Startup Blog

Here is the direct link to YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3yCB7AvvAk

I got this voicemail from a telemarketer hired by Marketing Profs.  Of course I did not answer the call because I did not recognize the number on caller ID, and I knew it was a telemarketer.

What I thought was interesting about the message was how obvious it was that he was just mailing it in and did not care about the content of the message at all.  He was trying to leave as many of these voicemails as possible and get his job done.

Someone in marketing spent a lot of time preparing that script and it is pretty well written.  But put into the hands of a $9 an hour telemarketer who has no idea what any of the words mean or what the evnt is about, it loses all passion and emotion and is just a mess of words strung together.  This voicemail makes the event sound pretty boring and unremarkable.

Do you use telemarketers?  Why?  Do you worry about the lack of emotion in their messages? 

Note: I love Marketing Profs.  Just not all the telemarketing calls and junk mail they send.

I recently wrote about how much the new Mircosoft TV ads suck.  But, now I see they have some new ads that are much better.

They are not funny, but they do counter the Mac vs. PC ads, and they do show pretty successfully that PC users are cool people doing cool stuff.  Sure, their money would be better spent making cool products that people actually like, but if they can't do that at least their ads are a bit better.

If I were a Microsoft stockholder, I would be so pissed that the company is spending millions of dollars running ads trying to "change its image".

The ad is stupid.  There is nothing to back up the assertion that they are cool.  In fact, Bill Gates buying discount shoes at a mall and eating a churro is anything but cool.

Anyone with half a brain sees right through the ads and then says... how about you take a few of those millions and build an operating system that is actually an upgrade from XP (unlike the downgrade that Vista currently is). 

Unless... maybe the whole point of the ads is for us to all start talking about how much the ads suck, rather than how much Vista sucks?  Perhaps Bill Gates is still a genius afterall.

We're holding a Tweetup / Meetup / Gathering on Sunday 9/7 at 6pm at Tommy Doyle's in Kendall Square to kick off the Inbound Marketing Summit (#IMS08).  This is open to ALL, you don't need to have bought a ticket to http://www.inboundmarketingsummit.com/ to attend the reception Sunday evening.

Twitter message: http://twitter.com/mvolpe/statuses/909453707

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=25511137661

Will I see you there?

Katie Couric joined Digg to "share her press pass with the community".  But is she really participating in the community? Here is what she has done so far.

1. Wore a cute t-shirt and made a video.
2. Submitted that video and got 3400+ Diggs.
3. Gathered a bunch of people to be her friends.
4. Submitted articles and videos, but thy are ALL ABOUT HER - they all have "Katie Couric" in the title. 
5. She has only Dugg a couple things that all look like are associated with her.

Is that really "participating in Digg"?  Maybe famous people don't need to engage in the community.  But what is the point then? They might as well have "biggestkatiecouricfan" or someone submit her stuff and be their presence on places like Digg. 

For reference, here is her video on YouTube announcing what she was going to do.  What do you think?

I am in the middle of a problem.  I can't decide on my next phone.  Neither one is perfect.  (Yes, all you Apple groupies, the iPhone has drawbacks!)

Blackberry Curve Benefits:

1. Full Keyboard.  I have huge hands and LOVE my full keyboard with real keys.
2. Video.  The iPhone does not take video.  I would use video for interviews for blogging.
3. Corporate Synch.  Bulletproof IT-supported synchronization with Exchange Email & Calendar.  Simple, works, easy.

iPhone Benefits:

1. Full Browser.  Using a full browser would be great for blogging and a ton of other stuff.
2. Qik.  I can't take recorded video, but I can live stream with Qik now.  Cool, but will I use it?
3. Cool.  It is cooler.  But is it also a fad?  Do I really want to be an Apple Black Turtleneck person?
4. Podcasts.  I think my iPhone will download podcasts automatically, which would be cool and help me keep up to date.

HubSpot got a bunch of PR mentions around the web today:

• HubSpot Handles eMarketing Surge - Mass High Tech
• Online Video Marketers Win Customers with Webinars - Mass High Tech
• Olympic Marketing Tips from a Gold Medalist - MarketingProfs
• Tips from an Internet Marketing Expert - That's Great PR Blog

You can vote for some of  these articles on Sphinn and Yahoo Buzz:

• http://sphinn.com/story/67368
• http://sphinn.com/story/67388
• http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:e185719c9b7cd3d84e74564d9bbbcf67:4e65a170aa46248fc1ec7367abe71dd5
• http://buzz.yahoo.com/article/1:6d158f115f36300413a941ea6897f525:a61ad4e2c65155653b4f62e72dfcce0e

When I commute home on the T (that's the subway in Boston, for the non-locals) I'll often twitter up a storm from my crackberry.  Last night I posted a tweet with a line from a Jay-Z song, just because I was in a spunky mood.

What surprised me is that I got a number of responses from people I did not expect, sort of like Twitter helped me find other Jay-Z fans.

• "Jay-Z Baby....He is coming out with Blueprint 3 Produced by Kanye and Timberland...Should be Hot" from HappyHourBoston
• "Great lyric, I used to set that as my away message on AIM." from Dan Abdinoor
• "Did not peg you as a Jay-Z fan... nice!" from Seph250

Great viral marketing by Gatorade.  Their product could led itself to a whole series of these.  I actually think it would have been better if the catch she made were more human.  A great catch, but more believable.  Still, very nice work.  It has been successful too, read this for stats.

Seth Godin is very perceptive.

Maybe most marketers should only try to do "slick" stuff if they have a huge budget and staff.  I think most of us should stick to "real" stuff.

There has been a bunch of discussion in the blogosphere today about the right role for a PR Firm in the age of social media.

See my blog article about the Role of a PR Firm in a Social Media World, and you can also watch this video from the blog www.PR-Squared.com.

<rant>

I have been a LinkedIn member for longer than I can remember.  Normally it is a very reliable service.  But recently in the last month that has changed.  And frankly, I am sick of it.

All I want to do each day is check my inbox, approve or archive invitations, approve people who have requested to be members of my groups that I manage (http://LinkedIn.ProMarketers.com) and see what other people are up to.

But, for some reason, LinkedIn is making this really hard.  A few days back it would not let me log in, no matter how many times or browsers I tried.  Today it is letting me approve group members for one of my groups, but not the other.

LinkedIn... Look, you used to be pretty cool.  If you really want to be like Facebook (and not the next Friendster, aka failure) get your act in gear.  Your website needs to be highly available and you need to stop giving me error messages whan I try to do basic things.

</rant>

Cool idea from Barak Obama.  Announce your running mate via text message and emails.  I wonder how many people will sign up?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/firsttoknow

I found a post on American Shelf Life about how you can now register to vote on Facebook.

Wow.  This could really benefit Barak Obama.  He already has a corner on social media marketing for the campaign, and this might actually be a tool to get those youger voters who support him to actually make a difference at the polls.

Over 2 million people have registered to vote using this application.  What is McCain going to do now?  Run more TV ads?  That should work... NOT.

I found this great post from Marketing Pilgrim.  I have always told people that from a marketing perspective, unless you are selling to teens, people who frequent clubs or late night parties, people in the music industry, or people who work in adult industries, MySpace is a waste of time.

I also think that there is potential to actually damage your brand if you have a big presence on MySpace and don't want to be associated with the elements of the MySpace brand.  I think Cartier is making a big mistake.  I mean, there are so many other options out there... why choose MySpace?

I found this on the Duct Tape Marketing Blog.  This politician lets his supporters write on the sign why they are going to vote for him.

What would your customers or supportes say if you asked them to tell other people why they liked you?  Would it be the same as you company pitch?  Probably not.  Why not?

Dharmesh Shah, co-founder of HubSpot, wrote an article smacking around Business Week for their opinion of Saas on his blog OnStartups.  I agree with him, and listed out my reasons in a comment.  That comment seemed worthy of a blog article here. (Disclaimer: I work at HubSpot which provides internet marketing software on a Saas basis.)

1. Reduced IT staff required.  It is difficult and expensive for a small or medium sized company to attract and retain a good IT staff.  A company like Salesforce.com can do this more easily.
2. Reduced IT infrastructure required.  Why should a small company that sells real estate have to buy servers and maintain them?  It makes more sense to let your software provider do that throgh Saas.
3. Upgrades are easy with Saas.  Have you tried to upgrade Siebel?  Yuck... both for the price and for the cost of actually doing the upgrade.  In contrast, Salesforce.com does multiple upgrades per year, and they just happen, pretty much.  You automatically get all this cool new stuff, and you just pay the same price and do nothing to get it.
4. Better alignment of interests.  In traditional software, you pay tons of money upfrant because a salesperson did a nice demo.  Then you are stuck with the software, if it works or not.  In Saas, you pay a little bit of money, and then you use the software.  If it does not work like it did in the demo, you can cancel and move on.  This is a huge benefit to the customer because it better aligns interests between you and the software supplier. You want the software to work, they want you to remain a customer, so they make the software work for you.

What do you think?  Is Saas Cool or Crappy?  Leave a comment.

We're launching a $50,000 Viral Marketing Contest at HubSpot.

If you think you can create some cool content, you should enter!  Both blog articles and videos are eligible.

Please enter!!!  I have a meeting this afternoon with one of our VC investors and I will need to explain why I'm just giving away $50,000 of their investment...

Cuil is a new search engine that just launched with lots of buzz in the startup world.  It is supposed to be a "Google Killer."  I don't get it.  I think it sucks.  Here's why:

1. They lie.  They claim to have the "world's biggest search engine" yet when you search for some simple terms, Google returns a lot more results than they do.  "Search Engine" yields 378 million results in Google and 165 million in Cuil.  "Startup" yields 57 million in Google and only 40 million in Cuil.
2. They are solving the wrong problem.  I don't need my search engine to crawl more web pages.  I need higher quality, more targeted results.  I need less search engine spam.  I need more personalization.  Cuil does none of this.  Crawling the last 0.1% of webpages Google misses is like including the microscopic dust particles under my bed during a search of my house.  Who cares!!!
3. Their results suck.  Search for "Cuil" in Cuil and you Search in Google for "Cuil" and you get a bunch of results that make sense, including a news article and Cuil itself.  Search for "Cuil" in Cuil, and you get results like "Properties for Sale in Cuil Mhuine, Ireland", "The Shire of Cuil Choluim" and "Download Chase Around the Windmill".  What a joke.

What do you think?  Is there anything about Cuil that is actually Cool?  Leave a comment...

We went out to Kings for some bowling last night to celebrate HubSpot's 2nd birthday party.  I had a lot of fun, and I think most other folks did too.

Here are some HubSpot photos on Flickr, or watch the slideshow below.

http://www.SalesvsMarketing.com

I took a bunch (3,000 photos during my safari in Kenya).  I have selected about 200 that I think are good photos, here they are.  If you want to know more about the equipment I used, check out the article on Kenya Safari Photo Advice.

HubSpot has just launched a new PR tool called Press Release Grader, a tool that evaluates your press release and provides a nifty report about what is good and bad about it.  Some of the cool features that get me excited are:

1. Gobbeldygook Word Analysis - The tool automatically sans your press release for the meaningless terms that are overused in press releases everywhere.
2. Word Cloud - I think this is a really neat tool to see what your press release is REALLY about, not what you think it is about.
3. Link Analysis - One of the most under-utilized parts of press releases is the value of linking back to your own website for SEO purposes, this tool gives a nifty analysis of the links in your press release.

Check it out and let us know what you think!  www.PressReleaseGrader.com

What should a VP of Marketing get paid at a technology startup company? I have some data below from a well respected compensation survey of a large number of tech startups. Please note, all of this data is for non-founders. If you are a founder of the company, your equity is higher (and sometimes cash pay is lower).

You should check out the summary compensation report developed from the raw data that I used. You will also notice that I broke the data into four quartiles. Everyone wants to be in the top quartile, but that is not statistically possible. So, what separates the more highly paid from the less highly paid VPs of Marketing? I have a list of the factors I think are most important below. Your mileage may vary.

Factors Determining VP of Marketing Pay / Compensation Scale

1. More experience = more pay. As a younger marketing VP, I feel weird about saying this, but I do think that people with more experience can justify a higher pay package. She or he has seen the movie before and will anticipate challenges more.
2. More analytical = more pay. Many marketers are more emotional than analytical. All marketers need some level of emotional feel to be effective - not every decision has numerical data available - but for most tech startups, lead genration and analyical practices are critical, and a purely brand/emotion based marketer is not going to bring the proper skills to the team. Brand is nothing without leads and new customers at a startup tech company.
3. Domain expertise = higher pay. Clearly if you have some expertise in the particular domain that the startup is serving, you can justify getting a higher level of compensation.
4. More customers in the market = higher pay. Let's be honest, marketing is not required to be a core competency of every company. For instance, at a company that is targeting the CTOs of just Fortune 100 companies, getting new customers really is largely a sales effort - the market of potential users is well defined, and lead generation is more of an activity to support sales than something truly strategic. Sure, there is still a huge branding, messaging and positioning game, but without lead gen you have removed a big posrtion of the marketing challenge. Plus, if you think about the importance and big pay that top tier consumer marketers get, it makes sense to say that the larger the number of potential customers the more of a marketing challenge it becomes.
5. A marketing-related product = higher pay. Companies that sell a product that has to do with marketing (email marketing software, web design, CRM, etc.) should more highly value a VP of Marketing because of the strategic input into the company. If you are selling data-storage hardware, then the VP Marketing does not have a more special skill for knowing the customer than some other folks in the company. But if you are selling to other Marketing VPs, then your own Marketing VP is a useful resource - because he or she is also a prospect / customer.
6. Better company = better pay. The hotter the company that higher the pay should be. This might sound counterintuitive, but I believe in it strongly. Why? Because hot tech startups demand a lot from employees, and also demand an A+ team - this is true for a VP of Marketing as well. If things are going well, things will move fast, and having a VP of Marketing that can change and adapt
7. Rare skills = more pay. If the company desires rare skills in their head of marketing, such as experience with mobile marketing, or knowledge of SEO, or expertise in international markets, they should expect to pay more for these skills.

Special thanks to two friends who are in the process of acquiring new jobs. Both of you made me think about this issue and inspired the blog post. I won't mention your names, but I think you know who you are. :)

Do you have other thoughts on VP of Marketing compensation at startup tech companies? Leave a comment below.