But there’s a factor that cuts across all of these and is probably more important than all of them: confidence.

Confidence is the attitude of leaders and winners. Great marketing always has plenty of it and the vast majority of mediocre marketing has little or none.

Used recklessly, confidence turns to arrogance and alienates your audience. But used well, confidence works wonders for any piece of marketing communications you apply it to:

• It gets noticed – jumping out from the background noise.

• It demonstrates your leadership instead of just claiming it.

• It differentiates you from your lacklustre competitors.

• It exposes your passion and your belief in what you do.

• It says you’re having fun – people like that.

• It is fun – turning marketing from a chore into a sport.

• It motivates the company – making people proud to work there.

Confidence really is the secret weapon of B2B marketing (for B2C, it’s not a secret). Even companies locked in commodity markets can leap out of the pack with a little attitude and energy.

As an agency, our best work is our most confident work. It happens when we dare to present something to a client that we know is likely be rejected. It happens when a client recognises that the option that makes them sweat is probably the one to choose.

Confidence has to come from something real or it transmits false bravado. It has to be rooted in conviction. When we do our consulting process for new clients, we’re always looking for the pockets of passion inside the company. The people having the most fun. The people who believe in what they’re doing and aren’t afraid to tell people why it’s great.

We call these the ‘crown jewels’ of any company and our work is all about discovering them and pushing them to the front of the story… with oodles of confidence.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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As I do this stuff I’m usually working side by side with a marketing manager/director/etc in order to make decisions about SEO strategies, and how to best plan for the future. Content can be a messy business at times, particularly if there are more than a couple of people producing it for a site… anarchy often rules in the shape of strange formating and styling and irregular usage of language.

So I find it helps to give people some guidelines to keep them on the straight and narrow. And in doing so, it’s usually best to strip out the blather and get them focused on just the handful of things they *have* to remember when creating a new web page (so that they can continue to build on a good SEO foundation without our help!)

So, here goes…. notes from my content optimisation scrap book:

Technical Page Content Tips

Here at Velocity, we always use a CMS for our client sites. We choose these apps carefully, and always ensure that they let us do some essential SEO-related things from a technical and functional page perspective… Because, for good SEO, there are a bunch of things you really have to do at a technical page level:

* Edit each of your page titles independently. Your page title is the thing that will be printed at the top of a browser window (in the centre of the grey horizontal bar, next to your minimise/maximise buttons). You should try and make this title brief - around 70 characters or so, relevant to the page and peppered with a few important keywords or phrases. This is because, like us humans, crawlers tend to use ‘titles’ as a good indication of what the page is about. (NB: don’t go crazy on the keywords! The page title MUST be readable and easy on the eye to humankind as well!)

* Edit each page’s metadata descriptions. This is the stuff that Google uses to describe you when it displays its results (ie, it gets used as the blurb that sits underneath the page title link in Google’s listing for you). As such, this field should describe the page, include a few keywords, and also *a call to action* like ‘read more’, or ‘find out more’ or ‘get your free offer here…’ etc. (Think about it - this globbet of content is really, really important - this is your ’sales pitch’ on a Google results page…. so a call to action is a good thing to draw people into the click.) This text should be around 160 characters or less. Anything more will get cut off at the knees.

* Edit each page’s metadata keywords/tags. Whilst this used to be important, it’s not any more…. but you ought to do it as a matter of good practice. Here you should list all your relevant key phrases, separated by a comma. This could be a big list, or it could be small…. whatever you think appropriate. You should note however, that this metadata field isn’t really used by search engines as a measure of importance or relevancy any more. It does, however, give them a clue about who you are and what you’re about.

* Use keywords in your navigation schemes wherever possible. Also use them (sensibly) in important on-page functional items like buttons, pull quotes, maps, and other such eye candy.

On-Page Content Tips

So much for the functional and technical stuff. What about the writing? Here’s my ultra-condensed guide to producing good, SEO-friendly page content….

* Make your content chunky - use header tags to split it into bite-sized paragraphs that are easy for crawlers and humans alike to read and understand. (ie, header, para, space; header, para, space, etc.)

* Use keywords in them there headers wherever possible, and wherever it adds value to the process of scanning or skimming the page.

* Create as many internal links in the page as possible, whilst still retaining a (human) reader’s focus. Use keywords in the descriptive link anchor text (if you’re using a half decent CMS, then you ought to get prompted for this). This anchor text is basically a descriptive label. It tells a crawler what your link is about. Hence, if you’re in the business of CRM systems, then your internal link from your home page to your products page ought to include an anchor text that goes something like this: ‘XYZ Corp’s CRM Software helps mere mortals sell ice to eskimos.’ In other words, use a bunch of sensible internal links to help a crawler find its way around your site and learn about what you do in the process.

* Create as many external links as possible. Use the same approach to anchor text as described above. Whilst internal links are important to help a crawler scoot around your site, external links will help them understand what kind of other web sites you associate yourself with. So, if you’re in the business of selling small handheld computing devices, make sure you link out to popular media sites that cover this topic and also other vendor sites that compliment you (and even compete with you). The more popular these sites the better - your goal is the bask in their sunlight.

* If you’re blogging, or using a CMS that uses blog-style principles (and of your front end design houses them) then use categories and tags for your posts/pages wherever possible, and try to infuse some keywords in there whenever you can. As per the points above, these navigational elements help crawlers to understand how to navigate your site and understand who you are in equal measure…. just like they help us humans.

* Put your most important content at the top of the page. By important I mean the stuff that’s full of useful keywords, headings, and links. Save the waffle for later in the page. (Like us, crawlers get bored easily.)

* Think of your page as a hierarchy of content. In fact, think like a robot in a hurry. Big, important words go at the top in big important heading styles. Weave linkage into this important stuff wherever you can, and try to ensure that this linkage reinforces the big keywords in its anchor text. In other words, keywords get kind of scored in order of descending importance, depending on where they feature in your content: from page titles down through primary navigation, headers, body text links, bold text and boring old plain text.

All you really need to remember….

In sum, all of the above illustrates that crawlers basically read the way that we humans do – they scan the page and pick out key elements to get a sense of meaning. As such, good SEO content is good to read…. and to write be able to write it is to have a good level of empathy with readers and crawlers alike.

If you’d like to know more about a bit of the science, check out our best practice SEO white paper ‘How to be a Google Guru in 30 Minutes’….

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All it takes is an idea — and a client with some vision and courage.

Our client VNL has plenty of both. Marketing guru Pär Almqvist and CEO Anil Raj responded to our ideas for bringing their story to life on the small screen with just three words, ‘Let’s do it’. A few weeks later, Pär and I were in Deorhi, a small rural village in Utar Pradesh, armed with two Sony HD camcorders.

VNL is the inventor of microtelecom, the re-engineering of the mobile infrastructure especially for rural markets. That means base stations that are solar-powered, incredibly low-cost and easily assembled by people with no technical expertise.

VNL sells to mobile operators but we wanted to make the promise of rural connectivity come to life by talking directly to the operators’ potential customers: the villagers themselves.

Deorhi was the perfect village for our needs. Two hundred kilometers from Delhi, Deorhi receives what we call ‘accidental mobile coverage’ because of its location near an important road between to larger towns. The people of Deorhi were never targeted for mobile services, but they got them by accident.

Deorhi is also where VNL’s Chief Technology Officer, Krishna Sirohi, grew up (his father founded the first school in Deorhi and served as it’s principal for 42 years).

The idea for the video was simply to go to Deorhi and interview the villagers about their experiences with mobile phones. We then edited the results into a warm, compelling piece that makes the VNL story come to life.

We expected people to like using mobiles — after all, it’s the first connectivity of any kind for Deorhi. But we were really blown away by the impact that mobile services are having on people’s lives — both for personal and business reasons.

The people of Deorhi were incredibly open and generous. As guests of the Sirohi family, we were also guests of the entire village. That made it easy for Pär and I to conduct over thirty interviews with everyone from 6 year-old kids to an 88-year old man.

After just a few interviews, we knew we’d got what we came for: even without professional cameramen, the footage looks great (bright sun and pretty amazing camcorders helped). We used one camera on a tripod and the other as a hand-held for cut-away shots and footage of the village. The stationery camera used a lapel microphone to make the sound as clear as possible (hugely important).

Pär composed and created the soundtrack himself. He’s not just a ‘marketing dude’, he’s also an incredibly talented musician and kick-ass web developer (he designed and coded the entire VNL site, which we wrote).

The footage was edited by Hugh Gormley, our quasi-in-house editor extraordinaire and posted on VNL’s Resource Library, designed and coded by Pär.

It appears alongside an interview with CEO Anil Raj that we shot over a few hours in Delhi (again, using our two camcorders). It’s a long piece so we cut it into chapters for easy navigation.

Looking back, a few lessons from these first forays into guerrilla video:

• Just do it – The costs of this kind of project are so low, you can shoot first and ask questions later. If you don’t like the footage, abort.

• Keep it simple – Start with a simple idea. No actors. No dramatisation. Just one idea executed well.

• Don’t ignore production values – Yes, it’s the YouTube ethic, but problems with sound, lighting, framing or focus will distract from your message.

• Invest in post-production – The film is made in the editing. Get a great editor and let him do his job. (Thanks, Hugh).

• Skip the committees – Pär and Elise Alpen were the only client contacts for both of these films. We checked in on the key decisions but they let us get on with everything else. It helped that Pär could handle a camera and both kinds of keyboard.

• Go for the end customer – B2B markets can be a bit abstract. Think about skipping over your direct customer and talking to the end consumer for some real energy and context.

Maybe we got lucky with these two films. But the point of guerrilla video is to keep costs low enough to be able to switch to Plan B or kill the project if it isn’t shaping up the way you want.

It isn’t just a video thing: this ’shoot from the hip’ marketing is on the rise as companies harness the power of blogs, forums, wikis, social media, pay-per-click and email.

As our name implies, we LIKE this kind of marketing. It’s fast. It’s fun. And it makes a real impact in the time it takes traditional marketing to arrange a conference call.

We’ve got more videos in the works for VNL and for clients like dotMobi – and we’re hatching a few new case study ideas for ourselves. Don’t touch that dial.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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This is our latest and greatest project on Wordpress. Those super smart investment guys at Kennet - whose funds assist great tech firms such as Clearswift (also a Velocity client), Kapow and Daptiv - asked us earlier this year to help them revamp their corporate positioning and give their web site a lick of paint.

Well, here she is: a totally new web presence for a totally different technology Venture Capital fund. We like to think we nailed this one - in fact we’re super proud. Although it’s a small site, it’s deeply layered with some luscious design and content touches that set it apart from the competition as a thinking man’s investment firm.

In fact, we can vouch for this first hand. We’ve worked real close with Kennet’s senior team over the past few months to get it off the ground. So, big thanks to Max Bleyleben (check his blog on the European VC scene here) and the crew for being so clued up and game for trying something a little different.

Credits:

Strategy, words, direction and project management: Velocity
Design: Tourist
Development and implementation: Two Thirty

Warm glows all round.

© Roger Warner for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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Download this B2B Technology Marketing White Paper in pdf Format

We’ve always been mildly allergic to the reductive matrices, models and quadrants peddled by the analysts, but we’ve come to recognise a ring of truth to the Gartner Hype Cycle. The Hype Cycle maps a curve that describes the way new technologies become adopted by the marketplace over time.

Few companies actually ride the entire curve. Rather, the curve describes the trajectory of a technology. Companies tend to enter and fall off the curve as time passes. Only the biggest (with the deepest pockets and the most diversified product portfolio) usually ride the entire length.

Gartner has named the five parts of the curve and identified the dynamics specific to each segment or ‘phase’.

Over the years, we’ve worked with companies competing in each of these five phases. And we’ve learned that the way you market needs to change depending on where you are on the Hype Cycle.

Here’s what we mean (Gartner’s own description is in bold, ours in normal text):

The five phases

1. “Technology Trigger”

The breakthrough, product launch or other event that generates significant press and interest.

Very few new products or new companies are lucky enough (or visionary enough) to launch a new Hype Curve. But when Venus aligns with Mars and you find yourself associated with the Next Big Thing, it’s good to take a view on the roller-coaster ahead.

The marketing challenge during the Trigger stage is not just to get on the map, but to draw the map. To stake out the terrain for the market in way that favours you.

For CRM to be born, Siebel had to create and sell the vision.

For ERP to take hold, SAP had to evangelise the hell out of it.

Our client, Magus, is pioneering Website Quality Monitoring by defining the web quality landscape and showing how monitoring is the missing (but essential) piece.

This is pure thought leadership. To win, you need to become a firehose of content: white papers, conference speeches, Powerpoint mountains, analyst briefings, interviews, brochures, websites and microsites, videos, case studies… everything you’ve got.

And it all has to pound away on a very simple story: this is the problem; this is why it can’t be solved with the current approaches; this is how we solve it; this is what it’s called; this is why we’re perfectly placed to seize this opportunity.

During this stage, you need your vision and your story to win. You also need to your language to win. In new markets, nothing has a name yet. If you’re there early, you need your names to be adopted by the industry.

This means trademarking the proprietary technologies and products that you need to own but also creating some terms that you’re happy to release to the market (like CRM or ERP) - making sure that your name is welded to this new generic term.

2. “Peak of Inflated Expectations”

In which a frenzy of publicity typically generates over-enthusiasm and unrealistic expectations. There may be some successful applications of a technology, but there are typically more failures.

As the market ascends to this peak, it’s important to balance your bold, exciting vision with practical, realistic solutions that can be bought into right away.

By all means, paint the pretty pictures of the future you’re helping bring about, but don’t forget: every vision has an equal and opposite reaction. Keep your marketing feet on the ground and sell your tactical solutions alongside your big story.

The first big wins for CRM were really just providing a single view of the customer that could be exploited by other applications.

The first big wins for ERP were fairly prosaic efficiencies in billing and inventory control.

Its also essential in this phase to align yourself with the over-hyped category while hedging your bets and creating a unique space that can survive the imminent market rejection of your vision.

You do need to associate your company with the hot new thing, but you also need to stand for something uniquely yours so you maintain control over your destiny. Live by the hype, die by the hype.

At its peak nothing was hotter than the Application Service Provider (ASP) market. But the hype preceded the industry’s ability to deliver on its promise (things like bandwidth, security and viable business models just weren’t in place).

Ip.access (yes, another Velocity client) is riding the femtocell market surge but is preparing for the coming Trough. They know that until the early field trial results are in, femtocells can’t leap to the Slope of Enlightenment. They’re executing a brilliant thought leadership strategy that manages expectations and positions them as the experts in femtocells (they’re also making money on another product line to fund themselves through the Trough).

The Peak is a good time for case studies, testimonials, editorial excerpts, awards and other credibility builders. Partly to address the skeptics who resist all hype waves and partly to prepare for the upcoming Trough…

3. “Trough of Disillusionment”

Technologies enter the “trough of disillusionment” because they fail to meet expectations and quickly become unfashionable. Consequently, the press usually abandons the topic and the technology.

We’ve seen excellent companies with great technologies left bewildered as the market gets pulled out from under them.

Usually, as the Hype Cycle shows, this rejection is temporary and over-stated. It’s the pendulum swinging too far before coming back to the sensible centre.

If you played the Peak right, you should have some marketing assets to take you through the Trough. If not, and you find that you company name is synonymous with the rejected category, your choices are limited:

• Duke it out - Keep evangelizing like mad; counter every objection; double your media relations and analyst relations efforts; find those early adopter champions and promote every success.
• Jump ship - Mothball Plan A and re-invent yourself.
• Hybernate a bit - Reduce the burn rate, live on your wits and wait for the market to re-discover the power of your offer.
• Rename everything - a new category, a new product set, new promises… it won’t fool many but it helps keep morale up.

If, during the Peak phase, you took our advice and sowed the seeds of something apart from the hyped category, now is the time to focus on these assets. Make them what you’re all about. Go back to the core benefits and re-spin them in your new light. But always keep your stake in the temporarily discredited vision. It will be back.

Do it right and the brand values you build during the Peak and Trough will transfer neatly into “Vision, Take Two: the Enlightenment”.

Sonitor (a Velocity client) makes an ultrasound-based alternative to RFID for use in hospitals. They rode the RFID wave until it crashed, but stuck to their ultrasound message. They’re perfectly placed to exploit the market’s disillusionment with RFID and demonstrate a better way.

When the early CRM implementations proved disappointing, dozens of the vendors that had rushed in, turned tail and re-invented themselves as niches within the CRM eco-system. In doing so, they stopped asking prospects to buy the whole vision and got them to shell out for some specific apps with a new spin: they worked.

Our client ShipServ was the last e-marketplace standing in the maritime industry (there were over 60 during the dotcom bubble). They kept their costs down, focused on one small but indisputable benefit (process efficiencies) and kept selling.

4. “Slope of Enlightenment”

Although the press may have stopped covering the technology, some businesses continue through the “slope of enlightenment” and experiment to understand the benefits and practical application of the technology.

The ASP vision was right all along. Now it’s called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and it’s owned by the application vendors themselves (not by third party platform players).

Only the biggest and best-run companies actually survive the Trough and get to enjoy the Slope. More often, new vendors emerge to ride the fun part of the Hype Curve while the originators curse them from the sidelines.

How you market during the Slope of Enlightenment depends on how you got there. If you’re a survivor of the Trough, you’ve got cases to peddle and stories to tell. All you need to do is re-discover your confidence (the most under-rated asset in marketing) and tell your story with attitude and energy.

ShipServ survived the Trough and is now enjoying a fantastic surge as the original vision becomes a reality. Now they’re attacking the market with total confidence.

If you’re a new player, hopping on board during the Slope, congratulations, you’ve mastered the other critical asset: timing (sometimes called luck). Your challenge is to make up for your lack of customers and case stories with a crystal clear vision that matches the accelerating market.

Salesforce.com helped revive CRM by turning it into a SaaS model. The world was ready for SaaS (and for practical CRM).

Marketing during the Slope phase is less about pure evangelism and more about differentiation, confidence and credibility. About supporting your claims with facts, case studies and testimonials and demonstrating momentum by generating a constant stream of news.

It’s also time to position yourself as the blue-chip supplier of the new technology. New competitors will be rushing back in. You need to be seen as the safe pair of hands. The ones who really get this stuff. Think white papers, speaking opportunities, eBooks…

5. “Plateau of Productivity”

In which the benefits of a technology become widely demonstrated and accepted. The technology becomes increasingly stable and evolves in second and third generations.

A plateau doesn’t sound like a very exciting destination after all that suffering. Gartner could have chosen a better term for this phase, but you get the idea: this is what Geoffrey Moore and the Chasm Mafia call the Mainstream Market.

Marketing on the Plateau is what most tech companies are doing right now. Trying to differentiate themselves while still evangelising the generic benefits of the new category. The Plateau is al about earning attention and rewarding that attention with real insight into the challenges of the buyer. Nothing new here (but never easy either).

Service-Oriented Architectures went from the hottest thing in the hot competition to a deadly silence… then emerged as pretty much the only way to build software and infrastructures.

Marketing on the Plateau may sound like a maintenance job but actually, it needs to be just as creative and visionary as any other stage. The idea is to differentiate with new spins on the same basic themes and issues that have now been accepted by the market.

Often, this comes as different vendors specialise in different areas of the market, building out the offer, deepening the technology, adding features and functions. It’s a could time to seize a niche and own it.

Portrait Software couldn’t win against big CRM but it could specialise in Customer Interaction Management - the point where CRM actually touches the customer.

As Web Content Management matures, EPiServer is becoming a leader in web marketing applications that can be driven from within the content management system.

Change your tune to suit the dance

So the role of marketing changes as a company or an industry progresses through the Hype Cycle. But there are a few constants that apply through all five phases:

• Thought Leadership is always essential
  The winners are the ones with the best ideas and the best stories crafted to deliver those ideas. It’s always a good time to take a strong view on the marketplace and present that view clearly and compellingly.

• Content really is king
  To even hope to shape the changing debate, you need to keep the content coming. Not the promotional bumf, the practical, useful, visionary content grounded in real market experience.Papers, demos, e-Books, presentations, videos, podcasts, blogs, microsites… you really can’t do too much of this stuff.

• Build a community
  As your ecosystem evolves, you’re stronger if you can get yourself into the centre of a growing community of insiders. To do that, you often need to create the community.Hold events, start an open forum, publish a wiki, recruit subscribers to your thought leadership material, get a social network going or exploit the existing ones… The Hype Cycle can be a lonely place. Build your believer base through all five phases.

• Master the art of search
  We could do a paper on the changing role of search engines through the phases of the Hype Cycle. But for now it’s enough to say that search plays an important role in all phases and a disproportional role in Phases 1, 2 and 4.Get yourself an agency partner that really gets search engine marketing, can analyse your current performance and recommend specific actions to improve it (here’s one we prepared earlier).

Experienced technology marketers will recognise all of the above. And we’ve said much of it before in different ways. But the Hype Cycle can be a new way to think about the marketing challenges you face right now and can throw new light on your priorities.

The important thing to take away is that your company does not have to be the victim of Hype Cycle forces. You can do things to control your destiny by getting the right stories to the market at the right times.

© Roger Warner for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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1) Identify a need
This is mostly a rational process and largely buyer-initiated. The FD knows when she needs new accounting software and she knows why.

2) Draw up a shortlist
This is usually an irrational process. People draw up a list of vendors to investigate by asking around, thinking of past experiences, following a gut feel. Google may have changed this somewhat, but it’s still largely an intuitive exercise.

3) Evaluate proposals
Mostly rational again. Buyers look at price, terms, delivery and specs. They compare competitors side-by-side. Marketing is present here, but at this point, it’s largely down to the offer (product + price).

4) Buy
Weirdly, this last step has a big irrational component. Buyers often do not choose the vendor that wins on paper. They choose the one they feel best about. The one they trust. The one they feel will get them to the goal in the least stressful way. If there’s a salesperson involved, this is their moment.

Where does marketing fit in with all this?
If you think of B2B marketing as the delivery of pure business information, its role is mainly influential during stages 1 and 3. Helping buyers identify a need and helping them evaluate options.

If you think of marketing as creating a brand, the job focuses on steps 2 and 4 — the largely irrational steps — drawing up a shortlist and making the final decision.

Let’s look at the four steps again with this in mind:

1) Identify a need
Marketing can help here by showing someone that the way they do things now is flawed (’selling the problem’). Or by convincing them that one of their perennial problems can now be taken away. Or showing them that their competitors are jumping ahead of them in some way.

All this falls under a banner they used to call ‘creating a need’. In reality, marketing can’t create needs. It can only address them. Doing this is all about getting noticed, then making a rational case for change. The ‘business information’ side of the B2B marketing equation.

2) Draw up a shortlist
Good marketing shines here. It gets companies on shortlists by raising awareness and by associating the vendor with the critical issues that relate to the problem (positioning and thought leadership).

On the warm, fuzzy side, marketing works here by building a brand that people feel good about. Engineers tease us about this part but it may be the single most important thing we do. As our client Anil Raj likes to say, there’s no such thing as business-to-business, there’s only person-to-person.

Clearly, the salesperson is the most important element here. But a great brand works with the salesperson to tip the scales. People like working with companies they feel good about. They feel good about companies that demonstrate they understand their problems, speak frankly and intelligently about them and show conviction, confidence and passion in everything they do.

3) Evaluate proposals
The salesperson’s work is the main agent here. But the ‘business information’ side of B2B marketing can contribute enormously by providing the information the buyer needs to make the decision (and convince others); as well as by helping frame the issues in a way that tilts the decision the right way.

4) Buy
It’s down to two or three credible products and vendors. All look like they can do the job or they wouldn’t have made it this far. Now, the ‘brand’ side of B2B marketing kicks in again. Buyers will choose the company they feel best about. The one they want to spend more time with. The one they respect and trust.

A great salesperson will overcome all but the worst marketing in stages 2 and 4. But great marketing will give your company the best possible chance of walking right up the four steps, contract in hand.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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We’re so proud about this one that we’ve issued a hard-hitting press release that explains what it’s all about in full.

The short story: it’s the first part of a new Velocity campaign for dotMobi, which is designed to help make “.mobi” the domain of choice for all mobile web sites.

It’s a great brief, working with a really great organisation. Watch this space…

Project credits: design and content - Velocity; development and implementation - dotMobi.

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.mobi is the only top-level domain specifically for mobile websites. It tells the user that the site they’re about to experience is designed with mobile devices in mind and, more importantly, with mobile users in mind. It’s a great idea and a powerful way to help accelerate the mobile web.

dotMobi does a lot to help the developer community make better mobile sites, with its rich developer resource dev.mobi. Now it’s time to make sure all the big brands and their agencies understand the importance of designing specific mobile experiences instead of expecting their .com site to serve mobile users. Part of this is to use the .mobi name for their new mobile-optimized sites.

To spearhead this effort, dotMobi has turned to Velocity, the B2B technology marketing agency. “Velocity gets mobile, gets marketing and has great ideas about reaching the marketing community with the dotMobi story,” said Amy Mischler, VP of Identity and Brand Services, “Their ideas are spot-on and their enthusiasm is obvious.”

The marketing-focused campaign will break this summer - spearheaded by a brand new, Velocity produced, web property, mobithinking.com - a comprehensive online resource for mobile marketers which launched today.

About Velocity

Velocity is the consulting-led B2B marketing agency for the Interweb era, specialising in technology. Projects range from strategic consulting to marketing acceleration programs to digital engagement campaigns that include through-the-line content, creative, websites, search engine optimisation, pay-per-click advertising and web analytics. Clients include dotMobi, Gartner, ShipServ, Clearswift, ip.access.

© Roger Warner for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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It’s a fascinating area - full of over-hype and under-delivery a few years ago; now ripe and ready for prime time.

Looking at the guts of the technical environment, it’s clear that much has happened since the heady days of BT advertising ’surf the mobile web’ with a dodgy GSM connection and a two-tone, LED-like WAP browser. Now we have 3G, in-home Femtocells for maximum coverage, and a mini super-duper iPhone in our hands. As a result, the mobile web is now ready to be used as a killer marketing platform.

But where to start?

This is one of the most interesting questions in ‘new media’ marketing right now. Nobody’s really developed the killer app or the definitive campaign yet. And it looks like in many ways we’re also recreating many marketing mistakes of the past.

Just like the desktop web took a bunch of successfully established marketing activities and deliverables and ‘transcoded’ them online into brochureware web sites, Flash microsites and the like, the mobile web seems to chock full of broken e-commerce sites for ringtones, poorly formatted mapping services and mind-numbingly frustrating directory listings.

The view from here is that we really need to stop and start again when it comes to building successful marketing experiences on the mobile web.

Here’s some obvious - but often forgotten - points to take into account:

• Phones screens are small (less content is more)
• Usage patterns have different restraints: time, location, etc (think running from tube to bus into town for a meeting and trying to check up on some facts)
• Speed is important. Not in terms of speed of connection (although this obviously helps), but in getting to the point as quickly as possible. Fewer clicks to action, easier to search and find, that sort of thing.
• Development standards and processes are different. See ready.Mobi for an example of how different by running your url through their free page and site checker. It’ll show you how your site looks on a Nokia (or a Motorola, or a Samsung…)

That’s a lot of difference - but, if you can build this kind of thinking into your creative plans at source they ought to present a bunch of great marketing and communications opportunies.

For example, how about a mobile version of your site that serves mobile-centric content only….? Like creating a stripped down ‘About’ and ‘Products’ section, but a top line presentation of those important white paper pdfs in an iPhone browser-friendly format so that - instead of playing Sudoku - executive types can read them on their long train ride home?

Mobile-thinking seems to be the future of the mobile web. What do you think?

© Roger Warner for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us digg
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Instead of a 5-6 person, two camera crew, we’re sending out a camcorder and a lavalier (lapel) microphone for interviews — it’s amazing how much better a video ‘looks’ if its sound is strong and clear (something the mic on the camera can never give you).

The point of guerrilla video is to shoot first and ask questions later.  If the footage is disappointing or the experiment is a failure, you’ve lost very little.  If you get good footage, you’re ready to edit.

With broadband now ubiquitous, it’s easy to justify video content for B2B websites.  If you’ve got a story to tell, a product to demonstrate or an idea to evangelise… talk to us about getting it on screen quickly and cost-effectively.

And talk to Roger about using this video content for boosting SEO by spreading the love beyond your own site.

While we’re at it… a big shout out to the folks at VNL – Pär Almqvist, Anil Raj and Elise Alpen – for the courage and spirit to dive in where traditional marketers fear to tread.  Watch this space.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity - the marketing acceleration agency for B2B technology companies, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us digg
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