Dec 15, 2009 | Management, Marketing
Too often marketing is seen as an expense, to be cut when things are tough. Often this is an outcome of a lack of accountability for results emerging from the investment made in marketing.
It is in the interests of marketers to pro-actively take responsibility for their expenditures, figuring out ways to turn the qualitative into traceable quantitative data.
Advertising on the Box will give you a TARP level, essentially reach and frequency against a target audience, printed media will do a similar job, but after 2 generations bred to filter out unwanted advertising, how effective is that?.
By contrast, the quantitative tools embedded in other sorts of expenditures can be accounted for by the behavior generated.
Coupons in the US started in this manner, but have evolved into simply a discount. Direct response advertising can be accountable, but not all of us are up late enough to see the steak knife ads.
The web is starting to offer tools to count the behavior generated by the ads, click through, and purchase, which have changed advertising media choices forever, it is just that most have not realized it yet.
Dec 14, 2009 | Sales
Part of a small current assignment is looking for a simple ERP system for a SME client, now too big to rely on spreadsheets and simple accounting packages.
Automatically, I went to the web, looking for user groups of similar software, and it got me thinking.
The web is the first place we look for something, from a complicated bit of technology, to a phone number, and this has come about so fast we do not think about it.
The standard early stages of the B2B marketing processes have been replaced by peer contact facilitated by the web, research is done on line, no longer relying on the vendor to do anything more than fill in the gaps, and provide a price.
For some time, I have been on the e-mailing list of an ERP vendor, I just never bothered to click the “off” button, to de-register, but I cannot remember their name now I need their product, or similar, just like old fashioned advertising, until you need it the ad is totally forgettable most of the time.
It seems theB2B game now is to create leads that have been motivated in some way before you get to them, and the sales role is being truncated into the closure, implementation and follow up stages.
Dec 10, 2009 | Management, Sales
You would not build a house without a plan, so why would you set out to manage your major customers without some sort of plan.
For most businesses, their key customer base is the core of their commercial sustainability, so it is worth investing a few resources to ensure you are able to deliver an optimum experience to them when dealing with you.
Engaging the customer in your planning sessions for their business is sometimes a counter-intuitive, but very worthwhile activity, after all, who knows them better, what they need, how they see the future, the internal hurdles they face, than one of their key employees?
Dec 9, 2009 | Marketing
Demand for a whole host of products appears to be splitting into two camps, the price sensitive camp, and the risk averse camp. What other explanation can there be of the situation where you find people willing to pay for something that is on the net, just a “click” away for free?. ( I am ignoring those few who have yet to turn on a computer)
This is a relatively new paradigm that appears to be emerging as the net reduces the marginal cost of production and distribution of many products and services to virtually zero.
For free entails risk, whilst paying carries an implicit if not explicit promise of service and support, which is does not come for free.
The marketing challenge is to leverage the for free into something people will pay for. A new word, “Freemium” is appearing as people consider this challenge, Rupert Murdoch’s stated intention is to use the freemium model to get people to pay for what has been free, but I have yet to see the notion of “information integrity insurance” being used as a reason to charge for what has been free. The Wall St journal would be a great model to consider, as information integrity is a foundation of its value proposition.
Dec 7, 2009 | Management, Strategy
Currently I am involved in a portfolio management exercise that covers brands, products, and projects on the books for a modest sized but rapidly growing business. A pretty standard exercise that most thoughtful businesses go through on a regular basis as a part of their strategic processes.
However, it occurred to me that the information, and mindset we were using reflected either an internal view of the piece we were looking at, often driven by what had worked in the past, or by industry trend data, that again, reflected an extrapolation of what had happened in the past, the underlying assumption that the past would repeat itself.
We know that the old saying “those who do not understand the past are destined to repeat it” is true, but what of the flip side, deliberately ignoring the past, to envision the possibilities, and using that to inform your portfolio management decisions.
We tried it, and whilst the process is incomplete, it is certain that the outcome has been altered substantially to what it may have been. We have also concluded that looking from the outside in should be a discipline we impose on ourselves, as that is how the markets, competitors, and innovative insights that can be very “left field” will look at us.
