Posts Tagged ‘integrated marketing communications’
Failed Icon
Failed icon. Sounds like dismal hook to hang one’s hat on doesn’t it? Especially given that most of us have such an aversion to failure in life and business—or even being associated to failure in any way.
When you think of failure, would you consider someone who:
- has spent a large amount of their career on educating and helping corporations and marketers to become customer-centric;
- is a Professor Emeritus at a well-known university that has a graduate program to educate students in being data-driven to ensure that customers’ needs and wants are met;
- has written over 10 books on subjects like driving and determining brand value and measuring ROI; and
- was named one of the 80 Most Influential People in sales and marketing a failure?
No, I wouldn’t either.
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Tags: customer-centric marketing, don schultz, integrated communications, integrated marketing, integrated marketing communications, Marketing Communications, Social Media | 
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The Dichotomy Issue: “Social Media Marketing” vs. Classic Marketing
I have the honor of being a part of the new Social Media Council of Advisors for the Marketing Executive Networking Group (MENG) and last Thursday we had our first Q&A webinar with MENG members. Other council members include: Amber Naslund, Mack Collier, Drew McLellan, Joe Pulizzi and Paul Dunay.
Last Thursday we had a Q&A webinar with MENG members. There were a lot of great questions, but one question really struck me and I wanted to share it here because it speaks to why integrated marketing and communications is critical.
“All of the panelists agree that social media are exciting new ways to listen and communicate, but they are basically new tools. So how do we get across to the marketing community that boring old marketing disciplines still apply and how do we get rid of this silly dichotomy between social media marketing and classic marketing.”
My basic response was that social media tools are not new and some have been around for ten years or more. And second, there isn’t a dichotomy because social media needs to be integrated.
I think this is a serious discussion that needs to take place because there marketers and marketing executives who have been given the wrong impression or direction when it comes to social media.
Integrating Social Media
First, I am not a fan of the term ‘social media marketing’ because a) it silos social media from other marketing communications tactics and other marketing disciplines and b) because a lot of folks out there are implementing social media tools without understanding the nature (or theory) of marketing as a whole. Second, as an integrated marketing practitioner, I totally disagree that ‘social media marketing’ is replacing classic marketing (or the theory that comes with it).
What’s new and important is how these tools are being used in business; how we have a window into what our customers are really thinking, where they interact, how to engage with them, etc.; and how we now have data to serve our customers BETTER.
But this notion of knowing our customers isn’t anything new…that’s basic marketing (and I mean ALL of marketing here, not just the promotional aspect of marketing), public relations and communications.
While CRM systems have been the tool of choice for keeping track of customers and extracting data they never really allowed marketers to put faces to names (unless there’s some stealth way to take a photo and add it to your CRM), to listen to conversations or to actively engage in a two-way manner. The only tool that allows that is social media.
The key to integration today is simple. Marketers need to be flexible, able to adjust, and most importantly able to provide pertinent AND timely information when, where and how customers/potential customers need/want it. Social media allows for that across all areas of marketing (product, pricing, promotion and distribution).
Who/What Is Creating the Dichotomy?
I think the most important issue here, however, is who/what is creating the dichotomy? Who or what is causing marketers to think that it’s an either/or situation?
Is it that we’ve been siloed for so long and that there hasn’t been a good job with integration to begin with? We only need to look at E-Mail Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, and Direct Marketing to get a sense of the answer.
As social media evangelists and practitioners we need to truly understand what is going on in our industry. Otherwise, we are doing a disservice to our customers and future as marketers.
Your thoughts?
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Getting Management Buy-In For Integrated Marketing & Communications
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:
- 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.
- Emphasize that a customer for life is a much more cost-effective model versus solely focusing on new customer acquisition.
- Communicate the benefits of how integrated marketing communications delivers a consistent message to both existing and prospective customers.
- 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.
- 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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!
- 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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Integrated Marketing & Communications, Redux
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!
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Galileo and the Importance of Integrated Marketing Communications
You might be wondering what an Italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher has to do with integrated marketing communications (IMC). Well, I consider Galileo a dot connector and integrated marketing communications is about marketers connecting dots so that your customers, prospects, communities, etc. don’t have to. And you know me, my marketing brain only thinks one way, integrated. But there’s more to this post than that…
A few weekends ago we drove past a billboard for the Galileo, the Medici and the Age of Astronomy exhibit at The Franklin Institute. I hadn’t heard about the exhibit so the billboard did its job, I was hooked, I checked it out online and we made plans to see the exhibit this past weekend. (Amazing, isn’t it?! A billboard! See push marketing still works.) I even talked about it on Twitter.
Even though I have lived my entire life only 25 miles from The Franklin Institute I had never been there (true!), so I was really excited to check it and the Galileo exhibit out…the notion of history, politics and science intrigued me to say the least.
To prepare for our trip we checked out The Franklin website and made a list of everything we wanted to see in addition to the Galileo exhibit. The one other thing that we were completely jazzed about was seeing “The Sky Tonight” at the Fels Planetarium. Just think about it, sitting under the night sky during the day, how cool, right?
The weekend rolled around, chores were done, and errands were run. We set off for The Franklin. Finding parking was a breeze (which is never the case in Philly), we didn’t have to wait in line to buy tickets, and everything was perfect!
And then it got a little bumpy…
After we bought or tickets, the girl behind the ticket counter shoved a little schedule towards us and we immediately looked for the 4:15 time slot for The Sky Tonight, but it wasn’t listed. Surely this had to be wrong, right? We checked their website schedule twice during the week and once before we left. It was listed on their site…they even offered the ability to add it to my calendar. But no. The girl said that was the schedule for the day. We were so bummed, but off we went to the Galileo exhibit and we picked another show at the planetarium.
Wait! What’s this? The sign above our heads as we entered the planetarium said “4:15 The Sky Tonight.” Excellent, she was wrong! It was back on.
So, we sat through Cosmic Collisions, which was amazing and actually made you feel like you were moving, which was a bit freaky. Afterwards, I figured I’d ask the guy “in the know,” the one running the planetarium shows. It was one of those typical “Hey Mister!” scenarios. I asked and he said, no it wasn’t showing. Naturally we asked why the sign said it was…he said “good point, I guess we never changed it.”
Hmmm, interesting. Onward and upward as they say. We left the planetarium to see what other goodies we could find to entertain ourselves with.
Organizations, like The Franklin, that require flexibility typically have a “subject to change” on their website. While I get that as a marketer, but as a consumer, I really don’t. I wanted to see what was advertised. It’s that simple.
What’s the point to all of this? It’s the little things that matter. Organizations need to make sure that they have all areas of marketing integrated…no matter how small the details. Because if you don’t your customers will notice.
If it’s Twitter, tweet me back and let me know that you’re excited for me to come visit (The Franklin didn’t); if it’s website make sure your schedule is reflecting the very latest, up-to-date information (honestly, we would have picked another weekend to go); if it’s a lobby sign, make sure that’s up to date too (don’t tease me!).
While the overall experience at The Franklin was a great one, it would have been excellent if only The Franklin delivered on what they advertised.
And as you know, it’s also a lesson in customer satisfaction and social media. I have a voice and, for better or worse, I am using it here on my blog. Will I go back to The Franklin? Absolutely. Even if annoyed, we still want to see The Sky Tonight and we’ll give them another shot to make good on their advertising. Will I tell others how cool The Franklin is, you betcha! But I’ll offer this word of advice, if there’s something you really want to see…call first to check the daily schedule.
What do you think? Should we marketers worry about every little aspect of integration? Is it the little things that create or enhance a customer experience or affect a brand?
[Image: Discovery Magazine]
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Tags: Branding, customer experience, integrated marketing communications, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Media, The Franklin Institute |
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