Our AMA Marketing Boot Camps are one-and-a-half day marketing programs designed for Marketers who are new to the profession or for those seeking a refresher course. The program is facilitated by an experienced instructor with heavy class interaction. The classes are designed for up to 40 people to provide maximum attendee interaction and participation.

Register by May 14 to receive the early registration fee. And remember, if you’re a new member who has joined AMA between April 9 and May 31, you can opt for a $200 coupon redeemable at any AMA Boot Camp.

Membership is $245 throughout this month’s membership drive. In addition, you can get a $20 gift card or a $200 credit towards a national conference (this credit can apply towards Branding and Marketing Bootcamps). Check out the many benefits of joining the American Marketing Association at Austinama.org/membership or contact Matthew Lemke, VP of Membership, at membership@austinama.org.

If you’re still not convinced, be sure to join us at 7:45AM at Xtreme Xhibits on May 31 for our Marketing Membership Benefits Breakfast to learn more about what AMA can do for you. Breakfast is free for registrants. Join us!

On May 17, Travelocity CMO Brad Wilson will join Austin AMA for Marketing Jam 2012. A pioneer in the online travel reservation market, Travelocity was the first company to allow customers the opportunity to book flights via the world wide web. Today, the company continues to be a top destination for online travel reservations, using a variety of elements into its marketing mix. Find out how Travelocity stays ahead by anticipating customer needs and using mobile, location and social marketing to foster big results.

Join Austin AMA on Thursday, May 17, at 6:30PM at Cool River Cafe. Members $30; non-members $40. Register at www.austinama.org/events. Afterward, jam out with your marketing friends over drinks while our DJ spins the tunes.

The February luncheon, hosted by the Austin AMA Power Luncheon Series, was a great and informative success. Our guest speaker, Gerardo A. Dada, who is head of product marketing at Rackspace Hosting spoke about the importance of striving for the “premium position” in you market. Mr. Dada discussed reasons as to why leading with price is not always the best strategy, and also highlighted “seven strategies to establish premium positioning” for your product.

Mr. Dada started off by associating the term premium with value, not price. He explained that price is too often at the center stage. Some examples he used were insurance commercials and how the majority of them seem to lead with price as the most motivating factor in the consumer’s mind. He believes that these price-warring markets present an opportunity for differentiation. When everyone is fighting for the crowd that wants to save the most, that leaves the crowd that actually wants some value unattended. And tapping into this unattended market is where a brand can find opportunity and make a play for the premium position.

Our guest speaker also noted that “it is not about being better, it is about being different.” This is an important distinction because research shows that customer dissatisfaction is not always specific to individual brands, but to whole industries. And if that were to be the case, a company needs to be able to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack if it plans on making an notable impact on the consumer.

Mr. Dada also stressed the importance of focus. You, as a marketer, must be able to narrow in on who exactly your premium target is. If you are going to be better and different, who are you going to be better and different for? Mr. Dada went on to explain that premium positioning is “achieved by focusing efforts and optimizing products for a segment of the market that is willing to pay a premium price.”

With regards to your customers, Mr. Dada stated that “people buy emotionally and justify their decisions rationally.” Using this rationale, our speaker went on to highlight his seven strategies to establish premium positioning:

1. Sell the Experience
2. Appeal to Emotions (robots don’t buy your products)
3. Align Prices with Value (are you selling your premium product at a commodity price?)
4. Packaging and Price Communicate Value
5. Understand the Intangibles (example: peace of mind)
6. Be Different
7. Empower Employees (happy and empowered employees delight customers)

I would like to personally thank Mr. Gerardo A. Dada for his time and cooperation, as well as everyone who made it out to our Austin AMA February luncheon. Hope to see you next month!

In January, Austin AMA joined marketing association chapters from across the state (and even a few beyond Texas) at a mid-year retreat in Dallas. The retreat brought AMA volunteers together to share best practices, learn about new member benefits and build unity among chapter volunteers.

Seven Austin AMA volunteers attended the event, and we’re excited to report that our marketing association is continuing to build upon the following resources as part of your marketing association membership:

• Marketing Toolkit : Find analytical tools, research, templates and samples that help you in your business
• AMA Connect: Join marketers from around the globe in this community built to address he needs of marketing professionals
• AMA TV: Monthly video news clips make it easy to stay up-to-date on marketing trends.

In addition, AMA brings marketers programming on a broad range of topics to help you in your business. For a list of local programs and events, visit our Events page. National events can be found at MarketingPower.com.

I am often asked why I decided to start a company exclusively devoted to marketing automation. This is my marketing automation love story.

In 2007 I worked at one of the fastest growing companies in the country. In two short years the company had grown from zero dollars to over $12MM in sales. The marketing department had spent the last two years building websites, corporate collateral and email campaigns designed to generate awareness and ultimately leads for our 100 person sales force. It was a daunting task. Each sales professional had their own list of contacts, and of course wanted all marketing materials customized with their own contact information. Our three person team was struggling to manage the task. After trying a number of solutions ranging from Outlook merge functions to Constant Contact and even native Salesforce email capabilities, we began searching for a solution that could help us address our need for scale and personalization.

In 2007 marketing automation was still a fledgling industry utilized primarily by enterprise level technology companies and those in the serious know. Lucky for us, my boss kept his ear to the ground. Over a course of about six weeks, we demoed several solutions. My team found themselves in disbelief at the capabilities and features demonstrated by the various software vendors. Our initial goal of handling multiple contact lists and personalizing emails was far exceeded. We were quickly introduced to new ideas like capturing prospect’s activity histories, executing lead scoring models and drip campaigns and synching data between a marketing system and a CRM like Salesforce.

The team eventually decided on Marketo due to our heavily customized instance of Salesforce. We were able to sync the leads and contacts of nearly 100 sales professionals into the system (tens of thousands of contacts), allowing our department to deliver emails on behalf of our sales professionals (complete with custom contact information, logos etc.) Our first surprise was being able to immediately able to deliver warm lead alerts directly to contact owners. Our sales professionals were overjoyed with their newfound insight into the digital behavior of their prospects.

By September 2009 our now four person marketing department was successfully supporting 200 sales professionals. Each month we executed campaigns with embedded lead scoring that triggered warm lead alerts immediately when a prospect exhibited an action that had previously shown a correlation to a sale. There were many stories of sales professionals receiving an alert, calling a prospect and gingerly asking if they needed assistance and quickly closing a sale. As a department, we were able to better justify our efforts by directly correlating our email campaigns to revenue to our executive team.

My own marketing mindset had completely changed. I no longer thought of marketing as a “make it pretty” function, but rather as a revenue center. I now understood that marketers could execute campaigns that drove a predictable amount of qualified leads and revenue. Marketing automation allowed us to reduce the length of our sales cycle and increase the amount of qualified leads we were able to hand off to sales–truly legitimizing our efforts.

The tangible difference that marketing automation software made in my marketing theory, practices and ultimately career, left me with a desire to tell others about the impact it makes on sales, marketing and the bottom line.

Courtney was a marketing executive who was fed up with the “make it pretty” reputation of most marketing departments. After successfully integrating marketing automation software into the lead generation strategy of one of the fastest growing companies in America, she founded LeedSeed, a marketing automation firm made up of marketing strategists, technical experts, and an agency-level creative services team experienced in generating revenue through the use of marketing automation, demand and lead generation techniques. LeedSeed is the marketing automation firm of choice for innovative companies across the globe. Courtney speaks and blogs frequently on using marketing automation to help customers develop revenue funnels and marketing campaigns that drive predictable, repeatable revenue.

By Dr. Liz Alexander

What do you make of this?

A LinkedIn group member recently posted a comment saying that she’d been severely reprimanded by a friend for writing a three-star Amazon book review. This friend wasn’t the author but an “internet marketer” who felt it was unwise to award this book anything less than five stars. Her rationale being that since the reviewer was soon to publish a book in the same genre she might tick off potential marketing allies.

My heart sank. What are we coming to when marketing trumps honest critique? But that’s exactly what appears to be happening in my industry: book publishing. It’s all too common these days, especially among first-time authors whose platforms consist of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and perhaps an extensive email list, to spam everyone with requests for glowing reviews. Regardless of whether their work deserves the accolade or not.

This isn’t just happening online. I recently received a self-published book whose first six pages were crammed full of testimonials – almost 30 of them. Sadly, it wasn’t a page-turner, unlike Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, which manages with just eight inside examples of praise, or the award-winning Blue Ocean Strategy, which has 11 internationally diverse review excerpts on its back cover.

A quick look at the spread of customer ratings for many books bought online through Amazon and the like should give the statistically literate pause for thought. With an unbiased sample you would expect a normal distribution – a few one stars, slightly more five stars if the book is particularly good, but in the main the bulk of reviews should fall within the three to four star range. How are we to identify truly exceptional books when so many mediocre ones boast 100% five-star reviews?

And what are we to think of the “Amazon exclusive” (and glowing) review of Seth Godin’s Linchpin by cult cartoonist Hugh MacLeod? As one reader/reviewer points out, MacLeod’s perspective can hardly be considered objective since he’s the book’s illustrator. A fact that MacLeod, Godin, and Amazon did not see fit to make known.

When I first started writing books 25 years ago, testimonials were pretty much only written by professional reviewers. Those featured in prestigious newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Fast Company, and Business Week, usually ended up excerpted on the back covers.

Even then, however, “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” behavior was common, with the same author names (Brian Tracy; Mark Victor Hansen; etc.) appearing again and again on back covers. Did these busy, famous people really read that many books?

Maybe – maybe not.

Some authors, according to one industry insider, consider writing back-cover testimonials to be free advertising – a way to keep their names (and books, which are invariably mentioned too) in the public eye.

Many will agree because their publisher’s PR not only asked them to, they also offered to write the blurb. Rather like a former boss or client agreeing to write a testimonial as long as they don’t have to go to the trouble of actually doing anything.

Mostly, the thinking goes, if you want someone to be kind about your book it helps to say something nice about theirs. Because testimonials help sell books, especially if readers see the names of people they know and like – and trust.

And therein lies the issue. As Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer surveys show, trust in our institutions – media, government, business — has been going down the toilet for some time now. In 2005 Edelman reported that trust had shifted from authorities to peers.  A year later a more credible spokesperson was “someone just like me.”

In Groundswell, (praised by 11 “real readers”), authors Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff report the top three “trust sources of information about products or services” are 1) Recommendations from family and friends; 2) Emails from people you know; and 3) Ratings or reviews by consumers.

If we’re giving five stars to a product or service simply because a good friend asks us to, how long before we can no longer trust today’s consumer reviews?

And, yes, I’ve succumbed to such behavior and written five-star reviews of books (well, two in total) that I thought average at best because the authors requested them. I’ve just gone into Amazon and deleted them; would you be willing to do the same?

Interestingly enough, Edelman’s 2011 Trust Barometer reports that “people like us” have less credibility now than was the case a couple of years ago. Seems we’re beginning to put greater faith in experts again, maybe because at least we can largely trust their objectivity.

Wielding the power to share our views with the world should come bundled with a certain amount of responsibility. Fearing to publish an authentic critique because it might affect your own, future book promotion is, as I told the lady on LinkedIn, a particularly cynical way of doing marketing. Which doesn’t help any of us in the long run.

When every book on Amazon boasts five stars and every self-published work contains multiple pages of praise from friends of the author, I guess we’re back to trusting people who have no vested interest in the outcome. Or our own judgment. Which, come to think of it, beats the duplicity of testimonial sluts hands down.

About the author

Dr. Liz Alexander is the author of 12 nonfiction books, 9 published by big names like Random House, HarperCollins, and Hodder & Slaughton. Her books have sold almost 500,000 copies globally, and some still earn her royalties 10 years after initial publication. Dr. Liz establishes executives and others as thought leaders in their industry. Her secret weapon? Empowering them to write books that showcase their intellectual capital. Discover more at: http://drlizalexander.com/

Content marketing has become the new social media. Overused and devoid of meaning.

But don’t go dusting off your old telemarketing or TV advertising playbooks just yet. Despite the fact that ‘content’ has been overplayed like a top 40 song, content is more important now then ever.

It’s not a question of ‘if’ you’ll ever implement a content-oriented approach into your marketing strategy. It’s a question of ‘when’ and ‘how committed’ are you to making content as ingrained into your company’s marketing fabric as cotton, wool and nylon.

Why content is so powerful

As Simon Salt said, it’s a myth that consumers have recently become savvy. They’ve always been savvy, but they didn’t always have the almost infinite variety of choices they have now.

But give consumers something they really want to know and learn about, something that excites them and speaks directly to their secret problems, needs and desires, and they can become yours.

Sonia Simone calls this “cookie content.”

Cookie Content, according to Simone, makes life better for readers, can be used right away, and tastes good.

It leverages powerful psychological persuasion techniques, such as reciprocity and authority, enabling you to make your consumers become willing participants in a conversation with you, and eventually customers.

What I advocate is a total content approach.

The 10 steps to the Total Content Approach

The total content approach consists of ten steps.

1. Content for one person

Produce all your marketing content: blog posts, articles, web copy, white papers, videos, as if you’re writing to one person. Brian Clark, Sonia Simone, Sean D’Souza, all accomplished content marketers, talk about that one person you should write for. How do you do this? First, choose an ideal target market. Then select one person who is representative of that market. Create a detailed profile of her, and write to her personally as if you’re writing to an old friend.

2. Content that speaks to their unique worldview

What is your one person’s worldview? What are the collection of beliefs that color the way she looks at the world? As Seth Godin said in his book “All Marketers are Liars,” it’s almost impossible to change somebody’s worldview. You can’t convert a vegan into an Atkins dieter, and you can’t convince a Yankees fan to become a Braves fan. So don’t. Instead, embrace and honor their world.

3. Content that expresses your unique approach

What is your passion, your purpose, your personality and your position? John Jantsch talks about the new 4ps of marketing as the modern way of expressing your uniqueness. It’s harder to convince your customers that your manufactured difference is authentic, so don’t even try. Embrace the authentic you, and your content will stand out and make your ideal customer crave more.

4. Content that attracts prospects

We’ve just covered marketing strategy. Now we’re getting into marketing tactics. The foundation to your ‘awareness’ marketing tactics should be content that attracts. When we think about our one person we’ve profiled, their problems, challenges, and goals, and their unique worldview, what content can we give them that they really want to read (or see or hear)? What will make their day when they find you? Produce articles, blog content, reports, eBooks, videos and podcasts that express a set of beliefs, or provides advice, tips, tutorials, resources, and how-tos that fulfill your prospects’ deepest desires.

5. Content that turns strangers into friends, and friends into buyers

Once they find you and feast on your attraction content, what can you provide them that will get them to know, like and trust you?

As Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, said:

6. Content-oriented SEO

Google’s recent Panda and Caffeine updates have made fresh, relevant content even more important than before. This was a direct blow to content farms, with their crappy content on topics the writers hardly know anything about. Now its time for you to step up to the plate and create timely, high quality content.

7. Content-oriented social media

For all the talk of social media allowing you to build relationships online via ‘one-to-one engagement,’ the best approach for an effective social media marketing strategy is the content-oriented approach. As Brian Massey said, a content-oriented social media strategy allows you to educate people before they buy, and allows for much better measurement. Sharing links to content on social media is much easier to measure than ‘one-to-one’ marketing.

8. Content-oriented advertising

Most savvy marketers agree that direct response advertising is more effective and measurable than image advertising. But most direct response advertising asks prospects to “call for a free quote,” “download a free trial,” or “contact us for a complimentary consultation.” What if instead you provided a free report, or a video, or any other type of free content? Robert Rose cites two examples of clients who increased the quality of the leads they converted by offering content as the call-to-action for their PPC campaigns, instead of traditional offers.

9. Content that deepens the customer relationship

Don’t forget about content marketing after you’ve made the sale. Keep in contact with your customers by sharing valuable tips, tutorials or how-tos on how to use your product, or different ways they can take advantage of your service. Send an email newsletter, or maybe even a print newsletter. Keep your name in front of them so they can become repeat customers, and start to refer you to their friends.

10. Content to reach internationals markets

The Internet makes it possible to reach a global audience, and content is the way to create that soft landing before you commit resources to opening international offices. I obtained half a dozen international clients by taking a pure content marketing approach: I wrote a blog in Spanish, and published a 44-page eBook in Spanish. As a result I have a never-ending supply of leads who want more of what I have to offer. These are companies from Argentina, Costa Rica and Mexico. What international markets would you like to penetrate?

Conclusion

Embrace content marketing. Dedicate yourself to it wholeheartedly. Fall into it, with the confidence you have when falling backwards off a table into the arms of your friends who are waiting to support you and let you know they’re there for you.

Are you ready to embrace a Total Content Approach? When will you adopt the Total Content Approach? Will you adopt it now, when you can still get an edge over your competitors and dominate your niche? Or will you wait until you’re the only one left in your industry who hasn’t done it yet?

Hopefully it’s the former.

Original article published here.

About the author: Fernando Labastida, the current blog editor for the Austin AMA, has been involved in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. He has carried a bag as an account executive for start-up and established software companies, and he has led marketing efforts in the U.S. and Latin America. He specializes in content marketing and copywriting, is a marketing evangelist for the firm Leading Results.

1. Describe what your job duties are at your current position?

I am part of a team that helps San Antonio businesses appear correctly on Google Maps, and help them claim their places listing. After they have claimed their listing, I show them how to use the Custom Analytics Dashboard to grow their business. I also teach workshops for Google called “Texas Get Your Business Online.” These workshops attract business owners and marketing managers who want to learn (1) how to create a website;  and (2) how Google Analytics, Google AdWords, Google Apps, and Google Places work. I am a professional networker and I am a resource to teach others about Google and their services .

2. What is your professional background?

I graduated in May 2011 from Texas State University in San Marcos with a BBA in Marketing.  During my senior year, I enrolled in an online Masters Certificate Program in Internet Marketing from the University of San Francisco.  I learned the history and current environment of pay per click (PPC), search engine optimization (SEO, mobile marketing, email marketing and social media marketing).  I was President of the collegiate chapter of AMA at Texas State during my senior year and won International Student Marketer of the Year. My work experience includes: SEO Intern, Leverage Marketing, Austin, Tx; Sales Trainer, Brinker International, Addison, TX; Sales/Marketing  Intern, Walt Disney World, Orlando, FL; Telesales, Bank of America, Dallas, TX; and Social Media Analyst, Austin AMA.

3. How did you decide to pursue a career in marketing?

Originally, I pursued a career in radiology at Brookhaven Community College in Dallas. But marketing is in my blood as my dad is in real estate sales on a national level. Through Brookhaven, I did an internship in sales and marketing at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla. That’s when I decided to pursue a marketing career. The internship lasted 8 weeks, with a different guest executive each week discussing his experience with his part of the company (for instance, Disney cruises, Disney Channel, Disney hotels).  The internship also included working in Downtown Disney where I worked in retail, as a food server and then with convention goers.

4. What was the most impactful marketing campaign you’ve ever been involved with and why?

During my junior year at Texas State, I was VP, Consulting of my collegiate chapter of AMA and I was tasked with creating an integrated marketing campaign for the Environmental Service Committee, a university committee that was created to promote energy conservation on campus. This was the first time I was able to map out a large project (500 hours and 7 teammates.) We did social media marketing, print marketing, direct marketing, viral videos and guerilla marketing. In the end, we were able to make a difference. One of the ways we measured this was how many student energy conservation proposals were received. Based on our work, the committee saw a 300% increase.

5. If you could have any job in the world, what would that be?

I would love to be an international disc jockey.  But seriously, what I am really striving to do at the moment is continue building my company. Eventually,  I want to be a CEO who manages a few e-commerce companies.

6. What is your favorite part of being an AMA member?

I love meeting people. Networking is a fancy way to say “making friends.” I love making friends, learning from them, and helping them. The people at the AMA love marketing and it is awesome to meet people who love what I love.

7. What is your #1 pet peeve in a job environment?

Lack of or no communication. I have found that it is very important to communicate with others often and be able to be found and responsive when needed.

8. What do you think is the next big change that will occur in the Marketing profession?

Analytics will be the next big change. Marketers love numbers (or they should) because numbers are evidence. When you apply numbers to a profession such as marketing, it changes to more of a hard science rather than a soft science. Also, analytics provides feedback. The feedback loop is changing to be much faster and smaller. The more feedback you have, the better you can create a value proposition. This translates into both online and offline sales.