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At TopRank Online Marketing, we are fortunate to provide consulting to quite a few innovative B2B companies that serve other marketers. A great example of that is PRWeb and parent company, Vocus, both long standing clients.

In late 2011 Vocus welcomed Jason Jue as Chief Marketing Officer. As Vocus & PRWeb’s Account Manager at TopRank, I was keenly interested in getting to know Jason better and learning his plans for the future – and what better way than through an interview for all readers of Online Marketing Blog to see?

In this interview Jason talks about the undeniable convergence of PR and marketing, what social media metric is most undervalued by many PR and marketing professionals, where marketers should invest for 2013 and his vision for Vocus.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what excites you most about joining Vocus? 

Prior to Vocus, I was Vice President of Marketing at Rackspace and had several executive positions at Dell in the US and Asia, marketing to businesses. Vocus offers cloud marketing and PR software to businesses in every market sectors and size that want to reach and influence buyers

I’m excited about sharing with businesses how easily our products work wonders for our current customers. Some of the leading marketing consultants such as Sirius Decisions and MarketingSherpa use our products to maximize their online publicity.

For some people, Vocus is synonymous with Public Relations software. Can you speak to how and when Vocus first expanded to offering marketing solutions?

We have always believed PR to be a core part of “promoting a product or service” or marketing. Many customers who buy our PR software have a marketing title, and we’ve recently seen faster growth in this group. These customers use our social media and PRWeb news release features of our PR software. For them, we created a cloud marketing suite which integrates search, publicity, and social media marketing. Our cloud marketing suite was the most successful product launch in Vocus history, and will be even better when it includes email later this year.

Do you see PR and marketing professionals as two separate audiences? Or are they converging disciplines?

In marketing teams that have PR and marketing professionals, we continue to see them as two audiences with different product needs, although their roles are converging, especially around social media. PR professionals are using social media for brand positioning. Marketing professionals use social media for lead gen. Meanwhile, for the millions of businesses who have few, if any marketers at all, the marketing functions blend together.

Use your crystal ball and give us a glimpse into the future. How will the Vocus offering change over the next 2 years? Where do you see the most opportunity for growth?

The future of marketing is simple and powerful integrated campaigns. Every marketing team realizes that when working together on unified and integrated campaigns, lead generation and brand perception results are much better than working alone.

I know that sounds like a pipe dream as marketing complexity has increased to address the everywhere all the time customer. Today’s customers are constantly switching back and forth from website, news, social, search, email, and mobile. To add confusion, each specialty has their marketing tools resulting in silos and disjointed communication.

In the near future, marketers will be able to buy cloud marketing software to easily manage integrated campaigns. It will incorporate the trendy with the tried-and-true tactics of marketing The essential elements will work together for better results in lead generation and brand perception. And, it will recommend how and when to engage with prospects and customers.

Seem unbelievable? I think it’s unbelievable that it hasn’t already happened. In the past 15 years, every corporate function, from marketing to sales to HR, has seen a proliferation of technology tools. Marketing is the only function without a major product suite. IBM is doing it for large enterprise marketing. We are integrating all the important marketing tools into a cloud marketing suite so every business, large and small, can easily achieve big results .

Staying on social for a moment, what is one social metric that you think may be most overlooked by PR and marketing professionals alike? On the flip side, any stat that you view as overvalued?

The most important social media metric is how many people actively recommend your product or service. I think the most overvalued metrics are fans, followers, and likes.

As 2012 is well underway, what is one investment you think marketers must make in order to succeed the rest of the year and into 2013? (i.e. invest in mobile marketing)

Focus on marketing fundamentals that will dramatically accelerate growth. Who is your target customer? What product or service should you develop for them? How should you promote to them? Why should they buy from you?

Then, find the best product for you that simplifies all the marketing tactics and trends. This product will then let you focus on the marketing fundamentals.

Thanks, Jason!

 

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. | Interview: The Future of Cloud Marketing Software with Vocus CMO Jason Jue | http://www.toprankblog.com

In 1984, two artists used a simple process to create a story that captivated an audience for years and generated billions of dollars in revenue.

That same process is being used today by a master copywriter to attract hundreds of thousands of paying subscribers.

With companies creating millions of web pages of content marketing, finding an untold story or a new angle can feel like an impossible task. Especially when you want to avoid creating a story so unique nobody understands it … or wants to pay for it.

So how do you create a story that cuts through the noise and strikes at the heart of your ideal client?

Let me tell you about a simple, 4-step process to get that done right now …

Why a fresh angle is so hard to come by

One of the easiest places to start in writing your business story is what you do and who you do it for.

You’re probably already familiar with a number of businesses whose story is based on this premise, for example:

• Social media marketing for real estate agents
• Sales training for technology companies
• Direct response copywriting techniques for bloggers
• Education design as the foundation of an online business

That’s still a strong place to start, and if you find a logical combination that hasn’t been done before, it won’t take much to stand out from the crowd.

But what if your combination of ideas has been done before?

What if it’s been done not only many times over, but by bigger, better known names? How do you create the additional edge that stops people comparing you to the many other business offering that you have?

The dark side of unique

You may be tempted to rack your brains and find something you can do or offer that nobody else has ever done before.

Sometimes this can work to attract attention and customers.

Or it might just attract attention … and no customers.

Even huge corporations with a gazillion dollar marketing budget have had their fair share of unique flops. Just Google the McDLT burger …

So, what can you do instead? What really works?

Creating a billion-dollar story

In 1984 two cartoonists decided it would be pretty cool to have a best-selling comic strip.

Not just one they would love to write, but one their audience would love to buy.

So they started by thinking what their target market (teenagers) were really into at the time.

After extensively brainstorming a list of teen topics, they circled the top three things which were:

1. Ninjas
2. Mutants
3. Turtles

They matched this combination to their love of comic strips and their skills as cartoonists to give birth to a craze that would go on to generate billions of dollars of revenue in licensing.

I love this story, not just because I grew up watching the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and have watched several episodes out of nostalgia while writing this), but because it’s a simple way to create a fresh angle that marries what you want to deliver and what your customer wants to have.

I learned about this story from Mike Palmer’s talk at last year’s AWAI Copywriting Bootcamp. He’s the head copywriter at Stansberry & Associates Investment Research. Since being there, he has attracted more than 400,000 paying subscribers and his most successful promotion achieved a gross revenue of $5.2 million.

And it’s this type of process he uses as a starting point for creating fresh stories that catch the interest of of readers.

The beauty of it is that you’re not limited to using it to define your brand or business. You can experiment with it for blog posts, eBooks, products, or new services.

So let’s work through an example of how this might work in a topic with lots of competition: Marketing advice and services for small business owners.

Step 1: Revisit what you do and who you do it for

You can’t write a strong story if you don’t know who you’re telling it to.

If you already have a customer profile, dig it out and set it in front of you. Build a clear picture in your mind of who you want to reach and remind yourself what you can offer them.

Remember, our example topic is marketing advice and services for small business owners.This is a pretty broad area with lots of competitors who are already operating and established. Using the following steps, you can still carve out a story no-one else is talking about.

Step 2: What are your customers happy to pay for?

Your story is only going to work for your business if it aligns with your customer’s demand. In the above example, a few things your customers are probably happy to pay for might include:

• Sales
• Leads
• Email / mail subscribers (assuming those turn into leads)
• Exposure of their business to their target market

So far this follows a pretty logical order for creating a story, and most people offering marketing for small businesses are talking about getting people more sales, more subscribers, leads, and exposure.

But you can start telling an ever-fresher story by considering …

Step 3: What other conversations are they having?

Entering the conversation your customer is already having is a well known marketing strategy for getting your reader’s attention.

But it doesn’t have to be a conversation about something they want. In fact, it’s often something they’re sick and tired of.

So, in the example above, small businesses may be getting sick and tired of companies promising sales and leads without proof or credibility.

Or perhaps you’ve noticed more business owners want to be known for the personality behind the service, not just what they do.

And with content marketing methods rapidly evolving, you may have seen examples of questions, confusion, and interest surrounding videos, webinars, and infographics.

Eventually, you might come up with a list of interests that looks like this:

• Increasing skepticism — more demand for proof
• Interest in well known business personalities / personal branding
• Increasing interest / confusion over new methods of content marketing

By this stage you might already see opportunities for telling a new story, or creating a new product that catches their attention and still gives them what they want.

Step 4: Add in a dose of “you”

Your business story naturally focuses on your customer, and then on the product you offer, but you can add an extra layer of interest by including elements like:

• Your personal interests
• Your professional background
• The reason you started your business
• Your skills

So let’s look at a couple of different ways we could combine the elements from these 4 stages:

A marketer with a personal obsession for facts, figures, and analytics notices a growing popularity for articles containing case studies and results. He decides to start a campaign of testing one marketing initiative a week, sharing the results, and explaining how to interpret the analytics. He starts promoting his “see-through marketing” explaining that it’s a reaction to business owners struggling to make sense of knowing what marketing actually works. If his story is a hit, he can then start to launch training programs and products that build on this interest and demand from his customers.

Or, take the marketer who has been in every musical since nursery school and feels at home on the stage. She notices more people want to use videos and webinars, but don’t know how to present themselves, smile, to hold their posture etc. She shares her stage experience and trains entrepreneurs to stand out in the “Broadway of online business,” helping them attract subscribers and build trust with confident, charismatic presentations.

The same four steps, but two completely different market positions. And as you can see, these four steps can be combined and interpreted in countless ways.

If you play around with the four steps, you can build a story that combines your strengths, personality, customer demand, and current trends to tell a story nobody is talking about in your industry.

And it’s one way to stop your business being seen as a commodity by your customers.

Instead of being just “another” copywriter, marketer, or web designer, you’re the copywriter, marketer or web designer who … [insert your story here].

What’s your story?

What do you think?

Do you look for a story to connect with when you’re hiring someone? What are the stories of businesses you admire? What elements stand out to you?

Let us know in the comments below!

About the Author: Amy Harrison is a copywriter for entrepreneurs over at Harrisonamy.com. Check out her recent free report on how to write sales copy when personality is part of your business.

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