Golden Practices

Creative and Edgy Attracts

I'm so behind in blogging. Seriously. And I know I don't actually have to tell you that. The beauty of blogs is that you, the reader, don't really know all the things I've been meaning to post and haven't yet. Except that, um, now you know.

So now that I've blown that facade completely, let me share some things worth checking out!

1. The all-around BEST website legal disclaimer you've ever seen (you'd sort of expect that from a law firm, but JUST WAIT...) is that of Valorem Law Group. Exactly what I love about Pat Lamb...

2. We've been looking at a lot of career pages on professional firm websites and absolutely LOVE the presentation of the interactive office walkthrough over at Quinn Emanuel.

3. We also love the MySpace approach over at Choate! My favorite is the bouncing ball video.

4. And would you expect anything less than edgy humor and creativity from a law firm that's comfortable with the nickname "MoFo"? I think not. I love their @$%#@! {Pigeonholed} page and their Why Mofo? page

Have you noticed these are all law firms. Ahem. Okay accountants, time to relax and let your creative juices flow!

Contrast the above with this type of video from PwC (who does do some edgy stuff, too) but you'll see their message is good but they are totally serious and low energy. Hmmm.

Any that you like?

Gathering Customer Testimonials

Today on the Association for Accounting Marketing Discussion List, someone asked about the best ways to gather client testimonials.

A discussion ensued and I was moved to share Golden Marketing's process. It seems several folks are comfortable writing a testimonial for the client and seeking their approval. This always felt icky to me. I'd always rather hear the story straight from the horse's mouth. So this is the way we do it, along with a few examples. This can be done by the in-house marketing department just as easily as by an outside firm.

So, here's our process:

1. Decide Who. We work with the partners to determine who would be the best clients to talk to. Usually this is a mix of long-time clients and new clients, clients across a couple different industries, and clients that use more than one service. What we find is that we can use one testimonial interview across a handful of client service pages and at least one industry.

2. Permission. Then we ask the partner or manager (whomever is the primary contact person) to call each client (usually we just start with 4 or 5) and ask, "would you be willing to talk to our marketing people for a brief interview to capture some of your thoughts on working with the firm, for us to use in our marketing materials?" If the client agrees (they always have) then the partner says, "Great, I'll have [person] call you to set up a brief chat, no more than 15-20 minutes."

3. More Permission. Partner passes us the info, we call, introduce ourselves, thank them for agreeing to take the time to talk with us and say: "I'm sure you're busy right now so we'd just like to set up a good time to talk for 15-20 minutes. When would be a good time?" Rarely do people want to talk right then, but if they did, we would accommodate. They usually appreciate having a little time to put their thoughts together.

4. Setting Expectations. We call promptly at the designated time, thank them again for taking the time to talk with them and explain the process:

"We really appreciate your willingness to talk to us about your experiences with [firm]. Today we are just going to ask you a few questions and we will transcribe the conversation to capture your thoughts as close to verbatim as possible...don't worry about constructing answers or being formal...after the interview we'll type up the notes, possibly reorder your comments for flow, and then we'll send the interview notes to you for your review.

"Since these are your comments, it's important that you are comfortable with what's in there and if there's anything you don't like, please feel free to strike it or edit it, and if you want to add anything, feel free to do that, too. When you are happy with it, just send it back over, and only then will we send it on the to firm/partners/team. Of course, at any time, if you wish for us to discontinue using your statements in our marketing materials, just let us know and we'll stop, no questions asked."

Sometimes the CFO (often the contact) wants to run it by the owner of the company so we consider that in the process.

5. Respect Their Time. Keep the interview exactly on time. Around the 15 minute mark, even if you need to gently interrupt the client, say "I want to respect your time and we promised not to exceed 15-20 minutes." Quite often, the client wants to continue--it is their prerogative. We've talked to several for an hour!

6. Prepare and Deliver. Then we transcribe, edit for flow, take out anything that was told to us "off the record" (of which there is usually a lot) or not entirely relevant, and then submit it by email making sure to remind them that it is their statement so they must be totally comfortable, and can change it to their heart's desire. Few change it much, if at all.

7. Appreciate. Once we receive it back, we provide to the the firm/team, etc and we send an appropriate thank you gift such as flowers, or something meaningful to the individual as a gesture of appreciation for "taking the time to talk with us and for sharing your story".

What we end up with is usually a full page "story" full of gems that we have permission to use in single-sentence snippets or in its entirety. Examples of "longer stories" here: not quite the whole interview and the whole interview -- and you can see a couple of that firm's smaller excerpts on the relevant industry pages of hospitality and construction.

Another approach we sometimes take for very short testimonials is to have a Y/N field on customer satisfaction surveys asking "If you have provided your name, may [firm] reference you when sharing your comments with future clients?" so that we can attribute survey comments on websites, in proposals, etc. Here's one example of a gem survey comment woven in.

No matter how we get the comments, we always document the client's approval of their comment use. Testimonials without client names are pretty ineffective. I wouldn't waste the time or space to go this route. Most viewers will simply dismiss an unattributed comment or assume it is contrived.

And we always try to use real comments as pull quotes beside what are otherwise the same ol' general claims made by all firms such as timeliness, responsiveness or continuity of audit teams, yada yada. Having a real client with a real testament to this quality underscores it beautifully, substantiating what is otherwise a same 'ol-same 'ol.

And these stories, or portions thereof, can be used in a multitude of ways over many years. 

The Emperor Has No Clothes

In 2005, I started this blog and at the same time, I started posting our Golden Web Reviews.

They are presented via a blog. I like the format for sharing and storing them which makes them easy to find, sort, and distribute (by RSS feed into readers and email) but it really isn't a true blog because it isn't a conversation, it's just our information without feedback.

The title of this post is part of my answer to my friend, Wendy Nemitz, principal of Ingenuity Marketing, when she said last week that our Golden Web Reviews are a pretty risky approach to marketing our website expertise and asked she me about making the choice to publicly critique the web presentations of CPA firms.

She's right. It's counter-intuitive to call attention to, as I say on the Golden Web Review page, "the good, the bad, and the ugly" of firms that are probably on my desirable future client list.

Truly, I contemplated for a long time whether, and how, I would go about publishing reviews of firm's websites. Not just the logistics but the approach. PC? Nice? Brutal? Who would I review? Who would I avoid?

What I told Wendy (and the rest of the Minnesota AAM Chapter to whom I had the pleasure of presenting on blogs and social media) was that, ultimately, I figured firms would benefit from and appreciate that someone was willing to say 'the Emperor has no clothes' and bring attention to the fact that few accounting firm websites are effective--if we were to talk also about WHY.

It's been a sound strategy for us. More than I anticipated. The Golden Web Reviews do get a lot of traffic which surprises me because we don't have many posted, and we've been going a loooonnnggg time between posting new ones (look for some news ones soon though, they are in the works!).

Much to my surprise, several firms we reviewed actually thanked us for the advice, ideas, praises for the "dos," and even the publicity. Two of the marketers said our "don'ts" validated their arguments which they had obviously lost with their partners. I never expected that sort of response. It is really cool. Some have redone their sites and incorporated our suggestions.

I confess I didn't know, back in early 2005, that a core element of social media would be authenticity and so the frankness of the approach was just right for the way in which the web was moving.  We got lucky in that respect.

Marketers know that marketing isn't all science. Some is just plain ol' trial and error.

This was experimental for me. But it felt right. Being honest is something I feel very comfortable with, and being critical in a fair and diplomatic way is something I'm glad to work continuously to get better at.

So, I'm wondering, as you read this, what are your thoughts on any or all of these things:

1. How do you feel about trying something even if you don't "know" it will work? Do you ever do it? Has it worked? If not, what have you learned?
2. Do you think we should open up comments on the Golden Web Reviews and make them more of a conversation--a real blog? Or just leave it the way it is?
3. Should we change the way we do our Golden Web Reviews? If so, what should we change?

I really appreciate any thoughts readers have about these topics. Thanks for considering sharing your answers.

Using Keywords More Naturally in Web Copy

People who write content for web are usually trying to strike a balance between helpful, meaningful information, and use of terms that will be attracting "the right" people from search engines.

As such, copy-writing can get tricky and the resulting text can be pretty scary, actually.

I enjoyed this brief article "Stop the Slaughter of Innocent Copy" over at Wordtracker.com that warns against overusing key terms.

Author Karon Thackston also offers a couple great examples of weaving in what you "aren't" or what you don't do in order to pull in some searchers while highlighting your alternative approaches.

Great Info on Viral Marketing

David Meerman Scott has again produced excellent and timely material on marketing in the digital age.

Again, he offers a free e-book. This one is The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free. His first was on New Rules of Marketing and PR.

Both are excellent. And his subequent 'real' book on the New Rules of Marketing and PR is THE absolute must-read book on e-marketing.

He only distributed his latest e-book via his blog and three weeks later, he writes:

It's been twenty days since I released my new ebook The New Rules of Viral Marketing: How word-of-mouse spreads your ideas for free.

I'm amazed at the stats. In just 20 days:

• 42,810 downloads (based on my Web analytics)
• Close to 100 blog posts about the ebook (depends on which blog search engine is used)
• Well over 1,000 hits on the exact phrase "new rules of viral marketing" (on the day I put out the ebook there were zero hits on the phrase.)

How did I achieve these results?

I didn't do a thing. I didn't beg the media to write about it. I didn't pay for expensive advertising to promote it. I didn't interrupt people by sending it out via email.

All I did was post it on my blog. That's it. You did the rest. Thank you for downloading the ebook and for talking about it.

(Well, I guess I can safely say that my viral marketing ebook has gone viral.)

I'll be on a live teleseminar Tuesday February 26th, 2008 at 5:00 PM EST to discuss viral marketing in depth. For about 70 minutes, I'll answer questions that you submit to me and discuss the issues people face with going viral. It's free to participate. I hope you can make it.

I've got the teleseminar date on my calendar. Can't wait!

A Year's Worth of Marketing

Gainer Donnelly & Desroches is a CPA firm in Houston that is decidedly different from other firms.

While Sam Gainer and his wife, Norma, travel the world, Sam captures dynamic people and scenes through his camera lens.

For years, Sam's photos have graced the office walls and he's shared his art with clients. A tradition that began with featuring a photo on the firm's holiday card grew into production of an exquisite calendar.

Each calendar has a theme. This year's theme is "Castles & Palaces of the World."

The first year Gainer Donnelly & Desroches made the calendar for their clients, they printed 3000. Demand has grown and requests come in from all over. The firm printed over 10,000 of the 2008 calendars! Sam has recently been approached by Houston Museum of Natural Science regarding an exhibit related to the theme of his 2006 calendar, "Natural Wonders of the World."

The current Houston Business Journal contains a story about these calendars (account needed to view full article) mentioning a debate the firm faced about whether or not to spoil the photos by punching a hanging hole in the calendar. A number of people like to frame their favorite pictures.

To solve the dilemma, the firm has provided downloadable, high-resolution versions of the 2008 featured photos right on their lovely, new website. Desktop sized images are also offered. All smartly branded with the firm's logo!

Brilliant. And beautiful. My desktop features November's castle.

So, great talent and uniqueness provide a huge differentiating factor. Who says personal interests and business can't mix?

By the way, their sleek new website is pretty nice. I love the ever-so-subtle movement they've included in the way they use still photos...see the office tour.

Hmmm, I wonder if Sam was the photographer??

Anniversary Impression on the Web

How cool is this? (worth the wait for it to load)

HEMA, a Dutch department store

How'd they do that??

E-Marketing - Do You? Don't You?

A discussion began over at David Maister's blog when a marketing consultant down-under, David Koopmans, asked:

"If you were advising a professional firm about web marketing, what would you stress?" after pointing out that "among some types of professional firm (sic) there is often resistance to the concept of marketing in general, and the digital space in particular."

An understatement to be sure! David Maister made some astute observations and appealed to readers for some specific evidence of effective digital marketing.

A long discussion ensued (see the comments on his post: Digital Marketing for Professional Firms) including a few posts by yours truly. (I was actually encouraged by a few friends and clients to "get over there and post!").

I both agreed and disagreed with David Maister's observations. In particular, I disagreed with the supposition that business decision makers don't spend much time on the web. (I've read several credible studies to the contrary.)

But the main point of my thinking on this is that looking to existing PSF firm websites for evidence of best practices in e-marketing is pretty much a waste of time. It's like sending your talent scout to a nursing home to spot cute child-actors. Possible but unlikely. 

Further, some might be surprised that, despite my passion on the topic of e-marketing and incorporating social media into marketing plans of traditional firms, my final comment includes the following statement about attempting to persuade firms in this area:

Personally, I don't see it as my role to "convince" anyone to move in this direction...As a service provider, I have no interest in helping people implement something they don't 'get' or believe in.

Frankly, the only firms moving in this direction are those whose leadership understands the way people are changing in their use of the web PLUS bear courage to innovate and experiment (because that is what it still is!) in this arena.

I'm pleased to see a growing number of accounting firms finding the courage to explore new techniques of e-marketing. If you're borderline, or not sure what I'm referring to, check out David's post.

Thanks to David Koopmans for posting more about this subject on his blog. And special thanks also to Bill Dotson, Technology and Business Development Consultant, who liked my comments enough to pick them up on his own blog.

Why RSS Beats E-Newsletters Hands Down

E-Newsletters are notorious for WYSINWYG: What You See is NOT What You Get.

Overcoming format foibles in the delivery of an HTML newsletter that I was testing for launch, is what first got me looking into blogs back in 2005.

When I found out how easy, painless, and beneficial RSS was over e-mail, using blog technology, with a Feedblitz email delivery option for those not RSS savvy, was a no-brainer.

Feedblitz is awesome and automatically distributes my RSS feed to the subcriber by email whenever I post. It's reliable and self-administered by the subscriber so I don't have to worry about anti-spam law compliance, administering my list, or any other regular maintenance. And did I mention it is free??

This is why I was surprised this evening when I received an e-newsletter (!) from another great (and free) blog tool provider SiteMeter. I love SiteMeter, too. And I subscribe to their RSS feed to stay current on product news so I'm not sure why I received this e-newsletter (because I don't remember signing up for it) but out of curiosity, I clicked. And look at what happened when it opened...

And I bet someone spent a lot of time making it look "just so."

I can't understand why companies still spend so much effort and money formatting e-newsletters when they can just use a blog/RSS and benefit from both "push" marketing to subscribers (both RSS and email readers) AND "pull" marketing, too, to grab web readers and searchers who might be future customers.

Is it just me or does it seem weird that an RSS feed tracking tool company still uses e-newsletters?

I'm not saying e-newsletters are necessarily dead... (can you imagine the hate mail I'd get??) but I have to ask why they are still so widely used when they are clearly suboptimal.

What's In a Plan? Marketing Plan & Budget Development

It’s time to create your firm’s annual marketing budget. Hopefully, you’ve already read my “part 1” post, “Plan Your Marketing Budget.” This is in response to an "Ask Michelle" Q&A post.

I'm including several of our tools and approaches...

Start with a spreadsheet that has a couple columns on the left for your initiatives by various groupings (more on that below). Then you'll need a column for Timing and one for assigning Responsible Person.

To the right of that, I recommend columns for each quarter of the year or you can do months if you want to get that micro--and then create a "total" column to the right. These columns are where you'll include any anticipated expense in the periods you expect to pay them. Not all items will have related expenses.

Your spreadsheet might look like this:

Try having high level categories for the firm, overall (this will include initiatives you cannot tie to any specific industry or service area), and then for each Practice Area (can be industry or product/service) that you are actively building or promoting.

Within each of those categories, seek to include initiatives that address each of these approaches:

1. Existing Clients. Usually the most important area of focus yet, usually, little is allocated to this area.
2. Influential People/Referral Sources. Very important, and includes current clients.
3. New Business. Where people tend to allocate the most time and $, yet somewhat less critical than the first two.
4. Marketing Infrastructure. A potentially bottomless pit of marketing expenditures – make sure to do just the things you need to support the initiatives you’ll undertake, above. Most of this work should serve to convey your firm’s credibility, value, and personality. Remember, professional services are relationship businesses, and personality overshadows technical competence.
5. Research & Development. In order to stay relevant, you have to continually reinvent some aspect of what you do. I talked about this a lot in my post "Product and Service Improvement in Your Marketing Plan?"

The initiatives you’ll include in your plan won’t all have costs associated with them, but be sure to include them, their timing, and the responsible parties, anyway. This will help accountability. It will also help the marketing department have the "What comes off our plate if we shift gears and take on this unplanned work?" discussions that frequently arise.

It's easy to come up with lots of "bottomless pit" ideas, but where ROI is strongest is where specific clients, referral sources and new businesses are reached and impressed. If you're stumped for ideas, you might find the following helpful. Some specific items you might include in your plans are identified in my charts below.

The first one depicts some R&D type items you might undertake. These are best assigned by the firm's operational management group (for buy-in and accountability), but are best carried out by practice area teams flowing down to the individuals who are/should be in touch with the affected clients/prospects.

This second chart (also making available a PDF of this as the pic is somewhat small) shows a several initiatives that you might undertake at the practice area or individual practioner level. While your marketing department can do a lot of the prep and coordination, most results ultimately come down to what the practitioner does or does not do.

This is why it is so important to include practice group and individual "big picture to dos" in the firm's marketing plan. (Their detailed "to dos" can go into their individual marketing plans). It really doesn't matter whether you start with your firm level plan and drill tasks down to a practice group, then individual level, or whether you start with individual plans and stream those items upward to practice areas and then into the firm level plan.

Firms usually find one of these ways easier to begin than the other. It all depends on your firm.

Here is that PDF...Download firm_plans.pdf

Also, I'm happy to share a plan shell in Excel. It has a few ideas sprinkled in but is very generic. You would want to add additional sections for each of your practice areas.

Download sample_marketing_plan.xls

Note the Red items are DIRECT marketing and the Green items are INDIRECT marketing. If you want your plan to generate results, plan a lot more activity in the "direct" areas!

Happy Planning!

Writing Great Case Studies or "Customer Evidence"

We know that claiming ourselves to be 'all that' is pretty meaningless. And someone else claiming it, or implying it by working successfully with us, has much more credibility.

An effective way to get this across is to tell stories about what we can do, from the customer's perspective. Copywriter Matthew Stibbe on his Bad Language blog shares The Rise and Fall of the Case Study.

In this post he describes the problems in developing case studies, the dullness that can ensue, and several neat ideas for improving on stale approaches (i.e. formulaic: problem, solution, benefits). Three of his many ideas are:

One case study, multiple presentations. The source interview and research don’t change, but perhaps I could write a traditional case study, a bullet point summary for the web, a killer quote for an email newsletter and a longer more journalistic story for PR purposes. The incremental cost of the extra writing is marginal compared the cost of going through the process to produce the basic case study.

More journalism, more story. Clients say that they want writing with fizz and ginger. They want something that reads like The Economist of the FT. But when I actually write something sparkling, they try to dull it down again; afraid that informality or originality might offend. It’s like turning My Fair Lady back into Pygmalion. The antidote is to have a little courage.

Remember the audience. I wrote some case studies for an ecommerce company. They were 1,000 words long but I was only allowed to mention the product in one paragraph. The rest of the piece had to be a proper story designed to appeal to the company’s target audience. In terms of PR coverage, these case studies were - by far - the most successful I have worked on. Why? Because journalists could see the point and people actually wanted to read them.

Matthew's first item is something we do often; pulling out nuggets here and there as supporting statements behind otherwise vague claims of the firm (e.g. timely, responsive).

He also talks about the fact that they are expensive--there is enormous effort, process, and skill behind good case studies. I have found the same to be true for those we've developed. In fact, many firms don't want to pay the prices we need to charge to make it worth our while to do this sort of work.

I'm reflecting now that in some instances, I probably haven't presented compellingly enough the value of that work. That really hit me when I read Matthew's point on measurability:

Build in measurability. Too often, people seem to think that the end of the process is getting the case study signed off and uploaded to a central customer evidence website. To me, it feels like that is only the beginning of the process. It must be possible to build in more measurability. For example, I can see exactly how many people come to my blog each day and what they look at. Perhaps the same can be done for case studies.

Like Matthew, I've focused on the project at times, and not on the residual value of the case study. We marketers should definitely be thinking about monitoring effectiveness of this (and other) means of communication.

A side note....the comment string on Matthew's post is very interesting. In particular, Jeff Younger writes that "case study" is altogether the wrong term--that a true case study is a history report that provides a proxy experience for the reader.

He states, "Because case studies are particular, any attempt to turn them into general marketing tools is an error." He and Matthew note that organizations like Microsoft have adopted the more appropriate term "customer evidence" for what most of us call "case study."

If you are a marketer and you're not yet reading Matthew's blog, you need to be! Also read Matthew's post: When Case Studies Go Wrong

Smiles Sell

I've been poking around the web looking at lots of biography photos lately and I'm astounded at how many people select portraits of themselves with no "teeth" showing or without any hint of smile.

Looking at pictures of people I know -- professionals in accounting, law, financial advisory services, etc -- and seeing them stone faced leaves me cold. I can only imagine how someone who's never met them might feel.

It's a tough world out there. We all want to work with people who add a little brightness to our day.

Smiling, even a little, in your bio picture suggests you're a positive person who might be enjoyable to do business with.

If you think I'm nuts, consider babies and dogs. When you smile genuinely at them, babies light up...they beam back at you, gurgling and laughing. And (most) dogs will wag their tails and approach you. Guess what? Same thing happens with grown-ups!

Why not up your chances of business people approaching you, too, by exhibiting a nice, friendly smile.

Wondering Why Few People Find Your Website?

Professionals tell me they don't get many search engine hits. They wonder what to do to get more traffic from potential buyers.

Should we buy Google AdWords? Pay for SEO services?

Well, maybe. But not without first addressing the real problem--the real problem is this:

When people search for a answers to their problems, they don't type in the name of the solution (cure), they type in the symptoms.

Think about it!

On your firm's website do you describe the symptoms at all? Or just have bullet points listing your cures?

Change the text on your website, accordingly! Then, if you buy AdWords or SEO services, use lots more symptom phrases than cure phrases in your keywords.

What Makes These Ads Good?

I've come across two ads recently that I've been wanting to blog about. (click to zoom in)

The first one reminds me of blogs that are written by professionals wanting to increase their business by providing useful information to people who buy what they sell. A good goal with a business blog, right? Well, why not with an ad, too.

This ad targets cat lovers and promotes kitty litter.

The ad has tips from a Hollywood pet trainer on how to teach your cat some cool tricks. Neat and useful. Something you might even clip and keep! And shows a passion for what buyers have a passion about.

What a concept!

Another ad that caught my eye in an airline magazine (probably American) is an ad for dentists.

Kind of a predictable or dull subject you might be thinking, yes? Certainly, it's a wordy ad and not too pretty. I'll confess right here that I almost NEVER read ads.

So what caught my eye about this one?

• the headline was pretty unexpected
• the pictured showed just two guys who chose to run an ad in a publication with a national (international, actually) audience...that seemed pretty unusual
• the bullet points -- I mean "Teeth in an Hour"?? wow
• "Last Time You Pay Policy" what on earth could that mean? Now I just HAVE to read on...

About the only thing that seemed hokey was the 30 years of combined experience. I've written about that before. Please don't tally your cumulative experience. This is the number one thing I advise not to do in my post "Please Don't Put This on Your Website." It's just not relevant. Frankly, if they are using 30 year old technology in dentistry, I'm NOT interested!

So, then, I read on and find differentiator after differentiator. Cool stuff.

Here are the highlights:

• Shameless specialization - this is ALL we do and the sole reason for our existence (first sentence of second paragraph)
• We understand!! Relating to patient's pain and reasons for procrastination, the ad removes obstacles and fear factors! (second paragraph)
• How they do it - in layman terms (third and fourth paragraphs, one for each core product)
• Five Star Service that says patients will be pampered and cared for in every way (last paragraph).

Seriously, have you EVER heard of dentists who will make your travel arrangements! They never did answer the question about what their payment thingy is, but by the time I read the ad, I forgot all about it.

Good, solid, and out-of-the-box.

Remember when you're thinking "we're just accountants" or "we're just lawyers" that, if two Texas dentists can set themselves apart this creatively with regard to services, your firm sure can!

How to NOT Get Your Press Release Picked Up

Readers of this blog know I'm not a fan of jargon in marketing materials (or anywhere, for that matter) as evidenced in my posts such as Fluff = Annoying Marketing and Please Don't Put This on Your Website.

This explains why I really liked "Eight Telltale Signs That Your Press Release is Bullshit" by Scott Baradell on Marketing Profs Daily Fix.

Read the post because Scott, a reporter and PR consultant, suggests how to help keep your press releases out of the round file through preventing these 8 mistakes:

1. Vague claims.
2. Industry jargon abuse.
3. Business nonsense talk.
4. Silly superlatives.
5. Bait and switch.
6. Tortured topicality.
7. Off-brand wire distribution.
8. Clumsy e-mail distribution.

Check it out!

"Webinars are a bitch." But Worth It.

On ClickZ Experts "Advice and opinions. By and for marketers" is an article by Karen Gedney on webinars.

Karen quotes a marketer friend who says, "Those Webinars are a bitch," and expounds on the enormous work involved, but concludes,

"Webinars are the price of doing business these days. They're super-popular with our clients. And I have to admit, they're kind of fun to produce in a kind of horrifying way!"

We're always telling firms that relevance of message is key. "Salesy" provision of information is a HUGE turnoff to every audience anymore. The philosophy now applies to websites, print materials, blogs, you name it.

Karen's article supports this. A source, Amy Bills, recommends approaches to attract webinar attendees:

The Right Topic and Message Attract the Right Audience

"More likely than not, the audience for a lead-generation Webinar is pretty savvy. If your event is just a demo of your product, they're probably not going to want to spend much time with you," says Bills.

"A tenet we follow is, 'Teach, don't sell.' Develop a topic, and a message around it, that really speaks to your prospect's pain points -- the things that are making their jobs difficult," she says. "If you have something to teach them, they're more likely to come. And while you're teaching, you establish your company as a thought leader in your space, which makes later sales engagements easier.

"This approach is important because we're always concerned not only with raw numbers but [also] with quality. If you get 1,000 registrants but none are good prospects, it's not a very successful lead-generation Webinar," says Bills. "But if you drive prospects who are demonstrably good prospects for your sales team (and eventually convert to deals) by giving them information that solves their day-to-day business problems, that's real success. So when we measure whether something worked, we're usually looking at the quality of the leads as well as quantity."

The article also offers great post-event advice:

Post-Webinar: Leave No Leads Behind

"After the live Webinar, you have a great opportunity to engage with prospects," says Bills. "Even those prospects who didn't attend the event needn't be left on the table. You have an opportunity to keep the conversation going with them.

"Bulldog recommends a follow-up communication 24 to 48 hours after the live event, dynamically generated based on whether or not someone attended," she continues. "That timeframe is critical: The likelihood of a prospect converting to a sale drops dramatically the longer you wait to contact them. Attendees can receive a 'thanks for attending' e-mail that reiterates the key messages from the live event and contains a sales-oriented call to an action such as signing up for a demo.

"Those who couldn't attend can receive a 'sorry we missed you' e-mail that gives them access to an archive of the live event, so they can catch up on what they missed and contains a call to action."

While you're checking out Gedney's article in its entirety, by sure to bookmark ClickZ Experts for other great information on marketing. It is a wealth of information.

Reception Ideas

I've written before about the "experience" of doing business with you. A few more great points and ideas are found on Seth Godin's blog this week in his post "How to be a Great Receptionist." He writes:

If the receptionist can change the mindset of the guest, good things happen (or, if it goes poorly, bad things)....So, a great receptionist starts by acting like Vice President, Reception.

A couple gems he offers are to spring for "a bowl of M&Ms or the occasional Heath Bar for a grumpy visitor." I'll add to that, why not have a small snack tray of indulgent AND healthy munchies for your visitors along with the beverages you offer? As busy as we all are today, it's often that we run too long without refueling and that is not really too good for the mood.

I love another of his ideas and I've encountered a firm or two who have done this:  "...ask the entire organization for updates as to who is coming in each day..."  Nothing flatters a guest more than being anticipated and welcomed warmly--by name! 'Oh, you must be Charles Jacob here to see Maureen...she's looking forward to seeing you.'

Spas tend to do this without failure...think of their target clientele...and consider the experience they are trying to create: relax, de-stress, you're-in-great hands. Is a professional firm so different?

Seth also offers: "Is there a TV in reception? Why not hook up some old Three Stooges DVDs?" (okay, maybe not Three Stooges, but something equally classic and universally loved is the point.)

A high-speed internet computer station is another suggestion he makes (not an uncommon idea) but I'll add to be sure to have a visible USB port (for flash drives) and a small laser printer. This makes for a very thoughtful reception area feature so visitors can check and print directions, flights and boarding passes, or print a document they may have meant to bring along.

And while you're at it, why not have a small flash drives available for a guest to use and even keep if they should need one.

I also like Seth's idea of "creating a collage of local organizations your fellow employees have helped with their volunteer work." I read this to mean to feature photos of your team doing great things and enjoying themselves doing it.

I'll add to that with a suggestion to feature a scrapbook of clippings of clients doing great things such as contributing to the community, achieving honors and awards and otherwise growing in their success (with their knowledge and permission, of course).

As I write this, I am reminded of photo albums in my obstetrician's office of hundreds of babies he's delivered...families proudly posing with their newborns--the doctor grinning beside the hospital bed which is a very nice visual of bedside manner, isn't it? Are you ever featured in the news or at events *with* your clients? If so, capture it. If not, why not? Arrange it!

There are so many ways to make life a little easier and better for people. Why not do more of it?

Best Marketing Blogs

Todd Andrlik (who goes by Todd And) is a fresh-thinking PR & marketing consultant who was inspired to develop a list of the Top Marketing Blogs that he calls the Power 150.

He built it because he was looking for the best blogs on marketing, PR, branding, etc., and could only find a consolidated list in Dutch. So he set about developing an English language version and that's what you'll find here.

His scoring is a blend of popularity (Google pagerank+subscribers from one Bloglines feed+Technorati rank) and his subjective score.

There are a ton of fantastic blogs to explore in this list! I still haven't got through checking them all out. After his top 150, he lists about as many "honorable mentions."

With so many excellent blogs on marketing, I'm very honored that Golden Practices--especially being niche specific--is on this list (presently at 182). I owe my readers, and Todd, a big thank you for that.

Be sure to check out some of the other 295 blogs he has identified. And if you want to search these blogs for specific advise, click on his Kitchen Sink link and do a keyword search. For anyone with marketing questions, this is a HUGE resource!

Thank you for creating this, Todd!

SEO for Real People

Understanding SEO and learning what you need to do to get higher in the search engine rankings is now a whole lot easier!

Dianna Huff, author of B2B Marcom Writer Blog has written a fantastic e-book on the subject. A quick read at only 70 pages, the book is "Turning Clicks into Leads Through Search Engine Optimization."

You can see her intro and TOC here (link opens PDF).

It is a true how-to guide written for non-techies. It is under $50 and worth much, much more.  (no, I don't make a commission...I only promote what I believe in :-) The book is packed with just enough--but not too much--info. If you're involved with web performance at one level or another, it's a resource you'll appreciate.

And if you write for marketing purposes, be sure to read her blog...it's consistently good!

Who ARE Your Best Clients? What Do You Do Once You Know?

If you'd like to read an article about client selection, CCH published my article, "Who ARE Your Best Clients? And What Do You Do Once You Know?" in their Feb 2007 issue of CPA Practice Management Forum.

It is loosely based on my presentation called "Evaluating Your Clients, Why and How" from Assoc. for Accounting Marketing's 2002 conference though I am proud to say that both my ideas and my process have evolved a lot since then!

The article is about Key Client Evaluation as a practice management tool and subtopics are:

• Traditional Client Grading Methods Are Flawed;
• Why “Grade” Clients; and
• Performing an Effective Client Evaluation

With CCH's permission, I share the PDF with you below (to my knowledge, the story is not posted on their site, it's just in their print publication).

Download cpa_pract_mgmt_final_who_are_clients.pdf

Good Writing. Bad Writing.

A great post on the Bad Language blog by Matthew Stibbe details what Matthew considers Seven Types of Bad Writing.

I think his 7 boo-boos nicely recap what professional service firms sites are particularly guilty of. (I, too, struggle with a couple of these.)

He writes:

What comes out of most companies is bad. In my experience there are seven types of bad writing:

1. Thinks too much of itself. The UK satirical magazine, Private Eye runs a regular column lampooning the abuse of the word ‘solution.’ For example, Dow Corning’s “Innovative solutions for wound management,” which means “bandages.” This kind of word inflation devalues meaning and arouses the scepticism of readers.
2. Is too clever by half. For some reason, people are afraid to write how they speak. They want to sound big, grown-up and clever. So they use big words and long sentences. For example, I was presented with this beauty at a school board meeting once: “the Governing Body are agreeing this budget as the financial mechanism to support the education priorities of the school as identified in the School Development Plan and will adhere to the best value principles in spending its school funding allocation.” It meant, “We approve the budget.”
3. Gets hyped up. Press releases often include frankenquotes. These are made-up quotations that bear no resemblance to normal speech. For example: “Nortel has established a legacy in innovation and will continue to push the envelope…” Try saying that in a pub to your friends. See if they still listen to you afterwards. Or trust you.
4. Tells lies. In the UK, journalists score low in public trust. Somewhere near politicians and spin doctors. However, good journalists are obsessive about research, accuracy, good reporting, details and, yes, truth. What works for newspaper stories also works for business communication.
5. Ignores the reader. As a writer, the greatest skill is to think about what the reader needs to hear, not what you need to say. It takes an imaginative leap. For example, Google says “Please read this carefully, it’s not the usual yada, yada.” Microsoft says “This software is licensed under the agreement below.” Which one is more likely to be read?
6. Needs to go on a diet. Most writing can be improved by liposuction. Consider the Gettysburg Address. Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” This is especially true when writing for the web, when you need to cut the word count by about 50 percent.
7. Has no direction. My favourite tutor at Oxford told me that I had to take my essays and drive them like Ayrton Senna (a famous racing driver). Good writing has a strong purpose. Bad writing has either no direction or has too many.

In fact, Matthew has an entire CATEGORY on bad writing!!

Hat tip to Dan Hull at What About Clients? for directing readers to Matthew's excellent blog (in a September post that I saved and finally went back to!!)

Killer Powerpoint

Sorry for any confusion...that's "killer" the good way...the way we used to use the word growing up in Southern California. The way that, if I say it now, my kids look at me like I'm a total dork (same goes for "gnarly" "rad" or "stylin'"). I think they use "phat" now, and "sick" to mean, essentially, the same thing. Yeah, like those terms are any better...  :-)

Back to the point of the post, Seth Godin is recycling a previous article about being effective with electronic presentations. With "Really Bad Powerpoint" he is trying to save the world from bad use of a potentially cool tool. His post is a great read. In it, his main points are:

• Communication is the transfer of emotion....If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures, then cancel the meeting and send in a report.
• If you believe in your idea, sell it....Your audience will thank you for it, because deep down, we all want to be sold.

Four tips for success:

1. Make cue cards (don't use the slides for this)
2. Create slides that demonstrate, with emotional proof (pictures), that what you’re saying is true not just accurate.
3. Create a leave-behind document as the proof that helps the intellectuals in your audience accept the idea that you’ve sold them on emotionally.
4. Create a feedback cycle to determine, "Did you sell people on your idea?"

And he finishes off with 5 rules to remember. The first is (gulp) "no more than 6 words on a slide"!

Egads, I'd better go change the two presentations I'm giving in the next 7 days!! I'll let you know how well it goes.

(See, also, Guy Kawasaki's "best of" post on the subject called The 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint)

Where Can a Marketer Get High-Level Continuing Ed?

Got a great e-mail yesterday. A request for resources.

Q

Hi Michelle! I am subscribed to your blog and read Golden Practices often. I am a marketing coordinator in [an 80 person office of a 600 person CPA firm located in 6 states]....We have a marketing director, graphic artist, copywriter, etc. in our headquarters and marketing coordinators in our major offices.

All that to ask...do you know of any good 'marketing professional services' training I can attend in 2007?

I am a member of the Association of Accounting Marketing, but my [boss thinks] their conference is a little too introductory and geared towards smaller firms...and would like me to do some research and attend at least one conference, but I can't find anything applicable, so thought you might have some ideas. Thanks for your help!

A

It's unfortunate to hear that AAM's conference seems too introductory—this is something AAM has grappled with for several years:  how to appeal to the most experienced marketers when so many new marketers continue to enter the profession. I'd not heard anyone suggest that AAM is geared for smaller firms—I'm not sure I agree—the issues seem largely the same whether small firm or large, though resources for initiatives are certainly vastly different. 

Still and all, AAM is a good conference for accounting marketers—I would just urge attendees and members to challenge the speakers and organizers more for new and deeper topics. And, if needed, topics that address the unique needs of larger firms. As a volunteer driven org (and conference) people like you can and should become organizers and establish things like a "large-firm track" at the conference. It is, after all, "your" organization. :-)

I really don't know of anything else specifically geared for accounting or even legal marketers that will truly get you to a much higher level than you receive at AAM or its legal equivalent, LMA. Some say they do, but I've not found that. What I have found is that looking outside the industry helps a lot.

It's really healthy to look outside of our "professional services" niche and explore teaching that is geared for the rest of the world, too. People, in general, become really good at "navel gazing" and benchmarking against each other which immerses us in mediocrity. We need to be climbing mountains, not staying comfortably in our valley.

(The challenge comes when bringing ideas back to the firm and convincing partners to try things that no other firm is yet doing! I've had those conversations—still have them, and they aren't usually easy. But when you succeed in making the case, it is awesome! And so are the results).

Not knowing what your particular job focuses are, your whole marketing department might enjoy "dividing and conquering" a la carte education such as the stuff below. Then maybe each of you can come back and share the "best of" with each other in a one day retreat or periodic half-day gatherings. As Stephen Covey says, we learn best when we teach what we've learned to others.

Some topic oriented education to explore might be:

• http://www.ana.net/about/  they have conferences and regional meetings all year long...it's one to watch and it's where the big boys play for branding/advertising and other external marketing initiatives
• http://www.prsa.org/ public relations
• http://www.iabc.com/ business communications
• http://www.iaf-world.org/ facilitation (skills for facilitating teams internally or focus groups, etc)
• http://www.womma.org/ word of mouth marketing
• http://www.amanet.org/ see just their marketing seminars here
• http://www.corante.com/  they have conferences later in the year. Here are last year's Innovative Marketing Conference, CMO Summit and Marketer's Forum to get an idea of what is offered
• http://www.emarketingassociation.com/2007/index.htm  e-marketing association has 2 events per year

I'm posting this on my blog so that others can expand the list with comments! Thanks for a great question...

Commenters: if you plug a conference or source of education, please keep it relevant to accounting or law firm marketing and please indicate what type of learning will be gleaned. Please no product or consulting spam. We're looking for legitimate recommendations, preferably from other marketing types.

____________________

Appended 30 Jan:

Cameron Fuller with accounting and law firm associations TIAG and TAGLaw, respectively, recommends the Marketing Partners Forum that some of their members find to be of value in addition to their own periodic marketing director fly-ins and monthly webinars or teleseminars.

A marketer wrote in to add Society for Marketing Professional Services

Debra Helwig at accounting association, IGAF Worldwide, wrote in:

I would strongly suggest they check out their firm's general association membership to see if there are resources for marketing directors. For example, we have a robust Marketing Directors Group with a strong peer network that engages in regular email exchanges, monthly conference calls, and an intense and high level annual [marketing] conference.

Most associations provide at least some level of support to their member firm marketers. What's more, most of the time these services and offerings are at least partially included in a firm's general association dues so marketing directors may have access to these resources either free or nearly free. One of the things I've observed is sometimes association benefits stay trapped at the partner level and information doesn't get to the marketing staff who may not learn of all the things that are offered. So find out who your firm's accounting association is, and if they offer marketing director support, take advantage of it!

Organizations like Debra's and Cameron's do offer continuing education for their marketers, both in person and virtually. When I was in-house, my accounting firm's association was an enormous resource for me in many ways and, to this day, I'm still close to several of those marketers and partners though many of us have changed roles, and even professions in some cases.

Thanks for writing in!

Impressions of Your Office on Visitors

The other day I posted about what it might be like in your lobby when people come see you.

Today I offer a hat tip to my pal Dan Hull for blogging about perceptions of guests who visit your office. Dan directs us to an article by Ann Macaulay found on CBA Practice Link (Canadian Bar Association's website) called "Making Your Law Office Client-Friendly" (a good read for accountants, too).

The article focuses on improving the experience of being your guest. It's loaded with tips and examples on everything from reception area lighting to offering a usable work station to your actions when you meet with people. Check it out!

About That "Trusted Advisor" Goal...

I'm thrilled with Charlie Green's post, "Bad Marketing 101: Trust Me!" in which he writes:

...“trusted advisor” is something you want others to say about you, not say it yourself.  You can talk about it amongst yourselves, hope for it—but not proclaim it.

Saying you are, or want to be, someone’s trusted advisor, is like saying you are, or want to be, really humble.

His post is SO right on. "We are qualified to be your trusted advisor" (or similar) is one of the most annoying promises that I see on professional firm websites and in collateral materials. Besides being quite presumptuous (who says you know what I want in an advisor, and what I deem worthy of trust?) it is so commonly stated that it's now cliche.

Charlie, by the way, co-authored with David Maister, THE book on the subject, The Trusted Advisor, agrees it is an inappropriate claim in one's marketing materials. Thank you Charlie!

In his post, he says he googled "to be your trusted advisor" and it generated over 31,000 results. He opines:

Trust is personal—an outcome, not a come-on. On a first date, asking for either sex or for a very long-term relationship is likely to get you neither. “Trust me” is the business version—socially inappropriate, especially on the “first date” equivalent of the internet.

It's very similar to what I wrote in "Please Don't Put This on Your Website" when I recommended against staking a claim to be a future client's "partner" in their business. I wrote not to say:

"We partner with you…"

...This is a status you earn with a long-term client or it may be a role you are invited to act within for a new client. Either way, It's not something you promise to the general public.

The same with the trusted advisor thing. (My original post lists more things to avoid...)

I couldn't agree more with Charlie's post. Be sure to read his blog post comments, too.