Microsoft has been suspiciously absent from the whole social networking game. That is very much unlike them. There are several trends that should drive Microsoft to drastic steps in establishing strong presence in social networking space... fast.
1. Windows OS is becoming less and less essential with the emergence of Apple, tablets, and smartphones. More and more businesses are using MacBooks instead of PCs; Apple is winning in the tablet space; Windows is way behind in mobile devices, dominated by iPhone and Android.
2. Office is becoming less relevant too with the emergence of Google Docs and similar free or low cost cloud-based services. Yes, many of these services lack all fancy Office features, but majority of people never use them anyway.
3. Internet users are becoming less aware of Microsoft too. IE is being pushed by Firefox, Chrome and Safari. Bing is interesting, but not dominant. Microsoft created a lot of hype on its cloud, but Azure or their other offerings are not dominant - neither in business space, not in consumer.
4. "VOS". Daily communications are steadily moving to social networks, both on personal and business levels. Email is moving to the cloud. A lot of personal applications are moving to mobile devices and social networks - consumers complete micro-purchases on AppStore, Android Market, Facebook credits for games, etc. Business apps are moving to the cloud, making the client OS unimportant.
To summarize, Social Networks are becoming the center of consumer computing experience, sort of a "virtual consumer OS." And all they require are a computing hardware, a browser and an Internet connection. Microsoft is not dominant in any of these areas.
Google is steadily taking over the "Virtual OS" space. This has to be a mortal threat to Microsoft. It has to worry Microsoft. The questions is, "what is Microsoft doing about it?" Well, for starters there was recently a "leak" on that subject.
But Microsoft today is not the same fighting machine it used to be. During the last two decades, Microsoft was a staple of computing. Competing against them was never a good experience. It got quite a few companies and industries destroyed. However, Microsoft went from being an innovator that revolutionized computing to a competition destruction machine to a somewhat civilized corporation to a huge company that is becoming too slow, unfocused, decentralized and stuck in the past.
On the other side, it still has lots of money, really good talent (I know quite a few amazing professionals there) and a huge presence both in the consumer and business space. I would use that as entry point for its social platforms.
DISCLAIMER! Back seat driver perspective. I would start with Outlook. Why not create a native and rich Web UI for Outlook that would integrate really nicely with Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+? It would transform into a web app that provides business users with an integrated and seamless communication experience that includes email, social networks and documents creation / cloud storage / sharing. Since many corporate users still "have to" use Outlook, this would benefit them in a way of simplicity - they wouldn't need to switch between applications and services. It would also benefit Microsoft by making Outlook "stickier" and increasing the usage of IE and Office.
Microsoft could also create a light version of it for consumers. Do I dare to say a "free," or a "freemium" version for less technology-savvy consumers (that don't buy MS Office anyway, so not much will be cannibalized.) This would become a gateway to social / cloud experience. Maybe even as a part of Windows UI in the future. Having lots of interesting components, Microsoft could offer certain nice to have components as upgrades. For example, from a free cloud word processor or a MS Word in the cloud.
Then I would grow the business by M&A. LinkedIn could be an interesting target to build on the business space.
Of course, this is me thinking out loud. There are many smart folks at Microsoft that may be working on similar functionality as I am writing this. It is never that easy for a large corporation to switch gears in a dramatic way. But soon Microsoft will have to make a drastic move or risk becoming a dinosaur.
CMO Perspective: Practical marketing strategies and techniques
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
Is "Good Enough" marketing good enough?
The "good enough" concept is valid and important in many areas, including product management. There is never a perfect product, so a good product manager knows when the product is "good enough" and ready. This is based on many factors, such as customer feedback, quality, R&D reality, roadmaps, competitive data, etc. This subject is taught in Pragmatic Marketing and is widely used in most PM organizations today.
But does this principle work in other marketing areas? Not in my experience. For example, the difference between "good enough" and great for PPC and SEO is drastic. Lots of PPC campaigns never work and exec teams stop believing in these as valid lead gen tools because marketing never puts the right level of effort on finding out what are the exact keywords their prospects use at different buying stages, from the research to purchase. This is not an easy process. And good enough usually = failure. This is where you use "Hack Marketing" to find the right keywords. The results of these extra steps are the difference between success and failure of PPC and SEO.
The same goes with the rest of messaging. It really pays to conduct research and understand what are the exact words customers and prospects use. There is no "good enough" here. For example, we changed one word describing how the product category is referred based on customer feedback. Lead gen campaign results shot up 67% in one week.
Finally, "good enough" marketing materials in my experience are useless. I rather have a great web site with all the right messaging and use it as the major marketing tool instead of tens of mediocre white papers just because it is "the right thing to do" and "everybody does it."
So is "good enough" marketing good enough?
But does this principle work in other marketing areas? Not in my experience. For example, the difference between "good enough" and great for PPC and SEO is drastic. Lots of PPC campaigns never work and exec teams stop believing in these as valid lead gen tools because marketing never puts the right level of effort on finding out what are the exact keywords their prospects use at different buying stages, from the research to purchase. This is not an easy process. And good enough usually = failure. This is where you use "Hack Marketing" to find the right keywords. The results of these extra steps are the difference between success and failure of PPC and SEO.
The same goes with the rest of messaging. It really pays to conduct research and understand what are the exact words customers and prospects use. There is no "good enough" here. For example, we changed one word describing how the product category is referred based on customer feedback. Lead gen campaign results shot up 67% in one week.
Finally, "good enough" marketing materials in my experience are useless. I rather have a great web site with all the right messaging and use it as the major marketing tool instead of tens of mediocre white papers just because it is "the right thing to do" and "everybody does it."
So is "good enough" marketing good enough?
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Google+... Why does it matter to marketing professionals?
Google+ means duopoly. Facebook's honeymoon is over. It has a real competitor now. The "social media" industry took another step to its maturity. It is now Google+ vs. Facebook. Just like Microsoft vs. Apple. Or Toyota vs. Honda. USA vs. USSR.
Google+ can put an end to the fragmentation in social networks. Until now, we had Facebook for personal connections and LinkedIn for professional ones. And most people have been separating personal and business contacts.
Google+ allows combining all your contacts in one place, organized in various "circles", like family, friends, soccer teammates, fraternity buddies, security community, blog audiences, etc. Then you can communicate with all these circles from one command and control center.
Google+ gives us a new way to simplify and unite connections, social networking, as well as conducting business, e.g. creating user communities, doing research, managing forums, blogs, etc. It also becomes another way to market - reach target markets, customers, partners, communicate with remote teams, generate leads / demand.
Given Google+ adoption rate stays high, it would be critical for business and marketing professionals embracing and using it. The exciting part is that it gives new and creative ways of reaching our audiences, which can turn into a competitive advantage for early adopters.
Google+ can put an end to the fragmentation in social networks. Until now, we had Facebook for personal connections and LinkedIn for professional ones. And most people have been separating personal and business contacts.
Google+ allows combining all your contacts in one place, organized in various "circles", like family, friends, soccer teammates, fraternity buddies, security community, blog audiences, etc. Then you can communicate with all these circles from one command and control center.
Google+ gives us a new way to simplify and unite connections, social networking, as well as conducting business, e.g. creating user communities, doing research, managing forums, blogs, etc. It also becomes another way to market - reach target markets, customers, partners, communicate with remote teams, generate leads / demand.
Given Google+ adoption rate stays high, it would be critical for business and marketing professionals embracing and using it. The exciting part is that it gives new and creative ways of reaching our audiences, which can turn into a competitive advantage for early adopters.
Monday, July 11, 2011
6 Ways To Avoid Fluff in Your Marketing Materials
FLUFF is one of my pet peeves. Why use complicated words that add up into phrases that mean nothing? Words like leverage, easy, flexible, scaleable, secure, ROI, TCO. They demonstrate lack of subject knowledge and discourage the target audience from reading these documents / web sites / blogs.
Here is an example I just found on a web site of a well known vendor. "...(product) is the foundation for the CIO's and IT leadership team's performance system. It features a cascaded optimization system, the industry's deepest and broadest insight into IT-controlled assets, and a secure, comprehensive, operational environment for a hybrid world."
What? A "hybrid world?" Wasted words. I counted 19 words that are just fluff and mean nothing. Wasted space. Wasted time and budgets. There are better and more practical ways of writing marketing materials that people understand and read. My suggestions are below:
1. Know your audience. Understand who exactly is your audience. Which industry? What is the main function of your target reader? What are their pressures and challenges? What are their titles and reporting structures? Their internal customers. Demographics. Internal politics, etc.
2. Understand the lingo your audience uses. Talk to your customers directly. Ask how are they using your product. Don't assume you know the words they use. For example, you would fail if you used "IT words" with process engineers in Electric Power companies. When marketing cyber security to Power and Energy, we had to change about 80% of our marketing materials. But the results were amazing - almost every IT department we contacted, wanted to talk to us. Even at the meetings, we were treated like peers rather than vendors.
3. Simplify. Read what you wrote out loud. Pretend you are presenting in person to your target audience. Keep on rewriting until the text flows easily and you would have no problem verbally presenting it.
4. Be brief. Less is more. Remember, the goal of most marketing materials is not to close the deal, but rather get the prospect interested enough to contact sales or try the product. Longer texts tend to discourage busy viewers from reading.
5. Avoid fluff. Avoid generic words, like flexible or leverage. Try quantifying or using proof points. For example, "the industry's deepest and broadest insight into IT-controlled assets" is fluff. However, something like, "a system covering 95% of the industry's IT-controlled assets" is much more credible and easier to understand.
6. Test. Most of us, marketers, don't work in the functional area of our target buyers. It may be a good idea to test the text with your target audience. This can be a very revealing exercise. In my experience, this step has revealed some gems that turned into new marketing tools and lead generation approaches that we never knew existed. For example, from our customer conversations we discovered an IT community called Spiceworks, that turned out to be one of the best lead generation sources for SMB markets.
Here is an example I just found on a web site of a well known vendor. "...(product) is the foundation for the CIO's and IT leadership team's performance system. It features a cascaded optimization system, the industry's deepest and broadest insight into IT-controlled assets, and a secure, comprehensive, operational environment for a hybrid world."
What? A "hybrid world?" Wasted words. I counted 19 words that are just fluff and mean nothing. Wasted space. Wasted time and budgets. There are better and more practical ways of writing marketing materials that people understand and read. My suggestions are below:
1. Know your audience. Understand who exactly is your audience. Which industry? What is the main function of your target reader? What are their pressures and challenges? What are their titles and reporting structures? Their internal customers. Demographics. Internal politics, etc.
2. Understand the lingo your audience uses. Talk to your customers directly. Ask how are they using your product. Don't assume you know the words they use. For example, you would fail if you used "IT words" with process engineers in Electric Power companies. When marketing cyber security to Power and Energy, we had to change about 80% of our marketing materials. But the results were amazing - almost every IT department we contacted, wanted to talk to us. Even at the meetings, we were treated like peers rather than vendors.
3. Simplify. Read what you wrote out loud. Pretend you are presenting in person to your target audience. Keep on rewriting until the text flows easily and you would have no problem verbally presenting it.
4. Be brief. Less is more. Remember, the goal of most marketing materials is not to close the deal, but rather get the prospect interested enough to contact sales or try the product. Longer texts tend to discourage busy viewers from reading.
5. Avoid fluff. Avoid generic words, like flexible or leverage. Try quantifying or using proof points. For example, "the industry's deepest and broadest insight into IT-controlled assets" is fluff. However, something like, "a system covering 95% of the industry's IT-controlled assets" is much more credible and easier to understand.
6. Test. Most of us, marketers, don't work in the functional area of our target buyers. It may be a good idea to test the text with your target audience. This can be a very revealing exercise. In my experience, this step has revealed some gems that turned into new marketing tools and lead generation approaches that we never knew existed. For example, from our customer conversations we discovered an IT community called Spiceworks, that turned out to be one of the best lead generation sources for SMB markets.
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