The Gap Between Preception and Performance

Sunset 2012-02-05 17.10.20 at Media Post shared some powerful data about the nature of a rewarding experience. Marketers too often focus on the customer actions they want without really understanding the values that drive those behaviors.

The resulting gaps impact sales results and brand engagement. The good news is that with a slight shift in perspective, marketers can gain the confidence that the customer actions they want can be predictably and reliably delivered. Read more about customers and What Are They Really Thinking?

I have seen this play out in the retail environment where products require a more education before the customer can fully appreciate the true value proposition of the products. In one case study we were able to boost engagement and sales to the tune of 40,392 units to 813,892 units in only two months.

We were able to crack the code for those customers. Results are often unprecedented.

 

10 Questions Entreprenurs Should Ask To Focus

Why 5% Succeed Best Selling Book CoverJackie Nagel, at Synnovatia offers excellent questions every entrepreneur should ask to focus their vision. That got me thinking about some of the examples I’ve collected, saved and used when developing projects, designing possibilities or delivering profit.

Elaine Starling co author of Why 5% Succeed: The 5 Principles of Predictable Profit, shares Key Questions To Triple Bottom Line Any Project, Business or endeavour worthy of your time and attention.

So once you know what your why is all about, you can focus on your customers. One of the best ways to do that is to Build an empathy map of your customers, clients. This is a powerful exercise and it’s often uncanny how close you can come without any other market research. If you do verify your empathy map with research or focus groups, you’ll have highly relevant data. If you do or don’t verify with focus groups, revisiting the empathy map regularly to revise or refine is essential if it’s to remain a useful tool.

Once you build an empathy map of your ideal customer it informs the steps to be taken that implement your customer engagement strategies. If you’ve done this much, your chances of producing relevant results for both sides of the bargain.are pretty good. That’s something to build on.

Asking questions is part of how we’re wired so why not ask really good ones? The best advice I have on the subject is to really be present when listening to the responses..

Key Questions To Triple Bottom Line Any Project, Business

Thanks to Elaine Starling author of  Why 5% Succeed for a really useful way to leverage opportunities and energize business practices. You can accomplish anything. You are unlimited and incredibly resourceful!!!

Have a blast writing about your projects and you’ll be totally energized for an amazing 2016!!

  1. How the project will benefit YOU.You As Center Of Your World– What skills will you practice or learn?
    – Who might you meet because of this project?
    – How might you be positioned socially and professionally because of this project?
    – How do you FEEL as you write about this project?
    – How long will it take you to complete this project?  If it took all year, is it worth it?
    – Can you automate this project at some point?
    – Is the impact of this project ongoing or a onetime burst?
  2. How the project will benefit OTHERS.Multiple people back of head view– Who will benefit?
    – How might they benefit?
    – How could it change their lives and the lives of those they know?
    – Is the impact of this project ongoing or a onetime burst?
  3. How the project will benefit the WORLD.– What might the ripple effect look like?  How would it spread?
    – How might the world change because of this project?  (Imagine the most AMAZING results EVER!!)

When you’re done writing, put it away for 24 hours.  Then re-read what you wrote and stack the pages with the most impactful on top.  You can rate them from 1 to 10 if you want to, but it’s really based on how you FEEL as you review what’s possible.

 

Checklists & Cheat Sheets To Make Marketing Easier and More Effective

One of the surprise gifts for the New Year for marketers everywhere was Natasha Alex‘s post on Business 2 Community.

29 Checklists & Cheat Sheets to Make Marketers’ Lives Easier

Revenue Formula Nested Framework

It’s so great to know what tweaks, low hanging fruit and accepted standards are for various marketing tactics and activities.

The real benefit from comprehensive resource lists is that no matter where your business is, there’s a first step that’s right for you business. This makes it easy to take action and leverage that action into measurable results.

If one were to spend the rest of the year implementing the nuggets from this, it would be time well spent.

 

‘Choice’ In The Subject Line Boosts Engagement

Man Overwhelmed by beverage choices @lauriesullivan, at Media Post shared some interesting data regarding engagement results from email and text message campaigns. Engagement where the recipient has a ‘choice’ in the matter, i.e., click to request a coupon versus just sending the coupon, had a significant impact on open rates and conversions.

Experian Marketing Services released its quarterly email benchmark report Q2 2015 focusing on engagement rates and duel subscriber rates, those who subscribe to email and some sort of alternative communication, like mobile text of push messages on their device.

“Customers who texted to get a coupon were more willing to complete a purchase than those receiving a push campaign, but both message types were successful in generating revenue.”

Analysts also looked at consumers who subscribe to both email, whether opened on a smartphone or desktop, and some other form of communication such as mobile text or push messages on their device.

In the analyses of SMS and MMS messaging programs from two brands it turns out dual subscribers were 3.9 times more likely to complete transactions than email-only customers. Transaction rates for mobile campaigns were 10-times higher than those for email campaigns

More than half of all email opens and 38% of clicks occur on mobile devices, but sometimes it takes two channels to make a campaign work. So, to better understand the value of mobile subscribers, Experian Marketing Services analyzed case studies from two brands with on-going SMS and MMS messaging programs. In both cases, analysts could attribute transactions to mobile campaign data by subscriber.

Consider this: signing up to receive emails, subscribers can open those emails on desktop, tablet, e-reader or mobile device. Mobile SMS and MMS require a separate opt-in. In the first analysis, “Brand A,” which sends emails and SMS messages announcing seasonal products, wanted to see if email subscribers who also provide their mobile phone numbers transact more in any one channel, compared with email-only subscribers.

Comparing both, Experian found significant increases in the percentage of mobile and email subscribers who had completed transactions. Dual subscribers (22.5%) were 3.9-times more likely to make a transaction, compared with email only subscribers (5.7%).

The second study with another brand analyzed SMS and MMS campaigns during eight months from another brand. It compared two types of mobile campaigns for Brand B, broadcast campaigns, in which the brand pushed SMS to the subscriber, such as a sale starts tomorrow, and pull campaigns, in which customers texted to get an offer such as “Save 25% off with in-store coupon- code XXX123.”

SMS push or broadcast campaigns made-up more than 95% of the volume, but pull messages added to stronger transaction results. It also compared transaction rates with Experian email benchmarks finding that mobile transaction rates were more than 10-times higher than the all industry average email transaction rate at 0.64% for all mobile campaigns compared to 0.06% for all industry email.

Customers who texted to get a coupon were more willing to complete a purchase than those receiving a push campaign, but both message types were successful in generating revenue. The overall revenue per message was $0.32, which is more than 3-times higher than the all industry revenue per email for this period at $0.09.

Building A Single Currency For Marketing Measurement

Metrics That Matter

Finally marketers are starting to drill down to the basic metrics for measuring effectiveness.

Anto Chittilappilly shares some useful ways of thinking about how to organize your business or marketing to deliver the results you’re after. Read the full article at Media Post.

This is what it looks like when mindset, media and message converge. It’s about time.

Publishing Is Dead? Long Live Publishing!

This originally appeared on Adotas

Feb 23, 2015 John Philpin CEO of Lyris

John PhilpinTo misquote Mark Twain “The reports of the death of music have been greatly exaggerated.”

For 20 years – long before the iPod came along – there has been a meme circulating on the Internet that ‘music is dead’. Yet music is not just surviving – it is thriving.

•   True – HOW we listen to and absorb music has radically changed.

•   True – HOW artists make money out of their music has radically changed.

•   True – the music INDUSTRY is dead – but that’s not a bad thing … they got in the way.

•   True – if you don’t pay attention, you will assume that music has hit a low because your music sources will be defined by the ‘bubble’ of ‘what you like’ or ‘what you hear through radio and TV stations owned by corporations’. Oh, and what you hear through websites – increasingly owned by those same corporations.

But … the fact is that we are living in a golden age of massive creativity with people creating and publishing their work directly to their audience. Music of all genres is cutting through the clutter to be listened and claimed. But we – the audience – have to work harder to find it. And we, the audience, have to recognize that to create something like music takes someone’s time, creativity and skill, and it cannot be free.

Now here’s an exercise: Let’s replace ‘music’ in those statements above with publishing equivalents. True – HOW we listen to and absorb news has radically changed. True – HOW writers make money out of their writings and opinion has radically changed. True– … well, you get the idea. And – just like music – if you are paying attention, there is a plethora of solid news, opinions, and columns on all kinds of topics imaginable to be found by the discerning reader.

Publishing is not dead – it is just redefining itself. But ‘Big Publishing’ for the most part is behaving like ‘Big Music.’ Both are attempting to hang on to the model that they know and love because it created so much money for them – not necessarily the creators. ‘Big Music’ continues to drive shows such as ‘The X Factor’, ‘American Idol’ and ‘The Voice’ – all essentially seeking to keep ‘Big Music’ in control. And the audience laps it up.

Big Publishing, Big Mistakes? Looking into the publishing camp, the story is not that different. Publishers are experimenting with pay-walls to ensure their content is not ‘given away’, cluttering their websites with adverts to help pay for their empires and a host of other tricks that simply make readers go away. This because they seem to confuse what they think they are about with what we think they are about. But that’s another subject.

I am a keen follower of Ben Thompson of Stratechery fame and one of his recent blog posts, Publishers and the Smiling Curve, prompted my own thoughts relating to how publishers’ current business models are too often positioned at the bottom of the value chain. Switching the power from a broadcast/blitz/blast communication style of the traditional media industry to a more considered, engaged, conversational style that embraces dialog that consumers prefer, is where publishers can drive value at the edges. But that is hard.

Ben has since followed up with another blog post surmising that there are two prime business models on the Internet.

1.     You can try to make a little money from a lot of people.

2.     You can try to make a lot of money from a few people.

For publishers that means making pennies on large numbers of subscribers only works if you have large numbers of subscribers. To quote Ben; “it’s the middle that is doomedbut things are looking up for the truly differentiated.”

Bottom line …  Publishers have to think differently about their business and their relationships with their audiences. Connected customers are powering a seismic shift in business models and as long as traditional media operates in a linear model of value creation acting like gatekeepers they will be left behind by networks that connect the right content to the right user.

Which brings me to ‘Niche Publishing’. Any business that wants to pursue ‘true differentiation’ needs to establish a product that, in the mind of the consumer, is markedly and undeniably different. Niches don’t scale; they go deep. ‘All you can eat’ strategies are ultimately suited for content that is broadly appealing. For anything with a limited but intensely interested audience, they are nothing but a bad idea. A way to limit your audience and the amount of money to be made.

Niche publishing is growing and profitable. But the question is where does niche publishing go next?

As I often say, the world of the future is not about the brand – it is about us – the customers, the people, the individuals. And as an individual, do I really want to receive lots of different emails, alerts, magazines, newspapers, zines – each one uniquely focused on an interest of mine? Of course not. I am my own system of record. I need to receive communications that are managed, controlled, and orchestrated so that I receive the right content at the right time without overloading me.

Bottom line, ‘Extreme Publishing’ is the future and allows for reliable and consistent content to be sent to me at the right time, to the right place, with the right …. based on my behavior, preferences, device, context … and anything else I (not the publisher) consider to be relevant.

That is what a connected customer communication platform is all about. It is a long journey, but just as Lao Tzu said “every journey starts with a single step”. My question for you is how many steps have you taken?

A Broad Brush Across Content Marketing In 2015

From Media Post

Content Marketing Block PuzzleAccording to KJ Wakefield & L Mangiaforte in a NewsCred blog, with companies globally spending an estimated $135 billion on content marketing in 2014, staying ahead of the curve is essential financially and strategically. To help visualize what content will look and act like in the near future, the authors collected the voices of marketing thought-leaders to tell us what they see for 2015.

There were a lot of digital marketing changes in 2014, as marketers focused on providing valuable content to their consumers, and making it accessible on every platform, including mobile, says the report. Digital marketing predictions for 2015 by “those in the know,” are severely summarized here.

  • Companies will make content a key component of culture. Rebecca Lieb of the Altimeter Group calls this “developing an enterprise-wide culture of content.” Content creation shouldn’t just be a task for the marketing team, but external and internal communications to get input from all teams. User-generated content won’t only be relegated to the realm of social media.
  • “Soon, many of the top media sites in the world will be brand-owned,” says Doug Kessler of B2B agency Velocity. As the percentage of media sites owned by brands increases, so too will marketing budgets for content, leading to continuously higher quality
  • “… indy media that doesn’t take native ads will rise again.” Kessler predicts. Content sites that don’t accept native will eventually strike out, likely gaining enormous followings and alternative ad revenue for themselves in the process
  • Storytelling will topple other marketing silos, emerging as the ultimate audience-reaching tactic. NewsCred’s Head of Strategy Michael Brenner says, “… content, data and technology will emerge as the only way for brands to reach consumers through storytelling… “
  • Brands will need to tap into their human nature and tell funny, engaging, and emotional stories if they want to survive, notes Brenner. That’s good news for consumers and content marketers alike, there are fewer things worse than lifeless content.
  • Daniel Burstein, director of editorial content at MECLABS, says, “… in the same way that marketing automation, email marketing, analytics, software, etc. are all converging into one end-to-end marketing platform (usually in the cloud), companies and content creators will converge as well. More brands will become publishers, more publishers will become marketing agencies, and more marketing agencies will become brands….”
  • According to Neil Patel, co-founder of KISSmetrics, community is going to be a big focus of marketing in 2015. “…companies are going to realize there is much more value in a community… everyone knows there’s Instagram, Facebook, etc… but not every company is building its own… ”
  • We’ll see clearer definitions and get a better understanding of social native ads, native display, and custom sponsorships. Tom Channick, head of communications at Sharethrough, says. As open web publishers continue to optimize their mobile websites and apps, these ads will become the primary monetization strategy by year’s end…”
  • Brands will stop creating stale blog posts and produce richer content experiences instead. According to Hanna Andrzejewska, marketing manager at GetResponse future content will: “…evoke emotions, express deeper empathy for each customer persona, and tell great stories with less emphasis on aggressive selling…”
  • Mobile-first thinking becomes a priority. According to Andrzejewska, mobile will take the lead. “Considering the fact that over 60% of emails are opened on mobile devices first and conversion rates are still in the single digit percentage ranges, there’s still massive potential for marketers to gain a deeper understanding of the mobile user’s behavior…”
  • In 2015, companies must fully integrate digital into their entire operation. Murray Newlands, founder of Influence People, says that to keep up: “Having a great digital strategy is no longer something that can happen in isolation. The whole company has to undergo a digital transformation…”
  • Brands that create content for mobile will be a hit among consumers. According to Steve Farnsworth, chief marketing officer at The Steveology Group, “… 2015 is when marketers start to grasp Flex-Media and its necessity to take advantage of ‘content in your pocket.’ That is, content that goes everywhere the user goes… “
  • “… Before creating an editorial calendar for your content marketing, analyze who is involved in the buying process of your product, says Farnsworth. What titles, pressures, and job responsibilities do the users, bosses, and influencers that buy your product have? Content marketers are discovering that digital assets designed specifically for those topics are rocket fuel for driving inbound sales leads… ”
  • Farnsworth also says that “… repurposing existing marketing and corporate communications is usually created by marketers from their point of view, and focuses on what they sell, not on what they know. This is content marketing poison. While repurposing content sounds good, more often it is like using rotted wood to build a boat…
  • Entrepreneur and investor John Rampton “… SEO as a title is dying and will be dead in 2015. It will evolve into something bigger and much more important that encompasses everything marketing and analytics… ”
  • Marketing Speaker and Coach Jay Baer says: “… 2015 will bring decentralized content creation programs with participants across the company (not just marketing), as well as content initiatives that rely on user-generated content in expanded and highly strategic ways. The best source of content in most companies may be your employees and customers… ”
  • Melissa Breker, co-founder of Content Strategy Inc., says, “… we will see content as an experience. We need to think past silo-based content and use customer journeys to determine how content can create different experiences… across all content touch points… “

Revisiting the Long Tail Theory as Applied to Ebooks

E readerIn a limitless world of digital goods, powerful search and recommendation engines, near-zero marginal cost of digital production, storage and distribution, niche products shall get much more market relevance. “Selling less of more” is part of what the “Long Tail” theory has been preaching.

Does it apply to the creative industries too? And how? Should digital book publishers reduce attention on blockbusters and increase focus on the Long Tail as the source of the most profitable growth? Is there a space for unlimited growth of niche ebooks?

The critical factor is not supply or demand. It’s relevance and a rewarding experience. Read more.

New Research Defines Buyer’s Journey to 3 Steps

Recognizing how buyers navigate through their purchase process gives sellers the insight to improve their process management for fun and profit.

  |  September 12, 2013   |

Buyers Journey Starts OnlineI’ve heard the term “buyer’s journey” more than ever over the past year and a half. Marketers have been talking about understanding the buyer’s journey for some time now, but I haven’t seen any hard data to define what exactly this term means. I decided to research the buyer’s journey concept to better understand how to leverage it in modern marketing. To understand the buyer’s journey concept, I surveyed 400 B2B buyers and compiled their answers to create the first definitive guide to the modern buyer’s journey.

Why I Surveyed Buyers Instead of CMOs

I’m tired of reading surveys from chief marketing officers (CMOs) when the average CMO only drives a 5 percent click-though rate on emails. That means most CMOs fail 95 percent of the time when trying to drive engagement in the buyer’s journey. So to understand the buyer’s journey, I knew I had to survey the real buyers – not CMOs – if I wanted to get to the bottom of things.

What I Found

When asking buyers, I wanted to really understand their habits and their process much better. From understanding habits and processes, we can then map our marketing to those two behaviors and increase our engagement. So my questioning started with understanding how they research. Understanding research is the key to understanding the buyer’s cycle, because every buyer’s cycle starts with research.

  • The buyer’s journey starts online. The buyer’s journey begins with research, and 76 percent of my respondents said that they start with Google. In contrast, 15 percent of people said that they ask their peer groups first, but they still engage with search at some point in their buyer’s journey. A stunning 99 percent of respondents agreed that their search terms change as their research deepens.
  • The buyer’s journey has three steps. The next question I asked was aimed toward respondents who said that they begin their search on Google: How many times after the initial search do you go back to Google and search again during your research process? Seventy-two percent of respondents returned to Google two to three times during their buyer’s journey. Putting the journey in that context allows us to then craft content appropriate to each stage in the buyer’s journey. This is key because 77 percent of respondents also said they want different content at each stage of their journey.
  • Buyers prefer shorter content. If buyer’s want different content at each stage, let’s talk about the type of content we should be creating. I also asked their preferred size of content. Seventy percent of respondents said they prefer content under five pages long.

If you take these three fundamental understandings of the buyer’s journey, you can easily increase your engagement rates with targeted content and emails and ultimately convert more prospects into leads for your company.

Three Ways to Use This Information

  1. Define the three stages of your marketing cycle. Break your marketing cycle into three stages of interest. Then craft your content to fit each stage. Research shows that you need three stages, and people want different content at each stage. Tailor your content to each stage for increased engagement.
  2. Keep your content short and stage-specific. Make sure your content is targeted to each stage, and under five pages in length. The majority of content out there is generalized and applicable to any or all stages in the buying cycle. If you find that this is the case for your content, try breaking it down into shorter, more easily digestible sections, then separate them out and tailor them to the appropriate stage. This gives you more run out of your efforts, and it gives your buyers a better experience – one that matches the way they want to consume.
  3. Match your SEO terms and SEM buys to your three stages. Ninety-nine percent of people are going to search for a different term at each stage. Understanding this basic truth, and knowing that most buyers like getting different content at each stage, will help you to better match your search marketing with the correct content and relevant calls-to-action.

You can watch me present this data here. Also, please leave me messages in the comments section below or ping me on Twitter @msweezey if you have any questions on this research or how to implement these ideas.

Image on home page via Shutterstock.

This column was originally published on July 30, 2013.