By Jerry Rackley

Whatever the sophisticated definitions are, marketing is a form of communication.  We should spend time figuring out how to integrate our marketing campaigns, segment our markets, position our products and all the other specialized things we do.  Sometimes, however, we just need to pay attention to how we write.  Regardless of where our messages end up, most of them start in written form.  Writing, therefore, is an essential marketing skill.

As an adjunct professor of marketing at a major university, I wish I could assure you that the future of marketing copywriting is in safe hands.  Alas, it is not.  The opportunity I have on almost a weekly basis to review the written work of aspiring marketers doesn’t comfort me.  Granted, my sample size is limited, but I find few of my marketing peers who disagree with my assessment.

I’m convinced that we as marketers have to fight for our write.  Okay, the previous statement probably isn’t grammatically correct, but work with me – I’m trying to make a point.  So let’s revisit Frank L. Visco’s rules on “How to Write Good”, originally published in the June 1986 issue of Writers’ Digest:

1. Avoid Alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid clichés like the plague (they’re old hat).
4. Employ the vernacular
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations.  As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Profanity sucks.
15. Be more or less specific.
16. Understatement is always best.
17. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
18. One word sentences?  Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
20. The passive voice is to be avoided.
21. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
22. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
23. Who needs rhetorical questions?

Though not exhaustive, this list is a great start for marketing writers to embrace.  To complete it, I would add, “don’t use no double negatives.” My pet peeve is #20. What’s yours?

By Jerry Rackley

If you do business successfully in a free market, it’s virtually guaranteed that you’ll have competition.  It doesn’t matter if you’re the market leader or a niche player, you have keep watch over what your competitors are doing.  Failure to do so invites disaster, or at least some nasty surprises.

The tea trade has a fascinating history and provides a case study on competition, which I discovered in Sarah Rose’s “For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World’s Favorite Drink and Changed History”.  In the mid-19^th century, China was the sole source for tea of any quality or quantity.  The British Empire had the upper hand when it came to trading with China for tea, but realized that the advantage was precarious.  Unwilling to entertain the notion of doing without tea, the East India Company hatched a plan.  It would make a preemptive strike and steal the intellectual property necessary to cultivate tea in the Darjeeling region of colonial India, effectively breaking the Chinese tea monopoly.

This industrial espionage mission was handed to Robert Fortune, an aspiring botanist.  Despite the fact that he was a foreigner with no knowledge of the Chinese people, culture or land, he succeeded.  Fortune smuggled thousands of tea plants, seeds and the know-how to cultivate and process tea to India.  The Chinese had no idea their pockets were being picked until it was too late.  Within 20 years of Fortune’s successful act of industrial espionage, the global tea trade had shifted from China to India.

The economic ramifications of this successful heist were amazingly widespread.  Once a luxury, tea became accessible to the masses. As Britain consumed more tea, the mortality rate dropped because tea was made with boiling water that killed water-borne pathogens, like cholera.  Before tea drinking was in vogue, factory workers nourished themselves with beer and ale, consumption that placed huge demands on British agricultural production, consuming up to half the annual wheat harvest.  And the machinery of the Industrial Revolution did not tolerate “buzzed” workers well.  Tea sweetened with sugar and milk provided a cheap, dense source of protein and calories.  Rose asserts that European countries where alcohol continued as the staple drink lagged Britain 50 years in the process of industrialization.

This story brings a harsh truth about competition into clear focus.  It is naïve to think that your competitors will play by your rules, or that those rules, if fair today, will remain unchanged.  Your competitors won’t always play fair, and the honest combatants always seem to fall victim to those with fewer scruples.  Recognize that some will not compete fairly even when you do.

Understand what’s at stake, not just for you but also for your competitors.  If you’re a market leader, you may feel you have your leadership position at stake.  Consider what’s at stake for the market follower:  survival.  When the stakes are that high, companies exhibit great determination to stay in the game.  It’s important to understand the stakes for you and all your competitors, because there usually isn’t parity.  When the stakes are high, what might your competitors do?

Demand Metric has tools to help you keep an eye on your competition like the Competitor Analysis Tool for evaluating your competition across a set of value drivers, such as Service Quality, Reputation, Awareness and Innovation.  Based on your inputs, this tool generates a differentiation chart that graphically depicts the areas of strength and weakness for each competitor, including your company.  Whether you use this tool or not, having a strategy for tracking and analyzing your competitors is not just critical to your success, but often your survival.  The Chinese never saw it coming.  Would you?

By Charles Gold, Demand Metric member

In the beginning there was technology.  We talked about features (it’s got an x-57 flux interface!).  Then there were benefits (tastes great, and it’s less filling!).  We’re now in the Age of Me.  People want products that specifically talk to their needs, and they want to be talked to as human beings. In the Age of Me, our B2B life is heavily shaped by our B2C experiences.

We need to make all of our marketing efforts more about the human beings who will use our products and influence or make buying decisions. By “marketing”  I mean Marketing (from strategy to tactics) and by “all” I mean all.  Product, pricing, promotion, distribution.

I’ve written recently about the future of enterprise sales.  But it’s about much more than how we sell.  It’s about what we sell, how it’s packaged, and how we talk about it.   Humbly submitted, here’s my manifesto for the new age, the Age of Me.

Demand Metric member Charles Gold is a career software marketer who believes passionately that as the software market matures, marketing is rapidly becoming the thing that sets winners apart from also-rans.   For nearly 20 years, he has worked with start-ups and established public companies as a senior executive in both marketing and product management.  He currently serves at the Chief Marketing Officer at Sonatype, an enterprise open source software vendor. Charles lives in Fairfax Virginia with his wife, three kids, and a rescue dog.  You can find him on Twitter at @chasgold and blogging on software marketing at cgoldmarketing.com.

By Charles Gold, Demand Metric member

For a very long time, software companies have gone to market in the same way.  Using a combination of field reps, inside sales, and telemarketing they targeted decision makers and endured long sales cycles.  They traveled to customer sites and took people to dinner. They used Powerpoints and glossy sales collateral to communicate their message.   They teamed up with marketing to generate and process leads.   They invested months in building relationships and were (often) rewarded with six figure wins.   And the system worked.  Billions of dollars of software have been sold this way.

But here’s a secret:  This model is dead.  Over.  Done.  But it’s dying slowly — especially within large, established software companies.   Startups are innovating, not just in technology, but in the way they go to market.

They’re selling at lower levels in their target organizations, they’re enabling bite-size purchases, they’re letting prospects sell themselves via free trials that deliver real value.  In short, they’re transforming the way software is purchased — in a new customer-centric way.  Customers are buying the way they want to buy — not the way the vendor wants to sell.

This new system is working — incredibly well.  If you’re selling software, you should pay attention — the world has changed and it’s time to get on board.   Read the full post at http://bit.ly/Az3QVd

Demand Metric member Charles Gold is a career software marketer who believes passionately that as the software market matures, marketing is rapidly becoming the thing that sets winners apart from also-rans.   For nearly 20 years, he has worked with start-ups and established public companies as a senior executive in both marketing and product management.  He currently serves at the Chief Marketing Officer at Sonatype, an enterprise open source software vendor. Charles lives in Fairfax Virginia with his wife, three kids, and a rescue dog.  You can find him on Twitter at @chasgold and blogging on software marketing at cgoldmarketing.com.

Get the full benefit from your Demand Metric membership by attending a free New Member Orientation webinar. Click on any session listed below to register:

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Each session lasts 20 minutes.

By Jerry Rackley

I recently attempted to dialogue with a journalist who was doing a story about out-of-the-box marketing ideas.  I haven’t yet seen the story, but I was bold enough to make a prediction to her in my email:

“I suspect you’ll get fewer, quality ideas than you’d like because the companies that are really good at coming up with these ideas use them to gain a competitive advantage.  They’re unlikely to pull back the curtain and let everyone see what they’ve got and how they do it.”

Or, as a former boss of mine used to say, you’re better off attending a presentation on best practices than giving one.

The greatness of out-of-the-box marketing ideas depends on context.  I could come up with a fantastic idea (maybe two) for a B2B tech company that is senseless for a B2C, mom-and-pop retailer.  And vice versa.  The magic to developing “proven” ideas that are out-of-the-box is to consider what is unique about each product or service, the market for it and the environment in which it is sold.

Several years ago, I attended a large IT/tech trade show in Las Vegas.  I had to use the men’s room, and when I went in, I discovered that some IT security company that was exhibiting at the show had placed customized strainers in all the urinals that said “How do you know the guy next to you isn’t looking at your downstream data?’”  Absolutely brilliant, and I’m betting it didn’t cost very much.  And as you can see from this example, this great idea would only work for a few companies and in a few settings.

The simple fact that someone in the media will publish a list of out-of-the-box marketing ideas will put them into broader circulation, ultimately reducing their effectiveness.  So if you discover an idea with lots of appeal, my advice is to jump right on it before everyone starts doing it and it loses its cachet.

It is good to share out-of-the-box marketing ideas, and I’m certainly not above copying someone else’s brilliance.  The advice I would also give is to copy not just the idea, but also the process or culture that produced those ideas.  It’s just like the old adage: give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and he feeds himself for a lifetime.

Editors note: this is the third post in a series we have invited some of our partners and members to contribute.

Mark Ogne is Marketing Leader – Transformative Content at Acxiom.  Read more of Mark’s insights on his blog. He shares these exhortations for marketers for this new year:

Recommendations, trends and challenges will be well aligned in 2012. Empowered consumers, proliferation of media options and the torrent of data will make it very difficult for brands to identify and understand their high value audiences, to place media impressions at the right time and place, and distill insight as a byproduct of big data.

Three items I suggest that marketers keep in mind during the year:

1. Many brands struggle to bring together anonymous, semi-identifiable and identifiable data to form a solid view if their customer engagement. A strategic focus to digest these forms of data and the ability to recognize and address customers in inbound and outbound conversations will become increasingly important.
2. To get beyond rear view mirror campaign ROI, marketers should facilitate Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) investment decisions where they align customer investment strategy relative to a combined current and future CLV potential. Ultimately, the objective should be to increase customer portfolio value, a close proxy to increasing shareholder value.
3. Marketers should enhance channel program execution with customer-based focus and message control. Learn how to better market at the customer level, this will be the trend to discuss next year!

Founded in 1918, the Laboratory Products Association (LPA) serves over 100 member companies with market information, education and opportunities to network that enables them to succeed and compete in the global marketplace.

One of the ways the LPA has positioned its members for success is through a partnership with Demand Metric that provides LPA members free access to the Demand Metric library of marketing tools and templates.

Partnership Origins

The seeds for the LPA’s partnership with Demand Metric were planted during the 2008 LPA annual meeting. Through another organization, some LPA members had experienced the value of Demand Metric marketing tools.  They recommended to Clark Mulligan, LPA President, that he explore providing these tools as an  LPA member benefit.

“It sounded interesting,” said Mulligan.  “Part of my job is to find new ways to provide more value to LPA members.  I got in touch with Demand Metric, had a few discussions about developing a partnership and launched it to our members on December 19, 2008.”

Partnership Parameters

This partnership provides each LPA member company with free access to the Demand Metric library of premium content, over 350 marketing tools and templates.  LPA members can also purchase additional services from Demand Metric at a discounted rate.

Partnership Performance

With Demand Metric, LPA members have access to tools that supplement their expertise and provide shortcuts to doing things like budgeting, managing products, creating marketing plans, assessing processes, creating RFPs, tracking metrics and many other marketing tasks.

In the years since the partnership was formed, Mulligan has received favorable comments about the benefits his members are getting from Demand Metric.  “It has saved them money because they haven’t had to hire outside resources, or re-invent the wheel.  It is providing value to our members, especially the smaller companies who don’t have marketing resources available.”

Mulligan knows of what he speaks.  Each year, he surveys his members to find out where they’re getting value from the LPA.  In the most recent survey, 70% of respondents indicated they have utilized Demand Metric tools in some way.  “Our members are definitely using Demand Metric and finding value in it,” said Mulligan.

Partnership Value

That the LPA continues to provide Demand Metric access as a member benefit is a testament to the value it provides.  “When the relationship began, Demand Metric offered 200 tools, now there are more than 350 – it has nearly doubled,” Mulligan concludes.  “I like that Demand Metric continues to be responsive to its customers and expand its offerings through additional content.  Demand Metric is a source of cutting edge tools and templates.  Our partnership with Demand Metric is a great business resource we can provide our members to help them improve their operations and the bottom line.”

Editors note: this is the second post in a series we have invited some of our partners and members to contribute.

Karen See (Twitter: karenlsee), revenue growth zealot and co-founder of Abovo Partners, suggests these resolutions:

Don’t drown your market!

Just because you’ve got a contact into your database doesn’t mean your market wants to hear from you EVERY DAY! With so much coming in, I now find myself just hitting “delete” versus dealing with the volume of unread e-mails and blogs.

Today I received a notice from a social media company saying they noticed I wasn’t opening their messages very often, so they were changing my settings for me from daily to weekly. I really appreciated that … and am now more likely to re-engage.

Know why you win and why you don’t.

This step in the sales process is so often disregarded as the next fire rages. But without this insight (often best gathered by “outsiders/consultants” for non-biased listening), the knee jerk reaction is to just throw more stuff against the wall and hope something sticks.

The cost for trying to get an opportunity closed is usually the same (or close) … whether you come in 1st, 2nd or 3rd. The difference is #1 recoups the investment while #2 and #3 not only don’t recoup the cost, they don’t make anticipated revenues. That’s a double-whammy that usually is resolved by doing deep-dive due diligence on past performance.

*   *   *

Jeff Pedowitz, president and CEO of The Pedowitz Group, a revenue marketing agency, shares this one:

All marketers should resolve to be accountable for revenue and tie part of their compensation to marketing’s contribution to revenue.

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Lauren Carlson, analyst for MA Software Advice, wraps this post up with these resolution recommendations:

Revenue Performance Management

RPM isn’t the next big acronym, but it’s a pretty big deal. Eloqua and Marketo have been championing the idea of “Revenue Performance Management” as the next great frontier in marketing. RPM is all about harnessing data and analytics, and using it to prove marketing’s impact on the bottom line. I think you can call it whatever you want, but the point is that marketing needs to take a more active role in proving their impact on revenue, and that means using the tools available to help do that.

Figure social media out

I spoke with Brian Solis, social media guru, and he said that currently, most companies are using social media as yet another bullhorn from which to blast their message. I think marketers and professionals in general need to figure out the most effective way to use social media to benefit their company. There are thought leadership pieces being put out every day on this topic. So, in 2012, marketers need to take an active interest in social media and actually figure out how to use it in order to reap the greatest benefits.

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These gems of wisdom are humbling and inspiring at the same time and confirm that the Demand Metric community is a repository of marketing genius.  You’re in this genius pool (pardon the pun) too.  Share your insight for 2012 with us.

Editors note: we have invited some of our partners and members to share their wisdom in the form of New Year’s resolutions for Marketers.  This first installment comes from Stephan Sorger, Partner at On Demand Advisors.  What would you share?  Join the conversation – enter your comments below.

To look forward, it helps to look back. Therefore, I will cite six great quotes from the past, and show how they inspire six great resolutions for the future.

1. Lord Kelvin: ”If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

Resolution: Establish metric-oriented management. Set values that specify performance (completion time, sales rate, cost per unit, and so on) so you can track performance, and take corrective action as necessary.

2. Mort Zuckerman: “Before you build a better mousetrap, it helps to know if there are any mice out there.”  

Resolution: Size the market before investing in it. In other words, look before you leap. I always recommend using multiple methods to determine market size. Don’t just look it up in an analyst report. Do top-down and bottom-up sizing to be sure.

3. Coco Chanel: “In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different.” 

Resolution: Differentiation is essential. Too many companies are out there making me-too products and services, claiming they’re “the next Facebook.” Stake new ground. Be different, as the old Apple ads used to say.

4. Steve Jobs: “Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”

Resolution: Just say NO to excess. Speaking of Apple, Steve Jobs showed restraint in the product road map (just a few products, but all great) and the feature set (elegant, not excessive). Find out what your customers crave, and make those features great.

5. Arnaud de Bourchgrave: ”I’ve learned that any political forecasting has made astrology look respectable.”

Resolution: Be wary of “Hockey-Stick” forecasts. I advise clients to show caution when they forecast rapid (or even exponential!) adoption, especially for radical new products and services. The Hockey-Stick forecast, which climbs unrealistically quickly, can set up false expectations and doom an otherwise promising strategy.

6. Scott Roeben:  “Sex is like art. Most of it is pretty bad, and the good stuff is out of your price range.”

Resolution: Show savvy in pricing strategy. Pricing is more important than most people think. It is tempting to just take the cost and add 20%, but you are doing yourself an injustice. Look at the price premium commanded by great brands such as Apple, Louis Vuitton, and Rolex. Pricing plays a pivotal role in their go-to-market strategy, and it should in your company, too.

Here’s to a happy and prosperous 2012!

Stephan Sorger is a Certified Management Consultant and Partner at On Demand Advisors, a strategic consulting firm.  He is also an instructor for UC Berkeley at their San Francisco extension, and author of the new book, “Marketing Planning: Where Strategy Meets Action.” Learn more at www.StephanSorger.com.