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Are you a marketing epistemologist? You might want to be!

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By 2020 customer experience will overtake price as the key brand differentiator. Forbes

Marketing as you all no doubt know, is defined in the Oxford dictionary is ‘The action or business of promoting and selling products or services, including market research and advertising.’

This is great up to a point! If recent research is to be believed we are exposed to somewhere between 300 and 3000 ads per day! Which prompts the question so how do we marketers get our brands into the brains of our target body of potential customers?

Epistemology is ‘The theory of knowledge especially with regards to its methods, validity,and scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.’

About 2 years ago I embarked on a digital strategy centred customer engagement and content. The opportunity for like-minded people to share ideas, knowledge and answer questions – Epistemology! The epicentre of the strategy was something I termed the Information Base, essentially a customer portal. The concept being that through supporting the target audience with help, information, thought leadership etc. we would develop a brand affinity that ‘old school marketing’ could only dream of. The result you can find here: http://proteins.gelifesciences.com

Screen Shot 2016-03-08 at 21.21.40

Built on Sitecore by the Reading Room this part of the strategy went from idea, to wireframe to development and production in around 8 months. Disruption was inherent in this from the start with Sitecore’s personalisation engine activated, login and self-selection preferences this is a first in not only the Life Science space, but most B2B’s.

Significantly aided by the unequivocal support of the CEO and Head of Product Development I look forward to seeing how this develops over the coming years.

Are you heading down the epistemology marketing path?

Check it out.

A

 

 

 

It is not Digital…but Organisational Disruption that matters

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The organisational keys to the digital kingdom

The organisational keys to the digital kingdom – PWC 2015

I’ve recently been consulting for a company that is keen to develop its digital capability. This is not a topic new to me, I’ve been lucky enough to lead digital transformations before, but what is surprising is the fact that I still hear, see and experience the same key challenge.

The reoccurring, but often ignored challenge is that the focus of the organisations is always on the channels and tools, and never on the organisational change required for a business to ‘be’ digital.

The above diagram (The five behaviors that accelerate value from digital investments – PWC 2015) nicely calls out the key competencies a company needs to display in order to ‘go digital’. Specifically there are two organisational ones that I believe are fundamental. First, CEO support. Although this does not guarantee success, it does get you a seat at the table, from which you can start to influence the organisation from within. What is not called out though is the need to drive a digital DNA throughout the company, and this comes from three activities:

  1. Re-structuring the organisation within the company to reflect the new way of working – customer first and digitally engaged
  2. Engaging the company in the change – and that is how it will be seen by the employees…Change, and ‘market’ the successes internally
  3. Ensuring some of the early key digital projects actually deliver value to the employees, i.e. initiatives focused on delivering internal productivity

The second fundamental behaviour is the outside-in approach to innovation. I see too many organisations doing the same thing and expecting a different result (see Einstein’s definition of insanity). Bringing in leadership from a different company (even the same industry) is key to accelerating the change. A perspective not constrained by seniority, familiarity, ignorance or ambivalence is absolutely critical as digital transformation requires people to take risk, be creative & innovative and challenge the status quo.

Starting with these two will significantly improve an organisations chances of achieving its digital ambitions.

@BlackBerry will rule the world!

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As a CTO I get to look at a lot of tech but for me the @BlackBerry 10 OS on the #BlackBerryPassport is the most practical, useful and valuable piece of technology (non consumer focused) to come out in the mobile arena in the last 2 years, and that on its own can significantly contribute to both businesses productivity and security!

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Why? Well the user interface is intuitive, it summarises my social ecosystem for me in one window, I need to only use my thumb to navigate, the keyboard means a 1000% reduction in typos and I can seamlessly view/comment on Excel and Powerpoint files on the go…to name but a few! #BlackBerryBrilliance!

So if I’m right in my statement above, why hasn’t BlackBerry penetrated deeper in the business world? Why isn’t it back on top of the corporate tree where it used to be? In fact, why is it certain software / applications (and this extends even to consultancies and suppliers) are trumped by less usable ones even when they’ve proven to be more capable, practical and cost effective? I’m sure there are hundreds of reasons, but I put it down to three key things:

  1. Advice – Well, poor advice! This could be provided by a company or even a website. There are a lot of them out there that provide a lot of ‘expert’ advice on what to buy. However how many are truly un-biased? How many are involved in the delivery or are externally rated on the success of their advice? How many talk about their failures? In my 25 years of working in technology I’ve never seen a consulting entity of any size talk about the poor advice they’ve provided in the past and any lessons learned! Once provided it’s on to the next one!
  2. Ignorance – How many times do we sense check the advice we’re being given? Do our own leg work and reach out to our peers or the wider community to sense check our approach? With so much going on and often in the larger budget businesses, there really is little time to focus on ensuring the research is properly conducted. In the same vein its easier to select one of the larger implementation partners than do the ground work to find the right cultural  fit for the company.
  3. Ego – Usually akin to that age old tale of the Emperors new clothes. If a senior leader has selected or sponsored a software product, implemented it somewhere else, or knows of a competitor doing the same thing, who’s brave enough to tell them it’s not fit for us? The employee with 30 years of tenure? The newbie? The career driven go-getter? The vendor/implementor? In my experience everyone decide it’s not a battle worth fighting and watches with a degree of silent embarrassment good money being thrown on bad as the project devours the pennies and pounds, the careers and conscience.

If we can avoid the above, use our community more, leverage small niche consultancies, look at the practicality and not popularity of the solution and be humble and open to the input of our teams, maybe we will see the likes of Blackberry or if you prefer the most sensible software, applications and products take their rightful place.

It’s too late to change!

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I found this membership card whilst sorting through a box of ‘stuff’ the other day, and it reminded me of the very real risk of failing to recognise, internalise and act on change.

For the international community a brief background…Blockbuster was THE video rental store during the 90’s in the UK that failed to adequately address the challenge of online video rental, download and viewing. It went bust.

I’m astonished that still with such obvious reminders of the risks of ignoring the bigger picture, and by that I mean shifts in technology, customer adoption/consumption etc., companies and businesses are still failing to adopt and adapt to change.

I’ve been thinking on this for a while and have surmised that apart from the obvious it’s a people thing, it is almost uniquely a senior management issue. Their fear of failure/ ego/lack of understanding/or plain arrogance is likely to at best result in losing ground to competitors, at worst strangle the business.

For these people I’d argue it’s too late for them to change. They need to either recruit and then trust someone with the skills to take the business forward and compete in the digital space, or resign and allow the business to find a 21st century leader prepared to run the company.

5 Key Inhibitors To Delivering Your Digital Strategy

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I find I often think, talk and blog about the speed of execution of digital strategies! Maybe because not many people understand this basic formula:

Faster Implementation = Quicker Realised Benefit

The sooner you deliver your strategy, the sooner your customers will reap the benefits and value of it. It sounds obvious, but if it is, why do so many companies fail to deliver?

I have some theories and below are some of the things to watch out for…and happy to hear of others you’ve heard of.

  1. Waiting for perfection! I used to be guilty of this a few years ago. Not anymore though. Get comfortable with the 20/80 rule! i.e. going live with 20% of what you want to deliver is OK. Just have a plan to quickly and iteratively deliver the remaining 80%.
  2. Delivering in a matrix. Often I hear that if one party isn’t comfortable with the direction, the whole project stops. Solution is don’t tell anyone you’re doing it. Keep your focus small and under the radar. Success is impossible to argue against.
  3. The boss! Sometimes the bosses view has the greatest weight but matters the least! Move from direction to opinion and once you’ve done that, help them understand their opinion has less weight than that of the customers. Hey, I didn’t say this was easy!
  4. Analysis paralysis. Cant make a decision because you don’t have all the answers to all the questions you have? Each question opens up another 3 questions? Just stop. Whatever data you have is no where near as good as you’re going to have once your strategy is live.
  5. Competition! Watching the competition, wondering what their next step is, trying to plan to do what they’re doing but better is a sure fire way to delivering nothing. Take the guess work out and just do something. That will be the springboard to enable you to beat the competition.

If you have any other inhibitors, drop me a line and I’ll update the post with your name and entry.

4 Key steps to start you on your Digital Transformation Journey

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So welcome to 2015 and my first post of the year!

One of my goals for my posts this year is to relay my experience of delivering a digital business transformation in the hope that it helps, supports, proves or disproves your own thoughts and ideas on delivering your own digital transformation

digitaltrans

 

The first question to answer is how do you get started? The old school approach has been to spend a significant amount of time (and money) understanding where you are now and where you need to be. This tends to involve many weeks and months of capability audits, skill assessments, workshops, roadmaps etc. Often resulting in many 100+ page Powerpoint documents with some beautiful imagery and graphs, and 1 page executive summaries.

Personally I’ve found this to be of no use. Who knows where you should be? Competitors? Consultancies? Frankly I don’t know how anyone can clearly define where you should be, other than yourself. The digital channels and engagement desires of your customers are evolving continuously. Businesses (including your competitors) are trying different things continuously in a vain attempt to deliver the promised goal of many a transformation.

The Modern Digital Transformation Path

 

For me Digital Transformation is really a number of smaller measurable projects, delivered at speed and iteratively. This is not just to ensure you quickly provide value to your customers, but also because the digital arena is adapting and evolving so quickly, the sooner you’re in the game, the better!

So the 4 key steps to take to start your transformation are:

  1. Focus your transformation not on how your business is organised or desires to be portrayed externally, but on your customer. Read about the business your customers are in, spend a little time talking to them. Be wary though, they also don’t know what they want and can steer you completely in the wrong direction, but they will be able to clearly identify for you where the opportunities lie! From this you’ll probably get a bit of a gut feel for the area your transformation needs to focus on.
  2. Don’t even think about trying to transform the whole business. You will fail. Don’t even try a whole function. Instead define a small measurable goal to kick off your transformation. Avoid a company wide one e.g. growth in a country by x, or y new customers. You want something small such that you can identify the external factors that may influence your success in achieving that goal. I would make every attempt to keep the audience of this small, the board I have found are best kept at a distance at this stage. You’ll need them later!
  3. Engage with a small consultancy to brainstorm how you can deliver that goal. What digital tools / channels do you THINK will help. Until you try no one knows for sure, so this is a leap of faith. What the agency will be able to do for you is provide you a semblance of probability of success based on their experience. try to ensure your transformation project touches a number of digital technologies and or channels. For example include a website, blogs and an app in your first project.
  4. Finally develop your project plan, Ensure you can deliver the majority of the activities in 12 weeks! I know that sounds aggressive, but it can be done so long as you keep everyone focused on the fact that this is an iterative deployment and perfection is not required out of the gate.

So that’s how I got started. Happy to hear any views on what you’ve tried, but in case you haven’t started yet…get to it! Time waits for no-one!

Carve your own path – Fashion v Function

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Selecting the right tools

Selecting the right tools

As Christmas / the Holidays rolls rapidly along, and people’s minds start musing on just how much money is deemed an acceptable amount of money with which one can buy oneself a present, without it appearing self-indulgent/greedy/selfish, I’ve started wondering what makes people choose, what is often the wrong tech?!

I’m thinking specifically about work and the professional environment here, that started this train of thought! I recently acquired a Blackberry Passport for work. I could have chosen any device, but find that the BB does exactly what I need from a work device…email, opening and editing Office docs without the need for reformatting, my full work calendar and a battery that lasts me a full day (over 2 days to be precise) etc. So if it can do all this, why are iPhones or Android devices so coveted by professionals and in the work place? Apps I hear – and often read – are the big difference. But what apps do I actually need that I can’t get on a BB? Maps, got them. Browser, got it. Whatsapp, yup. LinkedIn, yes. So I can only surmise then that its more fashionable and perhaps a status symbol, as I struggle to see that there is truly any additional value an iPhone for example brings, compared to a less expensive BB.

This thought carries across to tablets too. So many companies are iPad crazy. Again, why? The Windows tablets are perfect for the workplace. You can get all you mail accounts, open and edit Office docs again with ease etc. So whats the fuss with the iPad? Retina display, do you really care when using a device at work? I’m not sure it makes any discernible difference! Fashion over function!

Marketing Trends

So then I started thinking about digital marketing activity. At the moment content marketing is all the rage. Why? is it because some agency stated that it should be? Is there some digital marketing path that we should all be following? Who says we should be focused on this, especially when there’s no conclusive data that says it works. It feels to me like someone makes a suggestion and everyone, again to be seen to be doing the right thing (on trend), jumps on the train. Is it about content, or value? Inbound or outbound?

My suggestion and advice is, do what you/your business needs to do. All these trends and fashions might work for one, but certainly not all. It should be about fit for purpose not a fashionable fit!

Don’t look for what isn’t there. You won’t find it!

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B2B v B2C

B2B v B2C

So, my team and I are merrily rocking along the road to implementing our digital transformation strategy…swatting aside the ney-sayers, pessimists, doubters and layers of bureaucracy, with the full knowledge that my digital strategy is the only suitable strategy for the business.

However, there is one thing that puzzles me, and simply put it is whether there is any difference between a B2C and B2B purchaser. The reason I really want to understand this is because I don’t just want the strategy to work for now, but to adapt and work in 2, 3 and 4 years from now. To ensure this I feel I really need to understand whether I’m articulating a strategy for a specific B2B target, or whether in the very near future there really will just be a person with money to buy something and the channels used, experience expected and content consumed will be the same!

Why does this matter? Well I feel that if there really is a B2B buyer and their behaviour and approach to digital channels is different from that of you and I as a general consumer, then I need to ensure I’m continually feeling for that engagement. Staying abreast of the channels used and even the type of content required. However, if there is more of a merge of the two and a creation of a B2P (Business To Person), then I really need to just follow the latest trends in digital channels and adoption, “videos are in…then lets do videos!”. I like easy, and the latter sounds easier!

My personal belief is that we’re already moving to the B2P world. I really felt mid last year that the B2B consumer suddenly became more like a B2C one, leveraging and trusting more and more content online, and engaging the different and new digital channels as they did so. Will it stay that way. Is the type of product being marketed online going to be the only differentiator between a B2B and a B2C?

 

It’s not what you think, but what ‘they’ think!

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I recently stumbled across a great McKinsey report from 2013 that highlighted what top global B2B companies stated as impactful to their brand theme versus what their customer felt contributed to brand strength. Below is an extract of one of the tables in the report.

Brand strength

You’ll notice in the table that there’s an interesting trend in both graphs, namely on the left column (what B2B’s think was important) is almost completely opposite to that on the right (what customers found contributed to brand strength)!

I’m not sure I’m surprised by this, but it is a reminder that the sometimes corporate over-arching direction and/or messages – “…we’re he market leader”, “…we operate globally…” although may satiate the appetite of the CEO’s of the customers, do little to convince the purchasing power in the customers organisations the value of that vendor. However, engaging candidly and with transparency, delivering on time and having domain expertise does significantly contribute to brand engagement and probably (not stated) loyalty!

It’s a reminder that we all have opinions and views that play heavily on the definition and execution of our strategies, but the need to sense check what we think they want is actually what ‘they‘ want.

Your opinion is irrelevant! (Or living in an adaptable digital age)

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Opinions

Ok, that’s a pretty strong title, and this article may be a tad provocative. However, although not being a career marketer, it consistently surprises me at how slow to change, adopt and acclimatise to new approaches, different styles or bold brand changes marketing organisations are! I find it astonishing that many of my peers across industry have failed to adapt their marketing style for the digital age! Again I’m talking primarily B2B (although I’m sure this runs across all industries!).

I often find myself in discussions and debates about the look and feel of a website, the colour of logo or promo page or the text and font of an article. Why? In this highly technical world, we can change pretty much everything in a matter of moments (IT permitting!) “You don’t like the font, no problem let’s make it ‘Krungthep’ then”, “the image is wrong ok, we’ve changed it.”

It’s my belief this procrastination on appearance, look & feel etc. harps back to the days of print media. Remember those days, where once its in the post it’s too late for changes. You’ve printed your 10,000 brochures and are still not sure of the background colour, tough!

In this modern digital world, and with the digital tools that jangle around in it, adaptability is the key to success! Changes can be made on the fly or over a weekend if you prefer. Tests can be run to see exactly which colour or style or brand message etc. your audience prefers or engages with. We need to adopt the approach of TRY-TEST-REVISE and help our organisations move faster and provide greater connection with our customer base.

Now, lets extend this thought a little broader…what about the creation and execution of the digital strategy itself? Maybe a topic for next time.