Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

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Souvenirs from MarketingProfs B2B Forum

I had the pleasure and privilege of speaking on the Robust Online Content panel with Dr. Matthew Grant, Phil Juliano from Novell, Valeria Maltoni from Sungard, and Mike O’Toole from PJA on Monday at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum. One of my personal themes (that I didn’t articulate in the panel) for the conference has been souvenirs from conferences.

My friend Chris Brogan has an interesting quote – when times are good, people love strategy. When times are bad, people want tactics. I’ll take this a step further for conferences: people want something to take home. In this economy, people want a souvenir that they can take away that’s immediately usable, something that, when they sit down at their desk the day they get back, they can plug in and turn on right away and start making a difference, as well as show off to the folks who didn’t go.

Tony Robbins calls this sort of thing profound knowledge – information that once you have, changes everything. You can’t ever go back to the way you used to do things unless you try really hard. A good example of profound knowledge is the rule of thirds in photography. Put a tic tac toe grid mentally over your viewfinder in your camera. Put subjects at the intersections of horizontal and vertical lines, and instantly your photos are likely to become better. Now that you know that, you can’t ever go back to NOT knowing how to apply that rule.

I brought two souvenirs with me to give away at MarketingProfs, one of which I discussed in the panel, and one of which I discussed in the Twitter Therapy sessions. Whether or not you were at the conference (and you really should have been), you can have the souvenirs, too.

1. Customer service isn’t a burden. Customer service is a gold mine. If you’ve ever wanted for content to blog about, to podcast about, to share, to act on, you will never find a better source than the customers you already have and the problems they desperately want you to solve. I’ve recorded 900+ episodes of the Financial Aid Podcast and the customers of the Student Loan Network are my constant inspiration. I don’t need millions of dollars of research. I don’t need millions of dollars in marketing budgets. My customers tell me exactly what their problems are. Your customers are doing the same. The catch? You have to want to listen to them. Far too many people in executive suites are content to glance at their marketing dashboards and that’s as close to the customer as they’re willing to get. You have to be willing to dig – as you would in any gold mine – to get to the real treasure.

2. Try the 8 foot test. This is an easy test to do. Load up your web site on your computer. Maximize your browser. From 8 feet away, is there an immediate and obvious call to action that gets your visitors to do what you want them to do? Here’s an example I use in my demo – go to StaffordLoan.com and do the same. If you can’t tell what we want you to do (apply for a Stafford loan), then you need to see an eye doctor. If you don’t have a room big enough to walk 8 feet away, then load the sites up on your mobile device and hold it at arm’s length for a similar effect.

Hopefully, these two souvenirs are worth enough that they alone made it worth it for you to come to MarketingProfs. Hopefully, every other speaker and presenter gifted you with a souvenir or two as well, so that you went home with an armload full of stuff that will immediately make your business better.

My thanks as well to Ann Handley and the MarketingProfs team for putting on another great event and assembling a terrific panel.

Bonus: grab the eBooks I mentioned at the panel discussion here.

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June 10, 2009
Meet me at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum

I’ll be at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum today, speaking on a panel about creating compelling content with Matthew Grant, Mike O’Toole, Phil Juliano, and Valeria Maltoni. If you’re at the B2B Forum, say hi. If you have no idea what I look like, the photo at the top of the post should help a little, as it’s fairly accurate and very, very recent.

The Conference FAQ

So what do you do?

I’m the CMO of Edvisors, Inc., a college student marketing company based just south of Boston. We operate Edvisors, the Student Loan Network, and a few dozen sites, and offer federal student loans, private student loans, online degrees, and student credit cards to the higher education audience. We’re always looking to work with new partners, and our 1.5MM+ audience is a great audience to share your stuff with. Grab me at the Forum if you’d like to talk more, or shoot me an email.

I also run the Financial Aid Podcast and co-host the Marketing Over Coffee Marketing Podcast with John Wall, the not-basketball marketing star. If you’re around Boston, I invite you to be a part of PodCamp Boston 4.

Do you have a business card?

You’re looking at it right now. If you’d like to contact me, there’s a handy form on this site. You can also email my GMail address, cspenn at gmail. I don’t carry a pile of paper cards because [a] they’re environmentally bad and [b] information changes so frequently, it’s easier just to give you my personal web site URL, www.ChristopherSPenn.com

Are you on Twitter?

Yes.

Are you on Facebook/LinkedIn?

Yes.
Yes.

I welcome all connections on all social networks.

Do you ever do other conferences, private speaking engagements, etc.?

Yes, through Edvisors. Feel free to contact me for more info on that.

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June 8, 2009
Social media's defining factor

I posed a question on Twitter that cuts to the heart of all of this stuff:

What is social media? Seriously, what defines social media from any other form of media?

Lots of folks responded.

bigguyd: @cspenn interactions. SM is a two way street where traditional media is one way, typically.
comedy4cast: @cspenn We all wear colorful hats!
discordia77: @cspenn other forms of media have “experts” telling the information, social media is interactive between all elements involved in the story.
seanrehder: @cspenn asks “define social media.” Social = peer and media = information. Social media = information gained from our peers vs. “the man.”
sizzlemaker: @cspenn Media–such as newspapers or broadcasts–is one way. Someone producing content to give you. Social media allows you to interact.
tommorris: @cspenn Nothing. ‘Social media’ is a term used by marketeers for just about everything. It’s lost all meaning. It’s a pointless buzzword.
keithbooe: @cspenn higher level of real time (or near) interaction and direct user involvement than traditional media?
mlseaton: @cspenn the amount of people claiming to be experts or gurus! That is pretty much what defines it.
Ed: Essentially @cspenn Built in sharing. Conducive both by design, and user intent
JoyHaynes: @cspenn For me, real time conversation and connections to other people.
theelusivefish: @cspenn imho, there are 2 things distinguishing social media from the rest – low barriers to entry and the ability for any to participate
kristenmchugh22: @cspenn SM is both expression & engagement. There are some ppl wielding infl for good&selfish int., but not engaging on meaningful scale.
heykeenan: @cspenn the connection makes social media different from other media.

Here’s what I think defines social media apart from any other form of media: Metcalfe’s Law.

From Wikipedia:

Metcalfe’s law states that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n2). First formulated in this form by George Gilder in 1993, and attributed to Robert Metcalfe in regard to Ethernet, Metcalfe’s law was originally presented, circa 1980, not in term of users, but rather of “compatibly communicating devices” (for example, fax machines).

Something can be termed social media when its core value relies on the network effect – Metcalfe’s Law.

For example, is a blog post a form of social media? No. The value of the blog post is the same whether one person reads it or one million people read it. Its value is inherent in and of itself. The same is true for a podcast, a TV show, a commercial, a newspaper, etc.

Contrast that with a bulletin board, a call-in radio show, Twitter, discussion forums, comments on a blog post, Facebook, etc. The core value that these forms of media deliver relies on Metcalfe’s Law – the more people who use them, the more valuable they are. The more social they are. The core value diminishes with fewer people and ultimately, the product or service has no inherent value.

When you need to develop an understanding of whether something or not falls in the social sphere, examine careful what its value is, and how the impact of more people changes its value. If the value of the item, network, service, or thing is independent of participation, if Metcalfe’s Law does not drive its core value, it’s not social – and that’s perfectly okay. A well-made hammer’s value is not reliant on the number of people who buy and use it.

If the same product, service, etc. has its value completely unravel if Metcalfe’s Law were applied in reverse – taking away people from it – then it’s social, and requires people to generate its value; the more people who generate value, the more value it has.

This also means that some aspects of “traditional media” are inherently social – call-in radio shows, the classifieds in newspapers, even a corkboard in the employee breakroom.

Three things for marketers to think about: if something isn’t social by design, that’s fine. Don’t try to force it to be social, because it won’t fit. A bouquet of flowers and a perfect sunset can’t Twitter, and never should. Instead focus your efforts on using a different marketing model that works with whatever the core value of your product or service is.

If something “traditional” is social by design in your work already, bringing it online will vastly accelerate its growth and value thanks to how easily socially-powered things spread online.

When your boss, client, friend, neighbor, or kid asks you to make something social (because social media is the shiny object of the day) ask them this: do you want to create something which [a] has no value of its own and [b] is solely reliant on the temperament of the crowd for its value, knowing that one screw-up can destroy everything and leave you with nothing of value?

Personally, I’d ask them instead whether they want to create something that has so much value inherent to it that others can’t help but talk about it and promote it for you in a social context.

What defines social media for you?

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June 7, 2009
My morning news-stand
Do you know what happens when you set foot in the ocean?

In that brief moment, you touch the world, all of it, because every drop of water that touches your feet has touched every shore, every beach ever.

So it is with the Internet, with social media, and with the news. When you check the morning news in your country, do you just check what’s happening in your nation, province, or city? Or do you take advantage of that little copper or fiber wire in your wall that is your footstep into the world?

I try to make a habit of checking headlines from major news sources every day to see more than one perspective. On my morning news-stand (fed into Google Reader and Calibre for the Kindle as well):
- BBC News
- The Boston Globe
- Bloomberg
- Reuters
- CNN
- The New York Times
- Daily Telegraph
- Montreal Gazette
- Toronto Globe and Mail
- The Sydney Morning Herald
- Asahi Shinbun
- Al Jazeera
- The Jerusalem Post
- Xinhua
If you don’t already read the headlines or news from a country other than your own, start today. It’s free to do and will give you a much wider perspective on what the world thinks is important. As recently happened with President Obama’s speech in Cairo, while the American media was occupied with David Carradine’s death, the rest of the world was mulling over the President’s words. If you read only American news sources, you might have missed some very interesting reactions elsewhere.

Are you deeply involved in social media? If so, chances are you’ve got at least one follower or friend in another country. Might be useful to know what’s topping the news where your friends are, too.

What’s on your news-stand?

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June 4, 2009
Winning against all odds

An interesting bit of Twitter conversation fleshed out.

chrisbrogan: 10,000 hours of practice: the magic number of skill mastery. – Gladwell.
cspenn: Gladwell failed to answer how to overcome advantages that other outliers have. Only major flaw in that book.
chrisbrogan: meaning, in a pool of many 10k folks, what causes one person to rise?
cspenn: more like his hockey example – if you were NOT born in the 3 golden months, how can you still excel?
chrisbrogan: I thought he posited that you can’t.

You can.

The art of the ninja is more about perseverance and psychology than throwing stars and swords. Ultimately, the ninja faced Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers to an opposite extreme: they were outnumbered, outfunded, outgunned, and outdone in nearly every way. They faced an unforgiving wilderness, a hostile government, treachery at every turn, and no room for error. By any rational standards, they should have been instantly wiped out, quickly condemned to the dustbin of history as a mere footnote.

Yet amidst all this, they still had to win, against impossible odds. How do you win against the outliers, against people who have all the advantages of resources, time, energy, manpower, and culture?

One of the “hidden secrets” of ninja sword fighting that we’ve been exploring recently in the Boston Martial Arts Friday black belt classes is that the outcome of certain sword kata (patterns) is more dependent on mastery of yourself and your emotions than on what your attacker does. Certainly, you don’t take lightly someone in front of you with a four foot razor blade. You pay attention to them. You guard against them. But your success doesn’t hinge on just them.

The “secret” to “winning” in these routines is more about finding the weaknesses inside of yourself that are holding you back or causing you to make stupid mistakes, and minimizing their impact. I can’t speak for my classmates, but overcoming the desire to “win” (even though it’s just a practice exercise with nothing to “win”, not even a cookie) is one of my biggest weaknesses that I’m working on. If I can get past that, if I can just be there without trying to force an outcome, if I can get out of my own way, I am successful more often than not.

Sun Tzu, the war strategist, is often quoted:

One who knows the enemy and knows himself will not be in danger in a hundred battles.
One who does not know the enemy but knows himself will sometimes win, sometimes lose.
One who does not know the enemy and does not know himself will be in danger in every battle.

Most people, most businesses, most everyone falls in the third category. We don’t really know ourselves. We don’t really know what we’re up against, and frankly, it’s amazing we succeed at all. Make inroads even just a little at knowing yourself or knowing what you’re up against, and your chances of success go up.

The ninja won against all odds because they didn’t face perfect opponents. Certainly, they faced incredible odds, but by dedicating enormous time and energy towards knowing themselves and their own weaknesses, and doing their best to mitigate those weaknesses, they were able to win against enemies who statistically should have beaten them to a pulp 100% of the time – but didn’t.

Here’s the second-greatest “secret” of all: it’s easier to know yourself than it is to know the unknown future ahead of you. If you’re going to invest a ton of time and energy trying to even the odds, your best bet is to start with yourself. Yourself, your team, your organization or company, the things that you have control over and that you can study in great depth.

How do you do that? I leave that to my seniors, my betters, and recommend you pick up a copy of How To Own The World, by Stephen K. Hayes. An-Shu Hayes does a far better job laying out a practical means of figuring out what’s holding you back than I ever could. If you want to win more, go grab his book, read it, and practice the lessons in it.

(yes, there is a greatest secret of all, too. not for now.)

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June 3, 2009
The eye of the storm

A couple of years ago, I posted a graphic of the mortgage resets from Credit Suisse First Boston. Let’s see where we are now.

Congratulations to all. We’ve made it through the subprime crisis and only lost GM, every investment bank, nearly wiped out the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund, put 1 out of 8 homeowners late or in foreclosure on their mortgages, and sent the economy into a tailspin. Otherwise, we made it through the subprime crisis.

We’re ready to start growing again, right?

Except… except the pool of alt-A and option ARM mortgages (all of which is defaulting at the same or higher rates of default than subprime 2 years ago) is still ahead, and it’s 50% bigger than the subprime mortgage market ever was.

If you’re thinking the worst of the storm has passed, it’s more like the eye of the hurricane. The second, stronger wall of the storm is arriving shortly. If you’re thinking that now is the time to spend a little more freely, to open up your wallet, think again and batten down the hatches. If anything, now is the time to increase your financial conservatism, to tighten spending if you can. Only once the storm has fully passed – in a couple of years – will it be time to go outside and start planting anew.

For more detailed charts, check out this post on Mish’s blog.

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June 1, 2009
What your eye doctor can teach you about web design

One of the biggest problems with design, especially web design, is that we have a nearly impossible task of trying to use words to describe design. For example, if I say light blue, what color comes to mind?

Is it the light blue of an early morning sky? The light blue of a flower? The light blue from a popular corporate logo? All of these are contained in light blue, but none conveys the same light blue I’m probably thinking of.

It’s not that we’re unsure of how a design makes us feel. Quite the contrary, we know precisely and firmly how a design makes us feel. What’s imprecise are the words we use to describe it, and so we often end up with web site designs that leave us unfulfilled, like how you feel a half hour after a fast food meal. You know you ate, but it just doesn’t feel satisfying.

So how do you fix this?

Anyone who’s ever been fitted for any kind of corrective lenses – contacts, glasses, OMGlazerbeamsinureyes, etc. knows the process for assessing your vision. You sit in front of a fairly large pair of goggles and the opthamologist flips various lenses in front of your eyes as you look at the wall chart. Throughout the process he asks you which is better, 1 or 2, over and over again in rapid-fire sequence. (at least, my doctor only asked which was better, 1 or 2)

The eye doctor doesn’t ask you about the qualities of what you’re seeing – no questions about color reproduction or grain, sharpness or focus. He just asks which is better, 1 or 2, because very often a layman’s description would only muddy the waters. The speed at which he proceeds ensures that you don’t try to get verbal about what’s fundamentally a non-verbal issue.

The very binary question of which is better without any lengthy verbal judgements means that we don’t have to force words to describe what we’re seeing. We only need to pass judgement about general positivity or negativity. Yes, 1 is better. No, 2 is worse. The speed means we resort to trusting non-verbal, instinctive decisions, rather than laboring about how to describe something.

The next time you’re working on a web site, advertising creative, design or set of designs, try the eye doctor test. Print out the designs or stick them on Powerpoint slides, and show them to people rapidly. Which is better, 1 or 2? Don’t ask for anything that requires verbal analysis, just quick calls. Discourage discussion for this specific test (there will be plenty of time for deliberation later). Just cycle through your designs. Which is better, 1 or 2? For added sobering results, throw in designs from competitors and see how yours stack up in a rapid, first impression test.

You might be surprised at how easily people make good judgements in the blink of an eye.

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May 29, 2009
Marketing flowers

I’m amused by how often the term organic is used in marketing. Organic campaigns, organic link building, organic traffic growth. You’d think the eco/green movement moonlighted in marketing the way we overuse the word organic.

Here’s some food for thought – organic if you like. The difference between organic marketing and paid marketing is the difference between a real flower and a plastic one. If your goal is superficial (decorate the office quickly), plastic is as good as real, it’s faster, probably cheaper, and easier to manage and maintain.

If your goal, however, is for that flower to eventually grow, reproduce, and bear fruit, then the plastic version will not do. The trouble is, a real flower is a lot more work. It takes vastly more time, more energy, more maintenance than the plastic or cloth substitute, but if your goal is long term, lasting growth, only the naturally grown flower will do.

Is there a place for the plastic floral display? Of course – but it depends on your goals. Too much marketing focuses on the superficial, the fast hit, the quarterly or monthly numbers (which are vitally important, don’t get me wrong) at the expense of the long term growth. The investment you make in the plastic flower today will not diminish, but nor will it ever grow or bear fruit. The investment you make in the real flower will, assuming proper care and focus, not only grow, but increase until you hit a critical mass where your field of flowers are self-sustaining.

What are you growing in your marketing?

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May 27, 2009
What not to market

Ever wonder what’s really hot, what’s really selling, where you can make some significant profits? Here’s a screenshot of the Auction House from World of Warcraft.

Look at all the gold and shiny things you could sell. What should you sell? Where should you focus your attention?

If you followed the herd mentality, you’d put your resources into Runecloth. You’d spend every waking moment gathering Runecloth in the game, because that’s what everyone else is selling. 4,683 people are selling Runecloth – it’s wildly popular! Jump on now – everyone’s doing it.

If you don’t follow the herd mentality, you’d notice the item beneath it is Runecloth Belt, which is currently being sold by… no one. Not a soul is selling them. It’s not popular. It’s not hot.

It’s not being competed for. That means you can sell in that niche at whatever price you want to sell at. You have no competition. (caveat: it’s still a desired item – just one that isn’t being produced)

This is counter-cyclical thinking or blue ocean strategy – sell where the competition isn’t, and even a modest amount of product demand plus no competition will ensure profitability.

Contrast that with the commodity market where low price is everything and even the slightest sea change in the marketplace will throw you from profitability to loss in the blink of an eye.

Want to know what markets you probably shouldn’t be in? Real life doesn’t have an Auction House that details every last item available and its current profitability, but real life does have a spam box.

Spammers are the bottom of the barrel for any commodity, hoping to eke out the tiniest profit on sheer volume. One look at what’s “hot” in spam should tell you whether your industry is in trouble or not, whether you’re swimming in a flooded market. If you find your industry consistently in your spam trap, you need to give some consideration to alternate product lines and sources of revenue, because the spammers are crowding out all of your legitimate marketing efforts and probably undercutting you on price as well.

What and where should you be marketing? Wherever the competition isn’t.

Food for thought, by the way: when “everyone is joining Twitter” or “everyone is on Facebook”, everyone is doing the social media equivalent of piling into the Runecloth market. For leverage in the world of social media, are you looking for the Runecloth Belt market or hoping the herd is right?

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May 26, 2009
A thoughtful Memorial Day

There is sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.

– Washington Irving

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

– Kahlil Gibran

May your Memorial Day be a thoughtful one.

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May 25, 2009

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