“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”

T. S. Eliot

The Beginning

When I first put up my blog in June 2008, I had no plan and certainly no ambitions for it. It was just a place to put my thoughts on customer-centric marketing, public relations and communications. With all of the millions of blogs out there, heck, I really didn’t expect anyone to actually read it!

But then… slowly, people did begin to read my blog and comment. It was humbling to know that people were actually reading my words, my thoughts. People didn’t always agree with me and my sentiments, but there was a great conversation around the topic.

As you can imagine, a lot of the conversation included debates around social media. Here are just a few of the lengthy conversations:

• Is Social Media the Same As Marketing?
• Social Media Certification: For the low, low price of…
• Top 25 Ways to Tell if Your Social Media Expert Is a Carpetbagger (written with Geoff Livingston)
• Social Media Ghostwriting: The Great Marketing/PR Debate*
• The Four Faces of Social Media

The End

There are many (!) blogs out there for people to read and for the past three years, I have really appreciated you all for taking the time out of your busy days to read my posts, generate conversations, provide insights, and share experiences. It has been a pleasure to get to know everyone throughout the years!

All things must come to an end, including this blog. I’ll leave it archived, but I won’t be posting to it anymore. I plan to spend my “off-hours” with the really important things in my life that I am called to: family and friends, volunteering and outreach, reading (even more!), getting to old and new hobbies, and teaching.

I am not done with blogging. I hope to share some posts at the MarketingProfs Daily Fix and over at the Ruters University Center for Management Development blog. And maybe—if I am lucky—some of my blogging friends will allow me to come visit and drop off a guest post now and again.

Here’s to a new end!

[Image Source: incourage.me]

It’s Mother’s Day weekend! Let’s celebrate moms and how they have turned marketers upside down.

As a marketer, I have been impressed with how moms have worked with companies to make their voice heard and to get companies to understand that if their needs (and the needs of their children and families!) are met with applicable solutions, they will become brand loyal. As people become as comfortable with social media tools and sharing their voices as moms, I am confident that they will follow this path and forge partnerships with the companies that serve them.

I have tapped into four wonderful moms (of all boys!), Christa Miller, Shelli Johnson, Jeannie Cusick Walters, and Becky Carroll who just also happen to be some of the smartest communicators I know. Here’s the advice they’d like to share with fellow marketers and communicators:

Christa Miller, owner of Christa M. Miller Communications and mom to two boys:

“Don’t assume that all mothers’ experiences are alike. Some are very similar, of course, but motherhood is so intensely personal that even our reasons for (example) going back to work, self-employing, or leaving the workforce altogether to stay home are not as cut and dried as the actions you see. (Mothers forget this, too.) Parenting cuts to all our deepest wishes, hopes and insecurities, our most personal life experiences and the way we see this awesome responsibility. Respect that, whether in humor or seriousness, and you’ll win my trust.”

Shelli Johnson, own of Frontier Consulting Group and Have Media Will Travel, and mom to three boys:

“Share a story that I, as a mom, can relate to—any story that some mom will relate to—and you’ll have my attention. If you get personal and make it real, you have me. Promise.”

Jeannie Cusick Walters, owner of 360Connext and mom to two boys:

“I wish there were more messages about how awesome moms are to each other. We’re always helping each other out and supporting one another – it’s not this crazy competition some marketers want to make it.”

Becky Carroll, owner Customers Rock!, author of The Hidden Power of Your Customers: Four Keys to Growing Your Business Through Existing Customers and mom to two boys:

“Don’t forget that not all moms (and mom bloggers) are mothers only of little ones. We who have teenagers are still moms – and we fondly remember the tiny hands and warm hugs that are sometimes missing at this age… market to that.”

Marketers, understand this: humor, trust, and understanding wins! Moms, what advice would you share with marketers?

Momentum: Moms won’t like your brand if you clutter up her Facebook page with promotions

“Facebook is the place Moms love. 91% of the Moms surveyed have a Facebook account and 62% claim to access it multiple times a day. A very high percentage, 76%, have liked or friended a brand or product on Facebook. Why? Because they liked the brand’s personality or wanted first-hand knowledge on new products or deals.

Why does she choose not to like or friend a brand? She doesn’t want you cluttering up her page with promotions and she’s concerned with privacy. And she feels Facebook is for her “real friends”. Plus she takes into account she’s probably already receiving emails, catalog, direct mail and mobile messages from the brand.”

Yahoo! Advertising Blog: Tips for Marketing to Moms Online During “Me Time”

“Content-matching combined with day-parting is key …it’s not just about reaching moms; it’s about reaching them at the right time with the right message.

‘Whether it’s on a PC or a tablet, the approach should be about creating content and messaging that respects a woman’s need to have both productive time and me time…’”

Marketing to Moms Blog: 8 Changes in the Mom Market over 5 Years

“Millennial moms have redefined Burger King’s old tagline, “Have it your way”. Today’s new mothers expect to customize products, media and even the lifestyle of motherhood. They are applying their pre-baby style to post-baby life and customizing motherhood to their daily activities, personal values, goals and philosophies and expect the products they purchase to be customizable to the motherhood they define for themselves.”

Material Instinct: Product extensions: why new isn’t always better

“When it comes to new products for moms, here’s my litmus test: solve a real problem without making more work for her. Creating another thing for a mom to pay for, own, maintain, and find in her purse is not progress unless it’s truly useful. Otherwise, let’s call it for what it is: preying on her insecurities while pocketing more of her cash.”

Social Times: Marketing to Moms on Twitter? Make Them Laugh

“A new study says that a majority of moms (52%) like to see humor in businesses’ tweets. Further, what moms want most from businesses’ tweets are links to interesting articles/news (71%) followed by links to sales or special offers on their websites (67%) and links to downloadable coupons/discounts (63%).

On Twitter they’re looking for good deals, too, but they also want to be kept informed about news and articles that are relevant to their lives.”

Happy Mother’s Day!

[Image source: SheKnows.com]

I just received an interesting comment on my “For Hire” post that asked:

“Are there really any leading authorities – aside from published authors – on integrated marketing and communications? There are a lot of self-promoters who claim expertise in what is usually “the obvious”.

This comment, while obviously an attempt to discredit my experience, made me realized that there are probably many marketing professionals out there that have the same misunderstanding and misperception when it comes to understanding the theory and benefits of true integration.

I want to help fix that.

From the dawn of its time, which would be about 1993, when the “Fathers of Integration” Schultz, Tannenbaum and Lauterborn wrote The New Marketing Paradigm: Integrated Marketing Communications, integration has always been based in customer-centric (putting the customer at the center of the organization) and data-driven marketing. Unfortunately, marketers conveniently ignored the customer-centric, data-driven part of integration. We’ll get to that in a bit…

What Integrated Marketing Is Not

Integrated marketing is not consistent branding and messaging across tactics alone.

Yes, you heard that correctly.

One of the many challenges that The New Marketing Paradigm attempted to address were silos (other challenges included the lack of customer-centricity, planning, and measurement). Messages and branding from marketing, communications, branding, and PR were consistently out of whack with each other—leaving customers and prospects to put the pieces together themselves. Talk about ineffective.

Fast forward. Silos still rear their ugly heads (we see social media putting a spotlight on them), but for the most part organizations have gotten smarter about why it is smart to integrate their branding and messaging.

That said, marketing and communications today still seems to be lead by the basic and simple act of integrating tactics to feed the lead generation beast. That mindset presents new challenges. By thinking that tactics have been integrated across channels it’s a job well done, marketers put themselves at risk of wasting precious resources, time, and budget. Why? Because integrated tactics alone do not deliver on*:

• Relevance
• Receptivity
• Response
• Recognition
• Relationship

Without truly knowing who customers are, when they are open to messages, how they prefer to respond, if they relate to the brand, and how they feel about the organization, it is nearly impossible to be targeted. That is where the data-driven part of integration comes to bear. Without outside-in data, “spray and pray” marketing will continue to be prevalent.

Obviously, I am simplifying this to make a point. It would take a book to dive in deeper!

(*To learn more about the Five R’s and the value they deliver, be sure to pick up a copy of IMC, The Next Generation : Five Steps For Delivering Value and Measuring Financial Returns by Don E. Schultz and Heidi Schultz.)

What Integrated Marketing Is

“GE executives described a stagnant GE when Jack Welch took over as CEO in 1981: “[GE is a company] … with its face to the CEO and its ass to the customer.”

I pulled that gem of a quote from Ranjay Gulati’s most excellent book, Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business.

Which direction is your organization facing? Let’s dive in before your backside catches a chill.

IMC: The Next Generation presents eight guiding principles of integration:

1. Become a customer-centric organization
2. Use outside-in planning
3. Focus on the total customer experience
4. Align customer goals with corporate objectives
5. Set customer behavior objectives
6. Treat customers as assets
7. Streamline functional activities
8. Converge marcom activities (this one we get, what about the others?)

The main struggle for product-centric companies when it comes to integrated marketing is the ability to realize customer-centricity and treating customers as assets.

Understanding Customer-Centricity

In Reorganize for Resilience, Gulati observed the following traits of truly customer-centric companies. They:

• Changed the conversation with their customers to one that is more outside-in and focused on how they can help address customer-articulated needs;
• Became problem solvers, not sellers;
• Focused on the set of customer problems they want to solve and are less concerned with the means and more focused on the ends;
• Developed a culture where customer centricity and outside-in behavior is their way of life.

Jay Galbraith describes the same tenets in his book, Designing The Customer-Centric Organization. Customer-centric companies focus on:

• Personalization and customization for the best customer solution
• Strategy supporting the most profitable, loyal customers
• Structure based on customer segments, teams and P&L
• Rewards given to employees who save customer business
• Sales bias on the side of the customer

Integrated Marketing, It’s “The Obvious,” Right?

We hear about the success of the same companies repeatedly. You know who they are: Dell, IBM, Cisco, FedEx, Lafarge, Best Buy, Target, and Southwest. There is a reason for that. The pool of customer-centric companies with truly integrated marketing is more like a puddle.

It has been with purpose for the past year that I have blogged about integration. I truly believe in integration and the value it delivers (how can the evidence be disputed?). As well, I have helped companies with integration in my career and know that it works.

(Note: integration is tough work and it’s not easy to become truly customer-centric, but that isn’t an excuse to move forward with it.)

For those marketers solely guided by revenue generation and shareholder wealth, try this stat on for size:

“…customer-driven companies were significantly more successful than shareholder-driven ones, providing a 36 percent advantage in shareholder returns, compared with their industry median; shareholder-aligned organizations provided only a 17 percent advantage.” – Reorganize for Resilience

Who wouldn’t want those returns?!

Your Job Moving Forward

The next time an agency or consultant is offering integrated marketing be sure to request a plan that is truly integrated (especially the five R’s)  and data-centric and see what you get in response. If it’s  full of tactics that have been “obviously” integrated with lack of regard for much else, you know what to do.

Integrated marketing: it’s the not so “obvious” marketing… after all. (Sort of like the “other white meat.”)

P.S. If you truly want to understand integrated marketing and it’s benefits, pick up the books mentioned in this post along with Kellogg on Integrated Marketing.

[Image Source: hypebeast.com]

I was going to read about social media tools that bring customers and companies together, but then I realized digging into that would take more time then I have this morning.

Instead, I am sharing what I have actually read this morning. This week’s reading is so inconsistent compared to how I normally prepare for this weekly endeavor (which to pick a topic and stick with it) that it seems to be a sudden flare up of MADD (marketing attention deficit disorder). Enjoy!

Jason Keath: Sometimes brilliant creative tells the whole story

Proves that smart advertising just might not be dead, just yet…

Mack Collier: Ford CMO Jim Farley: Social media leading to ‘massive cost savings’ for Ford

“As Jim explains above, social media is lowering the amount of money that Ford has to spend on traditional advertising.  That’s money that can then be spent on product development, customer service, and other areas that improves the quality of the product, as well as customer satisfaction. Which ultimately…increases sales.  So this is another example of social media working indirectly.”

Examiner.com: Marketing Mix -101 – 4C’s The next generation, a historic view

“In 1973, Japanese Professor Koichi Shimizu, who deemed ‘consumer-centricity’ the new strategy to marketing success, helped launch the “4C” model. Differentiation between products or services became a winning proposition. The ability to provide a product or service with higher quality than your competitor and that met the consumer need would likely assure success. This strategy remains paramount in marketing today.”

AdAge: Why You Need Satan on Your Marketing Team

“You need your basic assumptions challenged, and the declarative truths of your agencies and experts (and the media that cover them) not only questioned but aggressively dared. Is conversation inherently good? Is the problem that consumers don’t “like” ads anymore? Are clicks the same thing as handshakes, or lists a synonym for friendships? Do the words you use to describe online behavior have any relevance in the real world?”

Logic + Emotion: Learning To Fly: The Four Stages of Social Business

“…you have to “walk before you run” and as it turns out, the same is true for organizations looking to move from social media as a set of un-connected, chaotic collection of skunk work initiatives to a coordinated and purposeful initiative that works through the entire organization.”

Social Media Explorer: The Social Media Echo Chamber Makes Me Not Want to Listen

An oldie, but goodie. Is this still an issue?

Happy reading! Happy Easter! Happy Passover!

[Image source: The Irreverent Lawyer]

Dear CEO:

The last two years have presented us with a rough economy and no doubt, many people—employees, stakeholders and customers alike—are feeling its tight squeeze and so are you. Layoffs, cutbacks, delayed product and service upgrades, lack of innovation, competitive pressure, unsure stockholders, lost supply chains, and more, likely keep you up at night or at least in the office for countless hours when you would rather be home with your family.

With or without a bad economy, the business tides have certainly shifted over the past five years.

Customers are now more vocal than ever when it comes to your brand and the promises made on its behalf. Yes, even B2B customers.

It used to be that customers would share their positive and negative experiences through customer satisfaction surveys, focus groups, industry association meetings and even with the media. Now they have tools right at their fingertips that allow them to reach thousands—if not millions—of buyers in your target market via the Internet. These tools put a microscope on your brand and magnify it more than you have ever known was possible.

I am sure you have read or heard about social media and its importance. However, it is not enough to be aware that your customers are using social media channels. It is your job to understand why. The why lies in the fact that you do not know them… not really.

I am sure your focus is on what products and services your company makes, what is the highest margin you can earn without overpricing compared to the competition, what distribution channels make the most sense without adding more cost, and generating media attention and leads to generate revenue.

That mindset is broken. Your customers don’t care.

They care about whether you sell a product or service that they need or that eases their specific business challenge. They care about what their overall cost is (and that cost goes well beyond the invoice they will be paying you). They care about the convenience they will experience in doing business with you. They care about being able to search for a solution to their problem and not being interrupting with needless promotions for a product or service they could never use.

See the difference? They really want you to know them.

So how about it? Will you consider leading from a customer-centric perspective?

Best of luck,

Beth Harte
The Harte of Marketing
@bethharte
beth@harteofmarketing.com
www.theharteofmarketing.com

I know that you also have smart advice that you’d like to share with CEO’s to help them understand today’s business environment!

Here’s your chance.

The first ten people to share customer-centric advice get a FREE PDF copy of Dear CEO via e-mail.

Let others benefit from your advice by sharing this post using the #DearCEO hashtag on Twitter and sharing it on Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. There’s no better way to learn then from one another’s experiences.

If you’d like to buy a copy of Dear CEO, head on over to Arment Dietrich’s Spin Sucks, where they are available for purchase.

[Image sources: life123.com, Spin Sucks]