Category Archives: Marketing

Observations about the science of marketing technology

Marketing Fail

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Marketing jobs have the shelf life of milk. In the tech industry, marketing people move around a lot. Unlike code cutters, their skills can be well used up to the limits of their experience, then they see little incremental improvement from their activities. Seeing the end of a good run, they look for other companies – smaller in size, with new products, or just something exciting. Other times they get fired. Marketing can fail. What confounds many in management is which part of marketing failed and why. Marketing is both strategy and execution, and are typically carried-out by different people or teams. When sales are slow, management wants to know why and occasionally even marketing cannot (or will not) clearly identify what is not working. Obfuscating marketing malfunctions has become more difficult in the digital age because we can measure what is and is not succeeding, at least at the … Continue reading →

Pointed Communications

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A relative of mine tells her stories … for hours … before ending them with her point. Good thing she isn’t in marketing. Get to the point quickly, then fill in the gaps. I was recently reminded of this while being a judge for the CODiE awards. I think I’m in my 573rd year of being a CODiE judge. The contestant’s presenter launched into a live demo of the product without summarizing what the product did much less its key value propositions. Thankfully he skipped the all-too-common dozen or so slides providing background about the company and other snore generators. He was like my relative, all too eager to tell his story as opposed to telling me why I should care. With attention spans shrinking fast as content explodes, getting to the point becomes ever more important. Telling people why they should care up front causes them to care. When … Continue reading →

Content Discontent

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All companies, small to large, love and hate content marketing. A recent survey shows that enterprises and small/mid-sized businesses (SMBs) believe content marketing is the most effective inbound tactic. They also rank it as the most difficult. They note that lead nurturing is also tough. This means that they are not achieving their goals, especially at the intersection of content and moving prospects toward buying. I have actually herded cats, and it is simpler than content marketing. Content marketing is important for multiple reasons. It helps you in being found by prospects. Done well, it creates believability and authority in your brand and your products. And used properly, it can nudge a prospect along their path of discovery toward purchase. Yet few individuals or marketing teams have a critical mass of expertise to make content strategy, planning, creation and timing a reality. Even expensive marketing automation suites are useless if … Continue reading →

Branded Lies

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If you want to destroy a brand, just lie a little. Some recent political news (on which I won’t elaborate to avoid ruffling friendly feathers) is a case study in bad marketing by incorrectly setting the market’s expectations and misleading buyers. This is a cardinal sin in the Marketing religion, and those guilty of the sin will burn in the pits of unemployment lines. All relationships are built on trust, and all transactions are relationships. Even small one. When you buy a candy bar at the corner store, you trust that the reported weight is close to accurate, the contents are faithfully reported, that the snack isn’t poisonous and that the store has not substituted inferior goods. That’s a lot of trust behind a 50¢ transaction and fleeting relationship. Had any of those trust points been violated, you would never again buy that candy bar or shop at that store. … Continue reading →

Rational Buyer Apathy

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If your prospects seem apathetic, they may be rational. “Rational apathy” is when people perceive a problem to be so small, or the solution to be so enormous that they become apathetic about it. After all, we cannot individually take on every woe in the world. In commerce, rational apathy exists when a problem does not, or the market doesn’t perceive a problem, or solving the problem seems insanely complicated. The word “rational” is included in the concept because prospects are making gut-level decisions concerning their needs and alternative (in)actions. Lackluster concern comes from the perceived effort and benefit in solving the problem, and takes one of many possible forms including but not limited to: No Pain: Prospects perceive that they do not face a threat, the pain within their situation, or that the pain is small enough to endure. Too big to correct: Solving the problem appears to be … Continue reading →

Liars Leverage

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If your prospects think a problem is not easily solved, you may find it difficult to convince them you can easily solve it . One of the few must read marketing books is Seth Godin’s All Marketers are Liars, the central thesis of which is that all people tell themselves lies and a good marketer merely agrees with whatever lies are being told. This is well and good when the customers’ lies are sympatico with the product’s value, but causes friction when they are not. This came to light recently when a CMO conclave to which I belong started discussing “big data”, the current marketing and IT hype monster. The consensus among CMOs – right or wrong – is that integrated digital marketing intelligence and analysis is difficult – so durn difficult that only the biggest, bravest and wealthiest of marketing organization are attempting it or doing it well. CMOs … Continue reading →

CMO Data Woe

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Marketing has met IT, and thus far they are on speaking terms, though nothing lasts forever. I was party to a discussion in which CMOs disclosed what is most vexing to them, and the answer in a walnut shell is data. The promise of digitally tracking leads, automating prospect management throughout the pipeline, big data with supplemental data, and laser sharp analytics is not coming true for most. Truth be told, many are not yet at the starting line. Data, like iron ore, is eventually useful but mining and refining it is dirty work. The problems at this stage of marketing evolution are many, and they provide good check lists and warning signs for CMOs with a hankering to engage IT (who will make many of these items painfully clear). Not everything is digital: Though much of a customer’s buying behavior can be digitally mapped, much cannot. Your brand, non-digital … Continue reading →