So, yesterday, I kicked off this series by discussing some of the challenges we all face as digital marketers – and how we communicate to our CEO’s. Today, I’ll cover the first idea – which is that we need to start looking at our marketing PROCESS, and not our PRODUCT.
David Meerman Scott – the author and great marketer has a wonderful bit of stagecraft with which he often opens up his talks. He asks how many of the people in the room think their consumers care about their product. As a few hands goes up, he corrects them and says “no – no one cares about your product or service. All your buyers care about are themselves.” He goes on (much more eloquently than I will here) to advise how you can develop a much more conversational tone with a minimum of buzz words and discover how you might help your customers. These customers will then, in turn, naturally gravitate to what you have to offer.
This tactic, to any traditional student of marketing should come as no surprise – as it’s exactly in line with the famous quote from Peter Drucker:
“The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product or service fits him and sells itself.”
Peter Drucker
But didn’t we say yesterday – and aren’t we hearing everywhere – that marketing has fundamentally changed?
Yes. It has. But that change is not just that “digital” commands such a significant piece of the media buy. It’s growing of course – but it’s still small in comparison to other channels. Consider that ZenithOptimedia has predicted that advertising spending in total will grow this year to $450 Billion. As we discussed yesterday, “online” was expected to be one of the only segments to grow – and it will rise to about $60 Billion. That means that Online is still only 13% of the total advertising dollars spent.
No, the true fundamental change is the buying process that the digital technology has enabled. In other words, the Internet hasn’t been a fundamental change for us as marketers – it’s been a fundamental shift in the way people BUY.
We so often look at what other marketers are doing in terms of the prioritization of ad budget… But let’s look at it from the buyer’s perspective…
Consider this…
This last holiday season, leading research firm comScore asked consumers about the influence of social media on their holiday shopping behavior. 28% of them – more than one out of four – said that social media has influenced their purchases. Most specifically 13% said a consumer-generated review – which included personal blogs influenced their purchases. And, 90% of consumers say that Search Engines are how they find relevant buying information.
Buyers are shifting behavior. They are researching, reading, listening, searching and finding information on what they’re going to buy – before they buy it. In short it’s content and the relevance of that content to your buyer’s needs that tips the decision point in your favor.
And, in 2010 – marketing finally has the opportunity to control this content. Aberdeen did a study in 2009 where they looked at content marketing and content management. Marketers that are utilizing organic content as a marketing tactic are more than three times as likely to achieve a high return on that marketing investment. And the companies that are achieving that high return upate their Web content at least once per day.
But wait a minute. Let’s put the brakes on the stats for a moment. Let’s talk about us marketers for a second.
Do we really WANT control? Do we really HAVE control?
Sometimes we realize only AFTER we’ve implemented the expensive content management system or email campaign management tool – that even though it previously took a week to get the Web site updated, at least all we had to do was email Joe down in I.T. And then, whenever Joe got done playing World of Warcraft, the Web site got updated. We could always lament that it was something we just couldn’t control.
Here’s the thing: Sometimes the only thing that control gives you is a technology headache that you didn’t have before.
But if we want to be successful with a shifting marketing process – we must control it. We must accept both the control, and the responsibility.
So – What does your CEO need to know:
A Key Piece of getting a good digital marketing strategy is creating a PROCESS that will be managed by you. It’s a process that EMPOWERS you to take CONTROL over the digital content that will be coming out of your organization. It’s YOUR process that will determine the success – and your CEO need to know that you need control over that process to make it real. Your CEO needs to know that if you are responsible for the digital marketing process – that you’re going to need more than just money – you’re going to need to create a process where there are many “voices” that can speak to the expertise of your products, your services and your industry. And, that just might include her.
So, what are the steps to deploying a marketing controlled, Web content and marketing process. Well, we certainly don’t have room to cover all of them. But here are some questions that will help to determine your next steps.
- Who are the thought leaders in your organization and how can you empower them to speak in the voice of your customer. What position can you start to take – and where are your readers. What do your constituents want to know about before they make a purchasing decision about a product or service that you provide. In short, if you were a magazine, what magazine would you be?
- Who are your audiences? And who are the best people to speak to your audience? Can you establish a workflow; a process where the people in your organization can be that voice? Or, should you partner for it? Should you hire a company that can be that voice for you?
- What are the tactics that fit that model? Is it a blog? Or is it just whitepapers on your Web site? Is it a social media strategy on Facebook? Or is it all of the above? If it’s multiple channels start thinking about a process that lets you use content through multiple channels. For example, the next time you write a press release, start by writing the Twitter Headline. A press release in 140 characters. How can your press release turn into a thought leadership piece – and so on until you have a multi-channel bit of content. For example, as you might expect, we’re thinking of how we can turn this series of blog postings into a whitepaper.
- What’s in the way of developing your workflow? Is IT a bottleneck? Do you need technology and software tools in order to publish content, manage email, track leads? Can you work around them? Now start to think about the tools you can apply that leverage your process into something you can manage.
The answers to these questions will lead you toward building a process that you can manage. And a managed process is made more efficient with technology. Then, and only then, can you make a smart decision about a lead nurturing, social media, Web content management or any digital technology strategy. It’s that simple.
As Aristotle said – “well begun is half done”. And a process well begun brings us to the second stepping stone in what our CEO needs to know. How do we measure it? Because once you’ve defined a content and marketing process – the immediate reaction or sometimes it’s the pushback to the process from the corner office is – How will we measure it… What does success look like?
Tomorrow we’ll discuss measurement – and why we should stop proving, and start improving….
Photo Credit: A.Pitch
