While out to eat with friends recently, I heard a story that so caught my attention that I couldn’t wait to write about it. A former co-worker and now close friend of my wife and I humbly relayed something she’s started at work. She’s not the type to boast or draw attention to herself and to further put this in perspective, she’s the antithesis of the corporate, political-playing title climber. She’s got an incredible personality, truly enjoys people, and rarely is found without a positive glow. So, can you imagine that she’s potentially changing the way a Fortune 500 listens and communicates with its employees and customers?

Well, she is and she’s doing it with a chair.

She works in Communications for a very large retailer based in the Midwest who has thousands of stores worldwide, thousands of employees, and a bustling technology-filled corporate campus filled with energetic people trying to climb the ladder and change the world of retail.

Then there is Jill. She had a simple idea that - at first - was met with opposition. But, her perpetual optimism won over management and they told her to give her idea a try.

So, she plopped down two chairs in the heart of this busy corporate campus and put a sign over the two chairs calling out a topic for the day. She occupied one chair and then waited. And waited. And waited for another employee to sit down and discuss the topic she had posted. No technology. No motives. Just a person genuinely interested in her co-worker’s thoughts and feelings.

Well, her wait was short. People started to sit and talk. One at a time, Jill sat and spoke with employees. Taking notes on employees concerns and feedback, she promised their input would be anonymously passed on to upper management - and it is.

Would you believe that at times there are lines waiting to talk with her? They trust Jill and love sharing their thoughts with her. There are plans to not only increase the frequency of when she’s there to talk, but now she might sit at stores and talk with customers about their experience.

Again, two chairs. A topic. No technology. The whole world of business broken down to its simplest form - face to face, honest communication.

Here’s the copy that is used to advertise The Chair:

“The Chair” is designed to spark open, face-to-face, one-on-one conversation with employees in the simplest way possible: by offering employees a topic to talk about, an empty chair to sit on and an Employee Communications team member to listen to them (really listen - without a laptop, cell phone or Blackberry in the way). “The Chair” gives us a pulse-check on employee opinions, thoughts and ideas, while giving employees a place to be heard. “The Chair” is set up every other Wednesday from 10:30 a.m. to noon for corporate employees, with plans to expand it to store employees in the future.

With all the texting, blogging, IM, emailing, chatting, Twittering, etc. isn’t it awesome that a simple thing like this is having such a dramatic effect on a very large company? With any company, constructive feedback from employees and customers is not easy to get. As a marketer, I practically jump off the ceiling if I can get a customer or employee to sit down and tell me honestly what they think of our products or marketing plan.

Honestly, I’m not sure just anyone could pull this off. If you could meet Jill, you’d instantly know why this is working. But, I think more companies need to try. Listening is so important to understanding, and understanding customers and employees is what empowers businesses to improve.

Like a lot of corporate environments, people are falling all over themselves trying to take credit for the idea, but in the end it was all Jill. She’s loving it and has truly carved out a niche for herself in corporate America.

If you’d like to learn more about this effort, let me know and I’ll put you in contact with Jill.

What are your thoughts on The Chair?

1. Have you ever wondered if trade shows are more of a drain on your organization than a benefit?
2. Do you start to sweat when the business leaders in your organization begin asking about the return on trade shows you attend?
3. Are you routinely asked to attend trade shows that you do not believe will add value?
4. Do you have people in your organization that are emotionally charged about attending a show?

Deciding which trade shows to attend can be a difficult decision when emotions enter the decision process. It seems that every show has a strong advocate trying to convince the organization to attend.

Statements such as, “all our customers will be there”, “the market will think we have disappeared if we don’t attend”, “the trade publications won’t think we are a serious player”, and “this is the largest show in our biggest market segment” are a reflection of feeling, not fact.

Conversely, with very tight budgets and demand to show ROI, deciding which show to attend can prove to be just as difficult.

While establishing better goals and metrics is a usual course of action to prove marketing return, trade shows can be particularly challenging.

To ensure the show success it is important to set up quantitative and qualitative metrics prior to deciding to exhibit. If you establish goals such as the number leads, number of customer meetings, and the number of brand impressions you can mitigate emotional decision making.

Driving to Trade Show ROI

To measure ROI it is important to fully capture the costs and benefits of a show. Below I propose some metrics that can be used to demonstrate the benefit of a show. Three metrics in particular are the calculation of Advertising Equivalence, cost savings from customer meetings, and monetizing brand impressions with speaking engagements.

I would recommend the development of a standard template that includes the elements listed below. It is also important to consider the timing of when you validate the results. I have found that it is important to check at least three times: Immediately, within a month or so and then again when deciding to attend the show again.

Trade Show Costs

Event Sponsorships/Exhibition

1. Exhibit costs
2. Speaker costs
3. Sponsorships
4. Individual registrations
5. Other

Transportation

1. Booth / Equipment Shipping costs
2. Other Transportation

Travel

1. Number of attendees x the average cost per day x the number of days

Promotional gifts/collateral

1. Promotional gifts
2. Printer materials
3. Other promotional items (pre-show mailers, etc.)
4. Graphics /Banners / Signs

Resource Costs (Time x salary)

1. Attendees
2. Creative services costs (agency, writers, designers, etc.)
3. Show planner
4. Marketing manager
5. Product manager
6. Other

Customer Meetings

1. Meeting room
2. Food and beverage
3. Marketing materials
4. Other

Show Benefits (Included both quantitative and qualitative measures):

Leads

1. Number of leads
2. Total revenue resulting from closed leads
3. Increased Brand Awareness and Reputation
4. Estimate impressions (total attendees at show that see sponsorship of a general session)
5. Booth traffic impressions (Track for a period of time and then extrapolate)
6. Brand survey results (taken at the booth)

Public Relations

1. Press Release Coverage (Number picked up by trade publications)
2. Speaking engagements (Number and survey results showing interest)
3. Ad Equivalency (Cost for a full page advertisement / the amount of coverage space in an article)
4. Press meetings/ new relationships developed

Customer Relationship Development and Savings

1. Number of customer meetings
2. Savings from travel to individual customers (number of meetings x number of staff x travel costs – total cost of travel to individual meetings)

Market Research Insight

1. Number of research surveys completed
2. Document and key learning from customers at the show
3. Competitive information gathered

When using criteria such as the above, you should be able to add the total costs and the total benefits and ultimately be able to calculate the shows ROI (benefits-expenses/expense).

Hopefully, this provides some additional insight into the measurement of trade shows.

Do you see anything that is missing from this list?

In the meantime I’m very excited to announce that Tom Teynor - a successful marketing professional and good friend - has agreed to be a guest contributor on the Lonely Marketer. I was excited to hear that Tom will be an author here because he brings tons of good experience from many areas of marketing.

Tom has over 10 years of sales and marketing experience and is currently the Sr. Director of Marketing at Wolters Kluwer Financial Services - a B2B software and services company. Tom is currently responsible for go-to-market strategy and is responsible for marketing management, internet marketing, creative service pricing, and market research. He has also led product management.

Aside from work he enjoys spending time with his family, biking, kayaking, golfing, and snowboarding.

Tom’s first article will be published tomorrow. Welcome Tom!

Joe Pulizzi has been a long-time contributor to the Lonely Marketer community so when I saw his site, Junta42, come out with an incredible list of blogs that focus on content marketing, I knew I had to write about the effort. The Junta42 Top Blogs has a little something for everyone and is a very well put-together, comprehensive list of some of the top marketing blogs around.

Here are the top 42 (and yes, that is the Lonely Marketer proudly sitting at #33):

1. Straight Talk with Nigel Hollis
2. web ink now
3. Conversation Agent
4. Marketing Interactions
5. Buzz Marketing for Technology
6. ContentMarketingToday
7. Copyblogger
8. Web Strategy by Jeremiah
9. Daily Fix
10. Influential Marketing Blog
11. Logic + Emotion
12. CK’s blog
13. Rexblog
14. BeTuitive
15. Consumer Generated Media
16. Diva Marketing Blog
17. The Origin of Brands
18. The Viral Garden
19. What’s Next
20. Bernaise Source
21. Drew’s Marketing Minute
22. Made to Stick
23. Writing White Papers
24. Greg Verdino’s Marketing Blog
25. Writing on the Web
26. Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020
27. AttentionMax
28. Brand Autopsy
29. Branding & Marketing
30. Eat Media Blog
31. Passion2Publish
32. Think Tank - King Fish Media
33. The Lonely Marketer
34. Custom Publishing Council Blog
35. ExperienceCurve
36. Marketing Whims
37. Seth’s Blog
38. THINKing
39. Inspire Action
40. Pandemic Blog
41. Relevant and Valued
42. The A-Ha! Blog

I’ve actually found some great new blogs in here that I didn’t know about before which is why these lists are so fun!

This is not your large company marketing group. We don’t have a group for web marketing, a group for developing sales campaigns and related marketing tools, a group for print advertising, and on and on. I found myself looking for someone that has a little experience in alot of things rather than someone that was specialized in one area of marketing.

Now, if you are specialized don’t freak out about what I’m writing. Larger companies, agencies, and self-employed marketing professionals are all excellent locations for someone that has specialized. I’m writing from the small business perspective and what I need in that role. Here are some of the major elements of experience for which I was looking:

• Content Writing: I wanted someone that had exhibited writing experience. That could be white papers, application notes, web content, ad copy, etc. Marketing starts with content!

• An Understanding of SEM/SEO: I was not looking for someone that had proven experience optimizing a website. What I did want is someone who understood the concept and why optimizing web pages and paid search campaigns for search engines was so important in today’s marketing mix. If they mentioned anything to do with keywords, they made it to the next round. Interesting note - one of the candidates was touting his Google Adwords experience so I turned my monitor around, handing him the keyboard and asked him to show my top performing ad group. He had no clue how to find that most basic element.

• Lead Generation: I was betting I wouldn’t get this experience, but I actually did. I was happy to have candidates in for interviews that had displayed experience in lead generation campaigns. The best candidates talked about “Qualified” leads.

• Exposure to Social Media: Oddly, this was tough to find. Maybe it’s because I’m so connected with social media that I expected to see more experience with some aspect of the communication medium. No one I interviewed had direct experience (I’ll be curious to see what two years down the road brings). But, the candidates that displayed and articulated the importance of social media in the marketing mix proved to me they were current. I will say that each of my final round candidates did invite me to hook up on LinkedIn. Very nice touch.

• Sales Campaign Experience: It was important to me that the candidate had some experience in working with sales on sales campaigns.

• Market Research: Everyone seemed to have this. But, many could not spell out the steps they took in their research.

• Creativity: I needed some display of “out of the box” thinking. Something that would lead me to believe the candidate could lead us in new directions and challenge me in my thinking.

• Ability to Learn: I’m not crazy - I didn’t expect to find every characteristic I listed above. But, I wanted the candidate to have some of the experience and proven track record for learning “on-the-job” and quickly.

I found the whole process very interesting. I never took a step back before to really put down on paper the experience that I thought the small business marketing manager should have. It’s a fun and exciting juggling act that at times can be stressful and at times be immensely gratifying.

You can read the rest of my thoughts on this new feature in my article - AdWords Local PlusBox A Great Addition - over at Search Engine Guide.

• You’re tired
• You’re happy hour went a few drinks too long
• Writer’s block has set in
• Experiencing a period of high stress
• No inspiration
• You’re angry, sad, or just plain grumpy
• No topic grabs your interest
• You’re trying to squeeze in too little time to produce quality work
• You’re watching the kids and trying to write a post
• Your passion is taking a day off

Remember, no post is better than a low-quality post. Your readers and community are subscribed to you because they value the message you deliver. When that message is compromised for any reason, it may be time to take a day or two off.

Tom Schaber should be slowing down after decades of hard work, but instead he’s pumping out a new book and turning away more business than he can handle from his successful sales management consulting business. His new book is a down-to-earth, practical guide to sales management that is derived from over 25 years of managing sales organizations.

From the back cover:

The Road Warrior’s Guide to Sales Management provides owners and sales managers with a simple business approach covering:

• The optimal time for a company to hire its first sales representative or to add more salespeople
• Where to find sales professionals
• Interview tips to eliminate the sales duds
• Goal setting that really works
• How to avoid long, boring sales meetings
• How to fire a salesperson and not get sued
• And more on compensation, creating sales territories, and developing salespeople’s skills

For $17.00 this is a no-brainer for the small business owner or sales manager. I’m not just saying that and pushing this because I’m related to the author - I honestly think this is a great resource for small business. From front cover to back cover the book is filled with straight talk and practical advice. I’m proud of the author and proud to be able to tell you about it.

Tom blogs about sales management at Total Sales Manager and his book can be purchased through:

• Amazon
• Bookhouse Fulfillment

(FYI…these links are not affiliate links and I don’t make any money on the sale of this book)

You can read the rest of my Using Paid Search For Branding on Search Engine Guide!

I’ve long subscribed to a newsletter called the Pragmatic Marketing Update which focuses on information geared towards the technology product manager and marketer. Until recently I wouldn’t have considered the newsletter innovative in any way. It simply provided some good information that is relative to my career. Then, I saw this recently in the corner of the newsletter:

Obviously, this caught my eye. Pragmatic Marketing jumped into the realm of social media with a prominent LinkedIn and Facebook profile. I’d guess that most people that read this blog or other similar blogs are familiar with these social media sites and probably aren’t that surprised to see it. At last check, their Facebook site had close to 400 members. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like their using it for much more than allowing members to post job openings.

But, what about the Pragmatic Marketing subscriber that doesn’t engage in social media? What do they think of that? They’re seeing sites like these creep into their everyday life more and more.

A recent article on the MediaWeek website also highlighted a similar trend in their article Is Social Media Killing the Campaign Microsite? The article focused on the new method of companies not waiting for customers to come to their campaign landing page or microsite but rather jumping out and engaging the customers where they’re hanging out. From the article:

The growth of social media is causing marketers to realize they cannot expect consumers to always seek them out. Web widgets and video-sharing tools make it easy for any user to take content that formerly might have lived only on a brand site with them wherever they go. And social media sites help them share that content with friends.

Sprite Sips is an example of a Facebook campaign that is aimed at taking the Sprite marketing message to a popular social media site. It looks like the marketing campaign got off to a great start, but has since tailed off. Regardless, kudos to them for realizing that people probably weren’t going to seek out the Sprite website to see their latest campaign.

My belief is that social media campaigns such as the ones I’ve listed above are creeping further and further into people’s lives. I believe the more touchpoints people have with these types of marketing, the more likely they’ll be to jump in and figure out what this is all about.

The small business marketer should be looking at social media marketing tactics for 2008!

What are your thoughts? Do you think people not currently involved in social media will start to get into the action or will they think this is all one big fad?

Then, I discovered the power of social media. I discovered a great community of marketing and search engine marketing bloggers and how to integrate myself into these already very lively discussions. I found advice, networking opportunities, resources and most importantly, friendship, from this experience. Here are some statistical highlights:

Readers: 917 (at time of writing this post)
Technorati Authority: 344 (14,006th ranked blog)
Most Popular Post: Beginner’s Guide To Setting Up A First Blog Site
Most Traffic: 15,000+ visitors in one day (from above post)
AdAge Power 150 Rank: 89
M20 Client Side Marketing Blog Rank: 4
Chapters Written in Published Book: 1
Speaking Engagements: 4

But really, these stats are meaningless. What I’ve taken away most from this experience is the great people I’ve met and all that I’ve learned. I thought about linking out to all those people, but literally there are hundreds and I was afraid I’d leave someone out. I’ll have to hope they visit and read this post.

I remember sitting at dinner with a group of people in San Jose at the Search Engine Strategies conference. I sat down only really knowing Matt McGee, but left with friends from Search Engine Guide, Pole Position Marketing, and the Worst SEO Blog Ever. This is just one example, but I’ve made more connections than you care to read about. Social media has an incredible way of connecting like-minded people.

With all these wonderful experiences to remember, I don’t know what lies ahead for the Lonely Marketer. With a significant promotion and a growing family I’m not sure I’ll be able to maintain the level of content to which my readers are familiar. But know that whatever the future holds, this has been one of the most amazing and gratifying experiences of my professional (and personal) life.

Thank you friends and readers!!

What if you went to an online marketing conference and instead of going home with a notebook full of sound bites, you went home with a detailed plan of action to improve traffic and sales on your web site? What if instead of talking at you, the conference speakers worked with you to come up with a plan for your business?

That’s exactly what will happen for small businesses who gather together with some of the best and brightest minds in online marketing next spring.

I know much of my audience is small business marketers and I can’t think of a better conference to attend. Plus, the venue is a replica of the Alamo which certainly is a nice change of pace from the typical conference ballrooms.

I was also honored when Jennifer and Robert invited me to speak at the conference! I’ll be speaking on Blogging for Business which is a topic I love and believe in very much.

The agenda is packed with great information so check this one out - it’s definitely worth your time!