Citizen Agency

Kate* writes:

So, our real job as marketers is to ensure that we’ve made something worth talking about. And so begins the dance between product management and product marketing (steps I’m learning to do). Marketers need to understand our products more than ever, but more importantly, we need to understand our customer and what they need.

That is why Citizen Agency works on 3 angles of community building:

1. PRODUCT (the only thing we can control)
2. ENVIRONMENT (we can’t control it, but we can be aware of it)
3. COMMUNITY (once again, not to be controlled, but be part of and understand - like Kate says, “…we need to understand our customer and what they need.”)

I get a little frustrated when clients say to me, “So, when do we start marketing?” when we’ve spent weeks going over the product and haven’t seen much change and gathering feedback and relaying it.

I can create a ‘Marketing Plan’, yes…but it is a waste of time if #1, #2 and #3 are being ignored.

One of our clients who is excellent at understanding #1, 2 and 3 is Ma.gnolia. In fact, I said to Larry, “Let’s work on a marketing plan,” and he said to me, “I don’t think we are quite ready.” Wow. Today, I said to him, “We really appreciate how quickly you implement our suggestions,” to which he replied, “Why would I pay you to consult us, if we weren’t going to listen.” Double wow. (Chris is actually working on a summary of all of the awesome things Ma.gnolia has implemented in a short 2 month period - they have a 3 person team that is in two different locations and are the most fabulous example of agile we’ve seen)
Really, we have some pretty darned great clients.

Still, our bias aside, that is the number one thing we teach our clients and the number one hardest lesson to learn. Why? Because “making something worth talking about” is hard. It is hard to conceptualize. It is hard to predict. And it is really hard to implement.

Even so, we have a few ways to help make it easier that we work on with our clients:

1. Be part of the community you serve. Really. If you aren’t, you are very likely to miss your mark. The question isn’t why you would do this, it is why not?
2. Talk to the people who use your service today. If you are live and have a community forming, definitely listen up. People are more than happy to provide feedback if asked (by a human…not a script or a popup). Even better…we were chatting with the folks at Compumentor this morning and they were saying that they do feedback surveys constantly…and what they found was that what people say and what they do is very different. For instance, their consituents say they aren’t interested in Web 2.0 as a topic, but tend to download mostly Web 2.0 articles. So listen with your stats and with your participation as well.
3. If you are thinking about serving a specific community, do your homework. Talk to people. Participate. Find out what real needs are. See if you can recruit some friends from that community to give you feedback into early versions of what you are working on.
4. If you are doing all of the above and people aren’t talking about it, go back to steps 1, 2 and 3. And when I say, ‘talking about it’ (and I’m sure Kate would agree), I mean actually using your service, finding it useful, loving it, recommending it to their friends, etc. If there is one thing we’ve seen during ‘Web 2.0′ is the echo chamber talking about certain products…which doesn’t convert into regular users. What does that mean? Well, um, implementation is 9/10ths of the law. Something can sound really cool, but it turns out it totally isn’t.
5. If you are getting pickup somewhere unexpected, move there. Another thing it can mean is that, well, the market is all wrong. I was actually talking to Keith Teare at Edgeio the other night who told me that Edgeio was booming with over 1.2 million listings! Huh? I asked, I haven’t seen it on any blogs. That’s when Keith floored me, “You are right! We had our market totally wrong! We were going for bloggers, but then we saw that realtors, recruiters and merchants - without blogs - were picking it up in droves.” And you know what? They switched their focus and strategy. Brilliant.

The first three are homework…the last two are about paving cowpaths. It isn’t simple and it isn’t a “5 steps to success” process (although I number things to make it palitable). It is tough work and you have to listen and learn along the way.

So, yes. Make something worth talking about and make it for someone who wants it. Thanks for the tip, Kate!

[*I finally got to meet Kate at FoWA...sorry we didn't get to chat longer!]