When I Started, Volvo Didn’t Even Have A Website

Rich Ullman, Senior Vice-President, Marketing for Ripple6, Inc., a social marketing platform, recounted his history in digital advertising from the time when companies simply scanned print content online to create their websites. Rich has seen a lot of change in the digital space along the way and says the pace of it keeps increasing, “Things have changed more in the past nine months than in the past nine years and social media is at the center of it”. Rich shared several compelling statistics to prove his point.
• 1 out of 8 people met via social media
• If Facebook was a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine
According to Rich, the power of social media overcomes the advantages of scale. Large companies or political parties for that matter no longer control the dialogue, giving the little guy the ability to succeed as well. In this digital revolution, companies need to learn to harness the power of digital marketing much like riding a horse. You need to guide it, but you can’t fully control it.
Rich summarized his talk be saying that social media is big and getting bigger. It has changed the way people live and behave and has given us the ability to connect like never before. For marketers, it’s now a conversation rather than a campaign.

David Montfort

Four Important Rules for Key Account Management

Key (or Strategic, or Global) Account Management is a complex process managed by highly skilled professionals in many industries. Here are four rules that I have learned are essential to a successful account Management Program.

1. Treat your customer as they want to be treated, not as you want to be treated, or as you want to treat them. This requires that you understand their drivers, culture, and needs.

2. The customer is not always right … that may be why they hired you.

3. Don’t do something for, or sell something to a customer if you know it’s wrong for them.
• Don’t let your sales teams ruin a long term relationship to win a deal for this quarter.

4. Be accountable to your customer and hold your customer accountable to their organization and your relationship.

• When you have to go to the contract, recognize you are in a problem zone. Not that you shouldn’t, but understand it is a red flag. When you are assigned a new customer, read and thoroughly digest the contract, and build some crib notes on key SLAs, billing information, and governance plans. Then put it in a drawer and work hard to never have to bring it out in anger.

• It is personal. Saying "it’s just business" doesn’t cut it. All strong business relationships have a personal element… some more than others. We don’t deal with companies or departments, we deal with people. Success and failure reflect on the people not the department. If you intend to keep your customer for a long time … for life, you have to keep the best interest of your customer at the forefront of your thinking.

MENG forms social media council of advisors

Another terrific MENG initiative

http://www.mengonline.com/visitors/newsroom/MENG_Social_Media.pdf

We Don’t Live in a Linear World

Paul Kulavis, Managing Partner of the Sterling Park Group, shared the latest developments in Marketing ROI with the NJ chapter of MENG early Friday morning, February 5th. According to Paul, Marketing ROI is a rapidly evolving discipline which more and more companies are using to quantify the impact of their marketing spending. Paul highlighted the following analytical tools being used to measure and evaluate marketing activities.
• Media Mix Modeling: determines the optimal mix of media activities
• Market Mix Modeling: similar to Media Mix Modeling, but goes further to include external factors such as distribution, PR, trade promotion, etc.
• Test Marketing: In-market testing
• Simulated Test Marketing: less expensive alternative to Test Marketing which includes historical testing norms (e.g. BASES)
• Statistical Regression: workhorse of marketing analytics
• Genetic Programming/Neuronet: looks for relationships among all of the available data
• Structural Equation Marketing: derives variable importance based upon its impact to surrounding variables
• Simulation: conduct what if scenarios (e.g. Monte Carlo simulation)

According to Paul, there is no silver bullet and the best tool to use in a particular situation depends on the project’s objective , available data, time, budget, and any previous research that has been conducted. Paul cited examples of how this methodology has been used to determine the most effective marketing activities for Navy recruiting and the optimal circulation for a direct mail catalog.

David Montfort

Shocking Edelman Survey Results Reveal Less Trust in Social Media Referrals

A must read.

jeff

Delegating - Sounds So Easy

Recently read a concise article about delegating on BNET Insight. read article
The author makes it sound so easy....My two cents: One can easily delegate if the right people are in place and on the team, otherwise, delegating means failure. To steal from real estate world, i.e. Location...when it come to management, its "PEOPLE, PEOPlE, PEOPLE".

Cluetrain Manifesto

According to Paul Chaney, Internet Marketing Director for Bizzuka, the fifth P in Marketing is Participation. Paul concludes that companies and individuals can take advantage of this evolution by adhering to the following 10 Social Media Mindset Markers:

1. Every voice matters and some matter more than others(influencers)
2. WOM is more important now than ever
3. Listening is the new marketing
4. Lose control of your message (e.g. grant free access)
5. Information has to be findable (search) and shareable (social)
6. More “shared communities” and less “destination silos”
7. Watchwords of the new web are aggregate, curate, and filter content
8. Facebook is the operating system of the social web
9. Twitter is the new email
10. The web is real-time and all-the-time

Paul cited examples of companies that have capitalized on this new marketing dynamic such as Blendtec which turned a $50 investment into 700% growth and Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library who grew his retail wine business from $2 million in revenues to $50 million in revenues in just 3yrs. You can read more about Paul Chaney’s insights on how to use Social Media to grow your business in his book, The Digital Handshake.

David Montfort

Top 20 (Non-MENG Member) Marketing Blogs

MENG Members,

This morning MENG announced, via press release, the results of our study of the Top 20 (Non-MENG Member) Marketing Blogs that Marketing Executives (you) Are Actually Reading.

VIEW Press Release . I encourage you to take a look and to peruse some of these excellent blogs. You may find the content to contain advice that may be of great value to you in your executive leadership roles.

We would sincerely appreciate it if those of you on Twitter would help us by tweeting the link/announcement and certainly encourage any of you who would like to blog about the study to do so.


I just tweeted the study as @MENGonline and as @LisaPetrilli and would appreciate any RTs that you can provide! Additionally, I encourage you to tweet any of the bloggers that you know personally… (Sorry, I know this is obvious to you Twitter pro’s)!

Thanks to all of you who participated in the survey - we appreciate your support. We recognize that there are a number of highly acclaimed MENG Member-written blogs as well, and will be making it easier for you to access and read these blogs in just a few months.

All the best,
Lisa Petrilli

Small Town Rules

Gary Vaynerchuk, the driving force behind the Wine Library, a retail wine business, and Wine Library TV, his video blog about wine, woke up the audience at the early morning meeting of the NJ Meng chapter on Friday, January 8th with his impassioned plea to capitalize on the massive culture shift underway as a result of the internet and social media.
According to Gary, the internet has leveled the playing field and given the small entrepreneur the same capability to market their business as any large multinational corporation. While mass media converts 8-10% of the audience for a product or service into customers, the conversion rate for word-of-mouth is close to 70%. Based on firsthand experience, Gary realized that Twitter and Facebook did more to build his business than any traditional media channel he tried and at a fraction of the cost. It’s metrics like these he concluded that put mass marketing within reach of the average business person.
Gary stressed that because of the internet, we're connected like never before and now the critical small town business rules of listening to your customers and providing excellent service are paramount. He supported his insights with real world examples such as Zappos, Amazon, and Yelp as well as his own experience building the Wine Library.
Gary cautioned, that in today’s connected world, there is no hiding and only authentic, passionate, and committed businesspeople will be truly successful.
Gary’s passions run beyond the business world as he excused himself to catch a flight to Cincinnati to watch his beloved NY Jets play in the NFL playoffs.

David Montfort

Zappos Retails Its Culture

Interesting article in Business Week about Zappos......Gary was right on or maybe he already saw this.

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_02/b4162057120453.htm

Jeff