The art of positioning: New Nano Technology ..

..Could Revolutionize Server Cooling

Excerpts: “Some pretty smart folk from Sweden’s Institute of Technology recently discovered that if you add nanoparticles to water, you can significantly improve its ability to conduct heat to the tune of 60 percent. This discovery could be a boon to server farms, which are notorious power hogs because of the level of power needed to keep everything chilly, or at least from burning up.”

Why am I talking about this?

Not because this has suddenly turned into a technology blog; far less a nano-tech blog.

Because, this is just a brilliant way of positioning a barely understood technology, in a language that all of us understand and focusing on a benefit that we can all understand, tying up with “Green” as a defining leitmotif in the bargain.

Why would you not be interested? And spread the story?

Imagine, however, that the company positioned this as a technology that allows the water to cool faster; boring!

Now, all of sudden, there is a buzz; a positive buzz. We want this to succeed; we do not want to feel guilty about our carbon foot-print.

Just brilliant positioning.

Social media mesh with conventional CRM- Part 2

Slave to metrics? Is that bad?
As I was sitting down to write this post, my new Twitter friend, @poojalapasia sent me this link on Twitter CEOs Are Social Media Slackers. This, of course, comes as no surprise. Most big-company CEOs tend to be conservative and deeply suspicious of social media. Even if they are convinced of the disruptive potential of Social Media, they may not be so convinced of its ability to help consolidate an existing market position.
But, if you are running a small to medium enterprise which sells to other businesses and you need to establish a connect and build and nurture those connects with empoyees of other enterprises to prosper, social media will help a lot more than older means of communication.
The trouble is that while marcom metrics have remained Web 1.0 (very transactional), social media is all web 2.0. The simplest way to understand the difference is that Web 1.0 is largely quantitative; how many visitors, how many clicks and so on. Social media is more “qualitative”. It is not so much how many people follow you on Twtter any more (that matters too!) but more like, how well do they fit the target profile, the quality of the conversation and finally is your audience going to actively spread the word about you.
Do you see ads on Facebook?
I have seen lots of discussions and articles lately where this question gets asked. But, that is a wrong question which is being asked because of the inability of media houses to stop looking at every piece of real estate as a bill-board. Social media is about engagement over a long time; it is not about transactions. I may not see ads, but I am becoming a fan of something or other everyday, I am adding applications and games to my profile and I am joining various groups and forums.
If the only possibility you see in Facebook is a banner ad, then you really need a rethink.
How many leads did you get or “close” from Linkedin?
Let me answer this by saying, even though, it is possible to mark the source of a lead as Linkedin (or FB or Twitter), the real value of social networking sites is not the number of leads that you get through them, but the credibility that you build on them so that your messages (or messengers!) find a willing recipient.
Is there a meeting point?
My take is that CRM should welcome social media as social media should welcome CRM. CRM can include a lot of the more qualitative parameters from social media engagements with customers. Like trending topics in Twitter can help drive discussions in a forum which can be hosted on your website. You have to drive engagement with your key prospects or advocates on these fora to progress the sales cycle.
Where is this useful? One clear area where this can work is funneling the “backflow” leads (leads supplied by marketing, rejected by sales as premature) which need to be put into a nurturing system. Forums and blogs which have a lively participation, even if not all of it complimentary, finally convince prospects a lot more about the “support system” than individual actions from company people will.
There are metrics, and there are metrics..
I guess, what I am trying to get at is that it is wrong to apply old style transactional metrics to Social Media.
But, even without the metrics, I am convinced that social media is a great new way and effective way of connecting with people that matter and that include customers. Because it mirrors the way we actually connect to people in real life.

Acknowledgements:
1. Prem K Aparanji for pointing to this great resource on CRM on the web. Great discussion underway, right now, over a period of 30 days on social media. Certainly the place to visit if you want more in-depth discussions on social media.

The chicken and the egg

What comes first?

In an ideal business world, you can:

1. Have your advertising agency release the ad and pay them from the revenue you realised from the “sales leads”.
2. Get the best marketing research done and have your fortunes foretold; all before starting to sell and get revenue in the door.
3.  Grow your business purely organically and funded only through internal accruals.

If this sounds like a dream; too right. It is.

So, you are a start-up and you want to grow the business, add to your portfolio, improve your product quality, set up a customer service department? Bad news. You have few people; motivation is a problem as is quality. And cash flow is tight.
You want sales to grow, but can’t afford a lot of salesmen. And, you certainly want your salesmen to call on customers who have evinced a desire to buy or talk business. You want qualified sales leads. You want to “pull”. Who will run this for you?
Good marketing talent costs money. And, great marketing talent does not want to work for a small company, especially if it is a startup.  You want to hire freshers and train them up; problem is, you do not have trainers.

Consider outsourcing

A lot of companies have been outsourcing one of a kind or infrequent activities like building customer databases or gruntwork like posting letters and mailing even now. But, what you might want to consider is getting part-time access to outside talent.

Outside talent can help design your campaigns, customer databases, sales management systems: deadline driven intense activities that require expertise that you do not need inhouse. After all, if you do a yearly planning excercise and you need an experienced marketing head on board for about 15 days to a month, why not look for him/ her outside?

Similarly, tactical implementation of marketing plans can largely be left to outsiders. From profiling the target audience to appropriate messaging to the target audience; from deciding the media choice for communication to creating the communication to capturing the leads and passing the leads on to your sales.

All when you need them.

Tu Sprite pee!

Just a short post on lazy, nay clueless advertisers. And, things are getting worse, not better.

Years back, when Sourav Ganguly was dropped from the Indian cricket team, and it did not look likely that he will ever make it back, he disappeared from all advertisements very soon as well. Much as Ganguly fans would contest this, a player’s visual appeal (ability to move sales stock!) is linked to his playing days.

Why am I reminded of this? Because, Sprite is going against all marketing wisdom, even commonsense; asking folks to open bottles of Sprite in the currently running ad in the hope that they get to meet Shahrukh and the Kolkata Knight Riders team.

There are several things that are wrong with this ad. Firstly, KKR might be a great brand (some study quotes their brand value as the highest among all the teams, inspite of finishing last in IPL), but surely, cricket audiences are not enthused about wanting to meet resounding losers in a competitions; one that is still going on?
And, do they expect KKR to have such strong fan following outside of Kolkata to warrant mass adulation of the kind that is needed for people to be motivated to open Sprite bottles in preference to some other?

Shahrukh does have a multicity appeal and so does Sourav. But both of them have done much in the last 30 days to dissipate their appeal. Shahrukh will gain it back with his next hit, whenever it is. But, KKR is still at least a year away from being a winning brand.
Meeting KKR? Huh! Show me the money!

Here’s what must have happened. Some brand manager spent six months coming up with a message and haggled with many teams, owners and players to finally rope in KKR/ Shahrukh as the star-cast.
Then he and his agency took eons to find dates on Shahrukh’s calendar, shot the ad at enormous expense and  by the time they were done, KKR were on their way home.
Perhaps this was planned. Perhaps they honestly believed that KKR would reach the semis, perhaps go all the way. So, they booked media space and planned their blitzkrieg  to co-incide with the fag-end of the IPL. Alas.

Till such time, you can put this down to laziness; maybe even bad luck. Lots of us shared their optimism regarding KKR’s progress in the torunament. But, to continue to run the same ads, when they clearly are counterproductive – “what a bunch of losers” – is inexplicable. If the media slots can’t be cancelled, whu not run one of several canned advertisements they surely have?