The following article written by Tim Klabunde was published in the September edition A/E Rainmaker, a PSMJ Resources publication.

I received a message the other day from a friend telling me that I needed to visit Skittles.com. It wasn’t that Skittles had an incredible website and they were not giving away free candy samples, instead it was that the Skittles website isn’t a website!

I have been enjoying watching the evolution of the web for years, so you can only imagine then that a message about a non-website was well worth a trip to the world-wide-web. Here is what I found:

Skittles.com home page is a Twitter page with a little box in the corner of your browser window that has links to each of their other “pages.” If you click on “Products” you will be taken to Wikipedia to learn more about each of the different types of Skittles. If you want to see videos or pictures, you are directed to YouTube and flickr. If you want to know what people think about Skittles, you’ll end up at Twitter. Actually, the only time you end up on a Skittles webpage is when you click “contact.”

Web 3.0

Could it be that a candy company was the first to Web 3.0, where customers create content rather than owners? Skittles has captured something incredible by creating a non-website: they have shifted the focal point of the content to the customer! We often focus on creating fresh and new websites that provide great information, yet to often the content of a website is designed more to make an owner feel good than to benefit the customer. Skittles turned the tables by reaching to their customers and giving them a voice. In doing so they turned over the ownership of the Skittles website to the people the site was created to reach in the first place.

Your non-webpage

What would a potential customer learn about you and your company if your corporate website was suddenly down for a day? Are others writing good things about your service and your capabilities? Do you have a blog, a Wikipedia page, a LinkedIn group, or a twitter group that gives an active voice to your company? Take a couple of minutes today to Google yourself and your company, and take special note of the information on page two and three of your search. Is your web presence painting a picture of your company that you want to see?

The future of the web

We truly don’t know what will happen next on the World Wide Web, but one thing is certain: it is the people that are searching for information that will dictate the future of the web, not the website owners.

The following article written by Tim Klabunde was published in the May edition of A/E Rainmaker, a PSMJ Resources publication.

By the time Mark sent me an e-mail, he was already beyond frustrated after yet another failed marketing campaign. In the past several months, he had developed an ineffective postcard mailing, wasted time with a series of cold calls to potential clients, and spent hundreds of dollars on a web site optimization that did not bring in a single project. Everything that Mark had done had been part of successful marketing campaigns at other companies, so why wasn’t it effective at his? As we spoke, it became clear that Mark was failing to leverage the rule of multiplicity. That is, you must combine marketing activities to multiply their effectiveness.

Hit rates and multiplicity

To understand multiplicity, you must first understand hit rates. Everything you do in marketing has a hit rate; that is, the number of desired responses you receive as a result of your efforts. For example, postcard mailings result in three to six return phone calls for every 1,000 cards mailed, or a 0.3 percent to 0.6 percent hit rate. Likewise, true cold calls result in two to five future direct communications for every 100 phone calls, or a 2 percent to 5 percent hit rate. While these hit rates can be used as the basis for marketing campaigns, there is a simple way to rapidly increase these hit rates and build a strong return on investment for your marketing dollars.

The rule of multiplicity

The key to building a successful marketing campaign is to combine several approaches together with a concentrated group of people. Multiplicity is the concept that combining related marketing activities together will multiply your hit rates and ultimately the effectiveness of your marketing program through the saturation of your target market.

How multiplicity works

When you combine a series of events, you effectively multiply the hit rates together (2 x 3 x 4 = 24 percent hit rate), instead of simply sending out independent campaigns that result in adding your effectiveness together (2 + 3 + 4 = 9 percent). In Mark’s case, he could have initiated the same postcard mailing to a select group of prospects, followed with a letter containing a company introduction, e-mailed a link of helpful information he had posted on his web site, and then initiated a warm call to the prospect. By using this combined approach, Mark would be able to greatly increase the effectiveness of his marketing campaigns.

Building your marketing campaign

When you start a new marketing campaign, look at your objective, then identify the resources that you have available: the communication channels you can use, the time you have to deliver results, and your budget. With these parameters in mind, develop a marketing campaign that closely associates key marketing activities together with a consistent message. It is important to do this with a concentrated group of people, making changes and refining the process as you go to develop the best approach for your company and objective.

Overcoming failure

In Mark’s case, it was easier to just send out a postcard campaign and sit back to wait for the calls to roll in, but realistically, we all know that building our companies is harder than mailing a little piece of paper. Multiplicity is used by the best marketers in the world for one main reason – it works! Utilize the rule of multiplicity the next time you have a marketing objective to attain, and I promise that you will never go back to one-off marketing.

In his recent post Roll with the Changes on PSMJ Resources Ed Hannan addresses the ever changing face of marketing. I especially like his thoughts on LinkedIn in the last four paragraphs. Namely, he and I agree that LinkedIn has become the business networking site of choice in the United States today. If you haven’t visited the PSMJ Resources blog recently it is well worth taking the time to explore. Also, Bruce posted a great blog today on the same site that will help you determine if you are a seagull manager. Thanks Ed and Bruce!

This years SMPS Build Business conference was nothing short of great: great friends, great information, and great fun. Some of my personal highlights included speaking at CPSM day on Wednesday on Building a Company of Rainmakers, celebrating with friends at this year’s awards gala, and finally meeting Randy Pollock, Mark Buckshon, and Mel Lester in person. I would like to say a special thanks to Kevin Doyle who worked with me at length to make certain everything went smoothly on CPSM day.  Also, extra thanks to Ron Worth, Lisa Bowman, Michele Santiago, Mark DellaPietra, Bill Scott, Christine Chirichella and the rest of the SMPS National staff that made Build Business such a great success. I have enjoyed getting to know so many of the SMPS staff and I am nothing less than impressed at the incredible job they have done as SMPS continues to grow.

Later this week I will post a follow-up to Building a Company of Rainmakers for those of you that are now apart of this blog’s network after attending Wednesday’s seminar. Also check out the PSMJ Resources Blog that was also active during Build Business this year for additional follow-up from the conference.  Thanks for the great coverage Ed!

Thank you again SMPS, I look forward to seeing all of you next year in Las Vegas for Build Business 2009!