Burgers and the power of eliminating choice in marketing

This is the menu for Dirty Burger, an upmarket burger joint in the very downmarket Kentish Town area of London. It's part of a rise in high quality food "shack/diner style" restaurants in London that provide little or no choice for customers. There's Burger & Lobster (ermm, just beef burgers and lobster burgers), Orange Buffalo (chicken wings), The Rib Man (pulled pork sandwiches) and dozens of artisan coffee shops that do away with caramel decaf extra wet capufrappucinos. It's espresso, espresso with a bit of milk or espresso with extra hot water.

What they say, in an un-arrogant customer-friendly way, is we know our product. And we are going to deliver just one or two things, amazingly, brilliantly, wonderfully well. 

That says a lot about these retailers. It screams confidence, simplicity and, what we'd call in B2B marketing, "Thought Leadership". We've worked long and hard at perfecting the perfect dish, so lets not leave you to construct a toppings heavy, sauce soaked mess of a meal. We're chefs. You're not. Trust us.

That's an incredibly powerful marketing approach. Whilst a few years back we thought consumers wanted ultimate choice, I  now think they just want ease of access. Information access and connectivity means we're spoilt for choice. The point of pain now is making a decision. So lets all make it easier for our customers. Forget "have it your way". Let's make their lives a lot easier and deliver that perfect burger.

Image: courtesy of @fennerpearson : http://instagram.com/p/g8sXg4KDgU/

Vodka, Oreos and living in a digital marketing bubble

To use a soccer analogy, marketing's a game of two halves. 

I was recently exposed to a twitter conversation where a twitterati was berating anyone who used the SuperBowl/Oreo social media example in presentations. Basically, "yawn, yawn, move on - its been eight months now. Let's find another example to talk about". You get the idea.

Now whilst I see his point, lets not forget the real world...

A good friend of mine is an extremely experienced branding & marketing consultant and currently working for a number of emerging drinks brands. Recently she's been helping launch a Vodka brand into Europe - a market already crowded with value & premium brands all crying out for the attention of mainly 18-35 year olds. I was interested in hearing how she went about creating & marketing a new consumer brand. This involved good market research, some focus groups and a positioning that built an "emotional connection". Her view was that consumers wanted to identify themselves with a brand and be a "Product X person". To do this involved highly emotional print & TV advertising (to set the tone, image and demand) as well as aggressive trade sales (to position the brand in the right part of a bar, and thereby satisfy supply).

All good so far. And delighted to hear such rigour, I then asked about the demand for her brand's category as expressed in organic search. Which were the most popular brands on Google? What were the most popular search terms related to vodka?, who comes top when you search for best/cheapest/coolest/most expensive vodka?, cocktail recipes and so on. After all most consumers start/augment/complete purchase decisions via search and get recommendations through social sharing. Right?

Her answer?

"Well Google's all a bit flaky. It's just a load of random nonsense. You can't get any real consumer insights or build an emotional connection"

Now as a marketer immersed in digital marketing this was like heresy, and a somewhat tense discussion followed. Thankfully I didn't get on to social media!! But, regardless, it further reinforced that those of us in the digital/social marketing arena are living in a bubble. Don't forget that smart, intelligent, successful marketers are out there and are still not fully understanding digital/social as a way not only to communicate, but also listen and build affinity.

"They" are not always wrong. And "we" are not always right. 

It is beholden on us to not run out of patience, get bored quickly nor move on to the next new thing.  Let's not avoid our job of helping the vast majority of the marketing community come along with us on this digital marketing journey. Its a long and winding road, so strap in for the ride.

So please, please, please don't throw out the Oreos quite yet. They may be stale to you, but to many they're lovely & oven fresh.

(PS And *of course* you can combine Oreo & Vodka! Image courtesy of partyrebhat.net. Recipe at http://ow.ly/r05TR )

Feels like coming home : I'm joining Adobe

After an amazing time at Silverpop, I'm honoured to be joining Adobe, heading up the marketing team for Adobe Marketing Cloud in Europe. 

Firstly, thanks to my colleagues at Silverpop for all their support over the last year or so. I can truly say I had a blast. Silverpop is a great company - well positioned to capitalise on the phenomenal interest in digital marketing technology, with great technology, great customers and a great team.

But, as in a lot of times in life, I got an offer I just could not refuse. From a company I've admired for many, many years.

My association with Adobe goes way back when, as a budding sales executive, I helped a non-existent marketing department pull together some print ads using Aldus Pagemaker (later to become Adobe Pagemaker, then superseded by InDesign) on an Apple Macintosh SE. 

More importantly though, I've been a big advocate of the transformative effects digital marketing technology can have on the impact of the marketing function. Being a B2B marketer, this translates most immediately to regaining the revenue conversation and putting numbers around marketing campaigns. Numbers which sadly for the profession went missing for many years, allowing the sales function to take the high ground in most B2B companies.

I've pioneered marketing automation platforms, championed social media as a customer outreach tool, introduced social community portals and helped marketing regain its rightful place at the strategy table.  I've also written before about the need for more science graduates in marketing to facilitate this transformation. 

And, of course, Adobe is leading the transformation with its technology.  Nothing gets more gold standard in web analytics than Adobe (formerly Omniture) Analytics. And add to this world-class social, media optimization, targeting, web experience management and cross-channel campaign management and you can see why the geek in me is excited by the possibilities that Adobe presents for today's digital marketer.

So, exciting times indeed. And for a creatively-minded, Pagemaker-trained, marketing scientist with a passion for digital marketing technology, I just couldn't turn away the opportunity to join the Adobe team. After all, it's not like I'm joining a brave new world. It's more like coming home. 

Curation and putting the art back into marketing

Let's face it, most marketers are judged on output. Pieces of content, number of leads, words written, etc. But is that necessarily the only metric? I'm not talking about quality over quantity, but what value do you place on an individual's ability to curate? Or make good decisions? 

In this networked economy, with access to content no longer a major source of friction and most of us being positively overwhelmed with content, surely we should now be putting more value on a marketing decision framework that achieves the same end goal as an "old school" production engine? 

I was provoked by this recent article that laid out "14 new rules workplace millennials need to master". Whilst a parallel thread, the topics were relevant to my curation vs creation thoughts. In particular the following points:

• Your reputation is the single greatest asset you have.
• You need to build a positive presence in new media. 
• The one with the most connections wins.

As the article puts it "we have moved from an information economy to a social one. It’s less about what you know (you can find out just about anything within seconds with a simple Google search), and more about whether you can work with other people to solve problems." And that "...what you do is important. But what others think you do can be just as important if not more so."

I saw some of this recently when I was taking my CEO through creative ideas around some new company messaging. He was keen to understand whether I had come up with the ideas on my own, had worked with other employees or indeed worked with an external agency. Interestingly whilst he was interested in the creation process, he was more impressed that, regardless of whether they were my ideas or others, I had selected these to share with him. And that, to him, was more valuable.

Don't get me wrong, though. I'm not talking about passing things off as your own, without acknowledging sources. That's pure plagiarism. But the art of hand selecting ideas or content to share with your customers is a powerful concept. (in the case of my CEO, I had worked on some of the ideas with my agency, and told him so).

That CEO session went well. And I've had similar experiences throughout my career. And when asked about these moments and how I came up with great ideas, I can only come up with "it seemed right",  "i know what works and what doesn't work" or "well, that's what i do". (Disclosure: Don't worry, I make bad decisions too). 

Many brands have got this already and almost base their entire business model around curation. Take a fashion retailer like Mr Porter who compiles the latest trends, ready for purchase. Or coffee retailer Pact Coffee who sends you a different coffee every month.

And some brands have taken it even further. Seat14a, another fashion retailer, has just one "look" at a time available purchase. Like the one look, buy it. Don't like it, that's it. And film service Mubi that brings you movies one at a time, every day of the year.

What do all of these brands have in common? They use curation to build tremendous trust with customers and in the end show tremendous confidence. The confidence to go for it. To keep it simple. To take a risk. To have some fun.

And in the end confidence is one of the biggest values any brand can convey to its customers. And marketing that conveys that confidence will surely win out. 

So, whilst knowing your numbers and hiring more marketing scientists is important to upping the credibility of marketing teams, lets not forget marketers that make wonderful, intangible, unmeasurable decisions.  Dare I say it, let's celebrate the return of gut feel in marketing! 

So many marketing books, so little time...

Like me you're probably constantly on the lookout for new ideas, ways of thinking and ways to work better. [It may even be why you're reading this post].

Personally I love nothing more than a good marketing/business book that leaves me inspired. But I'm notoriously bad at making the time to read long text. Or indeed choosing the right book to read in the first place.

That's why I'm pleased with the idea of the Silverpop Book Club.

We’ve curated some of our favourite books and reviewed them, plus asked leading authors to join us and share their expertise.

As a sneak preview – here are just some of the books & leading authors we have joining us for some special webinars over the next few weeks:

•         Will McInnes introduces ‘Culture Shock’
•         James McQuivey discusses ‘Digital Disruption’
•         Scott Stratten explains why ‘QR Codes Kill Kittens’
•         Lee Odden shows you how to ‘Optimize’

So let us be your digital librarian, and join us over at: www.silverpop.com/bookclub. Sign sign up for updates; it’s the best way to get the latest and greatest book club news and to join our events.

 **B2B Marketing Best Practice Footnote**

From a professional point of view, I love this initiative. Curation of 3rd party content is a great way for us to provide some value to our community, without picking up the megaphone & shouting about our products. It allows us to enter a different conversation with customers and prospects and by sharing innovative content show that we ourselves are aware of, and part of, the latest thinking.

John Battelle on making advertising "inherently valuable"

For "advertising" think "marketing".

For the whole interview think "behavorial marketing".

Simple :)

Can retargeting work in B2B marketing?

My good friends at Velocity Partners recently ran an experiment using content retargeting to promote their business.

The concept is simple - firstly, present ads on other sites (all of which are signed up to a specific ad network) to people who have already visited your site. And secondly, on subsequent visits to those ad network-enrolled sites, change the content so you progress the visitor down your sales funnel.

Whilst I applaud Velocity's efforts to try new ways to reach their target audiences, it for me was also a great example of the good & bad of using retargeting in B2B. 

So, the good:

1. I think retargeting has more of a place in B2B than B2C, as considered purchases are a long haul and any opportunity to reinforce a brand over multiple touchpoints is worthwhile.
2. I actually experienced the experiment and was retargeted by them & thought - hey that's Velocity!

However, the bad:

1. I get really annoyed by B2B brands interjecting themselves into my consumer experience. Its bad enough pre-rolling car adverts, but I really don't want to sit through even 4 seconds of a middleware software ad when my kids are wanting to show me a Minecraft tutorial on YouTube. 
2. In Velocity's case, I experienced (1) but even worse - I'm already a customer! So I do not need more (intrusive) advertising thanks!

So a couple of things need to change to stop the current platforms being a bit of a blunt instrument:

1. Ad networks need to provide more granularity in letting advertisers choose which sites their ads appear on.
2. Retargeting needs to develop a behavioural dimension, which lets advertisers serve up ads not only on whether a consumer has previously visited their site (and nurture them thru a funnel) but also on other data such as purchase history,  CRM profile or other digital behaviours.

Anyone else have thoughts on the matter?

Favourite email campaigns #342 - The loyal customer pay-back

Loved this email campaign from Withings. I was an early adopter of their Wi-Fi scales not long after it launched. And it looks like I've fallen into their long term customer segment, rewarding me with a sizable discount in upgrading to their later model.

Nice.

I was only thinking today how uninteresting typical promotional deals of 10% off were, so the 25% in this offer grabs my attention. Plus I love the "thanks for your loyalty" message.

Great example of reactivation/segmentation. And you know what, I'm more than likely to make that purchase. Plus I'm also intrigued by their soon-to-be-released Pulse wireless activity and heart rate tracker. So maybe double upselling.

Great job!

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!