Ask “Auntie Joan”

“Auntie Joan” has arrived at MarkeTech to give your B2B wireless/telecom company some straight-shooting and practical answers to business development questions.

Hi, I’m Auntie Joan.

My idea for featuring a Q&A column on MarkeTech’s blog site started out at the San Diego CTIA show. After talking with countless exhibitors about their most pressing business concerns, about 80 percent had only one: “how to get better-quality trade show leads?” More importantly, it was the other 20 percent of the exhibitors. Each had a novel and unique question about a business development problem in their companies. When I asked who they were turning to for solutions, a significant number had nothing better than online research.                         

Realizing that there was no B2B market-sector platform for solutions to such important matters, the germinal concept of an open Q&A resource began to evolve. I harvested a few interesting questions at the show to validate the concept of “Ask Auntie Joan.” Now that I have answers prepared for a few Q&A postings, I’m opening my column to your business development questions.

My experiences at the show indicated that one might have concerns about revealing real-life business issues in my column. Rest assured that the “Ask Auntie Joan” default is total anonymity. Further, you choose the level of confidentiality on the question-submittal form. You can even elect to not have your question and answer published at all. I’m available for private, one-on-one sessions.

This new feature is exciting to me because I’ve always considered my firm’s blog site as one that answers its visitors’ specific problems. As the president of MarkeTech, my goal in working with you as “Ask Auntie Joan” is to help as many of you as possible to grow your businesses. I feel so strongly about this that I’d even make myself available to hands-on implement my solution.

Submit Your Question
When you submit a question, my way of saying thanks is that you’ll receive:

•  A complimentary one-hour consultation
• Access to the forthcoming MarkeTech Discussion Forum
• Topic-relevant white papers
• Priority registration for our webinars

These are all intended to help you actually achieve a successful resolution. And it’s all FREE!

Submit your question

Regards,

Joan Naidish
aka “Auntie Joan”
+1 818.883.9895
AuntieJoan[AT]MarkeTechcom[DOT]com

MarkeTech Announces Social Media Boot Camp

A self-guided tutorial that turns a B2B social networking
 newbie into an online publisher
and contributor in 10 easy steps.

LOS ANGELES — November 2, 2011 — Responding to B2B companies that are taking a Do-It-Yourself approach to online social networking, MarkeTech announced today its Social Media Boot Camp. This latest self-help tool in its business-development arsenal takes a social newbie through a proven 10-step process. The result is an online-networking savvy and socially responsive blogger, or a proficient contributor who can comment on others’ online postings. The program places emphasis on participation in discussion groups and chat rooms, where bootcampers gain experience in everything from learning to “listen,” to joining in social conversations.

This Social Media Boot Camp provides both advice and hands-on self-implementation TODO’s that enable participants to be effective online B2B communicators who develop the social skills to achieve business goals. Even though the Boot Camp is self-guided, MarkeTech personnel are available and hands on with each participant. “We don’t leave anyone stranded without a lifeline,” explains president Joan Naidish. “We check their progress, usually in real time. They find us monitoring their posts on discussion-group sites, for example. When they reach the blogging stage, we even make our blog site available for them to post as a guest.”

Downloading and going through the free Social Media Boot Camp is just the start. It leads to a comprehensive course in real-world Social Media Monetization. Nothing self-guided here,

Social Media Monetization…Everything New is Old Again

MarkeTech’s Social Media Monetizationprogram shows how
your B2B organization can successfully generate revenues
from social media programs.
The secret is nothing new!

Social Media is nothing new. Its market relations principles and practices have a success-based pedigree. The essentials of monetization were rooted in the high-tech marketing/PR disciplines of the mid-1980s. Regis McKenna Inc., the PR firm that virtually single-handed created Silicon Valley, proclaimed that Public Relations was dead. What replaced it was Market Relations (MR), replete with social networking, “the conversation,” and most all the programs and activities that define today’s Social Media. So, except for the sea change of the Internet as a communications medium, there’s little new about relationship marketing as it was originally created by RMI, where MarkeTech founder Joan Naidish was an RMI principal who pioneered many of the original Market Relations techniques.

MarkeTech’s Social Media Monetization program exploits and updates the market relations methodologies used to achieve the success stories of B2B networking and communications companies like AT&T, Motorola, Xircom, and Intel.

But that sea change of the World Wide Web did seriously impact relationship marketing. The business development strategies of high-tech businesses were upset, with attempts to monetize Web 1.0 being mistakenly based on information dissemination. Old-fashioned PR was used to plaster product and company information all over the web ecosphere, using primarily press releases and online articles. Ever since Web 2.0 with its social model came along, B2B companies

How to Use Trademarks Properly – Are Your Documents Compliant?

How to use trademarks in any document is simple and straightforward.

It was 8:00 P.M. when the call came through. New B2B client in a panic. Some wireless company threatening a lawsuit. A letter that says there’s a trademark problem.

I was about to calmly tell him to talk to their attorney but, instead, I asked him to email me a copy of the letter.

While waiting, I recalled something my sushi buddy Michael Bierman once told me: “Many trademark cases could be avoided by complying with the rules when writing. It’s always neglecting the simple things that turns into costly and time-consuming litigation.” As a partner at Luce Forward, he speaks from decades of trademark litigation experience.

A few minutes later I’m reading the frenzied client’s letter. I breathed a sigh of relief. It appeared to be little more than a form letter advising my client that “[product brand name] is a registered trademark….”

Prior to retaining my firm, this client had been a DIYer (Do It Yourself) that wrote its own documents. Unfortunately, use of trademarks must have not been observed, and that triggered the boilerplate warning letter.

My firm has always done some amount of oversight/mentoring work for B2B wireless clients who create their own documents. Document review typically accounts for the bulk of those activities. The trademark faux pas has happened often enough that years ago I created a basic how-to document just for such moments.  Here’s that advisory:

Mandatory Trademark Compliance Is
Straightforward and Simple

Proper trademark usage in your documents protects your B2B wireless company’s valuable brand. Applying the same usage to other company’s trademarked brands will help avoid legal entanglements.

What Is a Trademark?
It is any brand name, symbol, slogan/motto, word, image, or emblem that a company is claiming legal rights of protection to prevent a competitor from using it.

What Are the “Marks”?
There are only three trademark identifiers:  “R,”  “TM”, and occasionally “SM”

• When written, they are either
  • Superscripted, e.g., ®, ^TM, ^SM, or
  • In parentheses, e.g., (R), (TM), (SM)

Which Identifier to Use for Another Company’s Marks ?
Simple! The one that the company claiming the mark uses.

Where Do I Apply the Mark in My Documents?
The rules are easy:

• Always apply the mark the first time the brand name, symbol, slogan/motto, word, image, or emblem appears in the main body of your document
  • Apply the mark only once in your document, no matter how many other times you may use the same brand name, symbol, slogan/motto, word, image, or emblem
• Never apply the mark to the brand name, symbol, slogan/motto, word, image, or emblem when it appears in the title or subtitle of your document

Are There Other Rules?
Yes, and this one seems always to be misused. Trademarks should never be used as nouns or verbs. The mark is always used as an adjective. Here’s an example:

Right (Adjective)	Wrong (Noun)
“… announced the availability of its UniMobile® software that runs on any smartphone.”	“… announced the availability of UniMobile® that runs on any smartphone.”

One Last Rule
Always insert a trademark notice at the very end of your document. This is usually in small type. Here’s an example:

 UniMobile is a registered trademark of Wireless Widgets, Inc. All other
trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Regardless of the type of documents you’re creating—press releases, white papers, web content, sales collateral—proper trademark usage is more than just a nit-picking detail. Follow the simple rules, and you’ll save time, money, and frayed nerves at 8:00 P.M..

Other helpful writing tips are available in MarkeTech’s Monograph:  The Perfect Press Release. Email your request for a complimentary copy to Team[at]MarkeTechCom[dot]com.

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Guerrilla Selling’s Mind Map Challenge Revisited

While Guerrilla Selling’s “Mind Map” focuses on one-on-one direct sales interactions, can its face-to-face principles of buyers’ “phases” and sellers’ “best approaches” be effective in today’s online social media environment?

My Theory
In a B2B online social environment, without the requisite buyer’s presence in a face-to-face or one-on-one situation, practicing mind-map-driven guerrilla selling isn’t practical. My theory is that a seller can use his/her “Seller’s Approaches” – I view these as “behavior” — as triggers that cause a favorable response in a buyer audience. This flip-flops the original Mind Map chart, which teaches that the buyer’s behavior triggers the sellers reactive behavioral approach. For reference, I have included a slightly-modified version of the original Mind Map here.

The theory’s flip-flop premise is based on an online B2B audience of prospective buyers in which there are individuals, each of whom is in a particular identified left/right brain phase. If a seller were to address that audience with messages about “Fair-Care-Share” for example, the “Principle Phase” individual buyers would be responsive.  

In application, one might theorize that the six “best approaches” (disregarding the “Amoral Phase”) could be implemented in a series of blogs, Tweets, or other social media channels. By doing so, a seller could build – over time – a dynamic online personality profile that would appeal to more than one of the Mind Map’s categories of prospective buyers.

A Theoretical Example
For example, blog #1 portrays the seller as factual and logical, then blog #2 demonstrates fair-care-share aspects of the seller, while in blog #3 the seller is relaxed and just tells her/his story, and yet another blog (#4) stresses the seller’s responsibility to community and the good works his/her company is doing. This chameleon-like seller behavior is acknowledged in Chapter 4 of Guerrilla Selling. In the “Guerrilla Challenge” section, it teaches that “You must…adapt to the needs of each prospect you meet.” And, “They [Guerrillas] can shift from Ego to Pleaser to Authority to Principle phases as the situation requires.”

It would seem that the cumulative effect of such a blogging strategy could, over time, attract the identified Mind Map audience segments (as B2B leadgen). Similar-minded individuals in those segments would find the seller a person with whom a relationship might be formed.

The original Mind Map was reactive, i.e., the buyer’s behavior (phase) caused the guerilla seller to respond. It required an interactive situation, with a face-to-face meeting, or one-on-one (phone call).Today’s Internet reality is that in the online social communities, clearly identifying a particular individual’s phase is difficult, if not impossible. The Web’s social media tools are not equipped to provide face-to-face or one-on-one interactions. Therefore, a potential solution would be for the seller to behave online in more than one particular Mind Map phase, so as to attract (pull mode) compatible sales prospects.

Next Steps
My theory has not been tested in my real B2B (technology) world. I would be interested in your inputs. If feedback indicators are positive, I’d be willing to develop an alpha feasibility-validation program.

The Mind Map (Revisited)

The Mind Map is a model of behavior and personality that divides our human minds’ functions into seven “personality phases.” Guerrilla sellers use the map to understand people (prospects and customers) they encounter and be equipped to adopt a strategy that enables a relationship. At any given time, a particular person can shift from one mind phase to another.

Here are the Mind Map phases, listed with the most primitive “amoral” phase at the bottom:

Source:  Guerrilla Selling: Unconventional Weapons & Tactics
for Increasing Your Sales. William Gallagher, Orvel Ray Wilson,
and Jay Conrad Levinson, 1992. (http://www.gmarketing.com/)

Is Social Media Really a Free Ride to ROI?

While the best things in life may be free, social media has a price tag.

Browsing through some survey data recently, I stumbled upon one which indicated that some 113 (15% of those surveyed) Chief Marketing Officers indicated that the cost of social media is basically FREE! This response was to MarketingSherpa’s question of “…how you perceive social media’s ability to produce an ROI at budget time.”

Wait!…What? Do these marketing professionals actually believe that the budgeted investment in social media is ZERO? That would mean that any ROI would yield a de facto 100% profit.

I had to admit, however, that a case could be made supporting the perception of social media costing virtually nothing. There are companies that apply the DIY (Do-It-Yourself) approach to many social media activities. You know, those businesses that do everything in-house. A VP writes the blogs, an engineer or two Tweet, someone else is responsible for content on Facebook, and the sales guys plunder LinkedIn looking for leads. It’s all DIY. But, does that really mean it’s free? It sure would look that way in a budget, because salaries are an operational line item, and not indicated in the marketing budget.

My common sense and experience tells me that social media is time-intensive. Activities that consume significant personnel time should produce financial outcomes that are favorable to the company’s bottom line, either directly or indirectly. Is a VP’s time invested in blogging going to yield an ROI?

ROI at Budget Time
It was MarketingSherpa’s connection to ROI that bothered me the most. How can one realistically answer a question about ROI at budget time when the cost of leadgen is ZERO? The company budget may treat salaries one way, but can we ignore the real company money these DIY social media participants are spending when they use time on the job for blogging, tweeting, and the like?

Some businesses, mine included, do calculate “personnel ROI.” The IRR (Internal Rate of Return) on a reallocation of a current employee’s tasks has implications on the company’s bottom line. I actually have “target” income values that express how any employee’s time utilization should translate into productivity. That productivity is defined as revenue, so it’s “Revenue on Employee (ROE).”

My Hokey Hypothetical Model
Using an ROE approach, I constructed a rather hokey hypothetical model that shows company earnings as an outcome of the time an employee might spend doing social media activities. The following figures are annualized.  

The revenue value of each conversion is based on landing one customer out of each batch of 10 sales leads. The average revenue-per-conversion is $50,000.

This hypothetical employee would spend +/- 7 hours/week (about 20%) on social media pursuits. Thus for a salary-driven budget of $30,000 for 333 work-hours/year, the projected social media revenues are $100,000 for this employee. Personnel time utilization should be budgeted and clearly spelled out. So, it’s always time-is-money, and social media time invested does have a calculable ROI.

There’s also an ancillary issue of personnel time utilization, especially for employees who become addicted to Twitter, Facebook, et al. Productivity of other tasks can erode, perhaps enough to even threaten those other tasks’ ability to generate revenue.

While employees engaged in DIY in-house social media campaigns may believe that everything is free, business owners have a solid case for believing otherwise.

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Crossing the Chasm For Geoff Moore

My experiences as one of Geoff Moore’s first chasm test cases
certainly taught me a lesson about confronting
my client’s new-technology launch.

My very first project as a principal at RMI (Regis McKenna Inc) was as the team leader on the launch of a client’s new thermal-wax color printer technology.  

It was a year before Geoff Moore, a partner at RMI, would publish Crossing the Chasm. He approached me to alpha test his still-under-development chasm models. As he explained his ideas and concepts about this “chasm,” I became excited about the potential benefits it could bring to B2B-technology-marketing practitioners like me. My client’s pending launch seemed the perfect test bed.

I Go Head-to-Head with One of the World’s First Chasms

In those days, RMI methodologies defined what product-launch marketing and PR strategies and tactics were. The firm’s market relations® processes and techniques had launched all the major high-tech players, and went on to create — virtually single-handedly – the brand “Silicon Valley.” Dataproducts, my client, certainly had great expectations

MarkeTech Focuses Survey on Social Media Results

A new survey of B2B wireless industry sales executives targets online social presence’s ROI.

LOS ANGELES — August 28, 2011 — MarkeTech, a leader in innovative social media strategies and tactics, today launched its B2B “Online Presence” survey of the B2B wireless industry. The objective of this second annual survey is to establish benchmarks in social media practices that are evidenced by actual sales results.

The landmark survey’s protocol requires that only sales executives participate in this survey. Participants who complete the survey before 30 September 2011 will be the only ones who receive the final survey report. According to MarkeTech, the full survey results will not be made public. As with last year’s report however, participants can use and publish the data.

The survey’s benchmarks focus on social networking and media channels that yield an identifiable ROI (Return On Investment). “We need some honest metrics of what B2B wireless organizations are actually getting from their investments in social media,” states Patrick Potega, Chief Strategic & Tactical Officer (CSTO). “Is social networking monetization delivering on its promise? Sales executives have a right to expect an ROI that translates into measurable lead gen, conversions, and bottom-line revenues.”

MarkeTech expects its survey findings to empower sales-force executives to:
· Learn in which social media channels their real dollars and time are worth investing
· Find out whether their current online presence is under-performing in generating leads and conversions
· Make better-informed business decisions about their current and future social media strategies and tactics

Joan R. Naidish, MarkeTech’s president, indicates that the firm is conducting this research because “Available survey information is heavily biased toward B2C online social media. Also, there is growing evidence in the B2B segment of the wireless industry that those B2C social networking models may not be working.”

About MarkeTech
Since 1979, the MarkeTech team has been creating and implementing innovative business development solutions to its B2B wireless industry clients’ marketing and business-growth challenges.

Relevant blogs: 
   — Tactics for Generating B2B Sales Leads 
   — LinkedIn Works for B2B Sales Prospecting 
   — Email — Workhorse of B2B Lead Gen & Conversions

Contact Info:
Joan R. Naidish
President
P: +1 (818) 883-9895 (PDT)
F: +1 (818) 883-5706
Prez[AT]MarkeTechCom[DOT]com
http://MarkeTechCom.wordpress.com

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Email — Workhorse of B2B Lead Gen & Conversions

Statistics support the important sales pipeline role of email

Email — whether an individual-to-individual communication, an email blast, or bulk email that’s personalized — is a mainstay of B2B lead gen and conversions. Our sales pipelines would just never work without email.

Here are some stats that express the important role email plays:

• 3 billion worldwide email accounts
• 107 trillion emails were sent in 2010
• 30 million emails sent each day
• Businesspersons send 33 per day
• In 1985, 90% of all emails were business related, while only 8% were in 2010
• 89% of all emails are spam

More and more, email is becoming recognized as a social media channel. As such, the emphasis on quality content and frequency (distribution QoS) are key attributes in making email work for your B2B organization.

Guest blog submitted by: Prez@JSC-DIRECT.com
______________
Data courtesy Fast Company magazine (http://www.fastcompany.com)

The Press Release: Is It Really Dead, or Are We Still Pretending?

Social Media, having its licks at the traditional press release, may be doing more harm than good.

Two days ago, the PR Snoop spent some time on the PitchEngine website. He went there to see for himself what this Social Media Release (SMR) site offers that might provide a viable alternative to the good ole press release. PitchEngine’s founder states that “The traditional press release is dead. At least, to us it is.” The PR Snoop is also an admitted staunch proponent of the-press-release-is-dead faction in the PR industry. Therefore, he had high hopes that this social-media site had a solution that would finally allow everyone to finally bury the corpus delicti that continues to walk the earth as some sort of walking dead.

With that background, here is what the PR Snoop posted on PitchEngine in real time on that website as his “social media release.” It is tied into his previous guest-blogger post on the MarkeTech website, which you can view here.

“PR Snoop Continues to Snoop

“Revisits Breakfast at BusinessWire Findings

“In my April 13, 2010 blog on MarkeTech’s website (https://marketechcom.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/breakfast-at-business-wire/), I flat out stated that “the press release is really, really dead.” Now I have discovered PitchEngine. I’m in the process of writing my very first SMR (Social Media Release).

“What I see on the screen looks exactly like the form I routinely fill out on BusinessWire and any other press release distribution site. Unfortunately, when I complete this release, there will be no distribution by PitchEngine. I will have to do all the heavy lifting. I’m not even entitled to receive a Google search. WHAT!? Don’t the bots search this site?

 “Now I must admit that I can add images, a Twitter Pitch, and something called “News Facts,” but I know that I can do all of that in the good ol’ fashioned press release. I keep asking myself “what’s the big deal about PitchEngine?” They don’t pitch, I do. They don’t distribute. I do. They don’t SEO. I have to. So how have things gotten better with Social Media Releases which this company claims replaces the traditional press release?

“I’m not one to snap to hasty judgments, so as I continue to type into this standard press release form that I’ve seen a thousand times, I’m going to cross my fingers and wait with the proverbial “baited breath” for the social media miracle to happen to this otherwise arcane document.”

After the PR Snoop’s aforesaid experience, the issue is still one of whether the traditional press release is really dead. Have we really slain the beast and laid it to rest once and for all?

Here’s an update to the PR Snoop’s activities. The next day there was a hit on Google and Yahoo! search results, as promised by PitchEngine. He also has a Press Room on PitchEngine (http://www.pitchengine.com/prsnoop-continues-to-snoop/72674/) as promised.

Press Rooms and Pitches

PR Snoop must admit to a certain level of ho-hum about the press rooms. After reviewing a dozen or so, they are rather flat pre-formatted cookie cutters of each other. Most of what is there is routinely seen (usually done better) on corporate website “Press” pages. More to the point, the content on every press room visited was plain ole press releases. Very little social implications, except for links to the usual “SHARE+” Internet locations (a la bookmarking, syndication sites)…again, as routinely found on any half-decent B2B website. There was a comment field appended to each press release on the dozen press room pages the PR Snoop visited, but no evidence that any visitors had posted comments.

When the PR Snoop first arrived at PitchEngine, his mental image of what the name implied was that the site was somehow going to provide its subscribers with new ways to “pitch” journalists and their ilk. Other than a tepid acknowledgement that there’s something called a press room, there’s little discernable that PitchEngine does to either push its subscriber’s messages to targeted journalist audiences, or to pull those much-cherished writers/influencers to the PR Snoop’s press room.

After all, the PR Snoop clearly read that “unlike press release and wire services, Pitchengine: [sic] Helps you broaden your audience beyond the journalist to reach bloggers, investors, consumers and other influencers on the social web.” Granted, the sentence before cautioned me: “Don’t think of PitchEngine as a distribution service.” So, the PR Snoop should have known that all social promotions, distribution activities, and syndications are his own responsibility. Personally, press release distribution provider PR Newswire’s MultiVu has a document page view [example at http://multivu.prnewswire.com/mnr/zambellifireworks/44704], with a cleaner look and more appealing social-interactive capabilities (albeit, no apparent “press room”). Worth a visit to download a couple of cool fireworks photos!

The PR Snoop Challenge

Also, PitchEngine did indicate that it provides “…a way to package all of your PR assets (like a press kit) in one concise, easy to share package – the social media release (SMR) – that you can edit and make changes to even after it’s been made live.” Here’s the PR Snoop challenge: create a standard press kit that includes the usual documents such as a fact sheet, case study, company backgrounder, and let’s throw in a white paper, all using the limited document-creation tools PitchEngine provides. The challenge stems from that, only by creating the press kit source documents on the PitchEngine site do those documents become editable and changeable.

Let’s extend the challenge to then consolidate (“package”) those document files into a press kit, so that a press pro can capture the entire press kit. Even if one were to discover a way to package an entire press kit on this site, there is no obvious way to download any document from the press room, unless you manually select text then copy/paste it into your text editor, i.e., MSWord. Ironically, there is a specific hypertext to download the subject company’s logo. Good luck!

The Same Hackneyed Press Release

PR Snoop’s position on the press rooms is that they are little more than slightly-social, user-interactive storage space, and corporate clients can get that free, or for a fee, most anywhere these days. PR Snoop is not slamming the press rooms, per se. These “social media” sites perpetuate the same hackneyed press releases that have been around for literally a hundred years. The old press release isn’t dead, nor is it wearing anything more than the emperor’s new clothes in its posing as now new and social.

In conclusion, the PR Snoop is underwhelmed by today’s SMRs (aka SMNRs, SMPRs, blah, blah, blah). His examples of PitchEngine or any other service are not to cast aspersions on what they’re doing. Those examples only point out that the social aspects of today’s press releases are mundane links to social sites…as window dressing to the same stale news/information documents that we all thought were dead. Compelling content is still not there, and these sites provide nothing to address that. The documents displayed on SMR websites are what they always have been – just ordinary press releases. Neither PitchEngine, nor PR Newswire, caused that…but they do have to stop pretending that these core documents do result in better social and editorial pitch outcomes.

The real risk here is that the marketing/PR industry doesn’t evolve the core press release to be more social. If our need to find a viable, sustainable, marketable and user-compelling press release alternative is to accept what we currently have, then all we’re really doing is continuing to claim that we’ve killed the old press-release beast, without an exit strategy.

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Other Related Blogs

Breakfast at Business Wire