http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/ What this blog is all about en-us Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:48:31 GMT Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:44:15 GMT CF Blogger by DayDream Inc http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss caroe@creativematch.com caroe@creativematch.com http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=B7CB226A-1185-BAC1-E97687BF38B45054 Mark Ritson writing in Marketing Magazine (3 September 08) showcased the tie-up between Penguin Books and Match.com in a co-branding deal. Coincidently this week I am working on a client who has a paid-for newsletter for a niche audience.  They approached me asking for ways to increase subscription and advertising revenues. My answer, in part, includes co-branding. And so the challenge for you is to find out whether this is an appropriate tool for business development for your company. Situations where collaborative marketing and co-branding may be appropriate include: you have a good database of customers in a clear market niche or particular geography or demographic profile   there is little cross-over between the current customer base of either brand each brand can benefit from the positioning and reputation of the other profits from the resultant new business can be shared while both improve brand equity Ritson suggests that if your brand fulfils these criteria, the subsequent co-branding is newsworthy and so may additionally gain you free PR and press coverage. In the case of my client, a paid-for newsletter will hopefully benefit from an association with a free online discussion forum: those who are used to gossiping for free can read some well-reported news, which in turn will fuel the discussion forum and draw in more participants. And so when considering your business write two short lists who are my customers? what is my brand positioning? Then read your industry magazines and online news sources and list brands who you think might make good partners for co-branding associations with you. Consider first who their customers are and what their brand positioning is and see if you can make a cogent argument for a tie-up between you.  Remember that if you initiate the discussions, it's up to you to set out the reasons in the most persuasive way possible. Remember, the deal has to work well for both parties, a stronger / weaker party deal will probably fall down; similarly one where one brand is more likely to profit than the other probably won't work in the long term unless the terms of profit sharing reflect that imbalance.   New Business Development Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:44:15 GMT http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=B7CB226A-1185-BAC1-E97687BF38B45054 http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=047B7F6B-1185-BAC1-E962D2289678349B If you are interested or curious about what the Current Big Thing called Social Media is, who does it and what they are working on / talking about.  There are a wide range of great groups mainly based in London (sorry outatowners) that happen most weeks / months. If you have a reason to come to town.  Try and drop into one or other of these. Listen, Learn, Talk.... Chinwag event  NMK’s Beers & Innovation, Minibar, London Geek Dinners, MoMo London, Social Media Club, Creative Geeks, She Says, Swedish Beers, Open Coffee, Tuttle Club / Social Media Cafe, Girl Geek Dinners, Wiki Wednesdays, Next Wednesdays   And of course the BIMA events Thanks to Dierdre of Chinwag for the summary list.  Social Media Mon, 31 Mar 2008 10:56:52 GMT http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=047B7F6B-1185-BAC1-E962D2289678349B http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=E69D6604-1185-BAC1-E9876C6BC3254136 Customer data has been an important part of the advice I give most of my clients for a long time - since I worked for Peppers and Rogers I have tended to suggest that it be called Customer Relationship Management or CRM.   But that time is now moving into the past.  The future is about 'flipping' the control of customer data out of the hands of the corporation and into the hands of the individual.   You and I both know that many organisations have our personal data - whether it is just logins to websites or fully comprehensive bank account and credit card details from vendors we use online and offline.   Do you have a complete list of these companies and websites?  Betcha don't.  I certainly don't.  And so when something changes - you move house, for example or you decide that you no longer want your data to be held by a particular organisation or group of companies. you have to write individually to each to 'unsubscribe' or change or amend your customer data profile.  Which is frankly a right royal pain in the bum. Early days yet - but a possible change is for you to hold all the data about yourself and for companies and organisations that want to have a relationsihp with you to come to a private place online that you control and manage and to"collect" your data there for their purposes - with your permission.  And so if you change something, you update in ONE place.  And if you change your mind about a company and you no longer want their newsletter, you go to one place and change their permissions - maybe letting them know automatically in the process why you did or what they did to make you alter your view of them and their brand. Sounds good? It is called Vendor Relationship Management.  VRM.   And the principles are still being worked out by some of the leading minds of the online age - Doc Searls and Adriana Lukas.  I am working with Adriana on the London end of the project.   If you want to learn more, read this slide deck from Doc updating his "Cluetrain Manifesto" view of the world 10 years on... and explaining some of the VRM principles as he sees them And Adriana's One pager about VRM post which states her future-gazing view of the future. If you are a business here's a possible future for you Imagine having your customers share with you what they like, want and think of you. At the moment, you are dependent on market research, which is like looking through a keyhole at the rich ‘user-generated’ world. Imagine being able to relate to your customers, consistently and persistently, where they contribute directly to your supply chain where it makes sense - whether it is R&D, product design, distribution and marketing. Interaction with them is modular, intuitive and user-driven freeing much of your resources spent on marketing and transaction cost. And if you are a customer here's a possible future for you The ability to manage and analyze your data will give you better knowledge about yourself, the kind of knowledge that is the holy grail of most companies’ customer data management. The awareness of your preferences, understanding of your needs will help you to articulate them easier and strengthen your position with vendors. If you want to learn more about what you can do for VRM and what VRM can do for you - come to this workshop that I'm helping to run  Tuesday April 15th, the theme is VRM and how it addresses (and hopefully redresses) the imbalance between individuals and their relationships with vendors, companies or institutions. Direct Marketing Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:45:17 GMT http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=E69D6604-1185-BAC1-E9876C6BC3254136 http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=B3C0078A-1185-BAC1-E9B89748C6495349 I did a coaching session for Geraldine Grey - who is changing career direction and retraining as a real estate agent. She has kindly allowed me to write up the key biz dev tools that I recommended to her Create a strong "Brand You".  For her, this is to be 'the English Realtor' [yes she'd in USA!]  Have a short list of golden questions that can help you to firstly find out whether a prospect is serious and secondly to close down sales Have a strong process for keeping track of prospects, leads and follow-ups Get all your customers to write a reference after each job and build a Net Promoter Score scorecard Good luck, Gerry - hope it all goes well for you. Read this presentation on the Art of Self-Branding. New Business Development Sat, 15 Mar 2008 18:42:29 GMT http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=B3C0078A-1185-BAC1-E9B89748C6495349 http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=892383D9-1185-BAC1-E9CCB390B65440D4 Indirect and oblique marketing opportunities. One fantastic marketing tool that is often used by technology companies (but is available to most types of business) is to write a case study about your business. This details a particular product or service that you use and why you chose a particular supplier and the net outcomes of using the product. This is a great marketing tool because it talks about YOU, but the hard work of promotion and message delivery is being done by someone else! At an Earl’s Court show for marketing and technology, I picked up a case study one page flier written by Concrete (never heard of them before....) because it featured the logo of a company that I do know, Loewy the design and advertising group headed by Charlie Hoult. I read the case study – it is about them installing an advertising management system that delivers print artwork for clients to the media owners in a trackable, real-time web environment. The benefits to Loewy are of course being picked as a case study that the software company is promoting (presumably to Loewy’s clients and competitors!) and also the fact that they are probably an early adopter of the software. The risk that Loewy took in buying from Concrete is being rewarded by the case study positioning them as a leading edge, innovative agency. Neat. On a smaller scale, I have been working with a web agency, Howard/Baines who are building a name for themselves as the ‘designers of choice’ for both large enterprises and web 2.0 start-ups. A broad church of customers. Their offering is also quirky – they take paid-for software and open source and use the best tool for the job, frequently combining and integrating both in order to produce the solution that is right for the client. Howard/Baines needed to get a stronger presence in a highly crowded marketplace for web strategy, design and development and came up with the idea of writing a case study for Microsoft’s new Visual Studio 2008 suite. They wrote an online meeting organiser tool "Meet with Approval" using both open source and MS tools, a commercial site where users pay for the tool and which has netted over 2000 users and 500+ meetings since launch in October 2007. Approaching Microsoft, Clive Howard offered them the opportunity to use this as a case study to prove that it is possible to use both open source and paid-for software tools and that four key “myths” about open source were not always true: (speed, support, price and integration). Microsoft has a business need to improve its relationships with the open source developer community. It is a huge potential market for MS products and is a place where many of the most vocal anti-Microsoft messages are promulgated. And so we hoped that MS would pick up on this opportunity and agree to write a joint case study. They did and the outcomes have blown us away. Microsoft has chosen Howard/Baines to speak at the UK launch of Visual Studio 2008 to an audience of press, analysts and key MS users. Now that is a powerful group of people who MS is very keen to impress... and they have been very generous to Howard Baines, inviting them to the whole day including lunch with analysts and one-on-one press interviews with key technology journalists. This has enabled Clive Howard and Jeremy Baines to gain both great brand building opportunities with audiences that would have been beyond their reach (without Microsoft) but also to use the case study in their own media of choice for promotion as well. Well done, lads! Prospecting Fri, 07 Mar 2008 12:07:28 GMT http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=892383D9-1185-BAC1-E9CCB390B65440D4 http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=2B9EDA65-1185-BAC1-E949033E4CFAD147 When did you last 'mystery shop' your own business?  Either do this yourself, or get a friend to do it.  In the eighties this was a terribly trendy thing to do in the UK.  As the US became the 'land of customer service' where people bent over backwards to give great service to their clients and customers and the UK looked increasingly like a back-water.  It's rather fallen out of favour these days.   But I think it's time for a revival - ONLINE Mystery Shopping.  Seven things you can do to research your company's customer interface Do online research into your brand, company name, key individuals (remember to also get behind the login firewall for key print media e.g. FT.com, the Economist, Brand Republic, trade journals) and social media sites Check out all the negative search phrases as well as brand names ( XYZ sucks, XYZ hell) Go to the key websites for bad customer experiences Ripoff Report, Blagger, Grumbletext, Phone into a series of offices - at 5 pm on a Friday and during your Monday morning meeting Ask for a reference on your business and see who you speak to and what they say Buy online (if possible) Ask about privacy policy and what data is stored on you (and if you don't get a coherent answer quickly on this one, sort it out quickly) New Business Development Mon, 18 Feb 2008 08:17:53 GMT http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=2B9EDA65-1185-BAC1-E949033E4CFAD147 http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=A7153879-1185-BAC1-E921458865F58B12 A “Golden Question” is one in which the answer tells you more than the question itself would imply. Useful for research, discovery and us biz dev types who need to assess quickly new prospects and whether they will buy from us. I learnt about it from Don Peppers (www.1to1.com) who integrated it into his CRM method IDIC (Identify : Differentiate : Interact and learn : Customise). His classic golden questions was to find out whether a customer had a high propensity to buy premium brand pet food.  The question was “Do you buy your pet a christmas present?”.  Neat, isn’t it? Those who do, are more likely to lavish spend on their animals than those who don’t.  Simple. And so how have I used it with my clients?  They are mainly working in B2B areas and so the question set needs revising depending on your particular positioning and needs. #1 Digital Agency selling high end technology back-end services Julian wanted to be able to find out whether a prospect wanted a simple web site or one with higher functionality.  Working with him, I developed two questions to help him quickly filter people: Question 1: What was the date of your first website? Question 2: How many times since then have you re-launched or substantially revised it? Why does this work? With the first quesiton, he can tell if your company is an early adopter or late arrival for the new web technologies.   And with the second, he can assess your likely sophistication as a web user for marketing.  Each time you re-launch a website the functionality is improved. Relaunching every 2 years means you are more likley to be interested in moving to leading edge features. So, how does your company stack up against his questions?  Are you an early adopter, or a late-starter? #2 Agency working with start-up web businesses These lads want to be able to find out how far down the road you are to getting your website functional.  They also need to find out the degree of technological sophistication of the person they are talking to.  Pitching yourself too “techy” and you’ll quickly lose the interest of a punter but being too simplistic has the same effect.  Similarly their services vary depending on the stage of the business and how close to launch the start-up business is. Question 1: Have you got your requirements document written? Question 2: Are you happy with your user numbers? The first establishes business stage and sophistication and the second devines the success of the marketing support put into an already functioning site. Now what golden questions are right for your business?  Can you use them to shorten your prospecting time frame and more quickly find prospects who have the potential to become customers? Happy hunting! Rebecca Caroe www.creativeagencysecrets.com Prospecting Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:37:41 GMT http://www.creativematch.co.uk/blogs/RebeccaCaroe/front.cfm?action=display_blog&bid=A7153879-1185-BAC1-E921458865F58B12