The Education Business Blog

eBooks, iPads, and the Kindle are changing the fundamental structure of the publishing industry. From a strategic perspective they are having the largest impact on the development and pricing of products. In other words it is affecting the "what" deeply. The "how" has not changed all that much, regardless of whether you are selling print and/or technology.

There are four fundamental strategies for a growing a company in the K12 sector because even in the best of times K12 is (mostly) a zero sum game. In 2008 I wrote a post about this competitive dynamic:

In normal times education budgets grow at 2%-5% a year. Most start-ups or new products need to grow at a huge multiple of that - 30% to 300% or even more. Mathematically in order for you to grow someone else is must lose out.

K12 Growth Strategies

How does a company go about "stealing" share from other players in the market? Below we look at innovation, distribution, acquisition, and diversification.

1. Innovation - This is the most obvious - if you build a better product people will flock to you while ignoring the tired offerings of your competitors.

The best example in the market today is interactive white boards which are now in over 60% of classrooms (70% is considered market saturation for most technologies). This has mostly happened over the last 5 years.

Since this platform is now ubiquitous a new innovation frontier is content for these devices like Saddleback's excellent math programs.

PCI published our award winning PCI Reading Program - the first research based comprehensive program for intellectually disabled students in decades. It is designed for today's Special Ed population, including a much higher number of students with autism. Tellingly it is a combination of print and software. This product line has seen explosive growth in a rough market.

Success requires a clear vision of market needs and how to apply new tools to those needs in an economically efficient way. Easy to say, really hard to do.

2. Distribution - Distribution is the achilles heel of all K12 start ups. If you have something innovative making more people aware of your innovative solution will drive new business. The problem is that there are 3.8 million teachers in the US and they are bombarded with marketing messages. Cutting through that clutter at that scale takes time and money.

The largest publishers have actually contracted their distribution networks in the last five years. They collapsed their supplemental teams into their core basal teams with the predictable result that the supplemental business has shrunk. There is a fair debate on how much of this shrinkage is falling demand on the customers' side and how much is publisher neglect. What is clear is that the publishers' actions have fueled the fire at some level.

This has created opportunities for mid-market players with niche distribution networks to fill the gaps at both ends - with their own products and as distributors for larger and smaller players. As I noted last fall:

"...[in the attention economy] access to expertise becomes very valuable and companies that can help their customers make informed, relevant, and effective decisions will thrive."

3. Acquisition - Between starts ups innovating new learning technologies and mature mid-market companies seeking exits Education is a target rich environment for those seeking acquisitions.

The core challenge has more to do with investor expectations for returns on capital and the speed at which the education market moves. Due to the stickiness of education solutions once they are adopted they pay out nicely over a long period of time. Put another way - the payoff is there in this market but most investors are not patient enough to earn it.

Right now the larger publishers seem to be sitting this out but people looking to enter the market - like News Corp - are active. Private Equity groups are circling as well but many probably see education as a low risk hedge rather than a core investment. The VCs are quite active - but they are investing in small innovative start ups.

One of the more interesting plays may be marrying the playbook of the PE and VC camps. Leverage the distribution muscle of an established player than can reach across the market with the disruptive innovations coming from the smaller players through creative acquisitions. Culturally and operationally there are significant challenges in this approach, but the payoff if done correctly is a dramatic reduction in the time to market for innovations at a time of disruptive change.

4. Diversification - Another approach is branching into new markets. There are opportunities in corporate learning, education systems in other countries, tutoring, trade publishing, home schoolers, etc. for publishers who currently sell just to schools.

This mistake that may company's make is underestimating both the changes in product design and the distribution challenges associated with moving into other markets.

Does your box say "program" instead of "programme"? At a minimum you will need a new box if not a complete page review and spelling update for the guts of your program if you want to sell it in the UK or Australia. Are you ready for the rough and tumble of trade publishing or corporate learning?

Moving into new markets requires sustained discipline as you learn the rules of the road and a willingness to invest over a long haul. If you are looking for a quick hit don't waste your time on this approach.

Summary

If you are thinking about how to grow your business (rather than just holding on in tough times) then some combination of the four approaches outlined above is where you will probably end up. Your vision, access to capital, and discipline will determine what the right mix is for your company.

I've probably missed some obvious alternative to the four core growth strategies outlined above. Feel free to drop me an email or comment and we'll update the list.

I just got back from two weeks off, really off as in "I read 6 books" off.* The whole family sat on a chilly island in the Northwest and just let the old mazooma roll in. I highly recommend it.

My time away generated the germ of a couple of meta posts about publishing in the era of social media. But, before we get to that I saw the worst use of social media on on my flight out. If there were social media police these guys would be doing hard time.

I use an off-site parking lot when I travel. They get all the fundamentals exactly right - there is always space, you are always picked up within 1-2 minutes, they are clean, drivers are pleasant etc. etc. They normally bring their A game to everything they do.

But as I sat there groggy at 4:30 AM on the shuttle bus I noticed a poster in the shuttle bus that made my jaw drop. The photo below isn't all that good so I'll summarize the headlines here.

"We're Social

• Like Us!
• Tweet Us!
• Watch Us!
• Connect with Us!
• Check In Now!
• Show Us Love!"

Not once do they mention the customer or give them a reason to do anything - it is all about them. Why would I tweet them? People who tweet at the level of "just parked my car" earn the ignore button. Why would I watch them on YouTube? Seriously - are they giving lessons on how to park? To save y'all the pain I actually looked up their YouTube video and as I suspected it is nothing more than an advertisement.

This is the old media mindset at work in the new media. You can just see the cigar chomping VP of Marketing shouting "Get me eyeballs!" and the team scrambling to get webstats showing traffic, any traffic.

But social media is a two way street. You must give people a good reason to interact with you and you need to conduct a respectful conversation with them when they show up. Nowhere should you be taking about yourself.

So in the spirit of bringing solutions rather than just whining here is what I'd do. Each of these suggestions could be employed by any company.

• Focus on the services most likely to generate business - on this list only Yelp really comes to mind. Send an email to frequent parkers the day after they get home with a Yelp link asking for a review. Then respond to the reviews (good and bad).
• Tweet regularly on airport conditions - busy, calm, delays, etc. - give customers a reason to pay attention to your feed.
• Allow the members to link their frequent parker cards (yes they do that well) to social media and then give them awards for every 5th or 10th use of the card that is broadcast to their network. Give your customers bragging rights.
• Create some videos with truly useful information for travelers (links to cool packing software, tips on how to pack light, information on when the best times of the day are for security lines, etc.). Skip the ads, provide a service.

Now, go make yourselves useful to a customer....

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* For the curious this was true vacation reading not high lit - 1 from Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus series and 5 from the Lost Fleet series by Jack Campbell.

There is a profitability model for companies promoting themselves on Facebook and Twitter. There a lot of people making good coin from the incessant flogging of companies and organizations in social media. It just isn't the companies themselves who are profiting.

Here is how it works in four easy steps:

1. An executive is at the dentist's office and sees the plea to friend and follow them. A dim light bulb goes off - "we should do this too." Lemming marketing almost never works, particularly when you are following behind your Dentist.
2. Someone in Marketing with an advertising background is assigned the task of building a following in "social media." This is so important that they are given a bonus. The performance metrics are the evil stepchildren of the "brand impressions" school of marketing metrics. Quantity over quality.
3. A campaign of whinging pleas to friend and follow ensues. We see this in every piece of literature the company products (annual reports - really?), at trade shows ("it only takes a minute!"), and even on flashing freeway signs ("great idea, let me do that while I'm driving..."). Logrolling and sock-puppetry are rampant - many of the "followers" are marketing people at other companies playing the same game.
4. The metrics are hit, the bonus is paid. PROFIT!

1. Any executive who is in a position to affect social media policy must be an active participant themselves. This doesn't mean a LinkedIn account with 8 connections. They should be on at least 3 different services. A deeper understanding of how social media differ from traditional media has to be earned through experience - it is the only way. Put another way - they should intuitively grasp how empty the Dentist's little social media campaign is.
2. If you are going to build metrics organize them around engagement not exposures. The advertising paradigm of quantity over quality is precisely the wrong mindset to bring to this gunfight. Social media is all about a small number of high quality conversations not a bloated mass of easily ignored screaming.
3. Social media should be all about attraction rather than promotion. DO things that contribute to the on-line community and you will be rewarded with a growing network. "Followers" is failure - remember this is about engaging in a two-way dialog. You have to make a real investment to make a real contribution.
4. Everyone involved has to show a little more patience than they are used to in a transactional marketing model. If you are used to big bang marketing events you need to see how 2 new followers a day over the course of a year add up to a hell of a lot more than 100 leads from a trade show. It isn't as dramatic, but the impact is far greater.

What could be nerdier than a huge ed-tech trade show? It has technology, teachers, curriculum, and lot of gee whiz bang products. I'm sure a couple of the hotels had mad D&D sessions going late into the night.

I'll tell you what is nerdier - judging the marketing efforts at said trade show. Welcome to my world.

Most K12 education technology companies launch new products at ISTE. Companies go all out to put their best foot forward which means it is the fairest opportunity we have each year to pass judgement on the quality of their marketing.

The esteemed Panel of Judge (ahem) spent several hours wandering around casting jaded eyes on this year's offerings. It won't surprise close observers of the market that the mad scramble around Interactive White Boards is where the most intense competition and best marketing are happening. Both winners are in this space.

Best In Show

Proving that great marketing doesn't have to cost a lot of money this year's winner is eInstruction's Mobi View. Their t-shirt (two views below) captured the entire core messaging. I didn't even need to see the product to know EXACTLY what it did. Brilliant, elegant, fun, memorable, plus cheap. All the things that make great marketing captured in a stack of $10 t-shirts.

This proves that in the Interactive White Board scrum where behemoths like SMART and Promethean are dominating the messaging that a scrappy and creative team can get noticed without blowing the budget.

Most Questionable Use of Marketing Budget

Proving that spending a lot of money doesn't translate into coherent marketing, Polyvision takes the prize for their booth fountain. It was pretty, but in most classrooms I've seen sensitive electronics and open water don't share the same space. It wasn't clear what the take away from this stunt was - if there was a product related message in the fountain it wasn't obvious to me.

I like Polyvision's technology and I'm sensitive to the need to do something to stand out in a crowded field. But eInstruction is in the same space and managed to that without resorting to this kind of empty showmanship.

About the only positive thing I can think of is that is created a zen like space of reflection and calm amidst all the jangling advertising going on across the floor.

Now if I could just find the World of Warcraft LAN party....

OPOL

The International Reading Association's annual conference has been steadily declining in attendance (and thus importance to vendors) for several years now. From a draw of 20,000 attendees the show now attracts less than 8,000. From a content standpoint it remains a top drawer event. That isn't the focus of this piece. I'm making a more mercenary assessment of the event from a marketing perspective.

Reading Language Arts remains the single biggest segment of instructional materials spending (over 60%). Exploring why the show at the heart of the education market is getting smaller should reveal some telling lessons for vendors evaluating how they go to market these days.

This year's exhibit traffic was considerably better than last year's, but the show floor was still a shadow of its former glory. Vendor booths barely filled 70% of the exhibit hall and other than a couple of the major publishers (notably Scholastic) most companies were taking less space than they did even 2-3 years ago.

The vendor commitments to my eye appeared to be scaled appropriately for the opportunity. PCI and others were having substantive conversations with customers actively seeking solutions.

What follows is my own rough estimation of the key factors in the show's decline. These themes will look familiar to regular readers.

• Centralized Decision Making
• Technology Substitution
• The Internet
• The Economic Downturn

Centralized Decision Making

NCLB's accountability measures changed the dynamic of the whole market. With jobs on the line administrators pulled decisions from teachers and principals. Simply put there are fewer people involved in making decisions about what to buy and when they are purchasing they are making bigger more comprehensive decisions.

Rationally Districts are simply sending fewer people because fewer people need to be involved in making decisions about what they are doing about reading.

This isn't all bad from a vendor standpoint. If smaller decisions get bundled the size of the market hasn't changed all that much. This would explain why vendors like Scholastic who offer comprehensive core programs have largely maintained their presence. Even supplemental solutions, if they are complete programs, are attractive to these buyers.

From a traditional supplemental vendor's perspective this has been a disaster. Individual teachers no longer show up seeking targeted solutions for this year's crop of learners. They are not coming to buy a book on spiders or space travel. The administrators are looking for complete libraries.

Vendors should show up with a smaller footprint and with their complete solutions in tow. Leave the little supplemental stuff behind for your web site. In large part this is what appears to have happened.

But there are three other factors that are driving the change.

Technology Substitution

But for all that the most striking thing about the exhibit area at IRA is the absence of technology. It is still primarily a book show. Yes, Scholastic, Pearson, and Study Island all had tech presences there (along with many others). But, wandering the aisles one saw rack after rack filled with Ghandi biographies, turtle books, and teen vampire sagas.

This raises the question of relevance. Educators are starting to demand some element of technology in every purchase they make, even if it is just PDF's on a CD. It reminds me of when standards swept into the market and it became impossible to start a sales conversation without first demonstrating that you were standards aligned. Not many people used those alignments - but they simply would not consider products that didn't have them. The same is true of technology today.

I wonder if part of the problem is that for many educators a show that is fixated on books simply isn't as relevant as something like ISTE. Changing this dynamic at IRA has to become a joint project of both the association and the vendor community. Books are not going away, but books without some kind of tech hook don't have the draw needed to keep the event vibrant.

There are small but concrete steps that could encourage this - like getting the convention center to waive their ridiculous $99 charge per internet connection. There is lots more that could be done to encourage vendors who are attending to flog their tech and to recruit tech vendors who have reading solutions to attend.

The challenge here is cultural more than it is practical. The people who belong to IRA generally love books and want to celebrate them. But we can't afford to ignore the cold hard fact that much of our teen's reading is moving to pixels. Failing to emphasize that reality is undercutting the long term relevance of the show.

The Internet

The economic downturn is accelerating a inevitable transition to early information gathering via the web in place of trade shows. As noted elsewhere one of the central questions marketers need to resolve today is the mix between trade shows and web presence.

Trade show conversations have always clustered at the ends of the purchase process. Districts just starting to explore their options review a lot of products in one sweep of the floor to set a baseline of what they should be evaluating. At the other end Districts realizing they need to spend budget dollars quickly are out trying to nail down what needs to go into POs that have to be cut in the next 90 days.

In normal times the skew is to the folks just starting out with a few lucky bluebirds tossed in. Conferences this year have the reverse mix as folks scramble to spend the last of their stimulus money. More significantly the folks at the front end of the process are using the web more frequently instead of going to shows.

Companies need to be acutely aware of what this means for their on-line presence. If you think of your website as a 24/7/365 trade show booth instead of brochureware you start to do some very different things with your product pages. Think carefully about all the information someone just starting out with a purchasing decision needs and make sure it is easily downloadable. More importantly think about the terms they will use at the start of the process (hint - not the same as at the end) and make sure you are optimizing for those phrases.

If your flagship products still just have a cover shot, an ISBN, and a price you are going to get your lunch eaten in this new world.

The Economy

One of the major challenges for all education trade shows is the difficulty of justifying travel and convention costs at a time when districts are laying off staff and slashing programs. Unfortunately this trend line isn't set to improve for a couple more years, so this impact of the downturn will linger on through 2014 or 2015.

This has had an impact, but I would argue that it is far less than the other factors. It also isn't something the show community has much control over. As a community we need to focus our efforts on addressing the first three issues.

Conclusion

IRA continues to struggle for a relevant identity in a world that is rapidly moving to reading on-line and on the go. The economy is accelerating a trend towards on-line fact finding early in the buying process making the exhibit area less attractive to vendors. The event also needs to move much more aggressively to a blended print/technology focus.

Social media mirrors the dynamic features of a natural ecosystem. Which niche you are going to fill? Here are four examples with loving snarkitude - feel free to add more in comments.

Hamsters constantly post small updates on every aspect of their life. Favorite habitats are Twitter and Facebook. They eat any small scrap of feedback up. Want to know what they had for dinner or what their kids did this afternoon? They will be spinning along on their wheel of self-absorption assuming the whole world is fascinated. If you are a dear friend or a family member I might be interested in this - in small doses. If you are an acquaintance - not so much.

Owls save their powder for long blog posts on their theory of life - posting infrequently but weighing down your RSS reader with dense prose. Favorite habitats are Blogger or their own bespoke blog. They eat spam comments by the barrel and sustain themselves on the infrequent genuine comment that validates their sense of importance. They sit on the Internet's roof and hoot out who, how, and why? But really - why?

Frogs eat small meals all day long, hop around a lot, and don't contribute much. They are quite flexible in habitat - able to survive in almost any media environment that has a steady stream of content. In search of sustenance they will be constantly moving between services scanning and clicking but never adding much to the conversation. Someone has to eat all those flies - but just remember what they flies themselves eat.

Hyenas are scavengers who constantly rebroadcast others' content. Their habitats are YouTube, Scribd and other environments where pirated content flows freely. They eat the sweat of other people, adding a snarky sentence or two as needed. Copyright law is for suckers. The Lion King had their number.

Ostriches assume this whole thing is a fad and stick to their paper address book. Favorite habitat is the 1970's. They eat Filofax pages and any bad news about social media. Most reporters at traditional media are Ostriches. Or Dodos. Extinction looms.
Most of us move around a bit - particularly as our social media perspective matures. Many people start as Hamsters and over time move to Owls or Frogs. Some dive in - discover they don't like it one bit - and revert to Ostrich-hood.

Look at your own on-line interactions and assess which of these profiles you most resemble. Then ask if it is consistent with your values or if it is something you slipped into as a habit? You can evolve.

London - BETT claims to be the largest education technology convention in the world. From what I could see the scale of the show is about the same as ISTE (nee' NECC) in the US, although the content is distinctly more international. There are some differences from US education trade shows, but the differences were not vast.

What follows are the impressions of a first time attendee and the lessons I hope I remember for next year.

Overall Take

Lesson - be very clear on what you are after and focus your efforts.

With over 600 exhibitors even the most intrepid and well shod attendee couldn't make it around to every stand. I planned ahead with the PCI team and then took the better part of the first morning just mapping out my plan of attack. Even with all that I'm not likely to reach every vendor I wanted to talk to.

Lesson - you may not see the future by attending this show, but you will learn that the problems with implementing technology are relatively universal. You may glean an idea or two on how to tweak your offerings.

I'd heard that the UK is about 2-3 years ahead of the US on the technology diffusion curve, but that isn't evident at the show. What is hot and what is not are not all that different (white boards, iPads, etc.). It may be that while the solutions sets are similar they are simply faster at implementing because the market is more concentrated.

That said it is really valuable talking to people who are tackling the same problems from a different perspective. It helps bend your thinking to see the issues in a different cultural context.

Lesson - know where funding for your type of solution is coming from - just like home this will determine more about the health your business than anything beyond your product offerings. BESA and NASEN are good sources of this kind of information.

The economic climate in England is just as dreary as the weather. The funding issues here are worse than in the US because there was no stimulus. Given this environment the show was surprisingly crowded and busy - I was impressed by the crush of people. What I heard was that technology is the place people feel they need to invest to prepare kids for the future. More specifically, like the US, Special Needs is also likely to be protected a bit more to insure accessibility. Another parallel to the US is that while national spending isn't likely to be cut drastically, local spending is where the real pain will be felt. This is very similar to the state budget crisis in the US.

Lesson - come prepared to get the most learning done on the show floor not in sessions. If you want to attend sessions plan on rising early (not so easy if you are on US time).

Don't come for the sessions. I was excited to see a strand of presentations just for Special Education Needs (SEN as it is called over here) and showed up the first day only to learn that sessions are by reservation only. There are also relatively few of them - meaning unless you get here first thing every day and get your seat booked you won't get in. But this show is far more about the exhibit area than shows in the US - the sessions seem like an afterthought.

Lesson - Perhaps CEC and the SPED vendor community in the US should start advocating for named strands at NSTA and IRA and other major shows.

One of the things that really impressed me about the show is the focus on Special Needs. There is an entire area of about 30 stands on the show floor dedicated to vendors who are focused on SEN and an additional Fringe exhibit hall off premises with another 15 vendors or so.

This is unlike anything I've ever seen in the US. The general education shows like NSTA (NECC), IRA, or TCEA don't go out of their way to create a focus on SPED - either in the exhibits or in the sessions. Yes we have specialized shows like CEC and ATIA but since inclusion is a huge focus we also need to be part of the generalist shows in a more meaningful way.

Two Travel Tips For USA Newbies

Lesson - Do a little legwork and figure out where you want to stay to maximize your London experience.

Don't worry if it is far from the convention hall. The experienced crew was down by Parliament, newbies like me were in Kensington.

Public transportation is really good. Unlike US conferences there is very little value in staying close to the venue (although it is in a very nice part of town).

Lesson - Be sure to check up on TripAdvisor or Fodor's or similar sites for reviews of the hotels.

Don't expect a large room. I moved hotels after I found out that my room was so small that I had to sit on the bed to use the desk and had to stand my suitcase upright in order to open the door. Even by European standards it was a very small space.

Better yet - if I attend again I'll use VRBO and rent an apartment. If space is really an issue for you consider staying in one of the US chains where you will find amenities you are used to - although it does feel a bit like cheating (yes I moved to Marriot).

Cheerio!

Richard Carey points to an outstanding article by Shane Snow on using game mechanics to power your business over at Mashable.

This rings true in my personal use of social media (see here re Foursquare) as well as in a lot of the thinking that has gone into what will happen to learning materials as they migrate from print to digital.

The one thing missing from the article that I think is a critical element is narrative thread. Here are some comments of on how that applies to education.

Go read Shane's article - you will learn something. Then friend me on Foursquare. You will be pwn'd.

Are trade shows rising from the dead? Last week at CEC and this week at IRA attendance was up dramatically from last year. CEC went from 5,200 attendees to over 6,500. IRA was somewhere north of 12,000 depending who you believe.

Activity on the show floors was strong and sessions were oversubscribed.

Vendors I spoke with said their lead flow exceeded their goals and that they were having productive and valuable conversations. One company even had to FeEx in catalogs after they ran out at end of the first day. Attendees were not tire kickers but buyers looking for solutions.

Despite this I am skeptical that this is a sustained revival in show traffic. My sense is that this is a short term bubble driven largely by the stimulus. School districts can't put ARRA money towards long term projects so sending teachers and administrators to shows for professional development is a good investment. If I'm right this will last through next year's shows - then attendance will fall off again in 2012.

Several people I talked to also noted that Nashville and Chicago are better draws than Seattle and Minneapolis and that may also factor into the equation.

IRA - Intervention Central

I only had a couple of hours to walk the IRA floor yesterday - but that was all I needed. The show floor was subdued compared to prior years. The big companies were mostly there, but the footprint was smaller and a good 1/3 of the hall was empty space. Those who did show up ditched the rock star lighting and troops of dancers.

What stood out was the focus on intervention and remediation. While basal programs were there they were not the focus the way they have been in prior years. This is probably due to the collapse of the adoption market in the last 18 months - the focus has shifted to Title 1 and IDEA rather than state categorical funds.

Another industry veteran noted that despite the clamor for more technology from schools the paucity of software was surprising. It was still largely a book fair.

Going Forward

We probably won't be adjusting our trade show plans in terms of space or shows but we will probably send more materials and perhaps staff up a bit to handle the traffic. The analysis from the popular post on trade shows vs. web marketing still holds.

OK - admit it, trade shows are fun. Sometimes traveling to a distant city, circulating with your peers, and dining out on the company can be a kick. You are learning too - about competitors and about your customers. The deadlines around a trade show can produce drama and tension, and some people thrive on that.

By comparison web marketing can be a daily slog and there isn't much direct contact with the customer. Web marketing requires persistence and patience. Success is metered in small steps and delivered incremental improvements over time.

In this article I explore who should prioritize shows and who should focus on web marketing and I share some ideas about how to compare the two.

I focus on these two activities because in most cases the best source of funds to drive growth in web presence is a bloated show budget. The palette of marketers is much broader - and the metrics used here can be used to compare the full range of options.

What's a marketeer to do?

Big companies are answering this question in different ways. Apple is shunning trade shows in education pretty much altogether (zero presence at FETC last week). Promethean had a campus sized booth, cheerleaders, and free gourmet cupcakes for all.

Who is right? As always the most important question to ask about marketing spending is "compared to what?"

In order to influence customers you need to be present in different media and locations (print, web, trade shows, catalogs, peer to peer, PR etc.). Customers lend credibility to companies they see popping up in different places.

A marketing budget is a series of compromises that should maximize visibility and revenue. One of the challenges in marketing is justifying visibility when there isn't a direct tie to revenue (i.e. when your CRM can't make a direct link). Depending on your circumstances both trade shows and the web can fall into this category.

I believe the relative value of trade shows has declined precipitously in recent years when compared to web marketing. That doesn't mean you should abandon shows, you just need to think very carefully about using them in the right way. At the end of the day what really matters is profitable revenue.

Lets dive into a pool of numbers to look deeper at this question.

Trade Show Economics

Lets make some rough comparisons to get a sense of the relative worth of the two channels.

Consider a trade show with 5,000 attendees.

• A company with a decent presence (a 20x10 space) might get 100 leads a day requiring follow up.
• If the show goes 3 days this equates to 300 leads.
• These leads will require sales time and energy to further qualify and in the end might be whittled down to 50 sales (1% of the attendees at the show).
• The cost of attending the event will probably be somewhere around $20,000 (booth space, shipping, travel costs, entertainment, signage, drayage) with another $15,000 or so staff time in setting up the show, manning the booth, and then qualifying the leads and closing the business after the show.
• Total outlay $35,000 and a cost per lead of $116.

With a gross margin target of 70% you need to make $1,000 per sale, or $500,000 to make these events revenue neutral. You should be promoting expensive products or reaching decision makers who buy in large lots to make these economics work. If your average order size is less than $1,000 you are losing money on the trade shows (using the lead/order flow assumptions above).

Scale this up or down - the basic economics remain the same. Go cheap and end up in the back corner in a 10x10 and your leads will drop and be lower quality. Glitz it up with rock star lighting and your cost per lead skyrockets along with the required revenue.

Non-Economic Benefits of Trade Shows

There are also non-revenue benefits to being at a trade show and these shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. You build brand awareness, network with other providers in the market, and provide support to current customers.

The most compelling benefit is that full fledged sales conversations can take place at the event itself. If decision makers (larger budgets, more influence) are present at a show then a low number of leads may not be as much of a concern, in fact the show may be an extremely efficient of way of meeting with large number of these folks in a short time.

In education this would argue for attending AASA but not IRA. The attendees do need to be walking the floor not playing golf, so your mileage will vary.

Another valid reason to attend a trade show is influence with the sponsoring organization. If the membership are important customers of yours it is good form to show up and support their professional association.

Brand impressions are less - well - impressive. Assume that 30% of the show attendees are paying enough attention when they walk by your booth that they get an impression. You will reach 15,000 people over the course of a year at a cost of $23 per. Yawn. At the end of the day (or fiscal year) top and bottom line results are all that count - impressions won't buy a cup of coffee.

One other thing - trade shows are moon shots. It is almost impossible to learn and modify on the fly - the event passes so quickly that if your show promotion or materials fall flat you have no chance to recover - until next year.

Internet Marketing Economics

Now lets look at a comparable example for web site.

• The company has invested a significant amount in building out their web presence using an outside contractor to do the heavy lifting which cost $200,000.
• Amortize this over three years and your annual expense is $66,000.
• In addition to this they have three people dedicated to managing the web presence for both content and technical infrastructure at an annual cost of $150,000.
• Ongoing SEO and on-line marketing might cost another $15,000 a year.
• Coding and contract design to tweak and extend the site might cost another $40,000 a year.
• Total annual expense is $271,000.
• Average daily traffic for the site is 700 visits with a 2% conversion rate to leads and 1% purchases.
• On an annual basis this translates into 255,000 impressions, 12,775 leads, and about 6,300 purchases.

Non-Economic Benefits of Web Marketing

The brand impression argument is much more compelling for the website - the cost per impression is a fraction of a tradeshow's ($1 vs $23) and the volume is higher.

Even better - the quality of the raw leads you get on the web are often the highest short of personal contacts from your sales force. I carefully chose the phrase "raw leads" because the downside of web leads vs. show leads is that they are unqualified - no one has talked to them yet to get a sense of how truly interested they are.

But - these customers are actively seeking you out when they search on the web and then put their hand up for attention. At a trade show most of the people who stop are just chatting - they were walking down the aisle and needed a break. This is one of the fundamental differences in on-line lead generation and all other forms (here is an extended post on this subject).

While websites generate leads at a slower pace, over time they greatly surpass tradeshows in high quality leads because the volume is so much higher. It isn't even a tortoise and hare story since the leads from a 3 day trade show are equaled on the web in 10 days (100/day vs. 31/day).

The Bottom Line

So lets break it down. The following chart maps out the examples I gave above.

From a marketing investment standpoint these are equal - the return to the company after the cost of goods and cost of sales is zero. But this isn't realistic for a specific company - it merely shows the price points at which each option starts making a net contribution to the larger business. Between $61 and $1,000 the web is going to be a much better deal for you.

Get Real

The key is to make this specific to your company. You do that by applying your average order sizes and gross margins for shows and the web and your specific metrics (costs, response rates etc).

Here is an example from an average of a few supplemental companies that I have familiarity with. Their trade show related sales are typically double what they earn on the web largely because a Rep is actively working them. BUT - even with the benefit of this difference they are losing money on trade shows and are wildly profitable on the web.

To get to parity on the contribution margin if we hold the web order size at $250 the comparable trade show revenues need to be $4,000 per sale.

But what about gross margins - won't they affect this result? Somewhat - but order size has a bigger impact on this decision. If your gross margins are 90% you have a breakeven of $778 on trade shows and $48 on the web. If they are 40% breakeven is $1750 for shows and $108 for the web. The essential story doesn't change.

This example makes clear why Apple is shunning shows and Promethean is investing heavily. Apple sells tons of individual computers at something less than $4k with moderate gross margins while Promethean is mostly doing building or district level deals that bring in orders in six and seven figures with higher gross margins. The gearing all works in Promethean's favor for shows and in Apple's favor for the web.

In Conclusion

The conclusion is pretty clear - if your average order size is modest you probably should not be prioritizing trade shows (or you should be focused on dramatically increasing your average order size). Most companies should go to a handful of shows for the non-economic benefits - but choose carefully and scale your presence appropriately.

Don't be seduced by the work and "prestige" involved in trade shows - its easy to think that because you are busy and talking to customers that you are doing the most productive thing. Dig deeper - challenge your comfort zone on this.

Do you think about your web presence as a 24/7/365 trade show booth or is it something you feel like you have to do? Is it getting the same level of sustained attention that major events get?

Shouldn't it?

FETC 2010 provided an opportunity to assess the health of the Education Technology market. In today's guest blog my friend Mike Baum shares his take on the highlights and lowlights of this year's trade show

By Mike Baum

Coming to Orlando from Wisconsin in January, I expect warmer weather. I didn’t expect 50 degrees to be greeted as a warming trend. And when I saw the conference center adjacent to my hotel was hosting a national beekeeping convention with the alarming title “Keeping the Hive Alive,” I began to watch out for falling metaphors.

Traffic Report

The Florida Education Technology Conference (FETC) 2010 wasn’t all bad news by any means, but true optimists had their work cut out. Attendance and traffic, while possibly higher than last year’s debacle, were light and sporadic. Exhibitors by one account were down by 100, with absentees divided between business casualties of 2008-09 and firms keeping powder dry for ISTE (nee NECC) in July and possibly TCEA next month.

At least one long-time major exhibitor has permanently downgraded FETC to a “regional show” vs. the must-attend national show it once was. Companies still seem to consider FETC an important “announcement show” – more in a moment – but that’s due less to real significance and more to just the calendar, like the New Hampshire primary used to be.

Attendees

Booth visitors were mostly classroom teachers, some school administrators; of the few district people I encountered, most were IT with focus on the “T” – not engaged in curriculum decisions. Some shoppers, few buyers, at least at this moment.

To some extent this was to be expected: continued weak economy, a state whose budgetary problems are in the top 10 or 15, still early in the decision-making year. And as Lee’s last entry of 2009 noted, spending is likely to come even later this year than usual, nationwide. One bad swallow does not the Heimlich Maneuver make. Still, I think one can reasonably draw some conclusions – both negative and positive.

Implications

Negative: with apologies to my beekeeping friends, the buzz is over, at least for a while. One presenter at the show pointed out that we’ve come off a decade of education spending at 2X GDP growth, and that’s over. Much of that money came from rising property taxes driven by the real-estate bubble. The splash from that burst bubble is likely to dampen ed budgets for the next 2-3 years.

Tech spending may be further retarded by success: technology is ubiquitous in society and pretty plentiful in schools, so it’s not a question anymore of adding technology so much as what you do with what you’ve got, to really impact educational outcomes.

Vendors also have an increasing amount of “good free” to compete with – perhaps a dozen FETC sessions touted free resources from everyone from district or state consortiums (Florida especially is rife with them) to our friends at Google. So we all will have to come up with compelling educational reasons to make incremental or replacement purchases, at least for some time yet.

Positive: life goes on, technology is here to stay, and even if the market is stagnant there’s always gain in market share. NetTrekker formally announced expansion of their popular safe-search and web resource platform to the U.K. Discovery Education announced plans to enter the next Florida adoption head to head with traditional textbooks, as they did successfully in Oregon. Online delivery of content isn’t a panacea, but where it provides schools with a clear advantage it will sell. Expect pushback from the traditional publishers, of course, but historically they have trouble really focusing on ed tech.

What To Do?

The key, I believe, is finding fertile spots – I hate to call them “niches” – where technology makes it easier to do things educators want to or must do in light of larger trends. Such as?

Professional development – increased demand for “job-embedded” PD, which has to be largely online-enabled.

Writing – several people have pointed out that kids are actually writing more than ever before, between texting, blogs, and social networking – and if those messages are often short and cryptic, well, so is haiku.

Assessment – isn’t going away, must be delivered in short, teacher-friendly bursts to be really effective in improving outcomes.

Games – to many, a four-letter word, but increasing research (as presented by Lee at a fascinating session) shows they can demonstrate real educational outcomes if properly designed.

Targeted applications that help individualize, improve academic learning time, increase motivation.

Up here in the frozen north we know that a hard freeze is necessary every so often – kills mosquitoes, and many seeds actually require one to germinate in the spring. Maybe that’s an encouragement while we’re working to keep the hive alive.

Mike Baum
Principal
Sophia Consulting LLC
mhbaum@gmail.com

Mike is a business growth consultant specializing in K-12 marketing and product strategies. Former CEO of Renaissance Learning, he has 15 years of experience in the education market and over 25 years of helping companies become bigger companies.

A picture is worth at least 1,000 words. Thanks to Richard Carey for the link to this gem.

Nothing like a good dose of dark cynical humor to get your day started!

It's nice to see Richard back in the game from his super secret big project.

How is the marketing mix for companies that sell to K12 schools evolving? At a time when we are experiencing an explosion in the number and type of marketing programs we are also seeing rebalanced budgets and a consolidation among the large support organizations. The economic downturn has only accelerated these trends - it isn't responsible for them.

The Paradigm is Shifting - Slowly

To begin with - maturing internet search and peer to peer social media networks are changing some of the underlying assumptions of what marketing does. Put simply, it is far more important to be found today when someone is searching than it is to interrupt them when they are not. A customer who has typed in relevant search terms and come upon your site or who reaches out to their network to help them solve a problem and been referred to you is the highest quality lead you can possess. They are actively seeking a solution that may include your products.

Put another way - when you mail a catalog 99 out of 100 people are not interested enough in what you have to say to act on it. By contrast 99 out of 100 of the leads from the web or social network are ACTIVELY in the process of seeking solutions.

This causes a severe case of cognitive dissonance in traditional marketers. They gotta talk to a whole lot of people to be effective - more people, more contacts, mass reach is the name of the game. The new media numbers scare the bejesus out of them because they look so small. If it helps - imagine a line of 99 people standing behind each web lead. 100 visitors to your website translates into a 10,000 piece direct mail campaign with a 1% response rate.

What are companies doing about this? The ones who are growing are investing marketing effort and budgets in driving traffic and social media presence.

Here are some of the marketing activities:

• Write a company blog
• Add valuable commentary to other blogs - like this one (;->
• Social media network presence (Facebook, We Are Teachers, etc.)
• Optimize your web site for search and e-commerce
• Establish a Twitter fan base
• Loyalty and retention programs

The problem for traditional direct marketers used to immediate results is that they put up 5 or six posts - don't see any meaningful traffic - and they move on. So many blogs go absolutely no where that Google won't even take you seriously until you have at least 20 posts. For real traction shoot for 40-50. If you have a reasonable posting schedule of 1-2 posts a week it can take the better part of 6 months to get to this point.

If you don't see results in six weeks don't move on to the next shiny marketing object. You need to invest for 12-18 months to see real results in this sphere. If you stick with it you will see customers your competition don't even know exist. They will get to your site - find exactly what they were after - and take action.

Social Media and Marketing Budgets

Since sincerity and authenticity are the coin of the realm in social media it is very difficult to outsource this type of activity.

The best money you can spend here is on people to manage and engage in on-line communities. The choice of wording is precise - you don't engage with (traditional marketing - we do it to our customers) on-line communities - you need to engage in a conversation (new marketing - you are a member of the community) - involving real give and take.

The goal is building a new kind of house list - a list of customers who want to be engaged in a sustained conversation with you.

Because traffic builds slowly and organically this requires a sustained investment in people and activity.

But peeling money away from traditional marketing to do this isn't as easy as it might seem.


Traditional Marketing Still Rules

Chucking traditional marketing activities while you engage in the new stuff would be suicide. The paradigm is shifting - but the change is very slow and evolutionary. More importantly, traditional marketing activities can be successfully cross pollinated with social media based marketing.

At PCI we are having a lot of success working our catalogs and our web presence as one combined outreach effort. We cross promote them and find that customers like moving back and forth as they use each for a different kind of decision making. We also track our channel based activity and while catalogs have seen modest declines in effectiveness in the past few years they still make up the bulk of our revenue base.

Many companies have shifted direct mail to email campaigns with mixed results. It is certainly cheaper to blast out emails - but schools have grown increasingly sophisticated about blocking anything resembling spam.

We are at a point with email that you may be better off moving to a hybrid of traditional direct mail with a web response mechanism. Treat your direct mail piece as a resume' that gets you in the door - manage your website as the interview.

Bottom line - while you may be scaling back your traditional marketing efforts you can not abandon them. In fact - by linking them explicitly to your on-line efforts you find synergies between them that improve your effectiveness.

Traditional Marketing Budgets

Even as the paradigm shifts many companies are finding it hard to shift out of their old spending patterns. The new stuff isn't coming on-line fast enough to just cut the old - and declining returns from traditional approaches mean you have to increase your spend to see the same results you got in the past.

In this context companies are getting more and more creative. There is a lot of list swapping between companies (I mail your house list - you mail mine). People are merging old activities with web based campaigns (see above). Marketers are also becoming ever more data driven.

Managers are also grinding harder on suppliers and rewarding those who can innovate and deliver better services at a lower price. In a world where priorities are shifting and budgets are not growing this one of the most powerful ways to free up budget for the new activities.

Support Organizations

In this context there has been some real shifting around in the external support organizations that K12 Marketers rely on. Consultants, list providers, research firms, and advertising venues have all been going through transitions of their own.

At the high end there has been consolidation that mirrors what we have seen among the major publishers. Pressure on marketing budgets is also weeding out marginal players. A company like MDR - which has now subsumed QED and EdNet - is reacting to the fact that there are fewer and fewer large companies that can buy their high end list services. Remaining customers are seeking the efficiencies a larger supplier can deliver.

Marginal magazines are closing left and right - although traditional favorites like Tech&Learning and T.H.E. seem to be doing ok. This isn't just happening in education - here is a list of 10 well known magazines that closed this year.

In response to the technology shifts several new companies are coming in at the mid range. EdRoom, EdWeb, and TeacherTube are some examples of this kind of activity.

At the small end, competition for consultants, agencies, and research is intensifying as large companies shed staff. There has never been a better time to seek highly qualified marketing people on a consulting basis. We started a LinkedIn group for Education Business Consultants about a year ago and we have over 300 members from around the globe.

Research firms seem to have been hit the hardest in this context. This insight is purely anecdotal on my part. If this is true is isn't a smart move on the buyers' part. Imagine you are lost, hungry and thirsty. Would your first action be chucking the map out the window? That is the equivalent of cutting research during an paradigm shift combined with a severe economic downturn. Sigh.

In Conclusion

In the 20 years I've been involved in marketing to schools there has never been a more interesting AND more challenging time to do this job. Shifting paradigms, new approaches, and severe budget pressures make managing the mix a real juggling act.

Good luck with that.

In this first of a two part series, guest blogger James Mayfield Smith responds to my post on Storyline in Textbooks and Video Games. James has the coolest job title I think I’ve ever seen – Applied Mythologist. We worked together at Pearson several years ago, he speaks about Education Publishing from direct experience on the front lines of selling and authoring.

Part 1 of 2: The Strategic Use of Story to Sell

By James Mayfield Smith


I’ve enjoyed your posts on the potential of storyline for instruction. As a former teacher, educational sales consultant, and reading program designer, I’ve had many opportunities to see how a good tale told well can engage both students and adults in genuine conversation. Yet teachers are often left to work around their story-averse textbooks. Your analysis of why publishers in our industry are wary of strong storylines when designing instructional materials is insightful.

Story in Sales?

Many publishers also miss the boat by failing to see how the power of story utilized well can impact their sales revenue. Much of my consulting involves training executives to appreciate how humans respond to stories, imagery, and metaphor. By examining how we have told stories about ourselves for thousands of years, we gain valuable clues about the impact that telling and living into our stories has on us. With this information, we can begin to harness the power of story to teach, to create, to market, and to sell.

I discuss story-savvy selling in particular with sales training analyst Dave Stein in his Commentary on Sales Leadership blog. While Dave is quick to point out that story-savvy selling is an advanced selling skill, the five sales trainers who comment on the post enthusiastically share how they bring the power of story to bear with their own clients. Educational publishing executives may be interested in tapping into this power for their own marketing and sales force efforts.

On a strategic level, leveraging the power of story can be seen as a framework for the selling process in general. We all live out and perpetuate stories in our lives. For any sale to close, a buyer must let go of an old story of how to do something. The buyer must then embrace a new story that involves a different solution and a new way of accomplishing an objective. From a mythological perspective, trying to force a behavioral change while continuing to live an old story is rarely successful.

Most of us know a friend or relative trapped in an old story that they just can’t seem to shake behaviorally. When the old story is released, however, and a new story is fully embraced, the behaviors that result naturally from living into this story support a successful implementation. Applied to sales, the sale simply makes more sense and becomes more compelling within the new story than it would from the old perspective.

This change management aspect of sales is critical. Intelligent use of story is a powerful driver for facilitating change, particularly on the emotional and behavioral levels. Buyers usually make decisions on the emotional level, justify them with logic, and act on them behaviorally. Any long-time sales executive can regale you with stories of buyers who bought a product based on emotion rather than on the best fit for their circumstances.

An Example

As a young teacher, I once set out to buy a used Volvo, and then became emotionally enamored of a great deal on an “inexpensive” high mileage Mercedes. I bought the car and for the next two years, used a credit card to pay far more than my teacher salary allowed for the expensive maintenance. I had even heard that Mercedes vehicles were expensive to maintain. Yet this data was impersonal to me, and I had no emotional connection to it, so it didn’t even factor into my decision. I made an emotional decision based on my story that successful people drove a Mercedes rather than finding out all the facts about Mercedes ownership.

A good story that personalized the possible consequences of my decision might have curbed my romanticized story. This could have encouraged me to make a better decision for my circumstances. Telling the right story at the right time humanizes the sales process and accesses this emotional region, so that a seller can help a buyer make a more informed decision from the place where such decisions are actually made.

Three Reasons to Use Stories to Sell

But why the focus on stories, you might ask, rather than the emphasis on questions and conversations found in many sales training methodologies? Of course those are essential, as are other selling basics. But understanding the power of story is oft-neglected, so we’ll address this in particular here.

First, naturally talented salespeople are already (often unconsciously) using the power of story to sell. These naturals engage buyers with stories and tell key stories about other buyers to leverage a sale. Yet they are usually unable to articulate or teach what they are doing. Companies often joke about cloning their top sales reps – compelling storytelling is often one of their defining traits you should consider teaching it reps who are not using it.

Second, the selling power of story is a direct result of how our psycho-emotional-behavioral system responds to stories. After thousands of years of an oral storytelling tradition, we are hard-wired to respond to story in specific ways. After millions of collective bedtime stories and many millions more stories told for entertainment, humans have developed both a longing to hear stories (which supports the Hollywood film industry), as well as a calming and accepting approach to story. One effect of this conditioning is that stories allow buyers to bypass the somewhat irrational emotional defenses often triggered during a sales interaction.

Instead of reacting to a salesperson in a guarded way, buyers have the opportunity to relax into a story about a student whose life was changed or an administrator who successfully increased achievement in her district. Buyers are given the freedom to identify with any character whose wants, needs, and values match their own. This identification with characters process usually happens during a story. This self-selection dynamic draws our customers toward us and facilitates trust, like we are drawn to the heroes and heroines of a good novel. By allowing our customers to build emotional connections to characters and scenarios that are meaningful to them, we also build valuable bridges to ourselves as solution providers.

Third, and paradoxically, while stories relax our customers on one level, it stimulates them on another level by heightening attention and memory recall. The myths, legends, and stories of the tribe usually conveyed key data about where to go and not go, how to get home, what to eat or not eat, and other life-preserving information that was critical to remember. Thus, thousands of years of using story to convey important survival information has conditioned our brains to remember story well. Thus teachers and administrators will leave a conference and forget much of the data they took in, while remembering the stories they heard. By embedding sales calls within a story-rich framework, we provide our customers with anchors for retaining the key information about our company, our products, and the solutions we provide.

Coming in Part 2

Our next post in this 2 part series will address the tactical use of story to sell. We’ll discuss how to use the power of stories and business narrative to architect conversations about our educational solutions. We’ll also identify the different types of stories that are useful at different stages of the buying cycle.

James Mayfield Smith is an educational consultant, sales executive, and trained mythologist who applies the principles of depth mythology and the power of business narrative and story-savvy messaging to sales, marketing, and educational product development projects.

Lee's original post Storyline in Textbooks and Video Games is here.

If you want to be taken seriously in the age of social media you have to speak authentically or people won't believe you. Your marketing messages are a promise. I've written about delivering on that promise. Today I want to focus on the words.

For the promise to be taken seriously the words you choose are just as important as the message they carry. If you dress it up too much you sound like you are selling - and almost no one is buying that any more.

Being authentic is scary. We have to reveal something of ourselves. We become accountable to others. But in an ocean of hype authentic voices are winning the day (blogs, wikis, Twitter) because people are hungry for genuine human connections.

In the end it comes down to respect. If you respect your customers you talk to them like adults (even when they are kids).

Consider this choice:

Company A - "Our Business Associates drive for extraordinary customer delight and win-win synergistic partnership solutions."

Company B - "When you buy from us we want you to be happy. If you are not, here are three ways you can let us know about it..."

In the education market people fall into this trap when we tie ourselves in knots trying to satisfy every politically correct usage we can think of. A lot of our marketing copy reads like it was written by a committee of committees. Strive for making clear understandable promises in authentic language - and then focus everything you have on fulfilling those promises.

That is the path to success today.

What set me off this time? In the San Antonio Airport this morning a promotional announcement about the Riverwalk made reference to "Tex-Mex Cuisine." Tex-Mex is grub, eats, cocina, hell it is just plain "food." But cuisine? Please don't put tacos and beans in a leotard and white face. Fake words = fake promise.

While we are on the subject of Tex-Mex if you want the real deal visit El Mirador the next time you are in San Antonio. Steve Gatland of MDR swears by their smoky salsa.

And another thing about false promises - to the folks at Boingo Hot Spots [no link for annoying morons] - the forced advertisement we have to see before we pay 10 bucks for your buggy wi-fi is not a "Welcome Screen." You've managed to take an annoying "monetization" of our time and insult us as well.

Idiots.

Business Development work requires a certain suspension of disbelief to function smoothly. In the initial stages of any conversation both parties have to be open to undiscovered possibility. Often the most profitable opportunities only become clear after a false start or two.

I'm naturally optimistic and I allow myself to be seduced to new possibilities in initial meetings with potential partners. The positive side of this is that I've been involved in some creative and profitable deals that wouldn't have come off without a period of listening and exploration. The negative side is that it is very easy to send misleading signals to the other side who interpret your enthusiasm to engage as a leading indicator of a pending deal.

The Gullibility Paradox

This outlook creates a paradox because Business Development can't be allowed pull a business into time consuming distractions and strategic cul de sacs. You must be disciplined about the conversations you enter and how long you allow them to proceed before you bail out or engage. But unless you talk to people who are outside of the orbit of conventional wisdom you won't add much value in the long run.

It is common sense to be skeptical about any potential deal and to stay focused on your knitting. For the bulk of the managers in a business this is an imperative. But for those involved in Business Development your role is to explore the possibilities of an unknown future, and the skeptical approach in this specific context does not serve the needs of the business.

Roads Not Taken

I've seen the downside of not taking an optimistic approach.

In the mid-90's a major computer company approached the software company I worked for with an exploratory meeting. At the time we had a very close partnership with their chief rival. We were surprised when what was supposed to be a casual meeting of 2-3 people turned into a group of 10 on their side. My Business Development Manager went into the meeting with a mindset that discussion was pointless because of our other alliance and it came through in his words and body language. We didn't react to the signals that were coming our way and the conversation didn't go well.

Two months later they bought a rival for an absolutely ridiculous multiple on earnings.

I'm not sure if they would have bought us in the end - but we never got the chance to even have the conversation because we came into the meeting with our minds closed to the possibility.

The Solution - A Moving Scale

On the internationally accepted Eeyore to Tigger scale it helps to start every new conversation at about 75% Tigger. The closer to a real deal you get the more Eeyoreish you need to become.

I wrote about the Eeyore side in an article on Parnterships In Education - as you iron out details you need to assume that what can go wrong will go wrong (because, well, it will).

A Couple of Caveats

Does this mean you need to enter into conversations with people you don't trust? No - trust is the bedrock of any successful deal. Opening yourself up to entreaties from sleaze-balls isn't a business strategy, its a death wish.

Should you talk to anyone? No - there isn't enough time in the day to talk to everyone who comes your way. But at least for initial meetings you need to dial down your resistance to unusual approaches and opportunities. If there is a peripheral connection it can't hurt to listen for a few minutes. You might schedule a phone call instead of a dinner but you will learning something from every encounter if you are listening.

Conclusion

If you are involved in Business Development I encourage you to develop your openness to possibility from unusual sources. This is after all the essence of what you are trying to do - unearth opportunities that are profitable precisely because others have not discovered them yet.

If you can learn to manage your own outlook as you move through a deal you will surface the gems with optimism, and then negotiate a deal that can stand an encounter with the real world with skepticism.

Great marketing infuses a brand promise into everything a company does. It isn't about the slogan - it is making the promise come alive for your customers in every small detail.

In honor of a Thanksgiving traipse down the tryptophan trail enjoy the images below from the Heart Attack Grill. They make a very simple promise and then drive it into every single thing the company does with quality and humor. They are also unabashedly politically incorrect.

They have done something remark-able - people will talk about it. TV news has covered it, blogs have been covering it, and radio is in on the act.

In education - where at least 50% of everyone's sales come from referrals - this ability to be remark-able is essential. Yet we are saddled again and again with conservative copycat sample brochures and catalogs that could have been printed 15 or 20 years ago. What are you doing to make your products, services, and company remark-able?

I'm not suggesting that you mock 50 years of public health announcements - but just look at how they made a big promise and then delivered on it.

I don't think this translates directly into the education publishing market - institutional sales have to be politically correct as anyone who has tangled with the California Legal and Social Compliance guidelines can attest to. The reason I'm highlighting it is that it is a stark example of driving the brand promise into the operations - taking messaging beyond empty slogans that no one believes or pays attention to.

First the menu:

When you are done get wheeled out to your car by a "nurse"

Follow below the fold for more hilarity.

Continue reading "Heart Attack Grill - Great Marketing" »

Products designed for the classroom must meet the needs of teachers first. If students are the primary users of your instructional materials this may sound a little backwards - but it isn't. Teachers can make or break your product before a student ever sees it.

Designing for teacher ease-of-use should be a core competency at any education publisher.

Today we tackle issue #4 in the series on selling and marketing to educators.

Part 1 - Obey the Calendar
Part 2 - Education is not a target market - it is an industry
Part 3 - Education is a zero sum market

In the rush to get a product to market too often education publishers overlook the features and resources that make life easy for the teacher. The problem isn't that teachers are lazy, as many in the business world tend to fantasize, quite the opposite. The challenges and demands on a teacher are every bit as daunting as mid-level supervisors in large companies. Their time is at a huge premium and to manage their workload they develop detailed processes and structures - known more commonly as lesson plans.

Your Challenge

Your product has to insert itself gracefully into this workflow or it will fail because the teachers won't make room for it. They already have things humming along, thank you very much.

If students can learn more effectively with your products shouldn't teachers be willing to bend a little to make this happen? Yes they should - but even the most elegantly designed product requires the teacher to go through a learning curve. The time they invest in learning how to use your product shouldn't be amplified by additional time demands because your product isn't complete.

Almost anyone can find a small group of teachers willing to go to extraordinary lengths to make a new product work. Don't be tempted to conclude that all teachers will be willing to put this amount of effort in. If your goal is to reach a broad cross section of classrooms you have to design for the average teacher.

Poor teacher design surfaces differently for technology providers than for print publishers. The software paradigm of iterating to success tempts ed-tech companies to cut corners on teacher tools. The most common oversight is that companies assume that teachers will key in student rosters. I can almost always tell who knows something about the market when we get to this part of the presentation. Inexperienced companies will hand wave past this topic - assuming some kind of magic will occur to get student names into the system. Those who have been around the block a time or two will have a thoughtful approach that doesn't burden the teacher too much.

Populating rosters is tedious and time consuming. In districts with high mobility rates accuracy is a huge problem - the average district has a mobility rate of 20% but I've seen extreme examples of up to 90% where there is a high migrant farm labor population. There are simple solutions (.csv files) and more automated options (SIF) but you must think this through.

Textbook publishers have a different problem - since they tend to see a product as complete and done when it is published any aftermarket additions are outside of the normal workflow and are unanticipated expenses.

In these cases it is more often a case of not including supplemental resources that your target population needs and/or that your competition is providing. Examples include ELL teaching guides, standards correlations, presentations for electronic white boards, and on-line homework help. None of these things are particularly hard to add to a product - but they erode your profitability, and play havoc with your schedules - and you can't sell much until you have them.

A Caveat

Is it possible to go too far in accommodating teachers? Yes. The trick is to balance an almost endless set of feature requests and enhancements with what is essential and compelling.

Companies in this market have to strike a balance between business and learning - and the best way to do this is to have a team that is a mix of former educators and business people. Go too far in either direction and you are out of business. If the educators rule the roost your products will be perfect but marginally profitable because of all the extras tossed in. If you apply rigorous business standards only you won't address the core needs of teachers and you won't sell much.

Your goal should be sound business decisions that are educationally appropriate.

The Solution

There are a few things you can do to reduce your risk of alienating teachers with a new product.

• Ask at every turn during the product planning and development "how will a teacher implement this and how can we make it easier?"
• Make sure you understand teacher's priorities so you can optimize your development options. Talk to a lot of teachers, visit classrooms, observe how things are done today. Dig into the details. Make sure everyone on your team has an opportunity to do this if possible. Don't extrapolate from a small sample - talk to as many people as you can afford to.
• Hire former teachers if they have the right skill-set. Sales, mar-com, and product marketing are all areas ex-teachers can thrive in.
• Many education companies encourage employees to volunteer in local schools partly because it is a good thing to do and partly to get exposure to the reality of the classroom.
• Develop an educator advisory board and challenge them to think about the average teacher (the folks who participate in advisory boards tend to be the same ones who would put extra effort in to use your product).
• If your budget and schedule permits, build a pilot phase into your roll out where you do a limited deployment to a handful of classrooms. Incorporate the feedback prior to general release.
• Watch the competition closely. Often something that wasn't required becomes so once a competitor is offering it. Better yet - make the competition respond to you by innovating.

Another entry in our sporadic series on bad marketing.

This video is hilarious. I love the "my daughter didn't get it" and "we've love it but have some minor tweaks." I've been known to say the latter.

From the target market definition to the creative it skewers slack thinking and over-engineering.

If this is how you manage your marketing - please stop.

http://view.break.com/542649 - Watch more free videos

This is why small companies will do OK in tough economic times - their available resources force them to make tough market driven decisions. The company in this video is anything but market driven.

Do you need to pick a target market when entering the education market? One of the true signs of a rookie is a business plan built on selling to all schools. Just because all schools should be using your widget doesn't mean they are ready to buy it.

Picking a target market is a discipline many people try to avoid - they don't like getting boxed in. Others don't understand just how big the education market is or think all schools are the same. If you are in love with your product you may resist the idea that some schools don't want it or don't need it.

Today we tackle issue #2 in our series on selling and marketing to educators. As a consultant in the education market I work with a wide range of businesses. This series covers the common execution errors I see with new executives and companies when they enter the market.

Part 1 is here.


Part 2. "Education" is not a target market - it's an industry.

Education is a vast enterprise. In almost every community the school system is one of the top 3 employers. Thats right - every community. In the US education is second only to defense in total spending.

A target market is a niche, an industry segment that is particularly friendly to your story and solution.

Picking a niche to target (which I've written about here and here) is not complicated. Schools vary widely in their infrastructure, politics, test scores, pedagogical preferences, and budgets. Your goal should be finding enough low hanging fruit to keep you busy as you build your business without overwhelming your capacity.

If you are selling education technology - find the schools that already have the infrastructure to run your product. Otherwise you have to first sell them a bunch of someone else's stuff.

If you have a hot new reading product find the schools with the lowest reading scores - they are motivated to look for something new.

If you are capital constrained limit yourself geographically to keep your costs down. Build out from there.

If you focus on a particular pedagogical philosophy the presence of similar or related products should be a green light.

You also want to make sure you go where the money is.

In many cases you will pick from all of these. Lets say you have a new reading intervention for middle schools. To keep your average sale high you might want to target large middle schools with bad test scores and funding to address it. If you are in Newark you may want to focus first on your home state to keep costs down.

How do you find the data to help you focus?

I use a tool called MarketView from MDR which makes it easy to ask questions like "how many middle schools in New Jersey are missing AYP and have more than 500 students?" The answer is 107. This is a critical number for business planning (market size, share projections, revenue projections, sale force capacity, etc.). I could also easily create a mailing list and a call list for a Rep from the results of this search.

Scholastic's QED division also has resources and services to help you answer these kinds of questions.

State DOE websites are a great source of data. For example California has lists that allow you to drill in deeply on test scores by school, district, or county.

These quantitative qualifiers are a starting point - you then start calling on these schools and asking the questions you can't get answered from a database (e.g. what pedagogical approaches do they favor?, is this issue a priority for them this year?, do they have complimentary products etc.). By narrowing the list and then qualifying further you spend the most precious asset wisely - your time.

You can do a lot of this yourself if you choose to - but in many cases a seasoned hand can shorten the distance between your product and the right customers. But please - no matter how you approach this question pick a market to focus on.

A side note - unless your product is specifically designed for private schools or the home school market don't prioritize them initially. They are relatively small and highly fragmented markets. Public schools are 90% of the opportunity. This isn't an editorial on the merits of either market - just a dollars and cents suggestion to maximize your investments of money and time.

School Sales & Marketing Series

Part 1. Obey the calendar. Schools buy on a regular schedule, design your business around it.

Part 2. "Education" is not a target market - it's an industry. No matter how great your product you need to pick a target market to focus on.

Part 3. This is a zero sum game. In order for you to win someone else has to lose.

Part 4. Teachers don't have the time to take the rough edges off your product. Teachers make or break a product.

Part 5. It's all about learning - mostly. You need to know the politics of selling to schools.

Rookies in the education market make a set of common mistakes. There are five concepts you need to grasp about selling to schools that will help you avoid execution error as you enter the learning market. Consider these the iron laws of marketing to public schools. Accept them, nay embrace them, and your job will be easier.

In my consulting practice I go through these topics with almost all clients who are entering this market from other industries or countries. In this series I will post my thoughts on each of these rules and I welcome your comments and reactions. We will cover:

Part 1. Obey the calendar. Schools buy on a regular schedule, design your business around it.

Part 2. "Education" is not a target market - it's an industry. No matter how great your product you need to pick a target market to focus on.

Part 3. This is a zero sum game. In order for you to win someone else has to lose.

Part 4. Teachers don't have the time to take the rough edges off your product. Teachers make or break a product.

Part 5. It's all about learning - mostly. You need to know the politics of selling to schools.

It doesn't matter what you are selling - 60%-70% of your sales will come in the months of May-July. There are two reasons for this. First - most schools want to install, organize and train on new products during the summer when the kids are off. Introducing big changes during the school year is just too tough. Second, most school fiscal years go July-June. This means that they either have money left at the end of the year to spend in June or they are spending out of new budget authority in July.

This ebb and flow affects the entire business.

Sales - The fall season is spent generating prospects, during winter you demonstrate and write proposals, and spring is time to close the business. Deals do happen outside of this window (30%-40%) but they are spread over 75% of the year.

Product Development - In order to meet your goals you need to schedule product releases so that you can demonstrate them starting January 1 and ship them starting May 1. It may be necessary to pilot products starting Aug 1. If you are shipping an update it needs to be ready by May.

Marketing - Marketing works 2-3 months ahead of sales - creating awareness campaigns in the summer to run in the early fall, sales tools during the fall months, events during the winter months, and then planning for the next year in the spring.

Support - This group will always have a spike during the May-August time frame and it is useful to have a cadre of trained part-timers who can step in during these months to help with installation and training issues.

Finance - Your line of credit also needs to carry you through the lean months - make sure finance understands this.

I've worked in computer hardware, enterprise software, textbooks, supplemental materials, and education technology and they have all followed this schedule. You are not likely to be the exception to this rule.

In many ways this is similar to the retail world with their huge annual spike at Christmas. The good news is that with decent pipeline reporting you can usually tell several months ahead of time what your sales are likely to be. Budgets for education are set at the start of the year so there isn't the kind of economic uncertainty you find in retail. Most of the companies I've worked for were able to predict within 10% what their annual sales were going to be by the end of the 1st quarter (usually January).

Part 1 - Obey the Calendar
Part 2 - Education is not a target market - it is an industry
Part 3 - Education is a zero sum market

Piping hot education related blog topics served here! The debate over formative assessment, the top 10 sites for educational games, crowd-sourcing the next great novel, controversy around Microsoft's new ads, the relationship between quality and advertising, and a hilarious spoof of Politicians all get the nod this week.

Education Week has a very interesting article about Formative Assessment. Given the burgeoning mantra that formative assessment makes the biggest difference in outcomes it is revealing to see how little consensus there is on what it really is. Is it a practice or is it a product?

John Rice has a list of the top 10 sites for free EduGames. It is worth a peek and linking through to get a sense of what kids are actually playing. This should dispel the myth that EduGames need to rival commercial games in graphics and sound. What matters most is fun game play.

HarperCollins launches Authonomy. The site uses crowd-sourcing to allow readers to vote on the next best seller. Springwise has a quick overview - Publisher Hopes Crowds Will Spot Next Bestseller. I'm working on a similar project for a client in education - should be interesting.

Microsoft's new ads - love 'em or hate 'em? Seth Godin thinks they are rot that won't fix what is wrong - What Ads Can't Fix. His thesis is that the company has a solid business serving the stolid core of the market, and ads are not going to turn it into Apple. Ben McConnel believes they are a great opening salvo in redefining who Microsoft is by reclaiming the definition from Apple. As a bonus all the ads are in his post if you want to see them. In this debate you could substitute mainline textbook publishers and come up with largely the same analysis - both posts are worth a 2 minute read and some reflection.

As always Indexed nails her topic. This graphic about quality vs. advertising is amusing and revealing. We know this is how the education market works - one teacher tells another when they like something. I think of her wry charts as Mad Magazine for grownups. There is no connection to the link above about Microsoft. Really.

The Front Fell Off. Perhaps because we are dealing with a financial disaster this comedy skit resurfaced recently. It is a drop-dead funny take on a Politician evading the truth and trying to sound like they have a clue when they really don't. It is non-partisan so enjoy.

Education Channel Partner published a story I wrote about partnerships for companies that serve the education market. Whether you are a textbook publisher, an education technology developer, a fellow management consultant, or a reseller/dealer I hope you will find some useful ideas in the article. Think of it as Business Development 101 for education.

Too many partnerships fail because the partners didn't work through all the questions they needed to address individually and mutually. This article attempts to lay out a process for evaluating partnerships and a partnership taxonomy to help determine what kinds of partnerships are right for your company. It draws on my experiences at Apple, Chancery, Pearson, and Harcourt.

From the blurb:

Why do some partnerships succeed and others crash and burn? In profitable K-12 partnerships, companies carefully structure the relationship and know exactly what kind of partner they need. Here’s a guide to the elements of a successful partnership and a taxonomy of the kinds of K-12 business alliances out there.

I'm really pleased to be working with the team over at Education Channel Partner. Later this year they are publishing another article from me on data driven selling. That article expands and develops the ideas noted in this post from last spring - Data Driven Selling - Quick Start Guide.

Link to the full partnership article.

Powerpoint slides are "glance media" just like billboards. Today's post by Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen is an excellent synopsis of how billboards can inform slide design.

His post builds on Nancy Duarte's Slide:ology where she sets the standard for glance media - "Ask yourself whether your message can be processed effectively within three seconds."

In a marginally related segue I've been reading Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". Today's best insight:

"My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it."

1. Make it visual - "vision trumps all other senses"

8. Have a visual theme

Whether you are in sales, marketing, raising money, or making an internal pitch your presentation can benefit enormously from following these guidelines. You will increase the odds of communicating the message you intend to share ("we need to buy that thing") vs. the message that you actually communicate ("this guy is confusing me").

I love his mock up of a billboard as designed by the average Powerpoint user - its funny and informative.

The world would be a better place if people applied these rules to their slide decks. All too often they do exactly the opposite - ugh.

Schools are inundated with paper and instructional materials at this time of year. Those of us who build education products and create marketing collateral should be cognizant of is how wasteful so much of this is.

In our personal lives many of us go through the "more shelves or less stuff" debate all the time, and all too often we end up at Ikea with another Sbrorg shelving unit strapped to the top of the car.

Please stop.

If you think you need to ship that much crap into schools to compete you need to look at your business model. They don't want it, don't need it, and won't use it. Somewhere someone in your organization has not made some choices about what to create. They punted and tossed it all in.

I recently had lunch in a restaurant that bragged that virtually everything they used was recycled or composted. The only things that go into the trash are coffee cup lids, salad dressing packets, and tea bags (metal staples). This is a fast food BURGER joint. Their prices were in line and as a consumer I appreciated that they had put that much thought into their processes. I'll be back - and not just because the burgers were great.

The thought and care you add to your products will come back to you, but sometimes it means taking a little more time to think things through and a couple of hard decisions about what is truly essential in your products/materials. You will have to push hard and hold firm for this to happen - the pressure and temptation to put more in will always be there.

"I did not have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one instead." Mark Twain

In the end less stuff is the only sane way forward.

Education technology bloggers have been a busy lot with NECC 08, end of school year, and lots of new products to play with. Here are just a smattering of some of my favorite posts from the past few weeks. Enjoy.

John Rice flagged an article showing that putting games in libraries increases reading. This jibes with a presentation I saw last week at Games Learning & Society - a public librarian started doing game nights and they saw their youth circulation double - for BOOKS. This is going to make several people in my house happy - Mrs. Education Business Blog is a middle school librarian and the EBB spawn are avid gamers and readers.

Danah Boyd shares some meaty insights on status and online behavior for teens. The money quote:

In his book "Geeks, Freaks and Cool Kids," Murray Milner Jr. suggests that teens' particular obsession with status is because "they have so little real economic or political power" (2004:4). He argues that hanging out, dating, and mobilizing tokens of popular culture all play a central role in the development and maintenance of peer status. Just as these activities take place in school, they also take place in networked environments.

Continuing in the meme of bad marketing that I've been on lately David Armano names several bad habits marketers fall into. Funny and instructive at the same time. My personal favorite - shiny object syndrome. Let me know yours.

Want to have your pre-conceptions about school challenged? David Kirkpatrick compiles a list of provactive questions nobody dares to ask about education. I don't agree with everything on the list - but it it made me stop and think.

If you come across something interesting in your web perambulations pass them along!

This video spoofs the phony voice of marketers and advertising. It is "office safe" so don't worry about the volume. Enjoy.

Does your marketing sound like this? You might have been able to get away with this 15 years ago but since social media has allowed people to opt out this kind of insincere over-dramatization you need to be careful.

For education publishers you also need to remember that many teachers teach critical thinking skills - if you are talking down to them they won't react well.

Just like those idiots in the Houston Airport I wrote about last week.

To drive home the point here is another video (props to Microsoft).

It is time to start building an on-line persona for your brand and company that is based on sincerity, honesty, and mutual respect. You can start with the copy on your brochure-ware site - but I strongly encourage you to wade into the world of blogs, Facebook, and We Are Teachers to build a true Socratic Marketing culture.

If you wouldn't say it to someone's face don't say it in your marketing materials.

ISTE's NECC 2008 was a success by any measure. The sibilant susurration of schmoozing and selling suffused the show space. Attendance was high (12,250), sessions were well attended (over 924), and the show floor was constantly busy. Even the San Antonio weather cooperated by being a bit cooler than usual.

If you landed on the planet on Sunday and came straight to NECC you would have no sense of the pressure on education budgets that the economic downturn is creating.

Some of this is attributable to Texas, which as an oil producing state is having a milder downturn that many parts of the country. Typically 50% of attendees at national trade shows are from within in 200 miles (double that for Texas). But that doesn't explain all of it since according to the official numbers Texas attendees only made up 25% of the total.

Since budgets for instructional materials remain relatively static what is going on? Don't be fooled by the calm surface waters, there is turbulence down below in the niches that make up the total. Companies that are producing standards based education technology resources and tools are booming. Textbook publishers continue to commoditize and consolidate.

The evidence is piling up that education technology does work - even if it is just at the level of engaging today's digital natives more effectively than print. Given the costs of textbooks ($35-$75 a copy) it is getting easier to justify digital resources ($2-$10 a year). Good teachers know what works even without Scientifically Based Research (SBR) and they are voting with their interest for digital resources.

But some of the same old complaints were heard. No School Board asks the Instructional Materials folks to prove that textbooks are being used in the classroom, but they demand this all the time for education technology. It isn't an unreasonable request - but the standard should be applied equally. If teachers are only using 50% of a textbook that is a lot of useless atoms being shipped and schlepped around. As for SBR and skepticism about technology consider this - if the textbooks were working as claimed we wouldn't have failing schools....

NECC remains the premiere education technology event of the year, the launch pad for the following school year, and the best place to do business with your customers and your partners.

Having said that I am increasingly skeptical that the amount of money spent on these shows is justified. Thee were at least a two companies that spent over $500,000 on this event. It showed in their presence on the floor and around town. But what could they have done with that amount of effort and cash on more plebeian but long lasting efforts like sales force training, new product innovation, or web 2.0 based marketing (which delivers new customers 365 days a year)? For half of what they spent they probably could have achieved the same result and been ahead in other parts of their business.

I'm advising my clients to dial back their investments in trade shows. To be clear - I'm not advocating abandoning trade shows - but I think they need to be relegated to a more junior position in the marketing budget given how much more effective other programs can be.

NECC 2009's Washington DC location drew a mixed review from the vendor community. It will be useful to be in the capital in what is shaping up to be a transitional year for educational policy. On the other hand DC is one of the most expensive places to do business in the country with hotel rooms even at third tier chains going for $250/night. It will also be the height of tourist season - plan for busy and expensive flights as well.

A Few Corrections

Yesterday in my impressions of NECC piece I made a couple of errors.

There were computer vendors on the floor including Dell, Gateway, and RM. While Apple was not exhibiting they were engaged behind the scenes in sponsoring events and providing equipment for registration and other activities (although it was amusing to see IBM monitors hooked to Macs in the reg area). But the overall computer vendor presence was subdued. Even Microsoft had a relatively small space.

I underestimated the number of people Promethean sent - it was over 100. Times are good in whiteboard land. With Nettrekker and Atomic Learning they threw a hell of a party for their customers last night (thanks!).

ISTE's National Education Computing Conference (NECC) 2008 is in full swing in San Antonio.

The Education Technology maven's tribal gathering is bigger than ever. A sign over the entrance reads "The Worlds Largest Education Technology Exhibit." That's a Texas sized ambition.

Here are a few impressions from day one. I'll write a more detailed analysis after the show closes.

There is a huge amount of energy here. The show floor was thronged until closing and sessions are well attended. Even the Press Suites are jammed. Oddly, the scene on the Riverwalk tonight was a bit subdued (I don't know if that is because people were tired from a long day or if we just missed the big party).

The electronic whiteboard guys rule the roost. It appears that Promethean (who has the most prominent exhibit at the show) is spending well over $100k just to have staff here. Smart has a big presence as do RM and all of the players in that space.

Meanwhile the computer companies are largely AWOL. Apple doesn't even have a booth.

Who is making the smarter decision? Are the whiteboard companies making hay while the sun shines or are the computer guys moving all their spending to the web where they can reap the rewards year round rather than over 3 days?

There are still lots and lots of really interesting little companies springing up - ed tech is a lively sector. While education funding may be static or down slightly the ed tech niche is up considerably. This is based on both the number of attendees and the word from vendors.

Am I getting older or is the hall getting noisier? It seemed to me that the noise level is getting ratcheted up as more people do booth theaters with mic'ed presenters. Part of this is just the high level of activity on the show floor, but some of this is an escalating problem that will spell trouble in the long run. Vendors need to have consideration for each other and for their prospects. One large whiteboard vendor that had a huge staff presence (ahem) was making so much noise for most of the day that it was hard to conduct a conversation two aisles over. Ultimately this will drive people outside for some peace and quiet. Oh, and you kids stay off my lawn.

San Antonio's exhibit hall has a weird layout. It is so long and twisty that it takes forever to get from one end of the show to the other. This didn't seem to hurt booth traffic, but it did make finding people a real pain in the rear.

So far it is shaping up to be a great show. All Y'all come back and read more about it later.

Bad marketing comes in two flavors. There is poorly executed marketing that no one notices. Then there is insincere, dishonest, and misleading marketing that everyone notices. The first kind is a waste of your money, the second kind gives marketers a bad name.

I've written elsewhere on finding a good target market, selecting a winning brand promise, and engaging in conversational Web 2.0 marketing. If you do those things well you can largely avoid execution error.

Today we focus on an example of the second kind that was so breathtakingly awful I had to backtrack and take a picture of it.

This idiocy was on display outside of a jewelry store in the Houston airport last week. I'm not going to name the store - it would only encourage them. Lets look at what is wrong with this.

First - they actually have a stunningly simple promise - and that is powerful. Everyone likes a deal and if you have been away from home for a week or two a little jewelry would help ease re-entry. Of course one's next thought is that they just jacked up the price on everything by 50% - so as promise it rings of insincerity. This is one step above the rug store in my old New York neighborhood that attracted tourists by "Going Out of Business" for the entire two years I lived there.

Second - they trumpet their insincerity with the "a few exclusions apply" small print at the bottom. They picked a promise they had no intention of actually delivering on - and they are open about that. This is a really bad idea.

Good marketers, sincere marketers, pick promises that the company can live up to. The goal is find something that you can organize the entire business around - even if it doesn't end up as your slogan or in your advertising. McDonalds does affordable family food really well. Wal Mart delivers low prices. Pearson has one of everything you might need in a classroom (or they will buy it soon).

If these weasels really wanted to deliver on this promise here are a couple of things they could do to live up to it.

1. Actually price things at roughly 50% of their competitors - and have display ads the show comparisons to prove it to you.
2. Get rid of the items they are excluding - that way they can eliminate the small print retraction.
3. Have a price guarantee - if you find it at another jewelry store at list price for more they will match whatever half of that is.

I would rewrite the add to say "Lets keep it simple, half off everything. We'll prove it and we guarantee it."

Barring these actions all we have here is the kind of sleazy marketing that gives all marketers a black eye. If they can't live up to this then they should keep looking for another promise that meets an urgent need of their target market. I guarantee there is something else they could do.

My guess is that the lie is so transparent that the campaign isn't even working very well for them. What a waste.

How are education publishers reacting to the economic downturn? Guest blogger and PR maven Charlene Blohm shares some concrete examples of steps companies are taking to trim expenses.

Part 1 - Education Spending & The Economy - Survey Results
Part 2 - Education Funding Market Dynamics - By Doug Stein

By Charlene Blohm, President C Blohm & Associates

District budgets are tight - many schools have already lost the music teacher, the art teacher, the band teacher, the librarian. Left with few other places to cut, two elementary schools near us will be sharing a principal next year. Districts seem to be delaying major purchases and upgrades, especially with administrative or support systems (those that aren't directly tied to student instruction).

How are companies reacting? More than one company has adjusted its sales forecasts down based on decreased spending. The major sales they were hoping to close yet this school year are being delayed, with the forecasted income moving to the next school year.

As a result here are some of the cost saving actions we are seeing across the market.

• Booth sizes at trade shows are a tad smaller - I've seen some movement where last year's 80x80 became a 60x60 this year, or 40x40 became 20x20, etc.
• Also, fewer staff are working trade show booths. Travel is down no matter how you look at it - flights are dang expensive, and often hard to find depending on where you need to go. And that applies to vendors as well as educators.
• There has been an up-tick in direct mail - people weren't getting the results they wanted from what I bet they thought were going to be "free" email campaigns. Even with the postal rate increases, people are blending the two more now than they were a year ago.
• People are stretching advertising dollars with more online purchasing. In fact, some folks are now online-only advertisers.
• There seems to be less money being pumped into product development, and the time for a product to prove itself in the marketplace is getting shorter and shorter. That's been happening for awhile now, so this is not necessarily related to the current recession.
• We're getting more phone calls from overseas prospects. I'm not sure if that's a function of our reputation (we've been doing that for years) or the economy - but I think it's safe to say that foreign companies aren't afraid to spend money on product development and marketing.
• In recent weeks, it seems that people are finally starting to think Web 2.0. I've had more conversations about keywords in the past two months than in previous two years. That signals to me that people are keen to make sure their name is up in bright lights - meaning they need the leads and visibility in a way they didn't before; I don't think there's just a sudden interest in Web 2.0 on its own merits.

"A Cranky, Skeptical, Loudmouth looks at Social Media Marketing" is a little rain on the "Conversation Economy" parade. It was written by Bob Hoffman over at Copyblogger. The 55 comments are as good or better than the article itself (alert the Irony Police).

"You and I are web geeks. We spend way more time than we should looking at computer screens. We are not normal. Especially you. The biggest mistake any marketer can make is marketing to himself, i.e. assuming his customer is just like him. They’re not and they never will be."

I like his definition of interaction as well.

"...the ability to interact with the content of the medium, not just the medium."

The metrics are trickier. Using banner ads and click through ads as metrics is a red-herring. Those are old media dressed up in new clothes - kind of like running plays in TV. Of course they suck when compared to traditional media.

He also points to how few people are doing social media well and disparages any positive anecdotal evidence as outliers. But early in any transition far more people are failing at something than succeeding. Even after the transition has occurred more people are failing than succeeding, the ratio just improves over time. This isn't a great metric either.

What would be a good metric? I would like to see an analysis of the performance of companies in traditional markets that have invested in social media compared to their peers. We'd need to look over 2-4 years since community building takes time. No, this would not be perfect, but it would be better than what has been used to date. If you know of anyone who has done this research please share it in comments.

Perhaps by biggest beef with this outlook is that it takes an absolutist perspective - I hear this all the time from clients when I advocate a social media investment. People jump to the conclusion that in order for social media to succeed all other marketing forms must fail. The reality is just the opposite - we always find a niche for new tools AND we never toss the old tools. Just because a company is investing in social media doesn't mean they don't need to do good old fashioned trade-shows and advertising. The relative mix will change towards what is generating the highest return and every where I've seen it used well social media generate a very high return indeed.

I think those of us advocating social media need to take thoughtful critiques like this one very seriously. If we can't convince the skeptics amongst us then we have work to do. If we are going to be intellectually honest we also have to consider that they might be right. A rigorous debate is best way to sneak up on the truth.

PS - As an FYI Copyblogger is my favorite site for blogging tips and ideas.

Blog years and dog years have a lot in common. They go fast, take constant care and feeding, and bring companionship and warmth into your life. Dogs force you to get up and move your body, blogs force you to get out and work your mind.

Social media are reshaping the business landscape and I've never found a better way of learning something than just wading in and messing with it. Under the tutelage of my blogfather Richard Carey and the folks at Justia I launched this site last May.

So what have I learned?

1. It works. 11,528 people interacting with my ideas has helped my business immensely (see stats below). As Jim Bower over at Numdeon is fond of saying - "it isn't about eyeballs, it is about eyeballs connected to brains." Half of my clients come from web referrals and the trend-line is up. It is far better than advertising and its "free." At April's rate there will be 24,000+ visits in the coming year.

2. Writing for a public sharpens your thinking in all contexts. Personally this has been the most rewarding part of blogging. It has forced me to organize and articulate my thoughts on key issues that affect our industry. It is far different than internal corporate writing, blog articles stand or fall on their own merits.

3. Focus = Traction. To succeed a blog has to have a clearly defined audience. I always try to bring my posts back to what the topic means for the companies that serve the education market. If you search on "education business consultant" or "K12 education marketing consultant" this blog is #1 or #2 in Google. That happens because Google rewards sustained focus and original content.

4. Networking is part of the job. Blogging is all about a conversation - know who your peers are and engage with them. Read about related industries and bring the insight back to ours. I use my blog roundups to share things other bloggers are saying that I think are relevant. Some of the most popular posts on the site also came from guest bloggers (thanks Randy, NT, and Paul).

5. Mix up depth and breadth to keep it interesting. People like the depth a 4-5 part series can bring to a topic, but for everyday browsing they also like short pieces that engage their interest.

6. Make it personal. This medium is all about being genuine. Speak your mind, share your story, and be real. Every few months I post what I'm listening to on my iPod - and I get a lot of positive feedback about it even though it isn't on topic. I also enjoy putting in human interest pieces and humor - but that is also part of my personality.

7. Key words matter - a lot. Learning to write blog posts is an art - and doing it well without it looking artificially structured to parse in a search engine isn't always easy. Knowing what words to use and where to use them in your articles is a skill you need to master.

8. Links and visual cues bring a post alive. Having quality links to support your arguments (or provide alternative viewpoints) adds credibility. Picking a graphic that amplifies the message also helps a lot. There are tons of free or near free images out there today so you have no excuse.

9. Good tools make it easier. I use Ecto to draft posts - it allows me to work off-line and is seamlessly integrated with iPhoto and Amazon. Movable Type isn't as user friendly as I'd like it to be - Ecto makes up for that and then some.

10. Patience. Gaining traction takes time - there is no short cut around this. It takes about 20 posts before the search engines take you seriously - with the 10's of thousands of new blogs started every day this is just common sense. But even after you have build a corpus of posts it takes time for people to discover you and become regulars. Don't be discouraged early on.

My thanks go out to those who helped me get started on this path and to the many readers who have provided feedback and encouragement as this adventure has unfolded.

The most popular posts from the last year:

1. Education Publishing - A Wave of Change Sweeps Over the Industry (multi part series)
2. Information Overload (how to build materials for the 21st century - multi-part series)
3. Teachers and the Internet - Five Things You Should Know
4. Lifelong Learning - Retired Construction Worker Deciphers Stonehenge Construction
5. Where is the Wii for Education?
6. Textbooks vs. Education Technology - Clash of Paradigms
7. Target Market Selection
8. The Future of Education Publishing - Panel Report from the Education Industry Investment Forum
9. Ethics Video Game - Using Frankenstein to Teach Ethics?
10. Are We Producing New Education Entrepreneurs

Some stats from the last year.

11,528 visits - This does not include RSS. Not having Feedburner set up from the get go was a mistake. We are putting it in place now.

19,740 page views. This might seem low, but since the landing page is the blog this makes sense. Most people go there, read the latest posts, and move on. Again - without Feedburner this the low end.

1:38 minutes is the average time on the site. This means 314 hours of people interacting with my ideas (or 40 eight hour days). This is a highly leveraged use of my time. Consider these alternatives

• At 7 minutes prep and talk time per call (assuming you got through on the first call) this would take 168 eight hour days.
• To get this kind of engagement via direct mail with a 1.5% response rate it would take 768,000 mail pieces.
• To reach this number of people by speaking at conferences with an average room count of 100 it would take 115 presentations.
• You get the idea.
• Actual time on task - 2-3 hours a week (or 16 eight hour days a year).

95% of readers were on a high speed connection. I no longer worry about putting video and other high bandwidth links in my posts. I'm toying with doing some v-casts as well.

79% of users were on Windows, 20% on Macs 1 % on Linux. 7 People came in on a phone and 1 came from a Playstation (WTF?). Why the oversampling of Macs? It probably has something to do with Education being the target market.

5% of users were on 800x600 screens. It looks like we could have comfortably designed for a minimum of 1024x768 and hit 95% of the users.

Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look.

While you are there bookmark the blog or better yet drop it into your RSS reader - on a regular basis senior people from the publishing industry will be writing about the business.

Advertising isn't working as well as it used to. In an age of information overload people are tuning out distractions as a matter of survival.

Here are two visuals to help make this point.

1. It is far more important to be found when someone is looking these days than to be visible when they are just scanning. To visualize this look at the graphic below

When someone is scanning (watching TV, reading a magazine, walking a tradeshow floor) it is relatively easy to fall into their visual field. When they are seeking (googling, reading blogs, using RSS) you have to be right on point for them to see you.

2. Don't believe me - take this 20 second test.

As people adapt to the world of information overload they will scan less and seek more and advertising will become increasingly difficult to justify.

As usual Seth Godin sums it up nicely:

"Media rule of thumb: if people wouldn't miss your ads/content/noise if it went away, you should find somehting else to sell to advertisers. Not because it is ethically wrong to annoy people just because you can, but because in a world with a bazillion channels, people just ignore you if they choose to."

Marketing departments have tried to control brand identity with years of research and oceans of ink (and pixels). But the concept that a company can control its brand is a myth and it always has been. At best a company can contribute to its brand identity, but in reality that identity is created by the market. That identity includes not just the nice polished stories pumped out by Marketing, but all the crappy and in between stuff that happens when product meets customer.

This topic was brought home in a lively discussion at the Austin Social Media Club breakfast this morning. Bryan Person led a conversation about how to lead people to Web 2.0 who are outside of the technology bubble. One theme that surfaced was marketers' reluctance to give up controlling the message. That "control" is a total conceit on their part.

With Web 2.0 customers can talk to each other about the things they always talked about, but now Marketers can see it. This is hugely disorienting for a tribe that thought they "controlled" and "managed" their brand identity. But all of us as consumers are gravitating to this new way of interacting with each other. For companies that can adapt it will result in much more authentic conversations with their customers. We need more focus on contribution and less on control.

Later in the day Andy Pass from Classroom 2.0 and I were talking and he stated that the challenge is that companies don't need to develop an on-line voice they need to develop on-line ears. They know how to shout, but they are terrible at listening. Until you can stop shouting and start conversing you are not in tune with where customers are going today.

The net effect of 80 years of broadcast culture has been the development finely honed BS Meters among the general population. When you read your marketing copy does your own BS Meter peg into the brown zone? Lighten up, get real, and learn to listen more.

Hype alert - Web 2.0 Marketing is a paradigm shift but only a portion of the market is using it today. In Part 1 I argued that market trends should be pushing you to use social networking, blogs, wikis, and the other tools of Web 2.0 in your marketing mix. Given the uneven adoption of these tools in your customer base you will be managing a mix of the old and new for quite some time. So think of it as expanding your paradigm.

Before we go on I want to add to what I said in Part 1. There is one additional reason for doing all this that is specific to the education market. Most teachers are isolated in their classrooms - they yearn to have their voice heard and to be part of a larger community. The asynchronous nature of most social media are ideal for meeting this need. It is one of the reasons there are so many education groups already on Ning.

So what does this “paradigm expansion kit” look like? Here are five ways of thinking like a Web 2.0 Marketer that you can add to your toolkit.

Idea #1 - You can’t do this on your own. The value from Web 2.0 is other people talking about your products. For people to do this they need a context where they are comfortable interjecting their voice. Many companies believe that they can build their own walled garden so that they can control it. But customers want Switzerland - a neutral zone where they can get useful information - not company controlled spin. Your first goal is to become a trusted player in the larger on-line community. Join and support the networks that are out there and blend your network into it rather than trying to go it alone.

Idea #2 - Web 2.0 Marketing is a process not an event. You manage it the way you would any other process - with a sustained commitment to continuous improvement. This breaks the paradigm of a lot of event driven marketing. You don’t manage your personal relationships this way (“I sent my wife an email last week - don’t need to worry about talking to her for a while....”) and you can’t build on-line relationships with customers this way either. This is a budgeting challenge because you have to dedicate resources to managing your on-line presence. My suggestion is to look at some of the most expensive items in your budget (trade shows, advertising, etc.) and dial back on them as you dial up on Web 2.0 activities. Smaller newer companies should start here and add the other elements as they can afford them.

Idea #3 - It is about authentic conversations. When you engage on-line speak as yourself. This is not a new and improved way to push your spin into the world. People will sniff out on-line phonies and expose them. Ridicule is not going to help your brand identity - particularly if it shows up in Google. A positive example of how to do this is Randy’s Journal - the blog of Boeing’s CMO. He speaks from a personal rather than corporate voice. Marketers are welcome to the conversation if you add value and contribute expertise. Oh - and don’t spam bloggers with press releases - it just annoys them. Make comments on their articles or phone them up and talk.

Idea #4 - Web 2.0 should be embedded in your products. Seth Godin in his latest tract - "Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?" - makes the point that most companies try to graft Web 2.0 approaches onto existing products and services with predictably disappointing results. Consider this - on-line gamers spend 1 hour reading about the game on companion websites for every 2 hours playing. That is because the companion sites have been encouraged to develop as part of the games’ ecosystems. Imagine what your customers would be saying about your curriculum content if students were showing similar levels of engagement. For more ideas on how to do this see my article 10 Ways to Build Instructional Products for 21st Century Skills.

Idea #5 - Set your expectations correctly. Social media sites are hugely popular as measured in total traffic, but fewer than 1% of your customers will probably be contributing participants. If you expect everyone to comment and contribute you are going to be disappointed. You are trying to reach the influencers who will help spread the word. Overhyping the participation rate in order to get a project funded is a time honored tradition at many education publishers - but in this case since actual participation is so easy to measure it will ultimately undermine your project.

Some of this probably looks like common sense, some of it may look a little weird. My strong suggestion is that in order to understand how to use these tools for your company you need to first use them for yourself. Next in this series we’ll look at some ways you can get started with social media.

Part 1 - Web 2.0 Education Marketing

Education marketers have been slow to adopt wikis, blogs, social networks, and virtual worlds. There are valid reasons for this (see below), but it is time for us as an industry to begin embracing these tools. In this series I'm going to explore the industry context, the gestalt, and some concrete ideas to help you get started down this path.

Over the past year I have been asking people "what is the first thing you do in Amazon after you make sure you have the product you were seeking?" The almost universal answer is that people scroll down to look at the user generated comments. This is the power of Web 2.0 at work - what your peers have to say on a subject is far more important than anything a company might say.

There are two primary reasons the education industry should be employing Web 2.0 tools:

1. The education industry is going through huge change driven in large part by technology substituting for older ways of doing things. In this time of transition staying close to your customers and their shifting priorities is going to be a requirement. Web 2.0 tools are some of the most effective ways to create a real two-way dialog with customers - what I have elsewhere called Socratic Marketing.

2. Our customers are becoming accustomed to using these tools everywhere else in their lives. If we don't keep pace we run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

There are some good examples of people working with these tools like here, here, and here. But they tend to still be the exception not the rule.

So if these clear needs are out there why haven't we seen more of this in education? There are three reasons that come to mind:

1. A key factor is the concentration of decision making at the district level that we have seen in the past few years due to NCLB. Without a need to reach broad numbers of teachers companies simply see this approach as a lower priority.

2. Some of it has to do with the inherent conservatism of education and the spillover of that mindset into the companies that serve them.

3. Finally, most of those setting budgets and priorities at the larger education companies are digital immigrants to the world of Web 2.0 - it is unfamiliar, vaguely threatening, and will require learning new ways of thinking and acting. It is easier to keep doing what you are already doing.

Of these three reasons only the first is a valid "marketing" reason not to do it. The other two are just excuses for holding back. If your product truly touches just a few people at the district office then this may not be the path for you (on the other hand with 14,000+ districts it may still make sense). But if your products are in the classroom or serving a broad network of people across a district then you should begin to think about how you can tap into the power of that network.

Next in this series - 5 core concepts for marketers for working in a Web 2.0 world.

Busking teaches fundamental business concepts. As a young man I saw the world by tossing open my banjo case and belting out a few tunes. I played in Boston, Montreal, Tokyo, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seville, New Orleans, and Amsterdam to name just a few spots.

Along the way I absorbed some interesting lessons that have helped me be more effective in the business world.

1 - Make people feel something. People respond to musicians who make an emotional investment in their performance. Laugh, sigh, get that ache in your voice, and share your joy.

• Address your customer's unstated social needs. Will your product make them look better? Will they feel more professional using it? Is it cool?
• Build products and deliver services that go beyond the basic spec. Make your product something people are proud to have around.
• Never check your soul at the door of the workplace. If you have to - find another job

2 - Respect your audience by mastering your craft. The goal of practice is to work so hard that performance looks effortless. When you play well the audience will reward you, not the guy who knows three chords and two songs.

• If you can afford the time, get things right on a small scale before you try to master the universe. Build practice time into your business plans.
• Read, go back to school, fill the gaps in your knowledge in any way that you can. Make opportunities to practice your craft in service work.
• Learn the black art of setting and making a budget.
• Cross train - invest in your career by doing a variety of jobs.

3 - Play well with others. Street scenes are like market niches, you run into the same people every day. Most afternoons in Paris I would trade off sets with a Peruvian pipe flute band in an alcove down in the Metro. It had heavenly acoustics (that I still dream of) and we both made tons of money.

• Get involved with your industry associations. They tackle problems no individual business can.
• Never speak ill of your competition - just out-hustle them. Customers don't want to know about your rivalries - they want a solution.
• Network to find others with complimentary skills and bring them into deals. Most (not all) will do the same for you in return, expanding your deal flow.
• Be loyal to people. Look after each other because the company won't.

4 - No one wants to be the first customer. Buskers always start by throwing $3 their own change into the case.

• Give a new product away to the first two customers. Factor this in to your business model as an expense. If it makes you feel better make them pay for training.
• Donate your time to get started in something new. My first consulting client several years ago paid me a straight commission for business development work. I was able to show up at conferences legitimately representing a client which made it a lot easier to find other clients. That first deal was lousy for me, the other deals were the gravy.

5 - Don't rush to judgement, sometimes it is just a bad day. There are days when the weather is wrong, you are there at the wrong time, your fly is down, or people are just being ornery.

• Give ideas and people more than one chance to make an impression.
• Be leery of a single focus group - if you get the same result from several then you are on the right track.
• Bring job candidates back for multiple interviews and make sure they talk to a variety of people.

6 - Have fun. The purpose of busking is to pay for your adventures. Go see the ruins, sleep in, enjoy a long coffee, stay out late, and enjoy your trip. In the business world this means:

• Take risks that move you towards your personal goals.
• Remember that you work to support your life, not the other way around.
• Have a laugh or two in meetings.
• Take your dog and your office down to the coffee shop by the lake.

Information Overload is a serious problem in our culture today. People are frustrated and overwhelmed by the fire hose of information they are trying to absorb. But, as the American Philosopher Ann Landers was fond of saying:

"No one can take advantage of you without your permission."

In summary:

• Personally we need to take control of our information diet. We need to discard our old paradigms and seek information only when we need it.
• As publishers we need to create products that equip students to be effective in the conversation economy.
• Professionally we need our customer's permission to have a long-term conversation with them.

I've pulled together some resources that you can tap if you are interested in learning more about this topic.

Blogs

43 Folders - Great site for productivity - a fan of David Allen's work.

Unclutterer - Great daily tips on how to unclutter your life. We can all use this one.

Seth Godin - Marketing maven and a great blog with short punchy articles. It never takes more than a minute to read.

David Armano - An incredibly crisp and visual thinker on marketing. He coined the phrase "conversation economy."

Tim Ferriss - Author of The 4 Hour Workweek - tips, downloads, and worksheets.

Pick The Brain - Ideas for how to be more effective. Another David Allen acolyte.

Marc Andreeson - Wit and wisdom from the founder of Netscape.

Steve Pavlina - Personal Productivity guru. He has some odd ideas but they are worth reading even if it only stretches your thinking.

Books

"Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity" (David Allen)

"The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich" (Timothy Ferriss)

"Power Sleep : The Revolutionary Program That Prepares Your Mind for Peak Performance" (James B. Maas, David J. Axelrod)

"The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More" (Chris Anderson)

"Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything" (Don Tapscott, Anthony D. Williams)

This was an interesting series of articles to write and it represents a summary of what I've learned over the past couple of years. I hope that you got some insights to help you personally as well as some ideas that you can use professionally.

Information Overload Series

Part 1 - It’s all in your head - really
Part 2 - A cure for “a poverty of attention”
Part 3 - 10 Ways to Build Instructional Products For 21st Century Skills
Part 4 - 10 Ideas to For Marketing & Selling In An Age of Infinite Input
Summary - Closing Thoughts and Resources

Marketing and selling in the era of infinite input feels like howling into a gale. The average urban dweller is subject to 4,000 ads a day, 1 every 14 seconds. The only sane defense is to tune it all out, to turn it into wallpaper for your world.

Earlier in this series on Information Overload we looked at our broken paradigms of information management, a new personal productivity paradigm, and 10 ways to build instructional products for today's learners. Today we look at what this means for those of us in the persuasive professions. The suggestions here are not just for education publishers - they are what I consider best practices for all marketers.

The fundamental problem is that the signal to noise ratio has gotten completely out of whack. I have an email account that I've been using for several years. Spammers have gotten their grubby little mitts on it and I now get over 3,000 spam emails a week at this address. I have great filtering - less than 100 make through so that isn't the problem. The issue is that I no longer bother looking for false positives - I just delete it all and hope/pray that if it is important the person will find another way to reach me.

So what is a legitimate marketeer to do? Here are some suggestions for how to rethink your marketing and sales mix so that you can stop shouting and start conversing with your customers. Fundamentally it is about what I call Socratic Marketing.

I'm assuming you have read at least the first installment in the series, what is below will make more sense if you have.

Marketing & Sales Concepts For The Conversation Economy

1 - Be remarkable - You should have a winning promise and make sure that everyone in your company understands their role in making it real. Do something worthy of sharing with other people and customers will find you. Seth Godin writes consistently and persuasively on this topic. This is the bedrock of the new approach.

2 - Stop shouting. You can't have a conversation when you are screaming. Beyond the obvious (opt-in lists) you need to look at every communication and ask whether it is relevant, important, and actionable for the target audience. Make sure you hit all three. With the time you save from implementing the ideas in Part 2 listen more. With social media, blogs, and wikis It is so much easier to do today that you have no excuse.

3- Respect people's time. Less is more. Here is a great example.

4 - Be there when the customer is ready. Post information on your web site that maps to different stages of the sales cycle. Initially have general comparison charts that help prospects form a mental map of the market. As they get closer to buying have the detailed specs on hand. After they have purchased send at least one message with tips on how to get the most out of the product.

5 - Relax Grasshopper - This new information economy is not kind to control freaks. The goal is to help your passionate users find ways of communicating with their peers - what they have to say is going carry a lot more water than anything you say. That said, if you open up communications with customers you lose control of some of the content and some bad stuff is going to crop up. This is really an opportunity to engage in conversation. Would you rather they complained behind your back where you can't respond? In the end the benefits of openness far outweigh the negatives.

6 - Make it personal - In a sea of corporate dreck people respond to the genuine and personal. Boeing's Chief Marketing Officer has a blog, Randy's Journal. This forces a more honest interchange - he is speaking from his own perspective. It allows him to talk about issues that he has expertise on (e.g. the fabled 7 extra inches of cabin width on the Airbus translates into a pencil width for each seat). People expect you to have a perspective but they also respect the expertise you bring to their information gathering.

7 - Stir up some channel conflict. In an era when all the rules are changing and no one knows for sure what is going to work you had better get comfortable with channel conflict - you have to try a lot of new things to find what breaks through. Put a few products in on-line teacher communities like We Are Teachers [client], allow customers to build custom bundles on your website, or publish something just for the on-line world.

8 - Don't hide information with the hope that you are going to "force" the start of a sales conversation. You will just frustrate customers who are used to instantly finding what they need. In fact - go the opposite direction and constantly fine tune your site to increase your pageviews and make sure that the navigation is as intuitive as possible for the largest number of users. Don't manage your website as a job protection scheme for your sales reps - you don't do them any favors by pissing prospects off early in the process. If it is a complicated sale the customer will want to talk to a Rep.

9 - Worry more about communicating with your customers than about your competitors. Don't kid yourselves that the competition won't get access to information if you hide it - after all you get your hands on all the competitor's info - don't you? In a world where information flows so easily it will find its way out whether you want it to or not. The only person you will really inconvenience is a prospect.

10 - Its the Web Baby - Optimize. Take a hard look at your web site and the various search strategies customers use to find you. Are you at the top of the search results every time? Do your writers know how to load up searchable text in your titles, tags, and the first paragraph on each page? Is your copy tight, punchy, and hyperlinked where needed? When a customer gets to a product page is there more there than a part number and a price? Measure your results on everything and move resources towards what is most effective, even if it seems counterintuitive.

We hope these ideas help you get started on the road to building a robust conversation with your customers. To find the budget I suggest you downgrade trade shows and invest the savings in on-line presence. Most organizations continue to invest far too much in trade shows out of inertia. Think of the new stuff as building a 24/7/365 trade show booth if that makes you feel better.

If you have tried some of these ideas or have additional tips to pass along comment away!

Information Overload Series

Part 1 - It’s all in your head - really
Part 2 - A cure for “a poverty of attention”
Part 3 - 10 Ways to Build Instructional Products For 21st Century Skills
Part 4 - 10 Ideas to For Marketing & Selling In An Age of Infinite Input
Summary - Closing Thoughts and Resources

Sundance/Newbridge deserves kudos for their catalog cover contest. It embodies some of the elements of the Web 2.0 aesthetic in a traditional marketing vehicle and shows that you don't have to reinvent the world to harness the power of user generated content.

I found this because the Austin American Statesman reported the winner in this morning's paper (sorry no link on their site). If you think that won't do much for them from a marketing standpoint you would be correct. Yes, it was very cool to see local 6th Grade Nicolette T. win for her work Metamorphosis and I hope local educators will think warmly of Sundance this fall.

But, the real impact is that over 400 other kids submitted entries and their schools were all paying attention to this. Those kids had fun (we assume), enaged their creative faculties, and got their competitive juices going. Sundance got some great ideas from their most important constituency, the kids who learn from their materials. Everyone gets to look at a cool cover for the next 6 months. It was a win all around.

Too often we sit in meetings where an important topic is hotly debated (cover design anyone....). Usually the simplest and best answer to all the hot air is actually a question "Have we asked our customers about this?"

For a related article please visit Web 2.0 Tradeshow Booth at NECC.

Anyway, big GRATZ to Nicolette. Texas rules!

E-Mail Marketing to Educators: What`s Working was put on Heller QED on October 12th. I had the honor of speaking about eMail marketing in a web 2.0 world.

My core message was that eMail 2.0 is activity driven, not demographics driven.

A person does something, and the company responds in a personal, authentic, and timely manner with a communication. It has the same give and take as a conversation. The focus is engaging people early in the decision making cycle with useful information, not at the end with a last ditch special offer.

As a follow up to the call I've assembed the following list of resources for attendees. I've also included my presentation for those who were unable to make the call.

Presentation

My presentation (PDF) Download file from today with speaker's notes included.

Articles

A couple of really good articles that lay out the case for the conversation economy.

The Conversation Economy - Business Week

Internet Marketing Mind Map - very cool

Books

These are all books that will build background knowledge and understanding of the larger trends that are at work today in the marketplace.

Wikinomics

The Long Tail

The Wisdom of Crowds

Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing The Way Businesses Talk With Customers

Small is the New Big

Business Blogs

All of these blogs touch regularly on issues related to marketing in a web 2.0 world.

Logic + Emotion

Seth Godin

The Long Tail

Bokardo Social Web Design

Copyblogger

Marketing and Strategy Innovation Blog

Influential Marketing Blog

Education Business Blog

Educator Blogs

These blogs won't teach you about email or marketing - but they will show you the kinds of conversations educators are having in general. These are some of the best but there are thousands out there to sample from.

eLearnspace

Weblogg-Ed

Not So Distant Future

Classroom 2.0

Metrics Tools

These are all tools that will help you measure traffic and activity on web sites. Some are free, some are not.

Quantcast

Comscore

Hitwise

Compete.com

Google Analytics

Service Providers and Autoresponders

These are companies and products that can help you set up your response trees, manage the process, and track performance metrics.

Skylist

Intellicontact

Aweber

Send Studio

Eloqua

You can also build a lot of this directly into your website if you choose to.

Teaching metaphors, the role of school in society, bad (i.e. wrong) press for video games, glitz vs. content, banned books, racism in games, phishing games, and monkeys at the keyboard. All featured on this weeks roundup!

Teachings of a Zen Gardener over at PickTheBrain is a beautiful analogy for what teachers do.

The always excellent Will Richardson posted “School as Node” over at Weblogg-Ed. The original post he references talked about revolution but Will argues that we need to engage in a conscious act of evolution. This is a nice follow on to the articles just published here by Paul Schumann.

Unconscionable. Really. Newspaper Seriously Errs Reporting Videogame Study at Educational Games Research. We deserve a better press than this - oh wait we have the web now.

Logic+Emotion published When Presentation Eclipses Story. Textbook publishers are on the horns of a dilemma here - pretty covers and whizzy free-with-order stuff sells books - but at the heart of it we should remember that it is about kids understanding the content. Its also a good reminder for anyone doing a presentation.

Sad but true. Starting to notice - the only people school firewalls keep away from resources are the teachers - students know of every proxy on the planet - from the Classroom 2.0 blog. Related to my entry Disfunction Junction

Love this list - Banned Books: Have you read one? from Clarksville, TN Online. I'm a piker - I've only read 18 of them. But this gives me some ideas..

On the edugaming front at the The Forge · Straight From Central Casting is a disturbing reflection on the role of racism when creating "the bad guys" in game design. Think this doesn't matter for the real world? Head over to DailyKos to read a hilarious send up of anti-muslim stereotyping.

Play this game! Over at PC World Phishing Game Warns Users highlights a great educational game that everyone should play. I consider myself fairly savvy and I only got about 75% right the first time through.

Hat tip to Paul Schumann - this is a really cool video of a crowd game using technology. Look at the intensity - we want that in our classrooms!

Must see video - Chimp vs. Pacman.

Can you build a target market for taco fine art photography? Bobby Henderson is trying it in an attempt to answer the question

"Is there a niche so small that it will fail because it's so small?"

Think about this in the context of my article on selecting a target market. In the age of social media this is no longer a joke (ok - only a bit of one).

When was the last time your organization made some really hard choices about focusing on very specific customers? Are you willing to say "no" to be more focused? Are you #1 in the niche you have defined or are you trying to be something to everyone and limping along?

Burger King and the Simpsons producers have teamed up in a brilliant marketing campaign - you can upload a photo of yourself (or victim) and create a Simpsonized image.

Thats me to the left there, d'oh.

If you need to waste 15 minutes today I recommend this activity!

Its got humor (a rotating donut for the processing icon), personalization, and active involvement. The details are right too - obvious links to the promotional partners, a good solid URL, easy export, etc. Someone thought this through carefully and had a lot of fun with it at the same time. Not an easy trick to pull off.

When was the last time we saw humor used well in education marketing? Playful is engaging, but we are all caught up on meeting standards and aligning to correlations. Something to think about as we all head back to school.

Picking a target market is one of the most fundamental decisions a sales and marketing team makes. Your target market determines what products you build, where you promote them, and how you talk about them. Socratic Marketing in the budding conversation economy demands a rigorous approach to this question as part of your Big M Marketing approach..

Picking a good target market is a balancing act. The smaller your market the higher your odds of success in targeting specific needs. However, that has to be weighed against the financial objectives of the business. You can’t get so small that you define yourself out of a job! Think of this as two forces that are inversely proportionate. Your goal is to find the right balance point.

So why do so many companies get this wrong? They define markets based on granfalloons, a concept coined by Kurt Vonnegut which means "a proud and meaningless association of human beings." For example, have you seen segmentation schemes based on geography, district size, or % of free and reduced lunch students? If you are engaging in data driven selling and/or socratic marketing these are good starting points, but they are not the most powerful way to define a market.

A far more effective approach is to define your market based on how customers think about their problems. After all, in a conversation economy their problems are the topic you will discuss with them. “Fine,” you say, “but I can’t look inside their head to see how they think, I can’t measure that to determine if the market is big enough.” Fair enough, but if they really believe something their actions will speak louder than words. You can observe where they spend money and time to tease out what their priorities are.

On a sail there are dozens of tiny strings, tell-tales, woven into the fabric that show how the wind is moving across the face of the sail. This allows the sailors to trim the sail for optimum performance. As a metaphor this works perfectly for the concept we are after here. We can’t see how our customers think, but we can observe decisions they have already made to get a sense of it.

For example, at Chancery when we released Open District in the mid 90s we decided that only large districts would be open to purchasing the product so we didn’t even bother setting up pricing for districts with fewer than 10,000 students. Almost immediately however our Sales team was telling us that smaller customers were interested. When we dug a little deeper we found that it was far more important how customers saw the role of data in decision making than how big they were. The tell-tale we used to determine this was whether or not they had hired a Database Administrator (DBA) to manage their IT systems. This allowed us to be far more precise about our targeting while expanding our footprint at the same time.

On the curriculum side you might have products that appeal to constructivists or to advocates of guided reading. For the former you might look to see if they are using any products from members of the Constructivist Consortium. For the latter it might be relevant if they have maintained a librarian on staff or if they have a bookroom. Your products might require a fair amount of teacher training - look to see how they are allocating their budgets in this area. If you are selling technology you might key in on whether or not they have installed electronic whiteboards.

The goal is to find a handful of tell-tales that marketing and sales can use to focus their efforts. Marketing can use it for list selection (only give us Districts with a DBA) and Sales can use it to qualify prospects (check - they have whiteboards).

In the end the way you define your target market should be unique to your business but it should go much deeper than superficial indicators. Your goal is find a group of customers who are thinking about their challenges in ways that make them particularly open to the solution that you are offering.

Blackboard's booth at NECC in Atlanta was one of the best examples I've seen recently of Socratic Marketing. They asked teachers to write a brief paragraph on how they intended to use a free trial of the product in their classrooms. Then they took a polaroid of them and pasted several hundred of them all over the booth. In an inversion of current trends they created a real version of a virtual community. It was fun and interesting to browse the cards and it made a strong visual statement.

Blackboard started a real dialog and also provided the foundation for a series of ongoing conversations. Shana Glenzer, Sr. K-12 Marketing Manager at Blackboard, told me that they were getting ideas for uses of the product that they hadn't thought of, like connecting pregnant teens to classroom resources. They also intend to use the ideas in conversations with senior administrators at districts - "6 of your teachers visited with us and here are some of the ideas they had..."

It was arresting in its simplicity and represented a validation of the products in the words of end users. It also showed that great marketing doesn't have to cost a lot.

Brilliant.

The National Education Computing Conference NECC put on by ISTE in Atlanta this week was the most active education tradeshow I've seen since the dot com bubble burst in 2000. Ironically the 2000 show was in Atlanta, the Big Peach bookended a lull in the ed tech market that looks like it is over. 18,000+ attendees thronged the World Congress Center in Atlanta for SRO sessions and a mobbed show floor.

The International Reading Association Conference which was held just six weeks ago was sleepy backwater compared to NECC. Even with valid reasons for IRA having a slow year the difference in these shows is so dramatic that one has to conclude that educators are voting with their time and money on the best tools for teaching today.

To bring this point home look at the two pictures below. The one on the left is from NECC and the one on the right is from IRA. Both were taken at the height of show floor activity. At IRA one could have set up pins and bowled in the aisles. At NECC one had to move at herd speed to navigate the hall.

One of the surprises of the show given the level of activity was how little revolutionary new technology was on display. Ed Tech enthusiasts have been a sour lot of late - saying that they are are not hearing or seeing anything new at conferences they attend.

But perhaps a maturing set of tools and practices explains why we are seeing this burst of activity. We've reached the far side of the chasm. The tools are not the edgy unsupported pre-beta versions of the early 90's that only a hard core techie could love. The solutions on display are robust, stable, and well supported with professional development and other resources.

We've moved from the visionary early adopters, across the chasm, and are now reaching the pragmatists in the early majority.

Hopefully this groundswell will continue to build over the coming years. If my hypothesis is correct the future of ed-tech will look like the green section of the curve below.

For those who need a quick refresher on Crossing the Chasm here is the Wikipedia link.

Few education companies do marketing well. Many are good at sales and distribution, others are product driven and innovative, but very few are able to drive high growth through world class marketing.

What does great marketing look like?

* Reps have so many leads they triage them.
* Customers recommend you to all their friends.
* Annual growth consistently beats your peers - your market share is growing.

There are two core questions that constitute what I call “Big M Marketing.”

1. What promise are you making to the market?
2. How are you aligning the entire business to fulfill the promise?

The first question drives the strategic vision and the second drives the tactical execution. Yin and yang - you have to embrace both.

It really is this simple - but simplicity is difficult for most companies. You must put the time in up front to get the promise nailed down and then you have to sustain your focus on it long enough for the market to believe you.

So how can you get away from empty sloganeering, sales support masquerading as marketing (you need both), and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey marcom? Here is a brief overview of one way to start doing Big M Marketing.

Continue reading "What is Marketing?" »

Web 2.0 is providing another nudge to the conversation economy. As advertising becomes less relevant the power of engaging your customers in a real dialog increases. Listening should be a core competency at the corporate level.

A productive conversation is Socratic, it focuses more on good questions than on staking out positions, and both parties have to be open to learning something. It is a relatively quiet affair, based on mutual respect. It helps the participants distinguish between facts and opinions and arrive a reasoned judgment.

But most marketers are having trouble letting go of dictating a message to the market. We have been taught that the louder we shout and more often we shout the more likely we are to get results. But what happens when everyone is shouting as loud as they can? White noise.

A brilliant article and a subversive video got me thinking along these lines recently. David Armano makes the case for the conversation economy in this article. At the same time the Bring the Love Back video is a hilarious take on the consumer breaking up with advertising.

In a nutshell consumers/buyers want to be heard. If you are still talking at your customers instead of with them you are missing a great opportunity to earn new business.

Follow for a taxonomy of the kinds of questions marketers can ask to get the conversation going….

Continue reading "Socratic Marketing – Real Dialog = Real Results" »

TORONTO – From the vendor perspective the big story out of IRA this year is attendance which is less than half of the number that attended last year. Final numbers are not available yet but rumors on the exhibit floor ranged from 5,000 to 7,500 and at times it felt like 0. Prior years have ranged from 17,000 to over 20,000. It is a shame because there are some exciting new products out this year from companies large and small.

No one had a definitive explanation for the drop off. It can’t be budgets, because Toronto isn’t any more expensive than Chicago was last year. In fact it has some significant bargains ($2 seats to the Bluejays anyone?). Perhaps it was just too difficult politically to send someone to a foreign country on a school budget. Maybe people were scared away by having to have a passport.

Whatever the cause it seems pretty clear that in the post 9/11 world American educators are not as able or as willing to embrace the International aspect of the organization. This is tragic because it is happening at precisely the time that the rest of the world is growing ever closer.

It is always interesting to see how vendors react to dead shows. IRA did have the decency to notify vendors in advance that the numbers were way down (huge props to them for doing this). Several companies took advantage of this and scaled back their presence, but surprisingly some didn’t. One company went full tilt and reportedly had 125 people there. Thats a quick $250,000. Others, reacting more nimbly and realizing they couldn’t change their floor space, had 80x80 booths that were equipped and staffed as if they were 20x20s.

The real winners were the large companies who were on an off year in the space lottery. Being buried in the back of the hall wasn’t such a big deal – particularly if it meant you had prime space next year in Atlanta.

In my mind this is just one more bit of proof that companies should scale back their presence at these large shows to the minimum needed to save face. Yes – you have to be there and if you are going to be there your presence should entertain and engage. But,
you can reach more people every few days on a well constructed website as you can once a year in an 80x80 booth.

Has your company ever honed a promotional activity only to see it lose its potency right as you perfect it? The frustrating fact is that promotional activities have a shelf life.

This happens because the more effective you get at targeting a market the faster you tap the folks who respond to a given approach. A company I worked at had honed direct mail to a fine art over 3 years – our response rates consistently topped 2%. All of a sudden our response rates were down to 1%. We knew our stuff was good – it had worked in the past. But over those 3 years we had reached most of the folks who responded to mail.

What can you do when this happens? Follow me to the flip for 3 suggestions.

Continue reading "The Shelf Life of Promotional Activities" »

Most companies switch their marketing messaging too frequently and undermine the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns as a result. The power of repetition is one of the foundations of world-class marketing.

So if it is a bad idea – why do so many companies do it? Find three reasons on the flip – see if any of them fit your company.

Continue reading "Don't Change Your Brand Promise Too Soon" »