Tag Archives: marketing

March 16, 2016 · 12:05 pm

How’s That Going?

Sometimes when I meet people and they describe their work lives to me, I’ll listen as they tell me what they’re doing and then follow up with a simple question: “how’s that going for you?” You’ve probably done something similar, and I bet that you rarely get “I don’t know” for an answer. I certainly don’t, and it concerns me when I do since how can you not have some feeling about so important a topic that occupies much of your waking day? 

What made me think of that was a report put out by the folks at Rundown. It took a look at how companies feel about their content creation process and the subsequent content marketing. It’s instructive to any business regardless if you’re doing content marketing or not. You can look at a summary of the report here.

Almost 80% of the surveyed content marketers agree or strongly agree that their team “makes awesome content that our audience loves.” That’s great, except for that pesky follow-up question – “how is it going?” You see, 52% of these same people disagreed that ” My team has a clear understanding of what works and why.” 55% disagreed that they knew how much each type of content costs to produce, and an astonishing 82% disagreed that they have a good understanding of the ROI on the content creation and marketing investment.

I’m not going to pontificate about in which activities a business should or should not engage.  I will say, however, that no matter which ones they are, it’s imperative that there is a handle on costs as well as some measure of ROI.  I am cringing as I think about answering any of the people for whom I worked with “I don’t know” when asked about what something cost or how it was impacting our goals (revenue, engagement, whatever).  Resources are precious.  So are measurable, actionable data about the results of activities we undertake using those resources.  Saying you make “awesome content” (or anything else) doesn’t resonate with me unless part of “awesome” is moving the business forward.  You?

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March 4, 2016 · 10:06 am

Getting Real

This Foodie Friday, I’d ask for an extra minute of your time so you can watch the commercial below.  It encapsulates our business thought perfectly:

I’d say that the spot is less about “big” food than it is about authentic food.  Real food, made with the same ingredients you’d find at home or in a farmer’s market.  It is yet another manifestation of consumers being sick and tired of lies and their desire for authenticity.  In case you hadn’t noticed, consumers are buying a set of values over a simple brand logo or image these days.   I found this quote from a marketing blog which I think states it well:

The demand for authentic marketing is a reaction from consumers based on decades of deception and deceit from organizations with slick marketing campaigns and smooth interactions with the media. From cigarette manufacturers, food producers, banking and more recently, automotive, the public has become less trusting of the messages shared by corporations. What the public really craves is this: honesty.

You might think that you don’t have this issue, but it goes beyond your products themselves.  For example, how authentic is your social media?  Are you letting the consumers do the talking in their very real voices or are you heavily editing comments?  Have you ever bought followers or likes to make your content appear popular rather than allowing your content to draw consumers to your brand?

Consumers are sick of photoshopped images, “editorial” that’s nothing more than an ad, and “astroturfed” virality.  The age of making products less expensive to produce while making consumers less safe or healthy is gone.  Maybe we ought to factor in the customer’s long-term viability as we think about “cost effectiveness” since their lifetime values certainly will decline if we shorten their lifetimes.  Do you like that notion?

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February 18, 2016 · 10:53 am

Engaged With Engagement

Many of us who hang around in marketing circles often mention the word “engagement.”  It’s a term that expresses a connection between a consumer and a brand and is a highly sought after end result of our marketing activities.  There isn’t any question that we need it to happen but there does seem to be some question with respect to how it should be measured.  That was the topic covered but a survey from the CMO Council and reported by eMarketer. 

The survey asked marketers about the primary metric they used to measure engagement.  As you might expect, many of the marketers (more than a third) focused on revenue metrics.  That’s not a bad idea since there is not a heck of a lot of interpretation needed.  Either someone bought, and revenue went up, or they didn’t. Customer lifetime value, revenues per customer and overall revenue increases were the primary type of metric they used.  Then there were those who focused on things such as clicks, conversions, shares, traffic and web analytics.  These are campaign metrics, and another  30% of respondents said that these were the primary type of metrics they used.  Lead generation metrics, finance metrics, and service metrics had far fewer choices as a primary metric for measuring engagement.

Here is the thing.  As the eMarketer piece said:

Though not the most popular way to gauge successful engagement, customer service is important—and many consumers feel that good service makes them feel more positive about brands. In fact, nine in 10 internet users worldwide said so.

That gets me asking if we are trying to grow our businesses by aligning ourselves with our customers’ concerns and needs, should we not be measuring success using metrics that reflect those concerns and needs?  The above data suggests that many of us aren’t.  Sure, I get that if revenues are growing we’re probably doing something right, but maybe that’s a short-term gain based on a promotional offer or a single new product.  Have revenues grown because you’re keeping customers happy or despite the fact that they’re unhappy?  Today’s food for thought!

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