Adam Cohen (Partner, Consumer Products & Retail Vertical) A Thousand Cuts – Social Media & Web Strategy

Chris Boggs (Manager, SEO Practice) Search Engine Watch Columnist

Darrin Grella (Recruiter) The Art and Science of Recruiting

Mark Taylor (Managing Partner, Technology Services) Technology in Marketing

Keep up the great content guys!!

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Free is not a business–it’s zero-cost marketing for a business. And it works best at the largest scale: a small percentage of a big number is a big number.

In the new Web 2.0 economy and what I am overusing as B2B 2.0, how can we apply “Freemium” to scale for our businesses.  I guess it depends, doesn’t it?  If you are a manufacturing company where most of your target audience knows who you are and buys from you one way or another, this plays a lot differently then if you are a software firm launching a new product into the marketplace.  Both very B2B, but very different in their approach.

But for the majority of businesses out there that don’t have their customer base “locked up”, the question of “What’s a free customer worth” should be tackled.

Problem is, convincing the regular customer to be a part of this model is difficult.  So, let’s start basic:   When you figure out where your thought leadership is, give at least some of it away for free.  Track the heck out of it and get some information from them (name, email), but give it away.  Establish yourself as a thought leader in your specialty area, start creating relevant content, and give it away.

Anderson goes on to talk about the 4 types of free:

• cross subsidy – get one thing free for buying another
• subsidized – third party ads support free
• freemium – a few support the majority (basic “free” version)
• gift – given away for non-monetary rewards

I really like the idea of doing zero cost marketing.  Marketing to the masses by offering a freemium product and getting a small percentage to subsidize the masses.

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I recently posted on needing a GPS system for the internet.  This is the first of many thoughts around navigating the internet, and more importantly being able to store information a little more logical from the internet.

Here is my idea for how I would like to navigate a web site.  This is a simple representation of the B2BRelevance.com site home page header.

When you click on any link, the focus is on the page you have selected like this:

A couple of points:

• Navigation is not linear or hierarchical, it is relational.  Therefore when I am on a page, I would like to see the relationships between data and pieces of information.  I would like to know where I came from, and where I can go on the site
• The path that I have traveled thus far on the site could be highlighted.  I could “see” the path highlighted and even go back on the path that I have traveled so far.  Most importantly, I want the ability to save the whole or part of the path I have traveled to my own repository and draw my own relationships between information from this path and other information that I already have.
• I would like to see the author of the information on the page, and see who referred me to that information – was it Google, Twitter, another Blog?  Who are they?  And Why did they send me here?  Maybe it’s relevant, maybe it’s not.  In addition, I want to be able to relate ideas, and content to people.  People to organizations, people to people, organizations to organizations and all of this to content.  I want it at my fingertips, and I want to be able to navigate it fast.

Wishful thinking?

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• Where am I going?  Sometimes I get off track from what I started looking for.  There is just so much information – I start looking for one thing and I see something interesting and end up 30 minutes later trying to remember what I originally started looking for.
• Where am I at?  Within a web site or down a track of information, I have no idea where I am at.  I mean most of the time I can tell what site I am, and even a breadcrumb to tell me where I am at in the site.  However, I never know where I am at in the context of my search and the path that I used to get there?  Most of the time I find information through a track of information.  I start with a search on one group of terms, and as I learn more I am able to refine my terms including seclusions to help me find the true information I am looking for.   But the information I am looking for is normally not a single page or a single concept – it is the actual track that I used to get there.
• What have I found?  When I actually find information that is useful, what do I do with it?  Rarely is it one page – most of the time it is a group of related concepts on one page or a group of pages that I would like to use later, but I have no good way of storing these concepts as a whole.  Bookmarks do okay for storing information on a single page, but nothing stores the whole tree or whole navigation path.
• Information and people – it’s hard to separate information and people and I don’t think you should.  With blogs and twitter, information is tied to thought leadership which is normally lead by individuals.  However, bookmarking tools typically don’t relate information to people or vice versa.
• Bad representation of information and hyperlink – the beauty of the hyperlink is that information was no longer hierarchical – no longer top to bottom, left to right.  The problem along with getting lost is that my brain works a little more visual then the internet is.  Text doesn’t really work for my brain – I like pictures and visualizations.

I have been thinking and postulating about these problems a lot lately.  In my own fight to stay relevant, I know that people need to be able to use the information I am publishing in some relevant way.  I don’t mean just here on this blog, I mean whether in presentations, conversations, webinars, whatever relationship we might have and all of the related content out there that helps frame a position or complete the research that is being done online.

I need a GPS to be able to navigate my way through the internet – a way to know where I am going and where I came from, and most importantly when I am off track how to get back on track.

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It’s been a rough couple of weeks, as many are contemplating survival techniques.  We have seen marketing budgets shrink considerably, but luckily businesses continue to move into interactive marketing so our plans remain steady.

Here are a couple great tips from that Marketo post.

What does all this mean? It means that now, more than ever, marketers need to:

• Maximize conversion of their advertising dollars into prospects by optimizing their landing pages.
• Stop wasting leads that aren’t yet sales ready and start using lead nurturing to build relationships so that when they are ready to buy, you’ll be positioned to win. In a recession, new prospects are less likely to be looking to purchase right away — which means they are less likely to want to talk to a sales rep. Lead nurturing is even more critical in a recession to ensure you convert the precious dollars you spend acquiring prospects into revenue.
• Use lead scoring to identify the best leads and help the sales team prioritize where they spend their time
• Prove the impact their marketing activities have on revenue and pipeline

What kind of conversations are you having?

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{ I started thinking though that I need to develop
my own personal positioning statement }

For those of you that don’t know what a positioning statement is, here is a quick walk through.

Positioning template
For (target audience), (product, company name) is the (frame of reference) that (benefit / point of difference).

It’s easy – all you do is fill in the brackets. Yeah, right – do this with a committee of 10, and you will be there for hours.

• Target Audience: The attitudinal and demographic/firmographic description of the core prospect to whom the new product or service is intended to appeal
• Frame of Reference: The category in which the product or service will compete
• Benefit/Point of Difference: The most compelling and motivating benefit that the new product  or service can own in the hearts and minds of the customers relative to the competition

It did take me quite a while to come up with my personal brand positioning statement – even though it was just me.  i had to fight to keep it authentic!!

{ For b2b organizations, Justin King is the web strategist that can help you
create, manage and grow relationships with your customer base
using the online channel }

Do you have a positioning statement?  Share it if you don’t mind…

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After reading an article by James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II, I am adding the word Authentic to my b2b vocabulary.  How true does this ring?

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet holds a message for the marketing world: To thine own self be true. With authenticity appealing more and more to customer sensibilities, those words could not be more important. Organizations today should be true to their own selves, while also being who they say they are to others, according to the authors of this article. Yet the customer experience of actual offerings often fails to live up to what marketers said about them. Now is the time to stop saying what your offerings are through advertising, and create places where people can experience those offers as they actually are.

Creating a relevant dialogue and content is more than just perceived relevance, it has to be authentic as well.  Here are a few ways to stay authentic and relevant in your content online.

• More thought leadership, less marketing – focus on finding individuals in the organization that are closest to the customer, that understand the actual problems your customers is facing and know ways to solve it.
• It’s okay if your content is raw – I know you want your content to be marketing driven and developed with the right “messaging”.  I understand – so do I.  But, if the content is raw and unfiltered, it shows authenticity.
• “it is what I say it is” – be honest with yourself and your customers about what you can and can’t do.  Stop with the B.S. and focus on your strengths.  Your customers will appreciate you for it.

I love the word authenticity, and it is actually convicting to think about.  Building my own personal brand, I need to remember “it is what I say it is” – I am going to strive to be true to myself.  Not a bad goal.

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