Category Archives: Consulting

July 2, 2014 · 8:34 am

Missing The Measuring

I guess there is generally good news with respect to marketers and how they’re measuring social media.

English: A business ideally is continually see...

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The”generally” qualification, however, means that there’s still some work to be done. As you’ll see from the data below, while many organizations are getting better about measuring the effectiveness of what they’re doing, what they’re using as key performance indicators could use a lot of fine tuning.

According to the results of a survey put out by the folks at Ipsos OTX for the Association of National Advertisers, 80% of US client-side marketers measured the effectiveness of their social content, with social media metrics such as “likes” the most common.  That’s the good news.  The bad? Metrics that could identify business ramifications were not used nearly as much, with financially based measurements such as return on investment and sales landing near the bottom.

What did the study find that these companies are measuring?  “Likes” leads the list.  Putting aside that it’s an easy number to fake (you can buy thousands of likes for not much money) if you had a reason to do so (your bonus is tied to the number perhaps?), it’s a quantitative factoid that has very little to do with results.  It’s very likely that a brand would make more revenue from a couple of thousand highly interactive fans who post one comment each, than from one million fans who rarely interact with the brand.  Something as basic as follower counts or likes might have importance but it’s a relational importance – how many do we have vs. our competition – rather than being important in and of itself.

Some of what the study found is encouraging.  “Advocacy” is being measured by 27% of brands and “conversation volume” by 52%.  Those are engagement numbers.  It’s good to measure how many people see a post.  It’s better to measure how many are talking about it.  It’s way better to understand what they’re saying and the best is when you can measure all of that along with seeing and reporting what actions they took.  Hopefully that action rang a cash register or brought you a new customer.

Does that make sense?

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June 30, 2014 · 10:28 am

Playing Defense

There was a valuable business lesson to be learned from yesterday’s Mexico/Netherlands game.

2010_05_26-NED_vs_MEX_006

(Photo credit: colin.merkert)

I don’t know if you watched it, but the Mexicans took a lead early in the second half. This was more than a bit of a surprise – the Dutch are one of the favorites in the World Cup and the Team Mexico had barely qualified. El Tri have rarely made it past the round of 16, the stage of the tournament in which this game was played.  They didn’t make it this time either and we can learn from what they did.

After a quiet start, Mexico dominated the first half and scored early in the second.  They played attacking football.  Once they scored, however, the went into a shell and were content to sit back on defense, making the occasional counter-attack but mostly allowing the Dutch to come at them.  Holland is one of the best teams in the world and features three of the best players in the world in the attacking end.  It was only a matter of time before they tied the game given many chances to do so.  yet Mexico played defense.  Sure enough, the game was tied after a corner kick (Mexico had kicked the ball out defensively) and lost when a Mexican defender gave the ref a reason to call a penalty on a (perhaps phantom) trip.

Why the sports report today?  Because we often make the same mistake in business.  We get to a point where we’re happy with what we’ve got and then we play defense.  We don’t develop new products or services.  We don’t encourage our people to advance their skill set.  We sit back and allow the competition to come at us and put all of our resources into defending or delaying their attacks instead of making them wonder how to defend ours.

The time to play defense in business is when there are overwhelmingly negative forces in the market and not when you have a lead.  There will always be other companies attacking you and playing defense is part of any business plan.  However, building a small advantage and then expending all your resources to defend it usually puts you out of the tournament.  Thoughts?

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June 27, 2014 · 8:55 am

Vegas And Veggies

For our Foodie Friday Fun this week I’d like to ask you what your local supermarket and a casino have in common?

Casino Royale en Las Vegas

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You might not have noticed but neither of them have clocks that are highly visible.  In the case of the supermarket there is a general rule that says the longer someone is in the store the more money they will spend (I suspect the same is true of a casino) so they don’t want anything to remind the customer that time has passed.  That’s one of the things each of these very different types of establishments do to increase sales.  You’ve probably never seen windows in either place (in fairness very few stores have windows other than up front), and both deploy a wide range of sensory stimuli to encourage spending: music, fragrances, lighting, even nuances like colors.

It’s really about engagement.  Does it surprise you that both casinos and supermarkets have researched how to create engagement for a very long time?  In my mind, the only reason that it should is that both do a fairly good job about not being obvious in the psychological tricks they use to create engagement.  Here is a quote from an interview with the manager of a Fairway store:

“The real secret of Fairway’s success is to make the shopping experience emotional,” the manager concluded. “We want our customers to be wowed by our unique product selection, service, and merchandising.”

Which is very good guidance for any of us in any business.  The strongest connection you can have with a customer is an emotional one.  Your pricing may change (for better or worse in the customer’s eyes) but their memories of having been treated like a special guest won’t.  If you’re tending to their needs and making sure they’re content instead of “doing transactions” you are creating a bond.  It can be with content or it can be an in-person interaction but engagement through an emotional connection is as good as it gets.

Think about that while you’re wandering the aisles!

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