BoostStrapping

Marketing on Facebook | 5 Takeaway Lessons

Last Friday, Karen Marchetti (or as we call her, "KMarch" - yes, everyone gets a nickname once indoctrinated in the eBoost Consulting Family) invited us to present at San Diego Software Industry Council on the topic of marketing on Facebook.  Quite cleverly, we entitled it, "Marketing on Facebook | 5 Takeaway Lessons".  This is an off-shoot of a presentation we use to drive home the topic when we train internal corporate marketing teams on leading, managing and executing on social media marketing initiatives. 

Below is the slidedeck - it was featured on the SlideShare homepage this weekend and is currently being showcased on the Business & Mgmt page by their editorial team.  It will remain there for next 16-20 hours. 

Tweet to your Tweeps, peeps!  =)  And let us know your feedback.  This is our first time posting any of our presentations on SlideShare - experimental.  But if the feedback is there, then we'll post more.  We've got dozens of these in the vault...otherwise known as our server. 

-johnny

P.S. - special shout-out to SDSIC for inviting us again to speak.  It's always a blast working with such a professional team that really takes care of its presenters/speakers.  Karen, Jill, and the rest of the crew are amazing.  If you are in the San Diego area and want to stay on top of their events, I highly encourage you to become a fan of SDSIC on Facebook. 

P.P.S- big nod to Garr Reynolds, who inspired this presentation with his work posted on his blog, PresentationZen.  Also, thanks to Nielsen and Forrester for the supporting datapoints. 

Marketing on Facebook | 5 Takeaway Lessons

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Allocating Marketing Resources After the Recession (Pt 1)

Marketing Strategists' Mental Minefields 

Much like love, the marketing strategist's mind can also be a battlefield. 

So you've been marketing in a recession.  You made the necessary adjustments in your marketing mix, shed unprofitable customers and focused in on your most revenue-now marketing initiatives.  This series of posts will describe the way that you can take steps today to ensure that your business performs well on the upswing. 

Step 1: Get your mind right. 

As we've noted before, thoughts turn into actions.  So to get results as a strategists on the flip side of the recession, then your mind has to be reprogrammed.  Needless to say, step 1 in allocating marketing resources after the recession is to get your mind right. 

It's been well cited that the longer and deeper a recession is, the more likely consumers will adjust their attitudes and behaviors permanently.  Their coping mechanisms may become ingrained and define a new normal. 

This is a mental minefield that consumers are prone to and you may be aware of. 

But what marketing strategists often  fail to consider is that they way they strategize may have adjusted as well.  For instance, if your CEO has been urging you to only spend on short-term performance initiatives for the past year, then it may have changed your philosophy more than you realize. 

This is a real phenomena, folks, and if you intend on making the right maneuvers now to capitalize on competitor weaknesses, then there are three types of mental minefields you need to be aware of. 

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1. The Mindfulness Trap - Even if you were to draft a sensational, well-balanced marketing strategy, there will be times when (a) the boat is rocked and you'll have to make adjustments and/or (b) your CEO is mandating that  you need to cut back to initiatives that "only perform" (i.e. short run marketing). The tendency to be pulled into a short-term perspective by the pressure of daily activities.  This scenario is very likely and you'll have to be mindful of where your actions are germinated from. 

2. The Cognitive Trap -  Under duress, most marketing strategists will make the assumption that short-run marketing initiatives and long-run marketing initiatives exist in an either-or world.  That is, if you run branding, then you can't run PPC.  Nonsense!  Nothing exists in a vacuum, and budget is a large component of marketing, you can have your cake and eat it too.  This is where principles such as hedging marketing bets come into play. 

3. The Self-Knowledge Trap - Henry Mintzberg, a pioneering management scholar, once demonstrated that managers often see themselves as strategic visionaries, though in practice they spend a remarkably small proportion of their time on anything strategic.  Instead, they focused more on transactional activities.  The trap here is that there is a disparity between what marketing strategists think and what they actually do.  This isn't to say that you shouldn't be executing on tasks, but if you think tactically more so than strategically, then you may have a problem.  This trap is perhaps the one
we encounter the most during our Executive Education courses.

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What I encourage you to do today is a self-audit on which trap(s) you are most prone to.  Increased self-awareness inevitably leads to improved leadership.   

Till Step 2...

-johnny

eBoost Consulting IS one of San Diego Business Journal's 50 Best Places to Work!

True Story: in 2006, Micha, Nick and I were throwing the football around the office at 6760 University, talking big thoughts, thinking big talk.  We came to the consensus that accolades are great and all, but the biggest award that we could ever strive for was to be considered as the BEST place to work in San Diego.  To be considered the best among your team was the pinnacle of success for us and earlier last year, we set out to accomplish this goal in 2009. 

Fast forward to today (4/7/2009), we received a letter stating the following from San Diego Business Journal:

"Congratulations!  Out of all of the companies who participated in the San Diego Business Journal's Best Places to Work Awards, only 50 companies have qualified.  We are pleased to announce your firm is one of the San Diego Business Journal's 50 Best Places to Work in San Diego and will be recognized at our upcoming event."

It goes on to read, "Hor d'oeuvres will be served and beverages will be available.  Parking is complimentary."  Needless to say, as people with a blog called BoostStrapping, we're feelin' the free.  Who's with me? 

To say we're stoked about this would be an understatement.  We've set out to be a company made up of best friends who have fun, laugh and beat up on our clients' competitors.  Thank you San Diego Business Journal.  But really, more importantly, thank you to everyone who makes up the eBoost family.  In no order: Katita Banana, Alli G, Killer Kill from Deville, Dee, Jen "Quick & Dirty", Nick "Rainmaker", E-Sauce, F-Bomb, Ambah, Geakerson, MC Lite, DJ Lokal, Torres, Tat, DJ E-Dobbs, Petar Pablo, AP, Early B, Neil "Hearts-a-Flutta" Dutta, CK1, Justin Credible, Kolb Stone, Steph Infection, Mini Micha, Doody, East Bay, TP, THE Jason Kirby, Beau-dacious, Ed-vard-son, Nicole, Special K, Marcel Marcel, Nickel, and Big Euro Sexy Micha.  I have no qualms with saying, this award is because of us. 

Pop the play to see a vignette of Preparing for the Upturn and a quickie retrospective of a few events that helped shaped eBoost.  You know what time it is. 

-johnny

P.S. - Coincidentally, we will be out of office tomorrow on a team-building exercise in Julian.  Alls we know is that there will be an obstacle course.  The interns may or may not make it back...  That wouldn't nullify our award, would it...? 

MBA Dance Moves with Nick Urbani (Volume 1)

Our Rainmaker Makes It Rain at Executive Education. 

As we're prone to say here on BoostStrapping, everyone wants the know-how but no one ever wants the know-why.  That's a shame because the know-why is where everything starts.  In this video clip, Nick demonstrates why 200 page deliverables on customer data and accompanying text-rich and bullet-point heavy PowerPoint presentations are things of the past.  This segues into an explanation of how personas are changing the why our clients think and communicate about their customers. 

The "B-School 3 Step" & "The Frontline Handjive" are debuted as well.  Someone call Kanye because these moves are bangin'! 

Enjoy!
-johnny

The Ultimate Question presented by The Ultimate CEO

Micha lectures on Net Promoter Score at eBoost Consulting's Executive Education course. 

Please subscribe to our YouTube channel! http://www.youtube.com/eBoostConsulting   We've got five playlists up and a lot more videos to come.  For a month at least when this trial runs out and we'll evaluate the cost.  Until then, enjoy!

BTW, "McLovin" is Micha's nickname that Alpha Delta bestowed on him.  Allison explains it here on the intern blog.  Grey's Anatomy has McDreamy.  We have McLovin. 

SMH. 

-johnny