This blog has moved: Note the new address

Hi There:

If you have subscribed to this blog on RSS, please note that I have discontinued posting on this blog and I now blog on marketing at

http://marketingdunia.wordpress.com

I really have no way to move your subscriptions over; so, please, do me a favour and follow the link above and follow my blog.

Ciao

PS: The latest 10 posts are:

• The real cost of CRM implementation
• Two approaches to building a CRM system
• CRM 2.0: limited to campaigns?
• CRM 2.0: Why the challenge is actually in adoption
• Social media mesh with conventional CRM- Part 2
• Social media mesh with conventional CRM- Part 1
• CRM for small business
• Google early announces “Wave”
• The chicken and the egg
• Tu Sprite pee!

Moving my blog over to Wordpress platform

Came back from a great vacation in Goa.  My blog on marketing resumes.

Effective this month, I have moved my blog over to the WP platform. So, those of you who have bookmarked the old location on blogger, please do a favour and move on over.

The new blog address is http://marketingdunia.wordpress.com

Trends for the online advertising market

Reality Sinks In at Online Advertising Confab - Advertising Age - Digital

I wanted to draw your attention to this very important, if depressing message coming out of (predominantly) US. Online advertising is not as immune to recession as previously thought. There are firms fighting for survival as budgets get squeezed and the whole display advertising business is coming under question.

Basically, there are two reasons to advertise: 

- the short term goal is to generate enough sales leads for the sales force to chase 

- the long term goal of building your brand

As their clients fight for survival, the ad agencies are under pressure to deliver short term leads. However, quality is bound to suffer in this short term focus. I expect more creative, if loose, definitions of what a lead is. And, that will be sad, because that is just postponing the problem by a quarter. This current market is unlikely to get better in a few months and dud leads will be shown up for what they are. 

IMHO, the online advertising model(before the advent of Web 2.0) has basically been largely about putting the alphabet 'e' before the corresponding traditional media version. So, we have banner ads (e-advertising),  e-direct mailers and e-newsletters and webinars (e-seminars). In many cases, we have been seduced by the efficiency of delivering content but we have not been as worried about the effectiveness of the message as it is delivered.

What does this mean for Indian marketers? I firmly believe that the only way for small businesses to make an entry today in the market is rely more on the internet to drive product adoption. Given that online media is still vastly under-represented in the marcom mix of most Indian companies, big or small, I think the market will still grow, albeit slowly. Here we are still on the efficiency curve. Also, there is an election coming and Obama has inspired all our political parties to explore the internet as a means to connect with the population. Given these factors, I still think the online advertising market in India will grow, even if the growth rate is nowhere as much as was forecast even a few months back.

Seth's Blog: Get rich quick

Sharing ideas is the best way to learn.
Why do I blog? What is it that draws me to the keyboard and share my thoughts with the world? It is the hope that someday, I will be welcome to participate in the discussions with you on marketing, the Indian SME space, how we can drive efficiencies and effectiveness in the way SMEs today approach marketing.
This is my own "Hyde Park corner". This is my pulpit. I do not sell snake oil, nor do I offer instant solutions to the many challenges that beset marketers, particularly in the SME space in India. My hope is that by throwing up issues to discuss, we will trigger thoughts. Hopefully, you will someday honour me by allowing me to eavesdrop into your thoughts and conversations.

Ownership of the funnel

- why clear demarcation of territories is unhelpful, even dangerous
Sales is responsible for immediate, this week/ this month and marketing looks at next month, next year and next life! Funny, but this is the kind of thinking that has ruined customer relationships, reduced sales role to deal management and restricted marketing to a role akin to a scriptwriter in a Bollywood movie; lucky to see his name featured in the credit-roll, if at all.
What is needed is a realization that both sales and marketing have long term and short term objectives/ goals and they need to collaborate in long to medium term growth in prospects, opportunities and leads. They each have a stake in ensuring the leads convert into orders and in promoting usage and thus customer satisfaction, loyalty and word of mouth.
Sales fights the battle, but today marketing is no longer just an enabler but active participant. The battle is not joined only on the day the salesman negotiates the final purchase with the customer but, on the days and months leading up to that day where the customer has moved from a state of no awareness to awareness to interest, evaluation and purchase. Marketing, sales and even customer support: they all play a role in these stages.
The engineer in me likens the various influences on a purchase process to the addition of lots of vectors. As we know, the maximum that you can obtain in a vector addition of several vectors is the sum of the magnitudes should the vectors be all in the exact same direction. Enough said.

Why marketing must partner sales

I have had the good (!) fortune of being on both sides of the great sales and marketing divide in B2B S&M organizations. When in marketing, the lament was how all efforts go to waste because sales "does not follow through and close the leads we generated" and in my stints in sales, I was convinced that "marketing is clueless"- about the market, about customers and their needs. Their leads were of no use to me. It was as if our goals and priorities were different.
The truth is that in large B2B companies, local marketing in countries are focused on the heavy-lifting; running trade-shows, sending out mailers, placing ads. The accent is on getting things done rather than genuinely trying to listen to customers and integrate their feedback into the product or service introduction process.
So, marketing runs programs with no feedback loops. Any customer response, howsoever "raw" is passed on to sales as a "lead". There is no way of telling a good lead from a bad one and since "lead-nurturing" as a concept does not exist; sales essentially starts working with a prospect who is at the very early stage of awareness.
What is the solution? Marketing and sales need to work together on an acceptable definition of a lead. This will vary from industry to industry and company to company but the agreement needs to happen so that marketing can work to create programs that nurture the raw leads further and pass on leads that interest the sales. On their part, sales could do more to spot the micro-trends in their industries, the customer pain-points and decision making roles in client organizations and log them formally. This will help marketing to create programs that address the right customer problems, identify the right solutions and target the right communication to the right customer contacts involved in purchase.

The obsession with English

and, how that is a show-stopper for internet penetration in India

Irrespective of what data you believe, only a minuscule percentage (less than 2%) of the population in India is "connected". Even among the folks who are online, very few use the internet for doing anything other than checking email sporadically. This does not count the folks who have to log-in at work in furtherance of their company's business. I seriously believe this has to do with the lack of availability of compelling, appropriate local content. As we think of bringing internet to the villages, we need to figure about what they are going to use the internet for and what kind of education, information and entertainment can be served up to them in local language. This is as relevant for the villages as a vast majority of folks living in our towns and cities.
While the accent of all the policy directives seems to be on the "hardware"- connect more villages, make more low cost computers available etc, a strong push on local language content availability which educates, informs and entertains (a la local language television) is needed to ensure true internet penetration and usage among a much larger percentage of the population.

B2B vs B2C: is there a fundamental difference?

In a B2C scenario, it seems like to me, patience is not a virtue. The customer does not take long to decide and the marketer is also interested in getting an instant nod as in a yes or no. Most importantly, the sales cycle is short and feedback in terms of what works and what does not is obtained in terms of what sells and what does not.
In a B2B scenario, the cycle is long and many decision makers play a role. Each have their own "wins" and I most recently talked about it in "Cover your bases in B2B marketing". While in both B2B and B2C the customer needs to cross the gamut of steps from low awareness to awareness, interest and so on leading to purchase and adoption which hopefully leads to repeat buys and brand loyalty, I think the B2B marketer invests a lot more post-purchase, especially if you are selling high involvement capital goods. Also, the B2B marketer understands that it is a long haul and invests accordingly. In a B2C setting, it seems the actual sale is the only act the marketer is measured by.
In a B2B setting, you have "User Groups"- both face to face and online, forums for sharing ideas, support and product improvement ideas. The higher the cost of the product, the higher the risk and more the need for reassurance from knowing "I am not the only user; there are others out there". This involvement with the customer in all stages is what separates the B2B marketing from B2C marketing, as is practiced today.
I have seen sporadic attempts in involving end-customers in creating user groups in B2C as well. Cooking utensils makers like those making pressure cookers or microwave ovens hold cooking competitions, Camlin sponsors art competition among students in schools and liquor brands sponsor events teaching cocktail mixing to corporates and individuals. I think we will see more and more such innovations powered by the internet going forward.

How the recession is driving ad agencies to perform

While on the subject of the online advertising market, I looked up some recent published data from DNA India. Please read the article in full here.

The recession is giving rise to the following trends:

- Customers are moving to online ways of marketing/ advertising from the traditional media. The reduced marketing budgets are driving this.

- Customers are demanding to see clearly measurable and attributable results of their marketing spend.

- The model is becoming pay-for-performance; which simply means: "I don't care who and how many saw my advertisement. I care about what action they took after they saw the ad."

Did they click, visit a website, see a tailored offer or, actually purchase anything?

Advertising online will soon have to answer questions they have never had to answer. So, instead of spraying messages at random, they will have to collaborate with their clients in segmentation, targeting and messaging and positioning to maximise returns on the marketing spend in line with their objectives.

SMBs Are Online Schizos: Sophisticated Consumers, Yet Neophyte Marketers | Broadband Evolved

I recommend reading this blog post for some great data for the state of marketing awareness among the SMB community in USA. If we had similar data for India, the "online" percentage of SMB marketers will be much much smaller.

Given the state of the economy and the need to squeeze every bit of productivity from your marketing systems, I am sure, SMB marketers in India will accelerate the move to the internet in search of leads, getting authentic customer feedback and building a brand.

Cover all your bases in B2B Marketing

Seth's Blog: The rational marketer (and the irrational customer)

Seth Godin talks about some of the pitfalls of b2b marketing. As always, a great read. 

In B2B marketing, there are many influencers and decision makers involved in the purchasing process. For a recap, read..

As I said in a previous post, you need to know who the influencers in a particular purchase are, what their roles will be and most importantly, what their key wins are so that you can structure a message tailored to their unique position. Explicitly, if you are selling packaging systems, what matters most  to the purchase director is the price of your solution; but, the marketing director, who is also involved in the purchasing process is looking for a packaging system that will make his product look more attractive to the end customer.

What is your whole product? What does it do? For whom? How many in your B2B marketplace can you enlist as stakeholders in recommending your product? All for their own reason.

B2B sales (and marketing) is complex since typically a committe takes the decision. When human beings are involved, the process is rarely mathematically exact. But, irrational it is not.

Facilitating conversations

Ideally you want to talk one on one with every single one of your customers and respond with solutions to their problems or better, learn enough about them to anticipate what you product or solution you should be building. 

This requires you to build huge content repositories which your "conversation engine" can pick from; either to start or to continue a conversation or even to close it. You also need rules; decision trees which anticipate how conversations can progress and point to the right response to be picked. 

All this is a lot of work and investment in time and money when you are starting off as a small enterprise. So, take small steps. As you start to move away from mass-marketing and move towards one-on-one marketing, there will be slow progress. You will first talk to smaller groups and then, yet smaller groups as you get better with customer profiling and targeting your messages to the audience. All the more reason for you to remind yourselves of micromarkets. 

If you pick well targeted benefit statements that appeal to the micromarkets and if we manage to build a well structured "dialog" with each micromarket, the results can be very gratifying.

The art of listening

The Art of Listening

Jon Collier writes a thought provoking blog which I read when I can. This was a gem and I thought worth pointing out and commenting on.

Times are tough, says Jon and his advice is to be proactive and reach out to customers and solicit feedback and really listen well. Talk to customers every free moment you have and have a dialog about your products, services and what you can do to make him happy. 

Hundreds or, even thousands of conversations. Each with twists and turns and learning opportunities. Things to communicate on both sides, feedbacks to log and actions to initiate, communicate and close the loop on.

The internet makes it possible to have hundreds of meaningful conversations; with the same objective but with different auidiences.

It does not have to be the net..

.. but

Think of the dialog process again. When did you last carry out a conversation where you spoke a sentence or a paragraph and waited for th answer for a week or two? This is what you must do when you depend on a paper mailer to communicate.

How many customers will take the trouble to write back to you in response if they had to depend on putting pen to paper?

Accept it. The net is the reality. And the reality is that every time you are sending a mailer out to hundreds of customers, you are creating opportunities to have conversations with them; not one way, not one-off. Will the conversations be in tens in number or hundreds or in thousands? How meaningful will they be? How much will they advance your communication objective? That will depend on how prepared you are with relevant, precisely targeted content that enable this whole dialogue process. 

More conversations with your prospects/ customers and more meaningful ones at that. Will you sell more or less as a result? 

"Does it also do that?"- the need to have a dialogue

Content is king; knowing your product's key benefit to the target segment is important as is having as many support points as you muster. Customers do like the benefit statement spelt out in easy to understand personal terms. Product usage examples, testimonials from othert users, application hints.. they are all good. Keep them coming and organize them in a way that you can find them when you need. 

Internet enables faster delivery of messages. Remember, it also enables faster trashing of irrelevant messages. So, having something useful to say is your best chance of being read in the long run. Communication is a two-way street; so, more relevant your messages, more is the chance that the customer comes back to you; with a question, with a comment or a feedback or even better an intent to purchase! Start a dialogue.

Prepare ahead of time

It is no good to be underprepared for a customer meeting. Don't be caught in a situation where you have to communicate to a potentially large customer segment but either your benefit statement is not ready or you do not have adequate support points behind your benefit statement. You need a lot of content to facilitate dialogue with a large customer base segmented into micro-markets. Get started on generating and organizing content today; before your "strategy boys" are done with their market segment definitions.

Back to the original point..

Content is king..

I do not mean to trivialize the process of segmentation of customers. It remains one of the most difficult arts to practise. However, it is far from being the end of your campaign design. Targeting this finely segmented market (a collection of micro-markets each with their own needs, expectations and not to forget, business potential) with unique communication/ messaging and delivering it through the channel that best reaches them, is what is going to test you.

Who creates the messages? And who writes the content that will resonate with each of the target market and who provides the support points that will make the messages credible?

The internet made it easy to communicate but, it is akin to your being in the same room with your client. You still need to know what her individual needs are at that point in time and how to verbalize your solution to her needs. 

When you have one segment to chase and only one message (one person to chase in a crowded room with one single thought in mind) to deliver, perhaps you can handle it. When you have many segments and as many individual messages/ benefit statements to deliver, it gets tough. Not the delivery so much but being ready with the right benefit statement.

How to Change the World: The Art of Generating Buzz

How to Change the World: The Art of Generating Buzz

Buzz marketing is the new-age PR, the ultimate in (virtual) zero-cost marketing. There are some leading practitioners of buzz marketing in the world. Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin.. and Mahesh Murthy, Suhel Seth in India.

So, when I saw Guy's post on generating buzz, I clicked on the link and waited. As did the rest of the world, I bet since the page is taking forever in coming up.

I am still waiting. That's how successful Guy is in generating buzz!

What do you want to say?

Your product and your company has a core value. It stands for something.
However, the marketplace is composed of micro-markets; with their own needs and benefits that they are looking for.
When you want to be all things to all people, you lose focus and your brand promise is no longer clear. So, this is a real danger and before the more sophisticated internet technologies came and changed the way we are able to target customers, marketers were either trying to please everyone or defining their market too narrowly. Either way, they were losing customers.
Today, it is possible to do very sophisticated targeting to very small audiences with a view to precisely aligning your message to their needs. But, now the challenge is creating enough targeted "message content" which can feed the lines of communication that you have opened to sharply segmented audiences.
And as the channels themselves proliferate (mobile, web, e-mail, blog, Twitter, Facebook.. in addition to the traditional TV, newspaper and roadside hoardings ) the need to customize messages to the needs of the customers and the demands of the channels increases.

Micro-markets

or, why targeting is so much fun

The same product is used by different people in the same company in many different ways. Since it satisfies many different needs by its many features, some really interesting thoughts emerge.
- most products are over-designed for the ultimate use to which they are put.
- every product-application can be potentially a "micro-market" and a product's market is a sum of all the micromarkets.
As an example, your laptop is used for your spreadsheet, e-mail, typing letters, making presentations, watching DVD, surfing the net... all these are usages to which you put the machine. You may use one feature or you may use several. All these usages are micromarkets. Some micromarkets are viable(big enough or profitable enough) to be targeted standalone. Some require to be clubbed together and marketed as a "suite".
Video watching micromarket is a very interesting case. It resides in the DVD player, laptop, iPOD and the cellphone. In case of the DVD player, it is the mainstay of the product you are selling; in case of your cellphone, it is a small adjunct.
If your product is a laptop, you are positioning it in several micromarkets. Some work together in the customers' mind but some do not.
Knowing all possible usages of your product is useful so that you can cultivate those micromarkets and deliver messages that resonate with them. And, aligning the message sharply to the market is the acid test of marketing.

Who are you talking to, again?

And, what are you telling her?

So,  you know that even in the same enterprise, actual human beings involved in taking decisions may need to be communicated to differently.

Firstly, they have unequal information and priorities regarding you and your products that satisfy their needs. This means some among them may be at a stage of low awareness whereas some may be experienced users of your product for a long time. Some would have reached a stage of comparing solutions from different vendors whereas others may not even be convinced they have a problem/ need; as a result they may not even have started any active research.

Secondly, roles even within the same organization are constantly shifting. 

Depending upon where they are and what their role in the purchase process is, communicate appropriately and differently so that customers hear only the most appropriate product benefits.

Sounds good in theory; only the very best of salesmen manage to do this consistently and well.

Multiply the problem by the number of companies that potentially you could be selling to. This now becomes a daunting task of reaching many messages across to many individuals across many companies. Internet makes it possible to not only target a broad audience; it also makes it possible for us to target really small segments of buyers across many companies very cost effectively with messaging that is personalized.

But, who is doing the actual buying?

When I take my daughter to the candy store, it is she who is doing the buying. Even though she is all of four years old and I am forking out the cash. When we take her to buy clothes, I do the buying. She has an opinion, and she voices it but is routinely ignored. 

It is of course different with our elder daughter, who is "11 going on 21". We have to listen and sometimes she wins and sometimes we do. In all cases, of course, I am paying the cash. 

When a business purchases goods, many people are involved in the purchase decision. And their roles and power they wield also varies from case to case. 

With my younger daughter in the candy store, she is the consumer (User buyer in jargon), Evaluating buyer (she decides which candy gets bought) and also Economic buyer (the boss-man; who signs the PO). Like in an enterprise, the man who forks out the cash, often has no other authority or influence other than signing cheques.

So, what is my role in that case? I suggest, and only half-jokingly, it is that of the "blocker"; I try to avoid the corner of the shopping mall where the candy store is. In all enterprises there are people who will try and block you (or the candy-salesman) getting in touch with your prospective buyer (or my daughter).

But, when the same younger daughter is taken to buy clothes, we decide the budget, the colour, the type of dress, the accessories.. the lot. She virtually has no role.

Knowing who is involved in making purchasing decisions is key. After all, you don't want to waste time and money selling candy to me, do you?

Some answers and some questions

Customers, especially in a B2B setting, spend precious little time searching for a product till they have a need. The implication is that even if you spend a lot of money and creative energy getting to be known, you are pretty much wasting your time if your message reaches a customer who is not in “active search” mode. This is why the most expensive marketing campaigns tend to be for new customer acquisition.

Contrast this to the situation where you have a specific group of customers who have purchased your product in the last 6 months and your objective is to ensure continued satisfaction. Will your communication be different? Of course. What do you think would be a few things you would like to tell your user base? Would that include a short introduction to your company? I hope not!

While the customer is in comparison mode, the opportunity is in trying to get into a close dialog and close communication. Anticipating the information needs at this stage and highlighting your advantages are key. What are some of the innovations you have seen in this space?

Different strokes for different folks

Why you must tailor your message to suit your audience

I talked about the fact that customers are in various stages of awareness/ interest regarding your product/ solution or company. Let’s try and understand that a little more closely.

All customers are created equal in the beginning. They do not know you exist far less know about the existence of your product or service to solve some need of theirs. So, what causes them to change?

At any given time in your audience, there is a mix of customers in varying stages of awareness of your products and service. What tack you choose to take in your messaging to this market depends on:

- What is your objective?

o Is it making sure as many potential prospects know about your products or your company?

o To ensure that you make the “shortlist” of those prima-facie able to solve a problem?

o To ensure that you are actively being compared with other products/ companies?

o Or, communicate a time-limited promotional message to ensure purchase?

o Or, are you now wanting to build loyalty with the customer (s) who have purchased your product once?

- Who is the specific customer you are talking to (Are you addressing the contact that has the biggest potential impact on the sale of your product? Sure?)? What does he want to hear? What do you want to tell him?

Why staying in touch is vital

Why small businesses need to communicate to their customers often

When you are a small business selling to other businesses, big or small what are your priorities?

Any business is run in two basic parts; one part is in charge of producing goods or services and the other part in engaged in selling and realizing revenue from those goods and services. However, you are not the only one in the market. As you (or your salesman) struggle to get attention from the different parts of the buyer organizations, you need to, in competition with the other players, establish your presence by increased awareness of yourself, your products- quality and prices and also build over time, a lasting relationship with as many buyers as possible.

Most organizations pay a lot of attention to the “make” process, especially when they are starting off. They pay some attention to the “sell” process but ignore the path from the “make” to “sell”. By this I mean that the whole process of talking to customers with a view to getting their feedback about the product, communicating the virtues of your product and the desirability of doing business with you as a company is ignored leaving the salesman with too much on his plate.

IntAer

A simple diagram of the steps in the marketing communication process

Remember, you can’t short-circuit the above process. A customer who is not aware of your product or solution or your company, will not suddenly put you in the shortlist of vendors she is considering purchasing from. You need to cross the hurdles of awareness generation (you exist) and interest generation (in your product’s ability to solve her problem) first. Knowing where your customer is in this process is the first step to advancing her down the process.

It goes without saying that the goals of communication will change from one step to the other and a smart marketer will align the maximum resources at his disposal to solving the most critical issues.

One of my favourite (good) examples of paying attention to the “intermediate” steps has been the old Eureka Forbes advertising. Anyone old enough to remember those? The ads not only positioned the benefits of the products (cleanliness and hygiene of your home) but most importantly, at a time when it was still a novelty, de-risked the sales model where the door to door salesman would actually enter your home to demonstrate the product. Eureka Forbes does not do those ads any more because today so many companies are engaged in direct marketing that it is no longer a perceived risk to let a company salesman in your home, but without doubt, the phenomenal success in market penetration of Eureka Forbes could not have been achieved just on the strength of their products and the aggressiveness of their salesmen. This was achieved because Eureka Frobes correctly assessed the overwhelming market sentiment and the challenge thereof and communicated correctly to bridge the right gap.