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March 28, 2009
Changing In A World Without Time
Several times in the last few months, I have been challenged in projects by clients who are never available to meet or discuss their projects. Yet the timelines do not change and deadlines continue to approach. In the midst of this growing time crucnch, their organizations have a burning need to change how they approach marketing and communications.
Such is the inherent irony of our age...we have a clear need to change and no time with which to effect the change. Here are my thoughts on how to begin to understand and introduce some of the big picture changes needed in your marketing programs when time is not something you have any excess of:
- Knowledge Is Power: More than ever, marketing practitioners need to become readers in order to begin to absorb the trends that are reshaping how our jobs get done. Setting up an RSS feed in iGoogle or some other aggregation tool can help feed you a steady diet of ideas to help you adapt to the language and techniques of conversational marketing and other important new approaches. A few minutes a day starts you down a path...
- Toes In The Water: Participating in new media -- e.g. by commenting on blogs, opening a Twitter account, etc. -- is the only way to learn how these tools can be introduced into a program for your organization. The new world is not passive -- these are active engagement tools.
- Consistency Matters: Perhaps the hardest thing for Web 2.0 newcomers to understand is the "slow ramp"...that is, the time it takes to gain traction. If you are a famous person before you engage online, your pre-existing fame will help you rapidly build a following. For everyone else (including most corpoate entities) being consistently communicative is the first lesson to learn. New media is about trust and relationship, things that are not built overnight. Many of the leading bloggers and online media mavens have been creating daily or weekly postings for 2-3 years. Their reach is the result of consistent effort. Not everything needs years, but like dough rising, some things can't be rushed.
The first step to "recovery" from traditional media addiction is the admission that change is necessary. Then, learning what all the fuss is about by engaging yourself, provides the first step toward helping you become the internal advocate for change that you need to be.
Posted by jcioban at 11:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 21, 2009
Marketing Never Stops
On Thursday night, Barack Obama appeared on a late night talk show, leaving plenty for the political talked heads to talk about ever since. Was it Presidential? Did it have too much risk? Was his tone right? Was the 'Special Olympics' reference a disaster?
Whatever your opinion, it demonstrates one great lesson for us...that 'marketing' never stops. Obama wasn't there to shore up flagging poll numbers...he was there to leverage his soaring numbers by working to connect with some of his core constituents -- the everyday people who make up a significant piece of Jay Leno's core audience. The White House was buying ad time to reach a core demographic with a message of hope in desperate times. In short, the White House was using marketing.
The President has no shortage of things to do. From the challenge of the economy to the perils of international affairs, time is not something Obama has an excess of. Yet, he took his time to project a message to people -- a message that said despite your fears, it is OK to spend a little. That we will be OK as a country. That your President undertands your pain and is on your side.
I'll leave it to Bill O'Reilly, Keith Olberman, Laura Ingraham or Rush Limbaugh to debate his success. My emphasis is that he understands the role marketing plays is in this tough economy, and that he is not afraid to take a chance (another great lesson) rather than follow a tried-and-true approach to getting his message out. And those are lessons that lots of companies, from small business to global enterprise, should take to heart.
Posted by jcioban at 10:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 18, 2009
Rethinking E-Mail Subscriber Metrics (Or...Ziff Davis Must Die).
ATTENTION PUBLISHERS: This is an open plea about e-mail readership stats. Please...do not publish how many readers are on your lists...just tell me the average number of people who open and click through in any issue. Give me your unsubscribe rate. Tell me how many readers have been inactive for 6-months. I will pay a lot for exposure to engaged readers and couldn't care less about a big list of people who never open. Let me explain my plea.
For the past several weeks, I have been trying to Unsubscribe from Ziff-Davis' Web Buyers Guide. Frankly, I have no recollection of having subscribed...must have been some checkbox on a magazine subscription renewal that I forgot to uncheck. But that is just the beginning of the story.
I have now unsubscribed from countless "variations" of this "publication". I was getting multiple a day and realized something was up. I hoped for a Global Unsubscribe, but there was none. And sadly, unsubscribing from one flavor does not kill the rest.
And so, weeks later, I am still whacking at the problem. Now, admittedly, I have done this instead of simply hitting "spam" to see if ZD really was this clueless. And so, it is with some surprise that I found it is true. I actually like some ZD pubs, but this whole experience has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. That's how it goes for brands in today's world.
It shocks me that in this day, with all the knowledge that exists about best practices in e-mail, that a major publisher could use such abysmal practices. (Then again, in the middle of the wrenching changes happening in the publishing industry maybe it shouldn't surprise me.) Now, more than ever, building trusted online relationships means treating my Inbox with RESPECT. It is a hard habit to break...that relentless urge to shove "stuff" down the pipe in the hope of pumping up subscriber counts. But survival in online media will come from producing truly valuable content and building readerships that are active...not volumes of readers who are just trying to figure out how to Unsubscribe.
BTW...corporate e-mail marketers. This cautionary tale applies to your e-mail marketing programs as well. List size is sooooo 2005. Count who's clicking, not who's on the list...
Posted by jcioban at 8:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
