Is marketing losing its humanity?

Jan 8, 2020 | Marketing

Marketing, when I first started was a mind-set that had at its core, the customer.

The information we had was by todays standards in the dark ages, and we had to work really hard for it. We pored over sales and basic market research reports by hand, working with others in the supply chain, and most importantly, talking to customers, real ones, over a coffee, lunch, or even on the golf course.  In the process we learned about their problems and aspirations, and once in a while, came up with something good.

In the meantime, we  got to know in some detail what they were seeking, and how we might best address that quest. Yes, it was an expensive and time consuming process, and yes, it was subject to being less of a commercial exercise than it was a tonic for the ego, but it was effective.

Now all we do is pore over the deluge of data generated by algorithms driven by marketing technology: Martech.

We delude ourselves that in doing so we  are not missing anything,  but the reality is that we are so deluged that we risk missing what should be the obvious, and more importantly, the less obvious connections visible to the experienced and informed human eye, invisible to an algorithm.

The central objective of marketing is to solve a customers problem, add value to their lives in some way, and have them come back for more.

I am unsure of how this end is achieved by constant automated updates, unsolicited sales offers, chasing them around the net with ads for stuff they do not want, and making them click away a detested pop up.  So called marketing people, those who have emerged in the last 15 years, seem to think that actually engaging with a customer, talking to them, asking questions to which they might  not like the answer, is akin to walking on stage to deliver a presentation to a crowd: to be avoided at all costs!

Marketing is at its core, all about human interaction.

Martech has its place, but is not a silver bullet, or replacement for the insight that comes from humanity.

 

Header cartoon courtesy Tom Gauld at www.tomgauld.com

 

 

 

Own your digital real estate, or slowly disappear in 2020.

Dec 22, 2019 | Change, Governance, Social Media, Strategy

It is getting harder and harder to be seen in the tsunami of stuff posted on various digital platforms.

The platform owners are wholesalers of eyeballs, their business is monetised by being the choke point between those who create material, and those who may benefit from seeing it.

Since the purchase of LinkedIn by Microsoft, the changes being made to generate a return on the $US26 billion paid have all been designed to build the case for monetising the access to the other side of the equation.

I have no problem with the principal, being paid for value delivered. However, for a small consultancy, wanting to inform, educate, demonstrate expertise, and add value, the costs can become significant.

There is an option.

Be really good, be different, and be of value to the few who really care.

Everything posted on the various ‘social’ platforms is first posted on my own digital home base, a point of distribution I own, so make the rules by which I operate, www.Strategyaudit.com.au . The alternative is to rely on platforms others own, where they make the rules by which you have to play.

For those who sometimes find value in what I write, subscribe to the posts on the site, rather than waiting to see them on LinkedIn or some other place, because you will miss most of  them.

Once subscribed, you have the option of reading them, or just skimming and moving on, the choice is yours, not that of an algorithm designed to extract rent for the privilege.

If the posts become less than valuable, unsubscribe. Easy.

For many years now the path has become increasingly clear: to be seen, you must own your own your digital real estate, not rent it from someone else. 

The recent changes in the LinkedIn algorithms have halved the number of people who see what I post, and moved them geographically. A set of eyeballs in Sydney is for me terrific, New York or Mumbai is of less value.

At some point soon I will simply stop posting outside my own digital real estate, relying on that oldest of marketing tools, word of mouth, to spread the word. At least then I know that those who see the stuff really care, perhaps learn, and might start a useful conversation, which is why I do it.

This is the last post for 2019. I hope it has been a good year for you.

As I sit here in Sydney, ringed by fire, and observe the impotence of the public governance  we have somehow inherited, the hubris and self interest that prevents sensible debate and change across our economy and social services, I can only believe we are at a tipping point. I remain an optimist, and hope against hope that 2020 sees the awakening of a feeling that we have to not only demand change for the better, but dig in and generate it, one by one, until it becomes unstoppable.

Merry Christmas, and I will see you next year

Discover ‘flow’ to build scale 

Nov 28, 2019 | Leadership, Lean, Operations

The notion of ‘flow,’ or as we call it, ‘In the zone,’ is a psychological state first articulated by psychologist Mihaly Csikenmihali, published outside academic circles in his 1990 book ‘Flow: the psychology of optimal experience’.

From time to time, most of us experience ‘flow’ in our lives.

Those rare times when deeply immersed in a task, when energy and concentration are together forming a focus and delivering a rolling output, that makes the time seem to compress and fly. The level and quality of output when in such a state is surprising to us, even  astonishing. 

I wonder if there is a collective noun that describes such a state to a group?. It would apply when a group of individuals are so closely working as one, but using their individual skills simultaneously, and cumulatively, such that the collective output is greater than the sum of its parts.

How does a group go about achieving this state of flow?

It takes engagement, focus, alignment around a common purpose, and preparation. The output when it happens, is amazing.

Einstein must have been in an extended state of flow during his 1905 ‘miracle year,’ when he wrote four papers that together formed much of the foundation of modern physics.

He did  not achieve this by himself, although he was not known outside a small group of friends. He was working full time in the Swiss  patents office in Bern, these seminal papers were his ‘side-gig.’ He was not able to access the supposedly best minds in the fields he was thinking about, as he could not get a job in a university, so he walked and discussed with his few close friends and colleagues, and significantly his first wife, herself a substantial mathematician.

There must have been some degree of collective ‘intellectual flow’ present in that time, the state where collective and collaborative activity delivers compounding outcomes, leading to those seminal papers.  

Every enterprise should strive for ‘Flow’ in their activities. The flow of processes, such that everything happens predictably, smoothly, to a predetermined cadence, building on itself, delivering a compounding outcome.

This applies as much to innovation activity, and strategy development and implementation,  as it does to the mundane processes that we need to have happen every day to keep the doors open.

Can you see any sign of ‘flow’ in your enterprise?

 

Header credit: Lucidpanther via Flikr

The new Revenue Generation paradigm

Nov 25, 2019 | Customers, Marketing

When was the last time you made a sale without the customer first doing a google search on their problem, and alternative solutions, before you knew they existed?

A while ago I bet!

Customers no longer need you, the information you have, and  the products you sell, simply because they can easily find many alternatives.

The traditional sales funnel, starting with awareness, moving through familiarity, to intent and action, is dead. The model of a marketing function producing ideas and collateral, which is thrown over the organisational silo wall to sales to use for everything from the cold call to take the order is also dead.

In its place is a flywheel with has customers at its centre.

This simply means you have to know your customers intimately, not just their demographics, their circumstances and behavioural patterns. This in turn implies a great deal of work has been done in defining who is your ideal customer, and being able to reach out to them at a time when they are in ‘buying mode’, with a solution to the problem they are facing, that you can solve better, in some way, than anyone else.

There are no magic bullets to any of this, it takes hard work, experimentation, and persistence, and most importantly, the assistance of those customers you do know well,  to tell you what you need to do to keep them. When you enhance your levels of service, then they will be your sales force, spreading the word, one by one.

The Buyers journey is also an old fashioned cliché, usually represented by a linear process. These days it is no such thing, it is more a series of many interdependent decision points, whose order is often  changed as your ideal customer drops in an out of a decision cycle that is independent of you, the seller.  

No longer should you see Sales and Marketing as separate functions, one feeding the other. Both are part of a highly variable non-linear Revenue Generation process over which you may have some influence, but no control.

The day of the functional silo being efficient is over, thrown out the window by the power of the buyer!

 

 

 

 

 

The curse of insider knowledge

Nov 22, 2019 | Communication, Leadership, Management

When we know something, the automatic expectation is that those with whom we are communicating understand it equally well.

This automatic, unrecognised assumption can be a barrier, and at its worst, a curse.

Participating in a conversation a while ago where I was the outsider amongst a group of Canberra bureaucrats, their verbal shorthand, particularly around the departmental names and programs was incomprehensible to me. The terminology  was perfectly well understood by all of them, and they were surprised at my ignorance, when I pulled them up and pointed it out.

Try a little experiment.

Tap out a song, like happy birthday, with a pencil on a desk, and have people tell you what it is. We expect most to be able to pick it, the tune is obvious to us, singing it in our minds as we do it, but only a few actually pick it.

Of course, this closed communication loop is used all the time as a badge of membership, and a means of exclusion.

It may be that the group I was talking to were expressing their status as insiders by excluding me, but assuming this is not the intent, it was nevertheless the effect.

Every group has its own set of verbal and behavioral tools. These can be used as an offensive weapon, a means of exclusion, or they can be a tool of inclusion, it just depends on how you use it.

 

Header cartoon credit: Scott Adams and his mate Dilbert.