Biz Blog Profile Series: Intuit QuickBooks Online Blog
04/05/2005
Biz Blog Profile: is a behind the scene look at how corporations, non profits and higher education institutions are using blogs to support their marketing goals.
Paul Rosenfield, General Manager for QuickBooks Online, is not afraid of challenging the status quo and pushing the envelope. Especially when it comes to implementing new strategies that bring his team closer to Intuit's customers and help customers establish trust with the product and the people who are the product.
Biz Blog Profile: QuickBooks Online
About Intuit
Intuit is the leading provider of personal and
small business financial management tools, with such products as Quicken,
TurboTax, and QuickBooks. QuickBooks Online Edition is the web-based version
of the popular QuickBooks software that is used by 3MM small
businesses.
Why Intuit is Blogging via QuickBooks Online
Because QuickBooks
Online Edition is a service that you pay $20/month and access over the
internet, we have found prospective customers want to feel confident in
placing their sensitive data online. One way to achieve this trust and
confidence is to share information about who we are, what we're working on to
help customers and improve the business, and be honest about our "warts" when
we have them.
How Blogs Fit Into Intuit's Marketing Strategy
Our key marketing strategy is placing our customers at the center
of all our marketing. We do this because we have a service
that revolutionizes our customers' lives via anytime/anywhere access
and their testimonials speak far better to prospects than reading
sterile marketing copy.
Selling-in To Management
I
have long felt open, direct conversations with customers are an
excellent way to instill trust and confidence. When an employee approached me
about blogs, I greenlighted the effort. Two days later we launched our blog on Typepad.
How Intuit is Marketing the QuickBooks Online Blog
We have integrated our blog directly into our service home page, community boards, and prominently on our marketing website. We have much, much more we can do to increase our visibility. For instance, we will be bringing a RSS feed directly onto the service home page.
Future Direction
Improved integration into all marketing
vehicles, especially our marketing website and service website. Inspiring and
encouraging more employees in the group to blog. Inspiring the rest of Intuit to
blog. Seamlessly weaving blog into the community board experience so we can more
easily respond to posts. Creating a "development only" blog.
Paul Rosenfield On Blogs
At heart, blogs belong to all the employees - not the marketing organization. Just like Ted Levitt said, "Marketing is too important to trust to Marketers." So too, do Blogs belong across all the key processes of an organization. To place it within Marketing is to potentially defuse the potency and lose valuable conversations that Support, Operations, and Development can contribute to and learn from customers.
Blogs are also very easy to do. Don't ever let anyone say, "Well, blogs aren't a priority right now." Those who say that don't know what blogs are. The easy ability to publish a short blog entry on a volunteer basis makes blogs an ideal "just do it" initiative. Far too often big companies squash the initiative and drive of motivated passionate employees in their misbegotten zeal to "think big" and "be strategic". Our blog took two days to design and costs us $15/month through Typepad.
Sidebar: The Mona Lisa of Blogs, Debbie Weil, also interviewed Paul. Great read.
