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Lotsa leads? Or quality leads? Pick one.

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If you’re in marketing, you’re building a business. If you’re building a business, you need sales. To get sales, you need leads. It’s a basic equation. Whether you’re delivering campaigns for a storied global enterprise, or printing business cards in your dining room, you need leads. Names. Contacts. Prospects. Suspects. We’re talkin’ people, people!

And the more, the merrier, right? So throw all kinds of budget at the wall. Banner campaigns. Events. Lists. Who cares how you do it, just flood the joint with leads. Leads galore. Leads up to your eyeballs. You want to be sifting through sales prospects until you can’t see straight. You’re swimming in a pool full of 24-karat gold-plated leads. You’re in the money!

Except you’re not.

Once you’ve gathered hundreds of names from people with varying interest in your business, you have to start calling each one of them. Some names may be real gems with the budget, the need, and the authority to buy, but the rest are fools’ gold. A waste of your time. You’ll probably never find the right ones. You’ve got way too many leads. Is that possible?

Damn straight it is. It’s not only possible to wind up with too many leads, but it goes on in sales offices all across the country. You may be surprised to hear is that even well-run campaigns based on brilliant material aimed at highly-targeted audiences can deliver a long list of names that is 80% useless. Why does this happen? The answer is that the need for a big list of raw names often trumps their quality. Number is easier to measure than quality, and marketing leaders like you are often compensated for the raw number instead of quality measurements.

Why? Quality takes time. It might be two years before a lead you hauled in pans out, and by then you’ve already done the ‘see-me-in-my-office-bring-a-box-for-all-your-stuff’ dance with the boss. When sales flag, marketing gets the pole.

So what do you do?

First, fight the need to haul in huge numbers of raw leads. Don’t be afraid to ask the burning questions. If people are really interested in your product, they’ll give you the answers you need. Ask for this kind of information:

  • Name
  • Title
  • Role (Decision-Maker? Influencer? Recommender? Freaking Intern?)
  • Company
  • State
  • Zip
  • Email
  • Phone
  • Website
  • Company Size (Employees)
  • Reason for Search (Why are you looking for a new solution?)
  • Budget for Solution
  • Current Solution (Do you use a similar product now?)
  • Decision Timeframe (When do you plan to buy?)
  • Source (How did you find us?)
  • Have Sales Contact Me (Check the box)
  • Newsletter Opt-In (Check the box)

And depending on your industry, there may be many more dimensions you can ask about. And be honest; don’t try to trick people by calling it a ‘quiz’ or taking them through several form pages. If you gather this information, you can use it in two ways: to filter people completely out of the lead process, to be nurtured by an automated email campaign; or you can hand over everything to sales, and they’ll decide who to call first.

I know what you’re thinking; “My boss will never allow me to ask these things. He wants leads no matter what their interest.” You just have to ask, “If they’re not interested, why do we want their names?”

The truth is, in this era, it has never been easier to gather names. Your company can mine LinkedIn and other business intelligence vendors. You can get 70,000 Twitter followers by sticking a few interns on the project. You can throw budget at a bunch of banner and PPC campaigns and gather trainloads of people who will never buy anything. If you just want names to waste your sales organization’s time with, that’s easy.

Today marketing is about the targeted process. To make your sales organization happy, don’t firehose them with a list of 80% lousy leads. Hand over the best 20%. The lousy leads will be there when you need them.

Which you won’t.

Cookie Cutter Social Media Strategies (For Cookies Only)

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Look, I’m new to social media, so I won’t shovel you expert advice about building a huge following. Your Twitter mojo is probably a thousand times mine. If you rock the social media house, keep doing whatever you’re doing. I’m probably learning a lot from you.

(The truth is, I’ve never worked for someone who saw any value whatsoever in social media, and I wasn’t able to sell it to the boss. So my opportunity to jump on the social media bandwagon was spent doing old-school stuff; powerpoint decks, data sheets, press releases. I know, I know. That’s another post.)

But like everyone else, I do have an opinion on how best to use social media to grow your business. That’s what it is ultimately about, right? Growing your business? Building a base of people in your community, so that you have a wealth of knowledge and experience to draw on to help you deliver a finely-honed service or product to the people who are willing to pay you for it? Creating mind-share? Getting noticed?

I’m looking for all of that, too, and the advice I’ve found on how to use social media in my marketing strategy follows a massive bell curve. The range seems to break down like this:

Social Media Strategy - Bell Curve

The advice in the middle approaches a ‘best practices’ tactic for social media in marketing. Although I think we’re still a long way from that. If you are a thought-leader who publishes new material all the time, social media is exactly what you need it to be. You can gain a massive following and if you’re good, you can monetize that following.

But a cookie-cutter strategy won’t cover everyone. No more than a great cookie recipe will help you make a cheeseburger. If you’re selling air conditioner parts, the best social media model really isn’t there yet. If customers found out about you through Twitter, it’s a safe bet you’re a long way from a sale. You should use social media to build a community and get links, but not leads. And that reality will drive your strategy more than anything else. For the average B2B company, social media is still a luxury.

So if you’re not a constant online publisher, why worry about strategy? You’re still in the “Just Do It!” stage. Jump in.

Look at email marketing, which was the Wild West about ten years ago, but is now a (variably) respected marketing and communications tool that offers tracking, best practices, compliance guidelines, and an entire realm of best practices and expertise. Social media looks at email marketing the way email marketing looks at postcards. The strategy will come.

I’m not going to prescribe any specific approach, except to suggest that you take advice that works well for a publishing model with a grain of salt. In ten years it will be easy to know the best way to use social media, but today, despite all the hollering, we know nothing. I’m just saying; “Relax!”

What is a “Real” Social Media Success Story?

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Whenever you read about companies and celebrities using social media such as Twitter and Facebook, you hear all the stories about how these organizations and people have become huge social media success stories. They have expanded their reach to more followers and created another portal for constant engagement and brand-building.

A rundown of these social media success stories usually includes the following:

  • Oprah Winfrey
  • Ashton Kutcher
  • CNN
  • Walmart
  • Apple
  • Skittles
  • Marriott
  • Kodak
  • McDonald’s
  • CVS
  • Hershey’s
  • Staples
  • Intel
  • Cisco
  • UPS
  • The Home Depot
  • PepsiCo
  • Discovery Channel

Do you notice what they all they have in common? They all existed before the rise of social media. Beyond that, they were all huge before the rise of social media.

Oprah, for example, got famous for creating one of the better daytime talk shows, and making it the cornerstone of her media empire. Every day, she touched a nerve with viewers and guests, and stayed away from the circus atmosphere of some other daytime shows (you know who I mean). She covered topics that were touching and interesting, and developed a brand that was largely based on her personality and interests.

In other words, she was a social element before the medium she could really exploit was even born. And you might notice that her show is still on television, and is still the foundation of her empire. Her followers would not be her followers without it. So is Oprah really a social media success story?

Similarly, Ashton Kutcher was not unknown before the rise of Twitter. It turns out he was already a very talented and funny actor, and the star of a hit television show, a veteran of several movies, a teen magazine heartthrob, and his posters graced the walls of girls’ bedrooms everywhere before he ever sent his first Tweet. Without all that, he’d probably be a geeky-but-dreamy guy working at Wal-Mart, known for his ability to make friends, but not a social media legend.

While we’re on the subject, Kutcher challenged CNN to gain more Twitter followers. He won, and claimed the victory showed that “Social media and social news outlets can become as powerful as the major news outlets.”

But CNN still seems to be standing. 90 million people subscribe to it through their cable providers and several million viewers tune in each day. Kutcher relies on reruns, movies, Nikon ads and tabloid covers to keep his name on everyone’s mind. When he covers a foreign war, humanitarian disaster, or the daily economic report using only his Twitter account, I’ll be impressed.

Speaking of Wal-Mart, you might have noticed that the company is larger than some countries in revenue and total square footage. This had nothing to do with social media, and neither will the company’s future. Wal-Mart’s only possible strategy with social media is to strengthen its relationship with followers, most of whom shop there only because of low prices (based on forcing its manufacturers to exploit slave labor overseas).

Apple took a lot of flak until very recently for being late to the party, and even discouraging the use of social media tools. The company is now on board, but with such a dedicated base of followers and some of the most innovative consumer-oriented multimedia tools, it’s surprising they didn’t lead. Apple’s finally building outposts using social media is not an example of a success story.

Skittles are tasty, fruity sugar drops that got to be one of the biggest sellers before the Internet was even around, so what is the point of a candy having a website anyway? Well, the Skittles marketers thought the same thing and replaced their website with a Twitter window and a little Flash with promotional offers and links to Facebook and YouTube. It’s brilliant, but is it a social media success? Skittles isn’t even a company. It’s just a brand sold by Wrigley Bros., which in turn is owned by Mars, Inc.

So what exactly is a social media success story?

It has to go beyond creating an outpost and generating buzz. A true social media success story should have been virtually unknown before using social media, and should be a legitimate business. A business is something that fills a market need, has a sustainable revenue model, and has the potential to enrich more than just the owner, but also its community, industry and audience. A lot of people make money from their blog, and they advertise their blog through social media, but have they created something that can continue to operate and adds value for others?

There are a few examples:

Zappos
http://blog.davemadethat.com/2008/07/09/communication-20-zappos-a-social-media-success-story-interview-with-tony-hsieh/

Bacon Salt
http://www.baconsalt.com/

Cold Stone Creamery
http://social-media-optimization.com/2007/07/social-media-marketing-success-stories/

MyWorkButterfly
http://mashable.com/2009/04/28/grow-social-network/

Indium
Finally – a success story that more closely matches every marketer’s situation: How to take an existing business with a small budget and little name recognition and gain market share using social media.

http://www.indium.com/

“Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”

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Immortal words these were. When Captain Picard spoke them on ST:TNG, a little cup suddenly appeared out of nowhere, full of piping hot tea that was so accurate it could fool the bald Shakespearean captain. The machine in the wall was called a replicator, and it was based on the same technology used in the transporter. It reproduced the cell structures of materials kept elsewhere on the ship, like a cup of tea stored in containers in the cargo bay (Which often came crashing down during firefights. What if the tea spilled?).

Okay, so Star Trek was a little far-fetched. Sue me. I’m here to tell you that the path to the 24th century replicator has begun. For a few years now, the ancestor of the Star Trek replicator has existed in the form of the Fabber.

The Fabber, also known as a Rapid Prototyper, or 3-D Printer, works a bit differently from the replicator, of course. You cannot simply create the matter out of nothing. It uses plastic or metal in the form of slugs, wire, powder, or liquid for its raw material, and sophisticated design software to create extremely fine shapes. The Fabber will use the material to mold the the shape you desire.

Design software, some proprietary, but much of it open-source, is available to help you create the implement of your choice. Break the stylus for your Blackberry? Fab up a new one. Dropped your toothbrush in the toilet? Just fab up a replacement. An exact replica of a Hattori Hanzo sword? Done.

And just wait until we can use empty plastic milk jugs for the raw material. I’ll never need Radio Shack again.

If you hook up your Fabber to a computer with voice-recognition software, you can even croak “Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.” in your best Patrick Stewart voice, and a little teacup will appear. But you’ll still have to make the tea yourself.

For now.

Neat ‘unconventional advertising’ on MBTA

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Okay, I hate the term “Guerrilla Marketing” because it evokes images of some severely hateful and dangerous people. I envision businessfolk in suits carrying giant foam-core charts and AK-47s. Advertising should be thought-provoking and disruptive, but not deadly.

I’ve enacted some interesting advertising ideas in my time. Before the opening of a technology store, I and my colleagues covered the windows with paper, and tore holes to reveal a little more of the interior each day. One of us put on a giant furry alien costume and walked around the local marketplace with a battery-powered ticker in his three-fingered hands, reading lines like “Play more video games.” We also crashed a trade show and set up in a vacant booth. Nobody ever stopped us.

But I digress. Boston is also known for the infamous “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” Mooninite tech-forms that shut down the city for a day. THAT is the pinnacle of (let’s call it) ‘unconventional marketing’; Shutting down a city. Steve Jobs, eat your heart out (Steve did get to shut down part of Boston by opening the Apple store on Boylston, but I digress again).

Recently, on the subway train, I saw one of the panel ads, usually for stuff like banks and schools and beverages, and for the MBTA’s own communications. But this one was simply a sketch, a name, and a list of stuff the author does, like airbrushing shirts and handbags, and the web address. The guy (or gal) had taken one of the paid-for panel ads and flipped it over, drew on it, and put it back wrongside-out. It is possible the perpetrator took the panel home and brought it back, and maybe did this with several others.

Genius.

Illegal, yes, but deadly? No. Shut down the city? No. A better pitch than whatever was on the front side? Probably. I have nothing against blanketing a station with one company’s ads, as Dewar’s and Apple often do. I see nothing wrong with wrapping a bus in a movie ad. But let’s face it, they are not actually unconventional because there is an entire industry of moneymakers involved in those techniques. The difference here is that it cost nothing. It is basically graffiti, done tastefully and in a surprising way. I like it.

Only one problem: the website listed was at www.myspace.com/somethingtoolongtoremember… and I cannot remember it. A simpler name, and the creative would become sublime.