Tag Archives: digital

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.

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Personally I think its Personalisation!

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Personalisation

I was recently invited to speak at one of the Innovation Enterprise summits in London (IE run some excellent global events that attract CxO level attendees from a spectrum of businesses areas). Although this event was focused primarily on content, I was giving the final talk of the day and chose to concentrate on personalisation.

I opened with the above diagram and although all the images relate to recent experiences of mine, they all ultimately describe the need to know me as a person, and the importance of delivering a digital engagement that is targeted to me…that is me! Not a persona or machine generated impression of me, but me!

Why does this matter? In my opinion because I believe this is key to the digital future of all companies. We know of the generic user journeys we’ve no doubt all mapped, and the personas we’ve all created. But they are still very generic.

Marketing Week - Reaching e-commerce consumers in the 12-minute window

Marketing Week – Reaching e-commerce consumers in the 12-minute window

With ever shortening attention spans and social channels becoming clogged with information, ads or updates, getting the message across is becoming increasingly harder.

However, something targeted to me in my favourite colour (seriously) or on my preferred channel, or more importantly that knows where I am in the purchase journey and targets the information I need at this stage, will get me interested and engaged. The rest drop in to my conscious but dis-engaged delete marathon that I run almost daily on my spam email address (you know the one you use to register for white papers and so on).

In summary to get ahead you first need to get to know!

 

 

5 Key Inhibitors To Delivering Your Digital Strategy

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implementation

 

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.

Which digital channel is right for me? #toomanychannels

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Sometime back, before I had created the digital strategy for my business and started its digital transformation journey, this question perplexed me. And I mean, really perplexed me! Which are the right digital channels to engage with? confused

Which, of all the digital channels should I use? Which one will guarantee me success? Facebook is on the wane should I therefore ignore it? LinkedIn is for business will I alienate people if I use it. What does a B2B need v a B2C? Is Twitter of any value…and so on.

Of course, the answer is all of them! They are all relevant and important channels to ensure the successful implementation of your digital strategy and transformation. So don’t waste too much time deliberating which one matters to you, but instead think about which one(s) you might want to start with.

To help with this, some considerations you may want to take into account

  1. Do you have a strong web site, mobile friendly, engaging etc.? Ultimately you’re going to want all move your customers to an action, and this will be either interacting with content or hopefully buying something. And that is likely to be on your website. So if your tweets or blogs are awesome, but your website is as engaging as a magnolia painted brick, you’re going to have problems. Sort out your website first!
     website
  2. What country are your audience in, and how does your target audience in these countries leverage and engage with the various digital channels today? This is a key consideration. Brasil for example are big on Social Media for B2C and B2B engagement. China have Weibo and don’t allow Youtube etc. So if Brazil is your target country and you were planning on using LinkedIn, you’re strategy may fail purely based on using the wrong channel. Identify your audience, where they are and what they use today.Digital snapshot
  3. What kind of content do you have/can you generate and how frequently? In this sound-bite consumption world, not all hooks catch a fish. So having frequent and different content types across the channels maximizes your chance of catching a prospective customer. Develop a content strategy, keep it simple and build in a resource plan to keep it current!(image source: http://www.garyhyman.com)contentwritingblog
  4. Can you rank the digital channels by probabilities of successful engagement? Roll out your strategy on 1-2 channels first, gauge the customer engagement, and the commitment from your side to keep the content flowing, and then add in others as your experience and ability mature. My suggestion would be not to start with your highest ranked probability of success, but to start light and less obviously  (image source: http://www.smartinsights.com)Buyersphereb2breport2015influencevsusage
  5. Finally, are you aware of current and future trends? We have some very established social channels now, but new ones appear almost daily and you need to either corner the market on them for your brand immediately or keep close tabs to see how/if they blossom. Either way, you should have a cookie cutter approach to adopting new digital channels, such that you can swiftly execute an adoption plan.

2015-digital-marketing-trends--what-opportunities-lie-ahead_54978e613f9cd

I hope you found this of some use.

Catch you all soon.

 

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!

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.

It’s all about the numbers!

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Or is it?!

I’ve spent the last 3 months building a transformative digital strategy for my business. Spending the early weeks reviewing articles from the big consultancies jumping to the graphs that say ‘A’ is better than ‘B’, conceiving, executing and analysing my own customer surveys looking for what the customer is doing and where, reviewing articles and info-graphics on ROI’s, KPI’s, and other metrics interrogating the information for insight and relevance, and so on

Having assimilated as much of this information as I possibly could, I discarded the majority of it! There was certainly a lot of data, numbers, reports, surveys, dashboards etc. but what became apparent very quickly was, there is almost no data or benchmarks that can be applied to either what I’m thinking of doing, or even the use of digital in my space! In fact a lot of the data I reviewed could if taken at face value have led to the production of a very myopic strategy, based on what is done today and the prejudices of those that have been in this industry for many many years.

The reason I bring this up is simply because senior leaders and executives often look for data to prove the potential of something. How quickly will I see a change? How quickly will I get my return on investment? How many sales will this lead to? Etc. However in the case of a digital strategy, it’s a theory! Although there may be data that helps support part of a strategy, a strategy in itself should be a unique, untested concept that will be proven out over a period of time. ROI’s, Sales or other KPI’s can be proposed but frankly they’re guesstimates.

So I started to wonder how many truly innovative digital strategies, concepts or ideas have been prematurely killed by the fear of not having a clear line of sight to a metric, or because a guesstimate was inaccurate or datapoint was not achieved on time? I suspect quite a significant number.

How do you get around this, after all this is nothing new? Well I propose 2 things.

The first is for the management teams and is a difficult one, but frankly if you’ve hired a great digital leader or team really shouldn’t be, and that is TRUST! Trust in the leap of faith your employees are proposing. Leave the data blanket alone and just believe in your team.

The second is for those building the strategies and will help with the above point. Keep both the cost and time of execution as low as possible, but without undermining your digital strategy in a way that it impedes the potential success of it. Look for POC’s and Pilots, keep the first set of deliverables manageable, and iterate iterate iterate.

As for my digital strategy, fortunately I have a CEO, CMO and leadership team that don’t mind calculated risks and in fact support leaps of faith! Me, I’m executing on my strategy and I hope many more can convince their leaders and peers that in the digital world, all bets are off!

Its about the customer…but by the customer!

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A number of articles recently have talked about the importance of the customer, and the burgeoning need on suppliers to ensure the focus of marketing activities is around content that delivers value to the customer. A report out this year (The Growing Power of Consumers – published by Deloitte 2014) for example highlights the need for suppliers to (among others) move to informing and educating customers rather than just selling to them.

But is the manufacturer becoming redundant in the provision of value to the customer in the pre-purchase part of the buying journey?

Bear with me, but if I think about when I want to buy a product as a consumer (new tumble dryer as it turns out is need of the moment) it’s the customer reviews of the products that have a gigantic impact on my decision-making process. I then use various comparison sites to get the best price and finally the actual manufacturers site for dimensions etc. (unless of course these were provided earlier in the purchase journey). It seems pretty clear the value I, and others, place on a consumer review as opposed to what the manufacturers site might have to say.

However, the question I’ve not yet quite managed to answer and welcome your thoughts on, is does this carry over to the B2B world? I’m starting to think it does and that in the very very near future, no matter what product is being purchased, my guess is reviews and experience of use by peers, is going to become the single most significant input with which 90% of the buyers will seek out, trust and make a decision on! Whether it’s the final end user or sourcing department, the final decision to purchase will be based on what the collective peer group say about it.

If my musings are right (they may not be) then how many B2B’s are prepared to and looking at building, growing and supporting a site where the good the bad and the ugly is discussed in an open and transparent fashion?