Golden Practices Blog

Turning a Liability Website into an Asset - Graf Repetti Launches New Site Today

Congratulations to my friend, CPA marketer Rob Orr, on a terrific-looking website for his new firm, Graf Repetti.

When Rob arrived at the firm, as their first marketing director, the website was a fairly typical first generation website: no pictures of real people, ordinary text, and design scaled for 800x600. The biggest problem with it, though, was that all the text on every page was embedded in pictures so search engines couldn’t index a darn thing.

With plenty of potential "first projects" to choose from, Rob knew the old website was a liability hindering recruiting and marketing efforts because search engines couldn’t pick up much of anything about the firm. It simply couldn't wait.

He made it a priority to focus on a rebuild and a fine job he did. I love the messaging and the partnering/pairing “2” concept, I love the curves, and I love to be able to see the real people in the firm. A huge leap forward for Graf Repetti. Well done, Rob!

CPA Tells Accountant Jokes, Humanizes Firm

GROCO, a CPA firm in California, has videos on their website featuring one of their accountants, Steve, telling CPA jokes.

Brace yourself! These jokes are absolute groaners (a la "why did the accountant cross the road...)

In a low-tech production style reminiscent of the old Bartles & Jaymes commercials, the joke-teller, Steve, is flanked on both sides by his colleagues, one who stares at him, shaking his head, and another who over-zealously responds to the jokes.

Despite the low budget videography and the, uh, quality of the jokes, one thing is for sure:

Any firm that shows that they don't take themselves too seriously is worth a second look. Especially in a very competetive talent market of people who use the web to qualify employers, and who value the portrayal of authenticity and human qualities (and personality) on the web.

You can find a bunch of other GROCO videos, including some of their tv ads, on YouTube. And, in case you were wondering, Steve has both his masters in taxation, summa cum laude, and his JD from BYU. Obviously...he is quite the actor.

Hat tip to Wade Perry, marketing director of Nashville firm Crosslin & Associates, for telling our group about these videos at the recent Hancock Askew's HighTide conference for BDO members.

Must Be The Annual "Let's Send Them Everything We've Got" Mailing...

Funny but true.

A few years ago I was just starting to work with a 30ish person firm that, ironically, performed the audit for an organization who employs a good friend of mine formerly of the CPA world.

My friend dropped the bug in my ear that the audit engagement partner wasn't very service oriented. He didn't call or touch base very often. And, in fact, when Partner was asked by my friend to NOT give the standard financial statement presentation to the board, but to go into more conversation about what the implications of the numbers were, Partner simply gave the standard presentation anyway.

My friend wasn't too impressed. He told me about it so I could try to clue the Partner in to some flaws in his service skills.

Sadly, my anonymous report fell on deaf ears and was met with protests of denial that it was a valid issue. If only they'd known how big and influential a client this is...  Ironically, Partner thinks he's an amazing marketer.

So a few weeks later (December time frame), I received this email from my friend...

I need to correct my comment to you the other day about the lack of outreach from Partner. In yesterday’s mail I received a fat envelope from Firm.

It’s fun to look at packages like this from both a client perspective as well as a marketing consultant perspective (which probably isn’t fair, but it sure is interesting!) I thought it would be fun to give you some anonymous client feedback for you to consider as you help them.

The white envelope had a 1” x 2.5” white label in the return address area placed sloppily in the corner with Firm address info. It looked a little cheap that they did not have envelopes printed with their information on it. In the envelope I got:

• A xeroxed “Dear Valued Client” letter confirming the understanding of the terms and objectives of the engagement for services related to computer software consulting services. As far as I know, we are not engaging them for that service.
• A xeroxed “Dear Valued Client” letter confirming the understanding that they will prepare our 200X federal and state income tax returns. As far as I know, the CPA who does our books will be doing that.
• A 2-page xeroxed document that describes “Internal Control.” There is no indication on page 1 that this is a Firm document – on the bottom of page two are addresses and an invitation to visit the website – the first indication of who this document is from, but still nothing that names the firm directly.
• A 1-page xeroxed copy of a Company Car Lease Value worksheet to help with the preparation of W-2s. I assume this would be for us to fill out and return to them if they were doing our W-2’s, but they are not, so I’m not sure what to do with it.
• A 2-page xeroxed paper entitled “COOP – Disaster Relief.” It’s got some good information, but no indication anywhere that it is from Firm.
• The December 200X Business Pension Update newsletter. Looks pretty good, but leaves me wondering where the January – November issues have been.
• The December 200X Business Year End Update. Also makes me wonder where any January – November issues have been.
• The 200X Annual Tax Planning Letter – looks good. Must be a PDI piece…
• Firm Technology Solutions tri-fold brochure

My initial reaction to this package was that it must be the annual “lets send them everything we’ve got” mailing.

I was expecting the package to include information on our upcoming audit next month. That was not there but everything else was.

I’m sending you all of this as much for fun as anything else. Just thought I’d share this with you as an additional area to help them with – now I’ve got to get back to work!

I'm not posting this to embarrass anyone, but to spare other firms from creating similar impressions. Is it possible your firm has done any of this?

QUICK LIST OF DOs and DONTs

DO listen to your client's specific requests (even if you think the person asking isn't the key decision maker)

DO reach out to your clients regularly in a personalized, non-generic way

DON'T send an impersonal letter that starts off with "Dear Valued Client" -- It looks like you don't care. Either do the darn mail merge to personalize the salutation, or send the info in a newsletter or other format not intended to be individually addressed.

DO send only relevant information pertinent to the services that particular client buys. If you send additional information, preface it with what else you are sending and why "this may be applicable to you this year so let's discuss it..."

DON'T send engagement letters or forms for services never before discussed with the client

DO make sure you're not passing on an inconvenience to your client that you should bear yourself. Being too busy to filter what you send is lazy and inconsiderate. Wasting their time to filter information, item by item, to discern if they are supposed to do something with it, teaches them something: what you send is not always important. Next time you send something, don't be surprised if they don't open it.   

DON'T think that your client will ever be impressed by "quantity" over "relevance."

The Four Ways to Differentiate & Why Negative Ads Are Run

Differentiating professional service firms is enormously difficult to get firms to do.

Off the top of my head, it would seem there are only four main ways to differentiate a professional service firm:

1) Specialize. Specialize in a narrow market niche where word of mouth is sufficient, or in a broad niche, promoting it proudly and loudly.

2) Humanize. Feature the people of the firm, humanizing them by showcasing their individuality and highlighting their unique strengths, and team strengths. Sometimes accomplished by poking harmless fun at one's own firm or profession.

3) Personalize. Feature the personality (ie culture) of the firm, or a truly unique aspect of the firm or its processes, in a memorable way. Best done with a clever ad series or other public positioning.

4) Criticize. Try to get others to see how your firm is better which is, by definition, pretty nearly impossible other than to elevate your firm through reducing your competitors. Typically accomplished by bringing attention to known negative attributes of a firm, or profession in general, or by exploiting negative stereotypes.

Bruce Marcus, author of The Marcus Perspective blog, recently posted about how political "dirty tricks" tactics are "seeping into the legal profession."

It would seem the fourth approach, Criticize, is what the law firm discussed in Bruce's post has done. I think this way is becoming more common because, frankly, it is the easiest of the four ways.

And it's a natural for Big Law and other big professional service firms—not to mention politicians because The 'Criticize' approach shows confidence and strength whereas 'humanizing' is best achieved by showing people’s softer (read: vulnerable) side—not something Big Law lawyers are prone to do. It’s also better suited to general firm hype—quite the opposite of specializing.

The 'Specialize' and 'Humanize' approaches are the most effective and easiest ways for marketing to do its job, but firms are REALLY hard to sell (ideawise) on these approaches. It's a shame.

Boutiques and specializing firms of all sizes are enormously effective, even on tight budgets, because they are so focused on a particular market. Because they don't try to go a mile wide, they can go much more than an inch deep.

The 'Personalize' approach is one that the bigger firms all seem want to try but, the thing is, very few firms really ARE so different culturally or operationally that an effective campaign can be pulled off.

A catchy tag-line, cool ad series, or great theme type of image can be employed, but getting this out there is VERY expensive! And ads tend to wear out over time. A mascot can do the trick: think GEICO's gecko or Budweiser's frogs or clydesdales, so, translating to law, think of Womble Carlyle's bulldog (parachuting in the photo above).

So, back to my original point...

'Personalize' is the most expensive of these techniques and the toughest to do well. I assure you the ads and other necessary branding typically run a quarter mil or more--this figure tossed out by Burkey Belser as a minimum for such branding at a presentation he gave to Assoc. for Accounting Marketing back around 2002 or 2003 (to a stunned and disappointed crowd of marketers who knew they'd never get that sort of budget). Burkey is the ad whiz behind Winston's successful launch.

'Specialize' is most effective and needn't be expensive at all. But it requires being willing to do away with the "all things to all people" approach so many firms are fond of. It requires adopting a client-centric mentality.

'Humanize' can be reasonably affordable but requires effort AND confidence to put yourself out there in a way that lets people see you as accessible and someone they'd want to work with.

I think 'Criticize' is simply the easiest, cheapest way to get some attention because it doesn't require much change in behavior or approach. Just some guts.

And, as any toddler will make you aware, receiving negative attention is preferable to no attention at all. We've all heard the saying "there's no such thing as negative PR." But it's not without some baggage, is it?

Darfur Exhibit Sponsored by Houston CPA Firm

I recently visited Houston (for the first time!) in order to attend a one-of-a-kind event. CPA firm Gainer Donnelly Desroches hosted a preview of the "Darfur: Photojournalist Respond" exhibit at the Holocaust Museum Houston.

As written up in TRIBEZA Magazine:

For the first time ever, the museum opened its doors to a special preview event before its public opening reception. Supporters of UNICEF and the museum, as well as clients of the firm, including Dr. Carolyn Farb and Joanne King Herring (chairs of the UNICEF Southwest Regional Board of Directors), attended the cocktail soiree.

Within the last six months, the firm has established a relationship with the Holocaust Museum and is underwriting the exhibit in conjunction with FotoFest2008. The powerful exhibit features 30 images from eight photojournalists whose firsthand accounts documented the situation in Darfur, reflecting daily injustices occurring at the time. The exhibit runs through August 17.

If you're a regular reader of this blog, you may recall that the firm is associated with photography as their very own Sam Gainer is quite gifted with the ol' picture box. They are also quite good at marketing.

Their marketer, Stacy Soefer (pictured above to my right, with her mom Cindy Soefer on my left) has a strong background in fund-raising and events public relations, particularly in non-profit event PR. Her polish showed in the quality of the event, and her PR skills were evidenced by the amazing press coverage drawn to this event. The high-profile guests (clients of the firm) in attendance didn't hurt. 

In addition to TRIBEZA, the event is picked up in publications including: Modern Luxury Houston, Houston Business Journal, Jewish Herald Voice, 002 Magazine, PaperCITY Magazine, ICON and HTexas.

All the great press aside, the coolest thing for the firm, IMHO, was a team member saying to another that "I've never felt more proud to be a part of this firm." How do you assign a value to that?

The firm has a whole photo gallery dedicated to the Darfur event on their site.

Personally speaking, my own experience at the exhibit was extraordinarily moving as I took in both the Darfur photo exhibit and the Holocaust exhibit. Houston's Holocaust Museum has done an amazing job of bringing to younger generations the facts and horrors we must never forget about this tragic time.

The juxtaposition of a railroad car which carried victims to their camps placed beside a Danish rescue boat is simply jarring. And, similarly, the current tragedies in Africa are depicted alongside the horrors of the Holocaust that we'd like to think could never happen again.

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!