tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6115484586097338032024-03-13T11:59:46.375-06:00Without a NetMusings of demand gen marketer turned data storyteller (with the occasional note on family thrown in)Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.comBlogger120125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-60841108249976970392024-01-18T11:32:00.001-07:002024-01-18T11:37:53.817-07:00Measuring MROI in a B2B World (4 of 4): A Framework<p>This is the final installment of a four-part post that explores the challenges of measuring marketing return on investment (MROI) in a high-ASP B2B business. <u>This is the money post</u>. I will describe a framework for evaluating MROI.</p><p>Part of why it took me a long time (a year!) to write this fourth and final installment of the series is that my thinking on this topic continues to evolve. Because of this, this post really represents my latest thinking which, with apologies to Regis Philbin, is definitely NOT my final answer. I wrote a draft of this post back then and I just threw out most of it. </p><p>There are many levels at which you could try to evaluate marketing ROI, each potentially providing an answer to a different question. The two most important are these:</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Campaign-level ROI: Did this campaign 'make money?' Was it worth the investment, especially as compared to other things we might have done with the money invested?</li><li>Top-level marketing ROI: Is our overall marketing program budget a good investment? Should we increase or decrease the investment level?</li></ul><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;">Campaign-Level ROI</h4>One of the better articles I have read on the challenges of measuring MROI is a few years old, but still valid: Amy Gallo's <a href="https://hbr.org/2017/07/a-refresher-on-marketing-roi">A Refresher on Marketing ROI</a>. It highlights some of same the challenges I have in this series. The article focuses on trying to measure <u>incremental</u> return delivered by an <u>incremental</u> marketing program, or what I'm calling campaign-level ROI. The article highlights the primary challenge with this analysis: How do you define incremental? How can you accurately estimate what the baseline revenue would have been if you didn't do the marketing program? And how much of the marketing is truly incremental, because it relies on all of the baseline marketing investments you're already making (what I referred to in my first post as 'the cost of doing business')?<div><br /></div><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGGrVqeEaAIT4rRBxtQ9eKwax7-Jiwnoc9n6U4i5cijrenNgy5UgMXpEjPYH0fe0woYV32f3Ct3PLs3hUNeV-sY2UwvF7VuCSlzh585YroP-ITyoSWT54TuSG61BXK_v67EZPxyv_xSaXgW3_cPwVogRGLqUsYSzp5blsIin5TfOpmC9H04FK1iVnJteg/s2500/jackson-simmer-Md73pphIB-U-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2500" data-original-width="2000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGGrVqeEaAIT4rRBxtQ9eKwax7-Jiwnoc9n6U4i5cijrenNgy5UgMXpEjPYH0fe0woYV32f3Ct3PLs3hUNeV-sY2UwvF7VuCSlzh585YroP-ITyoSWT54TuSG61BXK_v67EZPxyv_xSaXgW3_cPwVogRGLqUsYSzp5blsIin5TfOpmC9H04FK1iVnJteg/s320/jackson-simmer-Md73pphIB-U-unsplash.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: start; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@simmerdownjpg?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash" style="background-color: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out; white-space: nowrap;">Jackson Simmer</a><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: #f1f1f1; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: start; white-space: nowrap;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/woman-in-black-jacket-lying-on-white-snow-Md73pphIB-U?utm_content=creditCopyText&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=unsplash" style="background-color: initial; box-sizing: border-box; color: black; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: start; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table>You can't. Seriously. Give up. Stop trying.</div><div><br /><div>Then what you can do? Two things:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Don't try to measure <u>absolute</u> incremental ROI; focus instead on <u>relative</u> incremental ROI. Answer a different question. Instead of 'did this campaign make money,' answer 'did this campaign have a better return than that campaign?' Why is the latter question an easier one to answer? </li><li>Because you can make a large simplifying assumption: the foundational marketing investment, the 'cost of doing business,' is the same for both campaigns being evaluated. </li></ol></div><div>If the underlying foundational marketing investment is the same for multiple marketing programs, then just measuring the incremental program spend and program outcomes and comparing those across multiple programs allows you to pick program winners and losers, based on an ROI computation. </div><h4 style="text-align: left;">Top-Level Marketing Program ROI</h4><div>So how can you use marketing ROI analysis to evaluate the level of overall marketing investment? Measure marketing's impact on pipeline. (Note: In <a href="https://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2023/02/measuring-mroi-in-b2b-world-3-of-4.html">post 3 of this series</a>, I said I focus on pipeline instead of revenue because of the time gap from one to the other, enabling quicker decision-making. Another reason is that generating pipeline is marketing's job, closing those deals is sales' job. Evaluating marketing investment based on the latter does not make sense.) This is the highest reasonable level of MROI analysis. </div><div><br /></div><div>This analysis should not capture all of marketing investment, like brand programs and website investments -- again, the cost of doing business -- because those would be required if executive management decided to shift resources from marketing to engineering or sales or something else. It should only include demand gen oriented campaign activities.</div><div><br /></div><div>How can you measure marketing's total impact on pipeline, then? To say it differently, how much of company pipeline is <u>sourced</u> by marketing, and how much does that cost? I break it down to three components:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li><b>MQL-Sourced Pipeline</b>: marketing qualified leads that are handed to sales, who then uncovers an opportunity.</li><li><b>MQA-Sourced Pipeline</b>: marketing qualified accounts that are handed to sales, who then uncovers an opportunity.</li><li><b>MDF-Sourced Pipeline</b>: company-funded marketing activities by channel partners, who then uncover opportunities.</li></ol><div>In the past, I have argued against the very concept of marketing sourced pipeline, primarily because it is generally associated only with leads, and tends to ignore the multitouch engagement of buying teams and accounts. While the concept behind MQL-sourced pipeline should be familiar, the problem is that past analysis has shown me that leads are a limited and poor indicator of a customer buying team's activity in high-value B2B sales, so only associating leads to opportunities to define marketing's pipeline impact is a very limited view. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, with multitouch and attribution modeling, analysts are able to paint a much broader picture of marketing's account engagement and, more importantly, to monitor account-level or buying-team-level activity. This allows you to monitor engagement thresholds to identify marketing qualified accounts (MQAs) and notify sales when an account appears to be in an active buying motion. Any opportunity sales creates at that account within a finite timeframe following that notification is considered marketing sourced. That's the concept behind MQA-sourced pipeline.</div><div><br /></div><div>The final component of marketing sourced pipeline for B2B enterprise sales comes via MDF-funded channel partner marketing execution. Obviously, that's only relevant if your company funds marketing campaign execution by your reseller partners. </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Perfect MROI Analysis is Impossible, but Usable MROI is Achievable</b></div><div><br /></div><div><div>I recognize the framework described above, with relative ROI analysis for campaign evaluation and top-level marketing program ROI for overall marketing investment evaluation, is not perfect, nor is it complete. Marketing just doesn't exist in a silo, particularly as it relates to sales, so isolating either the investments or the outcomes is impossible. If that weren't the case, there are so many other questions that a more clean and complete MROI measurement capability might be able to answer. </div><div><br /></div><div>But it is adequate for answering some important and relevant questions. And if you have built the required underlying capabilities, like multitouch and attribution modeling, to evaluate MROI in this framework, then you also have given yourself access to so many more capabilities, like marketing mix optimization or even predictive modeling. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div><br /></div></div></div></div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-63170118897243795782023-02-15T13:59:00.002-07:002023-02-15T13:59:47.347-07:00Measuring MROI in a B2B World (3 of 4): Attribution is Required<p>This is part three of a four-part post that will explore the challenges of measuring marketing return on investment (MROI) in a high-ASP B2B business. </p><p>As I stated on the first post of this series, MROI is a straightforward concept: measuring what the return is on your marketing investment. I have also identified six problems that make that concept much less than straightforward in real-life implementation. "Devilishly complex" was the phrase I used. However, it is <u>not</u> impossible to get reasonable MROI measurement to guide decision-making, if you have certain baseline capabilities in place. </p><p>There are two key capabilities that enable MROI measurement: multitouch attribution (MTA) and pipeline attribution. Why? Because that attribution is the bridge that associates all of the touchpoints in a complex customer journey to resulting pipeline.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkisNwRk1ZriwwVIbrZiP6DjljeOCM20rcpX3D7AkZXRpw77EW9gRvzk0PgkFx2Z3l1IyckMWoxQfrCJbVpj7olKwHHDRYyxcK7gaAb9ws3tkO87cY53HrhY_w8Obtr789MAcbaNBHqs5xHhltKOlGO-rJ7k-cjDRG3k4ocTHX8KYOG4YzxOnxuwC/s6613/adrien-cesard-HfGEtmnRwuE-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4409" data-original-width="6613" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVkisNwRk1ZriwwVIbrZiP6DjljeOCM20rcpX3D7AkZXRpw77EW9gRvzk0PgkFx2Z3l1IyckMWoxQfrCJbVpj7olKwHHDRYyxcK7gaAb9ws3tkO87cY53HrhY_w8Obtr789MAcbaNBHqs5xHhltKOlGO-rJ7k-cjDRG3k4ocTHX8KYOG4YzxOnxuwC/s320/adrien-cesard-HfGEtmnRwuE-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@adriencesard?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Adrien CÉSARD</a><span style="text-align: start;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/bridge?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Unsplash</a><span style="text-align: start;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table></p><p>[To get one thing out of the way, I'm only going to talk about pipeline attribution, rather than revenue attribution, because of the Delayed Return Problem. Focusing on pipeline, which is the estimated value of the sale when the opportunity is created, reduces the time gap between investment and return by the length of the opportunity-to-close cycle, commonly a couple of months in this type of business. This makes the resulting learnings more actionable.]</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Multitouch Attribution</h3><p style="text-align: left;">MTA has been a well-known concept in marketing for many years. However, it's frequently associated with attribution marketing touchpoints to the generation of a marketing qualified lead. (For example, here's a <a href="https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/multi-touch-attribution">HubSpot article</a> talking about it.) While that may be adequate for some businesses with simple sales engagement models, in the case of high ASP B2B, it doesn't solve for the Buying Team and Lead Irrelevance problems. (I guess I called the latter a sub-problem, didn't I?) What this more complex sales engagement model requires is a way to associate multiple marketing touchpoints to <u>multiple</u> leads.</p><p style="text-align: left;">One way to do so is to associate all marketing touchpoints with an <u>opportunity</u>, rather than a lead. In doing so, you retain all of the benefits of traditional multitouch attribution, like being able to compare performance of very different marketing channels, like email and in-person events, but in a way that acknowledges that you're engaging multiple individuals at an account.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;">Pipeline Attribution</h3><p>Maybe this goes without saying, but if you have implemented the ability to associate touchpoints with opportunities, then you are now associating touchpoints with pipeline. It is then a straightforward exercise to attach costs to the marketing investments that generated those touchpoints. After that, you know what you have? MROI! </p><p>Well, sort of. In my next post, I'll break down different views of MROI into a framework that can be applied for various forms of marketing decision-making.</p><p>Also, I don't want to gloss over the complexity and hard work that I just described in a few short paragraphs. At our company, it took us two years to build out this capability completely, and we're still fine-tuning it. The point is, if you do that hard work and solve the hundreds of small problems you'll encounter, you'll have an analytics foundation that can serve many purposes, not just MROI evaluation. Our attribution model is at the center of almost all marketing performance analysis that we do.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-32571405355578427252023-01-23T20:36:00.001-07:002023-01-23T20:36:58.150-07:00Measuring Marketing ROI in a B2B World (2 of 4): More Challenges<p>This is part two of a four-part post that will explore the challenges of measuring marketing return on investment (MROI) in a high-ASP B2B business. </p><h1 style="text-align: left;">Why is Measuring MROI Difficult?</h1><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy0VArqMJmZ_5jG8OoplDEHc0xC74S_cx-K2AsuOXG_8af9KLEH8l60mCbvgwvCA7nZPVJu3ljHHTe0n0f8ixFVXzan2vJCgz_pNrmL33uCqlCi5rW9dWbAO5ZyrBYxcPoGtbQ2mQQ_B12n_3Cxn4YM_CWf_EaMm2hJDipD4VZETA-lujqHonKkyWV/s8256/annie-spratt-Jr8byYZmTTU-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6192" data-original-width="8256" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy0VArqMJmZ_5jG8OoplDEHc0xC74S_cx-K2AsuOXG_8af9KLEH8l60mCbvgwvCA7nZPVJu3ljHHTe0n0f8ixFVXzan2vJCgz_pNrmL33uCqlCi5rW9dWbAO5ZyrBYxcPoGtbQ2mQQ_B12n_3Cxn4YM_CWf_EaMm2hJDipD4VZETA-lujqHonKkyWV/w200-h150/annie-spratt-Jr8byYZmTTU-unsplash.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@anniespratt?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Annie Spratt</a><span style="text-align: start;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/return-on-investment?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Unsplash</a><span style="text-align: start;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table>The first post in this series identified several challenges facing the marketing analyst when trying to evaluate marketing ROI. This post will discuss the following additional challenges:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>The Delayed Return Problem</b>: purchase cycles can easily exceed six months after initial marketing engagement</li><li><b>The Relevant Investment Problem</b>: some marketing is 'the cost of doing business' and other marketing is incremental, optional investment</li><li><b>The Campaign Definition Problem</b>: campaign definition is inconsistent, making it difficult to evaluate campaign MROI</li></ul></div><div><div><br /></div></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Delayed Return Problem</h2><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xgW_idH4ynhxsA7zEPceqmG1xYQ7hQ8zQVve85Dq3npgm18u5GCLuA0bjIrQIIbyf-Vm96nUtQTj5yBkLViqDpEW8pj8J1Eep0ItwfyWyRdLhy6-cnNBFl_39qBhC6oDv60CWSNGF4EPXNHLijHArnESINIpKzv5y5VVJv-8ntcZ7eAY3W7HXTjL/s4608/jess-bailey-mexeVPlTB6k-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9xgW_idH4ynhxsA7zEPceqmG1xYQ7hQ8zQVve85Dq3npgm18u5GCLuA0bjIrQIIbyf-Vm96nUtQTj5yBkLViqDpEW8pj8J1Eep0ItwfyWyRdLhy6-cnNBFl_39qBhC6oDv60CWSNGF4EPXNHLijHArnESINIpKzv5y5VVJv-8ntcZ7eAY3W7HXTjL/s320/jess-bailey-mexeVPlTB6k-unsplash.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@jessbaileydesigns?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Jess Bailey</a><span style="text-align: start;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/calendar-november?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Unsplash</a><span style="text-align: start;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table><br />The buying process for a $1M piece of technology is typically months long, frequently well over a year. Let's say you want to base the return of your MROI calculation on sales revenue. That sale likely takes place two to four months after the opportunity was identified. That opportunity is identified months after the prospect account interacted with your marketing campaign. And that campaign interaction took place months after your campaign was planned.</div><div><br /></div><div>This long delay between campaign planning (i.e. investment) and campaign return (pipeline or revenue) severely limits how MROI calculations can be used to guide marketing decision making. For instance, it makes no sense to use MROI to optimize an existing campaign to maximize ROI because of the delay between optimization changes and subsequent effects.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Relevant Investment Problem</h2><div><br /></div><div>Frequently in marketing performance measurement, the focus of the computation is just the incremental program spend, like the cost of a media buy. Or maybe you include the costs of an external agency to develop creative for that ad run. But you typically don't include the cost of your internal staff that manages paid media.</div><div><br /></div><div>But in the high-ASP B2B multitouch world, which investments are considered part of the 'campaign' under evaluation, and which touches are baseline execution to even be in a market? For instance, you're not really a business if you don't have a website, and websites aren't free. But some components of your website are specific to a campaign, not just the baseline web presence to show you're in business, and the cost of those components are an incremental cost associated with the campaign.</div><div><br /></div><div>Deciding which costs to include and exclude from a given MROI calculation, and uniquely identifying those costs, are some of the most difficult steps in MROI measurement.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Campaign Definition Problem</h2><div>What is a marketing campaign? To many folks not involved in marketing, they probably think they have a good idea of what one is because they have been subjected to <u>advertising</u> campaigns their entire lives. Why does the definition of a campaign matter? It matters if you intend to use MROI to evaluate campaigns as compared to each other. You need a consistent basis for campaign definition to ensure you're fairly evaluating campaigns by this metric.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg--b9vjWDGvTTLJB5jnaM9l66X9cpeHJ4YKAMFfOs3cudPnXqK18H19JkDVHXbzSs1M9CyjurifYrcPNKsdRtz8prHWqIvwjPcrjzDRTE7r4Y4BA8--9HzPMC7_wB6sgVQqZG0QFGdMicQh1h6V-VAPhTdCsm9uc-gLL-GARiGYtZ20KMXS4dpEUta/s2279/isabella-and-zsa-fischer-uSPjZzYwXO4-unsplash.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1525" data-original-width="2279" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg--b9vjWDGvTTLJB5jnaM9l66X9cpeHJ4YKAMFfOs3cudPnXqK18H19JkDVHXbzSs1M9CyjurifYrcPNKsdRtz8prHWqIvwjPcrjzDRTE7r4Y4BA8--9HzPMC7_wB6sgVQqZG0QFGdMicQh1h6V-VAPhTdCsm9uc-gLL-GARiGYtZ20KMXS4dpEUta/s320/isabella-and-zsa-fischer-uSPjZzYwXO4-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@twinsfisch?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Isabella and Zsa Fischer</a><span style="text-align: start;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/photos/uSPjZzYwXO4?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Unsplash</a><span style="text-align: start;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>Mateusz Makosiewicz' <a href="https://ahrefs.com/blog/marketing-campaign/">recent blog post</a> gives an excellent list of many different types of marketing campaigns. A former CMO of mine asserted that a marketing campaign is a large-scale, multiyear program. Her definition didn't match any of the eight examples in the article, although it comes closest to the eighth, the 360° campaign. </div><div><br /></div><div>Two of Mateusz' examples are an SEO and an email campaign. Those typically don't have incremental associated costs because your SEO and email infrastructures (staff, agencies, martech) are part of your baseline marketing function. Contrast that to the brand campaign he also mentions. Brand campaigns are typically executed with large media buys, and frequently leverage creative developed by marketing agencies that specialize in brand programs. </div><div><br /></div><div>Applying MROI to 'free' campaigns, like SEO and email, would yield infinite ROI, as compared to the finite returns of the brand campaign (ignoring, for the moment, how you would even measure the return of a brand campaign). This extreme example highlights the need to have a consistent definition of 'campaign' if you want to apply MROI to the evaluation of those activities.</div><div><br /></div><h2 style="text-align: left;">Lots of Challenges; Where to From Here?</h2><div>I have identified many challenges associated with measuring and using MROI in your marketing performance evaluation. But they are just challenges, not complete roadblocks. In the next post, I'll discuss the importance of multitouch and pipeline attribution in this effort, and the final post will provide a framework for evaluating MROI in high-ASP B2B businesses.</div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-6910685805295795152023-01-13T07:26:00.000-07:002023-01-13T07:26:39.669-07:00Measuring Marketing ROI in a B2B World (1 of 4): Challenges<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><div>This is a four-part post that will explore the challenges of measuring marketing return on investment (MROI) in a high-ASP B2B business. The posts will break down this subject into three topic areas:</div><div><ol style="text-align: left;"><li>Why is it difficult to measure? (2 posts)</li><li>Multitouch and pipeline attribution are both required</li><li>An MROI measurement framework</li></ol><div>(Make sure you subscribe to the blog to be notified when subsequent posts are published!)</div></div><h1 style="text-align: left;">Why is Measuring MROI Difficult?</h1><div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy0VArqMJmZ_5jG8OoplDEHc0xC74S_cx-K2AsuOXG_8af9KLEH8l60mCbvgwvCA7nZPVJu3ljHHTe0n0f8ixFVXzan2vJCgz_pNrmL33uCqlCi5rW9dWbAO5ZyrBYxcPoGtbQ2mQQ_B12n_3Cxn4YM_CWf_EaMm2hJDipD4VZETA-lujqHonKkyWV/s8256/annie-spratt-Jr8byYZmTTU-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6192" data-original-width="8256" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy0VArqMJmZ_5jG8OoplDEHc0xC74S_cx-K2AsuOXG_8af9KLEH8l60mCbvgwvCA7nZPVJu3ljHHTe0n0f8ixFVXzan2vJCgz_pNrmL33uCqlCi5rW9dWbAO5ZyrBYxcPoGtbQ2mQQ_B12n_3Cxn4YM_CWf_EaMm2hJDipD4VZETA-lujqHonKkyWV/w200-h150/annie-spratt-Jr8byYZmTTU-unsplash.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: start;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@anniespratt?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Annie Spratt</a><span style="text-align: start;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/return-on-investment?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="text-align: start;">Unsplash</a><span style="text-align: start;"></span></td></tr></tbody></table>Marketing return on investment (MROI) is a straightforward concept: how much return is the company receiving on its marketing investment? Company leadership simply wants to evaluate their marketing investment just like they would investment in other functions, like product development and sales. MROI is typically thought of as comparing the incremental sales generated by marketing campaigns with the cost of those campaigns. If marketing campaigns achieve less ROI compared to other investment types, like developing another new product, then leadership can shift those investment budgets accordingly.</div><div><br /></div><div>While the concept of MROI is straightforward, the actual measurement of it is devilishly complex, particularly in business-to-business (B2B) markets with high average selling price (ASP). There are several reasons for this complexity, and this post will describe each.</div><div><br /></div><div>Fundamentally, the high-ASP B2B sale is different from a low-priced, transactional consumer sale: there are long customer research cycles prior to sales engagement; selling cycles are many months, or even years long; and the 'buyer' is not an individual but a team that involves multiple customer departments. There are also some factors shared with consumer sales, such as the impact of online research on purchasing decisions.</div><div><br /></div><div>If you examine the problem more deeply, you'll find seven overlapping and interrelated factors that make measuring MROI particularly challenging. In no particular order, they are: </div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><b>The Multitouch Problem</b>: contacts engage with multiple marketing channels</li><li><b>The Cookie Problem</b>: contacts engage on multiple platforms, privately</li><ul><li><b>The Work From Home Sub-Problem</b>: contacts are no longer working from their office</li></ul><li><b>The Buying Team Problem</b>: prospective accounts have a buying team, rather than a buying individual</li><ul><li><b>The Lead Irrelevance Sub-Problem</b>: those that control budget actively avoid becoming a lead</li></ul><li><b>The Delayed Return Problem</b>: purchase cycles can exceed six months or more after initial marketing engagement</li><li><b>The Relevant Investment Problem</b>: some marketing is 'the cost of doing business' and other marketing is incremental, optional investment</li><li><b>The Campaign Definition Problem</b>: campaign definition is inconsistent, making it difficult to evaluate campaign MROI</li></ul><h2 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Multitouch Problem</h2></div><div>This may be the most well-documented challenge in evaluating marketing execution performance, but it presents a new level of complexity for MROI measurement, especially in B2B.</div><div><br /></div><div>The multitouch problem arises because in any long marketing and sales prospect engagement timeframe, the prospect engages with many different marketing activities. The common solution to this problem is a technique called multitouch attribution (MTA). Rather than describe MTA here, you can find a couple of excellent tutorials <a href="https://segment.com/academy/advanced-analytics/an-introduction-to-multi-touch-attribution/">here</a> and <a href="https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2021/11/15/multi-touch-attribution">here</a>. (Interestingly, the second article quotes market data indicating that only about ⅓ of companies have even implemented MTA. Wow.)</div><div><br /></div><div>One thing to consider when learning about multitouch MTA is that the majority of the relevant literature, including the two linked articles above, is from the perspective of an all-digital customer engagement. In high-ASP B2B markets, marketing also invests in important offline engagements, like trade shows, in-person lunch-and-learns, sports hospitality, and similar. These investments are frequently a large part of the marketing budgets at these companies, so a proper MTA solution must also account for these interactions.</div><div><br /></div><div><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; white-space: nowrap;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgacytMAT_cOsvTXJXLMIaosfAmYCl4MfUOMfhwzI2iaBmuAd6GJtWpoxQ4vo8WQmA6EC9M0MMj1oaJSkKtNqSqqrkdLSbQCgPtEAGw000o-wTpyXbUm_OCXAZA9YfcOh6SlxYdj4bnJK3uiKBzaWcu9WfZULvk4O2POEfSNwzCGDM0KcBGtOlPbtWT/s6000/david-nicolai-VEsDauTEAkw-unsplash.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="6000" data-original-width="3376" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgacytMAT_cOsvTXJXLMIaosfAmYCl4MfUOMfhwzI2iaBmuAd6GJtWpoxQ4vo8WQmA6EC9M0MMj1oaJSkKtNqSqqrkdLSbQCgPtEAGw000o-wTpyXbUm_OCXAZA9YfcOh6SlxYdj4bnJK3uiKBzaWcu9WfZULvk4O2POEfSNwzCGDM0KcBGtOlPbtWT/w181-h320/david-nicolai-VEsDauTEAkw-unsplash.jpg" width="181" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@davidnicolai?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">David Nicolai</a><span style="color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/trade-show?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a><br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table></span></div><div>Using MTA, you can now assign 'value' to each marketing execution. In other words, each marketing execution now has a measurable contribution to the desired outcome, like leads or pipeline. To then use MTA as a foundation to compute MROI, another layer of complexity is introduced: the need to assign investment costs to the marketing execution. This is where it gets really tricky, because the costs need to be tracked at the same granularity, and using the same hierarchy, as the performance measurement. </div><div><br /></div><div>For example, participation in a large third-party trade show may have a single budget number, but that budget number is likely broken down into component pieces, like hospitality events during the show, or paid media buys for pre-show promotion. Engagement touchpoints may be captured in multiple ways, like clicks on paid media, in-booth badge scans, hospitality attendees, VIP meetings in a suite, or post-show email responses. There may be several questions about this trade show, or trade shows in general, that you want to answer with MROI, like 'are hospitality events worthwhile?' or 'is paid media an efficient channel to promote trade shows?' or just the more global 'was Trade Show X a good investment?' To answer each of these questions, you need to ensure that you're including only the correct marketing touchpoint contributions to the multitouch model AND isolating the correct associated investments. For even medium-sized marketing organizations, this quickly becomes big challenge.</div><h2 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Cookie Problem</h2><div>Most of the technical problems marketers face when trying to measure performance tend to get easier over time as more advanced technologies are made available. The opposite seems to be happening with what I call the cookie problem; it's getting worse. We do see technological advancement, but any improvement is facing increasing headwinds from increased privacy protections, both legal (e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation">GDPR</a>) and commercial (e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuckDuckGo">DuckDuckGo</a>), in addition to evolving user behaviors, like an individual prospect using multiple platforms to access company digital assets.</div><div><br /></div><div>Simply put, the cookie problem is this: whereas we used to be able to track a prospect's interactions with our digital marketing via a simple cookie on their machine, and use that cookie to associate and aggregate lots of that individual's interactions, we can no longer do so. </div><div><br /></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMkAaCOpwdK2-NpQgpXoGBDVH8yzt2T7eVbV9lJ6lRAWWCfCGwDjMBQ2wGWFlTxFGtsXSZXQDifrmq8V8vEgoQGXjztCoowFvAkAOkEt89-WvN8IUY8_wmTJcPKENGKEsz1TWUt_c9nwHX4AoIWuOfqqXfLbz1vG_Hr3firrOgvIOfwr4xjac5Xv7M/s6282/austin-distel-VvAcrVa56fc-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4188" data-original-width="6282" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMkAaCOpwdK2-NpQgpXoGBDVH8yzt2T7eVbV9lJ6lRAWWCfCGwDjMBQ2wGWFlTxFGtsXSZXQDifrmq8V8vEgoQGXjztCoowFvAkAOkEt89-WvN8IUY8_wmTJcPKENGKEsz1TWUt_c9nwHX4AoIWuOfqqXfLbz1vG_Hr3firrOgvIOfwr4xjac5Xv7M/s320/austin-distel-VvAcrVa56fc-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@austindistel?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Austin Distel</a><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/web-lead?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table><u>The WFH Sub-Problem</u>. Adding an additional later of complexity to the cookie problem is what I'll call a sub-problem: the work from home sub-problem. One standard method of associating an anonymous visit with at least an account, if not an individual, was by using a reverse IP address lookup tool. This worked because prospect companies have a limited set of IP addresses that became known over time. Now, with so many prospects working from home, if they're not on their company's VPN, then their IP address just looks like their local broadband provider. This presents a significant new challenge for the IP lookup tools to identify accounts.</div><br /><h2 style="text-align: left;"><br /></h2><h2 style="text-align: left;">The Buying Team Problem</h2><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TVW6kZfp0r-htpGA2sDZgcTLZCOkRB3SYWzK_lxMrVP28cewB1R_78C8FNwMlZ3x2wHYjV5CvuWGIg1JuZratCkRHQzaR05ZgqFlVn6eY1iCywlaHFszLtV84L1FdOIUn6rgg__ZLXhbyam9_Ckm6tDardBp4cm4oAWLVH3qXdSwiJTiKTgofs9F/s3600/jason-goodman-Oalh2MojUuk-unsplash.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2400" data-original-width="3600" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6TVW6kZfp0r-htpGA2sDZgcTLZCOkRB3SYWzK_lxMrVP28cewB1R_78C8FNwMlZ3x2wHYjV5CvuWGIg1JuZratCkRHQzaR05ZgqFlVn6eY1iCywlaHFszLtV84L1FdOIUn6rgg__ZLXhbyam9_Ckm6tDardBp4cm4oAWLVH3qXdSwiJTiKTgofs9F/s320/jason-goodman-Oalh2MojUuk-unsplash.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;">Photo by </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/@jasongoodman_youxventures?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Jason Goodman</a><span style="color: #111111; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; white-space: nowrap;"> on </span><a href="https://unsplash.com/s/photos/web-lead?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #767676; font-size: 13px; text-align: left; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out 0s, opacity 0.1s ease-in-out 0s; white-space: nowrap;">Unsplash</a></td></tr></tbody></table>Purchases of high-ASP B2B technology are rarely performed by an individual in a simple transaction like consumer purchases are. Rather, they are executed by a multi-departmental buying team, potentially including people from operations, finance, purchasing, and IT. The serve in a range of purchase roles, like technical approver, budget owner, product evaluator, supplier evaluator, and so on, and all of those roles will interact with marketing campaign activity at some point. </div><div><br /></div><div><span face="-apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "San Francisco", "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Ubuntu, Roboto, Noto, "Segoe UI", Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: whitesmoke; caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17); color: #111111; font-size: 13px; white-space: nowrap;"></span></div><div>ALL of those touchpoints, across ALL of those roles and team members, are relevant to the evaluation of marketing return. In other words, marketing return must be evaluated on an account basis, not a contact basis. That means that your martech stack must have the capability of associating contacts into accounts, at scale.</div><div><br /></div><div><u>The Lead Irrelevance Sub-Problem</u>. I only call this a sub-problem to the buying team problem because the individual lead is a subset of the buying team. However, it may be the more impactful problem. Simply put, the contact that typically becomes your first lead at an account is likely NOT a particularly important contact in the account's purchasing process. </div><div><br /></div><div>Why is this? Modern B2B marketing techniques have been deployed and refined for about 20 years, and the targets of those techniques have come to recognize and assertively avoid them. The 'big fish' is not going to fill out your lead form. She's not going to be scanned in your trade show booth. He's not going to answer his phone when your SDR calls. Anyone sufficiently advanced in their career to have a meaningful influence on a high-ASP purchase has seen all these techniques and is immune to them. The ones filling out your lead form and being scanned at your booth are low-level players at the account. <u>The lead is dead</u>.</div><div><br /></div><div>That doesn't mean that you don't want to capture leads or stop executing at least some of these techniques. (I might argue that your lead forms are doing more harm than good, but that's a topic for another post.) But leads should be treated as what they are: a simple indicator of possible account-level interest that should be targeted with a broader account engagement strategy.</div><div><br /></div><div>(Please see the next post for the remainder of the problem statements. Reminder ... subscribe if you want to be notified when subsequent posts are published.)</div><div><br /></div>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-72317387744235120212017-06-30T14:40:00.000-06:002017-06-30T14:40:03.049-06:00Who’s Your Customer?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Anyone that has worked with me for any length of time or
whom I have managed knows that, at some point, I will ask them, “Who’s your
customer?” Anybody that does work has a customer, but few people really think
about who their customer really is, or even think in terms of having customers.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y1kt9XPsEMU/WVa2E8d7K2I/AAAAAAAAAWU/V3MlwEYweuUCfn301EGh8O7R88tzm3gWACLcBGAs/s1600/pexels-photo-401684.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="213" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-y1kt9XPsEMU/WVa2E8d7K2I/AAAAAAAAAWU/V3MlwEYweuUCfn301EGh8O7R88tzm3gWACLcBGAs/s320/pexels-photo-401684.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Let me be clear: I’m not talking about your company’s
customer, the business or individual to whom your company sells goods or
services. I’m talking about <u>your</u> customer, as an individual employee, as
a team member, or as a manager.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ll use myself as an example. At SolidFire, I ran the
demand generation function. The role of demand gen is to develop leads for
sales to pursue. As such, we had two primary customers: inside sales, who would
receive and pursue our leads; and the campaigns team, for whom we managed several
(mostly) digital channels through which to execute their campaigns. We had
secondary customers, like field marketing, who would generate leads through
field events that we would upload, process, and deliver to sales. As a manager,
the members of my team were also my customers, and there are also other
customer relationships that I maintained in that role.<o:p></o:p></div>
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What’s the value of considering those teams, campaigns and
inside sales, as customers, rather than simple collaborative teams or
stakeholders in our activities? Because the concept of a customer carries with
it a set of expectations that are richer, deeper, and more meaningful than a
mere collaborative relationship, and those expectations lead to better outcomes
for everyone involved.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Here’s an example. At one point, we started hearing rumors that
sales was dissatisfied with some types of leads we were providing, even though
we believed these were quality leads. The tension between marketing and sales is
a common situation, so it wasn’t surprising to hear this. But if we could break
down this barrier, both teams could be much more successful in their efforts. <o:p></o:p></div>
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There are a lot of ways I could have handled this problem,
but I decided to view the problem through the lens of a customer-supplier
relationship. If we were a supplier to sales as a customer, a common role in
that relationship is the customer success manager (CSM), whose job is to ensure
that the customer is successful in using the supplier’s product or services. The
CSM role is bilateral: she represents the supplier’s product to the customer,
helping them use it properly and fully; and she is the voice of the customer to
the supplier, helping guide product development to better serve the needs of
the customer.<o:p></o:p></div>
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We needed the equivalent function between demand gen and
inside sales, so we created a CSM type of role and, in fact, we hired an inside
salesperson to staff it. In this role, our CSM (I think we called him a
marketing sales coordinator) had a bilateral role: he represented marketing to
the inside sales team, explaining different types of leads, why they received
them, and how they should pursue them; and represented the sales environment to
marketing, describing which types of leads were working best or worst, and why,
enabling marketing to optimize their campaign efforts.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sUju2JJwoUQ/WVa2fcFXYmI/AAAAAAAAAWY/jJigui0Zg4s6uYokPPuF1f0qXXxFkT6YQCLcBGAs/s1600/business-163461_640.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="424" data-original-width="640" height="212" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sUju2JJwoUQ/WVa2fcFXYmI/AAAAAAAAAWY/jJigui0Zg4s6uYokPPuF1f0qXXxFkT6YQCLcBGAs/s320/business-163461_640.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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The result of this change was dramatic. Inside sales came to
view demand gen, and the broader marketing team, as partners in their success.
Sales acceptance rates of marketing leads increased, and sales qualification
rates of accepted leads improved. Would we have achieved the same result by
having a more traditional approach of trying to collaborate between these two
teams? Maybe, but I doubt it. In the same way that customers and suppliers generally
don’t achieve a truly collaborative relationship, marketing and sales
frequently struggle to truly collaborate. By establishing a role whose entire
job is to ensure sales’ success, that changes the relationship measurably.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, have you started to ask yourself who your customers are
in your job? Does it change how you think about your interworking
relationships? Try it. It can be powerful.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-34227169302407922292013-11-05T21:25:00.000-07:002017-02-20T07:50:58.464-07:00The Challenges Facing Today's CMO<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YI3Gt_KvGRs/Unm0lA4iFtI/AAAAAAAAAUw/yvCGMluZfhY/s1600/ID-10073067.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YI3Gt_KvGRs/Unm0lA4iFtI/AAAAAAAAAUw/yvCGMluZfhY/s200/ID-10073067.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
As was widely reported last year, Gartner's Laura McLellan <a href="http://my.gartner.com/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=202&mode=2&PageID=5553&resId=1871515&ref=Webinar-Calendar" target="_blank">predicted</a> that by 2017, the CMO would spend more on IT than the CIO.<br />
<br />
This has come up again in my thinking as a I have been doing some work recently for a client. I was struck by the complexity of the set of software tools available to the CMO. If we just look at content marketing, Curata recently <a href="http://www.curata.com/blog/content-marketing-tools-ultimate-list/" target="_blank">published an interesting map of the associated tools</a> available for that discipline:<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VpTrP8uhrbM/UmlCOrHIDBI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/rXfpLFeo8ek/s1600/Curata_contentmarketingtools_list+(1).png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" height="198" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VpTrP8uhrbM/UmlCOrHIDBI/AAAAAAAAAUQ/rXfpLFeo8ek/s400/Curata_contentmarketingtools_list+(1).png" title="Content marketing market" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Curata's Content Marketing Map (click <a href="http://www.curata.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Curata_contentmarketingtools_list.png" target="_blank">here</a> for a full size version)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Consider this complexity shown in the diagram for a moment. Granted, content marketing forms the foundation of most modern marketing campaigns, so this is a large part of the tool universe that the CMO has to worry about. However, this doesn't even address digital advertising, another major area of concern for the CMO. The map for the digital advertising toolset it equally as complex, including media firms, ad networks, targeting technologies, paid search and paid social management, etc.<br />
<br />
Because of the movement toward everything being digital, the CMO is asked to manage incredible technical complexity. Even a smaller firm's chief marketer probably deals with at least a dozen different tools. At a larger firm, it can be far more.<br />
<br />
So how is a CMO supposed to manage this technology complexity? The Gartner statement implies a comparison, or even a competition for resources, between a CIO and a CMO. But there is one major difference between the two: the CIO is a technologist, but that frequently is not true of the CMO. Although it is changing, the CMO's experience is built on branding, positioning, strategy, advertising, and many other tools, not necessarily on technology.<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Purchase Risk</h3>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CysmJ1A3AXE/UnnEUc7h8dI/AAAAAAAAAU8/M_ZK5IOtHXg/s1600/ID-10083358.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CysmJ1A3AXE/UnnEUc7h8dI/AAAAAAAAAU8/M_ZK5IOtHXg/s200/ID-10083358.jpg" width="200" /></a>One of most challenging aspects of managing these large technology bases is reducing the risk associated with purchasing and integrating new technologies. The CIO and CMO both control very large technology budgets, and hence face significant risk when making the decision to purchase a new tool that may cost millions of dollars. How do they ensure that this new tool will work as advertised with the other tools they already own? How do they limit purchase risk?<br />
<br />
The CIO has a couple of means to minimize risk:<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Large tool providers with complete offerings, like IBM or Microsoft. These companies offer very broad product lines that are already integrated, so the CIO can confidently add new tools to her existing lineup.</li>
<li>Third-party VARs, integrators, and middleware providers. Because the IT software and services industry is fairly mature, there are thousands of third-party providers ready to step in to both help guide the purchase selection process and to ensure successful integration of the new tool.</li>
</ul>
<div>
Does the CMO have access to the same risk-reduction techniques? The marketing tools market is much younger than the IT market. Some tool categories are brand new (like content curation) and others are still rapidly evolving. There are few large providers that have complete solutions. Third-party providers are rare, and tend to take the form of marketing agencies that don't have much of a track record in technology integration.</div>
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<br /></div>
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Risk Abatement for CMOs</h3>
<div>
The marketing tools vendors are moving rapidly to address the risk issue. First, there has been a lot of consolidation activity as large enterprise software providers have made significant purchases in this area. Here are some examples:</div>
<div>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Adobe acquired Omniture, Efficient Frontier Technology, Demdex, and Neolane</li>
<li>IBM acquired Unica, Xtify, DemandTec, and Coremetrics</li>
<li>Oracle acquired Compendium, Eloqua, Collective Intellect, and Virtrue</li>
<li>Salesforce acquired ExactTarget, Pardot, Buddy Media, and Radian6</li>
</ul>
<div>
Clearly, these companies are trying to become the same kind of full solution provider for marketing technology as they are for information technology.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xc9OkUvD8VY/UnmxdbiV9YI/AAAAAAAAAUo/L4v7GhzsMAk/s1600/eloqua-app-cloud.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="75" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Xc9OkUvD8VY/UnmxdbiV9YI/AAAAAAAAAUo/L4v7GhzsMAk/s200/eloqua-app-cloud.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x8yWUMFLhDQ/UnmwneKNxGI/AAAAAAAAAUg/An1wWwVPuX8/s1600/images.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="41" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-x8yWUMFLhDQ/UnmwneKNxGI/AAAAAAAAAUg/An1wWwVPuX8/s200/images.jpeg" width="200" /></a>Beyond acquiring companies for their portfolios, these companies are also establishing 'marketplaces' for third-party applications that work with and complement their solutions. These marketplaces include the <a href="http://topliners.eloqua.com/community/appcloud">Eloqua AppCloud</a> and <a href="https://appexchange.salesforce.com/">Salesforce AppExchange</a>. While these marketplaces <u>help</u> reduce risk for the CMO by offering products that 'work with' the company's core offering, the products are not the same as a fully integrated tool developed by the company. (For an excellent article about third-party marketplaces for marketing automation, including a more complete list, see <i><a href="http://chiefmartec.com/2013/10/emerging-third-party-era-marketing-automation/">The emerging third-party era of marketing automation</a> </i>by Scott Brinker at Chief Marketing Technologist Blog.)<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: left;">
What's Next for the CMO?</h3>
While vendors are helping reduce the purchase risk associated with marketing technology, this is still just one aspect of the complexity facing the CMO. It's not likely going to be enough to make the 'traditional' CMO adequately prepared for the new technology environment.<br />
<br />
A post on the Wall Street Journal blog <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2012/11/18/why-cios-may-morph-into-the-chief-digital-officer/" target="_blank">speculated that this will mean the CIO may evolve into the Chief Digital Officer</a>, responsible for not only a company's network, servers, computers, and productivity tools, but also for the digital marketing technologies. Maybe. But the CIO / CMO difference mentioned above has an important aspect: the CMO is a <u>marketer</u>, and that's not true of CIOs. So, can the CIO manage marketing automation tools for maximum <u>marketing</u> effectiveness? I'm doubtful. Another solution must be out there.<br />
<br />
The need for a CMO grounded in marketing fundamentals is not going to change. Some CMOs may become comfortable with the new marketing technologies, but I don't know if that will be true of the majority. I also think that a Chief Digital Officer that combines information and marketing technology may work from a technical perspective, but someone still needs to ensure that marketing strategies are effectively implemented on those technologies.<br />
<br />
I think we'll see a rise in a new set of executive titles, like VP Demand Generation, <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2012/08/23/the-hot-new-cxo-chief-marketing-technology-officer-infographic/">Chief Marketing Technology Officer</a>, or, as Scott Brinker says, Chief Marketing Technologist. Marketing leaders in these new roles must be as much technologists as they are marketers.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Image of digital marketing on chalkboard provided by KROMKRATHOG and traffic sign by mrpuen, both at <a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/">freedigitalphotos.net</a>.)</span></div>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-21716621883103136282013-08-27T15:12:00.000-06:002013-08-27T15:12:33.915-06:00Marketing Gold: How to Develop Brand Evangelists<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2hdRtbcnMa8/Uh0PoQF7taI/AAAAAAAAATw/_sHkIZbOaB4/s1600/megaphone+by+imagerymajestic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="How to develop brand evangelists and product evangelists" border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2hdRtbcnMa8/Uh0PoQF7taI/AAAAAAAAATw/_sHkIZbOaB4/s200/megaphone+by+imagerymajestic.jpg" title="How to develop brand evangelists and product evangelists" width="141" /></a></div>
The concept of the brand evangelist has been around a long time. Guy Kawasaki wrote about it in the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Art-Start-Time-Tested-Battle-Hardened-Starting/dp/1591840562/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377633704&sr=1-1" target="_blank">Art of the Start</a> back in 2004. However, relatively few marketers actively recruit and engage evangelists, in part because it's not as easy to do as simply writing case studies or buying ads. But brand evangelists are the marketer's gold, and the smart marketer should include the development of brand evangelists as part of any complete marketing plan.<br />
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The Value of Evangelists</h3>
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Why are brand evangelists so valuable? The evangelist:<br />
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<ul>
<li><u>Provides unpaid third party validation of your product or service</u>. Because they're unpaid, they're perceived as especially trustworthy and credible.</li>
<li><u>Develops or extends word of mouth</u>. Evangelists are the most energetic form of word-of-mouth referrers.</li>
<li><u>Allows prospects to see themselves with your product</u>. They can see how your product or service improved users' lives, and hopefully will see themselves in that 'mirror.'</li>
<li><u>Continues indefinitely</u>. Unlike marketing campaigns that have a limited lifetime, evangelists tend to continue for many months or even years with continued company engagement.</li>
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Evangelist-sourced content can be part of, and provide lift to, <u>any</u> marketing campaign.<br /><div style="text-align: left;">
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Finding Your Evangelist</h3>
A brand evangelist can be one of the most valuable marketing assets a firm has. So how does the marketer go about identifying potential evangelists?<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fx7qsjwUOpM/Uh0S2et1yzI/AAAAAAAAAT8/EomQaIH1NVw/s1600/group+by+Naypong.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="How to find brand evangelists and product evangelists for marketing" border="0" height="174" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Fx7qsjwUOpM/Uh0S2et1yzI/AAAAAAAAAT8/EomQaIH1NVw/s200/group+by+Naypong.jpg" title="How to find brand evangelists and product evangelists for marketing" width="200" /></a></div>
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<li><u>Recruit salespeople and post-sales support teams</u>. Not only are they the ones who communicate most with customers, but they're going to be the biggest user of the evangelists' content, as well. They have a stake in the entire process.</li>
<li><u>Identify customers who are active bloggers</u>. They have shown an interest in publishing their opinions.</li>
<li><u>Use influencer* identification tools</u>, such as <a href="http://klout.com/s/business" target="_blank">Klout for Business</a>, <a href="http://traackr.com/" target="_blank">Traackr</a>, <a href="http://www.grouphigh.com/" target="_blank">GroupHigh</a>, or <a href="http://spotright.com/" target="_blank">SpotRight</a>. There are many others.</li>
<li><u>Monitor and review comments</u> on user forums or product review sites.</li>
<li><u>Establish promotions that solicit user submissions at events for users or owners</u>. If your company is large enough to have a user event, take advantage of that investment. </li>
<li><u>Listen to visitors at your trade show booth</u>. Evangelists are already fans of your product or service, and they'll make a point of visiting your booth.</li>
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By comparing candidates across all of the above sources, you should be able to identify a handful of promising candidates. Now, you have to recruit them.</div>
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Recruiting Evangelists</h3>
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Why does someone evangelize about a product or brand? According to Kawasaki, simply because they want to make the world a better place. They want to help others who might be facing the same challenges, providing them with advice based on their own experiences. This is the key to recruiting someone to serve as an evangelist, and should serve as the theme of your outreach to them.</div>
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2SfxsnZQrD4/Uh0NlQ47p3I/AAAAAAAAATo/S3bi-Odf_jc/s1600/uncle_sam_wants_you_poster-r71a0f1bf27da42aabc7eb60212bdff43_60q_8byvr_512.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Recruiting brand evangelists for marketing purposes" border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2SfxsnZQrD4/Uh0NlQ47p3I/AAAAAAAAATo/S3bi-Odf_jc/s200/uncle_sam_wants_you_poster-r71a0f1bf27da42aabc7eb60212bdff43_60q_8byvr_512.jpg" title="Recruiting brand evangelists for marketing purposes" width="200" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A secondary motivation might be their own self-interest, whether that's to enhance their career options, to grow their blog traffic, or just to boost their own ego. Depending on the characteristics of the prospect, the appeal to his or her self-interest can be explicit or implicit. For instance, you could offer them early visibility into upcoming product features.</span><br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Leveraging Evangelists</h3>
Once identified and recruited, there are many different ways to channel their evangelistic fervor into corporate content:<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1d1d; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Provide them with opportunities to submit guest articles</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1d1d; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Encourage them to post ongoing videos, and promote those videos through your channels</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1d1d; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Share infographics, or help them create their own</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: white; color: #1d1d1d; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Enable them to become an active voice in user forums</span></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">That's the great thing about evangelists. They're already motivated, so the only limitation on how to leverage them is your own imagination.</span></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: SSP-Regular; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;">*Influencers and evangelists are not synonymous. Evangelists are influencers that are true believers and have a much higher motivation to provide </span><u style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: SSP-Regular; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;">active</u><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: SSP-Regular; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;"> support to, and endorsement of, the brand. Much of recent social media marketing has been focused on identifying and engaging influencers. While this is important, it is also important to go that one step further to identify and recruit evangelists.</span></i><div>
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: #1d1d1d; font-family: SSP-Regular; line-height: 25px; text-align: start;">(Image of woman with megaphone provided by </span>imagerymajestic and group with magnifying glass by Naypong, both at <a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/">freedigitalphotos.net</a>. Army recruiting poster image is public domain.)</span></i></div>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-80294244596372770502013-05-08T10:55:00.000-06:002013-05-08T11:26:23.417-06:00Digital Marketing IS DEAD<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Long live marketing!<br />
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A while back, <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2013/01/digital-marketing-is-marketing.html" target="_blank">I wrote a post</a> about how digital marketing is <u>just marketing</u>. The same rules apply, like the three Cs and four Ps, positioning, communications fundamentals, all of that. These rules are just applied in some relatively new media, like search, display, and social.<br />
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Recently, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/vanessa-colella/0/5/a5b" target="_blank">Vanessa Colella</a>, Citibank's North American head of consumer marketing, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/citibank-eliminated-digital-marketing-2013-4" target="_blank">said something very similar</a> but from almost the opposite perspective. In fact, she said it <b>far better than I did</b>.<br />
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According to Vanessa, her first order of business in her position was to "eliminate the digital marketing department."<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4jbxIDJcK5Y/UYqKPCwieNI/AAAAAAAAAS0/pQCbn274heo/s1600/vanessa+colella.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="139" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4jbxIDJcK5Y/UYqKPCwieNI/AAAAAAAAAS0/pQCbn274heo/s200/vanessa+colella.jpeg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vanessa Colella</td></tr>
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<i style="text-align: right;"><span style="color: blue;">"Why? Because everyone in a company's marketing department needs to be fluent in digital strategy. "There's no path for you if you don't," she said."</span></i></blockquote>
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This is music to my ears. <b><i>Every marketer must now be a digital marketer. </i></b></div>
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For example, if you're a PR specialist, and you're not well-versed in not only social media and online community-building, but influence tracking tools, SEO, campaign tagging, and analytics and conversion attribution techniques, then you won't be fully effective for your client or employer. You'll eventually be replaced by someone who is comfortable with all those technologies and techniques.<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N2pE3lMqMiU/UYp-gEPg77I/AAAAAAAAASY/wO-agSVBk3k/s1600/ID-100113808.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N2pE3lMqMiU/UYp-gEPg77I/AAAAAAAAASY/wO-agSVBk3k/s200/ID-100113808.jpeg" width="200" /></a>Similarly, marketing education needs to be synonymous with digital marketing education. I recently taught a university course on digital marketing, covering a broad range of topics: search, social, video, mobile, display, tracking and targeting, websites, analytics, conversation optimization, etc. For most of my students, my course was the first time they had explored many of these topics in detail.<br />
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But these topics need to be integrated into <u>every class</u> in the marketing curriculum. For instance, the marketing communications course that begins the path to a newly-minted PR specialist should include all the digital techniques I described above, in order to create a foundation for a successful communications career.<br />
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I have also been guilty of <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyearlesrevenuegrowth/" target="_blank">describing myself as a 'digital marketer</a>,' thereby continuing this obsolete differentiation between digital marketing and traditional marketing. In reality, I was doing 'traditional' B2B technology marketing for a decade before I ever added digital techniques to my toolkit. So I have begun to change how I describe myself, instead focusing on my strength as a demand-generation strategist, as opposed to a branding specialist, for instance.<br />
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For the marketing profession, this transition is slow in coming, but inevitable. Ultimately, the modifier 'digital' should, and will, drop from the marketer's lexicon.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="line-height: 14px;">(Skull image provided </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;">renjith krishnan and graduate by David Castillo Dominici, both at</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;"> </span></span><a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/" style="background-color: white; color: #7c93a1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 14px; text-decoration: none;">freedigitalphotos.net</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;">.)</span></div>
Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-19094682884882925242013-02-21T21:27:00.000-07:002013-02-22T07:29:15.402-07:00Understanding Virality: The Top 10 Factors for Achieving Viral Video Greatness<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A while back I came across a Mashable article entitled "<a href="http://mashable.com/2012/11/30/th20-most-shared-ads-of-2012/" target="_blank">The Top 20 Most-Shared Ads of 2012</a>" based on data from <a href="http://www.unrulymedia.com/" target="_blank">Unruly</a>, a UK-based video marketing and monitoring firm. It's an entertaining list of ads and it's worth a look. More recently, the world witnessed the phenomenon of the Harlem Shake, whose crazy virality was <a href="http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-harlem-shake-has-exploded.html" target="_blank">documented by YouTube</a>.<br />
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This all has me thinking about the drivers for virality. What's required to achieve viral video success? Can virality be planned or, at least, can the chance of virality be maximized?<br />
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Many people think Gangnam Style was an overnight success because of a catchy pop hook and fun video. However, there was a lot of <a href="http://www.thedrum.com/news/2012/10/30/case-study-how-gangnam-style-went-viral-campaign-yg-entertainment" target="_blank">strategic groundwork laid</a> before the video creation and launch, including establishing partnerships with American artists like Will.I.Am and organically growing their YouTube audience over a long period of time.<br />
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So, what are the top 10 factors in achieving viral video success?<br />
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Defining Viral Success</h3>
First, how should you define viral success? According to the Unruly 100 Viral Video chart, to get in the top 100, a video needs about 10,000 shares in the first day, 75,000 in the first week, and 300,000 in the first month. But that's for the top videos in the world. Does your viral success need to be judged against the world, so you need to achieve 10,000 shares a day? Would 10,000 shares in the first month be a viral success for you?<br />
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Let's say my blog gets about 1000 visits per month. Given that baseline, 10,000 visits in a month would be a huge success. Your own unique business situation and goals will determine what target viral success is for you.<br />
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<h3 style="text-align: left;">
Strategic Success Factors</h3>
There are two groups of success factors that I call strategic and tactical.<br />
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Kevin Allocca of YouTube Trends <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_allocca_why_videos_go_viral.html" target="_blank">gave an entertaining TED talk</a> in which he identifies three factors required for viral success. These are what I call strategic factors, and I broaden them a bit from Kevin's:<br />
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<li><b>Have an unexpected hook</b>. With the Harlem Shake, it was a great song hook combined with the strangeness of the format, with a person in a helmet grooving a little while everyone looks bored, then the group goes wild at the song jump.</li>
<li><b>Encourage the community to participate</b>. Any video that can be easily imitated, spoofed, or somehow responded to will drive its distribution.</li>
<li><b>Drive strong emotion</b>. It could be shock, awe, surprise, curiosity, joy, or some other emotion, but the emotional content has to be there.</li>
<li><b>Promote through tastemakers or curation</b>. Kevin identifies examples of Jimmy Kimmel and others promoting videos to get them started on their way to virality. You may not need a Jimmy Kimmel, however. Your industry likely has its own trend setters with healthy followings.</li>
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It's pretty easy to assemble the list of strategic success factors, but the art is in the execution. Creating content with an engaging hook, that drives strong emotions, and encourages participation takes some level of creative genius. Promoting your video is a success factor that may be more predictable or controllable. However, there are other things you should do to maximize the likelihood of success.<br />
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Tactical Success Factors</h3>
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Paul "Bear" Vasquez was simply the lucky recipient of a tweet from Jimmy Kimmel that launched his wild viral success for his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQSNhk5ICTI" target="_blank">double rainbow video</a>. If you are striving for that success and don't want to rely on luck, there are several more tactical steps you should take:</div>
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<li><b>Be concise</b>. There are several data that show that shorter is better. For instance, <a href="http://www.sys-con.com/node/1688695" target="_blank">according to the Jun Group</a>, social video ads of 15 seconds or less are shared nearly 37% more than those between 30 seconds and 1 minute, and 18% more than videos longer than a minute. The Harlem Shake videos are only 30 seconds, which means several can be viewed in a brief session.</li>
<li><b>Make it a progressive series</b>. Get viewers involved or emotionally invested, then keep bringing them back for more. The Old Spice videos are an example of this. Progressive series allow initial modest sharing to build up over time.</li>
<li><b>Be searchable</b>. Use appropriate keywords and optimize the video for those keywords. This helps maximize the reach by allowing someone who has casually heard about your video to find it easily.</li>
<li><b>Promote on all social sites</b>. The Jun Group also said that people share videos on Facebook 218 percent more than through Twitter and e-mail combined. While that may be true, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and even LinkedIn all have different sharing dynamics. Don't minimize your reach by focusing on one channel. That goes for your website and email campaigns, as well.</li>
<li><b>Use a great title</b>. Great titles increase clickthrough rate. </li>
<li><b>Use a great thumbnail</b>. Sex still sells.</li>
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So, if you carefully follow these ten important rules, you'll achieve viral greatness, right? Well, a little luck wouldn't hurt, either.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="line-height: 14px;">(Images provided by</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;"> </span></span><a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/" style="background-color: white; color: #7c93a1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 14px; text-decoration: none;">freedigitalphotos.net</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;">. Graph and network image by ddpavumba, dice by jscreationzs, and woman by artemisphoto.)</span></div>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-90191716962613422472013-02-11T17:49:00.000-07:002013-02-11T17:49:09.868-07:00The Impact of Big Science Saturday<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uPj-GOT7x6U/URllx_YdglI/AAAAAAAAAPw/gwS-g-HgHCY/s1600/lab+eqpmt+image+by+renjith+krishnan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-uPj-GOT7x6U/URllx_YdglI/AAAAAAAAAPw/gwS-g-HgHCY/s1600/lab+eqpmt+image+by+renjith+krishnan.jpg" height="320" width="200" /></a></div>
For long-time readers of this blog, you know that <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2006/11/got-any-big-science-saturday-ideas.html" target="_blank">Big Science Saturday</a> (BSS) was a part of our family for several years. Over those years, my sons and I probably performed 100 different experiments of varying complexity, but almost always fun.<br />
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As I said many times, my goal was never to steer the boys into science careers. I was really trying to do three things:<br />
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<li>Get them to wonder how things work and to ask probing questions.</li>
<li>Teach them how to have a structured approach to solving problems.</li>
<li>Show them that science can be fun.</li>
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Well, as life has marched on and the boys have grown older, BSS is no more, and I sometimes wonder if I achieved any of these goals.<br />
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As I now consider this question, I suppose I did have some success. For instance, those BSS times developed into our appreciation for robots, like those on the TV show <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259128/" target="_blank">BattleBots on Comedy Central</a>. We're very intrigued by the upcoming SyFy show Robot Combat League, which will debut in a couple of weeks, which appears to have robot battles like those in the movie <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0433035/?ref_=sr_1" target="_blank">Real Steel</a>.</div>
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But it's not just TV shows. We also seek out local robot events, like the <a href="http://www.coloradofirst.org/coloradoregional.htm" target="_blank">FIRST Robotics competition</a> coming up in April. And recently, Maddox even spent $130 <i>of his own money</i> on an <a href="http://www.gosphero.com/" target="_blank">Orbotix Sphero</a>.</div>
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So, I suppose I have made some progress on goal number 3, associating science with fun.</div>
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Another effect of those many weekends of BSS can be seen in the boys' science fair projects over the years. Their science fair projects tend to be rooted in real-world things they have seen or heard about, rather than the standard old projects of studying how bread molds or using Coke as a cleaning agent.</div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ld_lPfxFa4M/URmMM6mGCpI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/htRCHpRjoAo/s1600/bird+image+from+Dr+Joseph+Valks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ld_lPfxFa4M/URmMM6mGCpI/AAAAAAAAAQQ/htRCHpRjoAo/s1600/bird+image+from+Dr+Joseph+Valks.jpg" height="184" width="320" /></a>For example, a while back I was telling the boys about an incident when a bird pooped on me when I was about eight or nine. That led to a conversation about how difficult it might be for a bird to poop on a specific target while it was flying. Maddox turned that into a clever science fair project that involved building a testing rig from erector set, complete with a long rail with a motorized traveler, a bucket on the traveler that dropped a marble at a specific position, and a little Lego guy as the target. </div>
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It was a great project, although the principal of his school didn't think 'poop' was an appropriate topic, and suggested that the bird be a carrier pigeon dropping a message. Give me a break. Maddox went with an unspecified 'package,' and let people use their imaginations.</div>
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Their interest in basing science fair projects on real-world observations shows some success in achieving goal number one, wondering how things work. So, I suppose all of those BSS sessions have had some positive impact in terms of the original goals.</div>
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However, the most important impact of BSS was letting us spend some terrific family time together doing sciency things, and I see the results of that every day. That's really what made it worth the effort.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; text-align: left;"><span style="line-height: 14px;">(Lab equipment image provided by </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;">renjith krishnan and bird</span></span><span style="background-color: white; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;"> provided by Dr Joseph Valks, both at </span></span></span><a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/" style="background-color: white; color: #7c93a1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 14px; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">freedigitalphotos.net</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px; text-align: left;">. Sphero image provided by Orbotix.)</span></div>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-22308151628384562862013-02-01T10:58:00.000-07:002013-02-01T10:58:38.675-07:00Are LinkedIn Endorsements Meaningless?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dziiMBwa97c/UQv1ZHsapKI/AAAAAAAAAOM/XV-nS4B7duk/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:01+AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dziiMBwa97c/UQv1ZHsapKI/AAAAAAAAAOM/XV-nS4B7duk/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:01+AM.jpeg" height="140" width="400" /></a></div>
Recently, Todd Wasserman of Mashable wrote an article stating that <a href="http://mashable.com/2013/01/03/linkedins-endorsements-meaningless/" target="_blank">LinkedIn's endorsements have become meaningless</a>. Feel free to read the article, but he's basically saying that, because endorsements are so easy to give (friction-free, in his terms), they're widely abused, so they have become meaningless. He cites examples of random endorsements he's received for languages he doesn't speak, or requests for reciprocal endorsements, as examples of their misuse. He then goes on to make the argument that they would be more useful if more effort was required to give or receive them (i.e. add friction to the process). Almost all of the comments on his article agree with him.<br />
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I disagree with both the argument that they're worthless, as well as the suggestion that making them more difficult to give would improve their usefulness. Fundamentally, I think they're serving their purpose well, which is to implement almost a 'wisdom of crowds' assessment of a person's skills.<br />
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First, let's remember to differentiate between recommendations and endorsements, because, as I've researched this a little on various discussion forums, they tend to be confused. Recommendations are the items where someone took the time to write something nice about you. Here's an example from the <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffweiner08/" target="_blank">profile of Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn CEO</a>:<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8W2UaXAVWE/UQv4HN7DzgI/AAAAAAAAAOU/j5ScnvhuFIM/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:12+AM-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-H8W2UaXAVWE/UQv4HN7DzgI/AAAAAAAAAOU/j5ScnvhuFIM/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:12+AM-2.jpeg" height="78" width="400" /></a></div>
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In the language of the article, they are a high-friction activity, so should be viewed as having some value. But you can help someone to write your recommendation. To me, recommendations are similar to references used when you seek a job. They're somewhat illustrative, but must be viewed with some suspicion and not heavily weighted in the decision process.<br />
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Endorsements are the little check-boxes on skills on your LI profile. At first I thought they were of little value because, as the shared article states, they're just too easy to give. But then I watched how the endorsements on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/tracyearlesrevenuegrowth" target="_blank">my profile</a> evolved:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uPDHOVpCBg4/UQv5ZyxHUaI/AAAAAAAAAOk/BDizS7bGI50/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:20+AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uPDHOVpCBg4/UQv5ZyxHUaI/AAAAAAAAAOk/BDizS7bGI50/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:20+AM.jpeg" height="283" width="400" /></a></div>
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Over time, certain skills on my profile clearly rose to the top: marketing strategy, digital marketing, online marketing, and lead generation. Those are exactly the skills that I believe <i>I do best,</i> and that <i>I want others to know that I do best</i>.<br />
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UNSCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT: Take a look at your own LinkedIn profile. If you have a solid number of connections, say a couple hundred, see if the skills identified as the most endorsed are an accurate representation of what you believe to be your actual skills, or if they at least reflect how you think the world may view your skills. I'd be curious to hear your conclusions in the comments below.<br />
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The Wisdom of Crowds?</h2>
So is this actually a small implementation of the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_crowds" target="_blank">wisdom of crowds</a>?' In his book defining this concept, that the "many are smarter than the few," James Surowiecki points out that a diverse collection of independently deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts. Is that the case with LinkedIn endorsements?<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--jHkUCZVvuo/UQv8xSp4mNI/AAAAAAAAAOs/jrQpER4FXw0/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:34+AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--jHkUCZVvuo/UQv8xSp4mNI/AAAAAAAAAOs/jrQpER4FXw0/s1600/Screenshot+2:1:13+10:34+AM.jpeg" height="320" width="205" /></a></div>
Endorsements seem to fit the four criteria Surowiecki identifies as separating wise crowds from irrational ones:<br />
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<ol>
<li><b>Diversity of opinion</b>: Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.</li>
<li><b>Independence</b>: People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.</li>
<li><b>Decentralization</b>: People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.</li>
<li><b>Aggregation</b>: Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.</li>
</ol>
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Yes, you get the noise of the occasional friend that endorses every skill, or endorsements from people that don't know you that well and endorse you for something that makes little sense. Aren't those just 'eccentric interpretations?' And the bar graph display of endorsed skills seems to provide the evidence of the collective opinion.</div>
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Endorsements are a Valuable Indicator</h2>
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Over time and over a larger population of connections, a true profile of your skills, <i>as acknowledged by your peers through endorsements, </i>should show through. And that can only be accomplished by making it very easy, or frictionless, to provide endorsements. </div>
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Here's how I think endorsements should be used:<br />
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<ul>
<li>For a hiring manager, use the top few endorsed skills as a quick indicator of how others view a job candidate. If there's a mismatch between the skills endorsed and those required for the position, ask the candidate to explain that mismatch.</li>
<li>As a job candidate, confirm that the skills endorsed accurately reflect your true skills and how you want to be portrayed to others. If they don't, you can delete individual skills, or you can delete the entire endorsements section from your profile.</li>
</ul>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-4843015126380262292013-01-31T08:41:00.000-07:002013-01-31T08:41:19.324-07:00The New Content Marketing: Mass Customization<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q-I5_dJr1MY/UQhE3BRcFvI/AAAAAAAAANU/uZGF-p_fg5E/s1600/stadium+chair+by+kongsky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Q-I5_dJr1MY/UQhE3BRcFvI/AAAAAAAAANU/uZGF-p_fg5E/s1600/stadium+chair+by+kongsky.jpg" height="195" width="320" /></a></div>
In <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2013/01/moving-beyond-content-marketing.html" target="_blank">my last post</a>, I stated that the standard B2B content marketing model is in need of improvement. This is because everybody is doing <i>the same thing</i>, creating the same kinds of content, and filling up prospects' email inboxes with it to the point where it's now <i>just so much noise</i>.<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2vZeZ1-5cBY/UQVCYxdiv3I/AAAAAAAAANE/Dq_CNZveSkU/s1600/Screenshot+1:27:13+8:05+AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2vZeZ1-5cBY/UQVCYxdiv3I/AAAAAAAAANE/Dq_CNZveSkU/s640/Screenshot+1:27:13+8:05+AM.jpeg" height="640" width="345" /></a>So, what's my idea for cutting through the noise? How would I suggest we change the game?<br />
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'Case Study': Marketing IBM's EMM Suite</h2>
First, let me lay the foundation with an illustration. Let's look at IBM, specifically their <a href="http://www-142.ibm.com/software/products/us/en/category/SWX00" target="_blank">Enterprise Marketing Management</a> (EMM) suite, and let's assume that their marketing efforts have attracted a web visitor from American Express.<br />
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On the EMM web page, they offer case studies for Citrix, Land's End, Seton Hall University, and Wehkamp. Well, American Express is not an enterprise software provider, a clothing retailer, a university, or a Dutch mail order company. By making these case studies available to an American Express lead, they're <i>hoping</i> that that person will be able to see a little of her own problems and challenges in one of those stories.<br />
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They also have some good video content within this section of their website, and repeated on their YouTube channel. For instance, here's a six minute overview of their Digital Marketing Optimization Solution. Again, in this video, they're using data from an activewear retailer, which is not American Express's business.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/SGRwICrnurU?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
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So, while IBM has published some solid content about their EMM suite, there is a potential communication or engagement disconnect with most visitors, since most visitors won't be in the small handful of verticals represented in the content.<br />
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<i>(Another problem with this site is one of the most common that I see in B2B technology marketing. The entire language of the EMM home page, and much of the site, is in terms of solutions, not problems. This requires the web visitor to already have gone through the mental analysis of their problem to have arrived at a solution, but not all have progressed that far. If I have knee pain, I don't search out an arthroscopic surgeon because I don't yet know that I need surgery. I search out a doctor that will help me understand the cause of my knee pain and suggest possible solutions. This is a topic for a future post, however.)</i><br />
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One of their competitors is <a href="http://www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-marketing.html" target="_blank">Adobe's Marketing Cloud</a>, who have at least attempted to engage more directly with their visitors. For instance, they have a section of the page that speaks to specific job titles:<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xEhnMBaDsik/UQhcdbr9OaI/AAAAAAAAANs/QAiVB4EeivU/s1600/Screenshot+1:29:13+4:32+PM-2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xEhnMBaDsik/UQhcdbr9OaI/AAAAAAAAANs/QAiVB4EeivU/s1600/Screenshot+1:29:13+4:32+PM-2.jpeg" height="135" width="400" /></a></div>
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Adobe also has a series of pain-type statements on the top panel, like "social media is worthless," "half your ad spend is wasted," "marketers hate big data," and others. While these may not match any particular visitor's pain, at least they're attempting to move ahead of solutions and more into needs.<br />
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So what is IBM to do, given the following constraints?<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>They don't know what company a given visitor is from, or what their particular needs or problems are.</li>
<li>They can't publish content for every vertical.</li>
</ol>
<h2 style="text-align: left;">
Marketing Mass Customization</h2>
My vision for the next generation of content marketing is a system that delivers content <i>customized for each individual visitor</i>. The next wave of B2B content marketing should be marketing mass customization.<br />
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<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_customization" target="_blank">Mass customization</a> is a manufacturing concept that was developed in the early 1990s that described the ability to manufacture products fully customized for individual consumers at near-mass-produced costs. The technique relied on advanced technologies, like computer-aided manufacturing, interactive configurators, and automated inventory control systems. <a href="http://www.dell.com/" target="_blank">Dell</a>, for instance, enables something like this in their PC ordering process.<br />
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How would marketing mass customization work? How would IBM be able to provide customized content to each individual visitor? Remember, this is my vision for where content marketing <i>should go</i>, but while that capability may not exist currently, it's certainly not far off because the underlying technologies are already here.<br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCy75l-uQmA/UQioqZcvxII/AAAAAAAAAN8/w0_WyGBJrw4/s1600/crystal+ball+from+digitalart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gCy75l-uQmA/UQioqZcvxII/AAAAAAAAAN8/w0_WyGBJrw4/s1600/crystal+ball+from+digitalart.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
Let's look at constraint number one, above. IBM doesn't have a crystal ball to determine who's visiting their site, but they really don't need one. With IP lookup techniques, supplemented with a few databases, a fairly rich profile of the visitor can be developed. Several companies like <a href="http://www.netfactor.com/" target="_blank">NetFactor</a> provide such a service.<br />
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The IP identification can be used to quickly determine what vertical the visitor is in, which can then be used to customize the presentation of the home page. This customization can be as simple as highlighting one case study or video over others on the page. In the case of the American Express visitor, IBM could provide material relevant to financial services companies. For instance, they could presume a set of likely challenges that American Express faces, like customer churn, for which they have targeted content on.<br />
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In addition to not necessarily knowing a visitor's needs, even IBM can't publish content for every vertical, as I noted in the second constraint. Dealing with this requires some cleverness, but it is possible to address that. Here's an example. There's a bright young company, <a href="http://www.flixmaster.com/" target="_blank">FlixMaster</a>, that's enabling "creators to build dynamic, interactive videos with drag-and-drop ease." Be sure to watch the demo video to understand the implications of what they do.<br />
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What that means for IBM is that their video that I highlighted above could be restructured to be much more customized to each viewer. The video, at six minutes, is too long and contains too much information, anyway. What if, after a brief intro, the video offered the website visitor a couple of different options for aspects of EMM that she might be interested in? Not only does the visitor get to see just what she is interested in, but she also tells IBM, through analytics, what that is.<br />
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The Foundation of Marketing Mass Customization is Here</h2>
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Clearly, full marketing mass customization is not here yet, but as I illustrated, the building blocks are. My vision for next-generation content marketing is that every visitor to a website, or every reader of email, gets a unique set of content that specifically addresses their needs and problems. That's how marketers can cut through the noise of all of the marketing messages our audience receives.</div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><span style="line-height: 14px;">(Stadium chair provided by kongsky and crystal ball by digitalart, both at </span></span><a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/" style="background-color: white; color: #7c93a1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: x-small; line-height: 14px; text-decoration: none;">freedigitalphotos.net</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; line-height: 14px;">.)</span></div>
Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-54117389798709915612013-01-28T07:42:00.002-07:002013-01-28T07:42:33.246-07:00Moving Beyond Content Marketing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BbYhg8PmqNE/UQKrpO81SGI/AAAAAAAAAMo/0V5ZVPxmuVA/s1600/imagerymajestic+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BbYhg8PmqNE/UQKrpO81SGI/AAAAAAAAAMo/0V5ZVPxmuVA/s320/imagerymajestic+image.jpg" height="320" width="212" /></a></div>
I went to bed last night thinking about a question. I'll share the question in a moment, but first let me say why I went to bed thinking about a question.<br />
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It's fairly common for me to go to sleep considering some particularly challenging problem. I find that the time before I'm fully awake can be a time of imaginative free-thinking that can lead to creative solutions. It's one of the ways that I solve problems. Other times that I find to be productive for problem-solving thought include when I'm in the shower, or when I'm out on a long, exhausting bike ride. When I empty my mind of other thought, either through exhaustion, or snoozing, or similar activities, I can typically achieve some clarity on thorny questions.<br />
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The question I was noodling last night was this. The standard B2B marketing success playbook looks something like this:<br />
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<ol style="text-align: left;">
<li>Create various forms of content:</li>
<ul>
<li>Thought leadership pieces on where your industry is going</li>
<li>White papers addressing particular challenges in your customers' environments</li>
<li>Case studies describing how your product or service improved your customers' business</li>
</ul>
<li>Make that content visible through a wide variety of channels, frequently behind registration walls:</li>
<ul>
<li>Social media channels</li>
<li>On the company website</li>
<li>In email newsletters</li>
</ul>
<li>Use the gathered email addresses from registrations to feed a marketing automation process</li>
<li>Track user activity and adapt content to drive users to a conversion point</li>
</ol>
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There are various challenges and problems with this model:</div>
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>Everybody wants to be the thought leader in their segment, but that clearly can't be the case.</li>
<li>All customers get lots of these marketing automation emails.</li>
<li><a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2012/12/engagement-marketing-revisited.html" target="_blank">Recent data</a> shows that while companies believe they're engaging customers, they may not actually be doing so.</li>
<li>All companies within every segment are pursuing exactly the same playbook, which, in the mind of their consumers, leads to a lot of noise.</li>
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It seems to me a new playbook is needed to break through this noise. </div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IIDQH9LSiWo/UQKyegB1s8I/AAAAAAAAAM0/28QKHyb8L-I/s1600/Idea+go+football+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IIDQH9LSiWo/UQKyegB1s8I/AAAAAAAAAM0/28QKHyb8L-I/s200/Idea+go+football+image.jpg" height="138" width="200" /></a>Since it's Super Bowl week, let me provide a football analogy. In the mid-1980s, San Francisco 49ers coach Bill Walsh introduced what came to be known as the West Coast offense, which emphasized short, horizontal passing routes in lieu of running plays in order to stretch defenses to open up long runs and passes. It was highly successful and changed the game for the next twenty years. Now, with the recent advent of quarterbacks capable of running as well as passing, like Cam Newton, Robert Griffin III, and Colin Kaepernick, the read option offense may again be redefining the game.</div>
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So what is going to redefine the B2B marketing game? That's the problem I went to sleep considering. What did I come up with? I have an idea, which I'll share in my next post, so please check back here in the next week or two, or subscribe in the box to the right so you'll be notified when I publish. In the meantime, if you have thoughts on this, please leave a comment.</div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">(Images provided by <a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/">freedigitalphotos.net</a>. The sleeping man image -- not me, by the way -- is from imagery majestic, and the football is from Idea go.)</span></div>
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Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-5568715918996800182013-01-24T12:13:00.000-07:002013-01-24T12:13:52.917-07:00Digital Marketing is ... Marketing<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6pTZC7yL2dg/UQGFYsnOy9I/AAAAAAAAAMY/abDZBra4vQc/s1600/ID-100129656.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6pTZC7yL2dg/UQGFYsnOy9I/AAAAAAAAAMY/abDZBra4vQc/s1600/ID-100129656.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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I am a digital marketer. By that I mean that I use digital marketing tools and channels to promote products and services. These tools and channels include: SEO, PPC, display or banners, advanced targeting techniques, social media communications, social media advertising, remarketing, affiliates, analytics, conversion optimization, A/B testing, email, and marketing automation. But the most important word in the phrase 'digital marketer' is <u>marketer</u>, not digital.<br />
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What's important to me about these tools is not that they utilize cool, advanced technologies, and they're steeped in data, and they help automate or optimize complex campaigns or processes. Don't get me wrong, I'm an engineer by training and I LOVE all that stuff. No, what's really important about those digital marketing tools is that they help me <u>market</u> to today's consumer.<br />
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It's common for practitioners of digital marketing to get caught up in the tools, the data, and the technology, and forget the marketing fundamentals. But digital marketing is just a subset of marketing, and based on the same fundamentals.<br />
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What fundamentals? Well, the real basics, like the three Cs and four Ps:<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dI-z2Uxt6i0/UQFx9lWYv7I/AAAAAAAAAMI/Uy1KglMcKKY/s1600/Screenshot+1:24:13+10:39+AM.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="marketing fundamentals, 3 cs,4 ps" border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dI-z2Uxt6i0/UQFx9lWYv7I/AAAAAAAAAMI/Uy1KglMcKKY/s1600/Screenshot+1:24:13+10:39+AM.jpeg" height="200" title="Marketing Fundamentals: 3 Cs and 4 Ps" width="400" /></a></div>
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For instance, the four Ps* define the product marketing mix, of which digital channels are a component. Digital technologies have different characteristics than traditional technologies, like greater speed and immediacy, bidirectional communication between the consumer and the company, rich data, and tremendous reach. But for the digital marketing mix to succeed, a solid understanding of the 3 Cs is required, and the market segmentation and targeting and the product differentiation and positioning derived from the 3 Cs analysis must all be properly implemented for the digital marketing to be successful.</div>
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This is why, when I'm approaching a new digital marketing problem, I always start with very basic questions, like who is the audience, what's the message and positioning, or what do we want them to do? For example, I once wrote a <a href="http://www.burnsmarketing.com/burns-digital/qr-codes-dont-forget-your-marketing-basics" target="_blank">blog piece about a taco stand vendor</a> who ignored these fundamentals when implementing a QR code on his stand, presumably because he thought that, in tech-crazy Boulder, Colorado, a QR code would be cool.</div>
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So when I call myself a digital marketer, what I really mean is that I'm a <u>marketer</u> that has a particular affinity for, and skill set in, the digital portion of the marketing toolkit.</div>
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*This presentation format for the four Ps is based on that presented in the excellent marketing text by Perreault, Cannon (<a href="http://twitter.com/learnthe4ps" target="_blank">@learnthe4ps</a>, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/teachthe4ps" target="_blank">@teachthe4ps</a>), and McCarthy, <a href="http://amzn.com/0078028884" target="_blank"><i>Essentials of Marketing</i></a>. </div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">(Image courtesy of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">jscreationzs</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"> at </span><a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/" rel="nofollow" style="background-color: white; color: #7c93a1; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank">freedigitalphotos.net</a><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">)</span></div>
Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-29277385281372106832012-12-06T09:58:00.000-07:002012-12-06T09:59:12.650-07:00Engagement Marketing, Revisited<h3>
<b><i><span style="font-size: large;">It's all about data and testing</span></i></b></h3>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-im_QsC9IGlI/UMDAr0ZRm0I/AAAAAAAAALA/1-PJtB1oSPw/s1600/data+blog+post+image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-im_QsC9IGlI/UMDAr0ZRm0I/AAAAAAAAALA/1-PJtB1oSPw/s1600/data+blog+post+image.jpg" /></a></div>
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As you saw in my last post, I have spent some time recently discussing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engagement_marketing" target="_blank">engagement marketing</a>. At Burns, we defined engagement marketing as <b>brands engaging customers and prospects when, where, and how those customers and prospects want to engage</b>. It is an aspect of marketing that has been enabled and shaped by the rise and evolution of social media.<br />
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There is now some evidence that we may be missing the mark a bit on what it means for marketers to truly engage, or how customers interpret engagement.<br />
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First, <a href="http://socialmediatoday.com/users/steve-olenski" target="_blank">Steve Olenski</a> at Social Media Today <a href="http://socialmediatoday.com/steve-olenski/1045231/engagement-marketing-disconnect-between-consumers-and-brands-rages" target="_blank">wrote about</a> a recent report from Forbes Insights and Turn called “<a href="http://www.turn.com/forbescmoinsights" target="_blank">The New Rules of engagement: Measuring the Power of Social Currency</a>." His main conclusion is that this new report shows that what marketers interpret as customer engagement, and the metrics they use to evaluate it, is significantly different from how customers themselves define engagement with brands. He has <a href="http://socialmediatoday.com/steve-olenski/412114/major-disconnect-between-brands-and-consumers-when-it-comes-social-media" target="_blank">written about this issue before</a>, and now states that this "disconnect is alive and well and may even be widening."<br />
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You can read his well-written post in detail, but the report data below will quickly illustrate his point.<br />
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If you examine the first line of data, only 15% of consumers said they feel engaged with a brand when they share an ad, but ad or other content forwarding is a relatively strong influence on marketers' engagement measurement. This is an example of the data driving Steve's conclusion that there's a big disconnect between consumers' and marketers' views of engagement.</div>
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If you read all of Steve's post and the original report, you might simplistically conclude that consumers really just want two things: deals or promotions and funny ads. I'm being a bit facetious here, but you could certainly conclude that, as a marketer, you need to completely rethink what engagement really means and how you should measure it.</div>
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Not So Fast, Here's a Deeper Look at the Data</h3>
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<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneyelivingston" target="_blank">Courtney Livingston</a> writes a <a href="http://www.courtneylivingston.com/marketers-arent-as-misguided-as-were-making-them-out-to-be/" target="_blank">great response to Steve's post</a>, questioning the type of conclusion I illustrated above. Courtney states that if you look at all the data, including the chart I show above, there's actually a significant amount of correlation between the consumers' and marketers' responses. In the case of this chart, there a 0.5 to 0.75 correlation between the two response sets. That's a reasonable good correlation, and other data in the report correlates even better.</div>
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In other words, Courtney states that "marketers are headed in the right direction (maybe not on the right track, but not completely lost, either)." She goes on to reasonably state that, "As an action has more significance to a consumer, it should also hold more weight in a brand’s engagement measurement model." The question then becomes, how do marketers act on this data?</div>
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What's a Marketer to Do?</h3>
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As I said before, engagement is an aspect of marketing constantly being shaped by the evolving usage models of social media, so as marketers we're only left with <b>data</b> and <b>testing</b>. In this case, the Forbes Insights report has provided a rich set of data from which we can form testable hypotheses. </div>
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For instance, the report clearly highlights the relative importance of humor in ads, as compared to thought-provoking characteristics. (I have long been a proponent of using humor in digital marketing channels, even some that don't typically use it, like pay-per-click advertising. For example, I gave a webinar last year on <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/burns_marketing/creative-ppc-techniques" target="_blank">Creative PPC techniques</a> in which I highlight using humor to improve clickthrough rates.) This is an easily testable characteristic. You could run two separate ads, one thought-provoking and one humorous, in a variety of channels and measure their relative success using metrics appropriate to those channels. The aggregation of all of those metrics should provide some excellent insight to support or refute the report hypothesized importance of humor.</div>
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I'm a big believer in letting the data speak and testing, testing, testing. I'll be interested to see if anyone provides real consumer data to support or refute any of the report's conclusions.</div>
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(Image courtesy of adamr at <a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">freedigitalphotos.net</a>)</div>
Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-46757888652982957882012-12-03T15:19:00.001-07:002013-01-24T20:26:49.574-07:00I'm back! (Blogging, I mean.)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KuZ8hHwQ1hc/UL0kt_RwubI/AAAAAAAAAKw/r2fXkOPGk3Y/s1600/ID-10063962.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KuZ8hHwQ1hc/UL0kt_RwubI/AAAAAAAAAKw/r2fXkOPGk3Y/s400/ID-10063962.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></div>
This blog has been effectively silent since December 2009, or three years. Why? Well, mostly because my blogging energy has been applied to developing content for my employers. If you look at all the material I have created over these three years, I certainly haven't been silent.<br />
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Here's a partial list of my work during that stretch. I either completely or mostly authored all of the pieces below:<br />
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<span class="s1">Seminars, webinars, and university courses:</span><br />
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIn-6iJuwYo"><span class="s2">Planning Your 2013 Marketing Budget</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://busbizcast.business.colostate.edu/bizcast/Viewer/?peid=8d9e9f13d812474db4b45a68322254461d"><span class="s2">Digital Marketing Overview</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZgFNV0zO0Q&list=UUCaujvsxHMWIwF6PZtObOdg&index=17&feature=plcp"><span class="s2">Local Online Marketing</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/burns_marketing/creative-ppc-techniques"><span class="s2">Creative PPC Techniques</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.slideshare.net/ParallelPath/seo-iseasyviaverioconference"><span class="s2">SEO is Easy. Seriously.</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
<span class="s1">Video blog posts:</span><br />
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.burnsmarketing.com/burns-digital/engagement-marketing-defined"><span class="s2">Engagement Marketing Defined</span></a></span></li>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.burnsmarketing.com/burns-digital/engagement-marketing-never-stop-the-conversation" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Engagement Marketing: Never Stop the Conversation</span></a></span></li>
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<span class="s1">Text blog posts:</span><br />
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.burnsmarketing.com/burns-digital/qr-codes-dont-forget-your-marketing-basics" target="_blank"><span class="s2">QR Codes: Don’t Forget Your Marketing Basics!</span></a></span></li>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.burnsmarketing.com/burns-digital/top-10-usage-guidelines-for-qr-codes" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Top 10 Usage Guidelines for QR Codes</span></a></span></li>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.burnsmarketing.com/burns-digital/problem-solving-via-qr-codes" target="_blank"><span class="s2">Problem-Solving via QR Codes</span></a></span></li>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://www.burnsmarketing.com/blog/fisa-cans-can-spam-two-major-differences-between-the-canadian-and-u-s-anti-spam-laws" target="_blank"><span class="s2">FISA Cans CAN SPAM: Two Major Differences Between the Canadian and US Anti-SPAM Laws</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
<span class="s1">Digital publications:</span><br />
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://read.uberflip.com/i/66409"><span class="s2">2012 Digital Marketing Trends Survey</span></a></span></li>
</ul>
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<li class="li2"><span class="s1"><a href="http://burnsmarketing.uberflip.com/i/74616"><span class="s2">Achieving Goals With Engagement Marketing</span></a></span></li>
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Well, I want to re-introduce you all to this blog now because I'm going to start publishing here again. There are a number of topics that I'd like to explore independent of the context of a particular company, and this is the best place to do so. Hopefully, you'll enjoy the new content. Stay tuned ...<br />
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(Image courtesy of Just2Shutter at <a href="http://freedigitalphotos.net/" rel="nofollow">freedigitalphotos.net</a>)</div>
Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-71609725783502047982009-12-01T09:34:00.001-07:002009-12-02T09:06:47.064-07:00Rockets!Wow, it has been over two months since I last posted. In some ways, I feel bad about that, but it's really just an indication of how busy I have been at Parallel Path.<div><br /></div><div>Because of this busyness, I was determined to spend the Thanksgiving weekend 'unplugged' and not working, and to get in some quality time with my family. And it worked out just as I had hoped, with lots of throwing the football around, playing kickball, and generally goofing off. One of the highlights was on Friday, when the boys and I (and some other family members) spent the day shooting rockets. It was a beautiful, clear day with no wind; perfect for rockets.</div><div style="text-align: center; "><br /></div><div>As regular readers of this blog know, for many years I put on Big Science Saturday for the boys. That has waned quite a bit, but we still seem to find time for fun and practical applications of science, and launching rockets is a perfect example. We have been launching rockets (of the<a href="http://estesrockets.com/">Estes</a> variety) off and on for a couple of years now.</div><div style="text-align: center; "><br /></div><div>What was particularly fun about this launch is that we have started to experiment with getting the rockets to do fun things they weren't necessarily designed for. By doing so, I hope the boys start learning about some of the basic physics involved in rocket flight.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>This weekend we experimented with launching an 'astronaut' in the rocket. The astronaut was made from Legos, and you can kind of see him in the lower left of</div><div>this photo (thanks to Pawel for all of the pics):</div></div><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxSl1hGbRnI/AAAAAAAAAEs/Dg3riOqE2hQ/s320/lego+guy.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410131391215781490" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 204px; height: 320px; " /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxSl03FUt5I/AAAAAAAAAEc/nFGnKZlwAvQ/s1600/dsc_0041.jpg"></a><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div>The Lego astronaut had his own parachute that deployed separately from the rocket's recovery chute. We then went through several launch cycles, first by Maddox:</div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxSkkf_bJxI/AAAAAAAAAD0/YlmMCi6Hnz4/s320/dsc_0025.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410129999348573970" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px; " /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>... then by Ryan:</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxaN9vqD-3I/AAAAAAAAAE0/mQs-KahKbD0/s320/dsc_0039.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410668094236654450" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px; " /></div></div></div></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxaN983O6FI/AAAAAAAAAE8/DxEM4z90WT4/s1600-h/dsc_0040.jpg"><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxaN983O6FI/AAAAAAAAAE8/DxEM4z90WT4/s320/dsc_0040.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410668097781557330" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px; " /></a><div><div><br /></div></div><br /><div><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxSl03FUt5I/AAAAAAAAAEc/nFGnKZlwAvQ/s320/dsc_0041.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410131379936868242" style="float: left; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 0px; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px; " /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I'm not sure the boys learned much about rocket physics through the activity, but they did learn what happens when you don't put enough protective wadding between the rocket motor and your astronaut. We ended up with a very scorched astronaut dude:</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxaPBD9R6sI/AAAAAAAAAFE/Ii--I7URuzg/s1600-h/dsc_0054.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SxaPBD9R6sI/AAAAAAAAAFE/Ii--I7URuzg/s320/dsc_0054.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410669250737203906" /></a><div><div><br /></div></div><div><div>Overall, a tremendous day.</div></div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-32318756695746632672009-09-24T21:04:00.011-06:002009-09-24T22:01:19.309-06:00More Mac HijinksYes, yet another Mac vs. Windows post. Sorry, but I just keep stumbling across interesting stuff.<div><br /></div><div>A while ago I posted on the Apple TV ads that beat up on Windows. Well, it turns out that Apple doesn't confine their shots to their advertising. I stumbled across a subtle shot embedded in my new Snow Leopard operating system update.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the few new (visible) features in Snow Leopard is that the cover flow view is integrated into the Finder window. This provides a cool way to quickly view the files and subfolders in a folder. Here's an example:</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/Srw7sgImbFI/AAAAAAAAADM/Ned4js_PcIs/s1600-h/grab0.jpg"><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/Srw7sgImbFI/AAAAAAAAADM/Ned4js_PcIs/s320/grab0.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385244890154560594" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 204px; " /></a><div><div style="text-align: center; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#0000EE;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><div style="text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color:#000000;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="text-decoration: underline; "><br /></span></span></span></div></span></span></div>Today I was looking for some documents on our corporate network using this Finder view. When I viewed the network, I saw several servers in the Finder window:</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/Srw9Nk3oETI/AAAAAAAAADU/-pk8VdhKqMw/s1600-h/grab1.jpg"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/Srw9Nk3oETI/AAAAAAAAADU/-pk8VdhKqMw/s320/grab1.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385246557872853298" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 211px; " /></a><div>The first couple of times I saw this view, it didn't occur to me that these images were intended to represent Windows servers. When I realized this, I wondered what the text might be on the screens, so I blew it up:</div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/Srw9_4HkYJI/AAAAAAAAADc/kI7atarg-JQ/s1600-h/grab2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 174px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/Srw9_4HkYJI/AAAAAAAAADc/kI7atarg-JQ/s320/grab2.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385247422033453202" /></a><div><br /></div><div>You may not be able to see the detail, but it's the Windows blue screen of death!</div><div><br /></div><div>They never miss an opportunity to take a swing. I love it.</div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-79876363211101315072009-08-29T10:30:00.000-06:002009-08-29T10:30:00.847-06:00Twitter silliness<div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(30, 43, 59); -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I use a web monitoring tool called </span><a href="http://www.filtrbox.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Filtrbox</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> to search for certain phrases across websites, Twitter, blogs, and other social media. It provides broader and fresher results than Google Alerts, which I used to use, and makes Filtrbox a terrific real-time market intelligence tool.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">One of the keyword phrases I monitor is my employer's name, Parallel Path. The daily results of this search have highlighted a thread that has been going through Twitter for weeks that is unrelated to my company. The following phrase has been tweeted hundreds of times over the last several weeks:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><a target="_blank" href="http://www.filtrbox.com/redirect.htm?u=NjcxMA==&a=NzkwNDI0MzA=&f=Mzc3OTI=" style="color: rgb(105, 156, 45); text-decoration: none; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">"There's a parallel path between friends and enemies, and wenever u cross it u make frienemies</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">" </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">It appears in various forms of grammatical construction, but the concept is always the same.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I have to admit that I don't get it. At multiple levels, I don't get it. But clearly, the following people do:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/MzCitaBaby"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">MzCitaBaby</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/GuapGang619" style="text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">GuapGang619</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/AdotdaDon" style="text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">AdotdaDon</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/mrslovexlabels"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">mrslovexlabels</span></a></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/redd_foxx"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">redd_foxx</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (I thought he was dead. Tweeting from beyond the grave?)</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/BackOnMyBest" style="text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">BackOnMyBest</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/WhYYuOnMyDiCkGG"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">WhYYuOnMy****GG</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (Word removed by FCC censors.)</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/Beauty_Badd" style="text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Beauty_Badd</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/itisIAnthony"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">itisIAnthony</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/jstFOLLOWmee"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">jstFOLLOWmee</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/sKAY_shesPoppin"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">sKAY_shesPoppin</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/KikiFarah" style="text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">KikiFarah</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(30, 43, 59); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/LondonCee551"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">LondonCee551</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/rell007"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">rell007</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/prettydamnnbadd" style="text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">prettydamnnbadd</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/ShAnNaBaByy"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">ShAnNaBaByy</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">@</span><a href="http://twitter.com/fashioNeCca101" style="text-decoration: underline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">fashioNeCca101</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">These are people that have tweeted the phrase in the last few days, some several times. The first tweet I saw of this was on July 18, so this has been somewhat viral for over a month.</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Quantcast estimates the current demographic profile of Twitter users as follows:</span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><iframe marginwidth="0px" marginheight="0px" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" height="260" width="509" src="http://www.quantcast.com/profile/embed?img=http%3A//www.quantcast.com/profile/demographicGraphAll%3Fwunit%3Dwd%253Acom.twitter%26cols%3D2&w=509&h=260&showDeleteButtons=false&wunit=Charts.Summary.Demographics."></iframe></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(30, 43, 59); -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size:small;">Clearly, I'm not squarely in the demographic center of Twitter users (as compared to the Internet average). I'm not a female African American and I'm on the older side. When I look at some of those Twitter account names above, that mimatch is certainly reinforced. My Twitter account, @tearles, just doesn't fit on the same</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(30, 43, 59); -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> list with @</span><a href="http://twitter.com/sKAY_shesPoppin"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">sKAY_shesPoppin</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> or @</span><a href="http://twitter.com/MzCitaBaby"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">MzCitaBaby</span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#1E2B3B;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; font-family:Georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(30, 43, 59); -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px; font-family:'Trebuchet MS', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">guess that explains why I just don't get it. (But it highlights to me the beauty of Twitter as a communication medium and marketing tool. That's for another post ...)</span></span></span></span></span></div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-69099355879350658192009-08-26T20:51:00.003-06:002009-08-27T03:43:28.541-06:00Microsoft v. Apple - They Both Win(I know it has been a very long time since my last post. The main reason for that is that my work, which I am enjoying immensely, is keeping me very busy. However, I have been thinking about this topic for a while, and it's time for me to actually post about it.)<div><br /></div><div>I had a recent experience with my Mac that reminded me why I own one. But before I get to that, I'd like to discuss what I like about Microsoft or, more specifically, what I like about their new advertising campaign:<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/ibhC_3-1New&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/ibhC_3-1New&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><div><br /></div><div>Almost a year ago, I <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2008/10/microsoft-finally-did-something-right.html">posted</a> that I enjoyed and appreciated the "I'm a PC" campaign from Microsoft, a campaign created by <a href="http://www.cpbgroup.com/">Crispin Porter & Bogusky</a>. Crispin Porter excels at communicating both the essence of brand and the value a product delivers to customers. In this case, they're doing the latter, highlighting the configurability of Windows-based machines, so you only pay for exactly what you want. In every commercial, they take a direct swipe at Apple by pointing out that, to get just what you want from Apple, you would need to pay much more than a PC would cost. It's a powerful campaign, and does what I have always tried to do in marketing: highlight my product's strengths while moderating its weaknesses.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here's another thing that I enjoy about these new ads. I love that Microsoft and Apple are actively bashing each other. Apple has been plugging away at Microsoft for a long time with their "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" ads, and this is the first example of an effective counterpunch from Microsoft. Why do I like this? Because this kind of competition is great for consumers like you and me.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now, will these ads make me buy a PC? No way, and a recent experience will show why. My wife's sister-in-law celebrated her 25th wedding anniversary, and the family was asked to submit video wishes to the couple. We decided to make a goofy video about an episode from the couple's past. We shot about 10 minutes of very loosely scripted video, and I imported that into Apple iMovie. I then edited it down, inserted opening titles and closing credits, overlayed intro music, and inserted transition effects. I had never done anything like this, and it took all of about an hour. If you'd like to see the video, here it is. (However, it's full of family inside jokes, so I'm not sure you'll appreciate the humor.) <i>[I just noticed that the embedded video doesn't format correctly in either Firefox or Safari. If you'd like to see it on the YouTube site, you'll find it <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ACDQJIsrt4">here</a>.]</i></div></div><div><br /></div><object width="560" height="340"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9ACDQJIsrt4&hl=en&fs=1&"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9ACDQJIsrt4&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="560" height="340"></embed></object><div><br /></div><div>How does this illustrate why I wouldn't own a PC? Couldn't I do this on a PC? Sure. But I'd have to research the software required to do movie editing, go buy it, install it, figure out how to use it, make sure I had the correct drivers for my camcorder, etc. With a Mac, it was all there, it all worked, and it was intuitively easy.</div><div><br /></div><div>This was all done on my work laptop, by the way. If I were one of the people on the PC commercials, I would have defined the ideal work laptop for me, which means I never would have included something like Mac's iLife suite. But the fact is, my work laptop is my only computer; it has to do everything in my life. If I had to equip a PC with every application that I MIGHT need in the future, like photo or movie processing or creating PDFs, it would cost at least as much as my Mac, and it wouldn't work nearly as well. Apples-to-'apples' price comparisons have been done many times (like <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9023959/Mac_vs._PC_cost_analysis_How_does_it_all_add_up_">here</a> and <a href="http://technologizer.com/2008/08/14/are-macs-more-expensive-lets-do-the-math-once-and-for-all/">here</a>), and generally conclude that Macs and PCs are about the same price, when similarly equipped. </div><div><br /></div><div>Macs are complete machines, amazingly well designed. And not more expensive than PCs, when measured 'apples' to apples.</div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-32455767524167003952009-05-31T22:03:00.000-06:002009-05-31T22:03:15.952-06:00Customer service, done rightRecently, I complained about <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2009/03/24-hour-fitness-just-doesnt-get-it.html">an experience my wife had at 24 Hour Fitness</a>. On the same day I posted, a senior member of the company <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2009/03/24-hour-fitness-just-doesnt-get-it.html?showComment=1235966880000#c901971474260355142">submitted a reply</a> to my posting, attempting to make the situation right. There was a bit of piling on by other commenters, but at least 24 Hour Fitness's Harry was trying to do the right thing and provide a remedy. I don't believe Gina ever took Harry up on his offer, so the situation was never completely resolved, but at least he tried.<div><br /></div><div>Similarly, I recently had an interesting customer service experience with <a href="http://www.proflowers.com/">Proflowers</a>. I had little or no experience with ordering flowers online, but my favorite local flower shop went out of business and I need something for Mothers Day. I remembered reading an article about Proflowers' unique business model that ships flowers directly from the grower to the customer; something about by eliminating the local retailer middleman, the flowers can be a little cheaper and, more importantly, arrive at the customer's home with more of their useful life remaining. </div><div><br /></div><div>(From a marketing perspective, it also helped that I was constantly reminded of Proflowers through their advertisements on ESPN radio. Remember, in a <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2008/10/radio-ads-really-work-part-1-of-2.html">post last year</a> I both admitted that I listen to sports talk radio and commented on radio advertising effectiveness. This is another example of radio's effectiveness [although I can't comment on the ROI associated with radio advertising investments].)</div><div><br /></div><div>I decided to give ProFlowers a try, ordering a bouquet of Gina's favorite flower, tulips, to be delivered for Mothers Day. Well, their arrival was very disappointing. It was basically 15 flowers in a cardboard box. No decorative paper, no flower food, no little water bulbs on the stems, and two of the stems damaged. After we put the flowers in water, they all laid over and never looked right.</div><div><br /></div><div>I shot off a quick email to their customer service and received a near-immediate response, apologizing for my disappoint experience and offering me a free order, including free shipping. I ordered the same thing, 15 tulips, to be delivered the next week.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the second order arrived, it was a completely different experience. This time there was flower food and the flowers were wrapped in paper. Most importantly, the flower came with instructions on how to put the flowers in water and support them initially so that they don't lay over. The flowers turned out great.</div><div><br /></div><div>After the pleasant second experience, I'm willing to assume that I was just the unfortunate victim of a random, errant shipment and give Proflowers another chance. </div><div><br /></div><div>If they had just offered me a discount on my next order, I would never have made another order because there would have been too much risk associated with it. They removed all risk by providing the second order completely free. They did so because they recognize the lifetime value of a customer, rather than the value of a single sale. It's amazing that some companies focus solely on the value of the sale.</div><div><br /></div><div>Knowing the lifetime value of a cusomter is good marketing, and can lead to very good customer service. </div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-72557952621479076252009-03-17T20:50:00.000-06:002009-03-17T20:51:11.786-06:00The future is difficult to imagineI came across the following thought-provoking video:<div><br /></div><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cL9Wu2kWwSY&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cL9Wu2kWwSY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />I apologize if you have already seen it, since it has been out about six months. But one thing about the video that struck me as relevant to this blog is the statements it makes about children, that we're training children for jobs that don't even exist yet, or that they will hold so many jobs before their mid-30s.<br /><br />Is there a stronger statement of generational differences? And I thought there were a lot of differences between my dad's generation and my own.<br /><br />Why is this relevant to this blog? Because of what I have said about <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2008/06/just-when-i-was-beginning-to-doubt-bss.html">Big Science Saturday and why I do it</a>. (Or, more accurately, did it.) I can't say that my boys are going to be scientists, nor do I care. But I want them to be able to evaluate situations in a structured, critical way, since there is no way we can predict what they'll be faced with.<br /><br />On a related note, it is Science Fair season at Crest View Elementary. Ryan's is required this year and Maddox's* is optional, although they're always required at the Earles household. Ryan's not a fan of Science Fairs, maybe because I have required his participation every year when only a few of his classmates also participated. However, we found a topic he enjoys, and we made it a little more interesting by suggesting he <a href="http://buddyinboulder.wordpress.com/">blog about it</a>. Feel free to read his posts and comment. He loves getting new comments.<br /><br />And who knows, maybe he'll really take to blogging. Gina and I are trying to use his blogging as an opportunity to teach some writing techniques, grammar, and spelling. But, even if he gets none of that from blogging, it's still fun to see him put himself out there.<br /><br />*One of these days, I need to learn how to properly write the possessive form of Maddox: Maddox' or Maddox's.Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-35398034855200381412009-03-01T14:24:00.006-07:002009-03-01T17:45:19.997-07:0024 Hour Fitness just doesn't get itThis morning, my wife met her friend at 24 Hour Fitness to take some kind of cardio kickboxing class. Her friend was a member and had a free guest pass for Gina to use. <div><br /></div><div>This 24 Hour Fitness facility is pretty new in north Boulder, having been open only a few months. As with any of these types of facilities, they have a fairly large, aggressive sales staff, since gyms make the most money off of sales to new members. (Of course, they hope these members don't use the facility so they can oversubscribe their asset base.)</div><div><br /></div><div>When Gina showed her free guest pass, the salesman began giving his pitch. He asked if she was currently a health club member, to which she replied that she was and that she wasn't interested in joining 24 Hour Fitness. He then told her that she would have to leave!</div><div><br /></div><div>He explained that they only give out those guest passes to those that are willing to go through the sales pitch. Gina pointed out that the pass said nothing about that, but that didn't seem to matter to him. Since she wanted to attend the class with her (now very embarrassed) friend, Gina agreed to listen to his pitch after the class, since it was about to begin. She ultimately just walked out after the class.</div><div><br /></div><div>The whole thing just left a very bad taste in her mouth for 24 Hour Fitness. Do you think she's going to recommend that anyone else join that gym? Rather, she's probably going to go out of her way to tell potential members to avoid it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Would it have been very difficult for the salesperson to say, "We normally provide those guest passes for those that may be interested in joining. However, please enjoy your visit today and make sure to tell your friends what you think?" The incremental cost of allowing her to visit was effectively zero. The incremental cost of trying to apply a rule that should not even have been in place (if you're going to have a rule, state it on the pass) was creating an annoyed, but well-networked, active health club member that knows a lot of other health club members. Seriously dumb.</div><div><br /></div><div>How's this for a different approach? My friend David (his blog <a href="http://bluerant.com/">Bluerant is here</a>) markets a kids' TV show called Big Green Rabbit. He saw that some fans posted a video from the show on their blog, so he sent them a little thank you package. <a href="http://kawchukkovacs.com/archive/2009/02/26/big-green-rabbit-makes-our-week.aspx">Here is their response</a>. What do you think that package cost BGR, maybe $20, including shipping? What do you think the value of that family's BGR evangelism is worth?</div><div><br /></div><div>Businesses are built one delighted customer at a time. They can be torn down quickly by a handful of people with negative feelings.</div><div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-91035883271535975552009-02-03T20:48:00.006-07:002009-02-03T21:34:53.591-07:00If everyone's going to see it, make sure it's rightTwice over the last week, I have had the pleasure of using a <a href="http://www.sloanvalve.com/products_ENU_HTML.htm">Sloan Valve flushless urinal</a>. (I bet you haven't read many blog posts that start with a sentence about urinals, have you?!) The facilities at which they were installed were justifiably proud of their green initiative. So much so, in fact, that at both institutions, they had the following sign hung above each urinal:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SYkS3E4GWYI/AAAAAAAAACs/CAfXPTKq6UE/s1600-h/IMG_0220.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 309px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_6Srw8AfO-Y4/SYkS3E4GWYI/AAAAAAAAACs/CAfXPTKq6UE/s320/IMG_0220.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5298787173989243266" border="0" /></a><br />Nice, huh? Sure, if you ignore the poor grammar. What poor grammar, you may ask? Admittedly, it's minor, but it bugs me nonetheless:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">"... you are helping the environment to conserve ..."<br /></div><br />Does the <span style="font-weight: bold;">environment </span>conserve? If the environment itself can conserve, then why are we being asked to do so? Let's just let the environment fix itself!<br /><br />Maybe a better way to word this would be "... you are helping the environment by conserving ...".<br /><br />Even then, it's not really accurate. Am I, as a user, really helping the environment? I suppose if there were traditional urinals next to the flushless ones and I <span style="font-style: italic;">chose</span> to use the flushless ones, then I can say I helped the environment. But there were no traditional ones, and I wasn't going to go find one because I had to pee.<br /><br />So it was really the facility owner that was helping the environment by taking away my choice, and they should be applauded for that. The sign should really celebrate them: "The University of Colorado is helping the environment by conserving ..."<br /><br />It reminds me of when I was publishing an email newsletter for <a href="http://www.sharedplan.com/">SharedPlan Software</a>. Our newsletter distribution got up to about 20,000 readers, and I would stress out every time I hit the Send button. Any little grammatical error was going to be seen and judged by all those people, so I would critically read and reread several times before sending.<br /><br />Make sure you get it right before the whole world reads it!<br /><br />(Author's note: I saw the first of these signs at some facility last week, and it wasn't until I had already left that this grammatical issue occurred to me. I wanted to blog about it, but wanted the picture, so I was glad to come across the same sign today. However, I had never really thought about how awkward it is to take a picture around a bank of urinals. You know, there's just a certain urinal etiquette that must be respected. So I kind of had to hang around until everyone left to avoid any potential embarrassment, but I didn't want to be seen as lurking, either. I ended up washing my hands really, really well.)Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-611548458609733803.post-60798771489874626822009-01-25T11:15:00.004-07:002009-01-25T11:29:32.970-07:00The Detonators!I recently <a href="http://tracyearles.blogspot.com/2008/11/love-those-discovery-channel-shows.html">professed my love</a> for Discovery Channel shows. As the boys and I were lazing away a snowy Sunday morning watching <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/cashcab/cashcab.html">Cash Cab</a> (they seem to love that show), we saw an ad for <a href="http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/detonators/detonators.html">The Detonators</a>, a new Discovery show starting January 28.<br /><br />It appears to be the ultimate show for the boys and I. Why? Because all they do is show how they blow stuff up! Really big stuff!<br /><br />Sometimes, I amaze myself with my parenting skills.Tracyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08756036506379082149noreply@blogger.com0