Ask not what you can do for your marketing chicken headless

Two weeks, more or less, has passed.

Yeah, it has been crazy. I focused mostly on converting existing data into our new CRM tool, SalesForce.com, and updating the website.

A CRM tool is a good thing, theoretically. It takes a lot of the thinking out of the marketing and sales process. The downside, however, is that, like all computer solutions, its usage and limitation is not always exactly what you wanted.

SalesForce.com is a hosted service so it is kind of nice that way. Our new VP of Sales is a fan and, having no strong opinion on the issue, I am as happy with it as any other choice. So, my biggest challenges are mostly in the realm of loading data onto the database. There are several spreadsheets of existing customer information and marketing information that needed to be consolidated into one. Being an old COBOL programmer who worked with DB2 extensively, I know my way around loading data. This is one of those things that ain't too difficult but tricky enough that if you ain't careful, you can screw yourself royally.

What bugs me about SalesForce is that the standard field "Lead Source" is a picklist and can only have one entry. Logical but not useful. From the same lead (person), there could be multiple ways of contacting us. For example, if a person received a whup-ass e-mail then requests a product demo as well as a whitepaper, SalesForce does not allow me to provide the kind of granularity I need. If you think I am just nuts for wanting that kind of info, it gives me the opportunity to come back later and do con-joint analysis on the selection/request preferences and the ultimate outcome. (And people thought marketing is all frou-frou.) Anyway, I came up with a method of capturing that information that does not look too ugly on the database structure without dragging down the performance.

Website is coming along. Pushed the new sales process update onto the live site. My next major objective is to get the text changed so that the website reflects the new corporate focus. This will help the search engine ranking. With all the band-aids in, I will be able to sit back and think though the whole website re-vamping process. Part of the problem with the current site is that it has a very year 2000 look. Hope to put in a few fixes to make it look younger.

After staring at the website for so long, my favorite method of taking a break is to put in all sorts strange stuff onto the site. So, far, I have added Bevis and Butthead onto the corporate banner, added one of the exec's photo and added mustache onto the home page. Good thing that everyone enjoys the gag. It is a shame that some of the more inspired graphics and languages will never be shown on the live site.

Oh, also got some budget to upgrade the Hoovers account. Did you know that if you use Master card to pay for Hoovers, there is a discount? In my case, it amounts to some 20% off. I always thought that Master/Visa target consumer markets. But, I will take the discount.

The blasting program continued until this week. One of the particular memorable lines, I thought, involves a paraphrase of the JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you..." by juxtaposing our product against the solutions that we are suppose to replace. It was cute.

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Whup-ass in Week four

Week four with Ace.

Working on Google AdWords. If you have not heard, it is the paid-ad program that allows you to pop up a message on the right hand side whenever a relevant search is conducted on Google. There is a whole industry around it with companies with tens and hundreds of millions in revenue that does nothing but optimizing Google ad's. And, of course, it is incumbent upon me to optimize our little Google operation.

Adjusted some wordings and shifted the budget around. The prior program was set up focusing on different products and with a set of new products to peddle; it was not too difficult to make the initial adjustment.

What will be interesting is to implement the conversion program. Long story short, it allows you to know not just how many people was curious enough to click through your ad when doing a Google search, but actual do something like leave their contact information so hapless marketing guys like me can send them tasteless blasts (see below on Mr WA.) Well, that is what it is suppose to do, am thinking through the process and hope to get it implemented soon.

Re-vamping corporate website. Yeah, it is going to be a lot of work since the website was done for the prior set of products. So, you would never be able to guess what we want you to buy by looking at the site. Also, the new VP of sales wants to change the sales process which will also have impact on the site.

For now, I am thinking small. Change the part impacting the sales process and give the website home page a face lift with appropriate propagandas, and do the Google conversion stuff.

It is a survival skill to take small steps and declare victory often.

=A few updates=

The TechTarget problem turns out to be a logistic one. A paper targeted at the Exchange users was blasted to Domino users. No wonder no Domino users were interested in what we had to say about Exchange. So, problem ID'd and I demanded that Ace gets a free blast to the Exchange users since the Domino blast was useless.

The result was encouraging with a higher level of Exchange user interests. But, the interesting part was that there were also a little bit of Domino user interests. This kind of got me thinking, and thinking is free, are those Domino users for real? The blast title clearly stated that it is for Exchange. Are they requesting info to fill out an otherwise free afternoon, getting a copy for a friend, or, drum roll for conspiracy theory of the day please, is there a minimum level of response that certain organization orchestrates?

==

The internal marketing blast went out with minimum surprises. I particularly liked one of the tag lines where "whup-ass" is involved. It is not the most tasteful, but it sure made that afternoon that much brighter. On the administrative side, I had to spent a whole afternoon scrubbing the returned e-mail from the original list – for future reference, if you are going to take the trouble to maintain an e-mail list, please make it use-able, or I will come after you if you made me scrub it. Also had to deal with unsubscribe requests which were promptly processed - I would not want to be treated any other way.

So, back to the whup-ass story. It was somewhat controversial since it is wanting in the proper and good taste department. Nevertheless, the CEO rammed through that one. Reactions. First one was an angry reply who complain that he was not suppose to be getting marketing blasts. Technically not true as I got his e-mail when he requested information from the website which is an automatic inclusion into the marketing e-mail list. Twice. The twist of the story is that since he requested info twice from the website, he was blasted twice including the whup-ass line as one of the two. Well, technical truth is not what we are looking for. So, I took that poor sap off the blast list and tell the sales guys to blame it on me/Marketing. Second reaction was even better - we got a call wanting to know more about the product because the caller's boss' boss got the blast. God willing, we will close this customer. Regardless, there were high five all around for the "brilliant" wording.

p.s. I downloaded an image of a whup-ass label and stuck onto a can of Pepsi (the choice of drink has to do with the color of the can vis-à-vis the label). A can of whup-ass! Yesiree bob!

chiefchickenheadless (at) gmail dot come sign out