Marketing Operations in the Silicon Valley: Addressing CMO Challenges

By Adrian Carol Ott

CMOs of large Silicon Valley companies are confronted with significant challenges including:

• Globalization: Synchonizing messaging and market activity across continents.

• ROI: Faced with a maturing technology industry, CEO's are demanding greater ROI on their marketing invesments.

• New Marketing Technology: The advent of new technologies has enabled unprecedented interactive dialogs with customers. New technologies must be implemented.

• Stakeholder Agreement: Coordination with regional marketing groups, and stakeholders in product business units and sales constitutes a major task.

Marketing Operations Emerges

As a result of these demands and others, many Silicon Valley CMOs have commissioned a marketing operations organization to tackle these challenges. Originally designated to create metrics and dashboards for accountability, leading companies are increasingly treating marketing operations as a key foundation to the marketing function.

"Marketing operations ensures marketing is run as a business," states a VP of Marketing Operations at a major Silicon Valley firm, "We strive to enable the marketing organization to be streamlined in day-to-day processes so they have time to think, focus on the customer and to innovate."(1)

In many business-to-business focused firms in the Silicon Valley, marketing operations is combined with the sales operation function to promote integration of the two groups. Although organizationally integrated, the purpose of marketing operations as we will describe in this article remains the same.

Introducing the 5Ts of Marketing Operations™

Based on our work with clients, and in our research, we have found that marketing operations is an emerging dimension to the marketing mix. Enabled by new processes and technology, it goes beyond the 4Ps (i.e. Product, Price, Place, Promotion), and 3Cs (i.e. Customers, Competitors, Corporation (2)), to fully round out the marketing mix. The 5Ts of Marketing Operations™ are:

• Total Strategy
• Techniques & Processes
• Tracking & Predictive Modeling
• Technology
• Talent

By approaching marketing operations across these dimensions, CMOs have an integrated approach to enable marketing worldwide. Let’s describe the 5Ts in more detail:

Total Strategy: This area involves strategy development in the product portfolio. It is not uncommon for large high-tech companies to have seventy-five or more products in their portfolios, some have hundreds. Managing investments and priorities across the portfolio is paramount.

Techniques & Processes: How should information flow most effectively across the marketing organization worldwide? How do we make decisions? What are our governance processes? What is our roadmap for marketing processes next year? in 3 years?

Tracking and Predictive Modeling: How do we make marketing more accountable? How do we measure campaigns and ensure better predictability of outcomes?

Technology: How do we implement technology across the globe to enable effective customer dialog, demand generation and measurement? What are the business requirements for IT? How does technology support the marketing and sales process roadmap for the next 3 years?

Talent: How do we ensure our marketing personnel are trained and enabled to work with new marketing technologies and processes? How can we enable them to make the right decisions based on analytics and campaign scorecards?

The Future of Marketing and the 5Ts

The 5Ts have a deep and significant impact on customer relationships. For example, by implementing integrated technology for demand generation and customer database access, regional marketing personnel can now build innovative campaigns on top of a marketing operations infrastructure. By tracking the success of a campaign, companies will realize better customer targeting and ROI; they learn from prior successes and failures.

The 5Ts add a critical foundation to the marketing function enabling marketing operations to support Silicon Valley CMOs to tackling contemporary challenges and to integrate with sales operations. It is dramatically transforming the marketing function and is changing how marketing will be conducted in the future.

© 2007 Exponential Edge Inc., All Rights Reserved


The Author: Adrian Carol Ott is CEO of Exponential Edge Inc, http://www.exponentialedge.com/ a strategy consultancy that assists global corporations to grow and innovate through market assessment, go-to-market planning, and strategic partnering. She also serves as Chair of the Harvard Business School N. California Alumni Marketing and Sales Roundtable. The Roundtable is a forum that explores issues and trends faced by senior executives in the Silicon Valley and Bay Area Business Community.

(1) HBS N. CA Marketing & Sales Roundtable, "Marketing Operations: How It Will Transform Marketing Forever", Panel Discussion with VP's of Marketing Operations from Symantec, Cisco, BEA, and a consumer packaged goods expert, June 20, 2006
(2) It is recognized that the 3Cs have been used in other forms and described in different ways. For example, we have heard "Communication" used as a "C". Our description is what appears to be most consistent in literature based on the author's research. Other forms could be substituted for the 3C's and have the same effect. The goal is to avoid debate on this element in this article as it would take it away from the central topic.

Turn Your Competitors into Allies

By Shel Horowitz

1. Get to know the other people in your niche. When you notice a new arrival in the marketplace--or if you enter a market new to you--pick up the phone and get acquainted. Become active in trade associations in your industry, and in your geographic area (for example, Chamber of Commerce, neighborhood business association). Participate in Internet discussion groups with others in your own or closely related fields. Talk shop, discuss approaches to problems, let each other know about events or opportunities of interest. Know each company's Unique Selling Proposition (USP)--the key reason why it makes sense to do business with that company--and that way, you'll know when and where to refer accounts that aren't quite right for you.

2. Market together, cooperatively. I remember a wonderful newspaper co-op ad from all my local florists, who teamed up just before Mother's Day. The headline: "You wouldn't buy your groceries from a florist! So, why buy your plants from a grocer?" The ad copy emphasized higher plant quality, expert knowledge, and various other benefits, and then listed full contact info for 11 different flower shops.

By joining forces, the consortium could afford a big, noticeable ad. An ad one-eleventh the size would have been easy to ignore, but this one filled a quarter-page (in a large-format newspaper) and demanded to be noticed.

Another example: in publishing, many small presses will include a flier for a complementary book from another publisher as they ship out orders; for the very low cost of printing and mailing the fliers, participating publishers get to reach an entirely new audience. Sometimes, publishers will even sell a bundle consisting of their own and other firms' books, gathered together at a value price.

It's not just small companies doing this, either. Some of the largest and most fiercely competitive corporations in the world engage in joint ventures regularly. The first car I ever bought new was a 1988 Chevrolet Nova, which was essentially identical to the Toyota Corolla. Built by Chevrolet to Toyota's specification, it was a marvelous car, and about $2000 less than the same car with the Toyota nameplate. Fifteen years after production ended, I still see a lot of them on the road. Similarly, the popular Ford Escort wagon was really a Mazda, etc., etc.

Think about the package delivery business. FedEx and the United States Postal Service have a very interesting arrangement; the USPS subcontracts intercity air transportation of Express Mail and Priority Mail to FedEx, which gets a substantial new revenue stream and utilizes otherwise wasted air freight capacity. And meanwhile, FedEx has installed thousands of drop boxes at post offices around the country, thus helping its consumers avoid pick-up charges and making shipping with the company incredibly convenient.

For service businesses, sometimes your biggest competitor is not another company, but the idea of doing it yourself. Certainly, this is true in my business. Most people believe they can write well--and few of them understand the difference between putting sentences together on paper to convey information--something most people can actually do themselves--and writing materials with a sharply defined focus and a powerful call to action, or a news hook. Only a very small percentage of businesses ever hire outside professional copywriters. Large firms hire this skill internally, and many small firms use their own (untrained) marketing departments.

In my business, two of the largest revenue streams are marketing copywriting and resume writing. On the resume side, our "market share" went down sharply after large numbers of people started having access to PCs and laser printers, and it went down dramatically again after Microsoft started bundling a resume template in Microsoft Word. During the boom times when companies would hire any warm body, people could get by with that approach. But now, in a leaner economy, many of our resume clients bring a document they created in this template--because it hasn't been landing job interviews. We can easily see why these self-written resumes haven't been working; they don't properly highlight the client's strengths or minimize weaknesses, the format may not be appropriate, and the writers haven't focused their resume on their target market: people who hire employees with a particular skill set.

3. Refer business to each other. Typically, you will each have areas of specialization that you do better than others. So if you get an inquiry from someone best served by your competitor, you satisfy the customer by playing matchmaker. And your competitors will do the same for you. I have some competitors--and complementary businesses--with whom I pay or charge a referral commission, and others where we simply pass appropriate clients to each other.

My business started primarily as a typing service, but very quickly, I branched out into writing resumes and marketing materials. I joined a local association of secretarial services, and because people knew my specialties, I got a lot of resume work through referrals.

At the same time, after my first two tape-transcription assignments, I decided I really disliked that part of the business and began referring those jobs out to other services.

This cooperation always had three winners: the client, of course, who got the best providers for the services they needed; but also my competitors and me: we didn't let the things we disliked get in the way of doing what we enjoyed and excelled at, yet we were able to keep our clients happy when they requested those services.

Here's another one of my "competitors," Wendy Kurtz, MBA, APR, CPRC, president of the PR firm Elizabeth Charles & Associates , talking about how this works for her:

I disagree with the premise that there are only two types: winners and losers. All too often, we as professionals tend to overlook the basic concept we learned in childhood, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." I have found that some of my best referrals have come from vendors and those competitors with whom I maintain a sense of "we're in this together," rather than "we're out to beat each other to the top."

4. Subcontract with each other. If one of you has too much work and the other has too little, doesn't it make sense to work with a professional that you trust and even it all out?

5. Create temporary joint ventures, where each of you is a partner. After all, if fierce competitors like Apple and IBM could join together (with Motorola as a third partner) to develop the Power PC chip architecture, surely you and your competitors can put aside your differences. These could be equal or weighted partnerships.

6. In some cases, if you work so well together, and enjoy advantages of scale, increased buying power, and so forth--and your corporate cultures harmonize well with each other--a permanent merger or acquisition may even make sense.

7. Be there if your competitors fold; if you've maintained strong positive relations, if you've cooperated on several projects, if your competitor leaves the business, *you* will get the referrals.

In the earliest days of my business, one of my competitors called me up and asked me if I needed any office supplies; he wanted to place an order with a large mail-order wholesaler and didn't have enough to make the minimum. That phone call has saved me thousands of dollars, because I wasn't aware of this very inexpensive supplier. I not only added my order to his, but for the past 20 years I've ordered from that company--at a deep discount over anything I could find locally.

And yes, this competitor later moved out of the area. He was one of several who sent all their clients to me when they closed their shops.

I got the initial call--and the later referrals--because we were on friendly terms and had often sent each other clients.

Excerpted from Shel Horowitz's Apex Award winning sixth book Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First.

Marketing Disruptive Innovations to Consumers: Myths vs. Realities

[ ... a Chasm Institute perspective ]

The boundaries between high-tech and the consumer have shifted. The next 2 to 5 years will increasingly blur this boundary further, making it essential for today’s marketers to more deeply understand the rules of the game.

It is no longer “business to business = high-tech” and “business to consumer = low-tech.”

Competitive worldwide markets clearly require smarter approaches for savvy companies seeking to introduce a “consumer” high-tech product. And the good news is that key success patterns are emerging and becoming more predictable, based on our Chasm Institute client strategy sessions and workshops during the past 10+ years.

In this overview, we describe four myths and realities that must be considered, for the successful marketing of disruptive technology into consumer markets.

These are as follows:

(1) Consumers and Disruptive Innovations –
This Can Be Done

· Myth: Consumers will not buy disruptive innovations.
· Reality: Certain consumers will buy disruptive innovations, but the motivation and economic model must be right.
· Lesson: Target wealthy consumers, or less affluent but highly-motivated early adopters (think MP3 players). In either case, you need to win over Technology Enthusiasts who will give your product a strong early endorsement.

Examples: early stage PC’s, home theatres, digital cameras, wireless home networking.

-----------------------------------------


(2) Cross the Chasm with Consumer Products – by Not Focusing on the Consumer

· Myth: There’s no such thing as Crossing the Chasm with consumer products.
· Reality: Best to first Cross the Chasm with a business use for your consumer product, then do the same with consumers.
· Lesson: Find a business application for your consumer product first, if at all possible.

Examples: the true commercialization of mobile phones started with sales professionals; the true commercialization of HDTV’s started with sports bars, trade show booths, corporate lobbies.

-----------------------------------------


(3) Completing the Whole Product is a Big Deal

· Myth: First one to market always wins.
· Reality: First one to market with the whole product wins.
· Lesson: Just because you have a cool technology, is no guarantee of market success – until you’ve nailed the entire “minimum viable” whole solution. And yes, this includes that pesky ecosystem.

Example: iPods (whole product included hardware, “look & feel”, industrial design, packaging, channel strategy, “out-of-box-experience”, pricing, iTunes music downloading system, branding, messaging – yes, even the billboards!)

-----------------------------------------


(4) Market Leadership can be Fleeting: ... don’t think you ever “own” the market – you’re only renting !

· Myth: I can always leverage leadership from a previous paradigm to win in the future.
· Reality: Few companies can break the stronghold of their past, without a clear + disciplined “renewal strategy”.
· Lesson: Just because you’re a leader in one paradigm, is no guarantee for success in the next paradigm. You have to fight just as hard, if not harder, to win the next wave of adoption.

Examples: Sony Walkman losing to Apple’s iPOD (2000’s), Motorola losing to Nokia in mobile phones (1990’s), Kodak losing to Canon/Sony in digital cameras (2000’s), Nokia at risk of losing to Samsung / LG / Motorola (2000’s).

----------------------------------------------------------

About the Authors:

Mark Cavender and Michael Eckhardt
Managing Directors at Chasm Institute LLC
www.chasminstitute.com


Mark Cavender is Founder and Managing Director of Chasm Institute. An accomplished teacher and workshop leader, he also serves as a senior instructor. With over 15 years of experience in enterprise software, Mark has a unique blend of strategic and tactical marketing skills coupled with a strong background in software sales.

Mark has worked with numerous leading enterprise software and telecommunications companies such as Acterna, Business Objects, Hyperion, Lawson Software, Microsoft, Nextel, Nokia and SunGard as well as growing firms such as Docent, iManage, and Logility. He has also done joint strategy work with IBM and their key enterprise software business partners.

Prior to founding Chasm Institute, Mark spent 9 years as a Managing Director with The Chasm Group and four years with Oracle Corporation, most recently as Director of Marketing, Financial Applications. Before joining Oracle, he was Marketing Manager with J.D. Edwards & Co. He has also held various sales and marketing management positions with GEAC (formerly Dun & Bradstreet Software / McCormack & Dodge), and Ceridian (formerly The Service Bureau Company).

Mark holds an MBA in marketing from the University of North Texas and a BS in general business from John Brown University.

E-mail: mcavender@chasminstitute.com

------------------------

Michael T. Eckhardt, Managing Director of Chasm Institute LLC, is a veteran of Hewlett-Packard, PepsiCo Inc., and Price Waterhouse. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Wall Street Journal Award Winner, Michael is a recognized expert in delivering market strategy workshops for high-tech executives and product teams.

Michael has 20 years of deep expertise in strategic marketing and high-tech market development. He provides clients in the U.S., Europe, and Pacific Rim with strategy workshops & tools for gaining and sustaining market leadership positions in highly-competitive marketplaces. He was first named a Senior Affiliate of the Chasm Group in 1994.

Michael's client base includes Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard’s printer business, Intel Corporation, AT&T Wireless, Agilent Technologies, Philips Medical Systems, Autodesk, LMC Data Systems, and Mentor Graphics.
Prior to Chasm Group, Michael directed Hewlett-Packard's market-focus consulting group. His work with HP frequently contributed to its business units generating profitable growth from key product lines, and increasing the market acceptance of new products. He provided HP product divisions, including the market-leading LaserJet® and DeskJet® printer businesses, with 3 priorities: market strategy workshops, customer needs analysis, and competitive intelligence training.

E-mail: meckhardt@chasminstitute.com

Everybody LOVES a Juicy Story

Enewsletter readership is declining rapidly
There was a time when email newsletters were a novelty. Even the quirky, semi-professional email newsletters got read. In fact, small- to midsize businesses had an advantage. When the company had something useful to say, provided information that could not be found anywhere else, and spoke honestly to customers without all the self-promoting hype, their email newsletters developed a loyal audience. Email newsletters were inexpensive and a great way to reach customers and build relationships.

Then large corporations with big budgets flooded cyberspace with enewsletters that were little more than thinly disguised self-promotional vehicles. People stopped reading and believing the hype. Today, even the most honest, promotion-free enewsletter can get deleted or tagged as SPAM before it has a chance to build up readership.

So how can we get prospects and customers to read enewsletters? How do we grab their interest and let them know we truly feel their pain and have a solution that addresses their problems? Simple. Write fiction stories about the drama that goes on in their day-to-day professional world.

Not a case study or an application story --- been there. Tried that. Those real-life stories are good marketing tools, but not unique enough to make our customers' customers drop everything to read the next issue of an enewsletter. No, we want to write juicy fiction stories that are real "page turners.” Evocative dramas that leave you hungry for more. Think daytime soaps with a twist.

We have the perfect client test case
This client provides litigation support services to Bay Area law firms. The target audience for its enewsletter is primarily paralegals and documentation managers working in high-pressure law firms. Both male and female, aged 25-55, they are very organized and professional. But sometimes, it seems that no matter how good they are, they aren’t as good as the lawyers they serve. Many complain that they feel like they’re always at the bottom of the hill when the crap rolls down. Plus everyone’s always in a hurry. The stress is almost too much too take.

And while many of them say they have no time to read our client's enewsletters no matter valuable the information, they continue to sign up. The enewsletter, sent quarterly to 2,000 people, scores an amazing 35% open rate, of which 15% click through. So we know somehow these paralegals MAKE time for good information. And we're betting a good, juicy story will be exactly what we need to cut through the marketing clutter and increase the number of subscribers so that we can justify increasing frequency.

Think Boston Legal with a twist
See, there’s this paralegal whose work is never good enough for her boss. And there’s office romance. And intrigue. And backstabbing. And offers to join a new firm. Just like Boston Legal or other popular law shows that come and go, the strength of the characters will pull them in and makes them want to read more. And woven in the drama will be mentions of our client’s solutions that help solve the paralegal's problems. But nothing obvious, of course.

The research is already done
Over the last year we've written dozens of case studies from interviews with paralegals and the client's account managers. We know what goes on in the law firms. When my senior writer and I pooled our notes, I realized we had a great story platform. Now all we have to do is convince our client this is a good idea. That might not be easy.

"You've spent so much time helping us transition from our folksy logo to a more sophisticated image. How will running a fictional serial in our newsletter support our new marketing direction?" asks the client.

Good point. This isn't something one of the big national firms would do. But we have a hunch that paralegals will be grateful for a little entertainment and levity in their high-pressure, buttoned-up jobs. As they read the stories, they'll know that San Francisco Legal feels their pain and understands the pressure they're under. Plus it will get their newsletter opened and read, building a loyal audience.

"But what about ROI?"
Well, we know the audience is so limited in what they can say and do in their profession, they crave a little entertainment and notice anything out of the ordinary. For example, a colorful "Going Green" flyer adorned with cute little tree frogs cost $800 to produce and brought in $2,000 worth of new business for the client. And an exhibit graphic we produced starring a sressed-out paralegal was a showstopper. Plus, the cost of producing content for the enewsletter won't go up since both of c3PR's senior writers are closet novelists who will jump at the chance to get paid to practice their passion. They'll make sure every story's just outrageous enough to be a little beyond believable so no one's offended. And we'll provide open, read, click-thru, forward-to-a-friend and new subscriber statistics to track the results of every issue.

Curious about how Polly Paralegal fends off the advances of Larry Lawyer and convinces Amy Account Manager from the Legal Services Firm to do the job in half the time? Or how Nancy NewEmployee is sleeping her way to the top? It’s all in the next exciting edition, so subscribe to today. You won’t want to miss an issue!

Mar Junge is the principal of c3PR and a closet novelist. Her first novel for the Young Adult market, Gypspy Blood, has been accepted as one of five to be reviewed by Author Barbara Shoup at the Pacific Coast Children's Writers Workshop in August. (But she's not quitting her day job just yet.) We'll know by mid June whether the client will let us test this idea in their enewsletter. If you'd like to read the first exciting installment, email mar@c3pr.com and she'll send you the link. If this client doesn't go for it, maybe we'll launch our own enewsletter telling stories about what really goes on in a P.R. firm. Think it would be juicier than what goes on in a law firm? If you're a fiction writer too, maybe this can be a group effort!

Letting Your Freak Flag Fly

Your Best, Longest Lasting Customers Relate to You Personally

If it’s true that our goal is about causing a memorable experience that’s worth telling your friends about and worth having over and over again (preferably for years on end) then we should be looking at who’s achieving that rare level of consumer attention and then holding on to it over the long haul.

I don’t believe that a better example can be found than the Days of Our Lives.

For over 38 years now ‘Days’ has maintained an iron grip on millions of viewer’s weekdays – five days a week. If they miss it, they record it and watch it the next day lest they miss a critical twist or turn. The converted presumably talk about it over dinner with their families and on the phone to far-away relatives.

Of course, with such a long run ‘Days’ must lose a significant number of viewers to defectors (to other daytime shows), people’s schedule changes, and of course death. They lose their actors, writers, and directors to the very same forces. So everything’s changing – the consumer, the product, the times. And of course ‘Days’ has had its ups and downs – from being the number one daytime show to near-cancellation several times. But we must agree that the level of devotion to that brand over such a long period is something to which we all aspire.

So what is it that keeps viewers so rapt over the course of decades, generation after generation? I submit that it’s simply that viewers quickly develop a personal connection with the characters. We identify with their trials and tribulations, with their loves and losses, with their smallness and transformations. There are characters we love and characters we hate – or rather love to hate – and we’re engaged by our own emotional journeys.

For decades, we’re aghast at the manipulative sisters-in-law and thrilled with daring of cheating husbands and business leaders. Depending on our estimation of our own moral history, we judge or excuse the character’s personal flaws and failings. We organize our own view of ourselves around their powerful, yet pedestrian stories. Our own story is experienced alongside and in relation to the one we see on T.V.

Get Naked

As marketers, how can we engage our customers like this? After all, we’re not T.V. writers, or actors! And we’re selling widgets that aren’t nearly as sexy as Hope or Shawn!

Blogging is clearly a beginning. We’re seeing a lengthening toe of personality beginning to come out from behind the corporate veil. But the vast majority of company blogs today are mainly just dozens of versions of the sales-pitch done in casual, everyman language. If we see anything personal, it’s a family vacation shot or a baby picture that feel like a premeditated shot at giving us warm-fuzzies. We may like our own kids, and thus have a flicker of identification with our hosts. But there are a lot of parents out there, and your kids aren’t going to hold my attention for long.

What attracts and holds attention are our authentic stories. It’s not the pretty parts, but the nasty parts that we appreciate. It’s the struggle, the embarrassment, the failure, and the drama that makes us squirm – and pay attention.

Why is Donald Trump famous? There are plenty of successful real estate investors out there, but Trump has bad hair, went broke, had a nasty divorce, got a trophy wife, and has a massive ego – all of which we love and hate and understand about him. The other real estate investors all did that stuff, too… but they hide it. Trump has made all those things his calling cards. They mystify us and keep us talking and watching.

We’re all striving to create richer relationships with our customers and clients. We want to engage them with our brands, and keep them coming back for more. But no matter what we sell, our customers ‘get it’ pretty quick. We run out of new stuff to say. Pretty soon, we begin to try to ‘connect’ with press releases and new ad campaigns.

But what’s interesting to people, in the long run, is people. It’s identifying with our dreams, successes, failures, and striving. Our stories. And, as entrepreneurs, we’re hardly lacking in this kind of material.

We just need to have the guts to show it.
___________
Landon Ray is founder and CEO of MoonRay, which provides a CRM tool for small and medium business with a direct-marketing mindset.

Web 2.0 Makes You ReThink the Basics

As Marketers we are taught to use the standard model of "Acquisition, Retention and Growth" as a frame work. When working with Web 2.0 initiatives, I have found it necessary to re-think the basics to fully take advantage of the possibilities of both the technology and new marketing approaches. The new model I have been evolving and using "Attract, Engage and Extend" has proved to be very useful in the strategy and planning of multiple web-based programs and initiatives.

Attract - customers with compelling and relevant content, resources and tools. Loyalty is fleeting and we can no longer count on "acquiring" customers.

Engage - customers in an ongoing dialog with your company and when appropriate - with each other. Social media and community tools empower us to have that conversation with our customers - and as marketers we need to be prepared to fully engage.

Extend – content beyond the site through syndication/ RSS, viral or pass-along tactics, access or download content to multiple devices, integrate with offline marketing and activities.

For example - I have used this framework to plan the requirements of a website - grouping the desired features, functionality and content depending on rather they contribute to Attracting or Engaging customers or helping to Extend beyond the website. I have also used the same framework to plan web based campaigns and to prioritize marketing activities.

A very simple idea - but useful.

Karen O'Brien is a Principal, Interactive Services with Crimson Consulting

Honey Pot Marketing

If you are a small consultant or a niche business, it is not always easy (or even possible) to target a prospect base. This is especially the problem if you are targeting startups even before they have public records, as is the case for our business naming services. We don’t know where the next person or small team is that is seeking a name for their new company. Many don’t even know that naming agencies like ours exist, or they have been scared off by the prices at the famous branding agencies.

So how can we reach them? Marketing 101 has told us to focus our efforts on our key target audience. Yet we don’t know who they are, or where they are, or even what management titles to track down.

But when the police (real or virtual) want to catch the bad guys, and they don’t know where they are, or what name they are using nowadays, what do they do? They put out the honey pots and attract the bears instead of chasing them all over the woods. They don’t know which honey pot will work, so they make a variety of them and spread them around in the areas where the bears are purported to exist, and they wait. (Did they learn this trick from the porno guys themselves?)

So what if we made a great honey pot on the internet and waited for them to come to us? Not enough. You can’t just put out the pot - you have to have some sweet smelling honey too. You need to offer them something tasty… some online resources, books, information, advice, testimonials, references or articles. You may even have to dish it up in different spoonful sizes, because when you target the little bears, the big bears might show up too! And suddenly you have corporate accounts that were looking for your niche services to solve a problem in their department or division as well.

The internet forest is very large, and even with pay per lick (I mean click), many will not find you. So what if you put out some more honey pots? Some with just basic information to interest them and point them to my main honey pot? Some with a taste of the honey to keep them going? Some that are more personal so they may want to meet me and have me show them the route to the honey and the process for making it? And you tell the ranger guides (search engines) about these honey pots too, in case that is all they have to offer some wandering bears picnicking in that neck of the woods?

Of course you will discover it is real work putting out all these little honey pots, and the bigger honey people will loose interest as it takes too many corporate meetings to plan them all and they want to go home at 6 pm. But you are an entrepreneur like many of your prospective clients, so you put out a honey pot every time you can find a spot and some time and some spare honey to taste. For example, I have a number of personal websites, as well as one for every eBook I have published, and many others pointing to our main www.BrighterNaming.com site.

And you can also find me on LinkedIn, MySpace, UC Extension, etc., all with a pointer to the main honey pot.

When you have honey pots spread all over the internet, you will never again sing:

Home alone, lost on the internet.