Marketing for Success - Mike Vilimek

Savvy Marketing by Obama

There is little doubt that the Obama campaign will be considered as one of the best examples of presidential marketing in US history. The campaign was dominant in online marketing with Obama having around 3 million supporters on Facebook, 4 times as many friends as his Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, on MySpace.com, and an email contact list of almost 10 million addresses.

What’s even more impressive is that within 24 hours of last week’s historic vote, Obama’s team launched a new web site, Change.gov to reach out and connect with the public. In addition to a countdown to the January 20 inauguration, the site has a newsroom and even a blog. The site is also very interactive allow visitors to share their vision of Obama’s presidency and even apply for jobs.  

 

Obama is the first president in a long time to have such a tremendous following among the youth of America, and he continues to do the right things in order to maintain that following. A recent poll by the Pew Research Center found almost half of Americans ages 18 to 29 turned to the Internet as their major source of election news in 2008.While I have no proof, I would image the majority of them voted for Obama.

How to Get the Media to Write About You

The first thing you need to realize is, all high profile journalists, editors and bloggers (yes, don’t forget about bloggers, they can have as much and often more influence over your publicity than main stream media) receive dozens or even hundreds of news releases, announcements and story pitches every day. So how do you get noticed?

A common tactic by some is to send out generic story pitches to as many influential people as you can. This “PR spam” is as annoying as the spam in your personal email inbox, and just as ineffective.  Not only is it ineffective, it can brand your company in a negative manner.

The best place to start is by doing some basic research. Find the most influential people writing about you, your competitors, your industry or a complimentary industry. Read their pieces and get an understanding of what interests them and who they’re audience is. Then, create a unique pitch that explains why you feel their readers would be interested in your story. Include references to some of their previous work and show how your story relates.  

Remember, all journalists/bloggers are looking for great story leads. Help them find yours by contacting them with a personalized, smart pitch that they will actually want to write.

 

Twitter Search

There is a new way for you and your company to monitor your online reputation. Twitter is a service that has recently caught fire as the latest great social networking tool. In their words, “Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”

Twitter has recently launched Twitter Search which allows you to search for what’s being said about any particular topic. Enter your company’s name or products or even your CEO’s name and get a gauge on what people are saying about you. You can even setup an RSS feed to get real time updates on your search terms.

Information Overload

Recently, the PFF Blog reported that Google CEO Eric Schmidt made the following 2 points during a speech at the Milken Conference:

1.       Users of Google's YouTube are uploading 10 hours of video to the site every minute. That's 14,400 hours worth of new video uploads each day.

2.       By 2019, your average iPod (or other personal digital device) will have enough capacity for 85 years worth of video. Start watching when you're born. Maybe you'll see the final credits in old-age.

With more and more content vying for attention, how will your marketing message break through the clutter? The key will be messages that are short, memorable and contain a visual component. Also try to offer something of value to consumers in addition to your marketing message, such as amazing footage within a video or hilarious content. This could help your message go viral.

Monitor Your Online Reputation

Whether it’s simply setting up Google Alerts notices, or hiring specialists such as BuzzLogic or Radian6, your company needs to be aware of what’s being said about it online.  Social media conversations including blogs, microblogs and viral videos can effect a company’s reputation almost overnight. Can your company afford not to monitor these conversations, or better yet, get involved?

Dell is a perfect example of a company that has taken their online reputation very seriously. In 2006, the company was getting lambasted by tech bloggers and in online forums for their terrible customer service.  Today, they reportedly have a 42 person team monitoring and engaging individuals and communities who have something to say about Dell. If negative comments are posted online about Dell, someone from their team is quick to get involved in the conversation and at the very least, make people feel as if Dell cares and wants to help.

Has any of this work paid off? A study conducted by Visible Technologies revealed that negative sentiment toward the Dell brand has dropped from 48% in 2006 to 23% today. Not all of this can be attributed solely to their involvement in online conversations, but it certainly appears they are on the right track.

Writing for Your Buyers

When writing press releases, blogs, or website content, it seems too many companies use words and phrases that mean nothing to their most important audience, their buyers. Have you used the following terms in your recent communications? Flexible, robust, world class, cutting-edge, groundbreaking, turnkey, the list goes on and on. Do you think these terms mean anything to your customers? Well they don’t. They are so overused and meaningless; they don’t provide any value in your communications.

Every time your company communicates with the outside world, regardless of the medium, use it as an opportunity to connect with your buyers. Think of the problems that your customers face and the language in which they would use. Communicate less about the features of your product and more about solving your buyers’ problems. This will also improve your visibility in search engines, as potential buyers will search for solutions to their problems using their own language. Can you image someone searching for a turnkey, flexible, robust solution? I don’t think so.

Before releasing any content, always ask yourself, “Am I writing for my buyers?”

Employee Blogs + Anonymity = Trouble

As a result of an employee’s personal blog, Cisco Systems has become the target of a libel lawsuit. The blog in question, titled Patent Troll Tracker (has since been password protected), was written by Rick Frenkel, director of Cisco’s intellectual property department. The blog focused on patent and patent litigation, but allegedly tarnished the names and trivialized a patent case a group had filed against Cisco.  The biggest problem however was Frenkel didn’t divulge his identity or roll with the company and didn’t make a clear distinction between his own views and those of Cisco’s.

Since the lawsuit, Cisco added the following rule to its Internet posting policies, “If you comment on any aspect of the company's business or any policy issue the company is involved in where you have responsibility for Cisco's engagement, you must clearly identify yourself as a Cisco employee in your postings or blog site(s) and include a disclaimer that the views are your own and not those of Cisco."

Employee blogs are a great way for companies to connect with their customers. While it remains vital for employee’s voices not to be filtered by marketing/pr departments resulting in safe, but boring corporate messaging, there does have to be a balance. Making sure employees don’t hide their identities and their connections to topics discussed should be a “common sense” rule.

Direct Marketing vs. SEO

There are countless companies that invest a significant amount of their marketing dollars in direct, outbound marketing initiatives. Direct marketers try to send their messages directly to consumers, without the use of intervening media. The most popular forms of this communication are direct mail, e-mail, and telemarketing. The main drawback of this practice? It is almost always unsolicited, resulting in a low percentage of positive responses (often 1-2%).

Compare this to SEO techniques, where the purpose is to reach customers at the exact moment they are actively seeking information about a product. If a customer is searching for a product you supply, isn’t that exactly when you want to reach them with your marketing message? For this reason, more and more companies are making SEO techniques a priority over direct marketing. That’s not to say that direct marketing vs. SEO has to be an either or, but if you’re spending a lot on direct marketing, try spending some of that on SEO. To learn more about SEO techniques, try reading SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford

Click to Tip

In a recent blog post, titled Ads are the new online tip jar, Seth Godin mentioned a new trend where readers can say thanks to publishers of good content by clicking on their ads, as a form of tipping. I wouldn’t say it’s an overly popular practice, but what if this practice begins to grow? How would this affect the advertisers? They will be the ones paying for clicks from readers whose sole purpose is to provide the publisher with a tip. Sure, advertisers will be getting more exposure, but most likely not interested buyers. Will they see this as a form of click fraud?

One things is for sure, advertisers would have to start doing a better job at targeting only the most relevant sites where the readers are sure to be interested in their products/services once their ads are clicked, something they should be doing anyway.

Should CEOs have their own corporate blogs?

In my previous post, I discussed CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon’s new blog, and how I felt it was not being updated often enough and did not allow readers to interact and leave comments. It got me thinking. Are CEO authored corporate blogs good marketing tools?

There are certainly examples of very successful CEO blogs such as GoDaddy.com’s Bob Parsons and Sun Microsystems’ Jonathan Schwartz. I believe these are exceptions to the rule however. Most CEOs, especially those in public companies, have to be careful not to post information that could upset shareholders, media, or financial and federal regulators. These restrictions often result in boring blog posts. Also, CEOs tend to be very busy people. With many other time consuming commitments, making regular blog posts can often be neglected.

The best option for most companies is to have a blog where your employees do the talking. People tend to relate better to others who are like them and “peer advice” is one of the most trusted sources of information.