2008 EDA Marketing Forum New Media: What Does It Mean and How Have We Started to Use It to Reach Our Decision Makers?

Invitation:

Join a panel of experts from the marketing, engineering, publishing, and new media distribution arenas for a discussion on how to work in the new and still-changing new media landscape. Panelists will describe how they are using both so-called “new media” (web, web 2.0, blogs, RSS, online videos, etc.) as well as traditional print media to get their messages out, and how they expect to evolve their message delivery in the coming months and years. The questions we will address include:

• How useful are these new media for a high-technology, high-price, long sales-cycle product?
• How has the high tech industry, especially semiconductor and EDA, embraced this new media and what results are they seeing?
• What should a "new media press release" look like? Is this new format effective? Is there still a place for the traditional press release?
• Is there a cost savings with "new media" than traditional approaches?
• Is "new media" useful for a startup with limited bandwidth and $$ in terms of cost of production, interactivity, RSS feed responses, blog monitoring, etc.?

Moderator:

Scott Sandler, President, Springsoft USA and Vice President of Springsoft Worldwide Corporate Marketing

Panel:

• Rich Goldman, Vice President of Corporate and Strategic Marketing, Synopsys
• Limor Fix, Associate Director of Intel Research Pittsburgh Lab and Senior Principal Engineer, Intel Research and 45th DAC General Chair
• Monika Maeckle, Vice President of New Media, Business Wire
• Rhonda McGee, Director of Research, Reed Business Information

Q & A Transcript:

[Q&A below are from both panelists and audience.]

What’s your experience with new media, and what’s working?

• Last year, this panel addressed the question of how things were changing, what was happening. A month later, EETimes dropped EDA coverage, which provided a real wake-up call with regard to how to get coverage. In our company, we had a heart-to-heart discussion and decided that we had to think like self-publishers. It no longer made sense to rely on the old model of writing a press release specifically so that it met the needs of one particular editor and then have everything else flow from there.
• Common wisdom is that engineers are not social. But you just need to give them the right media. Engineers want engineering information; they don’t want marketing information. When they start getting marketing information, on blogs or whatever, then they will turn off & not come back. Common wisdom re what’s effective for business-to-business marketing just doesn’t apply to them.  Our business is G-to-G: geek-to-geek. This works; anything else doesn’t.
• We have to change the way we get out the messages. Used to be, we would send out press releases and then we’d talk to editors, and then editors would write whatever they’d write. Recently, we had a blogger break news. As long as you have a trusted blogger that engineers are listening to, this will work.
• We’re starting to use videos on the website. Now you can show people on the website what we used to talk about in a glossy marketing piece, show them how something is operating on an actual piece of silicon. Engineers can see that something really exists, that it really works.
• We might have to make a distinction between engineers that spend 80% of their time in cubicles and mid-level management, which spends 80% of their time in meetings. For management, time tends to be divided into two modes: 1) searching. I need to do something; I need it urgently. Whatever you get out there, make sure it’s very searchable. 2) when I’m trying to catch up. May be at home, or when I’m waiting for a flight. In this case, I filter. I keep only a few blogs & filters unfiltered. So this can be primarily reading or e-mails. For e-mails, it’s important to make the subject line very clear and to provide a short abstract of the information before going into detail. Bottom line is that everything needs to be very searchable.
• As we have all mentioned, we have no time to read anymore; it’s become a leisure activity. That’s why searching has become increasingly important. Optimize any information that you put online for searchability.
• Integrated media remains huge. Print is not going away; print is read as more of a leisure activity – lunch break, travel.
• In a Reed Business Information April study of 4000 engineers from around the world and how they use online technologies, we found that online technologies suits the makeup of the engineer. On average, engineers spend one hour and 20 minutes online every day for business, excluding e-mail. Engineers rely on their peers more than any other community, looking for different kinds of information at different stages of development. The community of engineers is very important. They need more product information as they move through the design cycle.
• One of their greatest challenges is to keep up with technology, which changes on the fly, in real time. Engineers are proud to be geeks, and more comfortable getting information from other geeks than from any other source. Online media allows geeks to communicate with the sources they want to communicate with.
• There’s a huge uptick in the use of podcasts, wikis, blogs, wikis… The top three technologies used are webcasts, video clips and audio streaming.
• There is some variability around the world. In China, 90% are using online forums and about 80% are using some type of social network compared to 40% in the USA. IN Asia in general, about 60% are using social networking. 
• LinkedIn, MyFace, Yahoo – engineers are starting to look at them in a different light. Not just leads and entertainment, but they are also looking for sites that have specific data on products or reference designs… They would like customized content from communities that have moderators, possibly password-protected content.
• Although a lot of things have changed, I think what hasn’t changed is that people want good quality content that’s well written delivered in the form that they prefer.  What has changed is that people are getting their information from each other rather than from traditional sources. Not turning to institutions or corporate communication departments or the spokesperson you designate, but instead going to their communities and social networks.
• It’s so easy right now. Anyone can create a podcast or a blog or take a video, so everyone’s a content creator.  One of the questions we are hoping to address here is what is the ROI on new media. There was speculation in the New York Times recently that Hilary Clinton didn’t use online media effectively, and that partially contributed to her losing the nomination. On the downside, when everyone’s a publisher, that creates a surplus of content and a deficit of attention.

How has breaking news changed? How will the mix change? What is your experience with either putting out news or receiving it?

• We will probably always need a wire service, but to get to the media, you also need other ways to reach people: A blogger to whom our customers go to get information, whether employed by a company or by the “traditional” media. (Blogs are even quoted in articles.)
• Need to see how similar information was delivered, and make sure that you engage with that channel actively.
• E-mail and e-mail databases – whether subscribers or other opt-in lists.
• Online media are keeping their websites updated constantly to reflect the latest in breaking news.
• In the next few years, you will probably be able to get news on your cell phone or your Blackberry.
• From a news receiving point of view, my own searches usually begin with my own InBox, because I can never keep up with all my e-mails. You can even Google your own e-mail, so I encourage direct e-mail. I may not read it when it is pushed to me, but I may read it within a week. If I don’t find the information within my own mailbox, I will probably go to trusted sites – bloggers, publishers… Then maybe do a general search engine search.

Is the idea that you can maximize use of keywords to improve searchability a stretch? Will people really find them?

• You can actually run a piece of news through a text optimization tool to ensure that spiders find the words.
• You can put links to various parts of your website in a piece of news to drive traffic to your website. Search engines look at inbound links as part of how they measure the value of a website.
• There is much more multimedia content in press releases these days – photos, videos, links… Google can now search words, blogs, images – so all of these are opportunities to be found.
• You can also take some of the content of a press release and make it a blog post, then link between the release and the blog.

How does video effect searching?

• You can now search non-indexed content, although this is not yet well-developed. But it will become very common. 

How do you define “geek”?

• A highly respected term that describes people who know things that I don’t know.
• People who would communicate by e-mail even if they are in adjacent cubicles.
• Lots of different types of geeks; some are more vocal than others. I think a lot of geeks are born geeks. Always had a passion to take things apart, whether it be an appliance, a cell phone, a gadget. Fascinated by gadgets. And more comfortable with each other than with people who don’t speak their “language.”
• A technology problem-solver

How many people here actually blog, themselves?

• Five or six

How do we deal with language in a global economy? We’re talking about publishing, about new media – but not everyone speaks English.

• Many companies send out information already translated into various key languages. Keywords and photos and logos help reduce problems.
• Fortunately, for geeks, English works pretty well.
• We do a lot of translation into European languages, Japanese, Chinese when we really want to get a message across.
• When I get information in another language, I use Babel Fish [http://babelfish.yahoo.com/]
• Often, engineers read English more effectively than speaking it or writing it. If you want to be sure that everyone reads the correct information, you still have to use a technical translator.
• Our survey showed that communication among global design teams is always an issue – both language and cultural issues.
• Most of the publications publish in various regions and languages.

How can a company support all this new media? It all costs money and resources.  Once upon a time, we all bought advertising and supported print media, but now it’s completely changed.  Right now, what is supporting getting the message out?

• Still buy some print ads and some online ads.
• Print media of all sorts are being squeezed to move everything online, but the revenue isn’t making up for ad revenue yet.
• More experts are being brought in to provide online content; professional journalists are getting the squeeze.
• Many well-rounded generalists with years of experience are being fired.
• This brings up the question of journalistic ethics and good quality investigative journalists.
• Because so many companies using new media are so big, and have such wide audiences, we need to “sharpen our spears” and be very targeted about how we reach our audiences.
• Publications are launching customized communities with focused content in specific product areas.
• We need to be looking for more specific media content to be sure that we are reaching the right eyeballs.
• We have moved resources away from print and into various kinds of social media – bloggers on the company payroll who write well, are respected, and write things that are relevant to people. This is a resource investment, because these people became experts by doing something well, and blogging time takes away from that.
• We measure very carefully what our responses are to all marketing approaches. Ad click-thrus, how long people stay on particular areas of the website, are people registering for web offerings, which ones.
• Engineers seldom click on ads, unless it is for something I need at the time. But I would be willing to pay for customized information. It’s one way to cut thru all the information, and the time it takes to search.
• Peer-to-peer information is most important for me. We’re a tight-knit community; it’s not difficult to find someone to answer a question.
• Some companies have not only stopped advertising, but have also decided to become their own publishers and to hold their own tradeshows. Everyone has to become a publisher, because the aggregating companies are no longer able to support the companies.  We’re getting an increasing signal to noise ratio, and it’s only going to get worse.
• We need to learn what consumer marketing is doing, since they went through these changes 5-7 years ago.  How do I get my peers to tell me what they are filtering and what I should be reading?

It was always difficult to measure advertising effectiveness. How are we going to measure in this environment?

• I get a lot of numbers; clicks are easy to count.
• If people can do content aggregation services, they can measure subscriptions and how much people are willing to pay.
• Awareness and usage were hard to measure in print, but publishers do a lot of research of subscribers.
• Web analytics, some of which are free. Google Analytics. blog stats, press release distribution stats,
• Pre- and post-studies to see what the change is after a particular program.
• Studies of types of online ads that work and those that don’t work.
• Social media measurement is often like tradition advertising – after a campaign, are you getting more sales, more interest, more awareness.
• Look at comment volume on blogs; sign-ups for RSS feeds.