Marketing with Mike Volpe

How do you get 4 million YouTube views of your new song?  Use profanity in the title and the song, and post a video of it.

The one thing that Cee Lo (half of the Gnarls Barkley group) did do which was clever is that he posted the full version of the video on Facebook, but made you "Like" his Facebook page in order to view it.  That is a good example of giving away some content for free, and then requiring something to get the more advanced content.

Warning.  These videos are not safe for work.

Original Cee Lo F--k You Video

New / Final / Official Cee Lo Video (This is the one you originally had to "Like" his page on Facebook to see.)

Source: Entertainment Weekly via Matthew Stein

Without calls to action, you won't get any leads.

As a marketer, you should be placing calls to action all over the place - in your emails, on your website, in your blog articles, in your ebooks, in your presentations, in your videos... anyplace you can think of.

Here is a fun example from the bathroom at a nonprofit where the HubSpot marketing team did a volunteer project.  You are presented with a call to action while you releive yourself.  Crazy?  Maybe.  Effective?  Probably.

What's the most remarkable place you have seen a call to action?

I had a chance to get to know Eric during both HubSpot TV and sharing a panel with him a couple weeks ago talking about the ROI of social media.  Eric is a super nice and sage guy who has a real grasp of how social technologies are changing the business world.

See for yourself with a couple clips from HubSpot TV or check out his book.

We have an internal wiki that we use for almost all communication and collaboration at HubSpot.  I talked about it in my Atlassian Starter Day Presentation (we use their wiki product, called Confluence).  Recently, I got a question from someone who had seen my presentation that I thought was worth sharing here on the blog.

How did you get your sales team to use the wiki?

It wasn't easy, but here are some of the ways how we got our sales team to start using our internal wiki.

1. Get sales management buy-in - We were able to get the sales managers to agree that sales should be using the wiki, and that they would help get everyone in sales to use the wiki.
2. Put lots of valuable information on the wiki - We now have all of our sales scripts, sales tips, product info, competitive info, promotion info, marketing campaign info, and basically all the useful information a sales rep might need on the wiki.
3. Email sales links to wiki pages, instead of full emails - If you update information on a competitor, email the link tot he wiki page.  The wiki is richer since it has threaded discussion and links and videos and files, it is a better place to post and discuss information, but you can use email to drive people to the wiki content.
4. Use the wiki for projects involving sales - If you have a team of people doing a cross functional project (perhaps entering a new vertical), use the wiki to document and report on that project.  If the project involves sales, then you almost force them to start using the wiki and become familiar with it.
5. Talk about the wiki in every meeting - We mention that all the resources we are discussing in meetings are on the wiki, and tell people to go to the wiki after the meeting to get the meeting notes, slides, etc.
6. Use the wiki in new hire training - All new hires need to use the wiki to document what they learn each day in training, and also to follow along with all the training class presentations.  This helps make the wiki a part of the daily lives for the newest employees.

Today, our sales team uses our wiki for all sorts of things and are very actively engaged there, as much as other groups in the company.

Have you gotten your sales team to use internal collaboration tools in your company?  How?

At the Atlassian Starter Day I had a chance to share some of my thoughts on startup marketing based on doing marketing at HubSpot and helping to grow the company from 5 people to over 160 people and nearly 3,000 customers over the past 3+ years.

Below is a video of the presentation, as well as my slides.  If want to read more text tips and comment or discuss this topic, there is a great discussion on the OnStartups Blog article.

Email marketing is a powerful tool, when used correctly.  But below is an example of not using email marketing correctly.  Please, please, please, don't use large images in email.  Why?  Because the majority of the time, people won't see your images. Outlook and Gmail block images.  Devices like Blackberries usually don't download them.

Large images are not appropriate for email.  (It is OK to use a small image as part of your email, but not the entire email.)

Want an example? See below.  This is an invitation from the AdClub for an event.  Except I have no idea what event, when or where it is, or if I want to go by looking at the email in my inbox.  Sure, I could click on the link... but the extra 5 seconds that takes makes it less likely I will do it (don't we all have too much email to process?).

Note: I love the folks at the AdClub.  They throw some great events.  I feel bad about picking on their email, but hopefully the additional exposure of the event will make them forgive me.

What do you think?  Do you use images or text in email?

Update: Here is another email with only images, and what it looks like on my iphone:

Next week I am the day 2 keynote speaker at the Internet Technology Summit in Orlando where they have asked me to talk about how we have built HubSpot to 160 employees and 2,800 customers using the latest technology tools.  I am going to talk especially about how the vast majority of our company activity is conducted in the cloud, and the cultural implications of that.  I have blogged way back in January 2007 about the disruptive effects of Google Docs, and do feel that the availability of tools like these affects how you should start and build a company.

Here are some of the cloud based business tools I will be talking about, all of which I use myself:

• Google - email and calendar
• Google - documents, spreadsheets, videos
• DropBox - document sharing
• Mozy - computer backup
• Confluence - corporate wiki
• Jira - bug and issue tracking
• HubSpot - marketing
• Salesforce.com - sales and customer support
• GoToMeeting / Skype - online meetings
• Lots more...

Do you use a lot of cloud-based business tools?  What would you want to hear about on this topic? Leave a comment below!

EDIT: Please note that this post is associated with an Alternate Reality Game -- it is not real, it's for fun! Find out more here. We hope you will play along and solve the mystery. 

I am unable to comment on this or offer anythig besides the facts (at this time).  All of you however are able to speak freely in the comments or other places online.

Below is a letter asking us to shut down IMU, the free marketing education community.  At this time, we have complied, and shut down the InboundMarketing.com website.

Here is a video Rebecca made explaining it and a link to where you might be able to help.

To catch up, read the article Why Pampers Diaper Fail is a Lesson in Marketing Transparency to get the back story and the updates in the article Pampers Steps up Digital, Social Media Efforts.  Here are my thoughts...

Pampers does not have a communications problem as much as a product development problem.

• Change is BAD for products with a high emotional quality to them, and diapers are for babies and people are very emotional about babies.  There is a huge risk in changing products for babies, even if you improve them.
• You can't tell people what to think anymore in TV ads about your product or even by getting 3 magazines to endorse your product.  You can't fix a poor product with good marketing anymore.
• P&G's product development cycle is famous and studied in business schools.  But, it was developed in the era of one-way broadcast media.  Customers were told what to think by a few TV stations, and had no way of communicating effectively with each other and product ratings and feedback didn't exist.  The P&G product development process is no longer relevant in an age where things move much faster, and customers have much more control and are much easier to involve in your development.

What should Pampers / P&G do now?

Change their product development process.  Get rid of the 2-3 year cycle.  Get rid of the focus groups.  Create "P&G Labs" which works on experimental products.  If people buy them, they know they are experimental and might be cool or might suck.  Bring customers into "P&G Labs" and co-develop products with them.  If you get customers feedback really early, and be more public about the process, people will respect it, and get more involved.  They will also become advocates.  Then, after the product launches and leaves P&G Labs, if someone says they don't like the product, all the customers involved will tell them they are crazy and tell them the 20 reasons why this product is better.  And P&G won't have to say a thing.

If they had done something like this, the launch of Pampers Dry Max would have been very different.  

Apparently public service workers in the Netherlands get beat up all the time... and everyone just watches and does nothing to stop it.  How do you change this behavior?  Create an alternate reality where it happens right in front of you, and then tell people how they should react.

Normally I'm not a big supporter of billboards, but this one works because it is a perfect fit among media, message and audience.  Hat tip to PSFK on this one.