The Web Pitch

Three years ago today, John Dodds posted an excellent article on “marketing disguised as a discussion of technology marketing”. Geek Marketing 101 is so named because John sees amongst many geeks, a pervasive misunderstanding and consequent distrust of what marketing is. Also, a failure to recognise that much technology marketing is no longer geek to geek since complex products are increasingly being bought by non-geeks. Of course, these observations are equally applicable to geek to geek and non-geek businesses.

John’s 10 excellent points are listed below:

1) Marketing is not a department.
Marketing is a combination of elements that creates the environment in which it is possible to meet a customer need (starting right back at product development). Promotion and sales are just sub-sets of marketing.

2) Marketing is a conversation, but most people don’t speak geek.
Successful technology marketing must translate the creations of the uncommunicative into the needs of the untechnical. Spin is not good marketing. Lucid two-way communication is.

3) Simplicity does not negate complexity.
Reductive marketing that simplifies ideas does not undersell your complex creation. It facilitates an entree to your world. You can’t have passionate users until they start using.

4) Think what, not how?
Think of the "product" in terms of what it does, not how it does it. You may be interested in the latter, but your users generally aren’t. Portable computer memory is not a difficult concept to enunciate, yet flash drive and USB drive nomenclature is predicated on technological aspects not the actual function. Long words confuse, don’t they?

5) Think will, not can.
Think of the "product" in terms of what most people will be happy doing with it and not in the myriad possibilities it offers. You may think speed and multiple settings are hot, but outside the lab such attributes may not provide the greatest satisfaction. Simple, intuitive interfaces will.

6) Only you RTFM.
Regular people don’t read the manual. It’s too big (see 5), too complicated (see 3) and thus incomprehensible. It’s not that people are averse to science and technology – they’re averse to being made to feel helpless. The demand for books that simplify science is huge the world over. Your manual is marketing.

7) Technical Support is marketing.
In the absence of all of the above, your users inevitably need help. A technical support department speaking in non-technical, hand-holding language transforms their purchase from waste of money to life-enhancing boon and is the greatest marketing tool you have.

You’re not marketing to people who hate marketing.
Don’t allow your misguided prejudices about advertising and snake-oil to infect your approach and damage sales. People hate hype, spin and unfulfilled expectations. They do not hate having their needs met (see 1).

9) You’re not marketing to people who hate technology products.
They’re not Luddites, but nor are they geeks – that’s what you’re paid to be. However, they often hate how technology products make them feel because blinding with science is as bad as baffling with bullshit.

10) Marketing demystifies.
As the conversations develop, the users comprehend your products better and you better understand their needs. With increased confidence, they utilise more and more of your geekiness and, with increased awareness, you are better able to adapt to their behaviours. They feel more warmly about geeks and you may get the chance to buy them a drink. That doesn’t sound so bad, does it?

Great Stuff

I loved this recent post from Paul Isakson. There’s a big danger for businesses of all sizes to look for “shortcuts” into the world of Social Media.  Here is some gentle advice for businesses of all sizes:

• Quit trying to "join the conversation."
• Stop trying to be everyone’s friend.
• Don’t shove your marketing messages at people.
• Just listen to what people are saying about your product or service and apply what you learn to making it better. (Feedback is King)
• The same goes for your marketing.
• Make your message worth talking about.

Focus on your key messages and less on jumping on the bandwagon!

Hannah, from Proporta was kind enough to send me the Proporta Gadget Bag for review just before Christmas. Since then, I have been carrying the bag everywhere I go!

The Proporta gadget bag is a great and handy way to store all of your gadget accessories. The “Transformer-like” nature of this bag means you can unzip the front two compartments and take the smaller bag anywhere. Alternatively, you can assemble the whole thing to organise your gear for a long journey.  The gadget bag is perfect for those people who love their gadgets and carry around a lot of cables and adapters.

Click on each picture to enlarge the view

As you can see, the bag is small with the compartments on and even smaller when the compartments are zipped off. The bag is particularly useful if you are a netbook user too. Overall, I love the concept, because it is so easy to use.

Never again will you lose your batteries, battery chargers, media sticks or USB cables!

Pros: It is very light and incredibly flexible with lots of compartments. You can’t go wrong with this case.

Cons: The gadget bag misses a small briefcase style handle. Other than that, it’s perfect.

Overall A+

The Proporta Gadget Bag is available from Proporta.com priced at £24.95.

In fact, I think I may need need to get a few more of these!

Many friends and readers have been asking if I have hibernated for the winter? Well, not exactly. I am pleased to announce that I am currently working as a social media marketing specialist for my new client – Microsoft UK.  The role is a contract position, and I’m working to drive awareness of the Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) Award Program.

Take a look at the MVP blog here and the Twitter site here.

I will still continue to blog here on topics relating to Web 2.0 and personal branding. However, I hope to bring a fresh prospective of social media usage from the corporate world. 

Happy New Year!

I’m deeply humbled and honoured to have made into the UK’s Top Marketing 100 Blogs.

This blog was originally designed as a place to store my Web 2.0 research for my MBA dissertation last year. However, due to the support of fellow MBA cohorts, and loyal readers I decided to keep the blog going. Indeed, through the “magic of the web”, I’ve met some amazing people and shared in a great many conversations.

I’m deeply passionate at how ‘disruptive technologies’ are changing the world. This blog allows me a way to express that passion.

I hope The Web Pitch continues to inform, educate and inspire you.

To all my readers, supporters and critics

I’m not sure whether to continue laughing, or to be truly grateful to Google for a new innovative Gmail Labs app which has just been launched entitled, Mail Goggles.

Google Engineer, Jon Perlow posts on the Gmail blog: 

“Sometimes I send messages I shouldn’t send. Like the time I told that girl I had a crush on her over text message. Or the time I sent that late night email to my ex-girlfriend that we should get back together. Gmail can’t always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, but today we’re launching a new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles which may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you’re really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you’re in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you’re most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it’s active in the General settings Hopefully Mail Goggles will prevent many of you out there from sending messages you wish you hadn’t. Like that late night memo — I mean mission statement — to the entire firm.

I guess we have all sent emails over the years when we shouldn’t have. Some fuelled by alcohol, some fuelled by anger. I do think that for many people, this app will be truly useful. Though I’m still undecided if I like my email client controlling yet another part of the way I use my mail. I already have rules, spam and content filtering.  Can I no longer be trusted to send emails after a few beers, late at night?  Probably not.

Mail Goggles can be enabled in the Settings section of your Gmail.

In my opinion PowerPoint has an unfair reputation as a bad presentation tool. We have all heard comments over the years such as, “death by PowerPoint”. However, it is not the tool which is the problem, it’s often the presenter. My two favourite books on presenting, help to improve the style of your slides. The books also offer sound advice on limiting the amount of text on your screen.  Often, people respond more favourably to stories. Seth Godin, makes this point in his post below.

1. Don’t use PowerPoint at all. Most of the time, it’s not necessary. It’s underkill. Powerpoint distracts you from what you really need to do… look people in the eye, tell a story, tell the truth. Do it in your own words, without artifice and with clarity. There are times Powerpoint is helpful, but choose them carefully.
2. Use your own font. Go visit Smashing Magazine and buy a font from one of their sponsors or get one of the free ones they offer. Have your tech guy teach you how to install it and then use it instead of the basic fonts built in to your computer. This is like dressing better or having a nicer business card. It’s subtle, but it works.
3. Tell the truth. By this I don’t mean, "don’t lie," (that’s a given), I mean "don’t hide." Be extremely direct in why you are here, what you’re going to sell me (you’re here to sell me something, right? If not, please don’t waste your time or mine). It might be an idea, or a budget, but it’s still selling. If, at the end, I don’t know what you’re selling, you’ve failed.
4. Pay by the word. Here’s the deal: You should have to put $5 into the coffee fund for every single word on the wordiest slide in your deck. 400 words costs $2000. If that were true, would you use fewer words? A lot fewer? I’ve said this before, but I need to try again: words belong in memos. Powerpoint is for ideas. If you have bullets, please, please, please only use one word in each bullet. Two if you have to. Three never.
5. Get a remote. I always use one. Mine went missing a couple of weeks ago, so I had to present without it. I saw myself on video and hated the fact that I lost all that eye contact. It’s money well spent.
6. Use a microphone. If you are presenting to more than twenty people, a clip on microphone changes your posture and your impact. And if you’re presenting to more than 300 people, use iMag. This puts your face on the screen. You should have a second screen for your slides–the switching back and forth is an incompetent producer’s hack that saves a few bucks but is completely and totally not worth it. If 400 people are willing to spend an hour listening to you, someone ought to be willing to spend a few dollars to make the presentation work properly.
7. Check to make sure you brought your big idea with you. It’s not worth doing a presentation for a small idea, or for a budget, or to give a quarterly update. That’s what memos are for. Presentations involve putting on a show, standing up and performing. So, what’s your big idea? Is it big enough? Really?
8. Too breathtaking to take notes. If people are liveblogging, twittering or writing down what you’re saying, I wonder if your presentation is everything it could be. After all, you could have saved everyone the trouble and just blogged it/note-taken it for them, right? We’ve been trained since youth to replace paying attention with taking notes. That’s a shame. Your actions should demand attention (hint: bullets demand note-taking. The minute you put bullets on the screen, you are announcing, "write this down, but don’t really pay attention now.") People don’t take notes when they go to the opera.
9. Short! Do you really need an hour for the presentation? Twenty minutes? Most of the time, the right answer is, "ten." Ten minutes of breathtaking big ideas with big pictures and big type and few words and scary thoughts and startling insights. And then, and then, spend the rest of your time just talking to me. Interacting. Answering questions. Leading a discussion.

Most presentations (and I’ve seen a lot) are absolutely horrible. They’re not horrible because they weren’t designed by a professional, they’re horrible because they are delivered by someone who is hiding what they came to say. The new trend of tweaking your slides with expensive graphic design doesn’t solve this problem, it makes it worse. Give me an earnest amateur any day, please.

I would add a further point.

10.   Watch other presenters.  YouTube and TED, carry great videos of experts presenters. My advice is to  study, watch and learn from them. Watching other presenters is a great way of improving your own technique.

Enough said.

Indeed, Microsoft UK are selling Office 2007 for the bargain price of £38.95 in their Ultimate Steal Promotion.  What’s the catch?  You have to be in academia and have a registered .ac.uk email address.  I made use of this offer last year and I am very glad I did! 

Terms and Conditions apply

This post is dedicated to all those in UK Universities. I think I’m missing my days stressing over essays!

“The moment that organisations lose  their personality is when their employees become “people” rather than individuals…”.

As many of my readers and friends know. I’m very much in touch with the “human side of business”, especially forming a connection with people. Revealing, the honest, sincere and human side of your business to your customers has repeatedly proved to be a good thing. It’s the key to delighting them and making sure they stay with us for a very long time.

Rohit Bhargava as an author is right up there with the likes of Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki. Why? Because he tells it like it is. Jargon is left at the door and the book uses great worldwide examples of excellent personality branding. It’s nice to see an American author who shows a refreshing awareness that we all don’t live in America!

Wow. I must admit, Rohit actually had me at “hello” with this book. The book brings together, my own personal experiences of business differentiation. Learning, from companies such as Moo and Innocent Drinks (Also mentioned in the book). Rohit did an excellent job of drawing me in with his great writing style and a clear passion for the subject.

Throughout the book he provides many examples of businesses which are successfully using the techniques within the book. The case studies were almost enough to sell me the book alone. However, learning about each technique and then being given an interesting and detailed example of how each idea can be implemented in real life was fantastic. It was was great to see Steve, Hugh and the Blue Monster also getting a mention – Rock On!

Personality Not Included successfully leads the reader through the process of building a company personality. Rohit’s approach impressed me in a number of ways. Firstly he outlined all the key elements. I especially liked his “UAT Filter“- the three core qualities of a company personality:

1. Unique
2. Authentic
3. Talkable

Spot on. Secondly, he presented great examples from several companies for each element.

As I finished reading Part 1, Rohit did something that many marketing writers do not usually do. He wrote a “Part 2?. The second part of the book focuses on how to put the discussion in Part 1 into action. To further guide the reader through the process, Rohit provides a number of tools and frameworks to help. The book is broken down into the following chapters:

Part One

Chapter 1 – Faceless used to work because big meant credible. This is no longer true

Chapter 2 – Accidental spokespeople are speaking for your brand – Embrace them

Chapter 3 – Uniqueness plus Authenticity plus Talkability equals personality. Use the UAT Filter

Chapter 4 – Backstories establish a foundation of credibility. You need onq.

Chapter 5 – Fear of change leads to barriers. Finding your authority overcomes them

Chapter 6 – Personality moments are everywhere and unexpected, but you must spot them

Part Two – (Putting Personality into Action)

• New Styles of Marketing (Ten Techniques are Described in Detail)
• Taking Theory Further (Tools and Guides to Accompany Chapters 1 – 6)

The key theme from the first half of the book is that personality matters, because it is the element of your brand that inspires loyalty more than any product feature or element of your service ever can.

Rohit reminds the reader, that consumers aren’t just buying a product or service from you. They are buying “into” a whole experience. If they find the experience positive, they are very likely to purchase again, and/or recommend your business to others. As a text book, Personality not Included could also be used to boost your own “Personal Branding”.

If you love Seth Godin, or Guy Kawasaki then you’ll love Rohit Bhargava. If you are looking for a refreshing and up-to-the-minute business read, then you could do no better.

To conclude, Bhargava’s marketing experiences with the world’s leading companies has produced the definitive book that explains “Personality Branding”, in a practical, understandable and actionable way. I can’t recommend this book highly enough for any entrepreneur, business person, or anyone who wants to better understand how ‘personality’ can impact a business.

If you are interested in learning more about this book, download the book’s intro. Or, purchase online from Amazon.