In today's highly integrated marketing environment, more and more marketers are developing their own custom content as part of their advertising and marketing programs.  According to Junta42, "business marketers are allocating almost 30% of their marketing budgets toward the creation and execution of customized content.  In 2008, 42% of marketers said they would increase their content marketing budget."

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.

In lead generation or acquisition, the audience is searching for information, but has not made a decision about their purchase, treatment, etc.  Developing content that helps them take that next step can be the key to a successful lead generation campaign. 

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.

Posted by Ed Feather at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've recently been working on a campaign for one of our healthcare clients, targeting people who are eligible for Medicare, or soon will be -- basically anyone over sixty. It sounds simple enough, but in trying to think about the tone and feel of the campaign, my partner and I found ourselves bumping up against a major divide within this population. We had to speak simultaneously to a generation that came of age during World War II and the prosperous post-war years, and another—the Baby Boomers--whose identities were forged in the cultural upheaval of the sixties and seventies.

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?

My opinion – perhaps a surprisingly uncynical one for a Gen-Xer – is that the best way is to find the emotional common ground: the concerns, fears, joys and hopes that everyone in this segment shares, regardless of whether they voted for Nixon or McGovern in 1972. Get past psychographics and demographics and think about common humanity:

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. 

Posted by Jane Roper at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why do we bother with global demand generation? Life is so much easier if all of the regions manage their own campaigns. After all, who knows their region better than they do? It removes all of the politics and makes global marketing just one big happy family. Right?

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?

It's hard work. Imagine tacky office politics played out over a global stage. "That's fine that you developed this campaign. But if you want to run it, fund it yourself." Competitive and anti-cooperative situations tend to be the norm. So how can you overcome this:

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.

Posted by Doug Fox at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Recently I attended INTEROP Las Vegas. Roaming a trade show floor stacked high with servers and switches, routers and security devices. While I was there checking out how various companies were positioned, how they attempted to set themselves apart from the competition across the aisle using the same language to sell a similar offering, I noticed some trends.

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.

Posted by Jennifer O'Connell at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Life is changing and so is my persona.

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.

Updates to my profile might include:

• 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.

Posted by Kara Tierney at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I recently had the opportunity to take part in Creative Café at Boston University's College of Communication (COM). On a rainy Monday evening, young advertising students waited anxiously to share their portfolios as local industry professionals like myself filed into the student lounge.

The night started with wine and hors d'oeuvres, but quickly turned into an exchange of ideas—and hopefully some sound critique. I met with student copywriters and art directors one-on-one to review their books and weigh in on what I liked and what I didn't. I tried to offer the best advice I could, while also sharing some pointers on how to break into the creative side of advertising. After all, graduation lurks right around the corner.

As a COM grad (Class of 2000), the event reminded me of how difficult it is to get your start. It wasn't so long ago that I was on the other side, crafting my first book, seeking counsel, and developing the thick skin needed to survive it all.

Of course, it all comes down to the creative, even at that early stage. But in this tough market and in this digital age, expectations are higher than ever. Tim Brunelle, an early mentor of mine at Arnold (whether he knew it or not), just wrote a "commencement speech" to May's grads. Tim Brunelle discusses the difficulties of breaking through and shares a survey he conducted with 10 creative leaders and recruiters. It's a compelling read. 

The advertising program at BU may not be on par with Miami Ad School or the Portfolio Center, but it does equip students with the tools needed to put a good book together and get a job. Creative Café is a prime example: To get this much exposure to so many professional opinions is invaluable.

Yet those opinions are also a stark lesson in subjectivity—a lesson best learned early. For two hours, students showed their books to one person, then got back in line and showed someone else, thus generating a staggering amount of contrasting feedback. A campaign I gave the thumbs-up may have been heave-hoed by another creative. It's a lot for a college student to absorb, but it may be the best introduction to life as an entry-level writer or AD. Welcome to advertising, kid.

All in all, I was impressed with the level of creative. There was some bad work, for sure. Several ideas shouted "student-made." But there was also a lot of good work. A lot of elegant design, solid writing, and smart thinking. Few books were strong start to finish, but each had a gem or three. With some finessing and a little luck, these students may just return to COM in eight years to learn another lesson: Time flies.

Want to add your own lesson? Post a comment with your memories of breaking through and getting that first job. What was the hardest part? What helped you stand out? If you're a creative, what was the best or worst ad in your book? 

Posted by Matt Fishbein at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday was my day for door-to-door salespeople. I had two knocks within 15 minutes of each other. I can go six months without the doorbell ringing once so the two calls so close together was unusual. In my current neighborhood, however, the door-to-door sales effort has become a rite of Spring.

In the past, it's been a high school or college kid looking to paint my house or a lawn service technician promising to transform my yard. Yesterday, I had two very different experiences, which made me reflect on the value of tone.

The first knock was another college kid looking to schedule a free gutter estimate. Of note was his physical location - after knocking he had retreated fifteen feet to the bottom of our front stairs. He physically wasn't in my face and that helped make him to be less intimidating, less intrusive. He also had a grin that was ear-to-ear - this guy was happy doing what he was doing. First impression was positive. He asked how I was and if I had a few minutes. Polite – my positive perception was growing.

He went on to describe how he was setting up free gutter estimates for some of my neighbors. I need gutters so we kept talking, building some rapport. His enthusiasm made me think he believed in what he was doing. When we got to setting up a calendar date for my free estimate I naturally asked how long for the appointment. "An hour and a half" was his reply. This information effectively ended our exchange.

Clearly, my free estimate - his offer - was really a commitment for a hard selling appointment. I just don't have that kind of time or interest in that, and I told him so. He understood and off he went undaunted to knock on my neighbor’s door.

The second knock was a technician from a well-known Telco brand. Her service vehicle was across the street and she wore dirty branded overalls. We had ended our phone service with this brand nearly two years before - instead signing up with our cable provider for phone and Internet service.

This brand has been relentless in their direct mail efforts to bring us back. But, there she stood as living brand ambassador right at the door a mere tweleve inches from being inside my house. She wasn't grinning either. She was at the end of her day, and door-to-door selling was clearly not her primary job.

She had me as a current customer, but I corrected her. She didn't like that and her face went from low energy to a little annoyed. She wanted to tell me about the latest and great television service upgrades in my neighborhood, but her tone and body language said she wanted to go home. I didn't waste her time and pretty quickly gave her the "not interested" response.

Door to door seems like an extremely old world way to sell. I see how it can work for the local, small business. And I even appreciate the notion of how extending the use of your service people to sales people could help grow your business. But, a little training and the right tone can impact your results. Whether your unknown brand or a well-known brand, in this medium being friendly, positive and helpful are mandatory. Does anyone know if there’s a Do Not Ring My Door Bell list like the Do Not Call list for telemarketers?

Posted by Todd Baird at 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Guided Navigation and search (we will focus on Guided Navigation for this post) is one of those intriguing concepts that is difficult to explain, but easy to understand once you see its use. When I offer the concept as a potential solution to new clients, I find myself thinking back to Psyche 101 (I hated those classes) where two of us sat back-to-back—one of us describing shapes and the other one trying to draw them.

While there are a few players in this space, I will focus on a technology (MDEX Engine) from Cambridge-based Endeca. As one of Endeca's first partners, I continue to evangelize their solution because frankly, it is one of the best in this space. Frequently, I find myself exploring new implementations (www.homedepot.com and www.walmart.com) and discovering even better ways to use it. Having implemented sites with Guided Navigation (and analyzed their success), I continue to be amazed that more sites do not adopt it.

So what exactly is Guided Navigation?

In its most elegant form, it is a way for users to interface with information in a context that allows them to refine it and explore further.  Typical interaction models support a "query and response" form that requires the user to have knowledge of a given topic. Even if the user has some knowledge, they will most likely receive a long list of responses that may or may not provide any value (oh great, another long list of items to choose from).

Guided Navigation offers an "intuitive" interaction model. This approach treats information retrieval as a dialog between users and a site. It actually presents the user with a response and offers several refinement options that the user might not even know existed. The best part is that it always provides the user with valid next steps.

In order to explain Guided Navigation using a practical example, I am going to use a favorite topic of mine—WINE. This was also one of the first example sites built by Endeca and it remains a great learning tool today.

If you think about looking for a bottle of wine on one of your favorite wine sites, how would you begin? You might start by going to the primary navigation and clicking on "wine". Or better yet, you might locate the search box and type in a more exact phrase like "red wine" (probably because they did not have "red wine" in the navigation in the first place). The site will then provide you with a long, list of red wines based on one of any number of ranking systems. Or, if they subscribe to some school of usability, it will be in alphabetical order.

Now you begin to think, "oh great, but I have a limited budget and that bottle of Colgin Cariad Red far exceeds my price range." Not only can the number of bottles in the list far exceed your budget and imagination, but the number of questions you can ask yourself to find your next possible selection of wine to meet your budget is overwhelming.

This is where Guided Navigation begins to excel.

In the navigation scheme (made up of navigators), we can show the user every bottle of red wine as well as a set of related, primary attributes (called "dimensions" by Endeca). These related dimensions (in the form of clickable navigation) might include years, countries, ratings, wineries, price, etc.—all geared towards helping the user refine his/her choice. On top of the related dimensions, the Guided Navigation can dynamically discard invalid attributes.

For instance, if red wine is not made in a particular country, it will not show up in choice to the user. This "pruning" is necessary and will eliminate any "no results" found message. The best part? These navigators and dimensions are derived from the data input by the content managers on your site. There is no need for re-design.

Now, Guided Navigation can organize your next wine choices on several different levels. For example, a wine navigator may group categories into dimensions such as Vineyard, Wine Type, Vintage, etc. The categories within each dimension can be organized in a hierarchy so users have the option of zooming in from an aggregate view (French wines) to a lower view (Bordeaux wines) to the finest grain of detail (Pinot Noir wines). Again, these categories present themselves based on information stored in your database—structured or unstructured.

Most content object models have hundreds of attributes. Guided Navigation shows users only the dimensions that are most relevant for their current results. Data sets might have some dimensions that are available at all times because they are shared by every item. Other dimensions are only shared by a subset of the items and won’t appear until a user sees just that group.

Posted by Jim Burke at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)