Category Archives: Marketing

The 3 essential questions you must ask for content marketing success…

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

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

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“Any fool can create lousy content… sadly many do”

Like many of you, I am extremely suspicious of the claims of the content marketing zealots. I cannot count the number of times marketers have asked me what they should do when it comes to content marketing. They don’t understand its purpose or why they should bother – and they suspect they are being sold digital snake oil. The “emperor’s new clothes” is quoted regularly.

wanna buy some content marketing?

So to help marketers and business owners with their content marketing, I have created the 3 essential questions you must ask before embarking on your content marketing journey. Do you like how I was able to get the word “journey” into my sentence, to make me sound more digi-credible?

So here they are – answer these honestly and you’ll be able to solve your content marketing conundrum.

The 3 Essential Questions…

Question 1:
Do you as a consumer want every brand you buy or consider buying, to deliver an ever-increasing amount of content to you at every touchpoint you have with those brands?

Like 100% of consumers, your answer is probably a resounding “no” – so why do you want to do it to your customers and prospects?

Question 2:
What facts, research or data do you have, to prove your customers and prospects are demanding you increase the amount of content you disseminate to them?

Where is your evidence? Where are the facts? Or are you just following marketing fashion and the FOMO created by cyber-hustlers?

Question 3:
What will your time-poor, infobesity-ridden customers and prospects give up in their daily lives, so they can consume your increased volume of content?

They already have extremely busy, content-filled lives – why should they consume yours?

Now, if you can answer these questions in such a way as to demand you immediately start mass production of content for marketing purposes, please contact an alleged content marketing expert. They’ll know how to make money out of you, rather than for you.

But if you are not sure what to do, but are serious about producing content that persuades, really sells your brand and grows your bottom line, go to the website I’ve created to help you – www.thecontentbrewery.com

It’s an anti-content marketing, content marketing website – if you get my drift…

(To learn how to create content that persuades and sells, get a ticket to www.draytonslasthurrah.com)

Get Drayton Bird’s books FREE at his Last Hurrah in Australia…

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing

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A COMMUNITY SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT FOR AUSTRALIAN MARKETERS

Drayton Bird

For those who don’t know, Drayton Bird was named one of the 50 most influential marketers in the world, long before the term “influencer” lost all credibility thanks to the cyber-hustlers. His marketing books have been best sellers in 17 languages for more than 35 years.

David Ogilvy stated:
“Drayton knows more about direct marketing than anyone else“.

I first met Drayton on a conference harbour cruise in Sydney in 1984, when he spoke at his first Australian marketing industry function. Most of the delegates jumped onto the early party boat, not realising there were two vessels. So the handful of us who remained, including Drayton and his then wife Ce Ce, boarded the second boat. We ate kilos of prawns and oysters, while drinking heartily for our respective countries, well into the wee hours.

Little did I know it would start a regular pass-time whenever we got together.

We eventually ended up at Ogilvy & Mather Direct with the same boss – David Ogilvy. We then both left Ogilvy at a similar time and have delivered marketing seminars together ever since – in the UK, Europe, Asia, Australia and NZ.

So it is with a slightly sad heart I announce Drayton is about to conduct his final two Australian seminars ever. One in Melbourne (15/11/17) and one in Sydney (21/11/17).

It’s his Last Hurrah – and we’re calling it “Cocktails with Drayton”

But it’s not the usual one-day affair. Instead, over cocktails and canapes, Drayton is going to share his infinite wisdom, gained through hard work and toil, during a career spanning some 50+ years in the marketing and advertising industries.

If you think we live in the age of disruption now, think again. You haven’t known disruption like Drayton has known it. He remembers when marketing moved from no computers to a big mainframe computer. To quote a famous Aussie actor “that’s not disruption…this is disruption!”

I suggest you’ll likely learn more about marketing at Cocktails with Drayton than many do in their entire career.

It could save you years of learning on the job, as well as make you lots of money.

Here’s what you’ll get at Cocktails with Drayton:

  • The big three marketing questions – (most businesses ignore them)
  • Millions down the drain – because of “upside down marketing”
  • The Creative Magic Bullet
  • Video reveals what Ogilvy REALLY thought about Drayton
  • Do people have any idea what the hell you sell?
  • What would your boss love you to do? Confucius tells you
  • THIS gives the best ROI. Yet it probably doesn’t for you – here’s why
  • The irresistible rise of bullshit – a warning!
  • The man who dared to tell the truth
  • Are you coddling your people enough?
  • The second wisest man Drayton ever worked with
  • What IS the golden rule?
  • The timeless realities of marketing so often ignored
  • A Guided Tour of Marketing Lunacy
  • Why does your agency talk such utter **it?
  • Does that slogan sell for you?
  • Why do the best people quit? An Ogilvy story explains.

PLUS three FREE digital books:

  • “How to Write Sales Letters (And Emails) That Sell”
  • “How to Get a Better Job”
  • “How even a Business Idiot like me made a million or two”

The session will be full of examples and anecdotes, as well as plenty of humour.

During his career, Drayton has inspired loads of successful executives:

“Your books are among my most valued possessions, and easily among the greatest ever written on advertising, right up there with those by Caples, Ogilvy, Schwab, Reeves and Hopkins.”
– Gary Bencivenga, widely regarded before retirement as the world’s best direct marketing copywriter

“What a kick that was! I feel like I’ve just spent an hour with the Pope … you triggered so many great ideas and confirmed so many closely held beliefs of mine, well, believe it or not, words fail …”
– Clayton Makepeace, the world’s highest paid copywriter

“Drayton Bird is a wise and wily direct marketer. People all over the world have been lucky enough to learn from him.”
– Sir Martin Sorrell, founder of WPP

“Witty and practical, but never boring. A great book to read and re-read and one that I wish I had read earlier in my career.”
– Joe Sugarman. Copywriter, author, multi-millionaire pioneer of infomercials – at one time America’s largest single seller of electronic products

Curiously, even though I’ve heard more of Drayton’s presentations than anyone else on the planet, I always learn something useful from them. And you will too.

So if you want to meet one of the world’s leading marketing legends, before he retires from international speaking, you’d better book your ticket today.

If you have a young team of digital marketers, they’ll gain enormously from Drayton’s wisdom and so will your bottom line. And there will never be another chance to do so.

If you’re heard Drayton speak before, you’ll know his sessions are always both educational and entertaining. So why not treat yourself and your team to this rare opportunity?

Book your tickets here today:

Sydney Tickets

Melbourne Tickets

I make no apologies for this blatant plug, as I view it as a community service announcement for the Australian marketing industry.

Having attended so many events featuring alleged digital marketing experts, I know the enormous value of Drayton’s experience. And the marketing industry desperately needs to learn from a legitimate practitioner who knows what works, rather than from those who pretend to know, as they try to fake digital marketing authenticity.

Plus it’s a good excuse for a drink with a few colleagues.

See you there…

www.draytonslasthurrah.com

ACT NOW!!!

Looks like content is no longer king…

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by in Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Marketing, Social Media, social selling

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One of the most common conversations in marketing circles over the last couple of years, has been how to replicate the King Content hustle and flog a fledgling content marketing agency for an outrageous amount of money, making oneself filthy rich.

Hardly a marketer I’ve spoken with could believe Isentia paid $48 million for this unproven content marketing business. “Where is the value” everyone asked? Well it looks like there wasn’t much – value that is.

Recently, as most of you are probably aware, Isentia announced it was shutting down the King Content brand after a $4.4 million loss in the previous financial year.

It reminds me of the first dot.con when big ad agencies rushed around like headless chooks overpaying for website production studios that had fancy names. I sat in one meeting where a young kid with a very small company, but building websites for some well known brands, turned down a $1,000,000 cheque. He wanted more, despite the cheque being more than twice his annual revenue.

Suffice to say, after the dot.con collapsed, nobody knocked on his door and his business is still about the size if was 17 years ago and he’s still just making websites and apps.

But content marketing is an industry in itself, though Gartner’s Hype Cycle already has the alleged industry on the slide into the trough of disillusionment.

Which brings me to a speech I delivered last month at the NZ Direct Marketing Conference. As I’m curious by nature I asked the audience (about 200 marketers and agency types) the following questions:

  • Who wants every brand they come in contact with to deliver more advertising and an increasing volume of content to them at every opportunity possible?
  • Who wants more email in their inbox?
  • Who wants more notifications on their mobile?
  • Who woke this morning craving relationships with consumer brands? Can’t wait to read the thought leadership on toilet roll brands?
  • Who has walked out of a retail store or café because you didn’t get served?

The answers were fascinating.

  • Not one marketer in the room wanted more content delivered to them by marketers.
  • Not one marketer in the room wanted more email.
  • Not one marketer in the room wanted more notifications.
  • Not one marketer in the room woke up thinking about brands, let alone wanting relationships with them.
  • Every marketer in the room had walked out of a store because a salesperson hadn’t tried to sell them something.

This is fascinating stuff folks. After all, if marketers and advertisers don’t want what the content marketers and the cyber-hustlers are flogging, why do they believe their customers want it?

Taking their answers once step further, the whole audience believed the premise of content marketing – that brands should deliver content at every opportunity possible to anybody who remotely comes in to contact with the brand, but should not try to sell anything – is complete and utter bullshit.

Not one executive in that audience believed, by show of hand, that marketers should be doing content marketing. As consumers, marketers hate content marketing.

So if the industry doesn’t believe in content marketing, why are marketers wasting shareholder’s precious investment on it???

And why didn’t the management at Isentia ask these questions to protect their shareholder’s funds???

And why do I have images of the emperor’s new clothes, and lemmings jumping off cliffs???

Gotta go. I have an idea for an anti-content marketing, content marketing business and I need to write some content about it…

Adidas marketers should run around a football field if they want to sell footwear…

29 Saturday Jul 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Branding, Digital marketing, Marketing

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With much fanfare, the marketing clerks at Adidas announced they are no longer going to advertise on TV, as their target market is young and allegedly doesn’t watch TV. Their Aussie brethren repeated that announcement again this week.

It seems Adidas will only use digital channels for marketing to these young folk – completely missing the larger audience of active sportspeople still playing football, netball, jogging and much more, well into their 50’s. These people also have more money than younger people and will spend it on all sorts of branded goods.

they’ll spend money on anything…

I declare a hand here. I was once paid a few shekels to play football and eventually played for 40 years, so have bought a shed-load of boots, running shoes and clothing. I am a qualified football coach and assistant rugby referee. I coached juniors until two years ago, advising parents on what boots to buy.

I attend my kid’s rugby, basketball and hockey games, participating in team management. So in summary, I am a parent of, and involved with, the young sportspeople Adidas want to reach – not to mention a lifetime sports gear customer and person who showered regularly in male sporting sheds. Though that’s not a vision you need right now.

I’ve also worked on creating ads for sports drinks and sporting goods retailers, so may have some semblance of an idea about the market. Hence my humble opinion via the following points:

Point 1:
Young folk do watch large screen TV, often with an iThingo in hand. They love to watch sport on TV, as well as on smaller devices. So they do see TV advertising.

Point 2:
The lads play FIFA on PS4 which is where they see some of the coloured footwear of different players. This may have some influence on their choices. They also attend professional sport as fans, so they see what their heroes are wearing. Interestingly, sport brands rarely have pop-up stores selling stuff at these matches – where are the brand activation folk?

Generally though, their footwear decision is influenced by the following three things:

  • What their mates are wearing – if someone turns up to pre-season training wearing the latest lime-green boots, then that’s what they all wear.
  • The expert in the shoe store – Foot Locker or Athlete’s Foot – who advise on the best boots/joggers for their feet/sport.
  • The cost of the damn shoes – governed by my (or their) wallet.

The delusion that the only way to reach young sportspeople is via digital channels, is farcical. One has to wonder, what’s in the sports kool-aid at Adidas?

My kids (and I) have worn Adidas, Nike, Tiger, Puma and Asics. They are not loyal to any single brand. I was never brand loyal either, though admittedly I did prefer the Adidas Predator boot in my twilight years.

Craig Johnston, Aussie inventor of The Predator and proud mullet wearer…

More importantly…

Point 3:
This younger generation is responsible for the single biggest consumer protest in history. Around 700 million of them have downloaded ad blocking software to their digital devices, specifially so they don’t get any (Adidas) advertising. So am not sure who the marketers at Adidas believe will see their digital ads?

Stop that digital advertising…

Obviously, to overcome the issue of digital advertising not working, Adidas will create content and brand experiences for their customers. But they will need to spend money to promote the promotion, so to speak. They cannot rely on social media or WOM.

I suspect Adidas will awaken from its folly in good time. Maybe they should speak with P&G to learn how they lost $Billions in sales, when they moved away from TV advertising to Facebook advertising? P&G returned to TV BTW.

I’m banking on Adidas moving to a “footpath graffiti” strategy. They’ll hire street artists to paint the footpaths of the cities with Adidas branding – digitally activated of course. This will allow them to capture the attention of all those young people walking around staring at their feet and the ground, while on their mobile phones.

When said punter steps on an Adidas brand image, a RFID message will be activated on their mobile, instantly offering branded content -not selling anything, because as we all know, selling in the digital world is evil. This will make the punter’s life more fabulous, so they will fall in love with the Adidas brand. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Gotta run – where are my Dunlop Volleys…

connect to me on the run: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

Marketo demonstrates why marketing automation fails more often than not – twice in one week…

27 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation

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You have to admire the marketing automation industry. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

Twice recently, the good people at Marketo have demonstrated why most marketing automation fails – unless it has one essential element. And that element has no binary code or computer chips.

Can you guess what it is dear reader?

That’s right folks. The most powerful element ensuring the difference between success and failure in marketing automation, is “Homo Sapiens” – not a computer.

If you don’t have humans monitoring your computers, your automation will eventually fail. A layer of human intelligence is essential to monitor, analyse and act on what the computers are doing and revealing. Those microchips cannot do it on their own, despite the marketing automation sales spiel.

Here’s how Marketo demonstrated this recently.

If you’re a Marketo customer you’ll know the problem that occurred this week. In an amazing piece of irony, a Homo Sapiens at Marketo forgot to renew the Marketo domain. So Marketo’s customers couldn’t access the Marketo server to do what they pay Marketo to do – marketing automation.

Of course the industry has had a field day joking about it. Check out #marketofail.

But an even more powerful demonstration of how essential Homo Sapiens are to marketing automation, came with an email sent to me on the 19th July, from Bill Binch, the Managing Director of Marketo. It was a follow-up to an email sent a week earlier promoting a Marketo event.

Here’s the first email I received on the 13th July. I suspect your antenna is rattling too dear reader. When you read something like “STOP MARKETING. START ENGAGING.” you know you’re in for a self-serving sales pitch. After all, we’re in the marketing industry, not the marriage game. Leave that to The Bachelor reality TV series.

Ironically (again) the copy in the invitation says your customers “can smell insincerity kilometres away” and you certainly can with this invitation, it’s pungent.

I didn’t reply to this first invitation. It came from the latest name on the “From Line” – they keep changing. Probably a “customer engagement officer”.

On the 19th July, Bill sends me a personal message, though I do suspect he sent a few thousand of them. Here it is:

I’m not sure why he’s inviting me to the Melbourne event, given I live in Sydney? But I’m very keen to meet Bill. After all he sent me a personal message stating he’d love to meet me and that’s pretty powerful stuff for a business communication. So I replied personally to his email. Here’s my response:

Thanks Bill
I live in Sydney, so Melbourne is a bit difficult for brekkie, but could do the 1st if you’re in Sydney?

The problem of course folks, is that when you use marketing automation to fake sincerity, you can get caught out. The return email address for Bill’s message is not his personal email address.

It is an auto-reponder address: marketing_apac@marketo.com

I suspect there are no Homo Sapiens employed to monitor the auto-responder address, because Bill hasn’t replied to me. And given his enthusiasm for me to attend, I’d have thought this “marketing 101” function would be a sure thing at Marketo.

But then again, they seem to be more interested in getting engaged than marketing fundamentals.

I hope to get a reply, as I’ve decided I’d like to attend. And am keen to meet Bill, as I’m sure he’s a very capable MD. Better still, I’d love to work at Marketo, as I know I have something to offer. Even if it is just monitoring the automated marketing – because it seems that even when Marketo’s domain is working, the marketing automation is failing…

 

automatically connect to me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

Grocery shopping goes back to the future, despite Amazon’s arrival…

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

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

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Unlike many of the marketers in the packaged goods industry, I’ve some hands-on experience in the grocery category.

Back in ancient times, the early 1980’s, my family bought a suburban supermarket in Sydney. Every day we’d arrive early to collect the milk and dairy products outside the store before the sun hit them. And every night we’d shut up shop and head home, somewhere around dinner time.

It was the first time I knew the meaning of “putting your feet up”. That’s because if you’ve been on your feet for 12 hours, up and down ladders, carrying and unpacking boxes and taking bags of groceries out to customer’s cars, all you want to do when you get home is put your feet up and enjoy a cold beer – which we did each night.

An actor portrays me helping a customer…

In those prehistoric times we provided a home delivery service. (my mother also used a similar service when I as a wee lad) Here’s how it worked.

Customers would write their shopping list on a piece of paper and drop it into the store. Or they’d call us on the phone and we’d take the order. Some customers had standing orders each week and only called us to change the order. They’d pay us in cash, or even a cheque, to settle the account.

So our customers would send us their shopping list, we’d pick n pack it, then deliver the groceries to their home. It was amazingly old-fashioned dear reader. We also delivered goods from other stores on our shopping strip, like the butcher or baker, as part of the service.

Another actor portrays me delivering groceries…

But jump forward to 2017. Amazon is coming! The sky is falling. Online sales are growing – mainly because that’s what happens from a standing start, sales grow.

More importantly though folks, thanks to amazing digital disruption, customers can order their groceries on a website or app. They just enter their order on a keyboard, use their credit card to pay for the goods and the grocer delivers the groceries to their home.

Unbloodybelievable. How far have we come thanks to digital disruption? Whereas customers once used a pen and paper to write their order and the grocer delivered the goods, now customers use a keyboard to enter the order and the grocer delivers the goods.

This is such disruptive behaviour, it’s obviously a reflection of something going on in society. It seems some of our old habits have a long tail. Students of marketing will be well aware of the consumer behaviour of the 19th century – ordering goods remotely through mail-order catalogues and then having the goods delivered to your home.

It appears this same behaviour is catching on again. Amazon used to rely on this, but now they’ve bought retail stores too, so customers can go shopping in the stores, not just get home delivery.

So roughly 160 years since the early mail-order catalogues and thirty-something years since my family did home delivery, people’s behaviour is, well, it’s the same as the 19th century. Very little has changed. Surely there has to be a digital buzzword for this phenomenon of things remaining the same?

Gotta go now. Have to do the grocery shopping…where’s my shopping list?

 

Disruptively connect to me https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

The awesome, ultimate, essential, killer definitive guide that is guaranteed to blow your mind…

13 Thursday Jul 2017

Posted by in Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Marketing, Thought Leadership

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There is one truth in copywriting that resonates loudly in the digital world. It is simply; “the more adjectives the writer uses, the less their words are trusted by their readers“.

This is most evident with content marketers and their shoddy infomarketing. They are responsible for the growing chronic disease known as infobesity.

The only benefit of this disease, is its ability to help with insomnia. In case you struggle to get to sleep dear reader, I recommend you do as I do. Download some “ultimate definitive guides to digital wonderfulness”. You’ll be snoring within minutes, even seconds, of starting to read one.

Here’s one of the latest pieces of killer content I downloaded. But be prepared for amazing revelations. The title is “The six pieces of content your business needs as growth fuel“. A bit of a clunky headline, but wait, there’s more…

Click on this image to learn the first of the six things you need. I guarantee this knowledge will blow your mind:

Are you stunned folks? Who’d have thought that the first things you need for your business as growth fuel, as against growth fuel for your business, are these:

  • Home page
  • Product/service page
  • Contact us page
  • About us page

This insight is truly remarkable. Thank goodness the thought leader published it. I ask you, “how could any online business succeed without a home page?” and “who would have thought to have one?”

I was breathless when I read it. It’s no wonder so many businesses fail. They’ve forgotten to put a home page on their website. It must be true, because it has been published as a piece of content marketing.

And here are some of the other “things” you also need for growth fuel:

  • killer sales deck
  • well-built sales playbook
  • irresistable lead magnet
  • prospect nurturing email

You probably also need a “dejargoniser” to interpret WTF the author is talking about, not to mention an “adjective reductionator” to trim the content flab.

Have to go now – am off to blow my client’s minds about home pages. They won’t believe what they’ve been doing wrong…

 

Awesomely connect to me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malcolmauld/

If your marketing messages don’t appeal to idiots, you’ll fail…

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by in Advertising, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital marketing, Marketing, Sales, Social Media

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One of the best ways to check your copy before approving it, is to read it out aloud in a room on your own. The mistakes and clangers will almost always identify themselves as you read. Then you can fix them.

Better still, give your copy to an idiot or illiterate to read. According to the Adult Literacy Study, there are more illiterate people than smart people in the OECD.

The consequence of ignoring idiots is costly indeed. Because if you don’t communicate clearly, the idiots won’t understand your message and you miss out on most of your audience – and therefore most of your sales.

This brings me to the message that was put in my letterbox this week. Click on the image below to read it.

Apparently a family wants to buy a home in my street. They have roughly outlined what they are looking for and ask in the final sentence; “…please could you get in touch with us?”

But they forgot one thing. They didn’t include their phone number, an email address or even their name. We have no way of contacting them, even if we want to give away our home.

Idiots!

But this proves my point about checking your copy with an idiot. It now costs north of a couple of million dollars to buy in our street. So these people have money, even though they’re not smart. And an idiot’s money is worth the same as a smart person’s when it comes to buying stuff.

I have to get to a meeting now. Where are my car keys? Uh oh, I left them in the car – idiot…

Ad agencies and marketers continue to live in a parallel universe…

09 Friday Jun 2017

Posted by in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Marketing, Social Media, Thought Leadership

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Research released this week by ThinkTV claimed “people working for advertising agencies are out of touch, childless, share-housing, farmers’ market-loving, workaholic gym junkies, who overestimate the impact of social media and the internet on normal Australians.”

Me thinks it’s a pretty accurate persona, to use the modern vernacular.

Of course, the consequence of the frame of reference from which agency types view the world, is how it influences their creative and media decisions in quite biased and dangerous ways.

I was on the end of this type of thinking when talking with a marketer in charge of selling “enterprise solutions” for a telco. In layman’s terms this means she flogs large phone systems to big companies through consultative selling. The reason she was asking my advice was the fact her sales were tanking and she couldn’t get leads from her digital marketing in LinkedIn and banner ads on other sites. True dear reader.

I was showing her some interactive 3D mail examples from US telcos that worked really well to generate qualified leads, particularly when supported with telephone follow-up. She stared at me bug-eyed and said “mail and telephone for B2B marketing are just not on my radar, everything’s digital these days and the agency would never go for it“.

I was taken aback, because as she spoke, I saw something flapping outside her window.

Everything’s just digital these days

The real problem with this advertising agency parallel universe is that it’s not new. The industry has lived in it for decades and not learned from its mistakes. I remember a survey in the 1980’s that demonstrated how out of touch the people who worked in advertising agencies really were.

One revelation was that agency people assumed everyone leased cars and bought their groceries on their fuel card in Shell Shops and 7/Eleven stores. Why go to Woolies?

I also had a marketing assistant at that time, who eventually became a partner in an ad agency (must have been the training). She lived in Sydney’s eastern suburbs and abjectly refused to travel west of George Street in the city. “the only time I go west is to get to the polo and then someone drives me“, she proudly exclaimed.

So here is the latest parallel universe of Adland – it goes part of the way to explaining the massive amounts of money being wasted in digital marketing channels.

The key is as follows – view the charts and weep:

  • Adland = Yellow
  • Adland’s estimate of public use = Dark blue
  • The public’s real use = Light blue

This article in yesterday’s press let the facts speak for themselves. For example, when asked to estimate how many people watch Netflix weekly, Adland said 80%. Yet apparently only 28% of “normal” people use Netflix weekly.

Gotta go now and do my weekly mentoring of young agency talent. Where’s my Tardis?

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

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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?

 

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