What Marissa Mayer Really Means For Yahoo

Recently, Yahoo has been in the news in the wake of announcing that they have hired a new CEO ' Marissa Mayer, known as a public face and long-time employee of Google. You may well have forgotten all about Yahoo ' the New York Times reports Yahoo's net income fell 4.2% compared to the second quarter of 2011. Yahoo has had five CEOs in five years and hasn't really made a big splash since it failed to get purchased by Microsoft. SearchEngineLand reported on July 13th that according to the latest comScore report, Google has a market share in search of 66.8%. Bing is second at 15.6% and Yahoo fell from 13.4 to 13% in May.

Despite the clear continued downfall of Yahoo, once one of the darlings of the online world, the hiring of Marissa Mayer has not spawned much speculation on how the 37-year-old will save the company. Instead, the focus has been on the fact that a) she's a woman and b) she's pregnant (she's expecting her first child in October). Here is a small sampling of the articles that appeared last week.

Girl Power/Mommy Track Power with New Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer (LA Times)

Marissa Mayer: Yahoo's New CEO Reignites Working Mother Debate (Christian Science Monitor)

What Signal is Marissa Mayer Giving to Yahoo Employees (CNN ' this is mostly about her maternity leave)

If you're interested in the possible future of the struggling company, none of this information is particularly useful. The articles cited above focus almost exclusively on Mayer's gender and impending motherhood. Many articles we read don't even mention what she did during her 13-year tenure at Google.

The Business Scoop

If you sort through the articles dealing with babies, Mayer's extravagant wedding, and whether her maternity leave will be too short, too long, or just right, you are able to find a few interesting tidbits about what Mayer may bring to Yahoo, although Business Week notes she is keeping her specific plans rather quiet for now. We thought this note from the same Business Week article was rather interesting:

One area of opportunity is mobile, which none of the major tech powers has conquered the way Google dominates conventional Internet search ads. Consumers may have flocked to smartphones and tablets; advertisers haven't been won over'yet. That gives Mayer a plausible opening to leverage Yahoo's traditional strengths (e.g., Yahoo! Sports) and revive some of its once-hot properties (its photo-sharing site Flickr comes to mind).

Another business-centric article we found was from USA Today, which notes three primary challenges Mayer will face as Yahoo's CEO. Ultimately, Mayer needs to figure out Yahoo's brand, which is number two on USA Today's list. Yahoo is clearly not in a position to overtake Google's stranglehold on the search industry, and platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus have leapfrogged Yahoo's desire to make search more personal. Bing has already cozied up to Facebook with the 'social search' feature that shows friends' recommendations as you type searches into the search engine. Where does Yahoo fit? If Mayer can answer that question and run with a plan, she could be a real Silicon Valley hero and Yahoo could once again become a company to watch.

The Downside of Mayer's Hiring

Not everything is rosy about Marissa Mayer. In all of the excitement that Yahoo hired a woman 'even though' she was pregnant, it's easy to miss concerns that are being verbalized regarding Mayer's lack of leadership experience. This article from Forbes Magazine cites several sources that question Mayer's leadership experience. Some have lightly insinuated that Mayer got to where she was at Google because she once dated co-founder Larry Page. Then of course others simply point to the fact that Yahoo has failed to keep a CEO for any meaningful length of time for the last five years. Sometimes streaks are hard to break.

We will be watching Yahoo carefully to track how Mayer impacts the company. Very little, if any, of our focus will rest on her baby presents, names for her baby, how many days she takes for maternity leave, how many hours she may work during her maternity leave, or anything else related to her gender or parental status. We're interested in perpetually shifting world of the search engine world. That's enough to keep us busy. How about you?

Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/4036278304/ via Creative Commons

Limit Your Cleaning Service Options When Generating Janitorial Leads

Commercial cleaning services usually come with a wide range of specializations such as building maintenance, handyman services, and even pest control. Naturally this allows your business to serve an equally wide range of other industries. And with that wide range, you have a wider market from which you can gain janitorial leads.

However, not all those industries in turn will require all those services. Why is this significant? It's because you might still be marketing those services as part of your entire lead generation campaign. This is not only unnecessary but also counterproductive. You'd be surprised at how many more janitorial leads you can generate if you focus only what a prospect might require.

Think about it for a minute. If you were, for instance, looking for janitorial services with experience working with hotel and restaurants. One day, you get a call from two telemarketers each representing a janitorial service.

• Caller A ' This one tells you they've had experience working for hotels, restaurants, hospitals, factories, schools etc. They go on and list a number of skills available in their workforce.
• Caller B ' This one just simply says they've heard about your hotel business and say their janitorial company has the necessary skills to service hotels. Period.

Can you guess which one generates more commercial cleaning leads? Caller B. The reason? It's because this telemarketer just told you what you needed to know. You were not looking for someone who specialized in cleaning up different kinds of work places. You were only looking for a janitorial service provider who can clean and maintain your specific business.

Now this doesn't mean you, as the service provider, shouldn't diversify the skills of your workforce or your industry expertise. It simply means you should only market the services that correspond to your target businesses. Otherwise, you're just overloading your prospect with too much noise and too little value!

Marketing approaches that present too many options are more likely to induce decision anxiety among prospects. This excerpt from the Harvard Business Review talks about the same effect among consumers but it can also apply to B2B customers:

'Consumers spend far longer researching products today than they did in the past, and yet 70 percent don't make a decision one way or another about which brand to buy until the point of purchase. Even after making a purchase, one fifth of consumers continue to research the product to check if they made the right choice. Forty percent, meanwhile, admit to feeling anxious about the purchase decision they made. All this suggests that consumers are actually overwhelmed, unable to effectively process the flood of product information and choices.'

In fact, it doesn't even matter if you replace telemarketers here with email marketers. If you're approaching targeted prospects then your message should correspond to them only. Don't overload them with too much information and present too many cleaning service options. What's the point of specifying and differentiating your expertise in certain industries if you just send them all the same marketing message? When you approach a business, you'll get more interest if you tailor your message specifically to their needs. Gather more information about your prospects before making any direct marketing attempt. Keep the message short and simple (just like Caller B). Limiting your cleaning service options isn't about eliminating them but giving only the options that matter to your prospects.

Trusting Your Vision Implicitly Makes Your Work Better

My last post, 'Bad Reviews Suck. Why I Don't Care,' here on BadRedheadMedia.com seemed to have hit a nerve. The comments have been involving and brought up some amazing points. I encourage you to take a moment to read it here (and the San Francisco and Sacramento Book Review 'yay ' picked it up, where the comments got quite heated. Worth a visit.)

Jumping off from there, I'd like to cover something different but related today: trusting your own vision.

Here are two examples of trusting our vision'I'd love to hear your own.

1. When I was part of a large crit group (of published and unpublished writers) recently, I received some varied feedback on the nonfiction work I am currently writing (FYI it's my next book, titled Broken Pieces. The work is not humor like my previous books; it covers fear, desire, love, loss, and trust. I plan to release it in October.)

One of the members said that nobody would ever want to read 'such depressing stuff' and I should abandon my work, as it's 'not fit for publication.' Being that he's fairly successful, I took a second, third, fourth and fifth look at it. I even asked several other writers and editors for their opinion, and spoke with a Hollywood script doctor I know for feedback .

They all disagreed with him. Each one individually praised my work; the script doctor going so far as to say she wishes she could tap deep into her soul without fear and write this type of honest work.

Of course, I felt flattered and grilled them for what they didn't like; but it also made me wonder: is anyone ever right? Is there a right and wrong when it comes to creating art?

It would be easy to say that guy was a jerk and the others amazingly astute, but I didn't do either.

The argument right now is that self-published authors are releasing horrible crap into the poor, helpless creatures of the reading world. That we don't know what we don't know. That being turned down and rejected makes us better writers. That waiting years to be vetted by the traditional industry is still the only way to sell books.

Everyone has something to say. Here's my point: trust yourself. You created a vision for your work. Stick with it. Do the best you can at all times. Give yourself permission to write/create without anyone else's voice buzzing in your ear.

It took me awhile to get to this point. I've received some cruel, vitriolic reader reviews on both my books. And that's okay. I still keep writing.

(For the record, I work very closely with a professional editor, proofreader, graphic artist and formatter on each book. I want to be sure what I put out there is quality so when the criticism comes, it's not about mistakes; just that people think my writing sucks.)

As I said in my last post, not everyone will like my work. I take some satisfaction that professional reviewers like my books, and agents have contacted me since the release of both books wanting to work with me; but the fact is, I wrote my books without that feedback.

Point is, I haven't let the positive or negative feedback affect my work. I just keep doing what I'm doing because it's what I believe in.

Ultimately, trusting your own vision brings your work to light.

2. I have guest writers on my author blog, RachelintheOC.com every two weeks and I ask them to share an experience that shaped their lives. Many are hesitant to share at that level of honesty; others embrace the opportunity since they would never write that way on their own blogs/books. Some have revealed experiences they'd never spoken out loud before.

One friend thanked me for 'giving her the permission' she needed to write about a very serious topic. Her family knew nothing of it and it's the first time she'd ever admitted to having been abused in her past. She's now built up the courage to abandon her original book idea and write about her experiences instead.

This, above all, is why I'm honored: they could write about it all along. But giving them the forum to be honest with their vision allows them to write in a raw, honest way. I'm awed by their stories.

I often repeat my favorite writing quote from author Lorrie Moore: Write something you'd never show your mother or father. Many people cannot do that. It's challenging to write this way. To not worry about what others will think or say ' especially your own family.

But'it's also incredibly freeing. We're all grownups.

Me: I write about sex in my books. I have two kids. The jig is up.

My dad: How do you think you got here in the first place?

What are your thoughts on writing honestly and following your own vision? Please share your own experiences below.

If you haven't yet purchased either of my bestelling books, I hope you will check them out: A Walk In The Snark and Mancode: Exposed.

Curiosity Killed the Cat, But Risk Takes the Cake

Running your own business is, at its core, a risk. A huge one. A giant one. There's little safety net, and there's not much between your hard work and failure. But your risk was calculated, and you did your research and your planning. You put in the legwork and your risk paid off. In the same way that starting your business took risk, it's important to understand that growing your business requires risk as well.

One of the best places to take new risk is in your marketing plan. While the fallout in case of failure can be significant, see my post on marketing fails, taking a risk in your marketing can also be incredibly beneficial, just like this bit from the New York Times shows.

What's important to remember is that, like our mantra here at Content Equals Money, content marketing at the Fortune 500 level is no different than at the $200k a year level. It boils down to content and creativity ' not budget.

Let's look at some creative marketing ideas that turn out to be success stories.

Risk #1

I love this example from Mashable.com, from the University of Kentucky. UK is using the Instagram photos of students and other fans to create billboards for a statewide marketing campaign. It's a risk because you never know what kind of pictures you'll get, and while UK maintained editing capabilities, they never knew if they would get enough of the right kind of pictures.

It turns out they got plenty, and were able to create a great marketing campaign from a great, risky, starting point.

Risk #2

I'm a sucker for food. Actually, I'm a sucker for unhealthy food ' and like a lot of people one of my favorite foods is pizza. Rest assured though, the second risk we're looking at doesn't have as much to do with my stomach as it does with a marketing campaign that screams risk because of its blatant honesty.

This blog from a healthcare marketing company succinctly notes how Dominos engaged in a bold and risky marketing strategy of honest appraisals regarding their pizza.

Notice how open and honest Dominos was with their negative feedback. There's definitely a second marketing lesson in here, around using negative feedback in a positive way to turn your company around, but our focus is on a risky marketing campaign. I mean, think about it. It's incredibly risky to start out a marketing conversation with something similar to 'We're terrible, you've told us, and we understand. Here's how we're going to fix it.'

There's something very risky, yet very courageous about it as well ' And let's not forget very delicious! And for Dominos it's also very successful.

Risk #3

From Mashable in mid-2011, Jennifer Van Grove gives us a very detailed analysis of a risky marketing campaign by Ford Motor Company. For a brand like Ford, traditionally seen as conservative and perhaps even bland by many, a marketing campaign involving standup comics and hand puppets was certainly a gamble.

It's definitely a gentle walk on a thin limb to use sock puppets and comedians to promote a vehicle. Doug, the puppet in question, is a so-called irreverent centerpiece to a series of ads featuring the puppet and a traditional comedic straight man, which travel on various road trips and constantly update their various social media profiles.

A nice dual-effect here is how Ford is not only using a risky marketing campaign to increase brand awareness and brand positivity, but also using social media to supercharge their sales (Doug's Facebook page has almost 45,000 likes.)

Now it's true this isn't the most risky, but what Ford does well is setting goals and metrics for measuring their success, even if ventured from a moderate risk. If you look towards the bottom of Grove's post you'll see her citations of the goals and actual results of the campaign:

• Goal: 10,000 total Facebook fans
• 'Actual: 35,650 Facebook fans in four weeks
• Goal: 2.5 million YouTube video views
• 'Actual: 1.7 million views, or 67% of the goal with several months to go

More Stats:

• Facebook post views: 725,000
• Facebook 'likes' and comments: 7,019
• Facebook demographics: 70% of status updates reach Ford's target 18 ' 24 year-old audience
• Twitter followers: 1,000

Part of what makes this campaign risky for Ford is that rather than posting the ads on Ford.com or airing them on television, Ford posted them exclusively on YouTube. While YouTube is a proven medium, it's difficult to gauge if posting videos with prominent calls-to-action will make much difference. But Ford set their goals, and did it anyway.

Clearly Ford has set goals, engaged in a risky marketing campaign, and succeeded.

In these three examples you can see just a small sampling of risky strategies. What's key to learn here is that risk can pay off, as it has for all these campaigns. Bloomberg tells us that Dominos share price and sales increased, we've already seen the Ford metrics, and the UK campaign paid off in attractive and noticeable billboards.

What's also very important to note is that these companies were first in their risks. When engaging in a risky marketing campaign, it's easy to copycat another company, but that can easily lead to failure. In the era of everything social, your potentially-savvy marketing campaign can quickly change from 'social marketing success' to 'social mocking failure.'

Lucy Handley at Marketing Week, an online UK marketing publication, writes that risk matters. Indeed, it does. With a creative mind, and the necessary tools, you can easily duplicate these mass-market campaigns on a conservative and responsible budget that fits your company size.

It's an overused phrase, but in this case it's apt: Think Outside the Box. Get original, get creative. Use social media to your advantage, plan properly, and take your calculated risk. If you do, you never know; you might just be able to have your cake and eat it too.

But I can't end my post nearly as well as Handley can: 'I say here's to brands being more ballsy.'

Image Source

The Changing Role of Email Marketing [INFOGRAPHIC]

If you follow the latest in the B2B marketing world, you will have seen a fierce debate going around the digital space about whether email is dead. Marketing automation company Pardot recently conducted a survey, aiming to find out if there's any life left in good-old email' for B2B marketers, at least.

Well, it turns out there is. But what's a more significant finding is that with the advent of inbound marketing and social media, email has evolved. Once a tool primarily used for lead generation, it now finds a more effective application in nurturing already acquired leads.

Pardot's co-founder and COO, Adam Blitzer, explains these findings with the fact marketers now use a greater variety of lead generation tactics to capture prospect information, such as landing pages, forms, social media and paid search ads. 'Email marketing is then used to move new leads through the sales process or to re-engage dormant leads,' Blitzer adds.

Invitation to a webinar wins hands on as the most effective offer to include in an email (and generate responses), followed by white papers and case studies. Check out this Pardot infographic for more survey findings.

Embedded from the Pardot Blog

Download our B2B Guide to Marketing Automation for some email marketing best practices!

This Ultimate Customer Service Quote Leads to Amazing Customer Service

'A customer is the most important visitor, on our premises.

He is not dependent on us.

We are dependent on him.

He is not an interruption on work.

He is the purpose of it.

He is not an outsider to our business.

He is part of it.

We are not doing him a favor by serving him'

He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do it.'

The author of the above quote isn't a famous CEO of a recognized business. He's not the author of a bestselling business book. Would it surprise you to learn that the gentleman who wrote this is not at all known for business, but best known for his stand against violence and for living a simple life? And it was from a speech delivered in 1890! Yet these are still powerful words, spoken by a powerful and influential man. The author of the above quote is Mahatma Gandhi.

(By the way, if you have proof that this quote isn't from Gandhi, please let me know. Multiple sources indicate that it is; however, many also question the comment as something so far out of what Gandhi is known for, that you have to wonder.)

Business people are typically the ones writing quotes about customer service, not peace-seeking activists. But when it comes right down to it, these words are simply about treating another person the way they should be treated. If all of the employees you worked with bought into this philosophy, and demonstrated it every day to both their external and internal customers, you would be part of an amazing organization to work for and do business with.

Let's break it down:

'A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.' Welcome a customer into your business. It can be in person or on the phone. Even if your business is an online website, you must draw the customer in and make them feel comfortable.

'He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him.' While your customers may be dependent on what you sell, in the end you are more dependent on them. Your customers pay the salaries for you and the rest of the employees of your organization. For without customers, you have no sales, which means you have no cash flow.

'He is not an interruption on work. He is the purpose of it.' No one should ever treat customers as an interruption. On the contrary, customers should always feel welcomed and encouraged to interrupt us whenever they want to.

'He is not an outsider to our business. He is part of it.' If your customers are made to feel as if they are outsiders, they will eventually find a competitor who makes them feel better about doing business with them.

'We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do it.' In the end, the customer has choices. They honor us with their business. Maybe it's not quite doing us a favor, but the alternative is that the customer does business with our competition. Make the customer feel special and appreciated.

Read the quote again. Print it out. Share it with all of the people you work with. Discuss it. Embrace it. Implement it. This is quintessential business advice.

Customer Loyalty Programs: Knowing Your Customer is Key

As we have outlined on this blog in the past, customer loyalty programs are not only within reach of small businesses, they are a natural fit. Long before the introduction of points cards or buyers clubs, proprietors at small mom-and-pop stores learned that there was no better way to ensure continued business than to reward regular customers with an offer or a little something extra from time to time.

The thing that made this kind of loyalty marketing possible was the face-to-face buying experience. Seeing and speaking with customers on a regular basis made it easy to learn their preferences, gauge their interest in other products and know when the time was right for an offer or an upsell.

As we run modern-day customer loyalty programs, finding a replacement for this direct feedback is one of the biggest challenges we face. A telling example of this comes from a recent blog post that outlined three tips for loyalty marketing. The post made some great suggestions which could be summed up as: don't over communicate, don't under communicate, and don't miscommunicate. However, the whole foundation of the post ' the thing that gives rise to the advice ' is the fact that we have lost that direct opportunity to know our customers and what their preferences are.

There is no easy answer to this challenge, but for small businesses, there are a few steps we can take to know our customers better in the modern marketplace. The first of these is to make more of an effort to measure and analyze the results of our loyalty program communications. Whether we do this via QR codes to track direct mail responses, or by reviewing our email marketing data, marketing metrics offer a pathway to better understanding our customers.

One of the other tools at our disposal is a digital survey. These are quite easy to set up and can be run in conjunction with a QR code campaign to gather much-needed insights.

Whatever method we use, it certainly pays to know our customers, just as it always has.

What Next:

Get helpful tips for starting your own loyalty program in our free guide, How to Set Up a Customer Loyalty Program: Tips for Small Business Owners, or watch a recorded webinar: How To Get Started With Your Own Customer Loyalty Program.

What about you? How do you reward your regular customers? Do you have any kind of formal or informal loyalty program in place? Please share your experiences below.