User generated content

There is much discussion of web 2.0 technologies, associated web site phenomenon and in particular user generated content. It raises all kinds of questions. Is content dumbing down? Who is accessing this content? Who has the time to produce it all? Is it giving rise to an alternative economy, does it make business sense … ? I could go on. Just today some major brands withdrew their advertising from a user generated content site because of concerns that their name appeared in juxtaposition to unsuitable content material. Maybe that is inevitable given the apparent chaotic, anarchic and irreverent content that some might choose to post. Then on the other hand there is the success of Wikipedia - amazing by any standards. The Internet certainly seems to be a fertile ground for overnight successes. Started in 1999 Wikipedia today claims 1.92 million articles in English, has 4.8 million registered users 1,200 volunteer editors who edit articles that anyone can submit and requests donations to keep it running. According to accounts on the site, donations were $1.3 million in 2006. What kind of business model is that? Recently we learn that an article by Harvard Business School has explored ‘issues of how online cultures are made and maintained, the power of self-policing organizations, the question of whether the service is drifting from its core principles, and whether a Wikipedia-like concept can work in a business setting.’ All amazing stuff and if it were not for the huge numbers of visitors to the most notable Web 2.0 sites would they be of business interest? It certainly marks a sea change, but will it impact b-2-b or is it all totally disconnected from the old world notion of business as selling products and services to make a profit?

The times they are a changing

We are all aware of the unrelenting pace of change but every now and again a few items of essential truth combine, or occur close enough together to cause a pause to take stock of the situation. In the last few days two such moments have given me cause for thought. A review of a new book – Austerity Britain 1945-1951 – and the trailers for Andrew Marr’s forthcoming BBC series on the history of modern Britain both promised to provide a benchmark of how much change there has been in my lifetime. Nostalgia placed in context. But the other thing was a line in a news magazine from my former university about the conversion of what in my time had been the students union building, into a presentation suite and study facility where students could work quietly in groups. The closing sentence read, ‘The area brings a change in the strategic direction of the union with a move away from alcoholic provision towards allowing students an area where they can study and relax in an unlicensed area.’ This clearly is a monumental change from the heady days of student politics that held sway there in the late 1960s, a time when several of today’s cabinet ministers were rebellious student activists. The union largely existed for the bar, it was the primary source of income. Of course through work for our clients we had been aware of the changing use of university and school spaces as science and engineering facilities converted to performance spaces, but the news that alcoholic provision was no longer either a viable or required need was indeed surprising. And that is the point really, how often do businesses really reappraise what their customers need or do. It is too easy to become comfortable with client relationships and assume everything stays the same – it doesn’t.

Return to the dot com boom?

Back in the heady days towards the end of the twentieth century there was a rush of blood to the heads of investment bankers to pour money into nascent web companies. Typified by young technology driven entrepreneurs with a vague proposition and people working long hours at computers, business principles were disregarded in a rush to get money invested in the latest young hopeful. The term ‘cash burn’ was coined to describe the consumption of the capital investment chiefly into people and advertising. Within a couple of years it all ended in tears. We launched our business Technical Marketing Ltd s in 1999 during this first internet frenzy, self funded, based on proven and prudent business models but embracing the internet technology. A new article today – Still waiting for the dot com revolution - suggests that the sector is maturing based on new and more stable technologies but still has a way to go to deliver a must have experience to users. All too often the content disappoints. From America we read much about Web 2.0, the so-called Social media and the boom in video sites. The Prime Minister even published his congratulations to the new French president on You Tube! Then on the other hand the market is fragmenting with specialists not just in building web sites, but in search engine optimization, usability testing, content management software, statistical analysis and quite possibly in interpreting the evolving terminology to baffled clients. Back in 1999 we were invited to pitch for an advertising campaign for one newly floated dot com company. The initial meeting took place in an apartment in Kensington trying to establish a brief while the busy entrepreneur dressed before dashing off to take a flight to Paris. ‘All you need to know is in the prospectus’ was the brief. It was impossible to figure out what this company did or identify any sort of business model let alone define target audiences and markets. They seemed to actually be buying other dot coms that were floundering and burning cash in the process. We declined the account. Shortly after the business folded. Today we are faced with a growing list of internet related technologies and specialists and may we need to step back and put the web site into context within a marketing plan. Experience in the b-2-b sector shows that for most of our clients the web site is a convenient resource to obtain specific or background information about a company they already know. Providing the site works and the information they need can be quickly found and accessed they are happy. Knowing your market and customers will be the best guide to determining what should be on the site rather than employing an expensive cluster of different specialists to find out what you already know.

PowerPoint in the firing line

Today’s Daily Telegraph carries an article reporting on research by professor John Swells of the University of New South Wales suggesting that presentations using the ubiquitous PowerPoint slide package cause audiences to lose attention and ‘switch off’. Apparently the brain cannot cope with the amount of information being received. Microsoft not surprisingly support PowerPoint as a powerful business tool. Personally I have made less use of slide presentations whether PowerPoint or Keynote as client meetings have now tended to become less formal and reverted to more of an old fashioned discussion, without the encumbrance of visual aids. A few years ago it was quite different. The arrival of video projectors and lap tops enabled slide shows to be quickly arranged and slides projected onto screens, or simply the office wall. But now the excitement over the then ‘new found’ ability to do this plus our trend to closer client involvement instead of ‘lecturing’ the client, it is not something I encounter so often. My criticism of PowerPoint was not the information overload or boredom factor, or even the time it took to create an acceptable presentation and the sheer intricacy of some presentations, but the use of slides as a substitute for a full report. Busy people would ask me to send them the PowerPoint presentation or to present a market research report in PowerPoint; not simply as a reminder of a more detailed presentation or report, but instead of a report. To me PowerPoint was more a descendant of the flip chart, itself simply a visual aid to help underscore key messages. Soon the key decision makers were only receiving bullet point briefings – the rationale and depth of analysis largely unseen. So the presentations changed from being an aide-memoire into a mini report that resulted in a huge file size. Recently we concluded some market research on behalf of another agency, extensively supported by charts and graphs and at the last minute was asked for a PowerPoint version as an alternative to a presentation and report for their client. There was no discussion on the findings and recommendations although the client was reported to have been delighted .. and no doubt on to the next project – or PowerPoint!

Footnote: the Google ads served to accompany the online version of the news story was for an agency specializing in guess what … PowerPoint. Right after an article totally decrying it. How weird is that?

Can sales people let a good marketing campaign down?

Like many people I prepare for the worst when telephoning a company for information. Jobs are so deskilled and compartmentalized there is little chance of getting a complete answer at the first attempt. Then my heart sinks further when I realize I have reached a menu. How many levels will there be? What data will I need to key in? Will there be a relevant option? How long will this take? And how much will it cost? Then increasingly with off shore call centres – will I understand what they say? So it is with considerable trepidation I call BT to progress an order. I had decided to take up their offer to upgrade my broadband account and had returned the order form in the envelope provided in the expectation of order confirmation within a week. Three weeks had now elapsed and no news. Oddly for a telecoms business there was no phone number on the letter, or address, or e-mail – just the web site. That did not yield a number either but it did offer an online option to check order progress. Unfortunately it failed to recognize my information. So after fifteen minutes to reach a dead end I used the sales number on the telephone bill and proceeded through the multi-level menu, entered my phone number and eventually got a ringing tone that somehow died leaving me hanging. I repeated the process and this time got to speak to someone, gave my telephone number, customer number, home address and mother’s maiden name. They concluded I did not exist and offered to transfer me to some other part of the BT empire. After repeating the same information to a succession of people, queuing, listening to Vivaldi, being told how busy they were, it appeared the phone was registered in my wife’s maiden name, even though the bill reflected her married name, slightly misspelled, but near enough to recognize, and this was undoubtably the problem. I was put through to a supervisor to get the name on the account changed and was congratulated on my marriage. I thanked her and pointed out this was in fact a few years ago and could we make the account Mr & Mrs? No that was a step too far, so I settled with it in my wife’s name, possibly correctly spelled. When I got to person number 5 I actually explained I was progressing an order taking up their offer to upgrade my broadband. So far there had been no trace of receipt of this order, but this very helpful lady decided that I was in fact with BT Yahoo, not BT broadband – by the way customers don’t care about internal organization - and offered to set up the phone call and introduce me to the right person. Nearly there then. But hold on, person number 6 opened the conversation by asking if he could help me with anything. I explained the nature of my enquiry which seemed not to strike a chord at all. You already have broadband he volunteered after asking how much I was paying – is there anything else I can help you with. So is there an upgrade deal or not I asked? Apparently not. End of call after 32 minutes – another dead end. Not a great customer experience.

Next morning I have an e-mail sent at 5 am and addressed to my wife, wrong spelling of course, to thank me for my order and confirm delivery date of the equipment.

Short attention span screen generation poised to enter work place?

According to an article from World Business, “Susan Greenfield, a professor of pharmacology at the University of Oxford, argues that the culture of the screen, where everything is visual and available at once, is shaping a different kind of reasoning. "The screen culture is not conducive to taking time to think," she says. "The result is iconic thinking, quick fixes and short attention spans." Whether culture is the word to describe the possibly disturbing trend of some of the youth of Britain engaged in hours of nocturnal X-Box gaming, is open to debate. And if this is truly shaping a different type of brain as is also suggested is similarly a matter of conjecture, but what I found truly worrying was the suggestion that a generation bent on quick fixes and short attention spans are not only entering the work place but could next become managers. Arguably less qualified than their parents - despite degrees from some minor English town or village that now enjoys university status - and steeped in texting in a language reminiscent of the long redundant telex machine, how will we engage them in a conventional business approach? A different report noted how the impending retirement of the post war baby boomer generation was going to create a significant knowledge gap for many organizations. Will the newly named screen generation be their replacements? If so it is likely they will require knowledge in easily digestible packages. Whichever outcome, documenting, databasing searchable information seems to be something businesses should prioritise to ensure knowledge is retained in an organization, available to all that need it and accessible. Yet another report criticized the difficulty of pulling all the information together and finding it in a timely way. It is something long advocated by Technical Marketing Ltd, the building of a knowledge resource using web database techniques to acquire, store and provide accessibility to vital information. Enlightened companies are working on this recognizing the importance of securing the investment that has been made in acquiring the knowledge in the first place.

Are blogs relevant to b-2-b?

A great deal is being written about blogs. Company CEOs and politicians are said to write them. Individuals record their mundane daily activities, journalists break news using them, but very few of them ever get read! There is a lot written about the idea of blogs and the rapid growth in the number of blogs in existence – but is this just another idea with more puff than real value? A recent survey published by eMarketer quoting an American Advertising Federation report rated various new media for effectiveness putting blogs at a mere 13% just ahead of RSS with 8%. Leading the list was search at 49% followed by online video 34%, Social networking 30%, podcasts 21%, video games 20% and mobiles 15%. A veritable raft of new media communication opportunities and a lot of food for thought. Will there be winners and losers? Will they all develop to oust traditional media? Who knows? Back to blogs. According to Technorati the 50 millionth was tracked back in July 2006, the blogosphere is doubling every 6 and a half months, 175,000 new blogs are added each day, there are 1.6 million postings a day …. so not something to be ignored then. Except this nagging concern about effectiveness – well I guess if nobody reads most of them this is not surprising. Another part of the eMarketer article concluded that awareness of blogs really depended on links from other blogs – 63% and 22.9% by recommendation. Only 19.6% were via search engines so optimising content is going to be less effective than getting some well known bloggers to link to your blog. More about word of mouth marketing than conventional promotion. So where does this leave blogs in the technical marketing plan? Perhaps we are the frontier of a new communication media revolution …. Perhaps.

Small is beautiful ... or is it?

A piece of market research arrived this week from accelerator offering an introduction that they were ‘aiming to find out what’s really going on at the front line of small business’. In an earlier blog – September 18th 2006 – I noted that in terms of numbers 99.3% of all British businesses were officially classed as small, that is they employ 49 or less people according to government statistics. Of course the mere act of taking on employees immediately changes the nature of a small business – you are now managing people and dealing with a whole raft of employment legislation – and it is easy to forget you actually need to service clients and customers to make money that creates wealth. May be that is why nearly two thirds do not have employees. Of those that do the second biggest perceived threat is actually recruiting and keeping good staff. Not surprisingly 71% thought the UK government did not do enough to foster small businesses and business people. So no surprise there. Despite this 72% thought the UK a better place than Europe to start a business but significantly only 34% and 42% respectively thought the UK better than North America and Asia. Autonomy rated at 38% was the top reason for preferring to work in a small business. We are left with the question of whether there are two emerging business communities – the relatively few global giants and the mass of small businesses. Our experience suggests big businesses talk about marketing expenditure within an often somewhat arbitrary budget, whereas small businesses focus on generating more business profitably. What the statistics suggest is that marketing one small business to other small businesses is a factor that cannot be ignored and business to business technical marketing will need to provide efficient means to do this successfully.

No time to listen to a proposal?

We once ran, at the clients’ specific request, a cartoon in their newsletter. The scene was an ancient battlefield, a king brandishing a sword and wearing a suit of armour was being tapped on the shoulder by a knight trying to attract his attention. The caption was ‘I don’t want to see any crazy salesman. Can’t you see I have a battle to fight?’ In the background stood the salesman clutching a machine gun! We turn now to an article about overcoming TDD – Time Deficit Disorder. As the argument runs, businesses are down-sizing and the remaining staff are too burdened with keeping everything going, their time is over-scheduled with none spare to evaluate new propositions. It is an interesting concept TDD, or maybe its just difficult to engage in the right type of dialogue with a prospect anyway. So the task of the marketer is to convince the prospect it is worth allocating some time to listening – there might just be a solution to an existing problem. The approach needs to get quickly to the point – what are the benefits and are they relevant to the prospect. This is where the marketing skills are needed. To gain the attention in the first place, offer relevant benefits and make responding to the offer easy and quick to do.

The information revolution ... and is it any use?

A news item from a client today referred to Burkina Faso – what is that? A country? A town? A person? – why not Google it she said, then rang off. The CIA web site flagged it as an African country – I later discovered it was Upper Volta – maybe they decided to re-brand after all the snide remarks down the years. Of course Googling – a name or term that itself didn’t exist a couple of years ago - immediately yields millions of references; sometimes too much information. A document from the IML Group referred to the too much information problem, a problem they had now solved by having a site where only the businesses or products you are actually after are turned up by their search. Another report from Accenture today of a survey conducted amongst a 1000 UK and USA managers reckons 53% of the information they gather actually has no value at all. It gets worse – they can’t easily get hold of the information they need, it is in too many places, others in the same company won’t share it, too much information making it hard to find what is needed … and so it goes on. One large corporate I worked for demanded masses of information all the time. Of course most of it was useless because people had to make up information to fill their report quotas. For the 5 year business plan one essential piece of information was the market share to 2 decimal places of our 3 biggest competitors – even the competitors didn’t know themselves, I know that because I called them up to ask. More recently a client appointed a high ticket marketing guru who wanted a complete audit trail tracking every marketing dollar invested to value of resulting sales. Not surprisingly their IT systems could not actually deliver this information. The data was all there somewhere, but on different systems. The effort in extracting, using and interpreting the data was hardly worth it – although it did confirm what we already knew. And that really is the issue – gathering information for its own sake can be a waste of resource – the big question we always ask is, so now you know the information you wanted, what are you going to do about it and does it help? If it does – good. If not then was it worth the effort?

Benefits before explanations

Two totally different items, apparently unrelated but not if you happen to be an engineer working in marketing. An interview on the BBC breakfast programme today discussed a news item that National Health hospitals were about to begin advertising for patients. The interviewer started with the premise that money was to be spent on advertising and wanted to know how much, so that this figure could then be equated, if invested differently, into more doctors or patient services. The interviewee then explained that advertising was just one aspect of marketing and in fact at her particular National Health Trust, none of the marketing communications budget was actually being spent on advertising. As a marketer and engineer this need to explain what actually you do is something we meet regularly. In fact for as long as I have been reading the IEE journal the letters page has run frequent complaints that the status of electrical engineers is not understood and that engineers are viewed by the general public as repair men. I have experienced this personally in the past when relatives would invite me to fix items of failed electrical apparatus when I visited their homes. So one of the first tasks with any new marketing prospect or client is to explain what we actually do. Of course the TV interviewer’s perspective that marketing is advertising is a widely held view and so we have tended to focus on promoting the benefits first to reduce the whole client educational process to an easy to understand concept. The bottom line is that by investing in marketing you can grow your business and increase profits. Of course that works best when talking to the owner or the person responsible for the P&L account. In larger organizations department managers tend to lose sight of this because they are measured on managing a budget to come in on target which is not the same thing at all. One approach we have used is to write very simple briefings on a range of marketing topics which are both syndicated via other web sites and available to download as a PDF book - Minute Marketing .

Using news as part of a customer retention strategy

Experience shows that for our clients, most enquiries are now made by telephone or via their web site. An analysis that tracks enquiries through to orders and sales value for a company selling capital goods with a long product replacement interval, highlighted two very important facts. First, the highest value was derived from previous customers and the second most valuable group was people already aware of the brand. A central proposition in our marketing strategy for this particular client is to retain ‘top of the mind’ awareness for the brand and reinforce the brand’s value during the long time interval before they need to replace or upgrade. This has the effect of reaffirming the correctness of their original decision to go with the brand in the first place and to prompt their recommendation to others who are actively evaluating options to make a purchase decision. Apart from a continuous press and public relations campaign in the trade press, on industry web sites and news portals, customers and prospects receive personal communications by e-News at intervals of 8 weeks and a news magazine twice a year. The e-News html format has a branded masthead and presents six recent stories, each with an image, headline and news summary, linking to a Virtual News Office on our client’s web site where the full story can be read, typically with additional images and links. The magazine format is designed to offer high retention value, to elevate the piece well above ‘junk mail’ status and to offer an interesting and informative read, with motivation to pass on to colleagues to share. Relevant content is vital and comprises a mix of user product experience and endorsement, product updates, expert opinions and industry and community news. It is designed to position our client as an authority and totally embedded in the user community. This subtle ‘soft sell’ approach is supported by positive customer feedback and most importantly – orders!

Two thirds of all economic activity influenced by shared opinions?

A recent article claims that ‘today’s savvy consumers often trust a recommendation more than traditional advertising, marketing materials or other company communications.’ The article quickly moves on to Word of Mouth Marketing which perhaps surprisingly, then again perhaps not, has its own association – the The Word of Mouth Marketing Association or WOMMA for short. Amazing – but it does encapsulate long held views that recommendations about a company’s products or services are a powerful marketing tool and putting effort into delighting customers not only helps prompt a positive recommendation but equally valuably retains loyal customers. A third party endorsement deployed through a marketing vehicle such as a case study is a well-proven and useful means of showing others how the product can be used to the satisfaction of a customer and is well used in b-2b marketing. Products sold through consultant or architect specification often need the endorsement of leaders to persuade others to follow. According to WOMMA, two-thirds of all economic activity in the United States is influenced by shared opinions about a product, brand or service. The article the on goes on, ‘Research shows that recommendations that are ‘bought’ (through incentive programs and other similar marketing initiatives) do not yield the same financial benefits for a company as ‘earned recommendations’ do (which result from truly satisfying customers)’. So despite the new terminology, the story seems to be ensure you have satisfied customers because they can often be your most valuable marketing tool as well.

Marketing from the bottom up?

In the new dynamic it has become fashionable to talk about conversational marketing – different from ‘word of mouth’ marketing – in so far as this is marketing not driven hierarchically by the company from the top down, but by their recently enfranchised customers connected by internet. A world of individual customers inhabiting the blogosphere, connected by hyperlinks and acting from the bottom up. On the other hand few marketers seem to have embraced blogging, suggested by some as a crucial forum for conversational marketing. The Cluetrain Manifesto attributed by some observers as an early starting point for the notion of conversational marketing offers this opinion – ‘Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations.’ Certainly there has been a major movement towards the use of the Internet as a research tool to discover product information as a prelude to buying or specifying. In some industries users have long swapped information about experience with products and become a useful source of knowledge in identifying and fixing faults for example. What is suggested now is that this is no longer a one way street but indeed a conversation between company people and their customers. It implies greater transparency with companies opening up more information in return for greater customer loyalty and input of requirements but most importantly customers spreading the word about the company’s products in a positive way. Early days maybe, but could this be a glimpse of the future or merely a hopeful wish?

In the new dynamic it has become fashionable to talk about conversational marketing – different from ‘word of mouth’ marketing – in so far as this is marketing not driven hierarchically by the company from the top down, but by their recently enfranchised customers connected by internet. A world of individual customers inhabiting the blogosphere, connected by hyperlinks and acting from the bottom up. On the other hand few marketers seem to have embraced blogging, suggested by some as a crucial forum for conversational marketing.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Integrating print with online

Most marketing budgets still have a significant component for advertising in print, but although the web site URL is usually included, quite often it appears as part of the obligatory address block along with phone and fax details. Another school of thought is to use the URL as part of the response mechanism, then having brought visitors to the web site to make that visit relevant. Offering a ‘landing page’ that is specific to the message in the advertisement can both help continue the conversation and also offer a means of measurement of the effectiveness of the advertisement. In the b-2-b space the ‘call to action’ may not be to purchase a product - although we have clients where this is the case - but where there is more typically high involvement in the sales process the landing page can offer useful, relevant additional information to assist the visitor with the necessary research towards making a specification or purchase decision. Real in-depth information such as a White Paper or catalogue downloads can also be offered as well as a clear next step in the sales process remembering the brand offers the promise of providing a solution to the prospects needs. Visually it is important that the landing page continues the theme as well so it is obviously the right place. Of course integrating print and online marketing also requires effective management of both processes – in some businesses the marketing person does not have control over the web site and that is a problem.

Are White Papers a b-2-b soft sell?

A recent article by Michael Stelzner – ‘How White Papers can turbo-boost your sales lead campaign’ picked up on the white paper concept we mentioned back in August under the heading ‘Marketing in the engineering work space’. Then we offered the idea of White Papers as briefing documents to help educate the target audience to have a background understanding of the rationale behind our client’s products. When we think about it, we are often faced with an educational task for clients in technology and engineering businesses as part of an integrated marketing campaign. Then again we have had to also explain to some clients what a White Paper is. According to Stelzner, ‘New research shows that white papers are among the most compelling ways to attract leads.’ Apparently this research shows that 70% of US information technology professionals rely on white papers before making a purchasing decision. The informative nature is important as this influences buyers at an early stage in the sales cycle and can produce good quality sales leads. The key to a good white paper is the quality and content that deals with the issues rather than overtly promotes the products or services. Our view is that the ability to write such a document marks a company out from its competitors, it bestows authority on their expertise and allows them to command the moral high ground in their market. The only mention of products is by way of demonstration, where relevant, and the branding is the authorship. Our thinking is that if prospective buyers are ‘educated’ by our clients then the confidence to buy from that manufacturer is enhanced. One client finds that university engineering departments are particularly interested in white papers and getting them young can be no bad thing.

Do readers demand biased news?

A recent paper published by INSEAD reports, ‘Bias in the market for news is a well-documented phenomenon. Starting from the assumption that consumers want unbiased information, traditional economic theory cannot explain the existence of media bias in free societies, as it suggests that competition forces the media to be impartial.’ It goes on to report that, ‘Recent research in economics proposes an alternative theory which assumes that consumers want to read (or watch) news that is consistent with their tastes or prejudices, rather than to know the truth.’ May be bias is too strong a word, but people have traditionally purchased newspapers that reflected and re-enforced their own political views. It seems to me this is where the competition works, in choosing a paper where you relate to the editorial mission and perspective, so why the assumption that everyone actually wants unbiased news? What has changed in terms of the UK government’s treatment of news is the so called ‘spin’ more realistically called propaganda that seems to owe much to the Dr. Goebels school of reporting and is recognized as such by most people. Also TV reporters seem to have changed from reporting news to providing the interview themselves by answering questions posed by the studio based anchorman. What we actually get is what the reporter thinks is happening and perhaps that is actually worse. Breaking stories skim across news tickers often based on the flimsiest information while ‘experts’ are quick to pontificate, all without the benefit of any actual facts. Then there’s the campaigns, stories that run and run, but suddenly get dropped – I thought we would all have died of bird flu by now, but despite such dire warnings and doom and gloom it is no longer news. In our world of b-2-b communication the trade press is full of PR derived and increasingly paid for content, that blatantly promotes the benefits of the client’s products. I cannot recall an editor ever enquiring to check any facts, typically for a small financial consideration - traditionally but inaccurately known as a colour separation charge - they seem happy enough to print anything that is vaguely relevant to the publication’s title. For b-2-b marketers getting client ‘news’ into the editorial space of a publication offers the appearance of greater credibility and anyway without the manufacturers buying advertising space most trade journals would fold, few are remarkable enough to exist on cover sales or subscription revenue. But then I suspect most readers know this and it is a convenient means of finding out what is going on in their industry. They can check the facts out for themselves if the product sounds interesting and that after all is the real point – to stimulate interest. Apart from the trade press there are web sites which are even lees fussy about what is published and of course thanks to Virtual News Office companies can be their own publishers free of any editorial intervention at all.

Experiential marketing – the next big thing?

How often has the technical possibility to do something been heralded as the demise for existing technologies? CDs and web sites would replace print as the medium of choice for example, podcasts, RSS, experiential marketing are the way forward and so on. We have taken the view that being at the cutting edge is overall a good thing, it makes the company using it look as though it is also forward looking. But what we believe must be avoided is only using one method – our view is to play to the strengths that different marketing tools offer and bring them into the mix in the way they work best. Then there is the problem of explaining the new technology to clients. I suspect Alexander Graham Bell had the same problem – ‘but none of my customers have a telephone, so I don’t need one because they can’t ring anyway’. About ten to fifteen years ago the response to making product data available on CD was, ‘my customers don’t have PCs’. But when we showed their customers the benefits they went and bought a PC – they were just waiting for someone to take the lead. Same with web sites, ‘our competitors don’t have them, so why should we?’ That then changed to, ‘all our competitors have a web site – we need one right now.’ Pioneering new technologies can be tough in the b-2-b market with risk adverse clients who still wonder what happened to response cards from magazines. Much of this thought was prompted by an article in the Sunday Telegraph on the subject of company magazines used as a subliminal sales technique by major retailers to entice consumers – a sector of publishing that is apparently booming. Having belatedly adopted web sites, some clients are now so obsessed by the idea they continue to pour in resource and effort in the belief this is now all they need to do – unfortunately encouraged by ‘experts’ that tell them to spend thousands pounds more making the site search engine optimized – but that’s another subject. The newspaper article ran the following quote – ‘more and more companies are realizing that having got their web sites up and running, it is actually a pretty dead experience.’ Wow! So, back to magazines. By definition it is fresh each time – more than can be said of some web sites – and if correctly targeted will have sufficient retention value for the recipient to stop, review, read then pass on to colleagues. Far more subtle and effective than unsolicited junk mail which is destined straight to the recycling sack. We have long endorsed the value to the client company of a magazine or newsletter for their customers – we have just published the 10th anniversary issue for one client. By showcasing how they solved unusual challenges they have established a reputation for expertise, differentiating them from competitors who are just moving the boxes off the shelf. A good company magazine a couple of times a year works as a valuable part of a successful PR programme. So experiential marketing may not be just the high tech stuff – a good old fashioned read could also provide an interesting experience that makes customers favourably disposed to the company publishing the magazine. Why not take a look now at the various PR tools that could also apply and visit Technical Marketing’s web site.

Britain - a nation of small firms, most with no employees!

News arrived this morning from The Small Business Service (SBS) an executive agency of the Department of Trade and Industry, announcing Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) Statistics for the UK 2005. The press release can be found at, Small Business Service web site What the figures confirm is that in numeric terms 99.3% of all the UK’s 4.3 million business enterprises are officially classified as small – that is they employ less than 49 people. Of these, 3.2 million some 72.8% have no employees at all! These are interesting statistics where nearly three quarters of all UK businesses are one-man operations. In theory, plenty of scope to grow small businesses into medium size enterprises, a role where marketing can play a crucial role. The challenge is identifying those businesses that actually want to grow and take on employees with all the legislative implications that goes with it. This is an interesting challenge - the companies that could really benefit from marketing expertise are the least able to invest. We have developed means for working with clients that are highly affordable and where the impact of marketing can be quickly assessed in terms of orders received.