The Harte of Marketing

Posts Tagged ‘marketing management’

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?

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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I was reading Marketing News (the American Marketing Associations’ magazine) recently, the 5.30.09 issue on Measuring, and I came across an interesting quote in their “Measure Up” article (you need to be a member to access the article) on the return on marketing investment (ROMI): 

“Marketing is in the process of maturing from a communications function to a business function.” (Tom O’Toole, adviser with Diamond Management & Technology Consultants Inc.) 

Say what? 

The first concern I have with this limiting comment is that marketing has never only been a communications function. Let’s not forget that there are 4 P’s in the traditional marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion). Yes, I get that the statement was used to, perhaps, make a valid point that marketing needs to be an “accounting line item for ROI (i.e. business function).” But from a business perspective, all 4 P’s have always been measureable (in one form or another) and those managing these functions can and should be held accountable for their budgets, spending and ROI (if we spent X, what was the return). Is there a communications aspect with all 4 Ps? Sure people always communicate, right? But let’s assume with this particular statement Mr. O’Toole is addressing the “Promotion” aspect of marketing and equating “communications” to things like advertising, direct mail, online, interactive, PR, etc. 

The second is that even if we look at marketing promotions alone, accountability isn’t anything new and any marketing communications manager, VP or CMO that isn’t measuring marketing communications objectives (and campaigns) is doing a complete disservice to the profession and the company (that business function referred to in the comment). That said I get that marketers struggle with planning, measuring ROI and dealing with accountablity. It’s also tough to work within a corporate mindset (client- or agency-side) that if a campaign doesn’t bring in positive ROI (and lots of press or leads) marketers might face retribution instead of redirection. (BTW, we need to change that mindset.) I also understand that a lot of marketing management skips the important step of planning at all. 

From a measurement and communications perspective, marketing has many aspects that need to be considered, understood and―more importantly―bridged by tearing down marketing silos so that marketers work together AND have experience across the mix. For example, often product managers & product marketers determine the product/service and pricing long before marcom folks are tapped into for promotion. And business development folks determine the distribution (place) for the product. And it’s the marketing researchers that help the product managers & product marketers (and sometimes the marcom folks) to determine the product/service or if there’s even a market for it in the first place. I could go on with lots of combinations, but you get my point. It’s marketing management’s job to ask the basic questions like “did that supply chain partner help to reduce costs, increase sales and justify the marketing communications costs of selecting them as a business partner?” or “did the marketing research we conducted help the product marketers prove that there was a market for our new product and was that research built into the price of the product?” 

I am sure by now you are thinking “Beth, so what does all of this have to do with social media?!” Well, I have noticed a trend that people are stating, thinking or promoting that social media will replace all the corporate (and agency) ills of marketing and that just isn’t the case. 

I wanted to demonstrated that marketing is complex and isn’t just about communications (I hope I accomplished that in a simple manner…otherwise you’d be here all day reading a textbook or 10). As well, many marketing functions reside outside of the marketing communications department. And yet, they all need to work together, like well oiled gears. So while I do think social media (the tools and the concept) can help enhance all of the 4 Ps, it definitely won’t replace them. Saying that is equivalent to saying social media will replace accounting or HR. 

My question is this… if you think that social media will replace marketing, share with us how you think it will replace all the four Ps and how you will measure the return.

[Image: iStock]

Recently, Valeria Maltoni, the Conversation Agent and expert in community facilitation asked me to participate in her ebook, “Marketing in 2009.” To which I said “but, of course!” I have known Valeria for almost nine years and her ability to build communities & networks on-line as well as off-line never ceases to amaze me!

For this free ebook Valeria didn’t want marketing predictions for 2009, which was lucky for me because my crystal ball has been in the repair shop for quite a while and I have recently run out of eye of newt, toe of frog, wool of bat…

The path set before us contributors was executive direction. For my contribution, I focused on developing internal brand loyalty. By creating internal accountability for customer brand experiences and building internal evangelists, marketing executives can build the brand pride necessary to get employees to understand, embrace and champion external social media initiatives and customer conversations.

As an aside, one of the comments Valeria received was that this was really an ebook on social media thought leadership with little other marketing reference and, perhaps, it might have been misnamed. That’s an interesting perception and I think it might show that there is still a disconnect between social media and marketing…and that’s why this ebook is so very important! Marketing executives need to recognize that social media has become an important set of tools (albeit ever changing) that leads to dialogue and that dialogue might just be about their company, products/services or employees. And in that regard, social media and conversation have changed marketing forever. (Okay, one lil’ prediction…I think marketing executives know this already and 2009 will be the year that they start to implement social media if even just by sticking their toes in the wading pool.)

Thank you Valeria for including me to contribute to an invaluable marketing ebook (my first!) with so many marketers that I respect, admire and consider to be friends! Without further ado, here’s a little snippet of the contributions marketing’s brightest (courtesy of Valeria):

• “Basic metrics you can initially use to match up before, during and after sales deltas are frequency, reach, and yield” – Olivier Blanchard, The Brand Builder, @thebrandbuilder

• “There are three imperatives for execution programs in 2009 – start with measurement, create content for the open Web and for mobility” – Matt Dickman, Techno||Marketer, @MattDickman

• “The foundation and core of what social media is, consists of the five C’s. Conversation, community, commenting, collaboration and contribution” – Mike Fruchter, My Thoughts on Social Media, @Fruchter

• “With social media as a platform for participation, people can behave the way they were hardwired to behave in the first place – humanly, tribally” – Francois Gossieaux, Emergence Marketing, @fgossieaux

• “Companies with greater social intelligence have stronger bonds with employees and customers, and that translates into revenue” – Lois Kelly, Beeline Labs, @LoisKelly

• “Change ensures our own livelihoods – new opportunities and trends to capitalize upon, unique products and profit centers that merit development, robust innovation to leverage”- Christina Kerley, CK Epiphany, @ckepiphany

• “Social media interaction allows us to have… well, interaction with our customers. It lets us see them as people instead of statistics and it lets us hear their voices” – Jennifer Laycock, Search Engine Guide, @JenniferLaycock

• “Goals absolutely must be built on business objectives” – Amber Naslund, Altitude Branding, @AmberCadabra

• “A proper social media education is more than just learning new tools. The most important lesson we can impart is the necessity to think ‘humans’”- Connie Reece, Every Dot Connects, @ConnieReece

• “Social media isn’t causing problems, but it is revealing them. And the problems aren’t new; they’ve been around for a while” – Mike Wagner, Own Your Brand!, @bigwags

• “The secret of success in social media is a product or a service that people actually like and use” – Alan Wolk, The Toad Stool, @awolk

Let me know what you think…are we on the right track?

In the July/August issue of the AMA’s Marketing Management magazine there is an interesting article, “Wooing Luxury Customers,” by Suzanne Hader (Principal, 400twin). Suzanne covers a lot of great points such as what is luxury, what defines wealth, and what shapes luxury habits and how luxury brand customers look for a rich, emotional experience and great service rather than being ‘sold’ to.Not being a luxury brand marketer, I went on the hunt for other articles about luxury brand marketing and came across a few older items such as an article in Chief Marketer, a keynote on Luxury Branding Marketing and a scholarly article.

In reading all of these pieces, the one thing I consistently noticed is that the luxury brand marketing advice, for the most part, focuses on traditional marketing and branding—talking to the customer and creating an experience for the customer.

• The BMW Forum
  (Members: 183,864, Threads: 978,328, Posts: 13,296,986)
  
• The Fashion Spot
  (Members: 66,746, Threads: 45,987, Posts: 4,529,436)
  
• The Mercedes Forum
  (Members: 33,931 , Posts: 105,042, Topics: 31,073)
  
• The Purse Forum
  (Members: 128,573, Threads: 299,826, Posts: 7,153,120)
  
• The Rolex Forum
  (Members: 14,970, Threads: 44,550, Posts: 685,615)

• international
• influential and persuasive
• passionate and loyal
• purchasers that range from extremely wealthy to average income
• brand experts that help to educate non-experts
• developing on-line friendships that lead to off-line meetings
• vocal about price, features and quality
• discussing off-line sales/service experiences and are relaying them on-line

[Photo: iStock]