In This Issue
Also This Week:
The Sharp Axe of Authority and Wisdom for Thought Leaders
This is actually an article from back in September that we didn't highlight in the newsletter.
The article focuses on whether thought leaders are made or born (from nature or nurtured, or whatever the metaphor of choice is for you). While I don't know that we've fully settled the issue, it's a good discussion!
Read the article: "The Sharp Axe of Authority and Wisdom for Thought Leaders" »
[Podcast] What does FTC ruling on blogger payola mean to Internet users? (via APM)
The Federal Trade Commission this week announced new guidelines that would penalize bloggers for failing to disclose when they receive money for endorsing products. The fine could go as high as $11,000.
Listen to: "What does FTC ruling on blogger payola mean to Internet users? " »
Here are some of the best bits of marketing wisdom that came across Twitter this week:
Revealing Google's Stealth Social Network Play « Altimeter Group : A Holistic Approach To Emerging Technologies http://ff.im/-9nRsA
Corporate Use of Social Media is Untapped as Most Lurk - Deloitte Study http://ff.im/-9nQc6
Why marketers must become the new publishers http://ff.im/-9nQca
Follow Dana's marketing updates on Twitter »
Download the entire "Social Media Toolkit" »
Digital Centered Marketing Workshop & Podcast
In this AMA Spotlight Forum Digital-Centered Marketing: A Marketer’s Secret Weapon, participants will explore the world beyond the Internet to better understand and immediately seize the opportunities existing in digital marketing.
Register for the AMA's Digital Centered Marketing Workshop! »
October Marketing Links: Social Media & Thought Leadership
Want to see the cream of the crop in marketing, thought leadership and social media articles? Just look at what we're linking to!
Hit the Links! »
As we get nearer to 2010, I've had an increase in the requests for this marketing calendar mindmap, so I thought I'd share it with the newsletter list again..
DOWNLOAD »
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Upcoming Speaking Engagements
10.10 - Social Media Saturdays: Blogging
10.14 - Thought Leadership Marketing: Construction Specification Institute, NM
10.15 - Social Media Marketing: Green Bay Area Chamber of Commerce
10.17 - Social Media Saturdays: Twitter
10.24 - Social Media Saturdays: LinkedIn
11.05 - St. Norbert Marketing & Technology for Leaders Series
11.07 - Social Media Saturdays: Facebook
11.14 - Social Media Saturdays: Podcast & Video
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Wednesday October 7, 2009
Simple Marketing Audit: Strategy vs. Tactics
 It's that time of year again where, if you haven't already begun you 2010 sales & marketing goal setting & planning (I have, have you?) it's about time to get on that. I'm as much a fan of huge, complex marketing audit projects as anyone, but in lieu of that, and to get things started off on the right foot, I have a simple exercise that I use to do a quick diagnosis of what I did last year, what I'm thinking of doing next year, and determining whether or not those tactics are aligned with my overall marketing strategy.
You've all seen the exercises where the instructions are simply to “draw a line down a sheet of paper and put this on in one column and that in another.” That simple tool is recommended for everything from deciding which job to take, to how to communicate with your spouse to determining untold numbers of other major decisions in life. So, it must be good enough for marketers, right?
Here's what I recommend doing to start of your 2010 marketing planning. Let's pull out a sheet of paper (or download the simple template I've created here in .doc , .xls or .pdf form) and draw a line down the middle. Personally, I'm a “paper guy”, so I'd be writing this out offline, but do whatever works for you.
- Label the left-hand column “TACTICS” and the right-hand column “STRATEGY”
- In the left-hand column, list all of the marketing tactics, campaigns, themes and programs that you used this past year. If you need something to kickstart your brain, perhaps you could also look at the Channel Consideration Review Worksheet , which contacts a laundry list of marketing tactics. You might also consider putting in parenthesis what kind of results you received in the form of leads, sales, walk-ins, traffic, etc.
- Once you've listed out all of the tactics, now it's time to head over to the column on the right and map those tactics to strategy.
- In the right-hand column, next to each tactic listed, now list out the “way in which that tactic supported your overall marketing/go-to-market strategy”.
- If you're having trouble drawing some connections between the tactics and and your overall marketing strategy (you do have one, don't you?) you're not alone.
This is a quick exercise to help you catalog what you've done, what's worked, how well it's aligned with strategy, and to draw out those areas that need improvement or, what often happens, is that you figure out you've done a lot of tactical things that didn't exactly mesh with your overall strategy. Now's a great time to think about fixing those issues and setting yourself up for marketing success in 2010!
Thinking of doing a complete marketing audit on your firm? Drop us a line - we can help.
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Marketing Classics: Communications and Industrial Selling (Theodore Levitt, 1967)
Originally written as a comparison piece on the effectiveness of advertising vs. trained sales people (and the combination thereof) in the B2B industrial sales world, I see Communications and Industrial Selling as making a rock-solid case for thought leadership marketing and integrating thought leadership into the sales process.
In fact, the article quotes on my favorite ads of all time that makes the case for building relationships through thought leadership before sending salespeople in cold. It's the decades old ad from McGraw Hill that says it all. It showed a dour, forbidding looking purchasing agent, seated in a chair, staring off the page straight at you saying,
I don’t know who you are…
I don’t know your company…
I don’t know your company’s product…
I don’t know what your company stands for…
I don’t know your company’s customers…
I don’t know your company’s record…
I don’t know your company’s reputation...
Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?”
The moral of the story is that you need to work on both the "source effect" (the influence your company has as dictated by the source of the message) and the "presentation effect" (how powerful your sales person is in front of the customer). By pursuing a thought leadership position and leveraging thought leadership tactics in your go-to-market strategy, you're building the credibility that can only help win deals and close sales faster!
The full text of Communications and Industrial Selling can be found in the book Marketing Masters, 1991. »
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What's YOUR Barrier to Social Media Implementation?
PRWeek and MS&L just released their first annual survey on social media and how it's faring in the world of marketing. There aren't too many shockers here, but they did get some sound feedback on the barriers that are impeding social media adoption in the enterprise.
If you're in the middle of bring social media to your company, some of these won't surprise you. However, if you're in the planning stages or sitting on the fence, these top 5 are issues that we see every day. Here are a few ideas for getting past the top few issues.
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Lack of internal resources/time |
- Make it a team effort. Social media isn't just one person's job
- Connect the dots - "automate & syndicate" where possible |
Lack of knowledge/expertise |
- There are dozens of books on the topic
- Attend a MarketingSavant workshop! |
Not convinced about value/ROI |
- Read the Altimeter report on social media ROI - it's there!
- Create a pro-forma ROI for social media in your organization to share with execs |
Lack of clear policy & guidelines |
- Create a social media policy today (we can help)
- Fall back on your computer use, ethics and code of conduct policies and add in social-media-specific language |
Read the PRWeek / MS&L Social Media Survey »
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Cool Resource: Gist
 We wouldn't normally put a resource in this section that you can't get off the shelf today, but Gist is one of those tools that I think you'll want to be on the leading edge with and sign up for their Beta program. They're going to open up to the public soon, but in the mean time, here's why we're recommending this tool.
Gist is a great helper for executives, marketers and salespeople to keep up to speed on their most important contacts. Basically, Gist takes in your contacts from the various places you keep them, such as Outlook, LinkedIn and what have you, and sorts them by importance (your rank them) and gives you updates on information they find about them by scouring the web. It allows you to say "hey, Bill, I see your company just got an award, great job!"
Gist, in a word, gives you the gist of what's going on with your mot important contacts at a glance. It also catalogs the emails & interaction you have with them (through the Gist plugin on your desktop) so that you can log in to Gist and see EVERYTHING that's going on with that one contact. Brilliant!
Sign up early and get in on the Gist BETA »
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