Category Archives: Marketing Automation

Ignore the Personalisation Paradox at your peril…

29 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Remarketing, retail, Sales

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Personalised marketing messages have been around for centuries – think mail-order catalogues posted to individuals, using those individual’s name and address data. The personalised customer experience, including face-to-face customer service, is not new to the world.

Personalised customer experiences are not new…

But now in the digital age, we can personalise almost every communication we have with consumers. We can use names, images, facts, charts and other data linked directly to individuals, to customise our communications – be they email, landing pages, websites, ads, SMS and more.

We can go even further by using cookies to chase individuals around the web, based on their behaviour on a landing page, website, email or other digital asset. I’ve written about the remarketing problem of leaving cigarette burns on your customers before.

But here’s the rub…

When you use direct mail and write a letter to someone, it is common courtesy and good manners to personalise your letter with the correct name, address and other relevant details of your relationship with the recipient. In fact, if you don’t personalise correctly your recipients are offended or lose respect for you the writer. Your lack of good manners can damage your brand.

Dear John…

Conversely, in the digital world, the holy grail of a “seamless personalised customer experience” can be disastrous for a brand. The more a marketer uses personalisation and demonstrates they are using digital surveillance to track an individual, the more the marketer offends the individual and possibly damages their brand.

Here’s one example I’m still experiencing. In January I searched online and visited a couple of retail stores before buying some gym equipment. Almost three months later, I am still being chased around the web via remarketing, by one of the companies from which I bought some equipment and one that I didn’t buy from – I just looked at its merchandise.

I’ve written before about how this type of remarketing mistakenly tried to sell breast pumps to a granny. It seems marketers are not learning from their mistakes – which is the best way to learn.

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

Marketers have fallen in love with technology and the various tracking tools now available to monitor customers. And it could be argued it’s costing them more in negative attitudes toward their brands and lost sales, than positive results.

After all, you don’t see a greengrocer chase a customer out the store and into the carpark, throwing a free banana and special deal through the customer’s driver-side window, just because the customer fondled the fruit but didn’t buy it?

Don’t leave, I’ll give you a free banana and a discount of you buy more now…

Marketers need to consider if the marketing tactics driven by their online surveillance tools pass the pub test. If they don’t, then don’t use them – simple.

Most marketers I’ve asked about remarketing and digital personalisation use words like “creepy”, “sleazy” and “not on” when describing how they feel as recipients of surveillance-based marketing. So why do we do it to the people who pay our salary – our customers?

Mind your manners

If you are writing directly to a customer or prospect, by all means personalise your message – be it mail, email, or even a PURL. It’s good manners to do so.

But if you are going to use surveillance-based marketing tools to “personalise the online customer experience” you need to ask yourself if it is worth doing. Would you like to be treated the way you are treating your customers? Are you practising good manners and respecting them?

The reason you consider your options is simple. The marketing industry is among the least trusted in the world. The last ten years has seen its reputation trashed by the digital marketing practitioners. Your surveillance-based marketing will only reinforce this negative attitude and reduce the effectiveness of your marketing budget.

Trust me, I’m a digital marketer…

And this is the Personalisation Paradox that marketers face. It’s a delicate balancing act and you need to take it seriously – particularly if you want your customers to take your brand seriously.

Gotta go now – I was going to search for some lingerie for my bride’s birthday, but am concerned by what might follow me around the internet afterwards. Think I’ll just visit the store at the mall instead….

How digital marketers destroyed one of the most profitable media channels…

19 Tuesday Feb 2019

Posted by in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales, Social Media, social selling

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As many of you will know, one of the major weaknesses of digital marketers is their lack of knowledge of marketing history.

They naively assumed that just because a technology was new, all previous technology was useless, all existing media channels no longer worked, proven techniques suddenly failed, and human DNA changed forever. So they ignored everything that had worked pre-internet.

The nature of technology is to constantly evolve. Experienced marketers have lived through a constant stream of technical innovations – in television, radio, outdoor, mail, print, sponsorship and of course online. So for most, the digital channels just offered additional media options for marketing purposes.

One of the most profitable channels – for both the media owner and marketers – was the humble mailing list. Mailing lists existed for every consumer and B2B category. You could rent them or create your own and reach every person on the list. Many list owners rented their lists both for profit and to keep the list current.

But then the marketing toddlers in their digital nappies arrived. When they realised the power of direct marketing via email, they really went to town – spamming, abusing privacy, ignoring unsubscribe requests and generally operating without any ethics. They were so appallingly bad at the use of email lists, governments around the world were forced to take action to stop them.

In countries across the globe new laws banning spam, banning the sending of unsolicited emails, and protecting the privacy of consumers, were legislated. These were the direct result of digital marketers abusing their privilege – to communicate directly with consumers.

The backwash from these bans was devastating. Here’s why:

The new privacy and opt-in laws, spilled into the databases of mailing list owners, not just email list owners. These new laws meant once-compliant mailing list owners had to comply with laws designed for email list owners.

So, if you owned a list and it contained contacts from more than one country, you now had to comply with multiple privacy and spam laws. The cost of this compliance became prohibitive. When coupled with the reduction in subscribers to printed magazines, the cost versus revenue for list ownership and maintenance became unsustainable. The penalties for non-compliance were too high and not worth the risk of human error.

For the uninitiated, prior to these new laws, any marketer could rent a mailing list and send direct mail for business purposes. Let’s say for example, you wanted to reach IT professionals. You didn’t have to advertise and hope you reached them. You could rent a list and mail them anything from a letter to a white paper, even include an involvement device. Then you managed responses and followed-up the non-responses by phone.

Here’s one of the world’s most successful B2B campaigns from a pre-internet age. It paid for itself within 4 hours of delivery.

But that simple way of doing business has been severely damaged. Thanks to the spam and privacy laws, there are way fewer lists available to rent – particularly in niche markets.

Now B2B marketing for example, has become much more complicated and open to abuse. It is reflected in the growth of the fake influencers and fake thought leaders. Instead of renting a list or building one, marketers are being told they have to do social selling. As against anti-social selling? What sales process isn’t social?

Here, according to the digital marketing experts, is what you have to do today to reach a B2B prospect.

  1. Connect to as many executives as possible on LinkedIn or other social channels.
  2. Pay a third party, usually in a third-world country, to create a white paper, or ‘content’ for you to send to every contact you have, via the social channels.
  3. Don’t use proven sales techniques in your messaging, as selling is evil.
  4. Just hope the contact has nothing better to do but read your content and love it so much they contact you.
  5. To convince your connection your ‘content’ is worth consuming, call it “thought leadership” and call yourself “an influencer” – for no reason other than to big yourself up in your own eyes and hopefully fool some poor sucker that you know what you’re talking about.
  6. When your social selling fails to work, use the KPI of “thought leadership” and “content marketing” to fool your boss that things are OK. One way to do this is to send your boss all your content when you send it to your connections.

This process takes way longer and costs much more than simply mailing your prospects and customers with relevant information and reasons to respond (known as selling). But hey, it has digital buzzwords attached to it so it must be worth destroying a profitable media channel.

I’m not saying that contacting people on LinkedIn and gradually converting them to a customer doesn’t work. Though most social sellers don’t practice what they preach. Instead, they connect and start flogging their wares immediately, without any credibility, using puff-words like “awesome”, “killer”, “secrets”, and “mind-blowing” in their message.

Here’s an example of one I received this week from a person who asked to join my network, I didn’t invite him. It arrived courtesy of marketing automation: “…5 killer LinkedIn tactics we used to generate 50 appointments and 13 closed deals in 2 months” I have no idea why he thinks I’m a prospect, these killer tactics are the last thing I need to grow a business. The message has zero credibility.

Interestingly, many of the thought leaders on social selling have never used direct mail, so they have no credibility when claiming social selling is the solution. You can prove it too – do a split run test. You might be surprised at the results.

In my experience, using mail supported by the digital channels will get the best result – but I’m only speaking from experience. Given current marketers don’t care about marketing history aka “experience” the message will probably fall on deaf ears.

Blatant Plug…

If you live in Brisbane and want to know how to make your mail work in a digital world, here’s a blatant plug. Join Steve Harrison, the man Campaign magazine described as “The greatest Direct Mail creative of his generation“. He’s won more Cannes Lion awards for direct mail than anyone else. You’ll learn how to do award-winning, effective direct mail at this event on 11th March 2019:

www.creativemail.com.au

When technology companies mistakenly believe they’re marketing experts…

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, social selling

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If you work in marketing you will no doubt be a recipient of the vomitron that is the content marketing of the “martech” companies.

I’ve never understood the claims these companies make about their marketing expertise. It’s the equivalent of a medical instrument salesperson claiming they’re a surgeon. Just because a company supplies software used by marketers, does not automatically translate into that company possessing marketing expertise.

After I sell you this instrument can I do a spot of brain surgery before I leave?

Many of these companies are highly successful. Marketo for example, was just bought for a casual few $Billion by Adobe. Generally though, they’re successful because they sell very good software, not because they supply marketing advice. They also usually have bucketloads of investor’s money to throw against the wall to get themselves noticed.

Ironically, it’s their “content marketing” that is usually the giveaway that they’re not too savvy at marketing, despite their posturing. Here are a couple of examples that arrived in my in-box last week.

Salesforce posted a blog laid out as follows:
Holiday 2018 Predictions:
Mobile Will Ring Up Most
Purchases for the First Time
Ever

You can tell from the headline, you’ll need to suspend your reality if you’re going to believe what’s coming. The layout is almost incomprehensible. The article claims to be “based on the shopping data of over 500 million global shoppers, we’ve outlined the five biggest trends that will dominate headlines this holiday season“.

I’m not sure what this means? Is it 500 million people in the USA who shop for things across the globe? Is it 500 million people from around the globe who have bought something online? Have they bought once only? Is it just measuring online shopping data or does it include all the people’s shopping? So many questions unanswered…

Depending in which country you live, online shopping accounts for between 3% and 9% of total annual retail sales. So if this report is only measuring online sales, it’s the kiddie pool of retail shopping that’s being measured here.

I also have no idea where these headlines will dominate? Newspapers? Christmas catalogues? Outdoor posters? Blog posts? Trump’s Tweets?

So the premise is confusing before we even start on the so-called “headline trends”.

The first trend is a blatant lie. It states: Holiday shoppers will buy more on mobile than on any other device

This could be construed as people who are shopping for holidays, but let’s assume it means people who are shopping during the holidays. This is an outrageous claim as it is nowhere near the truth. There is not one customer in a supermarket with a full shopping trolley, buying their groceries using their mobile. They are picking them off the shelf and paying for them at the checkout using credit or debit cards, and in some cases, electronic payment devices.

To reflect the truth, the claim should probably read: “Of the overall sales made during the holidays, the small percentage made online will be done in the most part via mobile devices.”

This is not news. Anybody working in marketing knows that mobile devices are now the preferred way to access the internet and shop online. This activity has been trending for the last decade.

The second trend is gobsmacking bollocks. AI-based product recommendations will drive 35% of revenue

How do these people sleep at night? 35% of all revenue will be driven by AI??? If online sales are less than 10% of all sales, how can 35% of all revenue come from AI? Gartner will have to develop a new section for its Hype Cycle. The “Fabricated Lies to Drive Enthusiasm” section. It’s just before the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” section.

If you’re interested, you can read the whole article here, but it won’t help your marketing in any way.

On the same day as the Salesforce blog, three hours apart, I received two emails signed by “Team Marketo”. Even the most junior marketer knows that teams don’t send emails, individuals do. How often in your organisation does the whole “team” sit around a keyboard and collectively hit the send button? Ever?

Even worse than teams allegedly sending messages, is a message that doesn’t include a telephone number. If your business model doesn’t allow for a customer to easily call you, then your business is at risk.

It’s strange how the digital marketing industry seems to delight in only delivering a less-than-average DIY customer service, while prattling on about CX and UX. That is, the companies force customers to search websites in frustration, while trying unsuccessfully to find answers to problems, because the companies refuse to provide customer service by telephone.

To prove my point I had to use Google to search for Marketo’s phone number and then call the Australian reception, as there was no number in the emails. A computer put me on hold and then a very polite person named Claire answered. I asked if I could speak with Team Marketo. Claire was confused.

A team preparing to send bulk personal emails…

So I explained I had receive messages from Team Marketo and wanted to talk with the team. She explained that wasn’t possible but she might be able to help. I asked how can a team send an email? Do they all gather around one computer? Claire advised it was a martech problem. Ironically, Marketo is migrating data in a Salesforce CRM system and the system can’t read all the data. So Marketo has to send personal mesages from teams, rather than individuals. Go figure.

At least Marketo won’t have to worry about Salesforce much longer, given they’ll soon be doing another migration to their new owners at Adobe.

I also have no idea what “empowering the fearless marketer” in the signature file means? Does it only work for extroverts? What about the shy marketers? It seems to be just another glib strapline to try to build credibility where it probably doesn’t exist.

As Mark Twain (and others) have said; “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail“. And so it is with martech companies. They only operate in narrow channels in the digital space, but they assume the whole world lives their too. So they only ever provide alleged expertise for a handful of digital channels. They never provide expertise on TV advertising, male urinal advertising, skywriting, railway stair advertising, radio, mail, outdoor, letterbox, blah, blah.

The reason is simple – they know absolutely nothing about these media channels. Which means they only know a smidgen about marketing communications in general. Their sweeping marketing generalisations to attain credibility are often more dangerous than helpful.

Here’s another that arrived today.

Any art director worth their salt, knows you never reverse type out of a dark or image background. Comprehension is reduced to around 12% at best, as it is impossible to read. And you never centre blocks of copy. You either justify it or range it left.

As for the copy, well let’s just say anything talking about “engagement” of any sort is a dead giveaway it’s likely talking platitudes rather than facts.

Email marketing success is relatively simple:

The “From Line” gets the email opened, while the “Subject Line” gets the message deleted. Recipients ask “who is sending this – do I know them?” and then “what is the message about, is it of interest to me?” Then they decide whether to open or delete the message. The rest is just process. You don’t need a technology company to tell you how to succeed.

Maybe the technology companies should stick to their knitting – delivering Software as a Service. Let the marketers worry about doing the marketing education. After all, I’m sure they wouldn’t let a marketer tell them how to design the code for their software…

The silence of the fake influencers and lack-of-thought leaders is deafening…

19 Wednesday Sep 2018

Posted by in Advertising, Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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Those who have read my missives or attended my seminars, are aware I’ve been calling out the online zealots and their snake-oil since the invention of the information superhighway. So here’s today’s polite rant.

The internet and all it brings, is one of the most positive developments in the marketing industry. Yet the industry has been infested with dodgy, dishonest and downright diabolical deceivers, the likes of which have never been seen before.

Though it’s been quite comforting to have a number of industry heavyweights step into the fray these last couple of years and join the cause for honesty and integrity in digital marketing.

But something struck me recently. Given the public revelation about the major players in the digital media landscape, and their lack of ethics around privacy, data usage and the real number of users, something was missing. To recap:

  • Facecrook – data dishonesty, deletion of almost 20% of all accounts as they were fake, lies about video viewership, the list goes on…
  • Google – preferential treatment of advertisers in search results, placement of ads on fake accounts through programmatic channels…
  • Instagram – fake accounts, fake followers, fake likes, fake comments, fake influencers…
  • TripAdviser – fake reatsurant becomes number one eatery in London via fake reviews…
  • Twitter – fake news, fake accounts, fake followers, minimal brand success…

And that’s just scratching the surface. I suggest Bob Hoffman’s book BadMen should be compulsory reading for all young graduates considering a career in marketing.

Despite all the overwhelming evidence about the lack of credibility in these channels and the ingrained dishonesty in the DNA of digital marketers, those who’ve arguably made the most money from naive punters – the alleged influencers and thought leaders – have been deathly silent in their condemnation.

To quote The Adventures of file clerk Ralph Mellish, “nothing happened“.

None have come forth to apologise for their false opinionations unsupported by facts. There has been no admittance of guilt by these cyber-hustlers who stole budgets from unsuspecting marketers and entrepreneurs.

Where is the mea culpa? Where is the “content marketing” repealing the dishonest deeds via blogs, newsletters, social posts and videos?

Have you heard any apologies? “ah sorry, the truth is out, I lied” or “yep, you caught me, I was a bandwagon jumper looking to make a fast buck“, or “sorry, I made fake claims, but hey there was too much money to be made on the back of your FOMO” or “don’t blame me, I believed Facecrook, after all it was online so it must be true.”

It seems the only marketers making noise about the problems are those who have always criticised the opinionators, then suffered the trolls and backlash for having the gall to do so.

So if you’ve subscribed to an alleged influencer’s “content” now is the time to unsubscribe. Stop listening to them, unless they apologise and share the honest facts with you. But don’t hold your breath.

Interestingly, I’ve noticed some are no longer sharing secret social sauce. Rather they’re discussing “purpose” (the latest way to make money from FOMO) or giving advice on management tips, or workplace wellbeing – anything but the digital baloney they’ve been hustling for the last few years.

The truth is, there is only one way to get rich online. It is to run a business telling suckers how to get rich online.

Otherwise the real way to get rich online, is to do what those who get rich offline always do. They make sure their marketing activity does at least one or all of the following – nothing else:

  • Create new customers
  • Get those customers spending more money with you more often
  • Keep those customers spending money with you for as long as possible

It doesn’t matter what tactics or channels you use, as long as they are profitable. Many won’t be. You’ll have to test and learn. Nothing new here. And if you don’t invest in your brand, well that’s another story…

Ignore the fake influencers and lack-of-thought leaders – even call them out publically. Ask for your money back if you feel you’ve been taken for a ride. If they are legitimate they’ll return it to you.

Then remember this simple fact – technology changes, people don’t. Certainly not in the short life of new marketing channels. People buy emotionally and justify their purchase rationally – regardless of the media or shopping channels involved. Always have, always will.

Gotta go now, I’m downloading this super-awesome definitive guide by a technology company. It’s tells the 63 mind-blowing money-making social media headlines and content secrets, used by ninja unicorn mega-marketers to help you retire early as a thought-leading power Linkfluencer and best-selling author…

The XXX way to easily grow your digital marketing career…

11 Monday Jun 2018

Posted by in Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

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Here’s another digital marketing case study folks from the “you can’t make this shit up” files.

As you know the marketing industry has become infested with Virtue Signallers and fake marketers who make outrageous claims and sweeping generalisations about the industry, to try and position themselves as legitimately having some sort of expertise.

Sites like LinkedIn are adorned with self-serving wallpaper promoting miracle ways to be a LinkedIn legend, glib motivational statements for instant success, secret sauce sellers, and “fluencers” of all shapes and sizes.

Given the apparent gullibility of the market to believe this stuff, a mate of mine has decided to run some tests, particularly to see what the automation tools detect within his LinkedIn profile.

He works in sales, most recently selling advertising in digital publications. Given the luvfest for everything “X” (eg CX, UX even FX) currently infecting the industry, he decided to change his job title.

As an aside, why do marketers suddenly have an obsession with customer experience? Hasn’t the customer experience been the key to staying in business since the year dot? If you don’t acquire new customers and keep them regularly spending with you for as long as possible, you don’t have a business. Seems UX and CX are just virtue signals. But I digress.

To capitalise on this latest X-trend, this salesman removed sales manager from his title. He replaced it with an “X”. He called himself a HX Manager to see what it might do to the bots that trawl candidates on LinkedIn.

It only took a day for a result.

He got a call from a digital marketing recruiter. In a very enthusiastic voice she said she was keen to discuss his HX experience, claiming that HX is a growing area of marketing. She asked him to explain his HX expertise for her. (you can’t make this shit up…)

So he did. He said it meant he was a “human experience” manager. In other words, he worked with people selling stuff to them. Bloody amazing stuff this HX. She was well-impressed and asked him to apply for a job she is filling for a global brand, in its UX/CX division.

But he’s decided to expand his HX title to something that is even more descriptive. He is now an IRLX Optimisation Director.

That’s right folks, he’s now an In Real Life Experiences Optimisation Director. In layman’s terms, he sells things to people. And he’s already had one job inquiry, thanks to the brilliant marketing automation tools being used by recruiters to find talent.

Like many, I find the digital marketing industry’s obsession with renaming everything that exists in marketing, for no other reason than there is a digital component, rather tedious. The industry’s labeling by obfuscation is more embarrassing than productive.

I find it easier to understand when people just get straight to the point, like Bob Hoffman does when sharing the truth about the digital marketing industry: “you can’t make this shit up…” is one of his most used phrases.

And you don’t have to make it up. The rubbish that permeates the marketing industry claiming to be truth, is pure XXX-rated rubbish, and it gives you loads to work with to help advance your career.

For example, you can call yourself an XMN – that’s an Expert Marketing Ninja.

Or maybe an XCXMX – experienced customer experience marketing expert.

Maybe we establish another way of using X, with a Roman Numeral bent? Just as the X’s on clothing labels expand with your years (X to XXL) so too they can expand with your career:

  • XMX = 10 years marketing expertise
  • XXMX – 20 years marketing expertise
  • XXXMX – 30 years marketing expertise

These X-options are unlimited, and guess what? You can make this shit up – because there’s a digital marketing sucker born every minute who’ll buy it from you…

XXX

Why most shared content has virtually no impact on your brand…

02 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by in Branding, Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Remarketing, Thought Leadership, Viral marketing

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Originally published 2016…

Any marketer, advertising agent, researcher or social scientist worth their salt, knows for any marketing content to resonate with, let alone influence, the typical punter, it must be consumed numerous times in a short space of time. Seeing something just once, rarely makes a serious impression (though it is rated as such in media terms – an impression that is).

Unless the message is designed as a direct response message, giving prospects all the information they need to ‘act now’, most marketing messages hardly penetrate our grey matter if only seen once.

Just look at the way we learn at school – through repetition. A message has to be repeatedly consumed for it to eventually make it through our distracted craniums and finally embed itself into our conscience. This is called learning. It’s a rare human indeed, who can read or view something only once and then remember the content.

raked-classroom1937

Information retention comes through repetition not from glancing at content

So what does this mean in the world of digital chewing gum for the brain? This is the world where the people mostly share content in social channels, which requires less than a metaphorical chew to consume. The receivers of said content quickly scan it, dismiss it, then start to chew on the next piece of content, ad infinitum.

digital chewing gum

The majority of content shared by consumers is mostly images, video, memes, jokes, fundraising appeals and personal stories. People rarely share words or phrases, particularly lots of words like those populating ebooks, whitepapers, brochures and the like. Of course people communicate back and forth using words, but it’s not sharing in the content marketing sense.

The act of sharing on social media often has less to do with the content being shared and more to do with narcissism. “Look at me, I’m sharing this before anyone else” or “look at me I’m sharing something – how many likes did it get?” or “look at me, I liked something”. Though sharing in business channels can have less selfish motivations.

The average adult attention span is now roughly 8 seconds (just less than a goldfish) and ASS Times keep getting shorter and shorter – less than 1 second for many image-based channels like Instagram. So the ability for any snack-size marketing content to resonate at all in the memory of consumers, is nigh impossible. Did you like that piece of digi-jargon – “snack-size”?

attention span

And what about all that thought leadership content floating in cyberspace? At best, much of it remains in the ‘download folder’ of computers, because we’re too busy to print it or consume it in any depth. It’s why good quality email messages to opt-in subscriber lists, along with blogs, are still the best performing content online.

Ironically the content marketing failure is being driven by the content itself and FOMO. I’ve talked about the infobesity problem before. The average punter is waterboarded with content from friends, strangers, government, institutions and brands every second of the day. Add to this deluge, the modern dilemma of FOMO forcing consumers to have minimal engagement with content, and you can see why brands gain almost zero benefit.

Consumers know there’s loads more content coming down the digital pipe and they don’t want to miss it. So they quickly and disengagingly ‘like’ something, or ignore it, before moving to the next set of pixels.

content hipster

Hipster training to consume marketing content…

Just as we chew gum without thinking and then spit it out, it’s the same with content. We consume it without thinking and with almost zero emotional engagement. We swipe, pause, swipe – in a constant process to churn through the non-stop current of content. And the pause is usually shorter than the time it takes to spell ‘pause’. And even if consumers do take a few seconds to read or view your content once, will it really make a lasting impression?

Hmmm that reminds me, I’d better check my emails. Oh look there’s a dog…

dog

P.S. Please feel free to share this content with as many as you like:)

How the fake marketers used virtue signals to establish credibility…

21 Wednesday Feb 2018

Posted by in BIG DATA, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Remarketing, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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If you work in marketing you know that thanks to the internet and digital technology, the whole world has changed spectacularly. Human DNA has completely morphed. As consumers, we humans have suddenly stopped our centuries-old behaviour and now act entirely differently in every way, particularly when it comes to buying stuff.

Not only that, but everything that ever worked in marketing prior to last week, no longer works today. “Marketing has changed forever” is the gospel according to the fake marketers.

It’s the end of marketing as we know it…

And these fake marketers have successfully used virtue signals to con the marketing industry into believing this gospel. Every week they claim there are new rules for everything marketing. Apparently, these new rules are so “disruptive”, that only those in the secret priesthood of fake marketers, possess the unique knowledge to understand them. Like the weavers of the Emperor’s new clothes, they claim you’re unfit as a marketer if you can’t see what they can.

The virtue signallers play on FOMO and hide behind a bizzare myth that because this new marketing is done via computers, then “traditional marketers” have no idea how it works. Only the fake marketers masquerading as digital marketers can deliver the future of marketing. So roll up, roll up and get your digital snake oil, before you go out of business.

In case you’re curious, Virtue Signalling is the conspicuous expression of moral values done primarily with the intent of enhancing standing within a social group.

In the marketing world, virtue signalling is the conspicuous expression of marketing myths and B.S. done primarily with the intent of faking marketing expertise to enhance standing within the marketing industry.

Look over here, a shiny new marketing widget

The virtue signals come in numerous forms, but mainly they are fake claims, silly buzzwords, fake economies and fabricated expertise. You hear the signals in meetings and seminars, and read them in blogs, articles and social channels. One common element among the virtue signallers is their complete lack of real marketing expertise. They just shovel virtue signals in the hope of manufacturing some credibility and fertilising their reputations.

Fertilising my reputation with virtue signals

These are typical of the fake claims:

  • There are new rules for marketing and PR
  • Customers want conversations with brands
  • Customers don’t want to be sold to
  • Selling is dead
  • Traditional media no longer work
  • Personas have replaced target audience
  • Brand advertising is dead and so are advertising agencies
  • Marketing automation is the future of all customer communications
  • QR codes, VR, AI, Pokemon Go, <insert latest fad> will change everything – forever
  • Content is king (and queen)
  • Every sale in the world begins with a search
  • 157% of all sales are online

The jargon monkeys love their buzzwords and acronyms. You’ll know many of them like these:

  • Customer engagement/experience/journey
  • Brand conversations
  • Disruptive technology
  • Reach out
  • Ideation
  • Transparency
  • Personas
  • Data-driven marketing
  • Contextual marketing
  • Omni-channel marketing
  • <insert label> marketing
  • Growth hacking
  • Owned, earned and paid media
  • OMG the list goes on, and on, and on…

Even more shady are the whole new economies that are allegedly revolutionising marketing:

  • the social economy
  • the engagement economy
  • the attention economy
  • the belief economy
  • the sharing economy
  • the purpose economy
  • the content economy
  • the influencer economy
  • the subscription economy

The only economies these support, are the financial economies of each author who manufactured the economic term and published a book to fake legitimacy. By playing on FOMO they charge a fortune for alleged insights into their secret economic sauce, while doing the rounds of the marketing industry and seminar circuit sprouting their virtue signals.

Then I told him the future of marketing is the virtue signalling economy…

Finally, there is the thought leader industry – because that’s what it is, an industry. There’s almost no legitimate thought leadership. Hire a virtual assistant/slave in a third-world country to ghost write a book, pay an SEO expert to own a few related keywords, and publish an article to stake your claim to expertise.

Some even label themselves some kind of influencer such as Linkfluencer, Socialfluencer and the like. I attended a fluencer’s webinar and couldn’t believe the dross being peddled. Apparently these are the 3 keys to success on LinkedIn:

  • Connect with lots of people
  • Connect with journalists
  • Publish stuff and send it to your contacts

The “fluencer” running the event thought it was an amazing achievement to be published in online business press – the machine that demands content to keep itself fresh. Any marketer worth their salt is regularly published in business press, thanks to their PR company, or the sheer fact they are a legitimate expert. Being in the media is standard operating procedure for marketers. So to get excited because your article gets a run, is at best sad and really quite naive.

Another fluencer shared their secret to becoming an influencer on LinkedIn. Before you post an article, invite all your contacts to like and share your article immediately it is posted. This will fool the algorithm into thinking your article is popular and help improve your influencer standing within LinkedIn. Sad but true. To be seen as an influencer you have to get colleagues to help you scam the system.

Why not just be bloody good at your job and share legitimate expertise, base on years of real experience? Or possibly just tell the truth?

Maybe they should be called “effluencers“?

Luckily there are still some of us living in the real world and we know the opposite of these virtue signals is true. Just look at the disgrace the digital media industry has become. The fake numbers supplied by Facecrook, Google, You Tube, Instagram and Twitter have stunned marketers who have spent valuable shareholder’s, or their own funds, in these channels.

So to save you from virtue signal confusion, here are some facts:

  • Technology has changed, people haven’t.
  • Technology means we have new order forms for buying stuff – on apps and websites.
  • We have been ordering goods remotely and having them delivered to our home or workplace, since the invention of mail-order in the 18th century. So remote ordering on a computer is simply evolution.
  • People buy emotionally and justify rationally. That’s why brand positioning is so important. Technology has almost zero influence on why/what people buy.
  • Advertising is alive and well and still one of the best ways to build brand value.
  • People love being sold to, it’s known as good customer service. But people hate lousy salespeople, so fire your bad salespeople and hire good ones.
  • Replacing humans with computers and bots can often hinder, not help the sales process or customer service experience. People prefer to deal with people.
  • Marketing automation only works if humans monitor it constantly.
  • Customers don’t care about brands like marketers do, they have more important things to do with their time.
  • People don’t plan a customer journey when they go shopping.
  • You cannot predict when people will buy, which is why you need to constantly be marketing to everyone in your market.
  • The traditional channels work excpetionally well. While some are declining in reach, their audiences are very dedicated.
  • There is a reason it’s called social media, not business media. And what media channel isn’t social? Ever heard of the social pages?
  • Likes, follows, shares et al are not measures of marketing success.
  • Digital-first can mean sales-last. You need to test digital channels and be brave enough to not use them if they don’t work. Don’t let FOMO and marketing fashion drive you.
  • If you call yourself a digital marketer, your only half a marketer (if that). You need to understand all the channels in the media spectrum to be called a marketer.

Curiously, not one consumer packaged goods brand has been launched successfully using digital media. All new brands, particularly online brands, rely heavily on old-fashioned advertising and public relations for sales, and to get third parties talking about them. Just watch any television show to view the plethora of ads for online travel, insurance and hotel aggregators, home delivery services, online financial services, Google, Apple, et al.

Unfortunately, just when the momentum to fix the problems created by the fake marketers is growing, it seems Google, P&G and Unilever’s management are becoming virtue signallers, rather than solving the problem. Check out Bob Hoffman’s expose here.

Though in a positive step, more companies are removing the word “digital” from marketing job titles. They’ve finally realised it’s all just marketing, regardless of channel or technology.

Here’s a signal to consider – spend your marketing budget as if it was your own money, promoting your business, so the profits feed your family. You’ll be amazed at how you start to ignore the virtue signals and focus your thinking on what really works in marketing.

Gotta go now. Am working on an AI blockchain cryptocurrency VR app. It’s going to revolutionise marketing forever…

The surprising thing Google learned about its employees – digital skills aren’t essential…

15 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Advertising, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales, Social Media

≈ 5 Comments

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I have teenage children, aged 14 and 15, so an emerging topic of conversation is what career they would like to pursue. I find this interesting, particularly given I still haven’t a clue what I want to do in my career, even after working four decades in marketing and advertising.

Most schools hold regular updates about “the jobs of the future” and the skills our kids will need to succeed in the digital world. You’re probably aware of the need for STEM skills (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) that the career advisers and alleged experts believe are essential for a future success.

These skills are often quoted by the digital marketing virtue signallers, as part of their effort to position themselves as marketing experts (over marketers who really are marketing experts). They claim if you cannot code, you’re not a marketer.

You don’t need a marketing degree to be a digital marketer…

Well Google has done some research on its staff, as it was a STEM employer of choice. The results have been published in an article in The Washington Post and they are very surprising indeed.

The essence of Google’s research findings, and that of another piece of research conducted by the nonprofit National Association of Colleges and Employers (which includes both small firms and large ones like Chevron and IBM) is that STEM skills don’t count. Well not in the way they have been historically favoured.

The skills needed to succeed in the digital world are the soft skills, not the hard digital skills. These skills include being able to communicate and listen well; being a good critical thinker and problem solver; and being able to make connections across complex ideas.

STEM skills are vital to the world we live in today, but technology alone, as Steve Jobs famously insisted, is not enough. We desperately need the expertise of those who are educated to the human, cultural, and social as well as the computational.

And go figure, to succeed in marketing you need marketing skills, not computer skills. Who’d have thought hey? Maybe this is why companies are starting to eliminate the word “digital” from marketing job titles.

It’s surprising how long it has taken so many companies to realise what type of people they should hire for success in the digital world. I mean, all they had to do was watch The Intern.

I spend much of my time consulting with and mentoring young digital marketers. It’s almost a fulltime business – and might be soon. The main reason I do so, is these digital marketers don’t know very much about marketing and are worried they are out of their depth. They know how to post on social media and use Slack to “communicate” with their colleagues about when to play the next game of Foosball, but not much else. They fear they will fail as they don’t have the expertise.

So next time you’re in a meeting and an alleged digital marketing expert claims to have a new secret sauce for digital marketing magic, lean over and clip them behind the ear – twice. Just so they know you’re serious.

Stop your digital B.S. and get a marketing qualification…

Gotta go now – I have an appointment with a careers advisor…

Why delivering fast food by drones won’t get off the ground…

08 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in Advertising, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

≈ 1 Comment

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Holy Hamburgers Batman, have you heard the rumour? Marketers claim drones will soon be delivering Kung Pao chicken, Meat-lovers family size, or a Whopper with fries, direct to our door. Well not the Bat Cave, but the front door of your mansion.

No I don’t want fries with that…

There’s nothing better than a technology prediction. Who knows if it will come true, it’s just fun making up the future. But this prediction may have some wings, so to speak, and with apologies to Red Bull.

We’ve all seen how drones have changed the way countries wage war. But drones are also changing the way lifesavers monitor and rescue people stranded in the surf. In India, hospitals are using drones to avoid the traffic and deliver vital organs for transplant. Similar organ deliveries are also being considered for the Australian outback. Even football teams use drones to record a match from overhead, so the video can be used for training purposes.

drone delivery of vital organs

Drones have become so popular, you can rarely go for a walk at night without spotting a pair of glowing green eyes floating nearby. I first thought they were owls on meth, but then realised it was just kids having fun, and not the government spying on the public…that wouldn’t happen, would it?

Companies like Amazon, Domino’s and others have started experimenting with home delivery by drone. Domino’s successfully made a home delivery of a pizza with a single trial in New Zealand. It has also trialed a robotic unit (DRU) in Australia. I reckon the unit should be named DRU2D2, in deference to Star Wars.

Domino’s Robotic Unit (DRU)

While this is all very exciting and futuristic, I do suspect the drone delivery of fast food may not get off the ground. The reason is simple – teenage boys (and possibly their fathers). There is hardly a lad who wouldn’t love to knock a pizza-carrying drone out of the sky and claim the pizza for themselves. You could say that anyone who had the ability to do so, deserves their pizza reward.

I’ve had discussions with teenagers planning their own prototype drone gun. It will fire a small rotating net. The net hits the drone and jams the rotors. The drone plunges to earth (dangerously of course) and the lads recover the drone. They grab the pizza or Kung Pao and have themselves a take-away meal. Excuse the pun. Though I suspect any teenager who can use a decent slingshot could probably bring one down.

One pizza coming up…

But these kids may not have to invent their own gun, as one has already been built for them. It’s called The DroneGun (obviously) and the website says:

The DroneGun Tactical was made to help keep the increasing number of flying robots in check. It weighs 15 pounds and sends jamming frequencies that cut a drone’s video-streaming at a range of up to 1,094 yards. The signal also sends the unwanted drone back to its starting point or forces it to land on the spot. And the new Drone Gun Tactical is smaller than previous models, so there’s no need to lug around a backpack full of gear.

The DroneGun (meal acquirer)

Apparently the gun is only available to the military, but I suspect versions will become available to the general public before long. There will definitely be a demand, as privacy is a major issue, not to mention the sheer fun of knocking a drone out of the sky. There could be unexpected health benefits too. These guns might get boys off their butts and away from the PS4 as they roam the streets in search of lunch.

In an ironic twist on military drone use, the Chinese miltary has also started using drone guns to shoot down drones in metropolitan areas:

It seems that while there are many valuable uses for drones, the old adage applies to using drones for home delivery – just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Gotta go. I need to order some home-delivered pizzas, as a bunch of my son’s mates are staying over after football today. If only I had a…

When will marketers and agencies call ‘transparency’ for what it really is…

08 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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There is no other industry in the world more hooked on the drug of jargon, than the marketing industry.

We are constantly inventing meaningless new terms for the same old thing. For example, earned media = publicity. Omni-channel = multi-channel. And so on…

One reason for this, is that people new to marketing (digital marketers) believe marketing was only invented five days ago and everything new to them is new to the world. My friend Drayton Bird demonstrated this in NZ recently.

Another example of our jargon-based mentality is the word the industry has recently manufactured for “dishonesty“. Its use reflects appallingly on the whole marketing industry. Rather than admitting that the industry, particularly the digital marketing segment, is chock-full of cyber-hustlers, liars and money-grabbing spivs, we’ve avoided stating the truth and instead, created a buzzword.

In the marketing industry “dishonesty” is now known as “transparency“. And this buzzword is being flogged to death in talkfests as the amazing solution to dishonesty, even though dishonesty is never mentioned.

In his weekly newsletter, Bob Hoffman recently wrote that Transparency is the phoney flavour of the month. He highlighted how talking about transparency, rather than transparency itself, is all that the industry is doing, giving these examples:

As Bob asked – Was there a parade? Did you have a Transparency Eve party?

As we all now know folks, the major publisher platforms and sellers of digital advertising have been lying for years. And now they’ve been caught with their hands in the till. But instead of admitting they are dishonest, conducting mass sackings of the people involved and cleaning up the system, they’ve created a buzzword – transparency.

Now everyone in the industry must worship at the altar of transparency, using the George Costanza belief system- it’s not a lie if you believe it.

And the industry prophets deem we must have even more transparency. A whole transparency industry is spawning. An Institute of Transparency will be created. Seminars, white papers, thought leadership and books will be published about transparency.

Explainer videos and transparency personas will abound. And like the cyber-hustlers who call themselves Linkfluencers or Socialfluencers, there will now be Transparinfluencers to guide you on your transparency journey.

Once enough noise is made to completely blur the truth, transparency will transform into the goddess of honesty. All the negative publicity will disappear. (or should that be, all negative earned media will disappear?).

Reminds me of the mindless followers of The Holy Gourd of Jerusalem in The Life of Brian.

Hallelujah – it’s a transparency miracle!

Transparency – it’s a miracle…

And like many things digital, nothing will change. The industry will continue to remain dishonest, sorry, I mean transparent. And the digital publishers and sellers will go back to what they do best, making money at the expense of their advertisers.

I think I’ll go watch Brian again, just to cheer me up – where’s my VCR?

Transparently connect to me: www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld