Tell'em About It

I'm reading a great book now, What the Dog Saw, by Malcolm Gladwell, the guy who brought us The Tipping Point and Blink. It's one of those great writing achievements that enables you not just to think differently about something, but to think about it at all.

The first chapter is about the Chop-o-Matic, pitchmen and infomercials. Suffice to say this is a topic I would never have sought out on my own. In it he makes an provocative comparison: What if the manufactures of VCRs had used the lessons of the Chop-O-Matic? Would we have learned how to record our shows in advance the same way we could effortlessly see ourselves chopping up vegetables or rotissering a chicken (one of the later products made available by the Chop-O-Matic folks.

Made me think about the disservice we often do to consumers when we get stuck in our heads and don't really explain what something does or how it does it. We just want them to buy it. The makers and pitchmen of the Chop-o-Matic knew that wasn't enough. There has to be some type of emotional connection, some desire. Some way to demonstrate this thing in your life and how your life is better.

Corporate America, for all our good intentions, often blur that distinction. We just want you to buy it. We can't forget to tell you why.

And now, back down to earth

Lest I get too overzealous in applauding new technology and all the options it promises to help your product break through, a realistic reminder from Cory Treffiletti at Media Post about using all this new technology power wisely. Results are the bottom line. Gone are the days when marketing was just about feeling good.

Speaking of feeling good, have you hugged your agency today? Corey also talks about what he sees agencies bringing - or continuing to bring - to the table in the future. We've probably all been on one side or the other of a complacent agency. But most of the time, the agencies I've worked with have delivered (despite all the shit we put them through on the client side).

Walking on the moon

I've been thinking about all the great technology advances in the last 10 years - or even 5 years or 2 years - that have made marketing an exciting place to be. I'm not ashamed to tell you that when I started my first real job writing for a local golf magazine, fax machines were the big technology of the day. At that time, we still produced the magazine on big board layouts using type machines, x-acto knives and line tape. While I was still there, i managed to take a few desktop publishing classes on the new apple computers at school - and we eventually got one at work to do layouts on. Yes those were heady days designing away on that huge 8-inch screen.

The only direct marketing back then was direct mail. I also remember being tutored by a direct mail expert at a later job on how to craft the perfect 3-page direct mail letter. Good times.

I could not have imagined back then where we would be today. Now we send emails out on an automated schedule, have nurturing streams, can enable the pull of information through RSS syndication. Oh, and everyone is predicting the slow death and demise of television advertising. Wow.

Now, more than ever, targeted marketing and advertising is important. And armed with that information and an understanding of available technology, you can really have some fun getting the word out about your products or services.

You can "surround" your customer target so they see your ads in their favorite print magazines, on their favorite sites, they can sign up to be your product's "friend" on mypace and view your "tv" advertisements on youtube or on your site. They can sign up to receive updates from you on the latest events, products and features. They can review other users comments on your site (or other sites). Bloggers, both from inside your company and outside, can share their thoughts on trends, uses and features. Coverage of your product can appear in print and online pubs, which can be syndicated. You can create special user experiences on your web site or (gasp) a brick and morter experience that becomes a travel destination. Add to that partner and other promotion opportunities with events, television shows or movies and other products, and it's really a brand new world.

We've come a long way and i can't wait to see what happens next.

Making it to the marketing show

Got the opportunity this week to really flex my marketing strategy muscles. Our team has been working for several years to really illustrate the value of marketing to our management, in an effort to increase our budgets and driver greater awareness and revenue.

I don’t know if you have ever worked for a company that is cynical about the value of marketing. It really keeps you on your toes to show that you are adding value—through metrics, ROMI analysis, etc.

One thing I’ve begun to observe is that it is really hard to show this with small, decentralized budgets focused on low tier audiences. In fact, often times, each of the small groups who have budgets end up underspending. That amount may not add up to a lot for that team, but across all the teams, it can be quite significant. Which leads to problems of showing marketing value and growing budget. “If you can’t even spend what we gave you, why do you need more?”

So it was quite a treat to be brought in to take part in an exercise of “If we got x huge amount more money, how would you spend it?” In this case, it was a big centralized bucket to promote our highest level message to our most sought after targets. We had made it to the show.

We had to be fierce. This savvy team wasn’t going to be persuaded by lists of the same old tactics. They want to know the how’s and why’s, and where elements are working together.

So we spent some time thinking of all the potential tactical elements (including some that sometimes get overlooked like AR, PR, customer education, etc. as well as the traditional big dogs like hospitality events, advertising and direct marketing), then hooking them into the sales cycle, and showing how all the elements work together to carry customers through the sales cycle.

Basically, we are developing a customer nurturing stream on steroids – we will do this, then if they do that, we will do this other thing, and so on. For each phase, we defined an objective and end of phase milestones. For each tactical element, we defined why we recommended doing it and the percentage of spend.

So often we are just fighting fires. This is an opportunity to really do the thing right, and hopefully see the sales pipeline bloat up throughout the rest of the year. Then we’ll really be positioned to show the value of marketing.

Coming Together: Uniting Traditional Online Advertising with Paid Search

It’s yet another instance of how smart people do stupid things. In this case, because of how our organization developed organically, traditional online advertising and paid search were being planned, executed and reported on completely separately, with nary a connection point.

Interestingly, our initial forays into paid search were seen as awareness generating only, and now have morphed into key lead generators. Conversely, traditional online ad units, once seen as lead generating, are now viewed mostly as awareness generators. Most of our “leads” or “responses” generated from traditional online advertising, are reaped from whitepaper placements and newsletter sponsorships, not from creative ad units.

(I should state here, that I’m talking about BtoB marketing and that my company is all about nurturing folks through the sales cycle, which can be anywhere from nine to more than 12 months. So a response from one of our online campaigns triggers a “nurturing stream” that consists of follow-up touches via email or direct mail, depending on their opt-in status.)

Anyway, that brings me back to what was happening with online and search. As part of a larger effort to consolidate activities and vendors, we looked into streamlining our online response generation efforts. It seemed logical to us, given our situation. Of course, I couldn’t find out anything about it in any of the blogs or chat rooms I looked at. So I don’t know if that means we are behind or ahead of the curve, but here’s what happened.

Like a lot of companies our size ($1.5B) and larger, we are made up of a number if separate but related business units, each with their own budgets, goals and idiosyncrasies. Up to this point, each group had been separately taking their budget for online to one agency, telling them what they wanted, and then separately taking their budget for paid search to another agency and telling them what they wanted. In neither case were we getting the full benefit of our agency’s experience, and on the backend, all the reporting was different and difficult to compare.

So when we consolidated with one agency, we also centralized this process. We took everyone’s unique goals – how many responses they wanted to achieve for both online and search combined – and then took all of the money and put it in one budket for the agency (no small feat since it meant we might have to pull from one group’s budget to augment another group’s budget to get the net best performance for my company as a whole) and told the agency to figure out the best way to spend it between search and online for each campaign. To add to the fun, we asked them to negotiate value adds we received from the large online buys in the form of traditional online units, to help us improve awareness while still enabling us to meet our response goals.

The results so far have been fantastic. Everything is being planned in concert, our agency is helping us get the most out of our paltry budgets, we are getting the most benefit from their expertise, and when the campaigns launch and the metrics start flowing in, we can look at them side by side, and make optimization decisions based on performance.

Another fantastic outcome is that the creative across all the disparate groups now has a unifying theme, so we look more like the single company with a single voice that we want to be, helping us make more impact and generate more awareness across all of our product lines.

I’m not sure how other companies approach this. I’d be interested in your comments. For us, this has been a huge step forward and one that we hope will improve the ROI of our online investments.

Are brochures worth it?

I've done quite a bit of searching for the past few days trying to find some discussion - any discussion - about the value of brochures. Basically, all I've been able to find is agreement that they must be good - and there are many able companies waiting to help you create one.

I'm sure that it's not just that there is a lucrative market for creating brochures. Writing development can near $20K after it's all said and done - more if it's a real high profile piece. Printing around $10k. Then add in translations and additional printing and your're really talking about significant budget.

So say that on the low end, you spend $20k on brochure development and printing - single language. Doesn't sound too bad, right? There's a fuzzy return on that investment. But everyone needs a brochure, right? At least a good one.

But what if you are a large company with hundreds of products. Where do you draw the line?

I've been asking myself this question a lot lately. It's not just because I happen to not put a lot of stock into brochures themselves. It's how they are being used.

I hear, anecdotally, that the bulk of the brochures used at the company I work for go to trade shows. When I think about how many hours were spent getting just the right outline and just the right language on these things, it makes my head spin. Because I know what happens - as soon as the trade show is over, the participants pick through the trinkets and trash, trash everything else--including my $20k brochure.

The other way I'm told they are used, is that sales reps like to use them as a foil for discussions with customers. Fair enough. But is there a better way?

Recently my husband had occasion to buy a new car. We headed to Carmax one weekend to check things out. I found their use of technology amazing, from the gps system or whatever it was on the cars that allowed you to know exactly where they were in the lot by clicking on that info on their handy computer kiosks, to the online "brochure" or "sales experience" that our sales rep took us through. At the click of his mouse, every detail we needed to know, every point they wanted him to make, was outlined online. As a corporate brand manager, I appreciated the consistency of the experience. As a customer, I felt like I was getting all the info I needed, and if I wanted more, I could ask. It was, for me, the best of both worlds.

Now did I crave, you might ask, something tangible to take home with me to peruse at my liesure? Honestly, I didn't. I knew I could go online and get all the info I needed. But let's say for argument's sake, that I did. Would I need a unique brochure for each type of vehicle they sold? Probably not.

Which gets me back to my problem at work. We create hundreds of brochures every year. I don't think hundreds are being read. Somehow I've got to find a way to quantify that experience and work on ways to create a more consistent and favorable customer experience that doesn't rely on paper and ink.

Duh. Focus on the Customer

Just went through one of those surreal experiences as a marketeer that you wish didn't happen, but very often does in the heads down, blinders on world of corporate America.

Someone had a great idea about how to utilize a new technology - in this case - create a video blog. So half a dozen of us jumped in and began stamping out content, videotaping segments, pulling together resources, etc.

It was all really great until we stepped back and realized, "Where are the customer's needs in this whole thing?" Yep, we had made that age-old mistake of getting so excited about what we wanted to talk about (ourselves) and how we would use a cool new technology, that we forgot to focus on the customer.

Thankfully several red flags were thrown into the ring, and we took a collective step back to re-analyze our strategy.

Of course, this is basic marketing 101 - know your audience. But like a bad date, all we wanted to do was talk about ourselves. It's an understandable occurrance. There are so many cool innovations happening right now. We're like unbridled 5-year-olds who want to let you know everything we've done in an unfocused stream of consciousness.

Unfortunately, the remorseful date or the distracted parent isn't going to buy what we're selling until we make make it relevant to them.

We know that's the truth. Why do we keep getting ahead of ourselves?

Well, the good news is that I think the new strategy is going to work, but still have a few hurdles to cross before I can let you know for sure. Stay tuned for the next installment on this topic in the ongoing Marketeer Adventure saga.

What's in a name?

I have to thank Canadian marketer Jeff Lowe for use and pronunciation of the term marketeer. I had not heard it prior to working with him.

It suggests someone who is more than just a marketer, i.e. just doing a job, and more like someone for whom marketing is part of their essence.

Marketeer also sounds suggestive of a super hero, like The Rocketeer. And let's face it, who doesn't want to equate their life's work with that of a superhero. I know when I tackle daily advertising emergencies, it feels good to know that I'm not just doing a job; I'm saving someone's marketing plan.