Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

I got a note this morning from my friends over at Anvil Media, a Portland, OR search engine marketing (SEM) firm. Their online reputation was being bashed. I know them well, they’re above reproach in my book, so I wanted to look into it, and asked for an accounting of the situation.

A Marketing Coup Crumbles

Here’s how it rolled out:

1. A few months ago, Anvil and Attensa worked together to put information on Wikipedia about Attensa’s RSS feed server. Now, that’s a feat, because no “marketing” information is allowed on Wikipedia, it’s all about facts, according to Wikipedia’s “neutral point of view” policy.
2. They adhered to Wikipedia’s editorial guidelines, even to the degree that they neutered marketing language and listed Attensa’s competitors in fairness to the ‘encyclopedic’ nature of the site. Their content added enough value to the site to be published.
3. Leads started flowing into the Attensa site, and they were good ones. A marketer’s dream.
4. Their program was good enough to get coverage in Marketing Sherpa: “How to Use Wikipedia for Lead Gen…”
5. The shit hit the fan.
6. Someone pulled down the Attensa citations on Wikipedia, and everything else Anvil had ever written on Wikipedia - to boot. Emails were sent (some not-so-slightly threatening), memes ensued, and on and on…

I’m not one to fan a flame of reputation bashing (no matter the source), so suffice it to say, Anvil and Attensa and everyone I’ve been talking to about it have been (rightfully) alarmed by the response.

Wake Up Call for Transparency

So why am I taking the time to write about this? Because everyone in corporate America needs to know this story. I will go a little deeper here, to further illuminate the irresponsible nature of the secret sect that seems to control Wikipedia. In June I attended the Drug Information Association convention in Boston for the Academic Network. I blogged about it here, but it’s worth repeating…

One of the panelists lamented of their company’s inability to change a factual error on Wikipedia for a drug they manufactured - it was listed as being taken ‘orally’ when, in fact, it was not. They couldn’t do anything to correct it, though, for fear of being held liable for all of the constantly changing information about their drug on the site. So they opted, on the advice of their attorneys, to leave it.

That’s a pretty big deal. A drug company being unable to correct a HUGE inaccuracy about a drug, because of fear.

You see, since about August of last year, there’s been a tool that will show who’s editing what on Wikipedia, called Wikiscanner. When it came out, so did the horror stories (like these in Wired)… of companies editing (and deleting) entire paragraphs of information from Wikipedia. This is exactly what the Wikipedia Editorial guidelines are out to prevent, but now Big Brother can expose exactly who’s writing what…

And prevention is exactly what they’re getting - pharmaceutical companies are afraid to (or being banned from) righting obvious wrongs.

Meanwhile, guess what comes up as the #1 search result in most searches? Wikipedia. In fact, in the case of health and medical information, look who’s trusted most:

That scares me, just hearing one little story of an inaccuracy found, and the company being unable to change it.

People trust Wikipedia. Google trusts Wikipedia. But can we trust the people who edit Wikipedia? Not based on the backchannel I saw this morning.

Who are these people? A pretty clubby society of folks who’ve been able to figure out how to:

• Use the (fairly technical) programming language
• Participate and thrive in the backchannel conversations while doing so (see below)
• Control not only postings, but entire access to Wikipedia, and
• Block companies from editing entries

Who are these folks? To sum up with an insight as to their mindset (from Wired article Wikipedia FAQK), author Lore Sjoberg wrote:

“What should I know if I want to contribute to an argument nexus (or “article”) on Wikipedia?
It will help to familiarize yourself with some of the common terms used on Wikipedia:

• meat puppet: A person who disagrees with you.
• non-notable: A subject you’re not interested in.
• vandalism: An edit you didn’t make.
• neutral point of view: Your point of view.
• consensus: A mythical state of utopian human evolution. Many scholars of Wikipedian theology theorize that if consensus is ever reached, Wikipedia will spontaneously disappear.

Is it true that anyone can contribute?
Sure, Wikipedia is absolutely open to absolutely anyone contributing to absolutely anything! As long as you haven’t been banned, or the article you’re contributing to hasn’t been locked, or there isn’t a group of people waiting to delete anything you write, or you don’t make the same change more than three times in one day, or the subject of the article hasn’t decided to send scary lawyer letters to Wikipedia, or you haven’t pissed Jimbo Wales off real bad. It’s all about freedom.”

Freedom for those who know the secret handshake, that is. As for the rest of us, we’re probably just non-notable at best.

Count me as a meat puppet - on behalf of Anvil and Attensa, in this case…

I got an email from a friend the other day who’s a developer on the Marqui platform. It was a letter from Marqui’s VP Client Services, Jackie Reid. In it, she stated:

“….There has been some erroneous information spreading on exactly what is happening at Marqui and this communication is meant to give you information to make appropriate business decisions.

I am happy to report that Marqui is very much running “business as usual”. We have Support, Services and Engineering staff available to service all our customer needs. We are very much here to continue to serve you. Please go to our support portal (http://support.marqui.com) for news on updates, and new training videos. If you haven’t signed up, please do so and you’ll have access to all our great new resources.

We have heard that some of you are being contacted by partners and ex-employees offering support and services. Some of the communication appears to be misleading and encourages you to believe that Marqui will be “disappearing” or there is a risk your website will suddenly cease to exist.

Marqui is currently in a state of “Managed Receivership” and there are currently several parties interested in purchasing the assets and operations of the company with the full intention to continue the business and honour customer commitments. ….”

I am probably one of those Marqui believes guilty of misleading people to worry their website might suddenly cease to exist. As such, I’m duty bound to provide this update.

I hope the chatter around “Managed Receivership” and problems in the customer service area are quickly relegated to the past at Marqui. Meanwhile, I applaud Jackie for her outreach.

I just hope the rest of her team is as proactive as she seems to be as they attempt to stabilize the organization. Providing excellent customer support during any stressful time is the best hope any business has in building value for a potential purchaser… and for a seamless transition once the value has been established.

Go with grace.

As a marketer and ‘educator,’ (teaching people to fish, rather than fishing for them is my new bliss) I’ve been spending a good amount of time helping businesses understand the basics of search engine marketing and how to safely negotiate new media influencers (bloggers) and leverage the power of social networks.

All are brand building exercises.

The positive impact of a brand presence online in both search and in social spaces can be accurately measured in both leads and brand value for B2B and B2C brands when campaigns are constructed well.

And the best campaigns - just as in real life - are best constructed when considering people’s intentions, activities and behaviors online.

Building Brand at the Height of Engagement - Search:

Gavin O’Malley, in today’s Online Media Daily wrote of Google’s new report “The Brand Value of Search.” Granted, we must consider the source - Google makes a ton of money serving search advertisements - but there’s measurable value of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to a brand.

Google discovered (in surveying 2400 people, showing them generic ads followed with a brand recall questionnaire):

“As a branding vehicle, paid search strives for top-of-mind awareness for clients’ brand, and negatively impacts awareness for their competitive set, while impressions provide “free” brand lift, without the CPC investment.“

A well-written, compelling search advertisement can, in a mere 130 characters:

• Solve a searcher’s intrinsic desire to find relevant information
• Engage, educate and (even) entertain prospects and future buyers
• Generate brand awareness

…And (according to Paul Kedrosky, brilliant renaissance guy, in his 2007 presentation to Angel Oregon) at an average customer acquisition cost of about $8.20, search is the most cost-effective means to capture customers for some channels.

Building Brand at the Height of Meaning - Social Media

In a classic case of understanding the motivations of people as they engage online; an article in February’s Search Engine Watch dissed advertising as a marketing tactic to increase brand value where social networks are concerned.

“Remember that your brand influencers are online to connect with people who care about the things they care about. They are there to make meaning, not to be broadcast to. They are there to participate and create, not to be advertised to. The more your brand can assist people in connecting with others online to create or share something new, the more favorably you will be received in these new and influential social circles.”

Brands will add value to the consumers congregating in social network spaces by:

• Providing fun (via engaging content, video, games)
• Delivering useful tools (widgets, applets, etc.)
• Providing shortcuts to information (using widgets, extending users’ access to mobile devices, etc.)
• Conversing transparently (which means admitting errors, mistakes and omissions) with their engaged customers and prospects - and
• Listening to what people have to say

Socially connected consumers, interacting with a brand via tools, gadgets and content will easily extend brand awareness (therefore adding tremendous value to a brand) as they share information with others while connecting socially online.

Linking Search and Social Networks

In their book Groundswell, Forrester analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff talk about how social networks naturally connect people with the groups they care about. When people flock together for common good, brand associations are especially strong.

(Think about this. If brand awareness is raised in the act of searching, imagine the strength of a brand impression when engaging in meaningful social activities!)

In the groundswell, every online transaction has the opportunity to be rated and reviewed. What is your consumer’s experience with your brand during the transaction process? Are you measuring it like they are?

In the groundswell, “tags,” which are keywords supplied by ordinary people, are reorganizing the way we find things.

1. People type keywords into search engines
2. Search engines deliver results in the form of advertisements and links to naturally relevant content (most often socially generated content will rise to the top of search results) and
3. Consumers “vote” on the relevancy of the results with each click

In any case, positive brand associations generated along the way; whether you pay per click or pay to play.

Just as I do every time I post to my blog, I go to Technorati and to Pingoat in order to spread the word that my blog’s been updated. It’s was especially funny (in an ironic way) that my “Marqui is Mort” ping got this response from Pingoat:

Call me paranoid, but I’m not particularly sure I believe the unusual me he he…

I started hearing rumors about a month ago that Marqui was in serious trouble. Then I began to get queries from business partners around the northwest, asking “Do you know anyone at Marqui any more?” Apparently no one’s been able to get through to support for awhile… and I let my connections there lapse years ago when I left the organization.

And I’m sad to say I read with interest this little cautionary tale in CMSWatch last week which seems to confirm: Marqui est mort, “belly up…” in receivership (a type of bankruptcy).

The news of a tech startup going belly up is not that unusual. However, the news of a Software as a Service (SaaS) (define) provider going under is especially disconcerting. It slams to the forefront the delicate question:

Who really owns my data?

More business applications reside online (in “the cloud”) these days. And the more we rely on cheap/free/hosted/SaaS applications, the more we rely on the people behind them to manage their businesses honestly, ethically, and with the fiduciary controls necessary to withstand market pressures.

Does that mean the due diligence process is heightened when considering your technology partners? Oh, yeah. Especially when you’re doing business with privately-held organizations. Where web content management services are concerned, your partners are often your outsourced IT department. A trust in your partner is paramount. And we’re talking way more than service level agreements and uptime requirements here…

• What recourse does one have when the customer support team won’t answer your calls?
• Who can help you navigate the (oft-remote) handshakes of the organization - when most of your original connections are gone?
• How long do you let things go before you take the actions necessary to take control of your data?

Interestingly, some signs of Marqui’s trouble ahead - called out in the CMSWatch article - are pretty easy to recognize:

• There had been no new press releases since March.
• There had been no new blog posts since September, 2007. (As an aside, it’s going to be extremely sad to have my first two years of blog posts go into the dark matter with Marqui’s demise…)

In the case of Marqui, people who have their web sites hosted by the company must be keeping their fingers crossed that their servers will be properly managed in the time it takes to move away from Marqui. Any implementation of Marqui can be exported to HTML and hosted elsewhere, but what a nervous hassle in the meantime. And the cost of doing so is a huge pain.

I’ve been away from Marqui for about two years now. I feel extreme discomfort for the customers who are scrambling to migrate their data. And I wish I could be of some help.

But I don’t know anyone that I can trust there any more.

I do know plenty of competent, responsible, highly reputable agencies to refer Marqui customers to. It seems as if there might be a bit of an opportunity to help folks who are in extreme need out in that… ping me if I can make a referral.

It’s the least I can do.