Category: Engagement

Brand

Long-Distance Romance

Posted on

If a marketer’s dream is to have an intimate relationship with and knowledge of his or her customer, then that marketer’s worst nightmare must be to know nothing about the customers who they so fervently hope will buy whatever it is they are selling.

In what I consider an inconsistent, if not surprising move, the FCC announced recently (via BusinessWeek) that it was going to look into what is becoming a fairly common marketing practice: tracking potential buyers’ web browsing behaviors and patterns.

How is this inconsistent? This administration prides itself on populism, and more specifically, enabling people to take power and control over themselves and allow opportunities to create all kinds of value. (I feel an argument coming on here…maybe next post? or in the comments if you like). This moves stops them. It simply puts up an artificial barrier that says “what I do, how I act and what I create on-line cannot be shared.”

Huh? Isn’t the populist, Web2.0 world of the internet all about creating shared value? What ever happened to the pro-sumer? and since when do my browsing patterns, along with what I create from them, not my “production?” (could you even go so far as to argue that link streams – mine here – are a proud publication of at least some of where I’ve been? and could be considered a lite version of a browser tracker? maybe).

But the point isn’t the politics. It’s the marketing.

For generations, companies have marketed to demographic, ethnographic, psychographic segments (and more…) trying to find the common behaviors of their potential buyers (in my now-distant youth, I recall ads for Cheerios in racquet clubs…clearly assuming a connection between racquet sports and a desire to eat healthy). Cross-marketing campaigns, partnerships, and so forth have been a staple of good marketing as long as there has been good marketing.

With the proper cautions, warning and knowledge (and willing participation of the potential buyer), tracking web browsing habit is no different. It tells us as marketers what our potential customers might be interested in, what they are looking at, and ultimately, where we should focus our efforts and with whom we should team up to best find and engage our potential buyer.

Wait -Â I know you’re about to argue for the right to privacy. Yes, obviously. None of this should be done surreptitiously. It probably should have the same level of user control and awareness as cookies do now. It feels about the same. Chime in if you like on the privacy controls needed.

Here’s where the nightmare begins:

Consumers, and for the most part business buyers, are on-line. They are browsing, searching, shopping and so forth. We all know the social media adage “The conversation is out there, are you?” The same applies to your potential customer. They are on-line. Are you looking for them?

If consumer behavior in the mass-market society could be done with cross-marketing campaigns and consumer habits determined (at least in aggregate) by survey, then consumer behavior in the social market must be determined by where your potential market (of one person) is going, who they are associating with, etc.

As a marketer, you cannot even begin to know your potential customer without knowing these things (and there’s so much more).

If you were not allowed to find ways to trace the patterns of an individual’s behavior on-line, you cannot know that person in the way you need to in order to make relevant and useful products available.

You would be relegated to doing nothing more than shooting the proverbial arrow in the dark. And that’s any marketer’s nightmare.

So what about the potential customer?

No, I would not want the feeling of being watched. But I do like to share what I’m doing and what I see. (e.g. this blog, my LinkStream, my tweets, etc.) But I also hate all that useless advertising I see.

So what if I set my browser to allow some set of marketing companies to see some set of information about my browsing habits (say, purchases, shopping, searches, abandoned shopping carts, etc.)? I’d get useful information (with, I hope relevant ads). I’d be able to see more of what I care about, even if it is promotional.

I would appreciate those companies that took the time to invest in thinking about me and what I do and like before they came to me and made me an offer. I’d be much more likely to buy.

I would be creating opportunities for me to find, discover and learn, and, yes, buy. And I’d be much more inclined to join the brand that did all of this.

This unusual move would, in one fell swoop, take a significant bite out of the rapidly evolving buyer-seller relationship, and drastically change the course of the new developing social marketplace.

As a consumer, and as a marketer, I seek out opportunities to create and strengthen relationships with those I buy from and those I sell to. I hope the FTC doesn’t send me back to the industrial age of the mass blast and the 1.5% return.

Tweet
Share
Share
Community

Not Just Hammers

Posted on

A journey of a thousand miles may begin with a single step, but you don’t get very far unless you take the second step (and then the third, and the fourth and so on…)

Not long ago I was having dinner with a friend who also spends time supporting not-for-profits and we were lamenting how hard it can be to get people in general (the general public, mass audiences, whatever you want to call it) to do the (sometimes simple) things it takes to make a big difference in the world, whether in human services, environmental protection or any number of other fields.

Which is the same challenge marketers face every day – how to get people to act, or specifically, express interest and buy.

How is this the same thing? When we talk about lead generation, demand generation, the marketing funnel, prospect and customer engagement and any number of other terms we use to describe the parts of the journey from first prospect contact to closed sale and beyond, we are really describing a journey of increasing commitment by the buyer to the seller (and, I hope by both to the on-going relationship)

Let me offer this as a way to think about the development of the buyer-seller relationship:

Start with Awareness. Someone in the market becomes aware that we offer a product or service that he or she may need. From the seller’s point-of-view, we become aware that there is a group of potential buyers in a target audience. One example of how we make this happen is advertising.

Then we move to Interest. That same prospect has determined that there is a potential that our offerings may meet some needs and is willing to explore further. We see positive response to our communication (regardless of vehicle) and become interested in pursuing the potential buyer. We provide information, marketing offers and other ways to engage and get this information.

Next is Motivation. Now the prospect has determined that she has a motivating need and that our offering can help. He or she now actively wants to pursue a purchase. And we see the possibility of turning the developing relationship into a source of revenue. We might offer a sales call.

And then comes Action. The prospect buys. We sell. We deliver.

Finally, at that point we have a developed Relationship. The customer wants to succeed with our offering, we want the same. We provide help and support to make that happen and cultivate on-going sales and other offers as we learn about more needs.

Granted, there’s a bit more complexity here and we all know it’s never that linear. And you probably label your process and funnel stages quite differently, but I have not found many people who’d disagree that Motivation precedes Action, that Interest precedes Motivation or that Awareness precedes Interest. It might all happen in an instant (think about the last time you bought a candy bar at a grocery store register display – “there’s chocolate”, “I like that”, “I’m hungry/craving”, “I’ll buy one”, granted not much of an on-going relationship there if you don’t count, as Ms. Morgenstern would have called it, the relationship between the chocolate and your hips!)

So, now back to the problem.

The problem, remember, is getting people to take the actions they might know are right, beneficial or helpful. For example, we know that recycling is good for the environment, but most of us don’t recycle much of what we could. The same can be said about the other small shifts we can all take to improve the environment, better support the not-for-profits we choose and act in a number of other ways that seems obvious to us (side note: I now see that this is true of preventative healthcare as much as sustainability)

I’ll spare this rant, but please consider there to be a long set of paragraphs aiming to debunk the economic view of people as rational beings and that all of this is a result of utility maximization. Suffice to say, it’s not.

Let’s look at how we convince people to do green acts, and participate in (volunteer, donate) not-for-profits.

Many not-for-profits (this is particularly true with ones focused on diseases and serving the under-privileged) try to generate Awareness. They want people to know about the cause or problem.

That’s an admirable goal, and an important step. But not nearly enough.

Once I know about your cause, why you think it’s important and how big the problem is (usually what I hear from these organizations), now I need a reason to move to interest. At this point, I am more likely than not to say something on the order of “that’s nice, I hope you solve that problem” and move on.

What we leave to chance is Interest, Motivation and Action.

So why don’t many organizations succeed at these steps? Mostly from not having built tools. Often, the question is asked “OK, I’m ready and willing – what do I do?” and without the tools in place, action is not possible

No sales organization would consider trying to get a prospect emotionally charged about their offering then just sit back and expect the prospect to show up with a contract, check, cash, whatever, in hand. There’s a process, there are tools there are specific actions every sales rep takes and tools they use to give their prospects as many tools as possible to close the deal.

Not-for-profits can learn a lot from their commercial counterparts.

And dare I say, many of those commercial counterparts can learn a lot about where their marketing is missing a step just by looking at their customer’s journey and on what parts they are not partnering.

I know from my work in sustainability and not-for-profits that we have lots of problems that need to be solved. Now.

I also know most of them don’t look like nails. But let me suggest that we at least start showing people how to get hammers. And whatever other tools they need.

Tweet
Share
Share
Brand

Just Ask

Posted on

At this morning’s Social Media Breakfast (great discussion with Anneke Seley, author of Sales 2.0 on using social media in sales), I was talking with Sue of KITList and Clare about how to improve the conversation and engagement of the thousands and thousands of KITList members. The three of us wrestled with updating the blog, creating an e-mail discussion list, maybe a social media service presence (Facebook, Twitter?), but we weren’t really sure what would engage the large and very diverse group that is the KITList membership. Then came the “a-ha” moment:

Clare said “Why don’t you ask your members?”

Which is, of course, applying the basic social media principle to figuring out social media.

Marketers are always working hard to understand customers, prospects and future prospects better. We think we’re pretty good at asking people in our market what they think, want and need. We also think we’re pretty good at translating often disparate answers into a coherent theme that then, we hope, guides our strategy.

Where this morning’s conversation started was in the “market research” mode of asking a few people. Sue asked me and Clare, and told us she had asked a few others, but still had no good answers. So a few hours later, she wrote a blog post (and sent an e-mail) to the members and asked everyone.

A few hours later, I saw the news that Facebook, after the recent debacle, has now decided that changes to their terms of service will be open to discussion by all members and subject to vote of the membership (Can’t you hear the lawyers cringing?). A social media icon now adopts real social media practices in a way that much of the technology industry is proverbially famous for not doing for so many years. This means no more misunderstandings (we hope) and terms of service that the community of Facebook members actually wants to abide by (I’ll refrain from a rant on the use of self-interest as a motivator being better than the threat of lawsuit). Facebook is actually asking everyone, and the result is almost certain to be a service that’s more appealing to its members.

Not everyone will answer. But I can’t think of a better example of how to learn what your whole market thinks, and not just the select few you’ve chosen for research. This is not quite crowdsourcing, but it’s close, and it uses some of the same ideas about collecting opinions from many, many individuals.

So when you want to know what your customers, prospects and market really want and need (and I hope you always want to know), do you let a select few speak for everyone? or do you really ask – everyone?

Tweet
Share
Share
Engagement

Improvement and Change

Posted on

I learned something from my last few posts: The people who read this blog like to respond by e-mail. OK, maybe I’m generalizing based on just a few events (e-mails in response to posts), but I do get e-mail, and I don’t get many comments.

I didn’t intend to experiment to find out how my “market” likes to engage. But what I did was, on a small scale, the kind of experiment in which marketers engage every day: Put something out into a market or segment and see how people respond. Do the same thing (at the same time) to comparable but different versions of the same “thing” (offer, message, whatever) in different but comparable markets or segments and you’ll end up with a good idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Marketers do this all the time. And, I hope, as a result they improve how they talk to their market.

Marketers (and, I’ve noticed, many companies) are not as good at the kind of experimentation that creates change. It’s really not that different. Experiment with things you have not yet tried. Try a new medium for communication – outbound, inbound or (preferably) two-way. Try a few all at once. See if any work. Maybe try a structure to a program, or create something in your market that’s never been created before. It might not work, but it might, and even if it doesn’t, you’ve learned something about having the conversation with your market that your current structure would never have allowed you to learn.

Using simple methods, like piloting, controlled experiments, and allowing the emergence of what works and what doesn’t, this type of experimentation can be successful in almost every organization. And when you learn what works, and then work to improve it, you create the kind of marketing innovation that puts you ahead of your competition.

Why does this matter? I will refrain from beating the now-tired drum of “the market is changing” (which really means your buyer is changing) – we all know it’s true, and will continue to be. If you’re trying the same things over and over again (even if you are improving them every time), you will become irrelevant.

Why does it matter now? In the past year, I’ve seen several companies start to see their marketing effectiveness eroding, only because they won’t (or don’t know how to) try something new. And I don’t know if I believe the doom-and-gloom economic forecasts, but I do believe that the market will become more challenging in 2008 than it was in 2007.

So the question is: are you going to keep doing what made you successful last year, and let someone else find a new way to beat you? or are you going to experiment with new ideas and find the new way to beat them?

Tweet
Share
Share
Brand

The Visible Experience

Posted on

Experience counts. I don’t mean work experience, or the kind of wisdom that gives you insight, but the experience your customer (or prospective customer) has interacting with your company. Your customer’s Experience is the heart of your brand, and the heart of your customer’s decision to stay your customer.

Last week, I had two experiences which stood in stark contrast, and reinforced this.

First the good news:

I was invited to join a (relatively) new business-focused social networking service called Visible Path. In order to vet members to some degree, the service requires that your e-mail be a valid, non-spammer, domain (maybe more than that, I don’t fully know their criteria). So when I went to sign up, the site challenged me. The way it was stated caused me to interpret the requirement as the site admin’s desire to make an arbitrary judgment about my worthiness to join. This did not go over well, and I chose to, rather than join, fire off a rather scalding e-mail to the first contact person I could find on their web site. Within 2-3 minutes, I had a response back from Kathleen Bruno, who asked me to call her directly.

I did. She asked me what had cause me to think this, and how they could improve the process. We talked about this for nearly 30 minutes, discussing everything from word usage to my ideas for how to make the sequence friendlier and more transparent (there’s that word again!). She even told me who else in the company would also hear about my feedback.

This conversation turned my experience of Visible Path from one of a company who is clueless about networking (as an exclusive club?) to one that wants to engage users and make a valuable place to connect with others.

The initial experience was not good (I don’t think it’s completely my privacy fanatacism, either). But the response was outstanding. Here’s a company that “gets it.” They seem to care about the experience. They seem to care about making my experience useful, friendly and productive.

I’ve since completed the sign-up process and will be testing this very interesting new social-networking-for-business service to see if all of the cool stuff they offer really helps me (I’ll keep you posted!) (and, I’m not yet a raving fan of the service, but I am a raving fan of Kathleen!)

And now the bad news:

I spent this past weekend in Deerfield, IL. I stayed at the Embassy Suites (it was the designated hotel for the function). For those of you who know the Embassy Suites, you know they offer a reasonable breakfast buffet. Fortunately, this buffet included some hot food, like eggs and pancakes. Unfortunately, it also included cooked-to-order omeletes. Why is that unfortunate? In order to get any hot food at all, you have to wait in the omelet line. And on the weekend, the hotel is not populated with speed-focused businesspeople, but rather throngs of tourists, all clamoring for as much free food as possible (and ordering 4, 5 or more items). The line when I arrived was 45 minutes long. I didn’t wait.

I did, however, run into the manager as I left the line. I suggested that maybe the scrambled eggs could be placed in a chafing dish outside the line – not as fresh, but far more efficient. I made one or two other suggestions as well in my desire to be helpful and point out the error of their ways.

His response? He told me why my suggestions were bad ideas. He told me that my ideas were not what other guests wanted. All of this is probably true (I’m no hotelier, after all). But it left me thinking: This hotel doesn’t care what I think. They offer a generic service, and don’t care if I take it or leave it. (For the record, I’ll be leaving it next time I’m in Deerfield).

My experience of this hotel was one which does not care about its guests, one that does not listen, and one that does not care to improve my experience.

Contrast that to my new friend Ms. Bruno at Visible Path, who cared enough to want my personal experience to be a good one. I’ll be spending time using that service.

As is my habit, I pose the question: How are your customers experiencing your company? Are you sure? And what are you doing to make sure?

After all, Experience isn’t everything. When it comes to customers, it’s the only thing.

Tweet
Share
Share
creativity

Disrupting Because of…

Posted on

Doc Searls defines what he calls the because effect

This is what you get when your new business isn’t just about inventing and controlling technologies and standards, but about taking advantage of the new opportunities opened up by fresh new technologies and standards. For example, making money because of blogging, or RSS, or desktop Linux, or whatever — rather than just with those things

In the technology business, we tend to be very obsessed with the technology itself. So many companies claim that what differentiates them is the technology (often only certain features of the technology) and sometimes it’s true, but not often.

But many of the real opportunities exist in taking advantage of all of the technology we’ve invented to do things (anything from business processes to making new friends) differently – and better than ever. Or what can be done because of the technology.

Think about the people making money by running businesses in Second Life. They are not in the technology business, but they are in the design or fun or entertainment (or whatever) business. And their business is able to have the reach is does because of Second Life. You can even say the same for the large corporations who have established a presence in this virtual world. They are able to better interact with partners, customers, etc., because of the technology.

There are two things I ask myself everyday:

1) How am I making use of all of the technology and capabilities available to me to engage my market? to attract new prospective customers? to start an interesting conversation? You might say, what am I doing different/better because of the technology I have at my disposal?

2) I market technology. What are my customers doing different/better because of the technology I market? We marketers like to think in terms of benefits (many of which are not really benefits at all). But if you pose the question this way, the benefit becomes very clear.

What are you making possible for your customers that was not possible before?

Tweet
Share
Share
Community

Being in the conversation

Posted on

The phrase I hear in the marketing world almost every day is “the conversation is happening whether or not you are part of it.” This is usually followed by an admonishment to the marketing authority to become part of the conversation in some way, usually by trying to bring it to your own site/territory.

It’s good advice. All-too-often followed by not-so-useful action. It’s not as easy, nor as obvious, as it seems (especially for traditional marketers) to find the conversation, not to mention take part. And if you haven’t heard it enough, taking part not only means saying something, but also saying something useful and interesting, saying something authentically “you” and not saying something that is just a bunch of marketing-speak positioning words.

This posting is unconfirmed (as far as I know), but look at this response from the folks at Second Life. This gets at the heart of participation. The GetAFirstLife.com project owner is going to parody Second Life. And use some variations on the logo, etc. They accept reality and explicitly agree. They win points, buzz and goodwill all at once.

Most importantly, they further their reputation as cool people with something useful to say, and enhance their unique differentiation that makes Second Life the “place to be” in the virtual world.

Just like people will be talking about your company and your products/services. When you comment or respond, what will you be saying? Will it win you goodwill?

And most importantly, will it contribute to what makes you different and unique?

Tweet
Share
Share
Engagement

Staring at your navel

Posted on

David Armano, author of Logic+Emotion, gives some highlights of a Bain & Co. study.

Executive anxieties about losing touch with their customers is driving higher and higher usage of customer tools such as CRM and segmentation. These tools have moved from below average use to second and third place, respectively, in the 10 years since Bain has included them in the survey:

  • 84% of executives are now using CRM
  • 82% are using segmentation to tailor their marketing programs and offerings to groups of customers who exhibit common patterns of behavior
  • New tools are emerging. Use of loyalty management is at 51%, and the use of ethnographic methods to observe customers in the real world is becoming more mainstream, at 35%. But in 2006, each of those tools rank below average in terms of executive satisfaction.

There’s more on his post.

Don’t mis-read my commentary: I’m not discounting or dismissing the value of CRM or loyalty programs. In fact, I use those and simliar tools to get to know my customers better also. They are valuable, and they are also very consistent with the approach that businesses have long taken to marketing.

But the concern that these executives expressed is that their companies – meaning the people in their companies – are out of touch with their customers.

Which made me think: Are they talking to their customers? or, more importantly, are they listening? and are they listening where their customers are talking? (you can listen to your market research, but does the blog-commentary of your customers tell a different story?)

People who’ve worked with me will know that I am the first to jump into the data. Mine the CRM system. Find new segments and new demographics. Make the data tell stories it never has before.

But there’s a very large element of this data focus that makes me feel like I’m staring at my own navel and drawing conclusions about the world around me. Data can say alot. But data can’t speak for a person. Or a market. Or a community.

I’ve had the privelege to work with some companies where everyone in marketing talks to customers regularly. And so do all of the executives. We still mined the data, but every conclusion we drew, we validated. We asked actual people. We read what actual customers and prospective customers were saying about us in unsolicited ways. We had that very elusive sense of the market.

I’ve also worked with companies where talking to customers is, at best, discouraged and generally never happened. The inevitable result was that there was a lot of talk about how out-of-touch we were, and a lot of hand-wringing about how to get closer to the customer. System were put in place. Data analyzed. But still no one talked to an actual person. In one recent case, the conversation in the blogosphere was discounted as irrelevant.

You can guess which companies were more successful.

Being in touch with your audience matters. Data matters. Research matters. But unless you have something interesting to say, and can engage your market community in conversation, all the data in the world will just leave you staring at your collective navel.

Tweet
Share
Share
Engagement

Engaging Conversation

Posted on

From the Business Week article It’s the Conversation Economy, Stupid

Marketers are finding themselves in an increasingly frantic race to get people talking about their brands. The desire to produce something “viral” is nearly ubiquitous in the marketing world. But it’s unclear who exactly “consumers” are these days. We don’t even know what that word means any more. Can consumers be producers? Yes. Can they be users? Yes. Can they be active participants, members of niche communities, or even critics capable of effectively mobilizing others? Yes, yes, and yes.

The article goes on to talk about the “2.0” technologies that are changing the nature of the conversation (and yes, includes Twitter – their marketing folks must be proud!).

Really? I thought the “2.0” tools are making the conversation possible. Looking at this from the perspective of a marketer, the “2.0” tools are making it possible for consumers to become producers (of content at the least) and participants. They allow us to “hear” from our market not only in new ways, but to hear things that just 10 years ago we could not hear at all. Reading blogs about your product (and hoping it’s not on the yourproductsucks.com blog) gives you a perspective you could not have had just 10 years ago.

Yes, markets are conversations. It’s the buzz phrase of the week, but it’s been true before this week, and will be true after next week.

The fact remains, when I meet a new friend, I hope the conversation is engaging. As when I meet a new member of my market community, I hope that what I have to say is interesting enough to be engaging.

The point being that the conversation is important, but the conversation has to be engaging. You still must engage your community, your market, your potential customer.

The difference is that now we have to do it by actually being interesting. Being bright and shiny just isn’t enough. Are you saying something interesting?

Tweet
Share
Share
Collaboration

Mass collaboration?

Posted on

From Buzz Marketing for Technology:

Capturing this institutional knowledge and leveraging it across the organization is the power of Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise 2.0 tools are designed for individual contribution and grass roots, bottom-up type development. They must be simple to use in order to draw users to swarm around key pieces of knowledge, tagging and posting blogs and wikis.

This is in fact what many Enterprise 2.0 initiatives are based on, or are at least counting on. Knowledge management as a function or capability has had its ups and downs, but the reality is that all of us so-called knowledge workers count on access to incredibly large amounts of information and knowledge to do our jobs. If the tools work, and the knowledge not only gets captured through participation, but also grows through the synergy of collaboration, our jobs get easier, and we work better, individually and together.

The opportunity here is to extend this outside the enterprise. I don’t mean suppliers and partners – though that’s useful too. I mean to customers, prospects and everyone else who is part of the community to which you are trying to speak. I can ask the age-old marketing question “what can you learn from your customers?” but what if you can not only learn, but engage your audience in mass collaboration to make your offering better…and maybe your marketing too.

Tweet
Share
Share