5 Things That Have Not Changed in Marketing

With the explosion of mobile marketing, the popularity of social media, the apparent decline of traditional media, and the growing cynicism of the public toward overt marketing messages, it seems as if marketing has totally changed.  Today, I want to remind you of a few things that haven't.

• Relationships Rule.  While you may have different tools to work with, the value of building a relationship with your customers remains highly important.  In many ways, building relationships with your customers is all that matters.

• Quality wins.  A high quality product still beats out an inferior product, all other things being equal.  Quality copy has more impact.  Quality products and services generate positive word of mouth.  Quality is sometimes the best marketing. 

• Content Matters.  Period.  And Exclamation Point!

• We are Still Talking About Value.  In marketing we are still promoting the intersection of price and product or service features.   We are still promoting the Value Proposition.

• Only One Measure Matters.  It doesn't really matter how many likes, tweets, views or readers you have, just like it doesn't really matter what your Neilson or Arbitron rating is.  What matters is how many sales you have.  It is the only number that counts.

Fun and Inspired Marketing Ideas

In honor of US celebration of Labor Day, instead of laboring over a blog, I thought I would share some fun and creative examples of marketing that I have come across.  I only wish I had labored on these creative and unique ways to raise awareness of a brand.  The link after the last picture takes you to a longer list of these fun and creative examples of marketing.  What are your favorites?  Let me know in the comments.  I have a hard time choosing between the radio station air guitars stand and the hot wheels billboard.  Happy Labor Day!


































http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2012/02/23/48-inspired-marketing-ideas/gallery/image/ngg-image-5648/

The Life Cycle of a Mediocre Product

"You marketers," a friend of mine angrily said to me the other day, "need to give those of us that actually produce something a break!"

She was upset, but not really at me.  It turns out that a manager where she worked had made a comment that quality marketing (I'm sure he was referring to promotions) could take the place of quality product.  He indicated that the organization didn't need to put out a high quality (in his mind more expensive) product.  He suggested that they could still get customers with high quality promotions.  Customers, according to the erroneous manager, can't tell a good product from a bad one!

After I quickly explained to her that product WAS a part of marketing, I cautiously told my friend that the object of her scorn was right.  Marketing CAN generate sales with a poor product or service.  But only for one or two business cycles.

Often times, customers have no reasonable way to assess the quality of what they are buying until they buy it.  This is particularly true with services.  Usually, the customer who doesn't have past experience has to rely on word of mouth and the trustworthiness of the marketer.  If I am planning on hiring a neighbor kid to mow my lawn, unless she has mowed it before, or I have seen her work on other lawns, I have only her reputation to guide my decision.  After she has mowed my lawn once, I have a lot more information to inform future buying decisions.

I suggested to my friend that she only needed to wait out the object of her ire for a short while.  Mediocre products, after all, tend to have very short life cycles.  So do managers who eschew quality products.

Related articles

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A Numbers Game

It is very easy to feel overwhelmed by the quantity of data that is increasingly available to organizational and marketing leaders.  It is very easy to find yourself wanting to retreat to a analytic fetal position and ignore the data.

But the reality is that we value what we measure. Similarly, we should measure what we value.  There is a nuance between those statements.

The very act of collecting data on something, imparts value on it.  When my wife and I bought a new hybrid car 10 years ago, one of the things that we were fascinated by was the dashboard graphic that showed us our gas mileage at that instant.  We quickly learned how different ways of driving impacted that all important MPG number.  Our fuel efficiency was important to us in concept prior to that, which is why we bought a hybrid.  But with the graphic in front of us it became much less of an ethereal concept and much more of a focus every time we got behind the wheel.

Similarly, a long time ago, when I worked in an advertising agency, we collected the column inches of newspaper articles that appeared about our clients.  Because we were collecting that data and sharing it internally, it was a frequent topic of conversation.  Eventually, we recognized that as an advertising agency, not a PR firm, we really didn't impact our client's newspaper mentions.  We realized that we were collecting newspaper mentions "because we could," not because it was important.  We discontinued it and the topic of column inches was never discussed again.

With so much of our marketing and communication lives happening online, data collection is no longer the issues it once was. There are metrics galore available to any marketer or communicator who wants them.  The challenge for marketers has shifted from trying to figure out what information to gather to trying to figure out what, of the plentiful data available, is useful data.

Whereas before, marketers measured "what they could," now to a greater extent they can analyze what they should.  It seems to me that easily available data still has that allure of importance.  Like with column inches at the ad agency I worked for, marketers need to be careful about chasing after measures such as Facebook likes or Klout scores simply because they are available.

Just as social media options should be a tool in your marketing toolbox, not your marketing strategy, available metrics should help you measure whats important, not a measure of what is important.

Frozen Twinkies

Twinkies (Hostess Twinkies is a trademark of Hostess Brands LLC). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Before last winter, the most prevailing story, or urban myth, about Twinkies was the one about the guy who found a 20 year old Twinkie behind his couch and it was still soft and consumable.

Twinkies were right alongside cockroaches as the things most likely to weather a nuclear holocaust unscathed.

Then last winter disaster struck. Hostess, the company that made and sold Twinkies filed for bankruptcy.  More importantly, they announced the end of the United States production and distribution of Twinkies and several other brands.

Suddenly, Twinkies were the most popular formerly ignored snack on store shelves.  People stocked up with  cases and cases of the cream-filled sponge cake treats, anticipating a healthy black market of contraband snack cakes.  Besides, they last forever, right?

Then the white knight arrived.  Investors came and bought the Twinkies brand, as well as those of several other snack cakes, with the intention of returning them to production.

There was joy in Snackville...except among those who were sitting on cases of Twinkies.

Then strange things started to happen.  Hostess Brands LLC, the new owner of Twinkies, started issuing press releases that included terms like shelf life and talked about selling frozen Twinkies to some retailers to help extend expiration dates.  This was very confusing and contradicted just about everything I "knew" about Twinkies and their lack of a need for an expiration date.

I have come to the conclusion that the masterminds behind Hostess Brands LLC are actually marketing geniuses.  First, they manage to "rescue" a suddenly beloved brand from the expiration bin at fire sale prices, waiting long enough that a frenzy had been built up about the brand that hadn't been seen since the likes of New Coke.

Then, they wait six months to bring back the lunch box delicacies, further tamping up demand.  Then, announcements about the reintroduction include talk of expiration dates and freezing for selective retailers.  Suddenly, we are comparing Twinkies to more delicate baked goods instead of cockroaches.

Well played, Hostess Brands!  Well played!

Pop-up Fatigue

As I browse websites, I wonder if the companies sponsoring the intrusive, annoying pop-up ads think they are really helping their marketing efforts.

I suppose on one level, their market research shows that pop-up ads have a much higher recall with readers.  We recall the ads better because we spent so much time cursing them.

Research might also show a higher click through rate, which I suspect mostly consists of people mistakingly clicking into the ad while trying to find the increasingly tiny X that close the ads.

Technology provides us with an ever growing number of ways to get in front of customers.  I think it is incumbent on marketers that aggressive marketing doesn't cross the line into intrusive marketing.  It's a very thin line.

Related articles

• Display: A House Of Cards
• Poisoning the well

The Coronation of Content

"They" say that now, in the brave new world of social media, content is king queen royalty all that matters.

My initial response to that saying is when hasn't content been all that matters?

If content is now everything, that must mean there was a time when content meant less...when what was in your messages wasn't as important as it is now.

With some notable exceptions, I must have missed the Vapid Age of Communications.
  

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• The Content Con

The Many P's of Marketing: Privacy

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.

Privacy:  I like to think that I can use the Internet to fuel my obsession with the old TV shows "My Mother the Car" and "Cop Rock" (for the uninitiated, two creative, very short-lived TV shows) without having that obsession broadcast across my Facebook page, my Google+ site, or anywhere else I go.  I like to think that but I would be wrong.

It seems lately that not a day goes by in which we read about one tech giant or another who mines data from our emails or our app purchases or our searches to sell that data to advertisers who then use it to place ads that show up later in our email box or next to our apps or when we use search engines. On its face, this seems innocent enough.  These sites are searching what you spend time with so they can connect you with marketers who have something that matches your interest.  Facebook, Pinterest, and email, are all electronic formats which makes it relatively easy to mine content. That is how the boy and girl geniuses at Facebook and Google see it.

Many people, however, see it as an invasion of privacy.  Thinking of email like mail from the Post Office, many people expect the same privacy when an email or IM is addressed to them as they get when a letter is addressed to them.  It is common to see stories of a politician, teacher or other public figure who forgot that nothing is really private on the Internet and posted or tweeted or otherwise made public pictures or personal peculiarities that they meant to keep private.

I believe that privacy will be a currency of distinction between marketers in the next decade or so, just as specialization and personalization of messages were the currency of distinction in the 90's and early 21st century.  The marketer that figures out a way to keep customer information truly safe (or at least get us to believe that it is) will gain a significant advantage.  The marketer that figures out how to make her customers feel "data secure" will be able to collect more data and more unique data than her competitors.  The marketer who can make his customers and prospective customers feel safe sharing their personal information, will see fewer customers leave to try competitors, will enjoy greater customer loyalty and will have less need to sell customer information.

Some companies seem to have already identified privacy as important issue to customers, although I haven't seen any that are using privacy as a competitive advantage.  Rather they are using lack of privacy as a competitive weapon, charging lack of privacy against their competitors.  For example, Microsoft now tells us we will get "Scroogled" if we use Google for our email, citing Google's practices of mining emails for content.

One question that remains is how will consumers react.  To date, we have reacted to privacy issues much like we have responded to gas prices.  Everyone talks about how out of control the price of gas is as they fill the gas tank of their giant SUV.  Privacy issues have caused some tempests in Facebook's teapot, but hasn't really impacted the number of people who log onto the site in an almost religious fervor.  Perhaps more ads like Microsoft's will have some impact.  Perhaps not.

Regardless of whether they use it as a competitive advantage or a competitive weapon, regardless of whether consumers revolt or stay put, I believe we will hear more and more about privacy from companies in the coming years.  I think privacy will be one of the ways small and mid-sized tech companies will be able to squeeze out a competitive advantage against the giants in the industry.  I believe creating true data privacy and security is and will remain a truly sustainable competitive advantage.

Just don't tell anyone that I'm going to go watch Cop Rock!

Related articles

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• Facebook and data brokers to pick ads for you
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Make 'em Laugh!

Marketing is about making connections.

Studies have shown that most people make purchase decisions emotionally and then sometimes rationalize those emotional decisions with facts.

So it stands to reason that if you are a marketer or a salesperson and you can get your target audience to respond emotionally to your message -- you make them laugh, or cry, or feel nostalgic -- then you have a better chance of making that connection.

It seems to me that a good strategy is to have a message that communicates the emotional impact and benefits of the product or service but with enough details that the potential customer is able to act on the purchase decision and enough facts for them to justify it.


Some other posts to my blog that you might enjoy:
Read the Label: Pay Attention to the Subject of Your Messages
Could I have a few moments of your time?

Repost: Even in Science, Everything is Marketing

"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs."
                                       Sir Francis Darwin  1848-1925
                                       (son of Charles Darwin and a recognized botanist on his own)

Even in science, everything is marketing!

Some recent posts you might enjoy:
4.6 Billion People Can't Read This Blog
Primary Elections and Local Ads

11 year old boys

Everyone in marketing and public relations knows that they should be involved with social media and the internet.  Every company that markets (which means every company) knows that they need to have a presence on the internet because 1) It makes them look modern and "with it," 2) that is where they think their customers might be, 3) everyone is talking about social media so that must be where things are happening, 4) it doesn't cost anything to send an email so why not? or 5) all of the above.

The trouble is knowing you should and knowing how are two different things.  As I read recently in Fast Company magazine, "[companies and] brands on the internet are like 11 year old boys.  They know that they want girls to talk to them, but when they do, they don't know what to say."

It seems to me, many companies are putting the cart before the horse.  Instead of deciding you want to jump into social media and then figuring out what you should say, instead you should be deciding what your story is BEFORE thinking about the best venue or venues to tell it.  Often the nature of the story will dictate the appropriate media to tell it in.  While many stories work well on the internet, some are best told on radio, or by postcard, or an in-store display.

Like that 11 year old boy, you should figure out what you want to say before you start passing notes in class!


Some of my other posts you might enjoy:

• Tell Stories http://allismarketing.blogspot.com/2011/10/tell-stories.html

• The Marketing Value of Social Media http://allismarketing.blogspot.com/2012/03/marketing-value-of-social-media.html

In the Pink: The Branding of a Color

This blog is being reposted.

I complimented a colleague the other day, who was looking sharp in a new pink dress shirt.  "It's salmon," he corrected me.

It got me to wondering how pink got so strongly identified as the color of femininity (and to a much lesser extent, blue as the color of masculinity.)

I think most brand managers would kill to be able to have a brand association as strong as the association of females and pink (or light red as another male colleague always calls it.)

The Marketing Value of Social Media?

I have to admit that while I see social media as a valuable communications tool, I have had a hard time figuring out how to make some social media make sense from a marketing perspective.  The Ad Contrarian blog has an interesting take on this in the blog Farcebook.  Your thoughts?

Some of my thoughts on social media: Social Media: Quality vs. quantity

100 years later, is Wanamaker still speaking the truth?

"Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." 

                                          John Wanamaker (1838 - 1922)

 
Is Mr. Wanamaker's oft-cited pearl of wisdom still accurate today?

There is no doubt that the art/science of advertising has changed since the early 20th century.  With new communications channels popping up almost daily, both audiences and advertisers have more choices on where to spend their time, attention and money.  We have a greater ability to collect data on who views our messages and what they do after they view the message than we did 100 years ago, when Mr. Wanamaker was espousing his frustration about marketing budgets.  We can track everything visitors do when they come to our website, read our twitter, or stop by our blog.  We can tell where they came from, how long they stayed, and what they looked at while they were here.  We can, more accurately and with greater detail, compile and aggregate customer and prospect information to create customer profiles, matching purchasing behavior with electronic media use; past purchase behavior with current activity, and even search engine searches with a wide range of demographic data.

I am wondering if advertisers can use ALL this data to figure out which half of the advertising budget is wasted?  And if they can, do they?  And if they do, does yesterday's data accurately predict tomorrow's behaviors, given the rapid growth of communications channels and the splintering of the media audience?

If Mr. Wanamaker were alive today, I wonder what he would be tweeting about his advertising budget?

Sunday afternoons

It is Sunday afternoon and my family is looking for something to do.

There are an amazing number of restaurants, shops, and other venues that are closed on Sundays.  I can't believe my family is the only one trying to find something to do and a bite to eat without going to a big box or a chain.

I recently asked a local retailer why they were closed on Sundays and Mondays like almost everyone else in the downtown of the small city where I live.  She told me she was closed then because everyone else was.

That seems to me like a good reason to be open on Sundays and Mondays!

Reading list

I have always been frustrated when colleagues, whom I had admired previously, state importantly that "don't have time to read novels!" These people are often voracious readers of business books, business biographies, and self-help books of the 7-Habits variety.

If we consider marketing to be the art of making connections with other people, sharing information and persuading them to act as you'd like, it seems to me that you would need to know a bit about human nature.

For my two cents, there is no better way to get a handle on human nature than to pour through a well-written novel! Virtually every novel ever written has something, directly or indirectly, to do with human nature. Dickens, Walker and Irving are the cheapest (and most enjoyable) marketing consultants you can find!

Make sure a classic novel is on your reading list!

no calls is not no problems

A friend of mine described a recent product launch. They geared up for a flood of customer complaints and help calls. The calls did not come and for a short while, my friend equated this with a problem-free product launch. Just because a customer is not calling you, does not mean there are no problems. It could also mean that the customer has another venue for complaints and (hopefully) problem resolution. It could mean that they are just not talking about their problems...with YOU. I can almost guarantee that if there are problems they are talking to someone.

My friend found out that customers were calling distributors, talking to front line people, or just plain not talking about the problems they were having. No calls did not mean no problems, it just meant no coordinated problem resolution!

That is why you have to do everything you can to ask and beg customers to call with problems and complaints. Actually, those customers who do that, are providing you with a great service and competitive advantage, assuming you address the complaints! I know of some companies who actually reward customers who call in with a complaint. At a hospital that I worked for, I implemented a program where we paid patients if they called us with problems while they were still in the hospital. That allowed us to address, and usually resolve the problem. The result was we were out a few bucks but had a happy patient.

In the case of customer service, silence isn't usually golden!

The Power Cord of Marketing

Marketing with out a focus on long-term relationship building is like buying a laptop computer without a power cord. It is all wonderful and great for a little bit, but soon you end up with nothing but a very expensive paperweight!

Market for the long term!

Newspaper survey

I participated in a phone survey last night about local newspapers. It was conducted by a college student, which is one of the reasons I agreed to take the time. They survey was obviously conducted for the local daily paper in my community. While I was pleased they were gathering customer feedback and looking for ways to improve, I was struck by how the survey revealed the shortcomings of the thinking that went into designing it.

I see two mistakes that the designers of this survey made. First, while they were obviously focusing on their online presence, they seemed to be treating their website mostly as a newspaper that they don't need to print. The survey only focused on newspaper features and content that is currently in the printed version and how those features and content would translate to an electronic version. There were no questions about the value of archives, interactive stories, links to other news sources, or other features that would be unique to an Internet-based newspaper.

The second, and in my mind greater, mistake is that I was not given any opportunity to provide additional thoughts and input. What a shame to have me thinking about and focusing on their newspaper for 20 minutes (candidly more time than it takes me to read the paper in the morning) and not gather my thoughts and comments. What a shame to not to gather the unique insights I have as a reader or non-reader. What a shame to spend all that time (and money) to only go 80% of the way. All it takes is a simple question: "Do you have any other comments or thoughts?" Better yet, ask open-ended questions within the survey. The information you get is not quantifiable and can't be converted to a pretty graph, but can shed amazing insights.

Anything else?

What is this thing called marketing?

I guess, since I have titled this blog "Everything is Marketing," I should make an attempt to define Marketing.

I prefer a very broad definition of marketing. That should be obvious from the title of this blog. In my mind, "marketing" is anything and everything that contributes to the acquisition of a product or service. This includes sales. This includes promotional messages, both overt and accidental. This includes actions and product features and company practices and market conditions that contribute to the impressions that customers and prospective customers have of the product or service. So the receptionist, the delivery guy, and the accounts payable clerk are marketers. Marketing is not just the realm of the people who write the ads and close the sales.

Marketing has a lot to do with making connections. The best marketing is long term in its focus and develops lasting relationships more than quick sales. Marketing, in the mind of this humble blogger, is a very interconnected and intertwined with virtually everything an organization does. In other words, Everything is Marketing!