“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”

I’m not sure when Warren Buffet uttered those words, or in what context, but I have every reason to listen to and embrace that type of thinking.

Chris Brogan is no Warren Buffet, but he is no stranger to building businesses and personal celebrity. He set the marketing world on fire yesterday when he published his daily rate - the rate a business pays (or at least is asked to pay) to occupy his full attention span for a day. The rate is around $22,000. For those of you who haven’t seen that number previously, insert your yikes, holy s%^&, and no ways here.

That’s more than Barack Obama earns on a daily basis to address issues far more important than marketing strategy. That’s 1.5 times what Kevin Durant, the NBA’s second-leading scorer, makes on a daily basis.

I love the fact that Brogan published it. He clearly thinks - and more importantly his paying clients think - that his contribution in a day is worth $22,000 or more.

Particularly in the marketing world, we see too much of the opposite these days. Within the next 5 minutes, I can likely find a $500 website offering, or a $49/month consulting package, or someone offering a $15 hourly rate on high quality copywriting. It’s ugly, and whether marketing folks like to admit it or not, it has a negative impact on all of us.

Just today, we had to make 2 or 3 tough pricing decisions in our business. Fortunately, we have a pretty simple set of questions we ask ourselves when we’re trying to determine pricing.

• How much value can we create for the client?

• How much value does the work create for Right Source Marketing?

• At what level of revenue and/or profit can we genuinely get excited to do the work for the client, ensuring that we’ll deliver the optimal experience for the client and for Right Source?

Yes, we consider hard costs. Yes, we consider time and effort. Yes, we consider what the market will bear. That being said, our primary considerations are value (for the client and for us) and level of excitement.

Old models based on flawed pricing assumptions are falling by the wayside daily. You - as a marketing professional, firm or agency - have two choices. Succumb to the pressure of price, or resist that temptation and pitch and deliver value.

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing. Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post. Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

Earlier this week, the Pew Research Center released their most recent study Understanding the Participatory News Consumer, which contained quite a few interesting nuggets for marketers.

First, the Internet now has surpassed newspapers and radio to become the third most popular news platform in the U.S.  According to Pew:

The internet and mobile technologies are at the center of the story of how people’s relationship to news is changing. In today’s new multi-platform media environment, news is becoming portable, personalized, and participatory:

• Portable: 33% of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.
• Personalized: 28% of internet users have customized their home page to include news from sources and on topics that particularly interest them.
• Participatory: 37% of internet users have contributed to the creation of news, commented about it, or disseminated it via postings on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.

Now for some of us, this research data didn’t really tell you anything new, just put out some numbers confirming existing suspicions.  After all, we live in a world where Google’s Market Cap exceeds that of the venerable GE .  And yet, we see everyday that many companies still aren’t placing enough value on their online marketing presence.

Typically, this isn’t by intentionally avoiding the online side, but because, as one client often expresses it to me “We don’t know what we don’t know.”  With that in mind, here’s the first of a couple posts on how to make sure you are taking maximum advantage of your online opportunities.

Step 1: Take a Hard and Fair Look at What You Are Doing Now - And How it Fits With Your Overall Marketing Plan

Before you know where you are going, you need to figure out where you are.  Take a look at your strengths, what are you doing online now that is working?   Where are your areas of improvement?  And most importantly, what does this part of your marketing plan look like?  This piece is critical, as your Interactive Marketing Plan needs to be integrated with your overall marketing plan.

If you have the internal resources to do this assessment - great.  Often, however, that isn’t the case, or you may benefit from an outside set of eyes, brains and experiences (remember “We don’t know what we don’t know?”).  For our clients, we have a process called Interactive Shift and typically address the following areas:

• Marketing strategy
• Integration between traditional and interactive marketing strategy and tactics
• Website design
• Website usability
• Website content
• Search engine optimization
• Pay-per-click search engine marketing
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• Blogging
• Website analytics
• CRM

Regardless of if you do it yourself or work with an outside expert, coming out of this first step you should now have a sense of everything you are doing online, your strengths and potential areas for improvement.

Now it’s on to Step 2, which I’ll cover in my next post…

Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

I love software. I use software as a consumer. I use software as a businessperson. I use relatively simple software for simple needs - Outlook for email, Salesforce for CRM, QuickBooks for accounting, WordPress and others for publishing and content management, and so on and so forth. I also make part of my living from advising and providing services to software companies, and those services often include software recommendations.

Great software is irreplaceable. Most software is easily replicated, but nonetheless irreplaceable. As a matter of fact, some types of software are so irreplaceable that they have even made certain types of people…well, replaceable.

Marketing software comes in a lot of flavors - CMS, CRM, Analytics, Marketing Automation, PPC Management, Email Marketing - and can help you accomplish many of your marketing goals.

Here’s what it can’t do. It can’t build your marketing plan. It can’t develop your core message. It can’t replace leadership. It can’t generate creative ideas. Software is just a tool, not a marketing strategy.

Do Businesses Actually Think Software Can Solve all Marketing Problems?

Yes, some do. The blame for this lies with both the software providers and the business decision-makers.

I met with well-respected software executive a few weeks back to discuss some upcoming projects. He makes and sells B2B software, and therefore needs to market his B2B software. We discussed how we work with software companies, tossed around ideas about what is working from a lead generation and nurturing standpoint, and made some plans to address some of his company’s immediate needs. Towards the end of the conversation, he asked a seemingly innocent question:

“What about using HubSpot? Seems like a pretty sophisticated, comprehensive solution. What are your thoughts?”

My problem wasn’t the question. It wasn’t the mention of HubSpot, or software in general. It was the implication that this type of software could really represent a “plug and play” marketing solution. Marketing strategy, design, tactics and tracking in a box. Fill out a few forms, and…BAM, you just built a world-class marketing program.

(Disclaimer: This post is not a rant about HubSpot. I don’t know a single person that works for the company. I’ve never even seen their products, never hired them for their services. I am familiar with the model they are pursuing because they’ve been pretty transparent about it (kudos to them) and familiar with the company because they’ve been very smart about marketing their wares (kudos again). Hell, I even invested in a company that was designed to deliver on the same promise HubSpot wants to deliver on.)

Anyway, I answered the question in the most diplomatic way I could think of, and we moved on to other topics of discussion. That being said, the brief conversation clearly stuck with me and inspired this post.

So What’s the Real Problem You Are Getting At?

The real problem is two-fold.

First, many software companies are being deceptive. Deceptive with their messaging. Deceptive with their sales tactics. Even deceptive with how they represent the people they employ.

Second, while many of these software companies profess to “make your business stand out”, in the end they are contributing to the “Me Too Marketing” that results in every company looking like a mirror image of the next one. Sure, they put a nice messaging spin around it. I’ve seen Find/Get/Keep. I’ve seen Find/Convert/Close. And one more: Turn Searches into Sales. Is that all that marketing is about? Is it that simple?

Let’s dive into the deception topic quickly by way of example. One particular company raised a boatload of money a few years back and used it to build what amounts to an automated pay-per-click search engine marketing platform. They also used the money to hire “Internet Marketing Consultants” in bulk, in every major city, and now in secondary markets as well. Here’s the problem. These “Internet Marketing Consultants” are media salespeople. The only consulting they do is helping their small business clients figure out whether to spend 5k or 10k per month on…you guessed it, their pay-per-click platform. Need I say more? Is that what a company really wants out of their “Internet Marketing Consultant”?

And now, let’s get into the “Me Too” issue. I love processes. I love systems. I love software (really, I do). If everyone follows the same “rules of the game” put forth by the same 2-3 software companies, social media superheros, or agencies, then we’re just building factories. Factories that find, get and keep. Factories that listen, engage, connect. Factories that crank out the same website, PPC campaign, email template or landing pages as the next guy.

It’s a beautiful thing that so many entrepreneurs (and accompanying businesses) have been created over the last 10-15 years. It would be awfully sad for those same entrepreneurs - after exhausting the requisite blood, sweat and tears - to look, feel and operate just like the next guy. That will make for a lot of followers, and very few leaders.

My Advice to Businesses

Strive to be different. Sure, go ahead and look at the 800 pound gorilla, then decide to do something different.

Recognize that no piece of software can replace strategy.

Recognize that no piece of software can replace a well thought out plan.

Recognize that no piece of software can replace talented people.

If marketing software continues to encroach upon the “human” facets of marketing, will all marketers just become software consultants who know how to operate the latest and greatest on-demand, dashboard-based, WYSIWYG, web-based solution?

If so, I’ll certainly take myself out of the game. Maybe I’ll just write blog posts.

Oh wait. That won’t work. Just read about a new software company that reads your mind, writes and formats your blog posts, distributes them, reads and responds to comments, and even compiles all the good ones into an e-book. Sigh.

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing. Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post. Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

Search marketing is one of the great tools in a marketer’s arsenal.  We help our clients with search and find it’s often one of their most effective lead generation vehicles.  That being said, I’m going to take a few minutes and pick on pay per click search here because, in so many cases, businesses are getting sold on paid search as a “full marketing solution” — and they’re believing it.  In these cases the reality is it’s usually being sold by salespeople disguised as marketers who only really look at the media side of marketing (Yeah, you know who you are!), and not all the other facets.

I could have chosen social media, broadcast or a host of other channels - it’s not this specific channel that I have an issue with as much as the focus on any one channel as some sort of magic bullet.  But, for some reason we see this in the search channel far more than any of the others.  Likely this is because the ability to so directly track — spend to searches to clicks to leads/sales to CPA — creates such a clean picture that it’s tough to argue against continuing to feed that success until it’s maxed out.  And once maxed out then, and only then only then, moving on to another channel.

The problem with that single channel focus, however, is it is incredibly risky.  Not Shaun White, Half-Pipe X-Games Cool risky but Russian Roulette Foolish risky.  The reason is simple - all of your eggs are now firmly placed in one basket.  And we all know the rest of that cliché.  And we all also know this - the marketing landscape is constantly changing, and now more rapidly than ever before.

So, maybe paid search is knocking it out of the park for you today, but what happens if Google adjusts the rules of AdWords again?  Or when Yahoo and Bing unify their platform in the near future with their deal now having cleared the biggest regulatory hurdles?  Or with just the fact that the amount of competitors you’ll find in paid search now looks to be far greater than even 2 or 3 years ago with later adopters coming to the table, the growth of automated platforms, locally focused management tools and a host of other reasons.  By now you can certainly see where I’m going with this.  It’s incredibly likely that no matter your industry, there isn’t just one magic bullet but an integrated mix of tactics.

Rather than getting sold on pouring everything you have into paid search, the better move is to diversify your tactics.  As Mike often says, think of your marketing approach like a stock portfolio.  By investing in and testing multiple channels, and adjusting based on which ones succeed and fail, you’ll have multiple sources of leads/sales and not be exposed to the risk of just one channel.  Certainly include paid search in the mix, but don’t make it your only ingredient.  Because that doesn’t make you X-Games Cool, it makes you Russian Roulette Crazy.

Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

About six months ago, I was invited to meet with a top 10 Washington D.C. law firm to discuss helping the firm address its social media and search engine marketing strategy. I was very excited about the meeting. In my mind, since this law firm was comprised of sophisticated, well-educated and talented people, we’d likely be able to uncover some unique marketing opportunities.

We talked search engine marketing. The firm had never addressed it formally. We talked social media. This area had not been addressed either. We talked website. Built 5 years ago, and the four folks in this meeting had no idea how to change it or who makes changes to it. OK, so this is going to be fun - a green field if you will. That was my mindset.

Well, at least that was my mindset until I asked the following question:

“What is it that makes you guys different from the thousands of other large law firms? What differentiates you from the competition?”

A seemingly innocent, basic marketing question. Actually, it’s not even a marketing question. That’s a business question, one that every single employee in the organization ought to be able to answer.

Someone gave an answer, but all I heard was stumble, bumble, stumble…our partners are world-reknowned…stumble, bumble, stumble….we have 10 offices in the U.S. alone….stumble, bumble, stumble…we’re very well-known in real estate…stumble, bumble, stumble.

Unfortunately, this does not represent a unique scenario in the professional services category. More than any other industry, professional services firms struggle with building a marketing strategy that creates some separation from the pack. Instead, they fall into the “me too” marketing trap over and over and over again.

A lot of professional services firms do look the same from the outside. They offer the same services. Same rates. Same structure. Same types of people. Same tired glossy brochure. There is no easy fix for this problem, however, there are some clear mindset changes your firm can embrace in order to start creating separation:

1) Stop listening to the same 5 - 10 people that every other firm is listening to.

Reputation matters. Connections within an industry matter. Vertical knowledge matters.

You know what else matters? Creative ideas and solutions. Perspectives carried over from other industries. People who challenge you to look at your firm’s identity in a different way than you’ve looked at it for the past 20 - 30 years.

Always look beyond the usual suspects. You may just find some new superheroes that can help you separate from the pack.

2) Dig deep and figure out what makes your firm different, and extend that differentiator - and the associated voice and tone - into every nook and cranny of the organization.

This starts with simple elements like websites, brochures, direct mail and other marketing vehicles and then trickles down into more complex areas like employee training and corporate culture.

To borrow a concept from our friends at The Dashboard Group, find your One Thing and then build everything around it.

3) Embrace the fact that your firm is not meant for every type of customer, employee, partner or stakeholder.

Playing a catch-all game of marketing rarely works, especially for B2B-oriented organizations. In figuring out your differentiator(s), you are also figuring out who and what doesn’t belong. That doesn’t mean your marketing message needs to scream “XXX types of companies need not apply”, but if you execute with precision then people and companies will self-select themselves.

4) Recruit the folks in your firm that are comfortable with “celebrity status” and self-promotion to help you evangelize the message and promote the firm.

Every professional services firm is made up of some very talented and well-known executives or partners. Some are comfortable with heavy self-promotion, some are not. Find the ones that are comfortable with becoming a bit of a celebrity figure, give them the direction and tools to
build that celebrity, and then let them loose.

5) Do try new methods and tactics. Do expect some failures. Do not let anything out the door that you are not comfortable with.

This may seem contradictory - am I saying that you should try new things, but only try those new things when you’re certain they’re perfect? No.

The reason everyone falls back to old methods, tactics and messaging is because it’s easy. Trying the new method, tactic and messaging is hard. It’s hard because it takes more time. It’s hard because it may requires hours of learning before executing. If you allow yourself the time to learn the new “thing”, and spend the time figuring how to execute the new “thing”, chances are you will be comfortable with the new “thing” as it leaves the door.

This is merely a quick list of changes you should consider in your professional services firm. There’s nothing wrong with your firm fitting into a particular category; as a matter of fact being part of a defined category can be very helpful for clients and prospects.

Just don’t count on a Me Too marketing strategy to put you in a leadership position in that category.

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing. Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post. Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

Whether you live in the Baltimore/Washington area like we do, or have only heard about it on the news, everyone knows we’ve been hit here by record snowfalls.  I saw yesterday that Baltimore just passed Syracuse NY for first place as the snowiest city in the U.S. this winter.

While technology has allowed me to continue working on just about everything I would in a normal day, some of the down time “snowed in” got me thinking about how people might use some of that down time to address items on the “marketing list” (you know, that list some people never quite get to).

With that mind, I went back through some of our posts to highlight 5 pretty tangible and actionable items you can think about, evaluate and improve right away.  And while I tried to avoid the “clip show” format — Didn’t you always hate when sitcoms did those episodes that were just recycled material? – It did seem to work best in this format.

So here you go – 5 Marketing Fixes for a Snowy Week.

1). Fix Your Core Messaging:

We all know how important it is to have a clear and consistent message – But do you have a messaging problem?

Your Marketing Message in 30 Seconds

2). Diversify Lead Generation:

In an ideal world, you are managing multiple buckets of leads, each bringing a different volume, a different quality, and a different set of metrics.  But are you putting all your eggs in one basket?

Buckets of Leads

3). Convert More Visitors to Leads:

Make sure you are getting the most from your online visitors.  Tune up your contact forms and landing pages by looking at 5 common problems.

Better Contact Forms = More Prospects

4). Improve Your Search Marketing:

Writing ad copy for pay-per-click ads, particularly for Google AdWords, is an extremely challenging task.  Are you getting the most from your paid search campaigns?

The Most Challenging Copywriting Job in the World

5). Update Your Website:

Your company may have all kinds of exciting things going on - new customers, partners, upcoming events, etc.  But if from the viewpoint of the random website visitor, you’re not doing much lately it may not be worth taking the next step to get in touch.

Keeping the Newsroom Fresh

Implementing these 5 fixes will help you to upgrade your marketing — And give you a reason to avoid that snow shovel.

Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow@willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

For those of you reading this in a location outside of the Mid-Atlantic, here’s a news flash: the Washington DC/Baltimore area is buried under 30 - 40 inches of snow and blizzard conditions right now. This leaves a lot of time for shoveling, family time, movies, sleep, and….doing business?

Joe Mechlinski, President of EntreQuest and a good friend to the Right Source Marketing team, wrote an interesting post today that describes why this type of time period is an excellent time to push your business forward, even when face-to-face meetings aren’t possible. I loved Joe’s post as I think that most people “throw away” weeks like this, but Joe forgot to include the one item that he was already engaged in - producing and distributing valuable content.

Much like the EntreQuest team, Right Source Marketing has had a busy week even with the nasty weather conditions. Much of our time in between shoveling has been spent developing proposals for existing and new clients who want to pursue aggressive content marketing programs. Of course, before we get to the point of putting together a proposal, the client needs to first understand what content marketing is, and why it’s become a very hot category.

So what is content marketing?

Let’s quickly address what content marketing is NOT in order to get to our definition.

Content marketing is not new. Some of the most sophisticated marketing organizations in the world have been using content marketing for years.

Content marketing is not advertising. Advertising still has its place, but most advertising is still designed to interrupt the consumer or businessperson and ask them to pay attention to a particular product, service, or offer.

Content marketing is not about just creating compelling pieces of content. The phrase “If you build it, they will come” does not apply here.

Content marketing is a marketing technique that stands on three pillars:

• Creating unique, valuable and relevant content for a particular target audience

• Distributing that content to that target audience in an organized and systematic manner, in order to…

• Encourage members of the target audience to read, think about and act on the content

In essence, a content marketing strategy requires your organization to become a custom publisher. You can publish blog posts like this one. You can publish ebooks. You can publish videos. You can publish white papers. The possibilities really are endless, which is why most organizations require a content marketing strategy for creation and distribution.

Why is content marketing so hot right now?

Joe Pulizzi of Junta42, one of the foremost experts on content marketing and a fellow judge of the B2B Twitter of the Year Awards, recently published the 2010 Content Marketing Spending Survey. Based on a survey of 259 marketing professionals, Junta42 found that content marketing spending will comprise 33% of the average marketing budget, up from 29% in 2008.

While I can likely come up with 20-25 reasons why content marketing is growing in popularity and sophistication, you don’t need to know 20-25. These five reasons should be enough to push organizations to pay more attention to content marketing:

1) “Traditional” advertising - the type that interrupts the audience - is not as efficient as it once was.

Consumers and businesspeople get hit with thousands of marketing messages every day. Most come from some form of advertising. That means we’re tuning most forms of advertising out. It also means that businesses can count on most forms of advertising to deliver less efficiency. Content marketing is one alternative.

2) Well-organized, flexible content is reusable for many different formats, vehicles and tactics.

I will publish this blog post on the Marketing Trenches blog. It will also get linked to and republished on at least a couple of other blogs. I can drop it in a PDF and turn it into an article. I will include it in our email newsletter. I will use it when we compile an ebook. It will be distributed on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. I can make a video clip or podcast that includes segments of this post.

You get the point.  Content is reusable over a long period of time and in lots of different places.

Content marketing can also be used by a variety of different departments and for a variety of business goals.  Marketing can use the content to establish the company’s management team as thought leaders.  The sales team can use content as a form of “air cover” to help nurture leads and accelerate sales cycles.  The human resources department might use content as a way of training new employees on the company’s core business philosophy.  The list goes on and on…

3) Content can address a specific problem or situation for the prospective customer, or even particular facets of the problem or situation.

I can make an argument that I should have listed this as the #1 reason to embrace a content marketing strategy. Most pieces of software don’t solve broad-reaching problems for an organization. Most professional services firms aren’t initially hired to audit and reorganize the entire organization.

People - consumers and businesspeople - are looking for specific solutions or advice on specific problems. Content marketing allows you - the marketer - to give consumers and businesspeople that specific solution or advice and build a real relationship.

4) Great content lives forever.

The print ad you designed and produced 7 years ago will likely never take center stage again. It may not even be saved in an archive.

Produce a great video or write an informative article and it lives forever. Just ask anyone who maintains an active blog, and they will tell you that they see site traffic, consumer engagement and lead generation from blogs posts that were originally created as far back as 2-3 years ago.

5) Without a content marketing strategy, you’re not making the most of your social media and SEO efforts.

There’s no disputing this one. Produce and distribute relevant and valuable content, and you will be rewarded with rankings on very important long-tail search terms, and eventually even on broader search terms.

Produce and distribute relevant and valuable content within social media properties, and you will be rewarded with relationships that go beyond the typical measures of follower, friend, and connection counts.

Where are the misunderstandings regarding content marketing? What other facets of content marketing do businesspeople need to be educated on? What are the other benefits that others have experienced from an organized content marketing strategy? I’d love to hear your comments and will respond to all.

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing. Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post. Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

So we talk about blogging a lot around here.  And why not - I mean after all Marketing Trenches IS a blog so it does make a whole lot of sense.  We’ve also found that our blog is one of the best, and probably THE best, tools for our business.

Yet despite that ringing endorsement, and all the reasons that companies, organizations and individuals blog, all too often we still run into the same most common objections to blogging.  So, I thought rather than listing all the reasons you should blog, many of which we have covered before, I would set about answering these 5 most common objections.

1). “This is going to require a lot of time and resources.”

This one is probably the most common, and does have some legitimacy.  In a recent client meeting I mentioned that starting a blog is really easy, blogging…not so much.  The point is, it takes some commitment and you need to have a level of dedication and consistency to it or it won’t pay off.  But unlike many other marketing endeavors, the investment here really isn’t much in the way of hard dollars, but instead is time.  There may be some initial spend in blog creation, hosting etc. but that is minimal.  Some folks even use free hosted blogging platforms, although for a variety of reasons we opt not too.  At any rate, the investment here is time.  And really, how many things that are worth doing don’t take some time commitment?   Set aside a small block of time a couple days a week to write and the impact will be big.  If you hit writer’s block and aren’t sure where to start, you can even call yourself and leave a voicemail with the start of a post idea.  You can use a transcription service like Google voice or Jott to send yourself voice to text notes.  The key is making the commitment to do it.  As I said above, things that are worth doing almost always take some level of commitment.  And those who can’t commit often find themselves with a boat load of the “bad kind” of free time - while their competitors who did commit reap the rewards.

2). “We don’t have enough to say.”

Really?  I mean really?  While this one comes up frequently, I’m not going to give it much attention here because I think it is the weakest of all the objections.  I’m sorry, if you don’t have much to say then your problems run much deeper than whether you should have a blog or not.  If you don’t think your company has anything to say that is relevant, useful and interesting then you may want to start polishing that resume.

3). “We don’t want to take away valuable employees from their primary roles.”

This one ties back to number 1 a bit.  Sure resources at companies are tight these days, and people are being asked to do more.  Often the marketing team will be responsible for the blog but needs subject matter experts from the company to provide content.  The key is finding a way to make this as easy and efficient as possible.  One idea is to prepare a list of questions and ask for an email response, or do a quick impromptu video.  Sometimes once an employee appears on the blog once, and receives some feedback/ego boost/praise they’ll be excited to do it again.  This works particularly well if you link to their bios and or provide a feedback loop through comments or email.  A lot of the time this is also because people don’t understand what you are doing and why - a good explanation and a walkthrough on the value makes a lot of sense.  And if it turns into a lead or a new client, trust me all that apprehension goes away very quickly.  As with objection #1, if it’s important enough - and they see the value in it — people will make time

4). “We’re afraid of opening ourselves up to complaints and criticism.”

Trust me, complaints and criticism are already out there.  You having a blog is probably not going to start - or end - that.  By not being involved in the conversation, you are simply letting the complaints and criticism happen without you, and not having the chance to address them and often resolve them.  Wouldn’t you rather be involved in the conversation and have a chance to make it right, or at least learn from this one so you don’t have the same complaints and criticism again?  Most people will generally give you a fair shake if you genuinely try to address their issue.

5). “It’s going to be hard to measure.”

I’m shocked we still hear this one because there a ton of ways to measure your blogging efforts.  Like with any other marketing, take a look at your goals and then set the right measurements.  Between measures like unique and return visitors, length and depth of session inbound links, online mentions, views, followers, subscribers (RSS and Email), retweets, awareness in your market, inbound leads, opportunities converted to sales or just a nice letter or blog comment from a happy customer, there’s no way it’s going to be “hard to measure.”

So if you can’t seem to get over those common blogging objections I hope this has given you fuel for your fire.  These are the top 5 objections we hear, but I’m sure there not the only ones.  Feel free to add your own in the comments below and we’ll add them to the list - maybe we’ll even get one that stumps us!

About the Author: Will Davis is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Will a comment on this post.  If you liked this post, follow @willdavis on Twitter for more commentary like this.

“I hear you guys are the social media gurus in this area. Can you help us blow out our efforts on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook?”

These were seemingly innocent words from a prospective client, spoken just last week. As we dug a bit deeper, the red flags started flying. He wants help with social media only, and wants to address only those three properties. He doesn’t want us to worry about how the website, blog, search, email or other areas might impact social media. He is concerned about tracking the effort, but his tracking and measurement will focus on volume of followers, friends and connections.

Ummmm…no thanks.

He wants a Social Media Superhero. The superhero he wants doesn’t possess super human powers and is not dedicated to protecting the public. The superhero he is after is the type that can make his company look “hip” and “in the know”.  He is convinced this is what he needs because he read a book by a Social Media Superhero, a book that - not surprisingly - offered subtle plugs for the idea of hiring a Social Media Superhero.

He doesn’t need a Social Media Superhero. He needs a Marketing Superhero who possesses social media powers and skills, or who can access people with those powers and skills.

I’d say that over half the companies we talk to start with this Social Media Superhero mindset. They view social media as a set of properties that they need to address one-by-one, and they are focused on establishing a “presence” on each of those properties. If no one challenges that viewpoint successfully, they decide to hire a Twitter guy. Or a Facebook gal. Or my favorite - a LinkedIn optimization firm. With Spider-Man, Wonder Woman and Batman on board, how can this social media thing fail?

While I’d like to chalk up this mindset to the relative youth of social media as a marketing vehicle, that’s just letting folks off the hook. The reality is that this mindset existed even in the old days, and when I say old days I mean 10 years ago. While working in the interactive sports industry, I consistently interviewed candidates that professed to “know their way around Sports Illustrated” or “have a great sense for how to maximize what we’re doing with ESPN the Magazine.”

In those situations, the thought bubble above my head always read, “Great. I buy advertising from Sports Illustrated and ESPN the Magazine. I can get to anyone I want to get to at those places because I spend a lot of money. Got any creative ideas, or know how to build a plan? No? Next candidate please.”

Strategy and execution are two very different pieces of the puzzle. To steal a concept from Seth Godin, I can find a slew of factory workers to build standard Facebook fan pages and to maintain a Twitter account. That’s execution. I can count on two hands the folks I know that can handle the strategy side of social media in a superhero-esque way.

So next time Mr. Prospect, be impressed with the ideas. Be impressed with the organization of those ideas. Be impressed with the person who is generating these ideas. Be impressed with the plan.

You don’t need a Social Media Superhero. You need a Marketing Superhero.

After all, no one ever got fired for hiring Superman, right?

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing. Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post. Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.

Some call it interactive marketing.  Others call it digital marketing.   Still others use internet marketing, web marketing or online marketing.  Frankly, the terminology doesn’t matter.  What matters is that companies need to and want to address this function, and are becoming more and more open to exploring the different ways of doing it.

Occasionally we get a request from a company that has already decided that they’d like to build this function up in-house, using primarily employees as opposed to agencies, consultants and contractors.  The company typically has plenty of reasons for this approach, and while we often present scenarios that represent an alternative option, we do that to help the client arrive at the right decision for the organization.  After all, we call ourselves Right Source Marketing.  We recognize that there are many ways to build a gameplan, and our concern is finding the right gameplan for each individual company.

I like to put myself in the shoes of the person building this Interactive Marketing All-Star Team.  I don’t want to make too many assumptions because that takes the fun out of it, but let’s assume that the company is large enough and places a high enough value on marketing to consider building out this function in-house.  I’ve seen both B2C and B2B-oriented companies that fit this profile, so let’s not restrict ourselves there.

Let’s get started.  Before we get into structure, here’s the qualities I want from every single person that is hired for this team (beyond the typical responsible, detail-oriented, easy to work with type qualities):

• I want versatility.  Specialists are great, but the most effective specialists I know are the ones that at least understand how other areas impact their area.

• I want writers.  Everyone on this team will have to write and write well.  Everyone will be responsible for some form of content production, so poor writers need not apply.

• I want users of social media, but users that understand its business use.  It’s nice that you have 800 Facebook friends, 5000 Twitter followers and 1000 LinkedIn connections, but do you understand how those properties are used for business purposes?

• I want folks that are metrics-focused, but not at the expense of creativity.  Ok, so I want the best of both worlds.  Give me someone that can write an engaging blog post then turn around and build a financial model for a new product.  Those folks are out there; I know because I work with some.

• This one is personal, but I can’t imagine anyone wanting the opposite.  I want people that are ultra-organized.  If we’re going to create a marketing machine that spits out campaigns, programs and materials at a rapid pace, we can’t afford to work with slackers.

Let’s move on the specific roles.  Again, these roles are going to look different in every company and in every scenario, but most of these roles are relevant to the average marketing-centric company.

Start at the top.  I don’t care whether we call it a VP Digital, VP Interactive, Online Marketing Director, or even if you just call it Marketing Lead, but I need someone to lead this department.  I want this person to be the somewhat rare combination of a marketer who has dabbled in or played most of the roles below, and who has been elevated for consideration for this role because he or she has consistently found ways to make these functions work like a well-oiled machine.  I see too many organizations that hire this leader based largely on business and education pedigree, and not on marketing and experience pedigree.  Your MBA and previous investment banking experience are great, but that doesn’t qualify you to run this function if you don’t first understand how these interactive pieces work together.

Then I want a set of mid-level managers that run the following categories:

• Search Marketing:  Give me someone that lives and breathes SEO and PPC, understands the impact it has on all other marketing pieces, and has the Rolodex of potential employees, contractors and agencies that may be needed to fill holes.

• Web Designer/Developer: I don’t mean to simplify this role too much, but I want a designer and a developer that are 100% dedicated to marketing.  I don’t want IT to have control over my people, as IT and marketing still haven’t found a way to get along.

• Social Media: I don’t necessarily want to hire the person that has the most followers, friends and connections throughout the various social media properties.  I want someone that knows how to solve business problems with social media, and just as important someone who has a passion for social media that goes beyond just connecting with people.

• Email: It’s always a bit hard for me to envision this as a full-time, dedicated role, but we’re not going to be about just sending a monthly email newsletter.  If we’re going to do this right and deliver relevant, personalized email to different categories of people (prospects, clients, partners, repeat buyers, etc.) then I want someone in this role that can manage all creative, copy, list management, and reporting aspects.

• Content Management: We’re going to produce a lot of content, as content production and distribution is one of most versatile marketing tactics.  While everyone on the team will produce different forms of content, this person will be a hybrid of content champion and traffic manager, making sure all the content looks right, is in the right places, and that the appropriate internal and external people are aware of it.

• Project Management:  If we’re going to be running multiple programs for lead generation and customer acquisition at the same time – all involving various forms of strategy, creative, copy, execution, and tracking – then I need someone that is pushing projects out the door, highlighting problems with current projects, and recommending changes to improve particular projects.

I am going to stop there for now, because if I have those types of people in place I am confident we can fill out remaining pieces.  For instance, we didn’t talk about dedicated writers or video production or even certain forms of customer service which may touch marketing.

Give me this All-Star team, and I may be convinced that building an internal Interactive Marketing department makes sense.

For those of you who are part of (or even run) internal Interactive Marketing departments, or even if you advise companies that fit this profile, I’d love to hear your war stories.  What roles or characteristics are we missing?

About the Author: Mike Sweeney is Managing Partner of Right Source Marketing.  Don’t hesitate to drop Mike a comment on this post.  Follow Mike on Twitter for more marketing commentary.