So, now that YouTube's been purchased by Google, what does that mean for the rest of us?

Well, nothing, and everything. Nothing - we really can't get in on that big pay day. Fine. Everything - video on the web is a game changing big_freaking_deal.

My prediction is that any company that has a website NEEDS VIDEO on their site in some way, shape, or form.

Really, it's ubiquitous. The ad dollars are there to back it up and there's no shortage of deals being done on video in the mobile space, web space, iTV space and every other corner of the mediasphere that video can possibly touch.

Specifically, I want to see sites using video for lead gen. Even my wife's new chiropractic website has a chiropractic intro video on it. Sure, it's a 'template video', but it's sight, sound, motion and emotion that sells a hell of a lot more effectively than text!

So, I did a little digging to see who's doing this:

• IBM is using video as a lead gen tool for their lead gen tools
• Grip On Tools (via MarketingSherpa) used video via email
• Perfect Patients (provider of my wife's website) uses video as a lead gen too

I'm sure that there are many others, but let's look at why this is so effective:

1. Video explains concepts in a way that no text or podcast can. You can use voice, music, pictures, screenshots, motion pictures, whatever...to explain your concepts
2. Broadband penetration makes consuming video 'just part of the Internet usage' of the average consumer
3. Having prospects read your website for 5 minutes is a big stretch. Getting the information across in a 5 minute video isn't nearly as big a burden
4. Video is just more engaging that blogs, or even podcasts. Seriously. I can watch the "Fox Hat" video a thousand times, and it's still engaging, and it's still funny!
5. Puts a human face on the scene. Sure, blogs do this, but video REALLY does this. Putting the owner in podcasts seems to work, so putting the owner in video will work better, right?

There's certainly more to it than that, but video, screen casts, YouTube and everything else web video is a small piece of the growing interest in Sales 2.0. Stay tuned

I was in an interesting conversation yesterday with a friend who is an adjuct marketing instructor at a local university. He was lamenting the fact that many of his senior-level students did not know the distinctions between B2B marketing (or that such an animal has ever been spotted in the wild) and B2C, or the "creative side" of marketing. That got me to thinking. I guess I've been on both sides of the fence, and I don't know when I first learned that there was such a thing as B2B, but with parents as business owners, and having been a business owner at a young age, I imagine it was at a very early age that I experienced B2B.

Coincidentally, someone on one of the AMA listservs recently asked:

what do you think are the primary advantages/disadvantages in working in the B2B compared to B2C marketing field/arena?

Hmmm... What are the advantages/disadvantages? I guess I never thought of the dichotomy between B2B & B2C as potentially disadvantageous.

I think as a young marketer, just getting out of school, we see all of the commercials and popular consumer marketing and advertising and think "oh, this is what marketing must be like. I want to do that stuff." However, marketing is so much more, and I would argue that the opportunity, if you call it that, lies in specialization in a deeper niche in either sector.

For example. You can say that you're a B2C marketer, but what do you market? Paper, candy, consumer electronics, new products, old brands... If you take a cursory survey of some of the "director of marketing" job listings out there, you'll start to see that specialization in one area or another can really help you in the long run (at least, that's my experience...albeit in B2B)

Personally, I find B2B much more exciting. More specifically, I like the idea of 'thought leadership' in marketing (as an academician at heart who loves writing, speaking and all that stuff, this is a good fit for me). However, there was a response on the listserv that sums it up best. Bottom line, go after what you love. The opportunities will present themselves, or you'll make them happen!

Your decision on where to focus should rest on what you enjoy. Buying has both rational and emotional elements associated with it, but in the business world there is more focus on the rational element and buying is more controlled and structured. So there is probably less room, and I know there is less tolerance, for what I would call-off-the wall, highly creative advertising and messaging. Workers are busy and they prefer to know the facts and benefits of your product or service without having to do allot of work to figure them out. This, of course, is a generalization, because there are some industries that are fashion-oriented and have more appreciation for design and creative messaging and targeting. But I think your own interests in messaging, positioning and creativity should help drive your decision.

[UPDATE] Bob Bly (famed copywriter) just had a post and a bunch of great comments related to this topic.

The July issue of Business 2.0 (not yet on the web) has an article on how Gamal Aziz of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas is reinventing the property for maximum profitability. I think his idea on working backward was worth the price of my B2.0 subscription for the month...

Aziz's secret is a counterintuitive management practice - nicknamed "working backward" - that he invented on his arrival at the Grand. The strategy breaks down an operation into constituent parts, then calculates the maximum potential revenue that each business or space could generate in a perfect world - that is, if every customer spent the most the market could bear and if traffic reached its physical limits. Aziz then subtracts the actual sales from the hypothetical number and calls the difference a loss, even if the venue is making money.

His strategy is paying off. His projects featured in the magazine have all seen revenue improvements ranging from a 40% increase all the way to a 786% increase.

Think of the implications of applying this to your website properties, including RSS feeds, email newsletters and other potential revenue generating real estate. Is the real estate on your site generating max revenue? If you were to break down each section and extrapolate it's full potential from ideal figures, how much money are you leaving on the table?

Every successful conference around blogging, podcasting, social media, RSS and the like seems to bring up the inevitable comment "why don't you have more B2B examples for us B2B marketers?"

Point taken. In fact, point very well taken. Take, for example, the concept of 'micro-celebrities', which was the recent topic of conversation for Robert Young and for Ed Batista at AttentionTrust.org. i think that we're so attuned as marketers to talking in terms of 'consumers' and thinking only of the B2C folks that we overlook the power of some of these tools within the B2B context.

Micro-celebrities is one of those things that I see as being even more powerful in B2B than on MySpace or anywhere else. Think about it, who are the micro-celebs in your industry? I bet you know them, have met them at a conference or can access them through journals or other industry trade pubs. Granted, often times these folks are either consultants or tied to your competitor, however, that's not always the case.

Let's take the example of 'micro-celebrities' on MySpace and turn it on its head for B2B.

When it comes to advertising in mass media, a big name is required since such campaigns are only effective if the viewer already knows who that celebrity is. But in a social network, micro-celebrities who are well known within their network of micro-communities could prove just as effective and potentially even more so, particularly if such campaigns are able to generate buzz, excitement and a cool-factor.

As for MySpace’s role in all this, they are in the unique position to know better than anyone (as the owner of the platform with all the user data) who the "brand-safe" users are within its network.

Thus MySpace can effectively play the role of talent agent by aggregating a list of users who would be appropriate for advertisers within various categories. In fact, the incentive "to be discovered" is likely to spur many users to express themselves in a manner that will position them favorably for consideration.

OK, so we're not going to be doing much B2B on MySpace, but we could leverage professional associations, organizations and conferences to do something like what KI just did with Healthcare Spaces author Roger Yee at the recent NeoCon 2006 show. Who the hell is Roger Yee, you might ask? Well, that's the right response. You probably shouldn't know...he wouldn't be a micro-celebrity if you did! However, for the healthcare furniture market or the American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designers (AAHID), you know exactly who he is and a campaign targeted at your market would likely mean something to you. And you'd give it your attention! (after all, that's really all we have left - attention).

Getting after 'attention data' in B2B might be even less complicated than in B2C, and we could do it through the power of association(s). For example, if I'm a member of the DMA or AMA, and I attend their respective conferences, I am giving my attention to things like direct marketing or marketing research or something of the like. As a potential marketer to those folks, I need only to know a bit about the associations that they run with and the types of events they go to in order to more effectively target my marketing toward what my target base is paying attention to. It's still not the be-all-end-all for getting end-user attention data, but it's getting closer and it would seem easier to do with conference attendance and association membership because your target base is very actively self-selecting and directing their attention patterns.

Of course, smart marketers always want their customers to own their attention data, but I envision that we could see a major impact in B2B attention marketing if some of the larger associations were to promote services like the Attention Recorder.

Technorati Tags: attention, B2B + Marketing, micro+celebrity

From the "what took you so long" category, GlobalSpec recently released a report on the marketing spending habits of B2B industrial suppliers & manufacturing companies. (reported on my eMarketer) Not surprisingly, they're going to be spending more online. Yeah for those of us in the online industry.

Some other interesting findings from the report...

...70% of respondents indicated that either customer acquisition or lead generation is their primary
marketing goal in 2006

...Budgets for online marketing continue to increase, with 35% of respondents saying that they will
spend upwards of 50% of their 2006 marketing budget online

...93% of respondents indicated they will spend more or the same on marketing in 2006 than 2005

What did surprise me was that a huge percentage of the spend would be on "directories and websites". Directories? I guess that's what keeps the folks over at Thomas Register in business. They saw it coming when they went 100% online. Must be good news for them.

I guess this really isn't all that surprising if you buy into the rationale that the buyer behavior in these markets has progressed along w/ the marketing behavior - then doing directory placement buys is perfectly logical.

Stowe Boyd on Advisory Capital
- Simply brilliant. Really. Read it.
***

Reminded of an SNL skit with Mike Meyers during a Scotland bit during the Olympics
"If it's not Scottish -- it's CRAP!"
***

Technorati Tags: advisory capital

From the "great marketing minds" category, Bonita Coleman Stewart, the Director of Interactive Communications for Chrysler Group, talks about how interactive marketers are getting ahead of traditional marketers. I'm not certain that this is one for the textbooks, but certainly there are marketing departments that could use a good dose of process in thier teams.

[via AdBumb]

MediaPost's Real Media Riff's column today caught my eye. Now that my career is taking me back into the online world and more specifically into the only advertising world, I'm paying more attention to a whole host of different things. MP essentially laid out ten things that print ad providers need to do in order to get their act together and keep the ball rolling. I offer these items, taken from this article, along with my commentary. What amuses the hell out of me is that there are many industries that just as clueless when it comes to customer focus. I mean, how freaking hard is it to simply give your customers at least a little of what they want.

1 - Help marketers understand print's cause/effect contribution to generating results and building brands long-term. You'd think we'd have this down cold by now. If a print advertiser wants to become anything more than rubish, you need to partner with your customers and get them value-added analysis that helps them to make decisions in your favor.

2 - Give us issue specific circulation and cumulative data that shows how an audience builds over time. By doing business reviews with your customers, you could head off those pesky "holy shit, we can't afford to do anything with you this year" moments when they have to cut somewhere. Be there for them, and customers will be there for you.

3 - Give us reader involvement insights that help us understand the unique connections publications have with readers. Target marketing!

4 - Tap into the creative energy that permeates editorial pages, and give advertisers some new, innovative, branded ways to sponsor publications. Custom publishing is what I remember this being called... This is why advertising on very niche websites and blogs (and RSS feeds) is going to be so powerful because it's all about getting creative with tieing into the content.

5 - Reduce the long lead times to secure space and submit materials to monthly magazines. Patience with a sense of urgency. There is competitive advantage in speed and time to market.

6 - This one's for agencies. Find new, cost efficient ways for us to test print creative - and to test more frequently. And...publish your findings!!! Again, adding unique value takes you slowly out of 'also ran' status and puts you in a unique and special place in your customer's wallet.

7 - This one's also for agencies. Raise the creative bar. Put some of your senior talent on print advertising. We want intelligent, visually exciting breakthrough print campaigns. Don't we all. Stormy Simon of Overstock.com was telling a story at this year's Internet Retailer conference about how, ironically, 3 seperate agencies came to her with almost EXACTLY the same idea for commercial spots. Idiots. None of them got the job. Overstock did it themselves (much, much better than some cheezy agency) and introduced Sabine Ehrenfeld as an icon.

8 - Either justify or end the practice of bleed charges. This goes for anything in any industry. Or do on an account-by-account basis based on risk of losing business. Customers have become very cynical to 'surcharges' that are really just hidden, long-term price hikes. Stop fucking around and just raise your prices if you need the cashflow. Honestly...

9 - Either justify or end the practices of surcharges for national newspaper advertising in local editions.

10 - Get with the digital program. Print media should be the leaders - not the followers - in this exciting realm.

Does anyone else out there have an issue with sending too many customer surveys from disparate groups throughout the company? I'm wondering how others have handled the coordination of survey gathering, customer insight management, customer advisory boards and the like to ensure that customers are not being hit by the billing dept. in the same month as customer service in the same week as operations...the list goes on.

Is there some sort of enterprise wide "customer insight board" that your company has formed as a stewardship group over all customer survey and insight gathering activity?

I am a huge Peter Drucker fan and, like many business folks, hold his words as gospel. I was pleased to find his latest book last night The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done, at my favorite local bookstore, but was ecstatic to listen in to this radio interview of Drucker with Tom Ashbrook on the NPR Program On Point. Drucker, relevant and timeless as always, actually had an assistant at his home to type out the questions because his hearing is so bad that he needed to read them instead of listen and respond.

Drucker spoke of management, and the practice of management over the last 100 years. When asked "what is the essential Drucker message to management in the 21st century", he responded with these three questions, and added that this century, last century, and next century are all alike.

1. What is your business - what are your trying to accomplish - what makes you distinct?
   
2. How to you define results? (much tougher in non-business than in business)
   
3. What are your core competencies? What can/do you do with excellence and achieve great results?

In BtoB over the past few years, a lot of attention has been paid to wedge issues between Marketing and Sales, and how Marketing could better contribute to corporate profits. Below is a link to a short presentation which quantifies these issues for small BtoB firms. While it's not a statistical sample, it provides a lot of insight into the experiences of 218 companies.

http://www.growingco.com/WhitePapers/Web_Sales_and_Marketing_Studyv1_21Oct04.ppt

I was amazed to learn that Marketing's involvement in strategy development and lead generation in small BtoBs is virtually invisible. Budgets are primarily channeled into cold calling, followed by marketing collateral, advertising and PR.

Also, about 4 out of 5 BtoB salespeople in small companies believe that referrals are their best source for closing sales. It's not clear what proportion of "referrals" are from Marketing, but Sales tends to believe they are more successful securing referrals on their own.

The study concludes that Sales and Marketing, especially in small companies, could be aligned by creating mutual goals and incentive-based compensation packages. If you work for or with small BtoBs, or even for a larger company, it's valuable reading.

Siebel and Oracle, two of the largest players in enterprise software, recently weighed in on the strategy and tactics they employ to reach their respective B2B customer segments. Not surprisingly, the web is playing a large role in reaching their targets.

The power of the web to B2B marketers, he said, is that it's an awareness building vehicle, drives leads, it's interactive, cost efficient, targeted, and measurable. Online, he said, touches people along the entire buying cycle.

Print, he said, in defense of their decision, is expensive, hard to measure, expensive to measure, creatively limiting, and wasn't driving leads - and when it did drive leads they were inefficient leads.

1) Plan and execute across the buying process.

2) Work with and through sales.

3) Plan globally, execute locally.

4) Build and leverage an analytics foundation.

5) Utilize a single data problem for real time learning.

6) Plan and execute across the channels - surround the target - manage the context of your message.

7) Couch your ego and forge alliances with trusted brands. (Don't assume that just because you have a big name like Oracle that people will trust you.)

8) Close the loop - define and measure ROI.

9) Test and learn.

10) Treat your agency as a partner.

Both marketers emphasized the importance of tracking marketing actions all the way through to sales. Siebel pointed out that for one time period they received 50 leads from Google. Though this was, in comparison with their other marketing vehicles, a paltry number, when they tracked their media spend all the way through they found out that the Google leads were actually cheaper than any other.