David Meerman Scott And I Talk The New Rules Of Marketing and PR

If you believe you need to change how you market your products and services, but don’t know where to start, David Meerman Scott’s The New Rules of Marketing and PR may just be the perfect place. It’s educational, insightful, and provides real world examples from people who are reaping their benefits.

In the second edition of this book, David goes into great detail and helps you learn how to transform your marketing to attract and engage customers by creating helpful, useful content. It’s time for you to stop talking about your products and humanize your marketing. David walks you through the tools as well as provides and cites numerous examples of B2B and B2C companies successfully employing these tactics to grow their businesses and the communities that matter to them. It’s not rocket science, but it is new. David breaks it down and helps you understand how all the pieces work together.

David graciously spent some time answering my questions about the book and the state of marketing today (thanks David). Enjoy the read!

Jeremy: When was the moment you first realized your success as a marketer was bigger than just you and you were really on to, The New Rules Of Marketing and PR?

David: I always knew I was onto something. Way back in 1999 I had found a better way to market on the Web. It wasn’t until about a year after New Rules of Marketing & PR came out that people started to tell me that I was on to something.

Jeremy: I have a question about this statement, “Guess what? When I arrive at a site, you don’t need to grab my attention, you already have it!” Do you mean with loud bells and whistles, because I certainly have to direct your behavior with a good user interface and design, no?

David: Magazine, radio, TV, newspaper, billboards and the like all want you to go somewhere else to do something (a store to buy for example). However, when you arrive at a Web site, you are at the place where action happens, so you don’t need to coerce people.

Jeremy: Are buyer personas the single most important element of a content strategy? Or better yet, the single most important thing a marketer must do to connect with their customers?

David: I think “buyer personas” are the king of marketing and a focus on buyer personas allows you to create the content. A buyer persona represents a distinct group of potential customers, an archetypal person whom you want your marketing to reach. Targeting your work to buyer personas prevents you from sitting on your butt in your comfortable office just making stuff up about you products, which is the cause of most ineffective marketing.

Incidentally, my use of the word “buyer” applies to any organization’s target customers. A politician’s buyer personas include voters, supporters, and contributors; universities’ buyer personas include prospective students and their parents; a tennis club’s buyer personas are potential members; and nonprofits’ buyer personas include corporate and individual donors. Go ahead and substitute however you refer to your potential customers in the phrase “buyer persona,” but do keep your focus on this concept. It is critical for success online.

By truly understanding the market problems that your products and services solve for your buyer personas, you transform your marketing from mere product-specific, ego-centric gobbledygook that only you understand and care about into valuable information people are eager to consume and that they use to make the choice to do business with your organization.

Jeremy: “Think like a publisher.” Thinking like one may actually be the easy part, as acting like one is the real challenge. What one or two changes should marketers make to their department to make acting like one a reality?

David:

1) Stop talking about your products and services all the time
2) Don’t be egotistical

Instead of creating jargon-filled, hype-based advertising, you can create the kind of online content that your buyers naturally gravitate to—if you take the time to listen to them discuss the problems that you can help them solve. Then you’ll be able to use their words, not your own. You’ll speak in the language of your buyer, not the language of your founder, CEO, product manager, or PR agency staffer. You’ll help your marketing get real.

Jeremy: You talked quite a bit in the book about PR professionals resistance to the new rules. At it is core, is it rooted simply in fear of change?

David: Many company executives and public relations people trace their worries about social media to their belief that “people will say bad things about our company.” This fear leads them to ignore blogs and online forums and to prohibit employees from participating in social media. In every discussion that I’ve had with employees who freely participate in social media, I’ve confirmed that this fear is significantly overblown. Sure, an occasional person might vent frustrations online, and now and then a dissatisfied customer might complain (unless you’re in the airline industry and then it might be more than a few).

But the benefit of this kind of communication is that you can monitor in real-time what’s being said and then respond appropriately. Employees, customers, and other stakeholders are talking about your organization offline anyway, so unless you are participating online, you’ll never know what’s being said at all. The beauty of the Web is that you benefit from instant access to conversations you could never participate in before.

Jeremy: Have any Gatorade lately?

David: Frequently. But not because I am hungover. I like the stuff.

Jeremy: We have a long way to go with the full acceptance and adoption of the new rules, but that’s not gonna stop me from asking, what’s next (for marketing and pr)?

David: I’m interested in GPS enabled iPhone (and other mobile) device applications such as Layar and Foursquare.

Jeremy: Right on, I am too. I love the impact technology is having on the way we connect and market. These certainly are interesting times we live in. Thanks again for your time David.