Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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The marketing pitch cookie

The marketing pitch cookie

Have you ever heard of the fortune cookie joke where you add “… in bed” to every fortune?

For example, these standard-issue fortunes become much funnier:

“You are talented in many ways.”
“Any rough times are behind you.”
“Decide what you want and go for it.”
“Many a false step is made by standing still.”

Try applying this – silly as it is – to your marketing copy. For example, try “… in bed” with these well-known marketing slogans:

“Simply the best.” (Toyota)
“Can’t beat the real thing.” (Coca Cola)
“Thousands of possibilities. Get yours.” (Best Buy)
“Just do it.” (Nike)

If you don’t have billions of dollars to expend on an advertising blitz to back up a meaningless marketing slogan, chances are it will fail to be memorable or move the needle at all.

If your marketing slogan just gets confusing or makes no sense with “… in bed” appended, you’re on the right track. If, on the other hand, it’s downright funny, then your marketing copy is far too vague and unfocused.

Try it and see how it works for you…

… in bed.

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May 19, 2010
How you sold me at triple price

How you sold me at triple price

I’ve been in the market for an arborist – a tree professional that can take care of some dead wood and pruning in my yard on some very old trees. I’m far more capable when it comes to pruning databases than I am dogwoods, so I solicited bids from local arborists.

Three contractors came by the house and did their sales pitches. As with all things, I pay attention not just to the pitch content but how well trained the salesman is. Here’s what I got.

Contractor #1: Came by the house, presented me with a very direct, upfront list of what he’d do. Prune here, trim there, cut down some saplings – all very efficient. He presented his credentials, demonstrated a certificate of insurance, and gave me a price quote with no hassle: $697.

Contractor #2: Came by the house, apologized immediately and in advance for being a poor speaker and a poor salesman. Said he’s been working in landscaping for years, but just can’t speak well. He gave a brief overview of his services, what he’d do, and gave a $600 price quote which he said was firm no matter how much the scope of work changed. He made an additional point that no matter what other price we were quoted by competitors, he’d match or beat it.

Contractor #3: Came by the house and asked what we wanted, what we were trying to achieve. Asked whether we were looking for more sunlight, hazard reduction, etc. Noticed and pointed out some spots of rot on two of our trees that other contractors had missed and said that while there wouldn’t be a big impact for at least 10 years, eventually the rot would cause trouble down the road. Went into the front yard, which we griped about because the town’s trees on the sidewalk are never trimmed. Contractor mentioned that the law about trees is abundantly clear: if it hangs over your property, you have the right to trim or prune it without asking permission even if the trunk is on someone else’s property. He did a great upsell to his day rate, unlimited trees for $1900, and then explained how the trees would look in 1, 5, 10, and 30 years. He also said his insurance company would send us the coverage policy and paperwork with the written quote, which he’s not allowed to touch due to the possibility of fraudulent insurance.

If I were motivated solely by price, contractor #2 would have won easily. However, while price was definitely a factor, quality of work and expertise outweighed it. Contractor #3 won my business even at triple the price because he demonstrated expertise above and beyond just pruning trees – knowledge of the law and botany, expertise that indicates to me that he really knows what he’s doing.

Why is this so powerful that it justifies such a premium price tag? Unlike commodity widgets or generic chewing gum, trees and landscaping are very long term projects. There’s no undo with a chainsaw – once you do the work, it’s done. I was unwilling to leave my yard – which I value greatly – to the lowest bidder because, as in many things in life, you get what you pay for. I’m ready, willing, and able to pay for expertise if you can demonstrate your mastery before asking for the sale.

If your first instinct as a salesperson is to cut prices and focus only on the money, you will alienate the premium buyer who is willing to pay more in order to get more. Start with demonstrating service and expertise before the sale and you may make the sale without price ever becoming an objection.

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May 18, 2010
Fighting slander with a champion

Fighting slander with a champion

At the recent NEDMA conference keynote, an audience member asked a very insightful question:

In an age when the power of a single voice can be amplified so loud that it can take down a company or a brand, what recourse do we have?

What a powerful question, and certainly one on the minds of a lot of people. While the speaker’s answer – that the wisdom of the crowd is inherently self-policing – has some validity to it, it’s probably not an answer that’s going to satisfy someone in the corner office.

My take: first, you do need to legitimately not suck. That’s the hard part. If what you’re doing, what you’re creating in the world is worthwhile, valuable, and ethical, then you’ve got your best long-term insurance against trial by the court of public opinion…

… but that’s not enough. What you need on your side are champions. Not athletes, but in the truest medieval sense of the ideal, knights who will step up to battle for your cause. Bear in mind, we’re not talking about armed physical combat (but boy, wouldn’t that shut some critics up really fast), but having champions who are well-respected members of their community defend you in that court of public opinion.

Recruiting champions is very much a conscious effort. As you do business in your community, look for the folks who are the hubs of your niche. Get their attention and help them understand who you are and what you do, why your business, organization, or personal cause is worthy of their attention. Once you do, support your champions in any way you can. Help promote their causes, what they believe in, what’s of benefit to them and their community.

When the time comes – and it will if you’re successful – that you need to defend yourself against innuendo or false claims, summon your champions to your side and ask them (usually privately) to help stop the momentum of whatever issue you’re facing as long as you’re in the right. Don’t ever ask someone else to put their reputation on the line for you if you’re in the wrong – fix what’s wrong instead and own up to it.

If, however, you’re facing someone trying their damnedest to execute a smear campaign against you, if you’re facing unwarranted criticism or unjustified slander, your champions are your best defense in a court of public opinion. One last tip: the more successful you are, the more champions you’ll need in your stable, because there will be that many more people gunning for you.

Now ask yourself this: who are YOUR champions? Who will go to bat for you?

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May 14, 2010
The most basic business lesson taught by World of Warcraft
The most basic business lesson taught by World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft’s Auction House is the in-game marketplace, the bazaar where players can sell virtual stuff to other players. Magical potions, plate armor, everything under the virtual sun gets traded millions of times a day. Auctions listed in the Auction House can last up to 48 hours, after which they expire and your virtual goods are returned to you. If you don’t relist them, they just remain in your character’s bags. To be a successful auctioneer, you have to be “open for business” by constantly keeping items on the market for sale.

There’s one fundamental lesson the Auction House can teach us, one fundamental lesson we must take to heart and practice in our businesses:

If you’re not open for business, no one can buy from you.

It doesn’t matter how epic the items you have for sale are. It doesn’t matter how long it took you to win them in the game or make them from your trade skills. It doesn’t matter how low or high demand those items are. If they’re sitting in your bags and not on the market, no one can buy from you. You must be open for business to make money.

I know what you’re saying. You don’t play the video game. You don’t have a business that even remotely looks like this. The principle still applies, however. If You’re not open for business, no one can buy from you.
- You’re not open for business when someone calls and no one answers the phone, or worse, robots do it (poorly) for you.
- You’re not open for business when someone searches for your product or service and you don’t appear anywhere in the search results.
- You’re not open for business when someone emails you and you don’t respond ever, or worse, their email ends up in your spam bucket.
- You’re not open for business when someone asks a question about your company in social media and you aren’t part of the conversation at all.
- You’re not open for business when someone goes to check out online and your web site doesn’t let them complete the transaction.
Where are you open for business? Where are you effectively closed, turning away actively interested buyers who want to give you their money?

Want to make some real money? Where are your competitors not open for business, and can you be open for business in that space?

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May 12, 2010
Why you must bet the farm on mobile and social media
Why you must bet the farm on mobile and social media

Mitch Joel‘s keynote at MarketingProfs (which is a neat evolution of a talk I saw him give at PodCamp Toronto years ago) sparked an idea in my head about how we’re communicating with customers and what it means for your business. In his talk, he mentions the internal conversation, the one to one conversation, and the one to many conversation – how marketers can interact with their audiences.

Let’s take this a step further. Before we do, let’s look at a few changes in computing and communications.

The 1990s were the decade of email and email marketing. Computers were leashed to the wall for nearly every task. Even my ultra-awesome at the time Powerbook 1400cs (cs stood for color screen, imagine that!) needed to be tied to the wall for any form of communications. Most people were still computing using machines the size of aircraft carriers, and while the Web had just gotten popular amongst the high-tech crowd, by no means was it mainstream. Email was it, partly because email was something that people could grasp onto and understand immediately – form of electronic communications that worked very much like the real world’s analog equivalents. There were letters, addresses, inboxes, etc. – a good entry point for many.

2000-2009 was the decade of the Web, unquestionably. Computers got smaller and much, much cheaper. The decade started out with the Pentium III line of processors barely topping 1 GHz, and ended with computers shipping with four-core CPUs. People figured out the Web, they figured out what was possible beyond making a brochure of their company. YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter arrived. Wireless Internet access via Wi-Fi finally got hot and achieved some level of market penetration.

Here we are in 2010. Computers are shipping now with as much processing power in a handheld as in a desktop, and Wi-Fi + 3G are the standard rather than the exception. The latest computer is fully mobile – the iPad – needing only to stop to recharge its internal battery and not much else. All this and we’re barely into the mobile revolution. This corresponds with the latest change of mind – social media.

While social media got its start in the era of the Web, it’s rapidly evolving to take advantage of the devices now afforded to it in ways the regular web simply cannot. There’s nothing more social than hanging out with friends and passing a mobile device for someone to have a quick laugh at a text, a mobile pic, or a Tweet. There’s nothing more social than sitting with colleagues and just handing someone an iPad to say, “look at this…”

As devices get smaller and easier to use, they become more social. Clay Shirky said it best – when something becomes technologically boring, it becomes socially interesting. In the case of the iPhone and iPad, the interface becomes so intuitive so quickly that it fades away to nothingness, leaving only you and what you aim to accomplish.

So let’s tie all this together. Email was and is, for functional purposes, the one to one conversation. Yes, you can broadcast email, yes you can reply to all in a manner that’s as convenient as it is painful, but fundamentally email is a one to one conversation.

The Web was the one to many conversation. Put up your site and as long as your server can handle the traffic, you can do one to many conversations better than at any point in human history. You can get noticed, become popular, and do business at greater velocity than ever before.

Social – and the mobile devices that will increasingly power it – is the next logical extension of Mitch’s framework. Social is the many to many conversation, where you as a marketer are an active participant, but you’re not in control, not in charge, not even directing the conversation. You are among your peers, interacting, collaborating, and creating.

Just as the rules for email are different than the rules for the Web, so are the rules for social different than what preceded it. Chris Brogan and Greg Cangialosi often like to quip that the strategy of choice is “be there before the sale” but that’s not enough. You have to be relevant before the sale. You have to be credible before the sale. You have to earn a seat at the table not only before but at the time the decision is being made, which means you have to have persistent presence of mind in the business cycle of your prospective customers.

In this framework, that also means that everything you do has to have at least an idea of how it will appear in a mobile computing landscape. If all you do is broadcast useless updates on Facebook and Twitter, you won’t be shared or talked about. You’ll stop appearing in people’s streams – and when the majority of communication is done on smaller form factor mobile devices, what little slice of screen real estate attention you have left will vanish.

If someone were to pass around your web site on a mobile device at an executive roundtable, what would they see?
- How easy is it to find a call to action?
- How easy is it to find a call to share?
- How easy is it to pass around by word of mouth?
The future based on trend growth is clear: mobile devices will power the way your prospective customers communicate, and social media will be the many to many conversation medium in which you will do business. Bear in mind, there will still be one to one and one to many – but there will also be many to many, and you need to be there.

Are you ready?

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May 10, 2010
The fictional nature of money
How real is money?

From one perspective, it’s the most real thing in the world. Without it, you don’t eat, you don’t have a place to live, no clothes to wear, etc. unless you’re living out in the wilderness, foraging off the land. Money can be a tremendous amplifier of personal power. With an inexhaustible supply of money, you could solve world hunger, cure disease, and end conflict.

On the other hand, money is entirely fictional. It’s a construct, an artificial intermediary between things we value, because we may not value them equally or at the same time. I may sell email marketing and you may sell search engine optimization. If I don’t need SEO, no matter how valuable your skills are, I won’t trade with you no matter how much you need email marketing. With money, if someone else needs SEO, you can take their money and then give me that money for email marketing.

How fictional is money? The recent stock market mini-crash (due to a trading software error) caused several indexes to lurch as much as 10% below their value in mere seconds. At one point, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 998 points. This erased as much as $1.25 trillion dollars of theoretical wealth in mere minutes. Think about that for a second. Think about how much money that would be if you had it in your bank account.
- You could send 5 million students to college for 4 years.
- You could spend a million dollars a day and not run out of money for 3,424 years.
- You could own 1,667 super-giant luxury houses.
- You could pay cash for the entire Iraq/Afghanistan war and still have a couple hundred billion left over in change.
Think about the fact that $1.25 trillion was erased, vaporized, in just minutes. Imagine every student in college right now quitting all at once, or an entire city block vanishing in just minutes. That’s staggering, when you think about it. It’s hard to wrap your brain around.

Now think about the fact that the NASDAQ ordered a nullification of trades between 2:40 PM and 3:00 PM (when the mini-crash happened) for trades exceeding 60% of market value in either direction. Poof! Suddenly a big chunk of that imaginary money that was lost is back again.

You couldn’t build 1,600+ houses in minutes. You couldn’t enroll 5 million students in minutes. You couldn’t wage a 9 year war in minutes. But because of money’s fictional nature, you can make trillions of dollars appear with just a few clicks of a mouse.

What does this all mean for you? Think about your attitudes towards money, towards what you’re chasing. It’s a completely fictional construct that in our society is anchored to faith alone, making it the one true faith-based initiative our government has successfully created. Money is worth only what society believes it to be worth, because we can create or destroy vast quantities of it in minutes. It has no intrinsic value.

More important, if it’s entirely fictional, if it’s anchored only in belief of value, then instead of chasing money, think about how to create the perception of value. Think about how to inspire in someone else the desire to give you anything you want in exchange for that perceived value. What do people value about you, about your products or services? How can you provide more of that value perception? How can you boost the perception of the value that’s already there?

What do you value? I know that as a businessman, I tend to value three big things – things that will save me time, things that will save me money, and things that will make me money. If I perceive that your product or service can do any of those things well, I perceive that it has value and will buy from you.

Change your focus from trying to take other people’s money to creating the perception of value and see if other people start handing you a lot more money.

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May 7, 2010
The State of B2B Social Media from MarketingProfs B2B Forum

The State of B2B Social Media from MarketingProfs B2B Forum

I’ve been attending and speaking at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum for a couple of years now, ever since stepping in as a pinch-hitter at the 2008 conference. What a difference a couple of years can make!

Two years ago, people were asking what Twitter even was. Whether Facebook was more than just a place for kids to hang out and post drunk photos. People were marveling at the power of YouTube and MySpace – especially MySpace, wondering what their MySpace strategy should be.

I was thrilled to see this year that the audience had collectively advanced so much. People knew and accepted what Twitter was, what Facebook was, what social networking was. This year, the common thread among the discussions was more about strategy and integration.

As I put it during several interviews, it’s like we went to the social media home improvement store. Two years ago, people were asking what a hammer was, how to use it, and why you’d even want a hammer. Today, we know what the hammer is.

The collective challenge now seems to be, at least for the B2B marketers I had a chance to interact with, how stuff works together. Continuing the home improvement analogy, people know what a hammer is and what a saw is. People can even use these tools competently.

We’re at a point now, however, where people don’t know how a hammer and saw can work together, what role each tool is supposed to play, and how various tools can complement each other.

Ultimately, we’re on track towards building the house of our dreams. Our next challenges lie in understanding how tools work together, how they complement and empower each other, and how to skillfully combine their use to build that house.

What’s your take on the state of B2B social media?

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May 6, 2010
Are you an expert or a connoisseur?

Are you an expert or a connoisseur?

Being an expert in something is one thing, but being a passionate connoisseur of a subject is a completely different level. The expert gets to a level of proficiency and tends to stay there until their area of expertise is rendered obsolete by change.

The connoisseur is ever adapting, ever growing, ever learning, not necessarily because they have commercial demands to meet as much as they want to have the best possible experience for themselves.

This is an important distinction. Experts tend to be externally driven, usually by commercial motives. Connoisseurs tend to be internally driven, demanding the absolute best for themselves. The connoisseur will chase down knowledge, materials, and experiences to extreme ends for a better experience for themselves. The connoisseur is obsessed with having that perfect experience.

Given a choice between hiring an expert on a subject matter and hiring a connoisseur, I’ll take the latter any day, because I know their self-motivation and relentless demand for the perfect experience in their area of passion will keep them growing and changing with the times without any prompting from me.

Here’s the million dollar question: in your chosen profession, in your chosen hobbies, are you an expert or a connoisseur?

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April 30, 2010
What World of Warcraft's Patchwerk Can Teach You About Recovering Morale

What World of Warcraft’s Patchwerk Can Teach You About Recovering Morale

Last night, our guild downed Patchwerk, a giant abomination in Naxxramas, for the zillionth time. Patchwerk isn’t a challenge any more – in fact, he hasn’t been a challenge in a really long time. We bring our 10 man team in and in about 11 minutes from start to finish, we crush Patches, loot his swollen, bloated corpse, and move on with our evening…

… and I love him for it. I love that he’s absolutely no challenge whatsoever because sometimes, you just need some easy wins to rebuild your momentum. When life throws you challenges, you get to step up, learn more about yourself, explore and go beyond your limits, and ultimately become a more powerful, better person.

That said, challenges that are never-ending can grind you down. They can, if you’re not careful, wear you out. Going 120% all the time means you run out of fuel much faster, and that can create significant gaps in your personal momentum and progress from burnout.

That’s why non-challenges like Patchwerk are useful, productive, and essential to you. You absolutely need some stuff that’s easy-mode, that’s a sure-fire victory to bolster your morale, provide some mental breathing space, and give you perspective. What was once a hard fight, what was once a hard battle, is now a walk in the park and that change in perspective can be incredibly reassuring. You can measure and see objective results about how far you’ve progressed by how easily you crush your formerly difficult enemies.

If you’re pushing the boundaries of your personal or professional life, who’s your Patchwerk?

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April 29, 2010
What your personal brand can learn from the legend of the ninja

What your personal brand can learn from the legend of the ninja

The ninja warriors of old were greatly feared by their adversaries – shadowy operatives with superhuman powers that could single-handedly turn the tide of battle or bring clandestine death to their enemies. The ninja were capable of nearly any feat, from vanishing in a cloud of smoke to mind-controlling their enemies. Facing a ninja on the battlefield without a lot of backup meant a nearly guaranteed defeat, if not death itself.

Of course, like most historical legends, there’s a little more to the story. In many cases, there was far more than a single, lone ninja agent at work. To a guard at a fortress, however, one masked ninja looks just the same as the next, a misperception the ninja were all too happy to take advantage of. Assuming that a soldier survived the encounter, the ninja they faced off against yesterday wielding a sword might in truth be a completely different agent with different skills than the one they’ll face today with a battle-axe. The ninja fostered the legend of the ultimate warrior to serve them well, making opponents fear them and mentally defeat themselves even before the battle started.

What’s the common thread with your personal brand? Look behind the scenes of any major persona that you follow and you’ll find a veritable army of folks that make up that persona. You’ll find secretaries, marketers, assistants, organizers, agents, and others working in the shadows to make the public persona as successful as possible.

In many cases, the people who make up the machine behind a popular personal brand aren’t seeking any particular fame for themselves, or are at least willing to subordinate their own desires for the success of their employer. Their background work gives the public persona a perception of being far more skilled and competent in a variety of practice areas than the person behind the persona may have.

How do you make this work for you? If you’re looking to build your own personal brand, start looking for opportunities to collaborate and work with others, especially with folks who have complementary skill sets and skills in areas where you have significant personal gaps. Think of it as your own personal ninja clan of sorts. Contribute your own skills to their areas of need and you’ll strengthen your clan and every member in it. Like the ninja clans of old, you don’t actually need to be a master of everything – just be excellent at a few things, and turn to fellow clan members for the areas in which you lack strength.

Ultimately, the goal is for each member of your clan to appear to have the skills of the whole, for you to be seen as a consummate expert alongside your fellow clan members – and the general public may have absolutely no idea that you’re all working together.

Who’s in your ninja clan?

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April 27, 2010

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