Animoto.com - new presentation tool

I was introduced to a cool new presentation tool called Animoto by a friend, Dallas Brown. The tool allows you to quickly and easily build a 30 second spot for your blog, social networking site. You can use it for personal use, but there are some awesome business applications for this as well. It literally took me 10 minutes to upload my images from my drive, choose the order and select music. They handle all of the animations and rendering. It took longer to render the video than it did to assemble the content. You can check it out here: www.animoto.com

It's really easy to use. Checkout one that I threw together...

Kinda funky...

Social Media - Your Brand is Your Reputation

I found this video this morning, very insightful. It's part of a series on the American Express Open Forum for business. In this video, Seth Godin, one of my favorite authors and speakers is talking about branding and social media.

My Takeaway...

In the past, branding was largely controlled by the marketing team and ad agencies. Instead, now your brand is now becoming your reputation and how you behave in your interactions internally and externally. It is up to everyone in the organization to influence the brand for the better, and ensure your consumers have a positive perception of your company and your products and services.

One interesting thought... As I share this post, I’m influencing the brands of both American Express and Seth Godin.

Checkout this video...

Social Media - The New Frontier

There's no question, Social Media is becoming a legitimate marketing channel. Over the past few years, I've used tools such as MySpace, Linkedin, Facebook and now I have this blog. These outlets have allowed me to share ideas with other marketers, learn of their successes and increase my network...

Social Media was a huge topic of discussion at the Eloqua Experience, but I know it was also a focal point for the DMA annual event last week as well. It's becoming clear to marketers that the market is shifting. Anthony Lye, Oracles SVP of CRM mentioned in his keynote address at Eloqua Experience, that throughout history there are interrupters that completely change the marketing landscape. These interrupters include Dell's shift in selling PC's direct to consumers, the use of the Internet and now social media to name a few. Oracle is making significant changes to their business strategy to further integrate their business model with social media.

There's a need to expand the dialogue between businesses and their consumers. The days of marketing messaging / campaigns are passing. There may be a time in the future, where people no longer use email to communicate. Many consumers are no longer using email, relying exclusively on wall-posts on Facebook, or posts to Myspace or blogs. This is already a trend identified in the 18-24 crowd, but a variety of other users as well. In fact, a colleague of mine told me last week that his 80 year old grandmother has a Blog, she's from the Bay Area, so that makes sense... It's a trend that we can't ignore.

(image courtesy of liberatemedia.com)

These insights have caused me to seriously rethink our marketing strategies and leverage some of these emerging technologies and consumer trends. Oracle is integrating social media data into their CRM that can be used in the sales lifecycle. In our business model, we need to develop rapport with our customers, true relationship marketing, instead of the old batch and blast strategy. Checkout this video I found on the impact of these relationships on consumers, via Charlene Li's blog.

I have a funny social media experience with a business associate that is considered a guru in his field. The name alone is worth millions and his brand has a loyal following. A few months ago, he says to me. "Carson, I had to kill my Linkedin profile because so many of my customers were trying to connect with me. I don't have time to respond to the requests, or manage my image with these people, I hope you understand." On one hand, I completely understood. But that sparked a thought in my mind... If your customers want to connect with you, why in the world would you want to push them away? As their marketing agency, it makes complete sense for me that we should be investing heavily in developing their social media brands. In every problem, there lies an opportunity.

I've learned a lot in a short period through setting up this blog. I've been able to utilize tools such as Google Analytics to see what traffic I’m getting, where it's coming from and what countries, cities are hitting my humble little blog. I'm getting traffic from all across the US as well as, Trinidad, Singapore, UK, Netherlands and Canada. This motivates me further to ensure I’m producing valuable content and information for those that read my posts. I'll be working over the next few months to find new ways to leverage this channel.

I'm hooked...

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The failblog is hilarious, checkout this post I found this morning. Note to self... Always double check copy... unless this was strategic.

Lead Recycling = Go Green $$

While at the Eloqua Experience conference this past week, I had a chance to pick up a copy of the Lead Generation guide by B2B magazine. In the issue, I found an intriguing article. It was on lead recycling... Since this is right up my ally, it was of particular interest to me. "Lead Recycling Means Nothing Wasted."

It's only natural that anything on nurturing aged leads tips my interest. One of the biggest challenges I face as a "lead recylcer" is the lead quality issue. Since we are B2C house, our sales team often believes that leads previously dispositioned as "not interested" or "no-money" are really dead leads, unworthy of even the worst sales reps attention. This causes me to spend alot of my time educating the sales team with facts such as our conversion metrics, inbound opportunity and other industry information such as this.

When I returned, I immediately PDF'd the article and sent it to key sales and marketing stake-holders in our organization. No comments back yet, I'll let you know how that goes...

The article is pretty straight-forward really focusing on the fact that "aged-unconverted prospects are often more closer to purchasing than new leads". I'd like to say that again... "aged-unconverted prospects are closer to purchasing than new leads".

With the use Google and social networking communities, our consumers are more educated than ever. The sale is less emotional, more informed. Business consumers are actually less likely to convert on the first attempt than ever before.

One difference between our consumer marketing and the B2B space... I've found that 80% of all consumer buyers who purchase on the first attempt, always purchase within the first four weeks. We have a short sales cycle. If you keep in mind that less than 5% will even convert, that means there is a large opportunity with aged-unconverted prospects.

Studies have proven that 80% of those who don't purchase, will end up buying a product in that space within 18 months. The question becomes, will they purchase from you...or your competitors? If you have a one year lead nurturing program, you can significantly increase your conversion on those initial leads generated. Think about it, your lead generation dollars are already spent, the more you can convert from those, the better your front-end ROI. Unless your goal is to generate interest in your space, and provide buyers for your competition...

If you're not nurturing your leads, you should start immediately. If you're not sure where to start, just do what you can to get something going. With platforms such as Eloqua, and Insidesales.com you can have some significant wins without a huge commitment.

$$ Go Green $$

Brilliant Marketing Idea of the Week

These days the TSA security checks have gotten better, but they're still nothing to look forward to while travelling. If you're like me, I always make sure to put all my belongings in my laptop case before I get to security. Watch, wallet, change, phone, shank, brass knuckles.. the common stuff you carry everyday on your way to meetings...

If you've flown anywhere in the past 5 years, your familiar with the following situation... The cheerful and welcoming TSA agent will ask you to kindly take off your shoes and put them into a bin so they can be inspected for contraband. Errr. or something like that.

Here's where it gets interesting... It's typical for me to go 6 months or longer with the same kicks, which can usually result in some wear and tear, foul ordors or other embarrassing funk. As I put them into the bin, I notice the unfortunate condition of my leather loafers as I watch them slide into the machine so they can be inspected for explosives.

Well, this experience happend to me recently. I was travelling through the Seattle airport, just had gotten to security when I noticed something profound. The large stack of special government owned rubbermaid bins in front of me were unusally presentable. They were bright white and had a colorful creative plastered to the bottom of the inside of the bin. Whats more, every security line and traveller in the place was putting their stinky kicks into one as well.

Zappos.com It's a brand I'm already familiar with, they sell shoes and other bags and accessories. I think I may have even purchased from them before. I quickly realized that whoever came up with the idea to market in this location was absolutely a genius. They're advertising directly to people who are actively walking / travelling and they also may be thinking just like me... "Wouldn't it be nice to try on some new ecco's, rockports or even some suede Puma's right about now. It's target marketing at it's best...

If you're like me, when you notice cool marketing ideas, it really gets your thoughts going about other products or brands that could benefit from a similar strategy. I'd like to know more about whoever brokered this deal. I've travelled several times since then though Salt Lake City and Las Vegas and I have yet to see another implementation. Maybe the conversion is still being tested.

I'm assuming because the bins were so shiny and new, Zappos likely provided the bin with the ads installed. That would make alot of sense to me. Instead of using tax payer money to write a government contract for $20,000,000 worth of anti-terrorist rubbermaid bins, allow companies like Zappos to provide the bin and their ad. The fed could likely even get advertising fees for brokering the whole deal. That would sound way too much like business, instead of government. It's the whole spend money, instead of make money deal...

We can always dream...

Eloqua Experience Part I

The past two weeks have been crazy, I haven't had much time to rest or even post for that matter. We took a family trip to the marketing mecca of Disneyland in So. Cal. Then when I returned, I jumped back on a plane back to Las Vegas for the Eloqua Experience conference.

I'm still wrapping up the conference tomorrow, so I won't publish a full report yet. I wanted to get some of this information out there, so I thought I would make an initial blast. Old info is never good anyway....


This conference has been amazing. In the past few days, I've had
the chance to network with over 400 top marketers from all over
the world who use the Eloqua marketing platform. Where else can a knucklehead like me talk strategy with the marketing director of Seagate, 54,000 employees and 13 BILLION in revenue for 2008 or Dr. Robert Cialdini psychologist and master of persuasion marketing?

These are some of my highlights of the event:

• Marketing automation can increase your ROI 10x without adding any additional team.
  
• My nomination for an Eloqua Markie award gained 2nd Place finish in the Interactive Marketing category. Although I hate being the first loser, there were many submissions from the 550 Eloqua clients, so this is an honor that I appreciate.
  
• The most powerful moment of persuasion comes after admitting your weakness. Talking about your strength, and then admitting weakness is the worst thing you can do. - Dr. Cialdini.
  
• The fear of losing value, is more powerful than the desire to gain value. - Dr. Cialdini - you can always win with a good take-away.
  
• I was able to add at least 50 top marketers to my professional network.
  
• I should avoid playing Texas Holdem with my own money. Although, I did lose... I did end up playing at the final table in the 300 person Texas Holdem competition. I went all in on the first hand, better luck next time.... It's a good thing they were fake chips...

More to come...