Feb 3, 2014 | Branding, Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
One of the questions I am most often asked is “how do we make this go viral”. To my mind it is also one of the silliest.
The objective of “social” weather it be media, or a drink in the pub, is engagement with others. The objective of viral is, well… not sure, apart from entertaining shocking, scamming ,infecting and occasionally informing people we do not know, will probably never meet, and who will have no impact on our lives.
However, the manner of the diffusion of content on the net logically has an impact on the level of engagement an individual will have with any piece of shared content.
Something that is “e-broadcast” to everyone on a list by an unknown person or institution to the individual receivers, is unlikely to have high open and resend rates, so will not go far. By contrast, something sent selectively to individuals with whom there is already a connection of some sort will have a higher open and resend rate.
It is these open and resend metrics that count, in effect an endorsement from a sender you know that it is worth your time to open the link.
The return on effort is definitely with social, not viral.
Jan 27, 2014 | Change, Governance, Marketing, Small business
In Australia today, January 26, it is “Australia Day”, the day we Aussies, or most of us, think the place was started, conveniently ignoring the thousands of years of habitation before Captain Philip turned up with a bunch of convicts in Botany Bay.
For most of us it is also the start of the working year, the end of any summer holiday, back to the grindstone.
For me, thinking about the coming year over everyone else’s break (we self employed do not get one) I came to the conclusion that 2014 was going to be the year of Analytics, Big Data if you prefer, the year when we finally recognised the now central place analytics hold in our commercial and private lives.
It does not have to be the geek version of analytics. Most of the businesses I work with are small, some tiny, but every one has potential assets hidden amongst the various databases they collect, usually without trying. Riverina Grove, a manufacturer of fine Italian food products in Griffith has 6 years of pretty simple data held on excel that can describe by line item every transaction over that time by a range of parameters. Not hard to collect, as it comes out of their standard accounting software, not hard to analyse, Pivot tables in excel do a great job, certainly not “big data” by most measures, but Gold to an SME, should they choose to use it.
At the other end of the scale, is Netflix, an institution in the US, disrupting totally the movie rental industry, and whilst it has not always got it all right, their use of analytics has driven their recovery from stumbles, and success with customers. This long piece in “The Atlantic” outlining Netflix’s data capability to turn data into useable marketing information is a “must read” for marketers.
Data is the secret weapon of organisations, the challenge is to use it, to approach the data with the view that somewhere in here are answers I need, but to get them out, not only do I need the data skills, but the creativity to find ways to extract and enhance them. Josh Wills has a definition of a data scientist, that new profession that has emerged in the last few years I like, “better at software than any statistician, and better at statistics than any software engineer” that comes from this terrific Slideshare presentation on data science.
As Warren Buffet so famously said, “In God we trust, all others bring data”.
It is up to us all to figure out how to use it, but while you are procrastinating, your competitor is probably ramping up his capability.
Happy Australia Day.
Jan 22, 2014 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Analytics is perhaps the buzzword of the moment, it seems to be attracting some of the same purveyors of snake-oil previously touting SEO as the saviour of all sins.
Amongst the detritus, however, there are some gems. Avinash Kaushik’s “Occum’s Razor” blog is one such gem, as is Scott Brinkers” Chief marketing technologist” blog. I am sure there are others, but the weight of numbers is with the snakes.
A mate of mine has a small business specialising in collecting data from HR environments, applying analytics and offering advice on areas of improvement. Tasks like board performance assessment are his bread and butter.
A few weeks ago in a casual conversation, he was down cast, as he had been beaten in a tender by a competitor, for the third time recently, when he knows from long experience the algorithms in his analytics are way more robust than those of his competitor. The difference in the tenders was made not by the analytics, but by the visual representations of the analytics. His competitor has invested in visuals, whereas he has continued to invest in the data integrity.
Visuals sell, as they offer simplistic answers to complex questions, but the question remains, how good are the answers.
Jan 17, 2014 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Small business
Every day I get stuff by email that purports to make me some sort of compelling offer, something that some dill out there kids himself (herself?) that I need.
It often starts:
Dear Alan (wrong spelling)
I am the CEO of Buttstuffers & Co, we are experts at something that we know will add 50% to your bottom line. Hopefully you are the right person for us to talk to. (I do not care who is the CEO of Buttstuffers, I do not know who they are, what they do, all I care about is how in hell they got my name, and yes, I am the right person, because I can ignore you, or more satisfyingly, tell you to piss off)
I would like to offer you a free ???????????, guaranteed to work for you, just to demonstrate our goodwill. (too late, my quotient of goodwill disappeared when you misspelt my name, and since then you have just managed to annoy me)
Download our free whitepaper now for more information. (Why would I do that, all it does is confirm an email address, and give you more information to throw more crap at me that demonstrates you are simply full of it)
We are experts at:
Marketing automation
Marketing ROI
SEO
Creating client relationships
Etc,etc.etc.
(If you were expert in any of this, which I seriously doubt, you would not have sent me this. In former times, you would be selling snake oil)
It gets really tiresome, marketing flatulence like this just gives those of us who genuinely care about what you think, and how your business can improve, and how our expertise and experience may assist, a bad name.
I tell my clients it is part of the price we pay for the tools that the web delivers, but nevertheless, flatulence smells bad irrespective of the cause.
Jan 6, 2014 | Change, Innovation, Marketing, Small business
Its the new year, 2014, January 6 to be exact, and I have been ruminating on the “List” every blogger accumulates and publishes early in January in the hope that they get noticed, and build some momentum for the year.
All the research tells us that headlines that include a list, like “top 10” and “5 things to…” get opened more than their non-list competitors, so that is what most seem to use, understandably. Being opened is the first hurdle, and a list helps with that, but the following wished for outcomes, being relevant, shared, and useful are just as challenging, and lists do not necessarily help.
Contemplating my list, trying to articulate the things I see happening that may influence our commercial choices in 2014, I saw a common thread. Everything I was contemplating sprang from the opportunities opening by being different, new, or looking at a common challenge from a new perspective. This seemed to hold equally when contemplating new products and technologies, emerging services, and new business models.
It seemed to me that the thread was that the real advantages and advances in 2014 will not come from doing the same things better, but by doing different things.
How different are you planning to be? what is on your agenda that is genuinely new, rather than just a rehash of something old but perhaps proven? how are you going to stand out in an increasingly homogeneous world?
Dec 4, 2013 | Branding, Change, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
The produce branding model used by the agricultural so called marketing programs run by industry bodies all fail the basic test of being consumer centric. Generally they are retailer centric, using grower levies to fund discounts, and sometimes display space, never brand building. ”
“Australian tomatoes” is not a brand, it is simply a description.
Besides, the major retailers are exercising their control of the supply chain by not allowing proprietary brand building marketing anywhere near their stores.
The major retailers hold varying shares of produce categories. I suggest that hard vegetables like potatoes and carrots are in line with their overall share of around 75%, but their share of sensitive, seasonal fruit is probably more like 40%, with everything else falling somewhere in between. Where they fall depends on the “commodity” status of the produce, and consumers view of the trade-off between convenience and freshness, taste, and the more subjective things like customer service and product provenance.
Sydney Harvest is determinedly consumer centric. It is an evolving business model that creates a collaboration between the best growers in the Sydney Basin ands specialist produce retailers in Sydney to deliver field fresh, best quality, provenance assured produce to discriminating consumers, turning the usual supply chain into a demand chain.
Currently in pilot, the initiative is setting out to determine if there is a market in the niche, as there is certainly a niche in the market for such a collaboration.
