Jan 5, 2012 | Branding, Communication, Customers
“Advertising is what you do when you cannot get there in person”
This has been a pretty regularly heard quote over my 40 years in this business, attributed to Fairfax Cone, one of the founders of Foote Cone & Belding advertising. It remains one of the foundations of good (i.e. effective) communication weather it be paid-for media space, or one of the newer forms of “content marketing” on the web.
How come most of the advertisers I have heard/seen over the Christmas period never heard it?
I make that assertion based on the crap that passes as advertising over this period, almost all of it based on price and a transparent “1/2 yearly”, or “Clearance sale” type claim. Also, the businesses owner is often used as the mouthpiece, usually not a media friendly person. Nothing to attract me apart from a cheap price, certainly nothing to persuade me that the product will do anything to solve my problems, just price.
Problem with price being the only reason to buy, is that it just becomes a race to the bottom, and as Seth Godin has pointed out, the risk here is that you just might win.
If you could talk one on one to all the potential customers, would you still say the same thing as you are saying in your advertising?
If the answer is “No” better rethink your approach for the good of your long term pocket.
Jan 3, 2012 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Sales
We are in the middle of the post Christmas sales, an orgy of discount opportunities for consumers as retailers rush to clear stock, and take advantage of the behavior consumers exhibit every new year, “buy, buy, grab the discount”.
Whoops?
Have we trained customers to expect great deals post Xmas, do they put off spending at full price till the post Xmas period, not because the deals are great, but because they have been trained to do so?
Clearly the answer is yes, customers have been trained, just like Dr Pavlov demonstrated.
So, what else can customers be trained to do? When you think about it, the list gets pretty long.
Switch brands indiscriminately
Demand discounts
Be impatient and unforgiving
Expect free service, whilst getting a discount price
24 hour delivery
Limitless warranty
The list goes on, but to each, there is a positive side, customers can be trained to stay with the one brand, not to expect discounts and unreasonable service and warranty, not all of them, but usually enough to make the investment worthwhile, as the alternative is to go broke being the cheapest to all, rather than delivering genuine value to those who are prepared to pay for it.
What are you training your customers to expect?
Dec 19, 2011 | Customers, Marketing
Ever thought about how markets happen, how the emerge, how they grow?
A new market has to have a first customer, most marketers look to the value proposition, the competitive landscape, the distribution channels, the mechanics of manufacturing, the service offering, but that is not all it is, there is another factor usually overlooked.
Somewhere, sometime, there needs to be a first customer, then a second, and with luck those will tell their friends the product is good, and the ball will start rolling.
However, for every new customer, there must be a first time, they must be persuaded to buy into a new market or product category, to overcome the barriers of habit, reluctance to take a risk, to be different, to move from something that they know is OK to something they have heard may be better.
I have not yet bought a Smartphone, but I suppose I will at some point, when the pressure is sufficient to get me to buy one, but that will be the first time I buy a Smartphone, it will be a hurdle, the second one will be much, much easier.
Getting people to buy their first is the key hurdle of any new market.
Dec 16, 2011 | Customers, Management, Small business, Strategy
Being a supplier to FMCG retailers is really, really hard. The two gorillas are demanding, unreasonable, and often just plain stupid, at least that is a suppliers assessment. If you asked the retailers, they would just be doing their jobs, maximising the revenue and margin returns from their shelf-space, minimising their costs, and competing aggressively for access to the consumers wallets.
It is just a matter of perspective, but whilst the customer is not always right, they remain the customer, and if you want to serve them, it is you, the supplier who must adapt or die.
The current pressures on SME food industry manufacturers, a high $A, the retailers push into housebrands, difficulties in funding working capital, skills shortages particularly in regional areas where many of them are situated, and promotional costs, are pushing many to the wall. The long term impact of these changes appear to be all bad for the economy, as food security, balance of payments, regional jobs and skills, and having a manufacturing base from which to innovate, are all compromised. However, there is not much joy in complaining, clearly the various governments do not care, or are more engaged in important debates like gay marriage, and spending our money on sectional interests who seem to have a few votes, so we have to address the problems ourselves.
Manufacturing, let alone food industry manufacturing no longer even warrants a seat around the cabinet table, clearly we are on our own, so we adapt or die, and many will die, the few who successfully adapt will be very good indeed.
Dec 2, 2011 | Customers, Marketing, Social Media, Strategy
How do you calculate the value of an investment in social media?
Any investment attracts the need to try to quantify the returns, both to measure the success of the investment when it is too late to do much about it apart from ensuring the same mistake is not made again, and to prioritise competing investment options against a limited pool of funds available.
Accountants love the discounted cash flow, and real options type analyses that prevail, but how do you do these on an investment in media, social or otherwise?
It makes sense to start to consider “data chains”.
Cause and effect;
Influence and action;
Believable and buy;
These are all examples of the chains of connections that are on the surface largely subjective, but lead to an outcome that can be measured. The task of measuring the return on the exposure that can accrue from a presence in Social Media, and even conventional media, is fraught with challenges, but with systemisation of the pools of data generated from your sales, customer retention, prospect identification, web analytics, and all the other data collection options now available, you can start to see the patterns emerging that can be used to calculate a return, even if there is a “fudge factor” present.
At some point you simply have to acknowledge that behavioral patterns are not easy to quantify, and even harder to predict, but by explicitly acknowledging the chains of cause and effect that exist, you can start to anticipate, if not predict, the returns
Dec 1, 2011 | Branding, Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Marketing on line is no longer the “next new thing” it was just a few short years ago, it is mainstream, a major consumer of marketing resources, and source of huge marketing value when done well. As with all new things, you get better with practice, and we are just at the beginning, learning how to use the tools now becoming available to build an experience for our customers they relate to, and can value, building the relationships they have with our businesses in the process.
In past blogs, I have noted the success of Tesco, particularly in Korea with their virtual shops, and the astonishing range of innovation that can be generated using QR codes.
In this link to what is in my view the best curator of web marketing topics, the Businessgrow blog, there is an accumulation of the best on line campaigns done to date. It avoids the usual suspects, and concentrates on those that are pushing the boundaries, and is therefore a valuable glimpse into the opportunities emerging. The web may be a free medium, but it is one where content is king.
Being different takes creativity, guts, foresight, and resources help, but are not a substitute for the other three. In the end being effective on the web is way more than just being there, because almost everyone is there now, you have to stand out, be relevant, engaging, and useful.
