Adventures in Marketing

User Group Meetings

I currently run global marketing for an enterprise software business. When I started this job 3 years ago, we used to have two major user group meetings per year. One was in the US and the other in Europe, and they both took place in November. Attendance in both was around 150 people. These meetings were typical in that we had a few executive presentations, some customer presentations and a whole lot of product presentations. Frankly, the meetings had settled into a predictive rut and were becoming boring. Nobody expected big surprises and nobody got them!

In an effort to stir things, we have instituted the following changes this year:

1. We now invite prospects to the meetings so that they can mix with current customers
2. We allow industry analysts to attend these meetings and give them access to everything
3. The presentations have more of a solution focus rather than a product focus
4. We have changed the timing to have the meetings in the May/June time frame, taking advantage of the fact that budgets are unlikely to be used up this early
5. Registration fee structure has been changed to encourage multiple attendees from same company: 1 for$995, 3 for $1995. 5 for $2495

These changes will go into effect next year, so stay tuned for the results.

Back again, missing for a while

Been a while since my last post - too busy practising rather then writing about marketing! During the last year, have been extremely busy developing business in emerging markets of India, China and Latin America.

Obviously all three areas are enjoying tremendous growth, but it is interesting to me how different the opportunities are that each one presents. Caveat: my comments are coloured by the fact that I market enterprise software to large companies in life sciences, health and safety, petrochemicals, mining and minerals. Compared to the US and Europe which are growing at 4-5%, these markets are growing at 15-20% for us.

Latin America is all about petro, mining and minerals - mostly to provide the hungry appetites of China and India.

India is all about white-collar outsourcing - and this often means that the Indian companies follow the lead of their outsourcing partners in the West.

China is all about "safety" - right now, China is very concerned about the safety of its exports.

For different reasons, each market is investing heavily in lab instrumentation and software for monitoring and testing applications. Business norms are also very different between these places. More on that in future blogs.

Negative Keywords

In my current capacity as VP Marketing for Convoq, I use paid search marketing to drive prospects to our corporate website where they can download a free trial of our online meeting software. In working with the folks at Google recently, I was pleasantly surprised to learn about "negative keywords" - words or phrases that you select to NOT drive prospects to your business. How did I come across this and why is it important?

Over the last few months I noticed that over 50% of the people downloading our free trial software were just not qualified to ever become customers - basically a bunch of freeloaders from all over the world looking for a free way to communicate! I had to find out how they were learning about Convoq and our free trials.

Turns out that most of these people were inputting "video conferencing" as their keyword phrase and Convoq was one of the companies showing up as a result. I went back to my campaign, entered "video conferencing" as a negative keyword and Bingo! No more bad prospects!

Highly recommend you check this out if you use paid search marketing for your business.

Salesforce.com's Dreamforce event

I recently attended the annual Salesforce "user group" event called Dreamforce. We launched a version of our online meeting software, showcasing tight integration with salesforce.

I must say I was very pleased with the whole event - over 4,500 attendees, of which at least 3,000 were either existing or potential users of salesforce.com. These attendees were knowledgeable, attentive and looking for new ways to improve their usage of salesforce. The event was very well organized with lots of tracks to attend as well as lots of time to visit the expo pavillion.

It has been a long time since I felt that a trade show was worth the aggravation and expense, but this one changed my mind. I have already signed up for next year's event!

B2B Viral Marketing

Towards the end of last year, I had the pleasure of working with ClickSoftware on a B2B viral marketing campaign. Here is what their VP Marketing had to say:

Wanted to share with you a very exciting viral marketing campaignthat my team ran recently.

For comparison, our webinars are getting around 150 responses each. An email campaign with a white paper/case study offer will get 300 response on average. That's not bad at all considering the size of our market (field service software)

A couple of weeks ago, we launched a viral campaign based on an on-line game called "Service Tycoon." Briefly, I would describe it as 2 parts fun, 1 part education, 1 part marketing. See for yourself.

Within a couple of weeks, we overwhelmed by over 7500 responses, mostly within our industry. Plus, great anecdotal comments from
customers.

If anyone is interested, I'll be more then happy to share the details. Just drop me a note, or call me. You can actually see the game here http://www.servicetycoon.com

Best

Amit Bendov

Senior VP, WW Marketing
ClickSoftware, Inc
(781) 272-5903

Trade Shows

I am trying to remember when I last attended a technology trade show, and I am failing! There was a time when I attended every Windows World, PC Expo, Comdex and a few others whose names escape me now. I know I was younger then, and maybe that is why I think I enjoyed going to these shows.

What happened to them? Was it 9/11 and the fear of travelling? Was it the clamp down in marketing expenditure after the bubble burst? Was it that corporate IT budgets were slashed so much that there was no point in buyers going to shows? Or did the Emperor finally admit to having no clothes on?

I am not sure I know exactly why. I am however happy that I don't have to plan for another booth, spend weekends putting booths together and then spend all day on my feet.  Maybe Internet search replaced the need for trade shows!

I remember one year when a trade show manager was busy opening boxes in preparation for her show, and she let out a huge scream. The box contained leads from the previous year's show - nobody had touched all these leads that the company had paid tens of thousands of dollars to acquire!

Having said that, next week is CeBIT week in Germany - only the most gigantic trade show on the planet. Why has this show survived when our own Comdex has gone? Anyone know?

Helping a Warehouse Club increase membership

I am currently advising a Warehouse club on ways to increase membership. I have suggested a few ideas, would love to hear from you with any feedback.

As I see it, these clubs have three direct touch points with their members:

1) Personal touch when the members are shopping in the club

2) Through print media, either flyers or newsletters

3) Through email, with customised offers

Here are some suggestions:

a) While a member is at the club, often with a friend or family member, give them an aggressive incentive to get their friend or family member to join. Give away a $20 discount, or a cute and topical prize (a cuddly bunny at Easter, or a party hamper for July 4rth).

b) Offer existing members a coupon at a related business, but make sure this business is an online one, requiring email registration. For example, tell your existing members that you have negotiated a special member rate with an online photo service.

c) Create a campaign whereby each shopper might hold a winning number in their hand - probably best if printed on their receipt. The shopper has to go home and log on to a website to see if they have won a prize.

The last two ideas are more to build an email database which would then make it easier to create and execute future marketing ideas - such as, give the gift of membership, on Mother's Day or at Xmas etc.

Any new ideas, anyone?

Reflections on DEMO 2005

Just got back from Phoenix after attending yet another well organized event. We had the pleasure of launching ASAP Express, a FREE personal web conferencing and collaboration system, allowing users to conduct one-on-one online meetings, featuring text, audio, video, screen sharing, PowerPoint sharing and file transfer.

You can get your own copy by going to www.convoq.com

There was a bigger buzz at DEMO this year then the last few. More VC's, more press and lots of interesting products and services. Here are a few that got my attention:

Homestead Technologies showed their website building and hosting tool - very easy and very cool. Lots of template driven examples of websites to choose from.

LiveVault showed their data backup device which felt very comforting to have in your company.

LiveDeal had some interesting thinsg to say about search that results in local results - much more useful.

Jigsaw had a much better Sales networking tool than Spoke.

Smartonline showed a terrific new offering for their small business customers, called OneBiz - an integrated set of service offerings designed to help them function better.

The others were great too, these stuck out to me.

Don't be shy about contacting me

Under my lovely mug shot on the left, you will notice a link that shows my availability status. This is an open invitation for you to contact me, agree with me, disagree with me, give me feedback or just plain network.

You do not need any conferencing software on your side, just Flash, which you most likely already have along with your browser.

So go ahead, give it a try - the worst that will happen is that you will see a live version of me, not just my mugshot:)

To DEMO or not to DEMO

In my opinion, this is really not a question! If you have a new cool product or service to launch, and if you can convince Chris Shipley to invite you to DEMO - run, don't walk. We have been invited to launch our new product at DEMO and look forward to being there in a few weeks. For me personally, this will be the fifth or sixth time that I am launching a product at DEMO, and I love it.

DEMO is not an inexpensive proposition, but it is most certainly worth it. Depending on how many people you send, and what your equipment needs are, you could spend anywhere from $20K-$30K. So what do you get in exchange?

First you get to present your product/service to a highly qualified audience composed of senior press, VCs, corporate customer prospects, as well as fellow demonstrators. Second, you get multiple opportunities to give your spiel - you will constantly have the answer the question: so what do you guys do? Third, you will be able to meet and talk with potential partners for your business. Fourth, you will have a damn good time! DEMO's schedule and activities are structured to assist you with lots of networking opportunities, but you have to take advantage of them.

As a result, DEMO should not be taken lightly. Be really prepared with your "elevator" speech, rehearse your demo multiple times, bring lots of business cards, and don't be shy once you get there.

Look forward to seeing you there:)