Are you ready for the next phase of Marketing 3.0?

“Within five years, if you run your business in the same way as you do now, you’re going to be out of business”.

With that pronouncement as a lead-in to his latest book, Marketing 3.0, marketing guru Phillip Kotler stated his belief that too many marketers are still operating in an outdated paradigm that states:
•    A company’s aim is to maximize profits.
•    Company investors are more important than other stakeholders.
•    Customers buy rationally to maximize value.
•    Customers get most of their information from sellers and don’t talk to each other about products.

I don’t agree with Kotler that “maximizing profits” is an outdated paradigm, (after all, that’s why we are in business).  I do believe, however, that his points reflect yesterday’s thinking and that’s why understanding where marketing is heading is so important to our survival as marketers.

 Kotler defined Marketing 3.0 as a re-invention of marketing from customer-driven marketing to values-driving marketing, based on the revised definition of marketing by the American Marketing Association:

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

In the new marketing paradigm, all stakeholders must be considered invaluable – investors, consumers, employees and channel partners.  And the growth of social media has proven the value of peer communications in the success (and failure) of brands in all B2B and B2C categories.

Kotler identified three primary factors for marketers to consider in preparing for the changes that this new era of marketing would bring:
•    The continued growth of participation and collaboration among consumers.
•    The impact of technology and transportation on globalization.
•    The growth of a “creative society” where consumers are not only looking for products and services that satisfy their needs, but are also searching for experiences and business models that touch their spiritual side.

Supplying meaning is the future value proposition in marketing.
We have certainly seen how these first two factors have affected marketing through the exponential growth of social media and the impact of technology on competition.  If you aren’t actively engaging in ways to interact with your customer base, you will lose to someone who is.
But what about his third factor?  How do marketers supply meaning to their marketing?  Here are three ways to consider this important need:
1.     Invite your customers to co-create with you.  There is an old Chinese proverb that says “Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.”  Don't just get your customers to purchase your product, give them a reason to care - get them involved. If you are considering a new product for market, ask your customers for input.  Involving your customers means letting them have a say in not only what you market but how you market.  Don't wait for them to speak up. Instead, solicit their input regularly.
2.    Be a person, not a company.  Consumers want to be connected to people, not to companies. The questionable ROI value of Facebook Likes beyond registering for a promotion makes this point very clear.  A great example of transforming a faceless corporation through simply acting like a person is Comcast.  Listen to this Brian Solis interview on the impact that @comcastcares has had on their customer relationships.    BTW, I’m still not a great fan of Comcast, but I do appreciate that they seem to be trying and that is a good first step.
3.    Being socially responsible is more than adding “sustainability” to your messaging strategy.  Consumers have always viewed marketing and advertising with a jaundiced eye, and since the well-publicized corporate scandals of the early 2000’s and the Wall Street meltdown, the skepticism and disillusionment with corporate America has grown even worse.  While many companies are legitimately trying to be more socially responsible, the overuse of phrases like green marketing and sustainability have made this concept less believable (and impactful) in my mind.

Kotler describes the challenge to develop meaning in this way – “brands need to develop an authentic DNA that reflects their identity in consumer’s social networks”.  That DNA can be based on anything from natural ingredients (The Body Shop) to environment concerns (Flexicar) to family friendliness (Disney).  The important thing is to find something that is true, and that rings true to consumers, and then to be intentional about living up to that promise.

It is not about adding a new word to your marketing vocabulary!

As you look for ways to add “meaning” to your marketing, I hope you will find a way to connect with your customer’s mind, heart and spirit.


Want to learn more about Marketing 3.0 and its impact on sales and marketing?  Come to the PSAMA lunch on June 13 to hear award-winning marketer and author, Brent Clay, give his take on “how to survive the changing landscape”.  For more info and to register, click here.


-- Don Morgan

Don Morgan is VP Communications for PSAMA and Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, a business development and social media consultant in Seattle.

Blink Different - Three Keys for Engaging Audiences in the Digital Age

Guest Post by Bryan Cummings

A lifetime ago, I cut my creative teeth writing promo spots for local television. It was a great breeding ground to come up with visual ideas that set up, paid off, and delivered a call to action in less than 30 seconds.

Today, we would kill for that much time with the audience. Branding in the digital age happens in a blink, on a display banner in the corner of the page, a social media ad, or even a paid search result. In addition, there’s a lot more to think through creatively. In the past, we would create a TV spot and wait for the Nielsen ratings to assess effectiveness. Now, marketers need to think through several levels of audience engagement and respond to real-time feedback.

With the rapid evolution of digital media, it’s easy to get caught up in tactics and lose sight of the bigger things that drive success. Here are three strategies to guide your brand efforts and ensure a connection in the blink moments we have with audiences today.  

1.  Uncover a Unique Strategic Insight.  So much creative energy is spent coming up with ideas based on foggy direction. If you’re lucky, you have a creative brief that identifies a primary message (usually three or four) that the creative team will express memorably.

You might come up with a great headline, gorgeous art direction, or attractive motion design. However, is it a message the audience cares about? Does it differentiate the brand from its competitors?

Those issues are what make brands cut through. The starting point of every campaign should be a quick assessment of the audience, category, and brand to quickly identify a unique insight that drives creative and media strategy. Today, we must focus on the intersection of what the audience cares about, what competitors are doing, and what the brand stands for. That’s where the magic is.   

2.  Use the Shortest Creative Fuse. Digital media is diverging in two directions. First is the expansion of online video, which offers greater opportunity to tell a brand story with motion, sound, and at least a few seconds with the audience. Secondly is the growth of mobile and social ads, where space is limited and audience attention is shorter than ever.

This is the blink moment. Marketers should use this reality to critically evaluate all creative ideas until they hit on the strategic insight with the shortest possible fuse. Be brutal. Sometimes the most wonderful creative execution can be off strategy, while a more direct approach is right on target. We don’t have 30 seconds, or even 10, to make an impression anymore. Make that briefest of moments count.  

3.  Connect Emotionally with Social Media. Social and mobile are all the buzz, and rightly so; social media and mobile devices are where people are hanging out and connecting with each other. Every marketer is looking for smart ways to integrate social tactics into their campaigns. To be successful in this area, you must find an emotional extension of the brand to leverage for social media. People participate when they are touched or charged up by what the brand is doing. These emotional triggers are found in universal truths, such as love of family, cars, vacation, art, music, and pop culture. People get fired up about politics and religion too, but, just like at the dinner table, marketers should steer clear of those.

A good strategy for mobile is to vet ideas with a keen understanding of where people and what they like to do on mobile devices. Not every idea will pass the mobile test, but a few will stand out. That’s when we’re onto an integrated idea.

The digital age has made us all more productive, connected, and in touch. It has enabled the wonder one-to-one marketing on a massive scale. But it has also created an audience that is often multi-tasking and highly distracted. More reason than ever to focus your efforts on what the audience cares about, what makes you different, getting right to the point, and engaging emotionally in social media in order to be at your best in the blink.

Bryan Cummings is Chief Creative Officer at The Garrigan Lyman Group, a digital advertising agency headquartered in Seattle.

Eight shortcuts to more successful sales & marketing collaboration

GUEST POST BY MATT HEINZ

The concept of getting sales & marketing to work more closely together isn’t new. It’s been an issue, if not a focus area, for as long as sales and marketing teams have been working together (at least in theory) to drive predictable, sustainable growth for their business.

Discussions around how to make sales & marketing collaboration work have been intensifying of late, which is a good thing. And the fact that we keep talking about it – at conferences, on discussion boards, and blog posts like this – is an indication that we’re far from solving the problem (or should we say, taking advantage of the opportunity).

The fact is, there’s no secret to making the two teams work as one. And the answer is not just more meetings. Below are eight specific shortcuts to help your organization (or your clients) accelerate their path towards sales & marketing collaboration nirvana.

1. Common objectives
It starts with what you’re working towards. Traditionally, sales is responsible for sales and marketing is responsible for leads. That may still be operationally true, but marketing needs to be comfortable with sales and revenue as the lagging indicators of their success.
Yes, the sales team is required to achieve those goals. And the leading indicators of success, the short-term deliverables, will be leads and case studies and microsites and the like. But sales & marketing must first agree on a common set of well-defined outcomes. This is the grounding that becomes the basis for all other work, discussions, triage and execution.

2. Common definitions.
With sales as the output, it’s important for sales & marketing to agree on definitions and standards for the critical steps and deliverables that lead to sales. For example, what qualifies as a lead? What qualifies as a short-term sales opportunity?
Your common definitions will manifest themselves in a single dashboard to measure, review and improve results. It starts with a model that predicts the sales or revenue result. How many opportunities are required to get a sale? How many leads to get an opportunity? By combining this model with common definitions of each deliverable and stage, both sales & marketing have a crystal-clear understanding of what’s required to achieve success. All other inputs, opportunities and distractions are triaged based on those goals, metrics and definitions.
3. Common compensation/objectives
This one is controversial, but is a natural next step if both sales & marketing have common objectives and definitions of success. Sales is most likely measured largely on their success in driving new business. Why shouldn’t marketing be similarly compensated?
If you’re nervous about taking this step, start small. Give marketing a goal in line with your objectives & definitions, then give them a percentage of the “lift” achieved above and beyond that.
For example, let’s say you expect to generate 3,000 leads per month with a $30,000/month budget. What if the marketing team can generate the same leads for less? Would you give them a percentage of the budget difference as a bonus? What about if they generated more leads for the same budget? Would you give them a percentage of resulting sales commissions as a bonus? Worth thinking about.
4. Executive sponsorship
If your C-suite doesn’t believe in sales and marketing working together, it will never be a priority at the functional level. If your CEO and CFO mandate certain levels of performance and outcomes based on joint goals and market approaches, you’re far more likely to get everyone in each organization to fall in line and at least figure out how to operationalize the right priorities and tactics.
5. Up-front planning
What if you treated the marketing planning process as if it were a proposal to a customer?
Marketing doesn’t work for sales, but in many companies the primary “customer” for marketing is in fact the sales organization. So if that’s the case, it seems appropriate that the marketing plan each year should at minimum be reviewed and “accepted” by sales leadership as sufficient to help them achieve their own 2012 growth objectives.
This doesn’t mean that sales has complete veto power over strategies and tactics. The “means” by which marketing achieves collective goals agreed to by sales & marketing together should continue to be, ultimately, up to the marketing team.
But before the marketing plan is finalized, it stands to reason that it should be presented to the sales team for review and comment.
6. Daily/weekly triage
Even with the best-laid plans, things will go wrong. Problems will pop up. Tests will fail, campaigns will fall flat. Assumptions will be made, loyalties questioned. And new opportunities will be identified or discovered.
For these and many reasons, it’s important to have regular, metrics-based reviews of what’s working and what’s not, as well as a forum to capture and review new ideas to determine which of them should be operationalized quickly and which should stay on the side burner (at least for now).
This process allows for an unlimited set of new ideas to be input and addressed, with a specific process to, together, determine where the focus should be moving forward.
7. Offline relationship-building
All work and no play, well, you know how that ended. You can’t force offline or out-of-office interaction, but you can encourage and facilitate it. Get the teams together for happy hour, do a March Madness bracket that mixes the teams together, or other activities that fit your culture that help sales and marketing leaders get to know each other outside of their professional focus areas. When you can connect about sports or music or family, it’s easier to get through the professional obstacles and sticking points as well.
8. Measure before and after team satisfaction
Salespeople want to make more sales. Marketing, believe it or not, wants to help salespeople make more sales. The blame-game that exists in many organization not only keeps companies from closing more business, but frustrates members of both teams. Driving effective, successful collaboration between sales and marketing will drive both sides to feel better about their contribution, the direct line it provides to revenue, and greater satisfaction in their day-to-day execution to achieve those results.


Matt Heinz is president of Heinz Marketing, a Redmond based sales & marketing firm. You can connect with Matt via email, Twitter, LinkedIn or his blog.

Storytelling sounds like a great idea, but how do I make it work for my brand?

If you enter the phrase “storytelling as a marketing tool” into Google search, you will get 1,650,000 results.  Obviously a lot of people are talking about the value of storytelling in building awareness and trust for your marketing message.

So is the PSAMA.  This month’s luncheon meeting on Wednesday, May 9, will feature Hanson Hosein, director of the UW Masters in Digital Communications program.  He will offer his thoughts on what he describes as a “storyteller uprising” that can provide a product or service with “trust and persuasion in the digital age”. Click here for event details and to register.

A case study is a great way to tell your brand story.
Some companies confuse the idea of storytelling with the need to create a narrative from scratch and don’t realize they have been storytelling all along through case studies.  For anyone that hasn’t used a case study example in your direct or indirect communications, here are a few thoughts on why you should consider this important tool to market your company: 
•    Storytelling through case studies can bring your product or service story to life in the mind of your prospects.  A case study that is written from the customer’s perspective can often explain benefits and features better than a typical marketing message can.
•    Storytelling through case studies can educate your audience in a non-threatening, more believable way.  Good case studies use a problem/solution format to identify the challenge that a customer faced and how their solution addressed the customer’s problem.
•    Storytelling through case studies can help potential customers determine if the product or service will meet their specific needs.  A case study will speak directly to those who share a similar background through belonging to the same industry or facing a similar challenge, much better result than a generic marketing pitch.

Another advantage to storytelling through case studies is the positive impact they can have on a company’s own employees.  Case studies remind employees of the value of their product or services as well as provide them an easy way to offer an anecdotal answer to the question we have all faced “what do you do for a living”?

A good storytelling case study should have these key elements:

1.  Overview of market situation.
2.  Specific challenge(s) the client faced.
3.  Your creative solution.
4.  Any details or specifics that can highlight the uniqueness of your process or solution.
5.  How the client benefited from your solution. 
6.  Customer testimonial statement.

Some thoughts on the last two points above. 
Business results are sometimes difficult to quantify (or contrary to client wishes to communicate to their competitors).  That still doesn’t mean that you can’t find some way to communicate that you understand the purpose of your solution was to generate results.  Something happened –find a creative way to communicate that to your audience.

And I can’t overemphasize the importance of the customer testimonial statement relating to the case.  Consumers are more sensitive than ever to the “hype” of corporate marketing messages.  A statement from a business peer can help to add an element of truth and trust to the marketing sales message in your case study.  But make sure you get your client’s agreement to any statements you make.  I’ve seen ad agencies lose clients for overstating (or taking sole credit) for positive results.

Case studies are not the only storytelling tool you can use, but they are one thing every company should consider as they look for ways to build a relationship with their target audience.

Still wondering if storytelling is right for your company’s product or service?



-- Don Morgan

Don Morgan is VP Communications for PSAMA and Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, a business development and social media consultant in Seattle.