Follow customers, not trends

Follow customers, not trends

There’s an old saying that nobody’s as gullible as a salesman afraid of missing out on a trend. We would put some marketing people into this category today.

Consider two astute observations that came our way recently. One is that you shouldn’t believe all the hype about “in-bound” (as opposed to outbound) marketing; the other says quality content on a web site always trumps search-engine optimization (SEO). You’d think that both contentions would be self-evident truths.  In practice, too many marketers seem only too eager to err on the side of excess when it comes to perceived trends affecting their craft.

The dramatic rise of social marketing is the “trend” here that so many marketers seem afraid of missing out on.  Don’t get us wrong. We’re avid practitioners of all things digital but we’re in solid concurrence with Seattle-based PR exec Howie Barokas. To his way of thinking, the advent of social media has given too many marketing types, particularly when it comes to PR, a bad case of myopia about potential customers and the content aimed at them. While social media has changed the way people consume information and buy things, at the end of the day it’s just another channel. However important, it’s just another element in the mix of advertising, direct marketing, tradeshows, webinars and all the other means by which marketing content is made available.

As for the plight of the SEO-obsessed, we commend the sentiments of our colleague Efi Rodik: “People are sifting through the garbage online to find the good stuff—information that is informative, engaging, and above all, relevant. If your site is so keyword-optimized that it barely passes as English, then you’ve got a problem.”

Having responsibility for marketing content, you can never lose your focus on your end-user. We share Rodik’s view that customers looking for information or resources on the web will always want content that’s easy to read and understand. “If you’re pounding your keyword,” he says, “rather than focusing on providing useful, compelling information, then you’ll lose a conversion, your bounce rate will go up, and your ranking on your search-engine results page will suffer”.

 

This post first appeared in The Write Stuff, the blog of Write Angle, a high-technology writing service based in Silicon Valley.

Using PR and social networks to get qualified leads

To say that the tactics of the PR world have changed in the 21st century is the understatement of, well, the 21st century.  The tactics have changed right along with the technological jolts that have left mainstream media a shambles.  Marketers deploy PR operatives today to engage in very specific discussions with equally specific groups of customers and prospects, as well as the old-school influencers.  Which include a dwindling number of increasingly overworked editors and reporters.   All of this is described in an extremely well conceived slide show that was delivered yesterday by Todd Defren, principal of Shift Communications of San Francisco and Boston.  Defren’s thesis, substantiated by my own 30 years of, shall we say, lively debates with corporadoes in Silicon Valley– and PR results ranging from resonating success to abject failure (more of the former, fortunately)–is that effective PR has never been about column inches, airtime or, more recently, web hits.  It has always been about growing your sales line. And, to do this, attracting qualified prospects who want to talk to a sales rep.

What this means today is not all that different from what it meant a generation ago.  At least in the strategy formulation stage.  Step one is to DEFINE who it is you’re pursuing in terms of a customer.  Then, the PROFILING begins.  What is about this customer that makes them a perfect match for the value proposition of your product?   And now that you know everything knowable about them, where do they congregate?  On Facebook groups?  LinkedIn?  Twitter?  Obscure blogs and discussion groups?  None of the above?  Once this is determined, the “art” kicks in.  Defren’s take is compelling and relevant.  Just like a good value proposition.

How Twitter and Facebook will make money.

Still wondering what the big deal is about Twitter, or how  it and Facebook stand to reap colossal rewards by being search engines powered by human crawlers sharing content?  Then look at this. It’s a glimpse into the future.  Of course, the trend will have to hold. Hard to believe that a technology that enables microblogging and a social networking site now exceed email as a way to share links (content).  Hey, it’s not your older sibling’s Web anymore.