]]> tag:www.artandscienceblog.com,2008://1.110 2008-07-09T16:25:17Z 2008-07-09T15:22:21Z

Beyond demographics, have you identified their psychographics? Behaviors? Motivators? Hot buttons? Have you taken the time to segment them into like-minded groups?

Seriously, indulge me with a response to this quick poll, and then read on to see how other marketers fair.

Sadly, you're in the minority. I was shocked to learn from a recent CMO Council survey of 450 global marketers that less than 8% categorized themselves as having Excellent or Good knowledge of their customers' demographic, behavioral, psychographic and transactional data. The rest have fair to little knowledge of what makes their customers tick.

As Sohrab Vossoughi wrote in his recent BusinessWeek article, "How to Stand Out? Try Authenticity,"

Get to know your customers on an intimate basis. That's the only way to cut through the noise...'Different' is no longer a differentiator. What is? Creating an authentic relationship with your customers."

Vossoughi astutely points out a "confluence of factors" that have created a demand for customer intimacy:

• The public's declining trust of businesses and institutions
  
• An increased media savviness that makes them less inclined to fall for marketing ploys
  
• Reality television and virtual worlds skewing their definition of reality
  
• Technological advancements that make product and service information - as well as real-world customer reviews of same - readily available to anyone with an Internet connection

We work with our clients every day to help them create meaningful dialogues with their customers through rich insights and needs assessments. We have a variety of methods for doing this, including customer analytics, primary research and syndicated data sources. It needn't be a massive, organizational burden, but it does require dedication. And like Mr. Vossoughi, we recognize that these relationships can change over time, and our marketing plans must change with them.

Knowing your customer is critical to developing messages, offers, and channel plans that will resonate with them. Like any good relationship, you must work at it regularly, and be sensitive to the other parties' needs.

Imagine that you gave everyone in your personal life the same gift - say Omaha Steaks - for every occasion (birthdays, holidays, anniversaries, etc.). While I may love you for eternity if a box of bacon-wrapped filets showed up on my doorstep every month, your four year old son may be underwhelmed if he unwrapped that very same gift at his birthday party. Your uncle who's battling heart disease and struggling with dietary restrictions may be equally dismayed. And your vegan wife - who you've known and loved for years - may be downright angry at your thoughtlessness.   

You treat your personal relations differently - for good reason; don't your business relations deserve the same?

Related links:

You knew your customer when you first met. What about now? 

Recession? Time to start spending. 

So it was refreshing to hear the results of CIO Magazine's annual State of the CIO survey. Because the survey brought to light something that we’ve believed here for a while – not all Cs are created equal, or at least they're not all created the same.

The survey revealed that in fact there are three types of CIOs, and which archetype a CIO aligns with has nothing to do with the industry they're in or the size of their organization (it's so tempting to simply segment your audience by vertical industry or revenue). In fact, it has everything to do with how they perceive their role in the organization, the organizational imperatives they believe they should be supporting and leading, and what they feel they, and their organizations, should focus on. It's about how they behave, not simply what they do.

The three CIO archetypes identified by the research team include:

1. Functional head
2. Transformational leader, and
3. Business strategist

One archetype isn’t better than the other, rather it’s about where a CIO allocates his or her time. Functional heads drill down, focusing on improving IT operations and systems and managing the IT budget. Transformational leaders lead change efforts and identify opportunities to redesign business processes. Business strategists take an even broader approach, putting IT in the context of the business by developing and refining business strategy, understanding market trends and identifying opportunities for competitive differentiation.

Curly: You know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean ****.
Mitch: That's great, but what's the one thing?
Curly: That's what you've got to figure out.

One thing.  It's as important in getting your message across as it is in life.  OK, OK, maybe not "as important."  But make a single point.  Clearly.  In a smart, meaningful way.  And you're likely to have a very effective piece of marketing communication.

Alas, that's not the reality.  Too often, we try to cram in as many points, proofs, features, benefits, graphs and charts as space or time will allow.  All with the assumption that a prospect will eventually stumble across something relevant. Somewhere in there.

Who's got that kind of patience?  Or time? Or interest? 

Not me.
I'll bet not you, either.

And that, gentle reader, is the point.

The award was given for Balanced Living (See "Custom Content"), a quarterly magazine designed as part of a larger integrated acquisition and conversion campaign for Genzyme's SYNVISC.Balanced Living magazine was designed to look and feel like a real magazine – not like a sales-focused direct mail piece. Each target segment within the SYNVISC database receives a different version of Balanced Living based on their specific segment's needs.


Response to Balanced Living from the target audience has been strong, and Genzyme has even receive requests for additional copies and subscriptions for people not on the current mailing list.

Special thanks to Genzyme and the SYNVISC team for the opportunity to develop this program.  Also, thanks to the P+s team that developed this excellent piece of direct marketing creative:

Steve Lynch, Creative Director
Anthony Henriques, Creative Director
Doug Dayhoff, Art Director/Designer
Matt Fishbein, Copywriter
Ed Feather, Sr. Brand Director
Beth Johnson, Brand Manager
Melanie Winn, Traffic Manager
Victor Cali, Senior Production Manager

It seems that the negative industry news about ad spending is flooding my inbox on a daily basis. The headlines read: Online Retail Growth is Slowing, Upfront Questionable, Expected to Slip, U.S. Ad Spend Forecast for 2008 Lowered. Despite these reports and industry-wide cuts in spending, much has been written and validated about the benefits of maintaining or increasing marketing budgets during tough times. Studies have shown that you can not only gain competitive advantages while your competitors begin to pull back, but that those rewards can be reaped over the long-term.

Harvard Business School professor John Quelch wrote a great article about this topic in March. In his article, Marketing Your Way Through a Recession, published in the HBS Working Knowledge, Quelch suggests several key tactics for powering your way through an economic downturn. I have commented on three of the key points below.

 
Maintain Marketing Spending - The point Quelch makes here is simple: marketers that increase spending when competitors are cutting back generate better ROIs than during good economic times.  By taking advantage of more favorable advertising rates and locking in where possible, those willing to spend may be well positioned to benefit over the longer term. As a long-time direct marketer with a heavy current focus on B2B, I would also argue that an economic downturn is also when you may need to defend your spending more fervently to senior management. 

Don't be afraid to shift your spending into more accountable direct marketing programs where you can quantify your returns. Maybe this is why online online ad spending forecasts, despite some discrepancies, have remained positive.  Be willing to do more testing than before – conduct more tests with smaller test cells.  The learning you gain will pay major dividends and when your competitors return to normal spend levels, your understanding of market and customer responses will be a step ahead.

Focus on Family Values - This is a bit of a softer recommendation, but it makes sense. Quelch says, "When economic hard times loom, we tend to retreat to our village. Look for cozy hearth-and-home family scenes in advertising to replace images of extreme sports, adventure, and rugged individualism. Zany humor and appeals on the basis of fear are out."

While this recommendation may seem more geared towards B2C marketers, it applies on the B2B front as well.  Just because you are appealing to a decision maker making a purchasing decision on his/her company’s behalf, that individual or group of individuals is still feeling the same pinch of the economy as the typical consumer. S/he will be turned off by aggressive tactics, so keep it simple and play it safe.

For other great insights and data on increasing your ad spending during a bust period, check out this research on the importance and value of B2B advertising during times of economic uncertainty put out by American Business Media.

Custom content is becoming more of the norm across many verticals, including the pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device arenas.  Consumers are looking for helpful, educational information about conditions affecting them or a loved one.  Marketers have begun to embrace this need for information, and are now providing educational content online via websites, RSS feeds, emails, blogs and videos, and offline via direct mail, doctor office booklets, and many other formats.

As with any marketing, we must start with the target audience: Who are they?  What do they need?  What do they want?  How do they want to be communicated with?  In the pharmaceutical and medical device space, consumers have become extremely leery of information provided by the industry.  Thus, it is increasingly important to provide content that has immediate relevance and that clearly shows the origination of information.  For example, providing references at the end of an article can make a major difference to the untrusting consumer eye.

Different stages of the audience life cycle can also affect the type and placement of developed content.

For example, placing unbranded articles on a third-party health site about a specific disease state, treatment options, and details about talking with doctors can be very helpful to patients who may be very frustrated with the healthcare process.  Catch their attention and capture leads by placing targeted banner ads and text links around your custom content.

Once you have opt-in from your audience, an ongoing custom content communications program can help to drive the conversion stage of your program.  The content needs to be fresh, interesting and relevant.  The more personalized it can be, the better. 

For example, over the past year, P+s has provided a highly personalized custom content magazine called Balanced Living to patients who have asked for more information about SYNVISC (www.synvisc.com).  SYNVISC is a treatment from Genzyme Corporation that is used for osteoarthritis knee pain.  Patients who opt in for communications, and answer a few questions for segmentation, receive a personalized copy of the publication on a quarterly basis.

A branded website can also be a great place to add custom content. Content can take any form, but again must be relevant to your audience as well as interesting.  Well-developed website content can provide higher search rankings for your site on Google.com and other search engines.  Adding new content such as third-party articles, blog entries, updated RSS feeds, press releases, etc. can help your site gain higher search rankings.

Another excellent example of custom content for today’s online consumer is video content, including patient testimonials.  P+s has worked with the SYNVISC team to develop their online video content.  Providing a transcript of the video content allows people with slower connections to read the testimonials, and allows the search engines to index the content for search rankings.

As consumers try to block out advertising and marketing messages more and more, custom content (branded and unbranded) can be the key to the success of your campaigns.

There's lots of talk out there about how to market to Boomers. We all know they're more active, educated and media-savvy than past "senior" generations, and there's big money to be made off of them. But the majority of the senior population is still composed of non-Boomers, and will be for a while, even as ballooning numbers of Boomers join the retiree ranks. (The oldest Boomers, remember, are only 62.)

This means that for now, marketing aimed at so-called seniors has to speak simultaneously to the generation that swung to Sinatra at their high school prom and the one that rocked out to the Rolling Stones; to the people who said "don't trust anyone over thirty" and the people that they were talking about.

How can marketers bridge the generation gap?

Navigating the healthcare system is stressful, whether you're 65 or 90. Everybody wants to stay healthy and independent. Nobody wants to be a burden on their spouse or children. These are the kind of universal concerns we kept circling back to in our recent healthcare assignment.

The jury is still out on which of the campaigns we developed will actually run. But any of them—we hope—should strike a meaningful chord for everyone in the audience, regardless of their age. 

WRONG

Global companies have global customers. So a customer in Bangalore should have the same brand experience as a customer in Tokyo, Paris or Toronto. And in today's increasingly fragmented media environment, demand generation can play an even greater role in your brand perception than your traditional brand building mediums such as PR or advertising. Ignore this at your own risk.

And then of course there is the matter of finances. Developing 50 different campaigns in 50 different countries each and every quarter certainly doesn't have a positive impact on EBITDA does it? You're losing all of the economies of scale benefits offered by a more centralized demand generation structure.

So why don't more companies do it?

1. Equal Process & Politics: You need to gain an understanding of the internal politics and let that drive the process. For a multi-billion dollar technology client of ours, Europe was always the wheel seeking to spin in its own direction. So how did we solve that? We developed the campaign first with Europe in mind, ensuring their buy-in and adoption before rolling out elsewhere.

2. Understand, Then Be Understood: Technology companies go through detailed internal and external discovery efforts when working on developing their brand, why not take the same tack when developing a global demand generation campaign. Conduct internal interviews with key stakeholders to gain an insight into regional preferences and variations for audience, messaging and tactics. This will ensure your efforts have a solid foundation and are built to suit the needs of your global markets.

3. Participation, Not Buy-in: This can’t be a compromise upon compromise effort ending up in a watered down campaign that everyone has signed off on, but no prospect would ever respond to. That will be doomed for failure. Ultimately you need a tight group to make decisions and validation research with actual prospects should determine the direction not personal opinions or global committees.

4. Relationships=Results: Another key reason for taking the time to conduct a full internal discovery effort is all of those interviews provide a great opportunity to build key relationships that will play dividends when driving the campaign through each region. You're an ally working with them to make their job easier, not some corporate minion at the headquarters throwing the latest, greatest North American campaign into their market.

5. Art Of The Possible: Ultimately global demand generation work needs to exist where effectiveness meets efficiency. There are tight budgets and timelines and quarterly lead quotas that have to be met. You need to be flexible in your approach, developing for the long haul, but the engine can’t come to a complete halt along the way.

I won't sugarcoat it for you. Global Demand Generation is not for the faint of heart. It is hard work, but if developed the right way, there are huge marketing and financial benefits to your company, in addition to the benefit it will have on your career.

Blogs. If you couldn't make it to Las Vegas for the show, reading blogs was the next best thing to being there. From exhibitors to editors to attendees walking the floor, it seemed everyone was posting about what they saw or heard. Pictures of booths were posted, video interviews, or just reactions to what exhibitors were saying (see below). But the blogs did more than simply give non-attendees a glimpse of the show, it also allowed attendees to share their immediate thoughts on what worked, what didn't, and what is worth learning more about long after the booths are packed up and shipped back to their warehouses. In short, blogs were the real-time eyes and the ears of the show. 

Green is the new black. From Nortel's booth enticing attendees to "Calculate your Cisco energy tax" to the show organizers proclaiming INTEROP’s aisle carpets were made of 60% recycled materials, "environmentally friendly" was the talk of the day. Granted, when it comes to network equipment, reducing power means reducing costs, so in addition to helping the environment a more energy efficient device can also help the bottom line, but there's no denying that the "energy efficiency" message is here to stay.

Show No Fear. From Nortel's jab at Cisco's energy consumption to Xirrus' "Ditch the Switch" theme and Motorola's attempt to drive home the point that wired networks are prehistoric (that's a dinosaur made out of Cat 5 cable), exhibitors weren't afraid to promote their own offering by drawing explicit, sometimes aggressive, comparisons to their neighbor.

Open…and closed. INTEROP's heritage of promoting and testing interoperability between vendor products was apparent as exhibitors touted their standards-based solutions and ability to painlessly play nicely with others. While playing nice with others is a good thing, one look at the show floor and you couldn't help but notice the focus on protecting and securing the network. From McAfee's "Don't be the next data loss headline" and SonicWall's"Protection at the speed of business," to Blue Coat's "Stop the bad, accelerate the good," you couldn't help but wonder if while you were walking the floor some dastardly force was back in your office infiltrating your network and causing irreparable harm.

As a side note, check out McAfee's The S.P.A.M. Experiment - in the same way Morgan Spurlock lived his life on fast food for 30 days in the 'Super Size Me' documentary, volunteers from ten countries around the world conducted an experiment to live their lives by spam for 30 days. The participants' online diaries tell of their daily experiences and, at the end of 30 days, experts analyzed the spam and provided tips to help viewers keep the spam at bay. Pretty cool use of blogging – and relatable to anyone with an email address - getting McAfee's message across without the corporate spin.

All in all, INTEROP was bustling, with attendance up from last year, and 170 new exhibiting companies – a 25 percent increase. Even if the show floor continues to evolve, it appears that trade events are alive and kicking.

I'm re-entering the workforce after one of life's major changes – Motherhood.  After four months of maternity leave my life is forever altered.  With the joys of Motherhood also come sleep deprivation, a new commute, new shopping habits – the list goes on and on.

Changes in your customer and prospects profiles are an important part of understanding who they are.  These insights may lead to new up-sell and cross-sell opportunities.  Changes may mean shifting dollars and tweaking messages as prospects move from a core target to secondary target and vice versa.

• Multiple person household with child (and dog)
• Changes in media consumption
• My TV viewing has gone from prime time, to prime time appointment viewing, and even then it's often time shifted by the DVR
• I watch more infomercials now because I'm up at odd hours and sometimes mindless TV is all my sleep deprived mind can take
• My reading habits have changed.  The catalogs I once flipped through religiously are now in a pile that grows taller while it gathers dust.  Yet, when Parents magazine comes – I read it that night cover to cover
• Many of the blogs I read now are on baby related sites – www.babble.com
• Changes in purchasing habits
• I'm a BJ's club shopper now and clip coupons – diapers are expensive.  I even joined www.couponmom.com.  (Although this change is not solely linked to Motherhood but also the economy and rising food prices)
  
• I'm spending less discretionary income on decorating and more on food and clothing  

Some marketers are paying attention to the changes in my life – my mailboxes are full.  For some (life insurance, college savings products), I am now a desirable prospect.  Yet others (Martha Stewart Living magazine, West Elm) miss me and are sending me offers to try and drive purchase.  Kudos to you.  You will more than likely increase my purchasing habits as well my affinity for your brand.

And then there are those marketers who have no idea that my life has been changed at all.  They are wasting their marketing dollars by targeting me with products and messages that are now irrelevant.