Marketing in the DARC Ages? Take a Deep Breath
My friend Alice - a savvy and experienced marketer - mentioned to me that she’d been reading a HubSpot publication called “Hiring in the DARC Ages”. She asked this opinionated marketer what I thought about it. (”Hiring” is a chapter in the book, Inbound Marketing by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot founders and, respectively, CEO and CTO of the outfit. The chapter is available here.)
Like everything I’ve seen - and liked - from HubSpot, “DARC Ages” is interesting, provocative, and probably just a teensy-weensy bit exaggerated in spots. (Or maybe just a teensy-weensy bit ahead of the curve.)
The thesis is that successful companies of the future will not be built on outbound marketing success (think Mad Men) but, rather, on inbound marketing excellence.
It’s certainly hard to argue that inbound plays an increasingly important role in marketing. I’ve heard David Meerman Scott - an advisor to the HubSpot board - speak a couple of times, and both times he’s done a simple little exercise asking the audience about how they find product information/make purchase decisions. Not surprisingly…
Yup! We all go to the Google.
And we all know that any company that’s not doing at least some rudimentary inbound marketing - something one non-baby step beyond mere “web presence” - is more than likely losing out on opportunities. Hey, these days, you can even buy a casket online.
So I agree with the fundamental HubSpot point that marketing departments need to look for and groom employees who are “inbound marketing savvy.” And they provide a framework in which to evaluate employees, which is where the DARC comes from.
D = Hire Digital Citizens
A = Hire for Analytical chops
R = Hire for Web Reach
C = Hire Content Creators
To identify passport-carrying Digital Citizens, HubSpot suggests finding out what RSS reader someone uses; what blogs they read; whether they blog, twitter, or YouTube; whether they’re on LinkedIn or Facebook - and when they last updated their profile. It also suggests you have that someone show you their blog/RSS reader/Tweets. (Opinionated Marketer to prospective marketing hires in the DARC ages: if you have a highly personal (ahem) any kind of presence out there, get yourself a more professional one a.s.a.p.)
Another question it suggests asking is whether someone knows whether they’ll come up first when you google their name. I guess the point is not whether you actually do come up first. You may not have a lot of control over it.
Personally, I run horseneck and neck with equine consultant Maureen Rogers, but - at least for today - we’re number one!
Someone with an even more common name can’t be expected to be at the head of the class. I have a friend with the same name as an aging B-list celebrity, so - although my friend does have a web presence through articles and presentations - he doesn’t show up very easily.
Analytical Chops have always been useful in a marketer. (Ask me about my minor concentration in Applied Marketing at the Sloan School. I used to love, love, love that conjoint analysis.) But now that there’s data that’s inbound, and, thus, can inarguably be closely sourced, it’s more important than ever to have someone around who can analyze it.
Here’s the way that HubSpot suggests testing for it:
…have your prospective hire bring to the interview his or her favorite spreadsheet with pivot tables, and show
you some counter-intuitive insight that came out of the spreadsheet model in graph format.
Gosh! What if your favorite spreadsheet doesn’t have pivot tables. (Mine doesn’t but, then again, it’s not used for analysis.) And what if all of the data’s screaming intuitive! It can happen. Not to mention that sometimes counter-intuitive is both counter-intuitive and just plain wrong.
Web Reach is something that HubSpot says you should also look for, i.e., try to hire someone who has a lot of industry followers on Facebook, Twitter, Blogpost… The example they use of strong web reach is Guy Kawasaki. Personally, couldn’t they have set the bar a little higher? (Not!)
Sure, wouldn’t all marketing bloggers like to have the reach of Guy Kawasaki. Or Seth Godin. But, realistically folks…
One of the things HubSpot suggests as a means to identify reach is to query your candidates about their Facebooking/blogging/ tweeting/LinkedIn-iness, etc. - especially with respect to whether they have a specific focus on your industry. Personally, if there’s someone out there who is a known force in your industry - popular blog, tweets that matter, etc. - then you should know about them already. And maybe be pursuing them. As AmEx did in the Guy Kawasaki instance. (I.e., I’m just guessing here, but my guess is that AmEx didn’t bring Guy in for a sit down and then ask him how many followers he has. They went after him because of his name, reputation, caliber…)
As for those with large followings for something they’re doing other than in your industry, they’ve clearly developed the knack for attracting attention that bodes well - but which may not necessarily translate into anything for your industry. Maybe Mary’s got a massive following in the crocheted dog-sweater world, but will never have the same passion for widgets.
At the same time, someone with good content but not necessarily well-followed web presence (either in or out of your industry), may be capable of extending their reach if they put their mind to it.
The C in DARC Ages is for Content Creation where, bless ‘em, the HubSpot calls for excellent writing skills. Marketing departments need those who can create sharp content that gets linked to, and which draws comments.
Here’s my add-on advice here (when it comes to blogging, anyway) - especially for smaller companies. Yes, if you are blogging about a hot topic, people on the look will find it. But, whatever you’re doing, you may always find yourself lost on page 2 because your industry’s Guy Kawasakis have such a huge head start on you. One way to move yourself on up is to comment on the posts of your industry’s Guy Kawasakis. If your comments are interesting enough, people will click through to your site (if you’re allowed to provide the link). You also might want to write posts that key-off of posts written by your industry’s Guy Kawasakis. You may end up being added to a great blogroll or have a biggie write a post that keys off of something that you’ve written.
There’s more to the DARC ages article - it’s definitely worth a read.
And I don’t think that old-timer marketers need to get depressed or discouraged by it. Take a deep breath: The HubSpot is not saying that, if you can’t be Guy Kawasaki you’re irrelevant, as much as it’s saying don’t let yourself be irrelevant.
We all need to be speak some degree of inbound marketing - even if it’s just one-tense, beginner, ask directions skill rather than full I-can-translate-Hungarian-poetry fluency. And we all need to be able to reposition our skills so that they match up with what’s needed in this world.
If we don’t, guess what?
We end up on the outside looking in.
This could happen, anyway. (Age discrimination is serious matter for job hunters, especially in fields like marketing, where the image definitely skews young.)
But nothing will guarantee your irrelevance faster than not getting with the program and recognizing that, whether you like it or not, inbound marketing matters, and is going to matter more and more over time.
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A tip of the Opinionated Marketer’s best chapeau to Alice M. for pointing the DARC Ages out to me.
What we can learn from Tiger Woods about B2B technology value propositions
I’m not much of a professional golf fan, but I was - of course - well aware of Tiger Woods and the brand attributes - superb control, killer cool, supreme confidence, highly intelligent (that time at Stanford!), near perfection, uncommon discretion - that made him such a desired and prevalent spokesman for a broad range of products and businesses, including Accenture. The appeal to an outfit like Accenture was clear. The pre-Thanksgiving Tiger Woods represented the very attributes that they want associated with their brand. After all, they’re asking major corporations to pay them big bucks for advice and IT outsourcing. Control, cool, confidence, intelligence, perfection, discretion. What’s not to like? Plus there was the added bennie of association with Tiger: all those golf-playing C-level executives vying to stand in TW’s shadow in the Accenture tent at the US Open. From Accenture’s standpoint, what’s not to like?
Any old high-end jock will pretty much do for some of Tiger’s other advertising gigs - Gillette, Nike - with no points off for being not so intelligent, quasi-articulate, and/or a womanizer. But for a high-end business brand like Accenture, there was Tiger. And maybe a few others. But not all that many.
But when the carefully crafted “brand” sustains not a small nick, but is smashed to smithereens. Oopsie!
I’m sure that Accenture’s senior execs figured that, if they couldn’t get the image of Tiger’s wife chasing him down the driveway wielding a nine iron, neither could their clients.
Not to mention that long list of girl friends - porn stars, waitresses, hostesses, cougars, none of whom, apparently, could keep her mouth shut. Maybe if it had just been one. Or two. Or even three. But n+1, where n = the figure we heard yesterday. Wowie! (If it had been one, bitty little affair with, say, an Accenture consultant, in her charcoal gray suit and sensible shoes, with her MBA and briefcase, things would have been fine.)
Promiscuity, duplicity, arrogance - not attributes any business wants associated with their good name. Not to mention the sexism implied by Tiger’s general preference for dim-bims, which really won’t fly with those golf-playing, C-level execs who happen to be women.
No, Tiger had to go.
But he had to go because the image he and his handlers had so craftily cultivated was at some odds with the man himself.
Sure, he’s still a great golfer - confident, competent, etc. - but his crafted image was meant to convey something that transcended the golf course when it really didn’t.
That’s where B2B technology value propositions come into this story.
And that’s where we, as marketers, have to be awfully careful to make sure that what we say about our products and companies actually has some grounding in reality.
If you want to tell the world that your product’s robust - which, in truth, I wouldn’t actually advise, even if it is - then you had best be certain that it actually works. If you want to talk about scalability, better be sure that when the 10th user signs on, it doesn’t freeze up or topple over. If you want to tout security, make sure there aren’t big, gaping holes. Don’t talk about your company’s fab customer support if all a call does it get someone into a chirpy-voice, endless loop,menu hell.
And those are just the feature follies you don’t want to get into. When you get into the benefits, don’t go claiming that ROI can be achieved in a week if you don’t have the evidence to back the claim. Don’t prattle on about saving time if using your product will actually take twice as long as any alternative.
You don’t want to build a product without thinking through what the value prop is. But we all know that can happen. If it does, the last thing you want to do is ignore the reality of your existing product when you create an ex post facto value proposition.
A number of years ago, I was asked to brief the new president on the value propositions for all of our company’s products/services. Those products had, originally, had fairly strong value propositions. We were early providers of Internet services, and, as one of the first in for a wildly growing market, we could extract premium prices. Unfortunately, as new providers entered the markets, products like ours were being rapidly commoditized. We had done little in terms of our products to add value beyond what we’d offered initially. And then there was the problem of all the giddy, exaggerated claims that all Internet services providers were making about how greatly their customers were benefiting from their services. (Pets.com, anyone? Arf!)
Anyway, my group put together a truthful accounting of the value propositions for our products, making no pets.com-ian claims about their wonders.
“These value propositions are weak,” the new president told me. “We’ll need to change them.”
He was right.
We did need to change them.
But you can’t change your product’s value proposition by re-wording it.
If you have a weak value proposition, you need to either change your product, or find an audience for whom the product as is will work.
And that’s what I, at least, am reminded by the Tiger Wood fiasco.
If you want to be a play-ah, you can probably still shill for golf shoes and aftershave. But you can’t represent for Accenture.
So it is with B2B tech products. If you want to be able to say that they’re highly secure wonder-widgets that enable your clients to improve their top line and their bottom line, you’d better make sure that your products actually fit the bill.
Just do it!
