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Ok, this picture is part of a practical joke.  We don’t really use an overhead projector at Sonatype.  I am, however, old enough to recall using one,  and to remember the painful process of creating “foils.”

And painful it was.  Time consuming and painful.

But it did get me thinking.   Was anything better about presentations in the old days?  Surprisingly, yes.   Two (related) things.

1.  Producing foils was such a pain that people didn’t have 75 slide decks.  Each foil had to carry a significant amount of water.  This is in stark contrast of the massive (yet often underwhelming), presos we must endure today.

2.  Because there were fewer slides (foils), the presenter had to be better prepared for the presentation.  It was much harder to rely on a prop (slides) to carry the message.  Does anyone really need to see one more presenter staring at the screen and reading every word of their slides while the audience plays Words with Friends on their iPhones?

So yes, Keynote or Powerpoint on an HD projector is far far better.  But there is a babies-and-bathwater lesson to be learned here.

Continue reading »]]> Content is (once again) king.

Everywhere you look, the marketing discussion centers around using “content” to drive marketing results.  For all the buzz, two key facts are consistently overlooked:

• Building effective content is hard.
• Doing it consistently is very hard.

I’m not going to pretend to have the all the answers to make it easy.   But I’ve been giving the matter a lot of attention recently.  I’ll be facilitating a class on content marketing for Demand Metric next month, and, as my Dad taught me, a deadline helps focus the mind.

Here’s my top 5 conclusions:

Content is, in Fact, Critical

Beyond the buzz, content is a critical element of the modern marketing engine.  The B2B customer acquisition process is evolving quickly from a seller-push to a buyer-pull model.  Engaging, informative, compelling, and even humorous content has huge role to play in greasing the buying process.  If we don’t have a strong content strategy, our competitors will fill that void — and reap significant advantages in the buyer education process.

To Work Well, Content Must Be Very Good (and Most of it is Crap)

As I’ve said before, all marketing is an interruption.   To cut through, great content must be clear, compelling, and have real value to its intended consumer.  Unfortunately, most of what we see is salesy blather or obtuse technical material.  Both are generally ignored.  Bob London even gave it it a fitting name — content pollution.

Great content persuades.  But it does so tastefully.  It informs, educates, or entertains.   I’m a firm believer that prospects buy things, they are not sold things.  In other words, they convince themselves that ours is the right solution.  It’s our role as marketers to help them reach this conclusion.

Like Success, Great Content Has Many Fathers

A lot of marketers I talk to seem to think that they must bear the entire content marketing burden.   Wrong.  Great content and great content ideas come from a variety of sources inside and outside the company.  It’s our jobs as marketers to foster a culture of content generation and to ensure that good ideas are translated into great execution.

Reuse and Recycling is the Only Way to Scale

Too often, content development are one time, herculean efforts.  We spend weeks developing a 12 page whitepaper (does anyone read 12 page whitepapers anyway?), complete with fancy diagrams.  Then we heave it over the finish line, sigh a deep sigh, and move on the to the next project.  Very obviously, this does not scale.  Instead, we need to build content for maximum reuse.

Here is an example from my company,  Sonatype.   For the last two years, we’ve conducted an annual survey of our community to develop a deeper understanding of issues and opinions related to the products we offer.   We’re fortunate to have a large and engaged community, so we were able to collect more than 2,500 responses to a fairly long-form survey.  We had a tremendous amount of information and myriad ways to slice and dice it.

The survey effort is huge — but the content is compelling and the payoff is beyond huge.  From our survey, we produced more than 20 infographics, multiple whitepapers, a press release, a widely shared Prezi presentation, several blogs posts, and content for a number of analyst presentations.  We also garnered a ton of media attention.  And it’s only April; we’ll continue to leverage our survey findings and content throughout the year.

Process is Good.  In Moderation.

To scale, the content factory must rely on a variety of contributors.  At the same time, it’s critical that your message remains somewhat consistent.  I don’t mean scripted and robotic — just thematically consistent.

To achieve both objectives — a variety of contributors and consistent messaging — it’s important to implement a modicum process.  Every organization is different and must determine its own rules.   But my recommendation is to develop bands of content — ranging from totally uncontroversial technical materials to potentially explosive strategic announcements.  Each band should have its own process and its own levels of approval.  And each band should have the minimum possible bureaucracy to minimize misery and ensure you can move quickly.  More than one content effort has floundered due to old school ‘control the message’ marketing management.

Like I said, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about content.  Anyone interested in attending my Demand Metric session, can register here.

Continue reading »]]> I had a great time yesterday at the Mid-Atlantic Marketing Summit yesterday.  It’s always invigorating to step away from the day-to-day and see what others are doing, and how they’re thinking about their work.

I was fortunate enough to be asked to sit on the ‘Newest Trends in B2B Marketing’ panel along with some very impressive panelists  — Erin Bush from Neustar, Deb Lavoy from OpenText, and Scott Shaw from CreatiVerge.  Bob London from CEO of London Ink facilitated the panel.   Smart smart people with really really interesting things to say.

Some nuggets from the discussion:

How Has Marketing’s Role Changed in B2B Companies?

More and more, the marketing function has become central to  the way b2b companies goes to market.

• Prospects want to self-educate, discover, and learn — they come to us more prepared to buy.  Sales is increasing becoming a buy-facilitation function.
• Often the first indication of a customer problem is on social web. They may not file a support ticket before lighting up Twitter with their complaints.
• Pre-sales funnel metrics are attracting Board level attention and scrutiny.
• Products themselves are assuming more of a marketing role (I’ve written about this before).   Marketing’s relationship with R&D has become even more critical.
• Deb said,  “Marketers need to become the chief story tellers.”  Absolutely spot-on.
• Scott talked about how agencies are being held accountable for metrics — just delivering creative isn’t enough.    This is how it should be — and it’s exactly how CMOs want to work with our agency partners.

Where Do You Start in B2B Marketing?

Everyone tends to get wrapped around the axle with all the new tools in the tool box.  But all too often we forget about the fundamentals.

• It all starts with the customer’s problem and our unique solution
• Clear articulation of a value proposition and your differentiation is critical.
• One of my favorite quotes of the day (thanks, Erin):  “You can’t have thought leadership if you don’t have thoughts.”
• We need to work closely with Sales to understand customer problems.  It’s our jobs as marketers to synthesize inputs from Sales and Customer Support to help define and refine positioning.

Shameless self-promotion:  This topic is one of my pet peeves.   Marketing efforts must be designed around central concepts of customer needs, differentiation, core competency.  See my model for the modern marketing organization.

Buzzy or Worthy? B2B Marketing Tools, Trends and Platforms Marketing Automation Content Marketing Social Media

Tools and tactics are only as good as the message you promote with them.  But what about the tools & tactics?

• When someone comes with a request for a program or tactic  (“why aren’t we on Pinterest?”), we need to ask probing questions.  What business objective are we trying to achieve?  Does our audience actually use the vehicle in question (I doubt my audience,  25-35 year old software developers, is on Pinterest)
• Marketing automation is table stakes (my perspective) in b2b tech, but it’s not for the faint of heart.  Most companies under-implement their systems — there is tremendous capability and potential,  but only so much time in the day.
• Content Marketing (inbound marketing) is hard — and hard to do right.  Carpet-bombing the internet with bad content serves no one.
• Another great nugget from Deb — “we should rename content marketing to  substance marketing.”  I could not agree more.

I had a great time on the panel — and I’m really grateful for the opportunity to work in a region with such smart, dynamic, and interesting people.

Continue reading »]]> My Dad would have been 83 today.  He died eight years ago and I still think about him frequently.

My father and I chose very different paths career-wise.  He was an accomplished academic who stayed in school into his 30s.  I went to work right after college, returned for an an MBA, then went back to work.  My Dad worked almost exclusively for the federal government as an economist, researcher, and urban planner.    I, on the other hand, have been fascinated with private enterprise since I can remember.  Working for the government never occurred to me.

And yet, I learned a lot about business from my Dad.  Here’s a few nuggets:

If You Don’t Communicate Well, the Rest is Moot

From the time I was in high school, my Dad beat me up about my writing.  He would brutally edit my papers and critique my word choice.  At the time, I hated it.  Now, I’m incredibly grateful.   His point was simple:  No matter how strong your position, if you can’t communicate it clearly you’re dead in the water.  My Dad didn’t know about Powerpoint, but I’m sure he’d have strong opinions if he sat through many of presentations I’ve seen.

Be Loyal

Before he died, I went to my Dad to ask for some advice when I was working at some start-up or another.    I had been at the company since the beginning, but things were going sideways.  I had other opportunities and was considering bailing out.  His position was clear:  You were a part of getting this thing going, you  need to stick it out until the end.    He was right.  I stuck it out and things worked out for the best.

Just Solve the Problem

Like many of us, I can get wrapped about the axle stressing about some work problem or another.   Whenever this happened, my Dad’s advice was always the same:  don’t worry about all the things that you can’t do anything about, just focus on the root problem.  He was right — wasting energy on stressing about a wild series of what-ifs does nothing to move the ball.

Study the Matter

My Dad never made decisions quickly.  It was maddening when I was a kid.  The answer always seemed obvious to my naive mind.  But he was always thoughtful.  He took the time to research and understand, and to let his thought wash over the options before deciding.  While I didn’t always agree with his answer, it was always well-reasoned and deliberative.

When a Man Knows He is to be Hanged in a Fortnight, it Concentrates His Mind Wonderfully

A sign with this saying hung in his office for years.   In other words:  deadlines and consequences matter.  Some amount of time pressure constrains the task and focuses efforts. I’ve found this works for myself and for my teams.

I miss you, Dad.   Some days I really could use some advice.

Continue reading »]]> Remember when you were 6 years old and just starting to read chapter books?  If you were anything like me, you preferred books  that had a nice mix of words and pictures.  It’s not that I was lazy, I was just  overwhelmed by a mega-sized serving of words without visual interruption.    I had to be pretty determined if I was going to climb that mountain.

Guess what?  Adults are the same.  Of course, we don’t read picture books anymore.  But we do consume lots of written information.  And again, if you’re like me, you prefer it served up in manageable portions with lots of white space and illustrative graphics.  Why then, do we so often encounter the dreaded ‘wall of words?’

You know what I’m talking about — the web page, whitepaper, or collateral pieces that is long, dense, verbose, and inaccessible.  No one wants to read it.  And in all likelihood, no one does.

No one reads.  They scan and the skim.  They peruse.  But they don’t read.  And they  don’t often read 250 word web pages or 25 page whitepapers.

As marketers, it’s our jobs to communicate.  But we don’t get paid by the word.   Let’s challenge ourselves to say more by writing less.  I bet most of our content could be shortened by 30% or more.  And I bet most of us could add compelling and illustrative graphics that engage the reader instead of scaring them away.  And, most importantly, I bet our message will actually get through to our prospects.

Continue reading »]]> I’m convinced that many of us are working with a busted model.   Marketing has changed radically over the last ten years as has our customers’ buying process.   But many of us haven’t changed how we think about our function.

I was fortunate enough to work with Marketing Profs to publish my thoughts on what the model should be.   This new model builds on tried and true (it all starts with a customer problem and the differentiation of our solution), but then adds in the tactics that support the way our prospects now want to buy.    Most importantly, it shows the interconnections that are now necessary for marketing to be truly effective.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Continue reading »]]> I’m in tech.  In tech, we market innovation.  We let you do something you couldn’t do before.   We have a better way, a faster way, a cheaper way.  We are, therefore we innovate.

But here’s a secret, I’m sick of innovation.  Now before you start labeling me some sort of Luddite,  let me explain — I’m sick of technical innovation.    And I don’t think I’m the only one.   Here’s why:

Mostly, our prospective customers aren’t looking to be on the bleeding edge of anything, they’re looking for an easier way to solve their problems. They want to be more efficient and more effective in their jobs.  They want the information they need, when they need it.   They want what we all want:   simple.

And if ‘simple’ is the goal, there are two areas of innovation where we should be focused.

User Experience Innovation

Are our products really as easy to use as they could be?  Is the interface completely intuitive?  Are our product easy to try?  Can prospects see the value for themselves when they try our product?  Are there easy ways for them to share their successes with our products?

For most of us, the answers to these questions are somewhere between ‘no’ and ‘not really’ — and herein lies the innovation opportunity.

I’ve written before about the dawn of Age of Me where b2b customers carry their b2c expectations with them to work.   And when they do, they expect a streamlined, elegant, and simple user experience.   I would submit that the future of the software industry belongs to those companies who make user experience a core competency and a competitive differentiator.

This may will require culture in most tech organizations.  Fine.  To win, we must prioritize user experience — from first touch to first purchase to upgrade.  This is, in many cases, more valuable than adding additional features.

And given the user experience in most b2b software, there is ample space for some really cool innovation.

Business Model Innovation

But it goes even further – innovation doesn’t need to involve bits at all.  It could be in our go to market strategy or in the way we monetize our technologies.  As I’ve noted before, the traditional b2b software sales model is dying.   The ‘sales’ model is being replaced by a ‘buying’ model where the customer drives the process.

The new winners will acknowledge how prospective customers consume technology and devise innovative ways to grease the process.  This might involve a ‘freemium’ product strategy or a SaaS based delivery strategy that minimizes time-to-value.  Regardless of the strategy employed, the point is that there is significant scope for innovation in how prospects engage with your products and your company.

As with our product definition and our positioning, it all starts with the target customer.   What is their current process for evaluating and acquiring software to solve the problem we solve?  Where are the bugs in this process?  How could it be better?  What do they hate about doing business with the incumbents?   What would it take for them to love their vendor?

Now, all of this might seem obvious.  But if it’s obvious, why aren’t more of us investing more time and money in user experience and business model innovation?

Continue reading »]]> Some co-workers recently gave me a copy of  Mike Tennant’s The Age of Persuasion — a great book about how we ended up in such a message saturated, marketing-is-everywhere world.  Great book, loaded with fascinating anecdotes from the history of marketing.

One point from the book stuck with me.  He says, “all advertising is an interruption” — meaning that very few of us seek out advertisements.  They interrupt us doing whatever it is that we were intending to to.

The same is true of all of types of marketing.  When’s the last time you woke up thinking,  “today is the day I hope someone will try to convince me to buy a new widget” or “I sure do hope that Company X will email me today.”

The answer is, of course, never.  But the implications are significant — and largely ignored.   While most of us don’t generally go around looking for interruptions, we will tolerate them under two conditions:

1)  We’re interrupted by something that entertains us.

2) The interruption contains valuable information — that is, it teaches us something useful that we didn’t know.

And yet, most of the marketing we see does neither.  Instead, it asks us to care about what some vendor wants us to care about.  And guess what?   We respond with apathy.  This shows up as low click-through rates, poor webinar attendance, flat web traffic, low numbers of product trials, etc.

So let’s think about it differently.  If we want our message to be absorbed, let’s first start with something interesting enough for our prospects to listen.  In other words,  ‘outside-in.’      Have we done something compelling, funny, or interesting enough to justify the interruption?  If not, let’s rethink.

Outside-in is the only way to cut through the clutter.

Start today. Are the programs you have slated for this week going to entertain?  Inform?

Continue reading »]]> Marketing is learned mostly on the job — at least for tech marketing execs (CMOs, VPs, Directors).   A simple survey shows that most of us didn’t study much marketing in school.

Here’s what my completely unscientific study uncovered:

1) Literally no one studied marketing as an undergrad.  Zero. Zippy.  None.

 2) Almost 3/4 went to grad school.

3) But most of those who went to grad school didn’t study marketing there either.

I’m not totally sure what to make of this –  but the facts are the facts: to get to the top spot in a tech firm, you certainly don’t need to have formal marketing education.

For the record, my undergraduate degree is in economics (minor in psych).   In business school my concentration was finance.  Go figure.

Continue reading »]]> Marketing has changed tremendously in the past 10 years (social, online, blogs, analytics).  Well covered territory.  In all the hubbub, it’s easy to miss the fact the the software market itself is growing up.

Our market is becoming more consumer-like.  We should too.

I was flattered when MENG (the Marketing Executives Networking Group — an outstanding organization which I highly recommend) asked me to guest blog.  I wrote about what B2B tech marketers can learn from those who’ve already seen their markets mature — our cousins in B2c.

I won’t rerun the full article, because you can read it all here (along with a ton of other really good MENG blogs).  But here’s my top  5 list of things we can learn from b2c:

• Brand is Critical –  A strong brand greases the skids for product marketing.
• Quantitative Analysis — Consumer marketers are experts here. We should be too.
• Segmentation –  We talk about it. But we don’t really do it.
• Elegance and Ease of Use — Have you tried to set  up a software product recently?  ‘Nuff said.
• Speaking Clearly — Lose the buzzwords.  Speak plainly.

I delve into each of these topics a bit deeper in the article.  Check it out — am I nuts?  Or is this how we should be thinking?