Tag Archives: business thinking

July 7, 2015 · 9:18 am

Not Actionable Or Not Able?

Marketing Executives Network Group

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We discuss the need to measure the results of what you’re doing here on the screed fairly often.  As you’ve probably figured out by now, I’m a big believer in applying data to decision-making, especially after decisions are taken and tactics are deployed.  As it turns out, my views about that part are fairly typical within the marketing community.

In a survey of marketing executives, The Conference Board and the Marketing Executives Networking Group found 75% of the respondents in agreement with the statement that “A primary responsibility of marketing professionals is to generate data-driven insights about prospects and customers, and then create a brand or sales story based on those insights.”   I especially like that language because it is inherently customer focused.

Two other findings, however, disturbed me quite a bit.  Only 39% agreed with the statement that “Most information available from monitoring social media is not actionable” 56% agreed that “Most of the members of my marketing team are not as skilled in the use of digital marketing as they need to be.”   Those two statements are probably related and let’s think about why.

First, if you’re having trouble taking action on your social analytics, maybe you’re measuring the wrong thing.  I totally agree that “likes” is a useless number, but using conversion pixels to measure assisted conversions from social media can provide a wealth of information about how your customers come to buy.  Maybe you’re not doing sentiment analysis (that’s not baked into the standard analytics packages but readily available). You should be. Putting aside sentiment, we can focus on trending topics among your user base as well as feedback on your brands and those of your competitor.  Those are all highly actionable data points.

With respect to the second point.  If your team is lacking in some critical skill, whether it’s digital marketing, writing, or sandbox, your job as a leader is to help them improve that skill until it meets the organization’s needs.  If not getting them training is a “resource issue”, think about what it’s costing you in missed opportunities.  Flip that to the positive:  if you’re getting good results now, how much better would they be if you could agree with the statement on your team’s abilities?  Maybe that’s why the data doesn’t seem to be actionable.  Is it “not actionable” or are you just not able?

If the results of the survey resonate with you, get some help to improve your results.  I’d love to be that help but there are lots of qualified people who understand how to help your company live up to the promise that digital holds. I don’t think that dismissing it as “not actionable” is the answer.  Do you?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, digital media

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

July 3, 2015 · 9:09 am

Fake

Small tomatoes in Korea

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This Foodie Friday Fourth of July, let’s get real about fakes.  I was shopping for tomatoes the other day.  They had some beautiful looking specimens at the market and I knew from a lot of sad experience that they would be tasteless.  They probably came out of a hothouse hundreds of miles from where they were being sold. Unfortunately, they were typical of a lot of modern foods but they make a broader business point.

Our industrialized food production system has managed to remove a lot of the natural flavors of things.  Why?  Because we want things like tomatoes year-round, we have to transport them further, and in many cases, we have completely “fake” foods to which flavors n=must be added for them to taste like anything remotely worth eating.  This is from a talk by a UPenn doctoral candidate:

Berenstein began by narrating synthetic flavors’ earliest and biggest coup: turning vanilla from a coveted luxury good into a synonym for the bland and everyday. For two hundred years after its introduction to the West, vanilla was a precious commodity. Artificial pollination helped increase the global supply by allowing the plant to grow outside its native Mexico, but the real turning came in the 1870s, when scientists cracked the molecular structure of vanillin—and opened the floodgates for the manufacturing of synthetic vanilla flavor.

I think fake foods and flavors have peaked because consumers want the real thing and it’s not just in their food choices.  The desire for authenticity is now a constant in most businesses. Customers quickly recognize when we brands are faking it.  I like this explanation from someone writing in Ad Age:

Authenticity involves an emotional connection with an audience, and that connection is forged over years through consistency. Consistency builds trust and integrity. Ignoring the reality of your audience’s world, trying to be something you’re not, or telling customers what you think they want to hear quickly deteriorates trust and erodes integrity.

When we make our businesses more efficient for us, we might just be removing the flavor the customers crave.  It’s no longer real. Something that sort of tastes like what you took out what do.  Like that hothouse tomato, I’m not buying.  Would you?

Leave a comment

Filed under food

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 1, 2015 · 10:01 am

The Power Of No

Almost everyone I know complains that there never seems to be enough time in the day. Time really is a zero-sum game and even if you go without sleep (really a BAD idea) you eventually run up against that 24-hour limit. The answer, then, isn’t to find a way to make more time but to do fewer things. That’s the power of no.

It’s hard in business not to chase every opportunity, particularly when you’re a small company that’s just learning about in which of those opportunities lies the best chance for sustained profitability. As a marketer, there is a never-ending stream of media that provide the ability to interact with your audience. Social media grows daily and the support needed to maintain a steady stream of conversation in them grows with the number of channels.

As individuals, we take on tasks with impossible deadlines. We lose sight of the cost/value equation with respect to the time required for some pieces of work vs. the benefit gained to the enterprise or even just personally. We might even dig ourselves a hole by accepting responsibility for a task that we don’t have the skills to do. All of those things are self-defeating and could be stopped with just one word.

When I began consulting I was overwhelmed by the number of people who wanted my help.  The problem, I soon found, was that they had neither the ability nor the intention to pay me for my time (there is that word again).  As I’ve said to many people over the years, the Stop & Shop doesn’t take stock certificates at the checkout.  I’ve learned to say no.

Sometimes “no” isn’t about stopping something altogether.  You don’t really need to post on Facebook every hour nor does everything you run through Twitter have to be unique to that platform – cross posting is OK, honest.  Even so, being more efficient can help but ultimately “no” is  every once in a while.  Agreed?

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , ,