Archive for August, 2007 Page 2 of 3

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Jeff Ostiguy: Mobile Marketing: The Players, The Market, The Opportunity

Published by
Paul Woodhouse
at August 16, 2007 in Live Blogging. 0 Comments

Jeff Ostiguy is Vice President of Business Development at g8wave. Please feel free to read more about Jeff here.

Enough Jeffs for you this morning? His picture above doesn’t do the guy justice!

I must admit I’m not completely up to speed on mobile marketing and it’s good for him to start off expecting to be fired questions.

70% of all people have at least one mobile device in the US. It’s not what the phone does but what people do with their device that matters. Make the content more engaging and interesting. Can we see a theme developing through our various marketing channels so far?

2004 – 80% considered themselves “talkers” More txt messages in London than emails. As an English chap I should be able to comment on the difference between US and European mobile phone adoption. One major difference I’ve found is paying to receive and paying to send text messages.

At least Jeff is possibly the only guy who isn’t too bothered about a phone going off during his presentation. Bless.

Two kinds of messaging – standard vs premium rate. And we know which is the cheaper. He seems to mention Hell’s Kitchen quite a bit. Should Rock have won?

Qualified respondents, high conversion rates and relatively low cost……sounds like a marketing dream.

The power of opt-in vs over-egging the pudding. COuld it become an over-abused channel?

Sarah wants a Metallica phone.

A different but complimentary channel.

Strategy first, technology second. Start with txt messaging to build a mobile database and move on from there

What is the business/pricing model – Is g8wave creative/carrier. (I think we’re referring to howg8wave operates)

Trains analogy – g8wave is the boxcar with carriers being the tracks. WHo’s the station?

People seem to be getting interested and asking about pricing. Did I hear $10-20k for some kind of campaign. That seems to have cut the questions short.

I should’ve asked something about Twitter. Maybe I’ll take him to one side.

Read Jeff’s Q&A here.

Did you happen to enjoy that as much as I did?

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Jose Mallabo – eBay: So You Wanna Do Online PR?

Published by
Paul Woodhouse
at August 16, 2007 in Live Blogging. 0 Comments

Jose Mallabo

Jose Mallabo presently serves as Director of Financial Communications at eBay Inc. You can read Jose’s speaker bio here for further information.

Jose is a very engaging chap if truth be told.

PR types and their promises to get you into your usual publications.

PR is about managing relationships. The press release metric vs the building bridges.

Online PR going back 100 hundred years. He explained this to me over dinner last night, but I was too busy asking for pork and chicken dishes as opposed to pork or chicken dishes. Yeah, you really had to be there.

Here we go with regards to an online ‘voice’. Trad PR speak fails miserably in this respect – too corp. Your voice is one-on-one.

Doesn’t matter if your opinion is right so long as you have one. Key element voice and story: informed, clever, smart, witty, casual, accessible, respectful, passionate, fun, authentic.

I’m liking how he’s talking about this stuff to be honest – this is my bag – I’ll make sure I actually watch the video and read up on the notes.

IT’S TOOL TIME:

Actually, it was me that sent him the question about the death of the press release – credit where it’s due. ;-) (Read the Q&A with Jose here) So how has it changed?

Shorter press releases. Make it easy to cut and paste (for bloggers). It’s still alive.
[Q? Answer: use a wire service - spend the $100 or so. We can vouch for this at Direct Online Marketing to be fair - bloggers aren't always easy to find and require some cultivation.]

Do you have time to write a blog?

BLog Relations – yeah, take us out to dinner. Give them news to break.

Think about wikis……htc

I’d also throw in to think about various social networks and personalized / vertical search tools etc.

I’ve always thought you should use the online tool you feel most comfortable experimenting with or incorporating. A blogger doesn’t automatically become a podcaster, vlogger or whatever.

More on Kijiji here on this very blog.

QUESTION TIME:

What online tools to respond to Virginia TEch?

Specific protocol and statements about what eBay were selling etc. I haven’t done that justice I’m afraid.

Right, I shall upload some photos over lunch. Man, I’m sure I’m the only person not listening.

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Jeff James: Execution for ROI: Aligning the Planets.

Published by
Paul Woodhouse
at August 16, 2007 in Live Blogging and Speakers. 0 Comments

Jeff James
Read Jeff’s full speaker bio.
Jeff James has held numerous sales and marketing management roles during his fourteen years at Microsoft. Currently, Jeff serves as Director of Enterprise Marketing for the $6 billion U.S. enterprise market. In this role Jeff is involved in leading the strategy development and marketing execution for growing revenue and customer satisfaction among Microsoft’s largest corporate accounts.

As Jeff just mentioned to me – this is quite a sexy topic to be kicking the morning off with……

He’s also asked me to give a shout out to his wife, Anna.

Misalignment in marketing. 47% of all marketing is wasted. Jeff uses some old saying somebody once said about half of marketing being a waste, but thye didn’t know which half.

Gulf between sales and marketing teams and how do marketers or businesses measure those.

Feedback from attendee(s): leads/qualified leads. 1% rate.

What is a qualified lead? Black hole between sales and marketing teams.

Purchase Funnel – awareness, familiarity, interest, preference, intention, purchase, loyalty.

SMEs fail to test why to align, who to align, what to align and how to align.

Marketing most wasteful department in most comapnies. Financial depts should be involved to keep in check.
WHO TO ALIGN:

  • Marketing
  • Sales
  • Operations
  • Customer Services
  • Finance

WHAT TO ALIGN:

Messages and images to customer needs/desires

budget to revenue sources

campaigns to priority cust. tagets

internal processes

cross-term objectives

HOW TO ALIGN (not much point highlighting these considering they’re in the handout, no?)

FEEDBACK TO QUESTION: How is Microsoft doing now in terms of better alignment? Microsoft needed to provide more in-depth sales tools, more specific demos for particular industries.

How many people have tested a marketing effort with a small sub-set of customers?

Only one person attendee had.

Oh we’re on The Tipping Point and mavens/connectors. Influence the influencers. The best influencers online can often be certain key bloggers within your industry – FIND THEM. (that’s an aside by me.)

Missed his bit after Microsoft having to compete with itself over Office 7. Hadn’t thought of that. If only they’d throw it out there for free as an online office suite a la google they might be caning the big g alive.

Have a play at the Caveman’s Crib.

Interesting thoughts on how moving away from tv and trad media and increased online improves overall ROI.

90% of online presence will have an offline effect whether it’s a click thru or not. Brand awareness etc.

whatsticks.net

madetostick.com

email Jeff for his best practices thing jeff@mythologymarketing.com after AUG 31

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS…..erm none as he was whisked off. Not for being boring mind.

Here we have an action shot taken by my good lady. You might well ask who Jeff is!

Jeff

Let us know what you think as we go along. Please be as honest as you see fit. We can take it!

UPDATE: Read Jeff’s Q&A he did prior to the conference.

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Online Marketing: Innovations that Work Kicks Off

Published by
Paul Woodhouse
at August 16, 2007 in Live Blogging. 2 Comments

As Pink once said to me a couple of years back: “Let’s get this party started.”

Sarah Chatting

Here we have Sarah chatting away as she is somewhat prone to do.Paul Woodhouse Blogging

And here’s me being rather official.

Right, I’d better listen to what Jeff James is talking about.

UPDATE: Please excuse any typos and what not.

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Justin Seibert Interviewed in Pittsburgh Business Times

Published by
Paul Woodhouse
at August 15, 2007 in Business Blogging, Conference News and Speakers. 0 Comments

Last week saw our search marketing session speaker, Justin Seibert of Direct Online Marketing™ LLC, interviewed in the Pittsburgh Business Times for their “Five Minutes With:” feature. Alas, it’s only in their print edition so I have nothing for you to look at online, but seeming I’m such a decent chap I’ve typed the whole interview for your perusal:

Justin Seibert is president of Wheeling-based Direct Online Marketing™ LLC. The Internet marketing firm works throughout the tri-state area to get clients at the top of search engine listings and also placing advertisements online, as well as Web site design and blogging services. Seibert is slated to speak at a marketing conference on August 16th at Southpointe.

[PBT] We’ve seen some major company executives get into trouble recently with posting inappropriate comments on a blog. What strategy should they be taking instead?

[JS] “Some people haven’t been too smart about it. I think it really comes down to what are the rules of the Internet today. Before the rise of the Internet becoming so popular and so prevalent in everyday life, companies could just say they had their strategy and they would have their corporate-speak, and that was everything they said. The problem was, people were able to communicate with each other. A whole conversation started taking place away from the companies. One of the great powers of the blog is that you can talk with those people, you can become engaged in that conversation now. One of the problems people are having is they aren’t being transparent and honest.”

[PBT] How many companies have been affected by this?

[JS]“Wal-mart got bashed a couple of months ago because they had a couple of average joes (who were paid to blog positively about Wal-Mart). There wouldn’t be anything wrong with that….if you’re upfront about it. (Readers) might not like it, but you’re not going to get bashed for it. And instead, for getting flogs – fake blogs – they just got hammered for it. Honesty and lack of transparency are really the two biggest pitfalls.”

[PBT] What does your company do to help companies increase their online presence?

[JS] “We’re about search engine visibility. We make sure that if someone is searching – whether it’s a product or a service – we make sure they show up. We can make sure they show up all over the world.”

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