Red Zen Marketing

The presentation below, from FamileMarquis at Slideshare, shows what powerful punch can be achieved with a clear understanding of your messaging and positioning, and a bit of creativity.

Enjoy

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For four years, and ending only recently, NPR ran a revival of a 1950's era personal essay segment every week entitled "This I Believe". It was just a few short minutes in which the essayist--sometimes a well-known public figure, but just as often just an ordinary individual from across the spectrum of the American Experience--with a strong desire to say what was on their mind and heartfelt conviction had the opportunity to speak their own Truth as they saw it. It was thought provoking and often very moving.

I guess this post is my own little essay.

I've been waxing philosophical lately about the time I spend online and on the phone that is not directly relevant to my paid occupation or my job at hand. There are a number of friends--and some acquaintances--for whom I've taken time out to give of myself without expectation of anything other than the opportunity to talk with them about their situation, and share what perspective as I can in hopes that it may be helpful. I have no illusions that it is always so--they don't call or email me daily, so perhaps my perspective is not so illuminating as I might sometimes think! <grin>

Regardless, the growth of the Twitter phenomenon has had me thinking about this more of late.

My thought is that, although, yes, Twitter is incredibly powerful for pushing out news of important happenings "under the wire" from places like Iran and Tehran, it is also useful for "crowd sourcing" great business ideas and best practices across a wide realm of segments. Graphic designers are using it to share information--freely sharing links to other great sources for Wordpress themes, and other great tips. Enthusiasts of all things gadget-y find their true brotherhood online with updates posted seemingly by the minute to help others pimp their XBox or tweak their iPhone in the-land-down-under. And, incredibly, they do it all -- free.

Why?

Well, true enough, some might be after followers, believing that there's a monetization path before them. And well there might be. But the information offered is out there for the rest of us all the same. It's the classic Internet Freemium offering-- gather a user base (in this case a base of those 'using your tweets') and hope to see some of them make the transition to pay for something being offered.

There's also a good number of these Twitterers who are tweeting away, gathering followers, simply for the sake of tweeting and entering into the conversation. Else why would they devote such time to it with no apparent business model? It was at this realization that I realized I was doing the same thing with my time-- each time I spent time on the phone, or via email with Kevin, Chirag, Jeff, Dave, Elia, Gabe, or any of the perhaps dozen others.

Was I so different? I was not expecting anything of my interactions with my friends. It was time given back--or perhaps more appropriately stated-- time given forward. It's encouraging to see the indictors of this permeating new technology--to see that 'social media' is not entirely taken over by those who would relegate it "New Marketing Tools" but also being used by those simply reaching out to lend a hand.

I have worked remotely from my home in western Pennsylvania leading projects and creating products and helping companies grow for ten years. I could not have done that without the strength of an incredible network of friends and colleagues that reaches around the world. And, I can truely say that some of my best friends are half-way around the world from me right now.

I believe that as the world becomes increasingly smaller, and our many technologies for touching and communicating with each other expand and multiply, we have to remember that humans will always demand a channel for pure human interaction--that 'business models' and 'ROI' and 'justifiable business purposes' will never be enough to satisfy the insatiable human need to reach out and assist another, simply because.  Twitter may die--as some have foretold. But having tasted this new communication medium, I believe the masses will not rest until it is replaced by something that does not depend upon a slick Silicon Valley business plan. 

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If there's been one common thread running through all of my business experience since first working at Aspen Research in St. Paul, MN in the nineties, it's that there are some things you can't figure out just sitting in your office and staring at a screen. As one coworker used to so colorfully say, "@#$% the theory, do the experiment". Now Rod was an extremely accomplished chemist, not a marketer--by his own admission, but the same idea holds in product development. Better products come from truly understanding your customers and you'll never get that understanding from a set of quantitative cross-tabs, reading a Forrester report, or keeping up with what some journalist and her editor thinks will sell magazines aimed at your market. Sometimes you have to leave the office and spend time--quality time--with your customers.

Now before you start thinking that I'm imagining some grandiose and costly IDEO-like process for observational information gathering, chill. I'm not there. That's certainly valuable, and sometimes it's precisely what's needed. But it's expensive and normally a tool only the largest firms can afford. No, far too many mid-size firms and even entrepreneurs lose touch with their primary customer base and what matters to those customers most. Maintaining the dialog with these customers--well, the conversation, in the Cluetrain lingo--goes a long way to keeping you atuned to their daily struggles, their challenges, their frustrations, their pain points that your product has the opportunity to address.

At the low end of the cost spectrum, just getting out into the environment where you customers congregate is helpful. When leading new product development at Werner Ladder, I used to head down to a local Sherwin Williams, Home Depot or Lowes early in the morning some days to bump into and talk with contractors picking up their supplies for the day. At Andersen Windows, it meant driving out to construction sites and chatting with framers, contractors and GCs about how the construction market was doing and hearing their gripes. At Quickoffice, it meant spending time at Palm User Group meetings and talking to users about how they used the software--learning how some of my assumptions were very, very off the mark. Sometimes the smallest alteration to a product makes a big impact on a customer: a change to packaging makes it easier to access on a job site, a unified installation for an application makes it easier for a customer to get up and running with your software, the inclusion of a few sample files helps users to know how the app really works, etc.

This kind of customer insight and understanding is not expensive. It does take some time, but it's time that pays back dividends far in excess of the time spent. Sure, it helps to have some idea of what you are seeking input on; creating a list of things to watch for, or questions to ask will help you keep your time valuable. But also be open to listening to what your customers have to say when just given a chance to talk to you--let them ramble on a bit and listen. Ask some probing questions: why is that? when does that seem to happen most? and listen carefully to the answers. You'll likely find some invaluable nuggets that your competitors are not hearing, and you'll have the opportunity to keep that conversation going with development and sales of products that just keep on improving.

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