Tag: content marketing

Counterintuitive

Fabrizio1 Comment

We won’t open an e-mail we have not asked for.

We avoid banners on websites as if they were bearing plague.

Whenever possible, we avoid giving permission to be tracked for commercial and retargeting purposes.

We are fed up with listicles and click baits.

We are very sceptical of sources we are not familiar with.

We do not answer cold calls, and when we do we shut the conversation off as soon as possible.

We get mad when an ad appears for a product we have only visited the information page once. Three months ago.

We would never buy from a place that treat us badly, disrespectfully and dishonestly.

We could spend half of our very precious day to engage in an angry conversation with a customer support rep that cannot tell us why we are not getting what we have paid for.

And yet, as marketers we often assume others will be happy when exposed to all of that.

Why?

Do, measure and adjust

FabrizioLeave a comment

There are many different ways to address any case. Unfortunately, you probably have resources (attention, money, energy, motivation) to try one or two of them at the same time.

The point is then to avoid lengthy discussions about which way is the better (not to mention pointless scenario-building that change the rules of the case), and put some effort instead in identifying what successfully addressing the case looks like.

And then just do, measure and adjust.

Responsibilities

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As marketers, we have a responsibility towards our organisation and our customers. We want to establish a relationship that is meaningful and valuable for both sides, possibly one that lasts. And to do so, we often seek our audience in different channels, and eventually double down on the one(s) that proves to be better.

As human beings, though, we also have a responsibility towards our community. We want to contribute positively to it, possibly leaving it in a better state than when we first joined. There are different ways to do that, each one chooses those they are more comfortable with. But more often than not, we choose to participate, as pretending not to care and living on our own would feel quite alienating.

One can juggle the two responsibilities quite easily most of the time, perhaps even trying to build a narrative that makes the two outcomes match.

But it also happens that wanting to establish a meaningful relationship with an audience and positively contributing to the community become forces pulling in opposite directions. Think about pouring money into a channel that harms your community, that covers itself in good intentions, and that continues harming your community while increasing their profits.

When this happen, which of the two responsibilities should prevail?

If it’s numbers you want …

Fabrizio1 Comment

When marketing is in total and complete service of sales, it is very easy to fall into traps.

You get what you reward, after all. And if it is numbers you are after, you will find somebody who can sell them to you, or somebody who can induce you to believe in a new made up trend, or again somebody going rogue who will ask you for a ransom to get back what is yours in the first place.

I have written about this before, but the intensity of this collective allucination is baffling. Marketing is about experience and relationships, and the only way you can build a great relationship is by continuosly looking at quantitative and qualitative data combined.

When is the last time you have talked to one of your customers?
When did you spend half a day skimming through reviews?
When have you done something that does not scale, just to impress one single member of your audience?
When did you use Voice of Customer to make an important decision about your next campaign?

We all get to measure [success] differently. You know how many people in here are all about math, conversion, and quantity? You know what that’s called? That’s called salespeople. Marketing and branding doesn’t get measured by the hour. For me, how I measure it is “how do I feel about where I am positioned?”, “how well is my company doing?”, “how well is my speaking requests coming in?”, “how many people are watching my stuff?”. But I don’t measure it on a tactical day-to-day, it’s an overall feeling of a vibe, intuition, and some baseline metrics. Many people are into landing page optimisation, and by the way that shit works, but that’s sales. People did not come here to see me speak because I cookie them, and target them with my message. It’s because I give them value, and they hope to get even more value from seeing me speaking live. This is branding.

Gary Vaynerchuk, see also this article

Here is what we do

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When you go on a first date, you are not expected to discuss the most intimate recesses of your mind, nor your most embarassing habits. At the same time, if after being married to a person for few years you would find it difficult to open up and you would refuse to discuss yours and your partner’s feelings, that would sound strange.

Yet, more often than not, when a company approaches its customers, there’s one level to the conversation: here is what we do.

For awareness: (since you don’t know) here is what we do.
For acquisition: here is what we do (we know you are interested).
For activation: here is (a taste of) what we do.
For retention: here is (more of) what we do.
For revenue: here is (how much) what we do (costs).
For referral: here is what we do (tell others, pretty please!).

This is a strategy that would not work in any kind of relationships under the sun. And we expect it to work in a business setting, because for some reasons people are extremely more rational when they wear a suit than when they are in their pijamas. If we only get the chance to tell them once more about what we do, they’ll certainly be convinced!

How broken is this?