Marketing Archive
Commentary by blog and social media consultant Josh Hallett on the use of blogs for public relations, media, marketing, communication & branding and from time-to-time the unsolicited opinion.
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The American Marketing Association's Mplanet conference is coming up at the end of this month, January 26-28th, in my backyard (Orlando). I attended the first version in 2006, yes that's right three years ago.
It's actually an interesting concept, the three year gap ensures that the content is fresh and not simply a rehash of last year....after all much can happen in three years :-)
I'm honored once again to be one of the invited bloggers to help cover the event along with Toby Bloomberg and Peter Kim. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting a bit more about some of the trends/issues related to the event here, and on the Mplanet blog.
Will you be attending Mplanet?
Today at the MarketingProfs B2B Forum I moderated a panel on B2B blogging. When you get a room full of marketers the conversation will sometimes turn to SEO and of course ROI. Mix the two and you have a lively conversation.
Yes we all know that Google loves blogs, but if your only reason for blogging is SEO, then you're going to fail. Back in early 2006 I posted about a newspaper that wanted to start community blogging. I told them if the reasons were revenue or page views that things would fail. The primary purpose has to be conversation and community. If you do those two things right (and have your blog properly configured) then SEO and all the other benefits should follow.
During the panel today the analogy I used was this:
If your fiance asks you why you love him/her and want to spend the rest of your life with them you shouldn't say:
A. I'm looking for increased ROI thru shared living expenses.
B. You have a great network of (hot) friends, and partnering with you allows me to position myself favorably with them.
It should first and foremost be about love and compassion (with your fiance).
You get off an airplane at a somewhat rural airport. The kind with only a few gates. Then you see an advertisement for RFID tracking systems. That would be Radio Frequency Identification for logistics. Something is out of place here?
Then you remember you're in Northwest Arkansas, the land of Wal-Mart. Chances are somebody getting on or off a plane in this area would be interested in that specific type of technology. What looked out of place at first now makes sense.
I ran into the same situation in Washington DC earlier this year. I stepped on the Metro and noticed all the in-car advertising for Boeing's KC-767 Advanced Tanker. I'd never seen a $140 million dollar plane advertised on a subway before. Same thing with the in-station advertising, lots of pictures of planes. Of course most of this in-station advertising was at the Pentagon-area stations.
Same situation as today. Some of the folks riding the DC Metro around the Pentagon might just have a few hundred million for a new plane :-)
Yesterday I visited the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex to plan a pre-BlogOrlando event. During my brief stay I was able to 'ride'...whoops, 'experience' the Shuttle Launch Experience (SLE).
That little slip was on purpose. The SLE is just that, an experience, and not necessarily a ride. When you tell people it's a ride they have a certain expectation and if you're thinking ride when you get on it, then it might not meet your expectations. This issue is compounded by the fact that there are a bunch of 'rides' about 60 miles away at places like Disney and Universal Studios.
That brings up the question, how do you marketing or tell people about the experience which simulates an actual Space Shuttle launch without using the word ride? When you try to tell somebody the word 'ride' always seems to slip in there.
I'm a space/aviation geek so the ride/expereince was cool and something I look forward to taking my son on soon.
The rest of my photos from KSC can be found on Flickr.
Via John Moore, I learn that Andy Sernovitz, former CEO of WOMMA, now has a blog: Damn, I Wish I'd Though of That!
Subscribed.
I've had a run of new hyku stickers and other gear made up. All of it features the logo variation I've played around with for a while.
Will it replace my regular logo? Who knows...that would entail redesigning my site and other materials as well, which is something I don't have the time for now. The logo/look is meant to be something out of the ordinary.
David has a photo of his Moleskine up, but he's holding it sideways. The logo is meant to be vertical.
If you would like some stickers e-mail me an address.
Jackie Huba posts a recap of their recent book tour to promote Citizen Marketers. She lists a number of stats, two of which are shown below:
- Number of books sold: 7,445
- Blog subscriber increase from 15,735 to 47,798 during tour, via Feedburner. (The jump in subscribers on 2/18 is due to Feedburner adding Google Reader subscribers.The hiccups in May are due to a Google problem in reporting subscriber counts to Feedburner.)
Jackie notes that the increase might be related to the Google Reader. Even if the under-reporting at first was 100%, i.e. instead of a baseline of 15K it was 30K, that's still an 18K increase in subscribers. On the low end Jackie and Ben now have 18K new readers/potential customers. On the high end it's 32,000.
While the primary goal of a book tour is to sell books, I think the increase in RSS subscribers is a more important result.
Star Wars weekends are coming up at Disney-MGM Studios in the month of June. To promote the event a series of posters have been made for Orlando International Airport (MCO). Since OIA seems to be my second home it's great to see that the posters feature actual photography of the airport. The one shown below has Yoda waiting in baggage claim.
You would figure that a wise Jedi like Yoda would just use carry-on to bypass baggage claim altogether.
Another poster has Boba Fett wheeling a frozen Han Solo along using a Smart-Carte.
Now I don't want to get too technical......but the shot is 'composed' near the security screening stations in the glass tunnel after you get off the trams from the gates. You're not allowed to have Smart-Carte's in that area. But then again, he's Boba Fett and can probably get away with that.
Hat-tip: The Disney Blog
Over at Marketing Profs, Lewis Green talks about the benefits of chamber memberships for business development. I agree with many of the points Lewis puts forth, with the caveat that your business fits a local model to some degree.
While I am a member of my local chamber, I know that I won't be getting many clients from my local market. It's just the nature of my current business. My major clients are based in: Florida, Atlanta, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Silicon Valley. I joined my chamber to support the local business environment and community.
However, many years ago (1996-2002) when I owned a locally-focussed web design firm, the local chambers were indeed a huge part of my marketing mix.
So how does this relate to social media? When I talk to pr/marcom folks I often use the analogy of a chamber with social media. Here are a few highlights:
- Starting a blog, like joining a chamber is the first step, but it's only an entry. You need to put something in to your blog/membership to get something out. Bob Gernert of the Winter Haven Chamber says membership is like a health club. Joining is easy, but you need to actually go and exercise to see any benefit.
- Build relationships first before pitching/advertising. Imagine if you joined a chamber, went to the first social function and grabbed the microphone and shouted, "Hey my name is Stan and I sell car insurance, everybody needs to talk to me now!" I think the majority of the membership would look at you and say, "Who is that jerk?" That initial faux-pas will be hard to overcome, everybody will always remember you as being that jerk who sells insurance.
- At chamber social events introduce yourself to other folks, make the purpose of the conversation to learn about others, not to pitch your product. At some point in the conversation the other person will say, "What do you do?" Use that opportunity to say a little about yourself. If they're interested in your product/service they'll ask a bit more. Now you'll know who they are, what they do and how your product/service could benefit them.
- Learning about who you are talking to will avoid a number of embarrassing situations. Back when I had my web firm I can remember a few instances when a new over-zealous web firm would appear in the local market. At a chamber event one of their salespeople would come up and start talking to me, they wouldn't ask what I did, they just wanted to tell me about what they did and how my business could benefit from a new web site. I would let them talk for a few minutes before mentioning that I actually had a web site and was pretty sure it was built by somebody that knew what they were doing.
- It's conversation and relationships not advertising. When you think back to a recent event you attended what do you remember, the sponsor of the event or the conversations you had? For me it's mostly the conversations. At too many 'sponsored' events there is usually that awkward moment when the sponsor gets up on stage and gives a hurried, in-effective pitch to people who just had their conversation/lunch/dinner interrupted. That's not really the impression you want to leave with people.
- It's a long-term play. Sure there will be times you'll walk away from a chamber event with a solid lead, but it's the long-term relationships that pay off. I can't tell you how many times I would meet somebody and they would say, "Yeah we just had our web site built by X." No problem, in 2-3 years they'll need an update and guess who they always turned to? :-)
In the end, when I look at my years of chamber memberships I don't think about the business value, but more the relationships built and friends I have gained.
Eric Kintz, VP Global Marketing Strategy & Excellence with HP lead the final keynote session of the day.
Eric started off his keynote by plugging the primary theme again, the customer is the focus. It doesn't matter if you're B2C or B2B, it's the customer. HP has millions of interactions with customers every day and every second. HP sells three printers every second. That's a lot of customer interaction. They have to get it right with each of those customers and with each of those interactions.
To drive customer centricity at HP they are focusing on:
- Integrating the customer into driving business
- Measure and manage what matters to the customer
- Inspire employees to drive customer centricity
HP developed their performance chain. First off they had to gather metrics and tie customer centricity to profitability. Customer experience builds customer loyalty, which builds sales. Next up, operations looks to improve efficiencies in processes that matter to customers. The final piece is the employees. The goal is to have employees focus their attitudes and actions towards the customer.
HP measures and manages what matters to the customer. Technical support is a major customer touch-point. They want to make sure that when you call support that your problem is fixed and done so quickly.
Internally, HP has been focusing on customer experience training. Teaching their staff how the customer thinks. Another initiative is the 'Voice of the Customer'. With this program, any HP staff member can log a complaint/issue for a customer.
HP is also fortunate to be a B2C and B2B provider. They can often take a B2B customer (and their employees) and turn them into B2C customers. That's a powerful thing. Moving forward with B2B they want to market one account at a time. It means knowing the customer.
One new project is Change Artists, it is a portion of the HP web site that allows CEOs and CIOs to discuss issues surrounding technology. The discussion is about problems and solutions and not HP products. By hosting this conversation HP is learning what their customers want.
The breakout session in the afternoon that I attended discussed customer-centricity in the B2B space. Can it be done? The panel was made up of: Laura Ramos - Forrester Research, Don Friedman - CA, Jeff Reid - UPS, Marc Ruggiano - John H. Harland Co.
Laura introduced the session with some background on how the topic came about. Like many of the other sessions, it was based upon Peter Kim's research on marketing organizational structures. Much of Peter's research was B2C focussed, so how does this apply to B2B? Are the same sets of skills and attributes of a traditional B2B marketer relevant?
Forrester's recent research has shown and many B2B marketing organizations do not use customer-centric metrics. Once again, do the new rules of customer-centric B2C apply to B2B?
Laura then introduced panelists one at a time. Each of them spent a few minutes talking about experiences from within their organization.
Don Friedman, CA - Yes, B2B can be customer-centric, but the big question is how? One of the issues they face is how do they bring products to market that customers really want. Marketing used to be a function of promoting a product, today it's driving product development, the campaigns come at the end. When you have 1200 products in the portfolio it's difficult to change thinking overnight.
Being customer-centric doesn't always mean restructuring your marketing organization, it means putting the needs of the customer first. Sometimes you can work within existing structures to get that done.
Jeff Reid, UPS - UPS has a huge, diverse customer base. They have always used basic segmentation to organize their efforts. Moving forward they look to enhance their current segmentation and how those customers use the different channels within UPS. They have also developed personas. Their research has shown that they sell to five distinct personas. These personas are always looked to in the development of products/relationships. They looked to see what pained their customers and worked backwards.
A traveling road-show introduced the rest of the company to these personas. The road-show was successful since many internal groups had never really met/dealt with a customer.
Another major focus is creating and using credible metrics. When you cross different business units in a customer-centric model you need to make sure that the metrics you are using cross over well. For example in the web-space abandonment is an often used metric. However, outside the web-space it's not a well known term.
Marc Ruggiano, John H. Harland Co. - Harland is a major provider of products and services to financial services companies. Many people know Harland from checks. They print checks. However the payment world is changing. Banks aren't seeing an increase in check orders.
For years Harland had a geographically organized sales teams and product-focussed call centers. In the last two years they have undergone a large reorganization. Sales and marketing is now organized by the financial institution segment, i.e. large bank, small bank.
Harland has an interesting cross between B2B and B2C. The banks are Harland's clients, but the end users of the products are consumers. In this model then need to address the needs of the client and then their clients. Not only do they need to know their customers, they need to know the consumers.
Customer-centric marketing matters if:
- You server clients with different challenges
- You customize products for clients
- You have different business models for different clients
- Your competitors vary from client to client
- Your performance or expectation differs by client
- Your budget dollars need to stretch farther than before
Laura then joined the group and opened up the Q&A. She opened with a statement, "Are we all in agreement, B2B can be customer-centric" The panel agreed. Next, do you need to organize yourself around customer channels?
Don wondered if companies can really afford to re-organize their marketing structures by customer. There is benefit, but we're back to the 80/20 rule. The largest customer groups get the attention first.
How do you handle internal politics and disagreements on shared projects?
Jeff said that within UPS they let the customers decide. When you look at what the customer wants/needs then you take opinion out of the development process.
Good lines from Don: "If you don't have a customer you don't have a business." "Being customer-centric is not conducting focus groups and reading reports."
During the Q&A of her session, Sylvia Reynolds from Wells Fargo said (paraphrasing):
For years everybody was searching for the online customer. There are no online customers. Customers are real people.
If you remember
Shel Israel had a similar comment about 'virtual friends'.
The final keynote before lunch featured Sylvia Reynolds, CMO, Wells Fargo. Sylvia's session also dealt with customer centricity (sense a trend here).
Sylvia started with a few basic questions: What is customer-centricity? If this is so important why haven't we been talking about this before? Are all these new technologies (blogs, podcasts, etc) enablers or distractions?
Sylvia provided some stats about Well Fargo and how they interact with their customers. Wells Fargo has 23 millions costumers with millions of interactions with them via stores, on-line, phone and ATM.
What's important to realize is that in their history Wells Fargo has always been focussed on the customer, it's just now called customer-centricity.
Sylvia joked that a customer has never asked Wells Fargo to be more centric.
Wells Fargo has been very successful, so it's difficult for Sylvia to convince management that they need to change they way they do things. From management's perspective, if they weren't doing things for the customer already, then they wouldn't be successful.
The new goal is to manage sideways. Wells Fargo is looking to build customer experience across their 80 channels. That's the challenge.
Sylvia asks, "How many of you have been in a meeting where somebody talked about the 'customer' and they inserted their own preferences?" Do they really know the customer?
All the new technologies are exciting, but use the new technology to solve real problems.
At first collaboration between departments was for mutual benefit. Cross-sell is a religion within Wells Fargo. The new approach is to build collaboration with the customer's needs first, then internal benefit second. The new directive: Make our shared customer the center of all decisions. Nobody 'owns' the customers.
Wells Fargo is starting to use campaigns that connect to larger customer issues/dreams. This is a departure from 'product' marketing.
Wells Fargo is also trying new forms of marketing: blogs, events, Second Life. However, the use of new technologies is rooted in solving a problem. They discovered that people under 18 didn't know about Wells Fargo's history, or felt it made them look old. With the Guided by History blog they are trying to make the history of Wells Fargo relevant, hip and current.
After a short morning break the keynote sessions at Forrester Marketing Forum continued with a session led by Gary Skidmore, Corporate Officer and EVP, with Harte-Hanks.
How do you make customers the very center of what you do? That's the big question on everybody's mind here. Look to Starbucks, they've made an emotional connection with their customers. Think about their customer experience. As a customer you can order the drink you want with the ingredients you want. It's all about the customer. Gary then showed his standard Starbucks order: Tall, Decaf, Non-Fat, Iced, Vanilla, Latte.
Are your customers fans? Apple has a serious fan base. Look at the iPod, 100 million sale and over 2 billion songs downloaded. Think about the social game, "What's on your iPod?" Everybody has a unique playlist on their iPod..it's a unique customer experience.
To win in the market you must let your customers rule. Think about the upcoming generation, they are growing up with this new set of customer experiences that are all about them. Each year, as they grow older they will become more of your revenue base. It's all about them.
Want to create a customer-centric organization? First off, take care of your employees. Take care of their needs so they can focus on taking care of your customers' needs. For example, Cabela's encourages their staff to borrow equipment from their inventory. They want them to experience the products as the customers would.
Customer-centricity is a journey not a destination. If it's done right it will touch every facet of your organization.
Five strategies for achieving customer centricity:
- Information: Accurate, high-quality data about your customers
- Opportunity: Give people access to the data to build relationships and look for opportunities
- Insight: Understand the data, target and predict
- Engagement: The application of the data
- Interaction: Program execution, look to work in all channels in all locations (online/offline)
However, in business you have to make trade-offs. Knowing your customers will help you make those decisions.
Customers want access, they want information. Know how they want access. Customers also want choices. However, what they choose today might be different from what they choose next week. Customers also want experiences. Experience is becoming the secret sauce in business. Customers want reciprocity. They also want control.
The second keynote session on Tuesday was led by Mike Fasulo, CMO of Sony Electronics. Mike asked the audience, "How many of you have owned a Sony product?" Just about every hand went up in the room. Mike jokingly thanked the audience of highly-distinguished customers.
Mike feels that the successful brands of the 21st century will be those that can execute a truly customer-centric approach.
What keeps Mike up at night? Increased competition, widespread commoditization, price erosion. However, if we're only thinking of the customer do any of those matter?
When Sony launched the Bravia the did a tremendous amount of research to gain customer insights. What did they learn? The target audience was women. Women were not usually associated with electronics. However, their research showed that 55% of all consumer electronics purchases were made by women. Women influence 83% of all electronics purchases in the U.S.
Sony launched the product as the world's first television for men and women. The focus was on picture quality and style/design. Both of these items were equally important to men and women.
How do customers view Sony? Customers view Sony as a single brand. They don't see Sony as their individual units, i.e. Sony Pictures, Sony BMC, Sony Electronics, Sony Computer Entertainment, etc. But that's how Sony is organized internally. That's not how products come to market. The internal and external views don't match. The problem is, how can each of these units leverage the overall Sony brand?
In the imaging world, they have three brands, Alpha, Cyber-Shot and Handycam. However from the consumer perspective it's just imaging.
How do they align customer service, product marketing, corporate communications, event, sales and finance to serve a single customer across various product lines and divisions?
Looking at a recent campaign they launched, you see two different product lines sharing a theme. The focus is on the use of the product, not the aspects of the product, i.e. zoom, megapixels, etc.
Now the problem becomes continuity. Carrying those commons themes across all mediums. One thing Sony is doing is syndicated major campaign elements to vendors and point-of-presence opportunities.
Another customer-centric effort is the Sony stores. The purpose of Sony stores is not to sell product, it's to engage the consumer with Sony. Let customers shop where they are comfortable.
(Disclosure: Sony Computer Entertainment America/SCEA is a client)
Peter Kim, Senior Analyst with Forrester Research led the opening session at the Forrester Marketing Forum here in Miami, FL. I was fortunate enough to catch Peter speaking about the reinventing the marketing model at Mplanet last year (session review). Peter's report on reinventing the marketing model served as the inspiration for much of this event. It seemed fitting then that he should lead things off.
Peter said that this entire conference has been organized around you/us (the attendees). The conference could have been held in Boston or New York, but we thought of you...so we're in Miami.
Wanting to be customer-centric is different than actually doing it. It's the details that count. Customer-centricity is easy to say, hard to do. But here's the secret...it's in the details.
Peter hopes to cover three major points: Why now? How are marketers doing it? How can you make it real?
Why now? Customer expectations have changed. People expect immediate service. When you call or send an e-mail, you expect quick service. There is also social computing. Customer can now create content, talk with each other, etc.
The stage is set for more vocal consumers. However, marketing is not ready for change. Marketing organizations are broken. Increasingly the marketing department only controls one of the Four P's....promotion.
A few lessons: Don't try to own the customer. Build relationships with IT, HR and other departments.
How Are Marketers Doing It? Do you have a customer-centric culture? USAA does. USAA provides insurance and financial services to members of the armed forces and their families. When USAA trains new employees they educate them about the military. USAA makes sure that their staff understands the life of their customers. USAA has adjusted their billing cycles to match military pay periods so it's easier for their customers. Everything USAA does is for their customers, and it builds a strong customer relationship.
Technology can assist with customer-centric programs. Del-Monte has been using blogs to engage dog owners to listen & learn. They are developing products that their customers want and need. That makes marketing much easier.
How Can You Make it Real? Build functional relationships. Customer advocacy creates customer empathy. Use technology to make what exists better. Listen and learn. Focus on the details.
Here are a few other links from Peter's session: Forrester Recap, Q&A
The 2007 Forrester Marketing Forum officially kicked off this morning with opening remarks from Forrester Research Chairman and CEO, George F. Colony. To set the stage for the conference, George reviewed the six things he tells the CEOs he talks with:
1. You company is inside out. You need to put the needs of your customer before the needs of the company.
2. Your web site needs work. Company web sites they review fail to meet the needs of customers. Think of the customer first.
3. You should be asking one question. Would you recommend this product or service to a friend of colleague? The net-promoter is becoming a driving force within organizations.
4. You don't own your customer... your customer owns you. Loyalty is waning like never before.
5. Bits wants to be free....bits want to break the law. Companies don't like this, but it's the truth.
6. Great marketing + great technology is the only way forward. The most powerful part of this statement is the "+" sign. It's the combination of those two elements that makes the magic. It's the companies that do this well that will be successful.
Here will be my home for the rest of the day :-) The Forrester staff is busy with final technical checks and rehearsals. Peter Kim will be on-stage for the first keynote in about 30 minutes.
The Forrester Marketing Forum kicks off tomorrow morning here in Miami, FL. There will be two days of marketing madness with much of the focus on customer-centric initiatives.
You can follow the official Forrester Marketing blog at: http://blogs.forrester.com/marketing/. Peter Kim will be blogging, as well as Marianne Richmond. I'll be posting throughout the event and taking some photos.
Often bloggers will think of themselves as an independent voice, and alternative to traditional media. Sometimes they'll make bold claims such as, 'TV is dead' or 'there is no more mass media.....we're all media', etc. Yet here we all are blogging and twittering away about the most mass media of media events, the Super Bowl.
Like the tragedies that all-to-often hit us, the Super Bowl unites many of us for a short period of time. We gather online to talk about the game and ponder whether Peyton will win the big one. Mostly though we talk about the commercials.
Wait, I'm a blogger, I'm supposed to be anti-commercial. After all, TV's dead :-)
Just like last year I will not be doing a live-blog of the Super Bowl commercials, it's just too much work to be able to enjoy the game. I do hope to post a short wrap-up on my thoughts though. I know there will be a few other blogs providing coverage, however AdJab won't be one of them :-(
If you want to remember last year's commercials you can always check out Google's video page (which should update at some point today).
From Jeff Jarvis:
The newspaper industry is spending $75 million to argue that it’s not screwed. How much better it would be to spend $75 million on innovation so, indeed, it won’t be screwed.
Well said. I recently talked with somebody who was spending a few hundred thousand a year on advertising, even though their research had shown that two-thirds of their new customers came from word-of-mouth/referral. Like above, how about spending that money to improve your product/service. Just a thought.
This is marketing 101 folks, but it seems that every so often somebody needs a reminder. Over the past few weeks I've talked with a few organizations that are developing web products. During the course of each of these conversations they say something like, "I'd love for you to help us get this in front of some of the leading tech/Web 2.0 bloggers." (Read: Mike, Richard or Om)
My response, "Are you sure about that?"
Why? Tech bloggers and bloggers in general can be somewhat critical (understatement of the year). I just see them reviewing the product and killing it. Here's why:
1. The product isn't that great, that doesn't mean that it's not a well executed plan, it's just nothing new and exciting. Much of this stems from location. Often when a company is based in the Southeast (i.e. outside the normal tech centers) they don't know what else is going on out there. What may seem like a revolutionary idea in Florida is old hat elsewhere. Sometimes isolation can be good for creative thinking, other times it can trick you into thinking you're the most ingenious person in the universe...a universe of one though.
2. Know your market! When I see a product I will usually ask, "How is this any different than...." and list about three other sites/products that do similar things. Often the answer I receive is a blank stare, they don't know about any of them. This is usually a very awkward moment since they take a look at the competing product and realize they don't have the most original idea in the world, and that somebody *gasp* might actually be doing it better.
With those two basic items, I can see the train wreck coming. A premature 'pitch' to a tech blogger will result in disaster. One of the first things they'll do is ask question #2 and when you don't have an answer it will tell them quite a bit about your product. Here is how the post might go:
This blogger was given a preview of the new Z service by X. Yawn! Nothing to see here folks, please move along. I mean no disrespect to the folks at X, but it's not really an original idea. A, B and C have had similar services for almost a year now and have a significant installed user base. Of course it's always possible to overcome that first-mover, but when your product doesn't offer any significant advantages over A, B or C it's a tough sell. In fact X hadn't even heard of A or B till we pointed them out to them.....
Not the buzz you typically want with your new product launch.
P.S. If you're trying to show something to Mike or Om make sure it works on a Mac, since that's what they use.
