One picture telling a thousand words
Understanding how you can use new technologies in your marketing efforts is really hard, especially if marketing is just one of many responsibilities.
From my experience, most SME's are still miles away from even using web technology that has been around for years to its potential. (Even better than that, there are still a whole lot of business people who will tell you they don't need a website, because their clients wouldn't look for them online.)
So let's get to the point: Steve Rubel from micropersuasion.com (a respected writer on this subject)posted this really good map outlining not only what these new technologies are, but more importantly to what effect they are used.
Handy reference.
Where you spend your time and money
It always happens. You get excited about new stuff in marketing and you want to get right into it. Over the past few months I have been completely absorbed in the brave new world of blogging, RSS, “tagging”, “Word of Mouth”, search engine marketing and anything else that is online and vaguely marketing related.
I love the potential these technologies, ideas and strategies offer for small and medium business to add real value to their customer relationships and improve the ROI on their advertising dollar.
There are stacks of opportunities right there, and in the long term they will become a standard part of marketing mix.
But in the short term? I don’t think so. Not for the vast majority of companies who tend to struggle to get marketing initiatives of the ground using known channels and tools.
It’s not because these ideas, tools, strategies etc wouldn’t work, but because of the same reason SME’s struggle with marketing now; a lack of internal skills and resources to develop the marketing strategy, the combination of activities that should be undertaken and the project management to make sure it happens.
What tends to happen is that search marketing, blogging, email marketing, viral becomes the latest “latest silver bullet” solution sold to them with a promise to fix all marketing woes...and so we go around and around.
What is the greatest weakness in small business marketing? I think lack of focus and project management are up there, but I’d like some comments.
Kelloggs thinking is a little…hmmmm…limited?
I just read an article called "Kellogg marketing experts say their discipline must promote its strengths" curious to see what the academic top of the tree is thinking about when it comes to marketing.
What struck me is that "Marketing" in this article is pretty much synonymous with "Advertising".
Anyone working in marketing (especially in SME's) will realise that it is this limited view of "marketing" that's causing half the grief. Why? Because anyone with a budget can go and place advertising, and every CEO's has seen money go down the tube on useless, ego driven advertising campaigns.
What business leaders are interested in is a much more complete approach, with advertising as one potential expense in the marketing budget. How about identifying new segments, innovation in the product line, how about getting to know more about customer behaviour, about innovative pricing, and so on, and so on.
So if they believe that marketing should promote its strengths as the article says, this would be a good point to start.
On the bright side, here is a little gem for people interested in Word of Mouth (WOM marketing: Gary Briggs ’89, vice president and general manager of eBay Canada said "Word-of-mouth accounts for two-thirds of eBay’s marketing, he said, because “eBay users respond to the company’s main marketing message — trust."
That's impressive. And how much advertising is involved in that?
Turning Customers Into Evangelists
Going to Florida for a seminar is not really on the books yet, but after having read a fair few articles on the Word of Mouth Associations website it would have been nice.
Although the article itself is not revolutionary, it does focus the attention on something that I think is so often forgotten; turning customers into fans starts with the product.
9 times out of 10 the expectations of marketing are squarly focused on promotions and sales. It would be interesting to calculate the ROI on general promotional activities versus money invested in turning a customer into an advocate.
No, even better, let's see how much business has been generated from customer referrals and other word of mouth promotion, and how much from general advertising, trade shows etc.
In b2b marketing, I don't think there is a question about what comes up trumps.
So why don't we do more with it?
Here are three reasons I can think of:
1. It takes long term thinking; the results pay off in the long term
2. It's not as visible; no new website, ads or brochures to flash around
3. Based on the two factors above, it is a higher risk strategy for a marketing person.
Solution? Get support from the top first; it's not a hard sell once you have the numbers.
Word of Mouth Basic Training: Day 2: Turning Customers Into Evangelists
Managing customers profitably: but how much does it cost?
The concept is not new: not all customers are equal, the 80-20 rule (80% of profits come from 20% of your customers), loyalty, relationships, etc. From what I can see this tends to work really well in two types of organisations; those large enough to have the systems, training and management to develop and implement the right strategy and those small enough to manage this in sales people's heads.
The challenge lies with the company of that medium size, and they make up a very large chunk of the economy.
They often don't have the resources to get experts involved in developing the strategy and the systems to support this kind of customer management, but they understand the need.
So a software package is bought at great expense, it is installed and everyone goes back to the way they worked yesterday.
So what can you do?
I believe that it's more important to get the thinking right first. Understand what you want to do, what you can do (considering the size of your operation) and how you want to do it. And don't forget to get the people involved first...
You may not even need a new software applications when all is said and done.
Campaigns versus impulse
Campaigns versus impulse – get mileage out of your marketing activities.
It is very easy to fall into the “opportunity trap”, i.e. spending your marketing dollars on whatever opportunity looks great at the time it is being offered to you. Don’t. You wouldn’t (hopefully) spend your money like that in any other business area. Creating a small campaign is not very hard to do, and the results are almost certain many times what an impulse activity will pay off.
Here are four simple steps to follow:
Set an objective – that means that you look at who you want to promote what to, and that you set a specific (numerical) goal to achieve it. Numbers are magic. Once you have committed yourself and your partners/staff to it, it really focuses you.
Set a budget – however small or large, a budget is part of your commitment to make it work. Clearly, if you are going to spend money, you want to get meaningful results.
Step out an action plan – sounds silly, but a simple timeline with who will do what will ensure that things get done. It also helps communicate internally, and externally with potential partners that you are serious about what you are doing.
Track the results – accountability is not something that is often associated with marketing. I believe it is the essence, so develop a simple method of tracking the results of your activities. There are many different ways for many different programs, but any identification of the offer will help you track the outcomes of your program.
Try it. It works!
Pricing strategies – Harvard Business School
I think that pricing is too often done by accountants, or not used as a strategic tool. This article from a Harvard Business School publication looks at some interesting angles to consider when looking at your pricing. Use the Psychology of Pricing To Keep Customers Returning : Marketing : HBS Working Knowledge
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