While it’s not a new concept to treat individuals with ability to influence others as special–think about all the freebies celebrities get–it is an area being increasingly viewed as important to marketing.  What IS new, however, is that the Internet changed who can become one and how quickly.

There are individuals who are influential whether they are on or off ‘the grid’, such as analysts, journalists and standards/buyers groups, those who choose to become influential in a particular area, such as bloggers and columnists, and those who accidentally become influential by posting something, perhaps a video, that resonates with people and becomes popular.  It may not even be a person.  Clark Griswold the dog (who happens to be a male version of my Bella!) was an overnight sensation and is now influencing people to buy all kinds of products…which is another marketing lesson: helping people to have fun can increase your ROI.

Here are 10 tips for your influencer marketing campaign, per Influencers in this category (numbers correspond to quoted sources at bottom):

1. Treat everyone as important. Not everyone is an Influencer in your area of business, but if you treat everyone with the respect that they could be that’s always the best way. That one time you don’t respect someone as a potential Influencer you will inevitably wind up looking the fool. “Personally I would like to see brands realize every Customer can be an influencer and treat them in a way the builds them as advocates.”  While it’s normal to give Influencers preferential treatment, just be careful not to alienate customers who perhaps aren’t as influential (for now!).
2. Follow the content and get personal. “To become a Influence is the byproduct of continually producing high quality content.  Maximize human contact where possible – meeting for coffee or talking on the phone will form a much stronger bond between you, your brand and the potential influencer.”
3. Don’t forget the ‘little guys’. “While it’s relatively straightforward to manually identify the top-level “mass influencers” — such as journalists, celebrities or academics — the far larger number of ‘micro influencers’ has remained elusive. These micro influencers may not have a formal position that validates their influence, but they can be recognized among large audiences as being knowledgeable and trustworthy on specific topics. They also generate up to three times more word of mouth communications than non-influencers. Therefore, these micro influencers have a huge potential to drive purchase decisions and product contagion.”
4. Build a panel of vocal brand advocates or simply hire them.  Influencer marketing is “simply an extension of traditional word-of-mouth. We find that recommendations from ‘people you know’ are extremely important.  These advocates turn other consumers into advocates.”… “The Brand Ambassador hired by Company K was a nationally recognized authority figure in the category. His credibility enabled Company K to add more Brand Ambassadors at virtually no additional cost to increase the scope of the program.”
5. Sell to other companies how to connect with your “growing list of passionate individuals who are actively sought by their social group for recommendations.”
6. Track who’s writing about you and who could be. “Leverage social media [to] find people who are willing to review your product, spreading the word about your brand. These people are Influencers, and if you can access them, you’ll connect with the 82 percent of people who are influenced by the reviews they read online.”
7. Use Google+ circles to your advantage.  Something to do with Google+ that is different than what you’re already doing on other social networks!  “Customize different content to different groups…give [your] best content or news away to [your] most engaged or high value members.”  “Consumers could tell the brand what type of content they want, and the brand would create circles and share content accordingly.”
8. Influence and reach are not the same thing.  Another way of saying it: “It’s important to note the difference between credibility and fame.  Influence generate[s] both feeling and action on the part of your consumer base.”  As my high school Spanish teacher used to say, “Escuche y repita!” (“Listen and repeat!” I can’t believe I still remember that): reach is not the same as influence, but influence comes out of reach.
9. Target trade channels.  This is a stealthy way of infiltrating and overtaking markets.  “Company R targeted Trade Channels where the majority of the selling activity was very subtle and took place almost entirely after normal business hours. This made it nearly impossible for a Company B representative to encounter a Company R Brand Ambassador at work.”
10. Keep it focused.  “The program was limited to a single venue that was heavily visited by the targeted consumer group. This significantly increased adoption while keeping costs low.” … “The program was limited to a modest but very passionate consumer group that influenced the category. This significantly increased likelihood of adoption by a larger group while keeping costs low.”

One of the greatest challenges is identifying and targeting influencers in an effective manner.  To that end, I have made it my goal to scope out, use and review influencer marketing tools to help both of us achieve our goals.  The first in this coming series is available now, Manage Influencer Marketing with BuzzStream, on my second blog, BYOB.net, a hand-curated resource of products and services to help you Build Your Own Business.

Happy marketing ROI hunting!

1. Hosni Mubarak was an Influencer! By Frank Eliason
2. Marketers: How To Get Noticed by “Influencers” by Joe Chernov
3. The new marketing model: Peer index marketing By Azeem Azhar
4. P&G’s Panel of Women Helps Amplify Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Chris Laird / Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 4
5. InkFluence – Hidden Influencers
6. Does Word Of Mouth Marketing Work Better On Social Media? by Lauren Dugan
7. The Social Layer: Six Thoughts On Where Google Plus Is Going by David Armano / How I’m Using Google+ (Hint: It’s About Relevance) by Melissa Parrish
8. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 1
9. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 2
10. Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 3 / Frontera Marketing — The Power of Influencer Marketing: Part 4

Here’s the gist of the article: for two of GM’s automotive brands, GMC and Buick, consumers can now go to their website and utilize a vehicle-configuration tool, and then post the custom car from the tool to their Facebook page to solicit feedback from friends.  In addition to seeing responses from friends on Facebook, consumers also can see them in the configuration tool.  GM will be in essence spying on this activity to see what configurations are “liked” by consumers and their friends, and then “will also be able to tie those metrics to purchases.”

I’m curious HOW they plan to tie those metrics to purchases, as they then go on to say they they do NOT “have mechanisms in place to remarket to consumers who build and share a vehicle, other than messaging to those who “like” the brands’ Facebook pages.”  At least GM acknowledges that “likes” on a Facebook page or playing around with a configuration tool are not ROI:

“The ultimate gold standard is to be able to connect how people are engaging on GMC.com and with the tool and ultimately be able to lead that into sales and how this tool helps to facilitate sales at the bottom line.”

Since GM doesn’t tell us how they’re doing it, we can only speculate.  What we do know is that GM obtains permission to access consumers’ basic profile when the user connect their vehicle design with their Facebook account, and GM may use some of this information shared publicly to tailor future marketing communications.  As an exercise I want to think thorough examples of how ROI can be measured in this situation.  I will further break it down into soft ROI and hard ROI, as well as what metrics I’m certain GM can access and what is my speculation (noted by asterisk).

Soft ROI

• # of “likes” on the brand pages
• # of consumers who use the auto configuration tool on the websites
• # of consumers who share their custom car design with their Facebook friends
• # of Facebook friends who “click,” “like” and “comment” on the custom car designs
• # of Facebook friends who “pass-along” the content from one person to another*
• # of variations of car designs
• # of likes per variation (qualitative “comments”can also be coded)
• segmentation of most liked car designs based on other gathered information (e.g. male/female, age ranges, geography)
• # of configuration tool visits and duration of engagement
• source of traffic, other pages visited and in what order
• whether the brands/the promotion are being talked about online (e.g. tweets, blogs, press)
• whether the brands are being talked about more than competitive brands
• # of consumers who visit a dealer month over prior month, year over prior year
• # of consumers who use the configuration tool who own a GM car currently*
• # of consumers who submit or call for more information on their dream car*

Hard ROI aka the “Gold Standard”

• # of consumers who visit a dealer and show a copy of their dream car or mention the tool*
• # of consumers who already pretty much know what they want, due to the tool, saving agent’s time*
• # of consumers who redeem coupons/offer codes*
• # of buyers who respond in a follow-up survey that the tool had a significant bearing on their purchase*

In summary, there are certainly a lot of opportunities to measure the soft ROI of social media marketing integration and, while more challenging to link these activities to hard ROI — money earned or resources saved — it’s not impossible.  If you have any thoughts of your own to fill out these lists, I’d love to hear them!

Here are some examples of marketing messages taking advantage of these dual drivers of human behavior.  Note how much more often pleasure seeking is used than pain avoidance, simply because it’s more effective.

Pain:

• Trying to scare you with what has happened to someone else due to the same negative behavior you’re doing.
• Making you imagine yourself in an awful situation to stop a negative behavior.

Pain or Pleasure:

• Trying to get you to accept their opinion as a belief.

Pleasure:

• Making you laugh, thus trying to transfer that emotion that theirs is a ‘fun’ brand/product.
• Trying to ‘wow’ you with cool imagery, thus trying to link the ‘cool’ factor to their brand/product promise.
• Trying to inspire you, thus trying to link the ‘awesome’ factor to their brand/product promise.
• Using the awww factor—animals and babies (often combined with humor)—thus trying to create the ‘halo’ effect toward their brand/product.
• Then, of course, the always-popular sex sells technique.

The problem is that most of us base our decisions about what to do on what’s going to create pain or pleasure in the short term instead of the long term.  Yet, in order to succeed, most of the things that we value require us to be able to break through the wall of short term pain in order to have long term pleasure.  Remember it’s not actual pain that drives us, but our fear that something will lead to pain.  And it’s not actual pleasure that drives us, but our belief—our sense of certainty—that somehow taking a certain action will lead to pleasure.  We’re not driven by the reality, but by our perception of reality. ~Tony Robbins, Awaken the Giant Within

Although pleasure seeking is the stronger driver of human behavior, pain is our most effective creator of behavioral change when going down the wrong path. I learned recently from Tony Robbins that the best way to create change in yourself when doing something that you know is bad for you in the long term, but pleasurable in the short term, is to create so much pain in your mind around that thing that you have no choice but to make a decision to change.  The only way to do this is to “scratch the record” that goes round and round in your brain by feeding it lots of new, negative information about the long term effects of the pleasurable thing.  The down side, when a marketer tries to use pain to change a pleasurable behavior instead of the individual seeking this out for themselves, is that it’s far too easy to ignore if the person isn’t open to hearing it.

Marketers must know if they are trying to create a short term or long term consumer behavior change.  If trying to create a short term affect—e.g. buy our artery-clogging hamburger today—then marketers shy consumers away from the long term affect of their choice and focus on the pleasure (for those who eat meat) of today.  If creating a long term behavior change—e.g. buy our low-fat sandwiches today—then marketers pin their message on the long term affects of healthy eating habits.  This is why Subway recently surpassed McDonald’s in worldwide store units.  Focusing on long term positive (rather than negative) affects is more effective in capturing long term consumer loyalty; however, there are also plenty of folks who focus on today’s pleasures and don’t want to think about the negative affects of their choices in the future.

On another side of this issue, marketers who claim to focus on positive long term behavior changes—e.g. join our fitness gym today—often woefully focus on their short term goals instead.  As example, I called my local Bally Total Fitness to see how much they charge to join ($66 for 2 months upfront), their monthly fee ($30), for classes ($3 each or included in the monthly fee, depending on the class) and for personal training, which was like pulling teeth to get a straight answer.  The first guy I spoke with about personal training said “about $60 an hour” but he really didn’t know(!) and when I asked to be put through to someone in the personal training area, he hung up on me(!).  I called back, undeterred, and was put through to one of the trainers.  Rob also wouldn’t give me a straight answer. Finally, after much annoying back-and-forth about my fitness goals and experience, he said that when you join you can buy a package of 12 classes for $33 an hour but it goes up after that to “$49 to $99 an hour.”  I asked what criteria made the price $49 or more, and he said it “had to do with your fitness goals” and felt that mine, to tone up, would “put me at the lower end of the scale.” So the message Bally is sending to consumers is if you don’t want to spend a ton of money at their gym than don’t have high fitness goals to achieve.  I would like to see gyms include personal fitness training in their price, realizing that helping people achieve their long term goals and not creating a confusing, sliding scale—that even employees don’t know how to communicate—is not good for business.  It seems to me that Bally is focused on their short term goals of getting a minimum of two months out of people, figuring they’ll quit after that, instead of helping their customers achieve their long term fitness goals and making this financially feasible.

Compare Bally to a gym an acquaintance made me aware of recently, which I’m considering joining…Pop Physique is a dance-oriented woman’s gym, which appeals to me as I’ve always hated the gym but love to dance, and their small class sizes offers what is in essence a personal trainer.  Their pricing structure is straight-forward and on their website: $100 for the first month of unlimited classes and $150 after.  They also offer a single class for $20, and packages of classes that don’t provide much of a price break ($1 to $2 each).  If I want to go at least a couple of times a week the unlimited classes are the cheaper option, which is obviously intended.  Overall, it seems to me they are focused on my goals, to break through the short term pain of exercise for the long term benefits, to have fun and obtain the benefits of personal attention.

In summary, be aware of the power of pain and pleasure principals in your marketing efforts.  If your objectives are to help people achieve long term pleasure, you can address the needs of your customers in overcoming any short term pains.  If your objectives are to give consumers short term pleasures that can lead to long term pains, then you can give them other options also, e.g. smaller portions, healthier alternatives and clearly communicate the unhealthiness of the choice so that it is used infrequently.

Happy ROI hunting!

In summary of the article, an individual in the Avis customer loyalty program (lesson #1) hadn’t used their services in awhile but thought they might again for a personal trip, so they logged into the Avis site (lesson #2) to review their options, only to abandon the effort for another day.  A few days later, the person received a postcard from Avis that said their email bounced (lesson #3) and if they logged back in and updated their email address (lesson #4) they would get a free upgrade (lesson #5).  This multi-channel marketing effort converted the browser into a buyer; not only due to the free upgrade but because they were so impressed with the effort.  And then, they happened to work for marketing news site MediaPost and wrote about their experience (lesson #6).  Lastly, now here I am writing about that person’s experience (lesson #7).

Avis knew that having a clean database of email addresses is the most effective way to market to their lapsed customers, and also that direct mail still has its advantages.  As much of marketing has switched to email, postcards stand out more now.  Avis leveraged a predetermined process where an abandoned transaction triggers the next steps of a reminder email and, if that fails, a postcard to the last known mailing address, both with an offer to close the deal.  All this can not be done, of course, if customers are not first enrolled in a program to identify that person and their activity on the site.  What Avis was unaware of in their establishing this multi-step process is the resulting loyalty it would create, as well as the press they would receive from it.

Other companies would do well to follow Avis’ lead and think through where their customers may abandon a purchase in the buying cycle, what offer could encourage them to follow through, and how exactly to administer that offer.  If there are many reasons and points where an abandoned shopping cart could take place, and if there is no way to, or reasons for, a customer to enroll in a loyalty program, I recommend the company should survey its customers and prospects to map the buying process out and determine the best offer to cinch the deal.  Understanding all the opportunities for customer touches, having multi-step processes in place, and knowing what concessions may be offered to encourage the purchase, is key to success.

Happy ROI hunting!

On a personal note: I’m bacccckkkkk….from my blogging hiatus.  Sometimes one has to turn inward for a bit in order to once again turn outward…a marketing lesson in and of itself!

I will never forget many years ago I worked with a woman who said to me with great conviction, “Perception IS reality!” I had to shake my head (privately).  Perception is purely subjective and is a function of our internal “filters.”  It’s like looking through a dirty window.  The “dirt” is all of our experiences, beliefs, values, ego-driven needs and even our own behaviors that we interpret as being the same in others, that translate into a perception.

A great, old illustration of this is the Indian proverb of the blind men and the elephant.  The story goes that six blind men feel different parts of an elephant and give their interpretation of what it is: the one who feels a leg says it is like a pillar; the one with the tail says a rope; the one with the trunk says a tree branch; the one with the ear says a hand fan; the one with the belly says a wall; and the one with the tusk says a solid pipe.  The lesson is they are all right but have perceived just a small portion of the truth.

We marketers need to keep this in mind.  Marketing is simply the act of influencing people’s perception of value, helping them to expand their knowledge of the truth, and finding those who have the inclination to value what you have to offer. I read an interesting article recently on making money, from which I quote:

Value is perception more than anything. Figure out what the people you want to do business with believe value is in the first place, then give them what they want. The more of it you give, the more they’ll give back to you. Want to make crazy money? Provide crazy value.

Marketers too often assume that their perception is how others will see things.  How many products, services, ads and companies have failed miserably because of that belief?  Without a thorough understanding of what their audiences believe, think, feel and the experiences they have that influence their perception, marketers plow ahead only to find that they missed the mark.  In fact, the #1 reason why marketing plans fail is a failure to properly test on target audiences prior to launch.  Even what we think of as successful companies, like Apple, get it wrong sometimes: Don’t Like the New iTunes Logo? You Are Not Alone.

While perception is NOT necessarily reality, which matters more?  Perception, of course.  Marketing is all about gaining insights into people’s perceptions, executing strategies that we hope resonate with others, measuring response, and continually refining messages. If you are not using some kind of research in your day-to-day activities, something is wrong.  If you’re afraid to try new approaches, stick with them for awhile and risk failure, something is wrong.  If you don’t acknowledge when perceptions are wrong and create strategies to change it, something is wrong.

I wrap this up with my thoughts on five ways to overcome inaccurate perceptions:

1. Make sure you really do understand people’s perceptions. You may need to talk to a person, or lots of persons through a research survey, to be able to say “I get where you’re coming from.”
2. If you’ve made a mistake, acknowledge it. It doesn’t matter if you’re an individual or representing a corporation.  A woman I once worked with said to me, I paraphrase, “If you make a mistake and tell me it can be corrected.  The longer it goes on the more difficult and expensive the solution.” So speak up when you screw up. If you’re sincere, people and markets are generally quite forgiving since none of us are perfect.
3. Learn to accept others’ perceptions, even if you feel they are inaccurate. Don’t be defensive or dismissive when someone shares with you their perceptions, because the message you are sending is that their opinions don’t matter.  Only through feedback can we learn to see through the eyes of others and improve.  When I was a kid in art class, we would all draw a picture and then the whole class would critique it.  When kids learn early to do this, it raises their self-esteem and teaches them to put many minds together to a task.  When I went back and redid the picture incorporating the classes’ suggestions it turned out better.  I have found this to be true in all aspects of life.
4. Don’t be unwilling to change your perceptions. If your perception of something turns out to be different from that of others, then either you have to work hard to change their perception or change yours.  Changing yours tends to be easier and you may be able to incorporate others’ views into yours.
5. Let go of the past. Too often we look at mistakes and critique as a negative.  Sure, it can sting the ego to know that your effort didn’t pan out, you offended someone unwittingly, you said something you shouldn’t have, or you discover that people view you differently than how you truly are inside.  However, we can also view these as a positive – someone cares enough to speak their truth, we can use these things to better understand others’ needs and what we can do to serve them (which is after all what we’re all here to do), and their perceptions refine not only our marketing expertise but also our character.  When we do err, or when someone else does, we have to be able to let it go and move on.  Flaws aren’t fatal!

Bottom line, everyone just wants to be understood.  Do your best to understand others, using every tool available to you, and seek to be understood.  Be honest, be forthright, be willing to incorporate others’ perceptions into your life and business, and you will create the ROI you seek.

The man in the commercial is focused on getting his morning coffee and nothing else.  He dismisses everyone, including the cashier at McDonald’s, until he is presented with his coffee. The coffee guy represents everyone you want to talk to, whether you are targeting consumers or businesses.  He doesn’t want to hear anything else until he gets his coffee, just like prospects don’t hear anything from you that isn’t relevant either.

Marketing and sales people often approach people in all the wrong ways.  They only think about themselves and what they want to accomplish, rather than thinking about what is going on in the mind of their prospect.   People in general mostly care only about what is going on in their life, how they feel, what they need to accomplish and what they need in order to do that.  In order to reach people and present what you have to offer, you first have to try to understand those things for them.  After you determine that, in order to get their attention, you need strong value propositions.

Here are a couple of examples of bad approaches.  In this voice mail rcvm128_2010082508395100, Jennifer doesn’t clearly articulate what company she’s with and simply says she “has a couple of questions.”  She’s only thinking of herself, what she wants to know to move her sales process forward, and doesn’t state any compelling value proposition to entice me.  In this voice mail rcvm128_2010082515292500, Kirby says what he specializes in, lead generation and appointment setting, and does give somewhat of a value proposition but it is very weak: to “expand your client base in getting clients.”  Again, it’s mostly focused on himself.  So what can we do to better position ourselves, and not be a Jennifer or Kirby?  Take the time to do your market research and be thoughtful in the way you present your information.

If targeting consumers, you can read secondary research or do a custom survey to find out what’s important to them so you can be relevant.  You can also test your marketing messages before investing a ton of money in various media  (as aside, I work in market research at C.A. Walker if you need assistance in this area).

If targeting businesses, you can evaluate the people you are trying to reach by studying job postings for all the titles.  Print a bunch of them (Indeed.com works great for this) and create profiles for each.  You need to understand their responsibilities, their involvement in decision making, who else may be involved (target them all), their measures (metrics) of success, and their business drivers.  Then study the company looking at their website, articles, investor reports and presentations.  You should be able to pick up from these resources their current plans and issues in order to craft relevant messages.  You may also want to conduct your own survey to better understand these people and test your messages as insurance that you’re doing the right thing (as aside, C.A. Walker can also target specific business titles in surveys).

To create marketing ROI, you have to have the mindset that you are there to serve others.  The more you can understand your targets’ current needs and stop focusing on yours, the better.  Like the coffee man, you must try to insert yourself at the moment that they have a need (“I can give you coffee!”).  Good value propositions help people see that you understand them and can help them achieve their measure of success or fulfill their need, while focused on their issue (“I know you really need your morning coffee.  I can give it to you cheaper than Starbucks and it’s convenient!”).

It is a bit of a guessing game, but if you did a good job on your research it is likely you found many issues that you can address.  I suggest trying to find 10 things you can talk about.  You can then contact your target with 10 different value propositions over a period of 4 to 6 weeks.  If you did this right, something should “hit” because it’s what they are dealing with.  If none do, then you can move on and come back to them in a month or so when you have something else you can talk about.  You may also come across articles that relate to them, which you can share to help them stay on top of trends in their industry.  The best part of this technique is that you never have to feel like you’re bothering someone, contacting them multiple times, because you are offering them value that is targeted to what you’ve learned about their needs.

Your Turn:

What are your ideas for marketers and sales people to be more engaging?

In The Principles of Highly Persuasive Messaging it lays out an objective set of criteria for developing marketing messages. As stated by the author, Michael Cannon, “The key is to really understand buyers’ primary buying questions, come up with really good answers to those internally and then validate them in the marketplace.  Sales messaging without validation is really dangerous.” (as an aside my company, C.A. Walker, does copy testing if you need assistance in this area).

1. Focus on one offering. It states, “If you have many products or services that you sell on a stand-alone basis, then you must have sales messaging for each offering.”  My challenge at C.A. Walker is that we fall into that category of many offerings.  I recently created a talking presentation that talks about all our offerings, straddling all industries, but am now developing a message for each industry.

2. Target the Buyer by Audience Type, Buyer Role, and Specific Market Segments (combining 2 and 4 in the article).Before I am able to develop a message for each industry, I have to look at who my audience is.  I have already addressed buyers by type, those who are Researchers and Marketers.  My presentation for Researchers is similar to the talking presentation but the talking one provides more detail about our client experience.  The Marketers presentation addresses the unique difficulties that marketing professionals have, and talks about our offerings with a more top-level approach.

What I am working on currently, also suggested in the article, is looking at my audience by segments and sets of business challenges.  To do this, we are reviewing our previous business for the past several years and logging it by category and challenge solved.  I then am going to look at, what are the typical challenges that companies have in these categories?  How may I develop marketing messages that are relevant to companies in each space?  I can then add to this list challenges that I read about in the media.  I also spend time developing relationships with people who can help me to better understand a particular segment’s issues, so that I can better help them and/or their clients (if you are one of those people, thank you!  If you would like to network with me and discuss the issues you/your clients are facing, please connect with me on LinkedIn, Twitter or Email: rpaul(at)cawalker(dot)com rebekahpaul11(at)gmail(dot)com).

3. Identify and Persuasively Answer the Audience’s Primary Buying Questions. It says,  “The buying questions for each audience are fundamentally different. For example…Why should I buy your solution rather than a competitive alternative?”  I have already addressed this particular question in our presentations.  Our primary reasons are:

• We’ve been in business for over 30 years, with a deep well of experience to draw from.
• Our researchers have 20 years average experience and they implement projects beginning to end.
• Our data processing and programming is done in-house, which is more cost-effective and we have greater quality control.
• We’re a mid-sized firm, which is more cost-efficient for our clients.  We provide the benefits of a much larger firm with efficiencies of a smaller one.
• A broader perspective, due to our client and agency side experience, as well as clients across multiple categories.
• Highly responsive to clients’ changing needs, and extensive experience working within fast-moving industries.
• We provide actionable insights and recommendations that go “beyond the numbers.”

Other buying questions my prospective clients may have are, why should I buy a service like this, what research methodologies may be used to gain certain information, who have you done this for already, and what do the results look like? (If I missed anything, please comment!)

4.  Enable the Technology Adoption Life Cycle (TALC) and Sales Cycle. This cycle portrays markets as Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.

1. Early Adopters are the most passionate, those who are on lookout for new breakthroughs that offer a competitive advantage.  They can be a good target for testing of new products/services.

2. The Early Majority are those who break out of their comfort zones to find solutions to broken processes.  “The key to success is to provide a complete solution for one segment while identifying closely aligned segments that could benefit from a similar solution.”

3. The Late Majority waits for you “to gain a strong record of accomplishment and enough references from people they trust.”

4. Laggards are those who are “defenders of the status quo and want solutions that have no risk.”

This analysis isn’t as relevant to market research, which has been around for generations.  However, what is applicable is that there are people and businesses who are passionate about gaining a deeper and richer understanding of their target audience.  They understand that you Don’t Confuse Your Personal Experience With Good Strategy.  They know that although there are tools out now for do-it-yourself Internet surveys, obtaining a representative sample audience large enough to do desired analysis is not easy, writing an unbiased and effective questionnaire is no simple matter, and interpreting the statistics is both art and science.  In addition, while online surveys are often a cost-effective methodology, it may not be best suited for your research needs.  A good researcher can analyze a situation and determine that.

Then there are people out there who don’t use market research but are ready to break out of their comfort zone.   They require more of an educational approach.  We need to explain what closely aligned segments have done already so they can get a feel for what is possible for their business.  We recently did a presentation like this for the Southern California chapter of the American Marketing Association.  We are doing a similar presentation, focused on business-to-business research, on September 23rd for the Southern California chapter of the Business Marketing Association (if you are a B2B company, please register for our lunch-and-learn and meet us in our Glendale, California office, space is very limited!)

5.  Make the Right Comparison. It says, “If you can clearly communicate how your product can help prospective customers solve their problems or reach their objectives better than their current solution and/or better than the competition, then you should win the business.”  One of my goals is to know what market research, if any, has been done within my clients’ organization and who they are using, if outsourced, to be able to speak on our differentiators.  My other main goal is to understand what problems people are having, because I’m a problem solver and I use custom research to do it.

6. Use Strong Comparative Language. The article suggests using words like “faster, easier, more, reduce, increase, etc. in messages to create strong differentiators in someone’s mind.  OK.  How about “C.A. Walker is easier to work with as an extension of your marketing department because we provide faster turn-around on projects, we give you more value for your research investment as a mid-sized firm, we reduce your business risk and increase your marketing ROI.” Good?!

7. Communicate Value in the Customer’s Context. The article says “The best way to communicate the value of your capability advantages is to put it in the context of the business problems you can solve better than the current solution or competition (Customer Benefit), and the business value you can deliver, over and above the current solution or competition (Customer Business Value).”  In my situation, the Customer Benefit depends upon what someone is currently doing to fulfill their research needs:

o If they are doing nothing, then the Benefit would be a better understanding of their target audience(s) to more efficiently use their marketing dollars.
o If they are utilizing secondary research, it would be able to address specific questions relevant to their particular business issues.
o If they are using internal resources, the Benefit would be as support for their team for research needs beyond internal capabilities.
o If they are using external resources, the Benefit to outside agencies and marketing consultants is also as support for their needs, or we can provide a competitive bid to allow the client to review our approach and pricing as comparison.

8. Incorporate Lots of Proof Points. We use case studies and briefs of work completed as proof points, as the article suggests, but other options are “customer testimonials, research that supports your conclusions, standards boards, trade associations, demonstration or proof-of-concept implementation, followed by support data such as an ROI summary, charts, graphs, etc.”

9. Employ Multiple Differentiation Themes. It says to use as many of these themes in your messaging as you can: Time, Money, Risk, Strategic (increased productivity, return on invested capital, faster time to market), and Personal.  In our business, we are conscientious of personal reasons involved in the decision to buy research.  It is important that people feel that they made the smartest decision for their organization.

10. Make the Customer the Hero. It says, “Buyers do not care about your company or products, they care about themselves.”  Basically, we need to be able as marketers to put ourselves in our client’s shoes and write from their perspective.  They need to visualize what life will be like with you/your product or service to be the hero in their company.  This is why it’s a really good idea to use custom research to understand your customers’ needs and pain-points. I already knew and used this technique in my Marketers presentation, but I need to do several more addressing different segments.

11. Align with the Psychographic Profile of the Buyer. This is just another way of saying that research is needed so that “sales messaging [is] tuned to the buyer’s values and needs.”  One way to do this is through the use of segmentation research, which is something we offer.  We profile customers and prospective customers around their perspectives, needs, values, habits, activities, etc. and then evaluate how groups are similar and dissimilar.  The results typically are named fun things like “Facebook Fanatics” or “Mobile Moms.”  It’s a really valuable tool in your marketing arsenal.

12. Avoid the Use of “GOBBLEDYGOOK” Adjectives. Let’s avoid the words that everyone uses and no one really believes and pays attention to.  How can all companies be the “leading” organization in their space?

13.  Pass the Substantiation Test. Bottom line, if it’s not true and accurate don’t use it.  One thing I really enjoy about C.A. Walker is that from the top down, we are a highly ethical company.

14. Pass the Sales and Customer Validation Test. As stated in the beginning of this post, it is very important to test your messages.  Get input from your colleagues but most importantly your current customers.  The questions the article suggests asking are:  Do they agree that the key buying question you are answering is the right or most important question to answer? Do they agree with your answer? What do they like? Dislike? Why?

15. Differentiate You in the Market.  It says “If you took your messaging and replaced your company name with one of your competitor’s names, would the messaging still be true? If yes, then your messaging is not going to be very effective.”  In determining what differentiates C.A. Walker it came down to our long history of excellent customer service, our people (honestly, I’ve never worked with a nicer group of folks!), and our mid-size, which I believe we are in the “sweet spot” in this difficult economy.  We don’t have huge overhead and R&D costs that we are passing onto our clients, as I saw was happening in my previous position with another firm, and we’re not so small that we are outsourcing all our critical services.  We also generally care about building real long-term relationships and sharing in our customers’ success.

16. Use Highly Relevant Visuals That Appeal to the Buyer’s Emotions. It says “people buy on emotion and justify rationally.”  People are emotional creatures first and foremost, so it’s great if you can appeal to them through fascination as well as make things clear with pictures, graphs and charts that align with the message.  I really try to do this in my presentations and emails.

17. Summarize in Three Key Points. There is definitely something about the number three that people are drawn to.  Perhaps it’s because we are ourselves a trinity of mind, body and spirit, so it feels right.  Whatever the reason, try to summarize your message in three or no more than five key points.

18. Fit on One Page. People have low tolerance for sales messages, so if you can try to fit it on one page.  What I’ve been doing lately is handing out one-sheets where I use the front for what we do for business-to-consumer companies and the other side for business-to-business companies.  Often companies have research needs in both areas.

I hope you learned something from this approach for your own marketing challenges. I’m working hard on these steps myself right now and would enjoy your thoughts.

Happy ROI hunting!

I spoke about the importance of creating positive marketing messages in a prior post about engagement marketing but it bears repeating.  At our core we are social creatures and we are attracted to people, events, products, services, and brands that help us to have fun. The reason that social media is such a huge hit is because it helps us to connect with others so we can share fun.  It’s so simple, yet so profound.  This simple truth creates infinite possibilities to increase your marketing ROI.

First of all, what is “fun?”  Fun isn’t just fun, it’s hope.  Fun can be found in magnifying the things you love in what you do everyday.  It can transform the annoyances you face into positive challenges to help others.  It is fun to see the results of your hard work in your personal growth and in your career.  It is fun to use your success to turn around and help someone else get further in their life.  It is fun to work in a team to pull together to see something accomplished.

Think for a minute about the products or services that you or your company are promoting.  Some of us may be lucky enough to work for a company whose mission is to help people have fun, such as film, gaming or social media.  Others of us have to search a bit harder to determine the fun that we provide to other people.  However, if you take the time to do this exercise it can transform the way you market yourself and your company’s products and services.

I offer, as example, my own situation to explain my thinking. What I promote to the business world is custom market research services on behalf of C.A. Walker Research Solutions.  On face value it doesn’t seem like I’m selling anything particularly fun, but to me it is great fun!

First of all, I find it fun to build relationships either online or in-person and to discover people’s current business objectives.  I am a natural problem-solver.  I enjoy delving into different business worlds to understand perspectives and pain points, so I can determine precisely how we may contribute to others’ success by applying custom research, thus creating more fun in their life.  It’s also fun to think through with people if there is anything we can do together to offer markets a service that is stronger than either of us could separately.

I find it fun to analyze potential markets and figure out fresh ways to make relevant the various types of research that we’ve been doing for more than 30 years.  It is fun to then use that information to prepare marketing messages that appeal to people’s sense of fun; at least to be interesting!  It’s fun to post applicable articles to my LinkedIn groups, which I also may use to explain some of what we do, and to meet new people who seek me out because they appreciate what I’ve shared.

On a personal level, it’s fun to me to represent a company that I firmly believe in.  I’ve worked in a variety of companies over the years, but never before have I worked with such a terrific group of people.  It’s a joy to me to get up each day and go to work to spread the tale of C.A. Walker.  We are in a “sweet spot” in this rough economy as far as our size (25 people), the value that we offer, and our consistent focus on client service.  And to add to my point about the importance of having fun, I work with a bunch of comedians.  We’re all the time joking and kidding with one another, while always making sure all is well with our projects.  I love it!

It’s fun to study what marketing ROI means and how businesses are working to apply it.  It’s fun to build my personal brand, Marketing ROI or DIE!  It’s especially fun to read when people respond to my posts that it’s helped them in some way. It’s fun to use Twitter (@MktgROIorDIE) to spread what I’m learning and to make new connections, such as when I attended the Licensing Expo in Vegas recently.  I met some really great people through the use of the #licexpo hash tag who I look forward to working with!

So whatever it is you do, rediscover your sense of fun in it.  Think through how you are helping others have fun in their lives, and utilize that in your marketing to increase your ROI.  Most importantly, laugh daily and find people to laugh with you.  It’s hard to laugh alone!

The Death Of CPM , The Death Of The Retail Store , The Death of Affiliate Marketing , The Death of the Open Web , The Death of Video Rental Stores , The Death of the Landline , The Death of the Book , The Death of the Desktop , The Death of Newspapers , The Death of the Press Release , The Death of Advertising , The Death of the Pageview

What’s going on here?  More importantly what can we learn from it? After studying these articles I have come to the conclusion that no, business isn’t dying…but it is evolving.  We’re evolving; as consumers and as marketers.

As consumers, we want to be marketed to as the individuals we are. “Technology is fueling the consumer’s desire for personalization.1″  As marketers, we are seeing that treating people as ‘the masses’ is no longer appropriate.  It’s no longer about measuring our audience size but about how relevant we are to our audience1. We must become more sophisticated in our targeting efforts.  One-to-one marketing is the key now, whether we are talking to other businesses or to consumers.

In One-to-One Marketing: The true promise of Dynamic Offer-Content Customization it states: “Customizing offers based on customer segments involves a sequence of steps, beginning with identification of meaningful customer segments. Any method of customer-specific message optimization requires knowing ‘who’ your customers are, beyond just their names and email addresses. You must also have some insight into what they ‘want,’ how they think, the words, terms and images that attract and inspire them (as well as those that repel them), and ‘how’ they think.”

There are two ways I know of to develop customer segments.  One involves analyzing the people who come to your website, or who you want to come to your website, and developing it around their needs.  In Online Customer Segmentation Made Easy it says “the easiest approach is to ask the five basic questions that all news reporters know:  Who, What, Where, Why and How. By taking time to answer these five questions up front, you will be able to make the most effective use of limited resources, as you build a website that meets the needs and wants of all your customers.”  While creating segments based on online behavior may yield actionable insights for your website, it also doesn’t truly represent your customer base if you sell in other ways, such as direct and retail.

In that case, there is another method that involves surveying your customers.  The company I work with, C.A. Walker, does this type of segmentation analysis.  We design a questionnaire that allows us to group customers as similar or dissimilar based on their attitudes, behaviors and demographics, yielding those segments that are most valuable to target.  Segmentations are a valuable look into customer groups’ beliefs,  lifestyles and habits.

Another point I picked up from these articles is to not be afraid to launch evolutionary products and services, even if a larger company could launch a competitive product/service with greater advantages.  Far too often “industry leaders are usually so focused on maintaining existing profit centers and business practices…they ignore the threat.”4

Lastly, measures of marketing ROI are evolving also.  In The Death of the Pageview it makes a great point: “The most important thing is that you are gathering actionable data. By this I mean that you have to be able to use the information you gather to make a decision and take action.  If you’re not going to use it to make a decision, it’s a waste of time to even look at it.” Consolidating what these articles are saying, the important ROI metrics to gather and take action on are:

• Cost Per Customer (CPC)1
• Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)1 (links to my prior post on how to calculate and increase Lifetime Value)
• Value delivered — e.g. customers or inquiries1,  less stress2, saves time2, original products3
• Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)5

In summary, it is my belief that businesses don’t truly die; they simply evolve and may become a stepping stone into something more relevant to people’s lives.  Marketers must become savvier in order to evolve with these trends and must monitor only those marketing metrics that can assist to improve conversion rates and gain a deeper understanding of  customer behavior.

Sources:

1 The Death Of CPM

2 The Death Of The Retail Store

3 The Death of Affiliate Marketing

4 The Death of Video Rental Stores

5 The Death of the Pageview

Easy Embed of Video in WordPress

I found that managing video in pages and posts a bit of a challenge until I found a plugin called Smart YouTube.  Although it has “YouTube” in the name, it works for all kinds of hosted video.  Download the zip file, extract it into a folder on your hard drive, then upload it into your plug-ins directory (/wp-content/plugins/).  In WordPress, go to Plugins and activate it.

Under Settings in your left column, click on Smart YouTube.  Select “Display videos in posts.”  Make any other adjustments you would like to appearance such as width and height, or leave the defaults, click Save.  All you have to do now is take the link from the YouTube or other hosted video, open the page or post, click on the HTML tab, paste the URL where you want it, then change http:// to httpv:// (notice the ‘v’ character).  That’s it!

Add a Print-Friendly Page Icon

You may want to give people the option to print the screen without sidebars, in which case the WP-Print plugin is for you.  Once again, download, extract, upload and activate the plugin.  Under Settings in your left column, click on Print.  Make any adjustments to the text you want shown, which printer icon you want (they give you two to choose from), click Save.  When you want to add it to a page or post, select the HTML tab and paste [print_link] wherever you want it to show up.  That’s it!

One thing I did see and adjust: when the print page is displayed it has the title, the author, the date, and then some things I didn’t want, like Category.  I opened print-posts.php and on lines 46 and 47 is where it tells what to display.  I removed everything after the author, line 47, so now it looks like this:

<p id=”BlogDate”><?php _e(‘Posted By’, ‘wp-print’); ?> <u><?php the_author(); ?></u>

Add the New Facebook Like Button

I tried a few different Facebook Like button add-ons and felt this one the best.  Once you activate it in the plugins folder, it creates its own drop-down for settings in your left column.  You then adjust whether you want it on pages, posts or both; before or after content, or both, and other settings for appearance you can play with.

Post Simultaneously to Facebook, Myspace and Twitter

Lastly, a really neat plugin called Status Updater allows you to integrate your Facebook profile or business page, Myspace profile, and Twitter profile.  Once activated, under Settings go to Status Updater.

• For Facebook, enter your login credentials,  your Facebook page URL in addition to or instead of your personal profile, and select if you want it to update your Status (at top of your page) and/or provide as a link (with title, summary and picture).
• For Myspace, enter your login credentials and your “mood.”
• For Twitter, you can change how it displays under “Default status template” (e.g. “New blog post: %POST-TITLE% %POST-URL% #marketingroi).   Enter your link shortener credentials if you want to use that also.

Lastly, be sure to enter your email address under “Log email” or you can’t save.  This is to notify you when something goes out.