Mythology - The Meaning Behind the Marketing

Beginning with Sticky Trust in Mind

Think of your own likelihood to open an email and act upon it. Your split-second decision process might look something like this:

• Unsolicited - Unknown Source: Spam, pure and simple. You delete it quickly and are probably more than a bit annoyed.

• Unsolicited - Known Source: You may know the company, but you still didn't request it. Still annoyed, perhaps slightly less so depending on your existing opinion of the company. However, your opinion probably went down slightly after receiving their spam.

• Opt-In - Coerced: An email received from a company who required you to give them your email address in order to get to something you wanted (a free white paper, etc.). In reality, you really don't care to hear from these folks again. Most likely you'll delete it, or perhaps open .5% - 1% of the time when you're cleaning out your Hotmail. If you have the energy and time, you'll probably opt out (although most people don't, preferring instead to ignore it or flag it as junkmail that gets routed to the delete folder).

• Opt-In - Desired: This is actually becoming less common and less needed with RSS, but there are times when you actually do want something sent to you on a regular basis. Sometimes it's related to offers, most often it's related to valued information. These emails get opened, but still only 3% - 20% of the time.

• Forwarded From an Annoying Friend/Colleague: You know the ones, thinking every other joke or urban legend is worth forwarding to their entire address book. You may pay attention for a split second, but mostly just to shake your head and wonder why they have so much time on their hands. These are tougher to opt out of receiving, but mentally you're most definitely opted out.

• Forwarded from a Trusted Friend/Colleague:  Ah, now we have something. This is an email from someone who you know personally, or have placed some trust in because of others' opinions of them. You've experienced a track record of value in what they send, so most likely you open it. You may even forgive them a couple of times if they send something less than valuable, but the long-term trust remains. These are the pinnacles of influence in a word-of-web world.

The question is: Why do we plan and spend so much time and money on architecting "campaigns" that look so much like the first few scenarios, and so little on thinking of something uniquely and consistently valuable that it would earn a forward from a trusted source?

Sure, it's harder. And we're not at a point where marketers can completely rely on word-of-web to generate enough response volume. The scale just isn't there. But...If we re-prioritized our planning, if we started with that end in mind, wouldn't even the rest of our "traditional" marketing (including traditional digital marketing) be that much more effective?

If we started with "sticky" in mind, most likely it would stick to all of our communications and lead us towards higher return on marketing investment.

Mapping Marketing to Purchase Funnel Decisions

IDG Communications released a report recently demonstrating how the web site content provided by technology marketers is not relevant to the needs of their customers 50% of the time. The online research conducted last October captured feedback from 400 technologists and business buyers on what they prefer as they move from general education to business case development to final decisions in purchasing products and services.

In other words, as prospects moved through the purchase funnel, they did not find the relevant content they needed to make a decision. (This problem is addressed by  Mythology's first pillar of Empowered Marketing: Understanding.)

On average, the report found that six decision-makers from IT, business units and finance were involved in a typical IT product/service purchase. Note how influential each source of information was in their decision-making:

In addition to finding relevant educational and transactional content on a vendor's web site, the decision-makers reported that peer dialogue and independent authority dialogue were major influencers. Are you building this into your marketing engagement plans to assist prospects in making informed, credible decisions?

Tactics such as featuring a blog with guest posts from actual customers, or video clips featuring industry experts speaking about your products are very powerful influencers and are a welcome part of the decision process with customers.

The survey respondents reported that they could find relevant content on IT vendor sites only 42% of the time. The lack of relevant content reduced a vendor's chance of a sale by 45%! In light of this lack of information, decisions often go to the vendor who answered their questions and connected them with peer and expert content.

Your web site is your conversation hub, and a rigorous content management approach is critical to using the web to help move customers down the purchase funnel from Awareness to Purchase...and hopefully over time, Advocacy.

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?  

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.

Whopper Sacrifice: Monetizing Facebook and Other Social Networks

Facebook is one of the most powerful marketing tools developed to date on the Internet. The willingness of people to post their personal and career-related interests and activities and share them with both their network of friends and the Facebook advertising engine is quite amazing.

The ability to target not just on demographics but on psychographics is impressive. However, like many new marketing tools that arise quickly on the scene, the platform is ripe for misuse and disappointment.

Although plastering a well-targeted banner ad next to a targeted user's profile is certainly better than plastering one on an untargeted page, it's still not exactly enough to generate significant ROI. For example, whereas a pay-per-click link on Google's search engine is "double qualified" because the person is actively searching for your keyword, Facebook's targeting does not capture those "in market" users who are actively looking for your type of product or services.

Facebook users are there to socialize. What is more annoying than trying to be sold something while you're socializing?

That's why the most effective Facebook marketers know that in order to effectively market on Facebook and other social media sites, you must understand and commit to the concept of "community." What is community? While scientists and Wikipedia posters debate the exact definition, one thing is for sure about online communities: it's a group that has voluntarily come together around a common interest or affinity.

Sometimes that interest is buying stuff, but rarely. More commonly, a marketer must understand what common interests are worthing tapping into, and then decide how to add value to that community vs. distracting it with a pitch. You can add value through information, enabling people with common interests to find each other (a major benefit of any community) or humor, among others.

Unless you are a brand with inherent community-building appeal, or have established a cult-like following already, you may not want to start with a "fan page". Instead, think of a cause or topic related to your brand that you could build a community around. For example, if you're a hybrid car manufacturer, sponsor a "green motoring" group. You'll attract far more people while gaining credit in the community for building on this topic.

Another way to generate interest, buzz and action is to address the social network in terms that are relevant and contextual to the situation. Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice campaign is a good example in which they challenged users to delete ten of their friends in order to get a free Whopper. It was humorous as well as effective. In fact, perhaps it was too effective from Facebook's point of view, but Burger King is craftily keeping the buzz going by offering to help you send an angry-gram if you were de-friended over a hamburger.

Here is my steam-release angry gram to "Brandie."

Connecting Offline and Online Social Network Efforts

With the flurry of growth around social media, it's easy to forget a critical strategic rule of marketing: make all of your marketing channels work together to build a bigger impact.

Integrating media campaigns took quite a while back in the late 90's and early 00's as companies and agencies set up separate Internet advertising teams outside of their mainstream advertising/marketing groups. As social media campaigns ramp up, I hope we've learned to think about integration from the start.

We humans are social creatures, a trait that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others are successfully exploiting. However, there is still a difference between a virtual connection and an in-person meeting. The more senses engaged, the more memorable and meaningful it is to our minds and emotions.

Here in Charleston, WV, where I reside, we have an active group of Tweeters who meet each other in Tweet Ups at the local coffee shop. The in-person meetings have really solidified who I'm interested in following and how closely and influence my ongoing conversations. It's always a blast to compare a person's "live" personality and vibe vs. what you derived from their Tweets.

We advise clients to consider the customer purchase funnel: What aspects of online social media can fill the top stages of the funnel, and how can offline social efforts (sports marketing, entertainment, conferences, seminars, etc.) activate the relationship towards the next step towards purchase?

Balancing Pre-Testing With Execution

In the old days, market research and pre-launch ad testing was incredibly time consuming and expensive. Only the largest advertisers could spend enough time and money fine-tuning their message with a pilot group before launching to the rest of the world.

Even then, few of them did it enough, or did it effectively. From the Edsel to New Coke, the business world is littered with failures that should have been caught before millions were spent on their launch.

Today, the Internet has made the testing of marketing messages and creative much more affordable. It has also enabled testing to occur with much quicker turnaround, speeding a company's ability to get campaigns and products to market.

The New York Times reports on a new breed of online advertising service providers who enable marketers to test everything about their online ads - font types, color types, messages, etc. - to optimize which variation generates the most click through and  conversion. This is significantly affecting the role of creative agencies. Often what the creative "gut feel" might indicate is the best design does not test as well as a more bland or sterile design.

The question is, “how do we combine creative energy, which is a manual and sort of qualitative exercise, with the raw processing power of computing, which is all about quantitative data?” said Tim Hanlon, executive vice president of VivaKi Ventures, the investment unit of Publicis Groupe.“I think it’s clear that the traditional process of agencies is clearly not going to survive the digital era without significant changes to our approaches,” Mr. Hanlon said.

The left brain is horning in on the right brain in this case. You can foresee a scenario where an agency doesn't make its money on creative services, but on the reporting of which variation worked.

So how should a small or mid-sized organization balance the availability of testing vs. execution? Is it possible to test too much and slow down your speed to market? How much does an advertiser gain by slowing down and learning which creative is most effective before launching?

Here are a few recommendations:

• Err on the side of testing - In my experience, the vast majority of advertisers and marketers do not value pre-testing (or even ongoing measurement) nearly enough. It is doubtful that, given the pressures of "getting something out there" that you will ever test too much.

• Set a performance bar before you have to launch - The majority of marketers don't do enough testing because they are in a rush. Set aside time to plan the level of testing you will require for every campaign, then build it into the process before the next campaign needs launched. Choose your vendors, your process, your "go" levels of performance beforehand.

• Educate your executives - From the CEO to the CFO, your executive team needs to know that you recommend this higher level of discipline from marketing. This may take some executives aback who still see marketing more as a whim than a strategic investment. But long term, you will establish more business credibility and more than likely build up your reputation as an accountable, responsible leader. It also helps during budget crunches when you will need to justify your marketing budget and avoid slashes. Data-driven recommendations can help avoid a lot of dumb budget cuts.

• Take time to learn - Measurement, either pre or post, is meaningless unless you take time to digest what worked and what didn't and apply the learnings to the next campaign.

Marketing is still creative. But the more science and discipline are combined with creativity, the more fruit your marketing investments will yield.

Leaping Ahead of Competitors in Tough Economic Times

Knowledge@Wharton re-affirms the notion that taking a bold, aggressive approach during an economic downturn could pay off big time for companies who continue aggressively marketing while their competitors cut their advertising budgets:

Research shows that companies that consistently advertise even during recessions perform better in the long run. A McGraw-Hill Research study looking at 600 companies from 1980 to 1985 found that those businesses which chose to maintain or raise their level of advertising expenditures during the 1981 and 1982 recession had significantly higher sales after the economy recovered. Specifically, companies that advertised aggressively during the recession had sales 256% higher than those that did not continue to advertise.

Everyone from Gold's Gym to financial services marketers have had to revise their message a bit. It is more difficult to appeal to vanity or ego during times such as these. Instead, messages centered on value and practicality seem to ring true and connect with consumers.

However, for premium or luxury brands, there is still an opportunity to market the emotional benefit of escapism. After all, who doesn't need a respite from the constant stream of bad news?

Here at Mythology, we continue to tinker with our own messaging about "building belief in your business." One of our key value propositions is to get more out of your marketing and to focus on marketing ROI. This has certainly helped us connect with new clients as senior executives question what they've been getting from their marketing efforts.

As with all difficult circumstances, it's an opportunity for brands to sharpen themselves and get to the core of their value proposition. It's also an opportunity to devise more clever, low-cost, high-yield customer engagement strategies that will pay off as the economy starts growing again.

Get Focused Before Getting Creative

Over the last few months, we've been engaged with clients who felt pressure from senior management, board members, and even investors to "do something" with their marketing. It can be a huge challenge to push back on impatient constituents who see competitors running glitzy ad campaigns.

Add the fact that almost everyone thinks they are an expert on advertising, and you have a tough situation for marketing professionals who know better than to rush something out the door for the sake of "doing something."

The costs of developing a marketing campaign without understanding some fundamental basics are huge. At Mythology, we describe these fundamentals as the Ten Pillars of Meaningful Marketing, and we advise clients with all our might to follow them. It's a rare effective marketing team who can maintain the discipline to take care of first things first.

Without a deep understanding of customer felt and expressed needs, message development can only be guesswork. Without message testing, the guesswork is expensive indeed in the form of lower response rates or awareness levels. Without prioritizing which customer segments are most relevant, marketing messages tend to be too broad and fall flat in a world where each consumer is hit with 3,000 messages a day. Even the purchase of direct mail lists can go way off kilter without answers to basic questions on who you are truly targeting.

So before you cave under the pressure, or get excited by the creative process, take a step back. Review the Ten Pillars and challenge yourself to nail some basic questions before you go down the campaign development path.

We have a simple assessment tool that might help. If you're interested, just drop us a line at [email protected].

Marketers of the Year - What? You're Not on the List?

Ad Age has announced their candidates for "marketers of the year," which, as you can expect as long as the title of their magazine is Ad Age, has several big names who advertise a lot. But there are surprising political and viral marketing leaders as well.

The nominees are:

Apple

Coors

McCain Campaign

Nike

Obama Campaign

Zappos

Take a look at these Ad Age videos. Learning from the masters is a low-cost, effective way to strengthen your own advertising and marketing. In terms of next generation, conversational marketing, pay particular attention to Zappos and Obama. Zappos generates up to 75% of their revenue on repeat business and has focused almost exclusively on delivering a "wow" customer experience vs. investing in traditional advertising. Obama has taken grass roots, viral, word-of-mouth marketing to new levels in the political realm.