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I picked this saying up from Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book called Crush It .
I really liked the idea of content having dual purposes and not just the purpose of posting to your website or blog.
The lure part is really about a steady stream of content that is consistent in its frequency which is why as people come to depend on it brings people back to your site time and time again. You can call it Inbound Marketing (like the folks at HubSpot do) or you could call it Content Marketing (like the folks at Junta42 do) but whatever you call it its the basis for all your online activity.
The lasso part is really about an “away game” for your content. Gary defines in the how to build your personal brand sense of commenting on blogs and inserting yourself in to conversations. Which is a space that everyone can improve upon because it engages a new audience with the way you think. But also you can think of this as where you can use your content in other social spaces. Perhaps on Facebook, or syndicated to another group blog, or just other places to get you exposure.
The hard part is creating the content – the fun part is finding ways to get it seen by others and have them drive back to your site or blog and engage with you!
 A while back I created a post called – There is no “campaign” in Social Media because when marketers use the word “campaign,” it tends to suggest an initiative to get a message out to a targeted group of constituents. It also implies there will be a beginning and, somewhere down the road, an ending.
And I still believe that is the case …
And despite a number of comments I got about that post both positive and negative – I think I stopped short of really nailing the issue which is – social media is more than a campaign it a commitment!
Its a commitment to your organization to be more open and transparent, its a commitment to your customer to listen and respond, its a commitment to your community to always be there when you need them, its a commitment to be open to developing new products and services that take input from your community, its a commitment to take the high road when issues arise (as they always do) and most of all its a commitment that tells everyone in your company that this is the way things are going to be and we are going to be part of this – good bad or indifferent.
 At a recent dinner with a buddy of mine from Microsoft (who helped launch Bing) – I learned a lot more about the search market and a very important trend that can effect the future of B2B Marketing.
When you think about the search behavior of the average person online – we are mostly conditioned to search in very routine ways like pulling up a Google search page, using the toolbar in your browser etc. And we tend not to stray from that behavior now. It’s almost an unconscious choice for most of us.
But when it comes to search on a mobile device we mostly use very specific apps, like Yelp for Restaurants or Flixter for Movies – where the search result is much much richer – you not only get results that are more relevant but you also get a chance to make a reservation, get directions, buy a movie ticket right there within the application.
If you look at the share of mobile search that the Google app has it is minuscule compared to their share of the browser based search market. This is why Google is so interested in buying apps like Yelp or launching their own phone like Nexus One since they realize this is the year mobile search really takes off and if they just stick to browser based search their overall share will diminish.
OK so what does this mean to B2B Marketers?
While there is no app yet for finding and reading Thought Leadership on your iPhone or an app for finding advice from an Expert in a particularly difficult technology topic (business idea?) perhaps there will be shortly. Maybe apps like foursquare could have a business to business version in the near future. I think as B2B Marketers we need to be open to and looking for those types of opportunities – because one thing is for sure – the devices we have in our hands are going to only get better and traditional search while it may always be around in some form – new avenues on mobile devices are going to open up for us.
 Ok ok – based on the great response I got from my readers on my last blog post The 4 C’s of B2B Marketing I thought I would try to apply the same principle to Social Media Marketing. Frankly, I have been brewing this post for a while now and its time to let it loose. It combines a few things you might have read about into one new concept around social media – the 4 P’s of Social Media marketing. So here they are:
#1 Tell Good Stories – think Idea Virus by Seth Godin
#2 Make them Sticky – think Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath
#3 Package them to be Shareable – think World Wide Rave by David Scott Meerman
#4 Launch them using all available Social Media- think Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
The concept here is to create good content and allow that content to spread as frictionless as possible to as many people as possible.
Truth be told – no one cares about your product or service but they do care about how buyers have responded to purchasing it. You need to tell those stories in as sticky a way as possible then package them to be shareable and then spray them in as many social media channels as appropriate for your content. (ex dont list a white paper on YouTube)
I idea is to max out your distribution strategy by maximizing the appearance of your content in the proper social channels since you never know where your prospects might be hanging out on any given day. This means you need to find a way to take the “core idea” of a piece of content and package / distribute it into every possible niche of social attention.
I think this strategy is exceptionally good for B2B marketers with long lead cycles. It shows a sustained commitment to creating good content and tons of energy around the product or service you are marketing as well as a consistent and aggressive appearance in as many social media channels that make sense for your product or service.
Slide 1
4Tell Good Stories
4Make them Sticky
4Package them to be Shareable
4Launch them using all available Social Media
4Measure Reach Efficiency and Value
4
4Max strategy – maximize appearance in channels
4Find a way to take the core idea and distribute into every possible niche of consumer attention
4But maybe only the core one makes money
We’ve all heard about the four P’s of marketing.
Product
Price
Placement
Promotion
The four P’s were created mainly to describe the ideal “marketing mix”. The term “marketing mix” became popularized after Neil H. Borden published his 1964 article, Concept of the Marketing Mix.
I would argue this killer combo of marketing is mainly for B2C marketing and thus it is best applied to the marketing of products, especially mass retail products.
So let’s take a look at another more contemporary framework for B2B marketing – the Four C’s. This framework is newer, and in my opinion, more applicable to a wider range of today’s marketing challenges.
The 4 C’s of B2B Marketing are:
- Content – the creation of a steady stream of engaging content
- Connection – connecting with the audience you wish to attract
- Communication – communicating with them in an ongoing conversation
- Conversion – and then converting them at the illusive moment of need
Since B2B Marketing is arguably more of a marathon than a sprint in marketing – you need to always have your 4 C’s engine going – creating the best content, finding the connecting with your target audience, sustaining the communications pattern until they are ready to convert – this way you have a fighting chance at making all your marketing efforts count toward one goal – Sales!
In the next post I will show you the new 4 S’s for Social Media Marketing …
 In a recent BusinessWeek article featuring Tony Hsieh from Zappos – they closed with a quote from Tony “Sharing is how we build our brand.” And I couldn’t help but agree.
Whether you are a CMO’s of a B2C or B2B Marketing team the key in this next decade is sharing and the key to sharing is Content! Some people call it Content Marketing (Junta42) some people call it Inbound Marketing (HubSpot) but the meaning is basically the same. You need to put out a steady stream of content to build your brand.
As the old adage goes – some people spend more time planning the wedding then they do the marriage and this is true of a lot of what we see organizations do socially. They spend lots of time building the perfect blog, the perfect Facebook page, the perfect Twitter page but then have no plan for a sustained content creation.
The #1 question I get about Facebook Marketing (because of my book Facebook Marketing for Dummies) – is what do I do now after I set up my Facebook page for my business? The Answer: create and share good content. It seems so simple but you need to start thinking like a publisher.
You most likely already produce content for your website, brochures, collateral etc . So the question quickly becomes how can you take those same writing resources and turn them into a content creation engine. One that delivers content that is topical, interesting and relevant. Then package it up to be sharable in the form of blogs, podcasts, videos, white papers, eBooks or whatever.
I know we used to say Content in is King back in the 90’s and perhaps its taken social media to shine a light on exactly how much content you need in order to be king!
Ok so what does a humpback whale have to do with marketing? Check out this campaign from Greenpeace for the answer.
Greenpeace was hoping to raise the awareness about humpback whales that were being threatened by the Japanese Fisheries Agency’s plan to kill 50 humpback whales.
They started with an online competition to name the humpback whales that Greenpeace were tracking via satellite in the Pacific. They originally received 11,000 submissions in the competition to name the humpback whales they were tracking on their migration to the Southern Ocean, and then they narrowed it down to the final 30. Some of the names we very thoughtful like Shanti or expressive like Libertad. And then of course there was Mister Splashy Pants.
Mister Splashy Pants quickly became an internet meme, and later the subject of a TED talk by reddit co-founder, Alexis Ohanian. On December 10, 2007, Mister Splashy Pants was announced the winner of the competition. 150,000 people reportedly voted, and ‘Splashy’ received 119,367, over 78 percent of the votes. The nearest rival was Humphrey at 4,329 votes, or less than 3 percent. reddit alone was responsible for 20,322 of the votes.
But even better than that because Mister Splashy Pants was so popular and a viral sensation the Government of Japan decided to abandon plans to kill humpback whales in the Southern Ocean before Greenpeace even left the dock!
Advertising guru Russell Davies praised Greenpeace’s handling of the campaign as “one of the defining moments in New Media marketing.” And the name has since spawned clothing, logos, flashvideos, and the slogan “Save Mister Splashy Pants.”
The lesson to be learned from Mister Splashy Pants is: Crowdsourcing works but only if you let go and are open to the results. Initially Greenpeace was hoping one of the more thoughtful names would be chosen so they left the competition run for a week longer hoping that would change the result – but it only made the results stronger in favor of Splashy.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via natural search results. This gave birth to a whole industry centered on optimizing search results for a given term. For B2C or B2B Marketers this was a huge revolution.
But for B2B Marketing fans I think you need to expand your game around search to start include what I am calling … LinkedIn Search Optimization (LSO).
Late last year LinkedIn launched an advanced search feature on their site. And if you haven’t already spent some time plugging in your favorite B2B marketing keywords either paid or organic – you should. The results you get may surprise you.
I would start by searching for terms where you would expect your major thought leaders would appear – if they don’t show up on the first page of the results I would start perfecting their profiles to clarify what they do and what their strengths are using keyword rich descriptions in their bio and the description of their current role. Their headline should also be changed manually to display their expertise not their last job (which is the default). Also, your thought leaders email address should be at the end of the summary area or in the contact field labeled “public”. And you may want to remind them to update their status as often as possible. People in their network are most likely interested in their new projects and professional achievements – why not keep them abreast of what’s happening so they can refer them to a friend.
Personal branding expert Dan Schawbel suggests that your profiles should be rich in keywords that anyone would be searching for. For a good example check out these searches for the terms Facebook Marketing and Social Media. Ok ok yes I was doing a vanity search just to see how I would rank but I was very impressed by the results I got for Facebook Marketing – someone had their profile so well tricked out with keywords that they ranked higher than people who actually work at Facebook.
Clearly there is a new practice emerging here, a practice I feel B2B marketers can benefit from if they focus on it.
 At the end of the last decade we saw Amazon snap up Zappos for $928 Million. Combining two of the most customer focused organizations I am aware of on the web and making one of the most powerful customer centric companies out there.
Social media has forever changed the balance of nature in favor of the customer. Zappos was a beacon at the vanguard of how to communicate with customers socially which is why I believe they were so attractive to Amazon.
But more importantly I think this is a sign of things to come in this decade.
Every business must recognize that customer service is now their primary business. The empowerment of the individual consumer can and will affect every brand. In this world where customers can create content at the drop of a hat – displaying their love or hate for a given company – should not be taken lightly.
I believe that we are entering the age of customer service and customer service economy will become the norm this decade and beyond. Brands that fail to adjust will be left out in the cold. B2B marketers should add a new years resolution to their list to work on enabling their customer service to be as good and as socially agile as possible.
Remember this is the year that social starts to transform other areas of your organization!
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