I'm going to bring David Meerman Scott Week to a close on the HubSpot Blog with a list of my favorite resources from David. All of these are free, no registration required, and they are all very helpful for marketers.
Don't forget, you can see David Meerman Scott speak live at the Inbound Marketing Summit on September 8 in Cambridge, MA.
- The The New Rules of Viral Marketing ebook. This is a great summary of some of the best viral marketing techniques, with great examples of successful campaigns, and observations on why they worked.
- The Gobbledygook Manifesto will help you write press releases and other content using word people actually understand and have meaning, rather than being another "world class leading solution". if you want to check and see if your press release has any Gobbledygook, use Press Release Grader.
- The New Rules of PR is a classic in the ebook world. This is the ebook that has been downloaded by hundreds of thousands of people and was critical in the marketing strategy for David's most successful book to date (his new book, Tuned In, just launched). It only takes a few minutes to read it, and you'll learn something.
- Online Media Room Best Practices is a useful summary of some of the things you can do to make your website media room more appealing to buyers and media alike.
- 8 Tips to Make Your YouTube Video Go Viral is a great article with come simple tips on how to create a video that has a better chance of goign viral and some tips on how to take a good video and make it more likely it will go viral.
- You Must Unlearn What You Have Learned tells you why most things you know about marketing and writing no longer apply.
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For those that follow this blog, you know we're big fans of David Meerman Scott. We think his best-selling book "New Rules of Marketing and PR" is a must-read for all modern marketing mavens.
David recently co-authored a new book:
Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs
I had the opportunity to review an early draft of the book several months ago (I read it on my last trip to Mumbai, India). It was riveting. And, I'm not just saying that because David is an advisor to HubSpot (which he is) or because he mentioned HubSpot in the book (which he did -- thanks David!) but because the book is insightful and useful. And, it addresses a question I have struggled with for years: How do you increase your chances of building a runaway success of a business?
Seems I'm not the only one that liked the book. "Tuned In" climbed the charts to #1 last week and is still in the Amazon Top 100 bestsellers. Not in the business category, but overall. That's impressive.
So, my advice is to go read "Tuned In".
In the meantime, I have captured some of the key points from the book that I found particularly useful. Apologies if some of them don't make the most sense out of context (did the best I could while still being reasonably pithy).
Building A "Tuned In" Business
1. The tuned in company constantly listens, observes, and understands the problems that buyers are willing to pay money to solve.
2. From the makers of the market-leading "Victor" brand of mouse-trap on the failure of a new "better mouse-trap" they launched to beat the Victor: "We should have spent more time researching housewives, and less time researching mice."
3. Focusing on your competitors is a tit-for-tat game that rarely produces a market leader.
4. Your existing customers represent a small percentage of your opportunity, they have different market problems than non-customers.
5. Existing customers frame their view of your future based on incremental improvements to their past experiences.
6. Your opinion, although interesting, is irrelevant.
7. Don't assume that because you're an expert in a market or industry you know more than your buyers about how your product can solve their problems.
8. Communicate directly with your potential customers. It's hard to get "tuned in" if there's someone in the middle.
9. Most businesses try to buy their way in with expensive advertising or beg their way in by convincing media to write about them. Be different. Say something useful and interesting.
10. You don't have to be the first to identify a market opportunity. The founders of Intuit (makers of Quicken) joke about having had the 47th mover advantage.
11. Semantics can make a difference. Disney does not build rides, it "creates adventures". It calls employees "cast members". They wear "costumes", not uniforms. They serve "guests", not customers.
12. Nothing important happens in the office; the answer you're looking for is outside your building. Go talk to potential buyers.
13. Don't use your salespeople for conducting buyer interviews. Great sales people are great at sales -- not necessarily figuring out what will sell.
14. Absent any real data, conference rooms are just full of opinions.
15. Data trumps opinion every time.
16. Ask yourself: Is the problem you are solving urgent? Is it pervasive in the market? Are buyers willing to pay to have this problem solved?
17. It is too easy to build marketing programs around what the organization wants to say rather than what the buyer wants to hear.
18. Tuned in companies think like a publisher and create compelling online content.
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You can see David Meerman Scott speak live at the Inbound Marketing Summit on September 8 in Cambridge, MA.
If you've read the book or have comments on some of the above points, please leave a comment and extend the conversation.
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David Meerman Scott is a marketing guru, widely read marketing blogger, and writer of great marketing books like The New Rules of Marketing & PR and his latest book, Tuned In.
You can see David Meerman Scott speak live at the Inbound Marketing Summit on September 8 in Cambridge, MA.
Device you would never give up?
My reading glasses. My biggest luxury is hardcover books. I buy more than 100 a year.
Your favorite software application?
None. I can't imagine using the words "favorite" and "software" in the same sentence.
Blog you read most frequently?
Alas, my own. After nearly 500 blog posts, I use my blog as a way to recall and repurpose old ideas.
Social media tool you actually use?
YouTube.
Favorite business book(s)?
Made to Stick
Favorite newspaper(s)?
The local English-language newspaper in whatever world city I happen to be in.
Person that inspires you?
Akebono (the first foreign born Sumo grand champion) and Laird Hamilton (big wave surfing pioneer).
Who was your best manager? Why?
Doug Weil, who was my manager when I was Asia Marketing Director for Knight-Ridder. Because he trusted me.
Your first "real" job?
During high school I worked in a cheese shop. At one time I could identify over 200 cheeses by sight and smell.
Where do you do your best thinking?
In the surf.
What do you most value in employees/colleagues?
No fear of failure.
What you'd like to be the world's best at?
Playing blues harmonica.
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Aaron Ross, CEO of PebbleStorm, blogger at ColdCalling 2.0 and the guy who started the inside sales team at Salesforce.com, asked me to write a guest blog post on his blog about "How to Generate a Steady Flow of Inbound Sales Leads".
In the article, I listed the inbound marketing techniques that are critical to attract, capture and nurture prospects using a company's website and online marketing activities.
Here's the list of activities I discussed in order of their ability to increase high quality and a high quantity of leads.
- Referrals & Brand Searches
- Free Tools/Free Trials
- Organic Search Engine Optimization
- Blogging
- Email Newsletters
- Webinars
- PPC
- Site and Email Newsletter Sponsorships
- Social Media
Go over to his blog to read the full article with a lot of details on why I put things in this order.
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In celebration of David Meerman Scott speaking live at the Inbound Marketing Summit on September 8 in Cambridge, MA, we're going to dedicate a whole week of content on the HubSpot Blog to David and his ideas.
Today, I am going to write about some of the key ideas from his last book New Rules of Marketing & PR (his newest book, Tuned In, just launched - more about that later this week)
The Old Rules: Buy your way in with interruption advertising or Beg your way in with PR.
Before the Internet, most marketing communications was based upon the principle that media was controlled by a small number of companies, and there were two ways to use media to reach consumers and businesses.
First, you could buy advertising to try to interrupt people from what they were doing to pay attention to your message. This was the age of the 30-second spot, the print ad, the billboard, etc. Hire expensive creative resources, buy expensive advertising placements, and hope people liked your message and bought your product.
Big companies and big brands had the money to do this pretty well, and they took advantage of that. All the ad campaigns you remember - "Have a Coke and a Smile", the Absolut Vodka print ads, Marlboro Man, etc. were born of the Old Rules age.
Second, you could beg your way into the media with PR. If you pitch hard enough and often enough, you might just get the media to say something about your company and your products. The public relations industry flourished by helping companies break into the tightly controlled media outlets since it was the only way to reach consumers.
The New Rules: Publish your way in with blogs, videos, viral content, and more.
After the Internet, the cost of producing, publishing and distributing media of all types became a lot cheaper. Not 30% cheaper, but maybe 99% cheaper. Consumers turn to search engines as a primary resource of information. What does this mean? It means you don't need the media anymore. It means you don't need to buy advertising. People ignore advertising anyways. They fast forward through it on their TiVo, their eyes skip over ads in newspapers. It also means that you can start your own newspaper (aka blog) online in a couple hours for free. You can start your own TV station for free on YouTube and other places. Why buy advertising when you can own the content? Why use PR to beg your way into media when you can publish your own and write whatever you want whenever you want?
We've been big believers in the New Rules of Marketing & PR, since even before the book came out. We have learned a lot from David and his perspective - he does a fabulous job bringing a lot of ideas together into a neat and understandable format, and he is a great and inspiring speaker and writer.
At HubSpot, we started blogging before we had a product to sell - we've written over 250 articles so far and have thousands of subscribers. We build free tools that spread virally like Website Grader (over 350,000 websites graded so far) and Press Release Grader (thousands of press releases graded in the first few weeks). We create videos and share them on YouTube. We have a HubSpot page on Facebook with over 550 fans. We host free monthly marketing webinars. We formed the Pro Marketers Group on LinkedIn, now with almost 5,000 members.
Basically, we follow David Meerman Scott's New Rules of Marketing using as many techniques of Inbound Marketing as we can. This is one of the reasons why we want to bring David's ideas to as many people as possible - they are inspiring, and they work. So, come join HubSpot and David Meerman Scott at the Inbound Marketing Summit. If you are a marketer, I promise you will learn a lot.
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