Real people and social media interview: Kel Kelly
In this interview, I talk with Kel Kelly, Founder and CEO of Kel & Partners. As you will see Kel is enthusiastic about Web 2.0. This is no surprise as it is a cornerstone of her practice. She explains how they are now seeing interest in social media spreading beyond a narrow band of Web 2.0 start-ups and into mainstream corporate America. FM Days: What are the marketing trends affecting your business in 2008? Kel Kelly: Web 2.0 baby! The Web 2.0 KoolAid is finally getting served and consumed by the big guys. Heading into 2008, the bulk of our clients were Web 2.0-based companies. This year along with a continued strong Web 2.0 client base, we have seen a tremendous tsunami of business coming in from big brand companies looking to Kel & Partners to help them build and blend Web 2.0 initiatives into their overall marketing strategies. FMD: How are your clients measuring success with social media? KK: Our clients who are social media-based measure it based on things like # of members, stickiness, etc. Other clients using it measure it against the objective we established prior to defining and executing the strategy. In some cases it’s based on connecting with clients, in other cases it’s based on expanding their brand association, and believe it or not in some cases it’s directly tied to a goal in the CMOs bonus plan. FMD: What do you see as the biggest hype at the moment: KK: “Web 2.0 is dead and it was just hype.” Note to self: remember to tell the 100 million Facebook members, Wikipedia, Slide and the rest of the gang! Seriously. The web as a platform, user-generated content, aggregating the wisdom of crowds, service above a single device and all the other attributes that define Web 2.0 are alive and well. They aren’t going away. What makes me laugh is that most people who are talking about Web 3.0 and Web 4.0 don’t have a Facebook profile, don’t know what Twitter is, and wouldn’t know a blog if they happened to be reading one by accident. FMD: What do you see as the next big thing in online marketing: KK: Since nobody ever could have predicted things like Facebook and all its glory, I never even attempt to answer these types of questions. I feel it would be arrogant for me to even begin to guess. All I can tell you is that if it is Web 2.0-based, I hope to be a part of it. We’re having a blast and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters. FMD: Kel, thank you...
54 Pages of Nothing
A number of years ago I started a new job as the CMO of a fast-growing software company. As I was rummaging through my new desk and the charred remains of my predecessor, I discover something something shocking that explained his untimely demise – his 54 page marketing plan. I’ve never been one to create those elegant, buzzword laden plans that delight the masses. To me, plans are always a work in progress. This has often created friction between my more control-oriented bosses and me but they would eventually give up after I found a way to squeeze 30% more productivity our of marketing budget. Upon further reflection, this comes back to the agile vs. waterfall marketer question I raised a month ago. How can you honestly create a marketing plan for 12 or 24 months when things change so quickly? Also, according Spencer Stuart the average CMO lasts only 22.9 months. With that in mind, here is my ideal agile marketing plan. Is a living document less than 2 page long (ideally less than one) Looks no more than a six month into the future (one to three months if you can get away with it) Clearly articulates target markets and customers States specific, measurable goals (none of that generic “build a brand” stuff without measurable goals) Allocates a majority of the budget to proven programs (if you know them) Invests some resources to testing new, speculative media Is based on learnings from prior experiences (ie busted programs) In recent years I’ve seen more progressive types avoiding the document altogether and using a Mindmap. In the end, the plan is a helpful guide but results matter more. What you deliver will speak louder than a well written document about your cheerful parade of activities, so keep your eyes on what you...
Real people and social media: PJA Advertising
With all the hype surrounding social media these days, I decided I would find some “real people” using Web 2.0 to improve the way they do business. Over the next few weeks, I will be interviewing a series of marketers and agency people to better understand what it all means to “the rest of us”. In my first installment, I interviewed Mike O’Toole, Partner and SVP of Strategy at PJA Advertising + Marketing in Cambridge Massachusetts. Tangyslice: What marketing trends are affecting your business in 2008? Mike O’Toole: A renewed focus on demand generation, based on the shaky economy and declining marketing budgets. An accelerated emphasis on analytics and accountability. Online channels moving to the center of marketing spends. TS: How are people measuring success with social media? MO: We have a couple of clients who have hired firms (specifically, Nielsen Buzz Metrics and Cymphony, now part of TNS Media Intelligence) who specialize in monitoring and analyzing the social media conversation relevant to their brand and products. These firms combine software and professional services to measure volume and (more interestingly) tonality of blogs, bulletin boards, consumer reviews, etc. We encourage investment in these tools because it gives our clients a finger on the pulse of market opinion, and also gives them an additional yardstick for measuring the success of marketing campaigns (i.e. does a campaign help increase the positive buzz among key audience segments?). TS: What do you think is over-hyped at the moment? MO: Social media-as-marketing-strategy is over-hyped. This will sound obvious, but social media is by definition user-generated and user-controlled. Corporate marketing can’t exert control, and this makes a lot of marketers nervous. We counsel our clients to be careful, not to mention courageous. The best strategy is to participate in relevant communities and conversation, and to create interesting content that might be share-worthy. And to have appropriate expectations. You will be bashed at times, and measuring the return is tricky at best. It is critical to participate, though. PJA has done three waves of research with ITToolbox (an online community of more than a million technology professionals), and we have found that social media content and communities are top influences on purchase decisions. And when companies participate in the right way, we have seen their efforts make a real difference in brand and product perceptions. TS: What do you see as the next big thing online marketing? MO: Creating moderated, online communities of customers, prospects, and other key influencers. Web 2.0 tools and technologies have made it much easier for companies to tap into virtual audience segments to get feedback about products, customer satisfaction, and brand...
Art, Science and the Expert Opinion
Everyday I’m reminded that Marketing is both art and science. It is the art part that always challenges me. There is no formula to derive that magical viral marketing video or blockbuster TV ad. It usually requires someone with a wildly creative mind and a track record for delivering results. Beyond that I have found limited ways to vet these expert marketing advisors who bring these things to life. In other fields like finance or law people spend years getting special professional qualifications (ie a CPA or Bar Certification). As a marketer, however, virtually anyone can become an “ad man”, social media guru or brand expert (see @amandachapel). To mitigate this risk, I rely on portfolio, references and intuition when selecting an expert marketing advisor. try to understand the person and his or her frameworks. – How will he gather data? – How well does she listen? – How will he make real-time adjustments to the facts on the ground? – How well can she explain how she will derive this “expert opinion”? In many cases I know I will end up with an expensive opinion but it should be based on a combination of local knowledge and acquired expertise. It’s not magic and you should steer clear of anyone who can’t clearly articulate his or her process because they probably don’t have one. Caveat emptor and stay...
Everyday virality: Five ways to make your marketing more sharable
What once was a fun and hip way to promote your product or service has now become a common rationalization for the next magical project pitched by your favorite agency. Just take a minute and Google “viral marketing”. You’ll find an endless stream of creative types touting some viral video, screensaver or other form of microdrivel. If you dig a little deeper, however, you discover some pretty interesting content about what it takes to make something “viral”. I started this post with the goal of creating another one of those “<insert prime number here> ways to make your marketing more viral” rants. I’ll get to that in a minute but before I do let’s demystify all that is viral. Viral spread is more challenging if your offering isn’t inherently sharable. Virality isn’t a silver bullet if your other marketing programs aren’t working. Some pretty smart people have recently challenged the view that all it takes is a couple of “big sneezers” to to create an online “epidemic”. Viral is not a business model (apologies to the 50+ social bookmarking sites who will soon be sucking on fumes). BurgerKing’s subservient chicken really isn’t a chicken. So what is viral? Well, in many ways it is very similar to some old school things like customer referral and customer advocacy programs. You know, give your best and/or most vocal customers easy ways to “tell a friend” and maybe they get a little something back for their troubles. Like many web 2.0 ideas, you just take an tried and true concept like customer referrals and soak it in a sharable application-based infusion to get $25M+ of VC pixie dust (See Widgetbox). Unfortunately, many of us live in World 1.0 and have CEOs and boards that measure performance based archaic things like revenue and profits. So for the rest of us, here are some simple ways you can make your online marketing more sharable (you can still use the word viral if you want to impress your boss or poker buddies). In the long run it can be cheaper to get your happy customers to do your marketing for you. This doesn’t mean you can cut all your old school “push” marketing programs, but viral programs can make a big difference. So here is my list of five things you can do to make your marketing more viral: 1. Get your users to consciously share your brand – This means adding “email a friend” and other sharable links on every page. 2. Get your users to unconsciously share your brand – Think Hotmail. They built a huge business by adding a simple footer to...
