7 Books every marketer should read.

7 Books every marketer should read.

 

I am a voracious reader, have been all my life, all sorts of stuff from fiction, biographies, and books of ideas, to technical journals that challenge me to come to an even basic understanding. Perhaps it is because I am a bit of a dreamer, but also intensely curious, and reading feeds both.

As a management contractor and consultant, reading also gives me the foundation upon which to build the activities I recommend, sometimes implement, and write about incessantly on this blog.

However, there are a very few books that I go back to again and again, some that I read, remember, and refer to from time to time, some that get read and put aside as interesting, and many that do not get finished, as the message is simply not of the interest I assumed from the name, cover blurb and often the endorsements.

When asked which are the ‘go to’ books on the areas in which I practice, strategy, marketing, sales, and business improvement, it is a very small list. These few have added to both the width and depth of my thinking on my area of professional expertise. They are the standouts among a library of terrific books.

‘Influence: The psychology of persuasion’ by Robert Cialdini.

I first read this book probably 25 years ago, and have used the insights it offered ever since as a foundation for all my thinking related to marketing and selling. My current dog eared and scribbled on copy, probably the third or fourth I have had (I tend to lend them, but books are not boomerangs) is again on loan to someone I was trying to help.

 

‘Spin Selling’ by Neil Rackham’

Spin Selling is another oldie but goodie I first read over 20 years ago. There have been thousands of books written on all aspects of the sales process,  and while I have not read anything like all of them, none of those I have read goes even close to laying out the sales process as well as this one. Even in this digital age, nothing like the time when it was written, the principals remain, because they are about human behavior, not just creating a transaction.

 

‘The Goal’ by Eliyahu Goldratt.

The Goal is an unusual book, a text book written as a novel. I first came across it a very long time ago trying to get my head around making operational improvements in a ‘broken’ factory. The lessons in the book have subsequently become entrenched in the writings around the TPS, Lean and 6 Sigma improvement movements around the world.

It is not a marketing book, it is one that describes the improvement challenges in the manufacturing environment we see evolving in front of us, and the means by which those challenges can be met. As such, it is applicable to marketing, which should be as welcoming of continuous improvement as any other process. Besides, it is a good read!

Goldratt is a mathematician, and philosopher who first proposed the mathematical equations that now make up game theory, not a marketer. This makes, again, the point that great marketing always has a quantitative base, if you look hard enough to find it. .

 

‘Team of Teams’ Gen. Stanley McChrystal

I love this book, as it describes the manner in which General McChrystal turned the command and control culture of the US army on its head in the face of fierce opposition in Iraq that did not follow the ‘rules of war’ by which the US army had evolved. It was unthinkable that an apparently disorganised and leaderless bunch of terrorists (or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective) could, and did , render the overwhelming might of the US military redundant. This book provides a blueprint for every organisation to follow as it sets about reconfiguring its activities to meet the challenges of a fragmenting and information rich world.

A very useful addition is a follow up called “One Mission’ written by Chris Fussell, who was McChrystal’s offsider in Iraq, and collaborator in the writing of Team of Teams. It describes how the team of teams methodology has been translated into the world of business.

 

‘Playing to win’ by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin.

This book builds on the work of Michael Porter, who wrote the seminal book on competitive strategy way back in 1980. There have been libraries written about strategy, how to develop, deploy, manage, and account for it, and some are very good, well known books of great value. None however come close to this book first published in 2013, for a practical and useable model by which to manage the complex strategic processes necessary for success. For me, this model goes hand in hand with Business Model Generation (below) which looks more specifically at designing a business model that will best deliver a strategy.  Both require iteration and deep analysis of your business, its objectives and competitive environment.

 

‘Business Model Generation’ by Alexander Osterwalder.

There has been a slew of offshoots from this book, which presented for the first time the idea of a  ‘Business Model Canvas’. This idea evolved from the work and writing of many scholars and practitioners, especially those involved in the ‘Lean Startup’ movement that evolved into the book of that name written by  Eric Ries.  The Business Model Canvas is  now a tool I use in virtually every strategy assignment as a means to visualise in a simple way all the key components of an effective business model. It is not just for startups, but for every business that is seeking to critically analyse their current and evolving business models, and that should be everyone.

 

‘Pre-Suasion’ by Robert Cialdini.

I bought this book on the basis of ‘Influence’ but quietly wondered what more Dr. Cialdini could possibly say that would add to the depth of his first masterpiece. It is a very recent book, published in late 2016, which I have just finished for the first of what will be many readings. The amazing thing is that so many of the ideas when written down make so much common sense, but I had never really considered them, most being just so ordinary as to escape notice.  This is potentially the most important marketing book of the last 20 years. As marketers struggle with the homogenisation of markets, and increasing challenges of building a brand in the face of customer and media fragmentation, the ideas in this book may make the vital difference between success and failure.

The challenge in compiling such a list is what you leave out. Amongst the piles of dross, there are some gems that deserve your attention. Simon Sineks ‘Start with Why’ upon which his seminal TED talk is based, Stephen Pinkers ‘How the mind Works’, Daniel Kahnemans ‘Thinking fast and Slow, and Ray Dalios ‘Principals’ are just a few.

I still prefer to read a physical book, or journal, in hand. I find it hard to write thoughts as they occur on a screen, and the physical connection is for me, an important element. My view is that so long as you remain curious, and feed the curiosity, you will uncover a few books which for you represent the list you recommend to others. This is just mine.

 

Happy reading!

Header: courtesy Jay Cross via Flikr

 

The ethical underpinning of strategy & marketing is being eroded.

The ethical underpinning of strategy & marketing is being eroded.

 

Marketing is about adding value, finding innovative ways to solve problems.  Sometimes marketers set out to ‘solve’ problems that around the BBQ would be termed a ‘1st world’ problem.

‘Which dog manicurist’ rates in my mind as such a problem, the subject of a conversation I was unfortunately involved in at a local dog park a few weeks ago.

However, sometimes extremes are pushed.

An extreme example perhaps, but the fiasco surrounding breastfeeding at the recent World Health Organisation meeting in Geneva convened in the belief that there was a consensus informed by science to be ratified, shines a light on the ethical challenges we face.

For some, mostly our wives and mothers,  it is a highly emotional question, to breastfeed or not, substituting formula for the real thing. It seems that the 1st world is returning to breastfeeding as the developing world turns to formula, believing it is a sign of maturity, sophistication, something to which they aspire.

To me the answer to breastfeed or not is blindingly obvious.

We evolved as mammals, breastmilk evolved with us, and is therefore uniquely suited to the nurture and development of a baby. The high jacking of breastfeeding by those flogging formula for profit is to my mind an unethical, indeed immoral act of marketing strategy.

Formula is terrific for those who for one reason or another, cannot feed. Back in the day the baby would have either died, or been passed on to  someone who could, a ‘wet-nurse’ for nourishment.

The sight of the WHO being managed by those with an agenda favouring formula for profit over the natural product appals me.

Where has our moral compass been hidden?

Locally, the marketing for profit before ethics brigade have taken over in the financial services industry, insurance, urban development, and a host of other sectors, and we are all the poorer for it.

Bit by bit the fabric of our communities is being ripped apart, the evolutionary power of Dunbar’s number thrown against the wall of technology as the power to communicate and collaborate erodes what made us human in the first place.

Somewhere, somehow we have to find the tipping point, and start to recognise that all that is new is not necessarily good.

 

 

The ‘Benjamin Button’ effect of digital

The ‘Benjamin Button’ effect of digital

 

In the film, Benjamin Button does not age, as those around him do, but he does accumulate the memories and knowledge around him as time passes.

Pretty cool, unless the love of your life is stuck in the present, whatever that is.

For years we have recognised the ‘Button Effect’  emerging with brands in the digital age, brands that leverage both sides of the human equation, the so called network effect.

The more it gets used, the more valuable it becomes.

Accountants and accounting standards are confused by this, as all assets depreciate with use.

Not any more!.

Digital products get more valuable with use.

That is why the monsters in the space, Google, Amazon, Apple and Facebook combined have the market capitalisation of all but the top few countries in the world at  around $2.5 trillion dollars US.

Staggering stuff.

What makes them so powerful, a position that has been reached in less than 20 years, replacing 100 years of industrial development around the world?

A very few factors seem common to them, and those coming up behind them, particularly the Chinese marketers, Tencent and Alibaba, along with Uber, Netflix, Spotify, and others.

  • They leverage the network effect, becoming the Benjamin Buttons of marketing , becoming more valuable with use
  • They are global, and their products cross cultural boundaries
  • They are in the lead at developing and deploying cutting edge technology, AI, AR, machine learning, whatever you choose to call it, these companies are leading the pack by leveraging behavioural data they collect with use of their platforms.
  • They seem to be inhabited and driven by ‘kids’ younger than my children. ‘Digital natives’ I guess would be the cliché, but none of the drivers of this revolution would be at the top of a 20th century industrial company, they would not have the experience to navigate the hierarchical structures that ran them.

You do not have to be a new age potentially global behemoth to leverage the network  effects available to you. Small businesses everywhere are becoming the Benjamin Buttons of their local markets, but the rules of engagement have changed. What worked for my generation is no longer enough, leveraging the network effects is now an essential ingredient of continuous renewal.

Credit: header photo from the film . 

Is a continuing investment in content valuable?

Is a continuing investment in content valuable?

 

In early 2014 Mark Schaefer posted a piece titled ‘Content shock: Why content marketing is not a sustainable strategy’   on his website.

To me, it is one of the few pieces of truly intelligent strategic thinking I have seen on the topic of ‘Content’.

In the post he poses the proposition that because posting content is free, there would come a tipping point where there was so much content in total, and much of it just regurgitated rubbish, simply generated because it is fashionable, that the impact would be lost.

I think we have passed the point, illustrated in this guest  post from Buzzsumo on Mark’s site.

The data certainly confirms what I see on my site, and in my digital travels every day, but we should not  be surprised. We all know that if something is free, it carries very little value or credibility.

Why then do we continue producing content?

Simple answer: Because when you produce quality, original, thought provoking, instructive and challenging content, it does still deliver a worthwhile strategic outcome. You become seen as an expert, or at least someone worth talking to in your domain.

Producing such content on a continuous basis is very difficult and time consuming. It has a very long lead time before the benefits kick in, so most either give up, or outsource it and generally end up adding to the pile of digital rubbish.

There is a second significant challenge.

Once you produce this great, useful content, you have to get it seen. The biggest challenge in marketing these days is getting attention, and once having got it, not blowing the chance to do something constructive with it, to engage with those to whom you can add value.

This implies a whole lot of other basic marketing challenges, including that you have identified closely your ideal customer, and that you have a closely defined value proposition for them.

Then you have to ‘find‘ them, by one of any number of means, that can involve any or all of a number of strategies leveraging digital media and social platforms, as well as good old fashioned advertising and networking. Having found them, the next step is to engage them in a process that leads to a mutually beneficial commercial relationship.

Great content can drive all these steps.

Once created, great content is the gift that keeps giving. Even if you do not take the obvious steps of refurbishing great content as videos, longer and shorter versions from a tweet to a book, and reposting on various alternative platforms, a great post will continue to deliver viewers to your site, as does this one for me.

The numbers are not spectacular by any measure, but this is one of many posts that delivers page visits daily, to my StrategyAudit site. Despite being almost 5 years old, this post continues to attract increasing attention, which leads to the opportunity to engage and generate business.

So, the answer to the question in the headline is ‘Yes’, with the caveat that, like almost everything n life,  you must be both good at it, and different to the crowd to get noticed.

Photo courtesy Thomas’s pics via Flikr

 

What ‘digital transformation’ is not!

What ‘digital transformation’ is not!

 

It happened again over the weekend.

I had a conversation with a bloke who runs a medium sized business, and is embarking on what he called a ‘digital transformation’.

In other words, he is paying someone to build a website.

Another example of someone who is probably about to be badly disappointed, and lighter in the pocket.

A website is not a digital transformation, it is a piece of marketing collateral, and like every other piece, needs to have met and passed a few basic tests:

What is its purpose?

Who is my customer?

How is it different to others in a similar space?

What problem does it solve?

How do you want visitors to feel?

What do you want those visitors to do next?

 

If that is not all obvious in the first glance, start again.

The greatest cost in building a website is not  the technology, that is now almost completely commoditised, it is in the generation of the content in response to the answering of these simple questions. Failure to deliver to a site visitor something of value to them that creates at least curiosity to  learn more from you, means they will leave, and probably never come back. While there is  no dollar value to that outcome you can easily count, it is in reality the greatest cost in not having a site that works for you: lost opportunity and revenue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11 hard lessons from 40 years of building and implementing successful marketing plans

11 hard lessons from 40 years of building and implementing successful marketing plans

 

The key word in that headline is ‘Implementing’. A plan is of little value unless it is implemented,  the lessons from the success and failures of that implementation incorporated into the next iteration.

This is not another post about the 55 things to do to have a great marketing plan, this is about the things most forget that are about the organisational and strategic elements that will hinder any successful implementation.

Marketing planning should be a continuous, iterative, and a ‘live’ thing, not a once a year pain in the arse, necessary as a part of the corporate budget process.

To build a plan that serves the purpose of managing the implementation of strategy is a challenging and iterative process of identifying options, and making difficult choices across a host of domains.

Contrary to folk lore, it is a highly data intensive process, with a lot of experience, instinct and skill required that enables connections to be made between pieces of data that may not at first glance  have any real relationship. It is not the ‘smoke and mirrors’ some like to think, it is a tough, demanding but ultimately extremely rewarding process when done well.

You need a strategy

A marketing program operates as a part of an overall strategy, without which it is destined to be an expensive indulgence. Marketing is a key  part of the  delivery mechanism for the strategy. Strategy is all about making the always difficult long term choices, the sort that shape businesses over time, which need to be reflected in the resource allocation and activity decisions which enable implementation.

The importance of context

No enterprise exists in a vacuum. There are a range of factors that exert influence, but over which the individual enterprise has little if any control. The best they can do is accommodate the context into the planning processes, always being aware that factors over which they have no control can change with little or no notice, so retaining the agility to adjust in real time is a profoundly important capability. These factors range from the regulatory regimes, competitive activity, availability of critical capabilities, to long term trends  impacting on the economies in which you compete.

The importance of process

Process is simply the way things get done, from start to finish, in effect it is the plan for  the plan, the framework upon which the plan is built. A marketing plan is a part of a larger business planning process, Strategic, Capital, Operational, Financial, all have a cause and effect role in overall business planning, and a sensible, achievable marketing program cannot be written in isolation from the other functional planning activities, and that of the overall enterprise. There is a natural flow to all these plans, of both timing and necessary cause and effect impacts. For example, there is no point in a marketing plan setting out to launch a product that requires capital to be spent in the factory unless the item is also included in the capital and operational plans. Equally, there is no point spending capital in the absence of a marketing plan to leverage the benefits of the expenditure.

Iteration, experimentation and learning

We are dealing largely with what might work in the future, and courses with credibility in ‘future- telling’ are few and far between. Therefore it pays to have as many options open as possible. This is  not to say we should allow a scatter gun approach to prevail, we should remain focused, but within the parameters of a robust well thought out and understood set of strategic  priorities. It is a balancing act, one that is hard to get right, indeed, we only can judge our efforts accurately with the benefit of hindsight. Management of your ‘experimental portfolio’ should be a key task of the senior marketing person, the one who has the power to allocate the resources and hold them accountable, and certainly not left to the junior just to record activities.

Be specific about what you learnt, which forces clarity, and how you know, which forces objectivity in the place of fluffy subjectivity.  An intensive After Action Review process should be a core part of any marketing implementation.

Critical thinking

Marketing has always suffered from the tendency to be seen as fluffy, unscientific, and subject to leaping from an inadequately defined problem to a convenient solution. It has lacked credibility in the boardroom, where the big decisions are made. Often in the past that has been a fair characterisation, but there is no longer an excuse.

Most board discussions are based on objective data of one sort or another, which usually means it comes from the past. By contrast, marketing is about the future. It relies on assumption, speculation, and ‘mental models‘ as drivers, so carries less credibility than purely objective data.  We now have tools that can deliver some reliability in the cause and effect chains we seek to influence, so long as the hard intellectual graft is done.

If you are to have resources allocated to marketing over the long term that it usually requires to be effective, rather than tied to a changing annual budget cycle, with some artificial calculation tied to sales forecasts, you need credibility. This is where the critical thinking becomes (sorry) Critical! Use of marketing jargon, buzzwords, clichés and opinion may go well in a razzamatazz sales meeting, but where it really counts, at the point where long term resource commitments are made, they are counter-productive. Data and critical analysis is what counts.

In a past corporate life, leading a large marketing function, I insisted on sales forecasts for an initiative of any sort that was going to consume a significant chunk of a marketing budget to be done from several perspectives, and using differing sets of assumptions. The assumptions and perspectives were the subject of the interrogations, rather than just looking at a convenient  extrapolation. While we never got a forecast right, the outcomes were generally in the realms of  reasonable error, we did better the next time, and most importantly, we had the confidence of the board.

Compass Vs Roadmap

Dwight Eisenhower said ‘In preparing for battle, I have always found plans to be useless, but planning is indispensable’.  This is simply a variation on the adage that no plan survives the first contact with the enemy, but adds that the planning is essential. When applied to marketing planning, the same rules apply. To be effective they must drill down to and articulate the drivers and measures of success, provide a framework within which the activity needs to happen, but without dictating the details of the activity. Those facing the situation need to be able to respond to it within the frameworks of the overall strategy and objectives, in real time.

It is the achievement of the objective that is important, not necessarily the means by which it is achieved.

Activities are not outcomes

Too often activities completed are used as performance measures. It may be good to know that an agreed activity has been completed, but of way more importance is the understanding of what happened as a result of the activity.

The better KPI is the behaviour that is the driver of outcomes, rather than some assumption that an activity will deliver an outcome, or some simplistic extrapolation of the past. Results are the outcome of activities that are implemented after consideration of those things both in and out of your control, and will never be as forecast.

Cross Functional

Organisations build a structure to suit their internal processes, it makes the scaling of activity easier. However, customers do not care about your structure, they care about the level of service, quality, timeliness, and all the rest of the factors that add value to them, all of which are all cross functional concerns. Why would you not organise yourself in a manner that reflects what it is that customers are looking for?

Ensuring there is engagement of all functional areas in the development of the marketing plan is essential. They will all play a vital role in the delivery of the plan, and the CMO never has the functional responsibility for them all, so they must be led.

Clear Accountability 

Unambiguous accountability tends to focus the mind on the outcomes, which generally leads to better performance. Accountability also however comes with the requirement that the resources are made available to get the job done, properly, which is code for being accountable for the outcomes. The power to allocate resources is a key part of real accountability, rather than just its sibling, ‘responsibility’ which implies completing a specified activity.

In recent times, we have moved from individual accountability to team accountability, which has significantly complicated the management and leadership game, while offering the potential for huge gains in outcome. Holding an individual accountable can be done with just ‘management’, but effectively holding a team accountable for an outcome requires true leadership.

Plans should tell stories

Any plan, to be effective, must tell a story about the journey, the anticipated problems, alternatives considered, and the value of the outcome.

Marketing and importantly, brand building, are all about the stories we tell ourselves, and others, that illustrate how something has given us ‘value’ in some way.  Without a simple, illustrative story, all the rest just boils down to price on the day. All the great marketing we see tells a story of some sort that evokes a positive emotion towards the product. Apple tells a story, as did Meadow Lea (they stopped 20 years ago, but the effect lingers) Nike, Coca Cola, so tell yours in the plan.

My kids first dog, ‘Tamba’ was a great friend to them all. She/it played with them for as long as they wanted, protected them, and gave unconditional love, seeking nothing more than a pat behind the ears and a bit of ‘doggy-love’.  One day Tamba was a bit subdued, obviously with some version of doggy flu. Off to the vet who gave us some pills to administer, along with instructions. At home I shoved the pill to the back of Tamba’s throat, and held  her mouth shut for a while. As I let go, to her obvious relief, thinking the pill would be swallowed, up it came, back into my hand, a mess of dissolved pill and dog saliva. My neighbour, a ‘dog whisperer’ recommended I hide the pill in a spoonful of Vegemite on a square of toast, and offer it to Tamba. Whoof… gone! No pill.

I am constantly reminded of this story as I talk to clients, and watch marketing activity designed to generate a response. It is all facts, data, dry boring old stuff that has no emotion. It is like trying to get Tamba to take the pill, impossible until it was wrapped in something she loved.

Even the best plan does not implement itself

Planning is only the first step, one that without implementation is pointless. As my old dad used to say, 1/10 for the plan son, the other 9 points are reserved for implementation.