I woke up to a little tweet from Tony, the CEO of Zappos, yesterday. The @missrouge refers to is Tara Hunt, who specializes in community marketing. Running 197 slides and introducing terms such as homo-feelgoodomicus, this presentation is amazing and a must view for anyone looking to build a successful business, be it online or off.
According to Tara the key to a successful business is helping homo-feedgoodomicus feel good. She goes on to outline seven reasons that happens is the key to success:
1. happy customers talk to more people about their positive experience;
2. unhappy customers talk to the MOST people about their negative experience;
3. happy customers are repeat customers;
4. happy customers will pay more for an awesome experience;
5. happy customers are loyal;
6. happy customers will drive your marketing for you;
7. happy employees are more productive, creative, and loyal.
Tara then lays out the pillars of happiness (autonomy, competence, relatedness, and self-esteem) and gives specific ways that you can increase each of these incorporating great case studies along the way (including Zappos of course).
The basic takeaway is that if you are aware of the principles of happiness when designing your product or service you can become an agent of happiness. And who wouldn't want that?
My summary does not do the presentation justice. While 197 slides may seem daunting, you can blow through them in 10 minutes. Putting them in action could last a lifetime.
I did not make this up. It is the first thesis of the cluetrain manifesto. Read it. Understand it. Deal with it.
And once you accept that, get on THE HUGHTRAIN.
So what's the big deal? I mean choo choo already. First, unlike positioning, these are rather new marketing concepts (though cluetrain is now nine years old). Second, like positioning in the second half of the 20th century, these train theories are forming the basis of marketing thought at the beginning of the 21st century.
And a big BTW. The statement that "markets are conversations" is quite different from "marketing is a conversation". What's the difference? Talking to people at a cocktail party about what kind of car they drive because you need a new only versus reading the BMW 1 ad on the inside cover of WIRED. What matters most to you? I submit the two way with people you know that drive BMWs. It's the same with your customers and potential customers.
Nobody wants to be sold. So stop selling and start conversing. Remember the two ears one mouth thing? Use that. To converse. In English. Not geek speak.
Conversations are going to happen regardless of if you are working the room with your Grey Goose Red Bull or sitting in the corner nursing your 1964 Bowmore.
You only have one choice. Go with the clear.
P A R T I C I P A T E.
Continuing my series of short articles on startup marketing this week I want to talk about positioning (yet another P). Positioning is a concept in marketing which was first popularized by Al
Ries and Jack Trout in "Positioning - The Battle
for Your Mind" back in 1981. The basic concept is that any brand/company/product is valued by the perception
it carries in a person's mind. It is something that big tech companies typically do a horrifically bad job of. But to give a few examples in my mind:
Amazon = world's largest online store
Apple = simple design
Blackberry = mobile email
Dell = made to order computers
Flickr = photo sharing
Microsoft = hard to use software
Oracle = databases
Positioning is a bit of an old school concept that still has great utility today in the construct of startup marketing. Like some more colorful words, positioning it can be used as both a noun and verb.
Positioning, the noun, is the market's perception of a company and its products. It is what your competitors, customers, investors, prospects, and vendors perceive about the offering. The key word here is perceive.
Positioning, the verb, is the act of selecting and emphasizing individual associations that can influence the overall perception. It is creating, or at least influencing, the noun version of the word. Positioning is a crucial step and a foundation of any startup marketing strategy. If you don't do it, your competition will, and in a way that does not put you and your company in the best light.
With that said, I have found that entrepreneurs hate to try and position their companies. Why you may ask. Because it forces a niche approach. A niche approach forces you to decide what you want to be when you grow up. Entrepreneurs typically don't like to address this because it reduces options. If you don't reduce options you become Yahoo!.
So, how does one go about the act of positioning. I have found that a combination of the concepts presented by Geoffrey Moore in Crossing the Chasm (page 161) and Chris Coleman in The Green Banana Papers (page 36) work best. While it takes a lot of research, strategic thought and time (it will take at least 90 days to distill this), simply fill in the blanks or modify to suit your needs.
For __________________
(target customer)
__________________
(company/product name
is a __________________
(category in which you compete)
that __________________.
(functional need filled)
Unlike __________________
(your primary competitor)
we __________________.
(why you are different).
And once you get that down you consistently repeat it. Consistently repeat it.
Here are a few examples from startups that I have been a part of in the past that I still can recite.
CipherTrust
CipherTrust provides email security solutions for enterprises do they can protect their messaging systems. Unlike the competition, Ciphertrust offers comprehensive protection designed from the ground up for demanding messaging environments.
MindSpring
For individual consumers who are frustrated with their online experience, MindSpring is a national Internet access service that offers easy to use software, a reliable network that enables customers to connect, and accessible, friendly customer service. Unlike America Online, we are not trying to be the biggest, we are trying to be the best.
One final important thought. You can't turn a Chevette into a Corvette via positioning. The act of positioning has to begin with where your are currently positioned in the market and has some bounds.
With that said, positioning is powerful. Take the time and thought to do it.
Twenty five years ago legendary marketing scholar Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School made the statement that "The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer" which at the time was pretty revolutionary at the time. As I discussed last week, to get a customer you have to solve a problem.
When it comes to startup technology marketing, from a more traditional marketing function perspective, I find that a lot of companies don't do it. They don't do it because they don't understand it. They don't understand it because some marketing type dressed in all black and drinking a latte starts spouting in marketing speak the need to "segment the paradigm in a way that leverages your core competencies into product attributes that effectively capture your brand essence so at the end of the day you can create a customer centric communication platform that will enable you to not only enter the target's evoked set but create acquisition programs with strong calls to action that have effective ROI and meet your KPI metrics. And by the way, this is going to cost about $15k per month for the next year."
By the time Mr. Marketing is finished the geeks are looking at each other as befuddled as they should be, trying to get the guy out the door, and left with the impression that marketing is difficult and expensive. Well let me tell you it does not have to be.
Marketing is simple. It is two things. And number one is a lot more important than number two.
- Getting customers
- Building awareness of your company and product
In the early stages of a company you can filter any marketing proposed activity through these two lenses. If you do not understand how some marketing program can help your company to achieve one of these two things don't do it.
Marketing is simple. Just keep away from all those types dressed in all black. The good marketing types wear blue jeans.
One of the suggestions that the Skribit application in my sidebar that has gotten quite a few votes is "Startup Marketing". So giving my readers what they want I am going to start a series of posts on startup marketing that is based on a presentation that I gave at BarCamp Atlanta called Geek Marketing 101. The presentation has 10 slides, so there will be 10 articles. The first slide is entitled marketing is not a department.
For those of you with no formal marketing training it may be helpful to introduce a fundamental concept. The concept of the marketing mix. The marketing mix consists of the 4 P's which are product, price, place, and promotion. (Yes, this is a simplistic view of marketing. A Pillsbury VP and I came up with over 70 during an interview one day. It was a test. I passed.)
Graphically the marketing mix looks something like this:
There are two things that you need to glean about the marketing mix concept to understand startup technology marketing.
The first is marketing starts with the product concept. It continues with product development until a whole product is created. A whole product that solves a customer need in a way that makes them want to tell their friends about it. And if you have a whole product, a product that has everything that is needed for the customer to buy, you are going to be touching every "function" in the organization. I don't see anyway around this. Taking this course of thought to its logical conclusion you arrive at the realization that every employee is involved in marketing. And in this day and age they are.
Secondly, promotion, which most people think about when they say marketing, is not some isolated activity that can be bolted on at the end. It interacts with all the other elements of the marketing mix and if you try to address it as an afterthought after the product has been created you are doomed to failure. Doomed.
To do successful startup marketing every employee needs to make decisions from the beginning with the potential customer in mind. And not in the back of the mind. In the front.
Marketing is not a department.
This (with my modifications) just showed up in my mailbox.
It was good meeting with you at the SoCon08 Conference. XXX is a sales performance agency – focusing on sales recruiting and sales training for businesses. We are sending you separately our latest newsletter, “Driving Profit,” which we hope you will find beneficial. We would like to speak with you if you feel your company would like to increase its sales productivity.
P.S. Please visit our website at www.clueless.com
This crap went to about 260 people. Taking a social media nonconference attendee list and turning into a spam mailing shows an unbelievable disregard for not only everything that SoCon represented but the norms of Internet etiquette.
Don't do this. Never ever.
I got a request to write up a article on SoCon via the Skribit app in my sidebar. It was quickly voted up so you folks must want to know what went on.
Truth be told, I did not spend a lot of time at SoCon. I went to the networking dinner on Friday night and made it a point to network. Met some folks I did not meet before. Saw a lot of old friends. Then left at about 9:30 to go to my first ever tweetup that Tessa put together at Octane. I used to hang out at Octane as an office when I was working on a startup awhile back. Never had been there at night. Somewhat bizarre bar scene with everyone in the place playing with their mobile device be it a laptop, MID, or smartphone. I found the real life conversation somewhat like twitter itself. Interesting, with spurts of chatter and spurts of silence. Hung for about two hours drinking a beer that had been aged in bourbon casks. Tasty!
I only was able to make it to the opening general session on Saturday morning this year. Unlike last year, I actually said something. Something about how one of the big changes that I have seen in the last year is traditional media's rush to embrace the social aspects of the web and predicting what the next big thing is extremely hard to do, and that is part of the wonder of the Internet. The joy of discovery and the unknown.
Afterward I found out there was a live blogging back channel going with all the kewl kids that I wish I could have been a part of. I do think that as Simon would say, things got a little pitchy at times. Amani Channel has a nice video that captures the essence of the event. Checking out these links will tell more of the story than I am capturing.
The SoCon gang once again pulled off a great unconference and I will be there in 09. Once again I ripped the picture on this post from Josh.
Yesterday Chris Brogan announced that he was going to dedicate his next 100 posts to helping people grow the value of their social media and social networking efforts. Chris is a social media rockstar. If you have not been following him and want to learn how to better use social media and social networks to build relationships I encourage you to check out this series.
You will find it time well spent.
Yesterday Facebook made their big announcement about their advertising platform. Facebook is selling ads that display people's profile photos next to commercial messages that are shown to their friends about items they purchased, voiced an opinion about, or perhaps a FB app that is itself an advertising play.
According to The New York Times Facebook is going to message me when my friends opt-in to sharing what they are doing:
"For example, going forward, a Facebook user who rents a movie on Blockbuster.com
will be asked if he would like to have his movie choice broadcast out
to all his friends on Facebook. And those friends would have no choice
but to receive that movie message, along with an ad from Blockbuster."
Mark Zuckerberg said in the announcement that “nothing influences a person more than a recommendation from a trusted friend." Facebook is stepping over the line of permission I have given them while hiding behind the wall (pun intended) that they are not initiating the action, my friends are.
And if you start sending boatloads of advertising related messages around Facebook you will find yourself less trusted with at least one fewer friend.
Stammy thinks Facebook apps killed Facebook. Maybe. I think social advertising is a much more dangerous move for the company.
Number one rule of technology marketing is that word of mouth is the number one source of new customers. Now do you generate word of mouth? By turning an organization on its head and empowering those closest to the customer do do the right thing.
Why am I writing this post? Because Ben McConnell over at the Church of the Customer Blog has a great article on the subject which is partially quoted below.
"...real PR, is generated at the root levels.
The root levels are the clerks, the sales people, the support staff,
the receptionist, the call center people, the on-site technicians and
consultants, or the police officers, the clerks at the government
offices, or the nurses who take your temperature and blood at the
hospital. It's their work that generates real PR.
The best PR comes from the smallest of actions by the root-level
people. They smile when they first meet you. They call you by your
name. They compliment competitors. They don't blame you for their
system's misgivings. When forced to make a decision, they always,
always, always do the right thing, even if it's not in the economic or
political interests of their employer. They break the rules when it's
obvious they must.
That's real PR. It's the total sum of stories people tell about you."
You have to have mechanisms in place to drive the behavior in your employees that you want your customers to see. Mostly these are things that make employees love their jobs. It comes through in their customer interactions.
So you want happy customers talking about you in a positive manner? Create happy employees.
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