Okay, listening to myself on the radio gives me hives.  I sound like the Sunday school teacher, even talking lead gen, which in my book is a blood sport. I’m much more hyper selling these ideas in person.

Still, thanks to Debbie, the conversation was like being at a dinner party. And I did eventually perk up.

The panel includes: Dave Wieneke, Director of Digital Marketing, Sokolove Law, LLC, Shala Nicely, Revenue Engineer at the Pedowitz Group, and Heather Pritchett, Director, Corporate Marketing, Ventyx.

This morning I visited the DMA of Northern California to offer some thoughts for a round table discussion on the Four Emerging Pillars of Digital Marketing.  I appreciated hearing about the projects and challenges group members are taking on, and to share some of what we’re up to at Sokolove Law.

We got on to lead generation, search, and Sears of all things…yes, we couldn’t stop talking about the retailer as a source of portraits, electronics, and video in email.

#1 – if you liked the presentation, or have a question, please comment on my company blog here.  We’d love to hear from you, and it totally encourages us to keep sharing.

#2 – Here on useful arts I’ll be writing more about the topics we discussed today. Please subscribe if you like.

#3 – As promised here’s a copy of the presentation for your personal use.

The best business book I’ve read this year is The Shift, by M. Scott Davis. If you’re responsible for driving the vision of marketing, here’s a deep dive on business leadership from the CMO chair.

It describes the executive orientation necessary to make marketing responsible for revenue growth. It advises marketing executives how to transform their discipline from being a cost center, to the company’s growth engine.

The days of marketers operating in a vacuum, with marketing and business strategies being devised independently of one another, are ending.  The best marketers are now creating integrated perspectives that start with the growth objectives of their entire organization.

I had the pleasure of hearing Scott speak at BMA in Chicago this April.  The presentation and book are something I’ve come back to frequently.

We are this year’s version of last year’s rehearsing.

Thanks to everyone from the conference, especially the 230 attendees, for making this an extraordinary two days.  Today my boss at Sokolove Law blogged about me, claiming me as “Our Own Marketing Sherpa.” Three years ago, this conference introduced me to lead gen and the platform I’ve used since then. It was a privilege to share some cool stuff we did, and to encourage this community to take it up a notch.

Some conference notes are here on improving lead quantity, velocity, nurturing, quality, and sales alignment.

I continue to believe the design behind online marketing is less fine art than industrial design. Digital marketing is driven by mapping and improving marketing processes.  That’s where the scale results are — but for the most part, those who lead marketing today got there from brand expertise.

Many lack experience in creating closed-loop processes with sales.  The technology is ahead of the people and processes that they require, and that’s the need this conference helps fill.

Many marketers are neglecting an integral part of their business: the lead-to-revenue process.

Marketing departments tend to do what they’re good at.  Making the case for more top-line spend on traffic is something marketers like to do. And good spending will generate ROI.

However, many marketing departments ignore the bottom of the lead funnel. This holds higher potential for ROI,  because it’s systematically overlooked.

The Problem with Converts
Here’s why marketers aren’t as comfortable on the delivery end of the lead funnel.  Digital marketing first emerged as a combination of advertising and SEO, using content-based marketing.  Marketers, who traditionally bought traditional media, got good at buying traffic. Or earning it by publishing organic content. That’s not a stretch, and happily a portion of it “converted.”

But these converts are a very long way from being qualified leads, and even further from being ROI.  A qualification process lies ahead, as does a ride on the sales cycle, and the support process of onboarding, before the revenue starts rolling in.  Like the March of the Penguins, it’s a long ordeal. Especially without air support from marketing.

Marketing Must Do More to Sell
Access to online information has changed the purchase process forever.  Prospects engage with a company earlier in the buy cycle, but they often expect to be able to consider their purchase with little to no sales contact until they’ve made their sourcing selection.

This creates an urgent need for marketing to reach further into the selling process. In doing so, there’s a need for a whole new set of skills in 1:1 digital direct marketing.

Enter: The Smarketer
The divide between marketing and  sales is cultural, systems-based, and solidified by different accountability. Sales is heavily bonused on, well, sales. Most marketing departments aren’t bonused on sales, or ROI.

Changes in the sales cycle and technology will allow marketing to manage deeper in to the funnel. Sales wants marketing to support the full sale. The C-suite would consider that strategic alignment.

Marketing and Sales needs to share a unified lead process. Yesterday at Marketo’s user summit, Debbie Qaqish from the Pedowitz Group dubbed this practice SMARKETING.

Continued

We’ve all probably caught some great ideas through conferences and meetings with others in our field. Sometimes we even meet people who later become colleagues, clients, and friends.

The week of Sept. 20th, I’ll be on the West Coast to speak at three conferences. Being asked to give a presentation on something sure motivates me to learn and explain topics better. And it makes it easier to  have more casual conversations, having already put a bunch of ideas forward.

Anyway, I’m very much looking forward to joining-in these conversations:

• The Direct Marketing Association: Four Emerging Pillars of Digital Direct Marketing: Social media, SEO-based design, video, dynamic personalization.
• Marketing Sherpa’s B2B Marketing Summit: How to re-engage prospects through targeted communications and offers.
• Marketo’s Annual User Summit: How to clean up your customer data and make it a new foundation for segmented marketing.

I’d like to thank the readers who have twittered in thoughts to add to the mix.  I’ll absolutely be giving shout outs, and will twitter and blog highlights here. Thanks for encouraging my behavior!

Finding videos via search isn’t new, but playing them inside ad listings is.

For example, if you enter the word “Fame” in Google, you may have the option to play the movie trailer, which will roll surrounded by all the other search results. Google expects increasing video in ad results.

This gets searchers to video content more quickly. It also benefits Google by keeping searchers on Google’s site, so after watching the video, they can easily click on other results or initiate a new search.

If search engines find video in results is better for users (and their business model), they’ll factor this into their pricing and positioning algorithms. This could fuel video efforts, just as factoring site quality into PPC pricing spawned a generation of overnight SEM gurus.

1. Audience Reach
According to research from the Pew Institute, the number of online users who have watched video in the last month has doubled from two years ago.  That audience is now larger than the base of social media users.  It’s three times larger than those who have listened to a podcast, and five times larger than those who use Twitter.

Now, most everyone likes to watch.

2. It’s Less Taxing to Consume
While the novel may be better, more people watch the movie. My video mantra, “reading is for suckers,” has a basis of truth. Unless an audience is motivated (thank you for coming!) most third paragraphs of marketing copy go unread.

3. Marketing Buzzword Bingo: Authenticity & Transparency
When big marketing words fail, consider putting people on video. It allows a mass audience to make a 1:1 connection with real people who represent companies. It can impart knowledge, and even trust, by demonstrating your expertise and outlining what people can expect to experience as your client or customer.

4. Emotional Canvas
The combination of video, music, and graphics does more to change a viewer’s emotional state than reading copy can. It’s a natural channel for telling a story.

5. It Complements What You’re Already Doing
Video can illustrate and validate what you’re already saying in text. So don’t just flop videos out on a YouTube island; use them to support ongoing communications.  Customer service resources, FAQs about your company, press releases, even product descriptions can be made richer with video.

6. Can Something Be Both Personal and Social?
Video allows the marketers to gracefully step to one side and show the expertise of your firm. If you want to promote thought leadership, showing the thought leader (i.e. letting your audience see a real person) is a great first step. And as video can be easily shared, embedded, or linked-to, it’s a natural for engaged customers to add to their own blogs and Facebook pages.

7. Repurposable
There are all kinds of derivative uses of video.  It can be played in your lobby, brought to tradeshows, even shown at user conferences.  It can be burned to a DVD or buzzcard, or edited into standard elements in other projects. Think of video as a Thanksgiving dinner: you get a meal out of it, and you can repurpose the rest of it for days afterward.

8. Memorable
Remember the Lexus ad with the marble on the car?  Picture it for a moment.  That was part of a campaign that also appeared  in print and on billboards. But it was the video ad that held Lexus in the market’s consciousness.  While all media works together, it’s video that, in my experience, has the highest recall rate.

9. Choice
Some people prefer to scan text; others want a visual representation.  I’m certainly not advocating abandoning all other media, but online video, with its current reach and functionality, should be a part of your marketing mix.

10. As a new medium, video helps cut through clutter and get you noticed!
Even though it has reach, video also still has a novelty effect.  Email click-through rates more than double when they contain links to video. And implementing this channel says something about your embrace of technology and transparency.

Dave Wieneke’s mantra for consumer marketing: “Reading is for suckers”

Nowhere is this more true than when lawyers sell their own expertise.  By nature, lawyers write in legalese. It’s their training. I offer that legal writing and copy writing use opposite muscle groups.

However,  when lawyers speak, they phrase things in ways that connect with people far better. That’s also part of their training; it’s how they sell best. Jim Sokolove is legendary because he communicates to consumers on TV and on YouTube.

In an industry plagued by major trust issues, video should be the predominant marketing tool. When consumers think of lawyers, they most often think visually and in terms of TV: Perry Mason, LA Law, Boston Legal, The Practice.

And hey, those of you who are not lawyers or legal marketers are in no way off the hook. This should be a wake-up call.

The legal industry is slow to adopt new technologies, particularly in marketing. These forces are starting to change our often-staid industry. So if you’re not focused on video in your marketing mix, then get your head up; this ball’s heading your way.

Over the next week I’m going to describe several ripe opportunities to take your business marketing in new directions using video. Perhaps you’ll find yourself adopting my consumer marketing mantra (get used to it): Reading is for suckers.

And before you ask, yep, I’m very aware that this message is all copy.  No consumers here, just us online law and marketing wonks.  Tell me what you think?  Is video huge in your world, or just a bright shiny object?