What You Can Learn from the Penny

I heard a discussion on NPR last December concerning the new “penny.” I was amused to hear that a penny actually costs 1.7 cents to make and that, officially, there is no US unit of money called a “penny.” The correct term is “one cent piece.” The original “one cent piece” was about the size of the British half-penny. Our forefathers, being familiar with British coins, dubbed the “one cent piece” the “penny.” The name stuck. Once “penny” came into common use, there was no way the US Treasury was going to get people to switch over to using “one cent piece.” The proper name of this coin was essentially lost.

When it comes to building your brand, make sure you are consistent from the start. If you’re not, your brand will get lost.

I have a client who could not pick his favorite logo, so he uses both of them. You can go to his web site and see one logo and to a retail outlet and see a different logo on his product packaging.  Not only does this reduce the “critical mass” required to make a logo recognizable, but the customer is left wondering if one is the real product and the other is a knock-off. What will that do to your sales?

In another scenario, I worked with an engineering company who would alternate “The Multimedia Experts” with “The Multimedia Connection” depending on who was creating the marketing material. If you have so little logic behind your branding statement, if you can just substitute words, then you will not create a solid brand image. Your marketing materials are not going to work consistently towards your goals.

It is not hard to imagine that there are search engine optimization (SEO) benefits for being consistent but I am going to share an SEO tip that I have only seen once in my two years of research. You can significantly improve your ranking on Google if you will create three social media sites using the same name as your Web page. This is something that should be considered when creating your Web page. For many of you, this could be a problem because your Web page is already locked in and matching names on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter may have already been taken. If your company name or URL (web page address) is fairly unique, however, you have a great opportunity to increase you visibility on the Internet.

Here is an example of what I mean. When we created Accelerant Marketing Alliance, we knew that name was way too long for a URL. We created a unique abbreviated name for our URL: accelerantmktg.com. When we created our Twitter account, we made it match the web page: twitter.com/accelerantmktg. With Facebook: Facebook.com/accelerantmktg. The YouTube channel is in the works and it will be called YouTube.com/user/accelerantmktg. If you have been reluctant to start social media marketing, here is one more reason to do so.  You now know a secret SEO tactic that most of your competition does not know.

In your brand planning, you need to take a variety of things into consideration. For example, how do you manage your success? Most of us are aware of the failure Kleenex had in regaining exclusive use of their brand name once it became generic. Before that, Bayer lost exclusive use of the brand name “Aspirin” and had to build brand awareness of the Bayer name. Some of us will remember when Xerox started promoting the term “photocopies” to prevent the lost of their brand name. Once everyone from your six year old to your grandmother calls “photocopies” a “Xerox,” the brand name is probably gone.

Most of us will never be fortunate enough to achieve the level of success where our company becomes a household name. For the rest of us, the first battle will be “uniqueness.” “Accelerant” is not a unique name for a marketing agency.  When you throw in the different variants such as “Accelerator” and “Accelerate,” you have some branding issues. You can play with the spelling or add content to the name. We considered, “Excellerant” but decided that this might opened up some confusion with “Excel spreadsheets.” We are not accountants. We could have become “Accelerant Marketing of North Texas” but we did not want to limit our reach to just north Texas. We are worldwide. One of our oldest customers is a semiconductor company in Shanghai. In the end, we focused on our objective to form an alliance with our customers in making their success, our success. This gave us the unique name we needed to start building our brand.

At Accelerant, we are serious about our brand. We use a consistent font on all our materials. Even our meeting minutes are done in this font. We use our company slogan on both sides of our business cards. We are consistent with the punctuation for our slogan: “Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time.” The first part must use caps like a department sign in a major corporation. We do “big corporation” marketing. The last part must be in all lower case because that is a conversation between the two of us. We are bringing “big corporation” marketing to the people. Due to this attention to detail, we know who we are, what we offer and how to present our value in as few words as possible.

Make your brand marketing follow a plan or you will be all over the place, spreading a little bit of marketing here and there but not enough anywhere to make a difference. Be consistent with your brand. Use the same name, same logo, same slogan...same colors and font on all your printed materials (business cards, stationary, brochures), ads, Web page, social media, etc. If you do not, then you may end up like the “one cent piece”; everywhere but still unknown.

James Snider is the Business Development Director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, LLC of Grapevine, Texas. www.accelerantmktg.com “Corporate Marketing Department ... one hour at a time.”

What I learned from working in a nuclear power plant...work boots

Now, I thought I knew what work boots were. I have a pair of sturdy hiking boots I wear all the time. However, a friend of mine, who used to work for the BNSF railroad, offered to lend me his work boots. I will be required to wear steel toed boots on this job. I will be working on the "turbine deck" where everyone is required to wear steel toed boots, a hard hat, safety glasses and ear plugs.


I was warned to not get those cheap steel toed boots from Walmart. My shift will be from 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM. Twelve hours, 6 nights a week (with the potential of going to a full 7 day week) on a concrete floor. This is not a place for $70 boots. I was encouraged to spend the extra $100 for a good pair.


$170 for a pair of boots that I will wear for 6 weeks, then probably never wear again?


I called my friend from the railroad and asked if he could lend me his boots ASAP. I figured, twelve hours on a concrete floor is no place to be breaking in a pair of boots either.


Once my friend handed over his work boots to me, I was full of wonder and intimidation. These things must weigh 10 pounds each. They laced about half way up my shin and felt like Frankenstein shoes. Hard to walk in ....clump ....clump ....clump.... But they said "Red Wings" on them and from what I've read on-line, these are the best.


Suddenly, my years of experience in marketing were failing me. This was no place for a marketing, white collar guy. I was entering the world of the working men. Men who had tattoos back when men had tattoos, not musicians and drama majors. These were guys who were missing digits and called them "fingers" and "toes" not "digits." These were men who wore boots that weighed as much as a spare tire.


Next lesson? Learn to walk in steel toed boots and to look like you've done it all your life.

James Snider is the business development director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, a full-service marketing start-up providing a corporate marketing department....one hour at a time
For more information on Accelerant: http://accelerantmktg.com 
For more information on James: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

What I learned from working in a nuclear power plant

As a consultant, sometimes you are called upon to perform duties outside your normal scope. If someone knows you are available and they need anyone who is not a complete idiot, sometimes they will call.


I had just such a call recently. Seeing as business is slow right now and the caller is a friend, I accepted the job.


In about a week, I will start a 6 week stint as a safety supervisor at a nuclear power plant. I will be leaving the great state of Texas to join a team that performs maintenance on a wide variety of power plant equipment. It will be my job to make sure they are following all the safety rules, all the time. 

I have started reading endless safety manuals so I will know things like “4) Wear Kevlar gloves when using utility knives, and scrappers.” Honestly, I did not know that there was such a thing as “Kevlar gloves.” But then, the writer of the manual did not know that the comma before “and” was not necessary, so I guess that makes us even.


I am not sure what I will learn about “marketing” from this experience, but I tend to find grist for the mill in just about every circumstance. This will be a unique experience for me, for sure. Whatever I learn, I will share with you on this blog.


Now, the most important thing for me to learn is how to say “nuclear.” Saying “nucaler” might be OK in Texas among Texans, but it will not do a lot for my credibility once I set foot on power plant property.

James Snider is the business development director for Accelerant Marketing Alliance, a full-service marketing start-up providing a corporate marketing department....one hour at a time
For more information on Accelerant: http://accelerantmktg.com 
For more information on James: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

What I learned from Beer Marketing

Back in 1971, beer marketing took a major turn. The problem with American beer was, it pretty much all tasted the same. That is before Sam Adams, pale ales or the other beers which are distinctly different than "old school" American beers like Bud and Miller.  

These "mainstream" American beers were (and are) made from the same ingredients, using the same process, yielding the same results. Tastes test have consistently shown that beer drinkers who are fiercely loyal to one brand can not tell the difference in blind taste tests. How could marketing executives get the consumer to switch brands? 

Most traditional beer ads promoted the superior taste of the beer. Other ads generated interest with a comely female actress or used a star to build a "cool" factor about the beer. The ads, as you would suspect, were all about the beer.

At one time, Miller beer promoted themselves as "The Champagne of Bottled Beer." This had something to do with the extra carbonation in Miller beer but it was also an attempt to promote the "superior taste." This helped them to carve out a niche with people who liked beer but found it socially beneath their status or preferred other alcoholic beverages. 

What Miller discovered was that they were being successful with this niche market but that their target audience only drank a couple of beers from time to time. The real beer drinkers were the blue collar folks who drank beer all the time and in large quantities. If they could re-brand themselves to appeal to the working class "Joe 6-pack", they would increase sales significantly.  The term "Joe 6-pack" was actually coined by the advertising industry as an reference (albeit an unflattering one) to this average beer drinker.

In 1971, Miller started showing TV commercials depicting guys leaving construction sites and using the tag line, "If you've got the time, we've got the beer" and "It's Miller Time!" These commercials were very successful. They focused on the beer drinker and not the beer. That was huge. Beer drinkers (who felt somewhat marginalized in general) started buying Miller.  I remember when I was a carpenter, occasionally I would hear someone say, at the end of the day, "It's Miller Time" and everyone knew what he meant. 

This was so successful, that Budweiser (the number one selling beer) started running ads that said "For all you do, this Bud's for you." A powerful new age dawned where the customer, not the product, was the focus. 

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider
 

It's a tough call

I was discussing a recent marketing project with an old friend. He is about as "black and white" a person as I've ever known. After attending law school and passing his bar exam, he practiced law for one year and quit. The whole legal system was too crooked for him. Judges were too influenced by whether a particular attorney threw good Christmas parties and had a good deer lease. He felt that preferential treatment was given to the attorneys who were good schmoozers. 


In that respect, my friend is very much like the most technical engineers I've had the pleasure to work with or the misery of working for. 


When I told my friend that I'd taken on a physician as a client, he was aghast. Back in his day as an attorney (one year), it was considered unethical to advertise. That would go double for a doctor! A  person should not select a doctor based on good marketing but on whether or not they are a good doctor. If you read my post on engineers and social media, you will see similar logic. 

I explained to my friend that what I was doing was helping this physician to communicate better with people who needed her services. I was determining what made this doctor unique and helping her to verbalize it clearly. She specialized in certain treatments and not others. As a result, she was building a practice devoted to being the best in a certain niche which other doctors were only treating as a sideline. 

When we Googled the keywords a patient would use to find a specialist in this niche, she was not showing up on page one. Only Wikipedia entries, national organizations and other informational sites were showing up. No doctors and certainly no doctors in the city where she practiced.  

And since she specialized in one area, she needed to communicate with doctors who could refer patients to her. She needed to develop a short brochure and do something to increase the likelihood that the doctor would read the brochure and not just throw it away.


There was nothing manipulative in what I was doing for the physician. It was all about coming up with clear, concise wording; adjusting her web page and writing a short brochure on her specialty. 

The snag in my plan was in determining how to get a doctor to read a brochure. Chances were good that some gatekeeper would throw it away before the doctor saw it.  You can't just set up an appointment to visit the doctor to talk shop. Getting the ear of a doctor is nearly impossible. Sales people, with nice fat expense accounts, take up their free (non-revenue generating) time.


What I did not tell my friend was that part of my marketing plan was to have my client throw a blowout summer party at the lake and a killer Christmas party with the intent of inviting a select group of physicians who would likely refer patients to my client. Is that manipulation? Schmoozing? Bribery? Or is that simply the most effective way to gain the attention of busy, affluent and influential people? 

It's a tough call. 


James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Social Media and Fishing

I lead weekly social media labs. I frequently find people who are stuck on some minor detail with Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and feel that they just can not move forward until they (for example) understand what they should enter into the "Location" field....do they enter "Grapevine" or "DFW, Texas" or "Dallas - Fort Worth"...do they spell out "Fort" in "Ft. Worth" and do they spell "Texas" or just enter "TX"...


I also find people who are ready to write off social media because "It does not work." What you find out is that they tried posting three or four things to Twitter and nothing much happened. They did not see their Twitter account show up on page one of Google search results. They did not pick up a dozen followers in their first week. No one reached out to them via Direct Message.


I find this to be a particular tendancy among engineers. Their expectations of cause and effect are perfect for product design but not very good for business development. I have seen brilliant engineers with exciting product designs collect some great leads from a conference or a trade show, send off an email as soon as they return to the office, then wait for a response. Maybe, if they are very aggressive, they will make a phone call...and leave voice mail. What more can they do? They emailed / called and nothing happened. Maybe they are lucky enough to get a face-to-face meeting, then they expect the potential customer to get back to them.  When nothing happens, they become frustrated...and go out of business.

I feel like asking, "If you went fishing and the fish were not biting, would you say that fishing does not work?  Of course not! You would change bait, change locations, come back on a different day or a different time of day. You would ask someone where to go and what lures or bait seem to work there."


You need to do the same thing with social media. Try different things. Be creative. Keep at it. It is not the key to overnight success. You must be persistent and build success slowly.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

It I'd Asked People What They Wanted...

When it comes to the way most people approach social media marketing for the first time, I am reminded of a quote by Henry Ford.  Ford said, "If I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have told me 'Faster Horses'."


When I see a steady Twitter stream of news releases, I think "How is this any different than the 'Recent News' section on your web page? "  When I see an endless list of "this week's car deals," I wonder, "How is this any different than the classified section of the newspaper?"  If social media is so hot and new and so revolutionary...why do you think you can derive any benefit by using it like an old marketing tool?


Social media is about attracting customers by being interesting.  Talk about how you are being "green."  Tell me about the great charities you support and how you arrange volunteer days so your employees contribute a day of work to Habitat for Humanity or the local food bank.  Tell me a funny story about your product or service.  Give me information on how to get the most from your product or service.  Give me something interesting to keep me coming back for more.


Don't use social media to hawk your products day after day.  Be the company talking about something interesting.  What are you doing that someone might want to know about?  Tweet about those things.  Update your LinkedIn network with those things.  Put that on your Facebook wall.


Tell me something interesting and I will want to know more. That will lead to sales.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

The Big Mistake so many Make

One mistake I see being made by businesses using social media is that they think it can be all about them. Traditional marketing is all about getting your message in front of people... and your message is all about you, your company, your product or your service.  We use traditional web sites in this way.  Go to the TI, Ford, or Wal-Mart websites and you will see that almost all the information is about their products.  The customer goes to their website when they want this sort of information.


However, social media is different.  It serves a different purpose which is why it is so hot right now.  Most corporate marketing types can not get their head around this.  Social media is all about building relationships with your customer.  You are not going to build much of a relationship if all you do is talk about yourself.


I am reminded of a person I met at a social event about 6 months ago.  He looked lonely so I struck up a conversation.  I quickly found out why he was lonely.  He talked and talked about himself and never paused for me to get a word in edgewise.  He talked about the railroad industry and why it is in trouble right now.  At first, he was moderately interesting...until he started talking about the design work he'd done.   He was able to reduce cross axial vibrations by 19% which reduced the damage to goods and the friction between the wheels and the rails.  This permitted cars to carry 14% larger loads.... I introduced him to an unsuspecting person who just happened to be standing there and then I slipped quietly away.


Now, if I ever need information on cross axial vibrations, I will find that guy again and have the conversation, but chances are, I am going to avoid him in the future.  He did not provide me with anything interesting or useful.  He is a walking encyclopedia full of information I do not need.


What about you as a marketer? How are you using social media?  Are you providing information which a potential customer might find useful or are you telling them too much about yourself and the products you want to sell to them?  You can not just post anything on Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn and expect it to generate interest in your product.  You have to build interest in yourself by building a relationship with a group of people who will eventually be involved in purchasing your product.


Don't let your social media marketing be like the author about whom Moses Hadas said, " This book fills a much-needed gap."


More on what to write in the next post.

James Snider is a marketing consultant, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James has over 16 years of marketing experience with 7 years working for Fortune 100 companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and, since the summer of 2009, as a strategic business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Emotional marketing is powerful.

In my last post, I talked about marketing to emotions or "emotional marketing." I have studied this for years and incorporated it into my most successful marketing campaigns. Recently, I ran across a good article on the topic.

Emotional marketing is the most powerful way to increase market share and create undying brand loyalty.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Emotions!

When you talk about emotions to an engineer, you are treading on thin ice.  There is nothing they hate more than to hear about your emotions.  It is like throwing water on the witch.  However, marketers know that the most effective sales method is one that appeals to both logic and emotion.  You can convince someone that your product is the right choice, but an little emotional push will move them to make the purchase.


The problem is, "using emotions to sell a product" sounds manipulate to an engineer.  They want to give their customer all the facts so they can make a logical decision. This would make sense, given the logical nature of engineers, however, any good marketing person knows how to sell his/her product to his/her customer.  When left to pure logic, there is a lack of a sense of urgency to take action and the danger of "analysis paralysis."


Let's remove the word "emotion" and substitute "motivation."  How do we motivate the engineering customer to stop analyzing and to select our product without extensive research?  To do this, we need to determine what motivates them. About what are they passionate?

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Digital Tonto

If you are not reading Greg Satell‘s (Digital Tonto) blog, you are missing some of the best marketing content on the internet.  He is always interesting and informative….and he always makes me wonder how I have gotten this far in life and know so little.  Here is an excerpt from his most recent blog posting:
From “Marketing Memes”

Two Hunters
Memes can spread in lots of different ways for lots of different reasons.  Susan Blackmore, in her book The Meme Machine, describes how altruism can spread memes through a story about two successful primitive hunters, Kev and Gav.  Kev, is a nice guy who shares his meat while Gav is a bit more selfish and keeps the proceeds from his hunt to himself.
Blackmore notes that Kev will come into contact with more people and they will be more likely to copy his style of hunting  (i.e. type of bow and quiver, etc.).   Moreover, other memes of his will be transferred as well, such as the type of feathers he adorns himself with, songs he likes to sing, etc..
Gav’s memes won’t be as successful.  He won’t spend as much time with others so, whatever his merits, he won’t get copied as much as Kev.  As information gets passed down, future generations will be more likely to adopt Kev’s memes than Gav’s.

Greg then goes on to compare Google, Microsoft, and Apple to Kev and Gav and to discuss how ideas spread.
For the complete post (and all his other excellent articles) go to www.digitaltonto.com

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Ignite! Dallas, June 2, 2010

The Ignite! Dallas group is heavily populated with people who are active in the Social Media Club of Dallas.  I was fortunate enough to be one of 16 people selected (from a pool of 46) to speak at this rowdy event.  The topic of this blog was the topic of my presentation.  Please take a look:

                      James Snider's presentation at Ignite Dallas 2

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

All that useful fluff

To a marketer, features are "hooks" to help them get customers interested in their product.  The more features, the more ways the product can be sold and the greater the opportunity to get more people to love the product.  


Just look at the iPhone.  It had more features than the average smart phone and engineers love it.  It was those features that made people fall in love with it (and stand in crazy long lines to get the first one....and then again to get the updated version....and then again...) A significant portion of the people standing in line to get the new iPhone were engineers. That is because marketers did an effective job of marketing it.  


But wait!  There's more!  The Droid has plenty of features, but it lacks the "cool factor" of the iPhone.  There is nothing logical about standing in line all night long to get a new phone. This brings up the importance of "emotions" in selling a product. 

More on that in my next post.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Bells and Whistles...from the Engineer's vantage point

Ask just about any engineer and s/he will tell you that they do not like "bells and whistles."  They are a bit disdainful when they use the term.  Features on a product are seen as unnecessary "fluff" added by marketing for no good reason.

When you look at what engineers do really well, it is developing clean designs, making them as simple as possible.  They want to design products that work well all the time with minimal downtime.  Features add complexity and often bugs.  Additionally, most people never  use the features.

Example....When was the last time you used a microwave to do more than reheat a cup of coffee or pop a bag of popcorn, however, most microwaves have dozens of features.  You can not sell one that only has two buttons: "Coffee" and "Popcorn."

Admittedly, most features are just "fluff" but to the marketer, they are very valuable.  More on that in the next installment.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Left Brained...Right Brained

Part of the problem for engineers who want to move into marketing is the old "Left Brained : Right Brained" dichotomy.  

We are all a combination of left and right brained traits, but engineers tend to be more left brained.  They are more detail oriented and logical.  They reason through things in a step-by-step fashion.  They see problems as a series of dots to be connected sequentially with a line between each dot.  If they were a fisherman, they would bait one hook, drop one line in the water and catch one fish.  They tend to play it safe and follow the rules.  They are practical.


Marketers tend to be more right brained.  They are big picture and intuitive.  They gather random information together and weave it into a solution.  If they were a fisherman, they would cast a net into the water and catch all sorts of fish.  They tend to take chances and bend the rules.  They are creative.


By now, you are probably thinking, "But we are talking about technical products.  Engineers need to be able to talk to engineers.  If the customer is left brained, shouldn't the salesman be left brained?"  It is true that the technology marketer must have a good technical aptitude, but I assert that "marketing is marketing."  A good marketer will know how to sell the product to the customer, whomever the customer may be.


A few examples will clarify this.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

 

Let Marketers do the Marketing

In two weeks, I will be giving a presentation at Ignite Dallas (June 2, 2010). If you are not familiar with this international phenomenon, 15 or so speakers are selected to speak to a sizable audience on any topic they are passionate about.  They are restricted to 20 slides and 5 minutes.  The Ignite motto is,"Enlighten us, but make it quick."


I will be speaking on the topic of this blog...When Engineers Become Marketers.  Too often, marketing is relegated to the web guy, PR person, a salesman, or (today) the social media guru.  Marketing should be done by marketers.  Even with technical products which require considerable technical aptitude to be marketed well, the fundamental rules of marketing stay in effect and need to be followed.

Engineers who are not trained in marketing should not be marketing technical products.  On most college campuses, you will see a building called "School of Business" and a different building called "School of Engineering."  "Marketing" is taught in the school of business.  That is because it is not "Engineering."


Marketing is not something you can pick up by reading Wikipedia over the weekend.  It takes some aptitude, some training, and some experience to do it well.  Let a trained marketer do it.  After all, you wouldn't have your SQL programmer solder your thermal vias to your ground plane, would you?  That's crazy talk...


Over the next few installments, I will talk about how Engineers are fundamentally different than Marketers.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Take a Look Around...and keep your eyes open!

An incident came to mind recently which is applicable to more than high tech marketing.  Anyone who markets to people in a different culture can benefit from a tip I posted on my travel blog.  Essentially, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."  I try to fit in whenever I travel.  Obviously, when I am in Japan, I can never look Japanese, but I can look like I know the ropes.  Learn some words in Japanese. Prepare for taxi drivers who do not speak English.  Moderate your speaking style to be more consistent  with those with whom you are talking.  Walk on the correct side of the sidewalk (not always on the right.) Look both ways when crossing the street...that is something your mother always told you, but when you are in another country, it is particularly important because driving styles and rules of engagement are very different in other places.  

I recall one time when I was crossing the street in Shanghai.  The "Walk" light was indicating it was safe to cross.  I was almost to the other side when the light changed to "Don't Walk."  I'd seen a bus in the distance, but by my calculations, I would be out of the intersection before it would even get close to me.  I heard the sound of heavy and rapid footsteps behind me, only to be passed by my business associate who was only two steps behind me.  He was in a dead gallop and grabbed my shirt as he passed by.  The bus, which had been nearly a half block away, was traveling at an outrageous speed and was timing it to hit the intersection just as soon as the light turned green...leaving no margin for error.  Any slow pedestrian was going to be a fatality.  I was expecting the bus driver to show some caution, similar to bus drivers in the USA.  Not this guy.  He was focused on speed, not safety and it was up to anyone in the street to stay out of his way.

Another example comes to mind which deals more with business etiquette than with safety.  I had a boss one time who tended to wear sunglasses every time he stepped outside.  This is not the norm in the USA, but not totally unusual.  When he traveled to Japan, he noticed that the Japanese salesmen were suppressing laughter each time he put on his sunglasses.  After a few incidents, he asked the most "American" of the Japanese salesmen about it.  He was told that in Japan, no one wears sunglasses on the street.  They only wear sunglasses under certain conditions, such as when they go to the beach.  Each time he put on his sunglasses on city streets, the Japanese found it to be hilarious.  This was all good clean fun until they approached the office building where they were to meet with an important customer.  At this point, one of the Japanese salesmen turned to by boss and said, "Larry-san, please remove the sunglasses...it makes you a stranger."

If he'd been thinking about it, he would have realized that anything that made him standout as different should have been minimized when doing business in another culture.  Keep your eyes open and follow the lead of those who live in the culture you are visiting. 

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Looking for the "Right" Solution

The problem with marketing at high tech companies is that most of the marketers are engineers who think “marketing” sounds like fun. They are not genetic marketers. They were not "born to be marketers." In many cases, they do not even have a “recessive marketing gene.” These are the people who make up the marketing organizations at most technology companies (Apple being a notable exception) and the marketing working groups of most technology trade groups.

About three years ago, I was working with a sister organization who wanted to co-market 1394 with the 1394TA. They wanted to run an ad in the CES Show Daily to build traffic to their booth. I introduced them to one of the most creative people I know to help them create an ad that would "pop." If they were going to entice people to leave the Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung booths to see their demo, the ad would need to grab attention and create curiosity. 

This sister organization looked at a bunch of concepts from the creative company and migrated as a body to the least interesting ads presented. Anything truly creative made them uncomfortable. Their “engineering mind” kept raising doubts. They were second-guessing themselves to death. In the end, they selected the one concept that looked the most like all other ads in the magazine. Literally, when I picked up the magazine at the show to look for the ad, I flipped past it twice before I found it. It looked so much like every other ad, it was almost camouflaged.

It was at that moment that I had an epiphany. One reason why engineers make such mediocre marketers is because they are looking for the “correct” solution. The solution cannot be one that just feels right. It cannot be something that you just know is right but cannot explain why it is right. That “correct” solution must be the one that everyone else is doing. That is the criteria by which print ads are so often measured. 

With training, I have found that engineering marketers can be extremely creative, but this has to be nurtured. It will not emerge if they are left to their engineering training and logic.

 

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

Stretching the Creative Muscle

After the "Cowboy" ad, I convinced the marketing group that what they had been doing was pure folly.  They simply were not solving a single problem.  They were spending money for no benefit...and to the contrary....they were spending money to hurt their cause by clogging up the voicemail of their sales team with customers who should be going to the distributors for samples.


 Since we knew who our target audience was and since that target audience was fairly small, it made better sense to go directly to the customer with our promotion.  Our sales staff kept asking for some sort of "leave behind" to build goodwill with their customers.  Our competition was always bringing trinkets to the customer.  We rarely did.


We went to work on developing a giveaway that would be unique, desirable, and used in the office.  A frisbee or stress relief "desktop toy" is pretty boring and usually goes home with a customer (or in the trash a day or two later) and does not stay at the office.  Our first effort was a "flashcard" flashlight which is essentially a flat flashlight about the size of a playing card but much thicker.  This was a decent first effort.  It was unique, not very expensive, useful (everyone needs a flashlight), and had plenty of surface area for a sales message.  It was just not very popular.


The group was now starting to think creatively. We'd just not stretched the creative muscle adequately...yet.

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider

The Cure was Worse than the Disease

The “Be the Cowboy not the Cow” idea was not ground breaking. It was not brilliant, but it was a big step in the right direction. We did something that stood out. The message, however, was lost on almost everyone. Our Asian counterparts did not understand it at all. They changed the headline to “One World, One Cable.” To our European associates, the message came across as “Be a Redneck…” They shrugged their shoulders and swallowed their embarrassment.

Our competitors Photoshopped the ad and changed the headline to read, “Where there are cows and cowboys, there is always a lot of fertilizer…”

However, a larger problem surfaced.  

After the ad hit EETimes, I received a phone call from one of the sales reps I knew pretty well.  He complained that he hated it when we ran ads.  "Every time an ad shows up in a magazine, my phone starts ringing off the wall.  My voicemail fills up with requests for pricing and samples from garage shops who will probably not be in business next month.  At best, they will buy a few samples to play with.  I don't have time to mess around with these people!  I meet my sales targets by serving the needs of my tier one customers.  You guys in Dallas are killing me with these ads!"

I quickly took this information to the marketing group. Unimpressed, they responded, "Yeah. The sales people tell us that every time we run an ad." 

They knew this already, but failed to see the problem.  I was reminded of something one of my marketing professors told us, "No person should ever work as a marketer until they have worked in sales.  You do not understand what the sales person is dealing with until you have done their job."

I finally succeeded in killing ads altogether and began to work with the group to come up with different promotion methods.  "Be the Cowboy, Not the Cow" looked like a failure at first, but what happened over the next few weeks showed that it was actually a game changer for this group.  It marked a turning point. The team started to get the idea that they did not have to go with the same old boring stuff. It was time to get creative. We turned our attention to some of the most creative marketing being done in the industry.  

James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant.  www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider