/mar.ket.’nol.o.gy/

I tell people that "marketing is marketing" as a way to help people realize that the transition from traditional marketing to online marketing is about tactics moreso than it is about strategy. If you’re a really good traditional marketer, you will likely be a really good online marketer. I find this to be true in most places. One place where marketing differs, however, is B2B marketing.

Running campaigns where your customers buys $1,000,000 widgets offline rather than $100 cogs by clicking the “Buy Now” button is a different world. B2B marketers have to think differently and, once you get online, and take away the face-to-face sales effort which helps make B2B companies so successful, it can be a challenge. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the web sites of most B2B enterprises (e.g. chemical companies, shippers, device makers, etc). Their sites look like the were built in 2000 with little updating since. There’s a reason for that. They don’t believe in the power of the web.

In our new Marketnology^SM Insights whitepaper, we try to help them out. It’s a lot easier to take action when you have an idea about the steps you can take to implement a plan. The whitepaper, B2B Marketer’s Guide to Getting the Most from Your Web Presence details for B2B marketers a few technologies that they need to be paying attention to and shares a list of top vendors with products in each category. Among the technologies included are Analytics, SEO, Targeted Email, Marketing Automation, Video and Mobile.

Each of them has a lot of value for B2B marketers. Together, they offer marketers a powerful set of tools for redefining themselves online — something B2B marketers have to start doing if they want to find more success online.

Visit the Actuan web site to learn more about Actuan.

I saw an interesting headline come over the Advertising News Portal today. Apparently, research from Dyamic Logic and the Online Publishers Association (OPA) has found that ads placed on branded content sites or properties like iVillage and Discovery, perform better than ads found on portals or run through ad networks. How much better? Based on the article, we’re talking about 22% more brand favorability on branded content relative to portals. On top of that, a 13% lift was shown for purchase intent. Want some more validation? How about another article from ClickZ based on the same data indicating that consumers 18-34 and those whose household income is over $&5k are 33% more likely to have favorable opinion about ads appearing on branded content sites. Even better — affluent audiences appeared to be 55% more likely to “get the brand’s message,” according to the report.

Anyway, it’s all good information for marketers and should be helpful in making better decisions about ad placement. I’m sure some 2009 marketing budgets are reflecting the tough economic times and it’s helpful to know how to get the most bang for buck for your dollars. Be sure to read both articles to get a full flavor what the report’s results.

Some nice folks have decided that I should run for President and I say why the heck not…

Here’s the news video on my candidacy.

I mentioned a few posts ago that given the success of the Samsung Insight phone on Sprint’s network Sprint actually had a chance of beating Verizon Wireless at their own game. Granted… It wouldn’t be easy, but these days anything is possible.

The New York Times features an interesting article today that talks about Sprint’s travails and includes some quotes from Sprint’s CEO, Daniel R. Hesse. It looks like he’s implementing some painful changes over there in an attempt to recover from the consequences of their customer service mismanagement and other woes. If he can pull this off, we could actually end up with three real mobile phone competitors. How interesting.

My mother has an iPhone. She swears by it. I’m 34 (35 in September) so I’ll let you estimate my mother’s age. She’s also one of the people most likely to send me viral videos and emails. Her affinity for iPhones and all things tech is aided by her having spent a large part of her career as an educator who focused on technology, but apparently she’s not alone.

MarketingCharts released a story with research from “Surveying the Digital Future,” a project run by the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication. The data, released in partnership with AARP, seems to indicate that people 50+ are as engaged or, even, more engaged than younger folks. For example, take a look at this chart.

Your mom and dad could be engaging in online social networking more frequently than you or your kids. Go figure.

Take a look at the full article. You can find it both on MarketingVOX and MarketingCharts.

So, I don’t make a big deal about it, but I’m black. You’re here reading this, that means that you also have a pretty good idea that I blog. I’m guessing that makes me a black blogger, though I prefer just to be a blogger. Since I write about marketing and technology, I guess I could be considered a black tech blogger. You’ll understand my displeasure, then, about the following - http://1938media.blip.tv/file/326972.

It’s not that I don’t get his stereotypical view. Rappers have taken great pains to perpetuate that image (thanks guys). I think Mr. Feldman has a first amendment right to say whatever he wants. What I took offense to is that Verizon Wireless went and decided to source some content from this guy. I suppose they should be commended for trying to make things interesting for their customers, but surely there have to be better avenues for getting content. I like to laugh as much as the next guy, moreso perhaps, but such content goes too far.

I launched a brief message off to some folks at Verizon and got a note back telling me that they never showed the clip above and never intended to do so. They have, in fact, gone so far as to remove all 1938 Media clips from their VCAST service. Kudos to them for doing the right thing…

UPDATE: Tom over at TomsTechBlog.com has been kind enough to quote me. He disagrees with my statements, but he and the commenters (me included) offer up some good stuff. Go and take a look at his post.

I’m getting married in November. In an attempt to plan a relatively inexpensive wedding (less expenses and fewer people), my fiancée and decided to get married in Atlanta – a city we like a lot, though neither one of us could move there permanently. Getting married there has required that we head down there every couple of months or so to get things in order for the wedding. This time we drove, so there I was on the way back just thinking. One of the many things that came into my mind was “the deciding factor.” What I mean by that is the factors that have been key to the success of campaigns I’ve worked on. I started thinking about a recent project we worked on for MetLife and I came up with four – only a few, and none rocket science, but they are critical to getting a return on your investment:

• Team– I’m sure it seems obvious, but little is more important than the people sitting at the table. Too few and not enough perspectives are offered up. Too many and it’s very tough to get things done. Additionally, competitive drivers necessitate that individuals at the table have a variety of skills – vertical experience, marketing, e-biz, technology. The members of the team have to understand the power of interactive technologies or they have to understand what they don’t know and have resources on which to draw to find out. It sounds simple enough, but I think we’ve all been a part of teams where people didn’t say enough or said too much or the person driving the bus thought they knew more than they actually did but no one was knowledgeable enough to steer them otherwise.
• Measurability and Trackability – Trackability. I guess it goes right along with Marketnology as a word that Microsoft Word thinks is hooey. Just like Marketnology, though, trackability is crucial. The days of not knowing which 50% of your marketing is working are over. Marketing dollars are hard to come by and being able analyze the who, what, when, where and why of your advertising is the only sure fire way to get the CFO to sign off on more. Whether you’re using the web, DM, direct response, print, TV or outdoor, there are creative ways to use technology to measure and track consumers’ interactions with your marketing. FYI, to me, measurability is knowing that people were exposed to your advertising. Trackability is knowing their behavior during that exposure.
• Strategy – Putting it frankly, why the hell are you doing it? Think about it. Someone in the business thinks they might want a mobile campaign for the brand new Cogswell Cog they’re launching in a couple of months. Sounds good. Mobile is the new social networking, so let’s get it on it now. But… Who’s the audience? Are they active users of mobile devices? Does such a campaign align well with the existing marketing strategy? Are there realistic expectations about the reach of such a campaign? Do you know enough to create real KPIs and to measure against them? Those questions have to be answered. Too often we get caught up in doing campaigns that are cool without really considering the overall strategy. That’s not to say that’s wrong, but there has to be an upside – R&D, testing the water, etc. Doing it “just because” is money wasted.
• User Experience – I’ve saved the best for last. Nothing is more important. Nothing! I emphasize it because it’s overlooked so much. Even in 2008, people treat the user experience as secondary. If consumers can’t understand the secret code of your campaign or navigate your web site or figure out where to click in your ad, they won’t use it. If your team is great, your project beyond measurable, your campaign completely aligned with your strategy … and your user experience sucks, your campaign, 99% of the time, will die. If people can’t use it, they won’t trouble themselves to figure it out. Take the time to test. If it’s important enough to spend money on, it’s important enough to test.

Okay, okay… I’m being long-winded again. I have to stop that. This is important stuff, though. The deciding factors of campaigns are frequently ignored by well-meaning people like you and me who just want to get the job done. The times dictate that we not only get the job done, but that we do it better than everyone else. Paying attention to the deciding factors gives us a great head start.

Got something you think is a deciding factor? Let me know in the comments.

Allow me to rant a bit. I have two cell phones on two different carriers (don’t all the cool kids do this, these days) – AT&T and Verizon Wireless. I haven’t had a contract on AT&T in a few years. I haven’t needed it. I currently have a 3G N95 that I ordered online. Before that, I had a Nokia E61. Neither has been available on AT&T, but thanks to the wonders of quad-band GSM, I just drop my SIM card into a new phone and I’m up and running. As we all know, that’s not the case with Verizon. They require that you buy your phone through them and to get the best price, you must re-up your contract for two years for their admittedly good service. You want to get a phone from someplace else and use it on Verizon Wireless? Tough … (at least for now since they plan on opening their network a bit)

I don’t like my Verizon phone – a three month old HTC Touch (referred to by Verizon as the VX6900). I thought it was cool when I bought it, but its flaws have worn on me. I don’t care about it not having a keyboard, but at least the on-screen keyboard could be usable. Beyond that, I’m finding right now that it selectively rings. In other words, if it is in standby mode, it won’t ring when a call comes in, but will briefly ring once you turn the screen on to use the phone. Apparently, this might as well be a feature given the number of people for whom this is an issue. I say this to say that I’d like to change my phone and guess what, I can’t. It’s not because Verizon doesn’t have other phones for which I could pay full price. Instead, it’s because the only phones one can use on Verizon’s network, thanks to their closed-mindedness, are old ones. Go ahead. Go check out Verizon’s site and find a Windows Mobile (Professional, my preference) based phone that wasn’t announced at least a year ago. For those who are counting, that’s even pre-iPhone.

Here’s where this hits home for Verizon. Check out the Samsung Instinct. It’s an iPhone-like touch screen phone Sprint recently released and it’s selling so fast Sprint can hardly keep it in stock. Verizon has put out two phones, the LG Voyager and the Samsung Glyde, that they thought might be, if not iPhone killers, iPhone competitors. The public hasn’t thought so. What did Verizon do wrong? A couple of things…

For one, check out the different ways Sprint and Verizon market their phones. You can go to the Verizon website for the Glyde. Exciting, huh? That’s the first SERP listing on Google when you query “Verizon Glyde”. To their credit, they did hoodwink Samsung into building a Flash driven site. Not great, but better than what Verizon did themselves. Now, let’s head back to Sprint land. The Instinct’s site? Check it out. Sprint created a campaign around the launch of the Instinct. Talk about Marketnology^SM at work! Not only did they create a campaign, but they’re even offering to pay consumers for doing Instinct product placement in home videos on YouTube. Amazing, stuff…

But, I said Verizon did a couple of things wrong… The second thing? It’s something they’ve been doing wrong. They’ve not been thinking about their audience. Every non smart phone you buy from Verizon has the same outdated, ugly and difficult to use interface. They changed it a bit for the Glyde’s outer screen, but by and large they insisted on putting their ugly mark on the phone. Understand that the Glyde and the Instinct, when they leave Samsung, are just about the same phone with the exception of the Glyde having hardware keyboard. What happened on the way to market was Verizon’s unwillingness to think about what they can do to make things easier for the audience rather than using a lowest-common-denominator interface that makes thing consistent for their tech support. I would posit that if the interface is easy to use, customers won’t have to call that much – which explains why Sprint went for easy since they’re tech support is rumored to suck.

Enough of my rant, my point is that Verizon has their heads up their behinds. In this market, being lazy won’t sell phones. There they are stuck in the middle of AT&T, who had the vision to take on Apple’s crazy iPhone deal, and Sprint who seems to have found the key to getting people interested in their products (though, they seem to be faster to market than Verizon anyway). To my mind, Verizon has to get over middle child syndrome look towards innovation as way out of their obvious doldrums.

Well, here we are again. People are coming off of their All Things Digital high and in their euphoria continue to feel that a merger between Microsoft and Yahoo is in order. I’m not generally Mr. Naysayer, but I still feel it’s not a completely great idea.

Everyone’s rationale for Microsoft acquiring Yahoo is that Microsoft can compete better with Google if it owns Yahoo. People are, in particular, worried about search. Riddle me this. Why does Microsoft NEED (not want — NEED) to compete with Google on search ad revenue? Is the death of desktop Windows so eminent that Microsoft doesn’t have time to update the OS for other devices? Is all of their Office revenue drying up because Google Docs has been adopted by enterprises across the land? Or perhaps, Ruby on Rails has put such a dent in the ASP.NET ecosystem that CTOs have issued edicts that those who buy Visual Studio products and SQL Server will be cast out into the streets and eaten by rabid dogs. The thing is that I haven’t heard about any of that happening.

What I have heard is that Microsoft, a software company, has 9% of the search advertising market. Oracle, on the other hand, has 0%. The same thing goes for SAP — 0%. I’m guessing those companies realize that search advertising doesn’t fall into their set of core competencies. Truth be told, while it generates a good bit of cash from it, search isn’t Yahoo’s core competency either — which is why it’s a distant 2nd to Google.

As I see it, there are better options for Microsoft. If it wants to own the online space, it needs to focus on innovation and not just evolution (which it does really well). There are companies with technologies that will allow Microsoft to position themselves 3-5 years out ahead of where everyone will be when the Internet really becomes ubiquitous and our lives are driven by it (it may feel like it already, but not not hardly). Additionally, all of that ubiquitous Internet is going to require infrastructure on which runs — you guessed it — software. For Microsoft, it’s the software stupid. Where and how software runs may change, but we’ll always need it and some things just won’t be able to go open source because of the need for trust and accountability. There are other things and I would imagine that there are people far smarter than me that can detail those.

For me, once Microsoft is successful at getting Yahoo, they’ll find it a bit anti-climatic. It’s an idea lots of people believe makes sense, but once all is said and done will prove to be beneficial only to Yahoo’s shareholders. Thankfully for Microsoft, there are lots of important Yahoo shareholders who will push to ensure that it gets its way. Goodbye, Yahoo…

Someone asked me recently what I thought of the potential Microsoft-Yahoo (Microhoo) merger that never was. When they asked, I didn’t really have an opinion. It seemed to be part of the general merger madness that is going on across numerous industries. No big deal. As I begun to think about it, however, I decided that there was more and after some thought I say “Good riddance to Microhoo!”

Let’s be honest, while the acquisition would have been great for Yahoo’s investors, it would have been bad for the Yahooligans and it would have been bad for all of the reasons that Microsoft needs Yahoo. Namely…

Microsoft’s largess and arrogance inhibits innovation – Microsoft is successful today because they’re the 800 pound gorilla to beat – not because they offer the best of anything. Here recently they either follow others (e.g. iPod followed by Zune) or acquire what they need (e.g. Avenue A / Razorfish). Little in the way of real innovation has come out of Redmond in the past 10 years and that’s largely because they don’t have to be scrappy. Windows Vista sucks and people still buy it, MS Office is overly bloated and yet we shell out our money to buy each new version as if we need the three new features offered in the latest version. Microsoft sells it and we buy it, so why should they innovate? Don’t believe me. Ask yourself how Windows Mobile is on v6 and still user experience epochs behind the iPhone interface. That unwillingness or inability to innovate is why, if Yahoo wants to sell, they need to find a better partner.

At 20 years old, the Internet is relatively young. Yes, it’s changed the way we communicate quite rapidly and lowered the barriers between us, but at the same time very few companies have figured out how to actually make money off of it. Yahoo has. Microsoft hasn’t. And a lot of that is due to innovation. Yahoo’s problem isn’t that they’re not innovative. Instead, it’s that they can’t figure out what to do with their innovations. I mean ten years later, PageFlakes and other companies are trying to build business models out of the whole My Yahoo concept we all loved back in the late 90s. The thing is that Yahoo still innovates that way, but for reasons unbeknownst to me, sits on things or doesn’t push them the way they could. The time for sitting on one’s hands is over. In this day, innovation is key and it will be crucial to their success.

Here’s the real honest truth for Yahoo – they need to stop competing with Google. Google owns the search engine marketing space. With the Doubleclick acquisition, they own a good bit of the display advertising space, too. So, what. From mobile to set-top boxes to movies-on-demand, there are numerous other arenas where Yahoo can bring its advertising experience to bear as they all become Internet dependent. Moreover, a company with Yahoo’s resources and knack for innovation should be able to look into the future and prepare for where everyone else is going to be 5 years from now.

To my mind, what Yahoo has always done best is figure out what we, the consumers, want and then given that to us. Its list of successes include Yahoo Mail, My Yahoo, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Music, HotJobs and Yahoo Local, to name a few. Most of us have used all of them at one point or another. Where Google focuses on utility, Yahoo’s focus has been on user experience. It needs to get back to that. All of this worrying about what Google does simply distracts their management from focusing on who Yahoo is and, quite frankly, whether it’s going to be around in another 20 years.

Have you ever noticed how when you’re driving on the highway right behind an 18-wheeler that you can’t see ahead of you at all. You don’t know what’s coming and all you can do is react to the moves the 18-wheeler makes. However, if you just move over one lane all of a sudden the view gets clear again (barring another 18-wheeler) and you can get a better feel for the road and make better-informed decisions about how you approach the road. Yahoo has reached that point where it’s time to change lanes and get from behind the 18-wheeler. It’s time for the Yahoo gang to let their hair down and go back to being Yahooligans and living up to the wild ideas and innovation that the word ‘Yahooligans’ suggests.