Category Archives: Viral marketing

Your Marketing 101 Guide by the Numbers…

20 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Advertising, B2B Marketing, Branding, Content Marketing, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Media, Mobile marketing, Remarketing, Sales, Sales Promotion, Social Media, social selling, Telemarketing, Viral marketing

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Hello again. I’m currently writing a book on B2B marketing – adapted from my training courses. The B2B category has a lot of executives in marketing roles who have no prior marketing qualifications. They have sales, product or technical backgrounds. Some even call themselves social sellers.

So, I’ve put together a little “Marketing 101 Guide by the Numbers”. Keep these in mind when planning your marketing executions, as they’ll keep you focused.

The three goals of your marketing communications – and there are only three…

  • Acquire new customers
  • Get customers to spend more money with you more often
  • Get customers to keep spending with you for as long as possible.

If your marketing communications are not helping you achieve one or more of these goals, you’re probably wasting your money, regardless of the media channels or vanity metrics you use.

The two ways of marketing – and there are only two…

  • Mass marketing
  • Direct marketing

Mass Marketing – you communicate with as many consumers* as possible for the lowest media cost, to position your brand in the mind of the consumer, so they consider it when they are in the market to buy – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, print, outdoor and some online channels.

Direct Marketing – any marketing communication delivered directly to individual consumers* or to which they respond directly to you. All responses are measured and there is always an exchange of either data or dollars – online or offline. Generally used in broadcast, mail, email, telephone, print, events, social, search, mobile and online channels.

*Consumers is generic for both prospects and customers

The two reasons people use the internet – and there are only two…

  • To save time
  • To waste time

That’s it. You need to design your website, landing page, email, social channels, apps etc to make it easy for your customers and prospects to either save time, or to waste time, depending upon their reason for visiting.

Saving or wasting time?

There’s no such thing as a customer journey – just two contact strategies…

People don’t go on customer journeys. This is a marketing buzzword designed to make the user sound sophisticated – it’s complete bollocks. There are only two contact strategies to use, and they’re linked to the most relevant touchpoints. After all, a prospect isn’t a customer until they buy something:

  • Prospect contact strategy – to generate new customers
  • Customer contact strategy – to keep profitable customers and generate referrals

Marketers determine the most appropriate touchpoints to reach prospects and customers, then communicate as necessary in the most effective channels for those touchpoints. These touchpoints can be mapped for easier visual interpretation.

For example, a prospect may identify themselves by responding to an advertisement by telephone, downloading a white paper from a website, or at a trade show. This is the beginning of the prospect contact strategy designed to get them to either request a presentation (if required), to trial the product/service, or to buy. This can involve lots of channels, some of which can be automated.

Once the prospect becomes a customer, they join the customer contact strategy. This involves communicating with personal messages designed to create a positive customer experience, encourage loyalty, obtain referrals and generate further sales.

The customer contact strategy can also be divided into two separate executions. One execution is linked to the date the product or service is bought and includes messaging around warranty, service, renewal, upgrade and the like.

The other execution is linked to time of year and includes messaging such as monthly newsletter, seasonal offers, event invitations and more.

Obviously, the customer contact strategy uses more personal media channels including; face-to-face meetings, mail, telephone, email and social channels. And all the while, there is the 24/7 continual flow of marketing content on blogs, websites and social channels, as well as advertising.

People DON’T go on customer journeys…

The numbers that matter when budgeting…

There are a few key numbers to understand when budgeting your marketing activity:

  • Lifetime value – how much revenue you customer is worth over their lifetime of buying from you
  • Cost per lead – how much you can afford to spend to generate a qualified lead
  • Cost per sale – how much you can afford to spend to generate a sale
  • The advertising allowable – what you can afford to spend to generate a sale at either break-even or a pre-determined profit percentage

When you know how much a customer is worth, you can determine how much to spend to generate a qualified lead and therefore how much you can afford to spend to get a sale – based on conversion rates. This helps you determine the most appropriate media channels to use, as they are defined by your advertising allowable.

Remember:

Marketing creates the need, while sales fulfils the need…

Your marketing activity helps to create the need for your brand by building desire for it and reinforcing your decision after you’ve bought. Your sales people use selling techniques to fulfil the need and complete the sale.

Your direct marketing activity can both create and fulfil your prospect’s needs in a single execution. It also integrates your marketing and sales teams to ensure they both work together successfully.

So now you know, what you need to know, about you know, that thing that everyone thinks they know – marketing…

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

02 Friday Mar 2018

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

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Originally published 2016…

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

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

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

raked-classroom1937

Information retention comes through repetition not from glancing at content

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

digital chewing gum

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

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

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

attention span

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

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

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

content hipster

Hipster training to consume marketing content…

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

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

dog

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

The cost is high when FOMO and trend blindness run your marketing…

30 Thursday Oct 2014

Posted by in Advertising, Content Marketing, Copywriting, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Social Media, Viral marketing

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It’s a cliche to say the only constant in our lives is change, but it’s also a fact – hence why it’s a cliche. And it’s a cliche to say there has never been another time in marketing history where the Fear Of Missing Out has wasted so much marketing budget.

FOMO 3

Every time a bright new shiny digi-object appears (which is almost daily) marketers rush to spend money on it, before any evidence exists to prove its worth.

In her brilliant book “Viral Marketing – The Science of Sharing” Dr Karen Nelson-Field, Senior Research Associate at the University of South Australia’s Institute of Marketing Science, reveals many truths about viral and digital marketing channels.

The obvious fact is the most common issue affecting success in the digital world is simple – change is occurring ahead of learning.

hart7

The same thing happened when CRM and database marketing first appeared in the 1980’s – and millions of dollars were consequently wasted. In the early stages of any new media adaption cycle, marketers become so enamoured with the possibilities of the new channel, they only see the positives and only promote the ‘successes’. They actively choose to ignore failures.

As the Dr says; “when the wave of new devotion is so strong it is easy to ignore research that is counter to popular commentary.”

A self-fulfilling wave of anticipatory enthusiasm puts pressure on marketers to over-invest to avoid being left behind – FOMO. Decisions are based on hype rather than evidence. And like lemmings the individuals follow the crowd.

This medical condition is known as trend blindness. But as I’ve learned over the years, most people don’t want to speak out against the madness of crowds – popularity always trumps commonsense.

unpopularopheader

If you believe some experts, the way to viral marketing success is to have a cute cat, dog or kid doing unusual things in your video. And while some of the most viewed videos on You Tube include these species, more videos have failed than succeeded with cats, dogs or kids in them – but we only ever hear of the successes and assume that’s the full story.

kidsanddogs1

Elements for instant viral success

Being a researcher the Dr quotes many experts in their field to support her case:

Jenni Romaniuk, Research Professor, School of Marketing, University of South Australia said in 2012: “early knowledge is patchy in substance: research findings are often reduced to soundbites that get passed on without any regard to the quality of the underpinning research. Case studies – particularly ‘successes’ are taken as gospel instead of being treated more appropriately as single points in a larger story.”

And Bruce McColl, Chief Marketing Officer, Mars Inc says: “Don’t be seduced by new! Technology is there to serve your strategy; your strategy should not serve technology. Rigorously explore new media to enable a better execution of your growth strategy. Any other approach is a gamble with your shareholder’s money.”

This is an issue facing businesses when it comes to social media – they are letting the technology rather than the facts drive the strategy. I see it daily when consulting to marketers on their social strategy.

One client of mine is in the food business and increasingly a constant publisher of food porn. And while it’s a nice activity to post appetising food shots, now that we’re tracking the Instagram, Facebook and Twitter posts to sales, the head hours involved are certainly a long way off paying for themselves.

computer sweatshops

social media labour costs are not cheap

That’s not to say the channels won’t become profitable. But unlike traditional channels where you know the minute you post a paid ad whether it works or not, the social channels require long term investment of expensive labour – something most small businesses for example cannot afford, or are reluctant to invest in.

The other issue in the social space is the qualifications of the alleged experts. There appears to be the old attitude of “I work in digital, therefore I am… an expert”. Curiously when I ask audiences of digital marketers to nominate the books they’ve read recently (published by legitimate experts) the silence is deafening.

Some will argue that the increase in spend in new channels is part of the investment in learning, as the channels are new. The fallacy with that argument of course is that if you are going to invest in new media, it should be bench-marked against existing media over time to determine its value. And most of the investment in digital channels is not being accurately measured against existing channels that work.

Only when a new media proves it can pay for itself, do you add it to your marketing mix – either by investing additional funds or at the expense of channels that don’t perform as well.

So at the risk of being unpopular for having a contrary opinion, I’m off to read the Docs book again – I learn something new every time I do. For example, did you know that arousal and valence are key to viral success?

Wait there’s more…

steak knives