Web Ink Now

You must unlearn what you have learned

When I first started writing The New Rules of Marketing & PR there was significant debate about "new." Is this stuff really new or is the title just a hook? Yes, I admit that the book title was partly chosen to help position the book and generate interest.

Brian Clark over at Copyblogger was one of the first to jump in. Many people such as Brian asked: "Does marketing and PR on the Web really require 'new' thinking?"

More than ever, I am convinced the answer is "yes."

Robert Scoble, in his terrific foreword to The New Rules of Marketing & PR suggests: "It's a new world you're about to enter... if you understand how to use it you can drive buzz, new product feedback, sales, and more." I couldn’t agree more, Robert.

Some recent discussion with my friend and colleague Steve Johnson helped to solidify ideas around 'new." Steve reminded me of this quote: "You must unlearn what you have learned." – Yoda in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back.

It can be really, really difficult to unlearn what you have learned. Which is way so many people have trouble implementing great online marketing & PR.

Don't believe me? How many spaces do you type after a period? It took me nearly a year to unlearn typing two spaces after a period. A year! Just to stop typing a space! Twenty-something years ago I learned the "old rule" - that you always type two spaces after a period. So I always typed two spaces until I started to write books and magazine articles. I was required to obey a new rule: One space only or manuscripts were rejected. Wow -- that habit was ingrained! Try making that little change yourself.

Old rule: Buy your way in with advertising

As marketing people, we've all learned rules that worked in the offline world. But to succeed on the Web using the new rules, old habits must be unlearned.

As Steve Johnson says, "Stop shouting BUY MY PRODUCT!" (people turn off overt advertising, especially online). You need to unlearn the marketing habit of constantly pitching your product. Instead create content to help people answer their problems.

Old rule: Beg your way in with PR

Your buyers are not nameless faceless metrics. They are people like you and me who want to consume valuable content.

You must unlearn the idea that media and analysts are the only ones who can tell your story. Instead, the web has made PR public again.

New Rule: Publish your way in with great content that your buyers want to consume.

> You must unlearn the use of gobbledygook about your products and services. Instead start from the problems and needs of your buyer personas.

> You must unlearn spin. Instead, understand that people crave authenticity and transparency.

> You must unlearn interrupting people with "messages." Instead, publish online content they want to consume.

> You must unlearn marketing to the masses. Instead understand who your niche buyers are and reach them with targeted Web content.

> You must unlearn being egotistical and trying to force people to adapt to your terms. Instead create online content that addresses buyer problems.

> You must unlearn the assumption that you must buy access. Instead, create something that goes viral and let millions of people tell your story for you.

> You must unlearn the idea that the "clip book" is the only way to measure your communications efforts. Instead, consider how you can reach people directly.

> You must unlearn the idea that "leads" are the only way to measure your marketing efforts. Instead, consider how you are engaging your buyers and building a position as a trusted resource.

Smart Marketers are statistically improbable according to Amazon.com

Amazon recently turned on Search Inside for The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

I finished the manuscript for the book way back in December 2006 (about a decade in Internet time). As an author, some of the things that get surfaced by Search Inside jolt me. Did I write that? It’s like running into an old girlfriend after many years.

Search Inside takes every word of the book and runs it through a bunch of algorithms. Many authors and publishers don’t like search inside because they feel people can "steal" their work. Nonsense. Having my book appear in search results when someone enters a phrase that is used in the book is a terrific benefit. Search Inside also allows buyers to virtually flip through the book as they would in a bookstore. Being able to browse before a purchase is important for any Web site. Amazon lets publishers opt out of Search Inside, but I think those who do are making a mistake.

I'm particularly intrigued by the Amazon.com Statistically Improbable Phrases which are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside program. To identify Statistically Improbable Phrases, Amazon indexes every word of every book in the Search Inside program. Phrases that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside books are considered Statistically Improbable Phrases. The idea here is if a consumer is looking for a book on a subject, the Amazon search engine surfaces the right books by analyzing the text inside the book, not just the title and subtitle.

Some of the Statistically Improbable Phrases for The New Rules of Marketing & PR include: buyer personas, online media room, news release content, persona research, news release strategy, persona profile, influential bloggers, news release program, search engine marketing, click fraud, landing page, social networking sites, blog posts, online news sites, smart marketers. What a great way to surface long tail content.

So if someone, such as Adele Revella for example, had entered buyer personas into the Amazon search engine, my book would pop up in the book search results page because that phrase is statistically improbable and it appears in my book a lot. How cool is that?

I think the list of Statistically Improbable Phrases that are surfaced for my book is a great one. My book is about those things!

But hey, why are "smart marketers" statistically improbable? What does that say about marketing people?

How Mark Batterson used his Web site, blog, podcasts, video, and viral marketing to become a leader

Imagine that you want to start a new church. What do you do? Well, you look for a building, buy some stained glass and an organ, and hire a pastor, right? Not necessarily. In any marketplace (even church) it is always best to start by understanding market problems and buyer personas.

Mark Batterson is the lead pastor of a hugely popular church in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. But his isn't a typical church, because he doesn't actually have a church building or traditional services or all the trappings of religious devotion. Instead Batterson started with an understanding of the people he wanted to reach -- thousands of twentysomethings who had largely ignored other churches in the area. National Community Church (also known as TheaterChurch.com), conducts five services per week in three nontraditional locations because Batterson learned that a church building can be an obstacle to many young people. So he does church in theaters and has built the largest coffee house in the Washington, D.C. area. And because most of his "customers" don't drive, the locations are all near subway stops.

What distinguishes National Community Church is Batterson’s approach of embracing technology and Web marketing and applying it to church. The TheaterChurch.com site includes a content-rich Web site, podcasts of the weekly services, a motivational Webcast series, video, an e-mail newsletter, and Batterson’s extremely popular Evotional blog.

"The greatest message deserves the greatest marketing," Batterson says. "I am challenged that Madison Avenue and Hollywood are so smart at delivering messages. But I believe that we need to be just as smart about how we deliver our messages."

"I think we attract twentysomethings because our personality as a church lends itself to twentysomethings," Batterson says. "Our two key values are authenticity and creativity. That plays itself out in the way we do church. I think that church should be the most creative place on the planet. The Medieval church had stained glass to tell the gospel story to the churchgoers, who were mostly illiterate. We use the movie studio to tell the story to people. We use video to add color and to add flavor to what we do."

Batterson's focus on the Web site, podcasts, and online video (as well as video at the services) means that National Community Church staff members have some unique job titles, including "media pastor," "digital pastor," and "buzz coordinator." COOL!

"We want to use technology for really good purposes," Batterson says. "Our Web site and my blog are our front door to National Community Church. The site is a virtual location in a sense. We have a lot more people who listen to the podcast and watch the Webcast than who go to the services, so it is a great test drive for people. They can get a sense of the church before they arrive physically."

Batterson has gained online fame well beyond the Washington, D.C. area—his blog is followed by tens of thousands of readers all over the world, and the podcast is one of the fastest growing church podcasts in America. He also wrote a book that was released in October, 2006, called In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day: How to Survive and Thrive When Opportunity Roars.

"Blogging cuts six degrees of separation into three," he says. "I write knowing that my audience is another pastor in Australia, a housewife in Indiana, my friends, and people in Washington, D.C. Marketing through my blog is powerful. For example, last week I did a blog post about my book and asked my blogging friends to also post about it. We went up to number 44 on the Amazon bestseller list, and Amazon sold out of the book that day. They just ordered another 1,000 copies."

Batterson's enthusiasm for how churches can use the Web has caught the attention of thousands of other church leaders who follow his blog. "The two most powerful forms of marketing are word of mouth and what I call word of mouse. A guy named John Wesley, who founded the Methodist church, traveled 250,000 miles on horseback and preached something like 40,000 sermons. With one click of the mouse, I preach that many sermons with my podcast—that’s word of mouse. It is about leveraging the unique vehicles on the Web. The message has not changed, but the medium has changed. We need to continually find new vehicles to get the messages out."

Aren't the power of Web content and the new rules of marketing and PR something? Here's a guy who's a church leader without a church building, and through innovative use of a blog, a podcast and some video, he has become a leader in his field. He’s got a bestselling book and tens of thousands of devoted online followers.

Whether you’re religious or not (except for some weddings, I haven’t been to church since I was a kid), you've gotta be impressed with Batterson’s business savvy and with the way the new rules helped him reach his buyers.

Thank you Mark Batterson. You're obviously an inspiration to the members of your church. But you are also an insipiration to anybody who wants to stand out on the Web!

GrokDotCom and the future of Web content

I've been reading the GrokDotCom site regularly for a while now and find the way that the smart Web site conversion experts at Future Now Inc., the producers of GrokDotCom, put this site together. GrokDotCom represents the future of a content rich marketing site and provides a model for marketers in other industries to aspire to. In fact, this site is better organized than most "content company" sites such as magazines and newspapers.

On the GrokDotCom site you find featured content by Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg, co-founders of Future Now and authors of the bestselling book Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? This is good stuff and well worth a read, but not that unusual in the world of blogs and content rich web sites.

What is unique and highly valuable is over on the right of the homepage -- aggregated blog and site content from other marketing and communications authors, categorized as "A Day in the Life of a Persuasion Architect".

I had a chance to speak with Bryan Eisenberg about how Future Now puts this site together. "We go through and hand select some of the best blog feeds out there related to marketing, advertising, web technology, word of mouth – everything that a persuasion architect would be interested in," he says. "We work on a publishing schedule with best of the week stories that are brought back by a proprietary scoring algorithm. This content levels the playing field and helps people sort out the signal to noise ratio with blogs."

On The Future Today page, you can see the best of the week and best of the month articles. I really like that GrokDotCom links to other bloggers who write about similar topics. This form of cooperation among content creators is great. Many bloggers and site owners resist linking to others that they see as potential competition.

You can also sign up for GrokDotCom content as an email newsletter (my preferred method of receiving this valuable content, especially when I am on the road and pressed for time).

Thanks Bryan, Jeffrey and team – keep up the good work.

Branding is for cattle

Marketers are a bunch of flaky wimps.

I have been speaking with many technology company CEOs recently—something like 50 in the past three months while on the speaking circuit and as part of research I am doing into how great technology companies build products and develop go-to-market strategies. Many CEOs tell me that the way marketing tends to happen in technology companies is ineffective. Some CEOs say that within the management teams and employees at companies they have worked in, marketers are focused on the wrong things. They are not aligned with the goals of the business. Yes, some CEOs tell me that marketers are a bunch of flaky wimps.

Hold on there. Why is that?

Branding.

When I see "brand" as a focus of technology company marketers I want to puke. A brand is what is burned into the side of a cow's butt. As a marketing term branding is a misunderstood and over emphasized concept in technology businesses. Marketers prattling on about the brand confuse the CEO so its no wonder marketing doesn't command respect in these companies. While the rest of the organization is focused on metrics and revenue and ROI and reaching buyers, these ineffective marketers are worried about how the T-shirts look.

Marketers who obsess about brand usually focus on aesthetics over buyers. They are more interested in the color scheme of the Web site than in meeting their buyers' needs with a content marketing strategy. They care about logos not buyers. They research color schemes instead of the market. Countless marketers got their knickers in a twist about the outward manifestation of an organization's brand--including logos, image ads, and tchotchkes--all at the expense of buyers and what they need to understand the company -- especially the content found on the company’s site. Well, they are flaky wimps if that's what they do.

What's really at stake—in fact what branding's really about—is a focus on the buyer. As each buyer builds an emotional response to a company, that emotion becomes the brand-image for that person. Fortunately, some great marketers understand that the provision of quality Web content does more to build brand than pretty logos, cool Web design, and hip color choice.

Our challenge as marketers becomes taking that understanding and selling it to the CEO and the management team in terms that they understand, like ROI and dollars and cents.

CruiseCompete.com: Using news releases to reach buyers by focusing on the phrases they use to search

If you are developing a news release program to reach buyers directly, you need to think like a publisher and understand your audience first and then set about to satisfy their informational needs.

A great way to start thinking like a publisher and to create news releases that drive action is to focus on your customers' problems and then create and deliver news releases accordingly. Use the words and phrases that your buyers use. Think about how the people you want to reach are searching, and develop news release content that includes those words and phrases. Don't be egotistical and write only about your organization. What are your buyers' problems? What do they want to know? What words and phrases do they use to describe these problems?

Here is another fascinating case study that will appear in my upcoming book The New Rules of Marketing and PR.

CruiseCompete.com, cited in the October 2006 issue of Kiplinger as one of the 25 Best Travel Sites, helps people secure quotes for cruises from multiple travel agencies, based on the dates and ports specified. CruiseCompete.com is a great example of a company that uses news releases to reach people based on the phrases that their buyers are searching with.

In October 2006, for example, during the lead-up to the holiday season, the company issued a news release via Market Wire with the headline Cruise Lines Set Sail With Hot Holiday Vacation Prices. Importantly, part of an early sentence in the release, "…some seven-night vacations can be booked for well under $1,000 per person, including Thanksgiving cruises, Christmas cruises and New Year's cruises," included three critical phrases. Not only did this release's mention of "Thanksgiving cruises," "Christmas cruises," and "New Year's cruises" generate traffic from users searching on these common phrases, it also helped guide searchers into the sales cycle; each of the three phrases in the news release was hyperlinked to a purpose-built landing page on the CruiseCompete.com site that displayed the holiday cruise deals. Anyone who clicked on the Christmas cruises link was taken directly to deals for Christmas cruises. And the bump that the links in the news release gave to the three landing pages helped those pages reach the top of the Google Web search results lists.

"We know that people have thought about traveling for the holidays," says Heidi M. Allison-Shane, a consultant working with CruiseCompete.com. "We use the news releases to communicate with consumers that now is the time to book, because there are dynamite prices and they will sell out." Allison-Shane makes sure that CruiseCompete includes the ideal phrases in each new release and that each release has appropriate links to the site. This strategy makes reaching potential customers a matter of "simply understanding what people are likely to be searching on and then linking them to the correct page on the site where we have the content that’s relevant," she says. "We try to be useful with the right content and to be focused on what’s relevant for our consumers and to provide the links that they need. This stuff is not difficult."

The CruiseCompete.com news release program produces results by increasing the Google rankings for the site. But the news releases also reach buyers directly as those buyers search on relevant phrases. "Each time we send a targeted news release, we see a spike in the Web traffic on the site," Allison-Shane says.

As you craft your own phrases to use in your news releases, don't get trapped by your own jargon; think, speak, and write like your customers do. Though you may have a well-developed lexicon for your products and services, these words don't necessarily mean much to your potential customers. As you write news releases (or any other form of Web content), focus on the words and phrases that your buyers use. As a search engine marketing tool, news releases are only as valuable as the keywords and phrases that are contained in them.

The Buyer Persona Blog

As I've said many times on this blog, smart marketers understand buyers, and many build formal buyer personas for their target demographics. It can be daunting for many of us to consider who, exactly, is visiting our site. But if we break the buyers into distinct groups and then catalog everything we know about each one, we make it easier to create content targeted to each important demographic.

Adele Revella, who is the leading worldwide expert in buyer personas has just launched the Buyer Persona Blog. It is great. She uses buyer personas as the cornerstone of her clear vision and convincing action plan for companies that believe marketing can contribute to highly successful products and services.

I recently interviewed Revella for the buyer persona section of my book The New Rules of Marketing and PR which comes out in June, 2007. "A buyer persona profile is a short biography of the typical customer, not just a job description but a person description," says Revella, who has been using buyer personas to market technology products for more than 20 years. "The buyer persona profile gives you a chance to truly empathize with target buyers, to step out of your role as someone who wants to promote a product and see, through your buyers' eyes, the circumstances that drive their decision process. The buyer persona profile includes information on the typical buyer’s background, daily activities, and current solutions for their problems. The more experience you have in your market, the more obvious the personas become."

Often times, marketers and PR pros are amazed at the transformation of their materials and programs as a result of buyer persona profiling. "When you really know how your buyers think and what matters to them, you eliminate the agony of guessing about what to say or where and how to communicate with buyers," says Revella. "Marketers tell me that they don't have time to build buyer personas, but these same people are wasting countless hours in meetings debating about whether the message is right. And of course, they’re wasting budgets building programs and tools that don’t resonate with anyone. It's just so much easier and effective to listen before you talk."

If you believe in buyer personas like I do, you should be following the Buyer Persona Blog.

Disclosure: Revella and I are both instructors for the Pragmatic Marketing Effective Product Marketing course.