Marcom HRsay

It’s what wasn’t said that bugged me the most.

Even after all the HRO Today Forum analyst summit on the “innovation gap,” all the exciting HR vendor demos and the highlight of the HR Demo Show — the iTalent 2 competition (which I’ll write about more this week), when I talked marketing shop with a variety of talent acquisition and talent management suppliers, veterans and startups alike, most of what I heard was the marcom thinness of all things social.

Meaning, “We haven’t spent a dime on marketing or sales. All our growth has been because of social media, word of mouth, influencers, though leaders and connectors.”

Sounds a little too good to be true, because it is. And while it may be enough to launch a new product or service, particularly one that incorporates “social” functionality and targets “social” buyers, it’s just not enough to build a sustainable growth business near term or long. I can’t tell you how many small businesses I’ve spoken with who have eventually burned through word of mouth and needed something more substantive in their marketing efforts.

Let me back up a bit, though. In early April I read an article by Dr. Wendell Williams titled Who and What Can You Trust These Days (Dr. Wendell Williams specializes in helping organizations develop job competencies, measure applicant skills, implement performance management programs, and much more.) After reading the article twice for good measure, I thought cynically, “Well, that’s great marketing to promote your expertise, Dr. Williams.”)

However, his words unsettled me because he’s right. His assessment of what makes an “expert” in any given field an expert as opposed to a strong social “opinionator” is spot on. The spectrum runs from the hands-on practitioners who do the day-to-day client work and only know slightly more about the “software” than their clients do, to those highly trained and experienced individuals who “are capable of actually redesigning the software to make it more useful and efficient.”

Then what really crossed me was this line: “Bloggers are cropping up everywhere with opinions that are generally poorly informed.” Well, maybe for some. Or more than some. Anyway, he’s still on to something when it comes to leveraging only blogger credibility for your business growth.

Fast forward to last week when my old partner in crime, Mark Willaman, CEO of HRmarketer.com, shared an article with me from HARO founder, Peter Shankman.

It’s title? Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert”. And while it is a fun rant read about marcom best practices (his opening line is — I was going to call this article “All ‘Social Media Experts’ Need To Go Die In A Fire…”), I’ll just call out a few of my own business and marcom best practices here:

• I don’t care how cool you think your product, service and business model is, or how many investors are interested in you. Do you have at least some paying “beta” customers with decent initial user adoption who are helping you build and debug a cool product, service and business model? You don’t? Then scrap it quickly and try again.
• Just because you’ve bought another company (and their customers) doesn’t mean you have a cool product, service and business model. Especially if you still have to integrate and/or dismantle and keep your existing customers happy and paying you money. Workplace and brand loyalty go hand in hand these days.
• Try not to miss this memo the first time around, the one about making sure to underestimate your marketplace and overestimate your sales cycle when you’re starting a new business.
• Social media marketing is important these days, and that includes targeting industry influencers, bloggers and thought leaders, but it’s still only part of a comprehensive marcom picture. Remember, know your target markets and where they play, because not all of them play online.
• Email marketing isn’t dead. If you believe that, then you might already be.
• Same with traditional media relations. Target a handful of relevant industry journalists (they do still exist) and share relevant industry information with them about your company, products, services, trends you can speak to, insights you can embellish, etc.
• Content marketing is still the way to go when making your business case to prospects and the continued one to current customers before you hit them with lead nurturing sales schtick — white papers, articles, webinars, podcasts, speaking opportunities, case studies, marketing press releases, non-promotional blog posts, buyer-focused industry research, etc. — educate before you inundate.
• And when it comes to content marketing, reduce as much of the biz jargon in your deliverables as possible. Be professional yet conversational with your language. Talk to me like a human being, would you?
• Go to the conferences and trade shows where your prospects and customers frequent. And talk with them. Face to face. As often as you can.
• Again, I can’t emphasize customer service enough. Understand their business and service each customer as if each customer was your only one, because you not only want to retain them, you also want to spark up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.
• Metrics, metrics, metrics — don’t drown in them, but don’t neglect them either. Understand what’s generating the most visibility, traffic and leads and continue to invest in those activities as well as lead nurturing activities to warm those leads to the boiling point of buying.

I could go on and on, but hey, what the heck do I know?

 MarcomHRsay.com is an HR and Recruiting B2B blog for the real world and companies small, midsize and the entire enterprise, focusing on what helps people thrive and businesses grow.