Anthony
http://www.apowerpoint.blogspot.com
Bio: Have spent the better part of two decades working on various marketing challenges - from research and new product forecasting to syndicated retail reporting to customer analytics to positioning and creative.
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
Two recent projects have allowed us to rethink the notion of ‘demand generation’. In the usual sense the phrase refers to getting people to take a step toward becoming a customer - become a lead, ask for information or make a purchase. And in this world people follow the traditional path of awareness, consideration, and purchase with time spent between each stage.
There are scenarios when the desire to satisfy a need is much more intense than in other cases. A refrigerator dies, a job is lost, or a project is finally approved represent scenarios where people behave and think differently than the normal sales funnel. A useful analogy might be to think of pain in terms of medical conditions.
- Acute Demand: Characterized by the need for immediate relief. The decision to buy has already been made, now it is a matter of which option. Marketing tactics must cover all the places where a person would look for treatment - search, directories, factual comparisons, product reviews, and direct response. Those things that make it easy to make a decision in an extremely short period of time.
- Chronic Demand: Characterized by an on-going need that a person has, but has yet to satisfy. The decision to buy has not been made, but the individual knows they should. Marketing tactics must portray both empathy and information to allow the person to make a commitment. Given the long-term nature of chronic situations, campaigns should run in parallel with and through the events that trigger decision with attention paid to those with veto power.
- Latent Demand: Often an invisible need that hasn’t (and may not) surface. No decision to buy has been made at all and its unclear whether one will ever be made because a need has yet to be articulated. Marketing tactics should work on stimulating or confirming a need through the benefits of the solution. Since common interests are the new demographics campaigns should focus on where people congregate, both literally and figuratively.
As an example, consider the potential strategies for Pest Control:
- Acute: be everywhere a person would turn to if termites or fire ants are found. Who would they ask? Where would they turn? to get the problem solved that day. Yellow pages, Google/MSN/Yahoo!, and Angies’/classifieds should be at the foundation of the plan. Since resolving acute pains often relies on personal recommendations, this is a highly localized decision - even for national brands.
- Chronic: provide information around treatment options, health and safety concerns about the consumers house and family. Provide content and advisories on where outbreaks do/might occur through the media the audience uses. Become the content aggregator for a specific problem.
- Latent: be visible. Often termed ‘air cover’ in media plans there is a need to create some form of name recognition when a person moves to either chronic of acute demand. Sponsor community or elementary school programs; be a member of the community by actively participating. Broadcast advertising might be appropriate here to efficiently extend reach in lieu of any targeting information.
To provide a fresh view on a marketing plan, ask yourself:
- When people buy my product, what percent come from each type of demand?
- Are my campaigns aligned well with each need state?
- Are my tactics delivering the right information to each type of person?
Tags: demand generation, marketing plans
Posted in Marketing | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 12th, 2009
As B2B technology companies leave the early stage of incubation and product development they often struggle with identifying the best market for their offering. Misalignment between a company’s solution and the needs of the market is the number one reason for failure. In Tim Draper’s recent post on why startups fail many of the reasons had to do with understanding the market.
- They aim too high. A successful start up identifies a narrow niche and expands.
- They go after too small a market
- They don’t charge enough, i.e. the benefit isn’t compelling
- They get broadsided by incumbents, i.e. the point of differentiation isn’t clear
To succeed companies need to simultaneously answer three critical questions:
- Who is our customer?
- What do they need that we offer?
- Why is our answer distinct and better than other options?
In a nutshell it comes down to positioning and branding - the art and science of defining the best opportunity for success. This is what we as marketers do.
Tags: B2B, positioning, technology
Posted in Marketing | No Comments »
Monday, March 9th, 2009
One of our favorite types of clients is B2B technology for a few of reasons.
- There is always a differentiator of some type. Delivering certain functionality means trade-offs were made in development.
- The focus is often on lead generation which is quite measurable.
- The decision process is made by a natural community where numerous points of interaction exist.
Our approach is to understand who would be most interested in your product’s advantage and then surround that conversation network with the appropriate proof points.
Technology is not omnipotent, there are always weaknesses to be found in the category leader. For instance databases may optimize for transaction processing or ecommerce platforms may focus on branded sites. These decisions allow new entrants to damn them with faint praise while they focus on analytics or supporting multiple channels.
The ultimate marketing objective with any company is to clearly understand the value proposition, positioning, and personality of the brand. These three elements define the sweet spot and can be defined as follows.
- Value Proposition: states in financial terms what the buyer is getting from a product.
- Positioning: defines the market and offers the proof points as to why the product is the right choice
- Personality: outlines the manner in which the company and product portray itself.
These are not engineering issues or ‘build it and they will come’ but rather branding concepts that underpin the most succesful companies. They answer: “Why is this product important to me?”
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Friday, February 27th, 2009
As an agency, we’re often presented with products that are looking for help in finding their voice. There are several ways this may show itself:
- It may come across as another ‘me too’ product, or
- It tries to fight the incumbents on pre-established terms and ground rules, or
- It thinks it is the answer for everyone, or
- It doesn’t clearly know where it fits.
Most of the time a brand can work within an existing category through positioning and appropriate messaging. Because consumers prefer some choice there’s almost always room for a strong number 2 or 3.
But sometimes the product appears to be something new and different - deserving of the chance to create a category all its own. But what are the elements that drive a successful category? How can we identify a potential category-creator? There are three elements we look for: Ideas, Insights and Innovation.
- Idea: The product is new or different; it defies easy comparison to established brands. “It’s close to ____ but not really.” It does something different than what we would expect for the category, e.g. Curves or Online Law Schools.
- Insight: The difference has real value to a group of people. And this group isn’t likely who we thought at first. “You know who really needs this, its __________”. The ah ha moment where the right audience becomes clear; e.g. ‘law school is not just for lawyers’.
- Innovation: The functionality, delivery mechanism and business model have to be different; or at least 2 out of 3. If not, the 800# gorilla will make their category bigger by swallowing the product up. It must be painful for incumbents to compete.
These three elements often present a challenge to established brands and companies. New companies are much better suited to find their niche; although they may be challenged to execute. Established brands can execute but their legacy retards change.
Tags: Innovation, positioning
Posted in Power Windows | No Comments »
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
To help marketers develop strategies for using social media we posted a presentation as news release. The outline works through the intersection of marketing and social media as a series of discussion points.
To make it interesting, it is completely designed as 50 tweets. All 50 points made in less than 140 characters, in case you want to forward them on.
Tags: Marketing, Social Media
Posted in Marketing, Social Media | 1 Comment »
Monday, February 16th, 2009
The lines between various aspects of journalism continue to blur and create new categories.
-
Social media meets the press release. First, no longer are press releases written for the press; they’re written for everyone - clients, consumers, and investors. A good release strategy helps with search. Second, the Internet is consumed differently than print. We do not read, we scan. A 2 page release in 5 paragraphs just doesn’t work any more. Third, words are only one way of communicating. Places to check out for the social media newsroom include.
- Para Journalism is also emerging in a new direction.
- Spot.US - a marketplace where citizens, journalists, and news organizations can come together. Ideas for stories are posted and funded via micro-contributions. Highly California (bay area) centric; but interesting to peruse.
- newsassignment - a crowdsourcing approach to open-source journalism. Several projects looking at the intersection of professionals and journalists.
- Citizen Marketers - Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s book on the topic.
Tags: journalism, Social Media
Posted in Power Windows | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
In the cowboy movies, the last gunslinger standing rides off into the sunset with the girl. In online advertising its often the same; the last ad shown gets credit for the conversion.
In a recent iMedia article on ROI Young-Bean Song from Atlas pokes some worthy holes in that simplistic view of the world. I want to extend the argument to include all media. We know TV affects search and radio affects mobile. A full attribution model would look at the entire integrated media plan.
Tags: online, ROI
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 10th, 2009
I know customers appreciate it when we develop campaigns that reflect how they perceive the world, not how we or our clients would like them to.
On the radio this morning I heard a radio spot for a local restaurant (The Mayan) that started with: The food here “sucks” - yes they used s-word. The spot went on to say that while they had great ambiance and quick service the food didn’t live up to expectations. So they fired the chef. Yes, they said that too.
Since perceptions are a very hard thing to change this spot goes right to the heart of the matter: “The reason you stopped coming is because we failed to deliver on our promise. In fact we sucked.” In essence they said we heard you (listening is good) and we’re changing.
Too bad they didn’t take this all the way to the website - it contains standard restaurant fare including a PDF of the menu. They should have started a contest - tell us which items suck and why you’d get rid of it. That would have been a completely integrated campaign.
We’ll need to check back in a bit and see how its changed.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, February 7th, 2009
This week’s Power Windows post is a little different. Rather than provide insight around a specific topic, I’ll take a fresh approach to laying out a project timeline for marketing a movie.
Going from concept to butts-in-seats is a multi-year process with several very different stakeholders to satisfy. And, to no one’s real surprise each group goes through different emotional states over time. The following diagram illustrates what each stakeholder might go through for an animated holiday movie aimed at children. While the Industry starts off-skeptical, after all they’ve seen lots of ideas, the target audience is curious and interested in discovery. The challenge is to satisfy the skeptics without giving too much away. In the day of print, this was fairly easy. In the age of the Internet it isn’t.
Marketing plans need to address the sometimes conflicting emotional needs of different audiences at the same point in time. This is a strategic activity as much as anything else.
Tags: Emotion, timeline
Posted in Power Windows | No Comments »
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009
For those of us in the marketing and advertising business the super bowl presents a unique opportunity to talk about a collection of ads that have come to represent the best we can collectively offer. Fans vote them up and down on a multitude of sites, e.g. www.adbowl.com, pundits pund, and peeps tweet on #superads.
So, here’s a different take: which ads delivered on various aspects of marketing?
In no particular order, but we should probably create categories like the Oscars or Grammy’s.
- Differentiating - Bridgestone. By making tires cool in Taters and Hot Item they set themselves from your mother’s tires (safety).
- Clear Value Proposition - Vizio: While it might not have been the best venue for this kind of ad, it made absolutely clear that when you’re looking at TVs this brand should be in the consideration set.
- Gratuitous Use of Sex - Go Daddy, again, with the enhancement ad. The shower ad was stronger and tied with their base and product.
- Entertaining To Watch: Coke’s Heist; brand work at its finest.
- Signs of the Time (Dust Bowl): Hyundai’s continuous use of the Assurance campaign to tap into our uncertainty and put it at rest
- Brand Essence: Pepsi’s Refresh campaign of transitioning it from one age group to the next. The new logo that looks remarkably similar to the Obama style probably isn’t an accident.
- Missed the Mark: Monster and Career Builder. With unemployment rolls at record levels they had a wonderful opportunity to help people find their next job. Instead, they enticed people with jobs to find a better one - and we know that those currently employed are more likely to get the offer than those unemployed. Good in boom times; not so sure today.
- Truth in Advertising: Hulu for admitting that this stuffs rots your brains, now you can do it where ever.
- Best Offer: Denny’s Serious about breakfast; give everyone in America a taste of what it should be.
- Crossover - Cash4Gold for breaking the barrier. The super bowl was once the domain of ‘big brands’. Now that direct response has entered the mix, what’s next?
- Victimizing - TeleFlora, there shouldn’t be victims in your ads. The woman who received flowers shouldn’t be made to feel like a heel just because somebody cared.
- Repositioning - G. The nikesque Talking Heads put style into the effort, not just carb replacements.
- Continuity - AB for the Clydesdales; there’s comfort in the sameness.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
