rqtaylor

Am I riding a dinosaur?

While interviewing with several start-ups in February it became apparent that companies were looking to get an inside view of their demand-to-close process.  To do this they were using a variety of Marketing Automation tools.  The most interesting ones to me were Marketo and Loopfuse, many startups are using them.  They both integrate with SalesForce.com and other CRM applications.  What surprised me was that Eloqua has become somewhat of a bloated dinosaur in many companies minds.  A little too expensive and too many feature for what the start-up needs.  I used Eloqua for years and it worked great for our companies needs.  In fact, an error I made in 2006 changed the file formats you could load into Eloqua (I’ll save that for another day).

I guess one lesson learned is it is strange how software gets labeled and that label can spread throughout a community.  While Eloqua is a great tool used by many companies, it may be a little pricey and overkill for certain segments of the market.  That is how MySQL grew so fast.  It was optimal for the web and the cost was right for developers.  Luckily for MySQL the internet blew up and they had the right label.

So is the product your selling the next dinosaur or the optimized for the next big wave?  The next question can be is the software you are using the dinosaur that you are afraid to stop using?

Just some thoughts close to midnight.

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Knowledge Dump

For almost 5 years I worked for one of the great Commercial Open Source Software stories that may ever be told.  I joined MySQL AB right out of college and was part of the Lead Generation engine that pumped a high volume of leads (10’s of thousands a day) to sales reps all over the world.  I had a 360 degree view of the demand-to-close process and was able to help turn downloads into dollars.  Working for a high growth start-up was exciting, challenging and extremely rewarding.  After helping grow MySQL into a $1 Billion acquisition by Sun Microsystems and waiting out Oracle acquiring Sun, it was time for me to move back to the start-up environment.

After the acquisition I was fortunate to be recruited by several great companies, mostly open source, needing someone to generate leads and manage their demand-to-close process.  After sitting through several interviews I discovered how important expertise and experience in generating leads are.  I also found out that there are not many people that have been trained to do it successfully.

I have decided to start contributing to my blog again and sharing with the world the lessons I learned generating leads and turning downloads into dollars at MySQL.  I will also share some lessons I learn as I develop and run the demand-to-close processes at Pentaho, the Open Source Business Intelligence company.  I am currently an adjunct professor at Boise State University dumping some of this knowledge to undergraduate marketing students.

Tags: demand to close, Downloads to Dollars, Lead Generation

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Feedback on Research

I received the first feedback for my research.  It is in response to a presentation given in class.

Comments from Jason MacDonald

Very interesting and promising topic.  Seemed to do a lot of research but didn’t discuss much of the literature.  I think the audience needed a better foundation to understand the importance of the problem.  For example, is there a lot of evidence that companies treat communities like customers?

Some other issues:

1. The proposed connection between Marketing and Involvement Marketing was not very clear.  What did the double sided arrow represent?

2. It is hard to understand from the figure how marketing is related to co-creation.

3. Loyalty seems to be a ubiquitous variable in your framework.  You need to put more thought into how it relates to the other variables.  Is it a product of co-creation?  Is it an antecedent of co-creation?

4. The model suggests that co-creation produces firm value separate from marketing (sales).  It is not clear to me at this point how this can be true if market value represents the PV of future free cash flows.  That is, for co-creation to affect market value it must have and effect on cash flows but that effect is not evident in your framework.  This could be the biggest contribution of your framework if you can figure it out.

Tags: feedback, research

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So much noise, so little time

I try to spend about 15 minutes a day finding more information for my research project.  There is a lot of information writen in blogs, forums and a few publications on if or how to measure the impact of social media.  The bottom line for most companies is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure.  Yet companies want to be involved in the conversations that are happening in their markets.

The more I look into the issue, the more I feel that those that manage involvement marketing in a company need to be seperate from those that manage traditional marketing.  There should be a lot of crossover between the two groups, but the goals are so different there must be a strategic seperation.

I hope to start narrowing down a few companies to provide case studies on to see how they measure and manage involvement marketing.

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Involvement Marketing Framework

I presented the above framework to my Internet Marketing Strategy class on July 9. The thesis for my research is as follows: Involvement Marketing has different goals and should be measured differently than Traditional Marketing.

For the next year I will be looking at what metrics companies should and currently use to measure Involvement Marketing and Web 2.0 media to create a environment of participation. I believe that the metrics will be different than those used by traditional marketing.

I would like to site the following as resources I used to develop this framework:

• Hoffman and Novak (1996)
• Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004)
• Sawhney et al. (2005)
• Lovett and MacDonald (2005)
• Brown, Broderick, and Lee (2007)
• Maklan, Knox, and Ryals (2007)
• Schlosser, Barnett White, and Llyod (2006)
• Dwyer (2007)
• Briggs, Krishnan, and Borin (2005)
• Rayport, Jeffrey and Bernard Jaworski (2004)
• West and O’Mahany (2008)
  - Forming a Participation Architecture
• West and Lakhani (2008)
  - Community Construct
• Dahlander, Frederiksen, Rullani (2008)
  - Governance of Online Communities
  - Participation Architecture
  - Symbolic Value of the product for the consumer
• Mairinger (2008)
  - New Branding Process with Web 2.0
  - Branding 2.0
• James Dixon, The Bee Keeper (2007)
• Young (2008) Forrester
• KnowledgeStorm (2006)
• Blogs
  http://www.theopenforce.com/
  http://weblog.infoworld.com/openresource/
  http://news.cnet.com/openroad/
  http://techboise.com/
  http://www.newcommbiz.com/
  http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
  http://tim.oreilly.com/
• I would also like to thank Jeff Wiss, Giuseppe Maxia, my Mother, Father and little brother Jacob

Tags: framework, involvement marketing, research

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Involvement Marketing

I have been trying to think of what to call the new marketing efforts of new media for my research.  I came up with Involvement Marketing.  I am not the first person to coin the term.  Google told me that Stan Rapp and Thomas L. Collins used the term in their book Beyond Maximarketing.  Their definition of Involvement Marketing is what you get your prospects and customers to do - an activity you get them involved in other than merely buying what you are selling.

While I appreciate what they are saying here, I would like to take it one step further.
Therefore, Rich Taylor’s definition of Involvement Marketing is as follows:

Involvement Marketing is the marketing activities and strategies companies use to provide co-creation opportunities for customers, consumers and employees.

Much of Involvement Marketing today comes from using old media to push new media and utilize Web 2.0 technology.  I hope my research can provide a framework for companies to use to start providing co-creation opportunities to help add value to their firms.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: involvement marketing, research

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Your Online World

In the thinking and brainstorming function for my upcoming research proposal presentation, I have been looking into My Online World.  I am currently hosting a webinar, answering emails and posting on this blog.  I spend 6-10 hours each weekday on the Internet.  I use is for communication, entertainment, research, bills, shopping, work and more.  It touches every aspect of my life.  I am not alone, there are many like me.

But there are also many that are not like me.  I have started talking to many of my friends and family about how they use the Internet.  So far I have found that each person’s online use is not just different, but fairly personal.  I was surprised to find how personal Internet use is.

Think of Your Online World.  Are you the same person online as you are offline?  This could be an important aspect of Internet use that marketers should realize.  There seems to be some research started on this topic.

Brunet and Schmidt (2006)
Rouse and Haas (2003)
Johnson (2004)

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Web 2.0 for my Mom

I have found that in the online world in which I work and play, I am constantly pushing Web 2.0 and new media onto the people in my life.  While I can impress my little brothers with some of the things I find, I am not sure that my Mom and others enjoy me telling them about the new and excited things on the WorldWideWeb.

I am currently enrolled in the Internet Marketing Strategy class at Boise State University.  Since I took this class in my undergrad, Dr. Jason MacDonald has asked me to propose a research proposal on an internet-based topic for the final assignment.  After bouncing some ideas off my boss and Dr. MacDonald, I think I have found a topic.

I will figure out a more direct thesis and better wording in the next couple of days.  The general idea is how do companies introduce and drive consumers to new media co-creation activities (such as forums, blogs, social networking) using traditional media.  Through traditional media can a company get my Mom to adopt Web 2.0 and co-create with them?  Or does it need to come from a 3rd party through word-of-mouth?  How can firms introduce new media to their target market?

These are the questions I would like to help answer.

Tags: marketing, new media, research

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Conan the Blogarian is back

I have the privledge and sometimes pain of working with one of my best friends and brother-in-law.  I briefly tried to start writing my thoughts down and posting them on the Internet a couple years ago and all of the sudden I was named Conan the Blogarian.  I believe I even received the blogger of the year award for the office.

I have picked up quite a few nicknames in my day and I will now try to live up to this one.  Thanks goes to my little brother Jacob (for helping me set this little blog up).

Tags: blogging, nickname

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