The Harte of Marketing

There are a lot of marketers out there that understand that integrated marketing and communications (IMC) is a preferred way to do business because it is an outside-in approach. If an organization isn’t integrated, what are the best approaches to getting management buy-in? Anna Barcelos and I wanted to share nine key ways to provide management with the value of IMC.

Sales-Oriented Vs. Market-Oriented – Which Are You?

It’s often been said that the mindset of “If we build it, they will come” is not viable for long term business. To understand why, let’s look at the difference between a sales-oriented and market-oriented organization.

Sales-oriented organizations have a heavy reliance on promotional tactics to sell whatever products/services the organization has selected to produce. Sales teams, not marketers lead the pack and have the burden of performance (i.e. revenue generation).

In the short-run, markets can be created with aggressive campaigns and sales work; however, the lifetime value of a customer is minimal. The organization mindset is focused on ‘the next big thing,’ hungry and aggressive sales teams, and sales beating up marketing for not dishing up qualified leads or customers ready to spend.

Market-oriented organizations identify what markets need/want first and tailor their operations to deliver products/services that meet those demands as efficiently as possible. Within a market-oriented organization, marketing takes the lead not sales.

Because the market-oriented company has its complete focus on the customer, the end result is often brand loyalty, sales, and strong customer lifetime values.

Getting Management Buy-In

If you are in a sales-oriented organization, how then can you get management to understand the benefits of customer-focused integrated marketing and communications? Here are five areas to focus on:

1. Execute long-term customer acquisition programs across channels instead of short-term lead generation to feed the sales funnel. While the former may take a little longer, the end results produce longer term customers with much higher life-time values. Demonstrate this with metrics and show management. They are always interested in seeing results tied to revenue generation. 
2. Emphasize that a customer for life is a much more cost-effective model versus solely focusing on new customer acquisition.
3. Communicate the benefits of how integrated marketing communications delivers a consistent message to both existing and prospective customers.
4. Involve key players from “silos” within the organization in planning process. If you can’t beat them— join them. Realistically, sales-oriented organizations will always have silos due to individual department goals/quotas.  If sales and marketing work together, both are vested in acquiring/retaining customers.
5. Build incentives around existing and new business initiatives to not only motivate sales, but customer service and marketing as well.

You would think that a market-oriented organization would have a leg-up on getting management buy-in, but a lot of times there are still silos and separate budgets in place that affect true IMC. But by demonstrating the value of IMC, chances are you’ll have an easier time convincing management of its inherent benefits. Here are four ways to show value:

1. Do an A/B test of an integrated campaign versus a non-integrated campaign (suggested by Valeria Maltoni, Conversation Agent) Testing is a risk-free, quick way to prove the value of IMC. Large companies shy away from radically changing their current marketing efforts. Testing gets them interested without any disruption in day to day. If tests delivers expected ROI, then scale.
2. Leverage/collect behavioral data and analytics for follow up IMC campaigns with existing customers and build profiles on potential untapped new markets. It’s astonishing how companies have amazing databases that they are not exploiting as much as they could.
3. Survey/talk to customers for the best insight on what works with them and what doesn’t. (“How can we be better?” “ Where do you want to find information?”) Management is always interested in seeing results of these efforts!
4. Maintain communication across all departments. Market-oriented organizations are more customer-centric than sales-oriented organizations. Goals are aligned across the organization from top to bottom. Everyone plays a part in the customer experience. IMC works well within these organizations, but communication is key.

Whether an organization is sales- or market-focused, and the latter may be more beneficial, the reality is that unless upper management encourages a customer-centric culture, self-contained silos and status quo will continue to be the norm.  The benefits of outside-in planning that IMC offers will bring you closer to the customer and social media has really helped put that into perspective.  The voice of the customer is louder than ever, which is forcing traditional organizations to rethink their marketing communications strategies and encouraging customer-centric organizations to develop deeper relationships with their customers.  Both take time, but small efforts across an entire organization will deliver what’s most important—a happy, loyal customer.

Share your expertise with us! Have you encouraged management to implement IMC? Have you broken down or bridged silos in your organization? What worked best? What didn’t work? What would you add here?

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The hiatus is over! For those who have been loyal readers of this blog, Happy New Year! And I thank you for hanging in there with me while I took the time to consider where to head next.   

For a long time I focused on marketing, PR and social media, but rarely the integration of them all. The focus of The Harte of Marketing for 2010 (and perhaps beyond) will be integrated marketing & communications. While integrated marketing communications (IMC) is nothing new, the embracing of social media surely puts IMC back in the spotlight as its principles are similar to long-standing IMC principles.

I have often said that social media isn’t shaking the foundations of marketing or public relations; it’s just driving us home to our roots, which seem to be long forgotten. The same is true of the integration of communications (advertising, branding, PR, direct marketing, etc.) or marketing functions (the 4 Ps)…many people have been integrating since the 90s and for them this will be nothing new, but I hope to add a few twists and turns even they weren’t expecting.

The Eight Guiding Principles of IMC

I am a long-time student of Don Schultz (interview with Don), professor emeritus-in-service of integrated marketing communications, Northwestern University, as well as Larry Percy, Clarke Caywood, Robert Lauterborn, Philip Kotler and all the other folks who worked diligently to put customers at the forefront of our marketing and communications. While times have changed since they first wrote and educated on IMC, the need to prove value to management has not. These are the eight guiding principles from Don Schultz’s book “IMC: The Next Generation. Five Steps for Delivering Value and Measuring Returns Using Marketing Communications.(2003)” 

• Principle 1: Become a Customer-Centric Organization
• Principle 2: Use Outside-in Planning
• Principle 3: Focus on the Total Customer Experience
• Principle 4: Align Consumer Goals with Corporate Objectives
• Principle 5: Set Customer Behavior Objectives
• Principle 6: Treat Customers as Assets
• Principle 7: Streamline Functional Activities
• Principle 8: Converge Marcom Activites

These principles don’t seem earth-shattering, do they? Then why is it many organizations today still struggle? Helping organizations make these principles a normal course of their business operations (and more!) will be the focus here and I hope you’ll come along for the ride!

Although my blog is technically on “hiatus,” I felt this post was too important to not post it here (versus my digital marketing notebook on Posterous).

I am still thinking about the direction my blog will be heading, but I know one thing for sure…it will include a lot more analysis, testing, and less opinion. 

As a marketer, testing is at the heart of what we do (or should do) and I for one have been lax when it comes to testing social media. Without testing all aspects of social media, we are, unfortunately, arguing from ignorance. 

The first test: Authenticity, transparency… and trust. 

I have long argued that agencies or consultants who take on the persona of a brand and engage in ghost blogging and tweeting were inauthentic and lacking in transparency. I have also felt that social media puts a spotlight on marketers who don’t truly understand or blend in with the market they are targeting. 

But how could I really continue arguing or ‘feeling’ without testing? I have been, essentially, arguing from ignorance or feeling…and that’s not very sound logic. 

I decided that my notions had to be tested. And that test took place tonight during the weekly PR 2.0 Chat. Tonight’s PR 2.0 chat was not delivered or moderated by me, but by Leigh Fazzina. Leigh is a good friend and PR/social media professional and I knew she would be the perfect person to test the notions of authenticity and transparency because of her background. 

As I said, this is an unscientific test, but it’s one that certainly opened my eyes and proved that perhaps I have been wrong about my steadfast (maybe even pigheaded) notions on authenticity, transparency and― ultimately―trust. 

Authenticity 

This was not authentic. Leigh was pretending to be me and I was sitting there drinking coffee watching the chat happen. I was really surprised that no one questioned the use of “my” newly acquired colloquialisms (U, UR, R, RU, etc.) or tone (capital letters and a lot of exclamations!!!). Check out Leigh’s Twitterstream and compare it to mine. You’ll see that it was definitely her tone and voice tonight…not mine. 

This only makes me begin to wonder if I have been completely wrong about authenticity. What if I was blogging/tweeting for a brand consistently using my own tone, voice, etc. Would it really matter? What if I stopped and someone else took over…would anyone really notice or care as long as they are getting whatever it is that they think they need? 

Transparency 

Obviously we didn’t let you know about the swap, so that fails on any level of transparency (or translucency for that matter). Again, if someone is ultimately being ethical in their social media efforts to help a brand does authenticity and transparency really matter? Can marketers swap in and out and still be effective? 

Trust 

First off, I apologize for using the PR 2.0 Chat as a forum to test authenticity and trust. To be honest it was more about testing MY strongly held notions then it was about testing participant’s ability to notice it wasn’t me. 

But what does this tell us about trust? If a brand is using an agency/consultant to be their voice in social media and they build up a level of trust, is it really as fragile as we think it is? I am not so sure.

I believe that no one questioned the differences tonight because you automatically trusted it was me and you would have never expected that it would not be me (unless there was a guest moderator). Again, apologies for taking advantage of that trust. It’s not something I would normally do…but I have been plagued with questions regarding social media and I had to test to prove to myself that I have, potentially, been wrong.

Personally, I don’t think that the manipulation of trust is ever the right thing to do and I wouldn’t blame anyone for being angry/annoyed with me (especially the new folks who participated for the first time and don’t really know me). Perhaps we can all learn a lesson here… 

Conclusion 

Moving forward I will always believe in authenticity and transparency and will conduct my own interactions as such. And maybe I was wrong about ghost blogging/tweeting…perhaps it is entirely possible to handle it properly and create a level of trust if done consistently. I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable with that…but I’ll surely be less judgmental. That said, I believe trust is a fragile thing and when that trust is broken due to discrepancies in authenticity and transparency, organizations better be prepared for the potential fallout. 

Your thoughts on this very unscientific test?

[Image: iStock]

I wrote a really verbose post, but a good friend told me that what I had written didn’t sound like me (you know who you are…thank you again!). So, here’s take two. 

This past year has been truly exceptional and while I love blogging, I am not a writer. So from that regard, I struggle. I know this is *my* blog and I can do with it what I’d like, but I also don’t want to produce crap content. I have SO many thoughts rattling around in my head but the pressure to make them perfect stops me from writing them down. And the time to make them perfect doesn’t exist…so, again, nothing gets written. 

My other issue is that I can no longer scale. Trust me, I have really tried. I have been up to all hours of the morning just trying to keep up. But now I need to have time for my family, my home, my life. That means I don’t have 6 hours to write a post (yes, posts take me anywhere from 4-6 hours to write each one. Pathetic, right?!). 

As well, I know social media is quid pro quo and while I try my best to keep up with other blogs (reading and commenting), comments on my blog, etc. I am falling WAY short and for that I am terribly sorry. I would completely understand if people stopped commenting/tweeting my stuff.

Thanks for all of your support through the past year; it has meant the world to me. 

I am not saying that I won’t be blogging anymore… I just don’t know when. I need to step back and re-think how I want to approach blogging because where I am now is not working for me. 

P.S. I’ll definitely be blogging at the Daily Fix because, lucky for me, it’s part of my job. But here at THoM, I am raising the white flag.

Teresa Basich and I teamed up to write this post after discussing David Armano’s post. Teresa kicked off a group conversation by asking the insightful question “Now, what could we add to David’s blueprint beginnings?” 

Teresa wrote 3/4 of this post, so if you like the way her uber-smart brain works, be sure to check out her blog,  Overcommunicated, too.

Back in June David Armano of Dachis Corporation had an interesting post on debunking social media myths featured on the Conversation Starters blog of the Harvard Business Review. David discussed how organizations continue to believe that involvement in the social media sphere is cheap, fast, and easy. David offered readers three factors to consider when diving into social media: Seeding, Feeding, and Weeding.

In essence, he states that seeding is bringing onboard multiple people (yup, PEOPLE) to create a thriving social media “ecosystem;” feeding is providing a constant flow of updated content to your internal team and customers relative to specific company goals and initiatives; and weeding is pruning out any material that could hinder internal or external growth, or even creating a separate environment for specific programs. 

After continued discussion about this article over at the Marketing Profs LinkedIn Group, Teresa  and I decided an expansion upon David’s initial post. David’s three social gardening must-haves are a great start, but there is more care for any garden-or social media program-to flourish. 

The big takeaway for us came in the form of a great quote toward the end of the piece: 

 …Not taking into account the manpower that’s involved in these as you develop your social business design strategy can lead to a lack of adoption or participation-essential elements to any social initiative.

And it’s this quote that inspired additional gardening strategies: 

Testing

As any gardener will tell you, you need to test the soil before you seed. It’s really important to test the pH to make sure that it’s at the right level to guarantee a healthy and fruitful garden. If your soil pH is off-balance you’ll have to add lime, minerals, compost or other goodies to make sure the soil is properly balanced (acidity and alkalinity) for seeding.

It’s the same thing with social media. It’s referred to as “listening” though. Before seeding it’s imperative for organizations to know what the pH level of their soil is. The testing phase is not something that organizations should rush through and it could take months to understand the condition of your soil.  Are your customers and constituents complaining, are they neutral or are they evangelists? Your test results will help you to learn what additives might be necessary to prep for seeding. 

Watering 

Although David touched on this in his Feeding tip (we could liken ‘feeding’ to fertilizing), internal education needs its own gardening care tip. Providing updated best practices and regular training and education to your internal team is as important (if not more) as making sure to feed new, meaningful information to your outside constituency. 

As hard as it is to believe, social media is an ever-changing beast (note sarcasm), and has to be dealt with as such. The parameters of a social media program and overarching business development philosophy are (or should be) in constant motion, and if you’re not relaying changes to your team on a constant basis, the messages between you, your internal people, and the outside world can become mixed. And nothing says, “We do not have our [act] together,” like fractured messaging. 

Aside from those regular updates, your internal team should become more integrated over time, through education about the ties between all departments. Client services and support reps should be able to answer basic questions for other departments. At the least, each team member should become acquainted enough with all departments to act as a bridge for individual customers to connect with appropriate business lines. 

Automating

Before we get too crazy with the gardening and short-cuts to make it easier, let’s stop and take a look at David’s mention of automating certain processes. While it’s true that a few aspects of a social media program- i.e., actual dissemination of information- lend themselves to automation, we think a reasonable rule of thumb is that if a process holds any potential to develop a relationship with your customers, do NOT automate it. Why? Well, the problem with automation is its lack of personal touch. 

If a response to an inquiry is automated, it tends to halt conversation-there’s no invitation to continue discussing the question or problem, no opportunity to build up a relationship by remedying the problem or enlightening the customer to certain products or services that could be of great use to them, no chance to turn that relationship into loyalty. Customers want to feel personally attended to, and shelling out a pre-determined response deletes “We care about YOU” from your message. That personal connection is what this is all about, so if you remove it you’re kind of missing the point of the whole game. 

Harvesting 

A social media program is a long-term investment. It is a communications philosophy that should weave its way into your everyday business methods, but it is executed through smaller initiatives with set goals. Goals that must be reviewed and amended depending on what your customers want and need.

Of course, some goals will have little to do directly with your customers, but many of them, including new product offerings, Website updates, and even corporate responsibility, should be affected by what your customers have said and continue to say about your brand, products, and outreach. Online conversations and comments are a wealth of market research waiting to be analyzed, and filtering through those responses is essential to tweaking goals and initiatives in ways that allow your business to grow and help your customers the most.

Rotating

Have you heard of crop rotation? It’s a trick gardeners and farmers use to conserve soil (i.e. nutrient depletion) by changing the crops grown on a given parcel of land from year to year. Crop rotation also has the added benefits of reduce disease and pest problems.

Employees active in social media daily to support their brands and customers know that burn out can occur over time. It’s important for organizations to realize that while on-going monitoring and potentially reaction is necessary, it’s important to make sure that employees have some down time. Consider rotating schedules and interactions. 

As David pointed out, with weeding (prune and weed out material that can inhibit its growth), organizations should also recognize that customers and constituents might also tire of interacting with same people over-and-over and they might desire the need to interact with other departments/people inside your organization. 

 

Final Thoughts

So, why bring the conversation here? Why make it so long? Because recognizing that social media programs are an investment is where it all begins, and making sure organizations understand that fact and what’s involved in creating a comprehensive program aimed for success takes many words and even more conversations. 

Have we covered our bases? What other actions do you think fit into the garden metaphor? Would you change any of ours or David’s suggestions?