Scott Galloway. L2 Thinktank.
Mitch Joel may have flogged his Twist Image agency to WPP, but hopefully he keeps on writing his blog and alerting us to terrific stuff like this presentation Winners and Losers in the Digital age, by Scott Galloway.
Read the post, watch the presentation, have a squizz at Galloways L2 site, and apply it to your business and situation.
The Atlantic has made the call, at least asked the question.
I have no idea, as I am not a real twitter fan, never have been, simply because I do not see the sustainable business model yet, although there is no doubt of the disruptive impact of twitter on traditional media.
The thought of spending more of my most valuable and finite resource, time, on a platform that can deliver numbers, and can deliver with work some semblance of a community has never grabbed me, as the opportunity cost just seemed too high.
Surviving on advertising in a world where advertising space is now close to infinite, and thus almost worthless unless you can employ a degree of targeting that requires a degree of engagement that usually only comes from an existing relationships seems fraught with the sorts of hooks snake-oil salesmen use to catch the unwary.
Perhaps I am just getting old.
What twitter has done, which has benefited all of us is to highlight the value of condensing a message into its core, distilling out all the verbal trappings we often add in that really add no value. In addition, there is no doubt that the immediacy of twitter has played a vital role in getting information out about nasty, momentous, and often funny things that happen. The first time this was evident to me was the London bombings, when news came out via twitter way before any formal network could work out what had happened, and since then, Twitter has been the newsbreaker on almost every occasion.
So, I do not think twitter is dying, just trying to grow up.
A/B testing
As a marketer, I am fairly left brain oriented, some may say flakey and opinionated, and I have done well with that for many years.
Here is the paradox.
You can now test just about everything if you try hard enough. All sorts of ads, headlines, copy size, placement, colour, the best mix of paid and organic media, channel A Vs channel B, and so on. There is no longer any excuse not to test, to quantitatively know what works best, to be able to calculate with a pretty good level of confidence the outcomes of some marketing activity.
There are also some great resources to help think about the topic, Avinash Kaushiks blog being gold, as well as books like “A/B testing: The most powerful way to turn clicks into customers”.
There is a trap here however.
Reliance on data to inform decision making can become a crutch that stifles the left brain driven capacity to connect logically unconnected dots in some new way.
Years ago I was faced with a dilemma.
I just “knew” that rectangular 1kg yoghurt tubs would be better than the existing round ones, better for the retailers, better for consumers, just lousy for us as the producer, as margins were at risk from the higher costs, or volumes at risk from higher prices had we chosen to recover all the incremental costs.
Problem was that the round ones were industry standard, and were so for a reason, they were substantially cheaper, easier to print, and all the filling and collation equipment was designed for round tubs. I had to wait 6 years to do an A/B test by subverting a capex process of an equipment upgrade in a factory by substituting rectangular tubs for round. Not a simple proposition when you consider all the supply and distribution angles that had to be covered.
Outcome: rectangular was vastly preferred by consumers (I somehow “knew” that) and retailers as they achieved better shelf utilisation, which we were able to calculate and demonstrate to them. It turned out the cost premium was easily recovered in the incremental sales, and the dynamics of the market were changed in a fundamental way.
I could have, probably should have, lost my job for that piece of subversion, and had it tanked, I am sure I would have, but it would not have gone ahead with full disclosure in the capex process.
Some things are still really hard to digitally A/B test, you still need the market instinct and market risk taking mentality to have a go, but the personal cost has the potential to blow out in the wrong environment, but without the risk, there is no progress
These days with the ubiquity of mobile and social, almost everyone is a media channel.
Recognising this simple fact changes the formula for media success. In the old days, the formula used so successfully by mass marketers was:
Money X mass media = Sales.
This used to work, no longer, now that media has fragmented into thousands of pieces, and individuals have a personal menu of media consumption based on their interests, time, and competing priorities in their lives. The formula marketers now have to use is something like:
Time X tailored and personalised media = a chance for a sale.
Much more uncertain.
In this context, spending some time considering the productivity of the investment being made in social media, and you are making them, even if it is just the employee who spends some of your time checking their facebook timeline, would be useful.
Following is a framework you might like to think about. The reality is that it is little different from a normal Marketing Audit, is it just that we are focussing on social and the content that fuels engagement.
Social media competitive analysis.
Content plan
Repeat all above, again.
Content marketing has become all the rage, there are so called gurus out there selling new brands of snake-oil, and many are extraordinarily good at parting you with your money. However, the simple and fundamental truth of marketing remains: you must add value to your customers lives. Failure to do that results in just having a big bag of fancy hot air, not much use to anyone, no matter how fancy the plan.
Oh, and one last thing about plans that I bang on relentlessly to my clients: You get only 1 point out of 10 for the plan, the other 9 are reserved for implementation.
For a “How to” of an audit of the technical detail on your site, this post of Neil Patels is a terrific start.
I would value your feedback on how you undertake a content audit, so let me know.
A friend of mine has a very successful small business selling high value services to a small group of clients from diverse backgrounds. He does not want to be the next IPO, or employ hundreds, or even tens of people, just a couple to keep the business growing manageably, by delivering a superior and personal service to his clients, and a resulting comfortable living for him and his family.
Sensible aspirations.
However, the market he is in is very competitive, highly regulated, and subject to forces outside his control, so how does he grow in these circumstances?.
It is a classic case of needing a pipeline of prospects that convert to clients over time as a purchase looms, but having a limited key resource, his time, prospects need to be pre-qualified in some way, before they consume much of his time.
There is lots of advice around, free on the web and from all sorts of program managers and consultants that can cost a lot of money. By its nature, this generic advice can be conflicting, confusing, and presenting management challenges beyond the scope of capability for SME’s, so the opportunities are missed.
The standard advice generally includes a menu of :
Get a website
Get onto social media
Use mobile
Use SEO
Purchase ads on various Social media platforms
Employ analytics to A/B test various approaches.
Actively manage your landing page
There is a lot more, but those are the common bits in the mix, and as far as it goes, is reasonably on the money, but the generic advice pays no account of the specific circumstances of any business, and the commercial and private objectives of those who own it.
A pretty common failing of generic advice.
Over a coffee, I suggested a simple, and easily managed program which he is implementing, with early success:
Hunt around in Google, and there are thousands of posts out there giving you lists of things to do to have a successful blog. A few Are pretty good, but most a just lists of the blindingly obvious, hoping that the headline “Top 20 tips for success” and their ilk attract attention.
My contribution to the pile is a really simple list of three:
Pretty simple, but like most seemingly simple things, there is much to distract from the simplicity that needs to be distilled out, hard choices need to be made, and focus found.
Never easy, but rewarding.