Alan See

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (Recovery Losses Momentum) stated that consumers have seen little growth in their wallets and remain skittish about the economy’s prospects.  Of course, if you own a business that depends on people having jobs and disposable income you didn’t need research from the U.S. Commerce Department to tell you that consumer spending is sluggish.  Economists are currently cutting forecasts for the second half, and your calls and foot traffic are already down.  So, what’s your plan?  Take more costs out of the business?  My guess is that you’ve already cut expenses to the bone.  But hold the presses! Do you really need a marketing recovery plan?  After all, Business Week reported (The New Abnormal) that while Americans are broke and depressed they are still swilling $3 lattes and waiting in line for iPhones.  Are you from Apple or Starbucks?  I’m not either; so here are some quick tips to consider in our “unusually uncertain” economy.

1. Focus on the consumer.
a. Translation: Make sure you address competitive weaknesses within the four stages of the consumer purchasing process lifecycle, including: Awareness, Information Search, Evaluation, and Purchase / After-Sale Service.  In addition, you may need to think smaller by breaking large marketing initiatives into several highly targeted micro campaigns based on continuous selection of the best (most profitable) of the best (ready-to-buy).

2. You will not get a do-over, mulligan or practice shot.
a. Translation: Do your P&L homework upfront and structure your best offer immediately. Don’t hold back; consumers with cash and a willingness to spend it are in short supply right now.

3. Don’t wait until there is a problem to contact or follow up with customers.
a. Translation: Monitor trigger events (contract dates, service calls, etc) closely and nurture two-way relationship building conversations. For example, my cell phone contract expired back in February and I still have not been contacted.  When you do follow up make sure you have something valuable or significant to relate.  By the way, a call merely to say you “just wanted to touch base” is not value-add.

4. Keep asking, listening, analyzing and improving.
a. Translation: Keep asking for and listening to your customer’s feedback.  And make sure you are leveraging and engaging your entire organization as it relates to that feedback.  Social media platforms are an excellent channel to help you both listen and engage in conversation.

There is a story that is told of Henry Ford about a breakdown in his assembly line that no one on his staff could fix.  As the story goes, his production lines were down for hours; hours turned into days, and Henry was frustrated.  In desperation he called an electrical engineer friend whom he trusted to come to his plant, diagnose, and repair the problem.  His friend promptly arrived and after spending about ten minutes the Ford lines were up and running.  A most grateful Henry Ford thanked him and told his friend to invoice the Ford Company for the repairs.  A few days later Henry Ford received an invoice from his friend in the amount of $10,000.  Flabbergasted, Henry called his friend on the telephone and protested, “You only tinkered around for ten minutes!  Ten-thousand dollars?!”  His friend agreed that he would re-invoice the repairs.  A few days later Henry Ford received a modified invoice:

Tinkering - $10

Knowing where to Tinker - $9,990

Knowing where to Twitter …

There is a structured path to becoming an electrical engineer.  And based on the outcome of the story, Henry’s friend was either very lucky - or clearly knew what he was doing.  The road to becoming a social media marketing expert isn’t as clear.  In fact, in today’s environment it’s often the subject line of marketing agency jokes.  Still, if you believe there is a breakdown in your strategic marketing plan related to social media here are a few questions to consider before calling in an expert:

1.     Are my customers, prospects or other constituents on social media?  That may sound like a ridiculous question to ask first; but why did you get into social media?  Are you sure you need social media platforms?

2.     Can you describe the elements of your program that don’t seem to be working?  Again, that may come across as a silly question; but are your challenges related to strategy, technology or processes?  At the risk of some shameless self-promotion you might consider taking the Berry Network Social-Ready Assessment in order to establish a baseline measurement on those key competencies areas.

3.    What does the expert’s reputation appear to be in the social media space?  Do I trust them?  Are they practicing what they preach, and if so, are they any good?  Engaging your brand in social media is easier said than done.  So you may need to make room in your budget for paid council.

Remember playing “Rock, Paper, Scissors?” The basics of the game consist of each player shaking a fist a number of times (priming) and then extending the same hand in a fist (rock), out flat (paper), or with the index and middle fingers extended (scissors).  Each of these is referred to as a throw, and which one wins is dependent upon the opponent’s throw.

·         Paper wins against Rock (paper covers rock)

·         Rock wins against Scissors (rock smashing scissors)

·         Scissors wins against Paper (scissors cut paper)

Under close examination many organizations may find they are using a rock, paper, scissors customer experience strategy. You know - prime the market with new product features, throw out interruption based communications hoping to rock your prospects with repeat broadcast ads, cover your defects with stopgap fixes, and then cut your development time so you can do it again - only faster.

Your new product features might be on target, and your ad spend capable of rocking the market; however, your customers may still cut-out your business faster than you can scream “don’t run with scissors” if poor quality impacts their experience.  Research shows that your reputation for quality affects sales in three ways.  It will:

1.      Reinforce the confidence of previous customers.

2.      Win new customers.

3.      Induce customers of competing brands to switch.

The cost of quality may seem high, but the cost of poor quality is still higher.  If you take steps to protect your reputation for quality you will be sure to win no matter what your competition is throwing.

Most people will agree that practical experience is a good thing.  In fact, if you’ve been around the block a time or two, the old adage “experience is the best teacher” is probably anchored in your mindset.   When I reflect on my lessons learned through practical experience I always find Will Rogers’ perspective insightful, but also at times, troublesome:

“The trouble with using experience as your guide is that sometimes the final exam comes first, then the lesson.”

Why troublesome?  After all, at one point or another we all start out as greenhorns.  And let’s face it; there are situations we occasionally experience that are really not possible to prepare for.  What I find troublesome is the negative impact on organizations when key executives continue to scoff at the lessons offered, or worse, they refuse to acknowledge they were even handed an exam.

Are senior executives in your organization still scoffing at social media?  In today’s environment your customer’s are testing your organizations ability to interact with them on social platforms in the same way you communicate with them through email and over the phone.  In fact, you’ve probably seen the following factoids in a dozen presentations over the last six months:

·         75% of all active U.S. Internet households visited a social networking site.

·         22% of the time spent online is attributed to social networking sites.

·         20% of U.S. adults online publish or own a blog.

·         55% have at least one or more social networking profiles.

·         70% of consumers want to interact with businesses using social media while less than one-third of companies have the strategies, policies, and processes in place to meet this demand.

And yet some of your peers are still hesitant, or openly against implementing social media strategies into your organization.  I suspect some are hesitant because they are not personally using social media, and if the truth were known, they’re still not concerned with learning.  Even so, it’s time to let go of the notion that social media is just for kids and has no business value.  In short, you don’t want the adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” to begin to be associated with your brand (personal or corporate).  Here are some brief observations to share with your leadership peers that might motivate them to sign up for a lesson or two.

1.       Your words and actions are magnified by your position.  Most of your actions will seem more important to your employees than you intend; merely teasing about the use or value of social media on your part may become dangerously distorted by your workers.  It’s a critical time for you to provide executive level support for this new and emerging engagement channel.  Keep this in mind; it’s not about you, it’s about your customers.  If your customers want to communicate through LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook who are you to stop them?

2.       No need to boil the ocean.  There are scores of social media related platforms and applications, so don’t be afraid to narrow your focus during your initial learning process.  It’s too early to declare with authority the platforms that will remain standing, those that will be absorbed, or the ones that will fade away.  For senior executives I would recommend focusing on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, in that order.  Sidebar applications that help with efficiency and effectiveness (for example, TweetDeck for Twitter or various mobile applications for Facebook, etc) can wait.

3.       You can’t learn to swim without getting wet, so jump in.  If nothing else, just commit to spending 15 – 20 minutes per day learning the ins and outs of a single platform.  Once you develop a comfort level move to the next platform or application.  If you have a trusted friend or colleague who is already social media savvy consider asking them to breakfast or out for a beer.  Use the opportunity to pick their mind on the platforms they like to use, and how they strategically leverage those applications.  If all else fails, hire someone to help you with your social media education.  Based on my faculty, and consulting background I kind of like this idea!  However, you may want to start out by making an author happy and simply purchasing one of the many social media related publications on the market today.

4.       The clock is ticking.  We’re quickly moving from a time of mass communications to one of masses of communicators; your customers are sharing their experiences through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms at a rate that will continue to accelerate.  As a result, social media should become a part of every organizations risk management and customer engagement strategy.  That means the entire leadership team (CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO, Sales, Legal and HR) will feel the impact.  You know from experience that it always takes more time than expected to secure cross functional support.  So, it’s time to start building bridges.

My post “Using Marketing Booth Babes” sparked some lively discussion. The original post asked marketer’s for their opinion on the practice of using booth babes (scantily clad women … or men) to attract attention to their organizations booth at conferences and trade-shows. The use of sexual tension to create a direction for a movie plot or to sell products is an age-old strategy. However, many readers agreed that using sex as a way to suggest product “sizzle” was no longer very original, and in fact could be risky if it actually alienated potential purchasers.

So what is your opinion of the practice of using “Twitter Babes” to promote and draw in page followers? I’m not talking about spam accounts that are pornographic in nature. You can hit the block function on spammers easily enough. And I’m not talking about the properties where you might actually expect to see scantily clad women; for example, individuals who follow pages selling Victoria’s Secret like brands and products probably expect to see women in lingerie. What I’m thinking about are those Twitter pages where the bio, homepage URL and even the customized background suggest a professional intention that in no way requires a string bikini woman or ripped abs man as the picture icon. The “June 2009 State of the Twittersphere” report from the folks at HubSpot lists some interesting Twitter factoids:

• 79.79% fail to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 54.88% have never tweeted

Why are these factoids important? Because, when people are deciding whether to follow your page they look at your recent updates, bio, URL, location and picture icon to get a sense of who you really are. In short, Twitter is an extension of your brand. For that reason you should make sure your profile details, including your picture, supports your strategic goals and objectives.

The September 2009 issue of Inc. magazine showcases the 500 fastest-growing private companies. Forty-eight advertising and marketing companies are listed and a recurring theme among those organizations is a performance-based business model. In other words, the client only pays when customers take action. Pay-for-Call, Cost-per-Action, Pay-per-Sale, Revenue-Sharing, Profit-Sharing; make no mistake, performance-based business models contain elements of risk, and are taking center-stage in our current economy.

Well, “taking center-stage” may be overstated as the need to measure marketing performance has been a hot topic for several years now. Case studies that document marketing-return-on-investment (MROI) and articles covering the short tenure of marketing leaders who do not quickly deliver measurable results are numerous. So what’s different about the current trend? Traditionally, one might view the agency business model as low risk-low reward. This means that the advertiser pays 100% for all goods and services and then owns 100% of the resulting efforts. However, I’m sure there are several agencies who would argue that they have always been held accountable for measurable results no matter how the business model is defined. I’m also sure there are advertisers who would counter with agency invoices that they felt did not reflect a low reward trade-off.

All forms of advertising pose some risk, and no agency can afford to work for free - so we can’t hope to eliminate risk or reward in advertising. However, advertisers and agencies can negotiate with one another to find business models that represent acceptable levels of risk and reward for both parties. Performance based advertising isn’t for everyone and it’s not right for every situation; but given the current economic climate it’s worth exploring.

Are you friending, linking, tweeting and blogging? Social media is driving a wave of human interaction around the world. In fact, I find myself approaching the triple 3K mark on twitter; 3,000 tweets, 3,000 followers and 3,000 connections. Those are fairly low numbers when compared to many avid twitter users; although high enough to rank in the top one percent of users, at least according to Twitter Grader . But what does it all mean? Do social media sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of connections rather than build actual relationships? Is social media best used by individuals; or will it really change the way organizations engage their customers? And what about the ROI; is the return on relationships something that can (or should) be measured?

Some marketer’s are still eager to list the reasons why they don’t believe in social media platforms.

• It’s for self-promoters or the unemployed.
• It’s for teenagers.
• It’s just over-sharing too much trivial babble.
• It doesn’t directly drive sales leads.
• I can’t control the marketing message.
• There is no measurable ROI.

While all those may be true in some cases, you’re not doing your organization any favors by dismissing the game changing power behind the new social media applications. At a high-level social media marketing is about influencing the customer experience by engaging in dialogue with the customer in order to build a trusted relationship over time. The customer experience refers to all touch points people have from the moment they are aware of a need until they have fulfilled the need or reached a certain goal. To make the social-ready transformation an organization may need to adopt a new mindset. Most transformations involve strategy, technology and processes and a social media transformation is no different in that respect.

1. Strategy: How well does your social media plan support your overall marketing strategy?

2. Technology: Do you have the technology and infrastructure to support your social media goals and objectives?

3. Processes: Do you have the operational processes in place to support your social media goals and objectives?

In the last few months we’ve noticed that many organizations tend to fall in the following broad categories as it relates to the key transformation areas above:

The Broadcaster:
The Broadcaster is typically focused on one way communications and is most comfortable in the traditional media world of mass marketing. Leveraging typical “push marketing” tools and tactics the Broadcaster pushes their product towards the audience which may or may not be aware of it. The Broadcaster largely focuses on the features of their product or service and seeks a direct response from the mass audience. Often times the Broadcaster is focused on a short-term strategy that involves a specific event or time-based campaign (Christmas deals, Back-to-School, etc).

The Listener:
The Listener tends to focus on push marketing tactics; but also considers customer feedback. The Listener may have customer listening posts established in the form of brand monitoring initiatives, although those initiatives may be fairly informal.

The Conversationalist:
The Conversationalist is more in the “pull marketing” camp. The Conversationalist is typically interested in interacting with their target market at a deeper level of engagement through tighter relevance, content and stronger brand identification. The Conversationalist is focused on the development of trust and perceived value.

The Community Builder:
The Community Builder is fully in the pull marketing camp. The Community Builder looks for ways to engage their customers and prospects in two-way conversations, and is comfortable with the concepts of user created content and co-creation. The Community Builder is focused on influencing and involving vs. educating and controlling their audience.

Building a social-ready organization is an on-going journey. And that journey as well as an organizations position on the social media continuum is determined by several factors, including; overall marketing strategy, desired customer experience, business model, and the competitive environment. Social media isn’t going away so you need to set a course that’s right for your corporate goals and objectives.

June sales are leaving many retailers anxious about the approaching back-to-school shopping season. Consumers continue to buy less and they are more discriminating than ever. However; many brand consultants argue that the recession has not created a pricing shift but a higher degree of awareness regarding the value of products and brands. Today’s discount shopper is clearly reluctant to spend on premium brands if the value is missing.

I recently pulled out C. Britt Beemer and Robert L. Shook’s book “It Takes a Prophet to Make a Profit … 15 Trends that are Reshaping American Business.” Published in 2001, trend #6 reads:

“Consumers Are Reluctant to Pay Full Retail Price”

Their research showed the number one reason Americans dislike paying full retail price is that they think prices are too high. Fifty-seven percent of discount shoppers expressed that opinion. In addition, they reported:

• 82 percent said they knew the item would be on sale someday.
• 82 percent also said that somebody always has it on sale.
• 79 percent said they normally wait for sales because they don’t need an item right away.
• 46 percent felt that quality has suffered.
• 34 percent said that service has declined.

It’s difficult to read consumers because they are not always consistent. But when your customers are skittish about spending it’s not hard to see that both quality and value for the dollar are important.

Grocery store’s who tried to attract customer’s by influencing the customer shopping experience via coffee bars, fancy bakeries and the availability of exotic products are going back to the basics. Major players such as Kroger, Stop & Shop, Publix and other big food chains are now refocusing efforts on the middle aisles where as much as 70% of their weekly profits are generated. In fact, many retailers are also expected to slice the assortment of products in their stores by at least 15%. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (“Retailers Cut Back on Variety, Once the Spice of Marketing”) retailers are trying to cater to budget-conscious shoppers who want to simplify shopping trips and stick to familiar products.

Incremental variations on popular products can be confusing since some 47,113 new products, variations or sizes were launched last year, more than twice as many as in 1998. For example, a typical Target store has 88 kinds of Pantene shampoo, conditioner and styling products. How many hair products do you need? I don’t need any; but then again, I’m nearly bald. If your favorite grocery retailer stops carrying a specific product in the size, flavor or fragrance you prefer are you likely to defect to another store? I’m not; however, if they change my experience by closing more check-out lanes that could make a difference because I hate to wait.

The current economy is forcing changes that may impact the customer experience. What is a show-stopper for you?

Some 18% of small-business owners surveyed in April said they are working a second job, according to the latest findings from the American Express Open Small Business Monitor. It’s an indicator that many business owners are experiencing challenges in an economic environment that they haven’t faced before. It also sheds a new light on the lead generation process. The media landscape has expanded with a proliferation of channels touting more eyeballs and deeper customer engagement. More eyeballs and deeper engagement are both great. But when sales are down and you are forced to stop drawing a salary in order to deal with reduced cash flow you’ve got to be asking yourself;

“Where are the local customers who are ready to buy right now?”

According to research from comScore, Knowledge Networks/SRI, and other leading consumer media usage organizations; technology has dramatically improved the ability for consumers to research and shop before purchasing, causing previously used benchmarks like circulation to become weak indicators of expected sales. So, without relying on circulation numbers to derive a semi-accurate measure of expected sales how does an advertiser know where to spend their advertising dollars in today’s mix of print and online local business directories?

The key is to understand how online vs. offline media behavior differs between shoppers and buyers. Though online and offline behavior are not mutually exclusive of each other, each follows a different progression through the four primary phases of the buying cycle according to research from comScore and TMP.

                                                            Online             Offline

Need Definition                                   42%                 16%

Research & Consideration                  23%                 23%

Intent / Shop                                       17%                 21%

Local Business Selection                     19%                 41%

So, how does this data translate for the advertiser? TMP expresses it as, “When it comes to researching and purchasing, offline search is used overwhelmingly when a business has already been identified and consumers are ready to purchase. Online search, on the other hand, is used earlier in the buying process.” That means when putting together your directory ad, know that most consumers already know what they are looking for. They’ve decided to buy; now it’s more about informing and educating them quickly and making it easy for them to contact and do business with you.