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Getting your customers to talk

• Posted by Danny Sullivan
• October 05, 2007
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By Danny Sullivan

In today’s noisy technology markets, the media invariably seek ways to separate the most useful stories from the rest. As a result, the ability to deliver a customer perspective has become a significant barrier to entry for getting quality vendor ink.

And this presents one of the greatest challenges for technology vendors in virtually every sector. Time and again I encounter companies that claim to deliver tremendous business value to their customers, but that their customers aren’t willing to have this story told in public. The main reason for this lack of enthusiasm is often simply that the customer in question does not have anything to gain from doing so.

Unfortunately, there is no magic password that you can whisper in the ear of your customer to transform them into the glowing PR resource you want them to be (and if there were, you can be assured I wouldn’t be revealing it here!). But there is a different way of approaching the issue that may help improve the value of what you manage to get out of them.

The key point is to try not to approach the issue holistically. Many vendors will try to include a line in the contract with a new customer stating that they agree to do “joint public relations activities” or something similar. This is still a good tactic, as it at least raises the issue, but it is invariably one of the first things crossed out by the customer upon review.

And who can blame them. “Public relations activities” could cover a whole multitude of sins, and might mean having them be involved in everything from news releases and glossy case studies to tradeshows and speaking slots.

Sure, if you can get them to agree to all of the above, then great, but getting their agreement to sign-off on a four page case study, or to provide a quote in a news release, can still often be a tedious and sometimes fruitless exercise.

The reality of what is required from customers is much more simple. The media are usually far more interested to have access to information that is not publicly available. So, without wishing to detract from their value in other areas like marketing and sales, polished case studies and quotes in news releases are often of little real use to your PR program.

The most useful participation of all is a simple agreement to take a few calls from some relevant media over a certain period of time. With this arrow in your PR firm’s quiver, they will be able to achieve more than with any pre-approved quote or material.

Achieving this agreement is all about the management of your customer. Finding the right person to raise the question with, and broaching it in the right way. The idea of taking a phone call from an individual can feel a lot less significant than signing off on a news release that will be distributed to the world at large.

And involve your PR firm in the process. They are (hopefully) experts in the field and should be able to help both you and your customer understand what is required. Working together with our clients, we regularly craft other creative ways to circumvent the approvals barriers customers usually erect in this area.

Ultimately, unless you are one of those very lucky companies whose customers want to shout about the great things they are doing with technology, it’s never going to be easy to get your customers to talk. But you can at least focus on getting the most valuable participation out of them when they do.

Danny Sullivan

Posted in:

• Public and media relations

From consulting service to software product

• Posted by Francis Moran
• October 03, 2007
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By Francis Moran

My colleague Danny last week highlighted the worthy achievement of Scotland’s Graham Technology in winning Best Product at Call Centre Expo for its customer interaction platform ciboodle. The award capped a year of focused marketing since ciboodle was first launched.

But the achievement was much more than a year in the making. Like many software product companies, Graham Technology had its genesis in consulting; in its case, first with big systems integration projects starting more than 20 years ago, and then with the development of business process-based contact centre solutions. But at some point, Graham Technology had to begin a conscious process of evolution from consultancy to software product company. When we first started talking with the company, it was still fully conscious that “we can do anything for anyone,” but it was committed to this new path that would see it eschew one-off bespoke application development in favour of seizing a specific market opportunity and seeking to be a global leader in its chosen space.

It’s an evolution we have seen many companies wrestle with, and at which some of them balk. It can’t be easy, after all, to leave the comfort of an assured revenue stream where your big computer brains are fully engaged on new and exciting client challenges every day. As a guy who’s been a consultant for his entire PR career, I completely understand the lure of this challenging dynamic.

But it’s a tough model to scale, and that’s why so many software consulting companies, recognising that they may have something that looks like a product, decide to go for it. Sort of.

Unlike Graham Technology and other software companies whose new products we have successfully launched into global markets, too many only sort of go for it. And I think it has to be one or the other. It’s not that a consulting company constitutes an inherently inferior business model; it’s just that I think you have to decide which you’re going to be — service, or product.

Bottom line: Graham Technology unreservedly made the leap, and is reaping the rewards for having done so.

Francis Moran

Posted in:

• Marketing strategy
• Technology marketing

Joost for everyone!

• Posted by Linda Forrest
• October 02, 2007
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By Linda Forrest

Yesterday, Joost, a peer-to-peer streaming TV service, launched its public beta and the blogosphere is aflutter with comments – some positive, some negative but most fall into the wait and see category. Web-savvy folks have been beta testing this system for quite some time but now, it’s open to everyone.

As with most new content aggregators on the Internet, only time will tell as to whether it succeeds or not, but I’m inclined to agree with Smithick, a commenter on the New York Times’s Bits blog, “Content is king. People will put up with a crappy experience if they can get the content that they’re looking for. Joost will only take off when you can find a majority of topical, popular content on the site.”

Such is not the case at the moment and unless the site quickly supplies users with the content that they want, I’m afraid it will suffer the fate of other once promising P2P sites that couldn’t find a way to rationalize high-quality content with worldwide licensing and copyright issues. YouTube‘s popularity is due in large part to the illegal uploading of copyrighted content, though the Google powers-that-be have quelled the practice considerably since acquiring the site last year.

The idea of allowing users to access the television programming that they want to see, when and where they want to see it remains, for all intents and purposes, elusive at the moment, but with so many vying technologies, PVRs, myriad set-top boxes and P2P TV sites, it’s sure to be resolved in the near future. Stay tuned!

Linda Forrest

Posted in:

• Social media

Buzzwords to know: Bacn

• Posted by Jill Pyle
• October 01, 2007
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By Jill Pyle

Spam has been invading my inbox for years. Even with filters and blacklists, it always finds a way in. At the best of times it’s annoying, at the worst it hinders productivity.

Since registering for services like Facebook, Twitter, Aeroplan and Google news alerts, my spam count has been trumped by bacn. Bacn (pronounced “bacon”) is a new buzzword used to describe the pesky email notifications you’ve opted to receive but don’t want to read right now. Typical bacn messages include “Bob is now following you on Twitter!”, “Exclusive discount off our U.S. fares” and “Jane wants Sushi Meetups too!” If you don’t make a habit of instantly deleting bacn, it often remains unread and can quickly pollute your inbox.

The worst thing about bacn is that you’ve agreed or asked to receive it. It’s self-inflicted aggravation. Luckily, bacn can be stopped if you take the time to adjust your account settings and notification preferences. Unfortunately, this process can sometimes be more annoying than receiving bacn.

When you register for a new service, pay close attention to your notification preferences. Stop bacn before it starts.

Jill Pyle

Posted in:

• Random thoughts
• Social media

Reflections on the i-LIMB Hand

• Posted by Linda Forrest
• September 28, 2007
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By Linda Forrest

Sometimes, it can be challenging to draw the connection between technological advancements and one’s personal life. Such is definitely not the case with a recent media launch that we did for a new client.

Earlier this year, inmedia had the incredible experience of being responsible for the worldwide media launch of Touch Bionics’ i-LIMB Hand, the world’s first commercially available bionic hand. I completely understand the life-changing potential of this product because of personal experience.

My wonderful mother has always been able to do anything she put her mind to and has never let the fact that she was born with an abnormal left hand slow her down. Throughout my life, if people would ask about what happened to her hand, I would wonder why they were asking as she is so adept and resourceful that I would often forget that she had anything different about her hand.

At birth, her hand was misshapen due to a birth defect. As it was the early 1940s and medical science wasn’t nearly where it is today, the doctors made the poor decision to give her hand massive doses of radiation, resulting in severe radiation burns. Her parents were left with the choice between amputation and a “hook” to act as her hand or doctors could attempt to save her hand and lower arm with groundbreaking plastic surgery techniques developed on burn victims from WW2. They opted for the latter.

The many plastic surgeries and surgeons’ best efforts resulted in a patchwork of various skin grafts and immobile fingers that by her early 60s have poor circulation and have caused her near constant pain. At the onset of these problems, one of my mother’s great fears was that she would have to have her hand amputated. In fact, her situation had worsened in the past year and she had her baby finger amputated in February.

As I started to learn about Touch Bionics and the i-LIMB Hand, I kept her informed, sent her to the company’s web site and our whole family marveled at the technology and what it means not only to the prosthetics, science and medical communities at large and to amputees, but to us personally.

Although she does not currently have a requirement for the i-LIMB Hand, this development has truly made her feel more comfortable with the idea that should she need the remainder of her hand amputated at some point, there is a viable option for a replacement.

Near the launch, she said to me, “This is all so fantastic. I no longer need to be afraid I’ll lose my left hand as FINALLY a really amazing option is available. I’ve only waited my whole life for this!!!”

Thank you to Touch Bionics for the piece of mind that you’ve given my family and others like us. Your work is truly making an important difference.

Linda Forrest

Posted in:

• Public and media relations
• Technology marketing