Which digital marketing events do you find useful?

Below, you can find Radical Marketer’s 2012 Top 10 Digital marketing event / seminars:

1. Interactcongress (IAB Europe)
2. Ad-Tech
3. dmexco (IAB EU)
4. DMA Mobile Marketing Day
5. Clikz Events
6. SES
7. iMedia Connection Events
8. SNWF Social Networking/Media World Forum
9. IAB MIXX Conference & Expo
10. The Future of Digital Marketing (e-consultancy)

other important Digital marketing events / seminars:

• ICMA (International Classified Media Association)
• a4uexpo (IAB EU)
• Mobile Social Networking Asia
• Research Showcase on Social Media (IAB EU)
• Ecommerce Expo
• Driving Interactive (iMedia)
• Emerging Marketing Solutions
• M-Commerce Summit
• Online Video Advertising
• Blog World
• Social Media & Video Strategies (Clickz)

In the wake of the sad news on death of Steve Jobs, we see love & light from all over the world. Most trending tweets are about Steve Jobs, millions of Facebook profile pictures are changed for the memory of Steve and the social media is writing vigorously on Jobs character, Apple and anything about him (I just saw Madonna publishing her chat with Jobs on her Facebook page).

This morning, I was reflecting on what Bill Gates might be thinking on the love that was spread all over the world.

I guess Gates might be thinking; “Will I be remembered as Steve Jobs? Will there be this much love for me as well?”

And the sad answers will probably will; “I guess nobody will remember me like Steve.”

Even if 5% of people who changed their profile pictures for the memory of Steve Jobs will change their Facebook profile pictures for Bill Gates, I would see that as a big success for Gates.

The metrics for success are changing; money is not the sole metric anymore. Bill Gates is a person of another dogma. He is one of the most successful Managers’ of the 20^th century capitalist system. Even though, Gates’ philanthropy might seems like Madoff’s support on ethical issues, I believe in his sincere interest in trying to move to the other side of the table and help the world, do good.

However, these are nothing compared to Jobs sincere interest in creating value for the world. Jobs did not only succeed in capitalist terms, but also in the metrics of socialism – and maybe the next coming dogma of the world; the “New Order”.

What did Jobs say; “Being the richest man in the cemetery doesn’t matter to me … Going to bed at night saying we’ve done something wonderful… that’s what matters to me.”  This quote clearly shows the difference between Jobs and many others. The way he looked at being rich was not a cause, but a result of wonderful things. On the other hand, I believe Gates wanted to be a winner in the capitalist game, he didn’t care as much as Steve did on wonderful things. Since he was a great guy, he later shared his winning with the world. However, this doesn’t change how he played the game. Maybe Jobs also utilized some corporate world smut during his life. But, his sincere cause of “trying to create wonderful things” puts him in a saint-like position from my perspective. I don’t believe his drive was being number one in the capitalist game.

Lets’ not put Gates under the flashlights only. What about Scully who fired Steve Jobs from the company he founded, what is he thinking today? What about Gil Amelio? What are all the corporate mumbo-jumbo people, the corporate bullies, buffoons, bozos and the bubble blowers thinking right now?

Actually “The awakening of Bill Gates” is the awakening of the US & the world. The riots in Wall Street show the same awakening. The capitalist system as we know it today, will be transformed, the metrics we value will change and we won’t judge the people, companies or countries as we judge them today. There is a clear need for a “New World Order”.

As Jobs says all the dots will somehow connect, “The awakening of Bill Gates” will be connected to Wall Street riots and we will see a better world in the future.
By the way if you want to see a video on Gates & Jobs, NYT collected a nice video on Jobs & Gates Flashbacks;

Why do good things always get a bubble in the beginning?

Web came with its bubble. Then online advertising, blogs had their bubbles, after that mobile marketing, now it’s time for the social media bubble. But if you look at other things as well, (say Private Equity, Mortgage or whatever you want) there is always a bubble associated with good things. Gartner names these bubbles politely “the hype curve”. Every technology or innovation gets “over hyped” in the beginning. But why are there bubbles always?

The answer is simple;

• First because the landscape of emerging technologies is very suitable for bubble blowing (there is plenty of air in the atmosphere),
• Second there are bubble blowers everywhere.

I.  The landscape of emerging technologies

Let’s look at the landscape first. Three major dynamics of the landscape for emerging technologies / sectors are;

1)    Businesses and staff (buyers, investors, media, sellers etc.) are under extreme pressure to act quickly

2)    People involved in decision making don’t have solid experience & knowledge on the topic

3)    Measurement issue is not solved yet

Some important groups which are affected by these dynamics can be found below;

• Buyers (Business executives and decision makers who make the purchase of the emerging services / products)
• Investors (VC &PE funds who don’t want to miss out a big opportunity, who are rushing quickly after the most visible / most revenue generating model rather than the most value delivering)
• Media (Reporters who are after a nice and early story, who have to be quick in finding an example on the topic)
• Sellers (Entrepreneurs & inventors who are working in the emerging sector)

Mostly, all the members of these groups want to be the number one in a new area, not the follower. They need to act quickly to gain a competitive advantage and not to miss an opportunity. In this environment, competition and speed creates very high pressure which is working against the new sector.

It is impossible to invest time in getting a deep knowledge on the topic. At this pace, it is day-dreaming to expect the media, the VC/PE industry and business executives to be on top of the issues.

The third dynamic; that there is lack of measurement, is the icing on the cake for the bubble blower. The con artist or fool is no different to the eye of these groups than the value creating person. The success stories of “bubble blowers” are as great as their selling skills. These stories are mostly not on real value delivered, but unfortunately the lack of measurement helps them to smear their story with fictional returns.

Because of these three dynamics, an early stage sector is the best landscape for people and companies with selling capabilities, rather than delivering capabilities. I am sure most of the executives, who have been in business for a while, lived through endless examples of very successful bubble blowing implementations in many their sectors.

II.  Bubble Blowers Everywhere – Who are they?

These are “smart” people in every sector who build their businesses on the hype curve. It makes financial sense to sell to people, who don’t know what to expect. Either excite them unrealistically, or make them afraid that they are losing an opportunity against their competitors and they will be eager to jump in your wagon. Also the dynamics of early stage technologies and sectors are very suitable for a lot of people to fall into “bubble blowers” trap.

I call these smart people simply; “bubble blowers”, the people who put their business model on the early “over hype” of the technologies / sectors. They sell to people with not much knowledge by exciting them unrealistically and making them fear. The bubble blowers usually sell their products/services like hot cakes in the early days of a new technology.

However, one thing we need to understand very clearly is the difference between genuine marketing and sales efforts from “bubble blowing”. Also, it is important to understand the motives of these bubble blowers. When we look at their aspirations; there are three types of bubble blowers;

1)    The con artists, who are just there to make a quick win by fooling people

2)    The fools, who try to build a business, but think that the only way they can be successful is by misrepresentation, exaggeration and bubble blowing

3)    The capable, the true genius people who have both the skills to contribute to society and to excite the society with their selling skills

The con artists are the worst. Their business models are not a sustainable, respectable or ethical way of doing business. At the end, they are usually not as successful as the “fools” business model who at least tries to deliver after their promise.

I have sadly seen many capable entrepreneurs, who thought that bubble blowing for a while for competitive advantage was their only chance. If you are in entrepreneurs’ shoes, there is always a big pressure before reaching a tripping point. However, the belief that “bubble blowing” is the only way is actually working first against their company, second against their sector, third against themselves & their careers. What “fools” don’t unfortunately get is; the way they act in their sector is both hurting them and their emerging sector in a big way by creating confusion and destroying trust.

The capable is really a tiny fracture of the population. These are one in a billion types of people (like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, etc.) who have both capabilities together. It is really rare to see people like them in the business world. In these cases bubble blowing can work positively to society where these people excite the society, so that there can be more investment poured to an area which will create value for the society in the end. So to say the proceeds of the “bubble blowing” are used in a good way to create real value.

Note: This was an article that I have written last year, but never have published. With the sad death of Steve Jobs, I remembered this unfinished piece and wanted to share…

Steve Jobs who was the number one enabler of Radical Marketing has just died. He was not only the enabler (with products like iPhone & iPad) but also the pioneer of Radical Marketing as can be seen on the 1984 ad.

What a sad day for the world and also the marketing world.

As reported he is the Edison of our times.

“Even people who want to go to heaven, don’t want to die” –  Steve Jobs

Some great quotes from Steve Jobs;

• Stay hungry, stay foolish
• Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
• Being fired from Apple was the best thing that could have happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
• Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation.
• Let’s make a dent in the universe.
• It isn’t the consumers’ job to know what they want.

tweets coming from iStrategy event in Amsterdam are making analogy of social media & sex somehow. Below you can find creative definitions for social media.
Top 3 quotweets from #iStrategy on Social Media & Sex are:

Number 1) from: @janrezab
Social media is like teen sex. Everybody wants to do it. Nobody knows how.
Number 2) from: @pennypower
Blogging is like masturbation, it can be a great release but can also make a hell of a mess.
Number 3) from: @DaveNClarke
Social media is like sex, it could be over in a few seconds but could have a lifetime of consequences.

I was just listening to Hill & Knowlton’s Global Technology Practice Director Joshua Reynolds who had the chance to work with Mark Zuckerberg in 2007 &2008 on Facebook’s PR.
He shared a short story on PR Strategy of Facebook which i wanted to share.
When defining your company keep this short story in mind:
“Mark didn’t define Facebook”. Joshua said: “Mark, you have to have a vision of what Facebook is”.
“But Mark hired 1000′s of programmers and throw stuff, he let the world tell him what Facebook was”.
“He was right.”

Other highlights from Joshua Reynolds speech;
- intel invested $9USD billon on intel inside campaign (My take: Be realistic on your expectations & budgets when starting a campaign)
- B2B social media is picking up big (My take: #didntitellyou)

TIME recently picked the 140 Twitter feeds that are shaping the conversation. 16 of these twitter feeds are in technology. Below you can find top 16 twitter accounts that shape the conversation around technology, based on their influence ranked by TIME survey (as of March, 31 2011);

1. Xeni Jardin
2. Chris Hardwick
3. Beth Blecherman
4. Gina Trapani
5. Danny Sullivan
6. Pete Cashmore
7. Rafat Ali
8. Slashdot
9. Om Malik
10. Jeremiah Owyang
11. Robert Scoble
12. Kevin Rose
13. Nieman Lab
14. Kara Swisher
15. Fred Wilson
16. Steven Johnson

See the survey results at; http://ti.me/hfNBSQ

Before Facebook there was WordPress as the main publishing platform on the web.  And, WordPress will always have its place on the web publishing.

Even though the infographic doesn’t consider Facebook as a Blog platform (and I cannot read their unique visitor numbers), this infograhic is important to understand the power of wordpress on web, and it’s place on web publishing.

See The Power of WordPress Infographic is prepared by Tech King:

Facebook made a change to its Promotions Guidelines this week. The big news is; there is no longer a requirement to obtain approval from Facebook to run a promotion entirely within Facebook.

The two major changes are;

1) No need for prior written Facebook approval to administer a promotion on Facebook.

This makes life for brands much easier. According to Wildfire Blog:

“Previously, in order to administer a promotion inside of Facebook, you had to either obtain explicit approval from a Facebook representative, or else run your promotion in two parts by  ”publicizing” it in a tab on Facebook but “administering” it (collecting submissions or entries, conducting the drawing, judging winning entries, or notifying winners) off of Facebook. But now, there is no need to obtain approval to administer the entire promotion inside of Facebook, so users participating in your promotions will remain inside of the Facebook environment by default throughout the entire process flow of the promotion (and do not need to be taken to microsite to submit their data). This is great news because generally promotions that are run entirely in Facebook have better conversions (i.e. higher entry rates) and higher rates of sharing (via newsfeeds and friend invites) than those that are only publicized in Facebook but administered via a microsite.”

2) No need for a minimum media spending to support the promotion.

This is also a good news for brands. It is now easier for marketing people to get their promotion campaign approved internally and gives the ability to plan smaller size / focused test promotions..

But keep in mind that all promotions are still subject to Facebook Promotion Guidelines and the following types of promotions are still not allowed:

See AllFacebook article:  Facebook Promotions No Longer Need Explicit Approval From Facebook

The Groupon Trilogy – Groupon for Dummies

The Groupon trilogy is a set of tree articles focusing on using group buying campaigns successfully as a marketer.

The set will introduce Radical Marketers to effectively use this new campaign tool in their companies / on their brands. However, this trilogy is just the entry for using online group campaigns, we can call it “101 for Designing Group Campaigns” or “Groupon for Dummies”.

The tree articles on this set are;

Aim your Groupon Campaign – Top Five Reasons to Offer a Groupon Promotion

Plan your Promotion – 4 things to plan before designing a Groupon promotion

Execute your Campaign effectively – 12 Secrets to turn your Groupon Campaign a Success

If you are interested in more advanced consultancy on these topics, you always know, where to find it

Here, you can find the complete set as an eBook (pdf booklet) for free download.

How to set-up / execute a Groupon offering?

The so called group buying phenomenon which was fueled by Groupon.com created a new way of promotion. However, it is unfortunate to see some companies failing terribly on group buying promotions. As the recent study from Rice University (Utpal Dholakia) reports 32% of all campaigns on Groupon are unprofitable for businesses*.

On my earlier articles; I talked about the aim & plan of group buying campaigns. The last article on Groupon trilogy is this one which focuses on the execution of the group buying promotion.

Below, you can find the top 12 tactics that you should remember when setting up and executing your group buying campaign:

1)    Have a correct reason (see Top five reasons you should offer a Groupon promotion)

2)    Think about your brand value and positioning; if your business has a luxury perception (i.e. your regular restaurants clients value the ambiance and they are here for people watching and are insulted by the bargain shopper clientele) and make sure you are not destroying value with this campaign

3)    Don’t expect to produce repeat customers with your group buying promotion (You are getting “deal chasers”, 59% of the clients will not spending beyond your promotions face value and 75% of the Groupon clients will not buy full price at your company in the future*)

4)    It’s very important to know the medium before utilizing it, therefore, first purchase & use a promotion as a buyer and if possible talk to somebody who offered a Groupon promotion before

5)    Cannibalization has to be low; if you think most of your customers are on Groupon, don’t even bother giving a group promotion (cannibalization of your current sales will not only hurt you financially, on top of it, the lower price will destroy your perceived value)

6)    Cover your variable costs, make your financial analysis correct, don’t get bankrupt

7)    Make sure your quality doesn’t drop; If the increased utilization with Groupon clients will lower the quality of your service or product, then you might suffer even more in the long run, due to this promotion

8)    Focus on employee morale (higher utilization will increase the work load; lower tipping in case of service might be another problem)

9)    Train your workforce for the new “deal chaser” crowd; frictions between stuff & Groupon clients might lead to negative customer feedbacks on the web

10) Be careful on multiple uses of promotions (re-printing); it is a good idea to create a code database and checking code before usage (i.e. at reservation stage)

11) Target your campaign correctly; if you are providing value to a geographic region understand the geographical focus of the group buying site you are using. Are national buyers a disaster for you? Answer this question before you set-up your campaign

12) Be careful if you have given other promotions; even though you made it crystal clear that other promotions or offers are not valid, the “deal chaser” crowd will upset you by requesting multiple promotions. This will both have its impacts on employee morale and customer satisfaction as mentioned above (A large printed clause on this, close to cash register, will be very useful)

* Based on Groupon Effectiveness Study by Utpal Dholakia – Rice University, Sep 28 2010

How to plan a Groupon promotion?

Yesterday, I wrote about the top reasons to offer a group buying campaign / promotion. If your goal is one of the top 5 mentioned, you can possibly get positive returns from your offer. However, you need to do some planning before the campaign. Below you can find the 4 most important issues on planning a group buying promotion:

1)    Define your Goal (see see Top five reasons you should offer a Groupon promotion) if non of those are your reasons, think twice before designing your campaign

2)    Plan for minimum cannibalization; Talk to your customers, try to get a rough estimate on how many percent are “deal chasers” using group buying sites. If you think it is more than half, forget about the campaign (cannibalization of your current sales will not only hurt you financially, on top of it; the lower price will destroy your perceived value)

3)    If you are structuring the deal as a trial, have a plan / next step for your “trial” customers. How will you benefit from the trial? What is your next step to convert these trial clients into profitable customers? if you don’t have a solid plan and a great product/service, it is hard to get a positive return

4)    Do the financial analysis. Make sure your offer is at least higher priced than the variable costs (like supplies). Even if you are using the deal as an advertisement for higher awareness, make sure the costs will not get out of control.

Why to use a group buying campaign / promotion?

If you do not have a valid reason and strategy behind your actions, this tool, like all other tools for web marketing, will backfire on your business. You should first have a valid reason for utilizing a group buying campaign. Below, you can find the top 5 most suitable reasons for offering a group buying promotion:

1)    Selling excess capacity; if you have a huge inventory or low capacity utilization, group buying sites can be great for you to utilize your production capacity

2)    Advertising for awareness; if structured well (low cannibalization, covering variable costs, and not destructing the perceived value much), group buying models are the best awareness tool that you can use

3)    Giving a trial to an excellent but not very well known product/service; if you believe in your product very much, and think the customers will be back, no matter the price point, then this is a great way to make your trial known (make it clear to your users, this is only a trial pricing)

4)    The Refill Model (the model utilized by firms like Gillette & HP likes); sell the main products on group buying sites and the customers has to buy refills from you in the future

5)    Cyclic / Seasonal business promotions; if your sector suffers from seasonality this is a great way to increase utilization on low seasons (make sure that the promotions are only for low seasons)

Last month I wrote about some problems in “Measuring Marketing Performance“. This time another problem surfaced the web on TechMeme.

Again and again we hear about wrong “success stories” with misunderstood performance indicators within the sector or on media.
The Foursquare success story for McDonald’s even made the headlines for NewYork Times. In most cases when you hear a story, simply the numbers don’t add up. In this case foursquare check-ins were mistakenly used as foot traffic increase to all McDonalds stores.
Even though these might seem like a good way to impress the boss or client, there will always be “Radical Marketers” to debunk.

Who am I talking to?
“You Ought To Know” video was produced two years ago by Hubspot as a viral marketing campaign. It is unfortunate that today most of the marketers still don’t get the idea behind the video.
Marketing is changing, this is the era of pull marketing.
It is a great video, highly recommended for all Radical Marketers. Don’t forget; “Radical Marketers are pull marketers”.