Awesome, lovely superb…. just finding which social media sites exist today is hard but having to chase round and research available ‘names’ on each one for a new client – time consuming.
Thank heavens for the wonderful people at NameChk.com
They do the grunt for you.
Now all I need is to go register the name…. there’s a handy text download file option that gives you the URL you could get for each one.
Just don’t expect me to know what they all do!
NameCheck social media name availability
Image by glennharper via Flickr
Do relationships matter more than marketing or advertising for B2B?
There is some truth in this but it is often over-stated.
Many web experts talk about the glorious ‘free’ things that come to them just because of their relationship and web presence – but we believe that without a proven track record in the area of expertise – this is all wishful thinking.
Srini Rao wrote a nicely titled post about how relationship marketing helped him to land a dream client – read it because it sounds awesome. The plot line goes something like this – you hang out in a surf bar and drink a beer / shoot the breeze and at the end of the night the owner hires you to promote his surf travel brand.
Wow – the good life just arrived.
How did he make it happen?
I have no doubt that this really happened. Sometimes serendipity is just there for you and good things happen.
But there were several pre-conditions needed for this beautifully desirable outcome:
- Track record expertise in marketing brands
- A clear understanding of the surf marketplace (and involvement as a consumer)
- The client was ready to buy
- Give away some free advice over a couple of beers to demonstrate expertise / build the relationship
- Right place, right time, friendly fellow, made friends and KAPOW – new client.
Except for the last, every other one of these is a deal enabler.
Missing any one of them, it would have been virtually impossible for Srini to close this deal. Take our expertise in the rowing marketplace. We now have three clients who sell into the space and proposals out to two more. The last proposal happened because we were at a regatta and got chatting… in fact, read steps 1 through 5 above – that’s EXACTLY what happened. Now we’re waiting for the client to decide to hire us.
Why did this new client relationship happen?
Because of the four points listed above.
So take your business development plan and check out the steps in our biz dev methodology
1 – state your business
4 – profile raising
5 – relationship development
Each will help you position yourself appropriately to be in the right place for those relationships to blossom and hopefully you’ll also land your ‘dream’ client! Well done Srini, we applaud you.
Image via Wikipedia
There was a once a time when global brands selected their marketing and advertising departments on their creative ability and trained them in the philosophy of business. The most successful staff members were the ones with the most unique ideas which would push their brand to success.
This last sentence is still true these days, with one exception, the internet has allowed for the most successful and unique ideas to come from anybody around the world. No longer must you work as a ‘staff member’ for a company or brand to have your creative ideas fulfilled, nowadays it’s as easy as entering an online competition or registering on a website.
Sharing brand ideas
Take video sharing specialist, Tongal, for example. This website gained global attention last year when it entered in a US based initiative programme where “emerging” companies were asked to submit entries detailing their unique tools and services. This programme secured over 400 entries, and one of the winners was Tongal, who are now participating in a project for Brisk Tea.
The irony of this is that Tongal, itself, is a competition based website which allows anyone around the globe to enter their skills in creative thinking, filming, pitching and testing products.
Do brands need creatives?
It would seem that to work in the marketing department for a global brand in this day and age, you don’t need a creative bone in your body; you just need to know how to run a competition and recognise a great idea when you see one.
PepsiCo, the food and beverage giant, recently launched a competition very similar to the one in the US which found Tongal. The project, called PepsiCo10, asks “emerging” companies to submit entries detailing their unique tools and services by mid-July 2011. The primary fields of interest include social networks, mobile marketing, location-based properties, digital video, gaming and “learning” platforms.
“PepsiCo10 will bring value to our business by ensuring that we are at the cutting edge of whatever digital and social media technology is out there,” Peter Charles, a PepsiCo marketing manager, said.
This movement to ‘hunt’ the globe for great creative ideas is gaining more and more popularity, and so it should. Essentially, everyone wins, the brand gets the creative ideas they want for a reasonable price (PepsiCo is offering £10,000 to the winner), the winners or top entries get recognition, make contacts and gain experience in how to pitch winning ideas and the public get to see the most cutting edge, unique and creative advertising and marketing campaigns from sources which otherwise, would probably have never surfaced.
Other brand contest sites
A leading agency in this ‘buy an idea’ movement is idea bounty, a website that that allows clients to ask the world for creative ideas in exchange for a reward, or Bounty. The clients review the submissions and select the best Idea as the Bounty winner. Clients can only use Ideas that they’ve paid a Bounty.
And what about Swagapalooza - turning it round this is new products pitching bloggers with large followings. A product in search of an audience…. creative? Innovative? Worthwhile?
What does the marketer of the future DO?
Are we heading towards a future where a marketing departments primary job will be to select winners of competitions for creative ideas? As bad as that sounds for all you marketers out there, I think the answer is probably even worse. Why even have a marketing department for that task when people can submit their entries online and have the public vote for the creative idea they want to see actioned the most.
Be warned – The End is Nigh!
11 Crowdsourcing websites:
- 99 Designs – graphic design
- IdeaStorm - ideas
- CrowdSpring – Graphic design
- CrowdWorks – more for corporates
- Brandstack – logos
- InnoCentive – problem solving for businesses
- Spudaroo – specialist for copy writing
- AdHack – advertising experts who’ll write your next ad for you
- Brainrack – a brainstorming site
- NamingForce – to name your product
- Clipik – video editing
Related articles
- Is spec work evil? (creativeagencysecrets.com)
- PepsiCo and Highland team up in hunt for ten new social media hits (telegraph.co.uk)
- 10 ways of crowdsourcing your needs or talent (the10most.com)
- Evil Genuis Finds Case Study in her Pepsi (inc.com)
- Mashable Teams With PepsiCo To Find Europe’s Most Promising Startups (mashable.com)
How big does your company need to be before you use marketing professionals?
For brands who are growing and becoming profitable there comes a time when you choose to professionalise your marketing. Many businesses decide at this point that they have two choices: to hire a staffer or to buy in expertise from an agency.
Why you need better marketing
The needs are clear – you want more traction with your marketing, you suspect that there are better ways of doing promotion and marketing to get inbound leads and you can afford a budget just for marketing. These are good signs.
You have identified clearly that your brand has a need and the possible shortcomings of your current set-up.
Hire versus buy: the dilemma
There are advantages and disadvantages – the internal member of staff will need to have well-rounded skills in a range of marketing disciplines (web, advertising, PR, copywriting, print design) and therefore a senior hire with this range of skills is more expensive than a junior.
Using an agency also requires decisions about their skills and area of expertise compared with the type of marketing and communications activity your brand has done in the past or plans to do in the future.
Costs are usually the determining factor
It may be less costly to hire external advisers compared to the cost of a senior member of staff – compare the full cost of hiring and paying (including office costs) a new senior marketer with the price an agency would charge you.
Have a couple of ‘chemistry’ or getting-to-know-you meetings with local marketing agencies and ask their advice. Also ask to speak to a couple of their recent clients to see if they also made the same transition.
A third option worth reviewing is using a freelancer. You don’t have the full hire costs of a full time person but can often get very experienced people at lower fee rates. Check out the freelance hire websites like eLance.com and Freelance.com, Freelancer.com and guru.com. I’ve successfully hired people for my agency and for clients using eLance.
Creative Agency Secrets has two current clients who use us for mentoring work. They hired a junior marketer and we speak weekly to review their work, priorities and give guidance. Could this work for you? Give us a call – we always offer a free 20 minute first call.
In the meanwhile here are a few other articles that may help you figure out what to do
- Advertising – do it yourself or hire
- Hire a PR firm or do it yourself?
- Do it yourself internet marketing, or hire
- Hubspot offers inbound marketing tutorials for people using its website / content marketing system.
- Read Creative Agency Secrets’ assessment of Hubspot and how to do it yourself
- SEO do it yourself or hire a professional
- Small Business marketing – DIY or hire a pro?
- Web design – do it yourself or hire someone
- DIY or hire a market research company?
An introduction is the very best way of getting a meeting or speaking to a new business prospect company. Thanks to Alex Krupp I checked out a new service called Go Hachi.
It uses your existing connections on social media sites, to suggest the best person to connect you to your target.
Read our slide deck about our trial.
Here’s my connection link you help me get my beta invite by clicking here to make the connection.
See how Go Hachi describes itself
Related articles
- Hachi Shows You How To Meet New People (crenk.com)
- Emerson tests out how to meet Zuck (emerson social media.com)
There are times when your site is offline, being updated or upgraded. A holding page helps out by telling visitors that you’re temporarily away and when to expect access to your company website again.
There are good an bad examples – here’s a good one.
One question, what does Csquared actually do?
Challenge: Can you use your temporary web page to collect customer enquiries; get feedback on interim designs or perhaps a little self-designed viral that any visitor can edit and share?
Other examples of holding pages here, and commercially here and two campaigns explained here.
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Image by imjustcreative via Flickr
Sometimes it’s nice to be on the receiving end of some in-bound agency marketing. There’s a nice branding agency we have been following based in Birmingham, UK. They sent us a little slide deck.
It had some background slides about the company and some case studies of client work. All very nicely presented.
BUT
There was no apparent purpose to the communication. The deck arrived with a nice covering letter but no call to action, no reason for the email except to say they had some ‘exciting news’.
So we launched in to a critique and sent them this email
That’s a very interesting slide show you’ve presented. Thanks for sharing it.
However, you really do sell yourself short in an email shot like this – what would a prospective client like myself think after reading it…… “Nice slideshow. What was the ‘exciting news’ anyway? What now? Back to my work.”
Using some direct response copywriting in the covering letter/email can you provoke me to deliver a response? For example – get an answer to questions like ‘what did Rebecca think?’ and ‘could they do this for my brand?’ Both questions that will help to narrow down your list of ‘suspects’ and take them one step closer to becoming prospects and then clients.
What about building on the campaign like this?
- Having a special website landing page just for people who got the email?
- Use the landing page to measure click throughs and get a poll / survey / comments / discussion going?
- Sharing the slides on slideshare / docstock so others can embed them and let them go viral
- Putting them up on your website for others to ‘like’ on Facebook / Twitter
- Asking for a meeting in the email text so you can show your credentials in more detail
- Asking questions about my brand so I can see if I ‘suffer’ from the same problems you solved for your clients
Anything but just sharing your slide deck…
So that’s just my two pennyworth suggestions for you – free of charge.
You can take them and put them into practice yourself.This is an unsolicited approach offering you some free advice on how to improve your marketing. I just happen to be on your mailing list and so hope I’m trusted.
And they replied
Thanks so much for your thoughts.
This soft launch does indeed have a plan underpinning it, with more activities to come.
That said your passionate response is appreciated. We will keep you in mind for future activities!
What would you do in response to an unsolicited email?
We love SEOMoz the website from the masters of SEO.
They’ve got an awesome Pro SEO conference running in Boston MA during May 16-17th on “Deep Dive” for SEO.
We badly want to be there – but are not able to attend.
Is there anyone who’s going and would consider allowing us to subsidize their ticket price in exchange for giving us a personal de-brief afterwards?
Get in touch please.
Related articles
- SEO conference in Boston – May 16th/17th 2011 (seomoz.org)
I 've known clients like this
A guest post by Stephen Greensted.
Cynicism, Duplicity and Institutional Incompetence
In my last post, I looked at thirty reasons for advertising agencies not winning an account when they thought they were ahead. I could easily have added another seventy reasons.
But it’s not always the agency’s fault. Clients are just as likely to mess up the process. Recently, I’ve been sitting on the client side of the table more than I have on the agency side.
And very interesting it has been, too.
Here are ten common reasons for Client screw-ups:
- The clients knew before the pitch whom they wanted to appoint but were compelled by Procurement to go ahead with a pitch nonetheless
- The pitch was called by the new marketing director to enable him to appoint theadvertising agency from his former job
- The pitch was a statutory pitch, the purpose being to make the incumbent agency to try harder and charge less
- The client was looking for free ideas but had no intention of moving his business
- What the clients really wanted was a digital solution, but failed to mention that in the brief
- The new marketing director called a pitch, fired the incumbent agency, and then got fired himself by the managing director
- I’m going to have to be a bit careful about this one since a lot of people, me included, still feel litigious about what happened. Here goes: a bullying sort of recently hired client called an agency review. He knew which agency he wanted to appoint. However, this agency didn’t really come up with the goods in the pitch, but the least well-known agency which pitched produced a cracker of an idea based upon a very well-known pop video from the 1960s. The small agency was not appointed. Three months later, that idea was running on TV in a slightly different guise. The client had passed on the idea to his favoured agency, and told them to run it
- The client had specified that he was not going to appoint an agency with conflicting accounts, and then complained when the agency could not show a relevant case history
- The marketing director said she was in charge of the pitch process. She wasn’t. It turned out to be her bosses in the States who were not going to appoint a French advertising agency
- When we drilled down through the substrate and peered around in the gloom, we realised that the potential client didn’t really want great advertising to sell his company’s beer. What he really wanted was advertising to make him famous. He probably could have spent his time more wisely with a PR company
Again, neither all agencies nor all clients are either sinners or saints. You can find all sorts there, but you also come across some fairly extreme ones who are really only in it for themselves. I have as many client side friends as I do from the agency world. But, if you’re going to pitch, remember that you’ll never really know what went on in the clients’ heads. Pitches are hugely exciting, but they’re also disruptive and expensive, and should only ever be undertaken once you have answered yes to the following three questions:
- What is the true reason for this pitch?
- Who on the client side is really in charge?
- Are you sure you can work with them?
Geoff Howard-Spink had an additional three:
- Can we do great work for this client?
- Are we going to make a lot of money out of it?
- Is it going to be fun?
He went on to say that if the answer was yes to any two of these three, you should seize the account. If you can only say yes to one question, politely decline.
Which we did from time to time.
Related articles
- How To Lose A Pitch When You Thought You Were Winning (stephengreensted.wordpress.com)
We don’t often promote events but this one looks like a goodie – Demand Generation is a skill that many business find hard to translate from offline to online.
And since many marketing activities are now online – this needs to be learned and applied to your business, mine and our clients’.
