A long time a go, in a galaxy far, far away, I ran a team that developed a photo-retouching and pagination system that broke the $100K barrier.  We were competing with a $1M system.  Today you can perform similar tasks for less than $1000.

You can also:
•    Send emails for $15/month
•    Set up your own sales force automation for $15/month
•    Put up your own website for $75
•    Run your own social media campaigns for nothing
•    Communicate with clients over Skype and Webex

I recently had someone living in Mexico put up a website using Brazilian resources.  My son-in-law uses a resource in the Philippines to load images to his site.

You can also:
•    Have people in the UK write your blog for $25 a blog post.  I guess they are unemployed ‘English’ majors.
•    Run a design competition for your logo that will have designers from around the world provide you with a design for $150.
•    Have someone from India cold call for you.  Yes really.

These two trends, the democratization of marketing tools, and the ability of really smart people to do business from anywhere, regardless of accent, have changed marketing.

What they haven’t changed yet, is your ability to understand your customers and clients.  They haven’t yet provided you with the messaging needed from that understanding.  And they haven’t provided you with your core plan.  Or the inspiration for your new idea and the courage to implement it.

This left over stuff, is the big stuff.  It requires creativity, hard work, risk taking and even a little luck.   The other stuff is easy now.  So marketers, do the hard work.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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If this isn’t the coolest thing you’ll watch this week, I want to know what is.  It’s the ultimate whiteboard video.  But just a second.

Let’s say you weren’t convinced by my meager whiteboard video and the concept of story in your messaging, because your product or service is mundane or boring.  I have friends that do a great job of selling really boring SaaS for 1099 filings.  (Gag!)  This is just the kind of service that needs a whiteboard.  The proof you say?  How about 750,000 hits?

OK.  Now you can look at the video.  As you do, think about the following:
•    The subject could be boring.
•    It’s a technical subject.
•    The video title contains the word “Terror.”
•    The opening music is “Jaws like.”
•    The  opening “hook” is “When people look at it, it looks crazy!”
•    Find the drama.  The odds, the potential crash, their reputations.
•    Notice the two second scene changes.
(click the image to play)

And they spent a little money.  But Mars curiosity will be landing one way or the other August 5th. Will you have seven minutes of terror or will you know your prospects are watching your video before it’s over?

Send your whiteboard video links.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
651-357-0110 (Cell24x7)

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My Grandson

In a recent post, People Don’t Read…What Are You Going to Do About It? I advocated the use of video to get your messages across.  But by extension, if no one watches your video, you’re still stuck.

I’ve tried a few videos.  They’re OK.  Not great, but I got a good number comments on them.  I tired to keep them less than two minutes in order to keep people’s attention.  But I wasn’t satisfied.  Something was missing.  Then recently it clicked when I asked my four year-old grandson to tell me a story.

This is his story.   “There was a elephant. His name was Ralph, and he had big teeth. (Not the same elephant that got stuck in the room.) Then he went to the store.  He chased all the people out.  So then they called the POLICE.  But he ate all the food.  Then he pooped. Ha, ha.  When the police came, he got on a fire engine and drove away.  THE END.”  I asked him what happened next, and he continued the story for another two minutes.

So what do George Lucas and my grandson have in common that can teach us something about your marketing video?

The most important aspect for marketing videos is that you have to tell a story.

The first thing is that every story needs is a “hook” or a reason to continue listening.  For example; an elephant with “big teeth” (why big teeth?), or “A long time ago in a galaxy far far away.”  This engages us in “The Story.”  It helps us suspend disbelief and allows us to listen and focus on what comes next.

Once you are engaged in the story, you need some conflict or drama such as calling the police, or a rebellion in a galaxy against the emperor.

Then the next key element is to keep us engaged.  Two of the most important words you can use are “and then.”  And then… what happened next?  My grandson, without thinking, naturally used “then” three times in his story.  But here is where the genius of George Lucas comes into play.  His version of “and then” was the “two-second” scene change.  What’s that?

We are evolved to look at motion.  We can’t help it.  From an evolutionary standpoint, sensitivity to motion protects us from the predators in the bushes.  By changing the scene rapidly, Lucas keeps us hooked into the action of Star Wars and raises our adrenaline levels.  We are forced to pay attention because we are looking to see what happens next.  Look at any commercial on TV today and you will see this phenomenon.  No scene lasts more than two seconds.

So how does this relate to creating a white board video?  In my video, I try to tell a story.  It begins with “a great idea.”  We all identify with the creation of a great idea; it’s a classic business narrative.  Conflict is created by failure to sell that idea.  Motion is created by drawing.  This is the equivalent of Lucas’s fast scene changes.  The viewer wants to see what is being drawn next, and this creates the “and then.”  Next there is a little humor to open our minds.  Finally, there is the resolution.  The elephant drives away on the fire engine, Darth Vader is thwarted, and a solution to a marketing problem is presented.

It’s not perfect.  It’s longer than I wanted, but I am surprised at how fast it moves.  It was created for less than $100.  And I want to know what you think.  Did it capture your attention?  Does it hit the mark?  What would you do differently?  Leave a comment below.

So if your video turns out to be an elephant, put him on a fire engine.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Hope is a projection of our past fears or regrets onto the future with the expectation of a better outcome.   It is characteristically human.  The ability to imagine different future outcomes has elevated the human species and driven us to our current position on the food chain.  Hope is also one of the few things that trumps fear.

In today’s marketing and sales, consumption-based, media world, a lot of messaging seems driven by fear.  Tune in at 10 PM to see why soccer moms are selling crack.  The president is destroying America.  Does your computer have a virus?

In sales and marketing, we often have the opportunity to create fear as a buying cause.  But fear, by itself, is not sufficient to create a sale.  You also need to create hope.

Without hope we would be trapped in a set of automatic responses.  So we hope for better lives for our children.  We hope we beat cancer.  We hope we find the right partner.  We even hope to win the lottery.

We think rather than hope if we buy your service or product that you will solve our problem.  This is because hope is intensely personal.  What we really hope for is that our lives will be better.

It’s difficult to have “hope” for a solution to a business problem.  Rather, in sales and marketing, it’s easier to create a “vision” of a solution to a problem.  The two are different.  Hope, is based on a feeling and a projection of what that solution will mean personally.   A vision for a solution is based on thinking about the technical results, and it’s very rational.

Successful marketers and sales people need to ask,  “What is the “hope” driving my prospect, and how can I help them achieve it?”  Is it to be respected, or to earn the love of their families by being successful?  It’s not just to provide a “left-handed crenznut” in order to improve the output of you sales force automation system that will lead to increased sales.

I am impressed by one simple example but elegant example of hope-based messaging.  An outsourced printing center moved onsite to corporate campus in order to provide that companies reproduction services.  In the copy rooms of the company they placed a sign above each copier.  It said, “Let us help you go home on time.”

In eight words they accomplished the following things: 1) They acknowledged the hard work people were doing, 2) they connected it to the services they provided 3) they offered help 4) the message was positive and 5) they made it personal by tying it to seeing one’s family.  They provided hope. They could have said, “Are you going to be late again tonight? Call 1-800-WePrint.”

So what hope are you delivering in your messages?   Besides just providing a “solution” or creating a “vision,” can you get your customer to personally imagine what their lives will be like after doing business with you?

It’s hard work, but just imagine how you will be admired if….

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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How many times have you had a sales person ask, “What’s our Value Proposition?”

The question I always ask next is, “Why do you ask?”  This is sort of a snotty response, and it doesn’t endear me to the sales team, but it has a purpose.

In my experience, too many sales people simply take the value proposition given by marketing and restate it to the prospect.  This is the worst use of a value proposition.  If you are in Marketing and you enable your sales team this way, then you are not helping.

A value proposition is a list of reasons why a prospect might benefit from buying your product or service, and it usually contains a number of elements.  The first is identifying a need, the second is some sort of differentiation, and the third is some sort of proof.

For example, “If you want fine flavor, then the smooth taste of Camel cigarettes is what nine out of ten doctors recommend.”   Parsed, the need is fine flavor and health, the differentiation is smooth taste, and the proof is that doctors recommend them.

While value propositions are good for internal dialogue and evaluation, as you know, simply stating the reasons why you should buy a product or service is bad sales form.  It’s also lazy.

When a prospect asks you, “What’s your value proposition?”  They are simply saying, “I don’t have time for this… just give me the Cliff’s Notes version, and I will decide.”

But the process they are going through is: 1) Do I really have this need? 2) Is this really any better? And 3) Do I really believe this, or do I trust you?  There is no way that a single “Statement” or “Value Proposition” will ever do justice to a prospect in answering these questions.  But if you fail to answer any of these, your sales and marketing efforts will falter.

So instead, slow down, and go back to basics.  Take your Value Proposition and turn it into a set of questions to determine whether the prospect has the need you believe your product or service can fill.  Then determine the prospect’s perception of the value to satisfying that need.  If it’s worth solving, then look at what their current vision is for solving that need.  Only then can you begin to explore an alternate vision and differentiation.  Your differentiation may be simply that you are not spouting a value proposition, but guiding the prospect through a process of discovery and helping them see things differently.  Proof doesn’t come until the prospect has a vision of capabilities they might need.

But please don’t just give your value proposition.  You might as well sit back, light up that Camel, and wait for good health to flow your way.

Do Great Things!

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Yesterday, I had a colleague send me a link to a site that offers to write your blog for you.  The price was very reasonable, an introductory offer of $68.75 per blog!  He asked for my reaction.

My reaction was, “Really?”  And not in a good way.

Think about it.  Do you really want to phone it in?  If you are truly passionate about your business, how can you simply hire out the content and voice of your business’s soul?

I believe that marketers and business bloggers need to provide thought leadership, push the envelope, and not just offer rehashed stuff.  Because when you do rehashed stuff, your readers won’t tell their friends about your posts.  It will be boring.  Your readers will drift away from your blog.  Your posts will wind up like my insurance agent’s newsletter.  I will never read his stock subject, “Summertime Grill Safety.”  I might look at “Five Ways Not To Blow Yourself Up.”  But no newsletter or blog service will ever come up with that title.

Like every other industry, the marketing business can also follow the path of mass production.  Figure out how to produce more at a lower cost, offer it for a lower price, and then spend the money you make “marketing or advertising” your service to the masses.  You may sell something.  So will a hundred other organizations.  They will all be the same.

Yes, occasionally there is a technical discontinuity that happens in the marketing business.  For example, the creation of websites becomes more automated and doesn’t require experienced html programmers.  This can lead to lower costs for putting up a site, and suddenly there are website companies springing up from South Dakota to Manila.  This doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of improvements in technology or marketing.

We are told that blogging helps generate leads, and social media helps leverage your content.  I believe this to be generally true.  But you need to do the hard work.  Thank you to those that do it.

So if you are contemplating blogging and want to generate leads, I would advise against using a blog mill.   You might just as well lock yourself up with everyone else… or blow yourself up.

Do Great Things!
Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Driving Sales With Customer Focused Marketing
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

PS: For those of you who want to stop the other kind of mill you can visit this site.

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The other day I needed to get a quote on a service costing tens of thousands of dollars.  I visited a website of a well known vendor, spent five minutes trying to find the information I needed, then looked for the “Contact Us” page.  The page had no phone number, only an email form.  Looking further, I finally found a number and called.

I got an automated phone system, listened to the endless array of options and pushed the number that sounded the most likely.  I was routed to India or Pakistan and immediately asked for my name and telephone number.  Patiently I gave the information and explained what I was looking for.  Twenty minutes later, after numerous checks with the attendant’s “supervisor,” I gave up.  The person on the phone had failed to understand my need.  That company was Equifax.

Five minute later I was talking to Trans Union.  I found the number quickly on the Internet, dialed and talked to a person who stuck with me, forwarded my request to a business sales person who called back within 30 minutes, and gave me a full quote.  The value of the transaction could be up to $65,000.

Of course you’re familiar with this phenomenon.  But my question is this.  If we are all familiar, and have experiences like this, then why does the difficulty of helping a prospect via the Internet or phone still persist?  VPs of Marketing, what will your CEO find when he calls his own company? Surf your own sites.  Call your own number.  You might be surprised.

Do great things.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (cell 24×7)

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Here are three scenarios:

1.  The stock market crashes
2.  Your company is acquired by your biggest competitor
3.  Two of the largest vendors in your market merge

You’re in marketing.  What do you do?

Marketing is easy when things are sailing along smoothly.  But sooner or later, you are going to get an unexpected event because markets, competitors, vendors and customers change all the time.  Nothing stays the same.  If you expect things to always be smooth sailing, you may be living in another world.  So one of the issues marketing needs to deal with is how to respond to the event.

When I checked my finance page yesterday after the market dropped six hundred points, I saw something that reminded me of the need to quickly market to the event.  There was a pop-up ad promoting the book of some guy who predicted the last crash.  There was also an ad for gold.  These people were marketing to an event.  Their response time for their campaign was several hours.

A previous client of mine was acquired by their largest competitor.  It was an event.  With several months to go before the acquisition close date, they were susceptible to a fall-off in sales.  People didn’t know if they even had jobs, and who wants to buy from a company that may not be in business in three months.  Their marketing group activated a campaign within a day to assure current clients and provide a rationale for the merger to prospects.  The result was record sales in the month before closing.

In my current assignment, the number two and number three sized vendors just merged to become the largest vendor in the market.  What did we do?  Within an hour we pulled together our internal team, assessed the move, wrote a 1500 word paper, contacted 4000 prospects through an email campaign, issued a press and media release, and created a short video of the CEO speaking on the subject.  The result: five article placements, increased site traffic, increased lead traffic, and lots of new opt-in subscribers.

Marketing to the event is a short term tactic.  With today’s marketing tools, it is easy to react quickly and with a broad reach.  The question is… can your team respond?  It’s often the human element that is the weak link.  So here are a few questions for marketing.

• When the event happens, who owns the response? Do you?
• Do you know who you will use to help respond?
• Does your management team understand and value a quick response?
• Do you have a prepared list of stakeholders with whom to communicate?
• Will your communication fit your messaging strategy?
• Will it be timely, relevant and actionable?

How can you…marketing, take advantage of a drop in the market?  Are you going to be the next roadkill in the corporate budget, or are you going to lead your company?  You can imagine the drill.  Get ready.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (24×7)

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I heard someone say, “Marketing is just publishing.”  And if this is true, then the saying “Content is king,” should also be true.  The question is… does your king have clothes?  And is he dressed appropriately?

Great content is at the heart of any great marketing campaign.   It is also independent of media, and shouldn’t be confused with media.  Media is the way content is distributed, while content is the value and message of the information being conveyed.  In Quid Pro Nada, I discussed content as the currency in the new Internet marketing world and the value of giving it away for free.

Great content is also hard to accomplish.  A lot of content is garbage, mostly because it’s self-serving and sales oriented.   Talking about the features advantages and benefits of your products and services tends to be boring.  If you are still producing this type of marketing content, it’s why 95% of marketing literature thrown away (AMA).

Having a content strategy is a place to start.  Content strategy means that you have a content map of prospect needs for particular stages of the buying cycle.  This helps avoid offering ‘problem identification’ content to someone in the ‘evaluating stage’.   It also means that your messaging is consistent within any particular buying stage or part of the sales funnel.  Yet, as a marketer and consultant, my biggest content issues are tactical.  In thinking about content I’ve come up with four key elements and a set of questions you can ask yourself about each to see how well-dressed your king is.

The four elements are: 1) Creation, 2) Quality, 3) Focus and 4) Media.

Part 1:  Creation:

Marketing’s job is not content creation. A lot of CEO’s and sales people think it is.  But I rarely find a marketing person who is also a subject matter expert on the things that prospects, customers and clients care about.  That’s a tragedy in itself.   This doesn’t mean that marketing can’t create content, but unfortunately most marketers are too removed from the customer to understand their issues and interests. Rather, the best understanding of customers comes from Sales or R&D.

Marketing’s role is one of content facilitation.  Trying to get sales to create content is like… insert your favorite metaphor.  However, think of them as a source.  Sales people like to be interviewed.   Talk to them. Put them on video.  Go on a ride-along.  Sales can be a great source of truth. While you’re on a ride-along, interview customers and prospects.

The other area where real ideas for content are created is in the backroom of R&D.  If your marketing is not connected with R&D or consulting in a services organization, you are missing a great opportunity for content creation.   True R&D people and consultants are creative and naturally curious.  They have the ability to think about things differently and can be a source of thought leadership and content.

Lastly, good content has to be part of your organization’s culture.  Management owns responsibility for culture.  So if your CEO is not promoting a culture which values, creates and shares content, then have a strong talk with him or her.   It’s up to you to convey the value of content to the organization.  There are lots of ways upper management can promote content creation, from providing incentives, to allowing time for it, to setting an example.  Come to think about it, rather than talk to them, interview them on camera.

The questions to ask about content creation are:

1. Who owns content in your organization?
2. What are the best sources for content?
3. What is marketing’s role in its generation?
4. What is the value of great content?
5. How can you promote the value of content to your CEO?

In Part II I’ll discuss Content Quality.

Do Great Things.

Lee Stocking
The Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry With Qualified Leads
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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Here’s a model I’ve developed to think about the four basic building blocks for inbound Internet marketing: 1) Content, 2) Contacts and 3) Tools, all of which are first surrounded by a clear and concise #4; Messaging.

The first building block is Content.  Without content there really is no value you can provide or conversation that you can construct with prospects.  In Quid pro Nada, I outlined the value of giving away useful information.  Development of valuable content to share is often the major bottleneck of companies today and should be the first priority of CMOs.  However, content is driven by thought leadership and that is the responsibility of the CEO and part guiding corporate brand.

The second building block is Contacts.  Contacts are relevant to both Inbound and Outbound marketing, particularly in Email marketing.  Choosing segments is the first step (Segmentation) and helps refine messaging by targeting specific messages to specific prospects.

The last building block is Tools. These can be Search Engine Optimization tools and processes, Pay per Click services, Sales Force Automation or even Email Marketing which is more an Outbound Marketing tool.  Unfortunately, tools are often the first building block chosen as a result of the Silver Bullet phenomenon (link).  Though sometimes selecting a tool, catalyzes the need for content, segmentation and messaging.

The checklist before you begin:

1. Has messaging been developed and tested?
2. Is the segmentation identified (and the messaging developed for each segment)?
3. Is the tool appropriate to the task?
4. Finally, do I have a plan to integrate these in a measureable inbound campaign?

Thanks.  Do great things.

Lee Stocking
Prairie Sky Group
Making Sales Cry with Qualified Leads^SM
lee.stocking@gmail.com
651-357-0110 (Cell 24×7)

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