The Science of Marketing

Recent data from Marketing Sherpa, and a recent post by Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions peel back the curtain on one of the biggest misconceptions in e-mail marketing- people ignore or unsubscribe from your e-mails because their inboxes are just too crowded.  The reality, supported by Marketing Sherpa’s numbers, tells us a very different story- that quite often it’s not them, it’s you.

Yes, people are busy.  Yes, e-mail gets overwhelming.  But most business professionals still consider their inboxes a key driver for daily activities and decisions.  It seems the problem is not that valuable messages are being tuned out due to overload, but that irrelevant e-mails are being ignored because, well, they’re irrelevant. 

When I think about it, the marketing e-mails I delete or opt out of are the ones that have little or nothing to do with my priorities in life or my goals at work.  Sometimes I ignore them even if they are relevant, but not a priority in the moment.  When I’m trying to create value for clients during the work day, I probably won’t look at a list of vacation bargains.  When I’m planning a vacation at night, I probably won’t open a message on best practices in B2B marketing. 

My own behavior tells me that e-mail marketing activities have to be pretty relevant these days if they are going to be effective.  We better know our audiences, understand their interests, and if possible, factor in how time-of-day can affect our success.  And in case Ardath didn’t make it clear enough, we must do all that we can to segment our audiences and make sure that the subjects, content and assets of our e-mails are relevent to small groups with specific interests.

Occasionally I get the question- "Are marketing activities really worth it?"  Sure, it sometimes takes the more direct form of "Is this really going to help my company?" or the skeptical tone of "How much is that going to cost me?"  But the theme remains the same- people would love to measure the return on their marketing investments.  But is measurement really possible?

More and more, the answer is "yes".  The rise of direct marketing has yielded a wealth of statistics on open rates and click-throughs.  As more and more media move to the Internet, we can track referrals from a news story to a company web site.  And once visitors hit a site, we can track their every click, how much time they spent, and what resources they downloaded.  Our ability to measure is better than ever.  But are measurable results the only game in town?

While business managers and investors alike might nod in agreement, I’d argue that we have to continue to leverage "old school" activities that don’t produce oodles of statistics or fancy line graphs.  Don’t get me wrong, I love activities that produce measurable results- after all, this is The Science of Marketing and here we like things we can prove.  But to do the best job we can, we have to deploy the right mix of programs, some of which we can measure, some of which we can only believe to be effective.

We must continue to brief analysts on our strategies, and trust that they’ll provide better guidance to their clients and be better references for the press because of it.  We must continue to advertise in print publications and exhibit at trade shows, because sometimes people need a reminder that our companies exist and are active participants in their market.  And we must get out and talk to audiences about our latest solutions to their most vexing problems, because there is no substitute for personal touch.

There are plenty of activities we cannot measure, but that doesn’t mean we should scrap them all in exchange for stat-filled spreadsheets and fancy bar graphs.  We must continue to mix it up and do things that we can only trust will produce results.  We ust continue to believe.

As thin sheets of ice begin to form on New England’s many ponds, I can’t help but think of…swimming.  No, I’m not a member of the Polar Bear Club or anything, that’s just too adventurous for me.  I think of swimming because it helps me look forward to warmer times, when the boots and shovels will be replaced with golf spikes and irons, and the winter clothes will be once again packed away.  Today, this warm weather daydream has gotten tangled up with some client activity, and its got me thinking about rolling thunder: the marketing activities we use to sustain momentum between launches. 

When we put all the right pieces together, a well executed launch (much like a cannonball off a dock) can result in a big splash.  At launch time, onlookers watch to see how high, how far the splash will carry.  But inevitably the water falls back down to earth, and all that’s left is a concentric ripple that travels away from the swimmer in all directions.  Much like that ripple, rolling thunder provides a steady beat of awareness for companies and products once the initial splash subsides.

Since December is often the time to get next year’s plan in order, I thought I’d provide a sampling of basic rolling thunder activities that can be used between major launches to sustain awareness the whole year through.

Advertising – Get your brand out there through targeted ads that won’t break your budget.  Consider sponsored webinars and other non-traditional paid opportunities.

Announcements – save "B" and "C" level news releases for between major launches, and space them out to avoid quiet times. 

Blogging – Your company has deep experience and a unique viewpoint.  Use your blog as a forum for interaction with your audience about the topics you know best.

Communications Calendar – research and pursue editorial opportunities, speaking engagements and awards submissions that raise your profile among your targeted audience.

Direct Marketing – send the prospects you know a periodic, useful newsletter.  Always think of ways to expand and segment your list.

Events – Establish a presence at industry events, if not with an actual exhibit then through sponsorships and aggressive media engagement at the show.

Web Content – Make sure you plan some updates to your web site between major launches to reward frequent visitors with new content, and increase your search engine rankings.

The other day, I was absent-mindedly flipping through a magazine, The Numismatist, published monthly by, what else than, The American Numismatic Association (coin collectors).  The magazine is filled with member-written articles on history and economics and how they relate to money.

It is also filled with advertisements for coin dealers and others providing services to the hobby.  Most of these advertisements consist of a bunch noisy words and I fly right by them.  But, my page turning stopped abruptly when I saw this advertisement.

What caught my eye, was the simplicity of it all. Really just three lines (and two pictures): Wishful thinking. Sure thing. Insist on PCGS.

[If your not familiar with the concept, PCGS, is a third party grading service for coins.  For a fee, they authenticate, grade and encapsulate coins.  The value of this is that the encapsulated coin is now liquid with most people in the hobby accept a PCGS (and a handful of other grading service) grade as a sure thing.  The difference in value of an ungraded and graded coin can be enormous regardless of what the owner might wish.]

Of course, to those in the hobby, the advertisement need not be explained; it portrays a simple problem/solution value proposition and a company name.

OK, Jeff, I’m not a coin collector, so what’s this all got to do with advertising in the high tech B2B space?

The answer is simple, take a look at 90% of the advertising you see in one of your industry’s trade publications.  A majority of the advertisements are filled with noisy words. The PCGS advertisement reminded me that B2B print advertising is not necessarily about selling and it is certainly not about getting the spec sheet for your product out there.

What B2B print advertising is about is page stopping and branding – getting the audience to stop, even briefly, and recognize your message and name.  This is best accomplished with simplicity, just like PCGS.

In a recent post on Bizmark Tech, Deb calls our attention to some pointers by Suzie Gardner on what makes good material for a company blog.  One common thread that runs through most of the content areas she lists is information, and I couldn’t agree more.  If you want your company blog to become a resource for your customers, partners or anyone in your ecosystem, you have to give them something that’s useful, something that’s relevant, something they can’t get anywhere else.  You have to inform them.

What types of information should you provide?  Well…whatta you got?  I’ve seen high tech companies that are sitting on top of mounds of data about performance and security create blogs around this information – becoming authorities in their respective industries and generating massive media coverage because of it.  I’ve seen a building safety equipment vendor centralize publicly available research and legal information on its blog, providing a resource for its audience and creating awareness for its solution.  And I’ve seen an executive at a storage hardware vendor use his blog to discuss trends in data management and backup strategies, using his unique viewpoint to promote his company’s differentiation.

The point is, the people you want to communicate with are just outside your door, and they’re looking for useful information.  Chances are your company has some inventory of information that nobody else can provide to them.  By sharing this information with them, you can open the door to new conversations that position your company as an expert, as a resource, as a partner. 

The only question remaining are – what useful information does your company posess, and how can you leverage it on your blog?

I love looking at Google Analytics.  I do it every day for both this blog and our corporate web site looking for patterns, insights and clues to help increase eyeballs and hopefully business. One of the areas that I focus on is referring sites – how visitors got to our web site.  For each referring site (including direct links), Google Analytics lists visits, pages/visit, average time on site and bounce rate (percentage of visitors that exit on the same page they enter). Here’s some statistics and observations for our corporate web site from the beginning of the year until now.

Visits

• 39% – direct link (someone typed our URL into the browser)
• 35% – search engines
• 26% – other referring sites
• Of the other referring sites, 9% were from this blog and 5% were from LinkedIn.

Pages Per Visit

• 6 – direct link
• 4 – this blog and LinkedIn
• 3 – search engines

Average Time on Site

• 7:45 – direct link
• 3:01 – this blog
• 2:33 – LinkedIn
• 1:47 – search engines

Bounce Rate

• 23% – LinkedIn
• 38% – direct link
• 44% – this blog
• 53% – search engines

The conclusion is that social networking sites:

• Generate additional visitors
• Produce quality visits (more time on the site, more pages per visit, lower bounce rate) as compared to search engines

So, why not beef up your social networking efforts?

Here’s a follow-up to a post I wrote in late August.  You remember – the one about marketing communications activities that happen in sequential stages to be most effective.  Since then, I’ve been talking to peers and keeping an eye on the blogosphere to get a feel for how others feel about a phased approach to marketing communications.  The result: it seems that the days of trying to do too much with a single tool or program are quickly coming to an end. 

Most marketers are no longer swinging for the fences with marketing communications – they are thinking through their marketing goals and mapping out phased communications strategies that get them there over time.  They are walking before they run, dating before they marry, and establishing a dialogue  before they sell.  Here are a few examples of progressive thinking in the area of marketing phases:

Marketing Experiments Blog: Writing Headlines that Don’t Sell — But Get Much Higher Conversions

Startup Hustle: Acquiring, Engaging, Retaining and Monetizing Your Customers

Marketing Interactions: B2B Websites Need to Focus on the Long Term

Drew’s Marketing Minute: Are You Expecting too Much From your Marketing?

I’m a big believer in marketing programs that don’t sell or try to do too much, but instead happen in phases and focus on long-term success.  I’m glad to see that others agree.  What do you think?

The marketing consulting firm I work for sends out an e-newsletter, Foundations, every month or so to a list of prospects, customers, partners – the usual. A couple of months ago we started a lead feature called "The 1-Second Survey". The idea is to gather market information quickly and painlessly – we ask one question and give four or five possible answers, one of which the reader clicks on (see below). That’s it – done in (less than) one second. No more taking ten or twenty minutes of someone’s valuable time.

We’ve gotten great response, but we also got something that we didn’t expect. Several people have asked us: how do we do it? what tools do we use? Well, it’s really pretty simple and I’ll let everyone in on the "secret".

Start With an E-Mail Marketing Service

We use MailChimp for all our e-mail campaigns. (We’ve tried a few different services and like MC’s ease-of-use and campaign reporting.) Like most e-mail marketing services, MC allows you to embed links and track click-throughs.

Create Landing Pages

Each of the links above goes to a different landing page on our web site. These pages say "thanks for participating" and have links to other pages for more information.

Count the Clicks

MC reports on a wide range of statistics for each campaign (in this case a newsletter). One of these statistics is the number of click-throughs for each link embedded in the e-newsletter. Just tally up the clicks for each link and you have your survey results.

So, that’s the secret of the 1-second survey. It’s just that easy.

Have fun.

Every now and then, it’s fun to take a walk down memory lane.  So today, I logged into Google Analytics and punched up the content page to find out what our ten most popular posts are.  I was surprised at how diverse the list is, ranging from the very tactical to the very strategic, and covering just about every topic we’ve ever written about.  I’m glad to see that our readers enjoy variety, so we’ll continue to mix things up.  If there’s anything you’d like us to write about, please comment below or send us an e-mail – we’d love to hear from you.

With that, Our Ten Most Popular Posts: 

1. Internal Communications: Own It
2. The Blogosphere: You Don’t Have to Blog to Belong
3. Mission Statement: Make it Possible
4. Slogans: Say What You Do
5. Market Segmentation: How to Prioritize Targets
6. High Tech Blogging: Why?
7. Lead Generation: The Bell Curve
8. Communications Part II: To the Right People
9. Age of Conversation 2: The Deadline
10. The SEO Triple Play: Message, Mechanics, Maintenance

An interesting post caught my eye today, where Chris Garrett of the invesp Blog discusses the predatory sales mistake of cold calling. In his post, Chris uses an intimidating, fear mongering door-to-door salesman as a vivid example of what not to do when engaging prospects with whom we don’t yet have a relationship. His observations and advice are spot on, particularly his main premise that interrupting and annoying people with whom we’re trying to connect is the first ingredient in a recipe for failure.

When I think about cold calling, I immediately get an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach – something akin to my reaction to the words "root canal". Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy meeting new people and talking to them…but when I think about how I react to a total stranger calling me to sell something, I know I don’t want to be on either end of such a conversation. I’d rather get to know someone before I try to sell them something, and even then, I want to be sure that what I have to offer is something they actually need.

Assuming I’m not the only one who would rather warm call than cold call, where do we begin? Below are some highlights from Chris’ post and some thoughts of my own on scrapping the interruption and starting an interaction. I’m interested to hear your opinion as well, so please let me know what you think.

Chris Garrett says:

• Ask questions and try to understand the needs and concerns of your prospects
• Give something in return for permission to call back
• Provide incentives for referrals

I say:

• Leverage existing relationships to forge new ones (Think LinkedIn)
• Send useful information with no strings attached (See Communications: The Art of the RFU)
• Articulate your area of expertise, and offer free advice (Without giving away the farm, of course)

What do you say?