DMEF Blog

I hope everyone had Happy Holidays!

For New Years, I have two fantastic posts to share. The first is from The Savvy Intern, titled “What’s on Your List of New Year’s Realizations?”

That’s not a typo. The smart post encourages job seekers to shift their focus in 2012 away from “resolutions” and onto realizations. As the author (CEO and Founder of YouTern Mark Babbitt) relates, realizations help students or job seekers figure out where they are now, and what they have to do to get a job in the new year. Here are some New Years “realizations” that Babbitt lists:

It is past time to stop hoping the economy will get better – act and plan as if it will not

In today’s online “everyone knows everyone” world, you are a brand – make it a good brand

Developing an entrepreneurial (or intrapreneurial) spirit is critical to getting hired

You must be networking through social media and face-to-face – or you’re falling behind your career competition

Developing a mentor relationship with an influencer within your industry is crucial

For college students: your degree alone is not going to get you a job; developing your career is going to be hard work – and you must start right now

For recent graduates and workforce veterans out of work or underemployed more than six months: what you are doing now isn’t working… consider making a significant change to your approach

Cleaning up your online presence has never been more important

Those who come across as desperate, victims or who are not coach-able are rarely hired

You do not need to be perfect – you just need to be better than your job seeking competition

The second New Year’s “countdown” that I want to share is near to my heart. It’s written by Chet Dalzell, who has been helping Direct Marketing Educational Foundation to reach their year-end DirectWorks Challenge goal, in order to continue providing valuable programs that help teach students about marketing and place them in their first careers in the industry.

Here are Chet’s “Five Reasons Why Year End Giving Should Include a DMEF Donation”:

1. In its seminal research report, From Stretched to Strengthened: Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study (October 2011), IBM states that an explosion of data, social platforms, channel and device choices, and shifting demographics all point to tremendous hurdles for CMOs [chief marketing officers] to overcome. IBM calls it “a gap in readiness.” The ability of higher institutions to provide global (and local) brands with people with skills necessary to capitalize on customer-centric interactions is vital.
2. Another current report from McKinsey’s Global Institute, Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity (May 2011), states that the world needs as many as 190,000 specialists with deep analytical skills whose sole focus is Web marketing (never mind, analyzing data in multi-channel environments). These new professionals will need to be steeped in mathematics and statistics, as well as in marketing and the vertical markets where brands reside.
3. During the 2010-2012 period, according to the Direct Marketing Association (The Power of Direct Marketing, October 2011), the U.S. economy is forecast to create more than 280,000 jobs from mobile, search, Internet and email marketing alone. It’s vital we are able to deliver and develop professionals in our field who have requisite knowledge and education.
4. In a recent employment study for Direct Marketing Association (Quarterly Digital and Direct Marketing Employment Report, September 2011), undertaken by Jerry Bernhart Associates, employers noted that analytics-related posts are the most highly sought in our field, followed by marketing, sales, creative and information technology. Most recently, 61 percent of employer respondents said they were experiencing difficulty attracting the right talent for open positions, with 50 percent attributing this to a shortage of qualified candidates, and 18 percent to a lack of specific job or technical skills.
5. The Direct Marketing Educational Foundation (DMEF) serves to address the skills gap by enabling its Scholarship program, Student Career Forums, intensive training in interactive marketing (I-MIX), its Professor’s Institute, among other activities, to make direct and interactive marketing one of the most highly attractive fields for young adults. During the past year, DMEF engaged 2,580 students, more than 270 professors, and 650 schools in its various programs. We stand ready to exceed our success this coming year—but we need your support to do it.

Here are some great abbreviated tips from Vault Careers Blog on how to find a job this holiday (visit the site to read more details!). These are not just for temporary seasonal gigs by the way…

1. Your Competition is at the Mall – Not all those with the power to hire are on vacation, so get those resumes out there as often as possible and let others miss out on the opportunities that presented themselves.

2. Take Advantage of the Holiday Cheer – Holidays give you a great excuse to check in with your network and find out what might be available. Get your foot in the door with an informational interview, especially at a time when everyone is in the holiday spirit.

3. Holiday Cards are Not Just for Loved Ones -when you are mailing those holiday cards out, take the time to send some holiday well-wishes to those in your professional network

4. Companies Make New Year’s Resolutions Too – In order to get the ball rolling, [companies]will want to hire in December and spend the remainder of their budget for 2011 in the process. The end of the year is the perfect time to spend what’s left–why shouldn’t that extra budget item be you?

5. Parties are Networking Opportunities - take advantage of holiday gatherings involving friends and/or family. You never know who will be there, and it may open up some opportunities for you to make a good impression. Make sure to have a good time, share your job search story without coming across as desperate or pushy, and try to meet as many new people as possible while solidifying your existing relationships.

Last week I tried something for the very first time. Something I never ever thought that I would do…

I clicked on a banner ad.

I was checking in on one of my fantasy football games on Yahoo Sports, and I went to the match up page to see how much I was crushing my opponent by. What first caught my eye when I arrived wasn’t the topline scores, but rather a Miller Lite display banner to the right of the stats boxes, with my team name in it, the current point differential, and a call to action to write custom “smack” to my opposition. Considering I ended up winning 152 to 94, it was a little inappropriate to  talk smack on my opponent; however, I could not resist clicking on the banner, customizing a message and “experimenting” with this highly-customized, highly-entertaining banner. (DateMyLandlord – it was all for work, I swear!)

This innovative advancement with one-to-one messaging might actually give display advertising a glimmer of hope in an otherwise dying industry. Display CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) are down 30% from 2010 to 2010, and continuing to decline as they become more and more commoditized and ineffective. As consumers continue to be annoyed by traditional video roadblocks and homepage takeovers, brands will have to figure out a way to make display work – or abandon it all together for newer, more innovative approaches to advertising online.

In the meantime – if Miller Lite got me – a gen y, digitally sophisticated (if I do say so myself), cynic towards banners – to play with their ad for 2 minutes before adjusting my roster, I think they might be on to something. By applying some of the best practices around 1-to-1 marketing (essentially identifying high-worth prospects, discovering their needs, and delivering highly-tailored messages to them), they found a way to catch my attention and make me interact with the brand. Although the ad is a bit gimmicky, they realize I’m potentially a football watching beer-drinker, that I have a competitive streak and like to talk smack on my league-mates, and that I’d be interested in a message that immediately tells me how many points I’m winning by.

Now, if it just linked to Miller’s website or Facebook page…they might really be onto something!

A recent Pew Study caught my eye – it said that 0% of teenagers 12-17 are on LinkedIn. This isn’t a huge surprise because LinkedIn is a social network for professionals; however, when I dug a bit deeper I found that only 20% of users are 18-24.

With the difficult job market, students are thinking further into the future earlier in their lives. In high school, they are taking AP classes to get to top colleges (or to get through college faster).  In college, they are working 20+ hours a week at various internships and giving up summers at home earlier in their college years in order to gain more skills and become more valuable to employers. But aren’t all these efforts a bit like a tree falling in the forest? If no one “hears” them and you don’t amplify them to be seen by potential employers, then how valuable is all that extra effort?

One of the most powerful tools that students have in their job hunt is LinkedIn. They can use it for networking, job searching, and cataloging and describing their valuable experiences both from school projects and internships, etc. However, so few students are using the social networking platform prior to graduating – which I would argue is too late.

I found this great LinkedIn “Boot Camp” infographic from Business Insider today – it’s probably best to visit the site to really be able to view the step-by-step guide on how to optimize your LinkedIn profile.  I’d also add a step for all those under-24-year-olds – START A PROFILE TODAY!

When I was in the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation’s (DMEF) Next Generation Leaders program in 2007, a lot of people asked me why the Foundation was important, and why they should care about or donate to a nonprofit that helped educated college students and place them into jobs, when there are so many other non-profits out there like Red Cross or Charity: Water that are helping to solve very serious issues.

I think that over the last four years, as the country went through a serious recession and as more and more students found themselves without jobs upon graduating, the importance of DMEF became more and more evident. When I visit Columbia for alumni activities there is a serious concern about what “what happens next” and whether students will have to move back home or take out more loans to get by.

Right now, digital marketing is a field that is actually blowing up, and there ARE a ton of jobs available for young digital natives. However, as Doug Weaver (CEO of the Upstream Group) stated in a recent NYT article, Advertising Companies Fret Over a Digital Talent Gap, “Colleges and universities are not teaching the skills they need to survive in this environment.” Either students are like me, and went to universities that didn’t offer marketing degrees, or they are getting their marketing degree, but not learning the on-the-job essentials they need to survive in this rapidly evolving digital media landscape. Weaver goes on to say, “the traditional media sales or ad skill set was not built for this,” Mr. Weaver said. “You need a hybrid.”

DMEF is that hybrid.  By providing great programs like Next Generation Leaders, student career forums, I-MIX and many others, DMEF is providing students with practical, on-the-job training and information and connecting them with marketing leaders who serve as teachers and mentors. For instance, when I was at e-Scholastic for a rotation during the NGL program, I was on their analytics team, and I learned how to use Omniture to compile daily reports for the e-commerce team, and to help identify areas for optimization on the site. Access to the technology, to their fantastic Director of e-commerce, and to the executive team for whom I was analyzing and synthesizing the data for gave me a serious advantage when I graduated the program and started looking for my first job in the marketplace.

If you are a student and you are thinking about getting into this world of digital / direct / interactive marketing, visit DMEF’s site to learn how you can prepare yourself today.

If you (or someone you know) are interested in working in social and/or digital media after you graduate, are based in New York this January – May, and are looking for a internship that will teach you the fundamentals of social media and search marketing, while providing access to top marketing executives across over 50 marketing companies, then you should definitely check out this spring internship opportunity being offered by the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation.

This past summer, we had our first intern, Princeton student Erin Jennings, work with the DMEF to build out our social media strategy and learn about search and other digital media best practices in the process. Here is Erin’s description of what opportunities the internship provided her:

As the social media intern at DMEF last summer I learned more then I could have ever imagined or hoped for. Coming into the internship with little experience in the marketing field (especially because I attend a liberal arts school), I left the internship feeling like an “expert” direct and interactive marketer. While at DMEF, I was given the opportunity to work on, and be put in charge of, a variety of projects including social media marketing and strategy, search engine marketing and optimization campaigns (with some of the best in the business), and interviewing top CEO’s in the industry for the DMEF blog, amongst other things. The freedom and support the staff gave me to work on projects that I enjoyed, while also letting me give my own input on how projects should be run, made my experience invaluable. The leadership and skills that I gained from this experience left me well prepared for a future job across a variety of industries.

There are a lot of buzz words in marketing to grasp during school and the first few years on the job. Sometimes it takes a very eloquent, intelligent person to cut through the “buzz” and break down exactly what those words truly mean.

My fellow DMEF Board member, Wharton Professor, and author Peter Fader is one of those people helping to demystify, as he break down the true meaning of the buzz phrase “Customer-centricity” in his recently released book, “Wharton Executive Education Customer Centricity Essentials: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It Matters“. Although the term may appear to be fairly self-explanatory, Fader challenges traditional misconceptions of “customer-centricity” and provides his (very educated) point of view on its true meaning.

I’ve already downloaded the full eBook onto my Kindle app , and cannot wait to dig in after reading this teaser by Fader on CRM Advocate, “If You Want to Be Customer-Centric, You’ve Got To Be Direct“. He lists companies that his students (and probably many marketing professionals as well) often tout as having “customer-centric” business models, including Apple, Nordstroms, Starbucks, Wal-Mart, and then provides many insightful reasons as to why these companies are NOT truly customer centric (including a focus on product over customers, a lack of insight into who the most valuable customers are, and the confusion that “customer service” and “customer centricity” are one and the same).

Next the CRM Advocate post provides some insight into which companies Fader believes have managed to grasp the concept of customer-centricity, and successfully integrate it into their businesses. These customer-centric winners include Mary Kay, Avon, Amazon, and American Express, among others. And the one thread that they all have in common is that they embrace the principles of direct marketing. Again, “direct” is another term that students and young professionals may not be super familiar with. Fader clarifies its meaning, and its implications on a customer-centric organization by first listing what it’s not contained to:

Since the term “direct marketing” was coined by marketing visionary Lester Wunderman in the 1960’s, this practice has been negatively associated with late-night infomercials, pyramid schemes, and products that can’t be sold in the traditional marketplace.

And then by discussing what “direct” actually means by explaining Mary Kay’s use of the practice in order to achieve customer centricity:

A Mary Kay consultant lives and dies by her ability to leverage individual customer-level data. There is no “the customer.” Her success is about her ability to know her customers as individuals — their purchase patterns, preferences, and financial means. She is only successful if she can devote her valuable time and resources to the most profitable customers. These are customers that are going to build long-term value for the consultant through increased sales frequency, cross-selling, and retention tactics that will keep those relationships healthy for a long time.

Bottom line – I think for marketing and non-marketing students (and professionals as well!) Peter Fader does a fantastic job in his post of cutting through the “buzz” and the hype around certain companies, and providing solid explanations and examples of what customer-centricity truly means. I’m really looking forward to reading the book and learning more!

Businesses that want to attract top talent into their organizations might be wise to take a page from some universities that have been actively building their social media presence in order to woo prospective students.

Sarah Kessler from Mashable recently wrote an interesting article, “7 Ways Universities Are Using Social Media as a Marketing Tool.” As more and more educational organizations adopt these practices, the next generation of workers will be expecting similar forms of communication and tactics when they graduate and start thinking about where they want to start their careers. If a student is able to explore all the out-of-state schools he or she is interested in via  “virtual walking tours” on Facebook (like Syracuse, which is mentioned in the article), then he or she would likely be disappointed to be constrained by in-person (or brochure) only visits to companies. And the companies that do adopt these practices will likely be more appealing to these uber digital natives by signaling innovation.

Here are the seven practices that Universities are adopting in social media to appeal to students (visit the article for the case studies). Have you seen relevant examples of these initiatives used in the workplace to recruit employees?

1. Virtual Tours – Facebook apps and albums that let prospective students explore the campus
2. School Pride – Athletics and mascot-dedicated pages that encourage spirit
3. School Swag – MP3’s, screen savers, wallpapers, icons, etc.
4. Alumni Groups – The promise of staying connected even after the glory days of University are over
5. Sharing Department Content – Separate social properties that provide departmental information
6. Reaching out to Prospective Students – Apps that provide admitted students access to campus info and group-specific details
7. Facebook Places Advertising – Also relevant for Foursquare, campuses set up check-in points to make sure students are sharing where they are with their network still in high school

My alma mater’s Facebook page could use a little work!

With Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. getting so much attention over the last six months, LinkedIn has somewhat stayed out of the limelight. However, with President Obama’s Town Hall appearance on the platform two weeks ago, and the increasing importance of the professional networking site as the job crisis continues, LinkedIn is becoming increasingly important in the social arena.

However, where almost every college student seems to have a Facebook page, very few seem to really invest in LinkedIn until after they have started their careers. This is too late! Facebook is the platform that might break your career, whereas LinkedIn is the platform that might make it.  In one of my first posts ever, my former DMEF program alum, Francisco Alberini, spoke about the importance of building a personal brand via social media in your quest for your first job. He suggested to use “LinkedIn where you can easily set up a profile and connect with peers and anybody you’ve worked with in the past. Build a small network of peers and keep all your profile information up to date.”

Continuing that line of thought, I saw this great article by Jesse Stanchak a few weeks ago, “How to use LinkedIn to jump-start your job search.” In a Q&A format, Jesse provides 10 tips for how you can use the powerful platform to effectively find and snag your first job. Here are the 10 tips, I encourage you to read the article to learn more LinkedIn best practices about building a personal brand, using keywords, etc..

Formatting tips:

1. Make good use of white space. Too much screen clutter is hard to scan.
2. Divide your resume up with clear headers and bullets. Headers and bullets allow for easy scanning.
3. Because this is an online resume, you can use hyperlinks, images and video in creative ways. This keeps the page visually interesting.

Recommendation tips

1. Write recommendation in a normal speaking voice, not formal, stuffy business speak.
2. Make sure there is a concrete example or story that is shared. If you say, “Bill does great under pressure,” you better prove it.
3. Keep the copy to three main points. So it will be make a point, tell a story; make a point, tell a story; etc.

Reaching out proactively to hiring manager tips:

1. Find the company to which you are applying on LinkedIn, then find people in the company you can invite to an info interview and who might be a hiring manager. Only take notes at this point.
2. Identify the main problems at the organization. Read industry blogs, news sites or LinkedIn groups to get a temperature of its initiatives.
3. Reach out to the info-interview sources and see whether you can identify the hiring manager and what the person cares about.
4. Engage with the hiring manager by leading with how you can add value. Because you’ve already connected with an info-interview source on LinkedIn, you can probably get an introduction to the hiring manager, which is preferable, then a direct message.

I need to revisit my profile after reading Stanchak’s recommendations!

I don’t usually use this blog as my personal refrigerator, posting things I’ve worked on and am proud of (maybe my scrapbook occasionally, but not my fridge!), but today I released the first report from L2 where I was the research lead, guiding it from conception (three months ago!) to publication.  So today I’m sharing the Digital IQ Index®: Beauty, along with a few key findings from the report.

Here is the link to the Index: http://bit.ly/L2BeautyIQ

And here are a few of the interesting things we learned from the research:

• Digital IQ is significantly related to year-over-year change in stock price, suggesting that organizations that are digitally competent are driving shareholder value.

• Estée Lauder is an emerging digital powerhouse. The eight Estée Lauder brands in the Index registered an average Digital IQ of 122, 18 points higher than any other multi-brand organization.

• Thirty-five percent of brands have mobile sites, almost triple the number from 2010. Beyond mobile sites, there has been limited additional investment in mobile over the past year.

• Site sophistication has increased considerably over the last year, with 70 percent of brands having Facebook sharing capabilities and 69 percent incorporating user reviews versus just 10 percent and 41 percent, respectively a year ago.  Both tactics register a correlation with site traffic growth.

• Dior, Smashbox, Origins, Estée Lauder and Shiseido were the biggest winners year-on-year, demonstrating the greatest increase in Digital IQ, on the heels of significant e-commerce, social media and mobile launches.

• While beauty brands are registering less traffic to and from their brand site from Sephora.com, the traffic to and from Amazon has increased considerably, suggesting the online behemoth is playing an increasing role in beauty’s online ecosystem.