WILEY’S MODERN
MARKETING BOOK BUNDLE A Free 163 Page Sampler
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Contents Foreword by David Meerman Scott
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Acknowledgments
xvii
Introduction
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PART ONE: INBOUND MARKETING
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Chapter 1. Shopping Has Changed . . . Has Your Marketing?
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Who Moved My Customers? Inbound in Action: Barack Obama for President
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Chapter 2. Is Your Web Site a Marketing Hub? Megaphone Versus Hub It’s Not What You Say—It’s What Others Say About You Does Your Web Site Have a Pulse? Your Mother’s Impressed, But . . . Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: 37Signals
Chapter 3. Are You Worthy? Creating a Remarkable Strategy Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: The Grateful Dead
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PART TWO: GET FOUND BY PROSPECTS
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Chapter 4. Create Remarkable Content
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Building a Content Factory Variety Is the Spice of Life You Gotta Give to Get Moving Beyond the Width of Your Wallet Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Wikipedia
Chapter 5. Get Found in the Blogosphere Getting Your Blog Started Right Authoring Effective Articles Help Google Help You Making Your Articles Infectious Give Your Articles a Push Starting Conversations with Comments Why Blogs Sometimes Fail The Gift That Keeps on Giving Consuming Content with RSS Subscribe to Relevant Industry Blogs Contribute to the Conversation Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Whole Foods
Chapter 6. Getting Found in Google Paid Versus Free A (Brief) Introduction to How Google Works Picking the Perfect Keywords On-Page SEO: Doing the Easy Stuff First
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Off-Page SEO: The Power of Inbound Links Black Hat SEO: How to Get Your Site Banned by Google The Dangers of PPC Tracking Your Progress Inbound Marketing at Work: DIY Shutters
Chapter 7. Get Found in Social Media Creating an Effective Online Profile Getting Fans on Facebook Creating Connections on LinkedIn Gathering Followers on Twitter Driving Traffic with Digg Being Discovered with StumbleUpon Getting Found in YouTube Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: FreshBooks
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PART THREE: CONVERTING CUSTOMERS
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Chapter 8. Convert Visitors into Leads
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Compelling Calls to Action Mistakes to Avoid Optimizing Through Experimentation Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Google
Chapter 9. Convert Prospects into Leads Landing Page Best Practices Creating Functional Forms
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Going Beyond the Form A Word of Caution Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Zappos
Chapter 10. Convert Leads to Customers Grading Your Leads Nurturing Your Leads Broadening Your Reach Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Kiva
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PART FOUR: MAKE BETTER DECISIONS
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Chapter 11. Make Better Marketing Decisions
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Levels and DeďŹ nitions Campaign Yield Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Constant Contact
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Chapter 12. Picking and Measuring Your People
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Hire Digital Citizens Hire Analytical Chops Hire for Their Web Reach Hire Content Creators Developing Existing Marketers Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Jack Welch and GE
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Chapter 13. Picking and Measuring a PR Agency
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Picking a PR Agency Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Solis, Weber, Defren, & Roetzer
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Chapter 14. Watching Your Competition Tools to Keep Tabs on Competitors Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: TechTarget
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Chapter 15. On Commitment, Patience and Learning
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Tracking Your Progress Inbound in Action: Tom Brady
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Chapter 16. Why Now?
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Tools and Resources
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Tips from the Trenches for Startups
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Index
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CHAPTER 1
Shopping Has Changed . . . Has Your Marketing?
The fundamental task of marketers is to spread the word about their products and services in order to get people to buy them. To accomplish this task, marketers use a combination of outbound techniques including e-mail blasts, telemarketing, direct mail, TV, radio, and print advertising, and trade shows (or expos) in order to reach their potential buyers. The problem with these traditional marketing techniques is that they have become less effective at spreading the word as people get better at blocking out these interruptions. Ten years ago, buying a large e-mail list of “targeted names” and sending newsletters and offers to addresses on this list worked well. Internet users now routinely employ spam filters, and the National Canned Spam Act limits a marketer’s ability to send “unsolicited messages” to people with whom the company does not have a relationship. According to the research firm MarketingSherpa, the average open rate for an e-mail blast has gone down from 39 percent in 2004 to 22 percent in 2008. Ten years ago, hiring your own internal sales force or contracting with an external telemarketing firm worked
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Inbound Marketing
well. More recently, Caller ID has become a standard feature on home, work, and cell phones, and increasing numbers of people are signing up for the national Do Not Call Registry. A well-trained telesales rep can go a full day without having a decent conversation with a prospect.
Ten years ago, sending a piece of direct mail to a large list of people was an effective way to get business—just ask the credit card companies—because people looked forward to opening their mail. Mailboxes are full of junk mixed in with a few bills, so people pay less attention to them. Ten years ago, spending tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a TV advertisement was a guaranteed way to reach a large audience. More recently, people use TiVo/DVRs to skip advertisements, and in addition the plethora of available TV channels and the rise of great video content online, make choice the advertiser’s enemy. Ten years ago, radio ads were heard by people in their cars, homes, and workplaces. Today, the emergence of XM/ Sirius radio has dramatically lowered advertising’s reach, and
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Shopping Has Changed . . . Has Your Marketing?
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the emergence of the iPod and iTunes has dramatically lowered the amount of radio people listen to at home and at work. Ten years ago, a trade show was a sureďŹ re way for businesses to reach a business audience. Today, many trade shows have either gone out of business or have seen a signiďŹ cant decline in attendees due to people preferring to not spend money on ights, hotel costs, etc. Many people visiting trade shows now are job seekers and other vendors.
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Ten years ago, the trade publication was subscribed to and carefully read by most of your marketplace. Today, trade publications have been losing subscribers and laying off staff. These highly-qualified people are now starting blogs— some of which have become more popular than the trade publication. The bottom line is that people are sick and tired of being interrupted with traditional outbound marketing messages and have become quite adept at blocking marketers out!
Who Moved My Customers? People shop and learn in a whole new way compared to just a few years ago, so marketers need to adapt or risk extinction. People now use the Internet to shop and gather information, but where on the Internet do they go—and how do they use the Internet for these activities? We can break the Internet down into three main areas. People primarily shop and gather information through search engines, such as Google. The average information seeker conducts dozens of searches per day—and, rather than listen to a sales rep, read a spam message, watch a TV ad, or fly to a trade show, most people find it easier to sit at their desks and find the information online through Google. In order to take advantage of this new reality, marketers need to change the way they think about marketing—from the ground up. Another place people use to gather information is the blogosphere and its over 100 million blogs (as of this writing). Virtually every industry and consumer niche you can think of has a cadre of online pontificators, many of whom are quite good. Your target audience is no longer reading the trade publication, and instead is searching Google and
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subscribing to blogs written by the folks who used to write for the trade rag. The third place people learn/shop is in the social mediasphere—the name for the collection of social “media” sites such as Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn, Digg, Reddit, YouTube and others. These sites started as niche techie sites, but are becoming mainstream. To be successful and grow your business and revenues, you must match the way you market your products with the way your prospects learn about and shop for your products. And you do that by generating leads through inbound marketing.
Inbound in Action: Barack Obama for President Regardless of your political views, you can apply the marketing principles Barack Obama used in his 2008 presidential campaign—a brilliant example of how to effectively use inbound marketing to beat bigger, better-funded rivals. In the run up to 2008, Barack Obama was a little-known first-term senator from Illinois up against a well-known, wellfunded Hillary Clinton machine. Early in the race, Obama realized that using the same outbound marketing rules that Hillary would likely use would put him on the same playing field—but the field would be slanted her way. Because he initially had less funding, Obama couldn’t compete with Hillary and her e-mail blasts, telemarketing, direct mail campaigns, and TV and radio advertising. Instead of playing by the old rules, he made different rules altogether—many of which relied heavily on inbound marketing. “The aim of our online campaign,” says Chris Hughes,
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co-founder of Facebook and Obama’s Internet Strategist, “was to help individuals understand the values of Barack Obama and of our campaign and then to make it as easy as possible for them to actively engage with the campaign’s work. We tried to open as many direct channels of communication as possible—using e-mail, text messages, online networks—and then equip them with the tools to spread the campaign’s message using networking technology such as My.BarackObama.com and Facebook.” The strategy worked. Americans were able to connect with Obama via his blog, Facebook page (5,800,000 supporters and counting), Twitter (450,000 followers and counting), LinkedIn (13,000 members and counting), and YouTube (21,000,000 views and counting), among other social networks and web sites. The rest, as they say, is history. Eric Frenchman, John McCain’s online consultant and Chief Internet Strategist for the online political agency Connell Donatelli, Inc., commented on the candidates’ use of social media throughout the presidential campaign. (His comments were compiled by Jon Clements who writes the PR Media Blog found at http://pr-media-blog.co.uk.) Keynoting the Future of Digital Marketing event in London, June 2009, Frenchman called search marketing “the great equalizer” and the “one place where you can compete or even beat your competition with less money.” He also noted Obama’s ability to use Facebook effectively: creating “register to vote” widgets helped him amass over three millions Facebook followers versus McCain’s 610,000. Frenchman also made a point that to us is a key to using social media effectively—rather than use Twitter to engage in conversations with people, McCain used it as a “one-way communication vehicle.” In other words, he
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wasn’t listening to his constituents but instead was talking “at” them. Whether you agree or disagree with the candidates is now moot. The moral of the Obama campaign is this: inbound marketing, if done right, is a very effective way to reach your prospective customers. How to do inbound marketing right is what you’ll learn in this book.
To Do 1. Keep reading this book for “how to” advice. 2. Visit www.barackobama.com and look around. 3. Get fired up to take your market by storm. 4. 5. 6. ( We left these blank for you to write in other “to do’s” that come to mind.)
Contents
Foreword Scott Dorsey
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Introduction: Why AUDIENCE?
Part I: The Audience Imperative
1
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Chapter 1 Audiences as Assets: Think Like The Boss
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Chapter 2 The Audience Imperative: Our Hybrid Source of Business Energy
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Chapter3 Your Proprietary Audiences: Seekers, Amplifiers & Joiners
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Chapter 4 The VIP Joiners: Subscribers, Fans & Followers
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Chapter 5 Beyond Don Draper: Paid, Owned & Earned Media
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Chapter 6 Increase What Matters: Size, Engagement & Value
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Chapter 7 A Larger Font: Our Long-Term Responsibilities
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CONTENTS
Part II: The Audience Channels
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Chapter 8 Website: Marketing’s Magnetic Center
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Chapter 9 Email: The Bedrock Audience
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Chapter 10 Facebook: Making It Personal
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Chapter 11 Twitter: Real-Time Characters
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Chapter 12 Blogs: A Website by Another Name
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Chapter 13 Mobile Apps: Audiences on the Go
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Chapter 14 LinkedIn: The Professional Audience
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Chapter 15 YouTube: Internet Built the Video Star
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Chapter 16 Google+: The Great Unknown
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Chapter 17 Pinterest: A Collection of Beautiful Followers
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CONTENTS
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SMS: Cutting through the Clutter
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Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Instagram: Moving Pictures
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Chapter 20 Podcasts: Listen Carefully
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Chapter 21 Other Audience Channels: More? You Want More?!?
Part III: The Audience Roadmap
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Chapter 22 Map & Align: Strategy and Team
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Chapter 23 Build & Engage: Audiences on Demand
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Chapter 24 Serve, Honor, Deliver, Surprise & Delight: The Red Velvet Touch
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Chapter 25 Test & Evolve: What Marketers Can Learn from 5,000 Years of Football Conclusion Notes Acknowledgments Index
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Foreword
I
first met Jeff Rohrs back in 2004 when he was president of Optiem, a digital marketing agency in Cleveland, Ohio, and one of ExactTarget’s first reseller partners. His keen eye for business trends, passion for digital marketing, and sense of humor made an immediate impression on me—and it wasn’t long after that I found myself asking Jeff if he’d be interested in joining our team. In 2007 he made the leap, and both of us couldn’t have been happier with the results. As producer of our award-winning SUBSCRIBERS, FANS & FOLLOWERS Research Series (SFF), Jeff was one of the first to highlight the fragmenting nature of consumer/brand relationships. Whereas many were taking a one-size-fits-all approach to their cross-channel marketing efforts, Jeff and his team were urging companies to better understand and meet the consumer expectations created by each channel. As the SFF research demonstrated, SUBSCRIBERS wanted different things than FANS and FOLLOWERS—and vice versa. In early 2013, Jeff approached us with a new idea—one that seemed revolutionary at the time but has proven to be true: There’s a hole in our marketing organizations. Advertising, brand, content marketing, demand generation, interactive marketing, product marketing, and sales all have leaders; but no one leader is responsible for building, engaging, and nurturing our proprietary audiences. Sure, there are great folks on the front lines of email, mobile, and social, each developing audiences specific to those channels. However, companies that don’t have a singular voice to speak for the needs of proprietary audiences will be hard-pressed to deliver on the promise of today’s convergent marketing technologies—true one-to-one relationships with consumers across all channels. AUDIENCE is a wake-up call for every company today. Before you acquire a customer . . . before you can build a relationship . . . there must first be an audience for you to address. Your company may be content simply buying advertising to reach audiences, but Jeff and our entire team see a different future—one in which companies embrace an asset-based approach to marketing and work to constantly improve the size, engagement, and value of their own proprietary audiences. This is not an either/or proposition. Paid,
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FOREWORD
owned, and earned media can and should work together to produce more revenue at lower cost wherever possible. And that’s the simple, powerful message of AUDIENCE: It is within our ability today to leverage data, permission, and technology to better sell to and serve consumers across all channels and devices. Frankly, I don’t think there’s a more important book that companies can read today. Jeff has laid the groundwork for the responsible, long-term, profitable development of proprietary audiences. The structure you choose to build upon that foundation is up to you. However, if you build wisely, you’ll find yourself with a competitive advantage that will last for years to come. —Scott Dorsey (@ScottDorsey) CEO and Cofounder ExactTarget, a salesforce.com company
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Introduction: Why AUDIENCE?
It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.1 —Alfred North Whitehead
Welcome to the audience of AUDIENCE, the book! The moment you began flipping through these pages, you became a READER. I’m hoping you’ll soon purchase a copy and graduate to my CUSTOMER audience.* And if the subject matter really strikes a chord with you, perhaps you’ll become a website VISITOR (www.AudiencePro.com), email SUBSCRIBER, or a FAN of the book on Facebook. Who knows, you may even become one of my FOLLOWERS on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+, where I ponder how to build and engage audiences while masking a lifetime of pain caused by rooting for the Cleveland Browns (@Browns). Ultimately, the choice is yours because you—the consumer— determine whether or not to become a part of any audience. You are not owned. Your attention, action, and loyalty have to be earned by all those who want it. That’s how it works today. We like, follow, and subscribe to our favorite brands, companies, and people any time we want. We usually do so when
*I use ALL CAPS throughout to refer to specific, proprietary audiences that are detailed in Chapters 3 and 4. My hope is that it will avoid confusion and help you refer back to key audiences of interest.
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INTRODUCTION: WHY AUDIENCE?
it brings us joy, saves us money, or provides us with timely information. As consumers, we are in control. We decide which audiences to join, leave, or ignore altogether. Unfortunately, not all businesses appreciate this dynamic. They operate under the false assumption that paid media still rules the roost and provides all of the audiences needed to fuel their business. That may have been the case at one point in time, but no longer. Consider that as you read this, there are the following phenomena: • • • •
A cookie (the edible kind) with over 34 million FANS on Facebook A landscape designer with over 3.5 million Pinterest FOLLOWERS An actor with 13 times the Twitter FOLLOWERS of his TV show An oral care startup with 100 times more YouTube SUBSCRIBERS than competitors with over 100 times the revenue • A local restaurant with over 20,000 email SUBSCRIBERS—over 500 of whom have restaurant-inspired tattoos Each of these entities has a distinct advantage over their competitors who rely on driving business through paid media alone. With a push of the button, they can message their audiences directly in cost-effective ways that drive measurable sales, response, and engagement. In these pages, I’ll share their stories and those of other brands that illustrate the simple fact that:
Proprietary Audience Development is now a core marketing responsibility. If you embrace this responsibility, you’ll be a part of the team that turns audiences into long-term, profitable assets for your company. However, if you neglect it, you will fall behind competitors with less dependency on paid media thanks to their development of audiences that they—and they alone— can access on demand. The choice is obvious, but many companies will fail to embrace the tenets of this book because it requires a consistent, long-term effort. Marketing staff turnover, campaign-based mentalities, and siloed objectives all work to undermine your audience development efforts—and this will never change. It will always be far easier to call your media buyer, rattle off some
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Introduction: Why AUDIENCE?
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target demographics, and rent audience attention than it will be to command your own. But we know the truth. Always doing what’s easy is a path to poverty, not prosperity. Just as consumer behaviors are changing thanks to mobile and social technologies, so too must our marketing organizations evolve to reflect our new realities. The time has come to stop treating proprietary audiences as afterthoughts and instead embrace them for what they are—a source of critical business energy in need of investment, leadership, and support. AUDIENCE is as much a book for CEOs as it is for marketing professionals. Its lessons and advice are as relevant to small businesses as they are to Fortune 500 companies. You should feel free to read it from end to end or jump straight to the parts that interest you most. After all, you’re the audience; you’re in control. In Part I, we’ll explore The Audience Imperative. Through its mandate, I explain what proprietary audiences are, what they have to offer our companies, and why it is more important now than ever before for your company to build them. In Part II, I provide a deep dive into the top Audience Channels for Proprietary Audience Development. My goal here is to help you understand how these channels might fit your strategic needs, and how to pursue additional resources to aid in your use of them. In Part III, I present an Audience Roadmap that you can use to build, engage, and value your proprietary audiences in ways that will deliver measurable results. I conclude with thoughts on what marketers committed to Proprietary Audience Development can learn from 5,000 years of football (yes, football—trust me, you’ll enjoy it). One quick note—in the spirit of helping all of those whose stories, support, and encouragement have helped me make this book a reality, you will find that any mention of a specific individual or brand is accompanied by their Twitter handle (if they have one). I would encourage you to follow the folks that interest or inspire you. I know they’ll appreciate you joining their audiences as much as I appreciate that you’ve joined one of mine. So welcome! Grab a seat, settle in, and let’s learn how to build your proprietary audiences for the long haul.
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I
Part
The Audience Imperative
Audiences are all around you. They are direct, responsive, and extremely costeffective. They’re also new, constantly evolving, and quick to anger if you cross them. Your company needs audiences to survive. If you aren’t building, engaging, and activating proprietary audiences of your own, you’re falling behind. It’s high time you discovered why.
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Chapter
Audiences as Assets: Think Like The Boss
[T ]he audience is not brought to you or given to you; it’s something that you fight for. You can forget that, especially if you’ve had some success. Getting an audience is HARD. Sustaining an audience is HARD. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.1 —Bruce Springsteen
Quick! What are the most important assets of your business today? Your brand? Intellectual property? Physical facilities? Inventory? Employees? All of these are likely answers; however, there’s one asset that is constantly missing when I ask companies this very question. Audiences. Yes, audiences. This answer tops your list if you’re in the media, sports, or entertainment industries, because you’re in the actual business of putting people in seats. You build audiences for a living and know the competitive advantage to be gained if your audience is bigger, better, and more energetic than the competition’s. Media companies build READERS (print), LISTENERS (radio), and VIEWERS (television). Football teams feed off of FANS. And Lady Gaga . . . well, she loves her “Little Monsters.” Even lay consumers who aren’t in media or entertainment inherently understand that each of these audiences has monetary value. Loyal FANS pay
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THE AUDIENCE IMPERATIVE
cash for tickets to a live event, and a percentage of that money goes to the performers. The equation is simple: bigger audiences = more revenue. You may think that this equation doesn’t apply to you if you work outside of an audience-centric industry, but it does. Do you pay for advertising? Then audience matters. Do you have a website? Then audience matters. Do you want to grow your business? Then audience matters. Audience is the bedrock upon which every business is built. After all, what were your customers before they were customers? They were members of some audience that was exposed to your products and services. Not that long ago, companies were totally dependent on print, radio, and television gatekeepers to reach audiences. Today, however, every company can build its own global audiences via websites, mobile apps, email, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest (just to name a few). The rapid adoption of mobile devices and social media also gives those same audiences the ability to communicate right back to companies—often, in very public fashion. Ahh . . . that sounds familiar. You’ve got “a young gal” who works on social media, “a guy” who is in charge of email—and you have some videos on YouTube. Your website “kind of ” works on smartphones and you’ve got a LinkedIn profile for your company, so you must be building audiences correctly. Right? Wrong. These are siloed tactics that produce siloed audiences. Moreover, they’re often managed by people with conflicting objectives and few organizational incentives to collaborate. What I’m advocating—what this book is about—is the creation of an entirely new marketing discipline focused solely on Proprietary Audience Development. To fully appreciate the importance of this cause, we had better check in with The Boss.
The Boss Is Worried Bruce Springsteen (@Springsteen) is no stranger to proprietary audiences. With over 120 million albums sold worldwide and thousands of live concerts under his belt, he lives for them. And while you might think a veteran performer would be the last person to worry about finding an audience—you’d be wrong. After four decades as a performer, Bruce remains concerned about his ability to build and sustain an audience for his product (i.e., his music) in the Internet age. His quote at the beginning of this chapter sums the challenge up perfectly: Getting an audience is HARD. Sustaining an audience is HARD. It demands a consistency of thought, of purpose, and of action over a long period of time.
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If The Boss is worried about getting an audience, shouldn’t you be worried? Shouldn’t your boss be? The question of where the next sale will come from has always dogged businesses. Indeed, the entire field of capital-M Marketing rose up to address such fears head on. Over the years, marketers have used a combination of creativity, messaging, and well-placed advertising to help their companies generate the vast majority of their sales—so much, in fact, that we completely lost any fear about on-demand audiences disappearing. After all, there were always print publications, radio stations, and television networks out there, all willing to put your product in front of an audience at a moment’s notice in exchange for cold, hard advertising dollars. And then, the Internet happened. New, interactive channels fragmented consumer attention, toppled traditional information gatekeepers, and decimated the business models of traditional media. Consider that: • From 2008 to 2012, daily newspaper circulation dropped 26.6 percent in the United Kingdom and 14.9 percent in the United States.2 • Twenty-nine percent of TV viewing is time-shifted thanks to DVRs, VOD, and Web-streaming platforms (and 41 percent of recorded shows go unwatched).3 • By 2020, the average consumer will own 50 Internet-enabled devices.4 In Bruce’s industry, once all-powerful, taste-making radio stations now stand as homogeneous shells of corporate efficiency where fewer owners play fewer artists to fewer listeners. Record stores are on life support, sustained by a few die-hard music enthusiasts, vinyl addicts, and the resale market for CDs. As for the music-buying experience, it has shifted from tactile and personal to virtual and impulsive. Practically overnight, the biggest artists went from selling entire albums to pushing MP3 singles for 99 cents a pop. This is why The Boss is worried. The Internet, mobility, and social media have drastically altered a formerly stable and profitable means of manufacture, distribution, and promotion. Traditional influencers who propelled his albums to platinum-level sales have lost power. And if Bruce can’t find new, cost-effective ways to reach audiences, his records won’t sell, his concerts won’t sell out, and his cash register won’t ring. But we know this hasn’t happened. The Boss is doing just fine. His 2012 album, Wrecking Ball, topped the charts—his tenth album to do so.
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THE AUDIENCE IMPERATIVE
He has amassed an incredibly loyal audience over the course of his 40 years in the music industry, and as times have changed, so have the ways they follow him. Instead of learning about his new album from a radio DJ, they hear about it directly from his website, email, or Twitter account. Or they hear about it from a new tastemaker—a blogger or fellow FAN on Facebook. Whatever the case, The Boss has retained his following because his management understands the absolute necessity of Proprietary Audience Development over the long term.
The Audience Imperative Proprietary Audience Development is a comprehensive, collaborative, and crosschannel effort to build audiences that your company alone can access. This new marketing practice is built upon a mandate that I call The Audience Imperative:
Use your Paid, Owned, and Earned Media not only to sell in the short term but also to increase the size, engagement, and value of your Proprietary Audiences over the long term. When you build bigger and better proprietary audiences than your competition, you gain a tremendous advantage in the marketplace. You’re able to drive consumers to your doorstep with the push of a button—while your competitors are left fighting for better ad placements and bidding up keywords. Proprietary audiences allow you to: 1. 2. 3. 4.
Reach CUSTOMERS and PROSPECTS at a lower cost. Drive sales in a more on-demand fashion. Treat consumers as individuals instead of faceless masses. Optimize your budget across Paid, Owned, and Earned Media.*
Proprietary Audience Development is a comprehensive, collaborative, and cross-channel effort to build audiences that your company alone can access. *I’ve elected to capitalize the terms Paid, Owned, and Earned Media from here on out to better highlight how they support Proprietary Audience Development.
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Audiences as Assets: Think Like The Boss
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While few could discount these tremendously beneficial outcomes, Proprietary Audience Development is a discipline without a champion in most companies today. In Chapters 3 and 4, we’ll explore the different audiences in greater detail, but for now, take a look at all of the potential proprietary audiences at your disposal: SEEKERS
AMPLIFIERS
JOINERS
BROWSERS
ADVOCATES
CUSTOMERS
LISTENERS
ANALYSTS
DINERS
PROSPECTS
COMMENTERS
DONORS
READERS
CREATORS
EMPLOYEES
SEARCHERS
INFLUENCERS
FANS
SHOPPERS
REPORTERS
FOLLOWERS
VIEWERS
REVIEWERS
PARTNERS
VISITORS
SHARERS
SUBSCRIBERS
Now ask yourself this: Who manages the acquisition, development, and performance of these audiences in your company? Is it one person? Two? Five? Fifteen? If your company is like most, your proprietary audiences lie strewn across a variety of different channels, databases, and teams—there’s no primary leader as with advertising, branding, and even content marketing. As a result, your efforts to drive audience engagement through your Paid, Owned, and Earned Media are neither as seamless nor as profitable as they might be. Your messaging is also probably far from optimized since your website, email, mobile, and social databases aren’t fully integrated with one another. As if this weren’t bad enough, your company runs another huge risk absent a commitment to Proprietary Audience Development. Your audiences—critical business assets that they are—become subject to abuse at the hands of the loudest, most desperate executives, inexperienced newbies, and all manner of well-intentioned colleagues who seek to achieve their personal objectives regardless of the unsubscribes, dislikes, and unfollows they cause. This leads your company (often unknowingly) to sacrifice long-term audience profitability in service to short-term, ill-gotten gains. This is not the fearmongering of a deranged marketer; it’s a story I’ve seen play out time and time again. • The email marketing team directed by management to “blast” all of their SUBSCRIBERS (and sometimes even those who
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THE AUDIENCE IMPERATIVE
unsubscribed) regardless of the impact on opt-out rates and longterm email ROI • The social media manager told to “sell, sell, sell” even though selfcentered posts suppress FAN and FOLLOWER engagement • The mobile app developer who fails to ask SUBSCRIBERS to optin to push messaging or email, thereby leaving their company without any means to trigger mobile app reengagement Sound familiar? Want to help stop the madness and embrace The Audience Imperative? Then it’s time to help your company understand proprietary audiences as the incredibly valuable business assets they are.
The Audience as Asset Say it with me. Audiences are assets—valuable business assets. They may not be tangible assets, but with the right message to the right person at the right time, proprietary audiences can quickly turn into paying customers. Of course, a company’s physical assets are more readily appreciated precisely because everyone in the organization can see them. We know the value of a piece of land because of what we paid for it or what the market will bear. We have the common sense to hire security to guard our physical facilities because the alternative is to let thieves or vandals disrupt our business. And we know to invest money in the maintenance of our physical facilities, because otherwise that small leak will become a far more costly problem overnight.
Audiences are assets—valuable business assets. Unfortunately, we lack the same organizational common sense when it comes to audience assets. Few executives fully appreciate the lifetime value of proprietary audiences and yet, as we’ll see, many of them could be worth millions of dollars in future revenue. Does your company just let anyone walk around with access to accounts containing millions of dollars? Heck, no! We entrust such assets to people who are well trained, well screened, and well compensated. If your proprietary audiences possess such inherent value, shouldn’t the people who are a push button away from your audiences be some of your brightest, most trusted, and most valued people? This strikes me as common sense, but overall businesses fail to hold audience assets in the same regard as physical assets for a few reasons:
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Audiences as Assets: Think Like The Boss
13
1. The whole concept of proprietary audiences is very new. Prior to the Internet, a proprietary audience was a direct mail database hidden in some huge, distant server. Today, proprietary audiences exist inside and outside of our databases as well as across a vast array of public and private channels. 2. We’re focused on channel management instead of audience development. Many companies have Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube strategies, but few have comprehensive Proprietary Audience Development strategies. This leaves marketing pigeonholed into tactical discussions instead of debates about strategic priorities. 3. Channels are still evolving. The channels that support proprietary audiences haven’t evolved to the point where they provide marketers with simple, consistent ROI measurements. This makes it difficult sometimes to provide leadership with more than anecdotal stories of positive audience engagement. Today, your proprietary audiences aren’t reviewed as part of your company’s financial statements, but you need to begin preparing for the day when they will be. Indeed, I envision a future in which the people who manage a company’s proprietary audiences command the same respect and scrutiny as the VP of Sales. They do, after all, manage assets (audiences) that account for a huge portion of your company’s future sales if managed appropriately.
Netflix: When Audiences Are Your Most Important Assets For a glimpse at a future where corporate fortunes rise and fall on the size and quality of their proprietary audiences, look no further than Netflix (@Netflix). The company’s ill-fated 2011 plan to split SUBSCRIBER accounts (one for streaming and one for DVD delivery) caused the loss of 800,000 SUBSCRIBERS in a single quarter. As a result, Netflix stock dropped from a high near $300 per share to the $60 range in a matter of months.5 Granted, Netflix is in the audience business. However, its plight—and subsequent recovery in terms of SUBSCRIBER count and stock price—underscores that when audiences are viewed as assets, their rise and fall can dramatically impact the fortunes of any company.
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THE AUDIENCE IMPERATIVE
Proprietary vs. Owned You may have already noticed that I’ve been going out of my way to say “proprietary” instead of “owned” audiences. Audiences are proprietary to your company and not owned by your company because no audience is owned; members can leave any time they want. Whether at a concert, using a mobile app, or subscribing to an email list, the audience member always has the option to leave the venue, delete your app, or unsubscribe from your email. The same rule holds painfully true for traditional media. If it didn’t, we’d all still be reading printed copies of Newsweek (@Newsweek) while waiting to watch Must See TV Thursday nights on NBC (@NBC). While not owned, audiences can be proprietary in that the right to communicate with them belongs to a single entity. To better understand this distinction, let’s take a look at someone who’s not quite as famous as Bruce Springsteen but commands a loyal FAN base today, Joel McHale (@JoelMcHale). For those unfamiliar with Joel, he’s a talented actor, comedian, and “Proud Mom” according to his Twitter profile. In reality, he’s one of the hardest-working men in show business, with a starring role on NBC’s Community, a long-standing role as host of The Soup on E! Entertainment Television, and a lucrative stand-up career built in part on making fun of Ryan Seacrest (@RyanSeacrest). Joel and each of his shows have an active presence on Twitter, and as I write this, their FOLLOWER counts stand at: • 3,272,374 @JoelMcHale • 241,996 @TheSoup • 234,997 @NBCCommunity
No audience is owned; members can leave at any time they want. You read that right. Joel McHale has over 13 times more Twitter FOLLOWERS than each of his shows. In fact, as I write this, he also has over 11 times the Twitter audience of the NBC Network itself (@NBC—364,945 FOLLOWERS)! “Must See TV” has definitely seen better days. But here’s the twist: Not one of those FOLLOWERS is owned by Joel. He must work to retain their attention with each new tweet. Still, Joel’s Twitter FOLLOWERS are his proprietary audience in that he is the only person that can message them in the aggregate. E! and NBC can’t. They can
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Audiences as Assets: Think Like The Boss
message their own FOLLOWERS; but to reach Joel’s, they must ask (or pay) him to message them. As it turns out, Joel does encourage his Twitter FOLLOWERS to watch both of his shows. This is of tremendous benefit to NBC and E! as it extends their promotional efforts for zero cost. Similarly, Joel has to love it when NBC and E!’s main accounts (@NBC and @Eonline, respectively) include his Twitter handle (@JoelMcHale) in their promotions. This helps him build his Twitter following—an asset that he will take with him long after he departs from Community and The Soup.
Audience Exercise #1: Check Yourself If you want to understand audiences as assets, look no further than your own behavior. Write down the brands you currently like on Facebook or follow on Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or elsewhere. Now check your personal inbox. What brands did you give permission to send email to you? Which ones do you still look forward to? If you have a smartphone, pick it up and browse your open apps. How many are provided by companies you do business with? Now ask yourself this: Is your company doing all it can to build its proprietary audience across these channels?
Twitter definitely provides Joel with his largest proprietary audience, but it’s not the only one that he commands. He also has a website audience (www.joelmchale.tv), a Facebook FAN audience (www.facebook.com /joelmchale), and a live audience of CUSTOMERS when he headlines as a stand-up comedian. Does this sound familiar? It should, because aside from being an actor/ comedian, Joel is really a business—a business seeking to increase the professional opportunities and income for one Joel McHale. He does this when he can create energy in the form of buzz, interest, and ultimately sales around his projects. The same thing holds true for Bruce, and the same thing holds true for your company. In fact, if you’re in marketing in any capacity today, it’s time to embrace the fact that you, my friend, are in the energy business.
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THE AUDIENCE IMPERATIVE
The Relationship between Audience and Customer As I’ve hammered out the concepts in AUDIENCE, I found myself referring back to three books that helped to shape many of my beliefs as a marketer: 1. The One-to-One Future by Don Peppers (@DonPeppers) and Martha Rogers (@Martha_Rogers) 2. Permission Marketing by Seth Godin (@ThisIsSethsBlog) 3. Flip the Funnel by Joseph Jaffe (@JaffeJuice) Each of these works envisions a future where marketers could increasingly leverage technology to build deeper, more meaningful, and more human relationships with consumers. Each also values consumer permission as the key to unlock both the channels (email, SMS, Facebook, etc.) and the data to power more personal, relevant, and timely communications. AUDIENCE stands on the shoulders of these giants, seeking to remind marketers that before you can gain a CUSTOMER or build a relationship with a PROSPECT, you must have an audience—preferably one that’s bigger, better, and more responsive than the competition’s. That’s the heart of Proprietary Audience Development—and hopefully, a worthy heir to the fine work of Don, Martha, Seth, and Joseph.
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Contents Foreword Thomas H. Davenport Acknowledgments
ix xiii
Introduction
1
I The Problem: How Did We Get Here?
3
1 Moving Out of the Dark Ages
5
2 Why Is Marketing Antiquated?
15
3 The Data Hairball
27
II Get Ready for Big Data Marketing
39
4 DeďŹ nitions for the Real World of Big Data Marketing
41
5 Meet the Modern Marketing Department (Michelangelo Meets Einstein)
51
III The Five Steps to Data-Driven Marketing and Big Data Insights
67
6 Step One: Get Smart, Get Strategic
69
7 Step Two: Tear Down the Silos
85
8 Step Three: Untangle the Data Hairball
99
9 Step Four: Make Metrics Your Mantra
113
10 Step Five: Process Is the New Black vii
131
viii Contents
IV Realizing the Value of Big Data Marketing 11 Drive Value through Relevant Marketing
147 149
12 The Bright, Enlightened World of Customer Experience
167
Notes
177
Resources
183
About the Author
185
Index
187
Foreword
W
hy did you get into marketing? I am guessing that it’s not because you had a burning desire to refine propensity models until the wee hours of the morning, or to wrestle with integrating social media comments with web clickstream data. But those are exactly the kinds of activities that make marketers great these days. The function is undergoing a dramatic transformation toward a world of data-driven decisions that this book describes in detail. You may have gravitated toward marketing because it is one of the most creative areas of business, and you still need to possess that attribute to succeed. But creativity is increasingly judged not only in the human imagination, but also in clickthroughs, conversions, and lift. Marketing is not, of course, the only area of business undergoing this transformation. Few people enter the retail industry because they have a fascination with point-of-sale data, and few baseball fans want to work for a team so they can compute its Pythagorean winning percentage. The world in general is becoming more data-driven, and the change in marketing is only one example of that overall shift. However, as Lisa Arthur details in the chapters that follow, the change in marketing is especially dramatic. In little more than a decade, the function has gone from emphasizing pretty pictures and catchy phrases to one that captures, integrates, and analyzes data of all types. Needless to say, many marketers—and the managers outside the function who relate to marketers—are not quite prepared for this transformation. They’ve heard the noise about data-driven marketing, but they’re hoping they can retire before they really have to change their entire orientation. But unless they’re well into their sixties, retirement won’t help much. Every day, marketing assets become increasingly digitized. Every day, more information about customers’ preferences and behaviors becomes available. Every day, the opportunity cost of not pursuing data-driven marketing piles up.
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Foreword
There is both an organizational and an individual imperative for reading this book, internalizing its lessons, and continuing the pursuit of datadriven marketing. At the organizational level, some group of people needs to take the lead within companies in moving toward a data and analyticsfocused culture. Marketing, as the function most impacted by the rise of data—and as the most frequent gatherer and user of customer data—is in an excellent position to take the lead and to lead by example. If marketing can target customer promotions, understand the attribution of digital media to sales, and segment to markets of one, the rest of the organization can’t help but move in the same data-driven direction. If marketing takes the lead in this regard, it can also seize an opportunity to take primary responsibility for managing customer interaction data. As you probably realize, marketing is not the only customer-oriented function in most organizations. It shares that responsibility with sales and customer service. My view is that over the next several years, organizations will feel the need to clarify who is really responsible for customer information. If marketing groups can demonstrate that they are adept at managing and using customer information—and making the data accessible to other organizations that need it—there’s a good chance that marketing will get the role for the entire organization. Of course, in order to do that successfully, marketing will need to step up its professionalism in data management. As Arthur points out, that means discipline, a process orientation, and lots of work on data integration. These are not generally traits that are traditionally associated with marketing, so some changes need to be made. Arthur refers to the prediction by Gartner that by the year 2017, marketing organizations will spend more on technology than IT organizations. I am not sure that prediction will come true (and even less sure it will happen on this date), but if it’s even close, marketing data management will have to adopt some of the same approaches to data hygiene (security, backup, version control, and so forth) that IT organizations have employed for decades. There is some irony in the move by marketing into professionally managed information and technology. Over the years, marketers have frequently been guilty of a “renegade” approach to IT. Instead of working with the IT function to create a professional approach to data management, marketers often tried to evade scrutiny by acquiring technology and managing complex data environments on their own. The marketers in question may well have gotten their database up or analyzed their social
Foreword
media sentiments more quickly and inexpensively. However, this renegade approach has led to fragmented and siloed customer data, as well as some inefficiencies in technology architecture and platform management. Going forward, it’s not that marketing will replace IT in the professional management of data, but will collaborate with it. Indeed, one organization—Arthur’s own firm, Teradata—recently combined the jobs of chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief information officer (CIO). Perhaps we will see more such combinations, but in any case we will certainly need to see collaboration. Whenever I meet CMOs who don’t work closely with their companies’ CIOs, I consider shorting their stock. I can’t imagine the companies will be successful if marketing and IT don’t get along. At the individual level, it’s now clear that marketers at every level need to embrace technology and data as key elements of their professional portfolios. Everyone needs to know something; some need to know a lot. Every individual marketer needs to stake out a position on the continuum that has traditional, creative, intuitive marketing on one end (a position that is no longer tenable by itself), and hard-core digital data management on the other. If you’re on the extreme data-oriented end, you may not look much different from a traditional IT person, although you will happen to specialize in managing customer-oriented data. Some marketers will need to go back for formal schooling to develop this expertise; others can get by, as Arthur notes, with internal skill development programs within companies. Highly self-motivated individuals may even be able to acquire the needed knowledge by studying the voluminous amount of online information on this topic. Whatever means you choose, acquiring this sort of knowledge takes hard work. And in marketing, the work to keep up with expanding IT and big data knowledge won’t stop for the foreseeable future. It’s great that you are reading this book, and Arthur will have provided you with a solid foundation for big data marketing by the time you reach its end. However, the world of data-driven marketing is changing at a dramatic pace. New channels to the customer, new application categories, new types of data to exploit, and new vendors and offerings emerge all the time. To be successful in data-driven marketing, you’ll have to become a student of this domain for the rest of your career. This may seem daunting, but try to look at it as a fantastic time to be in this profession. What could be more stimulating than being in a part of business where the foundations are being shaken on a daily basis? Where
xi
xii Foreword better to be than in the vanguard of this change? Wouldn’t you prefer to be a leader of this transformation than to be led by someone else? In short, it’s a wonderful time to be a data-driven marketer if you like change, excitement, and new ideas. And if you don’t like those things, marketing probably isn’t the best place for you anyway! —Thomas H. Davenport
Arthur
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Introduction
B
ig data. I’ve been a marketer since 1984, and never have there been two words that cause more anguish in the C-suite. Over the years, I’ve seen corporate leaders execute masterful acquisitions, heroic management of budget cuts, aggressive staffing reductions, and other feats of strength. They seem to take most business hurdles more or less in stride, but mention the words big data, and the conversation changes. Every member of the C-suite agrees big data is an issue that needs immediate attention. The problem is, very few know what to do about it, and, of course, that indecision just adds to the anxiety. As companies put off formulating their plans, the data continues to stream in, creating massive tangles of information, processes, and applications. The knot grows. Insights and value get buried in all the chaos. Stomachs begin to ache. And no one wants to admit they’re falling farther and farther behind. I want to change that dynamic, and I wrote this book because it’s time to open up the conversation about big data. As uncomfortable as it may be, we need to start discussing big data—the good, the bad, and the ugly—without hype, without sales pitches, and without fear. Today’s business leaders need to roll up their sleeves and confront the challenge of big data head-on, but in order to do so, they must first have a clear view of the task ahead of them. I truly believe that kind of clarity can only be achieved through honest, real-world dialogue. That’s why this book isn’t filled with complex mathematical models and lists of confusing statistics. Instead, I chose to focus on what I’ve discovered as a marketer who’s coming of age in the era of big data marketing. I wrote about my mistakes and successes, as well as the triumphs of those I have had the pleasure to learn from along the way. You’ll find page after page of practical advice about how to drive the changes required to begin reaping the benefits of big data insights. If you want your business to move forward, if you’re tired of all the sensationalism and hype, if you’re ready to ease that knot in your stomach, you’ve come to the right place. Turn the page. Let’s start the conversation. 1
I
The Problem How Did We Get Here?
1
Moving Out of the Dark Ages
5
M
ore and more, the C-suite feels like a goat rodeo, a chaotic arena of business executives talking over and past one another. In fact, this pandemonium of different agenda and perceptions is now the spectator sport characterizing the Dark Ages of business. Even worse, it often takes only two of us to get the rodeo started. I’ve seen this firsthand. One afternoon, while I was working as a chief marketing officer (CMO) at a Silicon Valley technology start-up, I seized the opportunity to talk to the CEO about how we could improve our demand creation and solution adoption. After briefly explaining that more resources would help us segment our market and buyers, I began to lay out my strategy for developing different content and engagement strategies for each unique persona, but, just as I was hitting my stride, the CEO interrupted me. He was operationally focused, and already, he had heard enough. He looked me straight in the eye. “We don’t need to segment the market,” he said. “We just need to market.” Instantly, I knew I had failed. I hadn’t effectively communicated why improving connections and conversations with customers and prospects would add value to the business. Clearly, the CEO didn’t understand that messages and offers targeted to different buying personas would yield more eyeballs, more conversions to free trials, and ultimately, more paid subscriptions of software. And since I couldn’t provide quantitative proof of the returns from my suggested plan, he certainly wasn’t willing to devote any more resources. I knew we needed to invest in data analysis to better understand the market and advance our overall strategy and marketing techniques, but, to this CEO, that request was out of the question. At the time, I was frustrated. Why didn’t he get it? Worse, I wasn’t sure how—and even if—I could help him understand. Unfortunately, clashes and fly-bys like this happen every day in C-suites and boardrooms around the globe. They’re all too common, 7
8
The Problem: How Did We Get Here?
and they’re indicative of the chasm now separating marketing from the rest of the enterprise. On one side, there are the marketers who understand the intrinsic value of heightened customer engagement. On the other, there are the C-level execs who need to secure funding, drive change, and ease the organization’s growing pains—the very aches caused by fragmented data, fragmented systems, and disconnected interaction channels. Of course, marketers have been envisioning one-to-one relationships with customers for decades. They’ve always been the consumers’ champions, advocating within the C-suite not only for better customer service and support, but also for product developments. When The One to One Future, a book by Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, was first published in 1993, it captivated the industry by focusing on the individual customer rather than the market as a whole. This book became the marketer’s bible, inspiring new customer relationship strategies and insights into ways to better engage through true one-to-one experiences. Since then, however, marketers have struggled to make the relevant, targeted, and value-based conversations they have promised real for most brands and their buyers. Even though consumers are clamoring for a more modern approach, the majority of companies continue to deliver just the opposite. From my perspective, that’s no surprise. Outdated, ineffective, and ad hoc internal marketing processes, coupled with fragmented and missing data, can only lead to flat, one-size-fits-all messaging and interactions. And these lackluster experiences, in turn, are creating another gap, one that’s particularly perilous because it separates brands from their customers at a time when consumer patience is growing thin. How much wider will these chasms grow? How much longer can we stand at the edge of the cliff, secretly hoping the disconnects will somehow resolve themselves?
The Threat of Digital Disruption We can’t wait anymore. A new vision of customer engagement, one that’s grounded in personalized, relevant, and consistent communication, must materialize. I’m not talking about simply segmenting markets and targeting messages. I’m appealing to brands to begin true one-to-one interactions with their buyers and prospects. We must market like we communicate in our everyday lives, as one individual to another, as well as to groups or segments. We have to embrace a two-pronged approach that drives
Moving Out of the Dark Ages
highly relevant, individualized engagements, while also leveraging broader segmentations when it is cost effective and good enough. We have to imagine how a personalized experience with our brand, product, or service will benefit and add value to our customers. We have to build that experience, and we have to deliver it—now. Why the urgency? Because companies are facing continued consumer pressure to step-up with compelling experiences now—before the competition does—and because today, digital disruption threatens virtually all business models, physical products, and value chain relationships. But what exactly is digital disruption? Just like most of you, I’ve been trying to wrap my head around the concept. It’s multifaceted, all-encompassing, and difficult to distill into a single sound bite. But, I’ll do my best to explain. Here’s my definition of digital disruption and what it means to business today: Just as the word “disruption” describes throwing convention into confusion, “digital disruption” describes how technology and data are changing our culture, throwing communication and the physical world of processes and goods into disorder, across all industries. Every board, every CEO, every CMO—essentially every business executive I talk to—dreads the threat of digital disruption. I’ve even heard some Fortune 100 executives say they avoid using the term “disruption” when trying to drive change within their companies because the word alone ends up instilling fear rather than motivation. But, won’t validating this fear by ignoring digital disruption cause even more damage? Yes, it will. As author and business advisor Shelly Palmer told me, no matter what business you’re in, your company needs to think strategically about digital disruption. Its impact can be felt everywhere—business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), supply side, demand side—no business can escape the relentless pace of technological change.1 According to Palmer, who wrote Digital Wisdom: Thought Leadership for a Connected World, companies need to fail fast, fail cheap, and iterate. Long planning cycles have a place, but given the speed that information travels and the dramatic changes in consumer behaviors empowered by technology, an annual or even quarterly review of strategy and execution may be too stagnant. Companies must adopt more flexible and iterative approaches to planning because, as Palmer points out, “the rate of technological change will never be slower than it is today.”
9
10 The Problem: How Did We Get Here? In other words, we are entering uncharted waters. “It took 30 years to connect the first two billion people to the Internet; it will take about eight years to connect the next two billion,” Palmer said. “This unprecedented level of connectivity will empower new consumer behaviors. Companies and their leaders must adapt, or die!” Where is digital disruption taking us? The answer will vary from sector to sector. As of this year, 3-D printers can produce a pair of designer sunglasses, an electric guitar body, and even human tissue. This simple example illustrates digital disruption within the manufacturing and durable goods industry where we are moving away from mass production into personalized reproduction. In financial services, digital upstarts and smartphones are challenging the future of banking relationships. Retailers are also navigating disruption as the focus moves from online-only retailers to the impact of omnichannel commerce and the accelerating role of mobile commerce. While some business leaders look to other industries to understand digital disruption, most are wrestling with their own business model threats. Think about it: As consumer power grows, not only are customers controlling the market conversation; they’re bound to demand more control of their personal data, as well. The companies that thrive will be the ones that deliver value by building individual relationships with buyers based on trust and shared experiences. Digital disruption will connect business and consumers in new ways, and the winning companies will be the ones that scale the ability to transact with the individual. Clearly, it’s time for all of us—especially marketers—to move past the fear so we can confront digital disruption head on. Why especially marketers? Because marketing has been affected most by the explosion of digital channels and changes to consumer behavior. Plus, marketers are among those who stand to benefit the most from understanding the customer better through data analysis. After all, digital disruption is not, by definition, a negative occurrence; it is a phenomenon that forces change. Companies can use digital disruption as the imperative to engage customers differently with more personalized, tailored, and data-driven messages across all points of interaction.
The Enlightened Age of Data How is your company reacting to digital disruption? Do you agree that the C-suite needs to move from the Dark Ages into an Enlightened Age of
Moving Out of the Dark Ages
Data? Do you believe as I do that marketing needs to lead the way? As I mentioned earlier, marketers have long been the voice of customers within the enterprise, and now CEOs and the rest of the C-suite are counting on marketing to find new sources of revenue and differentiation through more compelling customer engagement and experiences. How should marketers respond? Marketers must respond by using, leveraging, and applying data: Data from customers. Data from prospects. Data from warehouses. Partner data. Sensor data from durable goods. Competitive data. Internal data. External data. All of these data insights can be leveraged to create a competitive advantage. First, companies need to create more holistic views of their data. Then, they need to analyze that information for actionable insights. Finally, they need to put the processes and tools in place that enable them to execute based on those insights. The bottom line? Marketing needs to be data driven. Let me be more precise. I define data-driven marketing as collecting, analyzing, and executing on insights from structured and multi-structured data (that is, big data) across the enterprise to drive customer engagement. Data-driven marketing is the engine behind improved marketing results, and it creates measurable internal accountability as marketers become more effective in planning, executing, and proving the value of their work. And keep in mind: Using data to guide and inform does more than engage current customers. Data-driven marketing techniques also capture new customers. In 2011, the Information Technology Services Marketing Association’s (ITSMA’s) survey results showed that 82 percent of datasavvy marketers report greater market share2 when using insights to drive marketing. That’s proof that more targeted, relevant experiences pay off. Teradata Corporation found similar results in its 2013 survey of more than 1,000 marketers globally. The report, Global Teradata DataDriven Marketing Survey, 2013, concludes that six out of ten marketers (58 percent) believe that a data-driven marketing approach helps them make better decisions.3 (The complete report is available as a supplemental resource to this book at www.teradata.com/big-data-marketing or at www.bigdatamarketingbook.com.) Figure 1.1 shows how data-driven marketing impacts the overall field of marketing. Kelly Cook, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW), has seen it happen. When her team needed to reinvigorate the DSW brand and drive growth for shareholders, Cook led
11
12 The Problem: How Did We Get Here?
More accurate decision
58
Better business result (revenue, profit, etc.)
49
More efficent use of resources, reduced cost
44
Identified a new opportunity, new competitive advantage
43
Faster decision
31
None/not sure/other/can’t remember
10 0
100% Percent of Marketers Agree with Statement
FIGURE 1.1
Benefits of Using Data in Making Decisions
Source: c 2013 “Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey, Global” Teradata Corporation.
a data-driven process to chart the consumer journey and deliver more personalized experiences in campaigns, offers, and messages. “You need a fully integrated strategy being championed from the top of the house,” Cook told Teradata Magazine. “Then it’s just a matter of prioritizing all the things you need to do because believe me, customers have no problem telling you everything you could do better. Knowing what you need to do for customers allows you to understand what data is needed, so you’ll know what to attack first.”4 I believe all marketers must be open to this kind of reorientation. We’re in the midst of a renaissance, of sorts, because a cultural shift is necessary to unify, understand, and leverage the enterprise and big data insights needed to drive more compelling, relevant customer engagement across all channels in real-time. Of course, that’s not to say that finding traction amidst all the disruption will be effortless, or even easy. Historians tell us that the Renaissance was a period characterized by inquiry, creativity, and growth juxtaposed with misunderstanding—and even fear—of innovators and their new points of view. I fully expect to see similar dynamics shape the Enlightened Age of Data, as the function of marketing continues to mature. During this renaissance, we’re all bound to face skepticism from other smart and seasoned business leaders. Difficult new questions will force us to rethink the very ways we work to build our brands. Before we move further ahead into the Enlightened Age of Data, let’s take a closer look at what’s been holding us back.
Moving Out of the Dark Ages
KEY TERMS Data-driven marketing: Data-driven marketing is collecting, analyzing, and executing on insights from structured and multistructured data (for example, big data) across the enterprise to drive customer engagement. Data-driven marketing is the engine behind improved marketing results and creates measurable internal accountability as marketers become more effective in planning, executing, and proving the value of marketing. Digital disruption: The word “disruption” describes throwing convention into confusion, and “digital disruption” describes how technology and data are changing our culture, throwing communication and the physical world of processes and goods into disorder, across all industries. Big data: Big data is composed of digital information, including unstructured and multi-structured data, often derived from interactions between people and machines such as web applications, social networks, genomics, and sensors. Big data is a continuous stream of information conducive for ongoing discovery and analysis. Industry leaders, like the global analyst firm Gartner5 , use adjectives like “velocity, and variety” as a way to frame the big data discussion.
DOs and DON’Ts Recognize that the world has changed, and therefore the expectations of marketing have changed. For example, social media is here to stay, mobile is exploding in importance, and customers are savvy, smart, and in control. Learn to leverage tension in the C-suite to inspire change. Healthy tension can identify the obstacles to charting (continued)
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14 The Problem: How Did We Get Here?
(continued) a new course and help you discover better ways to approach old problems. Avoid adding to the goat-rodeo dynamic. Instead, use the debates to build buy-in and alignment. Commit to moving from the Dark Ages into the Enlightened Age of Data. Embrace the journey to a data-driven marketing organization, one that directs programs and spend with insights based on real-time market response. Then, develop a simple plan to move forward. Don’t assume digital disruption is someone else’s problem. Engage in active dialogue across your business, get customer insights now, and begin defining a future state and the key success factors you need to get there. Be the leader driving the data-driven marketing culture. This change can’t be delegated. Define a vision and get the help you need to turn it into strategies for your business that drive more value. Don’t boil the ocean. Start with small steps and evolve. I’ve seen too many projects get sidelined by visions that are too big, coupled with steps that are too complex. Maintain a big and compelling vision, but identify low-hanging fruit for individual projects. For example, decide to increase revenue through better relationship marketing, and then identify the key initiatives that will deliver results. Don’t stagnate. Many projects in marketing are currently selffunded and, due to budget cuts and competing priorities, these initiatives often limp along. Complicating matters even more, it takes time to build credibility among the internal cynics needed to support certain projects. Put focus and resources behind strategic customer engagement projects. Then, staff these initiatives with people who can build relationships. You’ll need to leverage expertise and manpower from all parts of the company (not just marketing) to create alignment and move forward.
2
Why Is Marketing Antiquated?
15
E
xternal forces, like the digital disruption I discussed in Chapter 1, aren’t the only factors keeping marketers in the Dark Ages. When I talk to marketers one on one or speak with a roomful of business executives, I also hear about a wide range of internal obstacles that prevent companies from leveraging big data insights and developing more personal customer engagement strategies. Though the details can vary widely, the most common challenges these organizations face include: a lack of collaboration across departments, mercurial market and consumer behaviors, turf wars over customer data ownership, ad hoc processes, declining or stagnant budgets, overspecialized functions, and proliferating channels. These problems are spun from years of ever-changing marketing leadership and a shift in buying practices caused by a variety of factors, most notably, the Internet, mobile devices, social networks, and a global marketplace that is now always on and constantly connected. Why has marketing lost pace to these challenges? Because in many instances, marketers are unable to clear at least one (and usually more) of these six stubborn hurdles: l l l l l l
Tactical (versus strategic) marketing Manual marketing management Silos of data and demand for real-time engagement Communicating the value of marketing Lack of talent/training Fragmented and often missing data
Let’s discuss each of these hurdles so you can better understand why it’s so difficult for marketing to emerge from the Dark Ages. 17
18 The Problem: How Did We Get Here?
Tactical (versus Strategic) Marketing In many firms, the marketing function is purely tactical. Often, businessto-business (B2B) marketers are focused on supporting sales with lead generation, internal slide development, and content creation for salesenablement tools. In other companies, marketers are considered the “arts and crafts” department, and their main deliverables are websites and those tedious PowerPoint templates. By contrast, in forward-thinking firms, a completely different dynamic has taken root. In these companies, the marketing function has evolved from tactical to strategic. Here, marketing drives the product and services roadmap, designs the buyers’ journey, and essentially, directs the business. Of course, to take on this strategic role, marketers have to embrace an approach that uses data and insights to inform decisions. These firms recognize marketing as a new strategic opportunity and realize it’s the foundation for the entire company’s success. Why? Because when marketers shift from tactical to strategic roles, they’re empowered to become customer-centric. Guided by this new focus, they start charting the course to innovation and propelling the change that’s necessary to compete in today’s global marketplace. As I mentioned earlier, marketers have always been the experts when it comes to understanding customers. The difference is that marketers can now use small and big data analytics to link the customer directly to company revenue. As a result, they can prove the value of their strategy and justify changes across the organization.
Manual Marketing Management Unfortunately, most traditional go-to-market processes impede marketers from participating in high-level strategic planning. Think about it: Each quarter, marketers juggle hundreds of projects and thousands of creative and visual assets. They need a rich variety of content and a wide selection of offers and messages tailored to offline and online audiences. Managed manually, these initiatives devour the workday and leave little time for the strategic big picture. In short, too many marketers are still producing materials by hand using point solutions. Stuck in the Dark Ages, they still waste time scrolling through emails to manage the creative review process.
Why Is Marketing Antiquated?
They still perform manual list uploads to segment and communicate with their target audience. Is it any wonder manual marketers like these are battling irrelevance? And outdated content creation and review processes are only the tip of the iceberg. Marketing is one of the largest variable spends for most companies today. So I’m baffled that many organizations still manage their sizeable marketing budgets in basic spreadsheets. They don’t link each campaign or initiative to its cost and results, and they’re far from tracking or reconciling marketing spend to overall corporate financials or objectives. It would be absurd for a global corporation to use Excel workbooks to track its overall finances, so why was it ever considered acceptable for marketing? The pressure on chief marketing officers (CMOs)to prove the return on marketing investment (ROMI) has never been greater, so why is marketing the last frontier to integrate and automate its processes, systems, and data? The antiquated approach of manual project management keeps marketing in the Dark Ages and leaves its true value locked up on spreadsheets and hidden in fractured enterprise systems. Traditionally, marketing has not been forced to tie its spend and results to overall business goals and metrics. A department that has long been excused from the demands for quantitative rigor, marketing now stands at an inflection point, and in order to move forward, marketers must begin managing the business of marketing. What do I mean by the business of marketing? Marketing oversees a large portfolio of assets, including financial and human resources, projects that span the business and geographies, and intellectual property through content and go-to-market strategies. Marketers need to manage these valuable assets with greater discipline and process to assure they are optimizing and driving revenue and competitive advantage at the lowest cost.
Silos of Data and Demand for Real-time Engagement Consumers are in control. They’re demanding real-time responses that are relevant and personalized, and available when, where, and how they want them. This dynamic is driving marketers to fix inherent process bottlenecks so their teams can react to consumers quickly and effectively. Beyond the technology to integrate information from different channels and
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20 The Problem: How Did We Get Here? customer touchpoints, marketers need the data and content to respond in real time. Retailers are among the first to deal with this shift in control as the proliferation of mobile devices is revolutionizing the retail shopping experience. A 2012 Teradata study of more than 2,000 consumers1 found that one in five consumers is now “showrooming,” visiting retail stores to try products, then checking a mobile device for the best price online. Of those already showrooming, 33 percent said they ultimately used the information to buy elsewhere. And the trend is only expected to grow. Nearly everyone in the study (96 percent) said they plan to use their smart phone to research prices the same way or more in the future. How can retailers combat the showrooming trend? As I see it, the brickand-mortar retailers that succeed will be the ones that change the in-store dynamic. They’ll use big data marketing insights to empower employees, so then these employees can treat shoppers they way they want to be treated: as individuals with unique buying behaviors and preferences. For instance, by using data-driven marketing, retailers can learn what each customer values most: whether that’s a discount, bonus reward points, an extended warranty, or some other perk. Then, they’ll be able to offer that preferred option to the shopper who’s showrooming, right then and there, on the sales floor. Granted, all of this is part of good, old-fashioned customer service—and that may be what today’s consumers want most of all! In fact, 85 percent of consumers polled in the 2010 North American Customer Experience Report published by RightNow Technologies said they are willing to pay above the standard price of a product or service to ensure they receive a superior experience.2 Other industry sectors are feeling the effects of empowered consumers, too, and fortunately, most companies are not blind to this new consumer clout and the potential business impact of a poor customer experience. In particular, today’s social media networks take word of mouth to a whole new level. Here’s a case in point: Back in 2009, a disgruntled customer created a YouTube video to describe his bad experience with a well-known brand. The video went viral. More than 500,000 people viewed it in three days, and the bad press reportedly cost the brand $5 million in the first month. Bottom line: Consumers won’t remain silent with the power and reach of the Internet and social networks literally at their fingertips—a conclusion verified by survey results released in April 2013. Dimensional
Why Is Marketing Antiquated?
Research found that nearly six in ten of those surveyed (58 percent) said they are more likely to tell others about their customer service experiences today than they were five years ago.3 I find that when I poll CMOs and their senior leadership teams, their number-one strategic focus is to provide a more compelling customer experience. My advice is always the same: Focus on the external experience and work inward, improving customer information and data at each interaction point with the explicit goal of adding value for the individual and bolstering the trust that forms the foundation of customer relationships. Essentially, to improve the customer experience, you need to consolidate data, make sure your systems work together, and capture, collect, harmonize, and utilize information to enable more informed and timely engagement across all channels.
Communicating the Value of Marketing Even when a company’s processes are integrated, automated, collaborative, and strategic, there will be tension in the C-suite if employees cannot effectively demonstrate results. These days, there’s a laser focus on accountability and transparency, and marketers are expected to deliver a higher degree of performance and metric-driven discipline than ever before. In response, marketing executives are learning to embrace a data-driven marketing culture. They’re implementing new technologies to harness big data, integrate operations, and produce credible, tangible metrics. They’re nurturing collaborative partnerships, and they’re retraining or up-leveling talent to satisfy the demand for analytical skills in almost every modern marketing position. Even so, communicating the value of marketing isn’t always easy. Let me give you a personal example. I worked for nearly seven years at a multinational computer technology corporation in Silicon Valley, California. During my first year, I sat in research and development, where I led global CRM product marketing and frequently debated with senior leadership about how I believed marketing was more than clever words and pretty slide presentations. During this Dark Age of my own career, my colleagues kidded during staff meetings that they needed my “arts and craft” skills. They also jokingly told me to “get out the sock puppets”
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22 The Problem: How Did We Get Here? whenever I left to speak at external presentations. There is always a whisper of truth in humor, right? Without question, the C-suite at that organization viewed the marketing function as purely tactical—and back then, I didn’t have the data I needed to prove my team’s value. Now, I know better. Data, process, and content build credibility and demonstrate value . . . and value and revenue are what drive markets.
Lack of Talent and Training Businesses can’t move ahead into the Enlightened Age of Data if they don’t leverage big data marketing—and they can’t leverage big data marketing without the expertise of data scientists and others trained in skills like computational analysis, predictive modeling, statistics, and the management of big data sets. But, there’s a problem: There just aren’t enough data pros to fill all the needed positions, and that means opportunities are being lost while companies scramble to fill these crucial roles. Teradata’s most recent BARC Big Data Survey4 found that most of the companies polled intend to invest in big data technologies; however, a lack of human resources and know-how keeps them from gaining deeper insights. In fact, insufficient technical and analytical expertise is the most imminent challenge when it comes to the use of big data. The third State of Business Intelligence and Analytics survey echoed those results. In this survey, one-third of employer practitioners reported an overall lack of experience as their most important challenge, followed by insufficient business skills. Insufficient technical skills and a general lack of candidates tied for.5 How are employers responding? The vast majority (80 percent) of employers surveyed offer supplemental training courses for newly hired workers, ranging from extensive classroom work to mentorship and internships to tuition reimbursement.
Fragmented and Often Missing Data As you have undoubtedly realized by now, each one of the six hurdles outlined in this chapter is directly related to data. Yes, data holds enormous potential for business value. But, it can also present enormous roadblocks to progress. For example, when data is scattered in siloed systems—or incomplete, or missing, in general—customer relationship management
Why Is Marketing Antiquated?
(CRM) applications fall short of expectations. They fail in their promise to create what many consider marketing’s Holy Grail: the 360-degree view of the customer. In fact, most business executives I know laugh out loud when they hear that term because they know achieving that level of scope and specificity has been as elusive as finding Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster, or, of course, the Holy Grail. According to the Global Teradata Data-Driven Marketing Survey, 2013, only 18 percent of marketers routinely have a single view of all customer interactions.6 Why so few? The answer is simply that data fragmentation and data silos have created what I call a “data hairball,” my term for the complicated mess of interactions, applications, information, and processes that now plagues a variety of different business functions. At some companies, the data hairball consists of customer information spread across marketing, finance, sales, and customer support departments. At others, it’s a snarl of data from marketing service providers (MSPs) and information trapped in channels like separate eCommerce sites, undocumented call center conversations, and web activity that leaves partial data strung across the company and partners. Figure 2.1 illustrates why marketers lack the systems and data they need to work together. As you can see, it’s really quite simple. Marketers working in the Dark Ages are frustrated by a fractured hodgepodge of technology and channels. In Chapter 3, I’ll explain how this jumble impacts the customer. CEOs, CMOs, and their teams now wrestle with data hairballs every day. They yearn to capture more insights and drive more relevant content and conversations, and yet, despite their best efforts, the tangles usually just grow bigger and more complex. The uncomfortable reality is that most current information management systems simply aren’t up to the task. They can’t handle large data sets and they can’t perform advanced analytics. Then, as the number and variety of channels and applications continue to explode, these older systems simply fall farther and farther behind. Sure, many marketers are talking about big data; but very few understand how to tackle it, and even fewer have begun to leverage it within their organizations to inform more strategic, value-based customer engagement strategies. As I’ll reveal throughout this book, the true value of big data comes from insights, and those insights are only possible after the integration of data (both traditional and multi-structured) from different sources, such as digital, offline, internal, and external. Are you ready to dig in deeper? Let’s explore the relationship between marketing and data in more detail, starting with the next chapter.
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The Showrooming Trend
Source: c Teradata/Aprimo, 2012
FIGURE 2.1
Why Is Marketing Antiquated?
KEY TERMS Return on Marketing Investment (ROMI): A metric used to measure a marketing initiative’s overall effectiveness and contribution to objectives like company revenue. Understanding ROMI helps marketers make better decisions about allocating future investments. This metric is a common language for marketers to communicate the value of their efforts to the rest of the organization. Chapter 9 provides more detail on this concept. Data hairball: The complicated mess of interactions, applications, information, and processes that results when companies are unprepared to handle information from a wide range of data sources, many of which are not organized in an orderly manner, complicating usage and access. Showrooming: The practice of visiting retail stores to try products, then checking a mobile device to find the best price online.
DOs AND DON’Ts Recognize that traditional marketing technologies, processes, and culture need to evolve or risk becoming irrelevant. The modern marketing department must respond, often in real-time, to demands from the C-suite and a growing variety of stakeholders, including customers, collaborators, and vendors. Manual processes and a business-as-usual mindset can no longer keep pace. Identify where and how your data is fragmented. Begin by appointing a data-savvy, process-driven individual to lead the charge. Map out where data is being generated and where there’s influx from new digital channels. Then, build a project (continued)
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26 The Problem: How Did We Get Here?
(continued) plan for collecting and managing that data. Consider master data management technologies and a strong partnership with IT to make it happen. Put the customer at the center of all you do. Today’s empowered consumers expect personalized, relevant interactions. When was the last time you stood in your customers’ shoes and saw what it was like to do business with your company and use your product or service? Take a day or two to experience your company as a customer. One airline refused to allow its leadership team to fly first class to ensure they would understand how the majority of passengers experience their services. Understand the customer journey and inspire your organization and others on how to revolutionize the customer experience. Don’t add unnecessary complexity to the marketing hairball. Plot your course. Create a data management plan to ensure your moves are meaningful. Don’t stop collecting data simply because you aren’t currently using it. Who knows? It could turn out to be an integral part of the next project to improve customer engagement. Just don’t get ahead of yourself. Start small and build as your capabilities improve. Don’t bury your head in the sand. The data hairball may be overwhelming, and you may have a deficit of talent needed today to modernize marketing. Embrace the reality of where your team and data are today and commit to driving change and improving the picture. Don’t accept status quo. Your company might be growing, but if you believe your marketing approaches are outdated, do something about it. Digital disruption requires us to evaluate, execute, and evolve go-to-market strategies. What worked today won’t always work tomorrow.
PRAISE FOR THE PASSION CONVERSATION “It’s a fast read, a fun read, a smart read. Short sentences, huge heart. Read it. Why? To absorb an important truth from the masters of word of mouth movements: Conversations spring from passions, not products.” —Dan Heath, co-author of Decisive, Switch, and Made to Stick “Have you ever gotten teary eyed over a business book? Better yet, over your own business? Prepare yourself for The Passion Conversation, where the folks at Brains on Fire tell how their business connected them with people in very moving and powerful ways, redefining words like marketing, sales, and success. Read this book to move your perspective from business to people, and experience the incredible effect it will have on your life and work.” —Jon Mueller, General Manager of 800-CEO-READ “Love is the missing ingredient in developing loyalty with customers. In The Passion Conversation, the smart folks at Brains on Fire expertly explain how to develop deeper connections with customers who in turn sing your praises to everyone they know.” —Jackie Huba, author of Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics “I’ve had my eye on Brains on Fire for a while. Their humanity makes them quite distinctive, and The Passion Conversation captures that unique voice.” —Peter Sims, author of Little Bets, and founder of The BLK SHP Enterprises
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Join the conversation at brainsonfire.com/blog.
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Contents
Preface
A Note from the Authors xi
Introduction
1
Chapter One
Understanding Word of Mouth Marketing 17
Chapter Two
Sparking Work of Mouth Marketing 37
Chapter Three
Heroes: A Love Story 69
Chapter Four
The Fitness Rebellion: A Love Story
Chapter Five
The Driven Class: A Love Story
Chapter Six
Wonderopolis: A Love Story 149
Chapter Seven
Sustaining Word of Mouth Marketing 177
Acknowledgments
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About the Authors
199
Bibliography Index
97
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205
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We won’t lie. This was a hard book to write. You see, at Brains on Fire, we believe that we owe it to our courageous customers to spend most of our time and efforts finding and sharing their passion conversation and growing their tribes. As people who practice word-of-mouth marketing, just finding time to write this book was a really, really big deal. We burned some serious late-night oil. But it was worth it because we learned so much along the way. And we grew even closer to our customers. We had someone ask us the other day, “Aren’t you afraid you’re giving away your secrets?” We smiled and said, “Nope.” See, we don’t believe there are any marketing secrets. We’ve learned that sharing and connecting with other like-minded people in the world is what’s magical these days. By sharing knowledge with others, we’ve learned good things will happen. Our first book, Brains on Fire: Igniting Powerful Sustainable Word of Mouth Movements (yes, Brains on Fire is the name of our company and our first book) was a really remarkable ride. It connected us with some super-cool people. Some of those people have xi
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PR EFACE become our friends and kindred spirits. Some of them knocked on our door and joined our tribe. Some we’re honored to call our customers and advocates. You’ll get to meet a lot of them in the following pages. Consider this book a continuation of the lessons we shared in our first book. Here’s a quick review: Movements aren’t about the product conversation; they’re about the passion conversation. They start with the first conversation. They have inspirational leadership. They have a barrier of entry. They empower people with knowledge. They create a feeling of shared ownership. They have powerful identities. They live both online and offline. They make advocates feel like rock stars. Many times they find and fight an injustice. And most importantly, movements get results. We love hearing people recite these lessons back to us. We love it when they let us know how they have applied some of them to their own businesses. And you’ll absolutely see the lessons from our last book brought to life throughout these pages. Still, we knew we had learned more in the three years since our first book was published, and we wanted to spend some time digging deeper. We felt that we owed it to our readers, our customers, and ourselves. We’re big believers in the notion that writing (and speaking) inspires thinking, and writing this book and telling these stories has truly been a gift to us. We’ve talked to many wise and wonderful people including our customers, their customers, and even each other. Writing this book and having these conversations has helped us really think about the work we’re doing in the world xii
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Preface
and define what matters. It has helped us grow. It has opened our hearts, and helped us fall even deeper in love with the people we serve. Our only hope is that it does a little bit of the same for you. With LOVE always, Robbin, Greg, Geno, and John (and the entire Brains on Fire tribe)
When you have a book with four authors, you have to make some style decisions. So just like several other author teams have opted to do, we talk about ourselves in the third person. Please know that none us ever, ever, ever, ever refers to ourselves in the third person when you’re actually with us face to face. (Geez, that’s weird when people do that.) We did it here to make it easier to follow. You’ll even see us quote ourselves. Think of it this way: We simply decided to let you inside our walls and let you listen in on our passion conversations: conversations with our clients, our teammates, some smart people we know, and even among ourselves. Enjoy. And do us a favor: Please reach out to us and let us know what you think. You can find us thinking out loud most days on our blog at www.brainsonfire.com.
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We know what you’re probably thinking: The last thing the world needs is another business book. Don’t worry. This is not a business book. This is a love story. It might sound strange, but hear us out. The Passion Conversation is a story about being famous for the people who love you, and for the way you love them. We’re going to share some remarkable love stories. In the three years since our first book, Brains on Fire, was published we’ve done a lot of thinking about love and how it relates to business and to word-of-mouth marketing. We’ve also given a lot of thought to the word passion, which we actually mention 67 times in our last book. (Sixty-seven times? Yup. John Moore, the self proclaimed “ticky-tacky detail geek” among us counted.) Since that first book, we’ve wondered over and over again—at first to ourselves, then aloud to one another—is passion something that can be unearthed in someone? Can it be taught? Is it 2
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Introduction
real? It is overused or misused? Did we misuse it one or more of those 67 times? Does it belong in business, or is it a word best saved for artists, romance novels, religious stories, or 20-year-old lovebirds who can’t stand the thought of being apart? We’ve asked ourselves over the years why the following lesson from our last book gets tweeted and repeated over and over and over and over again. “It’s not about the product conversation; it’s about the passion conversation.” Hmmmm. The book you’re holding in your hands is called The Passion Conversation. We don’t take that deliberate choice of words lightly. Can we really write a book worthy of such a lofty title? Who knows? But we do know the following: We’re all in marketing grad school. And there are some valuable lessons to be learned inside the passionate love stories we’re about to share with you. They’re lessons that can make our businesses better places to work. Lessons that can make us feel more alive and more purposeful in how we spend our time and talents. Lessons that can help spark social change. Think about it: Can you imagine a world where more of us are happy at work? A world where the majority of us are working with passion? In the following pages, we’ll share the stories of four amazing organizations—Foundations Recovery Network, Anytime Fitness, DeVry University, and the National Center for Family Literacy—that took the time and effort to bring their passion conversations to life inside and outside of their office walls. Regardless of their for-profit or not-for-profit status, each of the companies we’re highlighting is adding value to people’s lives, and in doing so, they’re sparking word of mouth. It’s in our DNA as human beings to share things we find valuable and meaningful with others. We talk about things (and 3
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I NT ROD UCT ION people) we love often and with a force that sticks. You might not be a recovery business, a fitness franchise, a higher education university, a not-for-profit, or any of the other businesses we’ve sprinkled in, but chances are these stories will inspire you to take action nonetheless. We believe with all our hearts and souls, it is possible, absolutely possible, to fall madly and passionately in love with the people you serve. And we believe that it’s possible for those folks to fall in love with you, too; and, yes, for you to become famous and grow your organization because of that love. If you want people to be in love with you and talk about you, you must fall in love with them first. Your clients, customers, donors, tribe, employees, advocates— what you call them doesn’t really matter—can and should become beloved heroes in your organizations. Because guess what naturally happens when you’re in love? You talk about that person you love constantly. You can’t wait to be with them. You think about how you can surprise them. You inspire them. They inspire you. You share secrets. You want to understand them. You have empathy. You defend them. You have compassion. You don’t mind taking out the trash. You are deeply connected. Passion is contagious. As business owners, marketers, or Chief Love Officers (a title we think more relevant than Chief Marketing Officer) we should feel wildly romantic and passionate about the people who help fuel our businesses and spread our causes. Passion fuels word-of-mouth conversation and excitement. Our passions make us happy and let us know that life is worth living. They motivate us to do remarkable things. When we are passionate about someone, we really do talk about that person all the time. We’re eager and excited to 4
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Introduction
share the tiniest details. Spend just a few minutes around a new parent and you’ll see what we mean. Passion is not something you own; it’s something you pass forward. So if you take the time to understand your own unique passion conversation—and yes, we believe everyone has them—as well as the ones that excite those you serve, something amazing will happen. That’s exactly what we’ve done to grow our own business over the years. Not only have we fallen in love with our customers, we received the permission and indeed the honor to get to know and care for our customers’ customers. We are village matchmakers, facilitators, the Cupid of marketing companies. It’s our role to help connect our customers with their employees and customers through shared passions. Don’t just take our word for it. We’ve studied the work of some smart people who are also digging deep into why people talk—we’ve even become friends with a few. We’ve mixed and kneaded some of our in-the-trenches knowledge with the areas they’ve been researching and learning. We found that there’s magic in that recipe, magic we feel compelled to share with the world. What does it take to fall in love with your advocates, the customers and employees who are ready, willing, and happy to fall in love with you? The people who therefore willingly and passionately talk about you? Here are the key things we’ve learned that you’ll see come alive in the following pages: 1. Know yourself and clearly define what you really want from a relationship with your employees and customers. We hate it when we hear companies talk about using fans to tell their story. Think about it: Do 5
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I NT ROD UCT ION you really use people you care about? Absolutely not. You listen to them. You get close to them. You see them frequently. You want to be a meaningful part of their life. When we begin working with a new client, we almost always start by listening to stories within that organization’s walls. We have a day of knowledge sharing. We play games. We laugh. We hear their hopes and dreams. Our goal is to help the people we serve better define who they are and what they stand for. So, we spend time with the people who answer the phones. We observe them in action as they talk with their current and potential customers and supporters. We ask to see their love letters. We take photos of the things they hang on their walls and keep at their desks. We talk to the people on the front lines as well as the CMOs and CEOs and brand managers. We spend time in meetings and just hang out socially to get know their passions. Because you know what? Passion should be a mirror. Write that down or star it in the margins so you get it under your fingernails. The reflections should match; inside passion should mirror outside passion. You have to know what drives you and your employees to get up in the morning before you can connect with other likeminded people. As author and speaker Simon Sinek says in his book Start with Why, we go looking for your why. (By the way, if you haven’t read Simon’s book, do it. Right after you’re done with this one.) 2. Be very realistic about who your customers and potential customers really are. If you’re a not-forprofit, get an accurate picture of your volunteers and your donors. Who’s doing more than just writing a check once or twice a year and why? Start internally and ask yourself some tough questions. Who do you serve? 6
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Introduction
What do they really look like? What are their challenges? How and when do you fit in their lives? How can you add value? For a brief time, we had a client in the beauty and fashion business. We discovered this client’s customers were fairly average women, people who shopped at Walmart and Target and drove minivans. They were amazing, beautiful women who cared about looking their best, but they were not just off the cover of Vogue or Glamour. So we connected with them and started igniting a community around that connection. We found that they were real women with beauty and fashion tips and life stories (and struggles) to share. The CEO was upset that the women we felt they should be celebrating and loving weren’t magazine-glossy perfect. Some of them (heaven forbid!) were even overweight. He wanted to chase the pretty girl at the party, because that’s who he wanted leading the community and talking on his company’s behalf. That’s what people in the beauty industry do. But the pretty girl in the room didn’t want to talk to him and his brand. He missed the point entirely, and we resigned. Most likely, before we were about to be fired. The point is you have to be very realistic about who your customers really are and not just who you want them to be. As most of us know from personal experiences, you can’t make someone who is not interested in you love you. Write this down too: You can’t choose your advocates; they choose you. 3. You can’t find love sitting on your couch watching TV. There’s a time to just chill and watch TV, just like there is a time to quietly pour over data and 7
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I NT ROD UCT ION demographics. Make no mistake: We love data as much as the next company, but to really fall in love with your customers and find their passions, you have take time to be with your customers. You have to get out and make real world connections. You have to meet people where they are. Join their parties and go to their football games. And for goodness sake, don’t just come out and ask people, “What is your passion?” It’s a personal and emotional question and one that’s pretty hard to answer without any warning or opportunity for forethought. You have to earn trust to learn about someone’s true passions and trust takes time. Let’s be honest. The first requirement in finding the passion conversation is pretty simple: You have to enjoy being with people. 4. You can discover love and learn a lot online. There are tons of ways to listen to and participate in the conversations your customers and potential customers are having online. We partner with many smart companies who can help do just that. So exactly what can you learn from listening to these online conversations? A lot. You might find out people are tuning you out, or that they are crying bullshit on your entire industry. By using today’s online technology, everyone has the ability to meet people who share similar interests, people who they would have never been able to meet in “real life.” When we get a new client, we do two Google searches: “I love __________(fill in client name).” And “I hate ___________(fill in client name).” This helps us narrow down where the passionate conversations, both positive and negative, are taking place. You can learn a lot about passion at both ends of the emotional spectrum. 8
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Introduction
5. Love is patient and kind. You cannot find the passion conversation, ignite community and fall in love overnight. Sure, there are one-night stands that might feel good at the time (perhaps the marketing equivalent of this is a successful campaign). But for real and lasting relationships to take hold, you have to be in it for the long haul. As we stated in our last book, igniting community and sparking movements are not like traditional ad campaigns. Ad campaigns have an on and off switch. You create them, run them, cross your fingers and hope for the best. Building community and loving your customers is not something you do for a limited amount of time. It’s something you do every single day. And the value of that effort grows exponentially stronger and deeper with time. 6. Meeting people through activities is a low-pressure way of getting to know them, and also will encourage bonding. We almost always bring our customers together with their potential community leaders, something we discussed at length in Brains on Fire’s Lesson #3, which focused on the fact that movements have inspirational leadership. We bring them together to engage in a multiday summit or training session in an impressive venue. We encourage everyone to let go and enjoy themselves as we learn about each other. People share and form trust, and memories are created. There’s a little secret in the dating world that The Game author Neil Strauss calls “time-distortion.” (Though definitely not a business book, there are few good marketing lessons hidden in there.) “Time-distortion” occurs when you go to several different places with a person or group you’ve just met in a short period of 9
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Called to Serve WITH _______________. Before you can take your passion conversation outside of your organization, you have to make sure it’s felt deeply and clearly inside its own walls. Bon Secours St. Francis Health System is one of our current customers. They’ve actually been a lifelong customer of Robbin’s. Seriously, she’s worked with them through her entire entrepreneurial career. Together we’ve seen them through three CEOs and numerous CMOs. We were even with them when they changed leadership hands to an entirely new Catholic Health System based out of Maryland. During their first CEO’s tenure, St. Francis employees truly let their faith shine. They prayed before meetings and surgeries and nuns were often seen walking the halls and visiting patients in their rooms. The staff openly and proudly shared what made St. Francis different as a health provider. The second CEO felt it was better to rein that difference in a bit and instead focus on the technology aspect of health care. Given the research available at the timethis was seemingly not a bad move. Unfortunately, not long after this change, turnover and low morale became an issue. Something was clearly missing... When the third and current CEO, Mark Nantz, came on board he and his team made a bold decision to return St. Francis to its core values and reason for being. Together with the HR and marketing departments, we began working on a plan to discover the motivation of every single person in the organization. Everyone. The first step was to take a day and meet offsite with the entire 200+ person leadership team. We asked each person why they were in patient care, and more specifically why they were a part of the Bon Secours St. Francis team. These individuals were then given the tools to ask others throughout the organization those same questions. For the next few months these leaders and trainers held offsite retreats with different groups and departments to help each individual determine their own personal response to the prompt “Called to serve with _______________.” Their answer revealed the passion 10
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and emotions behind their work. Were they called to serve with love, joy, patience, simplicity, humor, the healing ministry of Christ? The answer didn’t matter; the goal was to simply connect their personal passion with the higher mission of the health system. We produced a video for the training sessions showcasing simple photos of people at work along with the following narration: We can do more with than we can ever do without. With talent and expertise, with bold ideas and compassion, ever aware of the impact our actions have on others, even when the action is simply to be ... with. So, with is how we stand. As Christ stood with those left to stand alone. His Touch we share. His Healing we minister. That we might lift hearts and connect every life we are called to serve … with love. In addition to the offsite training, Daily Huddles were initiated throughout the organization. These five- to ten-minute sharing sessions allow and encourage team members to relate their own personal “with _____” moments. So what’s changed in the two years since this internal movement was sparked? According to Mark, employee turnover rates are down from double digits to single digits, a remarkable change in such a short time. Also employee and physician Gallup satisfaction scores are at an all-time high. And more importantly patient care scores have improved. Just recently we re-edited the original “Called to Serve with ______” video and turned it into a 60-second television spot. The community’s response has been absolutely overwhelming. Love letters have poured in. The employees now stand proud when their friends and family share their connection to and love of their mission. There are so many lessons in this story but one stands out far and above: People work better, and in this case provide better care, when they are more engaged and it’s easier to be engaged when your passions are allowed to shine.
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I NT ROD UCT ION time. Maybe you first go bowling, then to a restaurant, then out for ice cream, then for a nightcap. By creating memories in several different locations, it seems like you’ve known each other for longer than just one evening. This approach makes sense; after all we feel more familiar around people with whom we’ve shared fun places and experiences. And while this takes time and effort in business relationships, it’s worth it. 7. Be realistic and take a stand. You’ll make some mistakes along the way and you’ll even change your mind. You’ll encounter a few dead ends while building lasting relationships and igniting community with your customers and your employees. This can get frustrating, but don’t give up. Keep going. It’s important to enjoy the process of expanding your community and connecting through shared passions. Not everyone will love you when you take a strong stand, and that’s okay. You won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, so don’t take it personally. You don’t have to— in fact it’s impossible to connect with everyone. You might even push a few people away, but that will actually turn out for the best since the people who are turned off by your passions will never be your advocates or customers. 8. Become familiar. Studies have shown that proximity is a significant factor in falling in love. The more someone becomes familiar to you, the more positive emotions you will feel around them—and the more the attraction increases. In order to get closer to someone, you need to have lots of contact with them. How can you provide platforms and content that add frequent, maybe even daily value? How can you create events that bond you to your clients? How can you give more than you get?
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Introduction
Once a year at Brains on Fire we bring in our employees and current and potential customers together for the Fire Sessions, a day of sharing and learning. We invite speakers we’ve met in our travels to share their research, experiences, and stories. We eat together, we talk, we laugh, and most importantly, we share. People start connecting with us months in advance, asking when – the Fire Sessions are going to be, and if they can bring a friend. It’s a lot of work, but it’s one of our favorite events because everyone in our company gets to interact with our customers and advocates. And good things happen. For starters, we remember our why—something that does wonders to refuel our passion conversations. 9. Tell some secrets. A few of you reading this book know what a struggle it’s been for us to find time to write it because we’ve let you in on that secret. More than once, we have tossed up our hands and said, “The world doesn’t need another business book.” Seriously. If you’ve shelled out the money to buy this book, you’re in the club and we’re planning on sharing the truth with you about the word-of-mouth marketing work we do. We’re going to let you listen in on the actual conversations we have had with our customers, and their customers. There are a whole lot of quotes in this book. You’ll hear many voices, including those from academics. We actually called people up, pressed the record button, and had those conversations transcribed. We even interviewed each other. That’s how we wrote this book. There should be many, many authors of this book, but our publishers would only let us list four. We have notebooks full of those transcribed conversations. (If you’re ever in our neck of the woods, stop by and you can pore through all those words and dig even deeper.)
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I NT ROD UCT ION We’re going to share the good and the bad here because we all know what distinguishes a close friend or a romantic partner from any other random acquaintances: the things you share with them. Sharing shows you care, which leads to trust. So think about some ways you can you let your employees and customers in on things that they don’t typically get to see. Doing so will create intimacy and closeness. It’s contrary to normal business practices, but give it a try. The “first to know, first to tell” knowledge has been a longtime tenet of word of mouth marketing, and there’s another benefit of sharing secrets: Your customers will get more comfortable in sharing their secrets and trusting you. Like all good relationships, it’s a matter of give and take. 10. Less is more. The world is drowning in literature full of facts and figures that just don’t stick. Don’t create brochures; create conversation tools. And keep in mind that less is more when it comes to these. Think about something as simple as a lowly T-shirt. Consider how a T-shirt with “Break the Stigma” written on it invites a conversation. A hand-painted, one-of-a-kind Fitness Rebel T-shirt with your name on it invites a conversation. Less is more when it comes to stories as well. Short, sharable stories rule. 11. The passion conversation isn’t about getting people to talk about YOU, the brand. It’s about getting people to talk about themselves. Encourage others talk about themselves, their lives, their hopes and their dreams. Create platforms, online and offline, for the people you serve to share their own stories. Give them opportunities to talk and be willing to listen. 14
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Introduction
It’s possible to learn to fall madly in love with your employees and your customers, and in the process unearth your own passion conversation. And this book is going to help you do just that. We’re not really in the marketing business these days. We’re in the people business. This makes sense for us because marketing nowadays is more about reframing the work you do in the world to inspire your employees and customers. The most successful word-of-mouth– driven businesses in the world have always been in the business of inspiring people. Good stuff happens when you’re in the people business. We promise. The subtitle of this book is Understanding, Sparking, and Sustaining Word-of-Mouth Marketing. We could just as well substitute Word-of-Mouth Marketing with Love and Passion. Just promise you’ll open your mind enough to embrace what we are about to share.
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I NT ROD UCT ION
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Chapter One
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EVERY MARKETING PROBLEM IS A PEOPLE PROBLEM Before we dig into understanding why word of mouth (WOM) matters, we want you to change your mind about the business you’re in. Odds are you think you’re in the marketing business. We’re going to help you unlearn your marketing mindset and convince you that it’s way more exciting and fun to be in the people business.
DITCH YOUR TITLE First of all, shake the cobwebs from your brain and give yourself a new title. Think: Chief People Officer. Chief Inspiration Officer. Chief Love Officer. Senior Manager of People Problems. Passion Conversation Facilitator. Come on. You can give back that Sr. VP of Marketing title or that Brand Manager title as quickly as you received it. Or how about letting go of that social-media-something title? You don’t need it. And if you are a CEO or a business owner and you hire marketers, make sure you are looking for people who love people. If you’re in marketing, you’re in the people business— and if you don’t believe that core tenet, then stop reading. Now. 19
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION
FORGET MARKETING PROBLEMS Companies face all sorts of marketing problems. If they would reframe those issues as people problems, their perspective would change. Reevaluating your role in solving these people problems makes it even more interesting. Consider the following people problems that leaders face: • A company is suffering from sluggish sales growth because not enough people are buying. • A business is experiencing low retention rates because not enough people are buying repeatedly. • A brand reeling from poorly conceived products and programs doesn’t have enough people truly interested in what they offer. • An organization dealing with low engagement hasn’t been able to make its cause relatable to people who can help them sustain support. • A business hurting from unsatisfactory customer service must confront the problem of too many unhappy people. If every marketing problem is a people problem, then every marketing solution must be people-based, right? Oh, yeah. That’s right.
EVERY MARKETING SOLUTION MUST FOCUS ON PEOPLE The reasons are obvious: People buy products and use services. People make an unknown brand known. People work together to turn causes into crusades. It’s people who form communities, talk, 20
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Understanding Word of Mouth Marketing
and share—and who fuel the engine of business. It’s people who have the mouths that word of mouth refers to. Steve Knox, former CEO of Tremor, Procter & Gamble’s WOM marketing division, and currently a Senior Advisor with Boston Consulting Group, puts it well: I passionately, passionately believe that the world of marketing is moving to a relationship-based world. We in marketing have been trained to think about the consumer at arm’s length . . . in an almost non-human way. And the new world of marketing is so much more about true relationships with people, which means there must be dialogue, and . . . conversation. Steve is a leader in the WOM marketing industry, and we all need to listen when he talks. We take Steve’s passionate words a step further and say:
IF YOU DON’T LOVE PEOPLE, GET OUT OF MARKETING—PERIOD We’re not saying you have be the kind of charismatic people person who makes friends with total strangers in elevators, but you do have to believe in and see the good in others. You have to believe this wonderful Earth of ours is full of amazing, beautiful people you’d love to know better. You should feel honored to spend time with your customers, not see them as a bother. You should feel driven to get to know them as people, not demographics or target markets. We deal with marketing problems every day, which means we deal with people problems every day. Or perhaps a better way to say it is: We deal with people opportunities every day. 21
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION Anytime Fitness came to us with their problem: Not enough people are exercising at their gyms. The National Center for Family Literacy sought our guidance because not enough people understand that literacy goes way beyond reading and writing. DeVry University used our help to connect with its people (in their case, students) on 90 campuses and in over 70,000 homes. And Foundations Recovery Network (FRN) turned to us to help eliminate the stigma people associate with addiction. Those are very evident and wonderful people opportunities. We’ve made a name for ourselves by igniting powerful, sustainable word of mouth movements for businesses and organizations of all sizes and design—big and small, for-profit and not-for-profit. These people-powered movements inspire people to buy, give, innovate, act, share, and most importantly, talk. Our first book shared 10 lessons we learned about making movements happen. Since that book was published, we’ve connected with thousands of readers in person, over the phone, and, of course, online. We’ve had passionate debates about the ideas and real world case studies that our first book brought to life. We’ve continued to learn how to humanize a brand to spark deeper, more meaningful conversations between people. These debates, discussions, and deep dives have led us to wholeheartedly believe that solutions to marketing problems are rooted in finding shared passions, igniting conversations and creating community. You must have community before you can ever even begin to dream of a movement. And you know what moves conversation within a community to advocacy, the fuel for movements? Passion. So, if you are ready to be in the people business—if you are ready to spark meaningful passionate conversations and find your advocates—repeat this mantra:
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People are amazing. They form tribes. They create communities and social change. They make great discoveries. They struggle. They fall in love. They are social and emotional. They love to help others. They want to be a part of something bigger than their own lives. They want to change the world. As marketers (or Chief Love Officers), we’d be crazy not to tap into those strong desires. Connecting people through shared passions can lead to great things. Okay, let’s get back to the task of understanding WOM marketing by going back in history and getting to know a swell guy named Ernest Dichter.
LET’S REVISIT THE FUTURE OF WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING The future of marketing happened way back in 1966 when Austrian-American psychologist Ernest Dichter published a
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION long over-looked seminal article in the Harvard Business Review. Remarkably, this article was titled “How Word-of-Mouth Advertising Works,” and its advice is just as relevant today just as it was back then. Steeped in his in-depth research on consumer motivations, Dichter’s article explained that consumers reject advertising messages because they are “more a sales tool than information and guidance.” However, he contended, if people perceived a brand as a friend—and if the brand could project a voice to match—consumers would consider it to be more authentic and trusted, and the brand would be received with more enthusiasm. Hmmm. Where’d that knowledge go for the last half-century? Imagine how much further along we’d be if more marketers in 1966 had taken note of Dichter’s smart findings on the importance of humanizing brands. And just so you know, Ernest Dichter wasn’t a fly-by-night shrink spewing cockamamie ideas. He’s known as the “father of motivational research.” According to a 1998 New York Times article, he “was the first to coin the term focus group and to stress the importance of image and persuasion in advertising.” His pioneering research techniques and analysis changed the way that giants like Chrysler, Procter & Gamble, Exxon, General Mills, and DuPont sold products to consumers. Dichter’s advice to humanize the brand to connect better with people wasn’t psychobabble. It was indispensable marketing advice then, today, and tomorrow, no doubt. Dichter’s personal story began on August 14, 1907, in Vienna, where he was born to a family of Polish and German immigrants. The Dichters were dirt-poor, and Ernest would always recall the poverty and starvation of his formative years and credit it with sharpening his awareness of the pleasures and comforts to be found in even the most basic and essential material goods. 24
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According to the Ernest Dichter papers, from the age of 14 the budding psychologist and marketing guru “concentrated on earning money.” He began by picking wild mushrooms and berries in the countryside, and selling them to grocery stores. He first became interested in marketing when he worked in his uncle’s department store. He even introduced music into the store in an effort to soothe customers while they shopped. (Think about that as you’re listening to the background music playing while you walk through the mall!) Following university training in psychology and informal training in psychoanalysis, he moved to New York in 1938. In 1939 he sent a letter to six corporations in which he offered his understanding in psychoanalysis as a way to radically improve their marketing strategies. He got his first gig at Ivory Soap. The Ernest Dichter papers report that after conducting a slew of one-on-one in-person interviews, he learned it was not the smell or price or look or feel of the soap that mattered to consumers. Rather, it was something else that made a person choose one soap over another; to use Dichter’s word, it was the product’s “soul.” He came to understand that every product has an image and that people buy products not merely for the purpose they serve, but also for the values the products seem to embody. Dichter explained that our possessions are extensions of our own personalities and serve as a “kind of mirror which reflects our own image.” (This quotes comes from a 2011 article in The Economist.) Dichter showed a photograph in his 1947 book The Psychology of Everyday Living of a woman applying lipstick with the accompanying caption: Cosmetics provide psychological therapy. Dichter is absolutely right. Cosmetics do make women feel better about themselves. Why else would American women spend 25
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION $7 billion year on makeup?* Why else would they talk to their friends, read countless online articles, and have conversations on social media about one product’s superiority over another? Even back then, Ernest grasped a simple truth we have come to understand even better today: In a world where technology has made it possible to connect more deeply and stay engaged with your customers, the focus should not be on a product’s features and benefits. It’s not about facts and figures. It’s about understanding how a product (or an organization) fits into a person’s life—and understanding how it makes them feel.
IT’S ABOUT THE PASSION CONVERSATION After digging around and unearthing more about Ernest Dichter, we believe he would have agreed with us on this statement: It’s not about the product conversation; it’s about the passion conversation. Still not convinced your marketing department is in the people business?
MARKETERS DO NOT DECIDE WHAT GETS TALKED ABOUT—PEOPLE DO Marketers wanting to tap into the power of WOM marketing to increase brand awareness, preference, and purchase eventually learn a fundamental truth. As Chief Inspiration Officers, you want to inspire others so they will talk passionately on your behalf. And studies clearly indicate word of mouth is the most powerful form of marketing. According to research from McKinsey & *www.thegloss.com/2009/05/01/beauty/how-much-do-you-spend-on-makeup. 26
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Company, word of mouth is responsible for up to 50 percent of all purchase decisions. Studies also indicate there are seemingly endless ways to spark conversations using word of mouth. Word of mouth research firm Keller Fay Group has been tracking the conversations people have about brands since 2006. In fact, they are the only firm that regularly monitors both offline as well as online word of mouth about products, services, and brands. According to their findings, advertising only prompts 22 percent of all conversations people have about brands, products, and services. However, the vast majority of word of mouth conversations, 78 percent of them, are sparked by something else. Which means that the playground for triggering word of mouth from customers about brands is huge. Even answering the phone can present a huge opportunity to create a talk-able, sharable experience. Call 864-676-9663 if you want to see for yourself. (Don’t be scared; it’s just us.) Anything and everything a customer can interact with is an opportunity to spark a conversation. Every customer touch point is a possible talking point, and since people (not marketers) decide what gets talked about, it’s up to Chief Love Officers to give people something to potentially talk about at every customer touch point. Products alone will neither spark nor sustain conversations. Nor will programs, campaigns, services, and so on. It has always taken and will always take people.
CONVERSATION LEADS TO CONSIDERATION When a brand, cause, organization, or product is a part of the conversation, then it’s under consideration. Stats galore back that up. Not to overwhelm you, but we know marketers like data, and even though we are trying to convince you to jump over to the 27
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION people business, we are going to share a few more of our favorite WOM marketing stats. • The Keller Fay Group has found that Americans will mentionsp ecific brand names about 60 times every week in conversations with others. In a year, that translates to over 3,100 mentions of brands by the typical American. • A Harris Interactive report reveals 71 percent of us believe reviews, opinions, and conversations from family members or friends have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of influence on our purchase decisions. • From McKinsey & Company: The reliability of the impact word of mouth marketing has on business is based upon the irrefutable fact that recommendations from family, friends, and friends of friends have greater influence over our purchase decisions than any other form of marketing. • Study after study confirms this irrefutable fact, including the 2011 Experian Digital Marketer report which tells us: “Despite consumer reliance on digital devices and Internet-provided information, the most influential element driving purchase decisions today is still word of mouth, followed by information from a website.”
PEOPLE BELIEVE PEOPLE THEY KNOW AND TRUST So you have to give people something to love and something they love to talk about. Here is one more nugget we repeat often 28
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about word of mouth: According to the Keller Fay Group, 90 percent of word of mouth conversations about brands happen offline. Here’s how Keller Fay’s Ed Keller explains this to us, “Despite the tremendous attention people are paying to social media, and the meteoric rise in the number of people using it, the overwhelming majority of word of mouth (WOM) for brandrelated conversation still takes place the good old fashioned way—face-to-face.” A brand-related WOM conversation is one where at least two people mention a specific brand name during the discussion. It might involve an outright recommendation like, “Sharpie make the best markers. You should buy one.” Or, it might simply involve a mention of the brand by name: “Did you know Sharpie now makes a hot pink marker?”
SOMETIMES YOU WANT TO BE INVISIBLE AND INDESCRIBABLE Word of mouth marketing can be invisible to the human eye, but not the heart. While you can’t necessarily see when it happens, you can definitely feel it. John Moore knows Whole Foods Market. He once served as their director of national marketing. Although the grocery chain does not have a full-blown WOM marketing program, they’re highly successful thanks to ongoing word-of-mouth from customers. And what Whole Foods Market does at the store level to get customers talking is invisible to most shoppers. Shoppers do not feel like they’re being marketed to because Whole Foods presents food as theater. While a trip to a conventional grocery store is a chore, a trip to Whole Foods Market is a chance to explore. Whole Foods emotionalizes the grocery 29
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION shopping experience by appealing to all the senses. Its stores are spotless, merchandising displays are dazzling, and the smells are beyond compare. Shoppers are often encouraged to taste and sample. Whole Foods Market celebrates food like it is a theatrical production. They also make it a point to educate their customers on the role natural and organic foods can play in helping them live happier, healthier, and more rewarding lives. The company believes it can cultivate loyalty by educating shoppers on the natural and organic difference. They use every opportunity to communicate that good food feels good. The best word of mouth isn’t a marketing tactic. It isn’t a tweet, a status update, a viral video, or anything else you can find on a social media website. Nor is the best word of mouth a publicity stunt or something a company does to get some buzz for a day. The best word of mouth is how a company does business every single day. The goal of any business should be to make word of mouth marketing operationally invisible. That is, it should be how a business does business not just one day, but every day. On-going, long-lasting word of mouth is very difficult to incite and maintain. This is because too many marketers treat word of mouth as an output. In other words, they try to sustain and manage the conversation rather than treating it as an input— starting and sparking the conversation. Whole Foods Market and a handful of other businesses understand that the best, longest-lasting word of mouth happens when a business operationalizes this approach by making it invisible to the customers’ eyes—but not their hearts, minds, or wallets. And they also get the notion of love and shared passions. Whole Foods loves their employees. All the way down from the
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Understanding Word of Mouth Marketing
C-level to the front line, they hire people who love what they love. The store experience they’ve built is one they actually love themselves and in the process, they have attracted customers who love and share their same passions. Because of this, loving their customers is as easy as loving themselves. Now, let’s talk about how Whole Foods and another peoplepowered business, Starbucks, use social media conversation tools.
PROVIDE MORE; PROMOTE LESS The brands that are nurturing meaningful relationships with customers online aren’t interrupting them with promotional messages on Twitter or Facebook. Instead, brands like Whole Foods and Starbucks are using these platforms to provide customers with more information about products/services. The vast majority of Starbucks’s and Whole Foods’s tweets are directed at someone (starting with the @ symbol), which means that they’re responding directly to a comment. These brands’ Facebook pages aren’t littered with promotional status updates. Instead, they’re taking a moment to make a connection with customers by providing them specific information. This might not be the sexiest way to use social media, but it’s been a very effective way for these companies to develop evangelical customers. While we’re on the topic of Facebook friends, now’s a good time to mention that real friendship is a little bit magical. The other day a friend of ours who is new to our town made a simple observation about making new friends that got stuck in our hearts: 90 percent of a having a friend is being a friend. We have a lot of discussion around here about engagement— what exactly does that mean, and how do you really measure true engagement within a community? So many brands and
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION organizations still feel the number of Facebook fans or twitter followers is a sign of promising engagement. They really do. The other day John stumbled on an interesting study by the Ehrenberg Bass Institute for Marketing Science at the University of South Australia, “Facebook Fans: A Fan for Life?” He sent the entire team this quick summary: The authors studied the “People Talking About This” (PTAT) measurement from Facebook between October and November 2011 to determine how many fans are engaging with the brand after the initial “like.” Their findings reveal less than 0.5 percent of Facebook fans engage with the brands they are fans of during any week. Of the 200 brands they studied, only one had 2 percent of their fans engage with them during a sevenday period. (Included in these 200 brands are “passion” brands, names like Nike, Chanel, Harley-Davidson, Jack Daniels, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co., etc.) Just 20 brands reached the 1 percent level of engagement from fans on any given week. The authors close by writing, “The real question is how cost effective is it for a brand to attempt to drive engagement if the most they can reasonably expect is that 1% of fans will engage?” This makes us think that maybe we have it all backwards. Perhaps the thing we should be measuring is our own effort to be a friend? This is something the community management team takes very seriously at Brains on Fire. As brands and organizations, we need to ask: Are we putting 90 percent of our energy to being our customers’ friends? 32
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FROM ED KELLER CEO of word of mouth research firm Keller Fay Group and co-author of The Face-to-Face Book “It was interesting to learn that some of the best ‘word of mouth marketers’ don’t actually think that’s what they are doing, per se. We talked to companies like MillerCoors, General Mills, Kimberly-Clark, and Zappos, as well as agencies like Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Starcom MediaVest, and Universal McCann. Generally, we chose to do these interviews because their brands were having success at improving consumer word of mouth based on our own data from our ongoing TalkTrack® surveys. Yet few of the marketers believed they were actively doing ‘word of mouth marketing.’ “The epiphany came for us when we realized that word of mouth marketing is really another term for ‘great marketing.’ Products and campaigns that stimulate conversation tend to be successful; those that don’t tend to fail. In our view, all great marketing is in fact ‘social marketing’ because social influence is the key to driving behavior change.”
So we’ve just talked about two big companies, Whole Foods and Starbucks, who both understand the power of loving people, talk-able touch points, and word of mouth. But what about the smaller companies, the ones that far fewer people have heard about? 33
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T HE PA SSIO N C ONV ERSATION
MEET URSA MAJOR “Ursa Major?” you might wonder. “What kind of name is that?” For starters, it’s a name that sparks a conversation and tells a pretty cool story. Oliver Sweatman and Emily Doyle named their company, one that handcrafts super, natural skin care products for men, after the “Great Bear” constellation for a simple reason: When they moved from New York to Vermont they became “fixated with the idea of bears.” A lot of people questioned the name. But as Oliver explains, “The term, Ursa Major has some cool history around it. Ptolemy referenced it, as did Homer and Shakespeare. It’s impossible to miss on a clear night in the northern hemisphere. It’s been used by all kinds of folks over the ages as a way to find true North. We have a big attachment to the outdoors; it’s one of the reasons we moved to Vermont. I think people like us who have this affinity with nature find something a bit mysterious and alluring about the name. It’s kind of romantic. We like to think the name appeals to modern day explorers—peoplewho actually enjoy digging into a brand and learning its back stories.” Oliver and Emily are glad they trusted their instincts to venture to Vermont and name their brand to reflect their passions. Geno Church is a big fan of products that are made in America. He’s crazy-passionate about it, really. In fact, this book would’ve likely focused entirely on made-in-America brands had Geno been the sole author. Geno is also the ultimate modern-day explorer, constantly searching for new products and brands. He discovered Ursa Major one night while sitting in front of his laptop at his kitchen table. He ordered some of the products, and they arrived a couple of days later in a hand-painted gift box. Inside there was a real handwritten note thanking him for the order. Ursa Major is a high-touch, emotional brand, and according to Geno, Ursa Major’s products also do a great job helping his skin stay happy 34
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and hydrated. Geno shared his latest find with everyone in the office loudly and proudly.
KITCHEN TABLE PASSION Oliver told us that he and Emily answer every single email they get personally, often staying up late at night sitting together at the kitchen table to make that happen. It might take them a couple of weeks, but they answer them all. “It’s funny because many times we wish we had a restaurant or a café or retail store. We like engaging with people and we like making them feel happy.” But they don’t have a café or retail store; they do most of their business remotely over the Internet. Still they longed to bring “some of that hands-on love,” like the kind you get in a little café or small retail shop to what they were doing. And answering email and sending handwritten thanks is part of how they do just that. Oliver and Emily are branders and marketers and explorers and business owners. They’re in the people business and they are definitely putting in the 90 percent effort to be a friend to their customers. And they’re growing a business through sparking word of mouth in the process.
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Contents
Foreword Anita Campbell
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Introduction
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PART I REV UP YOUR ENGAGEMENT MARKETING ENGINE
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Chapter 1 The Engagement Marketing Cycle
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Learn how word of mouth, amplified by social media, helps drive repeat business and new customers.
Chapter 2 Deliver a WOW! Experience
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To begin the Engagement Marketing Cycle—and get your share of positive raves and repeat business—you first have to WOW! customers with exceptional experiences. We’ll show you how.
Chapter 3 Entice to Stay in Touch
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Use these easy-to-implement tips to encourage people to stay in touch, because out-of-sight means out-of-mind—and out-of-mind means no business. ix
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Chapter 4 Engage People
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We’ll explain the five types of compelling content that drive online (and offline) engagement and bring people back to your business.
Chapter 5 How Engagement Marketing Drives New Prospects to Your Door
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Engaging your customers creates social visibility that results in referrals and new prospects, positive endorsements, and search engine relevance.
PART II GET MORE BUSINESS WITH ENGAGEMENT MARKETING
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Chapter 6 How Social Visibility Happens
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Understand which customer responses and actions create social visibility on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ and how to ask your followers to share.
Chapter 7 Engagement Marketing in Action: Real-World Examples
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Read case studies and examples from two small businesses and a nonprofit that use Engagement Marketing to gain exposure in their communities and attract customers and donors.
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Chapter 8 Engagement Marketing Tips and Tricks
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Learn five easy-to-implement social word-of-mouth methods that take only a few minutes each day but deliver real impact in the form of increased engagement and visibility, leading to increased business.
Chapter 9 Overcoming Common Obstacles
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Find time in today’s crazy busy world to implement your Engagement Marketing Cycle by using the tools and tactics you already have.
Chapter 10 Resources
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Tools, tips, and tricks to help you take your Engagement Marketing to the next level.
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Glossary
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About the Author
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Acknowledgments
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Index
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CHAPTER 1
The Engagement Marketing Cycle
A couple traveled to the Boston area to attend a wedding, and their host—who lived in the area—booked them a room at a gorgeous bed and breakfast. The B&B’s website featured fabulous photography of its stunning location, so the bride felt good about choosing this particular B&B. She requested a room on the first floor and informed the person handling the reservation that the husband had trouble climbing stairs due to a physical disability. When the couple arrived, they learned that no first floor rooms were available; instead, they had been given a room two flights up at the back of the B&B.You know how this works.You don’t like to make a fuss, so you say, “Okay, we’ll deal with it.” The room, although difficult to access, was lovely. After attending the wedding, however, the couple returned to their room to find a freshly made bed . . . and a pile of wet towels on the floor. When the couple reported the mess to the front desk receptionist, they got a blank stare and a shoulder shrug. This is the negative TripAdvisor.com review that I—and thousands of others like me—read about the B&B “[that] didn’t care enough to give us a first floor room even though one was specifically requested due to physical disability.” I found this review while looking for a place for friends to stay while visiting my 3
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town. Do you think I booked a room at this B&B? No! And I’m willing to bet that many other viewers followed suit. Compare this to a grateful bride’s positive review of an inn in Connecticut. The couple’s wedding reception had to be rescheduled at the last minute due to a hurricane. The inn owners helped plan the reception right down “to the last detail” and even hosted the entire bridal party.The bride praised the staff, the food, and the grounds and raved, “We’ll definitely be back! Thank you!!” Think about how many bookings the inn may receive from other brides seeking exceptional service and a worry-free wedding day—all thanks to one glowing review. When we ask business owners, “What is the single most effective source for generating new customers?” the most common answer is, “My customers telling others about me.”
Everyone Has a Circle of Influence Whether we join to build professional relationships (e.g., industry associations) or for more personal reasons (e.g., parenting groups, lifestyles, similar hobbies or interests, alumni associations, and so on), we all belong to various networks. These groups include our close and extended family, personal friends, acquaintances, colleagues, neighbors, and coworkers, to name just a few. Usually, our networks are filled with people like us—whether we belong to a group of new mothers or a group of serial entrepreneurs. Our networks, which can be forged online or offline, form our circle of influence; we influence them and they influence us. When we get together with our peers within these groups, we share information and updates about our personal and professional lives. Think about the last time you caught up with a friend or family member.You probably discussed what your kids and spouse are up to or where you went on your last vacation.
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Similarly, when you last attended an industry association meeting, you most likely shared resources, anecdotes, news, and business challenges with other small business owners or marketers in your industry. If one of your peers asked, “Say, do you know of a marketing consultant? We need help with developing an online marketing strategy,” you may have said, “Actually I do. You’ll want to call Jane Smith. She does great work—five stars.” This word-of-mouth referral is the golden moment for a business or consultant, but several factors make it difficult to encourage or track: (1) You can’t influence how your business is portrayed in the conversation; (2) You have no idea when someone refers a friend to you unless that friend calls to inquire about your services and you happen to ask how he or she found you; and (3) You can’t reward your clients for referring you if you don’t even know who made the referral. Social media completely changes this scenario. In the days before social media and the Internet, you, the business owner, could not listen in on your customers’ conversations about your company. Nor could you easily encourage people to spread the good word about your business unless you used loyalty marketing or a “tell a friend” campaign, both of which are expensive to conduct and maintain. With today’s social media tools at your disposal, you can encourage your clients to tell your story for you through Engagement Marketing. Engagement Marketing is built on a simple yet powerful idea: When you connect with your customers online, you stop speaking to your customers and start talking with them, and wonderful things begin to happen. Those golden word-of-mouth moments that once happened in the backyard, at parties, and at networking events suddenly begin happening right in front of your eyes on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and review sites. Through Engagement Marketing, word-of-mouth referrals become socially amplified: your customers’ friends, families, and networks all see these referrals and beat a path to your door.
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Your New Business Engine: New Customers and More Repeat Business Engagement Marketing helps drive more leads, more repeat sales—and more referrals. Engagement Marketing stimulates conversations and inspires participation. As you engage with your customers (and their friends), you’ll achieve surprisingly targeted social visibility; your customers’ networks are filled with great prospects for you. Remember, we’re all part of networks filled with people like us, so we all tend to have friends and colleagues with similar needs. When a friend of a friend finds your business through a trusted connection, it comes with the explicit or implied endorsement that this person stands behind your business. This endorsement gives you greater reach and adds to your credibility—or “social proof ”—as prospects that find you through other channels can easily see your positive engagement with returning customers. Your customers’ testimonials carry more credibility than any marketing message you could ever deliver yourself. This is because we value the feedback of others more than a vendor’s claims. If we actually know the person who is giving positive (or negative!) feedback, the review’s credibility skyrockets. In fact, 90 percent of consumers trust recommendations from people they know1 while only 14 percent trust advertising.2
1
Nielsen Wire blog, July 7, 2009, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/consumer/ global-advertising-consumers-trust-real-friends-and-virtual-strangers-the-most. 2 Socialnomics, May 5, 2010, www.socialnomics.net/2010/05/05/social-mediarevolution-2-refresh.
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The Engagement Marketing Cycle: Three Simple Steps to Success The Engagement Marketing Cycle begins once you’ve attracted a prospective customer or client to your business, as represented by the door in Figure 1.1. This first point of contact can happen at your physical location, website, Facebook Page, trade show booth, charity event—anywhere you make a connection with someone and the conversation turns to business. The Engagement Marketing Cycle, as seen in Figure 1.2, is comprised of three simple steps: Experience, Entice, and Engage. Although relatively simple, these three steps, when done right, are quite powerful. What follows is a brief description of the cycle. You’ll find more in-depth information on each step, plus practical tips, in the following chapters.
Figure 1.1
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Word of mouth drives people to your door
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Figure 1.2 The Engagement Marketing Cycle
Step 1: Provide a WOW! Experience The good news is that as a small business, you have an advantage that larger or national companies do not: you can create personal connections with your customers by providing extraordinary experiences—every single day. These experiences include everything from remembering your customers’ names and preferences to providing them with exceptional service they just do not get anywhere else. Creating a great customer experience from the moment a prospective or existing customer enters your business is crucial to revving up your Engagement Marketing engine. As Figure 1.3 shows, your goal at this step in the cycle is to deliver a positive, memorable customer experience that stays alive in your customers’ memories long after they have exited your business.
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Figure 1.3
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Step 1: Provide a WOW! experience
I don’t have to tell you that the bar is set pretty low in many businesses when it comes to creating great customer experiences. According to the 2011 Global Customer Service Barometer Research Report prepared by American Express, only 24 percent of survey respondents said that businesses “will go the extra mile.”3 Almost half of the respondents, or 42 percent, said the businesses are helpful but don’t “do anything extra to keep [my] business,” while 22 percent said that companies “take [my] business for granted.” Clearly, businesses can step it up with regard to providing exceptional service. As a small business owner, you have an advantage: you can easily assess your customer experience and implement necessary changes faster than large businesses can, and the rewards—new and repeat business—appear fairly quickly. Great customer experiences fuel the Engagement Marketing Cycle; without them, you won’t get the cycle started. In Chapter 2, we’ll explore ways to create great customer experiences. 3
http://about.americanexpress.com/news/pr/2010/barometer.aspx.
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Figure 1.4 Step 2: Entice to stay in touch
Step 2: Entice to Stay in Touch When you create a great customer experience, you make it easier for customers to be receptive to doing business with you again, to remaining in touch with you, and to sharing their experiences with their networks. But you can’t keep that great experience alive, if you have no way to stay in touch! You need to make a connection while the experience is fresh in their minds. To this end, you must persuade the customer to agree or “opt in” to staying connected. For this second step in the Engagement Marketing Cycle to work as shown in Figure 1.4, you must learn how to connect with your customers through a variety of media including social networks, e-mail, mobile (SMS or texting), events and, yes, even direct mail. Once you decide how you want to connect, you have to entice your customers to make the connection (often called opt in). Creating opportunities and methods for enticing new customers to connect with you is limited only by your imagination and creativity. E-mail marketing and social media platforms (such as your blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+,YouTube, and Twitter) tied specifically to your business are the two most frequently used methods for maintaining connections.
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In Chapter 3 you’ll learn how to comfortably ask people to connect with your business and entice them to opt in. The key takeaway is this: consider how you can entice people to connect with you during or immediately after they’ve done business with you.
Step 3: Engage People Now that you’ve delivered a great customer experience and have enticed customers to stay in touch, it’s time to bring these relationships to life by engaging people, as seen in Figure 1.5.“Engagement” means sharing content that inspires your fans, followers, e-mail subscribers, blog readers, and other online contacts to interact with you. Creating opportunities for engagement brings customers back to your business—by leaving a comment, “Liking” or “1+-ing” your post or website, sharing your content on Facebook,
Figure 1.5
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Step 3: Engage People
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Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn, visiting your business to make a purchase, or calling/e-mailing you to discuss a new project. Engaging with people is not a one-way street. If all your audience does is listen to you, then you’re not fully engaging them. The goal is to drive participation, whether online or off, and social media is particularly well suited to encouraging online engagement. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, YouTube, and a company blog provide you with the ability to create a destination for viewer interaction and establish a shared interest community. E-mail marketing is a great way to pull people back to your social networks. When your audience participates, especially on social networks, it creates buzz around you and your business: When your customers “Like,” comment, or share stories, their participation becomes visible to their networks (your new prospects!). Chapter 4 outlines the basic types of content that engage people and explains how you can use content to drive active participation. That closes the loop on the Engagement Marketing Cycle. Developing this cycle until it’s a well-oiled machine will keep your customers and clients connected to your business, increasing your repeat sales. Engagement Marketing, however, has an even bigger benefit: Engagement leads to endorsement—that golden word-of-mouth moment that drives new customers to your business.
Engagement Drives Social Visibility, Attracting New Prospects to Your Door We opened the chapter with examples of negative and positive reviews on TripAdvisor.com. Customers shared their experiences with a subpar bed and breakfast and an excellent inn—reviews that
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are visible to everyone who logs on to the site. But reviews are just one way that customers share their experiences. When you engage your customers through social media in a way that drives participation, you create socially visible actions. On social networks, your customer interactions are visible to other customers and prospects. When someone “Likes� or follows your business, comments on your posts, or shares your content with their networks, those actions are visible. When people tweet about your upcoming event or share that they are at your establishment, those actions are socially visible. When you engage in a way that drives participation, you create socially visible actions. In Chapter 6, we will explain in further detail how customer participation becomes visible across each of the social networks. As shown in Figure 1.6 socially visible engagement puts your business or organization in front of a new audience: the social networks of your existing customers. Not only are they seeing and hearing about your business, they are hearing about it from a trusted source, giving you an implicit thumbs-up.
Figure 1.6 The Engagement Marketing Cycle with social visibility
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Engagement Marketing Boosts Your Other Marketing, Too Socially visible engagement can have a big impact on your other sales and marketing efforts. A person who gets your direct mail letter or reads your ad and then looks you up online can see the engagement of your fans on Facebook, the comments on your blog, the mentions on Twitter and LinkedIn, and can know immediately that you’re a business that listens to its customers. This positive engagement—or social proof, which we discuss in later chapters—encourages people to connect with you, especially if someone they know (i.e., friends and family) are engaging with you, too. As we’ll discuss, social proof helps build trust and is much more powerful than any marketing message you can put out. Engagement Marketing helps you close new business by giving your prospects confidence.
Engagement Marketing Builds Momentum Over Time When you follow the three-step Engagement Marketing Cycle, magic starts to happen and takes many forms. Our highly connected digital world makes it easier than ever for people to share their experiences with their networks (and strangers!); social media tools allow for these experiences to be spread far and wide. You’ll begin to see existing customers coming back more often, and over time, you’ll begin to meet their friends. This interaction starts slowly and builds gradually. As engagement begins to build, you’ll see explicit references to your business popping up in blogs and in social media posts as well as on review sites. New customers will find you as a result of an inquiry that someone posted online, which resulted in a
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recommendation for your business. Someone will post on Twitter or Facebook, or in a discussion group (“Does anybody know of a great housepainter in San Leandro, California?”) and your engaged customers will hop in and recommend you. This discussion stream has the potential to be seen by all of the conversation’s participants as well as their entire networks. When you consider that the average Facebook user has 120 friends4 you quickly realize how many people can be reached with just one posting. This is the magic of a well-functioning Engagement Marketing Cycle; it drives both new prospects and repeat sales. Once the Engagement Marketing cycle is fully functioning, your customers become part of your marketing team. The cycle now becomes a new customer acquisition engine while also strengthening the sources you already use. Are you ready to build your engine? Let’s get started with the first step in the cycle: Providing a WOW! experience.
4
Facebook, 2009, www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=55257228858.
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CHAPTER 7
Engagement Marketing in Action Real-World Examples
As a small business owner, you may already be doing pieces of Engagement Marketing and wondering how to tie everything together. Or you may be wondering how to get the cycle started—or even if what you’re reading really works. In this chapter, we show you the money! In the first example, you’ll meet Bob Tullio of Gourmet Coffee Service, a small business in Southern California. Tullio had to think creatively in order to compete with national corporations that were gobbling up local coffee service businesses. Tullio’s engagement strategy, which centered around an e-newsletter and a Facebook Page, didn’t cost a lot of money or take much time— but it sure did net some fantastic results, including engaged clients, new business, and increased revenue. Maas Nursery, a family-owned business in Houston, Texas, had to compete against the national big box chains. Cristina Maas Batz realized that she and her parents needed to step up their marketing efforts. The nursery used Engagement Marketing to create a community in which their customers would feel involved. Maas’s engagement engine included an e-newsletter, on-site classes, 107
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a Facebook Page, and a Twitter account. Within two years, sales were up—a huge accomplishment in a down economy—and people who had never heard of the nursery were beating a path to its door. Nonprofits often have to reach various audiences, such as benefactors, potential members, and people who might attend the organization’s events or fund-raisers. So their marketing has to do double duty while operating within a tight budget.Vicky Jaffe and her team at The Currier Museum of Art, located in Manchester, New Hampshire, used Engagement Marketing to fulfill its prime objective: to reach its audiences and get them engaged with the museum. The Currier’s e-mail and social media programs keep people connected with the museum, keep them informed of news and events, and ultimately bring them back.
Gourmet Coffee Service Engages Customers, Increases Month-to-Month Revenues Easy-to-implement tactics help Gourmet Coffee realize $100,000 in additional revenue in 11 months.
Founded in 1995 by Bob Tullio, VP of Business Development; his brother Pete Tullio, CFO; Jon Fishman, President; and Larry Deagon, VP of Operations, Gourmet Coffee Service delivers office refreshment products and services to companies in the entertainment, legal, and finance industries. The company, which competes against national corporations, such as Aramark, Canteen Corporation, and First Choice, has grown from the ground up and now employs over 50 people, including drivers and four customer service representatives.
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“Our biggest challenge is client retention and revenue generation,” says Bob Tullio. “We have over 2,000 clients in the Los Angeles, Orange County, and Inland Empire areas. It’s a huge territory—making it costly to maintain connectivity with decision makers. Our industry has seen lots of consolidation with the national coffee service companies gobbling up the smaller local ones. We knew remaining in touch with our customers had to go beyond the connection they had with our drivers.”
Deliver the WOW! Spoil Your Customers Tullio and his team begin the Engagement Marketing Cycle by delivering a WOW! experience. Every four weeks, a driver arrives at a customer’s workplace to restock the pantry using Gourmet Coffee’s exclusive inventory control system and to clean and maintain the coffee brewer provided by the company. The driver even cleans the pantry! “Our slogan is, ‘We’re going to spoil you,’ and we do,” says Tullio. “We really want to make our customers feel special. Exceptional service is one way to do that.” Each Gourmet Coffee customer is assigned a dedicated client services representative. Each rep is responsible for being proactive by dealing with any special client needs, resolving pricing and product issues, and introducing new products and services. Reps visit each customer on a regular basis and manage quality assessment service surveys relating to driver route performance. In fact, the company’s mantra, “We’re Going to Spoil You,” extends far beyond the client services department. Each of Gourmet Coffee’s team members understands that his or her job plays an important part in providing the highest level of service.
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“Everyone here understands what, ‘We’re going to spoil you’ means and works to provide it. That means that we look at the entire customer experience, from finding ways to keep costs down for customers to sending out easy-to-read invoices. Our goal is to make sure customers are so happy, they never want to leave.” Now that’s a WOW! experience!
Entice Customers to Keep in Touch To further build connections with customers, Tullio turned to e-mail marketing. When the company was smaller, Gourmet Coffee was able to keep in touch with clients (and grow revenue) by sending free sample packets out with the drivers each month. Packets included new products, such as teas or coffees—and it was these samples that helped increase revenues each month as clients would often add the new products to their monthly list of Gourmet Coffee purchases. “As we grew, it became too costly and time consuming,” says Tullio. Thanks to e-mail marketing, the free samples now arrive in customers’ inboxes in the form of a Free Stuff e-newsletter that Tullio sends out once every six weeks. The e-newsletter typically features two or three hot new products, such as wellness teas, biscotti, or eco-friendly cups and napkins. Customers choose what they want to sample and e-mail their requests back to the company. Reps handle the sample orders and ensure that customers get their “goody bags” when their driver next visits. Gourmet Coffee also uses the newsletter to promote their other products and services, such as water filtration systems, single-cup brewing systems, vending machines, and more, which you can see
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Figure 7.1 Gourmet Coffee’s e-mail newsletter
in Figure 7.1. The company also has a “refer a friend” link in their e-newsletter. Customers who click on the link and refer a friend (typically via e-mail) to Gourmet Coffee receive a gift certificate. Tullio says the newsletter has been a great way to get Gourmet Coffee’s product samples into customers’ workplaces. “But we also use it to build connection,” he adds. “Each newsletter includes a photo of one of our client service reps in order to give it that personal touch.”
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Tullio works with an employee to create “internal” content. “You have to walk a fine line between content that benefits your customers and content that’s self-serving,” he says. One issue, which tied into the company blog, featured an article on Gourmet Coffee’s commitment to serving its community. The company provides all of the coffee—gratis—to Ronald McDonald House in Orange County as well as to two local youth organizations. “This lets our customers know we’re involved in the community and also introduces these organizations to a wider audience,” he says. “Again, it builds connection while promoting us as a company that provides more than just K-cups.”
Facebook Page Gets People Engaged Once he had his e-mail marketing program humming, Tullio turned his attention to Facebook. Tullio set up a Page (facebook .com/Gourmet-Coffee-Service) and drew over 300 fans within three months. Tullio and his partners committed to giving away $10,000 in prizes the first year by entering people who Liked the page in a weekly drawing. And we’re talking some hefty prizes, too! An Apple TV, a giant smoker, and tool kits were just a few of the giveaways. For maximum traction, Tullio promoted the campaign via his newsletter as well (Figure 7.2). “What really set off the Facebook Page growth and customer engagement,” says Tullio, “was the driver contest.” Gourmet Coffee encouraged customers to post comments about why they love their drivers. The top four drivers received a nice dinner at a local steakhouse. “We went from 150 to 350 fans in just three weeks with that contest,” he says. It takes Tullio a couple of hours a week to manage the Facebook Page. “I get a lot of industry newsletters with quirky stories,” he
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Figure 7.2 Gourmet Coffee promotes its Facebook contest in its e-mail newsletter
says, “so I just drop in the links and add a sentence or two of commentary. People love them.” One story from the Chicago Tribune reported that Starbucks would begin selling beer and wine at seven new stores opening in the Chicago area. Tullio’s comment? “We were just in Chicago, so we get it. Someone will be in the first Starbucks bar fight ever. We’ll be looking for that report.”
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Figure 7.3 Gourmet Coffee announces the weekly contest winner via video on Facebook
Tullio announced the weekly drawing winners through videos posted on the Facebook Page. In Figure 7.3, Pete, an employee, announces the weekly winner. Posting videos helped increase the fans’ engagement activity, which made the Page even more relevant to its fans and helped ensure that Gourmet Coffee’s content showed up in people’s Facebook News Feeds.
Engagement Drives New and Repeat Business In just 11 months after implementing its Engagement Marketing engine, Gourmet Coffee realized more than $100,000 in additional
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Figure 7.4 Gourmet Coffee’s holiday coffee promotion
revenues. The refer-a-friend program netted dozens of referrals, with seven of them turning into accounts—which translated into an additional $5,000 per month. “What happens,” says Tullio, “is that we’ll get over 100 sample requests each time we send out a newsletter. Between 30 and 40 percent of the samples are retained as ongoing products. So we can potentially generate $1,000 in new sales each month, and this is carried over month to month to month. For the December 2011 holiday season, we ran a special edition coffee promotion. We got a huge response: over 300 orders, a 100 percent increase over last year!” (Figure 7.4)
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Figure 7.5 Gourmet Coffee’s Engagement Marketing campaign components
When asked to share advice for other small business owners, Tullio replied, “Take it one step at a time. Set your objectives and then be patient.You have to let progress occur at its own pace. This approach to marketing—connecting with customers—does work. Stick with it and watch it grow.” As you learned from Bob Tullio, providing a WOW! experience makes it easy to keep in touch with your customers and clients. If your WOW! extends throughout your company, it will spill naturally into your Engagement Marketing. Sample goody bags, clean coffee pantries, and dedicated client service reps—why wouldn’t Gourmet Coffee’s clients want to keep in touch with the company and refer them to others? (See Figure 7.5.) Similarly, Maas Nursery needed to find a way to connect with its customers, especially during a time when everyone was looking to save money and thus headed for the bargains offered at big box retailers. Instead of competing head-to-head on price, Cristina Maas Batz began building a community and invited people back to the nursery for hands-on gardening classes.
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Maas Nursery Creates a Community and Grows Its Business Despite fierce competition, Maas increases revenue by 30 percent.
Competition with big box stores is Maas Nursery’s main challenge. “We are more expensive than the big retailers,” says Cristina Maas Batz, Marketing Director. “We get it. It’s a tough economy and people want to save money wherever possible.” It was this challenge that spurred Batz to consider starting an e-newsletter in 2009. “Growing up, I didn’t have much of an interest in the business,” she says. “I went off to college for my degree and eventually got married. But then I became pregnant and quit my job. I had been thinking for awhile that I wanted to get in on the marketing side of things. Due to consolidation and competition with national chains, it’s really tough for family-owned businesses to stay in business. It was very clear to me that we needed to step it up.We need to use technology to create a community where customers would feel like they were a part of our business.”
Maas WOWs Customers with Gardening Expertise and Selection Maas Nursery is one of the few family-owned nurseries in the greater Houston area. Owned and managed by husband-and-wife team Jim and Carol Maas, and founded in 1951 by Jim’s father, the garden center sits on 10 acres and carries everything from unique plants to unusual artifacts, antiques, and patio furniture. Many items are one-of-a-kind or are imported from Mexico. The nursery is known for carrying plants and shrubbery that you won’t find at the big box stores. In fact, their slogan is, “If you can’t find it here, it probably doesn’t exist!” Because Maas
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hires experts in their respective niches such as shrubbery annuals, or perennials, customers can bring photographs of their yards and get expert advice about what to plant and where. The company also provides landscaping and design consultation services. “We have a 365-day planting season,” says Batz, “and people spend a lot of time and money on their yards. Often, they don’t get the results they want. We help them reduce their costs and make their yards look much better.”
Monthly E-Newsletter Packed With Tips, Coupons, and Other Goodness Batz’s goal was to create an e-newsletter that educated people about gardening and plants as well as create a community that would draw others in. “I wanted the newsletter to be informative and a good resource for customers,” she says. The first issue, sent out in July 2009, was all this and more. Packed with helpful articles, the newsletter included top picks of the month, information on the different types of avocado trees the nursery had in stock, and a “buy one, get 20 percent off ” coupon for customers who purchased a Cajun Hibiscus. Batz also included an article on the benefits of Maas Nursery’s approach to landscaping, information on how to care for plants during the really hot summer months, and a recipe for zucchini brownies. (“If you grow vegetables, you know you always have way too many zucchinis,” says Batz.) Maas Nursery employees helped write the articles; Batz gathered all the information and created the newsletter. “That first issue was a little rough and a little ugly,” laughs Batz, “but once I learned how to put things together, the look and feel improved. It also helped that I moved to Houston so that I could be
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Figure 7.6 The July 2011 Maas Nursery e-newsletter
more hands-on with the marketing. Up until this point, I had been working remotely.� Batz has been very consistent and produces the newsletter each month (Figure 7.6). Each issue is packed full of gardening and landscaping tips from Maas Nursery topic experts, an article written in Spanish for Maas’s Spanish-speaking customers, and notices about upcoming classes. Each archived issue can be found on the Maas Nursery website (Figure 7.7).
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Figure 7.7 The Maas Nursery e-newsletter archive lets customers and prospects view the nursery’s events and learn about plant/lawn care
Events Draw People Back to the Nursery To get people excited about gardening again and to reinforce a sense of community, Maas Nursery began offering classes on topics such as fall and winter gardening, container planting, and cacti and succulents. “We started doing events in the Fall of 2009,” says Batz. “We’d promote the event through the newsletter and then people would e-mail us back to register. We’ve now automated that process using event marketing software.” Each event is relevant to the season and features a 45-minute lecture and hands-on practice. A big pot, soil, and the plantings are included in the $40 fee. “These events are a lot of work for us, and we give away $60 to $80 worth of stuff to each attendee. But we’ve had incredible turnout,” says Batz. “We get lots of repeat customers, plus people come in who have never been to our nursery. Sales are always up
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by at least a third on class days.” The nursery also hosts lectures and tours for gardening clubs. It takes Batz approximately 15 hours a month to coordinate the newsletter and put it out. That time includes meetings, coming up with ideas, following up with people for their articles, and uploading the content. “We want as much employee involvement as possible,” says Batz. “That way, the newsletter becomes personable, a local thing. People see an employee’s photo and say, ‘That’s Kim, she talks about vegetables.’” An additional 10–15 hours per month are spent on class preparation. “That’s start to finish,” says Batz. “I do everything—from creating the event page and handling registrations to making sure we have enough materials.”
Engaging Customers Through Social Media At the same time that she developed the e-newsletter, Batz began playing with Facebook. “Facebook is a great forum because more people interact on it,” she says. For the Business Page, Batz focuses on seasonal planting tips, event notices, and weather alerts. “We’re in a severe drought right now, the worst we’ve had in a hundred years. So we give people weather alerts as well as drought survival tips.” A video of Jim Maas’s appearance on a local TV station to talk about the drought netted numerous comments and a Facebook share. Batz often uploads photos of items from the nursery, too, and uses Facebook’s Events feature to announce upcoming events (Figure 7.8). “We’ve come to know the customers on Facebook, and then they show up at the nursery,” says Batz. “It’s been really good.” A few months after she had Facebook up and running, Batz turned to Twitter (@maasnursery; Figure 7.9). Facebook, however, remains the nursery’s destination of choice.
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Figure 7.8 An event notice on Maas Nursery’s Facebook Page
Figure 7.9 Maas Nursery’s Twitter Feed
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Figure 7.10 Maas Nursery’s Engagement Marketing campaign components
Sales Up in a Down Economy; New People Visit Engaging with customers through the e-newsletter, events, and Facebook (Figure 7.10) has paid real dividends, with sales up by 30 percent in 2011. “And this is in a down economy!” says Batz. “The e-newsletter, the events, and Facebook have been as effective as TV and radio, for much less cost and investment. People remember our name and tell others about us. Now we have new people coming to the nursery who didn’t know we existed.” Her advice to other small business owners? “Use technology to expand your business. If I can do this, anyone can. I literally created newsletters and put the events together with my baby on my lap. Use your creativity and find ways to draw customers back to your business. Get your employees involved. Ask for their ideas. Have them write articles. The more your customers can relate to your business, the more they’ll remember you—and come back when they need something.”
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If you’re a nonprofit, community group, or association, you may be wondering how Engagement Marketing can benefit your organization. Actually, Engagement Marketing and nonprofits go together like bread and butter, a combination that the Currier Museum of Art has used to its advantage.
Museum Engages the Community, Increases Attendance to Programs Creativity and focus help Currier Museum of Art achieve a 27 percent increase in exhibition visitors
“People today have different ways of consuming information,” says Vicky Jaffe, public relations and marketing manager for the not-for-profit Currier Museum of Art. “And who is online is constantly changing. Yesterday it was young adults; today older people are increasing in numbers online.” Reaching different audiences, engaging them, and ultimately bringing them back to the museum for exhibitions and events are the primary objectives for the Currier’s marketing department. To accomplish these goals, Jaffe and her team rely on Engagement Marketing.
Deliver the WOW! Exhibitions That Rock, Literally The Currier often features New England artists; exhibitions range from photography and video to ceramics and, yes, rock and roll. In the Backstage Pass: Rock and Roll Photography special exhibition (October 7, 2011 to January 15, 2012) organized by the Portland Museum of Art, visitors were treated to 175 photographs, including studio shots and candid outtakes, drawn from the largest private
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Figure 7.11 exhibition
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Currier Museum’s Facebook post about the Backstage Pass
collection of rock musicians in the United States. Many of the photos had rarely been seen in public. Response to and attendance at to the exhibition was fantastic. Fans shared their feedback on the Museum’s Facebook Page, which you can see in Figure 7.11. This post, which shows off a photo of the Beatles, netted 10 Likes and two shares, further increasing exposure and accessibility to the Museum. Due to the exhibit, attendance was up from the same period a year before. Says Jaffe, “In November 2011, when the exhibition ran, 7,193 people visited the Museum, compared to November 2010 when 5,658 people visited—a 27 percent increase.” Since Currier’s expansion in 2008, roughly 60,000 visitors a year have explored the Museum’s world-class American and European
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art collections. Currier, located in Manchester, New Hampshire, also owns the Zimmerman House, the only Frank Lloyd Wrightdesigned home in New England open to the public. Currier’s Art Center provides a year-round studio art curriculum for 2,000 students from 40 communities. Currier is one of two large art museums with collections in New Hampshire, with the other museum located in Hanover, which is about a two-hour drive for people who live in the southern part of the state. “Because of our location—which is more urban—we have a large and diverse community,” says Jaffe. “It’s our mission to let the community know what’s going on at the Museum and to invite them to participate in what we offer. To do this, we use a combination of e-mail and social media marketing.”
Multiple Touch Points Keep People Connected and Informed The Currier has depended on e-mail marketing since 2004 and sends out its main e-newsletter, eNews, to over 7,000 subscribers on the first day of each month. The timing is especially important because the Museum holds its First Thursdays Live event on the first Thursday of each month. (Programming includes special exhibitions, gallery tours, a chance to mingle with other art patrons, and live music.) Each e-newsletter is packed full of news about exhibitions, tours, family events, art classes, and more. “We’ve had people opt out of receiving the print newsletter, so the electronic version, delivered on a monthly basis, keeps them connected,” says Jaffe. The Museum also sends separate “e-blasts” to those who have chosen to receive news about the Museum’s Art Center, which provides art classes, camps, and workshops for children, teens, and adults. In addition to the e-newsletters, the
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marketing team sends out targeted e-mails alerting people to exhibitions and other timely announcements. One eNews that’s a big hit every year is the Top 10 holiday gifts issue, which lists items available for under $20 at the Museum gift shop. According to Jaffe, people print the e-mail out and bring it with them to the shop. “That particular e-mail has definitely increased sales!” she says. As you can see in Figure 7.12, the e-mail lists some pretty cool and unique gifts—everything from artisan jewelry and knickknacks to toys and board games.
Figure 7.12
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The Currier Museum’s holiday gift guide eNews
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Social Media Lets People “Plug in on their Own” The Museum set up its Facebook Page in 2009 and since then has seen it grow to over 2,800 fans. Topics run the gamut, from visitor feedback on exhibitions and reposts of Twitter content to announcements about scheduled events and “free to the public” viewing hours. “We get fairly good traction with Facebook,” says Jaffe. Followers look forward to the “CMA Pick of the Week,” a photo post in which a staff member poses with his or her artistic pick and shares information about the featured work. These posts not only pique people’s interest and showcase the Museum’s collection but also make art accessible and interesting to its fans—and anyone searching Facebook. In addition to its Pick of the Week, the Museum also posts notices of upcoming exhibitions, which helps to draw people back to the Museum, as seen in Figure 7.13.
Figure 7.13
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A Currier Museum event notice on Facebook
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The Currier Museum’s Twitter profile
The Currier marketing team uses Twitter to check into the larger world (Figure 7.14). The Museum follows local media outlets and organizations and responds to followers whenever the Currier is mentioned. The team repurposes content from both the print and e-newsletters as well as content from local publications for use on Facebook and Twitter. Jaffe and her team use hashtags when referring to exhibitions and events in order to solicit discussion. In addition to Facebook and Twitter, the Museum also manages a YouTube channel.
Engagement Enhances All Marketing Efforts; Helps Drive Attendance According to Jaffe, Graphic Designer Neva Cole manages the bulk of the Museum’s Engagement Marketing efforts. “When Neva went on maternity leave, it took five of us to fill her shoes,”
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she jokes. “Seriously though, we’ve learned that to manage everything effectively, you have to say, ‘Okay, it’s time to check in and take care of Facebook or Twitter.’ You have to give it your focus. “Every year, the makeup of people who go online changes,” she adds. “More older people are online; younger people use Facebook more than e-mail. It’s all very fluid. You can’t ignore social media if you want to reach various types of audiences.” According to Jaffe, attendance at the Museum varies from year to year and month to month, often based on which exhibitions draw the most interest. The Public Programs team does surveys and asks visitors how they heard about the Museum. Jaffe sums up the results: “All of it—the newsletter, social media—it’s all part
Figure 7.15 components
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The Currier Museum’s Engagement Marketing campaign
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of the mix. The e-newsletter complements Facebook and Twitter, and vice versa (Figure 7.15). It’s definitely helped us reach various audiences, kept us in touch with them, and helped us bring them back to the Museum.” As you can see from these stories, Engagement Marketing is easy and fun. Start with one initial connection method, such as an e-newsletter or a blog, and once you have that piece in place and are gaining traction, add a social media platform, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, or Twitter. Engaging content is the centerpiece. Experiment with different content types. Then measure your results and repeat what works. If you have an Engagement Marketing success story that you want to share, visit our Facebook Page (www.facebook.com/constantcontract) and let us know! See more stories at engagementmarketing.com. In the next chapter, you’ll find five additional tips for increasing engagement. They’re all easy to do and will definitely increase your Engagement Marketing fun quotient.
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CONTENTS
Foreword
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Steve King
vii
Acknowledgments
ix
Introduction: The Participation Age
xi
Marketing in the Age of Participation
1
The Catalyst: The Consumer-to-Participant Transformation
11
Tools for the Past 60 Years
31
Time for a Participation Revolution
57
Participation Way for the Participation Age
81
D + E + C = P2: Discover
95
D + E + C = P2: Empower
105
D + E + C = P2: Connect
119
v
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CONTENTS
9 10 11 12 13
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D + E + C = P2: Participation
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D + E + C = P2: Performance
137
Planning: Bringing the Participation Way to Life
147
Measuring Participation Performance
169
The Future Marketer: The Nurturist
183
References
195
Index
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1 Marketing in the Age of Participation
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T
he moment it all crystallized for me stands out very clearly in my mind. It was early 2005, and I was still working in marketing at Hewlett-Packard (HP). I had to organize a meeting for a large global product launch for the Imaging and Printing Group and was specifically focused on helping the team develop launch plans for the United States. It had a significant digital marketing concept central to the big creative idea, which was something new. Big ideas, however, were not new; in fact, finding that magical big idea was the ultimate marketer’s goal. The quest to uncover it usually began with a television concept that we would extend into the print and digital environments—if it worked. We had been counting on this formula for a number of years, and it had generally been a recipe for reasonable success.
But this time was different. The entire idea itself was about eliciting a response. The brilliant concept was designed to ignite participation from the individuals whom our message was trying to reach. This was not a “send out the message and see what happens” campaign. The idea itself was big, brilliant, and beautiful—but insufficient. In addition to the fact that we were asking for feedback, our audience actually had the tools to take action. This was significant, and that campaign suddenly made the notion of integration incredibly important. Even before this campaign came about, I had acknowledged the growing challenges related to media interconnectedness. I understood how crucial integration was to achieve ultimate program effectiveness. Yet as important as it was, and as easy as it sounded, integration had suddenly become incredibly complex.
3
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I was beginning to appreciate the challenges facing marketers in the new environment. The big idea, messages that had previously worked so well, were beginning to fail for several of reasons: 1. Despite the fact that digital was—and is—outpacing all other mediums the television “big ideas” conquered all. Even today, creative agencies are generally masters at crafting persuasive entertaining pieces designed for television, a medium meant for leaning back and being entertained. They usually don’t even consider or invite audience participation. Ironically, in this case, the idea and tagline of the HP printing campaign was, “What do you have to say?”—which referred to the individual expression reflected in someone’s printed piece. The tagline was a literal invitation for people to participate by building and printing individual creative pieces. HP invited participants to “say” something using creative units that didn’t function well; they hadn’t given much thought to how they would actually receive the “response” or engage in the dialogue. The harsh truth was we really didn’t want them to tell us “what they had to say”; we just thought the tagline was a good way to articulate self-expression, something that generally resonated well with individuals using printers. As good creative agencies usually do, the big idea struck the central nervous system of a cultural theme a little ahead of its time. Customers really did want a “say” and wanted to participate. We just weren’t prepared for the response, nor did we go about creating an environment that conscientiously fostered participation. 2. Digital was the stepchild no one wanted to own and an afterthought. Big creative agencies invested heavily in their creative and production talent in 2005. Their experience was in television and print. These agencies generally outsourced, often even contracting offshore, with small shops to create the web experience, that is, to do the actual coding for the ads or the sites,
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usually as a way to save money. This meant that the end products sometimes didn’t work correctly on the web and the concepts were never developed for the relationship medium. In addition, these other agencies usually built and managed other important digital cornerstones. The digital experience was built for creative units that were beautiful to the eye, meaning they were built in Flash and therefore invisible to search engines. So even if they did function properly and looked beautiful, no one could find them. I discovered this the hard way—with a bit of a twist. Shortly before the campaign launch, we discovered that we had a poorly designed web experience and made the seemingly easy decision to hire another firm to take over. However, the coding was done in Portuguese and actually finding a firm with experience recoding Flash in that language was not as easy. We never would have outsourced the television component; we did this only with the digital assets, which firmly illustrated their priority and value in the marketing mix. And although this has changed somewhat today, it’s not as much as one might expect given the importance of digital and search. According to the 2009 Global Interactive Marketing Organization and Agency Survey, most brand organizations have fewer than 10 employees working in digital. Despite the fact that digital mediums are growing, digital spend is still relatively small. In fact, a recent ZenithOptimedia ad forecast indicates that 95 percent of all future advertising growth will be on a screen (television and Internet). This study does not yet track mobile advertising growth, but it is projected to grow exponentially. This reinforces the importance of television and the increasing importance of interactive mediums. 3. Media was an after-thought in the process. And as I mentioned, it was frequently done by a different agency—and wasn’t considered and involved until too late in the campaign process. Media innovation around the big idea had great potential, but
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because the creative agency was the genesis of big ideas and consequently the owner of strategy and innovation, the media partner was brought in at the last moment for efficiency purposes. Any opportunities for further integration were subsequently lost. This, too, is improving today. In the 2012 Cannes Lions competition, the advertising industry’s largest global annual awards show and festival for professionals in the creative communications industry, there were a number of creative entries in the media category and media entries in the creative categories. This is an indication that more campaigns—and certainly the best—are now effectively blending creative, media, and technology. 4. All marketing assignments were designed as a form of persuasive entertainment. This is the most fundamental reason for the impending failures. Marketers assumed that people were waiting to be entertained passively with a big idea that might influence an opinion—and that they were basically uninformed and required assistance in making a decision about a product or service. For decades, marketing’s role was to aid people who simply needed information about a product in order to make a decision. This is where the idea of awareness originated. Programs were not designed to build a relationship with a person; we never asked ourselves what action we wanted them to take or thought of developing a two-way relationship. It never occurred to us to build programs fundamentally designed with participation in mind. And why should it have? Marketing tools, processes, and philosophies had developed and matured long before people used their computers, smartphones, or tablets to conduct an Internet search or ask their social network for feedback on a certain product or service. On this particular day, I was working on integration planning. I began assembling a list of individuals and their respective agency
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partners who worked across multiple marketing disciplines required to launch the campaign. Individuals who managed their discipline needed to understand the other functional plans in order to see how the overall marketing program was connected. The more connected and integrated a program is, the stronger it becomes, especially in the new digital landscape. For example, paid search and organic search required coordination and integration for optimal eectiveness. Yet since my organization managed paid search, it was tied to advertising and marketing and therefore it was integrated with advertising ight schedules. The corporate information technology (IT) department managed organic search, and the campaign was not even on their radar. Nor did they consider it their role to integrate with the campaign at all. In general, search should be coordinated with direct marketing, which was managed by yet another group; with public relations; and so on. Somehow, all of these teams and their agencies had never even met one another until the day I brought them into the same meeting to discuss launch coordination and integration. To plan the meeting, I had to track down individuals who managed various disciplines and identify their respective marketing partners. Eventually, the invitee list reached 60 people. How was I ever going to schedule a meeting for this many people? Even if I did get a reasonable attendance rate, how would we ever get through or plan the coordination in a way that both added value to individual functions and made the overall plan stronger? This was the moment that I realized that although we were operating using traditional marketing tools and processes, the world had changed. I knew that in order to plan, develop, and launch successful programs, marketing was due for an overhaul. The meeting actually took place. I don’t believe all 60 individuals made an appearance, although a number showed up in the room and others joined via phone. As each team discussed their individual
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plans and other teams asked questions, the overlap became very evident. In many cases, individual managers were not even asking the right questions about their individual programs, because they lacked information about other programs that ultimately affected their own. The tools, philosophies, processes, goals, and approaches—even the language around marketing—simply were not working any longer. We have long known that big companies always have silos, and they’re less than optimal at internal communications, which can often limit even seemingly obvious connections. Similar to any company, these teams were simply doing their jobs as they always had. The difference was me. I was no longer content with the “old” way. I struggled for a way to help others see the light, but I didn’t have much success. The same conversations with the same words just occurred over and over again, which led to us using the same tools we had been using for years. Words have always been important to marketers, who are masters at finding the right words, the right essence, and the right feeling to change perception. If you could change perception, then it was generally thought that a change in action would eventually follow. This is the core essence of any marketing brief: persuasive words that describe how one feels and how we want that person to feel after receiving our message. Marketers talk a lot about what we do and are doing to others. I was listening with a new ear, though, and suddenly it all seemed to have no meaning in the new world: Above the line, below the line, big idea, marketing message, viral, reach, frequency, target, audience— even consumer—I was just as guilty as everyone else, unconsciously using them over and over every day without really knowing what they meant or where they came from. The marketing and media landscape in 2005 was decidedly less complex compared with today’s highly networked complex environment. The rise of social media, the mobile explosion, and the fragmentation of media globally are increasing complexity.
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Marketing in the Age of Participation
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Perhaps even more fundamental than the landscape in which we work in is the basic mind-set shift of the focus for all marketing efforts: the consumer. The evolution of consumer sophistication and expectations is demanding a change in our marketing fundamentals, more so than any other single factor. Having lived or been born with technology tools that arm them with a constant supply of information, today’s consumers now have new expectations about their relationships with the brands whose products and services they use. They have evolved well beyond the uninformed, passive, undecided individuals they once were. They are new participants who expect to join, connect, share, take part, and engage with other people and brands. They believe that their voice makes a difference—and they’re right. Because I worked for a big global company on a market-leading product line, I had the privilege of working with brilliant agencies to architect beautiful creative masterpieces. These were mostly big ideas designed first for television and intended to wow consumers into finding out more about something they were unaware of. Although these concepts were stunningly elegant and beautiful, they often didn’t translate well in the interactive environment—because they were not designed for the participative environment. We never asked the question, What action do you want someone to take when he or she sees this? That is, until the “What do you have to say?” campaign came about. Suddenly, we were asking them to take an action and do something. We weren’t prepared for the response, but the new participant was expecting more than a response. They were expecting a reciprocal relationship. The decades of marketing in one-way communication messages were gone. This realization suddenly led to my desire to find out how we got here to begin with—and set out to understand more about the history of marketing before beginning the journey into marketing for the future.
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MARKETING IN THE PARTICIPATION AGE
Participant Marketing Summary 1. The controlled and linear tools, processes, and philosophies we use for marketing were developed for a different era in marketing, not today’s Participation Age. 2. Most marketing ideas have been generated by creative shops that are masters at crafting persuasive and entertaining pieces designed for television, a medium meant for leaning back and being entertained. They rarely consider formulating ideas around inviting audience participation. 3. Media is generally an afterthought in the process—an approach that is not conducive to the dynamic and complex media environment we live in today. 4. Inviting action and tracking performance are on most marketer wish lists, but they are often difficult to implement. 5. It’s nearly impossible to deliver truly integrated marketing in today’s fragmented and complex media environment, and it’s increasingly difficult for marketers to control this delivery. 6. Many marketers are not even aware of why they are using the language, tools, and processes they use every day, but they always have and continue to do so because it feels safe and there are few alternatives.
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22/10/12 9:03 AM