I wish I had a really cool story behind the name. But I don’t. Just like we do with our clients, we took a scientific approach. We went through the same brand exercises we would do for our clients and came up with about 400 names. We narrowed the list down to 25 after researching the domain availability and conducting an informal poll among our internal team and some clients. About this time, one of our designers came in with a piece of paper, with a few names he scribbled down over the weekend, one of which was Buzzhoney. We all liked it, so I threw it into the mix, and that's the one that we picked.
With 400 names, there had to be some real crap. What was the worst?There were several I'm sure. The one that stands out is "Virgency," which combined the words "virgin" and "urgency." I'm sure Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert) would have a field day with that. Needless to say, it didn't make the final 25.
You opened Buzzhoney in 2001 just after the bubble burst on the dotcom era and companies put the clamps on their budgets. Why then?I'd just seen the bottom drop out of the dotcom market first hand. In fact, I was just about standing on the floor when it happened. I was working at a company called ZEFER, an eConsulting firm based in Boston that had raised $160 million in venture capital. The idea was to grow internationally and quickly go public. ZEFER bought out Sladekutter, a company I started in the mid 90s, to address the business strategy and ecommerce needs that were emerging. We focused on Pittsburgh business mostly, helping executives deal with this change.
Anyway, with the acquisition I went to work for ZEFER as a Director of Innovation. I worked with a variety of clients across the country helping them figure out how to use the web or adapt technology for competitive advantage. But as the money dried up, projects were disappearing. It created pink slip panic. We all watched the whole demise of the industry, particularly in April of 2000 when it really collapsed. At that time I realized it was only a matter of time before the whole ship sank. So I left ZEFER, took a little time off and began researching a new business. And that's how Buzzhoney was launched.
With all of these companies biting the dust, what made you think Buzzhoney could make it?Having gone through the complete inception of using the internet for business during the dotcom age, there were many lessons learned which applied to marketing. Even many of the failures had great lessons attached to them. Having had an up-close experience working with global enterprises as well as startup dotcoms, I began to see some of the early potential.
I looked back after the implosion, took those lessons, and with a clean slate said, "If I were creating a marketing company today, what would it look like?" There was clearly a need for combining the innovation and creative ideas of the times with measurement and analytics. Technology had opened up this whole new world that made it possible to measure just about everything, to take much of the risk of marketing, make it smarter, more effective. I mean, the fact that so much communication today is digital means you can measure so many more interactions than you could 12 or 15 years ago. The whole notion that a company would have to adapt and be flexible to this new way of doing business clearly was an opportunity to fill a need.
In this new hypercompetitive environment, how did you convince clients to hire Buzzhoney?I had some great clients over the years who I had good working relationships with. Budgets didn't dry up completely. There were things that could be done. It was really about adjusting to these new needs. I rehired some former employees, who I thought were the best of the bunch in Pittsburgh. These were definitely tough times—2001 and 2002. Companies wanted to fix things that needed fixed; address problems concerning their website mainly—usability problems with existing ecommerce sites, for example. So it was really more about finding project work than anything else.
Now that we've moved past that, clients are looking to bring their marketing departments up-to-date, to take an overall approach, not a piece meal approach, which is exactly what Buzzhoney is positioned to do.
Besides how to get invited to all the extravagant company parties, what are some of the lessons you learned from the dotcom era?At the time, everything was new and there was a lot of trial and error. A lot of that experimentation led to some really great innovations. However, the high profile failures that gobbled up all the venture money skew the experience to be negative. Unfortunately, there were many dotcoms who had little more than vapor wear—no offering, just vapor, smoke and mirrors. So one lesson learned was that there is nothing better for your marketing than a strong customer-oriented product or service. Sounds obvious, I know, but it was a hard lesson for many companies.
Second, technology now allows for performance to be measured faster and more effectively than ever before. The dotcom era spawned the creation of "pay for performance," which has made marketing all that more crucial because it's now more accountable, and more evident, to a company's bottom line. We now have pay-per-click search capability, and different pricing models around ad banners that show click-through rates, which lead to conversion rates. Now media buyers can determine what they are willing to pay for these interactions, and show clearly why. The explosion of Google is a good indicator that search is now pervasive in our everyday lives. So understanding these new tactics and new ways that people find information and companies is so important. And this all started during the dotcom boom when businesses began transacting online.
Measurement implies showing return on investment. Is that ultimately what you're offering to clients, marketing strategies that translate into dollars in their pockets?Yes. We can identify areas that offer the best opportunity for revenue growth, pinpoint cost-saving strategies, and improve the overall effectiveness of a company’s marketing strategy. By working with us on a continual basis, we will measure and show real results so our clients can see continued improvement.
How?By setting targets we can reach and employing tactics to reach them. As an example, we can look at someone's interaction with their customers and identify a number of touch points to improve the amount of sales they make. Or we can improve the close ratio of their sales team, or increase the number of qualified leads. Every step along this process—which is a life cycle marketing approach—we advance the sale. It's all about helping our clients make more money.
If you're looking for a fancy website, there are a lot of companies that can help. If you're looking for a fancy website AND you want to increase your leads AND you want to increase your sales AND you want to keep your customer coming back, you come to Buzzhoney. If you want happy customers and want to make more money off of more customers, that's why you hire us. If you're just looking for pretty artwork, hire someone else.
What exactly do you mean by "lifecycle marketing"?It's a marketing approach that takes into account every phase of our client's interaction with their customers. It's divided into three categories—pre-sales, sales, and customer relationship (which is the ongoing process of how you communicate with your customers after you've made the sale).
Every customer—from before they're even aware of your company—has a series of goals and things they're looking to achieve. So we break down the mindset and goals of the customers as they are moving through these stages. We find out what their needs are, what their problems are at each phase, and develop tactics to address them.
A life cycle approach is a natural way that marketing can engage, can be effective, can help strategic planning, can help the process of selling and closing a deal. While some agencies might create ads and commercials to create a need, we engage throughout the lifecycle of the customer and put together a strategic system to meet their different needs along the way.
Is measurement the X factor that separates you from say, ad agencies?I think so, because quite frankly, a lot of ad agencies survive and thrive because people aren't interested or haven't been interested in measuring effectiveness. But I believe like so many other functions in a business, you can't effectively manage if you can't effectively measure. So to manage the results you need to measure the results—that also means managing the failures. What our approach to marketing allows you to do is improve some of your business processes, change some, and really employ technology so you know what to measure.
Knowing what to measure is the key, isn't it? Otherwise it's just "garbage in, garbage out."Some of the intimidation of marketing comes from the fact that there's so much data you can become deluged and numb. The trick is to figure out what are the key metrics you should look for, whether it's in lead generation or conversion for example, and then how to gain intelligence from those numbers. Once you gain the intelligence, you can make better decisions and allocate budgets more effectively.
I really believe marketing is on a one-way track towards measurement and it's never going back. People who want to avoid it and hide their heads in the sand, it's at their own risk. I try to explain to people that it isn't overly complicated, it's not rocket science. It does take a working knowledge of statistics and the ability to slice and dice the data in the right ways, but those are just new skills that marketing departments can learn, and we can teach them.
Does that mean Buzzhoney implements a marketing system that clients then take over themselves?It depends on their needs. There are many things within our program that clients are completely capable of running and managing on their own. So clients can work with us as much or as little as they need. In some cases clients might need our ongoing help because they don't have the personnel or time or interest even, to keep it going. Again, we're talking about a lifecycle approach. We're here to help them plan, to understand, to gain insight into their customers, to help them implement a technology or campaign, and then to measure and review. So it never ends, whether we're doing the bulk of the work or they are. It's constantly evolving.
Speaking of evolution, marketing is constantly changing. Just look at how marketers approached their jobs ten years ago. Or even five. How do you make sure clients stay up-to-date?Channels will always change. How you interact with customers, how you reach them and learn from them will change as new technologies hit the market. But the core principals never change. You're always going to look for ways to gain insight directly from your customers. You're always going listen to what they're telling you they need or want and then try to fill that need or desire. All of these lessons we learn about the customer, from the customer, are what drive every tactic and every message and means by which we market. New technologies will pop up, which we'll constantly be on the lookout for, but the basic principles of how we work as a team with clients to tailor strategies and tactics based on customer interaction will stay the same.
Do you specialize in any industry?We focus on middle market companies, typically B2B. We've done a lot of work over the years with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 clients. We have great relationships with those clients, they're some of our best. But our niche is working with the mid-size enterprises—companies in the $50-300 million range. We're set up to handle the skills that those types of companies wouldn't necessarily hire in-house. As for specific industries, we have clients all across the board and all across the country.
A prospective customer calls you, what happens?We answer, "Hello, this is Buzzhoney."
And after that?We begin a two-way evaluation process. We evaluate whether the client is right for us, and they evaluate whether we're right for them. This involves asking a lot of questions about their business and their goals. We also need to know as much about their current state of marketing so we can make recommendations and bring some thinking back to them. This can take weeks of ongoing conversation. It just depends. Every new client contact is a new challenge. When clients leave a meeting with us, I hope they are enthused and excited about the meeting and the potential of working with our company and I would hope they'd be impressed with the level of knowledge and experience of my team because we do our homework. That said, we can never fully get to know their problems until we meet with their customers and internal teams, look at customer data, etc., which comes after they become our clients.
How do you respond to clients who say, "We know our customers. There is really nothing new you can teach us."We recognize that many companies think they know their customers. And we certainly learn a lot about our client's customers by talking with clients. However, there are many things we learn when dealing directly with customers; many things, that companies would probably never learn because they don't have the time to find out, or the knowledge about what questions to ask or how best to gather the information.
How do you gather customer data?Looking at raw data from databases. Examining log files from the website. Talking with customer service reps. We'll also talk directly with the customers through one-on-one conversations or surveys. We might observe the way they use the website. There are many ways to engage customers so you can begin to establish a dialog that will help you learn more about them.
By listening to the customer, really listening, you can basically find out what they'll buy, why they'll buy, why they won't buy, what they like about you, what they hate, how much they'll spend, how much they could be persuaded to spend, and what they'll spend in a lifetime. When you have that data, you can apply a marketing strategy that has specific targets for measuring success. And once you do, you'll wonder why you never did it before.
A lot of what you do appears to be web-based. Do you also market with traditional tools such as print materials, too?Absolutely. You have to take an overall approach. The two need to work together. My first business was exclusively print and exclusively direct marketing—before multimedia, before the internet. This was the early 90s. We have evolved in adopting technology now to the point where I believe technology is not only important but critical to the life of business. But the communication principles of reaching people through a website or brochure for example, are the same. There are shared principles between print and multimedia.
You've built a lot of websites but web development obviously is just one piece of an overall puzzle of marketing services you offer. How are you different from other firms?From our perspective, we are here solely to help companies market more effectively. To do that, you need a number of skills. Some fit into the web design area, some in advertising. But at the end of the day, there's a specific set of skills around customer segmentation, data analysis, marketing analytics, and business strategy that ties all of this together. Some companies offer great creative, some offer great strategy, and some offer great technology. But I firmly believe Buzzhoney is the only company in Pittsburgh that offers all three under one roof. And that's so important when getting return on your marketing investment. We aren't hear to build award-winning sites or collateral materials. We're hear to develop marketing strategies that continually make clients money. Period.
What are some of the biggest marketing mistakes you see companies make?It's hard to say because you really need to look at it by more of a case-by-case scenario. But one of the most common mistakes companies make is having their marketing, sales and customer service departments work independently. Really effective companies have all of these departments, and sometimes a few others, working closely together.
Another common mistake is that companies don't effectively segment their customers. They treat all of their customers the same. They really market to all of the prospects and customers with the same message. The power of technology allows us to define a series of value propositions that tug at the heart and wallet of specific segments. And I can have a different approach to reach out and sell those segments. I know that different groups like to be communicated with in different ways. To treat your marketing approach as a one-size-fits-all strategy is 1995. It takes some actual hard, heavy lifting up front, but it's well worth it in the long run.
And Buzzhoney does that heavy lifting?We're wearing our weight belts right now. Clients just have to give us a call. [Editor's note: The number is 412-322-6004]