Marketing Thought Leader

Looking Ahead - Keep Your Clients and Prospects in Touch with Tomorrow

2011-12-28T14:09:00.000-08:00

If you have been reading my blog for awhile, you know that one of my strongest beliefs is that an agency should be more than just a "creater of ads". They must help their clients build a bridge between their customers and their brand in all communication areas.

Clients can be overwhelmed by the pace of change and the impact of new communications technologies. Smart agencies can help to fill that role, and build client loyalty in the process.

One way to do that is to follow companies that look at future trends, like Trendwatching.com, an "independent and opinionated (their description) trend firm, scanning the globe for the most promising consumer trends, insights and related hands-on business ideas."

Their monthly Trend Briefings are always fun and thought-provoking, and, from my experience, are usually on the leading edge of consumer behavior trends.Their most recent briefing report was a compilation of trends they have been observing over the past year. Here is a quick summary of what they feel are 12 trends that marketers should be watching closely.

1. Get ready for all-things China.
In addition to dominating manufacturing, Chinese tourists will reach 100 million by 2020. In 2012, department stores, airlines, hotels, theme parks, and museums will roll out the red carpet showering Chinese visitors and customers with tailored services and perks.

2. Consumers get personal about health with DIY monitoring and diagnosis.
During the coming year, expect to see consumers take advantage of new technologies and apps to discreetly and continuously track, manage and be alerted to, any changes in their personal health. New apps are being introduced almost daily designed to help you avoid a trip to the doctor, which may or may not be all that good. But it’s happening.

3. What's the deal?
In 2012, not only will consumers continue to hunt for deals and discounts, but they will do so with increased fervor and pride. Deals are now about more than just saving money: it’s the thrill, the pursuit, the control, and the perceived smartness, and thus a potential source of status that will drive sales in the coming year.

4. Recycling becomes a viable marketing tool.
In times of recession, economic interests have generally tended to overshadow eco-causes, but the quest for a more sustainable lifestyle will remain a pressing issue for years to come. One ‘green’ trend to watch in 2012 are brands helping consumers recycle by taking back all old items from customers, and then actually doing something constructive with them.

A great example is Nike’s trailblazing Reuse-A-Shoe program. Nike has collected and recycled over 25 million pairs of worn-out Nike shoes to-date. Old shoes are sliced, separated and ground up into a material called Nike Grind, which is then used in creating athletic and playground surfaces, as well as a variety of Nike products. Look for other brands to join this trend in 2012.

5. A cash-less society gets closer to reality.
We will continue our march toward a cashless future, as major players such as MasterCard and Google build a whole new eco-system of payments, rewards and offers around new mobile technologies. For consumers, the initial lure will be convenience, but eventually mobile payments will create an entirely new data-driven eco-system of rewards, purchase history, deals, etc.

6. Lower-income urbanites become a new marketing target.
Marketers are finally discovering the global opportunities for brands which cater to the hundreds of millions of lower-income consumers, a heretofore ignored target group. In 2012, expect more lower income consumers to demand innovation tailored to their unique circumstances, from health issues to lack of space to the need for durability.

7. Crowdsourcing will expand as a marketing and communications tool.
In 2012, count on the crowdsourcing trend to continue to shake up business processes and spawn innovations in new areas. After all, being given a chance to contribute, or to be a part of something bigger than themselves, has always been popular with people. Expect to see more initiatives in 2012 that make it simple (if not effortless) to contribute to anything, from pinpointing roads in need of repairs to finding signs of extraterrestrial life.

8. Brand transparency, and humanity, will be consumer favorites.
While 2011 saw new levels of consumer disdain at too many business' self-serving actions, stories of businesses doing good (think Patagonia and Ben & Jerry's) remind consumers that personality and profit can be compatible. In fact, in 2012 consumers won't expect brands to be flawless; they will even embrace brands that are are honest about their flaws (think Dominos), and support brands that show some empathy, generosity, humility, flexibility, maturity, humor and dare we say it, some character and humanity.

9. Touchscreen technology becomes “high touch”.
Thanks to the continued explosion of touchscreen smartphones, tablets, and the cloud, 2012 will see new touchscreen technology that is not only more pervasive, but more personal, more immersive and more interactive than ever. In 2012, we see touchscreens as an interface to a world where consumers will care more about the screen and what’s being accessed through it, than the brand.

10. 'Trading in' is the new black in 2012.
It’s never been easier for savvy consumers to resell or trade in past purchases, and unlock the value in their current possessions. In 2012, ‘trading in’ will continue to become an alternative to buying. Consumers have always resold large, durable goods like cars and houses; but in 2012, almost anything is ripe for resale, from electronics to clothes, and even experiences.

11. Risque becomes less risky and more accepted around the globe.
While cultural differences will continue to shape consumer desires, middle-class and/or younger consumers in almost every market will embrace brands that push the boundaries. Expect frank, risqué or non-corporate products, services and campaigns from emerging markets to be on the rise in 2012. Consumers in mature consumer societies have generally been more willing to handle much more honest conversations, more daring innovations, more quirky flavors, more risqué experiences, but in 2012, consumers in emerging markets will increasingly appreciate brands that push the boundaries.”

12. Consumers will demand instant visual information gratification.
The need and expectation for instant information and instant access to everything one wants to know is already deeply ingrained in the today’s consumer. 2012 will see a mix of apps and QR codes bringing information about objects that consumers encounter in the real world instantly. And like some other trends, it’s the rise of the smartphone that will fuel this full-blown access to everything.

As the authors of the latest Trendwatching briefing point out, "We’re not saying there are only 12 consumer trends to track in 2012; there are dozens of important consumer trends worth knowing about and applying at any given time of the year. We merely bring you a selection to get going."

I hope this recap gives you ideas on how to approach your clients and prospects. Today's information overload and digital technology makes it imperative for someone to take the lead in understanding what changes marketers should be exploring today to be ready for tomorrow.

Is your agency ready to provide that kind of support?

Creator vs. Curator - Is this the future of the agency business?

2011-12-01T09:53:00.001-08:00

I just read that Tim Williams has hooked up with 4-A's to offer a webinar entitled "Co-Creation and the Future of Agencies: Your Agency’s New Role as “Curator,” Not Just Creator"

When I first saw the headline, my first reaction was to scream "NO". We've been touting the advantages of the agency as an outside creative resource vs. in-house agency for years. And generally proving that creative talent with independent insight on consumer attitudes and behaviors produces a better product. But the key to that independent insight is being immersed in the company -- its brand heritage, its aspirations, its competitive environment, etc.

To say that we should give up that position and embrace a role as a crowdsourcing "curator" just doesn't seem right.

I've been saying for years that agencies must rethink and re-define their role with clients to succeed, but my focus has been on broadening the agency role as a resource to guide the client through the maze of multi-channel marketing options available (and too often confusing) to clients.

This webinar will focus on a different aspect of being a resource for clients, based on increasing incidence of marketers going around agencies to work directly with the media, production companies, and even directly to creative talent via crowdsourcing. Apparently, Tim will argue that by embracing the ability of the World Wide Web to solicit and deliver creative ideas from across the globe, agencies can stop defending their position as the exclusive creators of content and also adopt a role as curators.

According to the registration materials, "an agency curating the best content on behalf of its clients is like a museum curating the best art on behalf of its patrons. Several new unconventional agencies have built their entire business model around the concept of “expert sourcing” in an attempt to redefine the way “creative” gets done in the 21st century. We’ll show how agencies can create more value for their clients by exploring and embracing the many different forms of co-creation available to agencies today. "

I'm all for providing the best content on behalf of our clients. But, I'm sorry, I just can't wrap my arms around actively positioning the agency as a curator vs. a creator. One of the best lessons I learned in agency management was to think about "unintended consequences" to my decisions. If we embrace redefinition as simply a go-between coordinator, then how easy will it be for clients to say I can do that much cheaper in-house.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light!

Can you hear me now? Highlights from the 2011 Mobile Consumer Report

2011-10-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

If you company or clients have been slow about exploring mobile marketing, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee.

According to a new report from Experian Simmons, almost 1 in 3 cell phone owners today believe that their cell phone will be their primary entertainment device in the future. But more importantly for marketers, this new study says that 30% of adult iPhone owners now say they want to use their phones to pay for purchases in stores compared with just 12% of non-iPhone owners. That means a customer could walk into a store, research a product, but then buy from Amazon or another source on the spot.

Interestingly, those same would-be mobile payers appear to be very receptive to mobile ads. 23% of cell owners interested in making purchases with their phone also say they are “interested in receiving advertisements on my cell phone,” versus just 5% of all cell phone owners who say the same. Furthermore, 52% of cell owners interested in making purchases with their phone are also “willing to accept advertisements sent to my cell phone if I were to receive something of value in exchange,” versus just 12 percent of all cell phone owners who say the same.

The growth in these behaviors and attitudes cannot be ignored. Here are some other noteworthy findings and conclusions from the Experian Simmons study:

227 million Americans own a cell phone: Over 9-in-10 adults, 7-in-10 teens and 1-in-5 kids
Cell phone ownership among American adults stands at 91%, up from 72% in 2006. The vast majority of teens, too, have joined the mobile revolution, with 74% of those ages 12 to 17 porting a portable phone, up from 59% in 2006. Even tots are getting into the act - 22% of kids ages 6 to 11 own a cell phone today.

The Experian Simmons study identifies five distinct segments of mobile consumers.

Mobirati (20% of users): Representing the mobile generation, they have grown up with cell phones and cannot imagine life without them. Cell phone devices are a central part of their everyday lives.
Social Connectors (22% of users): Communication is central in their lives, and cell phones allow them to keep up-to-date with friends and social events. Their phone is the bridge to their social world.
Mobile Professionals (18% of users): Smartphones help them keep up with their professional and personal life. Their phone has become their all-in-one device for communication and information needs.
Pragmatic Adopters (20% of users): Cell phones came to being during their adult years. They are now learning that there are other things they can do with mobile phones beyond just saying “Hello.”
Basic Planners (21% of users): They are not into cell phones or the world of technology. Use of cell phones is just for the basics. The cell phone is just another communication device for these consumers.

While pictures are still the number one activity, web surfing and video are the fastest growing uses.
It’s not surprising that using a cell phone to snap photos is a routine, everyday occurrence (73% of cell phone owners say they have snapped a pic in the last 30 days). The more important statistic for marketers is that web surfing is also becoming commonplace among smartphone owners. 56% of users now access the Internet with their phone at least once a month. That a 41% increase since 2008. What’s the next big thing? Video: 18% of all cell phone owners now watch video either streamed or uploaded to their phone, up from just 10% in 2008.

Mobile phones are quickly becoming an indispensable shopping tool.
According to the latest data, at least 33.3 million Americans now use their cell phones for shopping-related activities. The most common mobile shopping activity is researching products and comparing prices, which 15% of mobile phone owners now do every month. The most common items consumers want to buy via their cell phones are: Tickets to movies/events; Travel services and Games/Toys.

There are many other findings on m-commerce in the study. You can access the complete study here.

Which I highly recommend if you have a client or prospect that can benefit from this knowledge. With a little help from you!

Give your prospects new insights on their business to grow your business.

2011-10-06T15:05:00.000-07:00

Now, more than ever, clients are looking for help. Many are confused about how to build and maintain customer loyalty.

They are unsure of how to use all of the new digital marketing tools now available to them and many are simply overwhelmed by the enormity of the marketing task ahead of them.

CMO’s know they have a limited life span, so they are desperate for an agency that can do something to help them grow the company’s business and make them a hero to their management. And the best way to do that is with new ideas and new insights about their customer or their category.

In a 2011 study published by RSW/US titled A Client's Look Ahead at Agencies, 77% of respondents cited "understanding of your market", 63% “understanding your company direction”, and 60% “offering something fresh & new” as critical factors in their agency selection. The quality of the creative product is still important (72%), but if you don't understand the client's business and offer new insights, then the greatest creative in the world won't win the account.

A few years ago, I spoke with Stan Richards, founder of The Richards Group, on what he considered the key ingredient in a new business pitch. Without hesitation, he replied that the ability to give the prospective client a new insight on their company or category was the key factor in winning new business. His business development team worked hard to find that insight, and then spent the majority of their presentation supporting that insight and its potential to grow the client's business.

In today's challenging marketplace, I would add the ability to help a client expand their marketing efforts into new digital frontiers is also a key factor in choosing one agency over another.

Clients are not saying to their agencies, "How can you help us make ads or a new web site?" They're saying, "how much do you understand about our business in order to help us build a bridge between our brand and our customers."

A New Perspective on Building Brand Loyalty

2011-09-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

One of my must-read blogs each week is Aaker on Brands, and this week's post offers some interesting new thoughts on building brand loyalty. The post is titled "Does Brand Love Really Exist", and recounts a recent study exploring what a person means by loving a brand or other object and a quantitative study to identity its underlying dimensions and the output or value.

The qualitative studies found that subjects identified these ten characteristics for brands they loved:

The brand is the best in every way from value, to key attributes, to experience.
The brand connects to something deeper than its functional benefits. (e.g. Apple representscreativity and self-actualization.).
The brand creates emotional benefits like being happy (e.g. “Pinkberry frozen yogurt makes me smile.”).
The brand provides self-expressive benefits and high levels of word-of-mouth buzz.
The brand generates affection and warm-hearted feelings.
There is a natural fit and harmony between the user and the brand they love.
The brand stimulates a desire to maintain proximity to the brand and even feeling “separation distress.”
The brand engenders a willingness to invest time, energy and money into loved brands
The brand is somehow involved in frequent, interactive contact with the consumer.
There is a long-standing relationship history.

These findings were from a qualitative study, but a separate quantitative study by the same researchers found that the brands people profess to love predict loyalty, word-of-mouth communication and resistance to negative information. As David concludes in his post "This, to me, is an impressive validation and elaboration of what had been basically a common sense analogy. Each of the 10 characteristics has implications about the creation, maintenance and measurement of loyalty."

So what does this mean for you and your clients, and the marketing programs you develop?
Well, it is certainly a validation of the need to understand and communicate the emotional benefits, not just the attributes of your brand. But more than that, I think it says that brands should be treated as a living, breathing extension of their users if they want to be "loved".

And if they want to have a loyal user base.

Latest Pew study shows 59% of smartphone users access social networking sites, and 55% using mobile or geo-location services

2011-09-08T16:06:00.000-07:00

The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project - 2011 Spring Tracking Survey confirms that smartphones continue to capture our imagination and our usage.

And if your company isn’t learning all you can about how to use mobile for marketing, you will be left behind.

In their study of over 2,270 adults (18+), more than a quarter of all American adults—28%—use mobile or social location-based services of some kind.

While the majority of smartphone usage is for texting (92% of users), photos (92%) and email (76%), these statistics stand out as it relates to mobile marketing:

59% of smartphone owners use their phone to access social networking sites, and 15% use their phone to access Twitter.
55% of cell owners use phones to get directions or recommendations based on their current location—that works out to 23% of all adults.
A much smaller number (5% of cell owners, equaling 4% of all adults) use their phones to check in to locations using geo-social services such as Foursquare or Gowalla. Smartphone owners are especially likely to use these services on their phones.
9% of internet users set up social media services such as Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn so that their location is automatically included in their posts on those services. That works out to 7% of all adults.

In total, 28% of U.S. adults do at least one of these activities either online or using their mobile phones—and many users do several of them. This is the Pew Internet Project’s most expansive study of location services to date.As smartphone usage continues to grow, I expect we will see these numbers continue to climb.

It’s time to get on board the mobile train (or at least get prepared to help your clients determine their needs and strategies), or be left at the station.

For a complete look at the Pew study, click here.

Help Your Clients Define What Business They Are In.

2011-08-11T10:15:00.001-07:00

I just read an interesting article in the latest issue of Marketing Management that reminded me of the importance of knowing what business a company is really in. Looking at a prospect's business from that perspective offers an interesting ice-breaker approach to developing a new client.

The author began the article with these statements: McDonald's is not in the hamburger business, Mercedes-Benz is not in the car business, Clinique is not in the cosmetics business and Hush Puppies is not in the shoe business.

His answer is that all of these companies are in the solutions business, based on the Theodore Levitt quote from his 1983 book The Marketing Imagination (still one of the most influential books I have read) :

People don't buy things, they buy solutions to problems.

Levitt's answer at the time was that McDonald's should consider themselves in a broader context, i.e. the fast-food business, Clinique in the beauty business, etc. But that answer falls short in the reality of today's overcrowded business environment.

This means that McDonald's has to go beyond the broad stroke description of fast-food to realize they are in the business of convenience, entertainment for kids, family-friendly dining, quickness, efficiency, etc. Similarly, while Clinique may sell cosmetics, they are really in the beauty, self-image, self-esteem, age transformation, sex appeal business.

This isn't totally new thinking, but in today's "long tail" marketing world, where product specialization has become essential, companies need to revisit this line of thinking on a regular basis. Knowing what business you are really in opens up new thinking about marketing strategy, competitive environment, and new product development.

And for agencies and marketing services companies, it opens up a new way to reach out to business prospects with value-based thinking that can grow a client's business.

And that should be the business every agency is in!

Don Morgan is Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, a business development and social media consultant in Seattle.

Harry Potter - Brand Wizard?

2011-07-20T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about the Harry Potter phenomenon lately. I continue to be impressed with the branding strategy and the marketing tactics that have been used to sell this "brand" to such a broad audience.

I've been a fan of Harry Potter since the first book was released in 1998. I've read all of the books (some more than once) and seen all the movies. My wife has been bugging me to take her to Orlando to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, so we'll probably do that soon.

But whether you are a fan or not, there’s more to this story than movie magic and the storytelling wizardry that has sold over 400 million books worldwide. There are great branding lessons we can take away from the boy wizard .

Here are a few.

1. Great branding starts with a great product. Each book has taken its readers, young and old, into a fantastic world of heroes and villains. We were drawn into the “brand” by our fascination with the concept of wizards and muggles, the interplay of good and evil, and the supporting cast of characters. We developed an emotional bond with the three principal characters as well as the supporting cast that serves as a great lesson for marketers – it starts with the product.

2. Stay true to your brand. How many times have you seen a movie after reading the book and been disappointed that they changed the storyline or the characters just didn't come to life as you had expected them to do? Throughout this film series, each movie was taken directly from the book. There were no unexpected surprises to interfere with the development of the story. And the casting has been superb. Can you imagine anyone else as Professor Snape or Bellatrix Lestrange?

3. Have a long term plan for success. J.K. Rowling has said in numerous interviews over the years that while she never imagined the success the books have garnered, she knew that the story would progress and grow to its ultimate climax with Harry defeating Voldemort, and good triumphing over evil. During a prolonged gap between books five and six, she stated that she wanted to be sure she got the story right. There’s a great branding lesson in making sure that subsequent marketing efforts build on the brand premise and stay true to the brand’s personality. There’s also a lesson here about positioning your brand for long term success. Too many marketing managers have an 89-day focus based on the need to bolster quarterly earnings, and sacrifice the long term.

4. Make your brand a must have. Ms. Rowling was insistent that no advance copies of the book go out before the official on-sale date. She angered a lot of book sellers, but that tactic was a primary reason many book stores held midnight parties and lotteries for that first all-important copy. And, as mentioned in point #1, she didn't disappoint her audience.

5. Look for ways to extend the brand by continuing to surprise and delight the target audience. Harry Potter has become as entrenched in our pop culture psyche as Luke Skywalker, Batman and Superman. And The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal-Orlando theme park brings the story (and the brand) to life and allows readers and fans to experience the books. What a great case study for experiential marketing. You can shop for a wand at Ollivander’s, enjoy a butter beer in Hogsmeade, ride with Harry on a dragon and tour Hogwart’s. Creating an opportunity to experience the brand first hand is great way for any brand to build loyalty.

6. Look for ways to build new excitement to extend the life of your brand. Now that the book series is over, don’t expect Harry Potter to disapparate. Ms. Rowling is about to unveil pottermore.com, an interactive experience that she promises will be “an online reading experience unlike any other”. The site will offer exclusive insights, new stories, ebooks and even the ability for the user to be sorted into one of the four houses of Hogwarts. Pottermore will not launch until October, but a sneak peak will be available to one million lucky winners of an online scavenger hunt that begins on July 31 – Harry’s birthday.

At every step, we’ve seen one smart marketing move after another. And I suspect we’ll see a few more before it’s over. I, for one, can’t wait to experience pottermore.com.

And along the way we’ve witnessed a great example of how to build and manage a brand. There’s really nothing magical about that. Or is there?

Circling the wagons. Can Google+ out-connect Facebook?

2011-06-29T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Google vs. Facebook battle just got a little hotter. Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has announced the introduction of Google+, their newest (and hopefully better than Buzz or Orkut) foray into the world of connections among friends. Or in this case, “circles" of user groups.

But according to Mr. Schmidt, this latest introduction is not an attempt to compete directly with Facebook. "Our social strategy is to take our current products, get users to give us social information and make our current products better," said executive chairman Eric Schmidt, talking to journalists at the Cannes ad festival.

It is obvious that the bigger opportunity for Google here is to harness the data about human connections generated by the social web and apply that to search and even display advertising.

Grouping your connections into "circles".
Google+ is different from Facebook in that you organize your friends into groups, such as family, work, friends, etc. This can be an advantage over Facebook if you want to share work-related information that your friends or family would not have an interest in seeing. Or if you want to share photos of a more personal nature that you don’t want your business colleagues to see.
Another difference with Google is that there are no friend requests. People do not need to agree to be friends with one another and can view updates without sharing their own.

Google + breaks down the Facebook data walls.
Even though search engines now crawl Facebook for links, the data about users and friends inside Facebook is not accessible to outside companies. Google+ could be a huge deal for Google if people are willing to participate in their network. Google+ will give Google a place for users to create their own content but will be searchable and information rich for Google. And you can bet they will monetize that data.

No one is talking about the impact of Google+ on advertising. Yet.
Google executives declined to say how Google+ will affect their advertising offerings, but as people spend more time inside controlled environments such as Facebook and mobile apps, Google loses its power to search and monetize that walled-off content. Google did confirm that +1, an icon launched recently as a counterpoint to Facebook Likes is integrated into Google+. Since +1 will be used as a tool to improve ad targeting, it seems safe to assume that Google+ will be used as a major part of their future advertising strategy, if it succeeds.

Google execs say more information will improve usability of all Google products.
Google executives said that getting social information on their users will improve Google products across the board -- by allowing personalization. Most of Google's most popular products such as search, maps and YouTube do not require a login, which limits what Google knows about its users.

Google+ may have more impact on mobile than social networks.
"It would take a seismic shift for people to take their social stuff to Google," said Deep Focus CEO and founder Ian Schafer, who said that the real earth-shattering use for Google+ is in mobile, not social networking. "The biggest implication for Google+ is mobile," Mr. Schafer said. "For example, for people to be creating content wherever people are and using that to deliver messages to them and close the loop on sales. The promise of Google+ is closing the loop on social CRM."
For advertisers and brands, the potential impact of Google+ is huge. "A connection made with a brand in Google+ can eventually be tracked to a purchase," Mr. Schafer said. "If we can create relevant brand engagements with people and give them an ability to purchase the product at a later date -- whether that's three, six or 18 months later -- this brings us back to social ROI."

I like the idea of being able to control my shared content to selected groups, but I’m not sure I want to stop using Facebook. So, to me, the real challenge for Google+ will be whether people will want to devote more time to sharing given the current time-compressed world we live in. It will be interesting to watch.

What do you think? Is this a brilliant strategy for Google, or will it fall flat?

Social Search is the new SEO buzzword.

2011-06-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

Facebook has just announced they have over 700 million users, and this makes them significantly larger than Google as the most popular site in the United States. Google search is now estimated at 250 to 400 million search a day, but did you know that Facebook serves over 150 million search queries a day?

Twitter execs recently reported they their search function is now handling an average of 1.6 billion queries per day, and they recently upgraded with an improved search infrastructure with the aim of making the results as personally relevant as possible. “Our ranking function accesses the social graph and uses knowledge about the relationship between the searcher and the author of a Tweet during ranking,” the company explained. This means that Twitter’s search index will now incorporate dynamic information such as information about the searcher and how users’ interact with tweets.

Search engines have been forced to respond to the tremendous growth of social media. As the demand for real-time search results increased, it became clear that users would no longer be constrained by the limitations of search engines, which have to index sites on the Web before displaying them on their results pages. In December 2009, Google introduced real-time search, which incorporates news results and Twitter updates into search results.

Google's universal search (which displays content from YouTube and other networks) is another way social media content has been brought into search results.

Apart from the incorporation of social media content into search results, social networking sites affect search engine rankings in other ways. On his blog, search marketing guru Danny Sullivan recently posted some interesting answers from Google and Bing on how they are addressing this subject. He reminds us that:

Both search engines count referencing of a given piece of content via Twitter as an indicator of authority (apart from the links coming from those references).
Both search engines attempt to compute the authority and quality of an author and give that author's tweets preferential treatment.
Both track links shared within Facebook.

The emergence of social media as it relates to search results means that an article that a couple years ago generated 50 links might today generate 10 links and 300 mentions on Twitter and Facebook.

Now that Facebook has opened up their pages to be crawled and indexed, you should be looking for new ways to use social media to influence search results on Facebook and Twitter.

Ten years ago, SEO professionals told us that improved organic rankings were all about optimizing page-level elements -- keyword frequency, title tags, and the relevance (and inclusion of those keywords) in on-page copy. Five years ago, Google significantly altered the algorithm so SEO strategists added the importance of relevant inbound links that pointed to your website to their sales story.

Those things are still important today, but organic SEO results these days requires a well-designed and optimized website plus relevant inbound links and a strong presence across multiple sites on the Web.

That’s where social media has become so important to the search equation. A/B copy testing by several groups, including SEOmoz, have shown that the cumulative reach of Twitter can far out perform multiple inbound links. If you are not using social media to complement your search straegy, you are missing a great opportunity. A good search strategy is enhanced by the relevance and broadscale reach of your content, and that makes social media a major indicator of relevance to search spiders.

So how do your clients take advantage of the convergence of social media and search for their business?

Here are four things they can do right now:
1. They should market their content across as many of the major social media outlets as make sense and are likely to be frequented by their target group. The major search engines now factor in how many times their content is shared among Facebook users and retweets among Twitter users. The search engines assign a higher value of importance to a piece of content that is shared by multiple readers. So you need to encourage your clients to broadcast their content on Facebook, Twitter, and other sites that can reach their customers and prospects?

2. They should look for niche sites or bloggers that target the same audience as their prospects. The more places they can find to expose their content and build their web presence, the greater the opportunity for search spiders to find them and assign a higher PageRank. And they should always encourage the readers of their content to pass it along to other interested parties. If they can build a network of engaged followers on these social media sites, they will move up in the search rankings and stand a better chance of being found when someone searches for a keyword that includes their content. Be sure they have links to their Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn (if they serve B2B customers) pages on your website. Make sure you are helping your clients understand that they should also let their customers know they can engage with the brand via social media.

3. Encourage your clients to start testing Facebook’s PPC as an alternative and/or complement to Google pay-per-click. The Self-Serve Facebook Ad Tool allows you a lot of opportunity to test alternative visuals, headline and body copy. Use analytics and attribution to determine the effect of the impact on organic search traffic and continue to test until you find the best combination of ad message and targeting.

4. Keep a close eye on the progress of Promoted Tweets as Twitter continues to make strategic acquisitions to boost its advertising technology. The recent addition of AdGrok (similar in concept to Google's AdWords) and the purchase last year of Smallthought Systems, maker of a cloud-hosted Web analytics application, could finally give Twitter a legitimate revenue tool to create a self-sustaining business. Analytics software is critical to evaluate the efficacy of online advertising campaigns and make adjustments accordingly.

Both search and social media are here to stay, and the ever-increasing interdependence between these channels should be seen as an opportunity in any business category. The strategic use of both channels can result in increased marketing effectiveness, and now is the time to take the lead in getting your clients on board.

Importance of mobile marketing confirmed in new Google study.

2011-05-24T12:27:00.001-07:00

A new study from Google, in partnership with IPSOS OTX Media CT, confirms the growing importance of mobile marketing and the need for your clients to capitalize on this new marketing tool.

According to Google, 79% of top advertisers don’t have a mobile optimized site.

This should be unacceptable to any advertiser, large or small, and represents a great opportunity for agencies to help their clients compete in today's digital marketplace..

The first thing agencies and marketers should do is read The Mobile Movement – Understanding Smartphone Consumers. This is a must read, with interesting and informative data on how smartphones are being used to help with our daily lives and our shopping purchase process.

Importantly, this study provides a great resource for agencies to convince their clients that the power of mobile marketing is simply too bid to ignore.

We all know there’s a mobile movement, and that smartphones are being used daily by millions of consumers. According to this study among 5,000+ adult (18-64) smartphone users, in the past seven days, 81% browsed the web, 77% used a search engine, 48% watched a video, and 63% stayed connected to our friends by visiting a social network.

What you may not know is the growing importance of the smartphone to our shopping behavior.
• 79% of users rely on smartphones to help with shopping regularly.
• 54% use smartphone to locate a retailer through directions, maps, or GPS.
• 49% compare prices to decide where to buy.
• 44% read product information and reviews.
• 40% look for promotions and coupons daily.

Smartphones are becoming an integral part of a multi-channel purchase process.
• 67% of users research product or service information on their smartphone and then buy in store.
• 23% research on smartphone, visit store to check out product, and then purchase online.
• 16% research on smartphone, visit store to check out product and then purchase on smartphone.
• 9% visit a store and then purchase on smartphone.

The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Consumers has a lot more information. For a free copy of the full report, go here. Or check out this video for a quick summary of the findings.

If you're one of those 79% of top advertisers don’t have a mobile optimized site, you need to read this report.

Social Media Spending Up; Facebook Likes Primary Goal

2011-04-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

A new study confirms the growing importance of social media. According to a poll from Effie Worldwide and Mashable, an overwhelming number of marketers consider social media to be integral to their strategies this year. The poll was conducted in February among ad agency executives and marketers from major U.S. firms.

Key findings from the poll were:

* 87% said social media was “important” or “very important” to achieving their biggest marketing goal this year.
* 70% plan to increase their social media budget by more than 10% this year.
* The primary social media goal is to increase Facebook 'Likes".
* Study respondents reported that social networking would take 11.9% of their overall budget this year compared with 13% for TV. That figure may be overstated, however, since $68.7 billion was spent on all TV advertising last year, compared with just $26 billion for Internet advertising.

Much of that spending will go toward trying to find new Facebook fans, which 35% of respondents said is their main goal in 2011. “Increase our presence on mobile” was number two on that list, coming in at 22%.

Other findings included:

* Brands that were cited for “effectively getting their message across via social media” include Old Spice ( chosen by 15%), Pepsi (8%), Starbucks (7%) and Ford (6%).
* 50% of respondents said they use a mix of in-house and agency to handle social media outreach.
* 80% said they were planning iPad-based advertising and/or an iPad-based app this year, while 20% said they were “not planning much” of either.

This study illustrates an important opportunity for agencies to lead their clients. How social are your efforts?

A Client's Perspective on Five Things Agencies Should Heed

2011-03-30T10:12:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Marketing:Your Business Connection has a great article from Rod Brooks, VP and CMO of PEMCO Insurance. Rod is well known around town and is well respected as a thought leader and exceptional marketer always willing to share his experience and marketing knowledge with others.

The inaugural article in his new series from the client side contains his personal perspectives and insights on advice to share with agencies. Here is a brief summary of his key points:

Loyalty matters. It matters to Rod as he believes that there are advantages and opportunities that come from leveraging the experience and knowledge gained from long-term relationships with partners who understand the brand and its business. He also believes it should matter to agencies, suggesting that agencies should tout their long-term relationships as a reference in new business pitches. But he also reminds us that loyalty is a two-way street, and questions agencies that resign one account to take on a larger one in the same category.
Commit to the journey. Rod admires agencies that know where the client is going, understand what it takes to get there, and work with the client to pull in the same direction. His advice here is to be proactive - don't wait for specific directions from the client. Be observant, engaged and stay in motion with your client.
The brand is everything. This is a great tip from Rod. Focus all of your new business effort on understanding the brand. Do your homework - shop their stores, use their products, call their service centers, talk with employees. It shouldn't surprise you to know that clients don't care as much about you as you would like for them to, so don't focus on you in new business, focus on what they really care about - their brand. (SIDE NOTE: One of the best new business pitches I ever made was when we mystery shopped 100 stores that carried the client prospect's products, completed a short survey on each visit, and used a board with 100 business cards from the store salesman as the first chart in our new business pitch. The prospect was impressed with the effort, anxious to know what we had learned, and, most importantly, awarded us a $20 million business that day).
It is not your money. Of course, it's not. But do agencies treat the client's money the same way they treat their own? Rod doesn't think so, and I'm sure he's not alone in thinking this. He also chastises agencies who "nickel and dime" their clients with petty charges like mark-up on copies, supplies used, and phone calls.
There's no such thing as full-service. As Rod says, like it or not, fragmentation and specialization is a reality, and while it may be more difficult to manage multiple partners, he is convinced he gets better work from someone who is truly skilled in a particular aspect of marketing. His advice - take down the "we do it all banner above the door", and focus on your core competencies.

Rod makes good points on each of these insights, and agencies would do well to listen and heed this advice. Competition gets tougher every day. Not every client shares exactly the same philosophy as Rod, but I'll bet that most of them do!

Managing your client relationship doesn't have to be like herding cats.

2011-03-23T16:08:00.000-07:00

Since agency training programs are almost non-existent these days, young people aren't given much guidance on how to handle client relationships ... especially tough situations. Here are some thoughts on what I've learned over the years that may be helpful.

How to say “no” to a client.
Most clients don't like to hear the word "no", but they aren't paying you to be a lap dog, they are paying you to help them grow their business. So there will be times when you need to convince a client that his idea is not a good one. It can be tricky...but it can be done.

I've always tried to look for is a left-brained logical reason for why it’s not a good idea, or can’t be done, or shouldn’t be done. Most clients won’t accept the “we just don’t like that idea” answer from their agency. If you can tie the “no” reason to financials, your objection will usually go down a little better with the client.

Another good strategy for saying “no” to a client, is to not react immediately. Rather, I prefer to say "let me see if that is possible" or "let me discuss that with the team and get back to you". In either case, you will demonstrate that you have taken their idea seriously. If you are still thoroughly convinced that their idea is not a good one, then you have also given yourself time to think through the options on how to present and sell your objection.

I once heard a story about Bill Bernbach that I never forgot. According to the story, Bill carried a 3x5 card in his shirt pocket and during client meetings he would often pull out the card, read it to himself, and then replace it into his pocket. The card read "Maybe the client is right". That's something to think about.

How to calm an angry client.
My first step is always to try to get the client to express the reason for his anger. If you can get him to talk about it, you can understand more about why he is angry.

My next step is to try to empathize with his situation. When an AE comes to me to tell me a client is angry about something, my first question is “why” and my second is “do you agree with him”. If they don’t agree, then I try to understand the AE’s perspective first. Then, I ask the AE to put themselves in the client’s shoes and try to understand why they are acting or overreacting the way they are.

A final step is to have myself or a senior executive at the agency call the client to let them know we are aware of the situation and take it seriously enough to have the boss call them. Sometimes, just knowing that we are listening to them helps.

How to build trust (and your business) with a client.
If your true desire is to help the client grow their business (not just yours), then you can do things to make sure the client knows you are sincere. Understanding all you can about how the client operates and makes money is a great start.

I have ridden on a bread truck at 3 a.m., made store checks at all hours of the day and night, made pizza, flipped hamburgers, toured chicken processing plants, and a bunch of other things I never thought I would do in order to understand the client’s business better. Then, I have some credibility when I recommend things that might generate more business for the agency.

One of the most powerful things an agency can do is offer a suggestion to the client on how to grow their business that doesn't involve advertising or any revenue stream for the agency. Clients have a lot of skepticism about agency recommendations and commitment to their business, and this has never failed to impress and win over a client.

If a client has multiple agency partners, you must never, ever denigrate the other agency or their work. You don’t have to praise it, but any criticism is a criticism of the client who approved the work or who hired the agency. And it seems petty and unprofessional.

How to generate selling opportunities for your agency.
The first step is similar to the previous one mentioned above - get inside your client’s head to understand what his business is really about. How do they really make money? What are their long term goals? Understand his problems, before you offer solutions.

Make sure you understand their personal or professional feelings on what you are trying to sell as a new opportunity. For example, if the client doesn’t really understand how to use Twitter, Facebook, mobile marketing or other social networking tools, you should pre-sell them through case studies or statistics on penetration and usage before you present your recommendations. There are numerous research studies available to show demographics and usage data on how their target audience is using these tools.

Sometimes, giving them new information about how a competitor is using a new marcom tool will stimulate their desire to think more about other options.

How to get more deeply involved in the client’s business.
I’ve already addressed a few of these in previous answers, but here are a few other things to consider:

Volunteer to work with the field sales force. Or work in the store.
Subscribe to all trade journals, and always be on the look out for articles of interest that you can send to them.
Call the client every day. Make sure they know you are thinking about their business all the time.
Buy stock in their company. It shows a real commitment on your part when you casually mention that you just read the Annual Report and were very impressed with it.

Using their products is another way to demonstrate your commitment to them. When I started my career at Leo Burnett, they were fanatics about this. I'll bet they still are.

If you were a smoker and preferred a brand other than Marlboro, you’d better not leave the pack out in plain sight. When I was there, the company brought in special coffee machines that only dispensed Taster’s Choice coffee. When Leo died, agency co-founder Phil Shaaf, told a wonderful story about Leo’s dedication to using his client’s products. It seems that Leo often had severe attacks of angina that could only be soothed by chocolate. Once, at a P&G meeting in Cincinnati, Leo had an attack in a client meeting, and was doubled over in pain. Someone said “Get him a candy bar”, and Leo shouted “Make sure it’s a Nestle”. I can tell you clients appreciate it when you are that dedicated to them.

Staying Ahead of Trends For Your Clients

2011-03-16T08:18:00.000-07:00

For some time now, I'm been preaching that agencies should be looking for ways to add value to their client's business beyond simply being a creative vendor. With new marketing tools being introduced almost daily, it is difficult and confusing for many clients to determine the potential value for their business.

When I read some of the reports from this year's SXSW conference, I saw what may be a great opportunity for an agency to lead their client. SXSW has a reputation as a predictor of what's new and what's next in tech marketing, and if that holds true this year then Groupon, Living Social and the local-deals market are the next big thing.

Based on the success of Groupon and others, hundreds of local publishers have launched copycat Daily Deal products in the last six months, and this is just the beginning. According to reports from the conference, several big names and mobile marketers are going after a share of this newly-formed billion dollar market with new and innovative products, including Google, Bing, Facebook and a host of location-based apps.

Google was forced to confirm the existence of Google Offers in late January when Mashable broke the news, citing confidential sources. Marissa Mayer, Google VP-consumer products, officially confirmed the new product offering with a keynote speech at SXSW detailing the search giant’s plans to offer a prepaid deals program that would compete with local deals giant Groupon, which the search engine failed to acquire late last year.

In November, Facebook launched Facebook Deals, which lets businesses offer discounts to Facebook users. The world’s largest social network announced it will work with local businesses on a "Groupon-like offering", which presumably means daily deals and discounts. This marks another social networking area that Facebook wants to conquer.

In the coming weeks, Facebook will allow users in Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, San Francisco and San Diego to buy deals through Facebook and share them with friends. Facebook sales' team will bring deals to local merchants and will also source deals through third-party networks like Tippr, Gilt City and Pop Sugar City.

In early March, Microsoft announced the launch of a new Bing Deals section on its desktop and mobile website. Rather than offer any money-saving offers itself, Bing Deals will give users the convenience of single-site sourcing by aggregating 200,000 offers in over 14,000 cities and towns across the US.

The deal search feature on Bing’s mobile website is location aware via GPS, allowing users to find the best offers within a few blocks of their current location. On the desktop version of Bing, deals are linked to venues. Any location you search for that’s currently offering money off will display a green Deal icon, linking through to details. With so many daily deal services out there now, being able to search for them through a unified, user-friendly interface like Bing will offer a major benefit to time-strapped consumers. Yahoo launched a similar service in November last year.

According to daily blogs from SXSW, even the little guys are moving aggressively in the local deals area. Loopt introduced its new Push Deals, a service for local retailers to sell slow moving or overstocked inventory over the course of hours. While Groupon offers deals within 24-hour periods for use over longer periods, merchants can send out Loopt Reward Alerts to get customers to take immediate advantage and drive them to their retail location. This means that if you’re walking by a restaurant and it’s a slow night, they can hit a button to send out a notification to give you a deal to come in. This works on a network like Loopt (as opposed to Foursquare) because the app uses background location to keep track of you.

Another location-based app, SCVNGR, is also jumping into the market with a new service called LevelUp. These deals have different tiers -- everyone gets the same deal the first time around, but you can unlock a sweeter deal on the second visit and one that's sweeter still on the third. "The goal is to turn newcomers into regulars," said SCVNGR founder Seth Priebatsch during his keynote. SCVNGR touts the real beauty of LevelUp for its merchants as retention.

Their execs point out that Groupon has built a great tool for acquisition to get new bodies through the door, but that model has proven easy to copy. As they described their goal, the daily deals crown will likely belong to whichever startup can figure out how to get those bodies coming back as repeat customers at regular prices.

Retaining its own customers is already a huge focus for Groupon. They plan to keep merchants and customers coming back through old-fashioned service and CRM tools. Google Deals is also tweaking the model in an attempt to turn users into repeat customers. The first visit doesn't automatically turn on a discount or offer -- customers have to check in multiple times to gain "Regular," "VIP" or "Guru" status before they can claim the discount. The experiment is only during SXSW for now, but Ms. Mayer said Google plans to expand nationally.

Foursquare has offered merchants deals through its app for some time now, but new features also demonstrate their focus on retaining customers. During the conference, Foursquare has partnered with American Express to tie transactional data to check-ins and customer behavior. Conference goers can link their AmEx cards to their Foursquare accounts so that when they check-in to a participating Austin business, the credit card automatically loads with bonus cash to go toward a purchase. The deal also means merchants can see transactional data through their analytics tools. For example, they can see that the top 20% of customers tend to check-in most frequently, or like one type of deal over another.

How big is the potential for the daily deals market? Well, if Groupon’s rejection of a reported $6 billion offer from Google wasn’t enough for them, they may know something we don’t.

What do you think? Should daily deals be a part of your client's marketing planning?

White Papers Can Be A Great Tool For Ad Agency New Business

2011-03-02T09:06:00.000-08:00

As an awareness and lead-generation tool for new business;
As a thought-leadership and CRM tool for current clients;
To establish, or reinforce, expertise in a specific industry;
As a training tool for employees and clients.

Why should your agency use white papers?
That's simple, they work. Several studies have documented the importance of white papers in evaluation and decision-making. A study by MarketingSherpa on technology marketing reported that 70% of respondents said they visited the vendor website and 45% contacted the vendor for further information after reading a white paper from that company.

According to Information Week, 93% of white papers are passed on to at least one other reader and 86% say they are moderately or highly influential. Case studies have reported that white papers can significantly outperform banner ads and email as a lead generation tool for many businesses.

White papers can establish your agency as an important thought leader.
White papers provide a platform for an agency to demonstrate their expertise and the quality of their thinking. Whether the topic is general (e.g. branding), industry-specific (e.g. trends in healthcare marketing), or topic-specific (e.g. how to use social media), a well-written white paper can establish your agency as an authority on the subject. Importantly, studies have shown that executives read white papers, so a white paper can be that foot-in-the-door that you've been trying to establish but can't seem to get past the voicemail and spam blocker screens.

Some of the more popular ways to use white papers are:

Discuss trends (can establish the need for a change from the reader).
Identify problems (can build a rapport and affinity with the reader).
Provide solutions (can confirm your expertise, but must be seen as objective and not a sales message to have credibility with the reader).
Suggest what to look for (can also confirm your expertise, but again must not be seen as an overt sales message).

A good white paper must be reader-focused, not self-focused.
It is critically important to write white papers from an objective viewpoint so that they are seen as educational, not sales-focused. Too many marketers make the mistake of treating their white paper as a multi-page text ad for their product or service. That approach is a recipe for disaster. And rejection.

A well-written white paper becomes persuasive when the reader is presented with facts and charts to support the writer's viewpoint and avoids any claims about the company or its products and services. Most white papers tend to be 4 - 8 pages in length, which allows you to present a thorough case without too much effort on the part of the reader. In many cases, a white paper can be a stimulus to drive traffic to an agency's website for more information (or more confirmation of the agency's expertise).

Michael Stelzner (http://www.whitepapersource.com/) , seen by many as the foremost authority on writing white papers, gave this illustration of a reader-focused vs. a self-focused white paper in a recent webinar:

Self-Focused: Groundbreaking TechWidget by XYZ Company Solves Time Management Dilemma.

Reader-Focused: Solving the Time Management Dilemma with Technology.

A white paper can carry more authority than other agency marketing collateral.
It is important to remember that a white paper carries a cachet of authenticity that other marketing collateral for your agency doesn't possess. To some readers, there is a perception (rightly or wrongly) that white papers are completely objective and factual, almost like a scientific paper that has been peer-reviewed. So be careful that you don't mis-use or abuse the white paper as a marketing tool. But it can, and should, be used by more agencies

Do you really need social media?

2011-03-01T08:12:00.000-08:00

For most companies today, the answer is yes. Social media not just the "flavor of the day" for marketers. There are real opportunities to engage with your customers to build a loyalty and commitment to your brand or company that can differentiate you in an increasingly commodotized world. And we now have real world case studies in almost every business category that prove its power.

But surprisingly, there are still some Luddites who haven't at least explored parts of the social media scene. And, I've spoken with more than one marketing manager lately who is questioning the value of social media for their company.

Here's a news flash folks. Social media won't work without a real understanding of what it can do for your company, a realistic plan for implementation, and the patience (and passion) to make it happen.

With humblest apologies to Will Shakespeare for my play on Hamlet's famous words, "to blog or not to blog" is not the right question. Let's talk about the real questions you should be asking before you launch your corporate blog, draft your next tweet, upload that video to YouTube, or whatever social media you want to use. Even if you are already using social media, it's not a bad idea to stop, take a deep breath, and really think through what you want to accomplish with the new digital marketing tools that are available.

Here are the real questions you should be asking about social media:

1. What is my goal for social media?
It is certainly logical to start with the big picture, but you would be surprised at how many companies say "we need a Facebook page" without a clear understanding of its potential value for their company and its role in an integrated communications plan. Just because everyone else has a Facebook or Twitter account is not a good reason for opening one.

If you are already using or considering how to use new technologies like blogs, podcasts, online video, wikis, widgets, etc. you need to make sure you know what you want to accomplish or you may end up using the wrong tool.

2. Who do I want/need to reach? Can social media reach that audience?
Technology has added a new dimension to analyzing and defining the optimum target audience. In addition to understanding their demographics and their psychographics, we also need to factor their technographics into the evaluation. How comfortable are they with using the new technology tools? Do they use their smart phone or their home computer most often? What new technology tools are they currently using? How would they prefer to interact with your company?

Good marketing still requires the basics of understanding your target audience, their media consumption habits and the benefits you can deliver.

3. What are the best strategies and tactics to reach this target?
This seems so basic, but is still a critical question that must be answered in order to optimize your ROI. Notice that I used the plural "strategies and tactics", not the singular. In most cases, you should be considering multiple social vehicles, but before you jump in you should make sure you have mastered one vehicle before launching another.

I believe that many companies that are failing or disillusioned with social media are simply trying to do too much at one time. They've launched a blog, added a Facebook page, YouTube page and Twitter account and are trying to monitor and evaluate, etc. with limited resources or without a realistic understanding and appreciation for the time and effort it takes to mount a successful program.

I recommend that you stop what you are doing and take advantage of the many free reports and white papers on social media for guidance on who's doing what. For example, a 2010 study concluded that Facebook is more popular for B2C, while LinkedIn is used by more B2B companies. But is that still the case? The challenge, and beauty, of social media is that it is continuing to evolve. Some have described the social media scene in the past as the Wild West. In many ways, that is still the case. So take the time to read current case studies that show the effectiveness of different options. And decide what is best for your business.

Internet search can help you gain better understanding of the best strategies and tactics to consider for your social media program. Just type "social media research" into your search engine and see how many hits you get!

4. What resources do I have available or need in order to implement an effective, on-going program.
Contrary to popular belief among many companies, social media is not a free alternative to traditional media. It will take time, money and patience to use social media effectively. Too many companies jump into social media without understanding how much time it really takes. Unlike Kevin Costner, you cannot assume that "if you build it they will come". That may be the most misunderstood element of social marketing. You can just set up a Facebook account and expect people to automatically LIKE you and visit regularly. You've got to give them a reason. And in many cases an incentive to do so. There are many tools to help you post, share and monitor your efforts more efficiently, but it will still require time on some one's part.

And it will require someone who understands the company and the audience, as every social media "expert" will tell you that content is king. So if you think you can just hand it off to that recent college graduate who is more comfortable with technology than some of your older staff, you should make sure they not only understand the technology, but also know how to write well and can represent your company brand.

There are many other questions that come up along the way, but these are the basics for anyone who is considering starting or expanding their social media effort. And if you've been using social media for awhile, it never hurts to stop, take a deep breath, and analyze what you've been doing based on these questions. Whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse, as my dad used to say. Know the basics of who you need to reach and what you want to accomplish before you decide which new technology to explore.

And keep this thought in mind. Most of your customers don't want to have a relationship with your company unless there is some value associated with the effort that is required on their part. It's up to you to figure out how to engage them and keep them engaged. Good marketing still requires good marketing.

Mobile tagging. How creative marketers are turning smart phones into brand selling tools.

2011-02-23T18:29:00.000-08:00

I've been saying for years that smart agencies recognize that clients are looking for leadership, not partnership. They want an agency that will bring them new insights and new ways to build a bridge between their customers and their brand.

After years of success in Japan, QR codes are finally beginning to emerge as a legitimate marketing tool in the US, and mobile tagging with QR codes is a great way to demonstrate leadership to your clients and prospects.

When Best Buy added QR codes to their product fact tags in all their U.S. retail stores last September, it made them the first national retailer in the US to acknowledge the future potential of mobile tagging. Since then, we’ve begun to see an explosion of new and creative ways to use the two-dimensional bar codes to enhance the marketing efforts of retailers and other businesses.

Some grocery stores are now using QR codes in the meat department to provide a wine recommendation for the tenderloin on sale, or to add a QR code with a recipe on an end aisle display. In both cases, using QR codes offers the potential to not only increase sales, but also to engage their customer in a way that builds brand loyalty without the façade of inflated price penalties for not using a shoppers card for that store.

The real estate industry is beginning to discover the selling advantages of replacing flyers on a lawn sign with a mobile tag that is never out of stock, and providing an on-site video tour wherever the QR code is placed. Tech savvy commercial real estate brokers are using QR codes to provide a 24/7 virtual salesperson to vacant retail storefronts. By scanning the 2D bar code, the reader is taken to a site with all occupancy, costs and local code details on the space

Now on newsstands, the 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition contains QR codes throughout the issue that provide access to extras such as videos, outtakes from photo shoots, interviews and personal profile data on models as well as additional information on the swimsuits that are featured in the issue. Readers are able to share what they find through social networks. Readers can also download the Swimsuit Mobile application by scanning codes found in the magazine. The codes are also featured online through the various websites associated with the magazine. Time officials see QR codes as an opportunity to revive the print medium by offering a way to provide more versatility for advertisers than the iPad and other tablets, which many are hailing as the future of the print medium.

When the Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools posted an abstract black-and-white square as its Facebook status update last week with no accompanying explanation, responses ranged from Huh? to Hurrah! depending on the users knowledge and use of their smart phone. In this case, the QR code led the smart-phone-savvy reader to an online schools survey.

QR codes to become an integral part of marketing in US.
Many tech experts and bloggers believe QR codes are on their way to becoming marketing and sales tools as ubiquitous as Facebook or texting and as familiar to US consumers as they already are to people who live in Japan and Europe.

MediaPost recently reported that 57 percent of Facebook and Twitter users said they have scanned a mobile bar code at least once in the past year, while as many as 40 percent had done so five or more times in the past year. A survey by Scanbuy found that mobile bar code usage jumped 700 percent in 2010 compared with 2009, with a big uptick during the Christmas shopping season when big-box retailers like Best Buy started adding the codes to their product packaging.

QR codes add another way for marketers to engage customers, but compatibility issues may hinder acceptance.
AT&T launched its own proprietary technology in August that requires the download of a free AT&T reader to scan. Microsoft has developed its own tags and compatible tag readers. A host of freebie websites have multiplied online that allow novice users to create their own unique alphanumeric embedded square bar codes by entering the data they want bar code swipers to be directed to.

With the resulting mix of codes and code-readers, and the variety of smart-phone systems — iPhone and Android, for example, are sold embedded with a different reader — one challenge of more widespread use is overcoming compatibility issues.

Robert Russell, AT&T's Atlanta-based mobility product management marketing director, said that global discussions are already under way to make the use of bar codes more standard. AT&T's scanner, he said, is able to read the three most widespread types of 2D codes.

"A lot of what's being discussed is how to make this ecosystem more standard," said Russell, speaking from Barcelona, Spain, where the Mobile World Congress was convening recently with standardization of mobile reading technologies part of the discussion.

Bar code information offers new potential for targeted marketing.
One advantage for marketers is the ability to gather even more data that will enable companies to keep tabs on who's using the bar codes. "Every time a code gets scanned, it brings 20 to 30 different metrics associated with the consumer, from the type of operating system being used (in the phone) to other things a consumer has voluntarily decided to enter into the scanner's settings," such as gender, age or other demographic information to create a user profile, Russell said.

Where QR codes go from here is limited only by the imagination of the marketer. Want more info and ideas? Dan Smigrod, CEO and Chief IDEAologist at GREAT!, a promotions agency in Atlanta, has several good posts on how to use QR codes. Follow this link to see his thoughts on ways to use this innovative technology to grow your business.

Helping your clients discover new ways to go to market is essential in today's agency environment. Are you leading your clients in exploring mobile tagging? If not, why not?

Is your website ready for mobile-access?

2011-02-04T05:25:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I wrote about some of the reasons that many people feel 2011 will finally see mobile marketing become a mainstream marketing tool in the U.S. With more people accessing websites through mobile web browsers, it might be time to redesign your site or create a new one with mobile users in mind.

Millions of consumers and business professionals are ditching their basic cell phones in favor of more advanced cell phones and smartphones that combine the functions of a PDA, cell phone and web browser. The introduction of the Verizon iPhone and subsequent responses by AT&T will, most likely, help even more people switch over to a smartphone.

As reported last week, mobile phones and devices have increasingly become an integral part of our everyday lives, and mobile has become the “first screen” in many of our lives. When mobile first came on the scene, it was the third screen - behind TV and the Internet. Now with the advances in technology, and the ubiquitous use of text messages and apps, mobile has become the first screen.

Mobile web access is something your clients and their customers, no matter who they are, trust and use throughout the day. That was the main message presented by Brian Forth, President of SITECRAFTING, at a marketing presentation last week. His presentation and Q&A made a strong case for adapting your native site for mobile and featured real world case study examples of why “mobilizing” your website now is a good business move.

Is your website ready for customers that want to access it from a mobile device?
If it's not ready, now's the time to learn all you can about who your audience is and how they access your site. Work with your technology professional to analyze your traffic logs and see what types of browsers are accessing your site. Do you see mobile traffic? Take the time to poll some of your customers about the likelihood of them accessing your website and others on their smartphones. Once you've decided a mobile site is right for you, it's time to create one.

Native vs. a mobile web app may be the best way for many companies.
Brian made a strong case for developing a mobile version of your current native site vs. developing a mobile web app. He reviewed the time and cost to develop and maintain multiple app platforms for iOS, Android OS, Symbian, Windows OS, and RIM/Blackberry OS to be able to speak to all smartphones and tablets. Despite the well-publicized Apple App Store and its 330,000 apps, the iPhone only accounts for 32% of users. By contrast, adapting a native app requires one change that many can accommodate within their current content management system (CMS) and their content is available to all users.

Creating a Mobile-Optimized SiteIf you have a very large website with thousands of pages, it might not be necessary to configure your entire site for mobile access. A professional web developer can code your site so that when users access your main website, different content is served to web browsers depending on whether they're mobile. If you visit Google on your PC or Mac and a mobile web browser, you'll find two different screens. On your computer's web browser you'll find the full Google site. On your smartphone's web browser you'll find minimal content--a simple search box and not much more.

Brian showed an example of how Harrison Medical Center used analytics from their current site to determine the reason users were most often visiting their site. The data showed that wait times for various Harrison clinics were a primary reason for many mobile users to access their site. They simplified their mobile page to just present this important data but continued to offer the option to download the full site, if desired. It was a great example of how to quickly provide mobile users with the information they most wanted to access.

What's Next? It’s time to look for creative ways to appeal to the mobile user.This is a great opportunity for an agency to provide real value to their clients. Think about your client's business, their website and their customers. Consider whether they have--or should have--content that mobile customers would want to access. For example, Brian talked about the Starbucks Card mobile app and how it provides mobile users the ability to pay and replenish their card balance on their mobile device. Alaska Air is now offering a mobile boarding pass app where the user passes their mobile device across a scanner and avoids the need for paper ticketing and boarding passes.

Convenience in a time-pressed world is always needed and appreciated.QR codes offer convenience-oriented applications aimed at mobile phone users (known as mobile tagging) and will provide many new opportunities for creative ways marketers can build customer loyalty. Google's mobile Android OS and Nokia’s Symbian OS support the use of QR codes by natively including a barcode scanner. In the Apple iOS, a QR code reader is not natively included, but over 50 free Apps are available with reader and metadata browser URI redirection capability.

It’s time for marketers to recognize that mobile matters. It’s just too big to ignore. And it's time for smart agencies to help their clients determine if they need to “mobilize” their web content.

Is 2011 the Year that Mobile Finally Becomes Mainstream?

2011-01-31T08:56:00.000-08:00

The cover story in the January 30 issue of Marketing News presents a solid argument that 2011 will be the year that mobile marketing finally becomes mainstream in the United States. For years, marketing prognosticators have been saying that mobile marketing would reach a critical mass, so when I saw the headline This Time It’s Different, I was curious as to why their editors felt that 2011 would be different. Here's what I found:

82% of U.S. consumers now own a cell phone, according to Forester Research. Tablets such as the iPad will reach 54.8 million units in 2011, according to Gartner Inc. and annual global tablet devices will reach 81 million by 2015 according to Juniper Research.
These are boxcar numbers that support their conclusion that 2011 will be different, but the real story is more than just about numbers. Mobile phones and devices have increasingly become an integral part of our everyday lives, and for many of us mobile is the “first screen” in our lives. When mobile first came on the scene, it was the third screen - behind TV and the Internet. Now with the advances in technology, and the widespread use of text messages and apps, mobile has become the first screen. It’s something your clients and their customers, no matter who they are, trust and use throughout the day.

The explosion of 3G and 4G devices, growth in data plans, and the resulting acceptance of smartphones are three key drivers for mobile growth.
According to recent comScore data, among mobile subscribers 13 and older, nearly half (48.9%) have 3G or 4G devices, up 23% from 2009. Their data also show that 33.4% of subscribers have some sort of data plan, and among those consumers, 83.9% have unlimited data plans. They now estimate that more than a quarter of U.S. consumers have smartphones, a 68% increase from 2009.

Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android are leading the charge on improving customers experiences on mobile phones, which will boost industry growth.
And we can't forget about RIM/Blackberry, Windows OS, and Nokia's Symbian OS. When you hear the phrase “there’s an app for that”, it’s true. There are now almost 300,000 third-party applications officially available on the Apple App Store, and last week Apple announced they had reached over 9.9 billion downloads. It’s becoming second nature to shop, do research on products and services, and communicate with your friends throughout the day because the new phones are so easy to use.

Spending on mobile advertising is expected to grow more than six fold over the next four years.
Spending is expected to reach nearly $2.55 billion, according to eMarketer, a New York-based digital marketing research firm. Along with consumer’s increasing mobile usage, growing ad spending on mobile will help to fuel its growth. Julie Ask, a vice president and principal analyst in mobile and telecom at Forrester Research, feels that “the larger screens have resulted in an increase in media consumption, and that generally leads to more advertising.” A recent survey by the Mobile Marketing Association of 200 executives found that 24% of respondents said they would more than double or even triple their investment in mobile advertising in 2011 compared with 2010.

Other factors cited include the growth in “tools you can use” to aid your marketing efforts.
Mobile payment technology, mobile gift lists and mobile gift cards will open more opportunities for savvy marketers to take advantage of mobile as an important part of their marketing plans. Many marketers are now experimenting with text messaging to alert shoppers to deals, and mobile apps have moved beyond games and GPS to include everything from recipes to tips for parents to teach their kids smart eating habits. Another growing trend is location-based marketing, and companies like Foursquare allow users to find special deals while in-store where they can make an immediate purchase.

Analytics will provide the final piece of the puzzle to marketers.
Michael Becker, managing director for the Mobile Marketing Association calls analytics “the connective tissue of mobile to traditional media”. The ability to track direct sales or indirectly influenced sales through mobile is expected to grow significantly and allow marketers to monitor sales activity in real time. With increased recognition of the valuable potential of having an interactive mobile device in the hands of consumers at a time when they are requesting support from your clients will entice more marketers to find ways to leverage that capability.

MMA’s Becker concluded the article with the statement that “mobile is where the customers are. It’s as simple as that. Old world marketing was about attitudes, awareness and usage. New world marketing is putting the focus on making sure that you, as a marketer, are there at a time of a consumer’s expressed need.”

With mobile marketing, a company can respond to their customers when they need them. No matter where they are at the time.

What about your agency and clients? If 2011 is, indeed, when mobile finally grows up, are you ready to take advantage of the opportunity?

Measuring Social Media Engagement is a Journey

2011-01-17T10:26:00.000-08:00

I recently attended a presentation by Sean O’Driscoll, CEO of Ants Eye View on how to measure social media engagement. He gave the audience an in-depth look at the various stages a company must go through to truly embrace and ultimately measure social media and its impact on their business. He described the process of implementing and measuring social media as a “journey” whose destination is to become a fully-engaged enterprise that creates a measurable impact on brand health and business through customer engagement.

The journey begins with an understanding and acceptance that to compete in today’s marketplace, a company should invest in building long-term relationships with their consumers.

There are several key factors that support this conclusion.
• Technology has lowered the barrier to competitive entry, and competition is more intense than ever.
• Consumer trust has shifted dramatically away from corporate America, and has been replaced by a heavy reliance on peers, friends and even strangers online.
• The adoption of digital tools and social technologies has changed expectations in consumers’ minds – they now expect engagement and service in real-time.
• Consistently engaging your customers requires marketers to be in the places where they are, not necessarily where you want them to be.

The journey for an enterprise to become fully engaged in social media typically has five stages.

Stage 1 can be described as Traditional, where a company is focused on traditional marketing tactics and is ambivalent to online conversations about their brand. Surprisingly, there are still many companies at this stage; where social media is not even on the executive’s radar.

Stage 2 is described by Sean as Dabbling in Silos, where socially active mavericks within an organization begin to monitor conversations but there are no formal teams in place. At this stage, the customer data they gather is not connected with business goals.

At Stage 3, the company begins to Operationalize their social media effort through an empowered team run by a proven leader. Listening to their customers begins to generate implications and provide a baseline for metrics, and the company begins to explore tools to consolidate the data.

Real Results begin to surface in Stage 4 when channels start to yield impactful results and systems and tools are optimized. At this stage, employees in all departments are actively engaged and competent, and company executives are invested in analytics.

Stage 5 is where a company is a Fully Engaged Enterprise in social media and the effect on business outcomes and the organization are substantial and measurable. Business outcomes include the ability to bring products and services to market with built-in demand, manage risk better, and result in more efficient research, development, marketing and support operations.

At this stage, the organization sees increased revenue and loyalty, and customer engagement is a part of the company DNA. Importantly, the entire employee base has a 360 view of the customer and can anticipate their needs. Sean cited Starbucks as an example of a company that has reached Stage 5 through their use of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and how they listen and respond to customers through their My Starbucks Idea site.

The measurement journey also moves through stages and is the hardest part of the social media equation.

The four stages of measurement move from merely gathering data to using that data to evaluate brand health and business impact. The goal is to show the connection between online customer engagement and business value, but measurement requires programs that are scaled, predictable and resourced.

Sean identified four approaches for measuring social engagement – measuring behavior, monitoring claimed behavior, testing alternatives, and data mining.

Behavioral tactics examples include using coupon codes specific to social media channels (Dell Outlet), social media URLs to build online communities coded into web reporting suites with embedded upsell/cross-sell ads (Intuit). This tactic works because it records actual product adoption, but doesn’t work when social media is “part” of the purchase process but not the last step. Sean cited Amazon reviews as an example of people using social media for peer reviews, but then completing their actual purchase on alternate sites.

Monitoring Claimed behavior via customer panel research is a long-used method that provides some measure of the social media impact on brand health and business impact, but is always subject to skepticism because it is based on what people say they do without knowing if they have actually done what they say. Despite this obvious drawback, monitoring Claimed behavior can still be useful when other data is not available, and when measured over time to discern trends and consistency of response.

Two Testing tactics cited by Sean were A/B testing of specific websites with alternative engagement functionality or testing Twitter messages for reach, click-thru and conversion. Testing alternatives provide a concrete comparison, but doesn’t work when sample sizes and data sets are too small to be reliable, or when you don’t have the time and resources.

Data mining on criteria such as matching community profile data to customer sales data and comparing to non-community customer sales or cross-tabbing verbatim comments with customer satisfaction measures are proven tactics for measuring success. However, the accuracy of the data and large data sets are prerequisites, and specialized expertise is required. Based on that, Sean felt Data mining was the most difficult tactic for most companies.

In response to audience questions, Sean felt that Claimed measurement was probably the most beneficial for smaller companies with limited resources.

All in all, this session was a good overview of the social media landscape and will provide a good basis for discussion with my clients who say "I think social media may be important but can it really impact my business".

Where are your clients on the social media journey?

2010 PR Lessons On How To Handle A Crisis

2011-01-11T12:31:00.000-08:00

We saw the positive results of an effective PR crisis plan almost 30 years ago with the famous J&J tampering incident. But the harsh memories of the financial and housing crises, coupled with resentment toward government and a growing public mistrust of all business, make the importance of a PR crisis plan today more important than ever.
In today’s online world, the 24/7 instant news cycle and the swift response potential of a skeptical and increasing militant blogosphere, require that your crisis plan should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis so that it can be implemented on a moment’s notice. That’s why I thought it would be helpful to review three key PR mistakes that made headlines in 2010 and gave us these important lessons:

Make sure you have a spokesperson for the company that will be seen as honest, transparent and sympathetic by the public both on and off camera.
Don’t try to minimize the problem or ignore public perception, because perception is reality to the perceiver.
Be ready to move quickly and decisively to repair public trust in your brand, and find a way to give the public “permission to believe” you have resolved the issue at hand.

Tony Hayward wanted his life back . . . but what about the millions of Gulf Coast residents’ lives and livelihood his company’s negligence disrupted?

BP’s image suffered a major setback with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, yet BP responded fairly quickly with ads showing their efforts to clean up the mess and “do the right thing”. One early commercial featured then-CEO Tony Hayward with a pledge that taxpayers would not be footing the bill for clean-up. Despite public skepticism kept fresh by daily media updates on the massive spill and memories of the Exxon Valdez travesty, public opinion remained somewhat positive toward the BP brand.

When Mr. Hayward traveled to Louisiana to survey the damage first hand, his prepared statement began with an apology. “The first thing to say is I’m sorry,” he told reporters. Unfortunately, his unscripted comments in response to reporter’s questions destroyed whatever goodwill remained for BP. When asked what he would like to tell locals whose livelihoods had been affected, his response that “We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.”

His answer angered locals and became a lead-in for news stories around the world. It wasn’t the first time that the British executive had caused anger with his comments. He had previously described the spill as “tiny” compared to the size of the ocean. He also asserted that the environmental impact of America’s biggest oil spill, and of the 950,000 gallons of toxic dispersant that have been used to treat it, would be “very, very modest.”

While the CEO is a natural, and normally good, choice as a primary spokesman during a major crisis, if he can’t be consistent as a reassurance to the public, he may not be the right fit. The key lessons learned in the BP story are to find a public face that can be empathetic and sympathetic to public concerns and who will be consistent and stay on script.

Steve Jobs tried to minimize the problem with the iPhone 4, and forgot an important CRM rule – the customer may not always be right, but ignoring their concerns is never a good idea.

Apple has had an unbelievable string of successes with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. But that streak ended when Consumer Reports said it would not recommend buying the iPhone 4 because its tests showed a hardware defect that caused the phone to lose reception when held a certain way.

Steve Jobs is thought to be one of the most savvy executives in U.S. business, but his refusal to accept that evaluation and his initial response that the problem was in the software and could be easily fixed was not his finest hour.

In a press briefing, Steve stated that “the iPhone 4 is using a very advanced new antenna system – a more advanced antenna than ever has shipped on a smartphone before." And, later in that same briefing, he said "looking at the data, we don't think we have a problem."

When negative comments continued to make news, Apple’s primary defense sought to transfer the problem to all phones. Official statements from Apple began by saying that “every phone's reception sucks when you hold it. Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone."

Eventually, Apple admitted the flaw and offered a free case to iPhone 4 users that alleviated the problem But this PR gaffe may have opened the door for Android phones to impact future sales. It certainly damaged the previously unassailable reputation and magic of the Apple brand.
The lesson here is obvious – always listen to your customers and if they are telling you something is a problem, don’t ignore their concerns.

Toyota initially drug their feet when faced with a quality issue, but when they finally responded, they focused on how they were changing their processes and introduced a new customer assurance program.

Toyota shook up the automotive world with a quality message that Detroit either ignored or could not match, and for 30+ years they enjoyed the benefits of that brand position. But in 2010, the car maker had to pay a $16.4 million fine for its failure to quickly disclose potential safety defects, and more recently was hit with $32.4 million in civil penalties for failing to properly disclose what it knew about safety defects. PR consultants say that Toyota was slow to respond and didn’t clearly explain the cause of the problem.

Experts now say that although Toyota has lost some market share, they are repairing their image with the help of ads that talk about their Star Safety Systems and showing that they are changing some processes that assign more engineers to monitor quality problems and extending time devoted to testing new models. Toyota execs now say that they are seeing the number of competitor trade-ins “returning to historic levels” and that customer loyalty shows “encouraging signs”.

The lesson here is to be prepared to respond on a moment’s notice, and don’t just say that you are fixing a problem, show your customers how you are doing it.

The overall lesson is that an unexpected corporate crisis is not a reason to panic . . . if you and your clients are prepared.

Does Your Brand Deliver On Its Positioning Strategy Every Day . . . Or Are You Just Faking It?

2010-12-26T08:24:00.000-08:00

Many marketers are asking the question “is brand positioning still relevant in the 21st century”? I've written on this topic before, and the majority of comments, both public and private, agree with me that positioning is still an important and viable tool in marketing. At the same time, almost all acknowledge that effective branding is much more difficult in a world where an angry tweet, critical blog post, or catchy YouTube video can cause serious damage to your brand image.

United Airlines discovered this during 2010 when their “friendly skies” were revealed as not so friendly by the YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars”, which has over eight million views (and counting). So did Maytag, Nestle, and others who saw angry, empowered consumers calling them out as branding frauds based on their actions.

But what caused that damage? Is it simply the availability of technology that allows a disgruntled customer to broadcast their dissatisfaction to large numbers of people? Or is it nothing more than poor brand management?

A brand that has been under fire this past year for major branding missteps is Toyota. Toyota shook up the automotive world with a quality message that Detroit either ignored or could not match. And for 30+ years they have enjoyed the benefits of that brand position. But all of that customer brand loyalty is now threatened because somewhere, along the way, Toyota managers failed to understand that a brand built on product quality must live that strategy every day to be successful.

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make is not realizing that branding happens in every interaction and point of contact between a company and its target customer. They work hard on their advertising and other external communications, but don’t understand that brand communication is much more than just what the brand manager and ad agency say about it.

It’s how your staff answers the phone, how easy the web site is to navigate, what message the packaging sends, the tone of the copy writing, and even, in the case of a retailer, how the store looks and where it is located. It’s the sum total of any and every experience people have with the company.

Consistency is a critical element of an effective branding strategy, and one brand that I have always admired for its belief in the power of delivering on expectations every day is McDonald’s. Every owner and manager must attend Hamburger University in Chicago, where they not only learn the operational aspects of running a franchise; they also study the importance of providing a consistent experience for the customer. Few customers would say that McDonald’s makes the best hamburgers, but the company continues to dominate the fast food marketplace in part because the customer knows what to expect. No matter where they are in the world.

This devotion to consistency was most apparent when McDonald’s entered Russia. McDonald’s execs felt that native Russian potatoes did not deliver the same crispness and flavor that McDonald’s is famous for serving. So they delayed their introduction into Russia for two years, imported their own seed potatoes, and waited until they got it right before opening the first restaurant. That is a great story and a great testament to the power and need for consistently delivering on every aspect of the brand promise.

Branding is a tough job. And it’s certainly not getting any easier when even the slightest misstep by anyone in the organization can have a snowball effect. But some brands get it right, by building on a platform that is truly representative of the core values of the company, solves a relevant need, and is consistent over time.

Has the Internet changed more than just how we buy, but also how we decide what to buy?

2010-12-07T09:02:00.000-08:00

McKinsey research on the Internet and its effect on our buying habits says "yes". The explosion of products, media alternatives and access to word-of-mouth experiences through social media and other Web 2.0 access points has created a radically new buying decision process.

The McKinsey study concludes that consumers no longer proceed in a linear "purchasing funnel" process when deciding to make a purchase. The funnel analogy has been a basic guideline for marketing thinking and planning for many years -- consumers start with a number of potential brands in mind (the wide end of the funnel) and then systematically move through linear stages of familiarity, consideration and purchase by narrowing the choices along the way to get to the one brand they ultimately purchase. It sounds logical, and has been until now.

Marketers and their agencies must acknowledge this new "consumer decision journey", as McKinsey describes it, and revise the focus of their marketing to be in the right place at the right time to reach consumers when their message is most likely to influence their purchases.

The first step in the buying decision is the same. The consumer considers an initial set of brands based on brand perceptions and exposure to recent touch points. It should be noted, however, that other research has confirmed that the initial consideration set is typically much larger than it might have been in previous buying decision based on the greater number of products and a decline in brand loyalty from a preferred brand to a preferred set of brands.

It's the second step in the buying decision that has been most affected by the web. Rather than narrowing the choices, the consumer enters an active evaluation phase where the number of choices may be dramatically expanded. Internet access to information from a variety of social media and other word-of-mouth touch points can have a dramatic effect on the brands that were initially considered, and those original choices can be easily replaced with more informed choices based on trusted input and evaluation.

This active evaluation phase shows a profound change in consumer response and requires much more consideration by marketers if they want to be successful. The traditional "push" marketing elements, that most likely affected the initial consideration set, can be easily modified by an empowered consumer who now takes control of the decision process. Today's empowered consumer actively seeks corroboration of previous brand impressions and new input from Internet reviews and other information sites as well as word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family and other trusted sources. The McKinsey report concludes that traditional marketing remains important, but argues that marketers must move aggressively to learn to also find ways to influence these consumer-driven touch points in order to remain in the consideration set.

Ultimately, the consumer selects a brand to close the purchase, but the McKinsey study shows that even this stage has seen changes. Their study places much greater closure importance on the impact of the in-store (or on-line store) experience as well as recollections of past experiences. They conclude that many purchases become a last minute decision.

Another important finding from this study is that the post-purchase experience has changed dramatically as well. Many consumers go online to conduct further research after the purchase, a stage never considered in the original funnel model. This post-purchase research can either confirm the wisdom of their decision, or have a significant impact on future purchases by exposing the consumer to new, previously unknown, alternatives.

This new knowledge on the "consumer decision journey" requires that all marketers re-evaluate their marketing programs to ensure that they are influencing and impacting consumers at every stage of the process. It certainly tells us that we must do everything we can to develop touch points during the consumer-driven stage of the decision process. For many marketers, this will require a mind-set shift from a reliance on buying media to a more balanced program that supports developing assets such as interactive web sites, mobile marketing, social media properties, and rich media applications that provide a way for consumer to learn more about their products and services.

This also presents a new challenge, and a new opportunity, for agencies to help their clients navigate these new alternatives to find the best solution for their brand. As I have said in previous posts, clients are not just looking for an agency to develop an ad or design a web site, they are looking for someone to help them build a bridge between the brand and their customer. Helping them understand how their customer reaches the ultimate purchase decision is an crucial ingredient in finding that bridge.

As marketers, we know that the Internet has dramatically affected the buying process for many products as online purchasing continues to grow at a dramatic pace. Preliminary results from this year's Black Friday and Cyber Monday online sales confirm this as fact, But we should also understand that the Internet has had a major influence on the buying decision process as well.

The complete McKinsey study can be accessed by following this link: http://tinyurl.com/yatjepz.

The New Importance of Customer Service As A Business Model

2010-11-29T10:33:00.000-08:00

Last week, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos .com, gave a record PSAMA luncheon audience of over 300 attendees an inside look at his own company’s approach to customer service, and says there is no doubt in his mind that “Delivering Happiness” (his description of customer service) is, indeed, a route to building a long term sustainable business.

Based on his New York Times bestselling book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, Tony shared his philosophy on why customer service and delivering the best customer experience for customers, employees and vendor partners can pay dividends. After all, he sold Zappos to Amazon last year for over $900 million.

But Tony is quick to stress that delivering a WOW customer experience is about much more than financial success. It’s about personal fulfillment and pride. It’s about having a passion for your job that builds a fierce loyalty to do the right thing every time. And it’s about having a company culture that strives to make every person in the company feel that they are part of something bigger than selling shoes. Happiness is a framework for business that can produce profits, passion and purpose both in business and in life.

At Zappos, they let their customers do their marketing for them.
Tony describes the Zappos approach to business this way, “at the end of the day, we aren’t in the selling shoes online business, we are in the stories and memories business. If we can create a WOW customer experience every time someone interacts with our brand, then those customers become our best marketing effort.”

To create and sustain that WOW experience, Zappos constantly asks these important questions:

What do customers expect?
What do customers actually experience?
What emotions do customers feel?
What stories do they tell their friends about us?

Answers to those questions led the way for Zappos to offer free shipping both ways and a 365-day return policy. It’s also why their website features a 1-800 number at the top of every page on the site. Tony says “we want our customers to talk to us, so we can build a relationship with them and better serve their needs”.

At Zappos, the telephone is their number one branding device.
A big part of the Zappos experience involves interaction with customers on the telephone. To make each call a special experience, there are no rules, no pre-set scripts, and no attempts to make calls more efficient by limiting the amount of time a call center employee spends on the line with the customer.

Zappos wants their customers to say “wow” when they get off the phone”. Tony offered several anecdotes on call center efforts to deliver that special experience to their customers, including a very funny story involving a 3:00 AM desire for pizza and the Zappos call center employee who took it upon themselves to find open pizza restaurants that would deliver at that hour. How many of your employees would go out of their way to satisfy a customer to that extent?

If we get our culture right, the WOW customer experience will follow.
Tony stressed more than once that company culture is the number one priority at Zappos. Their attention to maintaining a consistent culture begins with the employee interview process, which involves two separate interviews – one to determine skill set and a second interview to determine the cultural fit. They also offer five weeks of training before anyone is allowed to interact with a customer, so that everyone is on board with the core values of the company and how to express those core values to customers.

Tony related an interesting twist to their employee hiring process. Midway through the training period, employees are offered a $4,000 bonus to quit. That’s right. They will pay you to quit on the belief that if you are only working for the money, it’s unlikely you will be a good fit with the company culture.

Other culture builders include an annual “culture book” where employees are allowed to provide unedited comments on how they are “delivering happiness” in their own departments. And they also use Twitter to provide an opportunity for employees to get to know each other better and to share their experiences.

As he concluded his talk, Tony re-emphasized his belief that a strong, high touch customer service experience was a successful business strategy. But he also stressed that his message was not to adopt the same core values as Zappos in order to be successful. But rather, it was to say that it doesn’t matter what your core values are as long as you commit to them. That’s the real secret for business success.

So what does customer service and delivering happiness have to do with new business prospecting? Everything if you believe that the future of the agency business is a partnership with clients to help them build a relationship between their customers and their brands. Clients aren't looking for someone to do a new ad for them. They are looking for help. Smart agencies should know that help comes in many forms.

At Zappos, their secret to long term success is to deliver happiness through the best possible customer experience. What’s your agency's secret? Or is it a secret?

How marketers are using digital media to create a 24/7 conversation with their customers.

2010-11-15T14:34:00.000-08:00

At a recent PSAMA Executive Luncheon, I was able to get an inside look at how some marketers are leveraging customer insight and marketing technology to grow their business.

The presentation by Joel Book, Principal of the Marketing Research and Education Group at Exact Target, was titled “Fueling the Conversation: How Smart Marketers Use Digital Media to Attract, Convert and Retain Customers”. In addition to facts and figures on the growing power of email, social media and mobile marketing to attract customers and drive sales, it featured real world case studies to demonstrate how email is being integrated with social media and mobile marketing to dramatically improve response rates.

His discussion was based on what Mr. Book calls “The Triangle Offense of Direct Marketing” – email, social and mobile. Citing a 2010 study by Fair Isaac Corporation which concluded that consumer offers that are personalized, timely and relevant significantly outperform generic offers, he shared real world examples to show us how national and local marketers are using digital technology to deliver personalized offers to customers with dramatic results.

Email is the backbone of customer engagement.
Email is being used as an effective tool to reach customers at every stage of the life cycle. Whether your marketing goal is to attract, engage, convert, serve, renew or reward your customers, email has proven to offer tremendous value. A recent study found that 50% of consumers have made a purchase due to email.

Mr. Book shared eleven case study examples from national and local marketers demonstrating how email is being used to deliver timely relevant messages and offers. Some highlights of these studies included:

How Scott’s Lawn Care is using email and mobile apps to teach consumers how to use their products by delivering personalized targeted soil and grass treatment recommendations based on the geographic region of the customer.
How Best Buy uses a pre-planned series of three emails to build customer loyalty and purchase. Email #1 at the time of purchase provides education and help on how to set-up and use the item(s) you just purchased; Email #2 at 7-14 days provides special offers on accessories and services to complement or enhance the enjoyment of the item(s) you purchased; Email #3 at 21-28 days invites you to share your opinions to help other shoppers through reviews and ratings.
How Volvo Construction Equipment uses a monthly email newsletter to nurture leads, aid decision-making and support their dealer network.

Marketers are discovering new ways to integrate email + social media to fuel the conversation with their customers.
With 500 million active users on Facebook, 190 million active users on Twitter and 70 million active users on LinkedIn, social media offers a great potential to build relationships with current and potential customers. Case studies in this section of the presentation included a look at how Papa John’s Pizza uses email in combination with Facebook fans and special event sponsorships like NCAA March Madness to drive brand loyalty and sales. Other case studies showed how user-generated content is being used by an outdoor recreation service to build excitement for their river rafting trips, and how Whole Foods is using email and Twitter to deliver daily special offers by store managers for their local store and customer base.

Email + mobile can drive instant awareness and instant sales.
One of the more interesting case studies presented by Mr. Book was a test promotion at three Major League Baseball parks for Scott’s Lawn Care. Scott’s used direct response text messaging to drive subscriptions to their Lawn Care newsletter through an in-game announcement offering a free Groundskeepers Guide to anyone who wanted their home lawn to look as good as the outfield grass in the park. Fans were asked to text a special number to have the Groundskeepers Guide and newsletter waiting in their inbox when they got home that evening. Not only was that promotion successful in attracting new subscribers, Scott’s was contacted by a national home improvement chain to develop customized versions of their grass seed – Fenway Blend in Boston, Riverfront Blend in Cincinnati, etc.

Behavioral modeling allows email to deliver personalized messaging to drive retail sales.
In this section of his presentation, Mr. Book shared case studies from Best Buy, The Home Depot, Johnston and Murphy and others to demonstrate how analytics are being used to personalize offers relevant to consumer profiles and past purchases. He also made a strong case for using analytics to re-market to online customers who had abandoned their shopping cart without completing a purchase. He cited a January, 2010 study which concluded that 69% of e-commerce purchase transactions are abandoned before checkout completion and then showed findings from an MIT study which found that “real time re-marketing to website abandoners yields up to 50% conversion of those who had abandoned”.

Mr. Book concluded his presentation with a re-statement of his introductory premise –smart marketing today requires a 24/7 conversation with your customers. We are living in a new era of direct marketing where “serving has become the new selling”. As noted in a 2010 report from Booz Allen Hamilton, “The mix of media channels has shifted from a one-way broadcast model to a set of dynamic two-way media forums”.

Tomorrow’s most successful marketers will be those who recognize and respond to the need to market to a segment of one, with messaging and offers that are personal, relevant and timely.

Email, social media and mobile marketing offer a variety of ways to begin and carry on that conversation. Are you encouraging your clients to talk with and listen to their customers 24/7?

Understanding the post-crisis consumer.

2010-11-12T04:51:00.000-08:00

As marketers, we spend a lot of time and effort monitoring and analyzing the long term effects that technology will have on our media consumption habits. But I wonder how much time we’re spending monitoring and analyzing how the economic crisis will impact our buying and consumption habits?

The Wall Street slide, mortgage meltdown, jobless rate, etc. are obviously affecting our spending habits today, but what happens when all of the dust settles? Do we go back to our old ways of buying and selling in a post-crisis world that many feel will be characterized by a jobless recovery and more limited purchasing power? Or is this new economy creating a permanent shift in the way we evaluate and buy products and services.

That thought hit me this week as I was reading the just-published book, Spend Shift: How the Post-Crisis Values Revolution Is Changing the Way We Buy, Sell, and Live. Authors John Gerzema, Chief Insights Officer of Young & Rubicam Group, and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Michael D’Antonio offer an interesting perspective on what they term “a revolution in the making”. Their conclusions suggest that people are redefining their lives and reviving core values; things like hard work, thrift, fairness and honesty are enjoying a major renaissance. And that redefinition will have a lasting impact that marketers must take into consideration as they plan their post-crisis business strategy.

From mindless to mindful consumption.
To make their case, the authors draw on hundreds of interviews with social-science experts, CEO’s and entrepreneurs, as well as proprietary data from Y&R studies and their own observations and anecdotes from eight bellwether states. Their conclusion that the economic crisis has spawned a movement in society where the majority of American consumers are embracing both value and values isn’t really new news. We can see evidence in almost every business sector that purchase behavior these days is less about materialism and buying stuff for stuff's stake. The fact that our current economy has created a "less-is-more” impulse" among buyers has been well documented in the media.

The interesting part from a marketers’ perspective are their conclusions that consumers are also "voting for values with their dollars” and this rebirth of values is here to stay. In a well-written, insightful Foreword to the book, marketing guru Philip Kotler says this “values-led consumerism is not a small, isolated target market. Over half of the U.S. population is now embracing these value shifts”. He sees overwhelming evidence that consumers are buying into brands with meaning—brands with integrity, social responsibility and sustainability at their core. They are seeking better instead of more, virtue instead of hype, and experiences over promises.

The new consumerism is creating an unexpected side effect - optimism.
Despite declining economic power, consumers are actually wielding more power as these new attitudes require that companies improve their product quality and value to remain in the brand purchase consideration set. And an interesting side effect is a new found optimism and purpose for many people.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents from a national survey on “Changing Consumer Values” report they are happier with a more down-to-basics lifestyle. Eighty-eight percent report they buy less expensive brands than they used to, and report that possessions do not have much to do with how happy they are.

Interestingly, this sentiment of a growing aversion to status brands is higher among people who earn $100,00 or more who say that keeping up with the Jones’ has been a stress they don’t need or want. And I was surprised to learn that two very different generations - people aged fifty to sixty-four and the generation between eighteen and twenty-four- share the same aversion and interests.

A shift in spending is really a shift in values that marketers need to understand.
There can be no doubt that America is moving away from excess and debt-fueled consumption and towards savings and investment.

And from the scores of interviews and thousands of data points they have collected and reported on, the authors identify ten take-aways they believe the post-crisis values revolution has spawned that will change the way we buy, sell and live:

We are moving from a credit to a debit society.
There are no longer consumers, only customers.
Industries are revealed as collections of individuals.
Generational divides are disappearing.
Human regulation is remaking the marketplace.
Generosity is now a business model.
Society is shifting from consumption to production.
We must think small to solve big.
America is an emerging market for values-led innovation.
Everything will be all right.

Space limitations don’t permit me to expand on each of these points in this post. But I can tell you that I found each of these take-aways well reasoned conclusions from a very thorough and thoughtful approach to a complex issue.

And I believe, along with the authors, that all are changing the way we buy, the way we sell, and the way we live.

What's in a name?

2010-11-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

Shakespeare was wrong. A rose by any other name just wouldn’t be the same.

A recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek carried an interesting article titled The Twitter Effect: The struggle to create the next perfectly weird company name.

As I read the article, I agreed with the author’s premise that “the corporate name game” is difficult. There are more than a million names, slogans and logos registered at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. And, according to VeriSign, a global domain name registry, 11 million Internet domain names have been registered in the last 12 months, a 6 percent increase versus a year ago. VeriSign says that 193 million Internet domain names are now owned or in use.

So how does a company go about choosing a new brand name? The author chose Twitter as a brand name to illustrate his point that a brand name must be “weird” to stand out in today’s crowded marketplace. The author also cited Google, Verizon and Häagen-Dazs as made-up “weird” words that are successful brand names.

Where I disagree with the author, however, is that the name has to be weird to be successful. Different? Okay. Unique? Yes. But weird? Not necessarily.

I’ve always felt that a successful brand name carries something extra. It should communicate what the brand is about – it’s values, it’s benefits, it’s reason for being. Unless you have a lot of time and cash to seat the name in the customer’s mind, a name that carries some connotation of what the brand is about is essential.

Too many brands today are based on invented, meaningless words. A brand name that connects to a known idea and your brand promise is much more powerful.

Pollywog, a Minneapolis-based branding agency says this about naming a brand, “Unlike naming companies and consultants, we understand what a brand name needs—instant meaning, impact, emotional connections, nuance—to go beyond being merely an identifier to becoming a brand building force. Pollywog publishes an annual list of Best and Worst Brand Names. Here are their 10 best for 2009:

1. Rolls-Royce Ghost
Who would give a new product a name that reminds people of haunting, horror and death? Rolls-Royce bravely did when it introduced the 2009 Ghost. Though the name is likely a nod to the British automakers 1906 “Silver Ghost,” this is a car for the unapologetically intimidating, with a ride that’s smooth as mist drifting over a moor.
2. Droid
Verizon licensed this name from the “Star Wars” universe for the cellphone it hopes will lead a rebellion against the iPhone empire. Droid was probably worth whatever Mr. Lucas charged. It communicates extremely advanced technology, yet it’s familiar and a little bit cute—it makes the phone seem like a pocket-sized C3PO or R2D2. How could gadget geeks resist?
3. Mars Fling Candy Bar
At 85 calories per serving, Mars’ new candy bar aimed at women promises a brief, mostly harmless indulgence. Summed up by its fitting tagline, a Fling is “Naughty, but not that naughty.”
4. Hunch
This online decision-making tool learns about you through your answers to a series of preference questions. Then Hunch makes suggestions about what you might like—from movies to travel destinations to what you should eat for lunch. The name is apt, human and engaging, and it refreshingly under-promises the service’s accuracy.
5. Shard
Looking like a small, pointy chunk of metal, this new multifunction keychain tool from knife manufacturer Gerber is appropriately named the “Shard.” Though the Shard has no actual blade and is officially airline-safe, the danger implied in the name adds to its appeal and is likely a key factor in the flurry of online chatter from customers who can’t wait to get their hands on the soon-to-be released tool.
6. Envy
Only a laptop as slim, sleek, smart and sexy as this glossy-screened beauty from HP could pull off the name “Envy.” Even Apple may be turning a little green.
7. Fever
The first in a new category of drinks dubbed “stimulation beverages,” Fever claims to enhance feelings of euphoria and even stimulate the libido thanks to its mix of several herbal ingredients. The name communicates excitement and a physical effect on the body, without crossing into the risqué.
8. Thinair
Thinair is a wind turbine with just one blade. In severe weather, the Thinair turbine parks its blade horizontally, with the narrow edge to the wind to minimize damage. We like the slightly mysterious quality of the name and how it communicates the blade’s ability to effectively vanish from destructive winds.
9. Peek
The Peek is a pocket-sized device that sends and receives email and text messages. That’s it. No phone, no calendar, no music, no camera. A device with such limited capabilities needs a proportionately modest name. Suggesting a quick, casual look, “Peek” hits just the right note for customers who don’t want to fuss with complicated hardware.
10. SweetLeaf
Three stevia-based sweetener brands—Zevia, Truvia and PureVia—made our Top Ten Worst Brand Names of 2008 list because of the similarity of their unimaginative, contrived names. So it was nice to see SweetLeaf enter the market this year with a name that conveys “natural sweetener” using—duh!—natural words.

While I agree with their thinking on building an emotional connection to the brand and its benefits, I disagree with one of the brand names they listed as Worst – Bing. When I first heard the name Bing, I got a sense of immediacy and impact. I envisioned snapping my fingers. These are images that reinforce the basic brand premise, that Microsoft’s search engine does something specific . . . it gets you to the answer in a hurry.

So what do you think? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

The Battle For Your Inbox – Is Video Email the Next Wave?

2010-10-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

As email inboxes become more and more crowded, email marketers are being challenged to find new ways to increase open rates, engagement time and response rates. According to a 2010 study by GetResponse, email marketers are actively looking for new ways to integrate social media tools more effectively into their email programs as a way to break through the clutter.

Over 90% of respondents said that they planned to integrate social media into their email campaigns by adding sign-up forms on Facebook and other social media sites and through adding share options through their email messages. That same study predicted a dramatic increase in the use of video in their email marketing program, with over 80% of respondents indicating they would begin or expand their use of video emails this year.

The GetResponse conclusions on the growth of video were recently corroborated by a report released last month by the Web Video Marketing Council. The WVMC study identified these key findings on emerging trends and perceptions that will influence the increased adoption of video email marketing:

Online video is already being used by 73% of survey participants for marketing, and half are using video in conjunction with their email. In addition, 24% of respondents are considering the use of video in their email marketing programs.

There is a strong belief among marketers in the study that video increases email click thru rates. A large majority of marketers (73%) believe that integrating video with email marketing will increase click thru rates. Only 6% of respondents did not think that video would have a positive impact on click thru rates. The overwhelming positive perception indicates that more marketers are likely to include video with email marketing in the future.

Those same marketers believe that video also increases conversion rates and leads to increased customer purchases. Almost three-fourths of the marketers surveyed (73%) feel that video based email marketing is more likely to generate higher conversion and purchase rates than static content. Only 5% of marketers thought that video with email would make no difference or have a negative impact on conversion and purchase rates.

Most marketers in the survey believe that video email marketing is a wave of the future. Nearly all of the marketers surveyed indicated that video based email marketing was the wave of the future (52%) or were intrigued by the opportunity (44%). Only 4% of marketers did not think that video email marketing works.

Wayne Wall, CEO of Flimp Media (a co-sponsor of the study) agrees that video is a wave of the future. He offers this opinion of the future of incorporating video into online marketing programs, "The adoption of rich media web technologies will radically change the way corporations market, sell and communicate. In the next three years we will witness a broad shift from static text and graphic print and web content to engaging audiovisual and multimedia content, more viewer interactivity, and instant activity reporting and results measurement. As broadband makes web video available to a global audience, as well as a conduit for richer interactive marketing experiences, consumption of rich media content will reshape the direct marketing and communications industries as we know them today."

Despite this overwhelming belief in the potential power of video email, these same study respondents recognize that there are barriers and challenges to widespread implementation. Almost 80% said their email service provider does not offer a video marketing solution or they weren’t aware if they did.

They felt that ease of implementation and high cost of producing video assets were the primary challenges associated with using video for email marketing. Cost and availability of video content are likely related since video production can be expensive. The study concludes that as the cost of online video development decreases, more marketers will likely participate in video based marketing.

An interesting side note to the question of barriers and challenges is that 13% of marketers surveyed were concerned about the receptivity of consumers to video email marketing. This is something that should be studied in more detail as it will certainly impact how marketers approach video as a part of an integrated web marketing program.

A final finding from the study is that current practice is primarily limited to linking to a video landing page. However, most felt that embedding a video player in an email message would be a more effective way to use video with email when the technology becomes available.

My conclusion is that online video is a fast-growing digital marketing channel that should be looked at carefully by almost every marketer who wants to implement a truly integrated web marketing effort. These two studies indicate that many marketers are confident that video will grow and prove beneficial to their email efforts.

What about your clients? Are they using video in their web marketing programs? Is this an area that you can lead your client to build value as a partner?

What about your agency? Are you using video as part of your business development emails?

Are you catching the wave?

Microsoft hits a home run with Office 2010 viral campaign

2010-10-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

At a recent Puget Sound American Marketing Association luncheon, Jerry Hayek, Group Marketing Manager at Microsoft and Brian Donaldson, Group Account Director at Wunderman, gave a packed house an overview of the Office 2010 launch campaign. Jerry started the presentation with an overview of the challenges of introducing a new version of a product that is already in use by 80% of the world’s businesses. Their introductory program elements were, for the most part, what you would expect from a seasoned marketer with experience in launching new products – online and offline advertising, large scale events in 15 major cities, etc.

The real surprise of the presentation came in the form of an unexpected, and I daresay brilliantly clever, use of viral marketing to “influence the influencers”, i.e. developers, technical decision makers, and other IT professionals.

Responding to the challenge to find a way to speak to an important audience that is currently enamored with Google apps, iPads, Android and other sexier topics than Office 2010, Wunderman created a fictional company – The Allure Bays Corp. (ABC), complete with web site, YouTube channel, Facebook page and Twitter account. The company name originates from a broken-English Internet meme from 2000 "All your base are belong to us" (an inside joke reference that few outside of the technical sphere would understand and appreciate). But that’s okay, I’m not their target. And that’s what makes the campaign such a hit in my opinion.

The fake company's website www.allurebays.com is loaded with satirical videos that contain pop culture references and Easter Eggs (a new term for me, but one the tech audience knows well – Easter Eggs are hidden clues and content) that speak to the tech audience in a way that says “we get it”. A Twitter account was created to provide a venue for the tech audience to show off their skills to each other in deciphering clues and identifying the Easter Eggs hidden in the site and on the videos.

But Allure Bays is not just about a fun, clever game. Inside the videos are important messages about collaborating and communicating – two principal features of Office 2010.

A review of comments on their YouTube channel shows a mixed reaction among a notoriously difficult audience to reach and impress, but the majority of comments I read were positive. One of the responses to the Allure Bays campaign cited by Donaldson in the presentation described the campaign as "What happens when the marketing people at MS take acid and watch LOST? Allure Bays Corp."

Whether you like, or even understand the campaign, isn’t the point here since most of us aren’t in the target group for this element of the launch campaign. The marketing lesson, in my mind, is that this is a brilliant example of: (a) knowing your marketing situation and your target audience – how do you get an important tech audience to even notice, much less get excited about a new version of Office, (b) speaking to a highly, defined, technical target in a way they might listen to and appreciate, and (c) stepping way outside of the box in your execution.

There are a lot of sexy topics for techies to chat about, and I daresay that Microsoft Office isn't one of them. What is so interesting about this campaign is that it breaks through the clutter and makes Office 2010 a water cooler topic, love it or hate it. Hats off to Wunderman. And to the MS guy who fought it through the system.

If you want to see what MediaPost has to say about the campaign, visit their MediaCreativity blog at http://wndr.mn/u5mh.

I like this campaign. And I must admit I was surprised to discover that Microsoft has a sense of humor? The important lesson from this is that sometimes you have to adapt your style to speak to an audience in a way they will understand and appreciate. My hats off to Microsoft and to Wunderman for giving us a great case study on how to use viral marketing to make an otherwise routine introduction special!

How Mobile Is Your Client's Marketing?

2010-09-24T11:49:00.000-07:00

Email, social networks and mobile devices have become an integral part of our everyday lives. Just how much influence they have is apparent when you look at these facts from recent studies:
- 97% of US households use email.
- 75% of Internet connected homes use social networks.
- 91% of the US population uses a mobile device.
- 23% use a smart phone.

Mobile marketing gives your clients an opportunity to provide an integrated customer experience using all three - email, social, and mobile. But while social networks have been embraced by a majority of marketers, mobile marketing still lags significantly. Mobile marketing offers a great avenue for an agency to help their clients grow their business.

A new study from eROI, The Current State of Social, Mobile & Email Integration, provides a good snapshot on where marketers stand today, and offers some interesting insights on how marketers can better integrate mobile into their marketing strategy. Why should they consider mobile? As this study concludes, Once a good user experience and relevant content are present, consumer adoption is accelerated and, as history has shown, companies that are first to offer these things in untapped mediums typically benefit the most from them (think amazon.com, Apple, AOL, Yahoo).

So here are some of the findings from this study of more than 500 marketers that you can use to alert your clients to this opportunity:

Mobile marketing is often a forgotten medium by online marketers. The study found that mobile marketing integration into email and online programs is relatively low, and few marketers are putting much effort on this channel despite the growing adoption rates of mobile devices (iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Kin, Droid, etc.). Recent studies from Internet monitors predict that mobile Internet access will soon outpace PC access usage, so marketers must be prepared to adopt mobile or lose mindshare.

Only 1/3 of marketers surveyed consider mobile important. When marketers were asked about the importance of digital marketing experiences and the importance of an optimized mobile experience, only 31.6% said that mobile-optimized experiences matter for their audiences. Another quarter of respondents (24.6%) are currently testing, while the remainder said they just weren't sure or that mobile was not important.

When asked if their companies were measuring the use of mobile devices for their email subscribers, nearly two-thirds (63%) of respondents said no and another 11.5% were not sure.

Not surprisingly, two-thirds of respondents do not use mobile versions of their websites or landing pages.
Since the majority of marketers surveyed were unaware of their customer/ subscriber audience usage patterns, as it related to mobile, it is no wonder that 77% of marketers are not offering , or are unaware of, mobile versions of their websites (67.6% not using; 9.4% not sure). Of those that are offering mobile-optimized websites, 68% are providing limited versions of their websites and 32% offer their entire website in a web-optimized format.

Now is the time for agencies to encourage their clients to start experimenting with mobile to determine its relevance for their organization. Based on this study by eROI, it would appear that the best way to begin to understand the mobile web is to look at website analytics. As the opportunities for mobile marketing continue to expand, marketers need to begin to understand more about the mobile web and how their customers are using it. Providing the right content in the appropriate context is a basic rule of marketing. Not every marketer needs to provide a fully functional mobile website experience, but how will you know if you need it if you don't have a clue as to your audience usage patterns.

Many marketers unwittingly believe that the only way to do mobile right is to provide a custom application, and they are expensive to produce. But as web standards improve, there is a big rise in the use of mobile web over applications. Email remains one of the most popular mobile Internet activities not just by time spent but also by penetration. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 34% of all US mobile subscribers used email on their phone in May 2010, compared with 23% who used a social networking site.

The overall conclusion from this study is that marketers need to invest more time and energy to understand if the mobile web can contribute to their marketing program. Those who do stand a better chance at keeping pace with their customer's media usage. Those who don't may be left behind.

The full study offers other insights and opportunities on integrating social media as well. You can access the full study at http://www.eroi.com/online-marketing-resource-center/resource-center/

As I have noted in previous posts, many clients are simply overwhelmed by the new digital tools and how to use them to their advantage. In today's challenging marketplace, clients are not saying to their agencies, "How can you help us make ads or a new web site," they're saying, "how much do you understand about our business in order to help us build a bridge between our brand and our customers." The question is not just how to effectively use email, blogs, podcasts, mobile marketing, viral marketing, pay-per-click, user-generated content, Twitter, etc., but how to mix them with traditional media to create the most impact.

Understanding the potential value of mobile marketing is another way agencies can help their clients compete.

Are you helping your clients to monitor their corporate reputation?

2010-09-06T11:22:00.001-07:00

Are your clients doing a good job of monitoring and managing the online conversation about their company? Maybe this is an area where your agency can help them with a service they know they need but just can't afford to add the time and resources to properly manage.

In previous posts, I have discussed the need for agencies to broaden their service offering to clients and re-position themselves as more than just a vendor of ads. I have gotten responses to these posts that say they would love to help their clients in more ways, but too often it becomes an add-on cost without incremental income.

Managing their online reputation has become a critical need for many companies that simply can't afford to do it well. So here's an opportunity to approach your clients to add a new service (and build your relationship) for a small incremental fee -- monitoring the online conversation and managing their company reputation.

As we all know, the Internet and social media have shifted a significant amount of marketing power from the company to the general public. For many businesses, this is a terrifying prospect. As an example, a restaurant owner could be doing everything right, have one bad customer experience and end up with a negative review on Yelp or another review site. Just because their 19-year old server broke up with his girlfriend and is having a bad day.

On the Internet, peer reviews are increasingly important. According to a survey by the Opinion Research Corporation, eighty-four percent (84%) of Americans say online reviews influence their purchasing decisions. A negative review or disparaging comment can now be seen by hundreds, or even thousands of potential customers, and it can hang an albatross around your neck that never goes away.

On the bright side, positive reviews and happy clients are traditionally the best source of new business. That’s why it has become increasingly important for companies to monitor what’s being said about them online.

This is an opportunity for you to build a stronger relationship with your clients. By helping them with a problem that many know they have but just can't afford to hire additional staff to support, your agency can become a hero.

Popular sites like Facebook and Twitter have become essential components of many companies’ online marketing strategy, but there are hundreds of other sites where customers rant and rave about companies, products and services. The question you should ask your client is this: Do you know what they are saying about you?

There are a host of free and low cost social media monitoring services to help you monitor and manage the online conversation for your client. Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts are free services that allow you to select keywords and topics to track and receive email updates whenever they appear on the Web. They aren’t new tools and have some limitations on where they monitor, but they can still be useful for keeping an eye on search engine and blog activity and other mentions of relevant content.

More specialized monitoring services like Social Mention, HootSuite and Addictomatic track a broader range of social sites like Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, etc. Their function is to give you a more complete picture of online conversations and help you to organize this information better by aggregating all of this user-generated content into a single stream of information or dashboard.

Is your client aware of some of the newer monitoring and aggregation tools that focus on small local businesses, like Yext Rep? This company offers a real-time feed of what people are saying about them on Yelp, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, etc. as well as local sites like Google Places and Superpages - all on one dashboard as it happens.

Companies like Trackur, Radian6 and Viralheat offer a feature-rich monitoring package with more sophisticated services for a fee. These more robust service companies can offer greater appeal to a company with multiple brands and numerous keywords to follow. They can provide detailed analytics with comprehensive dashboards that show precise details (date published, source, title) as well as a summary of each item discovered. Their analysis can also allow the user to evaluate the potential influence of each blog or news site discussing your brand or company by measuring and reporting statistics like coverage, Twitter followers, friends, etc.

In addition to helping companies defend themselves and their reputation, keeping track of online mentions can create new marketing opportunities. For example, Radian6 users can drill down into several layers of detailed information on their profile results to segment comments by media type and geographic region. This data can help your client as a business-building tool by allowing them to tie this dashboard into their SalesForce.com database to create contacts and sales leads for the sales department.

There are many other tools and services out there that you should consider. These are just a few that I am familiar with. The important thing for you to understand is that you can help your clients, and make more money, by helping them monitor what customers, prospects, and peers are saying about their brand, their company, their industry, and their competitors.

Who’s talking about your client right now? Are their ears burning?

And for that matter, who's talking about your agency right now? Are your ears burning?

Going Head-to-Head With the Big Guys

2010-08-31T09:20:00.000-07:00

I've had an interesting Twitter conversation with Bob Sanders aka New Business Hawk this morning on his latest post "How can a small agency compete in new business". It's a good post and I recommend that you read it at http://bit.ly/b6s6tf.

My biggest takeaway from his article is that a small agency shouldn't be discouraged or defensive when pitching against a big agency - take the offensive. As Bob points out in his article, there are several obvious advantages that a small agency has over a larger agency - senior management direct oversight, faster turnaround, more responsive with fewer distractions, and lower overhead costs, to name a few. But there are other advantages that I've found can be capitalized on when selling against a big agency.

1. Look for ways to convince your prospect they will be a bigger fish in your pond. This is similar to the senior management oversight and other issues Bob listed, but can speak in a different way to your prospect. Senior management oversight, etc. is a practical way to address the quality of service a prospective client will get in a smaller agency with less bureaucracy. Being a bigger fish is more of an emotional factor. Every client wants to be important to their agency, so emphasize that importance in every way that you can by showing it during the "courting" process.

Make sure your senior execs are very visible throughout the search process. They need to attend every meeting and phone call, be a prominent part of the email chain, and even initiate contact on a regular basis to demonstrate that they are invested in the prospect. In my experience, the big agencies are saying the same thing, but don't always pay it off in their actions.

2. Build the relationship with the people who will actually service the account. Big agencies are most vulnerable in this area as many have a new business team that the client will seldom (or never) see again after they win the business. While this seems obvious to a smaller agency, I've found that the prospect is often seduced by the glamour and professionalism of the new biz team, only to realize after the fact that they won't be the ones to actually service the day-to-day activities on the account. Get every staff member that will be assigned to the account invested early and often, and merchandise that fact to the prospect. You don't need to trot them all out at the final presentation, but you should look for ways to involve them during the RFP and prep stages to give the prospect greater confidence that your agency will deliver on promises made.

3. Stress your creativity in areas that big agencies don't always pursue because they are below the line. In my experience, the bigger agencies still live in an outdated world that stresses above the line media over other options as the basis for a campaign. They will, most likely, include other integrated campaign elements in their thinking, but still rely on traditional media in some form as the base element(s) of their campaign thinking. This is a great opportunity for a smaller agency to demonstrate their attention and focus on doing what is best for the client, not what is most profitable for the agency.

4. Show the prospect how you can provide more value for lower costs. This may be obvious when discussing overhead costs, but another great way to demonstrate this fact is through production costs. Broadcast production is a great area to demonstrate your focus on saving the client money whenever possible. I've found that creatives and producers at bigger agencies always look at higher cost directors. Smaller agencies can seize on this fact as an opportunity to cast doubt in the prospect's mind. At my last agency, we made a point to emphasize that we look for ways to save the client production dollars by combining broadcast production and print production on the same day at the same site to create better campaign continuity and to lower session fees for actors. We also stressed smaller production crews and our focus on "rising star" directors who were less expensive but would still give us outstanding production value. I've also been impressed with Partners & Napier, an agency that used Six Sigma analysis to find ways to streamline the creative development process and thus save time and money for their clients.

5. Get creative with your financial package. And I don't just mean lower costs. Many big agencies talk a good game regarding incentive-based contracts, but few are able to actually find a way to get their corporate management or holding company to agree to implement. So standard cost-plus is still the basis for most of their contracts. At one agency I managed, we had many different contracts, but the most creative was a contract we negotiated with a long time client for a flat 20% of the advertising budget for agency income, and then used cost-plus for add-on projects that arose during the year. The client paid us a flat monthly fee as income so both sides had good cash flow planning in place. And the client saw all media and production bills at net cost with no mark-up. It worked because we had a great relationship with a client who was fair and honest with us, and because we managed that account very judiciously, our gross margin was north of 30%.

Small agencies have a lot of advantages to tout when facing bigger agencies. The key is to find which advantage can best neutralize your competition and then ride that horse to victory.

To Blog Or Not Blog Is Not The Right Question

2010-07-26T08:59:00.000-07:00

If an agency is going to offer legitimate advice to their clients on how to grow their business, social media must be a topic. So with humblest apologies to the Bard for my play on Hamlet's famous words, let's talk about the real questions your clients should be asking before they launch a corporate blog or upload a video to YouTube, or whatever social media they may think they want to use. Even if your clients are already using social media, it's not a bad idea to help them stop, take a deep breath, and really think through what they want to accomplish with the new digital marketing tools that are available.

Here are the real questions that should be asked when considering social media:

1. What is the goal for social media?
It is certainly logical to start with the big picture, but you would be surprised at how many companies say "let's start a blog" without a clear understanding and articulation of its value for their company and its role in an integrated communications plan. As with almost every new technology advancement, there are risks for companies that jump in without understanding what they are getting into.

If your clients are already using or considering how to use new technologies like blogs, podcasts, online video, wikis, widgets, etc. they need to make sure they know what they want to accomplish or they may end up using the wrong tool.

2. Who do they want/need to reach? Can social media reach that audience?
Technology has added a new dimension to analyzing and defining the optimum target audience. In addition to understanding their demographics and their psychographics, we also need to factor their technographics into the evaluation. How comfortable are target prospects with using the new technology tools? Do they have broadband access on their home computer if that's where they want to reach them? What new technology tools are target audience members currently using? How would they prefer to interact with the company?

Good marketing still requires the basics of understanding the target audience and the benefits their company (and your agency) can deliver.

3. What are the best strategies and tactics to reach this target?
This is a critical question that must be answered in order to optimize ROI. Notice that I used the plural "strategies and tactics", not the singular. In most cases, they should be considering multiple social vehicles, but before they jump in they should make sure they've mastered one vehicle before launching another. I believe that many companies that are failing or disillusioned with social media are simply trying to do too much at one time. They've launched a blog, added a Facebook page and Twitter account, are trying to monitor and evaluate, etc. with limited resources or without a realistic understanding and appreciation for the time and effort it takes to mount a successful program.

You should show them how to take advantage of the many free reports and white papers on social media for guidance on who's doing what. For example, in a recent post I referenced a new study from Hubspot that concluded that Facebook is more popular for a B2C company, while LinkedIn is used by more B2B companies. And, there are numerous case studies that show the effectiveness of Twitter for business.

Internet search can help you gain better understanding of the best strategies and tactics to consider for your client's social media program. Just type "social media research" into your search engine and see how many hits you get!

4. What resources are available and what do they need in order to implement an effective, on-going program.
Contrary to popular belief among many companies, social media is not a free alternative to traditional media, and you can do your clients a favor by making sure they understand this. It takes time, money and patience to use social media effectively, and these soft costs may not be as apparent and visible (especially to upper management) as a line item for the advertising budget. Too many companies jump into social media without understanding how much it really costs. There are many tools to help post on multiple sites and to monitor efforts and responses, but it will still require time on some one's part.

And it will require someone who understands the company and the audience, as every social media "expert" will tell you that content is king. So if your client thinks they can just hand it off to that recent college graduate who is more comfortable with technology than some of the older staff, you should advise your clients to make sure they not only understand the technology, but also know how to write well and can represent your company brand.

There are many other questions that come up along the way, but these are the basics for anyone who is considering starting or expanding their social media effort. And if your clients have been using social media for awhile, it never hurts to show them that you understand the importance of social media by recommending that they stop, take a deep breath, and analyze what they've been doing based on these questions.

Whatever your clients do, don’t let them make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse, as my dad used to say. Help them to know the basics of who they need to reach and what they want to accomplish before deciding which new technology to explore. Good marketing still requires good marketing, just like being an advisor to your clients on more than income-generating advertising can build relationships.

What's Hot and What's Not in Social Media

2010-07-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

Everyone's talking about social media today. How do I use it? How do I measure the ROI? Etc. Etc.

I've written more than one post about the importance of helping clients to navigate these new waters, and have had mixed reaction from my readers. The most common objection stems from the question of "why should an agency promote an area that doesn't represent a defined revenue stream". My answer to that argument is that if your agency doesn't find a way to help your clients understand these new tools, then another agency will. Agencies can do their clients a great favor by helping them to figure out if social media can help to grow their business. Here are some thoughts on how to do this.

I recently came across a report on The State of Inbound Marketing, published by Hubspot in February, 2010. The primary focus of the report is on the growing importance of inbound marketing tools for lead generation, including blogging, content publishing, search engine optimization, social media and social networks.

While I'm not in agreement with their self-serving conclusion that traditional outbound channels like direct mail, telemarketing and trade shows have become "less effective over time as buyers have behaviorally and technologically (e.g. TIVO, spam filters, "do-not-call" lists) tuned these interruptive campaigns out", no one can deny the growing power and impact of inbound tools, especially social media. Many businesses are aggressively changing their lead generation marketing efforts to explore and add programs that allow customers to find them.

Marketers who are actively engaged in, or actively exploring, social media can find many interesting conclusions in this study to help them plan their own approach. Here are a few that I found interesting and enlightening:

1. Company blogs are the fastest growing and continue to be deemed the most important lead generation service for their business, with 85% of users rating blogs as critical, important or useful. Almost half of the companies using blogs (46%) have acquired a customer from a blog-generated lead, the highest for any social media channel.

2. Twitter was ranked as the second most effective inbound tool for lead generation with 71% of users rating it as "useful or better". This was almost double the 39% of positive users in the 2009 study, and reinforces the belief by many "committed business Tweeters" that when Twitter is used properly, it can be a valuable addition to a marketer's toolkit.

3. Facebook ranked third in importance with 61% of users touting its importance, barely edging out LinkedIn, which had ranked third in the 2009 study. An interesting side note to this conclusion is that Facebook has been more effective in customer acquisition for B2C businesses and LinkedIn more effective for acquiring B2B customers.

4. Other reported inbound tools - StumbleUpon, Digg and MySpace - all declined in usage and perceived importance. MySpace has virtually fallen off the radar as a lead generation tool with only 10& of users rating the site as "useful" or better.

There are other interesting facts and conclusions in this report relating to cost per lead, lead generation budget allocations by category and company size, the importance of blog frequency, etc. You can download the full report and other useful information at www.hubspot.com/marketing-resources.

Whether you use this report, and other input, to help your clients undertand and utilize social media is up to you. If it were my agency, I would find a way.

Are You Helping Your Clients Position Their Brand In Today's Digital Marketplace?

2010-07-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

In previous posts, I've argued that the secret to new business success and client retention is to become an invaluable asset to your client's marketing team. That means you must help them in more ways that just creating advertising.

I recently saw an article in Marketing Management by Don E. Schultz, professor emeritus-in-service at the Medill School of Journalism. In the article, he argues that the concept of positioning espoused by Jack Trout and Al Reis in the 1970's is no longer valid in the 21st century. He cites several reasons for this hypothesis, but most prominent is his reasoning that "marketers don't control brand positions, concepts, images, or even experiences -- consumers do". He goes on to state that today's marketers have "only limited means to communicate with consumers today . . . to position the brand" and that "the brand manager's voice in the branding milieu is tiny and faint when compared to the branding experiences consumers receive from other sources -- such as peers, community groups, the brand's customer service group, the technical support experts, other employees, retailers, and distributors who are not even under the control of the brand manager or marketing department".

Professor Schultz concludes his argument with the question "does any of the brand baggage we've dragged into the 21st Century have any relevance or resonance today with us, our customers, or the marketplace?" Throughout the article, Professor Schultz makes it clear where he stands, which is evident with his description of positioning as "brand baggage".

An article like this can create a great opportunity for an agency to help their client or prospect succeed in a marketing environment that continues to change so rapidly. Professor Schultz is certainly right that the idea of one brand completely owning a position for all time in the customer's mind is outdated. But I don't think that idea was ever totally valid in the first place. Volvo has always been positioned as the epitome of safety, but that brand was never the only brand with safety features. So it never owned exclusive rights to that position.

Yes, things are different today than they were in the 1970's when the original concept of positioning was coined by Messrs. Trout and Reis. Yes, the proliferation of brands, sub-brands and line extensions has increased while the ability of marketers to reach masses of consumers has dwindled dramatically. Yes, there are new tools that all marketers should be exploring to discern how best to speak to today's customers.

But I've got news for you, Professor Schultz. The consumer has always been in charge.

When the marketing mavens in Atlanta tried to foist a new version of Coca-Cola on the world, consumers said no in dramatic fashion. The marketing business has always had its share of Edsels when consumers refused to buy into the marketer's attempts to position the product in the consumer's mind. Do you remember Quadraphonic sound, Apple Newton, Apple Lisa, PC Jr., the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, the USFL? These were all well-positioned, sure-fire winners until consumers said "no thanks".

So the idea that positioning is no longer valid for marketers because the consumer is now in charge doesn't resonate well with me. Nor do the arguments that marketers have limited means to communicate or that every exposure and every brand experience outside of the brand manager's voice and control is suddenly more powerful. The sum total of the actual brand experience has always been more powerful than the statements made in formal branding communications. And they always will be. The challenge for marketers today is to use that to their advantage.

No matter how wired the world becomes in the 21st Century, there will always be a need for marketers to try to position their product or service offering in the mind of the customer. There will always be a need for marketers to search for competitive niches and unmet needs, and to espouse the most salient benefits to a target group of consumers. Success, as always, will be based on whether expectations are aligned with the reality of the brand experience. And agencies can play an integral role in helping their clients define or refine their brand positioning to capitalize on the new realities of a wired world.

Is the concept of brand positioning different in today's world?
Yes.

Is the concept of brand positioning more difficult in today's world?
Absolutely.

Is the concept of brand positioning nothing more than yesterday's "baggage" and thus dead in the 21st century?
Absolutely not.

That's what makes this a great opportunity for an agency to become an invaluable asset to their client. And a great selling story for new business prospects.

What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

Will Changing Marketing Needs Require A New Agency Model?

2010-05-28T09:26:00.000-07:00

In the latest issue of Marketing News, Josh Bernoff (VP, Forrester Research) asks the question - Is Your Agency Relationship Past Its Expiration Date? He says it's time for marketers to rethink their agency's role, and then rethink their own.

Based on a new Forrester report titled "The Future of Agency Relationships", his premise is that in a stable media environment, agencies can specialize. Despite agency efforts to provide an all-in-one service solution, many marketers continue to have a silo-driven approach to their agency relationships -- an advertising or creative agency, an interactive agency, a direct marketing agency, a PR agency, etc. While this approach creates additional effort for brand continuity oversight and often some internal squabbling, it is the price marketers pay for getting what they believe are experts in each discipline.

According to Forrester Research, that approach works fine for a world where channels are relatively stable, campaigns have a beginning and an end, and customers respond to messages pushed at them. But that stability no longer exists. The number of channels continues to explode - today its Twitter and phone apps, but what will marketers need tomorrow? As word of mouth becomes more important and push marketing less effective, marketers will need a consistent, long-term relationship with an agency model that is more adaptive and understands the need to think more broadly than the current specialization model provides.

The new Forrester study concludes that with the rise of social media and digital proliferation, we are entering an Adaptive Marketing era. In this era, mass media is no longer the foundation of marketing communication, and will force a change in the expectations of what marketing agencies can and should deliver. Marketers will need agency partners that are more agile, can build long-term relationships with active customers and communities, and can use data to drive real-time decisions. The key needs marketers will require from their agencies are ideas, interaction and intelligence.

Agencies must think about ideas that not only build the brand, but will work across every appropriate platform. Instead of creating an idea and leaving it to other specialty agencies to plan and implement, creativity has to be collaborative so that all possible communications get considered at once. And as customers change, marketers and their agencies must change along with them.

Agencies must develop a framework for a new level of interaction with customers. Agencies have always been good at outbound messages, but have not played a similar role with inbound interactions. Smart agencies will need to adapt their approach in order to listen to online discussions, identify and connect marketers with their online social community, and build brand experiences that allow for interaction.

Finally, agencies must find ways to monitor and assimilate customer intelligence from multiple channels and be flexible enough to respond quickly to this information. Marketers and their agencies will need a more comprehensive view of quantitative and qualitative information and insights in order to react in real time and across channels to maximize efficiency. The resultant need for even more data than marketers currently have will require a shared role in evaluating and recommending strategies and tactics.

The Forrester report predicts that these changes will have consequences for both parties. Specialty agencies will need to rethink the depth and breadth of their service offering if they expect to meet this new level of need based on ideas, interaction and intelligence. At the same time, marketers will need to reconsider their own role and a new level of marketing collaboration with their agencies and this will surely require a re-evaluation of the current compensation model.

Forrester predicts that successful marketers will need to focus more on long term relationships and on speedy, adaptive actions that take advantage of the fluid nature of consumer attitudes and responses. And if agencies continue to only deliver silo-based expertise rather than ideas, interaction and intelligence, they will soon be replaced by a new agency form that meets this need.

What do you think? Does this new model sound feasible to you? What other things will have to change to make this model successful?

Adding Value - A Facebook Primer For Retailers

2010-05-21T06:39:00.000-07:00

In previous posts, I have discussed two powerful strategies to gain new business - presenting new ideas to build a relationship and helping to guide clients and prospects through the often murky waters of the new digital marketplace. Here is an example of a recent value-added document I produced for a client to help him integrate Facebook into his marketing program.

A FACEBOOK PRIMER FOR RETAILERS

Are you a retailer who has finally acknowledged that social media is not just a fad but a legitimate marketing tool? You might already have a Facebook page, but do you really understand how to use it to build your brand and your customer base? Are you confident that you can tap into 400+ million users who spend an average of 55 minutes every day checking out the activities of their friends and browsing for info and interaction with companies they trust and appreciate?

Here are seven practical tips you can you use to help you along the way:

1. Before you start anything, write down the objectives of your social media program and specifically how you plan to use Facebook to build your brand identity and customer preference. This sounds simple and logical, and has been repeated by almost every social media proponent. Yet clients still come to me and ask “can you help me set up or improve my Facebook page?” without a clear objective in mind.

Too many retailers and small businesses have jumped into FB on the assumption that it was a cheap way to advertise, only to be frustrated and confused about whether their efforts are bearing any fruit, and disgruntled that it takes up so much of their time. The truth is that it’s not free, or even cheap. Time is money in any business. And it will take someone’s time to effectively use FB or any social networking effort. So you might as well think it through first; determine what you can and can’t accomplish, who in your organization has the time and talent to devote to the effort, and how you plan to monitor and measure the program. Just like you would do for any other element of your marketing program.

2. “Companies they trust and appreciate” is an essential concept that must always be uppermost in your mind. In everything you do on Facebook, you should be transparent, honest, listen before you engage, and add value to the community. FB is not a push medium. It is an opportunity to have a two-way conversation with your customers. If you don’t respect your customers by adding some value to their spending time with you, they won’t respect you. And many will tell thousands of their closest friends not to respect you either. An addendum to this point is that retail brands with social media campaigns must be increasingly sensitive to the privacy of their customers. This is especially important in light of growing public scrutiny of some missteps by FB corporately on how they are using the information many users innocently added to their profile.

3. Your Facebook page is not just another shopping website for your company, but it can work like one if done right. Users come to a FB page with a different mindset and objective. Most people visit a retail website to gain information or to shop. FB users come to interact – with friends and family or with companies they trust and appreciate (see above). It’s okay to offer a shopping option on your FB page, but if that is the sole thrust of your effort, you will alienate many potential “fans” and not use FB to its true potential.

1-800-FLOWERS.COM offers a good example of walking the line between shopping and interaction. Their Facebook page allows fans to share their favorite flowers and send virtual bouquets to friends, but also to browse flower arrangements and send actual flowers to their friends without ever leaving Facebook.

But that’s not all they do on their site. Wall posts introduce special promotions, offer information about specific flowers and engage their fans with conversation starters to encourage response, e.g. what do you think is better for cheering up a sick or injured friend – flowers, gift baskets, balloons, or something else?” They also invite fans to post pictures of flower arrangements they have received and to comment on the occasion.

Shopping and selling is not verboten on FB, but it must be done in a way that fans see as a natural course of action based on interactions with the company.

4. You can engage and reward your customers and build your “likeability” through polls, contests and other giveaways. Several companies have used a “Cutest Baby” contest to not only solicit entries, but also to encourage the sender and others to solicit votes to determine a winner. In the process, they have gained awareness and fans. If you give your fans an incentive to associate themselves in a positive way with your brand, you can grow that trust and appreciation discussed earlier in this post.

Disney recently offered a great example of providing a traffic-building incentive with their “Give a Day. Get a Disney Day” promotion. Through Facebook and other media, Disney encouraged their fans to celebrate the spirit of giving by volunteering for one day with any local non-profit to win a free day at any Disney park. Their plan was to give away 1 million free passes throughout 2010. Instead, they reached the 1 million mark in only 10 weeks.

5. Cause marketing is an integral part of the Facebook culture, so a great strategy is to partner with causes your customers care about. Don’t just think about driving traffic to your site or encouraging your fans to come into your stores to redeem their coupons. The Facebook culture is steeped in sharing causes with friends, and users have a great appreciation for companies that support worthy non-profit causes. You can take advantage of that pre-existing mindset by sponsoring a cause your fans will appreciate and by creating a way for them to interact with your brand in the process.

Target found a creative way to use cause marketing this past Valentine’s Day to encourage fans to send their love via a Super Love Sender e-card to one of five listed charities. Target responded by donating $1 million to those non-profit groups based on their percentage of response. St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital was the primary beneficiary with almost 50% of the donations, but Target is reported to have gained almost 170,000 new fans.

6. Take your conversation and interaction offline by promoting events but look for ways to draw them back to your page. Using Facebook to promote in-store or other offline events is a natural, but one key to success is to find a way to sustain the event in order to promote fan interaction and discourse. In 2009, Ben & Jerry’s introduced a new packaging innovation they call Flipped Out. They used their Facebook page to promote a city-by-city national tour that was successful in gaining trial, but also kept their fans talking and sharing tips for several months.

7. One final tip is to make creative use of the tabs to direct your visitors and fans to specific pages you want them to visit. The majority of successful Facebook pages continue to use the Wall and Info tabs as presented in the basic FB format, but them rename and reconfigure other tabs to take advantage of ways to build interaction with the people who visit their page. A common tab is for Photos, to encourage users to submit their own photos, but other tabs can range from specific Shopping pages to New Products. A good strategy here would be to see how your Facebook pages can complement your website interaction approach. The important thing to remember is that your Facebook page is a two-way conversation, not a one-way push. So make tab changes that promote user interaction with your customers’

As it is with any element of your marketing program, creativity rules. And the newness of the Facebook experience offers many opportunities to try new things. I’ve given you some examples of how other retailers and companies are incorporating FB into their marketing program. But let me repeat something I said at the beginning of this post. In everything you do on Facebook, you should be transparent, honest, listen before you engage, and add value to the community.

The most important element is to add value to the time they spend with you on your FB page. If you respect your customers and make it beneficial in some way to spend time with you, they will respect you. And that has always been the first step in driving a customer to any store.

Optimize Your Elevator Pitch To Win More New Business

2010-05-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

When was the last time you updated your elevator pitch? Do you even have a formal elevator pitch? If you haven't sat down and thought it through lately, or if you just wing it on the spot, you could be missing prime opportunities to grow your business.

Most companies know the concept of the elevator pitch, and even practice it to some degree. But, in my experience, very few companies use this important new business tool as effectively as they could or should.

Here are five ways to take greater advantage of this tool:

1. Be prepared to tout your unique benefits, not your attributes.
As a member of several business associations, I regularly meet people at luncheons and other networking events and the variety of ineffective answers to the simple question "What is your company all about?" never cease to amaze me. Two common answers are "we make widgets" and "we serve the (your industry here) industry". Neither are very stimulating or motivating answers because they tell me your attributes, with no hint of the benefit of your company over competitors.

Many who do try to tell me the benefit their company provides often use the generic phrase full-service solutions provider in their answer. I suppose this does separate you from some companies, but a quick search on Google has over 82 million companies using that exact phrase in their web copy, so how unique are your benefits?

Since many of the people I meet are in their company's marketing department, or are entrepreneurs with their own company, these answers make me want to scream. You have an opportunity to "sell" your company to someone who was interested enough to ask. Be prepared to tell me what makes you unique in a world overrun with similar competitors by telling me your benefits, not your attributes.

2. Be prepared to adjust your pitch to your audience.
As a business development consultant, I work with both ad agencies and companies to help them be more effective and efficient in their marketing efforts. If I'm at an Ad Club meeting, my benefits are focused on positioning the agency, building a better target prospect list, and more effective RFP's and presentations. If I'm at a marketing association meeting, I still talk about positioning, but the benefits of my consulting practice are focused on corporate brand values, audience segmentation and target insights. As an independent consultant, I also promote the dual benefits of time and cost efficiency to both audiences.

In both cases, I am constantly refining and updating my story to take better advantage of the opportunity. By staying abreast of what people are most interested in knowing, and understanding the basic benefits I can deliver, I can adjust the framework of my company story to match the situation and the audience.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned as a consultant for the past five years is that you never know when an opportunity will arise from a chance encounter. The person you are talking with has other friends and acquaintances that might also be opportunities, so I never want to miss a chance to spread the word about my company and its benefits.

3. Be prepared to give your audience permission to believe.
Everyone knows that it's a tough market right now, but it has always been tough, and will always be tough. A good elevator pitch should automatically build in some statement(s) to give the audience permission to believe that what you say about your company is true.

I will always incorporate my background and experience to lend credence to my story. When I can give a specific category or company example of a project I have worked on, my benefits story is dramatically strengthened. I have also learned that when speaking to a Gen Y or Millennial, I always reference my blog and Twitter handle to reassure them that even with gray hair I am actively engaged with today's technology.

4. Keep everyone in your company informed and engaged in touting your company's benefit story whenever they can.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to only arm senior executives, or business development staff, with an understanding and appreciation of the company's elevator pitch. Everyone in your company has the potential to help your business development efforts, even that new trainee or summer intern. We all have family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances who know other people. Maybe that summer intern lives next door to the CEO of company that could use your services. Or maybe their parents belong to a club or association or go to church with someone who could benefit from buying your company's products or services.

The important thing to remember is that you never know who, how or when an opportunity will present itself. My recommendation is to invest all of your employees in the new business process by touting their potential importance and arming them with the right benefits to promote when they can. In my experience, younger people are often more enthusiastic than experienced veterans when talking about their company and its benefits, so why not take advantage of that exuberance.

5. Read any good website copy lately?
A final thought on building a better elevator pitch is directly related to your website copy. In today's digital world, nearly every company relies on their website to interest and entice customers. Your website is a written version of your elevator pitch, but too often sites are homogenized with buzzwords, platitudes and jargon that does little more than fill space.

Remember those 82 million companies that use the exact phrase full-service solutions provider? Would you believe that Google shows 224 million entries for full-service advertising agency? Quick, go look at your website and then see how many other companies are using the exact same words you are using. I think you will be surprised, and somewhat dismayed, at the answer.

If you subscribe to Inc. Magazine, you should check out Jason Fried's column in the May issue. His article is titled "What's Your Point? and his sub-title says it all "Nearly every company relies on the written word to woo customers. So why is most business writing so numbingly banal?"

Perhaps the same statement could be made about the elevator pitch. Think about it!

Creating a Point of Difference to Grow Your Business

2010-04-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

The two biggest complaints I have heard most often over the years from clients are that "all agencies are pretty much the same" and "agencies don't understand what we really need". They don't see much differentiation because (a) there isn't much, and (b) our points of difference aren't relevant to client needs. The March, 2010 issue of Fast Company profiles two agencies that have taken very different avenues to build relevant differences in their agencies that are paying off with big-time success.

Grey New York won 17 of 19 new business pitches in 2009, and operating profits were up 44%. Those are astounding numbers at a time when ad spending was down 11%, and industry insiders and media observers were chanting a collective "woe is me" mantra for our industry.

So how did they do it? Well, certainly their creative output was no slouch, with highly touted campaigns for E-Trade, BMW, DirecTV, Ketel One vodka and the NFL, among others. But two moves strike me as much more significant from a positioning point of view in new business.

First, the new chief creative officer, Tor Myhren, moved his entire creative team from elaborate, posh offices into a plain brown cubicles, signaling a dramatic change in how Grey would approach business both internally and externally. Second, Grey expanded their in-house production department, allowing it to produce TV and Web spots quickly and cheaply, rather than outsourcing.

These two changes in business philosophy aren't earth-shattering from an innovation standpoint (almost any agency could make similar changes tomorrow), but they are significant from a client's perspective. They demonstrate to clients that Grey understands their need for less fluff and more meat. Not to mention that clients want things faster and cheaper than ever, and if their current agency isn't listening to that cry for help, someone else will.

Partners & Napier, a mid-size shop headquartered in Rochester, NY, with offices in Atlanta and San Francisco has seen billings grow by 300% in the past five years. Several factors have contributed to this impressive growth pattern, but their most innovative move was to adapt their business model to their client's needs for cost control and demonstrated ROI rather than fighting it.

While the rest of the industry was bemoaning the rising influence of procurement departments at clients, and predicting the death of creativity in a business driven by costs, Partners & Napier responded to a client request by applying for and earning ISO 9000 certification. Through an intensive six-month study and documentation of all steps in the creative development process, they have adopted a Six Sigma-type approach to reduce inefficiencies in the creative development process.

The result has been a reduction in wasted time in all steps of the creative development process. A job that might have taken eight weeks can now be completed in three weeks, while saving the client approximately 40% and increasing productivity for the agency.

Chief creative officer Jeff Gabel says he likes the new system because it has given his team more time to create big ideas by reducing the important but "ancillary grunt work" leading to ideation. And CEO Sharon Napier likes it because they now have an innovative point of difference that is being used in win more new business.

Two approaches - one relatively simple to execute, the other more difficult but still doable with the right commitment and funding. Importantly, both demonstrate an understanding and willingness to respond to changing client demands.

And from a new business perspective, two new ways to create a point of difference for your agency that is relevant to current and potential clients! After all, we are in a service business, aren't we?

Three Ways to Build Trust and Service in Business Development

2010-04-19T10:35:00.001-07:00

Last week, I worked on a branding project for a very successful retail furniture store in Atlanta, and I was struck by how important trust and a real commitment to service have become in today's world. To kick off the project, I conducted one-on-one Discovery Interviews with management, retail floor staff, a few customers and even one of their suppliers. Later during competitive store checks, I saw firsthand how the wrong approach to service can backfire and negate what might have been a sales opportunity. These two facts were driven home time and again - trust is in short short supply these days and a true commitment to helping your customers/clients can be the "secret sauce" for success.

In today's business environment, almost every conversation seems to begin with skepticism. "What's your agenda and why are you really being nice to me?" seem to be the first reaction to any interaction between staff and customers.

My interviews with the staff confirmed that a large part of their success is built on how they approach and treat the customers. Unlike many furniture stores, they don't wait at the front door to pounce on you. They do ask if they can help, but if you want to browse you are welcome to do so alone. Almost all shoppers immediately reply "no, thanks", and when asked why, most admitted that they didn't want to be "sold on something I don't want or need". Think about the hard-sell approach you may have experienced in visits to retail stores (and car dealerships) where the commission-driven salesperson hovers nearby, even when you ask them not to do so.

I wasn't surprised at this fact, but was blown away by how successful this small furniture store has been by using these three simple principles when dealing with customers:
1. Ask and listen.
2. Take time with the customers, even if they aren't buying today.
3. Be a resource.

Listening has become a lost art.
Too often, our listening is really an opportunity to think about and plan our next response, even before you have heard everything. Too many companies (especially ad agencies) are on "Send" and not "Receive".

Even when you are trying to listen, you must be careful how you respond. Years ago as a junior account manager, I would try to anticipate potential questions or objections before making a recommendation to my client. I would discuss those questions and potential answers with the art director/copywriter/account planner, or whomever I was working with at the time. When my client raised a question, I was there with a ready response.

One day, my client erupted and said "Dammit Don, why do you always have a quick answer to every question I ask?" My dumbfounded and innocent response was that "I thought you might ask that, so I discussed it with the art director/writer/planner/etc. and this is why we are recommending this particular action". I learned a valuable lesson that day. You must not only listen, you must make sure they understand that you are listening.

Spending time with a customer/client sends a positive message.
In the case of my furniture store client, they not only listened, they encouraged the customer to understand all of the pros and cons of each brand and item they were shopping for by spending time with them to field questions and offer suggestions. Even when they didn't purchase, or intend to purchase that day. As the owner explained to me, "the average customer makes 2-3 visits before they purchase. If we treat them this way, and they visit a competitor who doesn't, we've won a customer and potentially everyone they come in contact with from now on".

I saw how smart that approach was firsthand, when I visited his two biggest competitors and was basically ignored (even though no other customers were in either store at the time and I had acknowledged that I didn't know a lot about the brands or their benefits). In one of those stores, I asked some specific questions about two brands and asked for some information to take home to my wife. Her response was a pre-collated handout of materials for brands and products I had not asked about.

Be a resource, and not just a commodity they buy.
One staff member said to me in our interview "I feel great when a customer says "thank you" and I know they really mean it because I helped them make a smart decision". There is no question that it takes more time to listen to your customers and spend the time needed to understand their needs so that you can help them understand how your product or service can meet those needs. But if you build a relationship that they trust, they will reward you with their business. And by telling their friends.

Maybe to many of you, this is nothing more than a BGO (blinding glimpse of the obvious). To me, it was a strong reminder of how important trust and service have become in a world where both are in short supply.

Digital Technology Requires Changing Your Mindset and Model For Business Development

2010-04-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

As the Web continues to impact the consumer decision journey and create a permanently altered landscape of empowered consumers and 24/7 brand interaction, some agencies have accepted this new reality and adjusted their approach to new business development. Others haven’t, and apparently need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into today’s world.

I continue to be amazed at the number of agencies who treat digital communication tools, especially social media, as a secondary, or even tertiary, consideration for their clients and prospects. Even though their clients have moved beyond them and are increasingly seeking ways to engage their customers at every step of their interaction in the brand decision process.

Agencies have traditionally focused their efforts on push-driven brand marketing to woo consumers when they first consider products and on promotional efforts at the point-of-sale to influence them as they are about to make a purchase. That approach assumes that customers move through a traditional decision process (commonly viewed as a funnel) that starts with evaluating alternatives through input from past experiences, brand messages and word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, then narrowing their choices and making a purchase decision.

Digital technology is changing all that. Consumers now read online reviews, compare features and prices on multiple web sites, and discuss options with total strangers on social networking sites. This information flow creates a new decision process where the evaluation of purchase options can grow exponentially as new input is accessed. Recent studies have indicated that while consumers enjoy this new empowerment for the most part, many are simply overwhelmed and want marketers to help them make smart decisions. They just don’t want to feel subjected to a hard sell. They demand a two-way relationship that is divorced from a one-way, company-driven sales mentality.

Agencies must development a new mindset about what their clients need and build a new model to meet that need.

This doesn’t mean that agencies should abandon traditional media. Despite the numerous predictions of the death of television, it is still the most pervasive and powerful communication tool a marketer can use. What it does mean is that agencies must begin to treat digital media tools, and especially social media, as something equal in importance to traditional media.

Too many agencies have stood by and watched their role and value decline with their clients as specialty digital suppliers have grabbed this turf and diminished their importance in the marketing hierarchy. It’s time for agencies re-evaluate their organizational structure and compensation models. It’s time for agencies to invest in social media through blogs and other digital tools. It’s time for agencies to re-define their role with clients and prospects as more than a creative and production vendor.

Clients need ideas that will transform their business like never before, and now is the time for agencies to step in as a partner in setting business strategy, designing products and services to meet changing customer needs and wants, and creating new revenue models for their client and for themselves. Clients need help in keeping up with the increasing availability of new digital tools and how to use them to their advantage.

Clients need more than new ads and a new web site; they need to know the best ways to build a bridge between their brand and their customers. But that need is not just how to effectively use email, blogs, Twitter, mobile marketing, viral marketing, pay etc., but how to mix them with traditional media to create the most impact and build brand advocates.

It’s time for agencies to develop a mindset and model that truly meets these new client needs. If we don’t, the agency business is doomed to becoming a second-class citizen in the marketing community. And that would be a shame for an industry that grew up with heroes like Leo Burnett, David Ogilvy and Bill Bernbach.

A New Role for Ad Agencies in Today's Marketing Environment

2010-03-23T04:02:00.000-07:00

The primary role for ad agency execs used to focus on talking to clients about how to say the right things in a creative and engaging way. The typical account manager spent most of his time thinking about how to send messages, e.g. what do we need to say to persuade people to buy our product or service?

Today that same account manager should spend the majority of his time talking to clients about how to build relationships with their customers -- what do customers need to know to make smart decisions? how do we reach customers on the go? how do we help customers share their experiences with their peers?

This is not a new message for a digital agency. Every advertising conference for the past ten years has predicted that the future is in building customer experiences, not just in producing great advertising. But it's time for every agency to recognize and understand the impact this change is having on the role all advertising agencies can, and should, play within client organizations.

As I have noted in previous posts, many clients are simply overwhelmed by the new digital tools and how to use them to their advantage. In today's challenging marketplace, clients are not saying to their agencies, "How can you help us make ads or a new web site," they're saying, "how much do you understand about our business in order to help us build a bridge between our brand and our customers." The question is not just how to effectively use email, blogs, podcasts, mobile marketing, viral marketing, pay-per-click, user-generated content, Twitter, etc., but how to mix them with traditional media to create the most impact.

There is no question that the new digital environment opens opportunities to redefine and expand the role agencies can play with their clients. Clients are dealing with a laundry list of challenges – a rebounding, but still sluggish economy, competition from companies and places that they never dreamed would impact their business, a continued drive for lower costs, and perhaps, most frightening of all, a growing realization of the power that a connected consumer has over their business strategy and success.

Clients need ideas that will transform their business like never before, and now is the time for agencies to step in as a partner in setting business strategy, designing products and services to meet changing customer needs and wants, and creating new revenue models for their client and for themselves.

This is, indeed, a new role for agencies. It will not only require new skills, it will demand that agencies expand their definition of what it takes to be a great agency. The agency of tomorrow will truly understand how to help their clients find the ideal marketing mix of creative, technology, media, user experience and analytics.

This new role for agencies is frightening to some, but is a great opportunity for all who embrace it to its fullest extent.

The Secret Weapon in New Business - Your Staff

2010-03-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

Are you taking advantage of one of the most powerful new business tools you have -- your employees? Many of the agencies I have met with fail to take advantage of this important resource.

When I work with an agency on their new business program, I make sure that everyone in the company is invested in and trained in new business. One of the first questions that should be addressed is this: Do all employees understand the role and responsibility they have in growing the agency?

New business development should not be limited to the new business AE or the executive suite. Everyone can, and should, contribute to promoting the company to prospective new clients. And that requires training, motivation and regular encouragement.

Are you training your employees to make them an effective new business tool for the agency?
Do they understand the goals of the agency? Do they understand how the agency is positioned and why this is an important benefit for clients?

Do you have an easy to remember "elevator speech" that all employees know, understand and feel comfortable in relating to others? If you don't, you should. If one of your employees meets someone and is asked what they do for a living, could they/would they give an answer that might help the agency develop a new client?

I always remind the staff at my agency clients that you never know who the person you are speaking with knows, or lives next door to, or went to school with, or sits on a board with, or goes to church with. So arming them with a canned, but conversational, answer to the question "what do you do for a living?" can be an important asset to your new business program.

Do you have a defined process for reporting leads to agency management?
It is not only important to train your staff to know and say the right things about your agency, they should also understand how to develop potential leads. They should know who to tell and why. They should recognize the important role they can play in developing a lead.

Keeping them involved in some way is a valuable way to build on the initial introduction to the agency. They should have access to additional materials and input to strategic decisions that can help to sell the agency's benefits to prospective clients. It is important for the employee to be kept in the loop if the new business team takes over the process as they can play a valuable role in evaluating next steps.

Is there a formal incentive program to encourage employees to participate in developing new business for your agency?
I've worked with agencies that offered financial incentives for leads, but, quite honestly, I don't think they work that well. The most powerful incentive I have seen is simply public recognition for their efforts. This is especially effective with Gen X and Gen Y employees, who function best when they receive continuous feedback and peer recognition for their efforts.

One agency I know has a monthly "Sterling Staffer" award that is used to recognize an employee for exemplary service to the company at monthly staff meetings. If your agency has a similar program, you should nominate or elect someone, whenever possible, that has been instrumental in helping to land a new client or additional business from an existing client. And if that recognition is supported by an additional incentive (like an extra day of vacation) it will make the program even stronger.

You should never forget that effective training and use of staff in new business requires a continuous effort to encourage everyone to be aware of their role in helping the agency grow. Make your staff a secret weapon that dramatically increases the reach of your new business efforts and your agency will reap the rewards!

Successful Marketing Still Begins With Understanding Your Target Audience

2010-03-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

Last week, I was reminded that successfully using today's digitally-focused marketing tools must still be based on a smart marketing strategy that understands and appreciates the target customer. Rod Brooks, CMO for PEMCO Insurance gave a sold-out luncheon crowd in Seattle a great lesson in Marketing 101.

For the past year, PEMCO has been running a wonderful local campaign positioning their company as the local insurance company that really understands its customers. The campaign profiles local stereotypes that feature some of the unique, and often quirky, habits and characteristics of people in the Northwest. The campaign sign-off sums up the campaign: We're a lot like you. A little different.

The goal was to connect Northwest values to PEMCO and "own local".

Rod recounted for his audience the basic steps his marketing team took in analyzing the competition (SWOT analysis, etc.) and performing an in-depth review of the general mindset of people toward insurance (not a pleasant experience since insurance is a product that you pay for but never really see, and you can only "win" by "losing"). But two key steps they took are a great reminder for any marketing organization.

First, they did extensive internal reviews to identify and articulate their company culture, values and challenges. Rod knew that good positioning and branding for a service company must come from the inside out; it must be based on who and what you truly are or it is doomed to failure (think about all of those banking commercials that tout friendly service but don't deliver).

The second step was to conduct a series of ethnographic interviews to identify and understand the values that are unique to the Northwest region. Some of those values - fiercely independent, incredibly green, regional pride - were pretty obvious to anyone who lives here. But the two most important conclusions PEMCO made about Northwest consumers are that they love the local guy (there is a very strong local food movement) and they take great pride in their quirky but often colorful local habits and characteristics.

The campaign features these local habits and characteristics in a humorous, self-deprecating way by introducing us to "Relentless Recycler", who judiciously washes, and re-washes, every item before it goes into the recyle bin; "Blue Tarp Campers", who ignore the rainy weather and enjoy their camping experiences through the aid of overhead cover; "Roadside Chainsaw Woodcarver", local artists found in almost every Washington community; and my personal favorite, "Sandals and Socks Guy", an interesting dress code that in my experience is only found in the Northwest.

There are other humorous profiles that relate to individual communities, like the "Fremont 60's Holdout" and the "Marymoor Off-Leash Dog Lady", but all represent the odd, quirky but also colorful nature of Northwest residents. Recently, PEMCO added an interactive website (http://www.werealotlikeyou.com/) that allows visitors to upload their own photo and headline to add to the growing list of profiles.

Word-of-mouth for PEMCO has increased over 300%.

The total PEMCO campaign is a great story in successful integration of multiple media, as it uses traditional media -television, radio and print - in conjunction with community relations and events, and a strong digital component. According to Rod Brooks, word-of-mouth about the PEMCO campaign has increased by over 300% since the campaign began. Sales are growing, and the intangibles of internal company pride and excitement have made this a model campaign in the Northwest.

But it all started with understanding their target audience and their relationship with that audience. And that's a good reminder lesson for all of us in marketing!

Understanding Your Client's Mindset Is Essential To New Business

2010-02-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

Every good salesman knows that you must understand your customer's needs in order to make a sale. The same holds true for ad agencies looking for new business growth -- you must understand the mindset and needs of your clients and prospects if you are going to be successful.

RSW/US has just released their 2010 New Business Report, titled A Client's Perspective on Agencies www.rswus.com/surveys. While many of the findings are not new, they offer a good reminder for the key elements to keep in mind as you plan and execute your new business program:

1. Clients want leadership, not partnership.
The pace and magnitude of change in marketing today has many clients confused and somewhat frightened. They don't need a friend to hold their hand, they need solid guidance and recommendations on how to take their products and services to an empowered consumer in a rapidly changing media environment.

When asked in the RSW survey why the respondents decided to change agencies, their top answers were: "Not happy with strategy or thinking" (44%), "not happy with creative" (42%), "wanted lots of ideas for a new project" (29%).
If you want to win (and keep) clients, you need to be proactive in leading your clients to explore new ways to market. If you don't, someone else will.

2. Clients want to know that you understand their company and their category.
Before you make any recommendation, you must give your client or prospect permission to believe that your ideas are based a sound strategy developed from your understanding of their company and customers. When RSW researchers asked about the factors that were most critical in helping to decide which agency to choose, the top two answers were: "Understanding your company direction" (69%) and "understanding of your market" (68%).

If you want to win (and keep) clients, you need to ask questions, stay on top of competitor's activities, and read and report on every new piece of consumer information you find. Remember that it is important to make sure your client knows how hard you are working to stay on top of things. Don't assume they will know. Send them articles from trade pubs and links to new studies, along with your summary of key insights and how it will/might affect your client. They will appreciate your efforts, and be more receptive to your recommendations.

3. Clients want reassurance. Show them a defined planning process and back it up with case studies that prove it works.
There's no need to invent a magic buzzword to define your methodology (the good ones have already been taken, anyway). The important thing is for your agency to have a planning approach that has proven successful for other clients.

Having a defined process works on two levels. It gives the CMO confidence that the agency will build its recommendations from a formula that worked for other marketers. And, it gives the CMO a rationale for his management to understand and accept his decision to choose a particular agency (keep in mind that every CMO has someone looking over his shoulder and will often make the most defensible decision, whether it is the best one or not).

The RSW study found that 45% of respondents listed "Agency's planning process" as a key factor in choosing an agency. The study also reinforced the power of case studies and testimonials for reassurance. "Recommendation from a colleague" (38%) and "recommendation from a marketer in another company" (37%) were also ranked highly as specific factors which most influenced their choice.

The RSW study has many other excellent insights, especially if you read the verbatim comments from respondents. My key takeaway from the study is something I have said in other posts -- clients aren't looking for a new ad or a new website, they are looking for a way to build a bridge between their brand and their customers.

How much you understand about their company, their customer, and their mindset will determine how successful you are at convincing them your agency is their best choice to build that bridge.

How Social Media is Impacting Public Relations and Why You Should Care

2010-02-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

I just returned from an interesting and informative presentation on how social media is impacting journalism and public relations and wanted to share some insights with you. The program, titled "Industries In Flux: Media and Public Relations and the Impact of Social Media" was sponsored by PR Newswire.

The presentation featured a panel discussion from online editors at seattletimes.com, msnbc.com and techflash.com, as well as a senior social media director from Waggener Edstrom, a large PR firm. The panel discussion addressed the impact of social media on both breaking news and more traditional corporate and product public relations activities.

It was interesting to hear that while all three journalists shared some concerns about the potential loss of journalistic integrity and lack of oversight that social media brings to the dissemination of news, they all admitted its potential value to their organizations. As a result, all were incorporating social media tools into their everyday workflow, and continuing to explore new ways to use these tools to increase the interaction with their online readers. I was especially intrigued by the discussion on Google Wave, a new collaboration tool now in Beta test that looks like it has a lot of potential uses as an information-sharing tool.

It was also interesting to hear these journalists discuss the challenges and opportunities for social media as a vehicle for traditional public relations activities. The explosion of traditional and multi-media news release options comes at a time when the news industry is shrinking, which places a greater burden on both sides to be noticed and gain earned media time. When asked how to break through the clutter, or even to discern how to identify who to contact, one panelist wryly advised cyber-stalking through Twitter to begin a conversation with a journalist that might lead to their picking up a story.

The Waggener Edstrom exec offered an additional way to use social media for public relations -- do it yourself . While he was careful not to advocate bypassing the media for important news events, he related an example of shooting camera phone video of the opening of the Microsoft retail store in Phoenix and sending that out to the news media as well as directly to the public.

He knew that the opening of a single retail store was not a major enough event to warrant national coverage, however he wanted to generate as much publicity for his client as he could. So he spontaneously videoed the opening events and in-store activity.

Interestingly, two of the panelists had picked up his "down and dirty" video and ran with it on the assumption that it did not look "slick and doctored" and was therefore more likely to reflect true news value for their online readers. The general consensus of the panel was that social media offered tremendous upside as a public relations vehicle when properly utilized.

So what does this mean for marketers and their agencies?

First, I believe the increasing impact of social media on news and public relations is yet another confirmation for marketers that social media can play an important role in your marketing program. If you aren't embracing social media yet you should at least be experimenting with how to incorporate these new tools into your branding and sales program.

Second, as empowered consumers expand their use of social media as a replacement for more traditional media, it is imperative that marketers monitor the conversation to gauge marketplace reaction and trending discussions on their brand and category. Social media can be both a blessing and a curse as potentially harmful misinformation may be disseminated about a company or a brand. One example that was given during the panel discussion concerned a misquote by a reporter from Reuters during a Microsoft press conference. The misquote concerned the prospect of future layoffs and was immediately identified as potentially damaging to morale by an alert employee.

Simultaneous corrections were broadcast by Microsoft to multiple news outlets and online communities at Microsoft as well as to Reuters. A correction was then sent out by Reuters. The total time from the misquote hitting the wires to a correction was only 18 minutes. When you compare that response with the 72 hours it reportedly took Domino's executives to respond to a mocked-up video showing employee spitting on the pizzas before boxing and delivery, you can readily see the value of social media for crisis communications.

The use of social media as a public relations and media relations tool has implications for agencies as well. Of course, any good PR agency should be looking for ways to use social media for their clients in today's digital world. But there are also implications for understanding how to use social media as a business development tool. Clients want, and need, guidance on how to take advantage of social media and other new technology tools. By sharing success stories like the Microsoft misquote, agencies can help their clients understand and accept the value of social media for their brand marketing efforts. All agencies, not just PR specialists, would be smart to look for opportunities to discuss and recommend social media to clients and prospects.

Four Basic Steps to More New Business for Service Marketers

2010-01-28T10:56:00.001-08:00

At a recent meeting, the marketing manager for a new start-up marketing services company asked me for advice on how to put together a winning new business program. As he described the exciting new technology and services they had developed, his question "what's the best way to reach out to new prospects?" reminded me that too often we look for the executional solution and forget that a sound, basic strategy must be in place before we make that first outbound call.

So here are four basic steps that every services marketer should take when planning your business development program.

Step One: Narrow your focus to the most important and most unique service(s) you provide. In today's overcrowded world of service marketers, the key to success for a small company is to be a specialist, not a generalist. I have worked with a lot of ad agencies and marketing services companies who offer a variety of services, but the ones that have been most successful have focused on the one or two services that give them a point of difference. If there is an area in which you truly excel, that's where you need to start when developing your new business outreach plan.

Too many service providers fall into the trap of saying that they don't want to miss an opportunity, so they tout every service offering to make sure they don't miss anyone. The problem with this approach is that you are competing with all of the other full-service, or multi-service providers, and unwittingly defining yourself as a commodity, not a premium product. If you are the same as a group of other companies, then the decision may boil down to who's the cheapest/fastest/easiest choice, not who is the best choice.

Step Two: Pinpoint your target prospects as tightly as possible. When you narrow your focus, you will most likely narrow your prospect list, but that can be a good thing. If the service in which you excel is truly important to a company, they will be more likely to listen to your message. And that increases your potential for a faster ROI on your marketing efforts.

Knowing your primary target group isn't rocket science, it's basic marketing. But as noted in Step One, too many service companies try to be all things to all people and end up wasting a lot of time, effort and money chasing too many prospects. A better strategy is to build a pyramid of target groups with the tip of the pyramid defined as a very small group who really want and need your service. And that's the first group to start with in your business development efforts.

When I work with an established company, my first recommendation is to carefully examine your current (or past) clients to determine why they hired you. Was there one particular service area in which you stood head and shoulders above your competition? If you don't know, ask; you might be surprised at the answer you get.

Step Three: Understand and promote the derived benefit your service offers. Several years ago, a colleague and I developed a systematic approach to strategy development that we called "The Derived Benefit Copy Model". Our hypothesis was that most companies talk about who they are and what they do, but they neglect to clearly articulate what that means to the customer . . . why should they care?

If you want your company to stand out in the prospect's mind, you need to identify and feature benefits, not attributes in external communications. And I don't mean just the rational benefits, but the derived emotional benefits as well.

In the aforementioned "copy model", we placed a special emphasis on the importance of understanding the emotional benefit that derives from a purchase decision. We used automobile marketing as a great example of the emotional basis for purchase decisions. Why does someone buy a Mercedes when a Hyundai performs equally well? The same question can be asked about people who buy a Mac instead of a PC? Or choose Nike over Avia or Brooks? There is an emotional reward to that purchase decision that transcends the attributes of the product.

The same thinking should be used when developing your outbound marketing copy strategy. Is there an emotional benefit to my service that can be capitalized upon? Can I structure my "brand promise" to differentiate my services from other similar companies by offering something beyond the physical performance of my service?

Step Four: Look for ways to give your prospect "permission to believe" your company is the right choice. There are two major factors at work here that should be noted. First, the pressure on marketers to avoid mistakes has never been greater. A recent Forrester study concluded that the average tenure of a CMO is less than three years. Too often this leads to a safe decision that can be defended to management. And one way to make your company a safe choice is to give your prospect a rock-solid conviction that your company is the right choice to make.

The second factor that must be considered is that marketers have an inherent mistrust of agencies. Let's face it. Agencies have a bad, but somewhat deserved, reputation for overpromising and underdelivering, and for basing recommendations on factors that were not necessarily in the best interests of their client. For years, the prevailing compensation system led too many agencies to recommend commissionable media buys over "below the line" alternatives that might have worked just as well to grow the client's business.

That's why the most critical factor in the decision process is to provide the prospect "permission to believe" that your company and service(s) is the right choice to make.

"Permission to believe" can be gained in several ways -- category experience, expertise in a particular medium, successful marketing to a specific target audience, are just a few of the ways to reassure a prospect that you can help them grow their business.

Over the past year, social media and SEO have been the hottest topics (and biggest needs) in the marketing community. Specialty service providers who understand the nuances and pitfalls of the digital space have been a strong growth area, but without "permission to believe" they can truly help a client, they face the same uphill battle as more traditional service suppliers.

How to gain "permission to believe" is an important topic that will be explored in future posts. The most important thing you should remember from this discussion is to really think through the strategic basics if you want to have a successful new business program.

Move Beyond Cold Calling If You Want to Grow Your Business

2010-01-12T12:42:00.000-08:00

Cold calling as a primary outbound marketing tool just doesn't work for ad agencies. Never has, never will. Yet I still run into agency principals who think that blanketing selected targets and industries with sales brochures and unsolicited telephone calls or emails is the best way to grow their business.

The latest edition of Marketing News from the American Marketing Association has an interesting case study on how a small Indiana service provider doubled their revenue last year through web-based marketing in lieu of cold calling. Here's what they did, and what any b-to-b service provider can do to grow their business.

The first step was a redesign of their web site to move it from a brochure site touting their background and experience to an interactive experience that walks potential customers through the steps of deciding if they need their service to why they should choose their firm. Along the way, they adopted several best practices to simplify the navigation and reduce copy to add more graphics. They rewrote copy using direction from Google Adwords and adopted some other simple SEO principles to re-write title tags and add keywords to their code.

The next step was to launch a blog to feature their knowledge experts' insights on topics of interest to their key audiences. They used SEO tactics to ensure that blog posts ranked high for searches related to their content matter, added a link to the blog to the company's web site and shared blog posts with LinkedIn groups. According to their marketing director, tracking analysis found that LinkedIn was particularly effective in driving traffic to their blog which in turn led to more attention to the company's web site.

Although they did not use Twitter, I believe that tweeting with a link to the blog post is another way to effectively drive traffic to your blog and ultimately to your site.

They extended the company's thought leadership profile by expanding selected blog posts into magazine articles, white papers.and presentations that led to conference speaking engagements based on their demonstrated credibility and subject matter expertise. They also began a concerted effort to establish strategic partnerships with complementary service providers.

The combination of web-based marketing efforts and new partnerships has led to a "snowball effect" according to their marketing director. Traffic to their web site jumped from an average of 10 to 15 visits per week to 1,500 to 2,000 visits per week.

Prior to launching this intensive web marketing program, nearly 80% of their new business came from cold calls and traditional outbound selling. This year, more than 80% of new business has come web driven initiatives and revenues have doubled.

These changes weren't rocket science. And they weren't particularly expensive. What they did is take advantage of an integrated marketing effort to allow prospects to move through a decision thought process before they even talked. That led to a much more cost effective way to invest their time and efforts to grow their customer base. Is it time to rethink your business development strategy?

A New Year's Resolution for New Business Development

2010-01-05T10:00:00.000-08:00

Are you happy with your new business development program? Is it working? Could it be better/more effective/more efficient? This is the time of year when people reexamine their life choices, so it makes sense for agencies and other businesses that sell products and services to reexamine their business and especially their business development program.

The old saying that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results is never truer than in new business development. Even if your company has been successful with past bizdev efforts, the dramatic and continuing changes in consumer attitudes, media consumption, etc. dictate constant re-appraisal and refinement.

A good new business program starts inside the agency, not outside.
Before you begin an outbound marketing effort, you should make sure that everything internally is as strong and effective as it can be. It's no surprise that economic conditions and the digital marketplace have affected all businesses, so the first step is to re-examine how external conditions have affected your company. You should be asking yourself and your management team questions in several key areas.

Are we positioned correctly to attract and retain clients?

Does our agency positioning have a clear focus that differentiates us from our key competitors?
Is our agency positioning right for the needs of today's clients and prospects?
Do we have any proprietary processes that can be leveraged to give clients and prospects "permission to believe" we can do things better than other agencies?
Do we have all of the services we need to support our agency positioning?
Have we focused on what we do best?

Do we have the right people to support the agency positioning?

Do we have the right skill sets to support our agency positioning and meet the needs of current and prospective clients?
Does everyone inside the agency understand our brand positioning and their role in delivering on our brand promise?
Do all employees know how to communicate our brand positioning and their role in new business development?
Are we organized in a way that supports our positioning strategy?

Do we have the right criteria and tools for identifying and approaching prospects?

How well do the needs of our prospects match our agency capabilities?
Do our promotional materials reflect our agency position in a way that will attract and intrigue prospects?
Do we have a defined promotion and publicity plan for the agency that consistently builds awareness and credibility of the agency brand?
Are there new products and processes that we should be developing to better meet the future needs of clients and prospects?

There are many other questions you could, and should, be asking that relate to agency policies and processes that will affect your new business efforts. But as we begin a new year, you need to start somewhere. In my experience, these are some of the most critical.

It's time to make a resolution to take a fresh look at your agency and your business development program. Welcome to 2010.

Social Media As A Branding Tool - A Case Study

2009-12-15T07:35:00.000-08:00

Many ad agencies continue to question the branding value of Social Media and remain reluctant to embrace it for their own branding efforts or to recommend social media tactics to their clients. This is not only short-sighted, it is simply not true according to Brad Nelson, Chief Tweeter at Starbucks. Brad recently shared his company's strategies and personal views on ways that Social Media enhances the brand value of Starbucks. His comments offer some interesting insights into how this market leader uses Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and mystarbucksidea.com to build their brand and how agencies should be viewing Social Media for branding.

According to Brad, Starbucks has embraced Social Media because of its growing popularity, but also because it works. He gave specific examples of how Starbucks uses Social Media as a key element in their branding strategy and also cited a recent Razorfish study in which 97% of Connected Consumers reported that a positive digital brand experience influenced their purchase behavior.

Starbucks uses Social Media five ways:

As standard operating procedure for any new launch or corporate policy initiative.

To monitor conversation and become aware of emerging issues that might positively or negatively impact the Starbucks brand or products.

To provide contextual and complete information around issues or controversies (i.e. to make sure that all facts are available as well as to give their brand champions complete information).

As a rapid response tool to issues or questions.

To put a human face on the company by providing information in a personal and relevant manner.

As part of his presentation, Brad shared several examples of how Starbucks has used Social Media. As part of the new product launch for Via, Brad related how an unplanned leak 30 days prior to launch was generating initial skepticism about the quality and taste of an instant coffee from Starbucks. Starbucks used social media to engage their audience, provide taste test results and promote their sampling strategy. They credit social media with helping to change public perception from negative to positive and shortly after launch, Via was being touted by the blogosphere as "the start of a new category", "the right thing to do for Starbucks", and "a product that tastes as good as regular Starbucks".

Starbucks management is confident that social media, in conjunction with more traditional tools, has played a significant role in the success of the Via brand. Social media has also been used as the primary medium in successful promotions for Free Pastry Day and Red Cup Day.

Brad also related an interesting story of how Twitter and Facebook helped with an international crisis management issue. An update to the Starbucks website has referenced Taiwan as a Province of China. This is a very controversial issue, and the blogosphere began humming shortly after it was posted. The issue was discovered and acknowledged within 3 hours, and fixed within 24 hours, just as the traditional media outlets were discovering the story. Starbucks' fast response made further reporting a non-story and traditional media outlets moved on to other stories. This is a great example of how listening and responding quickly can work to the advantage of any brand.

As more case studies come to light on the value of Social Media as a branding tool, ad agencies must listen and respond. Social media is not a fad. It is a legitimate way to monitor and converse with your brand's audience, and agencies who continue to ignore its power and presence as well as its branding potential will regret it.

How The Internet is Impacting the Buying Decision Process

2009-11-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

As marketers, we know that the Internet has dramatically affected the buying process for many products as online purchasing continues to grow at a dramatic pace. But we should also understand that the Internet and Web 2.0 have also had a major influence on the buying decision process as well.

A recent study by McKinsey concludes that consumers no longer proceed in a linear "purchasing funnel" process when deciding to make a purchase. The funnel analogy has been a basic guideline for marketing thinking and planning for many years -- consumers start with a number of potential brands in mind (the wide end of the funnel) and then systematically move through linear stages of familiarity, consideration and purchase by narrowing the choices along the way to get to the one brand they ultimately purchase. It sounds logical, and has been until now.

The explosion of products, media alternatives and access to word-of-mouth experiences through social media and other Web 2.0 access points has created a radically new decision process. Marketers and their agencies must acknowledge this new "consumer decision journey", as McKinsey describes it, and revise the focus of their marketing to be in the right place at the right time to reach consumers when their message is most likely to influence their purchases.

The McKinsey research examined the purchase decisions of almost 20,000 consumers across five industries and three continents, and identified four critical stages of the decision buying process -- initial consideration, active evaluation, moment of purchase, and post-purchase experience. Rather than moving in a systematic straight line, the McKinsey study found that today the decision process is more circular than linear and the subsequent stages often produce a broader consideration set than those initially considered.

The first step in the buying decision is the same. The consumer considers an initial set of brands based on brand perceptions and exposure to recent touch points. It should be noted, however, that other research has confirmed that the initial consideration set is typically much larger than it might have been in previous buying decision based on the greater number of products and a decline in brand loyalty from a preferred brand to a preferred set of brands.

It's the second step in the buying decision that has been most affected by the web. Rather than narrowing the choices, the consumer enters an active evaluation phase where the number of choices may be dramatically expanded. Internet access to information from a variety of social media and other word-of-mouth touch points can have a dramatic effect on the brands that were initially considered, and those original choices can be easily replaced with more informed choices based on trusted input and evaluation.

This active evaluation phase shows a profound change in consumer response and requires much more consideration by marketers if they want to be successful. The traditional "push" marketing elements, that most likely affected the initial consideration set, can be easily modified by an empowered consumer who now takes control of the decision process. Today's empowered consumer actively seeks corroboration of previous brand impressions and new input from Internet reviews and other information sites as well as word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family and other trusted sources. The McKinsey report concludes that traditional marketing remains important, but argues that marketers must move aggressively to learn to also find ways to influence these consumer-driven touch points in order to remain in the consideration set.

Ultimately, the consumer selects a brand to close the purchase, but the McKinsey study shows that even this stage has seen changes. Their study places much greater closure importance on the impact of the in-store (or on-line store) experience as well as recollections of past experiences. They conclude that many purchases become a last minute decision.

Another important finding from this study is that the post-purchase experience has changed dramatically as well. Many consumers go online to conduct further research after the purchase, a stage never considered in the original funnel model. This post-purchase research can either confirm the wisdom of their decision, or have a significant impact on future purchases by exposing the consumer to new, previously unknown, alternatives.

This new knowledge on the "consumer decision journey" requires that all marketers re-evaluate their marketing programs to ensure that they are influencing and impacting consumers at every stage of the process. It certainly tells us that we must do everything we can to develop touch points during the consumer-driven stage of the decision process. For many marketers, this will require a mind-set shift from a reliance on buying media to more balanced program that supports developing assets such as interactive web sites, social media properties, and rich media applications that provide a way for consumer to learn more about their products and services.

This also presents a new challenge, and a new opportunity, for agencies to help their clients navigate these new alternatives to find the best solution for their brand. As I have said in previous posts, clients are not just looking for an agency to develop an ad or design a web site, they are looking for someone to help them build a bridge between the brand and their customer. Helping them understand how their customer reaches the ultimate purchase decision is an crucial ingredient in finding that bridge.

Built any bridges lately?

The complete McKinsey study can be accessed by following this link: http://tinyurl.com/yatjepz.

Give your prospects "permission to believe" to win new business

2009-10-09T09:56:00.000-07:00

An ad agency exec recently asked me "what is the most important ingredient for a successful new business program?" Obviously, there are many things that contribute to new business success. First of all, you must have a defined and relevant positioning for your agency that differentiates your company in some way from the competition. If you have direct and successful experience in their business category or against their target audience you increase your odds of winning. As do case studies and testimonials that are relevant to the prospect.

In the fast-changing world of digital media and social media marketing, the ability to help a client navigate these new and challenging waters is an increasingly important element in new business success. Many clients are simply overwhelmed by the complexity and pace of change and need guidance on how to take advantage of these new technology tools. For many clients, it is important to keep in mind that the ultimate need is not just how to use email, blogs, podcasts, mobile marketing, viral marketing, pay-per-click, user-generated content, Twitter, etc. but how to mix them with traditional media to create the most impact.

There are many other ingredients for new business success, but all are based on the idea that you must give your prospect "permission to believe" to win their trust . . . and their business.

Regardless of how you approach new business for your company, unless you can give your prospect "permission to believe" that you are the best resource for their specific needs, you will have difficulty winning the account.

"Permission to believe" is critical for ad agencies because the natural tendency for clients and prospects is not to believe us. For years, our business model was based on a compensation system that promoted mistrust as to our motives for media recommendations. We compounded this error by looking down our noses at "below the line" activities and clients who didn't "get it" when we showed them new and different creative ideas (that may or may not have been consistent with their brand personality). Many agencies had an arrogant "we're the experts, not you" attitude with their clients, so why are you questioning our expertise?

Not all agencies were guilty of these practices, but we are all tainted by them. Most studies still list advertising and used-car salesmen as the lowest on the hierarchy of trusted professions.

Take a look around your local agency scene. Who is winning and who is not? I'll bet it's the agencies that have built a reputation for honesty and integrity. The ones who are known to work hard for their clients. The ones who go out of their way to find new ways to help their clients grow their business.

The agencies who give their clients "permission to believe" every day.

An Interesting Story on the Power of Twitter

2009-09-28T15:42:00.000-07:00

Since my last post on using Twitter as a business development tool, I've had several emails from friends who continue to question the staying power of Twitter. They argue that Twitter is a short term phenomenon with limited value for marketers and one that will fade out quickly.

Well, I can't say how long Twitter will be "the next big thing", but I can tell you that today, it is a very big thing. With over 32 million users -- up 700% over the past year according to eMarketer -- Twitter is a legitimate social networking tool that reaches a lot of people in a short period of time. The power and potential of this new communication tool was reinforced last week when I heard a presentation on Twitter and Social Media from Warren Sukernek, Director of Content at Radian 6.

Warren related his own personal story about the power of Twitter and how it helped him to land a new job. Last December, Warren was laid off. He had been actively engaged with Twitter for some time, so he sent this tweet

Friends, I've just been laid off. As a digital strategist, I would appreciate any leads or opportunities that you would be aware of. THX.

That afternoon, he got 250 responses that resulted in 20 interviews and 4 job offers. ALL IN 3 WEEKS FROM JUST ONE TWEET.

Warren's incredible story was featured locally on KING-5 TV, and later picked up by Fortune, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and several websites. His story is a reinforcement to me of the power of social networking.

Warren's presentation was an inside look at how to use Twitter as part of a total Social Media Toolbox to build your personal or company brand and to gain awareness and credibility among a wide audience. But he cautioned everyone that "you can't just join Twitter and tweet. You've got to build a network before you need it".

Warren's story is just one of many social networking success stories. That's why I've become an advocate of using Twitter as part of your business development strategy. You should be extending your reach, building your credibility, connecting with thought-leaders, sharing content and engaging in the conversation through blogs, white papers, and Twitter. Whether Twitter is long term isn't relevant. It can be a powerhouse today.

I encourage you to view Warren's presentation on SlideShare at http://tinyurl.com/yezlecg. You'll get a lot of good ideas on how to get more value out of social media tools. And maybe, just maybe, a new way to build business for your agency.

Using Twitter As A Business Development Tool

2009-09-11T07:09:00.000-07:00

While many ad agencies are finally acknowledging the power of integrating social media into their business development program, very few are using Twitter. I hear several reasons why Twitter is not used:

It's only used by kids and will die out soon.
Where's the value - who cares what someone had for breakfast?
You can't really say much in 140 characters.
I don't have the time it takes to monitor all of the traffic.

After studying how b-to-c companies are successfully using Twitter as a business development tool, I have come to the conclusion that Twitter may be the most powerful b-to-b new business tool your agency can have in your new business program. Here's why:

1. Twitter is not just a kid's fad that will soon die out. According to Forrester, much of Twitter's recent growth is coming from adults, not kids. In a recent study, more than 75% of online adults are using social media on a regular basis, and the fastest growing social medium among this age group is Twitter. Both Nielsen Online and comScore have noted the phenomenal year-to-year growth of Twitter, reporting monthly percentage increases of 1,500% or more.

Social media analysts have observed that adults use social media in very different ways than teens and young adults. While the younger set uses FaceBook and MySpace as a more casual sharing of daily activities and real time reaction to external events, adults use social media as an information resource. This makes Twitter an excellent way to position your agency as a thought-leader on a variety of subjects. It's a great way to build awareness among your prospect target list, and also a way to actually start a conversation without having to fight through spam filters and voice mail.

2. Twitter is a valuable resource to give you a real time picture of the hottest topics in the industry. The most valuable asset of Twitter is that it provides real time information. It allows you to monitor what is being said today by and about your industry, your firm, and your competitors - something that is always important to know. But more importantly from a business development standpoint, Twitter gives you real time information and insight into what is being said about your clients and prospects.

To be successful in starting a conversation with a new business prospect, you need to know what's on their mind. In my experience, one of the best questions you can ask a prospect is "what keeps you awake at night?" Twitter can give an agency that answer and allow you the opportunity to address the most pressing industry or company issues as a way to start a conversation with a prospect. As I have said in previous posts, many clients are simply overwhelmed with the pace of change and the information explosion that the digital revolution has created. Agencies that understand the client's issues and can offer a solution have a much better chance of new business success.

3. The long term value of Twitter (and all social media) for b-to-b marketing is the opportunity to provide valuable content, not sales messages or minutiae. Twitter and other social media are a great way to provide a valuable statement about your agency without using an overt selling message. Social media can position your agency as a thought-leader and a valuable resource of information and insight to a prospect. The 140-character short form of Twitter can actually be an advantage over long form content, such as white papers or blogs, by initiating an interaction with the prospect that might not otherwise happen.

One of the best practice ways to use Twitter is to provide an intriguing statement that links to a more detailed discussion of that topic. Through that link, Twitter can get a prospect to visit your site or blog and hopefully see more that interests them. It's a non-threatening way for the prospect to gain awareness of your agency that they can then pursue if they choose. At the very least, you've made them aware of your agency as a resource and an asset in an area they have interest in knowing more about.

4. Twitter does require a time commitment, but new aggregation and evaluation tools can make the job easier for you. As Twitter continues to grow in popularity, a number of tools are now available to help you manage your activity. I use TweetDeck to help me organize and monitor my Twitter activity. Tweets are arranged chronologically, and it can be daunting to view that string and determine which are more important to read. TweetDeck provides a dashboard that allows me to group the people I am following (or the subject on which I am searching) into a manageable array. Other tools like Twitter Grader and TweetCloud can help you evaluate the relevance and influence of the people or companies you are following so that you can make the best use of your time.

If you don't want to spend your day constantly monitoring and updating your tweets, you can use a tool like TweetLater to schedule your outbound messages. That way you can devote a specified time each day to reviewing other content and planning your own tweets, or re-tweets.

If you're unsure about what to do and how to use social media, you're not alone. Many companies are struggling with the same issues. But it's the ones who figure out how to take advantage of these new technologies that will gain a leg up on their competition.

As I said earlier, I believe that Twitter may be the most valuable social media tool you can use for your new business efforts. Are you ready to start the conversation?

The Five "C's" of an Effective RFP Response

2009-08-27T04:56:00.000-07:00

Writing isn't hard for an agency, but writing a good RFP requires more than a creative flair for communicating. It requires careful consideration of the prospect's stated needs, their style of doing business, and their corporate environment. It also requires understanding the process the client will go through to make a decision.

It's important to keep in mind that the prospect is most likely reviewing multiple submissions (often too many). So you must be relevant, and frame your credentials and expertise into something the client wants to know more about. At this initial stage of the agency selection process, many clients will look for ways to eliminate your agency from consideration. So I've developed a proven formula that helps me write a successful RFP using five "C's "-- concise, customized, criteria-specific, creative, and client-focused.

Be concise. Most agency responses are simply too long-winded. They cover every point in excruciating detail and make sure they include every possible selling point. After sitting through the agency review process with multiple clients, I quickly realized that the initial review is a quick scan, not a thorough and thoughtful analysis. I have seen responses rejected on the basis of how they looked, rather than the content. So be quick and to the point. If your agency has what the prospect is looking for, they will see it immediately. And they will appreciate the clarity and brevity of your communications.

Customize the response. Almost every agency has standard language to describe their philosophy, their capabilities and their process. But you should never "mail it in" by simply cutting and pasting from a previous submission. Every question is an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of the category, the audience and the prospect. Whenever possible, you should frame your response in a way that demonstrates your knowledge of the client's brand, market environment or audience. It is also a good idea to answer the question in a way that demonstrates solutions and benefits rather than just a statement of your agency approach or process.

Address the prospect's criteria, not your own agenda. Everything you say should be relevant to the client and the assignment by addressing the specific criteria the client has identified as important. Too many agencies try to impress the prospect with creative solutions on how to improve on what they think they want, and miss covering the criteria on which the client has determined he will base his decisions. Offering creative ideas is a good way to demonstrate your thought process and creativity, but only after thoroughly addressing the question asked by the prospect. And only with the caveat that these "preliminary ideas can be developed further or rejected when we have greater understanding of your specific situation and needs after we meet". It's okay to be confident and assumptive that you will make the next round.

Another point that relates to addressing the prospect's criteria is to be very explicit about why you have included certain examples of your work. Don't be afraid to say "This is relevant to you because . . . ". Clients can be very literal at this stage of the selection process and may have difficulty in seeing why your experience or process is relevant to their needs. And keep in mind that if your agency doesn't have the experience to match all of the selection criteria, tell the truth. It is better to show them fewer examples of relevant experience than many examples of unrelated work. More is not always more in a successful RFP response.

Demonstrate your creativity and professionalism in the response. The RFP response is an opportunity to establish your agency as a professional resource that can solve a business problem and help them sell a product or service. But the RFP response is also an opportunity to provide a statement of your agency's style and creativity as well as your salesmanship. By making your RFP response stand out in a crowd, you send a message that you can make their company stand out in a crowd as well. Even the most conservative client can appreciate a creative packaging of the response.

Just be careful not to make your response so unique and different that you unintentionally send a message that you don't understand their corporate culture or the seriousness of the decision and process. And correct your typos. Have a good proofreader review the final document before you deliver or you could shoot yourself in the foot and never know why it happened.

Don't forget that the RFP response is about the client, not you. It may seem counter intuitive, but the most important thing to remember is that even though an RFP may seem as if it is about your company's capabilities, it is really about the client. No client wants to make a mistake in agency selection, so you must do everything you can to convince the client that you understand their business and can help achieve their business objectives. Do your homework on the company and the category and demonstrate your knowledge in the response. Share your observations about the prospect's brand and the market environment. The client prospect needs to know that you "get it". They need to feel confident that you understand their challenges.

White Papers Can Be A Great Tool For Ad Agency New Business

2009-08-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

If there has been one constant in the fast-changing world of Internet marketing, it has been that "content" is the key ingredient for success. The same is true for white papers. A well-written white paper generates awareness about a product, service or organization, and is especially valuable as it is most often read while a company or individual is in the evaluation stage for a new purchase. There is a wealth of hard evidence through published case studies to support the value of white papers as a marketing tool, but perhaps one of the more impressive pieces of evidence is the $40 million paid by TechTarget to acquire white paper aggregator, BitPipe.

White papers have been in use as government position papers for almost 100 years, and during the past decade we have seen an explosion of business white papers as B2B marketing and sales tools. But surprisingly, many ad agencies have failed to take advantage of white papers as a marketing tool.

White papers can be used in several ways by ad agencies:

As an awareness and lead-generation tool for new business;
As a thought-leadership and CRM tool for current clients;
As a training tool for employees and clients.

Why should your agency use white papers? That's simple, they work. Several studies have documented the importance of white papers in evaluation and decision-making. A recent study by MarketingSherpa on technology marketing reported that 44% of respondents said they like reviewing white papers. Even more importantly, 70% said they visited the vendor website and 45% contacted the vendor for further information.

White papers can establish your agency as an important thought leader. White papers provide a platform for an agency to demonstrate their expertise and the quality of their thinking. Whether the topic is general (e.g. branding), industry-specific (e.g. trends in healthcare marketing), or topic-specific (e.g. how to use social media), a well-written white paper can establish your agency as an authority on the subject. Importantly, studies have shown that executives read white papers, so a white paper can be that foot-in-the-door that you've been trying to establish but can't seem to get past the voicemail and spam blocker screens.

Some of the more popular ways to use white papers are:

Discuss trends (can establish the need for a change from the reader).
Identify problems (can build a rapport and affinity with the reader).
Provide solutions (can confirm your expertise, but must be seen as objective and not a sales message to have credibility with the reader).
Suggest what to look for (can also confirm your expertise, but again must not be seen as an overt sales message).

A good white paper must be reader-focused, not self-focused. It is critically important to write white papers from an objective viewpoint so that they are seen as educational, not sales-focused. Too many marketers make the mistake of treating their white paper as a multi-page text ad for their product or service. That approach is a recipe for disaster. And rejection.

A well-written white paper becomes persuasive when the reader is presented with facts and charts to support the writer's viewpoint and avoids any claims about the company or its products and services. Most white papers tend to be 6 - 12 pages in length, which will allow you to present a thorough case without too much effort on the part of the reader. In many cases, a white paper can be a stimulus to drive traffic to an agency's website for more information (or more confirmation of the agency's expertise).

Self-Focused: Groundbreaking TechWidget by XYZ Company Solves Time Management Dilemma.

Reader-Focused: Solving the Time Management Dilemma with Technology.

A white paper can carry more authority than other agency marketing collateral. It is important to remember that a white paper carries a cachet of authenticity that other marketing collateral for your agency doesn't possess. To some readers, there is a perception (rightly or wrongly) that white papers are completely objective and factual, almost like a scientific paper that has been peer-reviewed. So be careful that you don't mis-use or abuse the white paper as a marketing tool. But it can, and should, be used by more agencies.

Social Media Is Not the Solution for Every Business Situation

2009-07-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

Despite the media hoopla surrounding Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking options these days, social media is not the solution for every one and every business situation. That fact is very eloquently expressed in today's Ad Age Digital by Judy Shapiro's excellent post "Not Every CEO Needs to Be a Social Media Star". Read the full article at http://tinyurl.com/m47tut.

Ms. Shapiro addressed the recent media headlines that denounced Fortune 100 CEO's as "social media slackers" based on their low participation on Twitter, Facebook, and personal blogs. She, in turn, chastises the media for their lack of understanding and empathy with the tasks and responsibilities of a senior executive with a major corporation. Her article points out that CEO participation in social media is "fraught with practical, business and strategic risks".

Many CEO's don't have the luxury of being able to express their personal opinions or expose their personal lives for practical as well as business reasons. If a CEO mentions that he particularly likes or dislikes a company or product, his statements can be misinterpreted by the business community or the blogosphere as stock manipulation. In 2007, there was a major web scandal when the CEO of Whole Foods Markets wrote anonymous blog posts about Wild Oats Markets in an effort to drive down their stock price before buying the company.

Fastlane, a blog by General Motors CEO, Bob Lutz, has been lauded by the press as a great example of social media from a major company (I suppose we can still call GM a major company). But the truth is that most of the Fastlane posts that I read are nothing more than a disguised advertisement for their cars.

There is also the practical side to using social media that CEO's must consider. To effectively use social media as a business tool requires time and commitment. Anyone who has run a company knows that time is a valuable commodity that must be carefully monitored and utilized. As Ms. Shapiro points out "not every communication challenge is a nail to be whacked by the social media hammer".

So how does this relate to new business development? Simply put, don't try to apply a social media solution to every new business selling opportunity. As I have said in previous posts, social media can be a valuable new business tool for ad agencies. And social media can be valuable as a topic for starting a discussion with prospects, since many clients are overwhelmed by the fast pace of change and need help in deciphering how to employ social media as a marketing tool.

But social media is not the solution for every business situation. And I'm willing to bet there are CEO's who would appreciate your empathy and understanding of their reluctance to use social media tools.

Use social media as part of your new business arsenal, but use it wisely!

Its Time for Ad Agencies To Tweet and Blog For New Business

2009-07-09T15:32:00.000-07:00

If you're one of those misinformed souls who think that Twitter is just a fad and that blogging takes too much time to be considered, think again. Yes, it's true that Twitter "churn" is high and that many people join and don't use or drop out quickly. And it's true that blogging takes a lot of time. But more and more businesses are discovering the power of social networking as a business development tool, and the blogosphere and Twitter continue to grow in importance every day.

As social networking invades the corporate world, more and more clients are coming to the realization that they need a strategic plan to incorporate social networking into their marketing program. This represents a great opportunity for ad agencies to step in and help their clients and prospects develop and implement a winning social media strategy.

A recent study by Anderson Analytics reports that 60% of the online population uses one or more forms of social networking. The average social network user is online five days per week four times per day for about one hour a day in total. Importantly, the fastest growing segment of social networkers are aged 45 - 55, according to Forrester, so social networking is being embraced by all age groups. That equates to 110 million users who are actively engaged in social networking every day. That's a number that is simply too large to ignore.

Ad agencies that are successful in new business are able to find and solve a marketer's "pain point", and right now there is no bigger pain point for clients than trying to determine why and how to use social media. Many marketers are simply overwhelmed by the complexity and pace of change with the new technology tools and media that are available. They simply don't know where to start, and your agency become an invaluable asset by becoming the catalyst to help them embrace this new digital marketing world.

And the larger need for most marketers is not just how to write a blog or use Twitter, but how to use email, mobile marketing, viral marketing, pay-per-click, user-generated content, etc. in conjunction with traditional media to create the most impact and return on investment. At a recent conference on social media, the presenter observed that "social networking is still the wild west. There is no order yet and clients are desperate for help".

The hottest topic today is Twitter, and many skeptics contend that the phenomenon is how the "narcissistic keep in touch with the feckless"(see The Ad Contrarian (http://tinyurl.com/mmohft). But even this harshest of critics admits that Twitter has value as a tactical tool for retailers and as a customer relations tool for most marketers. Recent case studies have been published by a number of sources promoting the positive impact that Twitter has had on business in every category.

A recent Business Week article "Twitter Dominates CMO Social Network Plans" (http://tinyurl.com/mcentt) lends credence to the need for ad agencies to embrace this tool and use it as leverage in new business prospecting. The article contains an excellent overview of the social networking world as it stands today and can give your agency guidance on how to approach clients and prospects.

Agencies should also check out a new study commissioned by Michael Steltzner, titled "Social Media Marketing Industry Report - How Marketers Are Using Social Media to Grow Their Businesses" (http://tr.im/rLVY).

Whatever you do, do something. There's an old saying that when you stick your head in the sand, you leave your backside exposed. In this case, you leave your business exposed.

Listen Up For Better New Business Prospecting

2009-06-30T07:58:00.000-07:00

In today's rapidly changing marketing environment, the art of listening as a tool for new business as well as for client retention is more important than ever. It never ceases to amaze me that agencies stress the importance of understanding customer behavior and attitudes to their clients, but ignore this most basic element of marketing themselves. Clients' needs and wants are changing every day, and if your agency isn't in tune with those changing wants and needs, you will get left behind by agencies that are meeting those needs.

One of the new rules of new business is that today's CMO is driven by a project mentality. Marketing tools are changing so rapidly that one communications supplier cannot do it all. The days of the generalist AOR agency are rapidly disappearing, so if you want to grow your business, you've got to understand your own USP and develop a niche that you can own. Listening to clients and prospects early and often is a way you can identify that niche and stay in touch with their needs from your agency.

Listening can perfect your new business approach. Do you know why your newest client hired your agency and how that compares to how other clients made the decision? Many agencies desperately seek to understand what they did wrong and didn't get the business from a prospect, but forget to ask the client that hired them why he or she did. Nine times out of ten, I am surprised to learn that something I thought was insignificant was actually an important turning point in my favor. Understanding the element(s) that contribute to success can be more useful that those that didn't win the business. Especially when you consider that those prospects that chose another agency may not be totally honest with you about why your agency wasn't hired.

Listening can deepen the relationship with current clients and forestall any problems that may be on the horizon. An added, and equally important value to listening, is the impact that customer research can have on your current client relationships. Clients appreciate it when you ask these simple questions - What can we do better? What are your biggest challenges? How can we help you meet those challenges? It shows them you care, but it also gives you an opportunity to gain valuable input on how to strengthen the relationship.

Listening can find new growth opportunities that were right under your nose. The best growth opportunities for an agency are often from existing clients. When I was recruited to serve as COO of a mid-sized agency, my first priority was to meet our clients and learn as much as I could about their business. In the process, I identified new growth opportunities from three clients, uncovered a growing concern from a key client, and set the stage for a future relationship that invited open and honest feedback on our agency's work. The results were not only immediate (we added significant new billings and restructured our account management team), but also paid off in future work through positive word-of-mouth among our client's business network.

Listening can establish a dialogue with past or dormant clients. In today's project-driven, high turnover marketing environment, doing outstanding work on one project doesn't automatically lead you to the next project. Many CMO's are moving so fast that they don't have time to go through a formal review process for every project assignment. Often the project goes to the top-of-mind supplier, and a short survey immediately upon completion of a project is a good way to keep your agency top-of-mind. And with the revolving door in the marketing suite at many companies, staying in touch through research may be the only way to be considered for that next project assignment.

Listening gives you a platform to introduce new products and services to clients and prospects. A good survey can not only collect data but also disseminate information. As long as it is done tastefully, a client survey is an opportunity to educate your clients about new or soon-to-be-introduced products and services in an nonthreatening and low-key selling environment. It can also be an invaluable asset in a prospect's decision process.

There are many ways to listen to your clients and prospects both formally and informally. One of the most effective techniques is a one-on-one interview in which a standard set of questions are asked by a senior member of your agency or an outside researcher. There are advantages to both, but in my experience using an outside party offers an opportunity for more honest and candid feedback, as well as makes a statement to the interviewee that the information is important enough to the agency to make a financial investment. On the other hand, the interest shown by senior management can build trust and shows the commitment of the agency.

Surveys of this type are best conducted immediately upon completion of a project, and be especially insightful when conducted at multiple levels within a client organization. As noted earlier, listening can keep you top-of-mind for the next project. I have had good success with a one-page fax back questionnaire that makes it easy for the client to give feedback without a major investment in time or interruption in their daily business schedule.

Social media tools like blogs and communities are also great ways to encourage dialogue and elicit feedback on agency strengths and weaknesses, as well as to identify key client concerns and needs. Another advantage of these social media tools is the opportunity for a simultaneous discussion with clients and prospects, as well as a way to expand awareness and buzz for your agency.

It doesn't matter how you listen to your customers and prospects. What is important is that you just do it. If your agency doesn't conduct at least an annual survey among your clients, you've set up a recipe for disaster. And you're missing great opportunities to grow your business.

Are you listening?

Changes in Consumer Behavior Can Affect Ad Agency New Business.

2009-06-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

Understanding your prospect's mindset is essential to developing new business for an ad agency. Clients want leadership and new ideas from their agency, as many are simply overwhelmed by the onslaught of new media options and the need for a strategy that marries new technology options with traditional media. Agencies that thrive today aren't just making good ads, they are helping their clients build a bridge between their brand and their customers, and a new report from Interpublic Group's Initiative offers new insights on how the recession is affecting consumer behavior that have implications for marketers that every agency should understand.

"The Game Changer" report concludes that the recession, in combination with the Internet, has created some permanent changes in consumer behavior. This isn't necessarily new information, but the specifics of how much these changes will affect marketers can be a tool for new business prospecting.
Here are three of the main conclusions from this study. I highly recommend that you download and review the complete study. A link is shown at the bottom of this post.

Internet content now seen as more reliable than traditional media.
While consumers still rely on television and newspapers for information, a growing number cite the Internet as their primary source, with 35% now saying that Internet content is more reliable and detailed than TV. This can have major implications for marketers who continue to place a substantial portion of their advertising dollars in traditional media. Brands must be prepared to engage with their customers on the customer's terms, not the marketers, and smart agencies can use this to offers prospects strategic alternatives to transition from a "push" strategy to a "pull" strategy.

"Reliability" and "honesty" are more important than brand heritage.
One of the most significant implications for marketers is that the recession has accelerated the decline in trust of institutions (and concomitantly brand advertising), and created an opening for social platforms and online consumer content to be seen as more trustworthy. The report calls for brand communications that are transparent and authentic, and that brands need to display values that are consistent with the personal beliefs of their customers to be respected and supported. This calls for a totally new approach to communication and offers yet another reason for marketers to consider a new agency.

The Internet and mobile phone have become essential "tools for life".
Perhaps the most far-reaching conclusion from the study is that 75% of respondents see the Internet as an indispensable resource for entertainment, information, communication and shopping. Over half (56%) consider the mobile phone the second most essential form of technology. Importantly, the study concludes that consumers now have an emotional connection with the online world and activities like shopping will never be the same. The opportunity for an agency to help a client develop a more complete and holistic social strategy that complements traditional communication vehicles has never been greater.

There are several other important conclusions, but the overall takeaway from this study is that the economic crisis is a game changer for consumers. And that makes it a game changer for marketers. Any agency looking for new business would be wise to determine how it changes the game for your biz dev efforts.

View the complete study and accompanying article at: http://tr.im/pnqa.
And thanks to @briannewberry for the alert!

What do you think? Do you agree that these changes in consumer behavior affect how you can approach new business prospects?

Building A Strong Agency Brand

2009-06-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Why do we insist that our clients follow the basic rules of branding yet disregard them for ourselves? I've just begun reading Tim Williams excellent book "Take A Stand For Your Brand", and his conclusion that ad agencies are as "undifferentiated as cows on a hillside" is a powerful condemnation of our industry.

Tim points out that if you read a typical web site or agency brochure, you get essentially the same message: ___________ is a full-service, diversified marketing communications company serving a wide variety of clients, from health care to high tech. We offer integrated solutions to make our clients successful, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda.

As I have noted in previous posts and white papers, a strong brand identity should contain these four elements -- it should be unique or differentiating, believable, relevant and true. There is nothing differentiating about being "full-service", "integrated", or wanting to "make our clients successful", although they may be believable, relevant and true. So is it surprising that clients have trouble distinguishing one agency from another?

One agency that has built a unique brand identity for itself is Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. They do excellent creative work, but their truly distinguishing characteristic to me has always been their creative and unorthodox use of media and promotions to garner buzz for their clients, especially Burger King. Their hidden camera prank called Whopper Freakout in which they pretended to discontinue the Whopper to gauge customer reactions was a creative way to demonstrate customer preference over the Big Mac. But their use of a longer form video on the Internet was a great way to integrate television and web video. The campaign generated millions of views on YouTube, a Grand Effie for the agency, and double-digit sales increases for Burger King. Another unorthodox promotion that demonstrated their out-of-the-box thinking was the Subservient Chicken (http://www.subservientchicken.com/). To some critics, the promotion was confusing/weird/stupid/sophomoric yet five years later it is still creating buzz and has garnered over 450 million hits according to Adweek Magazine.

Recently, BooneOakley in Charlotte (http://www.booneoakley.com/m/) has been generating a lot of buzz with their innovative use of YouTube as their web site. Personally, I'm not wild about the cartoon storyline or the difficult navigation, but the idea is brilliant . . . and differentiating.

BooneOakley will not appeal to every client, but they aren't trying to. As they say on their home page, they are "a full-service ad agency for those who dare to do daring work".

Defining your agency brand means not only deciding what you are, but also what you are not. That's a hard decision for many agencies to make, but it must be done. If you don't have a distinctive philosophy, distinctive capabilities, or a distinctive way of doing business, then your agency is a commodity. And commodity agencies have only one way to distinguish themselves from one another -- a lower price.

If you transform your agency from a commodity into a distinctive agency brand, you will most likely exclude some potential clients. But as Tim Williams points out that's OK because the ones who are attracted to you will be strongly attracted because you offer something they want from an agency. And that can give you a competitive advantage over those full-service, diversified marketing communications companies you may be competing against.

CP+B and BooneOakley aren't agencies for every client, but as Bill Cosby once said "I can't give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: try and please everybody".

Maybe TV Advertising Is Not As Dead As We Think

2009-06-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

With the rise in media and marketer interest in social media and other new technology and media tools, many industry observers have officially signed the death certificate for traditional advertising. But to paraphrase Mark Twain "reports of television advertising's death have been greatly exaggerated".

A February report from Association of National Advertisers and Forrester was featured in Ad Age and The Huffington Post with the cryptic headline "TV Ads Losing Their Effectiveness". That study was based on a survey of marketers where 50 percent said they believed television ads have become less effective due to the growth in DVR penetration and usage.

But a new study released by American Research Foundation begs to differ with those assumptions. The study, titled "Empirical Evidence of TV Advertising Effectiveness", analyzed 388 case studies from seven different research agencies and concludes that TV ads are still effective, if not more so. This ARF study is only one part of a major project currently underway at The Wharton School on "The Future of Advertising".

Among the conclusions to be released in the upcoming issue of ARF's Journal of Advertising Research are that threats to TV advertising posed by DVR's and clutter are overblown; print and online advertising are effective; and word-of-mouth about brands are largely driven by paid media ads.

According to ARF Chief Research Officer Joel Robinson, "we're trying to replace assumptions and mythology with factual evidence from independent research". He went on to support the ARF's objective viewpoint by reinforcing that "we are not a lobbying organization for any medium . . . we are on the side of truth".

Much of what these studies show is the need for more research, specifically on how to allocate funds among media and the full implications of growing consumer use of search and social networks, said Jerry Wind, Lauder Professor of Marketing at Wharton. "The major concern about the decreased impact of television as an advertising medium is unfounded, but there are still a lot of things we don't know.

Look for more updates on this and other media effectiveness research as they are published. In the meantime, what do you think? Will this new batch of research change your thinking on what to recommend to your clients?

7 Steps for Building Stronger Client Relationships.

2009-05-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

Many business development strategies focus on tactics for prospecting and gaining new business from outside sources, but often neglect to stress the importance of maintaining and building your relationship with current clients. Keeping a strong and healthy relationship with your current base is particularly important in a recession when budget cuts and loss leader offers from competitive suppliers make your agency more vulnerable.

Another point to keep in mind is that when looking to gain new business, you should not forget that the low-hanging fruit if often already on your client list. A recent study for the CMO Council found that 92% of respondents did not feel they had maximized the potential of their current client list. So here are seven important steps you should take to build your relationship with your current clients.

Step #1 - Identify your most important clients to prioritize your efforts.
You have limited time and resources, so it is important for you to focus your efforts where they will be most valuable to your agency. As a general rule, your largest client(s) should head this list, but not always. A detailed cost accounting analysis may reveal that our number two or number three clients are more profitable based on work load requirements and the type/quality of work you do for them. You should also make an objective evaluation of the strength of your relationship and the potential for growth. You may find some surprising insights on where and how to focus your client nurture efforts.

Step #2 - Develop a marketing plan for each client.
How many times do we stress the importance of developing a plan to our clients but fail to write one for ourselves. Take the time to develop customized objectives and strategies for each client and share the responsibility by giving specific assignments to senior members of your organization. Strengthening and growing your current clients is too important a task to rely solely on lower level account managers to do the job.

Step #3 - Get visible at multiple layers of client management.
If your primary contact and exposure is limited to only one level of line management, you are much more exposed than if you have a working relationship at the EVP or C-level. Most budget directives and hire-fire decisions are top-down, not bottom-up. We all know this, but the lackadaisical approach many agency heads take to keeping a high top-of-mind awareness and appreciation with client senior executives never ceases to amaze me. Many times the direct client contact discourages multiple contacts, but this is something you must not allow to happen. Don't go over your direct contact's head without his knowledge, but find ways to get others involved or face the consequences.

Step #4 - Promote yourself to your clients to reinforce your value and ROI.
Don't assume that the client recognizes and acknowledges your value just because the program is working. Do you think the marketing director is giving your agency all the credit? You should regularly look for ways to promote the quality of your agency and how your programs are adding value to the client's business and marketing goals. In today's soft economy, a focus on how your work is helping your client weather the recession is a good place to start.

One strategy that is helpful to many agencies is to generate a regular flow of program analyses, competitive and category updates, relevant articles and white papers on current or future areas of interest for the company. I always encouraged my account managers to read and search industry publications and websites for articles to forward to the clients, and to regularly screen competitor websites for new items that the client may have missed. This simple act can often make your direct contact a hero in the organization by keeping him informed and demonstrates the commitment you have to their business.

I also recommend that agencies develop two versions of press releases -- one to distribute to the media and a second version for clients and friends. The clients and friends version can go beyond the "just the facts" approach desired by reporters to include more acknowledgment and praise for the agency.

Step #5 - Conduct a Client Satisfaction Survey to identify opportunity areas and uncover potential problem areas.
If you aren't asking your clients regularly and formally if you are meeting or exceeding their expectations, now is the time to begin that process. Client needs are constantly changing, and a formal survey provides a platform for the agency to make changes and recommendations to meet those needs. Take the opportunity to talk about the economy and ask if there is any more you can do to help them in these difficult economic circumstances. Become part of the solution to the recession in their mind, not part of the problem. This is also an excellent way to build your knowledge and relationship with multiple levels of client management.

In some cases, it may help to outsource the survey to an independent party in order to gain the most candid feedback. But even if you take that route, there is an opportunity for senior management to meet with the client to confirm what you heard and how you plan to respond to that information.

Step #6 - Take your client to lunch.
As simple as that sounds, I see too many agencies that fail to appreciate the value of face-to-face contact in building a professional and personal relationship. As business has evolved in our 24/7, on demand world, many business relationships have become too impersonal. While voice mail, e-mail and text messaging are certainly more time efficient, they can never replace the value of reading the client's body language and visceral reaction to a recommendation. And you should never forget that it is more difficult to fire a friend than a vendor.

Step #7 - Offer a steady stream of insights and recommendations on ways to grow their business or improve their profitability.
The need for proactive thought-leadership as a relationship tool cannot be stressed enough. Your agency must be seen as more than a vendor of ads to have a long-term client relationship.

An obvious area to explore is the fact that many clients are simply overwhelmed by the complexity and pace of change and need guidance on how to take advantage of new media alternatives and technology tools. But keep in mind that the ultimate need is not just how to effectively use email, blogs, podcasts, mobile marketing, viral marketing, pay-per-click, user-generated content, Twitter, etc., but how to mix them with traditional media to create the most impact.

Clients also need help in understanding how their target audience attitudes, needs and motivations are changing as they adapt to new economic and social conditions. The Internet doesn't just change how we communicate with each other. It is having a profound impact on our shopping and buying habits, as well as our understanding of the world around us and how we relate to each other. The more real insight and information you can provide the client for his unique business situation and needs, the better your chances to be seen as an invaluable asset to their business.

In a recent post, I referenced a study by Rain Today that found only 42% of clients said they were "very satisfied" with their marketing/advertising/PR agency. Only 42%! That means that over half are not satisfied and are vulnerable to leaving their agency. The time to act is now! Building a stronger relationship with your current clients may be your best chance to avoid becoming a casualty of the recession.

What do you think? Do you agree or disagree that building current client relationships is just as important, if not more so, than gaining new clients? I would love your feedback to this post.

7 Ways To Piss Off A Client

2009-05-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

In a recent study by Rain Today, 42% of clients said they were "very satisfied" with their marketing/advertising/PR agency. Only 42%! That means that more than half are not satisfied, and are vulnerable to leaving their agency. Most of the talk about how to survive this recession has focused on gaining new clients, but it is just as important to keep your current clients (and income).

A few years ago, I gave a speech to an AAF regional meeting on "7 Ways To Piss Off A Client". My talk was based on actual quotes from clients on why they had recently fired their agency. Word about the speech spread, and I eventually gave that same talk to over 30 local ad clubs and business organizations. When I read the report referenced above, it reminded me of that speech and a quick review convinced me it is still valid today.

All of these "seven ways" are what I call BGO's (i.e. blinding glimpses of the obvious). But the sad fact is that even though agencies know these actions break down the relationship, many still commit these basic relationship mistakes every day. I could have titled my speech "7 Ways To Keep A Client Happy", but doing everything right doesn't always translate into keeping a client happy and loyal. I gave my audience the assurance that following my advice was guaranteed to upset their client-agency relationship. Here are my key points, followed by actual quotes on why that made them angry enough to look for a new agency supplier.

1. Don't listen.
"Agencies have all the answers. They think they know more about my business than I do. Or worse, they are only thinking about winning awards and not what sells."
2. Miss deadlines without warning the client.
"Agencies will tell you anything to get you to approve a job, but when the pressure's on, they're always late."
3. Be over-budget.
"All agency people are overpaid and under-worked. No wonder they're so careless with my money."
4. Be intractable. Argue about everything.
"Agencies argue about periods versus exclamation points. They try so hard to be right all the time, they lose sight of what they should be doing."
5. Be greedy.
"Agencies think that advertising is the only way to sell products are are always recommending ways to increase their billings, not increase my sales."
6. Don't support your client's products.
"Agencies are whores. They don't really have a commitment to my business."
7. Be preoccupied with new business or other business.
"After the honeymoon, the agency just didn't give me the service they had promised. They never seemed to be there when I called."

Do any of these seven ways sound familiar? If they do, maybe you should re-think your business development strategy.