Recruiting Animal

Pick Your Market Wisely

From: GlobalPost - Google scared this 27-year-old entrepreneur - Matt Lynley March 28, 2012 (edited)

Aaron Lavie, CEO of Box:

In 2004, there were no adequate sharing and storage solutions on the web.

That's why we started Box. It was meant for all use cases and completely all purpose.

It was meant to serve everything from a student to a consumer and for enterprise. We launched the company, we started to get traction.

And then the industry and the market changed.

Rumours of Google Drive started to pop up. It had just been rumored but we realized that these bigger companies could subsidize online storage for consumers to the point it would be free.

That makes sense. If Apple is selling devices, having information stored online makes it easier to sell devices to access it.

With all this competition in the consumer space, it was going to be too difficult for us to differentiate.

But in the enterprise space, competition and customers are sort of defined a little more differently.

There is a much deeper value for innovative solutions, a much larger budget for innovative solutions.

Enterprises want more agnostic systems that work across all platforms and we frankly thought we could build a better collaboration and content management offering.

So we decided to focus our entire company, all our marketing and sales, on the enterprise space.

Even if Google hadn't been getting into online storage, we would have gone into enterprise around the same time anyway.

The market sizes are dramatically different, consumers spend a fraction of a fraction of enterprise spending on software.

If you think about the spend difference and the size of market difference, then enterprise is a really attractive market.

 

Ravi Konda - Marketing Email

I get a lot of poorly written junk mail from Indian recruiters. The author is always a total stranger but invariably begins the letter with a how are you old pal greeting as if he knows me.

This phoniness pisses me off so I started posting this garbage on my blog for everyone to see and today I got a comment from one of the culprits asking me to take the posting down.

can you please delete this post as its got my personal info as my cell phone number!

What a laugh. He can send his trash here there and everywhere like a dog marking trees then claim that he doesn't want his contact info made public. Does that make sense?

Seth Godin and Tribal Marketing

Source: From Gaping Void, Interview With Seth Godin

Update: Seth Godin answers my question in the comments.

I like Seth Godin. But when I read point number one in this interview, I had to wonder if I was dumb.

He claims to be saying something radical but it seems to be a confusing restatement of the most basic business principle: If you provide a product to a market that wants it you are going to be successful.

Or is he saying that if you want to really be successful you should create a product that can become a cult brand for people who are not going to be mere customers but enthusiastic fans who long to rub shoulders with members of a product-oriented clan.

What I'm calling a fan club, he calls a tribe. And someone who wants to sell to a group with very specific tastes, can't worry about trying to please everybody. The decision to turn away from that which is broadly appealing (and therefore bland), he calls leadership.

His examples: Barack Obama, Adrianna Huffington and Harley Davidson.

Harley D is a famous cult brand. But should all motorcycle companies aim at the same kind of appeal, is that what he's saying?

Obama's popularity is simple pop stardom which at times can resemble messianism. In 1968, the new Canadian prime minister, Pierre Trudeau, had a fan base resembling that of The Beatles. But once he started governing, it didn't last very long.

The Huffington Post is something I haven't figured out. I thought that the needs it aimed to meet were already being served by an endless number of blogs. What does it offer that is unique? Its size?

How does this apply to recruiting? He's telling you to become a cult brand for a niche.

And in case you're thinking of writing a blog to attract your niche, Seth's ideal posts are as short as they can possibly be.

Animal Show Sept 24 NOON Eastern Time

08.09.24: LISTEN HERE

GUEST: YIN CHANG, Public Relations Specialist
Yin's Company. LinkedIn. Twitter

TOPIC:
Everything recruiters need to know about public relations

ALL CALL IN AND LISTEN INFO HERE

Mr Moustache Rides Again

On July 23, 2008, Mr Moustache Richard Becker of copywriteink.com made his third appearance on The Recruiting Animal Show.

In his recap of the show, Moustache points out how ignorant recruiters can be about branding.

Simply saying “I’m a recruiter” is not really a message; it’s a job description... it doesn’t do much to help a prospect decide why they might choose to work with one recruiter over another.

Moustache also takes a shot at companies that are too chicken to blog for fear of what readers will say in the comments.

Some professionals and companies... tend to shy away from social media because they are too afraid of what other people might think, say, or do.

Personally, I think that’s baloney. If your professional or company message cannot stand up to a challenge now and again, then your message probably doesn’t have much merit at all.

Meaning, they might have a good message but not the service to back it up.

I wanted to talk to Moustache about many things but I didn't manage the time properly. (I guess I let Cliff Mintz hog the floor because he's got a PhD.) So I'll have to have Moustache back again.

One thing I particularly wanted to discuss were his thoughts about apologies. I think he advises us do it once and move on because it's better to take a hit from angry victims than try to placate them endlessly. I like the spunk in that answer but it requires some clarification.

Clip from the show: Branding by Company name.
See also: Dave Manaster vs Susan Strayer on branding.

Animal Show Wed July 23 NOON EDT

GUEST: Richard Becker (Mr Moustache)
Blog, Twitter, LinkedIn

TOPIC: Marketing for Recruiters

Call in and Listen Info Here

Marketing on Social Media

1. The Personal is Professional
You create an online presence in microblogging (eg Twitter) by sharing mundane personal information with your "followers". Inotherwords, you promote yourself in the guise of chatting with "friends".

2. Overshare
Tell your audience what you are doing all day long. This means endless messages about where you are, what you're eating, who you're meeting, plus photos and videos (if you have them).

3. Enhance Your Image
It's easy to make yourself seem like someone special by publishing bits and pieces of made up life. The aura of success you create can be used to attract business.

Take a look at these Twitter postings:

Animal: Had dinner with the Assistant Deputy Minister last week. He said some very interesting things

Animal: Invited to my friend's island this weekend. Couldn't be bothered.

Both of them are true. I know a guy who's been with the government a long time and is now a senior manager. Once a month, I eat at a Chinese buffet with the same bunch of guys and he's part of the dinner crew.

Another friend comes from a wealthy family. They own a small island with a fancy cottage. He wanted me to drive some of his daughter's friends up to the lake because he's busy racing his car.

You might think that this kind of crap isn't worth posting but if you want to be a somebody online, think again.

How To Sell

Before the advent of department stores, small retailers used their front windows in a straightforward manner to put their goods on display. The big department store windows were different. They were used to put on a display meant to charm and amaze.

Frank Baum, author of The Wizard of Oz, was a window dressers and founded the National Association of Window Trimmers. "Even the male mind, naturally obtuse upon such matters, is forced to marvel at the beauty of the display," he said.

What's the lesson here? Sell the sizzle not the steak. The plain goods are not as emotionally compelling as the context in which they are presented.

That's why some recruiting firms rent fancy offices in downtown towers. But how can theatrics make a job seem magical when the person you are presenting it to understands it quite well? Doesn't familiarity with something that is probably not a dramatic change, rule out big dreams?

Reference: Froma Harrop

How To Lie Effectively

Recently, I've been reading critiques of marketing successes in the political field.

Martin Kramer shows us how you can use an over-simplified interpretion of the facts to misrepresent them. Here's what he means.

If two percent of your survey sample says they would commit terrorist acts and twenty percent says they strongly agree with those acts, you announce that only a tiny fraction of the people surveyed are extremists.

And we all recently saw a shifty but powerful interpretation of Barack Obama's Jeremiah Wright problem, as well. The press reported that Obama had opened a much needed conversation about race when, in fact, he was merely forced into rationalizing his support for a lunatic mentor.

Hillary ran into problems, however, because in her creative marketing she didn't merely interpret facts, she invented facts about her visit to Bosnia that were very easy to check and, so, was immediately refuted with videos of the actual event .

The lesson: it's easier to lie when you are merely spinning the facts rather than out and out lying about them. And it's easier to lie when the truth about your facts cannot be easily discovered.

The Length of Your Presentation

Depends on what you are presenting.

The length of your sales writing will depend on:

1. Lead generation needs less detail;
    an ad that aims to sell must address every potential objection
2. The higher the price, the longer it takes to justify or create the need.
3. The benefits of an unfamiliar product or service require a lot of explanation
4. The more features, the more writing required.

You have to test the results of your writing using various approaches
to see what works best.

Source: Copyblogger