Find me on Twitter

You’ll notice the content in this blog is a bit…well…aged?  Yes, guilty as charged. That’s because Twitter is the main place to hear me rant and rave now about all things marketing, education and healthcare. Pop on over and engage with me there @ChargeAheadMktg anytime.

Privacy Mistakes, Part 1

Mistakes are bound to happen, no matter what. In a fast-paced marketing team, details do get missed and things happen that, while ultimately preventable, are inevitable.

Certainly, how you recover and manage damaged relationships is critical in any situation. Sure, there are measured actions to take for crisis control on serious issues. Yet it doesn’t always have to be an enterprise-level problem in order to damage customer relationships, and no matter if the issue is big or small, when measures are taken to resolve the issue it can lead to backlash if not positioned or implemented correctly.

One of the most sensitive issues is the security of data. For purposes of this blog post, let’s say it’s marketing data. Specifically, let’s say it’s your email database. Your customer email addresses are valuable — priceless, even. And surely, your customers would rank the privacy of their data as a pretty high priority. What do you do when, say, one of your sales reps sends out an email to your entire customer list, yet instead of blind copying everyone he makes the email addresses visible to all? That’s what happened to me recently — although, thankfully, the sender wasn’t from my company, my email address was in his list for all to view. Here’s the message I got later in the day:

I would like to sincerely apologize to everyone blind copied here for accidentally delivering a mass email earlier today with your email address visible.

Needless to say, I am deeply embarrassed my error.

If there is something I can do to rectify any inconvenience that my hastiness may have caused, please do not hesitate to let me know.”

Is that sufficient enough a reply for you?

Ponder that question and let me know your thoughts, and I’ll answer the question myself in my next post.

The New Four P’s of Marketing — Part 3

So, we’ve looked at Proof and Presence and why they’re the lead tandem in the New Four P’s of Marketing.

Now let’s look at what you need once you have Proof and Presence: some Persuasion.

• Persuasion — What good is Presence if you don’t use it wisely? If you don’t use it to demonstrate your Proof to potential customers? That’s what Persuasion involves: using your Presence effectively to deliver your Proof and persuade customers to, well, become your customers.
  How do you persuade? Well, I’m not suggesting you do anything that’s not genuine, as the word persuasion is sometimes viewed. What I mean is you need to develop market knowledge and a customer-first mentality, and leverage it to be an expert and give customers a reason to trust and do business with you.
  What kind of knowledge? Data and statistics about your market and about your customers. Unique experience or perspective. Customer needs and how to address them. Hell, even just having an opinion is market knowledge and worth something in terms of mental capital with customers. Even a forum or community on your site can be knowledge, even if it doesn’t come from you — if you bring customers together to discuss things and share thoughts, you’re the driving force behind their connection. You’re an expert.
  How do you leverage it? A variety of ways. Start a blog, and use it to craft an authoritative perspective. That’s Persuasion at its best, when your organization’s leaders — and even its front line people — share their expertise with customers via social media. That’s real enagagement. You can start an enewsletter, develop white papers, open Twitter accouunts, build a unique content area of your website. It may seem like irrelevant effort if it’s work that doesn’t focus on your products or company. But it’s not. You have to make a case for customers to trust you. You have to persuade them why you’re relevant, why you’re the best choice. Showing them Proof and having a Presence isn’t enough — you must deliver content and perspective that makes the case.
  Aggregating and sharing this knowledge is the Persuasion that helps you keep customers that your Presence found for you.

Next post discusses the final new P: Price.

The New Four P’s of Marketing — Part 1

In a way, it’s not even appropriate to say “Things change fast” any more. It’s like saying “The sky is blue” or “AT&T sucks” or something else equally obvious.

Change is such an engrained part of the marketing landscape now, sometimes things change and you don’t even notice. Hell, you even start doing things the new way without even missing a beat or sometimes acknowledging the change. Stakes are so high and time is so precious. You evolve in real time and stop at some point later to reflect and evaluate what you did and how it performed.

The Four P’s are one of marketing’s hallmark principles. For decades, marketers were raised on Product, Price, Place and Promotion as the backbone strategic drivers behind what we do. And since so much of marketing was driven by companies and not customers, there was never a need to evolve. The Four P’s have driven our education, our strategy and our tactics for years.

Enter the rise of social media and the connected customer.

Now, even the Four P’s of marketing — the pillars of our discipline — have changed. Companies, marketers and our co-owned strategies have to find and keep customers using a new set of driving principles. It’s time to relearn what we do, whether you like it or not. We have to embrace a new Four P’s of Marketing: Proof, Presence, Persuasion and Price.

We’ll look at each one in-depth in a four-part series of posts.

• Proof — It’s no longer good enough to just produce a product, put a price on it and put it out there. That’s recipe for failure.  In an era of ultra-competition, you have to prove that your product or solution is the right one. That you’re reliable and ethical. That you provide a unique value or experience. That you’re consistent. You may even have to prove many things to many people depending on your customers’ values. For example, that you’re service-oriented or socially conscious or financially sound (especially now). You have to prove that your product is right too — that it’s meant to solve a customer’s problem or need, that it’s quality, that it’s worth their time.
  Hell, even when the customer believes your product is right, even if they believe what you stand for, you have to prove that you offer the best place to buy it — several other options are always a nanosecond away online. How many mashup sites are there that compare product prices for people?  Several dozen, maybe.  So you have to prove your retail or online experience is all the things discussed above also.
  Plus. how you prove it matters. Do you engage customers where they live and communicate, or do you implore them to come to you? Do you blare monologue or encourage dialogue? Are you reactive or interactive? You can’t just say something and call it Proof — you have to engage customers in conversations and meaningful interactions, and let them decide and label it.  That seal of approval — the customer-driven one, the viral one –is worth more than any other.
  Experience matters too. If you have a great product yet a lousy purchase process, you lose. A great event with a lousy registration process, you lose. A great retail store with average service or vanilla employee passion, no way.  A slick-looking website with poor functionality, you lose. Excellence matters, from first contact through shopping cart checkout, upsell messaging to customer service, website personalization to employee friendliness.  It all has to be right.  Otherwise the only thing you’re proving is that you know how to get it wrong, you know how to do it the old way.
  Hence, Proof now leads off the Four P’s of Marketing.

Stay tuned for a look at the next P soon: Presence.

A Post to Remember the Fallen of 9/11

You typically read about all kinds of marketing in this blog.

Not on 9/11, not this year.

I signed up for a great cause, Project 2,996. It rightfully seeks to shine the light on the victims of 9/11, instead of the heartless radical cowards who caused it.

As part of Project 2,996, the person I am writing a tribute to is Luis Eduardo Torres. An immigrant from Mexico, Luis started with nothing and worked his way up to being a senior broker at Cantor Fitzgerald, a job he ironically started on September 10, 2001. He was a bikerider, hiker and skydiver. This was a man who paid his dues, worked hard, and had accomplished alot. There are a few more details on Luis on his page at Legacy.com, and several people have left beautiful comments in the guestbook.

Take a good, long look in the mirror today. Enjoy the day, breathe the fresh air. Tell your family you love them. Find something you’re passionate about and charge ahead after it.

Because you never know what will happen tomorrow.

Charge Ahead Blog Top 10 Posts

I launched the Charge Ahead blog a year ago, and have enjoyed sharing many a random thought about marketing. Many semi-organized ones too. So much has changed in the field of marketing, even in just a year.

To celebrate my blog’s one year birthday, I took a good, long look and gathered a list of my top 10 posts over the last year.

• Steps to Improve Your Social Network
• A Letter to Marketing Professors
• Marketing Has a Role in the Future of Content
• Brand Y-O-U
• The Demands of Social Media
• Customer Utopia (I’ll mention my love for JetBlue whenever possible)
• Where’s You Value Proposition?
• A Friendly Reminder
• Customer Service Impacts Marketing (I’ll mention my disdain for AT&T whenever possible)
• How NOT to Treat Your Customers, Courtesy of Excite (had to throw this one in…I still hate Excite over this)

I thank you for your readership, and am ready to charge ahead with continued posts over the next year for you.

The Future of Content, Part 2

In a recent post, I discussed how marketers have a role in the future of content. Sitting here on yet another JetBlue flight, I came across two articles that highlight this position even further.

I’m reading an issue of Medical Marketing & Media — it’s actually a recent issue for a change, typically I’m catching up on magazines two or three months later. The first article touches on the launch of FacetoFace Health, an online community that lets patients find other patients based on similar conditions or medications. Many times, this is exactly the kind of content people want — not second-hand knowledge pieced together through interviews and research. Interviews that people can now do first-hand via Facebook, Twitter and other social networking communities. And research, mind you, that people can do themselves online via robust tools like Wikipedia. The FacetoFace site, like many social media sites, provides first-hand interaction with people based on experience, interests, likeness or non-likeness, or anything else. Your agenda…not someone else’s. It’s a real-time, ever-changing window into a give-and-take world of content. If you’re a marketer, talk to your customers, find out what they need to know or who they want to know, and build a community that delivers it. Welcome to the future of content.

The other article is written by a PhD and entitled “Healthcare journalism needs a recovery plan.” My impression (no evidence whether it’s accurate since I’m on a plane and can’t research it) is that this person isn’t an active participant in social media, and thereby not destined to be an active part of the future of content. A few pearls of wisdom from the article center on a new survey of healthcare journalists. 65% say the quality of health coverage is fair or poor, 48% think health journalism is heading in the wrong direction, 43% say training opportunities have declined. Really? The training opportunities have declined? When whole new communities like FacetoFace spring up overnight? Are they thinking about social media as an opportunity to get “trained” every day on meeting customer wants? Obviously not.

I can see why they feel journalism is headed in the wrong direction — because customers are now in control of content and where they get it. As I said in my earlier post, they want different types of content from different types of content providers. Time and again it sounds like journalists don’t see that journalism, in it’s traditional form, isn’t as tethered to the future of content as it once was. But the opportunity is there to them to take a good, long look and evolve and be part of it, just like it does for marketers.

Because comments like this one in the article sure aren’t the way to charge ahead into the future of content:

I’m going to hope that we’ll see demand for health and science reporting increase as we continue to shake off some of the anti-intellectualism that has bogged us down.

HUH? I guess I’m not an intellectual, because unlike those who think journalism is just going to bounce back, I’m with all the other marketers who are helping building solutions to meet customer demands in the future of content.

Wake up and maybe we’ll see you there.

Steps to Improve Your Social Network

This may be preaching to the choir, but clearly I am not against that in this blog. You know this.

Marketers are, by and large, good networkers. This is probably due to the fact that, like I said in a recent post, we are in sales as much as we are in marketing. We’re accustomed to seeking and finding customers on an hourly basis, so seeking and finding others like ourselves either comes naturally or comes through experience. And as part of Brand Y-O-U, your personal brand, networking is critically important to the vitality of your career.

Yet for young marketers, those who’ve been in a particular job or field for a long time, those who are not either natural or trained networkers, or those executives who are not in marketing, you need to take a good, long look at your social network and get up-to-speed quickly with the power of social networking. And specifically, building the power of your own social network — the generalities and statistics and cool factor about social networking are great, but the ROI in social networking needs to include some tangible benefits for you and your personal brand, right?

Make no mistake — investing some of your time in establishing a strong social network for yourself is just as important as investing time to understand the social networking tools you use to engage and acquire customers. And it’s important to invest this time when you’re:

At an experienced career level, in the growth stages of your career, or just starting out

In a strong employment position, rather than just when you’re looking for a job

That’s because when you’re out of a job, of course you’re reaching out to people — and it’s perceived that way. You’re out of your comfort zone — and if you’re not a regular networker, you’re viewed as putting on a persona that’s not normally you.

So, now that we’ve got the reasoning for networking out of the way, here’s the whole purpose of this post. A brief list of things you can do to be a marketer with a strong social network:

Build a power profile on LinkedIn — Keep it updated to-the-minute with all your experience, connect to people you work with and know, and ask people to recommend you. Sure, it may be a little cliche now, yet it’s the easiest and first thing to do, and it’s recognized by all. Make your profile a place you can send people to easily learn about your credentials. (Use my profile as a reference)

Read and comment on blogs — You need to read blogs for their valuable perspective and insights, so comment on them to put your thoughts on record, build a search-engine friendly way to find you, and establish your expertise. If you don’t have your own website or blog (which, if you’re considering starting a blog, ask yourself these questions first), link back to your LinkedIn profile.

Reach out to other professionals who are like you — Create relationships with people you can learn from, bounce ideas off of, and share insights with. They may work for your company, your vendors, other companies in your industry, or even your competitors. That’s right — competitors. Fostering a strong social network and empowering a give-and-take of knowledge is more beneficial than erecting barriers that diminish your network’s reach. Find these people on LinkedIn, at industry events, on blogs, on blog comments, on Twitter, on Google, on company websites, and via other colleagues in your social network. Reach out to them with an invitation to share expertise and discuss issues.

Stay in touch with your network — Don’t meet people and then just let the relationships wilt. Stay in touch with your network, where they are, what they do, and more importantly what and who they know. Find relevant reasons to communicate — share ideas, forward data and articles, set up meetings, propose partnerships.

These are the basics. There are other things you can do — start a blog, seek speaking opportunities, and more. If you’re new to being a social networker, start slow. Build a good foundation for your network before you charge ahead into the world of blogging and advanced social media.

You’ve invested the time, money and effort in being a good marketer — don’t let it go to waste because you didn’t invest in your social network and Brand Y-O-U.

The Power of Well-Placed Marketing

A couple of timely developments heavily influenced the writing of this post.

One is that, against my better judgement, I ignored AT&T’s repeated attempts to lose me as a customer and got an iPhone (turns out the customer-friendliness of Apple trumps the terrible service of AT&T). So I have WordPress on my iPhone, as well as Airplane Mode that let’s me use it on a plane. I can write this post, save a local draft, and publish it when I land and reconnect to the world of 3G. It’s a beautiful thing.

The other inspiration for this post is the ingenuity and timliness of marketing ( and marketERS) that hits me at times when I experience it from the other side of the fence. I’m flying JetBlue right now, and just got handed a sample on the plane. It’s a Dove lotion sample with a coupon included. If you travel alot you know airplane cabins mean stuffy air, or dry air from the air vents blasting. In the cold of winter it’s worse. I tend to travel prepared for that, but sometimes (like today) I’m among those whose lotion is packed in a TSA-compliant plastic bag in my travel bag in the overhead bin. So it’s a clear case of right sample at the right time. That’s the beauty of that tactic.

That simplicity and effectiveness are what our jobs as marketers are all about. For all the times we have to sell ourselves to management, sell our brands to customers, and put so much work into that big idea, sometimes it’s just as simple as doing the right simple thing at the right time. Dove just made it happen in a very simple and metric-measurable way on my flight. There are a few others for sure, like the DirectTV I’m watching and the RockStar enerygy drink I can order — two perfect things for a flight.

Take a minute to rethink how your customers make it through each day, and where your product or service fits perfectly. What do they do, travel on, travel to, watch, eat, read and buy? And where do the opportunities lie for you to hit that sweet spot of the right time and place for your message?

Where’s the Marketing Bailout?

Ok, time for a rather random post, compared to some of the marketing how-to commentary you read in this blog. But here it goes anyway.

In a daydream-type moment today, I couldn’t help but wonder that given all the coverage, debate, angst and fuss given to the government bailout of the financial industry (including Citi and now possibly automakers, too), what if there was a bailout fund for bad marketing campaigns?

Yes, that’s right. A huge fund of public money to help marketers in need. Ok, that may be too much of a folly for some to comprehend. So instead, what if the money came from an insanely-wealthy, smart businessman who just decided to give bad marketing a second chance? Say, a Mark Cuban or Richard Branson. Think of all the marketers and campaigns this bailout fund could help breathe new life into. Here’s a few famous ones:

New Coke would get a fresh start, rejecting market feedback since the first launch in a second attempt at reinventing this soft drink. How about a crazy new campaign with new packaging (using a completely different color pallette than the traditional suite of Coke products), a new tagline (maybe “New Generation, Another Try“), and a grassroots online marketing effort backed by advergame sponsorship (official drink of all the felons in Grand Theft Auto V)?

In an attempt to market its way out of the potential Big Three Bailout, Ford relaunches the 2009 Edsel X Series. It’s a hybrid, practical vehicle targeted to families via mobile events at Wal-Marts in 50 major metros. Ford also partners with H&R Block to provide mobile tax-completion services in branded Edsels, associating the vehicle with financial prudence.

Instead of trying to capture adult tastes with a 610-calorie burger, McDonald’s repackages the Arch Deluxe brand as the Deluxe Arch Salad. It incorporates the same elements at the original burger, yet slightly healthier — fresh tomatoes, onions and lettuce; low-calorie cheese; bacon bits; and low-cal croutons. It’s marketed as part of a value meal with yogurt, an energy bar and a non-bottled water. Marketing includes coupons distributed via gyms and health clubs, in-store events with athletes and celebrities, and grassroots sponsorship of sporting events and fairs.

Can you think of other products that would qualify for funds? I sure could (hell, I’d love to see my Cingular brand come back, but that’s not bad marketing just a bad decision…did I mention I hate AT&T?).

Not to bring up a sore subject, but can you think of your own campaigns that would qualify? If so, then go take a good, long look and fix them right now.

The Complicated World of SEO, Part 3

Still with me on this?

In addition to becoming familiar with the technical aspects of SEO (as described in my earlier two posts), you should hone up on building a basic framework on reporting and analysis of your SEO campaigns. You have to justify what you spend on some level, right?

Now, some of what’s discussed in that Search Insider post is complicated to make happen (translation = unlikely for many of us). Yet, on some level, you need to decide how you’re going to measure ROI of your search campaigns. You need some sort of measurement to justify, even if just for yourself (how unlikely is that?), what you’re spending. Triple the emphasis on it if you need to justify it to management or a boss (much more likely).

Kudos if you’re analyzing at the granular level. Get up to speed on the basic level if you’re not doing any analysis today.

This is “Your Brand Here”, and I Approved This Convention

As a marketer, clearly there are risks associated with taking a stance on political issues or candidates.

Yet, could it be that the conventions of both parties are the greatest untapped sponsorship opportunity in the world?!?!?!?

Imagine, tens of thousands of live attendees, and millions on TV, taking a good, long look as your brand logo is subtly injected into the fabric of the event. A passionate and enagged audience, too. It’s product placement on steroids. What if Obama calmly sips from an Evian bottled water during long applause? Or McCain wipes his brow with a Target-logoed towel?

Sure, there are probably a few hurdles to clear in terms of campaign contributions and what not. Yet couldn’t that convention sponsorship money go to charity instead of political coffers? And sure, you’d alienate a large number of potential customers — but you’d also turn the rest into loyal brand zealots! People would be clamoring to drink the same Evian water (or Kool-Aid) that Obama is. Clearing the shelves in certain states, extra inventory in others.

Yeah, probably a little too much of a hot button for many marketers to press. Yet can’t you see a maverick brand or CEO deciding to charge ahead and jump all over this opportunity? “The 2008 Democratic National Convention, brought to you by GoDaddy” or some other brand that wouldn’t shy away from the publicity, both good and bad.

I know, I know…unrealistic. Is it though? With a little lobbying, I’m sure GoDaddy could make it happen (especially if the lobbyist is that Obama Girl).