September 10, 2015 · 9:25 am

CPT

Making sense of data is really hard, and making sense of data from multiple sources which report in different ways is damn near impossible. Once again, we in the world of marketing are our own worst enemies, I guess. We could learn from our friends in finance.

Pick up any financial report and you’ll see the same statistics, generally reported in the same manner. That manner is GAAP – Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. While CFO’s and analysts have a little leeway within those principles, usually when you look at a piece of data for one company, something labeled the same way for another company means the same thing.

Not so in marketing. I mean, we do try. CPM has always been a measure of efficiency in media. The problem is that there are lots of ways to get to that number, especially in digital. Number of banners displayed? Number of viewable banners displayed? Should it just default to the impressions for which I’m being billed or do I want to factor in things such as actions taken (clicks, etc.)?

I think we need something like a Cost Per Touch metric. This would something standardized and would factor in the number of touch points across all media. An engagement on social media is counted just as is a video watched (you can decide the relative values of each). Actually, I don’t care what we call it but we need something akin to GAAP in the world of marketing data – something that can align web analytics, SEM numbers, social touch points, customer service, etc. Something that can help us to make sense of all of those disparate sources of big data.  Once we’ve standardized all of these things, all the other activities which depend on them become more efficient and productive.  Of course, it also means that there isn’t anyplace to hide since we can’t manipulate the numbers past a certain point.

Your thoughts?

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September 9, 2015 · 9:00 am

Hearing Aids

One thing that I find when speaking with clients and others on the topic of social media is there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what social is all about. Most of them seem to approach social as yet another megaphone. The reality is that social media is a hearing aid. Most of them want to be speaking when they really ought to be listening, and that fundamental difference has resulted in some pretty disturbing trends.  

First, data shows that companies are speaking a lot more in social than they are listening. Brands send four times as many posts as replies, according to data from the latest Sprout Social survey. My guess is that this has to do with a couple of factors. First, the management team is still fixed on the old way of thinking about marketing: we talk, you listen. Second, this results in a content strategy, not a service strategy. Third, it’s easy to hire a single social manager who can schedule your posts in advance and work across many social platforms. All of this is pretty wrong in my book.

I won’t spend any time on the changed (notice past tense) nature of marketing. The customer is in control of the brand to a large extent –  deal with it. If you’re listening to what those customers are saying you must, be nature, be servicing what you’re hearing unless you don’t mind missing golden opportunities. Sprout Social’s data says brands are, in fact, doing just that. Most brands ignore 88% of messages on social media. That’s 7 in 8 social messages to brands go unanswered within 72 hours. Sad…

Finally, brands are not set up to support constant service. I know resources are a challenge, but as I’ve said to clients, if you can’t support a platform properly you need to wait to deploy there. Social media is still in its infancy, and like any infant it requires constant monitoring and support. Ignoring customers almost 9 times out of 10 is insane.

We need to be responsive and engaged.  We need to use the hearing aids and drop the megaphones.  You agree?

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September 8, 2015 · 10:28 am

It’s Showtime!

Change is hard, and when it’s forced upon you by circumstances beyond your control, it’s even harder. That’s the ongoing situation in the television business, both on the distribution side and on the content provider side (read that as cable/satellite providers and programming services).

English: Logo for Showtime.

Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Showtime recently began offing a streaming-only subscriber service, and, as reported in the piece in Adweek, they’re learning a lot from the experience. More about that in a second, but the fact that the Showtime folks are even doing this at all gets a round of applause from me. Too many of my friends in broadcasting (cable-casting, whatever you might call it) are fixated with the traditional (dying) business model. They seem bound and determined to milk every last cent out of it before changing their ways (reality check = music business).  All this while the 13 largest pay-TV providers in the US, which account for approximately 95% of the market, saw a net loss of 470,855 subscribers in Q2 2015—the worst quarterly drop ever.  Now is the time to be trying new things and finding new ways of doing business, not when the drip of cord cutters becomes a flood.

Here is a quote from the article that got my attention:

Showtime Networks President David Nevins has been receiving detailed, data-fueled reports about its growth and usage each day. Having long been limited to getting monthly reports about subscriber trends for the premium cable network, he now browses detailed updates each morning, learning how many subscriptions were sold and what the service’s usage looks like.

While you might wonder why they weren’t looking at usage reports before, the reality is that there was little incentive to do so.  The network stuck their deals with service providers – the cable distributors were their customers, not “civilians.”  While they are no longer being separated from their users by a middleman, they’re also having to learn a lot about those users, which wasn’t an imperative before.  That transition, by the way, is probably one of the biggest impacts of digital – the disintermediation effect on many businesses.

“You can see on a nightly basis exactly what people are watching, and it’s fascinating.”  Anyone in business needs to know what our customers are consuming, as well as how and why they’re doing so.  Moreover, we need to be open to changing how we do business, better to serve both those customers and our bottom lines.  Showtime has been.  You?

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