Mythology - The Meaning Behind the Marketing

Broaden Your Scope for Better Measurement

One of the common mistakes organizations make in determining the ROI of their online marketing is to limit their scope of measurement to those metrics that are easy to track. For example, it's easy to measure the open-rate or click-through rate of a promotional email. But what kind of offline impact is your email campaign having?

Epsilon recently released a research report demonstrating this very effect, particularly in areas of brand and image. The study found that:

57% of consumers feel they have a more positive impression of companies when they receive email from them, and 50% said they're more likely to buy products from companies who send them email, whether their purchases are online or at a place of business.

The study also found action-oriented effects that rarely get measured. For example, 33% of respondents said they usually visit a site directly after learning about it in email, instead of clicking on a link (are you measuring your Google-generated traffic in relation to your promotional email to see if there is a correlation?). In the retail category, 67% said they purchased at a brick and mortar location after receiving a promo email (do you have a mechanism for tracking the boost email gives your store traffic and sales?).

The same is true for banner advertising and sponsorship, as well as your web site itself. It is important to architect a 360 degree view of the impact across your marketing and sales channels.

You can find the full study here.

Budget Cuts or Better Focus?

The Association of National Advertisers released a report with predictable results: 93% of firms are cutting their sales & marketing budgets. And here is where they are cutting:

 

It's easy for agencies and marketing consultants to propogate the "don't pull back, now is the time to market" mantra, but it does come across as a bit self-serving. We've been working with our clients to get more aggressive, but not necessarily by spending more money. 

Economic downturns are always good from one perspective: it weeds out the weak. And we know there are some very weak legacy advertising and marketing spending habits that need weeded out. The urgency to get results can finally push slow-to-change marketers to try out search engine marketing, for example, or perhaps build a targeted relationship marketing program vs. wasting another untargeted print ad. 

How is your organization getting more focused?  

Commodity + Experience = Emotionally Bonded Customer

A teddy bear is a teddy bear. Unless it's a teddy bear you made with your own hands with your friends and family celebrating the experience with you. Then, a teddy bear is a powerful memory, a trusted lifelong friend.

That's the formula for Build-a-Bear Workshop, the chain of mall-based retail stores founded by Maxine Clark that began to sweep across the country in the late Nineties. In just 10 years, 300 stores were opened worldwide. If you have a kid, particularly a daughter, and live anywhere near a major mall you've been there.

Not only that, you've been there over and over. The emotional connection that a little girl can have with a stuff animal that she created can be scary, at least for your pocketbook. But it shows the difference between a product (a teddy bear) and an experience (a teddy bear that you made to your liking in a magical environment).

Now there is a version for boys called Ridemakerz where tween boys trick out their own personal toy cars. Brilliant.

The commodity+experience strategy is effective in many industry scenarios. We're even seeing it in men's haircuts (how can the local barbershop or Regis compete for male haircuts vs. Sport Clips?).

Think about your industry. What about the product or service could be turned into a pleasant, powerful or memorable experience? And how could that affect your market share and profitability?

Loyalty Program Members Drive Word-of-Mouth

Relationship marketing and loyalty programs were the rage in the Nineties, but the rapid advent of social media and online communities have shifted the attention away from - or at least changed - their focus.

"Word of mouth" (WOM) is all the rage, and for good reason. WOM is the most influential channel of communication for convincing people to try a new product or service.

A new study by Colloquy called "The New Champion Customers" demonstrates a compelling link between traditional loyalty programs and WOM. It found that rewards or loyalty program members are 70% more likely to be WOM champions, defined as those customers who actively recommend a product, service or brand.

Loyalty programs tend to draw in those customers who are most likely to be fans of the brand. 55% of loyalty program members indicate they are WOM champions, while only 32% of non-program customers are self-described WOM champions.

Many organizations captured a great deal of customer contact information since the advent of email, but it sits idly in their databases unscrubbed and unmonetized. It's a smart thing to evaluate how you could activate these contacts by crafting a low-cost, high-yield loyalty program and connecting it to a social community. 

Plucking the Right Decision-Making Chords in Your Industry

The human mind is an interesting thing. Sometimes rational, often irrational, it's been said it's the most complex thing on earth.

Marketers have classically been trained with an assumption that consumers are rational. Most business undergrads and MBA students are well prepared to draw diagrams on feature/functionality-based value propositions and how one brand compares to another. Our "SWOT" analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) are analyzed to the nth degree on logical points.

Yet so many products and companies fail.

One of the reasons, I believe, is that most marketers fail to understand the full scope of decision-making criteria in their industry and regional scenarios. Just what drivers exactly do customers use in their busy, noisy lives to make decisions in a given time, place and set of circumstances?

Best-selling books such as Blue Ocean Strategy use a "Strategy Canvas" to help marketers assess where open space ("blue ocean") exists in the competitive landscape based on a deep understanding of customer decision-drivers. For example, in the airline industry, you could choose an airline based on a number of factors: price, loyalty program, travel amenities (meals, seating space, etc.), convenience of the departure time, etc.

A company like Southwest Airlines emphasizes some of these criteria over others, such as price and frequent departures, while a United traditionally emphasizes a different set of decision-factors.

However, the weakness of even this well-known model are that the selection of decision-criteria tend to be primarily functional and logical. Few, if any, models emphasize what is becoming to be the key driver in buying decisions - emotions.

Researchers such as Dr. Robert Passikoff, who runs the marketing research firm and consultancy called BrandKeys, provides an example of how of the four main decision-making criteria for fragrances, three of them are emotional. A competitor who enters the fragrance industry primarily on functional benefits is headed for disaster.

While this might seem obvious in a consumer category like fragrances, it's surprisingly true for business-to-business categories. If your firm does not fully understand the foundational decision-making criteria for your market space, including the emotional drivers, you could be in for a difficult challenge to grow market share and become a dominant player.

Get Yourself Together For Satisfied, Repeat Customers

According to a recent CMO Council study:

• 58% of the 480 executives surveyed said their companies do not compensate any employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements or analytics
• 38% said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers

• Only 29% said their companies rate highly in their ability to handle and resolve customer problems or complaints

The report goes on to share very informative, and scary, stats on just how poorly most companies are internally aligned to ensure strong customer experiences that lead to loyalty, repeat business and advocacy.

That's why at Mythology we continue to evangelize the "10 Pillars" approach to addressing the 80% of your marketing "iceberg" that is below the water so that the 20% that is visible to the outside world is accurate and effective. Without a serious focus on the foundational aspects of marketing - customer segmentation, deep intimacy with their functional and emotional needs, differentiated value propositions, intelligent engagement plans, etc. - ROI on marketing budgets will continue to disappoint.

In this economy, it's more critical than ever to develop discipline before developing the creative.

Pre-Super Bowl Thoughts: Evidence of Integrated Campaigns

As I sit here watching the 17 hour Super Bowl pre-game show, it's pretty clear that marketers still believe in traditional advertising. NBC (finally) sold out their Super Bowl ad spots and set a new record for advertising revenue at $206 million.

However, I think we'll notice that throughout the game that new media, social networks and search have permeated almost all major campaigns. Whether it be involving consumers in the creation of an ad like Doritos, integrating a Facebook experience like CareerBuilder, showing the outtakes of a commercial like E*Trade, or integrating search keywords with the media effort (70% of advertisers did this year), you probably noticed the new world of marketing in its tween years.

Now the question: is your organization leveraging best practices for integrating efforts across all marketing channels? If not, we're to help.