Feb 17, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Small business
Digital and email marketing is just the C21st version of direct snail-mail. Why is it then that we despair when our email open rates are only 2%, when that is all most direct mail campaigns ever got?
I think we are looking at things from the wrong end of the telescope.
Direct mail, and email campaigns can be hugely successful, we have all seen and heard of those successes, and when you look at them, the reason for the success is nothing tricky, but plain common sense.
The offer was personalised and compelling
The audience was engaged and willing
The communication channel delivered the offer with a minimum of fuss
The offer was easy to access
The creative in the communication was, well, creative and appropriate to the intended audience.
Those unsuccessful campaigns we see seem to concentrate on the above list in reverse order, worrying about the layouts smart photos, intriguing puns, and all the rest of the creative artifices, relegating the value of the offer to a specific audience, and the way that offer is communicated to the bottom of the pile.
Want success with direct mail/e-mail, get the customer to the front of the queue, worry about the rest later.
Feb 10, 2014 | Change, Communication, Marketing, Small business
The most powerful way to get someone to agree with your idea is to ask them the leading question, and have them give you the answer you want.
Ronald Regan used this technique a lot.
He did not tell the American people during his election campaign: “your economic situation has deteriorated over the last 48 months”, instead he asked the famous question: “Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?”. The answer was a resounding “NO” which led to the obvious follow up question:” What do you need to change?”
Resoundingly, he was elected.
Asking a question compels a response, and the formulation of the words to convey that response in turn provokes a deeper, more intensive processing of the question, and leaves less room for ambiguity in the way the receiver responds.
It is the beginning of an engagement process.
However, it does not always work.
Ever noticed how pollies never answer the question asked unless the answer suits them?
Watching the 7.30 report a few minutes ago (Aussie readers will know what that is) the Opposition leader, in response to pointed questioning about the announcement by Toyota today that they will cease manufacturing cars in Australia, simply pointed out that in the 5 months since the Abbott Government had been elected, all three car-makers had announced production would cease. As if the last 25 years, overvalued $A, and small scale of the domestic market had no impact.
To anyone with half a brain watching, his failure to at least address the question in some modest way, simply corroded his credibility.
So, answering a question well is as much an art as asking them, and can be used to turn the tables.
Next time you see a really good salesman, just watch and listen, and learn.
Feb 3, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
One of the questions I am most often asked is “how do we make this go viral”. To my mind it is also one of the silliest.
The objective of “social” weather it be media, or a drink in the pub, is engagement with others. The objective of viral is, well… not sure, apart from entertaining shocking, scamming ,infecting and occasionally informing people we do not know, will probably never meet, and who will have no impact on our lives.
However, the manner of the diffusion of content on the net logically has an impact on the level of engagement an individual will have with any piece of shared content.
Something that is “e-broadcast” to everyone on a list by an unknown person or institution to the individual receivers, is unlikely to have high open and resend rates, so will not go far. By contrast, something sent selectively to individuals with whom there is already a connection of some sort will have a higher open and resend rate.
It is these open and resend metrics that count, in effect an endorsement from a sender you know that it is worth your time to open the link.
The return on effort is definitely with social, not viral.
Jan 27, 2014 | Change, Governance, Marketing, Small business
In Australia today, January 26, it is “Australia Day”, the day we Aussies, or most of us, think the place was started, conveniently ignoring the thousands of years of habitation before Captain Philip turned up with a bunch of convicts in Botany Bay.
For most of us it is also the start of the working year, the end of any summer holiday, back to the grindstone.
For me, thinking about the coming year over everyone else’s break (we self employed do not get one) I came to the conclusion that 2014 was going to be the year of Analytics, Big Data if you prefer, the year when we finally recognised the now central place analytics hold in our commercial and private lives.
It does not have to be the geek version of analytics. Most of the businesses I work with are small, some tiny, but every one has potential assets hidden amongst the various databases they collect, usually without trying. Riverina Grove, a manufacturer of fine Italian food products in Griffith has 6 years of pretty simple data held on excel that can describe by line item every transaction over that time by a range of parameters. Not hard to collect, as it comes out of their standard accounting software, not hard to analyse, Pivot tables in excel do a great job, certainly not “big data” by most measures, but Gold to an SME, should they choose to use it.
At the other end of the scale, is Netflix, an institution in the US, disrupting totally the movie rental industry, and whilst it has not always got it all right, their use of analytics has driven their recovery from stumbles, and success with customers. This long piece in “The Atlantic” outlining Netflix’s data capability to turn data into useable marketing information is a “must read” for marketers.
Data is the secret weapon of organisations, the challenge is to use it, to approach the data with the view that somewhere in here are answers I need, but to get them out, not only do I need the data skills, but the creativity to find ways to extract and enhance them. Josh Wills has a definition of a data scientist, that new profession that has emerged in the last few years I like, “better at software than any statistician, and better at statistics than any software engineer” that comes from this terrific Slideshare presentation on data science.
As Warren Buffet so famously said, “In God we trust, all others bring data”.
It is up to us all to figure out how to use it, but while you are procrastinating, your competitor is probably ramping up his capability.
Happy Australia Day.
Jan 22, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Analytics is perhaps the buzzword of the moment, it seems to be attracting some of the same purveyors of snake-oil previously touting SEO as the saviour of all sins.
Amongst the detritus, however, there are some gems. Avinash Kaushik’s “Occum’s Razor” blog is one such gem, as is Scott Brinkers” Chief marketing technologist” blog. I am sure there are others, but the weight of numbers is with the snakes.
A mate of mine has a small business specialising in collecting data from HR environments, applying analytics and offering advice on areas of improvement. Tasks like board performance assessment are his bread and butter.
A few weeks ago in a casual conversation, he was down cast, as he had been beaten in a tender by a competitor, for the third time recently, when he knows from long experience the algorithms in his analytics are way more robust than those of his competitor. The difference in the tenders was made not by the analytics, but by the visual representations of the analytics. His competitor has invested in visuals, whereas he has continued to invest in the data integrity.
Visuals sell, as they offer simplistic answers to complex questions, but the question remains, how good are the answers.
Jan 17, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Every day I get stuff by email that purports to make me some sort of compelling offer, something that some dill out there kids himself (herself?) that I need.
It often starts:
Dear Alan (wrong spelling)
I am the CEO of Buttstuffers & Co, we are experts at something that we know will add 50% to your bottom line. Hopefully you are the right person for us to talk to. (I do not care who is the CEO of Buttstuffers, I do not know who they are, what they do, all I care about is how in hell they got my name, and yes, I am the right person, because I can ignore you, or more satisfyingly, tell you to piss off)
I would like to offer you a free ???????????, guaranteed to work for you, just to demonstrate our goodwill. (too late, my quotient of goodwill disappeared when you misspelt my name, and since then you have just managed to annoy me)
Download our free whitepaper now for more information. (Why would I do that, all it does is confirm an email address, and give you more information to throw more crap at me that demonstrates you are simply full of it)
We are experts at:
Marketing automation
Marketing ROI
SEO
Creating client relationships
Etc,etc.etc.
(If you were expert in any of this, which I seriously doubt, you would not have sent me this. In former times, you would be selling snake oil)
It gets really tiresome, marketing flatulence like this just gives those of us who genuinely care about what you think, and how your business can improve, and how our expertise and experience may assist, a bad name.
I tell my clients it is part of the price we pay for the tools that the web delivers, but nevertheless, flatulence smells bad irrespective of the cause.
