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"Niche groups are emerging as cultural creators" - Frank Cooper of PepsiCo at AMEX Innovation Summit.

Tom Peters has been talking about businesses aiming at the explosively growing Hispanic market as well as targeting female shoppers for years. I guess Pepsi finally listened.

At Broadsoft Connections I made the comment that a Bundle will need to be created to target a specific vertical (or niche). Not everyone agreed with me. But according to Seth Godin, Coca-Cola Japan comes out with a new product every 3 weeks because they have no idea what will work.

Are you experimenting with your marketing? Your bundles? 

Are you targeting Everybody? I hope not because Everybody does not know you. Qualified prospects will react more positively to a specified offer. 

Seth Godin wrote Permission Marketing in 1999. Ten years later, most media companies don't understand the concept still. As Seth explains in the book and in his blog numerous times, when I give you my email address, it is a trust issue. I trust that you will not spam me; inundate me with off-topic email; and most importantly not sell my email address to third parties -- even if they are your partners. 

All too often, when I sign up for an event, I get inundated with email from the vendors of the event. This irks me for a number of reasons, but mostly because I did not give my email address to them.

This is a failure on so many levels. The media company has a database of email addresses that are mostly "junk". By that I mean. yahoo, hotmail, and the like. That means they are likely not sending email that will not be read.

An advertiser is paying to send an email that will be likely read. It does no good to pay for 5000 emails if 4500 of them are worthless, unopened, bounced or sitting in an email box that gets opened infrequently.

By the way, the CAN-SPAM Act is one thing, but your media company brand gets destroyed by these kind of hijinks. Act accordingly.

This PowerPoint presentation represents the outline of what my panel was going to discuss at Broadsoft Connections. We were going to make 3 points about Marketing a Profitable UC Bundle: 

1. Does Bundling Work;
2. How do you sell it;
3. What makes a successful bundle

Does Bundling Work? It depends. Are you using a Bundle for Customer Retention or Customer Acquisition? Our panleists included to ILEC's and 1 CLEC competing directly against one panelist.

The big point to make is that if you add one component sold separately between 15-20% of your customer base will uptake that new component (if marketed well). However, if you add it to a bundle, many more folks will take it. Albeit at a less margin, but more overall revenue.

Everyone was in agreement that the only way to sell a UC Bundle was face-to-face. A sales force - direct or indirect - could sell it. The hardware salespeople have a problem transitioning from selling a box to selling the Invisible. But training can fix that.

Upselling an existing bundle customer can work via tele-sales to increase stickiness and ARPU.

What makes a successful bundle? No one is sure yet. The only point that could be made is that it needs to be simple. Small business wants the pain of technology removed from their business life. And Broadsoft's 180+ features, Xtended Apps, and the XML on the phone are an infinite list of possibilities that will confuse the sales team let alone the consumer. Bundles should be created to attack a market segment, niche or vertical.

I'm in Atlanta at the Microcorp event to moderate a round table for agents centered around sales and marketing. The title is Personal Branding. How do you promote your personal brand? 

When selling replacement commodity items, your brand may not be that important. However, when using the Consultative Sales approach or looking for the sweet spot in the role of Trusted Advisor, it is about your knowledge, skills, and reputation. In a nutshell, that is your brand.

A brand is the 1K of space in a prospect's memory that contains everything they know or fell about you or your company or your service. In many cases, that 1K is empty because they have no idea who you are. (What would they find if they Googled you?)

Your brand online is a summation of what the search engines contain about you (or your company). 

There are many places today to build a brand online: your website, blog, LinkedIn, Facebook, Squidoo, Twitter, Slideshare, YouTube and a host of other platforms. You see, before you had to take out an ad or a billboard; today, that ad or billboard can be online in the 21st century printing press of the Web and its publishing platforms (social networks). The whole revolution that we see online today is due to tools, software platforms, and user interfaces that created what is referred to as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 allowed for User Generated Content (UGC) by making it very easy for a consumer to add content / comments / thoughts to various websites, like TripAdvisor, Amazon, BizRate and others. 

That was the genius of Web 2.0. Social networks just took that a step further. But all of this means that it is easy for people to comment on your service or business. It's also easy for you to tell your story. 

Personal Branding starts with you telling your target audience the story of what you can do for them. How can you help their business get productive or efficient? How can you help them communicate to their customer better? Tell those stories. And you have a host of platforms to tell them on. Get started!

If your model is free, how do you pay the bills? How do you pay for the infrastructure - the servers, switches, collocation, bandwidth, labor, etc.? How do you pay developers and engineers to scale it and keep it up?

Twitter is still free and so is Facebook. Popular too. But both have issues with keeping it running. 

The funny part is that the longer it is free, the harder it will be to charge for it. 

The only app I can think of that transitioned to paid was Google Apps and Gmail for Business.

Recently, a Twitter app for Blackberry, UberTwitter, (that is free) decided to try ads with its update. OOPS! (Read it here). Was it the way the ads were presented ( with no lead up or announcement)? Or is it the Entlitlement mentality of most Internet users? 

There's a group on Facebook literally with the name We Won't pay for FB. I was told recently that FB's revenue is about $550M. How? There aren't that many ads running. And how much do you think it costs to keep Facebook and its CDN running? I would image over $1 million per month for bandwidth, gear, salaries, collocation, and the like. 

Advertising doesn't even bring in that much. The online advertising spend is much less than what marketers pay offline (like for print or billboards). So how will all these free apps survive?

Last night was the WITI Tampa meeting with two social media experts - IBM's VP Sandy Carter and Tampa Bay's own Shawna Vercher.  

Sandy walked the audience through some social media lessons, including some homework on your Brand 2.0: Post 2 presentations to SlideShare; join LinkedIn and Facebook and connect with 50 people; and join twitter and tweet. Your brand is about experience, connection, promise and interaction. Social media helps you to give your audience (or marketplace) that. It can't replace face-to-face, but, as Shawna put it, it's a nice placeholder for you until you see them again. It's a way to stay top of mind. It's all about what you want your brand to be - offline and online. 

Other ways to utilize social networks to boost your brand are becoming an expert on LinkedIn Answers; creating how-to videos on YouTube; and increasing your search engine results with tagged video and photos (especially with a Flickr account).

The one thing about social media that many brands haven't gotten is that social media is like dating. It should be treated just like face-to-face networking. People say stuff on Facebook and Twitter that they would never say in person. 

If you met Guy Kawasaki in person and all he did was talk non-stop about his Alltop project, wouldn't you walk away? 

If you met a blogger and all they did was discuss their blog posts, number of readers, famous people who commented, etc., would you want to run into that person again?

Then don't be that way on Twitter or Facebook. 

Shawna talked tactically about ways to use these technology platforms to gain business. It's a way to reach out to your audience and let them get to know you before you do business together.  To do that well, you need to have a social media plan.  What is Your Goal? How much time will you put into it? What will you say? Who are you talking to? Shawna recommends that "You map out your sales cycle."

Ideally, you want to give the preception that you are the best or an expert in your field. To do that well, you would ideally announce (whether on LI, FB, or twitter) about your speaking gigs, industry news, client proposals, worthy works, congratulate people, case studies, etc. It doesn't have to be about what you had for breakfast or what your cat did.

Remember that social media is the virtual date. Shawna says that Facebook is like meeting for a cup of coffee and Twitter is that blind date. Either way: dress appropriately and act accordingly. It's about interesting conversation first and foremost. You can't engage by puking marketing material on them or being all Me-Me-Me. Again would you do that in a face-to-face encounter?

Lastly, this stuff is permanent! It's like herpes, your digital history will last forever.

After dumping New England on Fairpoint and cashing in on that garage sale, Verizon bought Alltel. Now it is dumping more rural lines on Frontier. All of this is just Verizon's way of shoring up its stock report. Without the kickers from the Fairpoint transaction and the spurt from Alltel, my bet is that the company would be showing a loss. CNET reports that its profits are down.

It's pouring money into M&A, FiOS, LTE, 3G, International backbone, and Advertising. Especially Advertising. I get something everyday from Verizon. Even at 50 cents per mailer, that's almost $10 per month on one prospect. 

It's about to dump big bucks in a conversion to LTE for its VZW network to keep saying its the best network. But that is after it integrates the Alltel network. Oh, and after it settles things with the rural cellular companies who are tired of VZW squeezing them. Remember that they just built the 3G network, so that debt isn't paid up yet. And cell phone subsidies are increasing to compete with the fact that folks want the iPhone or the Android. 

The FiOS build out is costly. I read that VZ claims it is under $900 per home passed. No one else in the industry has a number that low. Most are closer to $2000 per home passed. Customer take rate is about 21-22%. How many of those are just upgraded DSL subs? 2.5M FiOS TV subs now - some from cable but some from DISH Network, I'll bet. (Still no mention of the 500K voice lines Bright House took from VZ in greater Tampa Bay).

Lots of M&A activity to hide the fact that its growth is stalled and that it has to be taking on huge debt from Alltel, upgrades and Customer Acquisition.

In a short article in INC magazine, one entrepreneur explains how he uses Google Voice for his startup business. He is a straddler - he has a full-time job while launching his own business. 

As noted by Ring Central, many of the features in Google Voice have been available for a while from VoIP Providers. However, it's partially the brand (it's Google) and partially the price (um, free). Once Google allows number portability, it will be tough to beat. Why?

For one thing, Raving Fans. Google has a lot of Raving Fans. And those fans tell stories about the service - even better than a testimonial. Who is your storyteller?

For another, easy explanations about what each feature is on the product page, the help pages, and on fan pages. Could your Grandmother understand what youare offering?

Another would be the brand. Most VoIP Providers don't do much marketing, even less branding. The only exception is Vonage. The other might be 8x8. Do the businesses in your local Chamber of Commerce recognize your company name (or product name)?

What are you doing to counter these factors?

While speaking at the FISPA meeting this week, I kind of focused on sales and marketing. Why? Mainly the E-Myth. Most of the ISP owners are technical but are very uncomfortable talking about business, marketing and especially sales. One point that is important is that ISP's are NOT selling Internet Access. ISP's are selling reliable, dependable high-speed access to Facebook, YouTube and the rest of the websites and Web Apps that people desire to use. SAAS and VoIP means that ISP's need to be cognizant of the fact that if you keep selling Internet Access you will relegated to a dumb pipe. Instead, you should be offering not just the access but also some of those Apps. (That's what the RBOC's want to do).

ITSP's are NOT selling replacement phone service. They are selling business productivity and efficiency through a new, reliable and redundant platform for voice service. It's NOT about saving someone 10% -- it is about understanding how the business uses the phone (and other communications services) to interact with prospects, customers, and employees.

Google Voice is now going public. Luckily, for some providers Google announced that it will charge for enterprise and premium users. At the FISPA meeting, IKANO (Disclaimer: I rep IKANO's Google Apps for ISP's) presented the concept of ISP's moving their email service to Google. This was at the tail end of a CLEC session where the discussion centered around becoming a CLEC is about controlling your destiny and your services. Well, outsourcing your email - still the killer app for users - for an ISP is tantamount to losing control. And the fact that Google - IKANO's partner for email - is launching Google Voice is just one more reason that the ISP's will say No to Google Apps. They see Google as the new AT&T.

In the book Marketing Outrageously by Jon Spoelstra, in Chapter 13, Jon writes about radio and TV advertising. Basically, you need to dominate a show or a channel to gain market share. Spoelstra doesn't talk about market share. He thinks it's about your brand being considered socially acceptable. PR firms want you to do Frequency and Reach. In other words, branding - get your name in front as many people as possible. Spoelstra's strategy is that you should dominate the show that targets your demographic. When you dominate a show, you create the impression that you are socially acceptable and ingrain yourself on the audience (your demographic).

I believe he is right. When you look at TMC portals, one company owns each category. Seth Godin in The Dip talks about being Best in the World. But it's up to you to define that world. That's what the Chris Anderson's Long Tail and Niche Marketing is all about. The way to be Best of Breed is to dominate a Niche that you create. That is what Whole Foods and Starbucks did -- established a Blue Ocean Strategy; that is, these companies stake out a new, uncontested category to dominate.

Most companies do not need millions to be successful. They need thousands. And they can narrow their focus to the best 1000 prospects to get that number. But like Vonage they want to hit everyone. It's expensive and doesn't pay off. Because it's expensive. Do you want to be Toyota or Lexus or Porsche? I want to be Porsche. 

What is your demographic? Don't know? Okay. What target market are you attracting and how can you dominate it in some way? If you are a Telecom Company and you are dominating your space, maybe you should talk to TMC or me about what slice of the market you want to own and we can devise a plan where you work to own that niche. That's the way to go. Be a sharpshooter not a scatter shot.