Time For Some Changes

4 09 2011

For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, I am about to make a change in focus.  You might have notices that I have not written a lot in the past couple of months.  A few months back I took a Product Marketing job at Informatica (Data Integration).  There, I’m responsible for the product marketing of two fairly-technical products aimed at a technical audience of data integration experts:

  • Informatica Metadata Manager & Business Glossary.  I will write a lot more about this subject, but for now let’s say that MM&BG gives you the visibility and control needed to manage a complex data integration environment. In particular, it is very useful in helping to manage change in that environment.  Simple changes often run afoul of unseen cross-dependencies.  A simple change can cause a ripple-effect of unintended consequences across you data integration environment.  The results can be bad data and bad business decisions.
  • Informatica Data Validation Option.  DVO is a tool to test and verify data after it has been moved or transformed.  It’s a way to detect and prevent damage to the data .
The interesting thing is that the blog has kept up its readership very well without any new content!
This blog has always focused a great deal on social media and the application of social media to the marketing of technology products.  That will continue.  Only now, it will be a lot more personal as I apply social media best practices to my two products at Informatica.
I have had some conversations with people recently who do not see how social media applies in this space.   A lot of people see social media as a way to reach vast audiences.  But, social medial marketing is also really good at “Long Tail” maketing — reaching small, scattered, but well-defined markets.  This also is a topic that I will be exploring in upcoming blogs.
Up next, a few blogs on metadata.  Who needs it and what does it do for me?

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Categories : Business Glossary, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Metadata Management, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Technology

So, You Want to Hire a Community Manager

31 01 2011


You have the beginnings of your social media marketing strategy going for your business and now it is time to hire a Community Manager to run it all.  That all sounds pretty straightforward.

The problem is, most of the job postings I see for these positions say something like: “We are looking for a social media God who knows all about Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, etc., etc.,”  The more advanced postings say something like; “Proven track record of delivering measureable marketing results through social media-driven campaigns.”

Being a good Community Manager is far more than having 500 Twitter followers, a deep knowledge of the latest “bright, shiny thing” in Social Media, or even a track record of running some successful campaigns.  This is a good start but not nearly enough to ensure long term success.

Your Community Manager is an extension of your company brand. This person is the human face that will interact with your customers, probably more than anybody else in your company.  Think of them as your company’s Colonel Sanders, only one that actually talks to your customers on a daily basis.

Sticking with the Colonel Sanders / fried chicken business analogy for a minute, picture what happens to your business in these scenarios:

  • Your Community Manager decides to leave for another more interesting (to them) job at another company.  It is their identity that your customers associate with your brand.
  • It becomes obvious over time that your Community Manager, while good at social media marketing, never had any real passion for the fried chicken business and doesn’t actually know much about fried chicken
  • Or, worst of all, your community manager likes your fried chicken ok, but has no empathy for your customers, their issues, or their concerns.

It’s time to stop thinking of Community Managers as social media Gods and think hard about them as extensions of your brand.  Sure, you want your Community Manager to know social media marketing, to know how to run campaigns that deliver measurable results, but there is more.  It is time to start thinking of Community Managers in terms of:

  • How long are they likely to stay in the job?  Or, with the company?
  • Do they really have a passion for your product or service?
  • Are they effective evangelists for your product or service? (Or, do they just pass product questions off to other people?)
  • Do they have a deep and genuine connection with your customers?
  • Do they provide read value to your customers in their interactions?
  • Are they going to stay around long enough to be measured on the effectiveness of the campaigns they are proposing or are they going to be off to the next cool thing?

There is always a lot of hype around any new technology and social media is no exception.  For serious business users of social media marketing and campaigns, the core values still apply.  Social Media gives us great new tools for creating genuine two-way relationships with our communities, but we still have to do the hard work of building and growing the relationships.


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Categories : Enterprise Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Social Media Marketing

Social Media Advertising – Part II

10 09 2010

Just after my recent blog (9/7/10) on this subject, I saw a very interesting article on Mashable that offers some interesting numbers and analysis around social media advertising trends.

Some of the key points of the article include:

  • eMarketer projects that social will account for 6.7% of the total online ad spend this year.
  • The 2010 spending forecast for advertising on social networks is projected at $1.68 billion in the US, up 30%
  • Total social media ad spending is expected to pass $2 billion next year.
  • The big winner in this space is Facebook, with revenues projected to pass $1 billion this year.

In addition to Facebook, the article goes on to describe Promoted Tweets on Twitter where a company can insert a brand-sponsored topic into the trending topics list.  This program is in the early stages and is well worth watching.

Why the Move to Social Media Advertising?

  • The average user is now spending more time on Facebook than on Google according to comScore.
  • Nielson says that the average person spends more than seven hours per month on Facebook.
  • It’s effective 1: Social media lets companies target their audience much with much greater exactness.  The result: context-relevant ads and messages that are useful to end-users.
  • It’s effective 2: Social media lets the community digest messages if and when the want them, rather than interrupting their TV, reading, or radio experience.
  • Location-awareness offers the prospect of making messages even more relevant, helpful, and entertaining.
  • But, maybe most important of all, social media offers the opportunity for companies to engage in a two-way conversation with their communities 24x7x356.

The bottom line is that social media is where people are spending their time.  Social media also offers an opportunity to really engage with customers rather than just “drive-by selling.”


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Categories : Business Models, Enterprise Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Social Media Data, Social Media Marketing

What Do You Wish You Had Learned in Marketing Class?

4 08 2010

I sent out a question to a combination of my contacts and other random people on LinkedIn.  My idea was to use the wisdom of crowds to help guide the subject matter I am going to teach in my intro MBA Marketing class coming up in a couple of weeks.

The question I sent out was this:

“I am teaching an intro course to MBA Marketing in August. Question: What do you wish you had learned in your marketing class but didn’t? Or, if you never took Marketing classes, what do you wish the Marketing people you worked with had known but didn’t?”

There were some great responses.  The overwhelming response was: My marketing classes were a great foundation but too theoretical.  Marketing classes need to be much more practical, hands-on and real-world.

Other responses received from more than one respondent (in order of number of responses):

  • MBA Marketing needs to cover both B2C and B2B marketing.  B2B is often overlooked.  You also need to cover motivational marketing – what makes these buyers purchase your product?
  • Stakeholder influence.  Nobody gets to just go and implement marketing plans.  The first “sell” that every marketer has to make is either to their own organization or to a client.
  • Measuring the effectiveness of marketing.  Was your marketing program successful or not?  How do you know?
  • How to use Social Media Marketing, Marketing 2.0, and Internet Advertising
  • Driving consensus between Marketing and Product Development on the definition of the product requirements.
  • Driving product requirements based on actual market and customer needs.  Not on the available cool technology.

Other very useful responses (in no particular order):

  • How to define your target customer.
  • How to define marketing tactics that fit your target customer and the budget of your organization
  • International marketing.  There is a big world there outside the USA.
  • When to use Social Media Marketing and when to use Traditional Marketing.
  • Integrated marketing. How to use multiple marketing programs together in an integrated fashion to achieve an overall marketing goal.
  • How to drive qualified leads to the Sales Funnel.  After all, that is the primary thing marketers are asked to do.
  • How to do cheap but effective market research.
  • How to evaluate the marketing mix in relation to a new product introduction.
  • More case studies.  In other words: Keep it real.
  • More entrepreneurial marketing.  A big trend today is away from big company marketing hires and more towards marketing startups and contracting. Prepare people for this world.
  • How to price your own marketing services.  (See point above)
  • How to adjust marketing strategy and tactics based on where a product is in its lifecycle.  For example: You don’t have the same marketing strategy for a new product intro as you do for a mature product that has steady or slowly declining revenue.

My sincere thanks to everybody who responded to this question!!  This is some great input from some people with a great deal of real-life experience.  There are real-world stories and experience behind every one of these responses.

This also proves the value of the Wisdom of Crowds.


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Categories : Enterprise Marketing, Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing Projected to Accelerate

30 07 2010

Shortly after publishing my blog yesterday, I came across more evidence of the growing importance of Social Media in Marketing in a Brian Solis blog (highly recommended reading).

Brian Solis Blog

The blog references the CMO Survey done by Duke University and the American Marketing Association.  Link for highlights presentation.

First, some overall trends from this survey of 4,336 top marketers at Fortune 1000 and Forbes 200 companies:

  • Overall marketing budgets are projected to rise by 5.9%
  • Internet marketing is projected to rise by 12%
  • Traditional advertising spending is negative.  Down 2.5%
  • Within one year social media will be 10% of marketing budgets.  It will be nearly 18% in five years.

This is in line with the trends I have seen from other sources, but puts specific numbers on the trends.  The survey shows how the projected growth in social media marketing has increased between survey periods

Last night, I was at a mixer for new MBA students at the University of San Francisco.  There were a lot of questions about where and how much hiring there will be for marketing people.  First, the overall trends are very positive.

  • In the next 6 months, new hires will be up 8.2% over last year.
  • Next year, they will be up 12.9%
  • In the next two years, they will be up 24.1%

The survey says that hiring companies will hire for experience more than for than for people from universities.  That means that doing real-world work is critical.  The top skills listed for marketing hires are strongly focused on Internet marketing, Growth, CRM and Brand Management.

Finally, a good number of firms said that they would be outsourcing marketing functions.  The survey suspects that a lot of this will be for Internet Marketing skills that they may not have in-house.  That means that there will also be a great deal of opportunity for jobs with smaller services companies that provide outsourced marketing functions to larger organizations.

The survey is being given again in August 2010.  I will be very interested to see if the current CMO optimism holds up in the changing economic conditions.


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Categories : Inbound Marketing, Marketing Plan, Social Media, Social Media Data, Social Media Marketing

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