The Hybrids are Coming: Evolution of the Prototype Marketer
Posted on 28. Feb, 2012 by Jay Baer in Blog, Guest Posts, human resources, inbound marketing, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social business, social media marketing, social media ROI, social media staffing
Paul Roetzer (@paulroetzer) is founder and CEO of PR 20/20, a Cleveland-based inbound marketing agency, and author of The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley).
Digital marketing has revolutionized the industry, and the job market. Corporate marketing departments and marketing agencies struggle to recruit and retain qualified professionals for career paths that did not exist three years ago, while academic institutions are faced with the need to adapt curriculums to the real-time nature of business.
The most valued talent in the emerging marketing agency ecosystem will be hybrids. Although specialists, connectors, and soloists can still excel with focused competencies and service offerings, disruptors are built on the versatility of social-media and tech-savvy professionals. They possess exceptional copywriting skills, along with dynamic personalities that enable them to build strong personal brands.
Hybrid professionals are trained to deliver services across search, mobile, social, content, analytics, web, PR, and email marketing. They provide integrated solutions that used to require multiple agencies and consultants. — The Marketing Agency Blueprint (Wiley), pp. 68.
Forward-thinking organizations seek hybrid professionals who are highly proficient writers, analytical and tech savvy, with a strong grasp on business, IT and human behavior. These next-generation professionals excel in the emerging core-marketing disciplines of mobile, analytics, social, web, search and content. They envision on a strategic level, building fully integrated campaigns, and they have the capabilities to execute on the tactical level, conducting activities that drive real business results.
But, there is a talent gap. Your organization can bemoan the lack of qualified professionals in the market, or it can take the initiative to create dynamic internal education programs, find candidates with A-player potential from diverse educational backgrounds, and develop employees into the hybrid professionals who will become the future leaders of our industry.
Catalysts for Evolution
In The Marketing Agency Blueprint, I outline three forces fueling transformation of the marketing-services industry: change velocity, selective consumption and success factors. These same catalysts have a direct affect on the type of talent organizations must recruit, train and retain:
1) Change Velocity
The rate of change, continually accelerated by technology innovations, has created growing demand for tech-savvy marketing professionals. Specifically, trends and shifts in consumer behavior, business processes, software, data analysis, communications and marketing philosophies have impacted the essential competencies and traits of prototype marketers.
2) Selective Consumption
Selective consumption is the basic principle behind inbound marketing, the philosophy made popular by HubSpot. In essence, consumers are tuning out traditional, interruption-based marketing methods, and choosing when and where to interact with brands.
As a result, organizations in every industry are shifting budgets away from print advertising, trade shows, cold calling and direct mail toward more measureable and effective inbound marketing strategies—fueled by content and social—that cater to consumer needs. Thus, marketers must be trained to plan and execute inbound marketing campaigns, integrated across traditionally siloed disciplines.
3) Success Factors
Marketing campaigns are not about winning awards for creative, building the flashiest websites, gaming Google for higher rankings, generating mounds of media coverage, or negotiating the lowest cost per thousand (CPM) as means to interrupt the largest audience. The job of a marketer is to produce results that impact the bottom line.
Marketers have the ability to consistently produce more meaningful outcomes—inbound links, click-through rates, website traffic, landing page conversions, content downloads, blog subscribers and leads—that can be tracked in real time and directly correlated to sales.
Rise of the Generalists
As Jay and Amber detail in The NOW Revolution, organizations should, “Search for well-rounded professionals with core business skills that can translate across roles and enable them to excel in an ever-changing environment.”
The future of marketing belongs to the generalists, the hybrids. These marketers are the key to increasing efficiency and productivity, building an insurmountable competitive advantage and fueling your organization’s growth.
So, the question becomes, is your business prepared to compete in the age of the hybrids?
Is Technology Ruining Online Community
Posted on 21. Aug, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, online community, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media staffing, Social Media Staffing and Operations
Online community and our lust for it is at its apex. Companies of every size and description are pondering ways to engage with customers, and interact with their fans. But the big miss in many cases is social media staffing.
It’s difficult to recall the age of not-so-long-ago when we didn’t even have websites, much less email newsletters or Facebook pages for our businesses, and other flavors of social media.
How did we “engage” and “interact” back then? How did companies possibly succeed in that technologically challenged epoch devoid of touchy-feelie buzzwords?
We succeeded by actually – not metaphorically – engaging and interacting with our customers.
We can learn a lot from the past, when instead of humanizing our companies, we just deployed actual humans. Instead of listening software, we just listened. Instead of measuring influence, we just treated our customers well, and with respect.
Did we do a lot more with a lot less?
Today, we spend considerable time and effort and emotional capital on how to construct the ultimate online community, festooned with custom tabs and iframes and videos and the sparkling Christmas ornaments of social media.
I suggest we should largely eschew all that, recognizing it for the tip of the iceberg it really is.
Let’s shift our focus under the water line where the real mass of online community floats.
Our customers want to be informed in a relevant, timely fashion about companies they support. Occasionally, they’ll tell their friends – but usually they won’t. And if they have a problem, they want an alternative to soulless call centers and maddening email runarounds. That’s how customers see online community and “engagement” and “interaction” – in a practical, “what’s in it for me” way.
Most businesses massively overestimate the bond between company and customer in social media. Even your robust online community with appropriate social media staffing doesn’t create a blood oath among fans. Recognize that – especially in Facebook – your brand is literally competing for attention with friends and family and close confidants. There’s not been a company-authored status update ever written that I care more about than routine updates from my friends and family.
Social Media Staffing is the Overlooked Success Quotient
So the way to win that game for business isn’t through apps and case studies and metaphor and magic. It’s with social media staffing, populating your online community with a cadre of truly outstanding employees who can inform, entertain, and assist your customers. That means you don’t base your social media staffing plan on who is the least expensive resource (interns) or who “grew up with this stuff” (interns).
Does that drive up the cost of the human capital managing your social media? Of course. As Charlene Li once said, social media isn’t inexpensive, it’s just different expensive. Why would you manage an online community that is the epitome of multi-faceted, real-time communication with people who possess a paucity of actual customer service or communications expertise?
Until companies realize the key to online community success isn’t technology, but rather a culture of caring and skilled labor, social media will never fulfill its true promise.
The Fallacy of Round the Clock Social Media
Posted on 30. Jun, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, Chris Hall, Guest Posts, off madison ave, real-time, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social crm, social media customer service, social media operations, social media staffing, Social Media Staffing and Operations
Guest post by Chris Hall an interactive content specialist at Off Madison Ave who specializes in writing for humans, not robots.
It’s 11PM and the world around you is getting ready for bed. As a mobile obsessive, you instinctually check your Facebook, Twitter and all the rest of your social media accounts while you brush your teeth, only to find that someone has interacted with your brand. The world stops – you must answer.
That’s the way my world has become at least, because in my mind brands don’t sleep. How could they? On Facebook for example, there are people awake at all hours of the night that may have a great questions, and the only way to provide the “human” experience that brands crave oh-so-much is to respond to them as if
they are talking to you directly – no matter when they happen to be communicating.
But how does this look to the other guy – the guy that is talking to your brand in the middle of the night? What your nighttime response does show is that your brand is willing to respond at all hours of the night, but is it really worth it?
Does Faster Matter?
Let’s say that this guy, who I’ll call Mr. X, is an average Facebook user. On a normal weekday he hops onto his page periodically and probably writes a couple pieces of content, probably in the form of posts or comments on other’s walls. Each of his posts probably gets 2-5 comments/likes, with 50% percent of those coming from his friend Joe who is inexplicably online 14 of the 17 hours that he is awake. Each time Mr. X receives a comment, there’s a little rush – a feeling of acceptance. And this feeling will be the same whether the comment is made that day or that week.
So let’s say that your “toothbrush response” gave Mr. X a slight feeling of brand satisfaction. He goes to bed thinking that your brand cares, but by morning life continues on like normal. He’ll go to work, eat some lunch and watch the seven YouTube videos that his friend Joe sends him on a daily basis. Looking back on the situation, do you think that Mr. X’s feeling about your brand would be any different if your response had come at 9AM rather than 11PM? Isn’t it likely that Joe’s feeling of brand satisfaction would be practically identical?
Give the Brand a Break
Brands are allowed to sleep. Obviously there are some brands that are exceptions to the rule, but the majority of brands out there should try to keep consistent hours… you know… to sleep and stuff. Keep alert in case of emergency, but when Mr. X asks a simple question, just let it go.
While social media is fast, consumers really can’t, and don’t, expect social media to answer any faster than an email or phone call would. What they want is real human interaction – and the only way to seem like a human is to act like one.
(Flickr image by Joi)
(Off Madison Ave is a Convince & Convert client)
6 Ways to Show You Give a Damn in a Job Interview
Posted on 20. Jun, 2011 by Elizabeth Sosnow in blisspr, Blog, digital marketing jobs. job interviews, Elizabeth Sosnow, Guest Posts, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media jobs, social media staffing, Social Media Staffing and Operations
Guest post by Elizabeth Sosnow, Managing Director of BlissPR, a New York City based public relations firm. She develops and supervises strategic communications programs for major companies in professional and financial services, with a particular emphasis on the legal, consulting and insurance industries.
He was an intelligent, well qualified senior candidate. Over the course of an hour long interview, he spoke about marketing trends knowledgeably, described relevant client work and seemed to be friendly, engaging professional. And I knew we’d never offer him a job.
Why? Because it was very clear that he hadn’t done his homework on us. Besides a brief mention of an obvious fact from the landing page of our website, he didn’t demonstrate that he knew who we were.
He didn’t reference the challenges our target audience faces. He didn’t ask about why we won a “Best Places to Work in New York” award. He didn’t tie our firm’s recent blog posts into the conversation. He didn’t attempt to research the interviewers’ recent social activity.
In short, he focused on selling himself. That might have been okay if we were looking to hire narcissists, but we prefer to hire team players.
I’ve interviewed probably 30 people in the past two months, from potential Senior Vice Presidents to AAEs. Most of them have been smart and…lazy.
Are you looking for a job? Then, please, please do your homework. This process will help you stand out from the crowd:
1. Start by gathering data on your interviewer(s) and the company
It’s incredibly easy to find powerful intelligence on the internet. And, um, aren’t you already doing that in your current job? With a little elbow grease, you can leap ahead of the other candidates:
- Start with a deep look at the website – drill down 4 or 5 layers
- Evaluate your interviewers’ LinkedIn profile, then see if you have any mutual connections. If you so, reach out to them to get their perspective on the company
- Assess their Twitter stream with any eye towards what kind of information they share, on both a professional and personal level
- Check out their Foursquare activities to see if you frequent the same places
- Can you find video footage of them on YouTube, Vimeo, etc.?
- Pull the last 10 blog posts by each interviewer (bonus points for looking at their guest posts for others)
- Use free tools to draw a rich contextual picture, such as Watch that Page, Topsy, Backtype, Klout, Twitalyzer and LinkedIn Signal.
- Run a Google search on both the firm and the interviewers, making sure to click through to the top 30 or so links. (Oh, and please don’t think a Google search is enough. It’s not. That’s why I list it as the last step, not the first.)
2. Assess the data and draw some initial conclusions
- What does the firm stand for? Is the mission clear to you?
- What kind of a client base does it have? How do they communicate with those targets?
- Who are they? Look at their employees’ bios and social footprint
- Are they connected to marketing or industry influencers? If yes, who? If not, who should they be connected to? Can you help them build those relationships?
- What do they think? Read their thought leadership and get a handle on their point of view
- Where are they headed? Any good firm is constantly evolving. Get a sense of who they “want to be.”
- What does their job description tell you about their current staffing needs?
3. Consider how to weave in your own credentials: Now you know more about where you’d fit into the team
- What experiences and skill sets can you offer to support their mission?
- How should you account for your own weaknesses and “holes?”
- Do you have past thought leadership that dovetails with their future goals?
- How would you expect to grow in this position? Will those goals match how the company wants to grow?
- Can you solicit references from past colleagues that will reinforce your fit for this position?
4. Develop questions that reflect your hypotheses
This needs to be customized, of course, but descriptive jumping off points include:
- I see the company recently chose to_________. Did you make that choice to reinforce your goal to ___________?
- __ out of your employees are currently discussing (business topic) on their social networks. Is that where you are intending to focus your sales in 2011?
- I watched your recent speech on ______ on YouTube. I noticed that you received a lot of questions on (topic), but I actually wanted to ask you _________?
5. Listen for clues in your initial discussion
When you finally get into the interview, expect to modify your assumptions. Your interviewers will immediately start giving you a great “bread crumb trail,” if you listen. Stay nimble and adapt your preparation.
6. Write a thank you note that summarizes conversational themes
It may be old fashioned, but I love it when someone writes a thoughtful note that shows they were listening and excited about our discussion. Passion and follow-though is a potent combination for employers.
Does this sound like work? It is, if you do it right. But I kinda believe that if you put this kind of effort towards a job interview, someone will deduce that you’d put it towards a new job.
How do you prepare for an interview?
(BlissPR is a Convince & Convert client)
A New Way to Calculate What Facebook is Worth to Your Business
Posted on 23. May, 2011 by Jay Baer in Blog, Email Marketing, facebook, Facebook fan pages, facebook metrics, free social media tools, Small Business Internet Marketing, Small Business Marketing, social media ROI, social media staffing, social media success metrics, social operations
Facebook for business is email newsletters 2.0.
You’re trying to accomplish the same things on Facebook that you are in email, aren’t you? You want to keep your business top-of-mind among people that are already aware of you, and encourage those people to buy again and tell their friends.
The number of Facebook “likes” you’ve accumulated is akin to your email list. The number of impressions your Facebook musings receive (findable in your Facebook Insights report) is akin to your email open rate. The number of thumb ups and comments on your musings is your Facebook feedback rate, which is statistically similar to click-through rate in email.
I’ve been thinking about the mechanical and psychological similarities between email and Facebook for quite a while, and some additional thoughts on these similarities can be found here.
But, until being inspired by a recent issue of AdAge (whose coverage of social media has gotten vastly better in the past 18 months), I’d never thought about valuing Facebook interactions within an email framework.
Valuing Facebook Through an Email Prism
Almost every company has some sort of email newsletter, and that communication channel has a cost associated with it, comprised of fees paid to send the email using a company like ExactTarget (client); fees or staff time needed to design email newsletters; analysis time; and probably some business rules and marketing time to think through sequencing, offers, subject lines, etc.
You can easily determine what that program costs your company on a per email basis, and what the equivalent “value” of your Facebook impressions are, based on your email investment. (download the spreadsheet below to help you calculate)
Ideally, you should now use the formulas above to determine whether a Facebook impression has a higher cost to your company (design and management only, since there aren’t any sending costs on Facebook yet) than does an email impression, and adjust your valuation accordingly.
Is this an appropriate way to calculate Facebook’s brand value? I know there’s been other studies that conclude a Facebook fan is worth $100 or whatever, but that’s based on surveying and presumptions of downstream purchase by advocates, etc. I think I like this model because it uses something we’re already paying for (email) to determine the brand-building value of something that’s a newer addition to the marketing program (Facebook). But this model doesn’t prove ROI because there is no “R” in this equation. We are assuming that an impression on Facebook (or email for that matter) will yield more in return than it costs your company in investment. We can model that too, but that’s a post for another day.
How does this strike you?
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