Where is the lifeguard for the marketing talent pool ?

Why most marketing fails

Rich Meyer Online Strategic Solutions

It  was  foretold  

Social  media  will  save  your  brand  and  can  make  up  for  bad  marke8ng  !  

And  many  marketers  drank  the  Kool-­‐Aid  

•  Social media can save our brand. •  Social media is easy to do. •  Measuring social media is easy. •  Focusing more on social media

and less on other marketing tactics will lead to success.

•  I can hire an agency to implement my social media and be the voice of my brand.

•  I don’t need to need to listen to consumers.

•  I can use social media to push information.

But  where  did  it  lead  ?  

OMG  !  You  mean  social  media  alone  doesn’t  work  ?  

•  Pepsi has fallen to third place behind Diet Coke in spite of its widely heralded switch from Super Bowl ads to a huge social charity program called Refresh Project.

•  Burger King has grilled through a

couple of CMOs and fired agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky after producing Facebook campaigns and viral videos that got lots of attention while the business witnessed six consecutive quarters of declining sales.

On  the  contrary  those  social  media  campaigns  delivered  what  they  promised  

•  The Pepsi and Burger King social campaigns not only delivered what they promised but surpassed their goals in terms of engagement, response and thus ROI.

•  The answer to these claims is

equally simple: If those "other" things mattered more to business performance, they should have been the focus of marketing, not entertainment or whatever

Are  marketers  brainwashed  ?  

•  Marketers are social media brainwashed and demand to be part of the social media dance party = agencies are forced to try things that aren’t working.

•  The sad thing about performing a service that doesn’t work is that folks start making stuff up to protect their jobs or business.

What  level  of  understanding  do  you  have        about  the  social  media  conversa8ons  

happening  around  your  brand  ?  

Source:  Alterian’s  Eighth  Annual  Survey    How  Engaged  Is  Your  Brand?  

What  ?  How  the  hell  can  this  be  ?  

It’s  totally  unacceptable  !!  

So  then  is  all  social  media  marke8ng  a  load  of  donkey  dung  ?  

Wait  a  second  !  I’m  confused…then  again  maybe  I’m  not  !  

Believe  it  or  not  good  social  media  marke8ng  can  provide  real  results  

•  Ford's Fiesta Movement produced lots of leads for its dealers and helped win its CMO marketer of the year honors.

•  Procter & Gamble's use of YouTube videos to fuel engagement with its brilliantly conceived "the man your man could smell like" ad campaign, because it's featured in most presentations at social conferences and even in a few books.

And  successful  integrated  marke8ng  leads                to  successful    brands  

•  What good are invented metrics for social campaigns if they don't evidence any influence on sales?

•  There's no such thing as a successful brand that doesn't deliver successful marketing, is there?

•  If social marketing can't be made responsible for tangible behaviors that matter to the business, not just to ideas about branding, then no made-up measures of its importance matter much at all.

 The  key  is  “integrated  marke8ng”  

•  Ford's vastly improved sales-conversion number on test drives benefited from the great quality of the car and its pricing, as well as from the overall economic conditions over which it had no control.

•  Identifying what the social efforts did, if anything, requires the upfront presumption that they were necessary and therefore accomplished anything at all that mattered (like starting out to claim that cereal is "part of a balanced breakfast").

•  For all we know, Old Spice and Ford could have sold more products without them.

Because the same old things are still important to consumers

•  People still need and do the same things they always did, and companies still need to sell to them.

•  Pretending that conversation is not important is a pure canard.

•  Fad ideas, like that anybody wakes up in the morning hoping to have a conversation with a brand of toothpaste or insurance -is no longer credible in light of the latest news.

And  consumers  also  want  product  func8on  over  brand  ethics  

When faced with a choice of good ethical positioning and bad product functionality or good product functionality and bad ethical positioning, individuals overwhelmingly chose the latter.

Strategy+Business ISSUE 62 SPRING 2011 Values vs. Value

But don’t use that as an excuse to be socially unethical !!

Today  consumers  do  want  it  all  

•  I expect brands to be listening to me in a channel where I want to talk with them.

•  Sometimes it is about price but a lot of times it’s not. It depends on how well you know my needs.

•  If you discount your product a than price is the reason I buy your product it’s not because of your marketing.

•  Disappoint me and I leave you forever. •  Advertising is going to make me aware of your product but friends are

going to help me decide if your product is worth trying.

Why  ?  

Because  they  are  empowered  consumers  and  social  media  have  given  them  a  unified  voice  to  talk  back  to  brands  that  are  not  

used  to  listening.  

But  marketers  s8ll  struggle  to  create  true  mul8-­‐channel  engagement  with  their  

customers  •  Marketers admit to still struggling to

create true multi-channel engagement with their customers.

•  More than three fourths admit to not being as engaged as they can and should be.

•  Marketers could use a clear strategic plan driven by consumer intelligence to move toward fully engaging customers at an individual level, with the precision they have come to expect.

Maybe  because  they  are  measuring  the          wrong  things  ?  

•  Everyone seems to be consumed with numbers.

•  Now the “numbers” are attracting attention to social media.

•  Everyone wants BIG numbers. Followers, tweets, retweets, blog post, rankings, Google juice, traffic and the obsession for numbers continues. The  most  important  things  in  

business  are  those  things  you  can’t  measure,  you  can’t  see  but  such  things  can  make  or  break  your  

business.    

Hint:  it’s  is  the  intangible  things  that                        create  success    

•  Management wants to focus on results at the cost of the intangible things.

•  Doing so destroys relationships, manipulates conversations and encourages the production of false results because that is what management wants, results even when they are false.

The  art  of  engagement  is  not  about  personaliza8on,  it’s  about  individualiza8on  

Marketers  now  must  not  only  engage  with  their  customers,  but  they  must  conEnue  to  analyze  and  measure  their  engagements  across  mulE-­‐channel  disciplines,  taking  their  findings  and  applying  

them  across  all  customer  interacEons  in  a  very  precise  and  

operaEonal  way..    

Engaging  users  across  social  media  plaOorms  has  become  a  full  8me  job.    

Social  Media  Sen8ment    

PosEve  

NegaEve  

Neutral  

•  What are they saying that is positive ?

•  Is it in line with our brand objectives ?

•  Can we leverage this with other market segments ?

•  Why are they negative about our product/brand ?

•  Can we turn it around to a positive ?

•  Is there a process in place to communicate negative comments to key stake holders ?

•  Is it a threat to our brand ?

•  Why are they neutral ? •  Is this based on something

we tested ? •  Can we change a neutral

impression in a positive conversion ?

Not  only  do  you  need  to  par?cipate,  you  need  to  be  able  to  monitor  and  analyze  the  chaDer  and  leverage  what  you  

learn.  

Don’t  ever  do  stuff  just  because  you  think  you  should.  That’s  the  definiEon  of  an  someone  who  is  clueless  and  it’s  a  path  to  failed  expectaEons.  

 

If  you’re  going  to  do  social  media,    do  it  right  !  

•  Social media requires a strategy, budget and resources to get it right.

•  If you don’t do it right you risk alienating your customers, prospects and employees while your competitors get it right.

Which  do  you  believe  ?  

Start  with  the  basics  

•  What our objectives ? •  Do people want to talk with us on social media ? •  Can we give them value in social media beyond

discounts ? •  Do we have resources to support social media ? •  Do we have a way to measure success as it applies

directly to brand & business objectives ? •  Has senior management bought into our success

metrics ? •  Are we ready to measure and optimize as we learn ? •  Are we in it for the long term and understand that we

need to thank every customer and listen to every consumer ?

In  the  end…  

There  are  no  shortcuts  to  good  integrated  markeEng  at  excellence  at  every  consumer  

touch  point.  

About  Rich  

Richard Meyer (richardameyer@me.com) •  17+ Years in marketing consumer and healthcare products •  MBA Marketing •  Http://www.newmediaandmarketing.com •  http://www.worldofmarketing.com •  http://www.richsmanagementblog.com •  http://www.richardameyer.com

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