Birth of a thought leadership website

dotMobi is a mobile Internet services company and the registry for the .mobi domain name. It’s backed by leading mobile operators, device manufacturers, and Internet players, including Microsoft and Google. Essentially, .mobi is the only domain name that tells users, ‘This site will work on your phone’.

We needed to get brand marketers and their agencies to start using the mobile web and the .mobi domain name. Marketers didn’t seem to realize that the mobile web is different from the desktop web: users want different things, mobile devices do different things, and the staggering diversity of devices means that you can’t just squash your old content into a mobile-friendly site. It has to be thought of as a mobile experience from the start.

To add to the challenge, there was enormous confusion over the different naming conventions used for mobile websites. dotMobi needed to inject a little clarity.

Clearing some space

Our response to the brief was to differentiate between ‘.com thinking’ and ‘mobi thinking’. We portrayed .com thinking as clumsy and heavy, compared to mobi thinking which is lean and agile. This image appeared first in some of our creative roughs, but the client liked it so it made it all the way through:

.com thinking just isn't as nimble as mobiThinking

What we did next

In order to get the show on the road we designed, wrote, and built a new website for marketers with plenty of the usual Velocity specialities: thought leadership, video, interviews and .mobi site tours. We also did a load of case studies, best practice advice, e-newsletters, eBooks and set up a mobile marketing blog, edited for us by journalist Andy Favell.

Andy’s editorial approach gave the site an independent tone, so users knew they could trust it. He got straight to the heart of the industry in record time, and built links with all the head honchos in the business. He’s got a genuine interest in mobile internet issues and it shows: he’s produced some great stuff.

We also created new identities for all dotMobi brands including mobiThinking, mobiForge, and mobiDomain, designed campaigns for mobiThinking, and created content that drove traffic.

The website is constantly evolving with new content, blog posts, interviews and short pieces. It’s built around key pieces of content that have proved extremely popular including The Best and Worst of the Mobile Web and The 2009 Top Ten MobiThinkers.

And it worked

The results were excellent. The press gave the site masses of coverage, vendors want to be part of it, industry people are queuing up to write for dotMobi for free, they got over 24,000 mentions on Google in the first few months alone, they’re invited to speak at events and they’ve recruited some big names to the .mobi fold: Coca-Cola, Sony, Amazon, and Reuters. The site also achieved the best indicator of success: Barack Obama created one of the most popular .mobi sites ever to track his presidential campaign (and he used the .mobi domain name!).

In a very short time, mobiThinking.com has become one of the leading sources of best practice advice for mobile marketers, with traffic topping 7,500 views a week.. From a standing start, that’s not bad.

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Post tags: B2B, B2B marketing, Identity, Mobile Marketing, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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The new e-Book discusses why, on the mobile web (as opposed to the desktop web we’re all familiar with), many users still do not know how to find the content they want and what brand marketers can do about it.

Poor content discoverability afflicts the 83 per cent of marketers who (according to industry analyst Forrester) want to exploit the range and reach of the mobile web. These guys know that getting your mobile content discovery strategy right can pay huge dividends:

• Consumer researcher Nielsen Mobile says that attracting mobile Web traffic extends the audience reach
of online sites by an average of 13%
• Advertising research house Dynamic Logic says mobile promotion significantly increases brand awareness, favorability, and purchase intent
• comScore, the marketing research firm, states that on average, mobile display campaigns get a higher
click through rate than online, averaging 2-3 per cent for mobile versus 0.25–1% online

The e-Book shows shows that mobile content discovery is a function of three linked factors. The first two are about marketing ‘pull’; the third is all about marketing ‘push’:
• The ability for the user to guess your Web site name
• The ability for the user to find your Web site using their favorite search engine
• The means the site owner uses to promote its content to interested users – such as display advertising, shortcodes, SMS, and others.

To remind you, dotMobi is the top level domain for the mobile web and its mission is to accelerate the mobile web and promote best-practice mobile sites. Google, Nokia, Micorosoft and 11 other industry giants are their shareholders. You can find our more about them here.

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Post tags: B2B content marketing, B2B marketing, B2B marketing agency, B2B technology agency, B2B technology marketing, dotMobi, mobile content discovery, Mobile Marketing, mobithinking, Velocity e-Book

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It reminds me of the health, fitness & diet markets — trillion dollar industries that exist solely to peddle sophisticated alternatives to a simple, obvious truth: eat less, exercise more.

The simple, obvious truth in marketing is this: the Disruptive Idea takes all before it.  If you’ve got one, you’re half way to the gold ring.  If you don’t have one, you’re probably wasting your time.

A Disruptive Idea is just that. It’s a new idea that threatens the status quo.  It tells people that they’re looking at things all wrong, then suggests a much better way.  The Disruptive Idea has to have these qualities:

It has to be true – Loud, lame or lyrical bullshit just isn’t sustainable.  The more you can prove the validity of your idea, the stronger it is.

It has to be different – Big ideas incite riots. ‘Me-too’ ideas incite yawns.

It has to be controversial –  If everyone who hears it simply agrees, it’s not disruptive.

It has to generate value –Spiritual ideas are wonderful, but in B2B marketing, a disruptive idea has to make someone money or save them money.

A few Disruptive Ideas from tech marketing history:

Salesforce.com: “no software”.  They didn’t even push the (fairly generic) benefits of CRM — they just hammered home the big idea that you don’t need software to run it.

Google: “pay per click”.  A completely new ad model that had big advantages: it worked; it was completely transparent; and it didn’t commit the advertiser to anything up front.

Betfair: “the betting exchange”.  A new way to gamble, pairing buyers and sellers of risk. The value: better prices.

Skype: “Free calls over the Internet”.

Disruptive ideas are not the only way to build a successful business.  Sometimes just doing lots of little things better than the other guys is enough. But a disruptive idea is probably the single most powerful weapon in the marketing arsenal.  And most marketers spend far too little time generating them.

Marketing machine work is easy. Anyone can do all those things that can be measured in an analytics package or poured into an ROI model. But take half the time you spend on campaigns or programs and put it into generating a Disruptive Idea and you just might hit pay dirt.

A lot of marketers don’t shoot for the big, disruptive idea because they don’t think they have the power to do it. They feel that they have to take the product as it is and sell it on its merits.  So they plough the usual furrows and nothing great ever happens.

We think it’s the marketer’s job to have big ideas and shake up markets.  If you’re products are boring, come up with something exciting.   If the company doesn’t let you make it happen — find another company.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Benefits, Branding, Content, Copywriting, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, credibility, Mobile Marketing, Relevance, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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The free eBook is called, “Marketing your small business on the mobile Web: the guide to low-cost, high-impact mobile marketing” and is available to all mobile marketers on the mobiThinking.com website.

“The major brands are getting into the mobile Web in a big way,” says Doug Kessler, creative director of Velocity, “But there’s a lot of untapped potential for smaller businesses using the mobile Web, too. This eBook is a primer for small businesses interested in learning more about the mobile Web to see if it might help them attract new customers or serve existing ones.”

Sections include:

• What is the mobile Web?
• How people use it
• How your business can use the mobile Web today
• How to make your first mobile Web site
• Ten tips for great mobile sites
• Promoting your mobile Web site
• Choosing the right domain name

The eBook is the latest in a series of free resources for mobile marketers from mobiThinking.com, the web resource presented by dotMobi, the registry for the .mobi domain name.

It also outlines the benefits of Instant Mobilizer™, a new tool for automatically turning a simple .com Web site into a .mobi mobile Web site. The tool is available from a range of .mobi registrars and is free when users buy a .mobi domain name.

Links:

eBook

http://mobithinking.com/white-papers/free-ebook-marketing-your-small-business-mobile-web

mobiThinking

http://mobithinking.com

Instant Mobilizer

http://instantmobilizer.com/

dotMobi

http://mtld.mobi/

Velocity – B2B technology marketing agency

http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2009. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B agency, B2B marketing, B2B technology marketing, Content, Copywriting, digital marketing, Mobile Marketing, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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In the digital world, there’s a downside that’s as painful as any upside: the dreaded Opt-Out.

The Opt-Out is a body blow to the digital marketer.  It takes the prospect outside the Realm of the Reachable.  And it does so forever – or until they opt in at some point in the future (a possibility made dramatically less likely by the act of opting out.)

So today, every marketing action risks an opposite (though presumably not equal) reaction.  A true and fair accounting of any marketing campaign should factor in the Opt-Outs.

Of course, even before digital marketing, any campaign could trigger a negative reaction (“Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to cancel that subscription.”).  But in meatspace, the opt out was usually invisible. Today, it’s instant and quantifiable.

So what can we do about it?  A few thoughts:

• Be relevant - That’s always been a good idea; now it’s imperative. An ill-targeted email will trigger many more Opt-Outs than a relevant one.

• Be compelling - Make people want to receive your next communication. Make them want to open the next email.  This is a much higher bar than simply delivering a message effectively.

• Consider doing less – The more you send people, the more it starts to feel like spam. Be selective.  Don’t send everything to every prospect.

• Offer granular Opt-Outs – People may not want to opt out of everything, just certain types of communication. Make it easy to selectively opt out or you encourage global Opt-Out.

• On exit, ask to maintain a connection – When you accept the Opt-Out (as all responsible marketers must), ask if it’s okay to contact them again in 6 months to see if they’d like to opt back in.  You never know.
• Measure it – Opt-Outs are an important metric. Measure them and factor them into any campaign’s ROI report.

• Use some automation – We’re working with a lead nurturing and scoring system that makes it a lot easier to segment (by demographics and behaviour); to automate campaigns; and to track responses and Opt-Outs. Talk to us about it.

• Keep filling the top of the funnel – Compensate for the Opt-Out factor by getting more people to opt in!

Bottom line: Opt-Out is a fact of life for the digital marketer. And it hurts. You can pretend it’s not a factor or you can meet the challenge head-on.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Branding, Content, Copywriting, digital marketing, Mobile Marketing, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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The free e-Book identifies the key principles of mobile web success as highlighted by a distinguished panel of mobi-gurus including contributions from the Yankee group, Gartner, Yahoo! and top mobile marketing agencies and service providers.

The eBook is the latest free resource to be posted on mobiThinking.com, the online resource for mobile marketers.  Velocity developed the eBook and web resource for dotMobi, the registry for the .mobi domain name, to help promote best practice in mobile web marketing and to communicate the .mobi story.

The eBook features plenty of examples of the winners and sinners, with screenshots and URLs of each, so readers can visit the sites and judge for themselves.

“The mobile web is hot,” says Doug Kessler, Velocity Creative Director, “This eBook shows people just how far marketers have come in the last year — and how far some brands still have to go.”

To download the free eBook, visit:

Free eBook: Best & Worst of the Mobile Web

About mobiThinking.com
mobiThinking.com is the web resource and community for mobile web marketers.  It’s produced by dotMobi, the ICANN-appointed global registry for the .mobi top-level domain name – the only domain specifically for the mobile web.

dotMobi is backed by fourteen leading mobile and Internet players: Ericsson, Google, GSM Association, Hutchison 3, Microsoft, Nokia, Orascom Telecom, Samsung Electronics, Syniverse, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, TIM, Visa and Vodafone.

Contact dotMobi at info@mobithinking.com.

About Velocity
Velocity is the B2B marketing agency for technology companies.

Contact us at:

info@velocitypartners.co.uk

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, B2B technology marketing, Content, Copywriting, digital marketing, Mobile Marketing, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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It deals with the fact that most technology companies are run by smart, technical engineering types – and these folks are pre-disposed to take a running jump from tech-speak to Big Business Benefits when tackling their corporate positioning and corporate message development projects.

In doing so, they’re approaching things in the same way that Evel Knievel used to approach the Snake River Canyon — because they recognise how far away the Land of Really Meaningful Business Benefits is from the World of Technology.  And the result is predictable:  they fall down.

The truth is, companies can’t leap from tech features to Big Business Benefits when describing themselves.  They have to build a bridge between them.  Better still, they need to swing across this ‘benefits chasm’ on a Vine.

And that’s what this new Velocity white paper is all about. It’s a killer set of diagrams and best practice advice for slaying any daredevil message and positioning pretensions you may have.

You can download it today, FREE, via:
http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk/2008/11/25/tech-benefits-recipes-for-corporate-positioning-and-corporate-message-development/

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.

For further information about Velocity, see:   http://www.velocitypartners.co.uk

© Roger for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Benefits, Branding, Content, Copywriting, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, credibility, Mobile Marketing, Relevance, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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Being smart, engineers recognise the problem and take a running jump from tech-speak to Big Business Benefits like generating revenue or increasing profitability.  They approach this in the same way that Evel Knievel used to approach things like the Snake River Canyon — because they recognise how far away the Land of Benefits is from the World of Technology.

The result also parallels Evel Knievel’s attempt at crossing his own private chasm: they fall down.

The truth is, you can’t leap from tech features to Big Business Benefits.  You have to build a bridge between them.  Better still, you need to swing across on a Vine.

That’s what the Velocity Hierarchy of Benefits is all about. It’s a killer slide that’s popping up with alarming frequency in our presentations to clients.  We’ve just written a paper about it which you’re welcome to read.

One of the more interesting things the Hierarchy exposes is the inverse relationship between Credibility and Perceived Value: your prospects believe the claims they don’t care much about and care a lot about the ones they don’t believe.

We attack this problem by creating links, or Vines, between  the higher order benefits and the deep tech below.  When it works, the technology story brings credibility to the business benefit claims and the business benefits bring relevance to the technology features.

No sense summarising the paper here. It’s only four pages long with a few pretty pictures thrown in.  Give it a read and let us know what you think.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Benefits, Branding, Content, Copywriting, Corporate Message Development, Corporate Positioning, credibility, Mobile Marketing, Relevance, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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But even the best thought leaders often follow a simplistic content promotion strategy that completely ignores the idea of a sales cycle.  Basically, they pump out some new content, promote it, and repeat.

The results is an over-emphasis on the recent instead of the relevant.

Most companies have a few pieces of core content that were usually produced early on — the ones that summarise the whole story in one place.  Or the ideal introduction to the market/app/technology/issue.

These powerful pieces often get buried under layers of new content — but the new material may not be the best starting point for every prospect.  Over time, a company’s content tends to get more and more specific.  You cover the broad landscape, then zoom in on issues.  But new prospects that know nothing about you would be much better off starting with the earlier ‘landscape’ pieces.

We like to get our clients thinking about the sales cycle and what content is right for each stage in it.  A first-time web visitor should be led to the big-picture pieces. Subsequent web visits or emails  could help them progress further, ideally based on insight into who they are (job title, industry) and what they’re doing — what pages they visit, what papers they read, what links they click on in an email.

We’re starting to work with a powerful tool that does automated lead nurturing based on demographic and behavioural scoring.  This makes it easy to target the right content at the right prospects as they progress through the sales pipeline.

As a result, clients can serve up  the most relevant content to each prospect, instead of just the most recent.

Any thoughts on your own use of content through the sales cycle?

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Branding, Content, Copywriting, Mobile Marketing, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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The newsletter does a lot right:

• It’s clear, colourful and inviting – three colour-coded sections; design in the service of content
• It’s about the reader’s concerns not just the company’s –only one short bit is about VNL at all — and they’ve earned the right to smuggle that in
• It’s packed with content – incuding recent industry news items (pre-digested) and links to two videos and two white papers.
• It starts with a nice, personal note from the CEO – giving it a human face
• It’s as long as your arm – nothing wrong with scrolling if there’s a lot to say — and it’s better than reducing the content to a series of cryptic lines.
• It’s a link-fest – driving people to the VNL website; with proper analytics to track the click-throughs

We even like the way the housekeeping is handled at the bottom:

Newsletters are an important string to the B2B marketing bow.  We could all do worse than following this one.

© Doug Kessler for Velocity Partners, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: B2B marketing, Branding, Content, Copywriting, eNewsletters, Mobile Marketing, Thought Leadership, Web Marketing

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