet.

You are all familiar with the definitions of features -– a product’s or service characteristics, which are you (read: company)-centered –- and benefits –- what your client, user, partner gets from using your product and engaging your service.

When you say that something is free, you associate that in your mind with a benefit. Why is free a feature instead? It is something you chose to give away, and which the prospect has no idea they need or want. As such, you designed it as the simplest, less time consuming, most canned thing you could do to get someone to sample your product and service.

This is not to take away from the value of what you offer. If you pause and think for a moment, how many times have you attended a free seminar that was designed to get you to buy something? In fact, it was probably designed for everyone in that room to buy something. And here’s the rub: it is by virtue of ease, the most universally applicable thing we could thing about.

But is it the most useful for your audience? For the prospect, user, and client, free is a gift, and as such it becomes a benefit only when it is used, learned, put into practice, and provides results. Yes, even the free books you may receive will not do you any good until you read them and put them into practice.

Free is designed to get people into the conversation, yet if the conversation is about your product and service and not about their problem and need, it remains a feature and never becomes a benefit. I will gladly try this and that, yet that doesn’t mean I will purchase your item or avail myself of your services.

Only when what is offered is an experience that truly speaks to your prospect and user’s needs and wants, you begin to convert free from feature to benefit. It’s interesting to note that in Italian free is gratis (from Lat. variation of gratiis, out of kindness, orig. ablative plural of gratia, which means favor).

So here’s my question to you. What can you do today to make a sampling of what you do go from free as feature to a benefit in your prospects’ minds?

Shift Happens

My Latin teacher in high school used to say "quam carta cadit, scienza galoppat". Don't try to translate it; it's pidgin Latin (read: it's made up). What it means is that when we do not have the paper in front of us, our knowledge goes with it. That was the traditional way of looking at information. The new way is online.

That was a big shift for those of us who were not natives. We didn't grow up using the Internet and surfing the web. We learned, some of us better than others. I'm a bit timid with some applications, and being in a corporate environment, I still surf the web using Microsoft Explorer -- and I think it's version 6.0. I know, I know, that is terrible news.

It's what I discovered when I came in this morning. All my favorite bookmarks were gone. As in irretrievable, not found, deleted, nowhere in sight. Do you get the idea? Five years worth of research disappeared in seconds. Because I am not as wise as I'd like to be, I did not know that there was no backup anywhere. My IT department is running a virus scan, but I suspect I was naive and did not do what I could have done to save myself the aggravation and time.

How can I remember all the great sites I have visited in the last five years? I am grateful that I learned how to aggregate my feeds using Google homepage so the blogs I read are stored there. I had another idea for a post today, but I think this conversation is one worth having. I am exactly like the marketers and business people you are trying to reach.

I have enough knowledge of the web to be dangerous. I know I should be using better tools, like Ma.gnolia.com to bookmark my favorites. Downloading the Firefox browser and using that instead would have been smart. My good friend Chris Baskind told me that there's a free extension that backs up your bookmarks every hour. Not only that, it will synchronize your bookmarks with your other computers. Bookmark something at work, and it'll appear on your home machine.

Like your customers and clients, I get email marketing, I understand banner ads, and other forms of online ads and branding initiatives. From a benefits standpoint I can have a detailed conversation of what to use that would work best for the business I am marketing. I am lost when it comes to features. That is why it is so important to sell me the benefits and eventually teach me the features; I love partnering with companies that help me learn. They will get my business.

Shift happens and it is very easy to be caught in the middle of it. It is also easy to forget that the people you are talking with may not keep up with what you're saying. They know enough to give you a false indication of where they are on the spectrum of technical savvy. So they have an incomplete understanding of what you do -- and sell.

If you partner with me, and bring me along, you may have a business relationship for life.

71 Million Blogs, Technorati Scrambles

See what I'm talking about. Happy April  Fools Day!

Mixing it up With ProBlogger Darren Rowse in New York City

I started reading Darren Rowse at ProBlogger last fall, when I was figuring out how to write a blog as opposed to a Web site. As a marketer in love with communications, I took an instant liking to Darren's business savvy and writing. Hint: the simpler it sounds, the harder the thinking behind it.

[that's Darren with me in the photo, courtesy of Joe Ferrara]

Coming up with good, original, and useful "how to" tips on a consistent basis is already admirable. Knowing how to run a highly profitable online business, given the myriad ventures to choose from, demonstrates that this is a viable marketplace and that Darren is indeed a pro. The fact that he is an extremely well rounded, polite, and nice person while doing all that is worth a special mention. His wife V. is a ray of sunshine, I was glad she could join us.

This crowd spoke the language of Six Figure Blogging, which is the prize I won in the evening drawing. Although I consider myself a very lucky person, I never win anything so you can imagine how excited I am. In the midst of learning about SEO, Text Link Ads (it means affiliate links and they where the evening sponsor), and listening to how young programmers and bloggers are drawing a better income from this activity than from their day job, I met some really interesting people.

[that's me talking with Marshall. Photo courtesy of Lara Kulpa]

A few stories from the evening:

• Lara Kulpa and her dad Chuck were first on the scene. Lara has a great disposition and sense of style. We chatted about her living in Italy for six weeks near Ancona a few years back. I was happy to read that she was also a prize winner. Lara's pictures are great, follow the link and you will get a sense for the evening. She introduced me also to:
• Aaron Brazell from technosailor and b5media. Aaron explained that he used to work for large companies and now he enjoys being on Darren's team.
• Joseph Ferrara was one of the first bloggers I greeted as he came in. With a ready smile and camera, he was seriously fun. Sellsius is the real estate business he co-founded. Joe was kind enough to send me several photos of the evening. You can see more by following the link above.
• I spent a bit of time in a conversation with Marshall Sponder, contributor at WebMetricsGuru, SmartMobs, BigGreenBlogs, and artist. Marshall and I shared many interests. He was telling me how he's learning to speak in front of an audience. It can seem daunting, I know.
• Bill Dyszel is a great conversationalist and an accomplished writer for PC Magazine and eWeek, as well as author of 17 books, among which Microsoft Outlook for Dummies. Bill is also involved in the making of 48-Hour Film Project. He was presenting one of his films in Philadelphia this weekend.
• Nick Senzee of eSquaredWorkshops didn't miss a word, taking notes as he met people.
• Shawn Waite, publisher at Shedwa had the best NY-themed business card I have seen.
• I also met Elaine Vigneault, provocateur and owner of the most minimal and classy business card.
• Victoria Levan is an illustrator who just created her own business cards.

Going to events like this one reminds me how important it is to be a presenter and an audience, alternating between the two roles while feeling comfortable in your skin. Aside from Darren, I did not know anyone else. Lara, Marshall, Bill, Joe, and V. made me feel very much at home.

Now you can see how I fit with bracketology, many of my smiles are full-braces. [with Marshall Sponder, photo courtesy of V.]

A couple of people mentioned the value of networking. I cringe a little when I hear that word because in my mind, network is an outcome, not an activity. What you do at events like this one is meet people, talk with them, learn new things and, if you have enough practice, make connections.

For example, I spent a reasonable amount of time with several of the people in the photographs with me. Enough time to learn about their work and in some cases also about projects they are really passionate about. The idea is to be in the moment, not worry about how many people you get to meet, enjoy and join the conversation you're in.

[Joe Ferrara with me here. Photo taken by Darren, courtesy of Joe.]

The whole business card exchange ritual is fascinating. It has different rules depending on the culture. For example, in Japan, you exchange business cards up front in a business setting so that everyone knows where they stand from the titles. The higher up you are, the less information you need to have on your card.

Many of the bloggers I met this past Thursday chose to have their name and blog URL with possibly a title or a tagline on their card. Some had cards with more information about their business, including a physical address and phone/fax numbers. Regardless, all the cards were quite imaginative and often matched exactly the blog identity.

[Darren, Lara, and me talking with Bill. Photo courtesy of Joe Ferrara]

Darren and his business partners and audience know a great deal about marketing online. The more traditional marketers could use some exposure to this crowd. I know I do. That is why I so enjoyed meeting everyone. It gave me another view of the blogosphere, one different from my usual environment where we mostly use blogs to brand ourselves and publicize our business and book(s). One of the most frequent words I heard was "making money". That is indeed a good idea.