Adventures in Modern Marketing
By David Maister
 In
June 2006, I asked the readers of my blog to advise me about
the best way to raise the awareness of my website. This
question prompted the most comments of any of blog post
since I began. I have combined that advice here with reflections
of my own on what I have learned from my use of the web
in my consulting practice.
Helping Busy People Search
We don’t best communicate information when we want
to convey it. Instead, communication is most effective when
we ensure that what we have to offer is accessible and useful
right at the point when someone in need starts looking for
it. We tend to assume that people will search for what we
have to offer. They will, but only if we make it really
easy for them to find things!
The single most important marketing topic that exists is
search: understanding, implementing and taking advantage
of new Internet search tools that enable clients, customers
and other audience members to seek out our information and
materials.
And the topic extends much more deeply than the much-discussed
“search engine optimization” which attempts
to ensure that people seeking information find our websites—we
also need to make it “super-easy” for people,
once they have come to our site, to discover and make use
of what the site has to offer.
The goal of any website is to make it easier for a broad
range of readers to enjoy content in the way that they
like best, removing readership obstacles, and thereby reaching
a broader audience.
Nurturing the Community
It has always been true that the best way to market is
to begin by working on current relationships, avoid the
temptation to reach for “quick hits” and implement
a strategy of patiently building new relationships and reputation
by a focus on helping.
The same is true online. The first and most important activity
is to build and nurture existing relationships—one’s
community.
The notion that many people welcome the feeling of association
that comes from being part of a community is not new. Decades
ago, American Express ran a hugely successful campaign using
the slogan “Membership has its benefits.” Many
marketing authors have commented on (and suggested that
other businesses learn from) the loyalty of Harley-Davidson
owners.
What I was delighted to discover was that it could apply
to me, a solo practitioner consultant (and to you.) It turned
out, to my delight, that there were people out there (clients,
readers, existing visitors to my website) who were not only
willing but eager to help me. My challenge was to nurture
and reward this community.
We must develop ways to ‘reward’ our most loyal
readers, blog contributors and subscribers; for example,
special advance access to materials, invitations to private
meetings and conferences, and honored guest memberships.
Gathering Input
In order to build the community, it is necessary for me
to be proactive in understanding my community: conducting
regular and systematic surveys of my current readers and
subscribers, to understand better why they subscribe, what
they are looking for and how they would like me to evolve
and adapt content and website features. Consultants like
us always tell clients to do this. Few of us take our own
medicine.
The tools for collecting information on those who access
and use our material may have been transformed by the development
of Internet tools, but it still comes down to the simple
statement about clients’ needs that I have fervently
preached for years: never speculate when you can ask!
Becoming More Valuable
If we want the world to think we are helpful experts in
our subject, then we must always try to act as a filter,
facilitator and advisor on the best, most relevant and most
timely information of value to our audience. I knew this—In
fact, I seem to remember co-authoring a book on this very
topic: how to be a Trusted
Advisor. That doesn’t mean I don’t
have a lot more work to do on this.
What the Internet allows us to do, with its links and search
capabilities, is to work toward this goal more easily, more
thoroughly and at a cheaper cost.
Word of Mouth
One of the most important lessons I have been learning
is that “Word-of-Mouth” marketing may actually
not be a marketing concept at all, but an operational one.
Word of mouth occurs when we give our clients, customers
or audience such a good experience that they go away and
talk about us. The outcome may be a marketing benefit, but
the activity is operational—enhance the experience!
What’s the Message?
I discovered that, in spite of all my preaching over the
years about ‘customer focus” I had not really
examined my website from the client’s point of view.
Above all, I needed to do a better job of recognizing that
there were different types of clients out there, with different
needs. For each separate need, it was necessary for me to
put myself in the shoes of different audience members
and ask, “What kinds of needs would they have, what
specific kind of information might they be looking for,
and how do I make sure my website makes it easy for that
particular type of client or prospect to find out what they
want to know?”
Getting Out and About
In today’s blogging world, the way we build attention
is not just to focus on our own materials (e.g., our own
blogs) but to seek out other hyperspace conversations that
are taking place, and join in those other conversations.
One more time, this turns out to be merely a minor translation
of a real-world lesson: if you want people to be interested
in you, you don’t succeed best by trying to force
them to come to you. (“Yoo-hoo! I’m over here!”)
Instead, you first go where they are, get to meet them,
and join in their conversations.
By making it easier for people to converse across the Internet
about our topics, using trackbacks and linking us in, we’ll
draw their traffic, in part, when they find us interesting.
That’s a sure way to broaden an audience.
On simple reflection, this is nothing more than the real-world
tactic of attending a client’s industry meeting and
finding out what they are already talking about. The effectiveness
of the tactic hasn’t changed. It’s just that
nowadays, attending a client meeting can be as simple as
finding other people’s blogs and joining in their
conversation, letting people judge our worth and merit by
the quality of what we have to say.
Moving Forward
Many of these sensible, powerful initiatives are merely
translations of old concepts into a new world: you succeed
by patiently building relationships, focusing first on serving
the interests and needs of those you hope to attract to
you, soliciting feedback from customers and acting on it,
and keeping the faith that you will attract a response from
that subset of the world that likes what you have to offer.
You may not appeal to everybody—not even everybody
you would have liked to form a relationship with—but
when your community forms, it can be an immensely powerful
(and gratifying) outcome. It certainly has been so far in
my case.
The good news is that this ‘conversational marketing’
works very well on the web, in the sense that there are
many tools to support it. The less great news is that it
doesn’t scale up very quickly, and it takes a significant
investment of time and energy to nurture those relationships.
None of that is new. What’s newly emerging are the
tools to be able to pull it all off! These new tools may
appear simple, but making them work effectively has proven
to be a matter not only of creativity, but of hard work
and finely-judged timing.
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David Maister is a consultant and author
whose books include Managing the Professional
Service Firm, True Professionalism,
The Trusted Advisor, Practice
What You Preach, and First Among
Equals. Subscriptions to his articles, podcasts
and blog are available at www.davidmaister.com.
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