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

18 Tuesday Jul 2017

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

Tags

Amazon, customer service, digital, digital marketing, online retail, retail marketing, Sales

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/

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

28 Monday Mar 2016

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

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

B2B Marketing, content marketing, customer service, digital, digital marketing, email marketing, marketing, remarketing, Sales, social media, social selling, Thought Leadership

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

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

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

content marketers shoveling content

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

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

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

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

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

Are content marketers smoking the wacky tobacky?

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

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

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

Let’s examine some facts shall we:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

wanna read content rather than buy a product?

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

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

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

The future of marketing is the same as it was 32 years ago – according to Marketo

11 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Email marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

ADMA, advertising, branding, digital, digital marketing, direct marketing, future of marketing, marketing, marketing automation, Marketo, Sales

In 1984, Apple launched its first personal computer to change the future of computers. And in 1984 ADMA held a 4 day conference in Sydney at the Regent Hotel in Circular Quay. It was a huge success and where I first met my good friend and business partner, Drayton Bird.

On one evening, there were two boats for the delegate’s harbour cruise. The majority of the delegates crammed aboard the first boat, which left a small handful for the second. Mr Bird and I boarded the second boat. Despite our best efforts all evening, eating prawns and oysters, while drinking for Queen and country, we hardly put a dent in the seafood. We did give the beer and wine stocks a decent nudge though.

The topics at the ADMA conference included such things as the future of marketing, acquisition and retention, CRM, customer relationships, customer contact strategies, touchpoint analysis, data driven marketing, personalised messaging and much more. The consensus was the future of marketing was not mass marketing, but direct marketing – how to acquire and keep customers profitably – driven by relationships, data, insights, computers, testing, tracking, analytics and relevant personalised creative delivered in context.

There was nothing really new though, as marketing has always been, and always will be all about, acquiring and keeping customers profitably.

So it was with a sense of deja vu, I attended a breakfast seminar this week in the MCA, located next door to the former Regent Hotel (now the Four Seasons). It was run by Marketo, a very successful marketing automation software company – and it was about the future of marketing. (Hint – you can always draw a crowd when you’re predicting the future).

Predicting the future of marketing…

Of course there were the obligatory marketing buzzwords – our industry would die without them: these included “customer journey”, “incremental customer journeys”, “customer journey tools”, “customer engagement”, “engagement marketing”, and the new impressive job title for senior marketers – “the CMO”.

It’s interesting how a job title changes over time. The head of marketing used to be the VP of Marketing, or the Marketing Director, or the National/Regional Marketing Manager. Now the same role is the CMO – and they occupy a similar spot on the corporate food chain as they did in 1984. Though they are only ever addressed as an acronym – CMO – never Chief Marketing Officer.

But I digress.

Marketo’s business depends on marketers believing the future of marketing lies with computers and software that automates what humans used to do. So we were told mass marketing is dead – despite it being everywhere you look on posters, public transport, buildings, television, radio, in letterboxes, cinema, the internet, sports clothing, coffee cups, etc.

Curiously there were Marketo branded cups, booklets, pens, lanyards, banners and clothing everywhere you looked at the event – it was a riot of purple – which sort of argued against the mass media argument, if you get my argument?

Marketo’s mass marketing was everywhere…

And certainly the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, publishers of the brilliant book “How Brands Grow” wouldn’t agree mass marketing is dead. They’ve proved it using science and customer data.

Apparently campaigns delivered directly to your customers to sell them stuff, via email, mail, phone etc, are also dead. Yet the seminar, which was free, was promoted directly to me via email. Go figure? But I’m easily confused.

So the future is not about mass marketing or even directly selling to your customers. What fool wants to sell things to stay in business? We were told the future is all about customer engagement – connecting with customers on every touchpoint in their buying journey – using data and computers to delivering your non-selling messages along the way.

Given Marketo’s business model though, one might cynically believe their predictions for the future of marketing are a tad biased?

I suspect Bob Hoffman, the Ad Contrarian wouldn’t agree with them either. While the event was being run, he published his latest blog titled Data Vs Probability in which he candidly argues: the more you study data, the more you realise that data is just the residue of probability – brilliant insight.

The speaker summarised by revealing the following bullet points as the key things we all need to understand about the future of marketing:

Relationships
Listening
Marketing everywhere you look
Outcomes
Context
Engagement marketing

So in summary, nothing has changed in 32 years – even the location for marketing events.

Technology changes, humans don’t. We still buy emotionally and justify rationally. Only now we have loads more channels in which to learn and buy – and marketers have loads of new channels in which to advertise (sorry, I meant place their content in context).

The problem for marketers of course is what I call “The John Howard Conundrum“. Just as he put it to Australians in his 2004 election campaign: “Who do you trust to run the economy…” – now marketers have the same conundrum as voters did: “who do you trust to do your marketing in the future?“

Who do you trust to do your marketing?

I do like the good folk at Marketo, they put on a great show – but I’m not sure the average punter really wants brands to have computers engage with them and follow them through life on their buying journeys – whatever that means.

Most research I’ve seen, concludes customers don’t care much about brands except in the moment they buy or when something goes wrong. People don’t awaken and rush into the day looking for a relationship with their toothpaste or a tin of sardines, for example.

Unfortunately much of the customer engagement software we’re being sold, is driven from the marketer’s point of view, not the customer’s, and leaves cigarette burns all over the punters in its wake.

But the brekkie and coffee were good, the view at Circular Quay was enhanced by the presence of the QE2, while the presentation was not too heavy.

The QE2 in Circular Quay

And for a couple of hours I drifted back in time to 1984, when I was younger and enthusiastically thought the future of marketing was all about:

Relationships
Listening
Marketing everywhere you look
Outcomes
Context
Customer relationship management

Aaah, what’s old is new again, again and again…well done Marketo!

The annual Superbowl advertiser churn rate continues again this year…

08 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Branding, Digital, Digital marketing, Marketing, Media, Sales, Social Media

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

branding, customer engagement, digital marketing, marketing, Sales, social media, Superbowl

Here we go again folks – the longest hour of the year is upon us. Some say this hour lasts 6 months given all the media hype, but for those who just watch NFL once a year, it fills most of a day.

This is the time when the single largest flush of the US toilet system occurs. It’s the same time every year – the first 2 minutes of half time in the Superbowl. It occurs because millions of television viewers rush to the loo to drain the gallons of Budweiser, Miller, Sam Adams, Coors, etc they have been chugging down during the previous 3 hours of the first half.

It also happens to be the most expensive television advertising time slot on the planet, which means an awful lot of marketing money gets flushed down the sewer, as viewers relieve themselves rather than watch the ads.

To ensure people do cross their legs and watch in discomfort, the advertising break has become an event in itself, with leaks (excuse the pun) weeks before the ads are shown on the TV. Advertisers spend a fortune in PR to get people to watch their ads. You can read here the list of brands advertising this year.

Most interesting though, is the annual churn rate of advertisers from the previous year. Only about one third of advertisers return each year to advertise, as the majority of advertisers don’t believe they get value for money. Yet there are those who return every year, because it seems to work for them.

Interestingly too, is how this is always ignored by the advertising trade press, as they fall in love with the publicity and help fuel the promotion of the ads, rather than the performance of the ads. Though I’m sure we’ll hear about brands who establish Social Media Mission Control Rooms – or SMMCR for short.

These highly expensive executive teams spend their Sunday based in a SMMCR responding to Tweets, trying to create publicity around the fact they spend their Sunday in a SMMCR responding to Tweets. That’s a career highlight you’d want to share with your grandkids, hey? Though I suspect, as I’ve shared before, this will be the best use of much of their efforts:

I have written about the super flush in previous years. And I even put the theory to test with the Sydney Water Board during the Grand Final of the Rugby League, between Canberra and Penrith, in 1991. Sure enough, the single biggest sewerage flow of the year occurred in the first couple of minutes of half time.

Though I suppose one benefit of mobile devices is the ability to stream coverage onto them. So maybe the fans will be able to multi-task and watch the ads while they perform their ablutions? Though given the inebriated state of some of the fans, I dread what will happen to their phones…

I wonder if you can insure for it?

Do you tell your customers “you’re absolutely marvellous” – Nicholas does…

12 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, BIG DATA, Branding, Copywriting, Customer Service, Digital, Digital marketing, Direct Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Automation, Sales

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

advertising, amni-channel, BIG data, branding, copywriting, customer service, digital marketing, direct mail, marketing, Sales

About two years ago, the UK clothing company Charles Tyrwhitt launched its online store in Australia using printed catalogues.

I immediately became a customer. They’ve regularly mailed and emailed me and I’ve bought a couple times since. Given I work from a home office, I don’t wear as many business shirts as I used to when I commuted to an office, so am not a frequent customer. I certainly don’t have my bride’s shopping genes.

They have been so successful in Australia, they have opened a warehouse here to manage distribution – one of only a handful of countries in which they’ve done so.

Today I received a letter in the mail – in an air mail envelope. It had an English stamp postmarked last Friday. The letter was printed on a heavy stock and came from Nicholas Charles Tyrwhitt Wheeler (imagine filling out that name on an airport departure card). Nicholas is the owner.

The headline was simply “You’re absolutely marvellous“. And the letter went on to explain why, in quite a credible tongue-in-cheek manner.

You can read it here:

There was also a silver embossed $25 voucher, valid for any online purchase until end of June.

When was the last time you mailed your customers to thank them for their business?

If you are stuck in the digi-world, you need to take note of what the successful retailers do – they use a combination of print and photons to engage their customers and increase sales.

They know they limit their profits, if they limit their channels – and given that mail has been successful longer than any other channel in history, they continue to use it. As does Ole Lynggaard, Country Road, Sportscraft, Mecca Cosmetica, Vintage Cellars, Winephoria, David Jones, Coles, Woolworths, American Express, Google – the list goes on and on and on…

There was only one problem with the mailing. On the weekend I ordered a bunch of shirts – even used the online chat for assistance. If I had the voucher in my hands then, I may have been tempted to buy a tad more. (BTW I did take up the promotion code offered on the site, though it had nothing to do with the $25 voucher)

But let’s just assume for a minute, the website did speak to me and offer an additional $25 discount – “Hey Mal, we think you’re marvellous – here’s $25!“. Would it have been a more engaging experience than receiving a letter from the owner of the company? I seriously doubt it.

The letter is far more powerful than a digital pop-up. Science proved that years ago. And it leaves a lasting impact about the brand. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy shopping on the site – it’s one of the best retail sites in the world for user experience. A benchmark for others to follow.

So now I have to go back to the site and spend my voucher – obviously my bride’s genes are rubbing off. She can always justify how much she saves when she buys something she wasn’t going to buy, just because it is on sale.

Where’s my credit card…