The 543 Group

Buy-ology

In the iconic Broadway show, "The Music Man," Mayor Shinn keeps telling the youth to watch their 'phraseology' - that the words they use matter and that they should show respect for their elders.  In a market fraught with buzzwords and jargon many do not understand let alone leverage properly, this advice continues to be true.

 

Buyology - Truth and Lies About Why We Buyis the title of the bestselling book by Martin Lindstrom, in which he explores, among other topics, how to optimize one's brand based on neuroscience.  From his own Website, "This groundbreaking new science will revolutionize our understanding of our own buying behavior and send shock waves throughout the marketing and advertising industries and the business world as a whole. A subject they never taught you in school, you’re about to discover your own ‘buyology’."  I have not heard the marketing world come crashing down yet.  It is always good to explore new approaches, however, and discover, as I often do, that I learn something new every day, and today it may have been that what I learned yesterday was wrong.  That's useful, humble education. 

If you are ready to 'translate consumer brains into brand action,' that's great, and we can help you get inside those brains.  We still encourage you to develop sound online marketing strategies based on your core knowledge of customer and prospects needs, attitudes, and behaviors, and then translate that into engaging user experiences and practical solutions that exceed expectations.  We'll promise to use phrases and approaches all stakeholders will understand, and deliver measurable results.  That's our theory of buyology.

Stimulus Plan - Focus on Greater ROI

The 543 Group finished 2008 with significant triple digit increases in revenue and has experienced similar good fortune thus far in 2009, at a time when so many of our colleagues in the industry did not fare so well or went out of business entirely.  We are both gratified and humbled by the progress we have made with our business model.

How did we do it?  We can't divulge every competitive advantage here, but suffice to say we sharpened our focus even more on the needs of our clients, and how they can maximize return on investment for their marketing initiatives.  Smart marketing executives know they need to constantly look for ways to lower their costs and provide greater ROI, and we developed even better methods to deliver our services and solutions as cost-efficiently as possible, without sacrificing quality.  We even implemented a rather compelling outsourcing model that is finding significant traction in these challenging times.

This is a business where almost everything is measurable, and it is time to build better 'mousetraps' to maintain competitive advantage and capture, or re-capture, market share and share of mind.  We encourage you to do so for your own organization and invite you to call upon us if you need assistance.  We would love to share our ideas with you.

Social Media Marketing Lesson #2 - "How To Get Your Web 2.0 Budget Approved"

A recent article with the title in quotes above discussed tips from a multi-billion dollar global banking company on how to help ensure  proposals for Web 2.0 initiatives gain approval from top management.  Their first strategy suggested 'selecting the right features' such as user-generated content, open software, rich Internet interactions such as guided selling, and digital interactions that included widgets and browser extensions.  This was followed by advice to show the benefits of each feature and then to 'step carefully.'

No kidding.  What the article failed to point out is that the first step toward gaining approval for anything called 'Web 2.0' is likely to start by not calling it that.  Web 2.0 refers to a set of tools that all generally support advanced and more user-centered content creation, collaboration, and sharing, but all are only tools that enable social brand marketing and enhanced user interactions.  The right strategy is to start by understanding the true needs and desires of all target audiences at each stage of the customer lifecycle, and what types of reach and engagement activities, socially shared/collaborated or not, will provide the best predictable ROI.  Then the right set of available content and functionality can be offered through the best media mix and campaigns possible, including leveraging every so-called '2.0' tool that might be appropriate. 

Show true ROI generated by getting and staying closer to customers and prospects so they beat a path to your brand versus the competitor - that's how to get budgets approved.

Objective and Subjective ROI

Every client or prospect we work with today is asking the same question:  "How do we improve ROI on what we are doing?"  And, more importantly, they want to know how to measure ROI for all their marketing investments, online or off.

I'm fond of saying that, with online marketing, everything is measurable, and it is true, if the strategy is set up correctly and it includes the expected ROI and a pre-determination of how that ROI will be measured.  What cannot be totally guaranteed is that everything is completely measured objectively.  Branded manufacturers will say that is it almost impossible to measure direct ROI from online marketing efforts because they are a step or two removed from the actual customer who purchases through their distribution channels.  Coupons, offers, coded registrations and special online 'extras' are often not sufficient to know the extent of how well efforts are working,but they are good options.  Sometimes companies simply need to look at spikes in sales activity as one objective measure of success, although it may be due to a variety of factors including the mix of online and offline marketing and sales activity.

What is in the control of any company marketing on the Web is how well its online experience conveys its brand, its differentiators, and its value propositions.  Google and Yahoo! and Apple did not get where they are through poor online experiences - it is precisely their ease of use and rapid delivery of that which they promise that compels millions to beat a path to their door.  Shaw Floors may not be able to know precisely the degree to which their online simulation that places their products on a photo of your home interior drives sales, but they can know their online experience is likely to foster a stronger brand affinity than that of their competitors.  Any catalog retailer who has a great selection and fast-loading large photos but has a lousy online shopping cart and payment process is likely to see a reduction in orders offline as well.  Why does every major auto manufacturer offer almost the exact same type of online experience and functionality now?   Because they needed to do so to level the playing field.  Prospective customers start on the Web and the experience better be good or they'll go somewhere else.

Every touchpoint matters and leaves an impression.  It's like a music system that only sounds as good as its weakest component.  If there is any area of your online experience that suffers, the total impression is likely to suffer.  And the impact of a brand's online experience does not have to be subjectively evaluated; it can be measured through Website satisfaction surveys or even page-specific 'Was this helpful?' inquiries. 

The actual value of a highly engaging and flawlessly executed online experience?  Priceless, for any company serious about growth and customer satisfaction.   

Thank You, Mr. Obvious!

There is one aspect of the advertising for the Apple iPod phone that is refreshing to see.  It's what you might call 'obvious advertising.'  There are no fancy marketing gimmicks, no catchy slogans.  Frankly, there is nothing more than a simple, up close and personal, demonstration of an innovative product and how it works. 

It points out what has always been true in marketing, but not practiced often enough.  Develop a corporate culture that drives innovation in products and services, and you can spend less time worrying about how to be innovative in your advertising, and more will still beat a path to your door and become advocates for your brand.  You do that with proper insight to your target audiences, their needs, and how your brand can deliver on those needs in a competitively differentiated manner.  Strategy first, always.

Social Media Marketing Lesson #1 - It's Only One Component

When you have been involved with social media marketing for years before it had that moniker, you learn several important lessons about what works best and what to avoid, and you try and pass those on to the next client and the one after that. 

In the late 1990s I learned that communities for health care could derive as much involvement and interest from children as from their parents; this is even more true now.  In online retail applications, I've long advocated emulating as many social aspects of the in-person customer experience to help foster the same affinity for the virtual experience.  For a non-profit, we learned together how online communities and forums could actually foster greater internal process management, leading to significant productivity improvements - it can get very interesting when you look at Web publishing first and other systems second.  In developing a brand strategy for a pureplay online service, I had to convince the client that the best application for social commerce in the world matters little if the user interface is poor or, more importantly, the value proposition is too hard to explain.  In e-commerce applications more recently, I have hammered home to clients the relationship of offline experiences to feelings toward online brands, and how the positive effect excellent online relationship-building activities can generate will quickly be erased by a bad offline encounter.

These all underscore perhaps the most important lesson to learn about social media marketing, if you do not already know it.  It is that social media marketing is only one of the many marketing touch points that affect a customer's or prospect's relationship with a brand.  Any sound strategy for social media marketing should be integrated with traditional offline and online marketing communications to create as seamless of an experience as possible.  Everything must work together, including every widget, community, blog, wiki, or other Web 2.0 technology being leveraged.  They need to work in synch with your print ads, television, Website, environmental, and every other component of taking your messages and experiences out in the marketplace.  Then you can begin to look at your forays into social media marketing the right way, as simply part of an integrated strategy to promulgate your brand and what it has to offer.

Leadership Goes Hand In Hand With Brand

In the ever increasingly complex world in which we live, where we are now bombarded with brand messages of every type in every medium online and off, many of which we choose to have delivered to our PCs, cell phones and other devices regularly, a key challenge is getting beyond all those messages to understand a company's ability to actually deliver on their promises.  Your customers, our customers, everyone who encounters a touch point with a brand, ultimately decide whether to interact with that brand, engage with it in some manner, perhaps make a purchase, and perhaps tell their friends. 

So, what is it that drives one brand to become and maintain its status as a true market leader?  What keeps the Fed-Ex reputation for fast, reliable delivery alive, or continues the innovation and elegant user interface design coming from Apple, or fuels the Disney organization to continue to delight millions with every form of entertainment?  It's leadership, and not just the CEO of the organization, but a top down reputation enhancement strategy that not only helps companies differentiate themselves from the competition, but enables them to stay prepared to continue to eclipse them.

While personal experience is the best way to learn how much leadership matters, a new book by Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value, leverages numerous case studies to illustrate how leading brands have implemented these six core strategies:

1. Build a case for leadership brand. "Leadership helps make strategy happen. Without the right leaders at all levels, an organization can't deliver on its brand promise to customers, its financial promise to investors, its social promises to community stakeholders, or its cultural promise to employees."
2. Create a leadership brand statement. "Leadership brand becomes the process whereby the identity of the external customer translates to the behavior of the internal employee and organization processes. When this connection of the outside and inside is made real (in terms of both rhetoric and action), we call that a statement of leadership brand."
3. Assess leaders against the brand. "When assessments are a part of a thoughtful development process, there is great likelihood that the leadership brand is realized with leaders who have the right stuff...at the right leadership stage...that delivers the right results in the right way."
4. Invest in leadership brand. "Identify and support the training, developmental opportunities and life experiences needed to encourage the specific practices that instill your company's leadership brand in executives and managers throughout the organization."
5. Measure leadership brand investment. "Over the past 15 years, the measurement of leadership effectiveness has been characterized by two divergent approaches. One is the competency approach; the other looks for a concrete return on the training investment."
6. Build leadership brand awareness for key stakeholders. "Build a long-term reputation by communicating the efficacy of your company's leadership brand to interested stakeholders — customers, employees, investors, suppliers."

All of the above reminds one of the old adage that it is not only what you do, but how you do it, that matters.  When it comes to building and maintaining a strong brand that fosters true loyalty and referral and long-term value, it does come down to the people behind the brand, and the leadership demonstrated at all levels.

Does 2.0 Enhance Your Brand Experience?

I recently was involved in two research efforts that looked at the effectiveness of specific Web 2.0 features various brands include in their online experiences.  While many of these types of content and functionality do not, in my opinion, really fall into the Web 2.0 category, it is worth considering how many of the following might reach and engage prospects and customers better and should perhaps be a part of your own online marketing strategy:

• 360 degree spins and alternate views
• Blogs
• Color swatching/colorizing
• Designing your own 'product' or look and mixing and matching components
• Interactive catalogs
• Mobile commerce
• Monogramming or engraving tools
• Microsites
• Personalized messages embedded in the Website based on embedded cookies
• Product tours - interactive or linear playback
• Quick looks and rollover views or fast zoom in, etc.
• RSS feeds
• Shop by category - type of room, outfit, look, etc.
• Stored personalization through areas like My Account, My Profile, or site favorites
• URL and Widget sharing - also embedded on other sites
• User rankings and ratings and comments and feedback
• User-generated visual content - photos/video/audio/graphics
• Videos - used for demonstration, advertising, merchandising, or other promotion
• Videos based on user remixed content
• Visual filtering and advanced search on product features or actual visual product configurators - often referred to now collectively as RIA or Rich Internet Applications
• Web to print
• Wikis

The key is not that any of the above site enhancements are generally more effective than others, but how effective any in particular may be to reach and engage your visitors to compel them to make a purchase or otherwise take the actions you desire as a result of your investment in online marketing.  And the key to that determination is how you measure their effectiveness.

I have said many times that almost every action online can and should be measured.  And how you measure is just as important, so your business can know as precisely as possible that specific new content or functionality enhancements, or online advertising or search or database efforts, or any online marketing initiative, led to direct increases in purchases, average order size, upsell incidence, site traffic, time spent on site, or other key metrics that provide upper management with the ROI they likely require for all marketing.  Did visitors click through from that e-mail campaign? Did they go to the new rich media demo that was promoted on the home page?  Did they watch all of it and then click to learn more, or leave after ten seconds?  Did they send a referral to their friends, or leave positive feedback on their customer service experience?  These and many like them are the right questions to ask.

When you have a strategy supporting every online brand experience and marketing component, and a plan for measuring, analyzing, and learning from the ROI from each, then you can know what Web 1.0 components are working well, which are not, and what new or Web 2.0 features should be considered.

Curiosity Fuels Innovation

When I was a kid, my big 'thing' to play with was Motorific Slot Cars made by the Ideal Toy Company.  They were battery-powered cars and trucks of all makes and models, and the track was the snap-together variety that included long straight-aways, big curves, test track sections, bridges, and even crash-through barricades.  As I was rather enamored with Motorific cars, I received more for each birthday and at Christmas until it seemed I could fill the entire basement floor with endless configurations.  I never ran out of ways to put things together based on my own curiosity about what was possible.

When developing online marketing strategies, or conducting any brainstorming sessions for your business, it is beneficial to bring that same type of curiosity to the table.  All participants should be encouraged to look at all the 'parts' available to address the issues of the day, and to consider numerous possibilities about how they could be assembled or put together to create something innovative, something differentiated from the competition that is compelling and drives desired action by customers and prospects.

Keep a child-like (not childish) curiosity as you collaborate to build that better mousetrap for your business, and anything is possible.  Cultivate that culture in your business, and your teams will always be looking to build something better.

Building Stakeholder Consensus for Marketing Initiatives

In building any significantly new interactive or online brand experience, part of the challenge to ensure success of the initiative is to gain stakeholder consensus before anything is created.  This is not always easy, and is often overlooked during the strategic planning process. 

If we are conducting formal branding exercise or brand planning sessions, there is usually good participation from those with a significant stake in how their brand is perceived.  However, when it comes to participating in customer-focused research, stakeholders are often nowhere to be found, preferring to review the results in a nice PowerPoint presentation.  However, if you really want them to look past their departmental responsibilities and see how their customers really interact with their products or services, get them to be 'in the room' and observe that interaction first-hand.  There is no substitute.  Third-party findings can always be disputed, but if they see and hear what customers have to say first-hand, reaching consensus on recommended responses usually follows.  Suddenly the needed budgets free up, the value of customer research is no longer questioned and, if you are lucky, a stronger sense of urgency exists to respond with the right solutions.

This isn't brain surgery.  It is, however, creating the proper rationale and atmosphere for stakeholders to see the truth, and then act on it.  For some, those that regularly interact with their customers, results may not be breathtaking.  But for so many executives, who seldom have any direct contact with live customers, the revelations can lead to major shifts in brand marketing and advertising.

There are also many forms of such research.  Assessing all the options and choosing the right method is paramount to make sure that the research really fosters insights on true and unbiased needs, attitudes, and behaviors that lead to predictable purchase behavior.