Jun 17, 2013 | Customers, Marketing, Sales, Social Media
Look at all the verbiage on the net about content marketing, having a personal brand, being a substantial presence on social media, and all the rest of the stuff. Really it is all about one simple idea, making yourself easy to find, then engaging the finder in a conversation that leads to a relationship. With good marketing comes the opportunity to turn that relationship from a casual one into a commercial one.
The days of putting a few advertisements out there, and making yourself available, are over. Everything has been commoditised, supply chains disintermediated, information ubiquitous, and terms and prices transparent.
Those in the market for something now do their research on line, sometimes “road-test” the product (weather it be a car of pair of jeans) in a bricks and mortar retailer, come to a decision and purchase, all in a set of discrete actions over which the seller has no control, and often is totally unaware of it going on. It is this loss of control of the process that makes the huge difference between now and just 15 years ago, when the retailer had the control of the information, and the location.
The initiative is in the hands of the buyer, so the game as a seller is not to have the product the buyer wants available when they want it, in the specifications required, but firstly to be found, all the rest comes later.
Buyers move through a cycle, from recognising the need, setting themselves a budget, doing research, creating a short list, and making the final choice. The earlier in the process a seller can be a part of the consideration, the greater the chance they will be there at the end.
It is in this new process of “engagement” with potential as well as current customers that is the value of content.
Jun 14, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, retail, Sales, Social Media
What will happen when facial recognition is good enough to recognise a person walking into a retail shop, and convey to a device that persons purchase history, returns, sizes, social media mentions and links, and all the rich data that can be collected. The opportunities to use this sort of marketing data integration are limited only by your imagination.
This is just a step away, probably closer even than that, the speed of development of software applications has been amazing.
Next time you walk into a shop, the assistant just may greet you with asking how the function you bought the blue dress for 2 months ago went, or inform you that they have just one left of a belt that would be a great match to the shoes you bought in February, and on it can go……
The real human challenge will be engaging your customers using all this information without being stilted or “creepy”, not a good outcome.
George Orwell is alive and well.
P.S. August 20, 2013.
Tom Fishburne, a favourite commentator on marketing who uses incisive cartoons to make his point posted this cartoon this morning, with the link to the Minority report clip that makes my point above way better than I did. Great stuff Tom.
Jun 12, 2013 | Change, Customers, Lean, Operations, Sales
The sorts of customers you have play a significant role in defining who you are.
A former client had a customer base that valued the hands on, custom design, and short supply chain they offered on their packaging component items. That group of clients were not buying the high volume, commoditized products, but far smaller volumes for more specialised and bespoke products.
However, promises of large volumes can be seductive, so in the face of squeezed margins and a flat industry, they broadened their product base to include the low margin high volume items required by the large commodity product suppliers.
The equation was changed, no longer did they enjoy an intimate relationship with their largest customers, being engaged in their businesses at a detailed, technical and developmental level, they were just suppliers who could be replaced with product from China or the US.
The result is a flat revenue line over the last 5 years, with fragile margins despite great success in increasing the productivity of their asset base and employees, and a significant lowering of overheads.
It takes guts and vision to turn a customer away, but it often pays.
May 21, 2013 | Branding, Category, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
I am old enough to remember doing warehouse withdrawals by hand. Heavens.
Then we had early data managers automate the process, an evolution that pottered on for 25 years, through to category management based on scan data, some of which can dive remarkably deep.
However, we ain’t seen nothing yet!.
The combination of retail data, personal card data, social media and the proximity capabilities of mobile applications will set off another revolution promotional and sales strategies.
Some of the technology is becoming pretty standard, the components of so called Big Data, and there is plenty around to tell you what to do, like this McKinsey article.
However, it takes resources and deep capabilities to effectively leverage the emerging possibilities, so how do SME’s compete?
It seems there are a few strategies that will become mandatory for those who actually want to survive:
- Develop scale. This does not just mean individual enterprises, which is by definition not possible for SME’s, but I see the emergence of “data co-operatives” groups of category marketers (some may even be competitors) who contribute to resourcing the necessary data science.
- Develop deep domain knowledge. This is like suggesting breathing is good for health, but the transitory and superficial culture surrounding product and brand management counters deep knowledge. This is a challenge of leadership, and personnel management, difficult topics for most businesses up to a substantial size. It is however, an opportunity to absorb the skills of the baby boomer marketers that are around, whose Intellectual Capital is becoming available for hire, as a contractor, consultant or often as a Director.
- Do extensive “Environmental Research“, and learn from what is happening elsewhere. For 30 years I have pretty well predicted what will happen in the Australian market by deeply engaging with 2 sources. Firstly the trends originating in the UK, which almost inevitably translate to the Australian scene at some point, and secondly being wrapped in social research, the stuff that details the behavior and attitudes of Australians. The original and still the best is the McKay Report. Hugh McKay has an enormous ability to articulate the complication of peoples lives and break them down into things you can use.
- Recognise and act on the simple truth that marketing is now fully accountable. No longer can marketers argue that the impact of their decisions are too hard to tie back to specific activities and costs. The ROI on marketing activity is now almost as transparent as that on capital expenditure, you just have to understand how to go about it, and get the right tools and capabilities in place.
- Differentiate. Notwithstanding the point above, you still need to stand out from the crowd, and the only way to do that is to be noticeably different, to engage with and serve consumers better than anyone else. The genuine creativity needed to do this will attract a premium, simply because it is so rare, and now the impact can be quantified, albeit after the fact.
Need help thinking about all that, give me a call, I have been there before.
Apr 26, 2013 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them tell you.
Ronald Regan used this technique a lot. He did not tell the American people “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”, instead he asked the famous question during his election campaign: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. The answer was a resounding “NO” and he was elected.
Asking the right question can prompt a favourable, almost pre-deternmined response, but the formulation of the words to convey that response provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the question. This leaves less room for ambiguity and uncertainty in the way the receiver responds to the question, and considerable committment to the answer.
I have also found it a great way to generate engagement at the opening of a presentation.
Apr 11, 2013 | Collaboration, Customers, Sales
“Relationships” is just a word used to describe the web of give and take that binds people together over time.
A transaction can take place without a relationship of any sort. However, a series of transactions that require choices to be made will slowly build into some sort of relationship, with a brand, a store, a salesperson.
Successful selling in the long term relies on relationships, the transaction is just a score keeping mechanism.
So, next time you sell something to a customer you have not seen before, it would pay you to find out something about them. Ask some polite, human questions, positively reinforce the intelligence of their purchase decision, find out what else you may be able to do for them, and give yourself the opportunity to turn a transaction into the beginning of a relationship.
