Did you see the trainwreck that was Heidi Montag at the 2009 Miss Universe Pageant? Um, okay….yeah, me neither – but that's what YouTube is for right? Mostly I'm just annoyed that she's now ruined one of my favorite Yaz Songs. It would seem that anybody can be a pop star these days. Everywhere you turn, reality-stars, relatives of singers, models – just about anyone – is releasing new music.
You don't have to be able to sing in a live performance – lip synching technology takes care of that. Really now, you don't even have to be able to sing at all.
There's one thing that all these "pop-stars" have in common……
If you haven't heard of Auto Tune, it's a computer technology that automatically "corrects" pitch for singers and instruments. Originally meant to "slightly" correct live performances, it's recently been used much more heavily to by many pop and rap stars. T-Pain and Kanye West are often the poster-artists for this – using Auto-Tune to the point of almost absurdity. But make no mistake, once you hear it and identify it, you'll hear it in many performances. And, if you really want to see something funny – check out this YouTube video by The Gregory Brothers called "Auto-Tune The News". You'll definitely get the point.
In short – it's a technology that allows for "anyone" to become a singer.
I got to thinking that this is happening in marketing too. Technology is not only making it easier to understand and drive our marketing, it's also being used as a crutch, a means by which "gurus" are coming out of the woodwork and as a method by which our overall marketing is suffering.
I've seen two troubling trends over the past few months. The first is where organizations, down on their ability (e.g. budget) to add creative and content muscle, are depending more and more on leveraging the most out of their existing analytics technology and data. It might be finally paying attention to behavioral analytics, using only what data they have internally to determine content or media strategy, or it's using data to auto-correct targeted content despite its relevance.
The second trend is the growing number of "Gurus" that are erupting. You know those SEM/SEO/Social Media Experts that are DM'ing you their prowess and have been in business for about 6 months. I swear to you this is true: I got a voice mail and an accompanying email from a company promising me the first spot on Google if I signed up for their SEM package. I had to call them back. And, yes, it was true… If I paid the money for what they called a "Search Ad" – I could have the first spot on Google… Other people might call that Google's PPC advertising… They didn't… Oy… Rebecca Lieb over at ClickZ actually has a funny version of this same story.
Anyway, the first trend – which is where I'll spend most of this post – is really a symptom of another unfortunate trend built up over the last few years – which was using our analytics to "prove" something – rather than to "improve" our process. Lately I've had a number of conversations with digital marketers who tell me that there's no way they can change their analytics/lead management/nurturing solution – because they've tried others and the numbers don't match. And, they can't afford to have a hiccup in their monthly graph that has shown growth over the last 8 quarters. Or, other marketers have 70,000 active "contacts" in their database and are spending thousands every month to email them irrelevant content. They can't stomach the thought of doing an "opt-in" campaign and discovering that only 2,000 of them are actively engaged in the content. Others spend thousands to target content to traffic they don't understand. It's irrelevant traffic coming from paid media that they can't turn off lest it decrease their overall traffic numbers.
If you're using technology solely to drive your marketing – you are fooling yourself into thinking you're a good singer.
Let's remember that Marketing is a studied field – something that many of us actually went to college and pretended to study diligently in between keggers (don't make me break out one of Professor Kotler's Books). There is at least as much art as there is science to marketing. It is still about developing trust and a relationship with prospects to understand their needs – or as Professor Kotler would say: "a human activity directed at satisfying needs and wants through exchange processes”.
Marketing – The Unplugged Sessions…..
So, just some quick thoughts (not meant to be all inclusive) to get the "auto-tune" ouf your own marketing:
1. Marketing Is A Creative Process That's Fed By Purpose – Not Data.
As Peter Drucker said "marketing is the only distinguishing and unique function of business. If we want to know what a business is we have to start with its purpose. And its purpose must be outside the business itself." In my eyes this means that your process maps to your understanding of your market and customer. This is so much more important than whatever measurement or management tool you use to facilitate the process. We are blessed today with technological solutions that can give us reams of data and understanding. The balance of science in marketing is to continually feed our purpose, and improve our chances of developing valuable exchanges with our customers – not proving that we are growing numbers – relevance be damned. If you let the grass grow in your backyard without ever cutting it – you'll one day walk out into a jungle. That's not to say that technology can never be used to automatically target more relevant content to your customers. In fact, it can and will. But first you need to understand the human needs of your customers – and that's done through good old-fashioned marketing work. In short, it's like the old musician's joke – "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? – Practice Practice Practice." Start thinking about your marketing as a self improving process fed by a purpose – and the availability of analytics data is just there to help you shorten the cycles in that process.
2. Have the capability to measure everything – and then don't.
One of my favorite statistics comes from a client who over the course of last year, really focused on SEO. At the beginning of last year, 75% of her traffic came from paid sources (SEM, Banners etc..). Over the course of the year, the SEO started to pay off, but like alot of us, her marketing budget got cut substantially. But as her budget began to be cut in the third quarter of last year, the traffic didn't fall off. The SEO really paid off – and by January of this year she had actually flipped that number. Her traffic remained flat (despite the marketing budget decrease). But, more importantly, her paid traffic is now 20% and her organic traffic is now 80%. When budgets go up again she'll be ready. Here's the thing; if she hadn't had the ability to measure paid vs. unpaid traffic – she would have never understood that incredible ROI. But, then again, even if she had – if she had focused ONLY on aggregate traffic numbers as a metric to her management team – they might have been moderately happy at the result (no traffic loss) but would have not understood the true value of SEO. Determine what the major elements are in your organization – and develop a dashboard that gives you those numbers quickly. Then, have the ability to dive into details if you need to. Nicole Rawski over at iMedia Connection has a great article on this.
3. Don't be afraid to throw everything out and start again with engagement
We all know the scenario, the new VP of Marketing comes in (we either are, or work for, this person) and the first thing they do is throw everything out and start over again. Why do they do this? Well, beyond the cynical so they get to "create their own legacy" there's a more functional reason – which is "assume nothing." Why are we so afraid to do this as marketers in an organization we've worked in for years? I know that this is sometimes easier said than done – but if we can successfully convince those that we report to that we use analytics to improve, not prove – then results and sales should be our biggest KPI. And if that means throwing out 70,000 email addresses and saving $2,000/mo on email costs so be it. And, if it means replacing our analytics with something that shows us getting 25% less traffic (but is itself more accurate) so be it. We've got to continually learn – lest we allow technology to control our behavior – and never learn to sing.
"This is death of autotune, moment of silence
la da da da… hey hey hey goodbye
Only rapper to rewrite history without a pen
No I.D. on the track let the story begin…
begin… begin"
Jay-Z : Death Of Autotune
There's a real backlash growing in some communities about the use of Auto-Tune in vocals. Having worked with a number of musicians I can tell you that most fall distinctly into one camp or another. Proponents say that it's just another tool, like synthesizers, drum machines and computers; something by which you can manipulate to make music. And detractors say that it's ruining musicianship, it's overdone and not terribly creative. I definitely fall into the former camp – as I believe that making music is not defined by the tools which make it.
But I will say that, very much like marketing – those that study the practice, understand the theory and actually know how to master the true balance of art and science are the artists (or the marketers) that will stand the test of time. And, I think that's what we're after. At the end of the day, I think we'd all rather aspire to be Paul McCartney, rather than Heidi Montag. But that's just me.
