Wednesday, December 16, 2015

How about a book for Christmas?

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Choosing a suitable Christmas gift can be a challenge. At one time a DVD  was a useful standby gift idea, one that didn't usually require too much knowledge of the recipient's interests, could be wrapped up easily and would be appreciated. But now everyone seems to download movies, box sets and the like and movies have gone the same way as music and to some extent books with their contents held in the ether, or cloud. 

I am not sure we are all yet ready for a fully digital Christmas where in place of opening up intriguingly wrapped presents from under the Christmas tree we sit around with our iBooks, iPads and iPhones and open our downloads! Recently I  received a Kindle as a birthday gift and this has great merit when travelling thanks to it being physically small, lightweight and yet easy to read. In these days of carry on hand luggage, books consume both space and add to weight that could otherwise be used by some essential items of clothing. 

On the other hand, books to read when flying or on holiday will probably be fiction. I was once influenced by a list of titles in a national newspaper recommended as suitable holiday reading for people in business as sources of new ideas, or essential background briefings for anyone with ambitions to succeed. That turned out to be a big mistake. They were just boring. However the concept of reading other people's ideas is quite compelling. Over the years I  have assembled a very small library - well short bookshelf really - of books that once read proved useful to refer to from time to time as a source of information when writing an article, drawing up proposals or prompting thoughts.   These books are all characterised by 'Post-it' notes sticking out of the tops of pages to bookmark some helpful references. Somehow they are more accessible than the links I bookmark to useful online references.

Running a small business which involves marketing strategy and content development, the small office library comes down to just a few subjects:-

Marketing - Marketing in a Competitive Economy by Leslie W Rodger, The New Rules of Marketing & PR by David Meerman Scott and the recently published Technical Marketing - Ideas for Engineers by David Brooks.

Management - The Practice of Management by Peter F Drucker and An Insight into Management Accounting by John Sizer.

Reference - The Oxford Dictionary, Roget's Thesaurus, two books on web design and HTML, A to Z London and AA Road Atlas Britain, plus a few operating manuals for various bits of kit.




Thursday, December 10, 2015

Digital marketing - rules of engagement

One thing marketing in the Internet [or digital] age does not lack is jargon.

As systems and software permit "tracking behavioral metrics online" we can be delivered a whole load of data about individuals. With a joined up system we can review past purchases, searches, page views, actions taken and lots more and apply all this stuff to evolve digital marketing strategies. But just because a campaign reports response rates to several decimal places, it does not follow that figure is real. Mathematically it will be correct of course, but what actually happened may be quite difernt.

Just because I leave a trail of searches and page views around the Internet, does not mean I am actually about to purchase a product. But that expensive digital marketing software someone sold you will trigger various actions, in particular presenting advertisements everywhere you now go as part of an engagement strategy.

Engagement is another popular jargon term for stalking a customer or prospect  who by online actions has been flagged up as a potential buyer.  So wherever you now go online the advertisements follow, offers pop up, emails arrive. It's all about personalisation. At one time it was much simpler. Companies had salesmen that 'engaged' with the customer. B-2-B marketers regarded these as being their target audience and looked for others like them as potential prospects who read specific trade magazines and attended particular trade shows. So the marketing team advertised in the journals the target audience read, posted press release to the  editors and exhibited at trade shows. The enquiries these activities flushed out were passed on to the sales team as leads. In the industrial sector the company typically sold a basic product which for many b-2-b's could last for years before a replacement sales opportunity might crop up. Happily much of this stuff needed accessories to work effectively - always a good thing to sell to a captive market as margins were always higher than on the base product. Consumables offered another profitable source of revenue and then the maintenance contract. All good opportunities to keep the customer engaged and bring forward the time for a replacement base product was purchased by talking about new models during visits.

As field salesmen were phased out in many companies that personal customer contact went to in-house teams who were less well placed to build the same rapport a good salesman could create. I was always impressed when out on the road with some of our salesmen how they could turn a 'no' into a big order. Also salesmen actually got to see how customers used the products - if acted on a good source of market intelligence. I am surprised how in many companies today the internal sales force seem more at home selling via email exchanges rather than using the phone. Meanwhile prospective customers are engaged in the early stages of researching products based on their own trawling round the web, which seems to be assumed includes social media sites and even closing the sale through an online purchase. And into this mix comes digital marketing software tools which aggregates all this stuff.   


Thursday, December 03, 2015

Digital Marketing - what does in mean for b-2-b companies?

The term Digital Marketing is gaining traction as digital agencies spring up or emerge from traditional advertising agencies. But what exactly does it mean in the b-2-b world?

Engineers probably have a different concept of the term 'digital.' For many it was effectively an advance over analogue systems. Instead of sending data as a continuous time variable signal each using a dedicated line, digital divided the data into packages which could all be sent down the same wire using a protocol such as DMX. But I don't think that's what digital agencies are about. 

Think back 20 years or so ago when print was suddenly not the only media agencies could  output their work to. CDs, then DVDs came along and agencies started talking about being New Media agencies. A term that has already faded away. What digital agencies are mainly about is using Internet tools and systems bundled up with software to gain greater engagement with their customers and prospects. 

Wikipedia describes digital marketing as "an umbrella for the targeted, measurable and interactive marketing of products and services using digital technologies to reach and convert leads into customers and retain them." .... there's more ..  

Some have talked about 'engagement marketing' by applying digital tools to tracking individual behaviour. Interestingly most of these digital tools have been around for some time and there is already plenty of data about. It prompts the question for b-2-b companies could they use existing tools better - or even use them at all - or buy some expensive software package that costs thousands each year? 

A lot of this starts with having a good, 'clean' database and that is a problem. What so often happens is that names are added for various reasons by different people and in different ways which soon become out of date. Whenever a b-2-b client tells me they have 50,000 or more records on their customer database, I  can be sure at least 25% of it will be wrong. Rather than face the task of 'cleaning' the database, this old unverified and frequently wrong data gets imported into the shiny new software the sales rep sold them. Yes interesting that. If the whole marketing world is now digital, why would a company selling premium priced software need a salesman to give a demonstration when whole sales process through to delivery and billing could be done online.?