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Seth posts about the problematic nature of making decisions under the 'guidance' of your marketing heroes. Point taken. You see this every day. I guess I think it's more an issue with sales than it is with Marketing. If you follow Mintzberg or Kotler or Guy Kawasaki or Jagdish Sheth, I don't know that it matters too much.

However, when it comes to sales strategy, many a disagreement can arise, especially at startups who are just defining their sales & marketing strategies, when you follow one sales type, such as Zig Ziglar, or a similarly slick figure vs. someone like Neil Rackham, who advocates a question/consultative strategic approach to selling.

Personally, my marketing heroes are:

1. Raj Devasagayam, my college marketing professor who told me that everything I needed to know about marketing I really learned in marketing 101. I prove him right every week.
2. Neil Rackham. SPIN selling & Major Account Selling Strategies changed the way I sell
3. Everyone who's featured in: 'Marketing Classics: A Selection of Influential Articles' (Ben M. Enis, Keith K. Cox, Michael P. Mokwa)

Who are YOUR sales/marketing heroes?

Every successful conference around blogging, podcasting, social media, RSS and the like seems to bring up the inevitable comment 'why don't you have more B2B examples for us B2B marketers?'

Point taken. In fact, point very well taken. Take, for example, the concept of 'micro-celebrities', which was the recent topic of conversation for Robert Young and for Ed Batista at AttentionTrust.org. i think that we're so attuned as marketers to talking in terms of 'consumers' and thinking only of the B2C folks that we overlook the power of some of these tools within the B2B context.

Micro-celebrities is one of those things that I see as being even more powerful in B2B than on MySpace or anywhere else. Think about it, who are the micro-celebs in your industry? I bet you know them, have met them at a conference or can access them through journals or other industry trade pubs. Granted, often times these folks are either consultants or tied to your competitor, however, that's not always the case.

Let's take the example of 'micro-celebrities' on MySpace and turn it on its head for B2B.

When it comes to advertising in mass media, a big name is required since such campaigns are only effective if the viewer already knows who that celebrity is. But in a social network, micro-celebrities who are well known within their network of micro-communities could prove just as effective and potentially even more so, particularly if such campaigns are able to generate buzz, excitement and a cool-factor.

As for MySpace’s role in all this, they are in the unique position to know better than anyone (as the owner of the platform with all the user data) who the 'brand-safe' users are within its network.

Thus MySpace can effectively play the role of talent agent by aggregating a list of users who would be appropriate for advertisers within various categories. In fact, the incentive 'to be discovered' is likely to spur many users to express themselves in a manner that will position them favorably for consideration.

OK, so we're not going to be doing much B2B on MySpace, but we could leverage professional associations, organizations and conferences to do something like what KI just did with Healthcare Spaces author Roger Yee at the recent NeoCon 2006 show. Who the hell is Roger Yee, you might ask? Well, that's the right response. You probably shouldn't know...he wouldn't be a micro-celebrity if you did! However, for the healthcare furniture market or the American Academy of Healthcare Interior Designers (AAHID), you know exactly who he is and a campaign targeted at your market would likely mean something to you. And you'd give it your attention! (after all, that's really all we have left - attention).

Getting after 'attention data' in B2B might be even less complicated than in B2C, and we could do it through the power of association(s). For example, if I'm a member of the DMA or AMA, and I attend their respective conferences, I am giving my attention to things like direct marketing or marketing research or something of the like. As a potential marketer to those folks, I need only to know a bit about the associations that they run with and the types of events they go to in order to more effectively target my marketing toward what my target base is paying attention to. It's still not the be-all-end-all for getting end-user attention data, but it's getting closer and it would seem easier to do with conference attendance and association membership because your target base is very actively self-selecting and directing their attention patterns.

Of course, smart marketers always want their customers to own their attention data, but I envision that we could see a major impact in B2B attention marketing if some of the larger associations were to promote services like the Attention Recorder.

Technorati Tags: attention, B2B + Marketing, micro+celebrity

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Well, what do you know, I made the MarketingSherpa Best Marketing Blog nomination stage in the B-to-B blog category. In fact, this happened in spite of the fact that I missed the deadline and never even nominated myself.

Anyway, if you're reading this, why not click over here and register your vote!

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Blogging live today from the American Marketing Association Hot Topic: Ahead of the Curve – High Tech Trends in Marketing

Dave noted an interesting shift when it comes to consumers trying to own the brand, such as in a recent case with Southwest airlines, where Operations gets involved and takes precedence over marketing and the 'designed' brand experience. Customers tried to take control of the brand experience, Southwest's operations team shut the customers down. What's a marketer to do?

The real magic in consumer marketing is in the consideration cycle, specifically in the consideration phase, where word-of-mouth is an HUGE component. The biggest question that you need to answer for the consideration phase is:

Would my customer recommend my company/brand/product/service?

Who likes podcasting? People that have a story to tell!

How many of you have an 'audio recorder' in your home? ....hmm, let me bust out the old cassette recorder.

How many of you have a video recorder? Oh, yeah, got the video/digital/web camera right over here!

Video is powerful. And gaining traction.

Dave talks about education marketing (vs. an infomercial). Infomercial are pitching a product, where as 'education marketing' is all about getting after the things that customers are really interested and helping them be more effective in their complex purchases. It's about really helping customers through it. It's not for everyone. If you're not a category leader, or don't have a product that warrants an educated purchase, then don't bother. This is not for you.

Technorati Tags: AMA Hot Topic

From Seth Godin:

Ten things programmers might want to know about marketers.

Nine things marketers ought to know about sales people

I'm going to resist the urge to over-analyze the reasons why programmers 'might want' to know about marketing, but marketing 'ought' to know about sales. OK? I'm still mildly amused when the tech versus marketing dynamic sounds like a fight for who is getting more cake.