Are You a Vendor
In a post on Advertising Age, Millie Olson brings out the question of whether an agency is a vendor to a customer or a business partner. The comments are interesting, too. In a conversation today with Mike Lewis, President of the Business Marketing Association for the greater Boston area (we’re working on the New Marketing Summit together), he mentioned that PR firms are often selected by a company’s marketing department, as part of a vendor selection process, and this surprised me (mostly because I’m a technologist, not a professional marketer).
I guess I imagined that the senior team picked them out. My last boss and business partner, Jeff Pulver, most definitely picked out his own PR firm. I was on the calls, but it was his decision. So, maybe it varies per organization, or maybe PR firms are often the vendor executing on a marketing department’s strategy. (You tell ME in the comments, okay?)
Pull this back from the specifics above, and think about your use of social media, the value you’re attempting to add to a business, etc.
Are you a vendor?
It’s a bigger question to consider than you might originally think. It’s a question of how you choose to connect and do business with companies. This question affects how you talk about what you do, how you price it, and how you choose to come to the negotiating table.
To the point in Millie’s article above, she viewed herself as a partner. People in the comments section said that marketers (especially external agencies) aren’t usually partners- they’re vendors. There’s a HUGE difference between two entities thinking of each others as partners versus a company thinking of itself as the prime and you as the vendor.
If You ARE a Vendor
There are ways you need to structure your ideas and offerings and how you intend to do business, if you’re going to take the stance of being a vendor.
- Remember that your job priority is your client’s success. Be clear about that in your work, in your positioning, and in how you propose things.
- Build relationships with several clients. Putting all your eggs in one basket is a great way to find yourself looking for a new job.
- Structure your business arrangements so that you can serve your client in a modular fashion. You might now always be the right person for the job. Don’t be a jerk and hook yourself in just because you’re the vendor on the other parts of it.
- Look for opportunities where you DO offer a value-add to other organizations, and position yourself appropriately in your efforts.
- Be clear in your contracts and in the deliverables. This is where vendors (especially less professional/experienced ones) get into trouble quick.
With regards to what you’re doing, are you a vendor? How are you finding the waters out there? What other advice would you offer other vendors? And what do you think about Millie’s ideas?
Photo credit, Mshades
Consider a Marketing Funnel
Brian Carroll gave some interesting advice in an interview with Chris Coch at ITSMA. He talked about creating a marketing funnel, and how this differed from a sales funnel. In brief, his interview covered five points:
- Create a marketing funnel.
- Create a universal definition of a lead.
- Use the phone.
- Ask about goals—don’t sell.
- Define lead nurturing—and the right people to nurture.
The full interview is here.
If we think about how this applies to social media, it’s something we need to consider (somewhat) differently.
You might be blogging or podcasting for lead generation. If so, how are you helping sort your audience from your leads? If you’re making media, that’s a starting point to a conversation. Are you asking your audience about goals? If you need to further qualify a lead built from your online efforts, is the phone the next step, or are there steps in between?
The idea of a marketing funnel, where one builds up even more information and distills even more who might be a prospective customer or client, versus who is simply enjoying the media, is something worth considering for your business. Have you looked at your media that way? How will you discern who’s just consuming your media versus who’s interested in doing business with you? What comes next after your blog post or video?
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
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My Best Advice About Personal Branding
In some ways, personal branding is noise. It’s talking about one’s self instead of talking about something that’s useful to others. But another way you might look at it is that personal branding is leverage: once you know me, you start to build a relationship with me. Once we have a relationship, I can share even more with you. The more we share, the more likely we’ll have other common interests down the road. It’s definitely part of the whole social media story, the rise of “me,” and personal branding. Here are 10 posts about personal branding from this site:
My Best Advice About Personal Branding
- 100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media
- The Real Power of Personal Branding
- Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online (part 1)
- Develop a Strong Personal Brand Online (part 2)
- Strip Malls for Personal Brands
- Passion Drives Personal Brand
- Elements of a Personal Brand
- Personal Branding and Social Media
- Quick Branding Tips for Individuals
- 10 Ways to Make Your Next Conference Better
Here are some folks I think do personal branding very well:
- Gary Vaynerchuk
- Christopher S. Penn
- Justine Ezarik
- C.C. Chapman
- Mitch Joel
- Jeremiah Owyang
- Liz Strauss
Is that everyone? Hardly. But those came right to mind. Hopefully, my advice will help you think about your own personal brand. What do you think?
What I Want PR and Marketing Professionals To Know
Since quite a number of people who swing by my blog are either in marketing or public relations, I wanted to address you specifically for a moment. I’m writing to you as part of this new version of media, one blogger not paid to blog, not working for a newspaper or magazine outlet, not especially beholden to the traditions that have come before. I’m writing to you as a human being who likes people, community, innovation, and business, not to mention art, creativity, play, and many other things. I want to tell you a few things for you to consider.
- Social media isn’t that scary, but it is different than what you’ve been doing. For one thing, it’s far more messy, and requires a lot more hand-holding.
- You have SO MUCH to gain from figuring out some of these tools and the way we’re using them. And one difference from typical businesses: most of us social media types are very willing to share what we know. Just ask.
- I love every one of you who makes an effort to get to know me before you have to market something to me or pitch me. It works out so much better when you and I have talked in some non-pitch way beforehand. And it only takes a few minutes every now and again to say hi.
- I’m tired of adjectives. Your new website isn’t innovative. The word doesn’t mean anything to me any more. Further, let me decide if it’s innovative.
- Bloggers aren’t all the same. I’m definitely not the same as Michael Arrington at TechCrunch. I’m not the same as Seth Godin. I’m not the same as most bloggers. I’m just doing my own thing, and they’re doing theirs. It pays to understand which of us you’re trying to reach for what, and reading the last 10 things we posted, just to get a sense of whether we’re the right kind of person to write about your thing.
- Blogging isn’t the same as releasing marketing materials.
- Putting up commercials on YouTube isn’t videoblogging.
- Be human first on social platforms like Twitter or Facebook. I know Lionel Menchaca as a human and as a Dell employee. You can do the same.
- Understanding Technorati and Google Blogsearch and Summize goes a long way towards helping you listen and hear what people are saying about you, your client, etc.
- You’re doing great things here and there. Sometimes, you’ll get praise for it. Other times, it might be overlooked. It’s still great.
- Great things are erased quickly when you mess up.
- If you mess up, say sorry fast. Acknowledge that you made a mistake, and then act on what you can do better next time.
- There’s lots you can teach we media maker types, too. I learn lots from you every day. I do this with phone calls, and by reading what you’re sending me. It’s a two way street.
There. That’s what I wanted to tell you.
What do you want to tell me?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, Mark Hillary
The Future of Sports is Boobies
Just got pitched for OpenSports, created by Mike Levy, who founded CBS SportsLine.com. I took a look at the page, scrolled down to the right, and found this young lady:
So, I’ll admit that I didn’t press play on the video. She might be a brilliant sports analyst.
But seriously, is this the future of sports? Or is this 1955?
To be reasonably fair, the site has all kinds of features. I’m still stuck on the sexist part. The rest? Probably good.
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How to Reach and Influence Prospects
This was requested by GirlPie
We talk about how social media like blogs and podcasts and social networks will help us grow our business, and yet, there are several ways in which we’re hampered. Some of our customers won’t provide testimonials. Others will take a while to actually execute a project. Still others have stumbled onto your site, and it’s up to you to keep them. Let’s talk about these prospects, first.
Who Are Your Prospects?
There are, of course, tons of ways to think about who your potential customers might be. David Meerman Scott talks often about buyer personas as a way to better understand who you’re hoping to reach. And in my examples below, I’ve only picked three types of prospective new customers. You have many other people interacting with your media, and it’s up to you to balance your efforts such that they align with the relationships you need.
Here are three prospect type examples:
Private Customer
In the example GirlPie provided, her customers don’t really want to refer her. This means she has a Private Customer. You could say that SEO and search marketing professional often have Private Customers as well. In these cases, your audience doesn’t want to tout your skills, because they don’t want to admit their prior weakness, or have other reasons to stay quiet.
Newcomer Customer
Some of us have customers from larger companies who are very new. They’ve been tasked with adopting an online strategy, or a social media marketing plan, or something like this. These customers are browsing the web, grazing through keynote searches, and hoping to gather enough information to convince their senior team that they understand enough to make some starter moves. This audience will recommend you, but only after they’ve launched their project (and sometimes that’s a long while after you could’ve used their recommendation).
Clean Slate Customer
Several people find their way to your site by way of search. Perhaps you rank high in Google for blog topics (that’s my constant #1 search term), and so someone searching for topics for their blog will land on your site, and wonder what to do next. In these cases, these potential customers might need a bit more content and guidance before they become actual prospects (and remember, we’re talking business in this post, not community and other reasons to do social media).
Reaching These Prospects
In all three cases mentioned above, different tools will have a different impact. Here are some suggestions:
- Private Customers - consider an email newsletter with discrete information that reinforces your benefits. In that newsletter, encourage forwarding. Email is much more intimate than a blog setting. Consider a private online pay forum that allows for anonymity, if that’s also useful.
- Newcomer Customers - along with your media posts (blogs or podcasts or the like), create specific-to-their-industry informational documents (or recordings or presentations), with an eye towards empowering your contact with information that will convince their senior team to take action.
- Clean Slate Customers - In many ways, the simple answer here is to provide great content that’s useful, evocative, and invites further inquiry. From there, if you see any responses that match your business offerings, reach out. Send an email. There’s no harm in exploring a potential business relationship, should you see signs that a person has a need you can help fulfill.
You’ll note that I didn’t mention social networks much in this instance. The way I use social networks is to build relationships. I do any business prospecting by way of the media I create. I’m on the networks to connect, to be helpful, and to learn new things. Hopefully, that distinction makes sense. If not, ask me to define that better, and I will.
Business Isn’t Evil
The social web has enabled all kinds of new opportunities to communicate. Business and sales are just one portion of a large spectrum of ways we connect and transact. As with everything you and I talk about here, it comes down to clarity of purpose. If you’re selling something, state it. If you’re looking for customers, talk about it. If you’re there to educate, that’s fine, too. They’re YOUR tools. Use them the way you want. Just be clear and open about it.
What’s your thinking on all this? Have I identified your prospect type here? If not, tell me in the comments, and we can open the question up to the community. What’s your thinking?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, Jurvetson
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Spectrums of Social Media for Marketing
This is just a little something that I started thinking about yesterday while preparing for a webinar with John Stone from CrossTech Partners coming up tomorrow. It just hit me while discussing how the various social media tools apply to businesses seeking relationships with customers (either b2b or b2c). I wanted to put this out as a starting point to a thought.
I believe that as marketers seek to use social media and social networking software to do business with people on the web that there is a spectrum to their engagement efforts.
On the far left, banner ads. Next would be building a small group somewhere, like on Facebook. To the right of that might be blogs and other created media. Content marketing is what I’d call that region, where you build interesting and compelling media as a way to encourage engagement and interaction. To the right of content marketing, at the far end of the spectrum, is relationship marketing.
Relationship marketing is where I’d put things like community managers and active engagement, listening, and robust interexchange between customers and businesses. Not just with the marketing department, but with people in all different parts of the organization.
They range in difficulty to properly execute from left to right, too. I think the costs in money and resources probably scale in that direction, too. It’s cheaper to buy a banner ad than to hire a community manager.
The results go in that direction, as do the risks.
Banner ads — small groups — content marketing — relationship marketing.
What do you think?
Photo credit, kevin dooley
Who Cares
As a guy who does technology, but has somehow found himself in a marketing-heavy role, I’ve got a lot of opinions. Some might be wrong. You’re always welcome to correct me if you disagree.
Marketers: please, please, please think really hard about the recipient of your message. It seems SO easy, but I find that people talk about how amazing they (their company/product/etc) are. I’m glad you’re proud, but is that what you want to tell me? Because if I’m the customer/consumer/user/partner, you know how I’m thinking, right?
- What’s in it for me?
- How does this impact me?
- Do I have to do something?
- What’s this going to cost me?
The other thing is this: please re-think which details you think I might care about. I passed an ice cream truck the other day on the road. The side of it read: Serving fresh ice cream since 1934. First, your ice cream better be fresh. Second, I don’t care when you started. I want ice cream. Finally, ice cream is fun. People LOVE ice cream. Why not talk about the fun?
Please. Ask yourself after every little scrap of copy you write, “Who cares?”
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
Photo credit, striatic
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50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies
You’ve started a company blog. What comes next? It’s not like someone gives you blog topics and an editorial calendar and suggests which one to post first. Well, I’m here to help. As part of my ongoing desire to see you pick up these social media tools for yourself and change the future of your business, here are 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies. (Feel free to repost, but please link back to [chrisbrogan.com] ). Oh, and if some of these don’t fit exactly, think creatively about whether you could adapt them.
50 Blog Topics for Marketers
- How to get the most from our customer service department.
- The best way to recommend an improvement to our product or service.
- Podcast - complete installation instructions in audio and video.
- What would you like to see in next year’s catalog?
- Our favorite projects over the coming months.
- Some tricks that might keep you from needing support.
- Upcoming coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
- We want to talk. How should we contact you? Where?
- Choose our product’s price.
- Five tips for getting more from your ______ .
- A little bit about us.
- A walk in our neighborhood.
- Photos from our community meetup.
- What goes into our decision process.
- Video - a tour of the plant, and a day in the life of your product.
- What it’s like to work for our company.
- We support these causes, and here’s why.
- The next two years: how we grow with you.
- We want to come to work with you (and learn how we can help)!
- Giving back to the community: our plan.
- What we worry about over the coming year.
- How we handle your disputes or complaints.
- Can you recommend a better process for this?
- Sometimes, we have to say no.
- Your call is important to us. We’ll tell you how important.
- We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time.
- Report from our independent community review board.
- How to close out your account with us. (Imagine how risky this is?)
- The economy is piling up costs, and we have to share the burden.
- Understanding what went wrong.
- Birthday announcements for August. (Imagine listing your customers’ names on a birthday calendar?)
- Fourteen ways to customize your _______.
- Why we like our competitor’s product better, and how we’ll catch up.
- Customer Profile - Sedah D’Abdul.
- Our fourth annual YOU awards.
- What we think is unique about us. Do you agree?
- Communities in your neighborhood, and several on the Web.
- Your blog posts: Javier Mendoza suggests ways we could improve.
- Companies to consider when you get too big for us.
- Why we believe participation pays off.
- Meet our four favorite customer service reps for September.
- Vendors that serve us so we can help you.
- Our global plan - Vietnam, Italy, and your back yard.
- What we look for in our leadership.
- Video - our new smaller offices downtown.
- Green is our new favorite color- save energy and money with your ______.
- How corporate responsibility saved us $3Mil last year.
- Growing up but staying fun.
- Your event, our treat.
- Five promises we’ve kept over the last few years.
You tell me: where there some squirmy parts in there? Can you see how customers might react to reading these? I wrote almost every one of these with the customer as a reader. How would these shift if your reader was someone else in your list of stakeholders?
What would you add?
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
Get the entire series by subscribing to this blog, and subscribe to my free newsletter here.
All photos are the property of other creators, and licensed under Creative Commons. Click any photo to see the credited photographer of each.
Am I Too Naked
Shel Israel and Robert Scoble talked about the value of blogging and transparency in their seminal work, Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers. But now I’m wondering if maybe I’ve gone too naked.
I finished a conference call a few hours ago with someone who said something that took me aback. Essentially, she said that I share so much on my website that she wonders what else I have to offer. Meaning, if everyone has access to the information I’m providing, why bother going further with me?
Wow. I hadn’t really thought that way. In my mind, what I’m giving you are the bigger pieces of the ideas, the strategies and the tactics, but not the customization and not the execution. THAT’s what I perceive my product is. That’s what you pay for. Plus my network. Plus my knowledge to adapt what I’ve given you over time (course corrections).
You tell me. Am I giving too much away?
Photo credit, kk+
