Perceptint Musings

A few days ago, I touched on an idea for a new role in the economy - a digital marketing advocate. I called it an Internet marketing specialist in the last post. I vacillate back and forth on the phrasing, but I believe as of today I’m settled into only using digital marketing advocate.

Because in this new role, I might recommend marketing channels or partners outside of the Internet depending on my clients goals and capabilities. The portfolio of options and agencies I discuss with my clients will always be fully engaged as I am their advocate.

After working twelve years in various agencies I realized I was only as good as the capabilities emblazoned on my trade show attire. The agencies reputation and some misinformed clients mistaken belief that we could do everything for a client because we were an agency led to a moment of enlightenment.

I was tired of being in a position that if we were asked about services or features we knew we couldn’t deliver, someone was tasked with bluffing our clients into believing we could deliver it. Screenshots, promises of future road-mapping, fueled by a foundation of MS Excel and MS Word based reports with the most rudimentary analysis because the people tasked with building it all were AM’s, PM’s, engineers, production roles and and anything else not an analyst.

Building and managing web sites, ad systems, software, marketing programs, and content for clients, but having to do it through the single production unit of the agency you’re in, began to tie this marketing advocate and my ideas down like rock rope shorts in a tarry river.

Many agencies have the instinct to do everything they can, even if they’re not good at it. Growing the account, expanding services into a client, constantly pushing to figure out how do we grow business from the marketers who already pay us well for what we do? Like a lap dog that found its perfect master, it waits and begs for table scraps because that is all it knows.

The advocates instinct is to carefully plot a perfect path, researching every millimeter from send off to welcome delivery. The goal is to help guide the great corporate Titanic’s gently past the iceberg, helping avoid the need for lifeboats and gut wrenching decisions because you knew well about the dangers ahead. And your client was right there with you, navigating with the best of them.

In today’s more nimble environment, I was increasingly under fire, having my good reputation staked on junior staff delivering services outside of my groups domain. Their mistakes and inexperience damaging a strategic client relationship I had built for years.

I also realized that no one agency can solve every need for a client today. They don’t need to and they shouldn’t. Digital marketing agencies need areas of expertise that they build thought leadership in, and niche value to maintain customer loyalty.

They could not and should not attempt to market across all digital channels, but increasingly they try. At some point, the sheer size and points of communication that must be maintained for a single client to run smoothly begin to overwhelm the agency model.

Why put good customers and relationships in jeopardy when all it could take was a little honesty and hubris? We don’t do everything you need us to, but the thing you do need from us, we do better than anybody. I’d buy that.

What I and most corporate marketers don’t want to buy is a company that is really good in X, buys companies that do Y and Z, and suddenly we’re supposed to translate that belief in service of X over into Y&Z. This wobbling, stacking blocks of value doesn’t deliver what a client really needs. The only person to benefit from these corporate mash-ups is a misinformed shareholder.

Unless your agency has built every single platform and channel management tool for every service they are selling you, I can almost guarantee that behind the scenes, you are getting the most Frankenstein, stitched together by the seat of your pants digital marketing mirage you’d never believe you saw unless you lived it. And I lived it, so trust me when I say I’ve seen it all.

Agencies that try to grow business by expanding their services deeper into their clients ultimately lose focus on their area of excellence or the ones they are dragging their clients into. Why do you think most clients of agencies receive reports in Word and Excel from many of their digital agencies, and not through an online reporting function?

Most agencies are struggling to consume and process the amount of data they are taking in and tasked with reporting back to clients. As they add new channels, they are adding thousands of data points per client into their systems. Growing their business means ultimately moving expertise into the data management business. And if they are expanding their service offering, it means keeping expertise and leadership across all of those channels., plus managing all that data.

In my estimation, the workforce is about five to ten years away from having enough people with the right experience in each channel to make that a possibility for the largest, global agencies. And that gap is where I smelled opportunity for a new class of strategist - the independent digital marketing advocate.

Someone with a depth of experience delivering digital marketing services, the ability to write like an analyst, the candor and honesty of a good friend, and a communicator who could tie it all together to help clients make better informed decisions, and manage the growing list of needed digital marketing relationships. The advocate can’t build and deliver it all, but they can plan, architect, map, and help steer corporations in ways that someone within an agency doesn’t have the freedom to do.

The advocate can investigate and test new channels on their clients behalf. They can serve as a springboard for new ideas and procedures. They sit in a neutral, analyst stance - giving researched and vetted opinions about various topics, as needed by clients and their own gut reactions to new technologies and trends. They can also help digital marketing agencies and their clients find more value in their relationship.

I chose also to limit myself to a single client per vertical industry. This really leaves plenty of room in my mind for many more digital marketing advocates to begin finding and delivering value until the rest of the workforce catches up.

At this point, valuable time says I should pause and tell you something. This post has turned into a five day epic editing session, so I know I have a lot more to say about this. Rather than keep editing and rewriting, I’ll lay today’s rant to rest.

I ended up just describing the digital marketing advocate this time. Next time, I’ll get into specific deliverables and the types of value I expect this role to create for large organizations. I’m very interested in any and all feedback and ideas that might pop up upon reading this.

May advocacy for a topic fall upon you like a wet, heavy winter rain. Reminding you of its strength with an icy grasp on your imagination. Until next time.

© 2008 Keith Boswell

Since there wasn’t any feedback on ideas for future posts, I’m going to plow ahead into the fertile stream of consciousness that is my brain. I wanted to talk today about creating value for your clients as an internet marketing consultant.

One of the things that working in retail customer service taught me was that the customer is always right. It sounds like such a cliche, but the truth in the statement is so right on. Especially when you apply the idea to finding success in consulting for clients. A programs success is almost always defined by its perceived value.

One of the mistakes that happens time and again when agencies and companies try to execute a new program is the lack of flexibility around the value and success of a marketing program. Here’s what I mean by that.

Salesperson X has gone out and sold program Y that they believed the client needed more than anything. From what the salesperson has said, the client has expressed this time and again by doing flips and headstands from every sales pitch through contract signing. And it got signed faster than any other contract this quarter, so they must really want it!

Then project kickoff occurs. The new team, production, steps in to replace sales. The razzle dazzle Mercedes is replaced by a well-oiled, hitched wagon. And now you and the client are off to the “across the field fast as you can” races. During your sprint to finish up this pre-defined project, both of you learn that the service they’ve been sold is redundant with another program they already have, isn’t going to impact the business in any way like they thought, or is in process of being done by another vendor in another group within the client organization.

What do you do? For the untrained agencies, project managers and account managers, clients slip through their fingers because they maintain their focus on the statement of work (SOW) because that’s what they’ve been told to do. Finish project Y by May 31st because that’s what the contract says. Deliver the project, even in flames to the client doorstep, because that’s what they paid for.

The way out of this flashing prairie fire of discontent? Educate and train your clients to expect changes mid-stream. Be flexible and open enough in projects to redefine value and success as a project is in motion. If you know a week or a month in that the SOW’s project is going to fail, what can you do to rethink the project, it’s metrics, it’s success - so that your clients investment is not in vain.

Good consultants have the flexibility and eye for opportunity that it takes to continually deliver and find new value for their clients. Project failures lead to corporate exorcism, so you have to keep your eye on finding the value in every project you touch.

Value for a client is also dramatically enhanced when sales and production are working together to scope and deliver client work. Production can help shape the sales offering and ensure that the right resources are in line to deliver the projected work. They can also sniff out early those embarrassing “um…what do you mean you already have another search agency…but I thought we were your search agency…” kind of moments.

This type of crossover planning doesn’t happen as often as you might expect, even in the largest of agencies. But when it does, the client and agency are much happier and better served. Relationships and true partnerships can emerge because of the mutual understanding by all project participants of the goals, needs, etc.

Keeping your value and your clients value high should be at the front and center of every decision you make as a consultant. Keep your customer happy, let them know they are right - with your good counsel and feedback, and stay focused on their world. They know the things they need to demonstrate their own value within the organization, so ask them and help serve it up on a bountiful platter they could never harvest on their own.

May value and wisdom slip from your tongue as raindrops from a storm cloud. Until next time.

© 2008 Keith Boswell

More than half of being a good consultant is navigating the waters of corporate politics. When you’re dealing with Directors and above, life can be a daily forest fire. As one of my clients likes to say, “the big swirl”.

The president of the company I used to work for always reinforced what it was to consult for a client, “If we’re good consultants, we’re like our clients Samurai.”

Noble warriors charging into political minefields, and usually being the first to suffer the fire of internal retributions. Sometimes leading the victorious charge, other times fumbling through a prickly political maneuver that goes sour. And even taking one on the chin for your client, in their battle, and licking your wounds later over drinks.

A good consultant is like a skydiver, jumping headfirst into that tempetuous air between internal marketers, IT staff,  agencies and contractors, — all playing in an amorphous dance of dollars, diplomacy, and danger. It’s easy not to realize how new it is to all of us still today. Or what a complex dance we’re trying to coordinate.

Digital marketing has been here more than a decade now, and there are always new elements, new players, new tracking, shifts in preference, growth in bandwidth and the band plays on. Explosive movements continue to erupt online, a Google killer lies in wait in some dark grassy knoll. And agencies and consultants that don’t keep up get left to wither in dry, lonely fields.

The digital marketing evolution plows right through the world of the corporate and individual id. Reputations. Personal pride. Questioning of one’s expertise. What does a brand really mean to its market today?

The clash between IT and marketing continues to spill over from the run-up days of the web. Mammoth web systems continue to be put in place to facilitate massive scale customer session loads, all while needing to support ever evolving marketing functions. And no one has been trained to do everything they used to do offline in a new faster world. 

To deliver value and success for your client, that’s the game. Making sure yours is the first “A paper” should be on your mind everyday. And being virtuous in your value leads to greater topics.

Diplomacy, for one, is a practiced skill. Knowing when it’s your turn to speak, knowing when your opinion matters and when it doesn’t. Understanding when everything is on the line because your clients reputation is at stake. It’s a subtle skill to learn over years of dealing with c-level clients.

Patience is a virture as well. You shouldn’t be in a hurry to exit a job in which you are adding daily value. Every day that you are there, and in turn value you deliver to your client, the more likely you are to stick around.  

Listening will never fail you. You have to know and track what’s going on in the corporation, what’s the buzz, what are people reacting to? Who does your client need to impress to get a promotion? Who might you be presenting to if you’re taken up to “the show”, the infamous CEO, CTO, CMO meeting, with twenty-seven attorneys in the back.

Observe the players, how they play, and trust your gut in telling you how to kindle a relationship with them. Know when it’s right to sit back, watch, and learn what not to do. The biggest mistakes you could make as a consultant are likely to be made by someone within the organization, or another vendor, if you are practicing some of our earlier exercises in patience.

Learning is a daily exercise, you must  stay that half step ahead. No questions on this allowed.

Now that corporations are realizing their first decade of web investments won’t be enough, and new investments will always need to be made, internal marketers find themselves faced with an ever mounting list of Web 1.0 and 2.0 issues to deal with.

And they are piling on fast. Most large corporate marketing staffs are tracking hundreds of campaigns a year. Almost always with limited staff compared to traditional marketing groups.

And the final exam essay for Politics 301 is the dreaded “you never want to get it” smear factor when a project goes horribly wrong, or someone higher up than your client, thinks it did. Because once the taint is on your shoulders, whether individual or agency, it is almost never shed from the organization’s belief system. You’ll likely be in new pastures soon, without a reference.

And since I brought it up, Web 2.0 is dead to me. Web 3.0, 4.0, 5.5, 6.2, it’s just not right. We’re evolving faster than software features. Why should we compare ourselves to a release candidate? We shouldn’t. So you won’t hear me use that arcane numbering system ever again. That’s a promise.

And so to summarize…diplomacy, patience, listening, and observing are the key to surviving as a consultant. Staying a step ahead in the dance, keeping your sword swift and sharp, and learning, ever learning. For the foreseeable future, you won’t slow down because as soon as you do, your world, your whole market can move right past you. No more playing catch up. It’s time to stay ahead of the curve.

May grace and elegance effuse from your next productive meeting. Until next time.

© 2008 Keith Boswell