I traded email over the weekend with David Meerman Scott (pictured), best selling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR. David is speaking at this week’s Cisco Partner Velocity 09, an event in Miami designed to help Cisco Systems partners with their marketing and PR strategies. I asked Meerman Scott if the Web 2.0 craze was over, and also pushed him for a few new tips on marketing and PR. Here are some quick excerpts from our email exchange.
Q: I loved your book. But now that it’s been a year or two since publication, are there any new trends/updates you’d add to the book?
David Meerman Scott: Since The New Rules of Marketing & PR came out in hardcover in June 2007, it went through 11 printings and is being published in 22 languages… We published an updated paperback edition in January 2009, which has updated information on social networking including Facebook and Twitter.
Q: Is Web 2.0 over? Are we onto something new? If so, what’s new?
David Meerman Scott: Of course not. But people have a technology hangover. Most discussions about “Web 2.0″ and “social media” focus on the technology. We hear discussions about blogging and blog software. We learn about YouTube videos and how to make them. Frequently, esoteric search engine optimization techniques are a big part of the discussion. And the relative merits of the various tools (such as Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace) are debated.
But what few people have figured out is what kind of content brings out the enormous potential of this technology. Without the right content, the technology won’t get one person to notice your ideas.
Q: What are the key messages you’ll be delivering to Cisco’s partners during this week’s Velocity event?
David Meerman Scott: My most important message at the Cisco Partner Velocity event will be about what I call “buyer personas.”
I think “buyer personas” are the king of marketing and a focus on buyer personas allows you to create the content. A buyer persona represents a distinct group of potential customers, an archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach. Targeting your work to buyer personas prevents you from sitting on your butt in your comfortable office just making stuff up about you products, which is the cause of most ineffective marketing.
Incidentally, my use of the word “buyer” applies to any organization’s target customers. A politician’s buyer personas include voters, supporters, and contributors; universities’ buyer personas include prospective students and their parents; a tennis club’s buyer personas are potential members; and nonprofits’ buyer personas include corporate and individual donors. Go ahead and substitute however you refer to your potential customers in the phrase “buyer persona,” but do keep your focus on this concept. It is critical for success online.
By truly understanding the market problems that your products and services solve for your buyer personas, you transform your marketing from mere product-specific, ego-centric gobbledygook that only you understand and care about into valuable information people are eager to consume and that they use to make the choice to do business with your organization.
Instead of creating jargon-filled, hype-based advertising, you can create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to—if you take the time to listen to them discuss the problems that you can help them solve. Then you’ll be able to use their words, not your own. You’ll speak in the language of your buyer, not the language of your founder, CEO, product manager, or PR agency staffer. You’ll help your marketing get real.
Q: Are you working on any new books or projects?
David Meerman Scott: My newest book “World Wide Rave: Creating triggers that get millions of people to spread your ideas and tell your stories” will be released late February, 2009 (a few weeks after the Cisco gig). See http://www.worldwiderave.com/.
A World Wide Rave is when masses of people around the world can’t stop talking about you, your company, and your products. Whether you’re located in San Francisco, Dubai, or Reykjavík, it’s when global communities eagerly link to your stuff on the Web. It’s when online buzz drives buyers to your virtual doorstep. And it’s when tons of fans visit your Web site and your blog because they genuinely want to be there.
I became fascinated with how and why ideas spread online. And the more I studied what made things spreadable, the more I ran across the sleazy aspects of “viral marketing.” So I wanted to write a book that helps anybody create something that people WANT to share. A World Wide Rave is when people are talking about your company because they want to, not because they were coerced or tricked by “viral marketing.”
Viral campaigns developed by most ad agencies involve buying access to audiences in the same old ways, such as purchasing an email list to spam or launching a micro-site that hosts a print- or TV-style ad. Worse, some of the dodgiest agencies set up fake viral campaigns where people who are employed or in some way compensated by the agency create reviews, videos or blog posts purported to be from a customer. For example, several publicists reportedly have written gushing (and anonymous) reviews on The Internet Movie Database.
Going viral via a World Wide Rave is more authentic—and therefore vastly more effective–than going viral via gimmicks, silly contests and dishonest trickery.
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If channel partners (and vendors) ignore changes in customer purchasing behaviors, they risk their (and their vendors) business future.
@MaritaR
Marita: Are you suggesting Cisco has overlooked a change in customer buying behaviors?
Var Guy. Well, I think it is awesome that Cisco is trying to help partners and open their eyes. But a great speech and motivation to open up to social media doesn’t help a lot.
We are currently in a project working with 10,000 solution providers in North America and their issues are much deeper.
They know that the world has changed – they can read it in their P+L. But they need strategic help.
It starts with social media engagement plans, understanding what to do where, content contribution from vendors. It goes on with the endless battle that vendors try to dominate their business. One VAR said “The big vendors dream about peer to peer collaboration and networked thinking – but at the same time try to dominate our business ignoring that we deal with 30 other vendors”
The large guys need to get social first. They need to understand what it means for a VAR to open up to the new ways of selling and marketing.” In my humble opinion, the days of the big pitches and speeches on mega events are history. Like all our customers, also our partners need more than lip services. Just my 2 cents
I agree with Marita. Vendors are not doing a good job leading their channel partners into social media. Customers are going there, vendors are going there, but resellers are being left behind.
Mike, Marita: Here’s the problem… vendors dive into social media (Blogs, Wikis, Twitter) but then they realize they don’t have the resources or the right talent to continually update the content. Plus, Web 2.0 social media is as much about search engine optimization (who are you linking to? What words are you using? who are you attracting) as it is about the actual content.
Still, a few vendors (Cisco, Dell come to mind) certainly understand social media. And they’re engaging their customers and partners through those tools. A prime example: Direct2Dell.com.
Best
-jp
Joe,
What you say is true. Vendors are not putting the right resources behind this. Although some are creating positions like Community Director and Social Media Manager to better understand the customer shift. But its not just about search engine optimization and web analytics (thats so 2006!). Measurement tools are moving to Social Media activity monitoring in order to understand a larger ecosystem. We do almost everything on-line now. Today I used Twitter to follow the layoffs at a major vendor then switched to Facebook to see if my friends had lost their jobs. No doubt many of them will now go to a meetup site or LinkedIn to network with prospective new employers.
Traditional social networking has changed a lot (replaced by hyperactive and automated Social Media), which means the sales process has changed. The largest and most progressive companies (Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, Dell) are exploring this change and leading their partners and their customers to a new way of doing business. Still, no one has all the answers yet. Like, “What do you put in place to manage a sales pipleine when the traditional sales funnel has been blasted to smithereens by on-line community sales referencing?”
Social networking is a great tool to establish trust across a group of prospects. We use Twitter and Plaxo here extensively and interact with hundreds of local and regional small business people. We also seem to drive traffic to our blog, and our web site, and have signed some decent contracts as a result.
All this comes at a price: time and effort. As pointed out above, it really is necessary to stay current, be on everyday, and to be, above all else, relevant to the community.
There’s nothing worse than reading a Twitter entry from someone who’s enjoying a pepperoni pizza (especially when you’re hungry!).
On the other side, there are people out there who feel they’re making earth-shattering statements several times a day on Twitter,and then there are those who seem to have a book of quotations open in front of them.
All those are worthless, and I don’t waste my time on them…
Social networking is definitely re-defining the sales and marketing process, and those who know what they’re doing seem to profit nicely…. it’s become a large part of Logicomm’s marketing plan for 2009….
Jim Van
Logicomm, Inc.
http://www.logicomm-inc.com
A great discussion here. An interesting data point was posted a few days ago by John Todor Ph.D. on the academy blog stating that executives see education as one of the biggest obstacles in embracing social media. Another data point we developed with the students was that employee empowerment by the C-Level is a big obstacle as people fear more about their jobs than they get adventurous and contribute to the social web.
On the channel side this accelerates as partners not only need to explore their responsibilities in the social web but also their collaboration pattern with vendors. While some vendors including Cisco try hard to introduce the concept or peer-to-peer networking and embrace networked thinking. The execution however is different: Too many vendors still try to dominate their partner channels, own the channel, make partners “life in their portals” instead of demonstrating leadership by networked thinking and recognize that even the biggest vendors can only thrive if they appreciate the dynamics of networking and step back from “world domination” to be “just” a node. The ones who understand that will remain leading their industry without monopolizing their business.
Quick note to add: Don’t get me wrong, Cisco is again demonstrating a great deal of leadership and this is so much needed. BUT A few hundred reseller joining a mega show – while the other 54,XXX of the 55,000 resellers don’t draws a clear picture: Social Media is a powerhouse of leverage across the world. A few speakers in a physical event can’t turn the heads around – let alone the business.
Axel: The problem isn’t a social media problem. It’s a basic business management problem. VARs and resellers love technology, so they focus on what they love — and many of them don’t spend enough time on the basics of business:
- sales and marketing
- PR
- training
- education
- HR
Web 2.0 and social media skills are components to all of those basic business efforts. But if a VAR doesn’t understand (or doesn’t take the time to practice) basic sales and marketing development, how can that VAR master Web 2.0 sales and marketing skills?
I know that there is that MYTH that VARs are techies and they don’t know sales and marketing. And I may be alone with my opinion but I consider it the biggest of all MYTHs in the channel. When I wrote “Channel Excellence” I reflected some of my experience with some 10,000 VARs around the world. And when I worked with VARs during my BlueRoads days, I interacted with sever hundred and as I work on Xeequa I do that too.
That VARs are non sales people is as far from the truth than “Earth is a disk”
And as a matter of fact it shows that vendors don’t have a clue what their VARs really look like. Why? Because they are so disconnected.
Anyway – this conversation inspires me to write a blog post about it and will get back with some more robust data points.
But if it would be true what you or better said your vendors say – we’d be bankrupt 25 years ago
Axel: When you write that blog send over the URL. The VAR Guy will be sure to drive readers your way.
The truth is that VARs come in all shapes and sizes. But many of them do struggle with the basics of marketing. There have been many vendor programs designed to help resellers with this (marketing programs in a box) but few programs have been successful. The basic assumption by vendors is wrong. They cannot give resellers the tools and expect them to go and build something they do not understand. With social media (communities) vendors can be right next to the reseller providing on-line information and guidance. The research we are doing indicates resellers want help with this. This is also being discussed in the LinkIn Channels of the Future Group and at http://www.tinyurl.com/azyyas