While I’m waiting for lunch to be served on the second day of the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston and my head is still filled with some great ideas, I wanted to get some notes on paper (or e-paper) to give you a sense of the presentation and to help me remember topics for later posts that will be beneficial for you.
Personalization
A big theme on the first day was about personalization, a.k.a. individual segmentation. Marketers have always known that segmenting their database gives one the ability to better target potential customers. Personalization is about creating the “segment of one”.
Both Brian Halligan of HubSpot and the CMS panel touched on the idea that the next wave of segmentation is going to be about the individual experience.
If you’re a customer of Netflix, Pandora, Zappos, and Amazon, think of your experience when you visit those sites. After you’re logged in, you see a version of the site that’s completely customized to you, based on your activities and preferences.
As Halligan put it, B2C marketers have been doing this well for years and now it’s time for B2B marketers to get on board. Plus, the latest round of CMS platforms from companies like Ektron, Sitecore and Percussion make this possible. Not easy, mind you. Just possible.
Social CRM
A panel on Social CRM reinforced the idea that marketing & sales is about the individual. No longer are reps able to sit in the office of a sales lead and see the diplomas on the wall, pictures of kids on the desk or other mementos that helps build a relationship.
Instead, there is social media.
A good CRM will make it easier for a good salesperson to integrate their calendar, contacts, emails and deal history into one source. If your only interaction with a customer is over the phone, you need every piece of information you can get to develop rapport quickly and perhaps most importantly, authentically.
The Science of Social Media Marketing
While a lot of these sessions are high level discussions about what a good marketer should be doing in terms of inbound marketing, there hasn’t been very much talk about how to go about this process. Dan Zarrella changed that trend on Day 2 and delivered a stand-out presentation with solid data to back up his best practices, even when they seemed counter-intuitive.
Some nuggets:
- Stop talking about yourself.
- Ideas don’t go viral because they’re good. They spread because they’re good at spreading.
- Write shortly & simply…as if you’re writing for Snooki.
- Tweets that use “Please ReTweet” or “Pls RT” get retweeted with 4X frequency.
- Combine relevancy. He used a story of writing an fake article on a USB Absinthe spoon. It was picked up by geeks that love gadgets & booze. When you make the information seem like it was written “just for them”, it is more likely that it will get shared.
Other Thoughts
Steve Garfield’s quick presentation on making video easy has inspired me to start video blogging. Once I work on my tan, I’ll start posting my pretty face in more videos. Send complaints to http://twitter.com/stevegarfield 
In terms of great presentations, I have to say that both Guy Kawasaki and Ben Mezrich were amazing. Read their books!
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