Paul Woods

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For all those B2B Technology Marketers (like myself)… Google have launched a knowledge center focused around how we can get the most out of AdWords for online Pay Per Click campaigns.

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Hi… my name is Paul, and I’m an email-a-holic!

[YOU SAY] Hi Paul.

Over the last few weeks I have noticed that productivity has been dropping as pesky email requests have been increasing.

After watching Robert Scoble interview Tim Ferriss the other day (author of the new book “4-Hour Work Week“… you can see the interview here)… I have decided that I am going to limit myself to checking email only twice during my work day.  Once around 11am, and once around 4pm. 

Why not check email at the start of the day?  Because it will put you straight into reactive mode for the rest of they day… when you really need to be in proactive mode to deliver on the commitments you have made.

I started the experiment today… and I feel like it has improved my productivity about two-fold, simply because I am now focusing on the things I need to get done, not the things that people need from me “urgently” (if they need it urgently, why email… why not actually call me to ensure I get the message… arrrgh… sorry, I digress).

But you know what… it is really really hard not to check your email when your new email notifications continue to pop up from Outlook.  So I turned them off, and now I don’t even feel the need to check my inbox!  I suggest you give it a shot and turn off your new email notifications…

Anyway’s… thanks Tim, and thanks Robert.  I think I might go an buy 4-Hour Work Week and see what other tips you have that will help me get more work done in less time.

Click here to register!

This month I will be on the panel at the Networx Brisbane marketing meeting.  Topic of the day is “Pitching internally or externally - how to sell your ideas and educate your market”

Should be a great night.  I really like the style of Networx.  Relaxed.  Informal.  Lots of knowledge sharing, a touch of booze, and of course… networking.  Reminds me of all the user groups I used to help out with when I worked at Microsoft… except the audience is 90% women at Networx, not 90% men like at the technology user groups

… and Networx is about much more interesting stuff like marketing and communications… not refining SQL queries or the BizTalk XML Schema Wizard!

The other member of the panel at the moment is Robyn Woodrow from Red Zebra Consulting.

If you are in Brisbane on Wednesday 20 June and are interested in learning more about pitching ideas to your colleagues or customers… make sure you register today and come along.

*And don’t ask me really hard questions!

*Note - non marketing related post - but I thought I would share this solution with the world to save people a few hours when they come across this problem. - PW

The Problem

Today I upgraded to the new version of the Windows Live Writer beta.  When trying to add a weblog account, I received the following error:

“An error occurred while attempting to connect to your weblog:

Invalid Server Response = The response to the blogger.getUsersBlogs method received from the weblog server was invalid:

Invalid response document returned from XmlRpc server

You must correct this error before proceeding”

So… after a quick search there were a few different solutions I came across.  But none were working

After more investigation scouring my hosts (Dreamhost) support wiki, I found the answer!!!

The Solution

There is a bug in version 5.2.2 of PHP (which is the version that my host uses) that essentially totally screws up your XmlRpc responses.  The good news is that it is easy to fix, all you need to do is add one line to the top of your xmlrpc.php file

$HTTP_RAW_POST_DATA = file_get_contents(”php://input”);

As soon as I did that… it worked

Hope that little tidbit of information saves you.  Because the Dreamhost support forum is a wiki, I updated the reference there as well to include WLW Beta 2 on the problem list.  Got to love wiki based support!

Tonight, whilst at a local university awards ceremony I saw one of the most interesting marketing strategies I have come across… so smart… so simple… yet so very very effective.

The university essentially got their brightest students together in one room to reward them for their stellar academic efforts over the last 12 months.  These were not your regular students… these were the cream of the crop… the top 1% of students for the year.

The purpose of the night was to reward them for their great work… or so it seemed!

The Professor who was Master of Ceremonies ran through the introduction for the evening, and then before they had handed over one award (whilst everyone was still wide awake!) on to the stage came the walking sales pitch.

“Hi, I’m Andrew, and I am a Phd student…”

At this stage the lightbulb is going off in my head…

1. a very highly segmented target audience
2. that are happy because they are being rewarded for being in that very highly segmented target audience
3. that are actively listening because they are very happy to be party of the very highly segmented target audience

The ultimate sales pitch… obviously the university is looking for the top students to take on a further research degree… and they were all in the one room at the right time!

So how can we apply this to the real world (the world outside academia)

1. Compile a list of your top ten customers using a criteria of your liking.  It could be turnover, margin, customer sat, strategic fit… whatever
2. Reward them for being your top customers.  Take them out for dinner, wine them, dine them, show them a good time
3. Have your sales pitch ready.  Obviously if they are your best customers, and are happy to be rewarded as such, in most cases they will be ready to buy more.

We have done this in a round about way in the past… building what is essentially a premium access lunch with our senior executives… but this takes it to the next level.

And it works too… I would say from my experience tonight talking to award winners that about 20% will go on to do research with the university.  Not a bad conversion rate!

Technorati Tags: Customer Recognition, Reward, Strategic Marketing

For organisations running a July/June financial year (like most here in Australia)annual report time is just around the corner.  The time of year that most marketers love (those who outsource or sidestep), or hate (those that don’t!).

Putting together an annual report is a big task, but it does not have to be that bad.  Here are a few resources to help you kick start your annual report project this year.

• Australian Reporting Awards General Criteria
  This is a great list of all the points your annual report needs to touch on - both the words at the front, and the numbers at the back
• Perfect Your Annual Report - Interbrand Annual Report Checklist (PDF)
  Questions to ask yourself covering messaging and audiences, design and content, editorial, production, and budget
• Annual Report Design - Hot to Design and Publish Annual Reports and Proposals
  About.com list of resources specifically around annual report design

Technorati Tags: Reporting, Annual, Corporate Governance, Investor Relations

Over recent weeks I have been working with one of the new starters in my team to bring her up to speed on how to write a press release.

At first I just said… “Here is a great story about our organisation, I feel it is pretty newsworthy, can you have a crack at putting a release together that we can send out”.  Bad move!  The copy that she gave back to me just didn’t feel right.  Putting myself in the shoes of a journalist or editor, I couldn’t really see what the newsworthy story was!  It was buried down in paragraph four… after three paragraphs of credibility building copy (which was pretty good mind you, just out of place).  Obviously there was a problem with how the “story” we were trying to tell to our audience (the journalist) was structured.

It is pretty easy, especially when you are starting out in MarComms or PR to focus too much on who you are, and not on the important part - what the story actually is, and how it affects your target audience! 

There is a  tool which can help you structure your press releases to ensure maximum impact… the “Inverted Pyramid”.

The idea behind the Inverted Pyramid is to put the most important facts at the beginning of the piece, and then the less important supporting ideas further down the copy.  A good test to see if your copy is following the inverted pyramid is to read the entire release, except for the last paragraph.  Still getting the message across?  Try only reading half the release.  If you can still understand exactly what the message is that you are trying to get across, then you are on the right track.

There are many other things to take into consideration when writing a press release, and here is a great resource that lists quite a few.

Technorati Tags: Press Release, Inverted Pyramid

Are you like me?  Starving for information about anything to do with B2B Marketing?  The best way to solve that problem is to find some blogs to fill the void!

Thanks to Jon Miller, you do not need to search and subscribe to dozens of individual blogs… because he has put the most relevant B2B Marketing Blogs (over 50 of them!) into a easy OPML file.  That means you can import them all with a few clicks of a mouse.

Check out the Big List of B2B Marketing Blogs at the Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog.  You can also directly download the OPML.

(…and yes I know this has been online since late Feb - but I finally got around to subscribing to them all today!)

Now if only we had a list of Marketing Bloggers in Australia!  Maybe my next project…

Technorati Tags: Lists, B2B

Most people fear public speaking… in fact for most, it is their greatest fear of all.  I was one of them. 

But now I rather enjoy getting up in front of people and talking about stuff - whether it is for 1 minute, 10 minutes or a whole hour.  How did I overcome my fear of public speaking?  By doing it!  And doing it again… and again and again and again.  After a while you realise that it is not as bad as you first thought

However… if you are still on that journey from nervous wreck to confident speaker, I found a public speaking checklist  full of tips to help you through your trauma!

This list was published by Prue Moodie in the May edition of CPA Australia’s “In the Black” magazine…

Don’t

• Read from a speech
• Go against your personality style
• Forget to explain why the subject is important
• Use word-heavy slides
• Tell the audience you are nervous
• Thank the audience for their time
• Tell jokes

Do

• Memorise your speech
• Check the technology is working
• Have someone introduce you
• Allow your eyes to rest on individuals or groups - for a few words only
• Pause for a couple of seconds occasionally
• Move - a step or two - to illustrate a point
• See the humour in yourself and the subject (but not in your qualifications)

What a great list for those new to public speaking!

There is plenty I could write about speaking… and I might make mention of a few things every week or two moving forward.  In the mean time if you are interested in learning more about how to build your public speaking skills, here are two great resources that you should check out:

TJ Walker’s Speaking Channel
http://www.speakingchannel.tv/

This is a great resource where you can learn all the intricacies of public speaking.  Check out “Speakcast” - they are very good video tutorials that everyone should have a look at.

Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen
http://www.presentationzen.com/

Presentation Zen is great if you are interested in how to use PowerPoint to assist you in delivering your message to your audience.  Note - the answer is not more bullet points!

Technorati Tags: Public Speaking

Hugh hits the nail on the head…

(click to enlarge)

… and he somewhat leads to the solution with…

It is too easy to talk about features and benefits and list 100’s of dot points about performance and why the technology you are “selling” is better than other technologies… but really… who cares?  Your average CEO doesn’t!

At the end of the day, you should not be selling the benefits of the technology, but the benefits of the outcomes that the technology provides.

Not…

“this collaboration technology can scale up to 10 000 users out of the box, is built using the Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1, fully complies with DoD specifications, can be installed on Windows Server , Solaris, HP-UX and more..  AND the user interface can be skinned using CSS to comply with your corporate identity guide.”

But…

“this collaboration technology can help your people work together, discover corporate information faster, and ultimately increase the relational or social capital of your organisation.  Remember the old saying it is not what you know but who you know?  Well this technology empowers your people to build relationships with people outside of their team, and even with your customers and suppliers - increasing effectivness across your organisation, and the value of your customer engagements.”

When you are marketing technology to real business decision makers, remember (as Hugh says so perfectly)… “tech problems don’t exist, people problems exist.”

Technorati Tags: Hugh, Blue Monster, Marketing Challenges, Tech Marketing