Why your marketing "signal" should be analog not digital

In the world of music production, you fundamentally have a choice between digital and analog techniques. Whilst for many years this choice was constrained to the murky world of studio technicians, engineers and sound geeks, consumers became famously aware of the differences in the debate over whether CDs (digital) are better than vinyl records (analog). 

Ignoring factors like convenience, longevity and corporate monetization, digital v analog has a more fundamental, scientific difference.

Sound is basically a bunch of waves coming at you like a series of gently rolling hills. The waveforms generated by vocals, instruments and electronics all create these hills. An analog system (such as that used to create vinyl records) takes these waves and tries to faithfully reproduce those gently rolling hills (albeit with some old tech). A digital system however uses the latest in smart tech to convert those sound into a series of ones and zeros, creating a series of jagged peaks.

Which means a digital signal is either there (as a one) or not there (as a zero). Whilst an analog signal always exists.

Difficult to grasp?

Well, the easiest example to relate to is radio. A radio station on AM/FM wavelengths may very well fade out, or suffer from interference. However the same (digitally enhanced) station on DAB gets no interference or noise whatsoever, and can sometimes just cut out. In the DAB digital world the signal is there or not there. There is no interference. No half-way house. No faint signal. Which is the downside of ones and zeros - they either exist or they don't exist.

Which is also the danger with a lot of marketing. The temptation is to be digitally perfect on a periodic basis. We're all scared of making mistakes (weak signal) or saying the wrong thing (interference) but the reality is we need to be on all the time. And if the signal we're projecting fades in and out occasionally, thats fine. We should all learn to experiment, and not be afraid of failure.

Of course prolonged (or repeated) failure over time is a bad thing, but with online marketing we can try, measure, fail and improve over a few days (and in some cases over a few hours). Which is why we should all go analog.

So to get analog I suggest 4 things:

1. Find a way to be continually in tune with your market. The most obvious way is to set up Google alerts on your industry, competitors & markets. Or have pre-built streams in a social media tool like Hootsuite.
2. Get in to a real-time measurement mindset. Set up a daily dashboard in your CRM system, or a daily analytics reports from your web analytics tool.
3. Automate your analog-ness by investing in an automation platform (such as Silverpop) that can be constantly pinging your audiences with the right information at the right time.  All the time.
4. Set aside a small amount of your budget (say 10%) to spend exclusviely on experimental projects. Try that whacky ad copy or build a fun viral video. Even the most modest budgets can support experimentation.

Being analog is a state of mind, not a thing you can buy. The chances are your competitors have made the move already and are out-marketing you. They're out there right now, spoiling your digital perfection with their analog noise.

So, forget stalling and remember, practice makes perfect. So get playing!

[Infographic] Things I say a lot on Twitter (this time it isn't personal)

I love a nice visualization - and was really taken by my work/life profile as envisaged by vizify. 

Its a nice, easy to set-up service that takes your facebook, linked, twitter, instagram and foursquare data and mashes it up into 5 or 6 neat graphics, fronted by a cool home page. 

Of particular interest was the twitter infographic below (click thru for the real thing), showing the words I use the most. As you can see, i'm all about marketing, b2b & silverpop. Which is no surprise as I took the decision mid-2012 to restrict my twitter posting activity to work-only content (I do follow non-work folk, but its consumption only). This wasn't a keep-my-personal-life-private decision, just a realisation that most of my followers come to me thru work engagements, and that I got very little interaction on personal content. So, like any good publisher, I paid attention to my readership. I stopped sharing my kids' experiences, family dinners and weekend check-ins and concentrated my valuable time on stuff people wanted to read & share. Thereby saving me a whole lot of wasted hours looking at my iPhone in the process! That said, I do get personal over on instagram (public access) and Facebook (invitation only). 

So give vizify a go - not only does it show your most used words, it also show those that get the most shares. And who knows, you may get to know a little bit more about what the people want and save yourself a lot of effort!

Jon Hopkins, Forrester and the fight for attention in marketing

Recently I did something very unusual. I gave my full attention to some content.

I know, amazing right? It sounds a strange thing to say, but I've come to realise that for most of my waking hours I can't go 10 minutes without checking social media, "second screening" (or, worse still, "third screening") or flicking refresh on my iPhone to check my email.  

But, for once, I decided to check out of the digital firehose and focus. OK, so it happened to be music related. I'm an avid music fan and have 13,341 (i checked) songs in iTunes. And in this age of ADD, for most of my recent purchases I (sometimes) couldn't name the artist, (most of the time) couldn't name the track and (definitely) couldn't tell you the album name. But this time was different. It was the release of the new album "Immunity" by the London-based experimental electronic musician Jon Hopkins. Someone whom I admire a lot and, to use a marketing term, has a lot of "share of mind" with me. 

So on my daily train commute I put away my phone(s), kept my Kindle shut and just listened. And very enjoyable it was too!

But it did raise the question that in my professional life, how many of my target audience lavish such attention on the content I'm producing? It's said the average consumer is exposed to upwards of 30,000 marketing messages a day - on their way in to work, on radio/TV, in their email inbox, online and in social media. That's an amazing amount of noise to compete with, and no surprise that Fournaise Group estimate that the average consumer attention span is now 4 seconds.

And don't think this is just a B2C problem. I was recently speaking to someone at technology research firm Forrester who told me that their analysts have to cover at anywhere between 100 and 1,000 vendors. And of course, as human beings, they're doing well to know 12-15. Which poses "interesting" challenges for us vendors who want to be known in our respective sectors.

So our fight as marketers, whether its reaching through the 30,000 to get to our customers or making the final 12-15 of an analyst, is in getting attention. 

So how do we do it? This is what I think:

1. Stop: thinking that people care about your products as much as you do. Start: appreciating the attention game & really honing your messaging skills.
2. Stop: believing that people have the time to read, re-read and digest deep content. Start: thinking like an entertainment brand, and produce engaging, stimulating, even amusing bite size chunks of content.
3. Stop: spraying & praying, bombarding your database with emails timed to when it's convenient for you. Start: building behaviour-triggered messages, that are relevant to the individual and timed to when its best for them.

The solution is clear: marketing automation + content marketing are powerful forces in the fight for attention. Get them right, and you may be my next Jon Hopkins. Get ithem wrong and I won't even remember your name. On which note, its time for the new Boards of Canada album. 

Photo credit: http://foxgotbass.com/jon-hopkins/

Google, The Matrix & Getting Personal

I read a really interesting article in The Guardian recently that asked us to all stop thinking of Google+ as yet another social network but as The Matrix of the internet. Having a G+ account is not about participating in the G+ community, its about having a passport (remember that Microsoft terminology, funnily enough released the same year as The Matrix?) that gets stamped everytime you cross the borders of content, data and interactions. Watch a Youtube video, ask directions on a Google map, click on a search result or open a Gmail message and all of these interactions are recorded and used to better personalise your Google-based experiences.

Of course, the jury is out on whether this is a good or bad thing. We continue to tread the line between wanting better experiences and not wanting to have our privacy invaded. But the future is inevitable - we will get more unique interactions from brands. Consumer demand is too strong.

I, like many, am fed up with the impersonal, irrelevant and downright annoying content shoved in my digital face on a daily basis. I've also posted before about the woeful lack of personalisation from companies such as Apple. Especially (in Apple's case) when i've thrown my heart, soul & wallet into becoming a loyal customer. That in essence is behavioural marketing - letting brands tailor the experience within their owned web, email, social & mobile assets to hopefully make the consumer experience just a little less frustrating, and dare I say it, enjoyable.

And it doesn't have to Big Brother/Borg/Vogon-like either. You have enough explicit information to personalise your marketing today, without the need for covert operations. Consider the wealth of behavioural data you have already: 

• Email : opens, click thrus, time of day preferred, device used
• Web : views, downloads, visit history, device used (again)
• Social : likes, shares, posts/comments
• eCommerce : cart abandonment, items purchased, previous purchases
• CRM : customer segment, age, marital status, location, preferences
• ...and so on.

So I welcome anything that helps to ease my digital day. Even if we tag it as something as menacing as The Matrix. And nothing could be more gratefully received then on today, my very birthday, a personalised Google Doodle (see below) wishing me Happy Birthday.  As I've always said, It's the little things...

Practice what you preach - a powerful way to market yourself

Many of us are in the lucky position to sell products that we ourselves can use in our own business operations. SFA, CRM, ERP, business intelligence, web analytics, email marketing and marketing automation are all great examples that aim to make the life of the sales/marketer easier and can be demonstrated in anger by the companies making them.

By how often have you dug deeper into these companies and come up with the old "Cobbler's Children" adage. Turns out the producers of the tools are just as immature in the use of their own tools as the companies they're trying to sell to. Sales people in some CRM vendors don't update the system with their activities and BI companies ​use Excel for analysis & reporting. You get the idea.

Which is why I'm extremely proud that the all new silverpop.com is a model example of what behavioural marketing can be. The site demonstrates what is possible from a behavioural marketing approach, listening out for behavioural cues from individuals and self-optimising to deliver the perfect, individualised customer experience.

Or put more simply, the more you use it, the more it learns and the more it serves up a personalised experience built just for you.​

Here are just six things (and one "...and finally") I love about the site:

1.  Social Sign-In which allows individuals to automatically populate a form with their Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and, most importantly for B2B organisations, Salesforce.com account.​

2. A personalised sidebar which serves up relevant content based on information gained through progressive profiling:

​3. A resources section that displays case studies and other pertinent content based on my specific industry:

4. Personalised contact information on who to speak to in Silverpop, based on data in our CRM system (in my example BTW i get a generic contact)

​5.​ A view of my interaction history with Silverpop (downloads, emails received etc.):

6. The opportunity to self opt-in to nurture programs (wow!):

...and finally:​

I love that our company website has become a living, breathing commercially active demonstration of what we can achieve. No canned demo or screen show. A powerful message to our prospects that we practice what we preach. And also an open, honest, transparent view of what we do. Something I believe all brands in a similar position should try & do.​

The power of great story telling in marketing

I was absolutely blown away by the volume (and quality) of tweets that came from the delegates at our Silverpop Connect Dubai event yesterday. I've snapped some of them here during my session, which made up just 45 minutes in an all day programme.

Much is talked of the role of social media in the Arab Spring of 2010/2011, but my point isn't necessarily to do with that. Dubai isn't a hotbed of political unrest and upheaval anywhere near comparable to Egypt and Tunisia.

My point has to do with the power of storytelling, and the basic need of us humans to communicate.​ Being a relative novice in doing business in the Middle East, I'm told its a very relationship-based region. You have to get to know people and build trust. And I saw some of that at this week's event.

Trust only comes when you have a story that is believable and credible. If you have a good story, tell it in an interesting/timely/relevant manner and relate it to the issues/wants/needs/desires of your audience then you'll go a long way.​ Story tellers and raconteurs have known this for years, and this core human skill has been practiced around campfires, in bars and over the dinner table for centuries. Social media gives the individual the uber-megaphone to tell or share a great story, and I'm pleased to say the story we had to tell in Dubai was ripe for repeating.

As marketers, we should continually bear in mind the power of having a great story when trying to build an emotional connection with consumers or business customers. ​Get the story right first and the channels will do the rest.

Finally, you'll see below a snapshot of the twitter activity, curated as a Storify. Have fun & enjoy the story!​

Danger: shiny marketing toys ahead

With the recent deluge of digital marketing tools, today's marketer is spoilt for choice with a box full of amazing, wonderful toys to play with. 

I'm a bit of an advocate for experimentation, testing and "marketing R&D". I've gone on record in the past stating that marketing teams should devote a small percentage of their budgets to trying out new approaches, testing things out, failing and learning. But be warned not to be spellbound by bright, shiny new things.

With the advent of social media, content marketing and inbound marketing you'd be ​forgiven for thinking its time to throw out the old and adopt the new. Forget broadcast, outbound marketing, its all about conversations now right? You'll get better results from a concerted blogging strategy that creates inbound opportunities years after they're created?

Well, yes and no. ​

As this fascinating case example from Doug Kessler at Velocity Partners shows, sometimes the "old" trumps the new. Here Doug shares that an outbound email and advertising programme outperformed a new wave content marketing programme.

And whilst many ​find it unpalatable to come terms with the fact, content marketing and its like may not be the right answer on their own. Actually, its all about a blended approach that takes the best of both worlds. As a recent Marketing Pilgrim post put it, "a balance between the ‘tried and true’ and the ‘new and exciting’ should be struck to ensure that marketers are not leaving money on either table."

So don't discount that email strategy out of hand, or ignore direct mail quite yet. Go back to first principles:

• who do you want to target (audience)
• what do they want to hear from you (message)
• where do they get their information (place)

Get that right, and don't worry you'll still get to play with those shiny new toys.​

In customer experience, it's the little things that count

I recently stayed at a hotel in Amsterdam. ​It was a good hotel. It scored 20 out of 30 on Google Reviews. 4 stars (and thumbs up) on booking.com. 4.5 out of 5 and 34th (out of 331) best hotel in Amsterdam on Tripadvisor.

It was right next to Centraal railway station, so only 20 minutes from Schipol Airport. The front desk staff were helpful. Check-in was painless. The room had an Apple iMac with cable TV and free internet access. Wi-fi was included. The room was clean. The free toiletries were upmarket. The bed was comfortable. I had a great sleep. Breakfast was above average. Guest services were efficient in organising taxis to my destination.​

It had all the makings of a hotel to be thoroughly recommended.​

​But I still came away slightly annoyed by my experience.

Why? Because for the three days I stayed there this ice bucket remained in the corridor just outside my room. It was a small thing. It could've been picked up at any time by any member of staff passing by. By the cleaning staff passing through 2-3 times a day. By room service attendants. By the night porter checking for door-hung breakfast requests at 2am. And, even worst, by the loyalty programme rep who slipped my new loyalty card under the door.

It's this attention to detail that tainted my experience. Don't get me wrong, it won't stop me staying there again. But its a frustrating example of how a brand sometimes forgets on the smallest of details.​ And sometimes, for me as a consumer, it tips the balance. Especially when hotels are becoming uber-competitive and collectively raising their game.

Which also means that there's opportunity to make great in-roads into customer experience by doing the small things. Sometimes we get paralysed into thinking that improvement needs a massive overhaul. But sometimes it just requires you saying thankyou to your existing customers for their custom, greeting new customers with a well thought-out welcome programme or recommending to them other products you know they'd just love.

So yes, sometimes you need to refit your hotel and put iMacs in every room. But sometimes you just need to pick up that one, small ice bucket.​

Small things make all the difference.​

The B2B marketing automation journey

An interview centred around the topic of B2B Marketing Automation (MA). Topics covered include how MA helps:

• align sales & marketing.
• marketing have a more "grown up" conversation in the business
• marketing move from a cost to a profit centre.
• provide a single view of customer behaviour across all digital channels

Like any good interviews, it took place in a restaurant/bar :)

Making your marketing more "bobular"

This is my favourite local wine shop. I shop there all the time. I’m so protective of it that I’m going to keep its identity secret!

But let me explain what this shop has to do with good marketing.

It's all to do with Bob, the manager of the shop. You see, Bob knows me. He knows what I like, what I don’t like, what I’ve tried before. What I’ve bought recently. That I like to cook and entertain.  The kinds of things I like to cook. My attitude to wine. My price range for normal evenings and for special occasions.

Where I live. Where I work. What I do for a living. How many kids I have.

Three weird facts you need to know:​

1. I buy five times more wine from Bob than from my local supermarket. 
2. I tend to leave the shop having spent 30-200% more than I thought I would.
3. I wouldn’t think of buying my wine anywhere else.

In fact I enjoy buying from Bob. I love the experience that much.

The bad news: most of today's marketing is far from Bob. In fact its decidedly un-Bobular. 

If Bob was a marketer instead of the world’s best wine salesman, I’d walk in and instead of saying “Hey John, how’d you get on with that Riesling?” he’d say, “Hello potential customer. This is a wine shop. We have red wine and white wine and sparkling wine. Some of it is from France.’

Instead of saying, “I’ve got a Rioja that your wife is going to rave about.” he’d say, “Buy three cases of Asti and get one free!”  (I loathe Asti).

Behavioural Marketing is ​the best way to get more Bob-like.  And it really is a simple idea:

• You capture the things people do when they interact with you across all channels (email, web, mobile, social, call centers etc).
• You combine that data with the stuff you already know about that person – the profile & preferences; or past behaviours.
• You apply a few rules to that data.
• You use the rules to generate a PERSONALISED interaction and a MULTI -CHANNEL MULTI-STEP relationship that delivers the most relevant customer experience for the INDIVIDUAL.

Simple.​

Its being Bob-like on a massive scale - being that personal, informed brand that doesn’t treat every customer like a new person who just walked in off the street.

Treating each one like the valued individual that they are.

Go forth and become Bob!