SAP and people with autism

This made the news:
Software company SAP to hire people with autism
The reasoning behind: “People with autism also often score high on IQ tests, and SAP thinks they have special skills which can help drive the company’s innovation.”
On the other hand it is a great publicity stunt which has gotten global distribution and interest. It still can be a hoax as SAP can hire a few people with autism as their headcount is about 64,500 employees. Hence the company can bare the cost of a handful additional people for a few years: even if they don’t do anything productive or creative it won’t matter.
In any case SAP brand name got into the spotlights worldwide which has greater value than the cost of a few man years.

Your company into the spotlights

In order to get your company into the spotlights you should think about alternative ways and alternative news instead of news about your products or services as that kind of news probably won’t make it into the headlines.
- Charity works in most cases but you need to the right charity (interesting your potential customers) at the right timing
- Sponsoring extreme sportsmen worked for Red-Bull in their early days – but Red Bull is spending ever more on getting into the news: Felix Baumgartner. The problem is finding an extreme sportsman (interesting your potential customers) and getting his performance into the news.
- A hoax could do the trick
- A relationship with a well known brand – this example of eConnect and Palm Pilot was a hoax too.

So use your imagination in order to get your brand exposed to your potential customers. Maybe even getting viral.

Did you ever get your company into the news?

Aspirational marketing video

This might be one of the best B2B video’s ever made.
This video tells a powerful story of what glass could do instead what glass currently does. This sure inspires for next generation of products: aspirational marketing video.
It sure went viral as it got over 16mio clicks.

Too perfect

Although the video is well made, continuously shows interesting applications and manages to show more possible functions and features with glass which keeps the attention, it could have been more entertaining as it seems to be happening in a perfect world. In most cases a perfect world is not entertaining and lacks sentiment or passion.

Emotion, sentiment or passion is missing

For a start the video is too long and there is no build up in emotion.
Being nice and perfect is not enough to entertain the audience and to be remembered too.
In order to be remembered people need a sentiment or passion: that triggers their brains more than anything else. Something that strikes them in their feelings or emotions instead of just amazement for technical achievements.
As emotions and feelings are personal they will stay longer with the viewers.
What is required is emotion, sentiment or passion in your marketing: emotional marketing even in B2B.

Apple had the emotion, passion and sentiment in this famous 1984 commercial:

What did you think about both video’s ?

B2B Viral video

Having the video about a B2B product go viral is the dream of all marketers and CEO’s.
Time and money are being spend on the video that will make the product know to all.

Your video will need something catchy or remarkable in order to stand out from the crowd as the competition for attention is huge and your company is relatively unknown in this world.
People share video’s that go viral amongst friends, not specifically with colleagues or peers. It are just those peers in other companies you need in order to spread beyond company walls.

Missing target audience

Viral means the video link is being forwarded massively. Massive participation means you are addressing a large part of the Internet population which is not exactly your target audience for a video promoting a B2B product.

Even if your video goes viral for one reason or another, it might not reach your target audience.
Going viral is probably limited to B2C in most cases.

have you ever experienced a viral B2B video lately ?

Pre-roll online commercial

We all have experienced ‘Pre-roll’ online advertising that keeps you waiting for the selected video you want to see and you can’t skip: you have to sit through the ad.

On the Internet when advertisers are using TV commercials as ‘Pre-roll’ online video commercials it is as bad as the early TV commercials that had someone reading the radio commercial in front of a camera.
Online commercials need to add on the interactivity of the Internet.

TV is a broadcast medium with no interaction or feedback.
Online video brings the advantage of interaction which allows for interaction or feedback.

Interactive video is required on the Internet

As long as this interaction is not integrated into the commercial it is ‘old school’: even ridiculous as the spoken radio commercials in front of a camera.
Almost a waste of money as it is:
- Not using the features and functions of the Internet media channel as should be
- Treating your potential customers almost as incapable
Still your audience can just use the back button if they are fed up with your online commercial.

Interactive video

The new format on the Internet needs to be interactive video.
You can achieve interactive video by:
- Text overlay: additional information
- Image overlay: additional information
- Chapters: allowing to skip a section or to jump to another section of the video
- Tagging: tagged items or objects with a link to another website
- Forms: insert a form in order to gather data from viewers
- Voting: giving the viewer the chance to vote and express his opinion
- Contest: a contest will drive people to click on links or tags in the video
Most of this can be achieved with Youtube Annotations. As the technology is available then why not use it ?

Of course it will demand more time, effort and money to develop an interactive commercial.
However an interactive online commercial will create a longer lasting impact and a more positive image and awareness of your products – also in B2B.
If executed professionally your video might even go viral.

Will you still use ‘Pre-roll’ commercial or boldly opt for the interactive video ?

Dropping a stone in water

When your drop a stone in calm water a surface disturbance is created, resulting in an expanding series of circular waves. The ripples show the energy of the dropped stone.

When you drop a stone in agitated water the waves created are hardly remarked as the the energy of the stone is less than the agitated water.

When dropping a stone in water with running waves the energy of both waves can accumulate creating higher waves than before.

A splash in social media

In social media the participants and the listening audience can have similar effects:
Missing the interest or engagement
When there is not much interaction or interest for discussing then a new message, communication or event can create waves similar to the dropping a stone in calm water.

Your message can create interest but it’s expanding waves will die out soon due to:
- Lack of interest from the majority
- Not getting any engagement from your audience
All the energy injected will cause small ripples. Even in case if you throw large amounts of money at your social marketing, it is like dropping a bigger stone in calm water: minimal interest.

White noise blurs the message
When there are many different communications and interactions going on between participants and the audience is listening, a new message, communication or event is unlikely to make much impact as it is suppressed by the white noise of all the other interactions.
If your message is not interesting or important enough it will be hardly heard or noticed.

Only in the case when the message is important enough it will cut through the noise and will have a big impact and will be noticed by many.
Cutting through the noise will cost large amounts of marketing money.

The wave of interest
When there is a wave of interest in a problem or solution and a message or event that is in line with this it can enhance the level of interest.

If you manage to make a statement, communication or message that is in line with the interest of a certain group already discussing similar information or events it is likely you will get more attention as the waves of interest are enhancing each other.

Catch the wave in social media is a must

It is all about catching the wave in social media.
You should catch the wave of interest and let the message ride the wave – even beyond your control.

Hence communicating a message or organizing an event is all about being:
-Timely massage or event
-In sync message or event
Your message has to be inline with the interest of the audience which are your potential buyers or user group.
In order to know the message you need to listen to your audience first.

Viral marketing wave explained
With a lot of luck the created bigger wave goes viral which multiplies even more your brand or product.
However this happens only in a very few cases as the newly created wave need to get more energy from other waves joining it. As a magnet it will attract many more smaller waves to build up the reach and time span of the marketing campaign.

It is not always the grandeur of an announcement or the money being spend on a press release, advertising or event that will make a bigger splash.
Being in sync and timely is much more important to create a big wave in social media than to try to make a big splash by poring in a lot of (wasted) money.

The audience is listening (THX)… if you listen to the audience first.

A few years ago the idea was that using a viral video any company could reach a huge audience. The video just needed to have that extra to make it go viral. That was the hype.

Top viral video’s

Now when analyzing the statistics of the top viral video’s on YouTube it is clear that mainly amateur video’s go viral obtaining millions of hits.
People also avoid commercial video’s and prefer original or authentic video’s from amateurs over sleek commercial video’s.

The success is related to:
- The sentiment or emotion with the people in the video
- The sympathy for the makers of the video
- The recognizable situation
- The missing relation to any product or service
All these play an important part in the appreciation and the chance to go viral.

There is no formula or standard scheme for a viral video:
- Anything can become a success
– Anyone can become a success – still babies are likely to score high
- A good laugh has more chance.

The quality of the video doesn’t matter as the content is the more important.

The viral hype has faded

The hype of the viral commercial has faded due to the low predictability of success. Marketing of products cannot rely upon this as a company only makes investments if they can calculate the ROI (Return On Investment), which is impossible for viral campaigns.

The uncertainty of success weighs too much compared to the needed creativity, the production costs and the cost of getting the viral campaign started – which requires in most cases an old-fashioned email campaign or whatever you can think of in order to get viewers.

The viral requirements

If you still want to give viralicious a try bring a video that is:
1. Unbelievable but true
2. Controversial
3. Aiming for a community effect
4. Bragging or organizing a contest
5. Making ´em laugh
6. Showing celebs doing the wrong things
7. Using babies

Use your imagination and be creative as you have to compete against a massive number of amateur video’s that are released continuously from all over the world.
Additionally your creativity and efforts shouldn’t stop after releasing the video; you will need both too for marketing your video.

In these times of minimal budget organic search is often regarded as ‘the solution’.

Organic search seems low cost at first:
- Just optimize the website: SEO
- Write valuable content
- Get links

Search Engine Optimization of the website by tweaking based on content, metatags, keywords and link-building for getting recognized and found in search queries.

Although metatags, keywords and basic on-page SEO are relatively easy to define and put in place, the real problem is in the content:
- Writing valuable content isn’t easy and requires inspiration, creativity and knowledge.
- Not everybody is a great editor or copywriter.
- You need to keep posting valuable content and make sure your content is up-to-date.

You will only get links if your content has value and isn’t a rehash of the same ideas found everywhere else.

Obtaining organic search visitors is hard labor and costs time and money. Time you could have used to call upon your customers or to do prospecting. Money you could have used for getting PPC traffic and immediate results (visitors). Organic search might be a one time long-term investment providing that your content doesn’t go stale over time. A site full of outdated information might be worse compared to providing nothing at all.

You are also at the mercy of the search engines latest whims and algorithms: there’s absolutely no guarantee that they will keep on bringing you traffic and let you keep your current position in the SERPs. Google doesn’t owe you anything, couldn’t care less if your site disappears from the SERPs and doesn’t even need to give you an explanation if it does.

Now, compare all of this to spending some hours figuring out an AdWords-like service and getting your first visitors almost immediately spending only a slight amount of money (usually). Investing in organic search/content development might not be the hen with the golden eggs that it’s often depicted to be.
For most businesses, the conversion rates of organic and PPC/paid visitors are also nearly the same.

Are you investing in content or ppc?
Are you absolutely sure this is the way to go?

Since ever marketing used to be a controlled process that is straightforward for most B2B companies:
- Advertising: create and pay.
- Advertorial: write and pay.
- Press releases: write and let distribute (pay).
- Leaflets and Product sheets: create, print and distribute.
- Trade shows: hire a booth, put up messages and be present.

All these methods and processes were clearly defined and easily controlled processes. They all are one way communications in specific channels.

Social media marketing disruption

Since the event of the social media the marketing processes are changing.
Not only because of the additional channel that is being offered, but mainly because of the un-controllability of the new medium and communication channel.

Anybody can post and publish anything about your company, products, solutions or customer service on these new social media channels.
This media is without any controlling organization or person.

Marketing is evolving from the well protected and almost isolated world of one way communications, into an open system of two-way communications that can even turn into conversations or even get virally distributed over large populations.
All of a sudden your B2B marketing is exposed to all the possible mishaps of social media that are beyond your control.

1. The world has become transparent:
In the past a few well-known gatekeepers controlled the distribution of information.
These people worked for newspapers, magazines, radio or television.

The change:
In the new world of influence there are no controlling people or organizations: no secrets.
Openness and transparency is required for marketing.

2. The world has turned to a conversational approach:
Previously there was no conversation: just one way communication – with the response from the audience by buying or not buying: To buy or not to buy that was the answer.

The change:
The marketing and advertising needs to be conversational and should encourage interaction.
Marketing campaigns needs to become part of the conversation and marketing should join in on the conversation.
If people post on a forum, in a blog or a comment on a blog, your marketing needs to consider to respond appropriately within a short time.

3. Everybody can become an influencer:
Previously the number of influencers was limited.
These people were highly appraised and had obtained recognition in one way or another.
Sometimes by just being in the same privileged position since many years.

The change:
On the Internet anybody can become an influencer for a short or a longer time span.
Still there are the less and the more influential people: like bloggers that have an audience.

The change in marketing due to social media

The change is in marketing disruptive having disadvantages and benefits:
- Disadvantages: un-controlled, unpredictability, uncertainty.
- Benefits: interaction, feed-back, conversation, possibility of viral spreading.

In any case your marketing needs to adjust and adopt as there is no way back. Those companies that take advantage early will benefit.

How is your company experiencing this disruption?
How is your marketing reacting upon this change?
Is marketing already taking part in the conversation?

Although Mack Collier has an interview with Sandy Carter of IBM concerning “The Recipe for Marketing Success with Social Media“, we dare to state there is probably no recipe for marketing success with social media.

Social media success is unpredictable

How much effort you do.
How much energy you put into.
There is no relation between input and outcome.
In social media anything can be picked up or seemingly everything can be ignored.
Social media success is unpredictable. It is not science.

How to get measurable success with social media?

In order to be able to measure you need to measure the input and the output.
For a start the measurability of social media is not feasible for the moment.
Due to the complexity of social media the input is unclear as there are so many sources than can trigger a social media event. The input can be different from the sources you are registering or the sources that you control.

Next you need to be able to link the input to the outcome.
It is probably impossible to prove the origin or the catalysat of the outcome.

No recipe of marketing success with social media

If we can’t measure, humans are not able to build a model or a heuristic that defines the recipe.
There is no secret formula.
It probably comes down to many experiments and good luck with the content and timing.

Of course you can try to use a catalysat like email campaigns or promote your content by bookmarking (or getting bookmarked by someone) on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Mixx, Propeller or similar in order to boost the process reaction to get picked up, but as too many factors play a role: no exact outcome can be predicted.

Above the unpredictability and unmeasurability of social media, it is certainly not suited for every type of business, solution or service. Thus maybe you don’t even need to look into social media.

What’s your experience and level of success with social media?

Currently the marketing market is still into outbound marketing: machine gunning the supposedly target customers with emails or calls.
This means using call centers and email marketing campaigns in order to address as many potential customers as possible. As email marketing is possible for as low as 1cent per email it is now the most widely used method.

At the same time the more emails that are being send by all companies worldwide, the less chance of emails getting opened and read.

As apparently no company can do without all this email marketing is good for both:
- The providers of email marketing services
- Spam filters vendors
Companies buy ammunition (email lists) and at the same time bullet proof vests (spam filters).

Measuring outbound marketing

Not only the low price per contact addressed, but also the ease of measurement of outbound marketing makes it popular.
Feed in tens of thousands of email addresses, push the button and register the number of clicks afterwards. And in some cases the number of sales closed.

The same can apply to using telephone calls by a call center:
The number of people in companies called lead to a number of deals but it comes at a higher cost and takes much longer to process all the contacts.

One of the problems with email blasts that arises is obtaining the tens of thousands of email addresses. No company in B2B can sustain collecting so many contacts.

Additionally outbound marketing is interrupting the normal workflow of the addressee. Chances are the timing is wrong and the message not appropriate for the receiver at that moment.

Inbound marketing is more complex but priceless

Inbound marketing is much more difficult to measure, as the seeds planted that are effective generating traffic to your website can be anywhere and their effectiveness will change over time.
The metrics and the measurement systems required are much more complex or even impossible to set up and to operate.

People in business are already starting to use search engines, blogs, forums and social media sites to get product or services information and reviews.
Inbound marketing is priceless as the timing is always right: the potential customer is interested for one reason or another as he was searching for the problem or a solution.

Still in the long run, when outbound marketing is no longer effective, inbound marketing will have taken the lead for generating leads.

Inbound: long lasting – Outbound: one time only

Inbound marketing efforts can have a long lasting effect: once a link embedded in a website, a catalog, a directory, a blog, a review or a document: the source can remain in use over many years to come.

Whereas outbound marketing efforts are one off: the marketing action (email or call) generates immediately a click or never.
Once the email is out of sight in the Inbox, no chance that it ill get any attention.
Once the call has been finished, hardly any chance of the called person will call back.

This brings an additional factor: timing. The timing of sending an email needs to be appropriate: too early or too late regarding an event, the daytime, or during the week and the email campaign is much less effective.

Inbound marketing is durable: like a marathon.
Outbound marketing is a quick one time win: like a sprint.

Inbound marketing (seeds planted) can have long lasting wonders and also total failures.
Outbound marketing (emails send or calls made) has one hit wonders or total failures.

Inbound marketing can hit the jackpot if their message becomes viral.
Outbound marketing has less chance to go viral.
Going viral is the best inbound marketing that you can have: the message lives and propagates on itself by Word Of Mouth.

When will the market turn to inbound marketing?
When will the switch be made?
The recession will probably help a hand as currently the amounts of email marketing used by companies is increasing significantly.

How long will you be continue using outbound marketing?