The Science of Marketing

This one’s for all you high-tech companies out there.  I’m talking about companies with products that have complex value propositions, long sales cycles, and multiple buyers.  For these types of companies, white papers are a key arrow in the marketing quiver.

For most companies, white papers are developed in one of three ways:

1. A member of the product team has an idea, writes a paper, and marketing rewrites it so it’s readable
2. A member of the marketing team has an idea, writes a paper, and the product team rewrites it so it’s accurate
3. Someone has an idea, but they have no time to write, so they hire someone to write it for them – then rewrite it just because

But there’s a new option out there, and recently I’ve seen it produce some highly readable, highly accurate white papers.  Find an independent expert, someone who knows your market and your company better than anyone else, and make them your white paper editor-in-chief.  Whether it’s a consultant, an analyst or even a journalist with some spare time, an educated, external viewpoint can be a huge asset in developing highly relevant works.

But don’t simply assign your expert a topic and dictate an outline for them to follow.  Empower them to guide the topic and direction of the paper, and let them do what they do in assembling a flow, gathering the details and writing the paper.  From what I’ve seen the results can be extremely compelling- the kind of paper your audience will want to read.  And that’s a nice change for you and the reader.

Recently, I have been engaged in an ongoing discussion with a colleague (a financial guy, no less) about the use of serif versus sans serif fonts.  I just expected it to drag on in a Seinfeld-esque could-Mighty-Mouse-take-Superman?** standoff.  In fact, I was firmly in the sans serif camp – always used Arial, always would – and didn’t take much stock in what the money man had to say.  He claimed to have a book that argued why serif fonts were better but never produced it.

Our Billy Madison argument went something like this.

Me: Sans serif fonts are cleaner and have more aesthetic appeal.

Him: Serif fonts are easier on the eyes.

Long on opinion and short on data.

Finally, last Friday, I decided to consult The Google.  I found that we are both right.  The common wisdom is that serif fonts are more readable (i.e., easier on the eyes) except on computer screens where sans serif fonts are more legible (due to varying screen resolutions).  This is why the Wall Street Journal is publised in a serif font while WSJ.com is in sans serif.

Anyone have another preference or opinion?

**Ironically, the writer who created Superman was named "Jerry Siegel" – look it up.

Yesterday, I was writing a press release for a client and came across an interesting dilemma.  I had these facts that I knew were important, but they just didn’t lend themselves to paragraph form.  I toyed with the idea of adding a bunch of words and turning them into a paragraph, but I eventually left the bullets as they were and moved on.  As I kept writing, I glanced up at the bullets every now and then, wondering if I should go back and rewrite them as a paragraph.  But in the end, I came to th following rationale for including bullets in a news release.

People are busy these days.  Very busy.  And journalists, the primary targets for a news release, are busiers than most.  They receive hundreds of news releases a day, and have to flter through them to find, research and write a few good stories before their deadline.  So why would I bury the important stuff under a pile of fluff?  I’d rather make it as easy as possible for them to find the information they need to write a story about my client.

Of course, bullets in writing are nothing new; they’re not even new in a press release.  But yesterday’s experience is a good reminder that we need to adapt our tactics to how people are consuming information these days.  We’ve been good at writing web content with bullets and bold face to immediately get people to the important information.  Maybe it’s time to look at everything we write and be sure our time starved audiences can easily find what they’re looking for.

In January, we wrote a post, "Getting The Brand Together: Consistency", which discussed brand promises – that what you say better be what you do.   Well, to do this you need to sit down and think hard about what it is you do and how to reflect that in your brand.  Consumer product companies have institutionalized this process.  High tech B2B companies to a less extent and high tech B2B start-ups not so much.

In the beginning, the usual process with a high tech start-up is: start a company, get a creative designer to design a logo, pick some colors and fonts.  Sometime later, messaging is developed.  So, the look and feel (visual brand) and the language (verbal brand) of the company are disjoint and possibly out of sync.  With so many companies vying for your audience’s attention these days, consistency is critical – so it is critical that the visual and verbal brand act as one.

There are three main concepts to think about when architecting an integrated brand.

1. The Word - Think about what your company does.  What word does it bring to mind?  Now, how can you get your brand to look like this word?
2. The Core Values – Think about how your company does what it does.  What values does it bring to the market.  Now, how can you add flavor to your brand that reflects these core values?
3. The Market – Think about your competitors, partners and customers.  What do their brands look and sound like?  Now, how can your brand stand out while fitting in?

By approaching your brand development in this structured way, you are more likely to have a tighter bond between what you say and what you look like.

Here’s a follow-up to a post I wrote in late August.  You remember – the one about marketing communications activities that happen in sequential stages to be most effective.  Since then, I’ve been talking to peers and keeping an eye on the blogosphere to get a feel for how others feel about a phased approach to marketing communications.  The result: it seems that the days of trying to do too much with a single tool or program are quickly coming to an end. 

Most marketers are no longer swinging for the fences with marketing communications – they are thinking through their marketing goals and mapping out phased communications strategies that get them there over time.  They are walking before they run, dating before they marry, and establishing a dialogue  before they sell.  Here are a few examples of progressive thinking in the area of marketing phases:

Marketing Experiments Blog: Writing Headlines that Don’t Sell — But Get Much Higher Conversions

Startup Hustle: Acquiring, Engaging, Retaining and Monetizing Your Customers

Marketing Interactions: B2B Websites Need to Focus on the Long Term

Drew’s Marketing Minute: Are You Expecting too Much From your Marketing?

I’m a big believer in marketing programs that don’t sell or try to do too much, but instead happen in phases and focus on long-term success.  I’m glad to see that others agree.  What do you think?

There are two granite compasses in my backyard.  One is aligned with true north; the other is aligned with magnetic north: 15° west of true north.  This summer someone asked me "why? who cares?"  Well, someone using a map to hike from here to there would care about the magnetic north compass and someone drawing a map would care about the true north compass.  Same thing, positioned two different ways for two different audiences.  This concept holds true for B2B marketing: the same companies, products and services must be positioned differently for different audiences.  This is especially true in the high tech B2B world where there are multiple audiences with diverse issues in the middle of the buying cycle.

Positioning and differentiation (more on this next week) are the two foundations on which messaging is built.  But, many high tech B2B companies often rush to develop messaging without mapping out positioning and, as a result, may ignore key audiences.  To avoid this, start positioning by identifying the key audiences involved in the buying decision.  In the high tech B2B, these audiences can be broken down into four broad categories:

• Technology evaluation – what does this do better than what we have?
• Operations management – how will it fit into my current environment?
• Business decision – will this help me make or save money?
• Risk assessment – will this company be around in a year?

Positioning should be thought of in terms of these audiences.  Remember many of these audiences have the same concerns, although their level of interest may vary for each issue.

The best way to pull the positioning together and document it is to map out a  positioning matrix as below.

This matrix gives a quick and easy read of three positioning statements, their supporting benefits and enabling product or service features correlated with the level of interest for each audience (H = High Interest, M = Medium Interest, L = Low Interest).  Beyond developing messaging, the matrix can be used by a company’s entire ecosystem for a basis of relevant and consistent outbound communications, whether it’s a piece of collateral or a personal conversation.

Could a little thought and a positioning matrix help your communications efforts?

The marketing consulting firm I work for sends out an e-newsletter, Foundations, every month or so to a list of prospects, customers, partners – the usual. A couple of months ago we started a lead feature called "The 1-Second Survey". The idea is to gather market information quickly and painlessly – we ask one question and give four or five possible answers, one of which the reader clicks on (see below). That’s it – done in (less than) one second. No more taking ten or twenty minutes of someone’s valuable time.

We’ve gotten great response, but we also got something that we didn’t expect. Several people have asked us: how do we do it? what tools do we use? Well, it’s really pretty simple and I’ll let everyone in on the "secret".

Start With an E-Mail Marketing Service

We use MailChimp for all our e-mail campaigns. (We’ve tried a few different services and like MC’s ease-of-use and campaign reporting.) Like most e-mail marketing services, MC allows you to embed links and track click-throughs.

Create Landing Pages

Each of the links above goes to a different landing page on our web site. These pages say "thanks for participating" and have links to other pages for more information.

Count the Clicks

MC reports on a wide range of statistics for each campaign (in this case a newsletter). One of these statistics is the number of click-throughs for each link embedded in the e-newsletter. Just tally up the clicks for each link and you have your survey results.

So, that’s the secret of the 1-second survey. It’s just that easy.

Have fun.

Every now and then, it’s fun to take a walk down memory lane.  So today, I logged into Google Analytics and punched up the content page to find out what our ten most popular posts are.  I was surprised at how diverse the list is, ranging from the very tactical to the very strategic, and covering just about every topic we’ve ever written about.  I’m glad to see that our readers enjoy variety, so we’ll continue to mix things up.  If there’s anything you’d like us to write about, please comment below or send us an e-mail – we’d love to hear from you.

With that, Our Ten Most Popular Posts: 

1. Internal Communications: Own It
2. The Blogosphere: You Don’t Have to Blog to Belong
3. Mission Statement: Make it Possible
4. Slogans: Say What You Do
5. Market Segmentation: How to Prioritize Targets
6. High Tech Blogging: Why?
7. Lead Generation: The Bell Curve
8. Communications Part II: To the Right People
9. Age of Conversation 2: The Deadline
10. The SEO Triple Play: Message, Mechanics, Maintenance

A few recent posts have touched on the things people tell investors to get their attention, and ultimately their money. Guy Kawasaki wrote a nifty list of pickup lines some entrepreneurs are using to open the conversation with investors, while Ben Yoskovitz refreshed his quick tips for pitching angel investors and Venture Capitalists. Both hone in on the need to abandon cute corporate clichés and focus on packaging and delivering a compelling story – preferably a story about making the investor a killing. But let’s not forget that most investors are not islands. They work in teams to evaluate deals and decide which ones to fund, so just as important as the story you tell is the investor’s ability to pass it along to other stakeholders in the fold. Here are a few tips to help build a story that is easily passed along:

• Start with a simple message – the one thing you want the audience to take away. Write that message down in big, bold letters and keep it visible while you’re building your pitch. Every slide or page you develop should support that simple message.
• Create the cheat sheet - a one-pager that sums up the opportunity. This summary should provide a high level overview of why your company is worth a second look, and live in PDF format so investors can email it around quickly to members of their supporting cast.
• Use consistent language – a lexicon of terms that is unique to your company. When investors use your words to talk to each other about your company, they are reinforcing your message. Make it easy for them by picking five terms you want to own and infusing them in your pitch and supporting materials.
• Get them talking – starting a conversation you want them to continue after you leave. When you’re standing in front of multiple stakeholders, ask questions, play back the answers you get, and solicit comments from others. By moderating the conversation in the room, you establish a dialog between people who might otherwise return to their offices and forget about you.

Incidentally, pitching VCs is not unlike pitching a prospective customer or partner in the business to business world. There are often multiple stakeholders involved, all of whom need to be able to pass your story along to get others on board and create consensus. By making your story easy to pass along, you increase your chances of success.

A recent study by web usability guru, Jakob Nielsen, shows that people are becoming much less patient when they go on line.

Shocker!

Everyone knows that people are getting more and more impatient in all aspects of life – IRL and well as URL. (Just drive around Boston for five minutes and you will see impatience in action.) So, as you’re picking yourself off the floor after hearing this revelation, let me say that the study does have some interesting data that could impact how you architect your web site.

First a bit of good news. The study says that in the last ten years, web success rates (which measure whether someone achieves what they set out to achieve) have climbed from 60% to 75%. Nielsen cites people’s comfort level with interactivity and better web designs – so we’re on the right path.

Now, here’s where you may need to take action.

• In 2004, 40% of web users went to a home page and then drilled down (the other 60% went right to where they wanted to go).
• In 2008, those numbers are 25% and 75%.

"Basically, search engines rule the web," says Nielsen.

I think there is one big web design/marketing implication of this study.

Every page on your web site has to be designed as a landing page – either informational or transactional. Don’t expect users to follow a logical chain of links to get to where you want them to go.

Anyone else have any opinions of the implications of Nielsen’s study?

You can read a BBC article about the Nielsen study here.