Category Archives: Sales

Online sales can reduce your revenue…

22 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by in Direct Marketing, Customer Service, Branding, Marketing, Digital, Marketing Automation, B2B Marketing, Digital marketing, Sales, social selling

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A couple of years ago my agency created catalogues for an office supplies company – different catalogues for different areas of their business and different types of customers.

They had a catalogue for typical office stationery, another for bulk purchases of products delivered on pallets, and other specialty catalogues. They did some sophisticated testing, with the objective of moving clients to order via their website to reduce the dependence upon the call centre, as it took the majority of the orders. They also believed they’d make more money with online ordering.

The test results revealed some interesting insights. When the company migrated customers to online orders, they lost revenue. The average order size via the website was much less than the average order via the call centre. The reason is simple and one which any salesperson can explain.

down-decline-graph

Online sales reduced average sales value and revenue…

Once the customer was on the phone, the customer service person could upsell via questions and sell even more products than the customer might have bought if they simply went to the website. The customers who did use the website for orders, usually only bought a small number of items.

Another insight they discovered was that most customers had the catalogue with them when they called to order by phone. This gives the customer service person another way to engage with the customer, by referring to the catalogue pages and discussing them together.

Woman reading magazine at coffee shop

customers have the catalogue with them when they call…

The grim discovery was that the move to online ordering had the potential to damage the business and reduce sales. While website sales can possibly cost less to process, the average sale value was less than telephone sales.

The company had to work a delicate balance of telephone and website sales and eventually hit on a strategy of telephone follow-up to online sales. As online orders were received, the outbound telemarketers would call the customer and upsell based on the products in the online order.

This became a productive use of the call centre staff, giving them options for inbound and outbound selling. Customers appreciated the ‘service calls’ and nearly always increased their order value.

virtualStaff365_callCentres_img1

let me help you spend more money…

So don’t believe everything you hear about the marvels of digital disruption – it can damage your business rather than improve it.

The old adage continues to apply – just because you can doesn’t mean you should…

Nothing fails as badly, or regularly, as a marketing automation fail (continued)…

04 Tuesday Jun 2019

Posted by in Content Marketing, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Mobile marketing, Sales

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Continuing from my article published last week about poor old Adobe’s problems, here is another example of computers getting in the way of sales because humans aren’t involved. This time it involves SMS – plus a late addition to the Adobe issues.

The sad part about this error is how easily it could have been avoided, as the perpetrator, Vintage Cellars, has my purchase history on file. Each bottle of vino I buy is linked to a loyalty card/app.

I do like my wine – in fact I enjoy both colours (red and white) in almost equal measures. Over a six year period in the Hunter Valley, I made wine as part of my membership of a wine club (now defunct). One vintage even won a trophy and my team also made a semillon in steel, not barrels, in the true Hunter Valley style.

If you’re a friend of mine, you’ll know I regard sauvignon blanc as a crime against humanity. It tastes like a batch of your neighbour’s lawn clippings, filtered by a garden hose through an old pair of your grandmother’s stockings. But that’s just my palette – others do enjoy it.

So last October, I received a text message from Zoe at Vintage Cellars – trying to flog me some sauvignon blanc:

Why I received this message is beyond comprehension. I’ve never bought sav blanc in my life, let alone from Vintage Cellars. Isn’t marketing automation messaging supposed to be linked to customer purchasing data to ensure the fabled “personalised customer experience/journey?”

I suspected Zoe was a fake customer service person, or possibly a bot, but I replied to her regardless, sharing a couple of my thoughts on sav blanc:

I assumed (wrongly) that the marvels of marketing technology would automatically process my message and stop the computers from trying to flog said sav. But unfortunately, the Vintage Cellars computers aren’t very smart. Even worse, it appears the humans in the marketing team don’t bother to check what their customers say to these computers. I know this to be true because a couple weeks ago, the computers sent me this message:

It would be funny if not so sad – well it’s sad that humans assume marketing automation works all the time, like a set-n-forget TV dinner in the microwave. It has obviously failed this time. But it’s sad for other reasons too:

Firstly, there is no way they could have missed me, given my wine buying in the last six months. I know this because I get my discount vouchers physically mailed to me each month and they are based on my household purchase history. And lately I’ve received a few vouchers – mostly linked to my bride’s champagne drinking I’m sure.

Secondly, because the message that was from Zoe, is now from “we” and is not signed off by anyone except the disclaimer.

And thirdly, it’s just bad marketing. Vintage Cellars has my data. They contacted me on a personal channel. I replied to them in the same personal channel. Yet they lie to me about missing me, are too lazy to check my sales history and are too lazy to write a decent message. It’s a bloody disgrace and enough to drive a man to drink.

But wait, there’s more – and it’s just arrived from Adobe as I type…

It’s an invitation to a webinar on mobile marketing, by the people who brought you “epic fails in marketing automation“. The image is of a human hand writing a WORD CLOUD in reverse on a glass screen. Why anybody would do this to their wrist is beyond me?

It appears the creative idea here, is to make the most prominent words the same as the topic of the webinar – enterprise, mobility, business, technology. Genius stuff. The first two sentences are:

“Your customers, your business, your market are mobile-first. But 80% of all workflows today are at least partially paper-based. This is expensive, time-consuming and not very user friendly.

Don’t get left behind! Best-in-class companies leverage digital and mobile-first workflows to eliminate clunky, manual steps, removing inefficiencies, increasing revenue growth and improving customer experiences.”

You can imagine dear reader that I may be a tad sceptical. After all, it’s the very fact that Vintage Cellars and Adobe didn’t have manual steps involving humans that caused their marketing technology failures. It was their very investment in digital marketing technology, with complete disregard for the compulsory layer of human intelligence, that cost them dearly.

The copy appears to be written by a typist, not a copywriter. After all, if your business is mobile-first (whatever that means) yet your workflow is 80% paper-based, how can your business be mobile-first? It’s obviously paper-first! The writer is contradicting themselves. This strive for marketing mediocrity is giving me a headache.

I’m off to medicate with a drink. Hmmm, red or white…

Nothing fails as badly (or regularly) as a marketing automation fail…

31 Friday May 2019

Posted by in B2B Marketing, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales, social selling

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As robots and “automation software” increasingly take over the tasks of humans, the number of customer service problems and technical glitches seem to be increasing. Yet ironically, in most cases, the simple reason for the failure is the lack of human involvement.

Here is the first of a couple of examples I’ll share with you:

Adobe is a very successful company and makes some great products, some of which I use. They were a client years ago and I also have friends who work there. On 14th May Adobe sent me an email with the subject line: “Gartner Magic Quadrant names Adobe a Leader in Multichannel Marketing Hubs“. Now as I’ve owned an email SaaS business, I thought I’d see what the Magic Quadrant had to say, though I wondered if I was supposed to be puffing on something when reading stuff by the Magic Quadrant?

The email is an image with the ridiculous headline: “Your customer has many sides. Engage them all.” There were no images of customers, just technology.

I laughed so much I just had to click on the link to see how many sides my customers now have – apart from the obvious backside. And as I’m already married I don’t want to engage any of them.

The link was for a report titled: “Connecting with People Across Their Every Dimension” so I was a tad confused given the subject line. The link took me to this page:

It’s not immediately obvious what to click on for the report. There is a “request a demo” button but that’s not the report button. Eventually I realised the headline “Gartner: Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs” was the link, so I clicked on it and it opened to this:

The page simply says: Access to this content has expired

So I went back to the email and tried again – same result.

I scrolled through the email to see how to contact Adobe. But like most marketing automation brands – they don’t want to provide customer service to customers or prospects. They force people to do everything themselves via (often useless) websites, rather than provide humans (or at worse, chat bots) to help. It’s the equivalent of going into a retail store and asking the salesperson if they have a product in stock, and getting told to go look out the back in the storeroom yourself.

The email fineprint tells me not to reply to the email, even though it was personally addressed to me (well to my subscription email name – Ted). I have to go to a damn website and search for the contact information:

PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. To obtain information on how to contact Adobe, visit the web at: http://www.adobe.com/company/contact.html

This is so wrong on so many service levels, not to mention the language: “To obtain information on how to contact Adobe” – I don’t want to obtain information on how to contact Adobe, I just want to contact Adobe.

Apart from the link not working and not being able to contact Adobe without opening up a website, the message itself indicates what’s wrong with many digital marketing businesses these days.

Like so many of these companies, Adobe obviously doesn’t employ copywriters or art directors – it employs graphic or industrial designers – people who know how to design, but not how to communicate. And they employ typists not copywriters.

Some of the obvious giveaways:

  • Centred headline across more than one line
  • Widow or orphan in the headline
  • Full stops in the headline (these tell you to stop reading)
  • Two full stops in the headline (stop reading or else)
  • Centred body copy – with widows
  • Breaking a publication title across two lines, with the final words hanging as widows
  • Reversing white out of black type in a sans serif font – significantly reduces readability and comprehension
  • Use of the jargon-monkey button on the keyboard – this message is full of it:

Let’s deconstruct:

“Today’s customer expects personalised content when it matters most” In simple terms, this is complete B.S. Today’s customers are no different to yesterday’s, last week’s or last century’s customers. They just want good service – if it involves personalised content so be it. But they are not “expecting personalised content” – most don’t want any more damn content. Marketers are the ones who want to create content – not consumers. Read more below.*

“And when you understand all the human complexities that drive customer decisions,” “understand the human complexities???” It’s not brain surgery – it’s marketing. Maybe this refers to a complex customer decision like “I think I’ll buy a cup of coffee” or “I will click here to download the report” – definitely need to understand the associated human complexities for such decisions. We’ll fail otherwise and never be able to “deliver experiences that speak to them, get them to click, and make a lasting impression.”

#changehands #fingersdownthroat

These types of messages are contributing to the reason the majority of people don’t trust online content as much as they trust printed content. It’s why the marketing industry is ranked near the bottom on the consumer trust barometers.

But wait – there’s more…

A week later on the 21st May, Adobe sent me this message:

The message has a report attached, a week after I had tried to download it. How long did it take the humans at Adobe to realise the link didn’t work? Didn’t a human test the link when it went live, so to speak?

This message also demonstrated the wrong people are creating the emails:

  • The Adobe team is singular not plural – so ‘we mistakenly linked you” cannot be. An individual created the email link, not a team of people.
  • Teams don’t send emails, individuals do – did a bunch of marketers sit around a send-button each waiting anxiously to push the button together as a team?
  • “We care about the quality and relevance of our communications and have taken measures to fix the issue.” No. No. No. Stop the passive language. There is no need to say “we…have taken measures” just say “the problem is fixed.”
  • Stop talking about yourself – there are numerous ways this message could have been written with more relevance so it delivered in Adobe’s words, “experiences that speak to them, get them to click, and make a lasting impression.”

BUT WAIT, there’s even more…

The report that I tried to download on the 14th is titled:
“Connecting with People Across Their Every Dimension.”

The report the Adobe team sent me on the 21st May is titled:
“Analysts Report Magic Quadrant for Multichannel Marketing Hubs“.

So now I’m confused. The report I was sent reflects the subject line of the email. It talks about SaaS that delivers messages in many channels to customers. But it doesn’t talk about the many sides of the customer, as per the headline in the email message, or the title of the report I tried to download.

So is the subject line and the landing page correct, but the email message incorrect? Or is the report title in the email message correct, but the subject line and landing page incorrect? It’s enough to make a simple marketer reach for the Magic… I suspect you get my drift.

This is so typical of what happens when technologists pretend to be marketers. What is going on at Adobe? Where are the experienced marketers? Where are the people who care or are accountable?

If you would like to learn some facts about readership, comprehension and designing to communicate, read the brilliant book by Colin Wheildon – “Communicating or JUST MAKING PRETTY SHAPES.” If you contact me on inquiry@madmail.com.au I’ll send you a FREE PDF of the book – no downloading or teams involved.

Gotta go now – am going to download a definitive guide to downloading definitive guides…

You can read more here:

* https://themalcolmauldblog.com/2016/03/03/content-infobesity-is-clogging-digital-arteries/

* https://themalcolmauldblog.com/2015/07/29/leading-legendary-lamb-leg-linkfluencer-looks-like-losing-the-lot/

* https://themalcolmauldblog.com/2018/10/25/theres-a-reason-the-first-three-letters-of-content-marketing-are-con/

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

How to get executives to dine at upmarket restaurants for lunch…

22 Thursday Mar 2018

Posted by in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Sales, social selling

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Today’s Throwback Thursday features two campaigns promoting fine dining restaurants in the Sydney CBD. These campaigns would still work today, 21+ years after they originally ran…

Fine dining restaurants located in 5 star hotels, are quite different to your everyday cafes and restaurants located on the high street or in food lanes. They have their own peculiarities, one of which is their location inside a hotel without street-front exposure.

They’re also expensive. Most are frequented for one of four reasons:

  • the chef’s (food/wine) reputation
  • celebrating a special occasion
  • the company/employer is picking up the tab
  • money is no object for the customer

Here are two case studies promoting fine dining restaurants to business executives:

  • The Astral Restaurant located at The Star Casino in Darling Harbour
  • The Galileo Restaurant located in the Observatory Hotel in Kent Street near The Rocks

The Astral Resturant was located in a separate top floor of the casino as part of The Endevour Room, the casino’s private gaming room. The casino is just too far to walk from the CBD for lunch – but it had free parking. The agency drew a map of streets west of George street down to Darling Harbour, with boundaries north and south in the CBD.

A list of senior executive contact details within the map boundaries was then rented and the names/job titles were qualified by phone. The mailpack is the size of a typical dinner plate and used the plate imagery within.

The mailpack had three incentives to visit and dine at The Astral:

  • $75 dining voucher for The Astral
  • $50 gaming voucher for The Endeavour Room
  • 1 month free membership to The Endeavour Room

So recipients could go for lunch or dinner, then get to gamble in the private VIP high roller room. Of course they probably weren’t aware that an entree cost about $75 and the minimum bet was $50, but the incentive worked its head off.

Front of mailpack

Rear of mailpack

Mailpack opened…

Letter

Letter, brochure, vouchers

Vouchers and membership card

The mailing generated a response of more than 25% and all respondents were put on a database for future mail/email communication. (email was just starting in the business world)

The Galileo Restaurant is also located on the fringe of the CBD. The agency hired people to walk ten minutes from the restaurant towards the city centre and create a map of the catchment area. Staff walked the floors of each building and built a list of senior executives for each company in the catchment area. A list of senior executives in North Sydney was also rented to so a split-run test could be conducted.

The mailing is an A3 piece of parchment card stock, folded into thirds and sealed with a black tape. It unfolds into a food art poster. There is an invitation with an excellent incentive:

  • Free lunch for two people – three courses plus coffee
  • The recipient can bring a guest along and enjoy lunch together

There is a reservation card to hand in when the respondent arrives at the restaurant. It captures the recipient’s name and their guest’s details. This doubled the size of the database and gave the restaurant a reference point for a ofllow-up mailing. This also generated more than 24% response rate. Local executives responded more than North Sydney executives, which was expected.

Front of envelope

Rear of envelope

Envelope folds open into an A3 poster

Reservation form, letter and menu

More importantly the staff offered the lunch guests a backroom tour of the hotel. While showing the guests around the inner sanctum, the hotel staff asked for the contact details of the person who books accommodation and events at the guest’s company. So the hotel built three databases – restaurant, accommodation and events.

Both these mailings would work today – the only difference is the reply device would most likely be a personalised landing page (PURL) supported by a confirmation email and/or SMS.

All this talk of fine dining is making me hungry. Where are last night’s leftovers?

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

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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…

Retailers use innovative response to arrival of Amazon…

07 Thursday Dec 2017

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

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The arrival of Amazon in Australia has created a bit of a media frenzy. Some of the over-reaction would have you think the world is coming to an end, as Chicken Little believed centuries ago.

Amazon is coming, the end of retail is nigh…

Yet a day after the announcement that Amazon was open for business, some media turned against Amazon. Apparently the prices Amazon is charging for many electronic goods are way more than competitors are offering both in-store and online. Amazon is not the cheapest in many categories.

This is a reflection of how online stores like Amazon are damaging brands by commoditising them and reducing them to compete mainly on price, rather than other differentiators. But that’s another discussion.

However, there is a group of retailers using innovative technology to combat Amazon. Though the cyber-hustlers would claim the retailers have lost their mind. After all, this is the digital world.

These retailers are using printed catalogues delivered directly into letterboxes to generate Christmas sales. Many of them are also advertising on television and radio, as well as in press (inserts and ads).

What are they thinking?

Here are the brands that have reached my family’s letterbox in the last two days:

  • Woolworths
  • Big W
  • Coles
  • IGA
  • Supercheap Auto
  • Repco
  • Priceline Pharmacy
  • Harvey Norman
  • Officeworks
  • Target
  • Bunnings
  • Bing Lee
  • Pillow Talk
  • Zamel’s Jewellers

Retail catalogues in my home…

I wonder, given the whole world has gone 150% digital, why retailers would use the technology that impacts all five senses (print), rather than the technology that only impacts three senses (digital)?

Maybe it’s because online sales in Australia will only be 7.3% of all retail sales this year? Or to put it another way, 92.7% of all retail sales will not be online this year. So digital marketing is the equivalent of playing in the kiddies pool in the big game of marketing.

Maybe it’s because they know that as a result of looking at printed catalogues, people shop online, as well as directly in-store.

Maybe it’s because they know catalogues and inserts work, as they are the secret weapon of digital start-ups.

Maybe it’s because they listen to customers rather than cyber-hustlers when it comes to running a profitable business?

Who knows?

But I gotta go now and do my Christmas shopping – where are my catalogues?

You don’t become a brain surgeon by hanging around the casualty ward…

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

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

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And you don’t become a CMO by hanging around the marketing department either. It’s like those people who claim to be copywriters just because they can use a keyboard.

To really stand out from the crowd and get ahead of your marketing peers, you need to invest in yourself.

Furnish your brain with knowledge from those who’ve already succeeded (and failed occasionally). Tap into the expertise of those who’ve tasted blood. Learn from the experts.

High achievers don’t use hope as a strategy when it comes to their success. And they don’t fall for the fake thought leadership and definitive guides published by marketing wannabes and cyber-hustlers.

Which brings me to this unique opportunity in Australia. International legend of marketing, Drayton Bird, is doing his final ever events in Sydney and Melbourne.

Every marketer on the planet would kill to achieve a fraction of Drayton’s success**. And it will be a long time before any other marketer comes close to earning the same genuine industry respect. If he was any younger he’d be called a unicorn!

So if you want better results from your marketing, or to improve your career, I suggest you take the opportunity to spend 3 hours at Drayton’s final gig-  Cocktails with Drayton.

You won’t get another chance to meet, chat and listen to Drayton in Australia ever again. In his 90 minute presentation he’ll share his best tips, ideas and marketing secrets, compiled during a career spanning four decades, including 20 years of online marketing.

He’s also giving away 3 of his books FREE, including the 338-page international best-seller “How to write sales letters and emails that sell“.

So to quote a well known Aussie “Do yourself a favour” and book your tickets today. They are only $125, or if you book 5 or more people, they’re just $100 each.

That’s a damn cheap investment to get priceless information to boost your career and your marketing results.

Book Melbourne here: 15th November (5.30 – 8.30pm) Rydges Melbourne

Book Sydney here: 21st November (5.30 – 8.30pm) Rydges North Sydney

More information at www.draytonslasthurrah.com

See you there…

**P.S. Here’s just a snippet of Drayton’s resume:

  • The Chartered Institute of Marketing named him one of 50 individuals who shaped today’s marketing.
  • Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Caples Organisation in New York and Early To Rise in Florida
  • Founding member of Superbrands
  • One of the first eight Honorary Fellows of the Institute of Direct Marketing
  • One of the first three people in the Direct Marketing Association of India’s Hall of Fame
  • UK magazine ‘Campaign’ called him ‘the only universally acknowledged point of creativity in the direct marketing world‘
  • His book “Commonsense Direct & Digital Marketing” has been a global best-seller on the subject every year since 1982. It’s published in 17 languages and sold around the world.
  • Advertising legend David Ogilvy said “he knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world”

How’s yours compare?

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/