How do you find your content audience?

How do you find your content audience?

Jul 13, 2020 | Communication, Customers, Strategy

 

 

Writing an email sequence is not as easy, or effective, as the videoed on-line courses (special deal $695, ends at midnight) would have you believe.

The templates and advice is all pretty vanilla although useful, but does not get to the heart of why people buy from you, and how, amidst the tsunami of stuff coming at them, they pick out yours.

Many seem to think digital is different from the old fashioned advertising I grew up with, and it is, tactically, but strategically, it is the same.

A potential customer goes through some sort of journey that differs in every case, but generally follows a process:

  • recognition that there is something of interest out there for them
  • Awareness that the stuff out there has relevance to them as a solution to some sort of a problem they have, or have recognised as a result of the discovery process.
  • The problem now seen becomes something that has a value in its solution
  • There is activity seeking that solution
  • Choosing a supplier, and installation of the solution
  • The after sales process, where they can be persuaded, assuming you did a good job, to be an advocate for the problem you solved for them, and more specifically for you as the solution provider.

The process by which this all happens is not a nice logical ‘Sales funnel’ where progress is made in an orderly manner. In reality is looks more like a huge ball of tangled fishing line, a real mess. Seeking to put order to the mess makes sense so long as you do not lose sight of the simple fact that the whole thing will resist the orderly, sequential nature of software, and revert to the mess at any and every opportunity.

The targets of your ‘content’ at each stage also has wrinkles.

You have current customers, the easiest to reach, potential customers, those you really want to reach who may have the problem unrecognised, some who may have recognised their problem, and you have advocates, those who might amplify your content.

The further audience is the wider community, out of whom all the other three groups emerge in one way or another.

Therefore, you need to mix and match between the mediums and the message to maximise the outcomes of the investment in content. You do this by the combination of focus on specific market personas. This includes personalised messaging of current and past customers, as well as more general communication of the problem/value proposition equation to gain reach into the varying audiences, to generate marketing leverage.

How deeply have your considered your mix of content and medium to reach your preferred audience?

 

Header credit: Maksym Kopylov via Flikr

 

 

 

Why ‘SMART’ does not work well for digital

Why ‘SMART’ does not work well for digital

Jul 6, 2020 | Analytics, Communication, Marketing

 

 

Marketing has moved significantly into the digital domain, online. It appears to make sense, as it appears ‘SMART’ (Specific, Measurable,  Achievable, Realistic and Time driven).

The engineers and accountants amongst us warm to this sort of seemingly measurable expenditure, they can look at a dashboard of quantitative outcomes, and feel good that they are not wasting money.

However, a closer look might give them pause.

Specific.

Yes, you can have a specific, focused activity that either happened, or did not, and people can be held accountable for them.

Measurable.

Yes, you can measure an activity done on line, so long as you are prepared to discount the bots and fakery hiding in the digital supply chain. The ad did appear, we got X 000 likes, Y 00 email addresses when they downloaded the clickbait, and sales reps are now chasing them as qualified leads. Hopefully a few of them actually are, but we may never really know.

Achievable.

Yes, the goal of getting likes and qualified leads has been achieved

Accountable.

Again, you know the intern in the marketing department was accountable for ensuring that there were X entries in the twitter feed, Y   postings on Facebook and Instagram, and that the agency supplied a white paper a week as clickbait.

Timely.

Again, yes, the boss wanted this all done by the end of the month, as it was, Hooray!!

Problem with all of this is that we are measuring the wrong things. They are all about activity, nothing about outcomes. When we understand and can quantify the cause and effect links between activity and outcomes, a really tough problem, SMART goals may become useful.

‘Digital marketing’ has replaced using ‘digital’ as a tool of marketing. Those amongst us who do not understand the wide impact of ‘marketing’ have got it all the wrong way around. They have been seduced by the new shiny thing that appears to be useful, and sometimes it is, but not often as a standalone strategy, it is by its nature a short term tactic only.

What can we learn from our kids about brand building?

What can we learn from our kids about brand building?

Jun 25, 2020 | Branding, Communication, Customers

 

Kids understand stories, it is the way they learn, the way they absorb the lessons of the past for later use.

Why don’t we use this instinctive capability more often in our marketing?

Take your kids to the pantomime, they love it.

They get excited every time the villain comes on stage. They boo, yell warnings to the hero, and hop up and down in frustration when the hero looks around as the villain hides.

Why does this matter?

When building a brand, you have to make choices. Who is your brand for, and just as importantly, who is it not for?

If you can explicitly state who your brand is not for, then those for whom it is for, will rally around and support it against the villain.

Simple stuff, hidden in the instinctive responses in our brains.

Watch your kids at the panto, and learn how to build a brand.

Define the villain, and the kids will cheer for you.

 

 

 

 

Marketing technology. Master or servant?

Mar 4, 2020 | Communication, Marketing

 

 

This is a story of two modest sized SME clients.

One has spent a lot of time, effort and money building a marketing technology ‘stack’, to use the vernacular. The expectation was that it would deliver significant marketing productivity, which they defined pretty well with a range of measures.

The other uses a basic system to record customer contacts and follow ups, as well as a semi manual system to create, collect and collate information, or ‘content’,  combined with social platforms and their website for lead generation.

The first client, with the sophisticated system has a tiger by the tail. The technology is ruling them, is unrelenting, unforgiving, and prone to drive them down dead ends because their data input is patchy  and sometimes flawed. Their recognition is that after all the effort, they are  little  better off than before the technology, just lighter in the pocket, and wearing people out.

The second client is struggling with the processes, particularly the manual interventions required, and the personal level of engagement necessary. There is frustration as they are continually told, ‘all this should be automated’ ,  but when you look at the total cost of conversion, share of wallet, lifetime value and referrals, they are much better off.

The question then is the extent to which the software is serving the purpose to which it has been directed, vs. serving itself. The intervention of people has been removed, automated, and the automation does not give a fig about the human interactions that make relationships, it just needs to be fed data.

Greek philosopher  Sophocles is quoted to have said, ‘nothing vast enters out world without a curse’ , and never has that reported quote been truer than when we consider the automatic responses we all have to the digital triggers now prevalent in our lives.

Give me back some of the humanity, with all its ambiguity and nuances any day.

So, as you are considering automation of your revenue generation processes,  never forget to account for the fact that people do business with people, in strong preference to algorithms, which are just tools.

 

 Header cartoon, Courtesy XKCD

The curse of insider knowledge

Nov 22, 2019 | Communication, Leadership, Management

When we know something, the automatic expectation is that those with whom we are communicating understand it equally well.

This automatic, unrecognised assumption can be a barrier, and at its worst, a curse.

Participating in a conversation a while ago where I was the outsider amongst a group of Canberra bureaucrats, their verbal shorthand, particularly around the departmental names and programs was incomprehensible to me. The terminology  was perfectly well understood by all of them, and they were surprised at my ignorance, when I pulled them up and pointed it out.

Try a little experiment.

Tap out a song, like happy birthday, with a pencil on a desk, and have people tell you what it is. We expect most to be able to pick it, the tune is obvious to us, singing it in our minds as we do it, but only a few actually pick it.

Of course, this closed communication loop is used all the time as a badge of membership, and a means of exclusion.

It may be that the group I was talking to were expressing their status as insiders by excluding me, but assuming this is not the intent, it was nevertheless the effect.

Every group has its own set of verbal and behavioral tools. These can be used as an offensive weapon, a means of exclusion, or they can be a tool of inclusion, it just depends on how you use it.

 

Header cartoon credit: Scott Adams and his mate Dilbert.

Content marketing or Marketing content?

Sep 23, 2019 | Communication, Marketing

These two things are different, absolutely different.

Content marketing means different things to different people. Last week I attended a presentation of a self-styled content marketing expert. He was pontificating from the stage about the value of content, and content marketing, but when I asked his definition of content marketing, all I got was clichés.

To me this is pretty typical, disappointing, but perhaps forgivable, as we are just in the early stages of really understanding how best to use this new(ish) medium.

To me, the best definition is that of Joe Pulizzi who runs the Content Marketing Institute.

‘Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action’.

This definition does not at any time mention selling. It focusses on delivering information of value to an audience, which may, in time, result in a transaction.

This implies there is a strategy in place, an organised, strategically focussed process that generates content for publication, that reports to someone who carries the accountability for the process and its management.

Without a process, and someone accountable, it becomes chaos.

Trouble is, much of the so called content pushed out is just rubbish. Chaotic gibberish that rehashes what others have said, not an original thought amongst them. Any good stuff in that maelstrom of rubbish is likely to be lost.

Whenever I hear the words ‘Content marketing campaign,’ which is often, usually from agencies of various types, I cringe. Content marketing is not a campaign, at its best, it is a consistent, ongoing  flow of information that may be of value. It is a journey, not a campaign!

Marketing your content is different again, it is simply the management of the challenge of getting your content, good, bad or indifferent in front of those who might be interested, gaining their attention, and extracting an action.

It is largely an exercise in channel management. In the ‘good old days, you had a few options, radio, TV, magazines, letterbox drops and direct mail. Not so now, when there are multitudes of channels all fighting for the attention of potential customers.

You can do a good job of marketing your content, but if your content is crap, it will not do you much good, indeed, it will work against you. Poor content is toxic to the receiver, as it has consumed some of their valuable time, but delivered no value in return.  

 

Header cartoon courtesy of Tom Fishburne www.marketoonist.com