Business Social Networking

There was an entertaining article last month in that staid publication "The Economist" about online social  networks changing the way people communicate.  Maybe working in Silicon Valley has me in the proverbial "bubble" but it took them this long to figure it out / write about it?  Any company that doesn't "get" social networking from a business as well as societal perspective is missing out on one of the most inexpensive as well as important marketing mediums there is.

By combining website marketing, SEO, product focused blogs, corporate tweets (Twitter), face book followers (see Jet Blue   http://facebook.com/JetBlue),  LinkedIn, delicious etc., companies are communicating with their clients in a way that wasn't conceivable a decade ago.  They can push out content as well as receive feedback faster than ever before.

Savvy marketers are pulling out all the stops to ensure that their corporate brand is properly marketed in all the different social mediums and ensuring they are maximizing their online presence as well as gaining very useful market research.  They're also aware that bad press in this new world is a challenge and some of the more with companies actually search for bad press to jump on customer problems before they go viral.  For example, if a Comcast cable subscriber "tweets" or "yelps" that Comcast Sucks with an addressable issue their searching for it and have a customer service representative contact them with the hope that their next tweet / yelp talks about them solving the problem.

The bottom line is that marketing is evolving at hyper speed and the companies that get it and embrace social networking will benefit their bottom lines.  I bet they will be writing about this time period in the business schools and history books in the not too distant future as a transformational era that completely changed traditional marketing as we knew it just five short years ago.

International Market Entry Strategy Planning

International marketing strategy planning is one of the most over looked parts of a successful export strategy.  It is absolutely critical to the success of any international expansion but is only as strong as the effort put into it as well as the talent of the individuals creating it.

The first and most critical step is commitment.  By that I mean is your company committed to an export strategy rather than trying to get a quick hit to unload extra product or help during a downturn?  Many companies will not make money in the first year or two of a new market entry and they need to be prepared for it, ready to ride out the bumps as part of a longer term strategy.  With commitment comes the next most important stage which is planning.

Developing an international marketing plan starts with the basics.  What is your company selling?  Who is buying it in your current market and how does it compare to your current in country competitors?  This is often skipped but I believe it is a critical first step.  If you don't know what you do better, cheaper or faster than your competitors in your current environment why, would you think you could do it in another, that you know even less about?  I also think if you're currently working in a small market and if you're not one of the leaders there with your product / service you're probably not ready for a larger market like the United States - which is often the goal of many aspiring exporters.

Now that we understand what we do well in our current environment, its time to look at the chosen market a company thinks they can export into.  My next blog will revolve around the next step, what a market entry analysis should include and how to go about developing one.

Run & Hide in a Downturn or Hit the Gas Selectively?

So much doom & gloom has been written about how to run a business in a recession I thought I would pose a contrarian perspective to see what other bloggers / readers were thinking.

Everyone in Silicon Valley is now familiar with the “PowerPoint” that Sequoia Capital www.sequoiacap.com sent out last month. They were the buzz of Silicon Valley when they invited their portfolio entrepreneurs & CEOs into a meeting and greeted them with an image of a tombstone that said “RIP Good Times”. The premise of the meeting was to cut costs immediately and figure out how to survive and successfully emerge on the other side of what they predicted would be a long downturn. From a historical perspective they also had a similar all hands on deck meeting before the last downturn.

Sequoia’s speakers (including Uber-investor Mike Moritz) told the Financial Times www.ft.com/home/us “It’s pretty clear that demand is going to soften across the board for every company - it doesn’t matter if you’re selling to consumers or companies.” They went through each functional area and showed their investees how they could/should cut costs to decrease their burn rate and increase their survivability in an extended down turn.

Now, as a fellow entrepreneur I’m very familiar with the need to extend your burn rate and believe that some cost cutting is in order in downturns. However, I take a different tact than many when it comes to marketing. When most companies and people are burying their heads in the sand I believe it’s the best time to get going and create some head wind for your company! Your marketing / advertising efforts will get more bang for your buck because there is less competition for head space. Your dollars will go farther and marketing / advertising is cheaper because they’re happy for any new business they can get. Last, this is the time to gain market share on your competitors and strike while they're scared and sitting around wondering what to do because “the sky is falling”, we better not do anything and just wait it out. Your more experienced Angels/VC's get that and the ones who do usually get the best valuations / long term deals because they kept at it during a downturn but became more focused and used their marketing budget proactively. However, we all know it is much easier to be a sheep than strike out (especially in Australia w/the tall Popeye syndrome!) and hit the gas judiciously.To my mind, more entrepreneurs should take the contrarian Warren Buffet approach and when all the sheep are headed to the pens go out in the field and look at this time as an opportunity to take advantage of, rather than to run scared and miss out on an opportunity to position your company for the coming up turn!

Check out the American Marketing Associations survey www.marketingpower.com for more information on this topic.