Talking together

Lately, we seem more concerned with having our devices talk to each other than we do with having our colleagues talk to each other.  With the explosion of wireless computing and the Swiss army knife of the 21st century, the smart phone, featuring more and more capabilities and tools, we have more and more ways to connect with colleagues and customers and fewer and fewer reasons to talk to people.

While I believe in the efficiency of webinars, conferences and conference calls, I also have multi-tasked my way through all of them enough times to know that they are not usually the best way to have an engaged conversation.  As with so many things related to communications, the closer you can get to face-to-face, one-on-one conversation, the more impact and persuasion you can have.  The closer we can get to one-on-one conversation the more likely we are to make a connection with the other party in the conversation.  

A friend of mine sends out emails about her business on a pretty regular basis.  She was telling me that she had recently started personalizing some of the emails to key customers.  The response from those customers was remarkable, she told me with a bit of amazement.  While not everyone made a purchase, many people felt the need to respond to her; to reconnect with her.  They saw these emails not as advertisements, which they essentially were, but as one-on-one communications.  As a personal message.  They felt compelled to respond.  They felt compelled to strengthen the relationship.

There are ways that technology can help us approximate the one-on-one conversation.  For a while, one of the biggest concepts in marketing was the idea of mass customization.  The theory was that technology would allow us to use the convenience of mass marketing but with the impact of a personalized, customized message.  While I suspect there aren't many people anymore who feel that a mail merged letter is the same as a hand-written note, it does make a letter seem a bit less like a form letter and a bit more like the sender wants to really communicate.  Technology allows us to customize what information a customer or prospect receives, essentially allowing us to customize our interaction on a one-on-one level.

We need to be mindful of what we are doing and not let the technology seduce us too much.  For example, think about how too many people use what is now a pretty dusty technology, PowerPoint.  Too many speakers continue to pour all of their energy into creating detailed, bullet-riddled PowerPoint presentations.  They end up giving their speech facing the slides because they don't want to miss any of the precious facts they have loaded onto each slide.  As Seth Godin says in his blog post titled "Really Bad PowerPoint," "countless innovations fail because their champions use PowerPoint the way Microsoft wants them to, instead of the right way."  Wordy, bullet-laden presentations rarely communicate as much as the creator hopes they will.  When a speaker is speaking to the screen, he cannot be talking with the audience.  Also, people can't see all the brilliance on the slide if their eyes are closed.

Similarly, some organizations confuse the use of social media as a strategy as opposed to a media option.  This results in companies focusing unwarranted attention on generating likes, or followers, or repins instead of focusing on the true mission of the organization or the brand, generating sales.  Getting someone to push a "Like" button is not a conversation or a connection.  It may be an invitation to start a conversation, depending what scheme you used to get that person to push that "Like" button.  We really need to be focusing on connections, real connections, with customers and prospects and other key audiences.  We need to be finding ways to talk together.

A colleague of mine told me recently that if an email exchange goes past three emails without the issue getting resolved, she picks up the phone and calls the person.  The issue rarely goes past one phone call.  There is nothing more powerful than talking directly with a person.

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• The Swiss Army Knife of Our Time

The Swiss Army Knife of Our Time

When I was a kid, after many years of begging, I finally got a present I deeply coveted...a Swiss Army Knife.  My Swiss Army Knife had a large blade and a small blade, a nail file, a screw driver, an awl, a scissors, a can opener (which I could never figure out), a genuine imitation ivory toothpick, a tweezers and a corkscrew.  What more could anyone want?  I think I only regularly used the big knife blade.

I wonder sometimes if smart phones aren't the Swiss Army Knives of our time.  They are sold with a seemingly endless array of features, most of which I suspect are rarely if ever used.  In the store, it is fun to think about using your phone to create business reports and watch movies, but eye strain and readily available, larger-screened options quickly prevail.  In the ad it sounds like a blast to be able to contact a bunch of friends at the same time, whether to plan a great social outing or to just guffaw over the latest TV sitcom.  At home, I realize that I don't have 10 friends that I want to call at the same time.  Most of them don't know and/or like each other and rarely do I do anything with that many of them at a time.

I expect that as smart phones become more and more de rigueur, manufacturers will need to come out with stripped down models.  There is a certain segment of the population who will appreciate, and buy, a phone that is designed to be, well, just a phone.

Once, in college, I used the corkscrew on my knife to open a bottle of wine.  (yes I still had the knife then and yes, I swear it was in college!). Similarly, once, I used the flashlight app on my phone, but even then it was just to show it off.  At least with the corkscrew I got to drink some bad wine!

The Many P's of Marketing: Pennies

Marketing has gotten more and more nuanced, as new technologies and strategies have opened up many options for marketers.  It is my contention that today, the marketing mix contains much more than the traditional four or five P's that are taught in school.  In this series I am exploring the Many P's of Marketing.

Pennies: When I got an iPad a while back, I spent the first few weeks learning about the whole "iCulture" created by Apple.

I am talking particularly about apps.  To a Windows boy, born and bred, apps seem an awful lot like programs and software that you could purchase and upload to your computer.  Except that apps are REALLY easy to install and many of them are free or cost mere pennies to purchase.

The success of smart phones and tablets has created a whole new app-based economy.  For literally pennies you can have access to a seemingly endless array of tools, games and features, both utilitarian and frivolous, that can fill your devices memory, and the hours of your day, with "things to do."

The thing that I think is so amazing is the ubiquitous nature of it all.  Long before I had an iPad or smartphone, I knew about Angry Birds and CT5K (couch to 5K, for the uninitiated) training app.  I lusted for apps that I couldn't get with my non-smart phone and Apple-less and Android-less existence.  

The brilliant thing about this app-based world is the ease of entry.  Many apps allow you to try a basic form of the app for free.  You get hooked and then forking over the $2.99 for the upgrade is a no-brainer.  And even though they make just pennies per purchase, the sheer volume of these small purchases has helped some small time developers to make a decent income, at least according to this Newsweek article.  The continued success and eager adoption of each new version of the Apple Operating System (iOS) would seem to indicate that this trend is continuing.

There are two thoughts to ponder for those marketers who don't work for Apple.  The first and more generic thought is the age old axiom that you can deal with only making a few pennies profit per item as long as you can make it up in volume.  The Internet provides an effective and efficient way to reach a huge audience, if you can figure out how to capture peoples imagination.  And their pennies.

The second thought is that it seems more and more important to figure out a way to "app-ify" your marketing plan.  Because smart phones and tablets have become more popular, an increasingly large portion of the marketplace are using these devices as their go to venue to interact with the electronic media.  In 2011, it was estimated that 35 percent of all US adults had a smartphone (83% had a cellphone).  That forecast was up to 45% for 2012, which I think shows the incredible growth of this industry/product/media.

The music industry seems to have done just this.  It wasn't that long ago that if you wanted to purchase a particular song, you had to buy the whole album (really a CD but I am glad we still call them albums.)  Maybe, if you were lucky and the song was released as a single, you could get the song a bit cheaper on an EP.  Now, songs are available for purchase individually.  Your cost to get a particular song you are fond of has gone from $17.99 for the CD to $1.29 or less.  This has had some interesting consequences.  According to an article in Digital Trends, music sales overall rose from 2011 to 2012, but album sales are down.

How a company responds to the app-ification of the marketplace will depend on a lot of factors.  How their decision impacts the company, will depend on the marketplace.  Will we all be rejoicing about pennies from heaven or scratching for pennies?  I don't know for sure.  The crystal ball app I downloaded needs an upgrade to get me the answer.