Marketing Guy 2.01

More fresh content is a reliably effective way to improve the search rankings of a website. Blogs and other social media are among the easiest ways to do this, yet many businesses are reluctant to even try.

It’s certainly not that entrepreneurs don’t have plenty to say about their products and businesses. Start talking to entrepreneurs about their businesses or products and it’s difficult to get them to shut up. The enthusiasm and interesting nuggets of information bubble over. Why won’t they contribute some of it to a blog, tweet, or news release?

Part of the challenge is that we are asking someone to change behavior. Like diet and exercise, content creation is not a one time event.  It’s a way of continuing a conversation with your customers. Thus already busy marketers are asked to become content developers. How can we ask them to add anything to their already overfilled schedules?

Part of the challenge is that blogging with the most popular systems such as WordPress, Typepad, and Blogger is still too awkward, unnatural and difficult for many people. When you do have an idea and a few spare minutes to create that bit of news worthy content, the systems get in the way.

WordPress, with which I manage this blog, illustrates the problem. It offers a surfeit of options in design choices and features. Although WordPress is available as a free download or hosted service, configuring, maintaining and tweaking it take time – sometimes a lot of time. Time is usually an entrepreneur’s scarcest resources. Thus the forest of abandoned blogs with only a few old posts. These don’t help search engine rankings and can give site visitors the impression that nobody’s home.

Some organizations outsource content development to a consultant or assign it to an intern, either of whom typically know much less about the business than you do. More often than not their output has a familiar “me too” feel. This is evident to your site’s visitors and so doesn’t help converting them to customers.

Just do it (not to borrow a phrase from Nike) can be a good place to start. But how? Don’t think blog: think send a brief email. Even very busy people use email.

How about a content creation tool with limited features and options (so you can’t spend lot’s of time preening and polishing), which works just by sending it an email? Systems like this already exist. One I’ve seen used with some success is Posterous. It’s a free hosted service, so your IT department won’t need to do anything with it (other than perhaps adding a link from your site).

Still don’t have enough time? You can probably reuse  an email message you’ve already written as the basis for your blog post. Maybe what your content creation strategy needs is a Swiss Army Knife with just one blade.

I’ve spent the past few months in Western Honduras helping some organizations brand and market. Working, traveling, or living in this small less developed economy is qualitatively different from Europe or North America. That said, I’d recommend it either for the pleasure or business traveler. But before you go, consider the following.

Language:
Spanish is, of course, the official and principal language. You will find English speakers of greater or lesser competence in tourist attractions, “better” hotels, and some larger businesses. Still, knowing no Spanish is a larger handicap than, for example, in Spain. It also makes the trip much less fun.

Even if you count on using English at your meetings, it may not be all you need to get to them. At the very least get a phrase book and listen to a few traveler’s CD such as those from Berlitz or Pimslieur on the flight down.

If you can spare an extra week, consider spending it at one of the intensive language schools such as Guacamaya http://www.guacamaya.com or Ixblanque www.ixbalanque.com. Tuition is less than you’d pay for an adult Ed. night class in the US.

Finance:
Payments and payment processing can be difficult. The Lempira, the Honduran currency, is not always how Hondurans like to be paid. You will find some prices quoted in US dollars and sometimes get a preferred rate if paying with dollars or, less frequently, dollar denominated travelers checks. Dollar denominated checks drawn on US banks can be problematic. The Honduran bank of the payee may delay payment for weeks.

Debit cards are widely accepted and you can get local currency from ATMs in the larger towns. You’ll pay a fee of a few dollars per transaction, though some banks charge a good deal more. Read the on screen instructions before pressing the accept button.

Robbery is common, so don’t be surprised to see armed guards in bank lobbies or even next to ATMs.

Food:
I doubt anyone goes to Honduras for the food. If you travel as a tourist, you can probably find the familiar, from fast food to a variety of world cuisines. Yet to understand Central America, include its food. The country is not prosperous and the typical diet is basic. Staples such as black beans, corn tortillas, rice, plantains, and potatoes are eaten daily. Chickens are ubiquitous (often running free in the streets) and so eggs are common, though relatively little chicken is eaten.

The fruit is excellent. Mango, pineapple, papaya, citrus fruits, banana, and a variety of melons not only enhance breakfast, but are served in a variety of drinks called licuados. If you want yours iced, you may have to ask for it.

Many foods we take for granted – from aged cheese to fresh crusty bread – are not part of he culture and can be hard to find. There’s an abundance of street food sold from carts or stands, from fruit salad to roasted meat on skewers. Much of it looks appealing, but you’ll have to decide if it’s worth the risk of moderate to severe intestinal distress.

In the coastal towns or the bay islands the Caribbean seafood can be excellent. Hondurans seem to like theirs fried. If you’d prefer it grilled, ask for it a la plancha.

Drink:
“Don’t drink the water” is a cliché worth following. Tap water is generally unsafe as is anything made from it, such as ice. Ask for purified water and learn its name in Spanish – “agua purificada.” It’s readily available virtually everywhere.

Honduras is a major coffee producer and you can count on getting a good basic cup. Specialized roasts or even decaf are unusual.

Local brewers such as Salva Vida produce beer comparable to Coors or Miller. Rum and Tequila are also popular.

Medical Care:
The CDC

http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/honduras.aspx

advises being vaccinated for typhoid and hepatitis A and B. If you go the coast, and I recommend you do, you should take anti-malarial medication starting a week before your first visit and continuing for four weeks after you leave.

Many communities lack ready access to hospitals, but clinics and physicians are often available.

Stray dogs are common. If you’ll be spending time out of town, rabies vaccination may also be advisable. Ideally allow four to six weeks before leaving to allow the vaccinations time to become effective.

I had to find medical attention after being bitten by a dog on a coffee plantation. On the third try, I was able to find a doctor, who would see me that day. I might have had more trouble if I needed to find one who spoke English. The total cost for the examination and medications about $18.

Many insurance plans will reimburse for medical expenses, you might also consider medical trip insurance. Short term policies such as those from Access America http://www.accessamerica.com/ also provide evacuation when necessary.

Getting Around:
Within Honduras it sometimes seems you can’t get there from here. There may not be a direct road between relatively nearby towns and the quality and state of repair Even within towns roads can be narrow and unpaved. You can rent a car in one of the major cities, but in most other places.

The country moves by bus. Schedules can be irregular and the bus doesn’t always arrive. Even “express” buses are not particularly fast. Bring something to read and a bottle of water.
In addition to conventional cabs, many villages have fleets of three wheeled open sided “moto-taxis.” These are even cheaper than cabs and fun to bounce along in. Although rates are generally low, ask about the fare first, before “relying on the kindness of strangers.”

Smaller towns may not have any scheduled bus service. General practice is to waive down a passing truck. If they choose to take passengers and have space, they’ll stop. If a seat is not available, you may stand in the back. Many trucks have hand rails installed over the cargo bed for this. Expect to pay a nominal amount for the ride.

Lodging:

You can find US style hotels at somewhat less than US prices. Depending on your needs and preferences, you can also find comfortable accommodations in posadas (roughly translated as inn or B&B) in the $20 to $40 per night range. Longer stays can be substantially less expensive per night.

Infrastructure:
Mobile phone use is very common and not having an in country phone number is a handicap. If you have an unlocked GSM phone, you can purchase a SIM card and blocks of minutes. It seems every tiny bodega resells these. You can also buy a basic phone for $10 to $15.

You may be able use your domestic phone and calling plan, but international roaming rates can be $2 per minute or more. Similarly, text messages, email and web browsing tend to be substantially more expensive.

There are WiFi hot spots in cafes, hotels, and souvenir shops. They often work well. However network down time as well as power outages are frequent. A demo, which depends on a robust Internet connection, is risky.

So why go?
In spite of the challenges (and also because of them) Honduras and its people offer opportunities to develop products and markets. I came away impressed by determination and enthusiasm of many people. As an entrepreneur or a volunteer your expertise will be rewarded.

¡Buen Viaje!

Surgeon and medical school professor Atul Gewande has a prescription for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of his profession and maybe of yours. The Rx is in his latest book The Check List Manifesto.

Gewande argues that a concise simple formalized routine – to ensure or confirm that some key tasks and procedures are done and done reliably – will significantly improve results and reduce variability. He calls the process – and the mind set underlying it – a check list.

He presents compelling evidence from a large multinational research project that, at least in surgery, using a check list also improves teamwork, communication and motivation. This may be the source of its value. It also prevents “obvious” readily avoidable errors, which are easy to overlook in haste or crisis. With it, the physician is more likely to obey the maxim – “first do no harm.”

Check lists can work in medicine. In other activities, such as aviation or construction, the evidence is suggestive but not yet convincing. What, if any, import do check lists have for marketers?

There are business plans, marketing plans, requirements documents, launch plans, and many others, which stick to the bottoms of marketer’s shoes. None of them approaches the nimbleness of a check list and their role in product success can be questioned. Can one formulate an actionable list before or as one is building a marketing campaign, which will really improve the chance of success?

There probably are some basic questions we should answer before pulling the trigger.

• Who will buy/use the product?
• How large and deep is the market?
• Why should customers buy and why should they buy from you?
• How can we distribute?
• What should the price be?
• Under what conditions should we not launch?

In far too many cases such questions are not formally asked nor thoughtfully answered? Products and marketing campaigns are launched for the wrong reasons ranging from competitive parity (our competitors are doing it so we should too) to management fiat (the boss says so). Should we be surprised that so many products bomb? Any simple list is incomplete. What’s on yours?

Apple’s iPad is off to a very strong start – over a million units priced from $499  to $829  sold in its first month. The number would be even higher if Apple could produce more. There are long waiting lists at Apple’s retail and online stores.

A factor in the iPad’s run away success may be its marketing. The iPad’s marketing mix includes news releases, teasers, advertising, a Facebook page for iPad applications and a dedicated YouTube channel. Amid all the celebratory hype is something often missing in most product launches, including Apple’s. Namely the experience of using the product, as in the example below.

This ad doesn’t bombard the viewer with a classic Unique Selling Proposition or a straight list of – benefits so common in marketing of either technology or consumer products including Apples own iPod and flagship Mac computers. The iPad marketing doesn’t dwell on clichés such as that of Apple’s MacBook Pro ad, which proclaims that the “unibody enclosure is carved from a single piece of aluminum.” It’s a commercial, reminiscent of classic auto and watch ads, that focus on what goes into the product rather than what you get out of it.

In a sense, the iPad hearkens back to some of the early successes of personal computing. Back in the day, software was sold (not marketed) to customers, who more or less knew what they wanted. Along came Lotus and its spreadsheet program. There were other spreadsheets, but the category was not firmly established. What Lotus did to establish the category and its position as the leading brand in it, was to send squads of reps out to the field to show, in brief demos, how an average user could solve a useful problem in a few minutes.

Critics of the iPad ask what can you do with an iPad, that you couldn’t do with a laptop, smart phone or combination of the two. Apple’s reply is to show how it feels to use one. Here, for example, is what it’s like to use the iPad as an e-book reader.

The effect of this “show ‘em don’t tell ‘em” was once revolutionary  and appears to be so again.

BTW, I’m writing this on an iPad.

Powerpoint(less) presentations have wasted many an hour. They have been deservedly criticized by commentators ranging from Dilbert to Seth Godin.

The problems with slide shows (using PowerPoint or any other technology) ought to be obvious – all too often they substitute form for substance and canned jargon for ideas and analysis. Yet their abuse thrives. They are the marketing monstrosities which pad websites and cause participants at business seminars to head for the exit early.

This should hardly be news, but PowerPoint and its discontents were the subject of the lead article in the New York Times of 4/27/10 titled We Have Met The Enemy And He Is PowerPoint. PowerPoint, it reported, reduced the effectiveness of decision making by the US military. The article included the slide above.

I don’t defend PowerPoint, but the offending slide discussed in the article and the “thinking” which generated it, would be problematic in any medium. It is too dense and ambiguous to work on a screen or in a single presentation. That, not PowerPoint, is the problem. BTW here’s one case where size does not matter. You can click on the slide for a larger, but no more enlightening view.

Slide shows can serve as a useful counterexample of how not to deliver a message. This was captured effectively at the opening of the recent BarCamp 5 “unconference” at MIT. When your marketing has something to say and you have an opportunity to engage, entertain, or edify an audience – let a (few) slides role. In the hands of the skilled it can still be potent. Otherwise spare the slides, your audience and your market.

As a computer user, you have at least occasionally had problems, where the computer or the programs running on it do not function as claimed. That is, bugs. Bugs cause problems ranging from unobserved to minor inconveniences to total failures. Programs crash, compromise security, fail to print a page properly, produce incorrect results, etc.

Not all problems are bugs. That a product does not work as you wish or has any number of limitations or is just plain lousy does not make it buggy. Yet by any definition web browsers, word processors, enterprise applications, databases and online services have them.

When I used to manage software products, one of the rules of engagement vis-a-vis the market was to strongly discourage talking about bugs or using the term. Even in an era of permissive and sometimes vulgar language, saying the “B-word” was taboo. This didn’t work then and certainly won’t work now. We have long since passed the era of plausible deniability.

Suppliers know about some bugs when they ship a product, others are latent and are discovered later. This is not because suppliers are necessarily stupid or lazy. The number of combinations of conditions, which it would take to reveal bugs, is astronomical, so it is impossible to test them all. Moreover there is no practical method of producing commercial software, which precludes bugs. Though we can try to avoid the colossal failure “show-stoppers,” which render the product unsafe or unusable.

This used to be thought of a problem for software developers, technologists, and in general for the other guy. No more. Software is an integral part of an ever increasing array of products – The phone and the network it depends on, the water saving washer and the electric gird which powers it, the tarter removing power toothbrush, medical devices, and even toasters.

Emblematic of this problem is Toyota and the reports of sudden acceleration in some of its vehicles. A contemporary automobile has scores of microprocessors and millions of lines of software (some estimates are as high as 100 million) controlling everything from fuel air mixture to skid recovery. It is not certain what causes sudden acceleration. What is virtually certain is that Toyota’s software and that of every other auto manufacturer contains bugs.

Toyota has so far denied that software or the electronics by it are at fault, but others are not convinced. No less a presence than Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak opined that despite Toyota’s assertions their problem “is software. It’s not a bad accelerator pedal. It’s very scary, but luckily for me, I can hit the brakes.”

Also unconvinced are NASA and the National Science Foundation, which are reported to be conducting studies on problems with automobile electronics and software

What does this mean for marketers? In good times, we try to tell good stories enlightening the market about good products. As software and its attendant bugs touch more and more of our products, we’ll need to have some stories debugged.

A chronic lament of many website owners is “we built it, but they couldn’t find it.”  There’s just too much competition for the first search engine results page. There is an industry – so called search engine optimization (SEO) – of (trying) to make your site stand among the millions of also-rans. Yet not all SEO initiatives are successful.

One problem is that the tricks and techniques, which used to have your site on page one, no longer work as well. As marketers, we have to be continually trying tactics to generate traffic.

A recent research report by Nate Elliot of Forrester Research points out how video on a web site can improve its search ranking. This agrees both with anecdotal evidence and some of my own tests.

Let’s assume you have some video content relevant to your product, project, or cause. If you don’t, see below. It’s easy to add video to your site and even easier to add it to video sharing sites – not only YouTube,  but also Metacafe, Vimeo, Break and many others. None of these charge you for the service.

Video added to your site can appear in “blended” search results. You may have seen this already, where a search engine results page includes not just links, but images, news photos (linking to an article), maps, and video. To see an example of this, search Google on a term such as Cross Country Skiing. By the time you read this, your results may differ somewhat from mine, but you should see blended results.

Although there is a lot of video on the web, it is less common than plain text pages – Forrester estimates 50 times less. Of course, just shoveling moving images into your site isn’t enough. There’s always a catch, but this one is manageable. Namely, help Google as well as your customers by optimizing your video for the web. In doing so, you can gain even more than a 50 fold advantage.

The basic techniques of tagging, titling and adding video to pages with relevant content are similar to what you or your webmaster should do to optimize plain text pages and still images. If you’re not doing this yet you’ve got lots of company. Tagging can give your site an advantage – take it. Video also involves some extra work. To make it easier for Google to find, create an xml sitemap just for video.

There are other video optimization techniques, such as paid web submission services for video, but I have found no compelling reason to use them.

You say you don’t have any video worth showing or no video at all. This is not the time to call James Cameron. You don’t even need a nephew in film school. As with any of your external communications, follow the KISS principal (keep it simple stupid). An inexpensive video camera, a story outline showing what your product does and some rehearsal may be all you need.

If you don’t know where to start or you’d like a bit of polish to video, there are a number of video editing services, which can take your rough footage to the next level. An intriguing option is video production startup Pixability. It is a service, which can provide simple guidelines and even lend you a video camera. You shoot, return the camera, and receive a finished video.

You don’t have to buy a beret and head to film school to boost the visibility and engagement of your online endeavor. Lights, action, …

As the economy defrosts, it seems trade shows and live events are returning. With them, like the tide coming in on a polluted bay is a flood of tsatskes – knick knacks, premiums, swag given to attendees of demonstrations and visitors to exhibitions or sent as incentives to prospects.

Visitors to shows used to fill their shopping bags with the shirts, thumb drives, golf accessories, cheap watches, sports logo wear, etc. This detritus would often be abandoned after being schlepped to the airport from whence it would grace thrift shops and the abodes of TSA staff or be worn by street people.

In these leaner and meaner times, the tsatskes too have become shabbier. The pens are no longer a reasonable knock off of a pen one might want to keep. The t-shirts look ever more like underwear, the gym bag is in no shape to take to the gym, the coffee mug is too small and homely to be used by a soup kitchen, and the logo water bottle is no more durable and less useful than a plastic soda bottle.

In sum, the crap looks like and obviously is crap. Crap with a logo, which, if anyone keeps it long enough to notice, only makes your brand look poor.

This is not to say that a premium can’t help your presentation be more memorable or serve an incentive for prospects. As with any other piece of MARCOM, if its relevant to your brand or product, distinctive (how often do you awake wishing for a generic coffee mug?), desirable (why would someone want a white XXL t-shirt, when a logo sponge would do a better job of washing the car?), and affordable (much more likely if your target recipient is more specific than a warm body) it can be effective.

Until you can do these, skip the swag. You may be better with digital goods such as e-books, downloadable videos, useful information (as opposed to boilerplate white papers), or free on-line trials.

Google recently launched its NexusOne (smart) phone. Despite the controversy, not only the phone but the move may be smart. This phone and Google’s development of its Android mobile device (when is a phone not a phone?) operating system have generated lots of coverage – both buzz and noise – in trade and mass media. Commentators have waxed eloquently about the phone itself, the carriers, the competition, and the alleged competitive drama.

It is being described as a battle of titans between Google and Apple along the lines of humans vs. orks, Godzilla vs. Magalon, or the Yankees vs. the Red Sox.

From a marketer’s prospective, this looks a bit different. Thus I doubt that making smart phones or other devices is central to Google’s strategy. Google has a broad portfolio of businesses including location based services (Maps), shared video (YouTube), cloud computing (Google Apps), and many others. However, what pays the bills and accounts for more than ninety percent of Google’s revenue is advertising.

Google’s business success derives from its innovation in search advertising. Those small usually all text ads, which appear in the margins of query results, have been a great business. It is the reward for owning desktop (including laptop) search.

There have been many competitors from those long gone such as Excite and Alta Vista to Microsoft’s new Bing service, but Google dominates the medium and the ad revenue, which accompanies it.

The threat to Google, is that the medium is changing. Increasingly search will happen not from a computer as such but from a small(er) mobile device such as phone. If Google can’t be a major player in mobile, its dominance in online advertising in general will be threatened.

No firm dominates mobile search, so innovative competitors would have a far better chance than in desktop search. Google apparently recognized this by making a number of investments in mobile technologies. By participating throughout the mobile value chain it improves its chances of gaining insights and forging relationships, which can enable it to retain its lead in search advertising even as context and environment for this change.

If Google is going to compete with Apple, it will be by delivering ads through phone apps, not by slugging it out in the low margin handset business. Thus, the Nexus One looks like defensive marketing rather than an attempted iPhone killer.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
—- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This cliché has probably wreaked more businesses than thirteen words in any language. It’s also inspired more than its share of bad MARCOM – claiming your offering is better is not only stale, it’s generally uninteresting. Even if your product is new and improved, don’t count on your patents or other intellectual property to protect you or help you in the market.

Established corporations often value patents and reward employees for securing them. These companies pile up the patents while smaller nimbler competitors grab the customers.

For small companies, intellectual property is not always an advantage and often a net liability. If you’ve got a better idea or mousetrap, the big boys are likely to grab it. You have neither the resources nor the time to prevail in court before you run out of cash and the game is over.

There may be some benefits to intellectual property (IP) – some customers or investors like it, but this does not in itself a business make.

An alternative is to think as they do in California. In other words do as Google, Facebook, Twitter and numerous other firms do and focus on business model innovation over IP. Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot, reminded me of this recently at the  Nova Innovation Conference at MIT.

The innovation may be in service delivery, revenue allocation, or aligning what customers value with what, who, how, and when they pay. This is not to say that business model innovation is easier than product innovation. It can require breakthrough thinking. Instead it offers the benefit of sustaining your business, while the competition is still calling plays from a tired patent playbook.

Venture Capitalist, Bob Higgins aptly summarized a Think California approach as “I think historically where we [venture capitalists] fail is when we back technology. Where we succeed is when we back new business models.”