If you’re looking for from-the-trenches B2B marketing strategies and tactics that work, you’ll want to check out what two marketing gurus from Service-Now.com have to share.

Tuesday night in San Diego, two marketing superstars from 4-year old startup Service-now.com delivered an in-depth, insightful view of a business and marketing success story.

Matt French, Brian Surritt, Marketing Director, and Rhett Glauser, 
Communications Manager, at the the only enterprise service desk (ITSM) via SaaS (Software-as a-service)  help-desk company, shared killer marketing insights.

The program title was “Achieving Leading B-to-B Brand Awareness On a Shoestring Budget” but their tactics/strategies have resulted in mouth-watering business growth and customer engagement.  The Service-Now.com approach makes other ‘branding’ strategies look wimpy by comparison.

It doesn’t hurt that Service-Now is loved by its customer base (F1000 to Global 2000 companies) and has tons of loyal fans that spread the love via word of mouth.  The big takeaway for me was how smart Service-Now’s (small) marketing team (we had half of them in the room) has been about integrating traditional marketing, social media and word of mouth. They stay in touch with analysts, the press and since “Our clients really want to see us grow…” as Rhett said, they really leverage word of mouth.

Results? According to San Diego Business Journal on February 13, 2009: “Service-now.com, an information technology support company in Solana Beach, said it has generated $20 million in revenues in fiscal year 2009, which ends July 1, following a record first half.”

Here are some of Service-Now.com’s marketing strategies:

Let their raving fan customers speak for them. Customers regularly join the company’s webinars as guest speakers and participate on panels at trade shows.  Word of mouth marketing doesn’t get any better than that.  The company captures the testimonials for re-use.

Event marketing. The company puts on 6-7 events per month.  Webinars attract 300-500 attendees.  They never miss the IT industry key trade events and leverage them for all they can.  Service-Now.com’s customer fans stand in their trade show booth, pull in passers-by and rave about the service.

Regional Industry events: They are finding more success at Regional events with the tight economy and lower travel budgets (Have you looked for regional industry events to participate in and find new customers?)

Leverage Partners’ databases. They use partners’ databases to promote webinars.  Could be how attendance numbers are so enviable. (Think about your partners—can you create a cross-event-promotion partnership?)

Social Media & Web 2.0. Service-Now offers customers and prospects a number of ways to participate with the company, and each other online.  Transparency is their mantra;  they require user, web visitor registration in very few places.  Here is a list of all Service-Now.com employees on Twitter.  CEO-Founder Fred Luddy included.  The company was nominated for a Groundswell Award from Forrester.

Wiki: all product documentation and info about software update is provided here.

Community: 7,000 of Service-Now.com’s 36,000 users participate in their online community.  Forums are here Groups here and there are several employees blogging.

On demand Demos: here http://www.service-now.com/what-we-do/demo/
Free instant access to the software—no registration required.

Customer Advisory Board:  Members are listed here from companies like Qualcomm, UBS, Staples.

Training Videos are here.  These are in big demand by customers—even though the web-based software is very intuitive.

Thanks to the sponsorship of Southern California BMA (Business Marketing Assn.) and local HTMA (High-Tech Marketing Alliance) San Diego for the event.

P.S.  Service-Now.com is looking for a web-designer, developer to hire among

P. P. S.  Update 5-26-09: I got Brian Surritt’s name wrong!  That’s what happens when you forget to ask for a business card–Brian is a great presenter.

If you’re a small business owner looking for examples of how companies have used social media to increase customer participation, loyalty and sales, Sony is a good example.  Even if they are ginormous.  MarketingProfs (premium article) did a nice job of profiling this Sony social media marketing case study early this year.

Sony began their social networking, social media sites in 2003 when online customer communities (and Web 2.0) were not the norm. (pre-YouTube)

They started out with the goal of not promoting Sony products but to educate and build interest and increase buyers by offering valuable content.  The kind of content camera/digital entertainment device lovers will return to over and over.  (You know—the kind of content all of us business owners aspire to create.)

Their first site launched in 2003, Sony 101 learning center, was purely informational.  It offered six free online courses about personal computing, general digital imaging, and home/personal entertainment.  Sony was hoping to convert customers interested in these topics and boost sales with the value added content—but without direct brand promotion.

Fast-forward to 2008:  they rename the site, “Backstage 101” and brand it as a Sony site.  They retain the informational, non-promotional content that’s worked so well since the start of the site.  Now 100 interactive courses and tutorials, as well as videos and articles are available.

Community Determines Content

Something for everyone.  Sony provides content for all levels of expertise—from beginners to industry experts—in the areas of personal computing, digital video, digital photography and home entertainment.  Topics are selected based on community feedback posted on forums and discussion boards, collected via surveys at the end of tutorials and from a couple of annual surveys.

According to Mildred Center, Sony’s director of Web Services, “Our content is shaped around what users need…something that benefits them personally… (for example) Cannon owners can get the same benefits.”

Sample of tutorials & article titles  in the digital video section:

• Simple Tips to Improve the Quality of Your Videos
• Shooting Home Video in Full HD (1920×1080)
• Videography Techniques for Family Videos
• Tell a Story with Video
• Improve the Sound Quality of Your Videos
• Shooting Techniques for Better Videos

Results

This is the best part.  Per MarketingProfs, “Year over year, in 2008 Backstage 101 experienced:
- 388% increase in the number of user engagements,
- 34% growth in member registration
- 31% increase in unique visits
- 179% more repeat visits
- The number of users claiming to have purchased a Sony electronics product increased to 36% Jan.-Jun. 2008, compared to 20% for Jan.-Jun. 2007
- Monthly sales on Sony web site continue to increase”

I know, I know—how can a small company achieve similar results?  Sheesh, Sony has an army of creative resources, budget and employees.

Well, dear reader, here is an example of a small(er) business putting their (smaller) resources into social media marketing efforts in order to build closer customer relationships online.

Mark Logic CEO Blog

Burns Engineering

Let me know if you agree or disagree that small business can build online customer communities, on well, small budgets.  How about Ning?

Q. What are you last thoughts about what you would suggest to other CEOs that are thinking about adopting social media, Web 2.0 strategies as a way of doing business?

A.  Join the wave and catch the momentum.  It’s happening – with or without us.  It is best to be part of the energy, as it can best advance your business, than watch from the sidelines.   Never forget that the Web 2.0 / Social Media activities are just one of many engagement efforts.  We must always speak many “languages”, the world listens in many ways.    Transparency and authenticity are highly enabled via Social Media.  Let it be.  It’s powerful.

Thanks so much, Jim.  We look forward to following Burns Engineering’s social media progress.

You can find the first part of this interview here and part 2 here.

Yesterday we began our interview (here) with Jim Burns, CEO of Burns Engineering, about how his small business decided to adopt Web 2.0 and social media in order to have rich conversations with their customers more easily.  Today we talk with Jim about Burns Engineering’s customers and how the company works to engage them in conversations.

Q.  Tell us about your customers.

A.    I get excited about the customers we serve.  What we do really makes a difference in peoples lives: from the safety of the tires on the car (Michelin) that we put our children into, to the medicines (Eli Lilly) we take to keep us healthy, the food (General Mills) we put on the table or the snow condition of the ski hill (Alta Ski Corporation) during our recreation time.

Our customers are engineers and quality and plant managers that look to our temperature measurement expertise to help create ways to drive efficiencies, productivity and safety through their manufacturing processes.   Some of our main industries are biopharma, energy and food & beverage.

Q. What are the top 5 questions your customers typically ask you?

A. The top 3 questions we hear are:
1)  What are the different ways I can install the sensor to get a good reading?

2)  What are the different designs for Surface temperature measurement?
3)   And the classic:  Price, lead-time and accuracy. (Accuracy of the sensor only)

The questions are generally focused on the sensor itself and the rudimentary assumptions that the sensor is just a sensor.  A few of the conversations will touch on some of the simple installation issues, but mostly very sensor proximate.

Then the next ones that usually come up are:
4)   How can I minimize my cost without buying a cheap sensor?
5)   How do I determine my measurement accuracy needs and then actually achieve them?

We prefer to look at the measurement in a more inclusive manner.  Covering the measurement planning details from the element to the readout or data collection device.  This begins to address cable and signal transmission topics, yet also the many other influences that affect accuracy and lifecycle costs.  It quickly becomes the value question rather than the commodity question…

This is a higher calling point of view.  So the way we offer answers and guidance must go beyond the phone call and email exchange…

Our objective is to share our TME (temperature-measurement expertise), as well as always be open to learn and dig into new challenges.  Burns answers these questions and strives to engage others in the conversations by sharing what we hear and learn through technical papers, trade shows, WebEx presentations, Wikipedia updates, the BEblog, Email campaigns, and connecting via Linked In and Twitter.

Our objective and mission is to attend to the needs of our users by providing temperature measurement solutions that are presented in the context of the users process, sensors that meet their needs rather than fit in our catalog, and provide confident measurements of their process.

It’s clear that the folks at Burns have a passion for helping their customers.  And that they are backing up that passion by adopting a new way of doing business.

Tomorrow, we’ll post Jim’s final comments about his Web 2.0 journey and suggestions to other CEOs considering taking the social media marketing plunge.

If you’re a CEO in manufacturing, engineering, or, well, a small to mid-sized business, you’ll want to dip into this Web 2.0 /social media (2-part) interview.  Find out from Jim Burns, the temperature expert CEO of Burns Engineering, the reasons he’s adopted social media, business blogging, Twitter and is building an online community for his customers and prospects.

Forbes and the new Razorfish Digital Report told us this week, “Yes, CEOs should Facebook and Twitter”.  And if you didn’t already know, (yes you heard it here first boys and girls),  “Web 2.0 is no longer just for teenagers.”

Q. Tell us about Burns Engineering.

A.  Burns Engineering will turn 50 this next year.  We manufacture temperature sensors for industry.

Our market position is based on “BE-ing” temperature-measurement experts (TME)… BE is the acronym for “Burns Engineering” of course.  We take that commitment seriously – inside and outside the organization.

Q. You’re using blogs and building an online community (social media, Web 2.0). Usually companies use these to create a closer relationship with customers, suppliers, etc. You seem to be unique in the temperature-measurement industry. What got you to take the social media approach (plunge)?

A.  At Burns Engineering we love BE-ing in conversation with existing customers and reaching out to new prospects.  So as a mature company, it’s a lot of fun to play with and the leverage the new media of Web 2.0 to keep these conversations alive. Burns has always been in rich, regular conversation with our customers about temperature-measurement:  Web 2.0 offers many new ways to deepen and broaden that conversation—in cost-efficient, effective, creative ways that all businesses need to do more of these days.

We’re not going to make CNN Headline News with our temperature-measurement expertise, but our specialized temperature-measurement solutions, products and services impact billions of production dollars in the industries we serve.

We got started in the Web 2.0 world after we partnered with an agency in Minneapolis – areyoufrank.com. They first helped us create our annual marketing plan based on our business objectives, then we looked to cost-effective technology we can leverage to implement our strategic plan and achieve the right online / offline marketing mix …

-    BEblog on WordPress: written by our product development and marketing leader … early product/service messages, lighter content, our hub of TME

-   Monthly BEblasts through Constant Contact: strong click-through rates since we often include at least half a dozen ways to interact with us: new articles, application notes, product info, community registration and of course, personal conversation opportunities with our sales team

-    BEpoll leveraging PollDaddy technology: gauges what our customers are thinking … then we share the results on our BEblog and continue the discussion there

-    Our online configurator: puts product creation in the hands of our customers, then we connect in person to make sure they’re getting the best solution possible

-    Starting our own Twitter TME community!

Check back tomorrow. We’ll continue our interview with Jim Burns, CEO of Burns Engineering.  If you’re in temperature measurement, check out Burns Engineering Booth 3205 at Interphex, New York City, March 17-19.

Update:

Part 2 of interview here

The last post of the interview is here.

As a small or midsize business owner or marketer, you can always use a good example of successful business-to-business social media marketing.  Small business CEOs tell me they find how-to social media marketing examples helpful.  In case you missed this insightful Cisco high-tech 2008 Web 2.0 product launch case study (like I did) here’s a quick review.

Cisco’s LaSandra Brill does an excellent job of explaining the social media launch of their Aggregation Edge Service Router in  “Building a Community with Social Media and Web 2.0 – A Cisco Product Launch Case Study” on her blog.

LaSandra shares the marketing program takeaways, best practices and what she wouldn’t do again in a comprehensive PowerPoint.

I like the key points La Sandra makes about ‘Marketing in a Web 2.0 World’ in her PowerPoint. My favs:

Create a relationship.  Not an event. Cisco strived for more than a successful product launch. They worked on building relationships with suspects, prospects and customers all along the way.

Build communities.  Not just websites. They worked to engage customers on many online sites.  They built a page on Facebook and other social networking sites popular with their target audience. (Facebook page, Cisco Support Group of Uber User Internet Addicts here.)

Two-way communication (not one-way).   The team’s goal was to engage customers.  Encourage them to share opinions, preferences and ask questions.  Engage customers in conversations.  They went way beyond the traditional press release, brochure and trade show.

Being everywhere online that your customers are. Publish and distribute your rich content online at as many sites as possible.  The product marketing team did the pick and shovel work to determine where the Aggregation Edge Service Router’s audience hangs out online.   They discovered some of their prospects were on Second Life, so Cisco was too.  (Who knew?)

Use web 2.0  to create a community that is passionate about your products. Cisco did. The marketers knew they needed rich content in more places than Cisco.com

Looks like they built the customer community in 3 months, prior to the product launch date.  While this is certainly a big company with a similar budget, the case includes lots of ideas that you can adapt for your small businesses or startup.    Next post, I’ll suggest social media marketing strategies and tactics that you can adopt from Cisco.

Here is LeSandra Brill’s webcast covering the Social Media Product Launch on her Marketing in a Web 2.0 World blog.

Enjoy! (Take notes… there will be a pop-quiz.)

Warrillow and Co. recently published research indicating that only 41% of small business owners have websites.  Are you surprised?    I sure was.

About that time I got a shout out from a nice PR person, Matt Langan, at WIX suggesting I might want to blog about WIX.  WIX is a tool that allows small businesses to build flash, template-free web sites and content.  So I asked if I could interview one of their small business owners.  Matt put me in contact with Terry Sullivan, co-owner of Texas Prime Catering.

Here is my interview (about 13 minutes) with Terry Sullivan.  Hear how he built a flash website in 10 hours, compares it to $9,000 flash websites and saved a ton of money.

Have you tried WIX?

Other Do-it-Yourself website tools?

A steady stream of laughter ensues when I tell my friends and small business clients I am attending Drupal Camp in Los Angeles this weekend.  (After I explain that Drupal is an open source type of software that creates fabulous web sites that let visitors become members and companies host tons of efficient/exciting activities.)

When I see the glazed eyes, I explain further.  Patiently.  That:

• Customer communities are the future of/will replace marketing as we know it for all businesses.  Especially small companies and startups.  (I say “will replace marketing as we know it” because not everyone is a believer like you and me.)
• The art of two-way, authentic customer conversations is now a business requirement.
• Small businesses have never had so many cost-effective options to reach their customers and prospects.

There are still tons of small business folks who believe that advertising, one-way corporate speak press releases and other traditional command-and-control marketing is the road to success.  Actually, the world has  changed in the last 24 months.  Most business people I speak to now know what a blog and social media are.  Maybe just not how to use them to reach buyers.  One step at a time.

I am so not a techie, but I have mastered become proficient at uploading posts and photos to Wordpress in recent months.  Heady with success, I march onward to further my so-called Web 2.0 skills.  I will always be a user, not a programmer.  So I want to understand a bit about Drupal.  Because Drupal creates elegant, functional web sites for customer communities.   Communities of like-minded people.  Communities or web sites where your customers become your members. The future.

See you in LA.

 Stories about how business blogs help small businesses reach out to customers, get known, attract buyers and grow their small companies are common.  Here is a story about how using a blog helped (saved) a small business owner when she was facing a financial crisis. Thanks to Todd Nelson, contributor to the Star Tribune newspaper for finding this gem of a small business blog success.

St. Paul-based Classic Cookie Company owner Katie Novotny felt she had to try everything when she realized her dire financial situation.   Early in March she posted a blog article about how her small downtown bakery was in need of a rapid stream of customers and cash in order to stay in business. Her blog entry stated the facts and appealed to her loyal customers and blog readers to get the word out—she needed lots of customers. Quickly. She also emailed the entry…

 to her friends and contacts. Todd Nelson’s Star Tribune article states in part:

“I’m like, OK, this is a last-ditch effort,” said Novotny… “I’m not going to go out and end up closing and not have tried everything. So I put it on my blog that we sort of had this emergency situation.”

She posted the blog item and e-mailed it to some friends.

From there, forwarded countless times, it took on a life of its own. By the next morning, in one instance, more than 3,400 subscribers to a weekly downtown electronic newsletter had the news of her plight in their in-boxes.”

The result was the power of Web 2.0 , the blog and the ‘people power’ of the community. Add to that, the power of networking.

The viral nature of the blog post resulted in other small business owners in Novotny’s community stepping up. An email reached a professional home organizer, Linda LaBarre of Linda LaBarre LLC,  who knew Novotny from a networking group. LaBarre, on her own, created and distributed fliers urging people to pay a visit to the Classic Cookie Co. and buy some yummy treats.

“We wanted to buy cookies and do whatever we could,” LaBarre said. “I was really happy that she found a way to keep the business going. It’s tough times, you know?”

According to Novotny, “Enough people responded that we were able to pay our bills, meet our deadlines and stay open. And we were also able to talk to our customers so they understood why we raised our prices the next week.”

This story reveals how powerful the Internet is as a tool. A tool to help a community to stay connected and come together when it really counts.   It also shows that transparency—being open, authentic and sharing facts about your company can be the difference between success and closing.

Do share your small business blog success stories with me.  I believe sharing real stories like this one are so valuable to all of us small business owners.  (Especially cases from a regional newspaper, that we might not all find.)

The complete article by Todd Nelson is here.  The Classic Cookie Company blog is here.
 

Welcome to Small Company Big Image’s new look and new home!

Thanks to Nate Whitehill and the team at Unique BlogDesigns!  I met them in November at BlogWorld Expo.  Nate is an Internet and Business Blogging Strategist. Also, a top blogger at Nate Whitehill dot com.  Nate launched his blog in January of 2007 and is now ranked number 1, 186 at Technorati.

I like working with Nate because he’s creative, and a great collaborator.  I felt like I was working with one of my partners.  Nate is unfailingly patient and goes so far above and beyond the call of duty.  I highly recommend Nate Whitehill and the entire Unique BlogDesigns team.

This marks Small Company Big Image’s return to Wordpress.  Actually, I think I may have set a record for the most-blog-moves-in-two-years. 

Small Company Big Image started out on Wordpress.com in early 2006.  (Here is the original blog.) I then moved the blog to TypePad in November 2006.  I just wasn’t clicking with Wordpress.com—never got the hang of the basics like adding widgets. Boy, finding someone who could move 10 months worth of posts from Wordpress.com to TypePad and preserve the links was quite a search.  I emailed and called (implored) several folks to try to hire someone.  (I think moving a blog is not a rewarding/lucrative/fun task.) oh, and I needed a design for the new TypePad blog also…

Anyway, I finally found the delightful and talented Sarah Lewis, owner of Blogging Expertise. Sarah came to my rescue when I called her from a list of TypePad experts provided on TypePad Support pages.  Lucky for me.  The blogosphere is an overwhelming place if you are a complete non-techie like me.

TypePad is a good blogging system.  Very easy to post and to set up TypeLists in the siderails, etc.  I had a cool design created by Sarah Lewis, ‘blogger extraordinaire’.  She is also very good to work with. 

The reason for my move back to Wordpress.org now is that I want to find a blogging/web presence system with the most content management flexibility.  I finally understand that Wordpress.org provides the full features of a (pricey) content management system (CMS)—on a small business budget like mine.

My search for a content management system that fit in my budget has been going on for a couple of years.  After working with three different web design firms here in San Diego County to find an affordable, user-friendly CMS, I gave up.  The most reasonably priced CMS I found were upwards of $5,000.  So, now I finally get it about the enormous, positive impact of open source applications like Wordpress.org.  A real boon for small businesses.

My goal is to take full advantage of the benefits of Web 2.0—updating content without relying on a programmer.  Will let you know if I’m able to fulfill my Web 2.0 dreams for some other projects with Wordpress.org.

I’d also welcome any feedback on the new design or ideas for content, topics.