I recently came across an interesting post about multi-path marketing on the Technology Marketing Blog, written by a trio of IDC analysts. The post pointed out the complexity technology companies face in implementing multi-path marketing campaigns due to the three dimensions that come into play:

1.     The voice by which you go to market, choosing from six possibilities: product line, industry, solution, campaign (or theme), customer segment and job role

2.     The media you use, choosing from dozens of traditional advertising and newer social media options

3.     Time, and lots of it, considering this bit from the blog post: “New IDC research shows that the average cycle time of creating a new tech B2B customer — from initial marketing all the way through to a closed deal — is over 17 months.”

You can likely see the problem taking shape: multiple voices, maybe a couple dozen or more mediums of choice and a lengthy engagement time.  Clearly, you’ll need some “robust content management tools” to ensure you hit prospects with the right message at the right time, as the IDC folks note.

Now, content management tools are only as good as the content you feed into them.  You need to act like a librarian, collecting all kinds of content so you have just the right piece to deliver to prospects at each stage of the buying process. As Silverpop President and CEO Bill Nussey points out in this blog post, that might shape up something like this:

• White papers, newsletters and Webinars in the early stages when buyers are researching the need
• Product-focused content in middle stages when prospects are deciding on selection criteria
• Customer case studies, demos and pricing/feature comparisons in the late stages when buyers are deciding between contenders

Of course none of these efforts will work very well unless your content is enticing to readers. In the early stages, especially, your best bet is white papers and Webinars that spare the hard sell but truly educate readers about the problem your product or service solves and why they should care about solving it.  Later on in the process, your customer case studies should reinforce the point, with concrete examples of customers who solved those very same problems.

Sadly, there’s no content management tool that will help you write great white papers and case studies, but you can download my white paper, “How to Write White Papers for an IT audience.”  Hopefully that’ll be a start.

The San Francisco Giants at long last won the World Series last week and ShoreTel found a way to make significant hay with the achievement.

ShoreTel provides voice-over-IP equipment and counts the Giants as one of its customers.  In 2009, the company created a series of content relative to its Giants installation, including a video with Giants’ CIO, Bill Schlough, a press release and an advertorial produced with Network World.  After the World Series win, the company jumped on the opportunity to once again put its Giants relationship front and center.

I am on the ShoreTel email list (perhaps because I did some work for the company several years ago, or maybe as a result of my relationship with Network World’s IT Roadmap event, which ShoreTel has sponsored on occasion). On Nov. 5, a few days after the Series ended, I got an email from ShoreTel congratulating the Giants and explaining how “ShoreTel helped the Giants hit it out of the park this year.”   ShoreTel helped the Giants save “hundreds of thousands of dollars per year – enough to put a new player on the field,” the note said.  Links to the pre-existing content were sprinkled throughout.

This is a great example of effective IT marketing on a number of fronts. For one, ShoreTel didn’t settle for one form of content to tout its success with the Giants. While many companies may have been happy to simply issue a press release, ShoreTel went the extra mile by producing the advertorial and video, giving other potential customers varying avenues to learn more about the Giants implementation.

Additionally, ShoreTel took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself, namely the Giants winning the Series. While that may seem like a no-brainer, it wouldn’t have happened if ShoreTel hadn’t put itself in position by having so much quality content at the ready.

The lesson here is to make the most of the content you have. If you write a white paper, look for ways to turn it into newsletter fodder, blog posts and the like. When you do a customer case study, consider creating a podcast or webcast to go along with it. Whoever writes the case study will be interviewing the customer anyway; it’s simple to tape the interview and create a podcast.  And of course, when one of your key customers is in the news, look for ways to take advantage by promoting any content you have at the ready.  That, of course, entails taking the time and effort to produce that content in the first place.

IDG Enterprise’s forthcoming LeadAccel online reporting service is the latest example of a tool that should be a boon for marketers looking to improve their lead nurturing capabilities.

I’m probably biased here, since I worked for IDG’s Network World publication for 11 years and still do a fair amount of work for IDG, but LeadAccel makes perfect sense to me.  With the service, IDG can identify how much time visitors spend with various content assets, such as white papers, webcasts, case studies, podcasts and the like.  In the process, the company can identify which prospects are doing a “deep dive” on a topic, as IDG’s Brian Glynn puts it in this interview, vs. those who are just window shopping.  With that kind of info in hand, IDG can expose each individual visitor to content that matches his level of interest.

Such information is crucial to effective online lead nurturing, which involves exposing visitors to content that matches where they are in the buying process. Give tire-kickers an enticing case study, which leads to a more in-depth video or white paper, then maybe a webcast and so on. Hand off to sales only those folks who have clearly invested some time in researching your product and appear to be ready to buy while you continue to nurture the rest with more and more valuable content.

The strategy only works, of course, if you continually produce content of value – white papers, case studies, podcasts, webinars and the like.  That’s where many companies fall short, and with good reason – they’re not in the business of creating content. But IDG is all about creating content that’s focused squarely on IT, which puts them in position to really deliver with a service like LeadAccel.

This has to be good news: magazine ad pages rose in the second quarter, albeit by just 0.8%, vs. the same quarter last year – the first increase since 2007, according to B2B Media Business.

Also encouraging is the list of magazines leading the charge in terms of ad increases, including titles such as Fast Company – at a whopping 31.4% – Barron’s, Bloomberg Businessweek and Entrepreneur.  If business magazines are seeing increased ad sales, it seems clear that B2B companies are increasing their ad budgets – a good indicator that we’re pulling out of the economic doldrums.  Hopefully it also means increased IT budgets at the end user companies that are reading all these business magazines.

Another positive indicator is that fewer magazines shut down in the first half of the year – 87, to be exact, way down from the 279 that closed shop in the first half of 2009. And 90 new magazines were introduced, which I find almost astounding in this economy, even if it is way down from the 187 new publications during the same period last year.

Call me an optimist, but I’m looking at both of these tidbits as good news.

In my last post I mentioned how it’s possible to parlay a single customer interview into numerous marketing materials, from case studies to videos.  In doing a bit of prep for an interview with the CEO of KACE, I found the systems management appliance vendor to be a perfect example of my point.

Case studies – or “KACE Studies” as the company calls them – are all over the KACE web site.  Big, fat customer quotes scream out from practically every page, with smiling, happy customers glowing about various KACE products.  Click on the Customers tab and you’ll find a long list of customer case studies, many in both written and video format.

If you’re a potential client checking out KACE, this is powerful stuff – actual customers, nearly 3 dozen of them, who you can see and hear telling about their experiences with KACE products.  Clearly, KACE figured out that the effort it takes to pull these case studies together is well worth it, especially when you can parlay the interviews into multiple marketing pieces.

End result: KACE can now write its own success story, as last month it was acquired by Dell.

Unless you are completely ecstatic with the white papers your firm produces and the results they deliver, you’ll want to check out “Reengineering the White Paper,” a 3-part series published by The Bloom Group consultancy that offers a prescription for how to produce more compelling white papers and ensure they get in the right hands.

Part 1 of the series focuses on “Developing a Compelling Point of View,” and offers a prescription for ensuring that your white papers actually say something interesting and have a “novel point of view,” as Bloom principals Bob Buday and Tim Parker put it.

Most white papers, the authors contend, “are treated as writing projects, not as structured initiatives to develop a compelling point of view.  Their emphasis is on phrasing an argument, not on building it.”

The key to developing a paper with a point of view is to sketch out your argument by addressing a series of issues, including: the target problem, shortcomings of current solutions, an overview and detailed explanation of your new solution, barriers to adopting the new solution and how to overcome them, followed by a call to action.

While I completely agree with that approach, I was a bit taken aback by the insinuation that companies aren’t already following a similar approach when they produce white papers. In my experience, that’s pretty much exactly the tack most companies want to take – and they get no argument from me.

Buday and Parker go on to tout the importance of concrete evidence to back up assertions in the white paper, with the most forceful being customer case studies. “Several surveys have shown that what managers value most in white papers is learning about how other companies solve problems,” the authors say.

I couldn’t agree more and this is an area where many companies do indeed fall down. Lining up customers to reference in white papers typically seems to be an after-thought. It’s a topic I always bring up on a project kick-off call, and one that typically results in silence or low groans on the other end of the line.

Yes, it can be a chore to get customers to agree to play ball, but the payoff is enormous. If you play your cards right, from a single customer phone interview you could not only get valuable content for your white paper, but a standalone case study, numerous customer quotes for various marketing materials, perhaps even a podcast.  It’s true that some companies have strict rules about not appearing to endorse products but most don’t.  Generally, IT folks are more than happy to opine about their vendor choices and enjoy seeing themselves quoted, especially when their results have been positive. The exposure puts the IT exec in a positive light as much as it does your company.

And exposure is exactly what you’ll both get if you follow the advice in part 2 of the Bloom Group paper, which discusses various ways to use social media to spread the word about your white paper to the right people.  Go beyond the bloggers, the authors advise, and come up with op-ed pieces drawn from the original ideas in your white papers that you can pitch to the online editors of leading business publications.

You can even build web sites around the point of view represented in your white paper to generate an online community of people interested in the topic.  “This means a white paper marketing campaign never needs to end—as long as the service or product that it supports is still being sold,” the authors say. Food for thought indeed.

Part 3 in the series has yet to be published but will focus on the biggest obstacles to producing and marketing white papers in the manner the authors describe.  I’m guessing time and resources will be two big obstacles, but will keep an eye out for the last installment to make sure.

I’m pretty sure that, at one time or another, every blog has to include a story about customer service hell.  It’s probably more therapeutic for the blogger more than anything, especially in a blog that’s supposed to offer marketing tips. But I’ll justify this on the idea that bad customer service is one more thing marketers have to deal with. From that perspective, I don’t envy the marketing team at Verizon.

I ditched Verizon phone service back in the late 1990s when the town in which I was living signed on a competing cable company that offered phone, Internet and TV service in one package. It was a no-brainer from a price perspective. The thought of getting rid of Verizon and its always-aggravating customer service was a bonus.

Fast forward to 2009, when Verizon FIOS came to my neighborhood.  Again, it was a combined phone, TV and Internet package that was attractive, especially the speedy Internet service which would let me replace the shaky one from the cable provider in my new town.  And being some 10 years removed from my last dealing with Verizon (save for the cellular variety, with which I’ve never had a significant problem), I apparently forgot why I disliked the company so much, or maybe was indulging in wishful thinking that things had changed.

I have now come to the brutal realization that they have not changed a lick.

Late yesterday afternoon, the Internet service in my home went out. After the usual rebooting of the computer and router failed to do any good, I called Verizon tech support. I was on hold for a few minutes before reaching a tech, who spent a few more minutes with me before determining it was a billing issue and sending me to the billing department. Again I was on hold, this time for more than a few minutes, before a customer service rep came on. Again I had to give my phone number, address and so forth – which drives me absolutely crazy in an era when such information should be easily passed from one department to another. After looking into the issue and finding nothing wrong, the rep put me on hold – without telling me why or giving me a chance to request I not be put on hold, which I most certainly would have.

This time the wait was interminable.  And when someone finally came back on the line, I found I was back in the tech support department where I started.  After lots of back and forth with the tech, he was about to put me on hold again. I protested and instead asked him to take my cell phone number and have his supervisor – or whoever – call me back. He was gracious enough to do that but still – by this time I’d been on the phone for more than an hour.

A few minutes later, the supervisor called me back only to say there was nothing he could do.  The billing department had indeed put a hold of some sort on my account and there was no way his department could remove it and restore service. There was also no way for him to transfer me back to billing – by this time, billing had gone home, half of them no doubt laughing about the poor sap in Massachusetts who would be wholly without Internet service for the night. The best he could do, the supervisor said, was have someone from billing call me after they arrived at 8:00 the next morning.  Fine, I said – the earlier the better.

After 9 a.m. the next day, I decided to try again rather than wait for a call that I had little confidence would be coming. I told my sad story to the woman in the billing department who, of course, wanted to put me on hold. I protested, asking instead for a call back rather than risking another interminable hold time, especially since I was on my cell phone using prime time minutes.  That was impossible, she said.  “No it’s not,” I said. “I’ll give you my phone number, you have your supervisor, or whoever, call me back.  It’s easy,” especially for a phone company, I thought, although I stopped short of saying so. No, no, it’s impossible, she insisted.  Just can’t be done. “That’s absurd,” I said, and gave her my phone number anyway. I told her if I was on hold for more than about two minutes, I was going to hang up and expect a call back.  She couldn’t guarantee that, she said, then placed me on hold.

I was bluffing, of course, and stayed on hold for a good 6 or 7 minutes before, suddenly, the music stopped, yet nobody came on the line.  I had been disconnected.

By now I’m getting pretty peeved, which is to say, screaming into the dead phone.  I decided to try my local Verizon store instead. The woman there was very nice and tried to help but ultimately just wound up giving me the customer service number that I already had.

This story is going on way too long so suffice to say that I called the number again, told my story, again, and after being on hold, again, and again, finally got someone who could help.  Turns out the issue resulted from my moving my phone service from Verizon to Vonage about six weeks earlier (because Vonage is less expensive and has better features). Verizon ties its billing to the phone number, so when the phone number went away, billing couldn’t cope.  So naturally the only thing to do was shut down my Internet service.  At least, that’s pretty much what the rep said, while trying to blame the whole thing on Vonage.

Whether there’s a moral here for marketers, I can’t really say. But here’s one thing I know for sure: if your company has truly good customer service, that’s something you can trumpet. And I’d say it’s perfectly reasonable for marketing folks in companies that don’t have good customer service to offer helpful suggestions to their customer service colleagues so they can turn their ship around.  Here are a few:

• Implement systems whereby you capture customer information once – whether by keypad or spoken word – then never ask for it again, no matter how many different departments the customer gets transferred to. This is especially true if you work for a technology company, because customers expect you to be good at this kind of thing.
• Offer to call the customer back if hold times exceed 4 or 5 minutes. The first time this happened to me, I was admittedly suspect, but when the company came through, I simply could not have been happier. I don’t recall which company that was but another that did it recently was Sonos, which makes a really cool wireless, multi-room music system that you should check out.
• Even if you don’t offer to call customers back, empower customer service reps to do it on their own, especially if a customer asks.  It’s not hard. You take down a phone number and call it when you’re ready. We do this all the time in the real world, or at least we used to before we started emailing and texting everyone.
• When you encounter a customer who has clearly had a bad experience, offer them something to make up for it. Maybe it’s extending their support contract by a month on the house, a gift card to Starbucks, whatever – it’s a just a nice gesture that doesn’t cost much and can help you win back a customer who you may otherwise lose. Or who may decide to blog about you.

OK, enough. But man, I really do feel better!

Everyone loves a good survey – and a survey can certainly be an effective marketing tool, especially when the numbers say what you want them to say.

But if your survey is to have any credibility, you need to tell people how many qualified respondents it is based upon.

This came up today because I was poring over the results of AdMedia Partners’ 2010 Market Survey, its 16^th annual survey of executives with leading media and marketing services firms, the results of which are covered in another post. I was initially attracted to the survey because it appeared to be based on a huge number of respondents – more than 7,400.

At least, that was my take after reading the survey methodology, which begins, “This report is based on a Web-based survey of more than 7,400 domestic and international executives in the advertising, marketing services, digital marketing, marketing technology, media or digital media businesses and related venture capital/private equity investors.”

Just to be sure that meant more than 7,400 respondents, I called AdMedia Partners. As it turns out, that figure reflects how many folks got the survey; the company doesn’t disclose how many responded. In the survey’s 16-year history, that’s just always the way it’s been done, says AdMedia Partners managing director Seth Alpert, although he’s not sure why. I tried to get a ballpark response rate out of him, but all he’d say was that it’s on par with “the norm” for such undertakings – whatever that is – and that it was less than 50%.  (My sense was that he wanted to tell me, that he couldn’t think of a good reason not to – but I’m guessing.)

To me, it’s not only a mistake to fail to disclose the number of respondents to a survey, it’s a disservice to your audience, which deserves to know whether your results are based on 20 opinions or 2,000.  I’ve done lots of surveys in my time, mostly as features editor for Network World, when we had a series of surveys we did each year. Always we were concerned about getting a high response rate so the results would be statistically valid, especially for our salary survey, where it was important to get enough responses for each geographic region. If we didn’t have enough responses for a specific job title in a given region, we’d fess up that the sample wasn’t statistically valid, give the results we had, and let the reader decide what it all meant.

Any company that wants to use survey results as part of its marketing strategy should follow a similar path. While the Web has made surveys far easier to conduct than in the days when we relied on snail mail, it’s still not exactly easy to get a high number of responses. But resist the temptation to fudge the response rate, or to simply not disclose it at all – the credibility of the survey and perhaps even your company is on the line.

AdMedia Partners earlier this week released the results of its 16^th annual survey of media and marketing services executives.  This appears to be a fairly significant undertaking, as the survey goes to some 7,400 executives in the advertising, marketing services and related industries, according to AdMedia Partners. (I say “appears to be” because, oddly, AdMedia Partners won’t disclose how many of those folks actually completed the survey – which is the subject of another post.)

First, the good news – sort of: folks are optimistic that the worst of the recession is behind us, with 68% believing we’re in an economic recovery. Consequently, they expect an increase in advertising budgets, with a median increase of 3% overall and 10% in interactive advertising.

While a 3% increase is certainly better than the 5% decrease in the prior year’s survey, it’s still not much. In fact, it’s 40% less than the 5% increases respondents in the 2006, 2007 and 2008 surveys reported.  On the other hand, you’re probably getting better deals for your dollar so maybe it’s a wash.

Where things get really interesting is in perceptions of online content companies and social media.  Nearly half of respondents (45%) consider growth opportunities for sites that focus on user-generated content to be overrated, while a whopping 63% think the same for social media sites.

At the same time, however, when asked about plans for expansion in 2010, 78% of respondents indicated one or more online marketing sectors, with the most popular choice being “word-of-mouth/social media marketing” at 55%.

So, respondents consider social media to be overrated, but that’s not going to stop them from expanding into social media.

Now I’m not bashing social media here; I do think it has a role to play in marketing.  I wouldn’t be writing this blog if I didn’t.  But from survey results like this, it’s clear that there’s no shortage of confusion over what that role is and how effective social media will ultimately be.

Of course, where there’s confusion, there’s opportunity. So I’d say marketers are right to get into the social media fray and try to figure out what works.

The folks at Vertical Systems Group are predicting that Ethernet business services will hit $40.2 billion in revenue by 2014, the result of double-digit growth over the next few years.  I believe it for a couple of reasons.

One, these folks have been following the carrier market for more than two decades and they know what they’re doing. In my reporting days at Network World, I routinely turned to Rosemary Cochran and Rick Malone for analysis of the news of the day and they never disappointed.

Two, when I talk to end users about the WAN services they use (typically as part of my work recruiting speakers for Network World’s IT Roadmap events), I consistently hear about carrier Ethernet. And what I hear is nearly universally good.  The services are easy to implement  – it’s just Ethernet, after all – and offer great performance.

Carrier Ethernet is an area that should be ripe for some good case studies, as it’s a real success story. I know (because I wrote them) that NTT America has churned out a couple, on clients including Internet radio station Pandora and hosting company SoftLayer, resulting in some good coverage.