Category Archives: Marketing Automation

What you sell and what people buy are often two different things…

08 Thursday Jun 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Customer Service, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, ,

If you’ve studied any tertiary marketing course, you’re probably familiar with Theodore Levitt’s famous consumer insight about power drills.

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

Marketers and their agencies are often guilty of not understanding the reasons why people behave the way they do. They don’t take time to talk with their customers. This lack of real communication has increased in recent years alongside the growth of marketing automation. We’ve stopped talking, we’re only computing, and lost a layer of human involvement along the way.

As I’ve written before, you’ll be surprised what you learn if you just talk with your customers.

This lack of knowledge about what motivates customers was laid bare at a tourism marketing conference in New Zealand, at which I spoke some time ago. I met Jeanette Kelly – a women who has spent years working in the hospitality industry, running her own business as well as working for others. Jeanette presented a wonderful piece of research conducted by the University of Waikato.

The accommodation and marketing managers of various hotels, motels, guest houses and the like, were asked what they thought were the most important factors influencing accommodation choices. They said, in order of priority:

  1. Staffing and accommodation service
  2. Room rate
  3. Location
  4. Facilities
  5. Marketing and Sales programmes
  6. Seasonal tourism
  7. Competition from other properties
  8. Supply and demand
  9. Events taking place in the area
  10. The general state of the national economy
  11. The state of the property

Guess what the customers listed as the most important factors influencing their accommodation choices, in order of priority?

  1. Cleanliness of the room
  2. Quality of the bath towels and wash cloths
  3. Quality of staff service
  4. Friendliness of staff service
  5. Comfort of mattress and pillow
  6. Quietness of room
  7. Well maintained furnishings
  8. On-premise car parking
  9. Overall facilities
  10. Level of security

In case you’re wondering ‘room prices’ came 17th on the list of priorities for customers. And what were the marketers smoking to believe customers care about marketing and sales programmes?

More importantly, as you can see in this case, what customers want to buy and what marketers are trying to sell, are poles apart.

So take some time to really talk with your customers and understand what motivates them. You could be pleasantly surprised by what you learn. Who knows, you might find they’re looking to buy something other than what you’re selling, or even be willing to pay more?

Have to go now. My bride says she has a surprise for me. Why is she carrying a drill?

 

Let’s connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

Would you encourage your children to work in marketing? I doubt it…

20 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Social Media, social selling, Telemarketing

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Some of you may have noticed I haven’t blogged for about three months. I decided to take time out to observe the industry through rose coloured glasses and find some positive examples of advertising to share – regardless of channel. I might as well have tried to climb Mt Everest naked. Sorry for that vision folks, but that’s how difficult the task is has been.

Because when you stop for a moment and take a gander, the sight is really sad.

I’ve spent most of my life working in marketing in one way or another – as a business owner, running marketing departments, running agencies and educating executives and students. Never in my experience have I known the marketing industry to be so shonky, shoddy, dishonest, artificial, delusional, self-destructive and downright on the nose.

Why would anyone want their children to get a job in marketing? It’s become an embarrassment to say “I work in marketing”. You might as well say “have you met my parole officer?”

The growth in deplorables (to steal a recent popular word) is directly linked to the rise of the digital marketing industry and all the charlatans it has attracted. It seems they’re all drinking the same kool-aid and believing their “owned media” to use a digi-buzzword. Their mantra is one of the oldest on the planet “a sucker is born every minute” and it’s easy to chant when the suckers, sorry marketers, are hooked on FOMO and fashion.

Everywhere you turn there are examples. And it’s been getting worse every year. I produced this parody video in 2011 to promote an event, partly because like many, I couldn’t find any facts to support the outrageous claims about online usage by consumers.

Then this book was a best seller in 2012. I cannot find any similar publications claiming analogue channels to be so dishonest.

The first abuse of a marketing channel was the telephone and this was countered by government and industry with “do not call” registers. The problem with telemarketing was not so much dishonesty, rather it was the frequency of unsolicited calls into people’s homes.

The spiral to dishonesty started with email marketing. The scams, abuse of privacy, illegal use of email addresses, spreading of viruses and frequency of messaging, created so many problems that governments created anti-spam laws as well as data privacy legislation. Email continues to be abused, with most people now having a daily ritual of deleting unsolicited or irrelevant messages.

Here’s a quick snapshot of the marketing industry as we know it today…

The fake internet is growing so fast it will be one of the biggest online industries in less than a decade. Bob Hoffman, another lone but increasingly louder voice in the wilderness, has been very vocal about the fraud in the online advertising industry. In a number of articles, he has revealed that the percentage of clicks on online ads by robots, varies from 30% and up to 90%. Agencies have no way of telling how much “traffic” or “clicks” are by robots, as even the publishers themselves don’t really know. Yet marketers are charged for this fraud.

Then there is the “fake profile” industry. Software can now create social media accounts for anything connected to the internet. So your grandmother’s new fridge, or your sound system running from an app, will be hacked and a profile created using the device’s unique IP address.

The fraudsters then buy fake followers, they cost as little as $2.00 for a thousand, and create a fake following. The “profile” then publishes fake content, either stolen, or created by slaves with no subject expertise, working in Eastern Europe, the subcontinent, or South America. Ad space is then sold on these “fake profile” sites to computerised advertising networks. Marketer’s ads then appear on the sites, with the marketer being none the wiser.

As the system is fully computerised and rarely has a human eye to analyse it, the ability to scam the programmatic ad networks to create fake sites and earn automatic “fake revenue” is huge.

But the digital marketing industry seems uninterested in addressing the issue. One of the drivers behind this lack of interest is that very few marketers care. They never look at their digital analytics. It’s more important to be seen to be “digital” and mediocre, than to be using digital channels profitably. An Australian report suggested more than 60% of senior marketers didn’t bother looking at or using the analytical data their digital marketing generated. So they have no idea what works or what fails.

Media companies have now admitted they have been falsely charging for online advertising and are returning $millions to clients, rather than face messy legal action. Dentsu was the first to raise its guilty hand.

I have one client about to go to court with its global media agency because the agency refuses to use the client’s programmatic advertising account. The reason is simple. The moment the client gets access to the account they will discover how much they have been ripped-off over the terms of the contract to date. It seems the agency is hiding behind a clause in the contract that says bookings must be on its account. The media agency would rather lose the client’s business across the globe than be found guilty of fraud.

Facebook admits it has overstated video viewing by as much as 80%.

Sir Martin Sorrell has called out Google for unwittingly allowing advertisers to subsidise extremist terrorist sites with their advertising.

Proctor & Gamble, the largest media advertiser in the world is threatening to stop advertising online unless the industry starts to act honestly and ditches its self-interest. P&G has already reduced its Facebook spend because it resulted in an appalling loss of revenue and market share.

While French media agency Havas has followed suit and pulled all advertising from Google and the YouTube platform until they “deliver the standards we and our clients expect”.

An active Twitter user is someone who accesses their account once a month – and there are more inactive accounts than active ones. #whybotherwithtwitter

FYI Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn remain the major publishers that continue to refuse independent auditing of their platforms. Whereas all the major analogue publishers have always participated in independent auditing as part of providing a legitimate service to advertisers.

How did it get so bad? I suspect that one reason is the fact so many people claiming to be digital marketers know nothing about marketing and just a little bit about binary coding. They have no respect for marketing, dismissing it as “just part of the process” for anyone who can use a keyboard. Or they’ve read a definitive guide and so have become a definitive expert.

I was in a meeting with a digital marketing manager who stated with authority; “a brand is just the logo taken to the next level“. But he did it with such conviction the juniors in the room took notes – I just shook my head and asked for more coffee, as it was the only drug available.

Creative thinking is not valued. Instead, you just need to Google “world’s best example of…” and then copy the ideas for your client or your brand. The result of following the “God called Google” has been a devaluing of creative talent.

And while BIG DATA is the latest trend, most marketers and their media agencies don’t analyse data. They don’t know what works and what doesn’t. They talk about data and even produce spreadsheets, but they don’t study the data to gain knowledge. Instead, they worship at the social altar of “likes” and “followers” and some nebulous term called “engagement”.

The digital channels allow you to predict the future, so you can make more money, or earn the same amount for a lower spend. They put more knowledge in the palm of marketer’s hands than any other channel. Yet nobody seems to care.

Though here’s what some major advertisers say about social channels after analysing them:

Unilever has said its social media results are about 50% as good as traditional POS advertising and other retail promotions. While Coca Cola ran its usual metrics through its social media and saw no difference in sales as a result of social content. Westfield shopping centres stopped social media advertising, as results and research revealed its customers preferred printed catalogues.

As Bob Hoffman published recently: in a study by the American Marketing Association, Deloitte and Duke University, more than 88% of marketers surveyed said they could find no measurable impact from social media marketing. While Forrester Research reported that only 0.07% of one major brand’s Facebook followers ever engage with one of its posts.

It can probably be best summed up by Coca Cola’s Head of Global Marketing, Marcos de Quinto who said; “Social media is the strategy for those who don’t have a… digital strategy.”

Yet in a recent industry debate with Mark Ritson about social media, Adam Ferrier, one of Australia’s brightest advertising talents, said “…These other two businesses – Uber and Airbnb – would not exist without social media.” I can only assume he said it because he was forced to support his side of the debate, as nothing could be further from the truth.

Uber has mainly used traditional public relations in mainstream media, plus social media to create awareness. Though as revealed here, Uber’s secret new business tool is good old-fashioned print. While Airbnb is a major user of TV advertising, email, network marketing, print and most recently talk-back radio targeting pensioners. The radio ads use pensioners to encourage other pensioners to top up their pensions by becoming an Airbnb host – strangely it says nothing about tax implications? Just as Airbnb pays no tax in our country.

So Uber and Airbnb cannot exist without analogue channels. Social channels are just a sideshow in the scheme of things.

Rumour has it, Unilever is removing the term “digital” from all marketing job titles, as they’ve finally woken up to the fact the job functions are about marketing, not about channels. After all, nobody ever called themselves a “Male Urinal Advertising Manager” just because they placed ads in the specialist channel of troughs in public and commercial toilets used by men. If you’re female and confused, ask a male colleague.

Smart marketers are realising that just sticking solely with digital marketing channels is more often than not, a mistake. For the best results, you need to promote across numerous proven channels, and run tests to determine the best ROI – just as marketers did prior to the internet.

Have to go now and prepare to teach young university marketing students. Might recommend they look for an internship at Long Bay Correctional Centre if they want a successful career…

 

Let’s connect https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

The Daily Mail’s ironic typo about retail store Typo…

29 Tuesday Nov 2016

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

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

If you ever needed more evidence of the disease being spread by the content marketers, just read a typical content marketer’s content or “curated” online publication.

The mistake these cyber-hustlers perpetuate is summed up by this phrase “I type, therefore I am….a copywriter”. The “experts” peddling content marketing claim “everybody writes”. Well sorry to state the obvious, but it’s simply not true.

Everybody types, but not everybody writes.

Here’s a headline running today, in the curated online “news” site The Daily Mail.

Parents ‘disgusted’ after finding swear words on books candles and beach towels in popular stationary shop on display in front of children

typo-2

typo

I’m no grammar dude, but any primary school child knows the word stationary means “standing still, not moving”. Just like the brain of the article’s author.

Anything referring to writing materials, books, pens etc is known as “stationery“. The easy way to remember it is “e for envelope”.

Here’s a clanger by BigW – sent to me by a colleague who wants anonymity. And the company wonders why it’s standing still in terms of growth?

bigw

And here’s another typo I noticed in the Qantas magazine last week.

epson

The subhead says “Epson have it in the bag“.

The last time I looked Epson was singular, while have is plural – in layman’s terms.

The subhead should read: “Epson has it in the bag”.

Mistakes like this are everywhere. An application I read for a marketing role requiring writing skills, included the following: “Unfortunately, motor accidents do happen, with thousands hospitalised in Queensland due to road traffic crashes each year.”

The subject of this sentence is “motor accidents”. How do thousands of motor accidents end up in hospital each year?

Maybe Confucius should be taught in schools? Here’s what he had to say about communication:

“If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”

This gives me an idea. Given the B.S. being peddled by the content marketers, maybe content marketing should be rebranded. Just call it “helpless confusion” as that’s how it makes most intelligent marketers feel…

Hint to Telstra – Australia wants your service to work properly, Australia is not interested in your rebranding….

17 Sunday Jul 2016

Posted by in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

On Friday I received an email from a computer at Telstra. It was an announcement that mainly caused me to shake my head in dismay.

The subject line reads: See our new brand before Australia does

True dear reader. Apparently rebranding is the priority of the company that specialises in regular service outages, digitally disrupting businesses from functioning, preventing kids from doing homework and generally stopping people connecting in the connected world.

Someone needs to explain to Telstra what digital disruption really means.

The disruptions have happened so often that Telstra’s compensation offer of a free data day, now falls on deaf ears. Australia (to use Telstra’s collective noun for all people and businesses in this country) is fed up – we just want our internet and phones to work. After all that’s what we pay for. Well we pay more than that – if we want Telstra to mail monthly invoices to us, because we cannot rely on their internet to deliver it by email, we have to pay north of $3 an invoice. If this was a third world country there’d be riots in the streets.

film not video

The email content states:

There is nothing more important to us than our customers, so before we share the next chapter of our brand story with the world on Sunday night, we wanted to share it with you.

On what planet do these people live? What Telstra customers have bookmarked the Telstra brand story, anxiously awaiting the next chapter for their reading pleasure? Change hands please, we customers are begging you.

The message continues with a link to a video and a subtitle “Click to watch the film“. As they say, the devil is in the details and I suspect if you click you’ll watch a video not a film.

This ignorance of small data is what Telstra is famous for, apart from digital disruptions. Here’s an email Telstra sent to me two days before Friday’s rebranding message.

The subject line reads: Malcolm, here’s a hot deal on a Samsung Galaxy S7 and Tab A 8.0

Samsung offer

Samsung 2

There’s even a free footy pass for the two codes I don’t follow – just another small data glitch…

Samsung 3

Note to Telstra: I am currently about six months into a two-year iPhone plan with you. Why would I even consider switching to a Samsung now?

The computers at Telstra must know what phone and plan I’m on – aren’t I one of those customers referred to in the rebranding message – who are supposedly more important than anything else?

This is the simplest and smallest of data – a customer’s record. How does Telstra continue to get things so wrong? Why is mediocrity such a respectable KPI at Telstra?

But hey, why get the small customer data correct when you’re doing a rebrand?

In case you are waiting with baited breath dear reader, the rebrand is all about the magic of technology. And I must say it does reflect Telstra’s technology – it magically disappears when you want to use it.

You can watch the magic of technology here, or maybe you can put the garbage out, you’re call.

As a shareholder I’m so pleased Telstra is focusing on rebranding, rather than providing a service that works when I need it to. That’s sure to keep the analysts and the customers happy.

Gotta go – need to put the garbage out.

Why most shared content has no impact on your brand…

14 Tuesday Jun 2016

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

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

, , , , ,

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 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”.

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:)

Youi’s awesome marketing automation is still failing awesomely – even for ex-customers…

02 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in BIG DATA, Branding, Content Marketing, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, small data, social selling

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

Regular readers of my musings may recall the appallingly mediocre service I received at the hands of Youi. I eventually rang them to ensure they had cancelled my policy, because they were still charging my credit card.

The lady who served me was wonderful and agreed I had received shocking service. She fully understood why I was leaving and was going to raise the issues with her supervisor. The supervisor was probably an awesome supervisor, most likely wearing lycra and a cape. After all, Youi constantly tell us how awesome they think they are.

awesome service

An awesome Youi supervisor?

At the end of the call, the customer service lady said I would receive an automated survey. I mentioned I was aware of the survey (see previous post). I explained it was designed by fools and didn’t allow me to rate individuals like her really well, as it wanted an overall rating for Youi.

She agreed the survey was badly designed and wished me luck. And you guessed it folks – the survey never arrived.

I haven’t been a Youi customer for a couple of months now. So I ask you dear reader, what do you think arrived in my inbox yesterday? Yes, that’s right, another Youi email asking me to “share my winter warmers” – as if I was still a customer. There’s even a hashtag #winterwarmers to create digi-credibility.

Here’s the first screen:

Youi 2

Malcolm, do you have a winter warmer to share?

What is going on at Youi? Why is the marketing automation so appallingly bad? They have my complaint on record, in numerous blogs, social media posts, emails, phone calls and text messages. I’ve cancelled my policy. I am an ex-customer. As John Cleese stated in the famous Monty Python dead parrot sketch; “this is an ex-parrot, he’s ceased to be”.

parrot

And I’ve ceased to be a Youi customer – yet their marketing automation technology is still sending me customer communications – I bet their digital marketers call it content marketing? Why do they accept such marketing mediocrity?

Here’s the second screen:

Youi survey 2

Even if I was a Youi customer, how am I supposed to remember the name of the person who served me, so I can mention them in my winter warmer? Certainly their CRM system wouldn’t be able to identify anyone linked to my account – that would require a simple computer system that works. And it’s pretty obvious Youi’s doesn’t – work that is.

How is it possible that I cancel my policy, have a customer service person state they are raising the reason for my cancellation with their awesome supervisor, and Youi still gets it sooo wrong?

Youi’s ridiculous tag line is “we get you”. Well they (and their marketing automation) obviously get you riled, frustrated, upset and p***d-off at the time-wasting they cause and the lack of service. Not to mention the lack of faith they create in modern data-driven automated marketing.

Worse still, even if I was a customer, they want me to go to their Facebook page and help grow Zuckerberg’s bank account, as well as influence my social feed to Youi-oriented posts for the next month. What planet is the Youi marketing team living on?

So dear reader, should I give them a red hot winter warmer and share my awesome customer experience journey? (I had to get some marketing jargon into the post) If you have a minute, please let me know your thoughts thanks.

poker

Here’s a winter warmer for you…

And if I am no longer a customer, does it mean Youi is in breach of the Privacy or Spam Act, by using my email address without my awesome permission?

Hmmm, maybe I should send an awesome complaint to the Privacy Commission – then Youi would really get me…

#youi
#winterwarmers
#awesome

How would you treat a loyal customer of 26 years?

27 Friday May 2016

Posted by in B2B Marketing, BIG DATA, Branding, Customer Service, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, small data

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

When I was a National Marketing Manager at TNT, I had to fly Ansett domestically because TNT owned the airline. Consequently I only flew Qantas internationally. But in 1990, I joined the Qantas Frequent Flyer programme. Last year was the 25th anniversary of my custom and last month, my 26th came and went quietly.

anniversary

I’ve flown with them every year since 1990 and spent six figures in airfares. Like many of you, I have been up and down the Qantas ladder of membership. At my peak, I was what’s known as a CIP and my membership status was something like Super Godzilla Platinum. For the uninitiated, a CIP is a Commercially Important Passenger. The CIP acronym is more valuable than VIP – it means you pay serious dollars for your seat, whereas VIPs may not pay at all for the privilege.

The reason I was a CIP, was because an over-indulgent ad agency paid me to travel the world’s busiest route – Sydney/Melbourne – on a weekly basis, sitting at the pointy end of the plane. Eventually I left that role and my travel action declined. I gradually dropped from Super Godzilla Platinum to Shiny Gold and eventually arrived at the humble Dull Silver level – though apparently it’s a Lifetime Membership. Woo Hoo.

During the time I slid down the Qantas eligibility pole for a free beer at the bar and a couple of party pies at the bain marie, I also became a Velocity member at Virgin.

pies

Lifetime Silver means no more free party pies or beer on tap…

So I ask you dear marketer, why have I not heard one word from Qantas? If you had a customer who had done business continuously with you for 26 years, wouldn’t you like to know why they’d reduced the amount of business they did with you? Wouldn’t you pick up the phone and ask?

Wouldn’t you like to know if you still get 100% of their flying wallet – to use some marketing jargon? Has your service been the problem? Does your customer now fly with your competitor?

cards

Have you left us for another?

I’m not sure how many customers you have who’ve spent continuously with you for 26 years, but I’m sure you don’t have too many. But if you did have such a customer, aren’t these the typical questions you would ask if they stopped doing business with you?

So why don’t Qantas marketers care about the people who pay their salaries? Is it because they make so much money flogging the personal data of members to FF partners, who in turn flog stuff back to said members? Is the airline business so lucrative and simple, they can afford to lose long term customers?

Is suspect the reason is simple – they rely on marketing automation. The computer tracks flight purchases and allocates ‘status’ based on transactions. And we all know how risky it is to hand over your customer service to computers. More often than not, marketing automation equates to marketing disaster.

Epic Marketing Fails Banner

There is no layer of human intelligence being applied to the BIG DATA at Qantas. Worse still they’re ignoring the small data that matters. Unless of course it’s a budgetary issue – but you’d have to be concerned if the margins in your business restrict you from calling your customers to talk with them?

I’m obviously not the most profitable customer for Qantas, but I have been a customer for more than two and a half decades. You’d think even the lamest marketer would acknowledge the fact? After all, the management could afford to pay a $90 million bonus to the staff last year? But hey, why feign interest in customers?

If you want further evidence, here’s what happened to a friend of mine. Her partner (also a friend of mine) died suddenly from DVT, following an international flight. While sorting out his estate, my grieving friend rang Qantas late on a Friday afternoon to ask what will happen to her partner’s FF points. (you need to plan this in your Will too, dear reader)

She was told to get back to them within 48 hours with the name of a relative to whom they could transfer the points. So after a discussion over the weekend, she rang Qantas on Monday, only to be told she had missed her 48 hour window! The points were to be forfeited.

Suffice to say, she gave them a piece of her mind and eventually coerced the customer service staff into allowing the points to be transferred, somewhat begrudgingly.

Gotta luv the Spirit of Oz.

So I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised about their attitude towards one customer of 26 years…

How the Connection Paradox and your A.S.S. Time ruin content marketing performance…

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by in BIG DATA, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

A few years ago I coined the term “The Connection Paradox“. It refers to the conundrum whereby the more people you are connected to on social media, the less of their posts you see.

It is simple maths – the more connections you have, the more posts will be sent to you. But given there are still only 24 hours in the day, you have less time in which to see each post, so you miss most of them. Unless of course you have no life.

The truth is, just as most articles and classified ads in newspapers were never read, but they “reached” the audience, the majority of social posts and marketing content never gets seen, let alone read – even though it reaches your newsfeed.

Apparently, the maximum organic posts a FB user gets from their connections is between 3% and 6%, depending upon which expert you ask. So users miss the vast majority of posts unless they invest hours searching and scrolling. And now with Facebook and Instagram only serving posts based on user behaviour with previous posts, well it’s time to cue the banjo music.

deliverance

The posts you get are related to previous posts – creates strange relations…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both LinkedIn and Facebook batch updates for users. When you click on the updates button, the updates automatically download so fast you suffer a virtual waterboarding, as you cannot cope with the inundation of posts being digitally jammed down your throat.

Picture2

Batching posts causes virtual waterboarding when you download them.

 

Picture1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Most updates disappear below the fold, never to be seen. Worse still if you are reading them on a mobile device – you have to scroll even further to find what was just downloaded. While you’re doing that, another batch builds ready to waterboard you again at the tap of a button.

This led me to coin another term – Your A.S.S. Time. In case you’re wondering, I can generate the buzzwords as good as any of the cyber-hustlers.

Your A.S.S. Time is your Average Social Screen Time. On Instagram for example, it’s often less than one second. For LinkedIn it’s maybe 15 seconds before you move on. Thanks to scrolling technology on smart devices, people’s A.S.S. Time gets less and less, as more and more content is consciously ignored.

People have no choice – we are becoming time-poor, infobesity-ridden carbon-based life forms hooked by the dopamine effect of the next thing to appear on a screen.

Consequently the majority of content from content marketing, never ever gets seen, let alone read.

So this creates another paradox…

If you believe the content marketers, to practice influencer marketing, you must generate lots of followers and do lots of content marketing.

Following the obvious thread – if you have lots of followers and they are also posting, because they want to be thought leaders and do content marketing too, then by definition – nobody’s being influenced – because none of the content gets consumed, as we’re too busy creating thought leading marketing content for our influencer marketing.

And there’s still only 24 hours in the day to create and consume content.

Maybe “content marketing” should be renamed circumlocutious marketing?

Sadly the way we’re heading digitally, I suspect the whole marketing industry might get renamed the “mediocrity industry” – but that’s another blog…

More than ever before, customers want to be sold too…

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Remarketing, Sales, Social Media, social selling, Thought Leadership

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , ,

There is some serious B.S. being peddled claiming human DNA has miraculously changed in the last few years. The peddlers (known as content marketers) claim people don’t want to be sold anything anymore. They claim businesses that try to sell things to their customers and prospects will fail.

I’m not kidding, such absurd claims are being made at marketing seminars – if it wasn’t so sad it would be hilarious.

The claim of course, is complete rubbish and without supporting evidence.

hot_steamin_manure-500x375

content marketers shoveling content

The plain fact is this – people love to be sold to by good salespeople. And when they have a great sales experience they rave about it and call it “excellent customer service”. They tell friends at social functions and on social media. Some marketers even label them advocates.

Great sales technique doesn’t make the customer uncomfortable. It doesn’t sound “salesy” – to use an emerging piece of jargon. A good sales person is highly regarded by customers. And we all have our favourites, whether they be at our local cafe, clothing store, pub, hairdresser, mechanic, IT supplier, butcher, baker or grocer.

But when it comes to lousy salespeople or poor sales messages, people share a universal dislike. Since the beginning of time, people have disliked them – it is not a new sentiment just because of the internet or claims by content marketers.

How many times have you threatened to take your business elsewhere because a salesperson wasn’t available to serve you? We all love salespeople.

So to push a self-interest content marketing barrow and state all a marketer has to do is publish more and more non-sales information and the world will flock to your door, is pure fantasy. The content marketers may be smoking the wacky tobacky, but the punters aren’t having a bar of it.

wacky tobacky

Are content marketers smoking the wacky tobacky?

The common thread among modern consumers is they are time-poor and suffer from severe infobesity – much of this caused by useless content marketing messages that don’t give people a reason to act, or consider a brand. Content for content’s sake. Yet the last thing people want in their busy lives is more content.

Human beings are the laziest species on the planet – we always seek the path of least resistance. One of the key reasons apps are so popular for example, is their ease of use. So marketers have to make it as easy as possible for people to buy – which is why giving punters incentives, offers, propositions and reasons to “buy now” are key to getting sales.

To quote my old boss, David Ogilvy, “you cannot bore people into buying“. Yet content marketers are adamant you can. Waste more of people’s valuable time and you’re guaranteed to sell them more, they preach to the gullible.

Let’s examine some facts shall we:

The single biggest innovation in online shopping was an in-your-face sales tool. It was invented by Amazon – and customers love it! They call it customer service, because that’s what great selling is all about – serving customers and prospects well. The technique is now used on all major transaction websites.

Here’s an example with which you are all familiar – you visit Amazon and click on a book you are considering buying. The site then tells you “customers who bought this item also bought…”

Amazon

Look out, Amazon is daring to “sell things”…

Even “Facebook with a necktie” (known as LinkedIn) uses this technique. When you view a person’s profile, you are prompted with a message “People also viewed” and there is a list of people’s mug shots linking to their profiles. This is a sales technique as old as retail selling – suggesting alternatives to get customers to buy at least one option. It’s a sales tool, not a non-sales tool.

Companies have always published non-sales information, it is not a new invention. And they made the information available at every point possible along the “customer journey”. Sorry, I had to drop the journey buzzword at least once. Some of you ancient marketers will remember such non-sales content as brochures, websites, booklets, newsletters, educational videos, signage, on-pack instructions, seminars, user manuals – the list goes on.

This is all designed to assist customers and prospects to make buying decisions, or as after sales service. Why would the punters want more ‘information’?

Yet the content marketers are claiming the whole world has changed just because people can do some online research before buying. This is stretching credibility beyond truth. Just because a marketer can reach a prospective customer in more places than ever before, does not automatically translate into “don’t sell to consumers, just post information as much as possible“.

used content marketing

wanna read content rather than buy a product?

By all means, help build your brand by publishing relevant content that cost-effectively drives people to a sale, or keeps them coming back after they’ve bought. But make it easy for the punters to buy – they are already inundated with infobesity and can’t be bothered doing all the work themselves.

So please, you self-interested content marketers, stop the lying about content marketing and making fake claims all a brand has to do to succeed, is publish non-sales content. It’s dishonest. Brands have always published non-sales content, as well as sales content – and it’s the sales content that has the biggest impact on the business and always will.

I’m going on a customer journey to get a drink of water from the kitchen. Better check some influencers to see what non-sales content they have, so I can make my buying decision – do I get cold water from the fridge, just run water from the tap, or maybe drink sparkling water from a bottle? After all, I want to ensure my water-drinking customer experience journey is the best it can be…

Those two marketers walk into a bar and laugh at influencer marketing…

18 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media, Thought Leadership

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

It’s become a popular word – “influencer”. And now the term “influencer marketing” has entered the marketing vernacular, in case you need a new buzzword for a meeting.

It’s not really a new term though. In my school days when I was well behaved, a mother thanked me for being such a positive influence on her son. Then a few weeks later, a teacher called me out for being a disruptive influence in the class – it’s no wonder I’m cynical.

Influencer marketing is the process of contriving authenticity and false expertise by publishing content – most of which is not original – to grow a “following” online.

There are all sorts of tricks and guides to grow your alleged influence and the beauty is, you don’t need any real subject knowledge or track record of success in your field. You just need the ability to connect to people online and use marketing automation tools to publish content – mostly reworked from other alleged influencers, or borrowed from real experts (and usually without credit).

You can even outsource to content farms on the subcontinent or South America to create your expertise. If you’re a shrewd promoter, it’s not difficult to position yourself as an alleged expert.

Influencer marketers abide by what I call the Dory Principle of Marketing – “just keep bluffing, just keep bluffing – bluff, bluff, bluff.”

dory_just_keep_swimming

The Dory Principle of Marketing – just keep bluffing, repeat infinitum…

There’s rarely original thought published by these influencers. The real sad part is the volume of young marketers believing much of what is being peddled as expertise.

Some alleged “influencer marketing experts” have synthesized words to brand themselves with ridiculous titles such as Linkfluencer, or Social Influencer, as if this somehow casts magical wisdom upon their being – change hands please.

100208.influencer

With thanks to The Marketoonist

That’s not to say there aren’t some genuine experts using content to educate and further their reputation. But they do so with legitimate credentials and history of success, rather than trying to punch above their weight using implied knowledge and sheer volume of content.

Recently a British marketer Dan Bond, published his list of alternate marketing influencers (as against those who practice influencer marketing). This humble blog you’re reading is on the list, with some rather esteemed company.

All the writers have a bit of mongrel in them and are refreshingly honest, which is why I read their stuff as much as I can. Check out their blogs here.

And avagoodweegend…