Aug 12, 2014 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business
Marketing has changed very rapidly from the mass outbound marketing upon which all the marketing theory and practice until about 2000, to what is often called “inbound” marketing, or in other words, finding ways to attract customers to you.
There is now a fundamentally changed capability set required to be a successful marketing executive, and to manage a successful marketing function.
- Customers are the new focus, not because of any epiphany, but because we can now see them clearly. We need to be able create situations and experiences for them to be able to engage with the proposition we are delivering them.
- Marketing is leading the digital revolution, now. Marketing was late to the table abut the pace of development of marketing automation over the last 5 or 6 years has been astonishing, and marketers need to be data analysts and automation savvy.
- Outbound marketing requires content, but no longer can you just hire an ad agency to churn out a few ads. Now the whole marketing function, and ideally other functions in a business need to become producers of content, so that consumers have something to relate to, that tells a story. These materials become the backbone of our branding activity,
- Marketers need to become remarkably ambidextrous when thinking about channels of communication. Not only do we now have a few paid outbound channels, we have a huge array of owned and paid and earned media options and platforms, all have to be managed, in concert with each other, so you get a cumulative and synergistic effect.
- Marketing needs to engage consumers in their social spaces, and on their social platforms. No longer can we just bash messages through via paid media, the challenge of engaging has become far more difficult and the location has moved from the lounge room to wherever they are.
- Branding success has always had customer loyalty and retention as an end result of any activity. Now that has changed, and we are actively developing marketing techniques and tactics to target the loyalty and retention of consumers, and the huge difference is we can now see the impact of our activities.
- Marketing agility based on A/B testing has become a core competence. This combines the data capability wit the imagination of the marketing to dream up ideas, then test and constantly refine.
Marketing is becoming the core function of every enterprise. From a bit of an extra, sometimes even seen as an indulgence 20 years ago, it is rapidly becoming evident that marketing is the most important function of every business.
Competitive success now depends as much on the quality of the marketing effort to deliver customers as it does the product and service offering. However, it is still true that no matter how great the marketing, without the product, you will not get a second chance.
Aug 7, 2014 | Branding, Customers
I just had another of those really, really annoying phone calls from a call centre, and being a marketer, I cringed with shame and frustration.
After I answered, it took probably 5 seconds for the person on the other end to answer me (memo call centre managers: this is just crapppola!!)
He was probably a nice young man, just trying to make a living in difficult circumstances in, well, it was not Australia, so his first language was not English, it may not have been his second either, so it was challenging understanding him.
He had a script, yes, scripts are a necessary tool, but do not easily allow the flexibility to cope with anything other than an utterly “vanilla” conversation, and those would be as rare as a cat in a doghouse. He clearly was under instructions not to vary from the script, but to respond to anything other than my script predicted comments with “yes, thank you Mr Roberts” and then, back to the script without a pause.
At least he got the name right.
I could go on, but the point is, why would somebody trying to sell me something waste their money so comprehensively?
The possibility that this young man was going to actually engage me in any way with his product let alone extract any money from me, are about as good as my chances of playing Roger Federer in next years Wimbledon final.
Why would any marketer actually pay for this desecration of their brand?
Are they really that stupid?
Unfortunately, the answer must be yes, at least in some cases.
By the way, the product was Funeral insurance, a hard sell in the best circumstances, impossible if you treat the potential customer with contempt.
Aug 5, 2014 | Branding, Collaboration, Marketing, Strategy
www.strategyaudit.com.au
Design is often used as a noun, “I will do a design for you” is common. However, when you think about it, design is not just a thing, an end product, it is a process of moving from an idea, through iterations, to a final form.
It is a verb.
“To design” should be a verb to be valued. Steve Jobs knew that, and executed on it, and as a result Apple became for a while, the most valuable corporation in the world, starting from the position of basket case.
“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works” Steve Jobs.
The “how it works” phrase implies not just that the product itself works in ways that deliver great value, but that the way it works is in sync with the mind of the customer.
Need to better define how your customers mind works?
Chances are the experience of the StrategyAudit team can help.
Jul 21, 2014 | Branding, Change, Marketing, retail
It is fascinating to watch the evolution of the marketing of the two retail gorillas, Coles and Woolworths.
It is clear what they are doing, setting out to engage consumers with the freshness, range and provenance of their produce, and selling consumers all the packaged goods they need on the way through the stores. Their strategies are working, but more importantly, they highlight the depth of the opportunity for those few independent retailers left alive, and points to the way the more fragmented food service, ingredient, and emerging home delivery and farmers markets should be marketing themselves.
Coles and Woolies remain mass retailers, vulnerable on the edges.
A few years ago Woolies were undisputed heavweight champ, Coles the belted contender with no hope, but how things can change with a new trainer. Coles has been rejuvenated, and whilst their financial results have been hugely improved, they have a way to go to catch Woolies, but in the marketing stakes, they have taken the lead.
The sponsorship of “Masterchef” was a masterstroke, and they have followed up and leveraged the success extraordinarily well, with Woolies just starting to respond by buying Jamie Oliver to shape up to Heston, Curtis, and Status Quo (I was young in the 70’s) and a massive and very well co-ordinated marketing budget. Bit of an uneven contest.
From a consumers perspective, increasingly their choices are limited to brands the retailers control. Wether they be Coles new “Heston Blumenthal” brand, Woolies “Jamie Oliver” brand, or one of the various other housebrand versions at differing price-points, and pack configurations, they are all housebrands.
Suppliers of packaged proprietary brands have been progressively squeezed out, and those left are mostly sourced via global supply chains rather than manufacturing domestically, where almost nobody is left standing.
Change always starts at the fringes, as we have seen time and again over our history. Change is happening now in the food value chain, but at the fringes. Organics, local produce, micro suppliers of almost personalised products, restaurants differentiating on the basis of seasons and local supply, “pick your own” farmers markets, food tourism, various home delivery services, all happening outside the supermarket, some pretty basic marketing communicating the differentiated offer.
Jamie and Heston can take their money to beat each other up in the ad breaks of the nightly news. The increasing number of us who really care about what we eat, will go to the local blokes who genuinely care about what they deliver to us, and buy from them.
Jul 8, 2014 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Success does not happen by accident, it comes from hard work, knowledge, insight and experimentation. In the case of websites there are almost a billion websites live (866k) in July 2014, the billion mark will probably be reached by the 4nd of 2014. This is from the first site, being put up by Tim Berners-Lee in August 1991.
This is a pretty useful universe from which to draw lessons, and we have learnt a lot about what works and what does not.
What works:
- Content that is Interesting and engaging and targeted for a specific group of people will attract their attention, rather than content that is more general in nature .
- Attractive, eye-catching design is essential. Humans are visual animals, design is fundamental to attracting and keeping attention. The more research we do in this area, the more we understand the basic rules, and they are rules that have applied from the dawn of human development. Disregard them at your peril.
- Simplicity. Also essential is a design that enables visitors to find the stuff they are looking for simply and quickly.
- Speed. Low loading speed is penalised by search engines, but more importantly, is penalised by casual viewers, who simply move on.
- SEO. At least basic search engine optimisation is both easy and essential, if you have a great site that cannot be found, nobody wins.
- Competitive. With almost a billion sites, the web is a competitive environment, and you need to be distinctive amongst your competitors. If you are selling machine tools, you need to look like you are the expert in machine tools, not real estate or life insurance, and the relative merits of your site to those of your competitors are important.
- Be there to help, rather than overtly flogging something. Your website is the front door to your business, make sure it invites people in, rather acting like a tout in a sideshow, and alienating almost all who pass.
What does not work, in a word, lots. Complicated, messy, poorly targeted, overtly sales driven sites that lack humanity. Just trawl through the sites of most of our federal governments agencies and departments to see some great examples of what not to do, while trying to be all things to all people. The easiest way to construct a list of “no no’s” is to do the opposite of the list above.
If you follow these simple guides, at least you will be on the right road.
Jun 30, 2014 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Small business
www.strategyaudit.com.au
One of the most common questions I get is how you get away from competing on price.
A couple of things are common in the situation that leads to the question:
- Someone else has control of the value chain. This is often the case with an FMCG product. In Australia two chains have 75% market share, the supplier, even to the MNC behemoths can only watch as they set the retail price, shelf position and category definition.
- The questioner has not spent the time and brainpower to consider what really matters to the customer. They have therefore failed, or chosen not to to make the hard choices that are central to building a brand.
Back to the Australian FMCG situation, as it relates to produce. Coles and Woolworths do not stock any proprietary brands at all in produce, just store branded product. The producer therefore has no control at all about what happens in store, but they do have a choice: to build a brand in alternative channels.
In some produce categories, hard vegetables, for example, the chains have close to the FMCG share of 75%. Carrots and onions seem to be pretty commoditised, but other categories like sensitive summer fruit, mangoes, stone fruit, and berries like strawberries and blueberries, have a far larger share in the alternative channels simply because the state of the product really matters to consumers. The 17 year old casual in Coles after school does not care much about the sensitive nature of the strawberries, but the greengrocer often does, the product matters, so they make decisions based on what matters.
Not every consumer will care enough about their strawberries, but perhaps enough will to make the development of a brand worth the effort, time, risk and cost.
When you accept that it is only price that matters to consumers, you have made a key strategic choice. That choice is that you will not care enough to find out what else may really matter to consumers sufficiently that they will make their purchase choice on a basis other than price.
Things that matter are usually beyond the physical dimensions and capabilities of a product, they are the stories that make the difference.
Why is one toaster worth more than another, they both toast bread, but perhaps one is just a tool, the other a piece of kitchen art based on the stories of the designer.
In simple terms, Focus on what really matters
