Is Inbound marketing the future?

A recent article by HubSpot suggested that marketing budgets are typically 90% outbound marketing and 10% inbound marketing and that the ratio should be flipped. OK, so what are outbound and inbound marketing?  

 Outbound marketing in short is the traditional approach - putting out messages to target audiences through advertising, e-mails, mail shots, exhibitions and all the other marketing tools. The article argues that not only is the average person subjected to 2,000  marketing interruptions a day, but has figured out means of blocking or filtering some of  them. For example Sky+ allows a TV programme to be viewed and advertisements skipped. Spam filters reject e-mail messages. You can sign up to opt out of mail shots and telephone cold calling. There are even street signs advising that you are in a "No cold calling area". So yes messages get filtered, but a lot gets through. So how about inbound marketing, how does that work and should 90% of the marketing budget be spent on it?  

I bought a new style of mousetrap at the weekend and was reminded of the Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation, " build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door." OK - so how does the world know you have a better mousetrap then? Well the conventional approach would be to send outbound messages, the inbound approach seems to advocate hanging out where people are looking for mousetraps. And it is probably not in the High Street anymore, but an out of town shopping mall or superstore, or of course the Internet. And hanging out on the Internet increasingly is about compelling and relevant content and social networking to encourage the target audience to come to you - in short they beat a path to your door. Sounds great!

Do businesses Twitter?

Much has been written in marketing circles recently about not just the remarkable growth of Facebook and Twitter but how these are now essential business marketing tools. I have so far  refrained from commenting on either as immediately relevant to the B-2-B marketing space, but two communications received  today are worth noting. A business-to -business forum unhesitatingly claims, "It's time to finally engage social media for all it's worth". Topics include"Integrating social media into your marketing mix", " Developing online communities that increase customer loyalty" and " What will social media do for my business". Meanwhile Engineering & Technology's E&T magazine devoted two pages to Twitter mentioning high profile users such as Barack Obama.  Twitter with its 140 character "tweets" to tell people what you are doing lends itself to headlines and news flashes which seems to be what the New York Times offers and of course the self styled citizen reporters. It also offers a channel for the trivial as well. Described as micro blogging it is more akin to sending SMS messages, but to all your contacts or followers. And here really is the issue - Twitter's "followers" and "Facebook's" friends - who are they  and how do you get them on board? They need to be your customers and prospects in your target audience to be of value.

Both Facebook and Twitter offer potentially useful tools that are in popular use, further channels to communicate information to and receive feedback from your target audience but as with other media their inclusion within the marketing mix should follow marketing principles. Unlike printed publications who offer access to their readership, with social media building the readership of followers and friends is your job. So although the tools are free, the awareness well established it still requires a commitment in time to build the audience, create content and importantly to respond when appropriate. 

Back to basics

The flow of informative articles landing in the inbox has reached a torrent as discussions on whether or not to tweet, how to blog and speculation about the latest Google algorithm are joined by exhortations to keep on  marketing in the recession with offers of marketing webinars, free tools and white papers. During recessions the accountants assume more importance than in more prosperous times and demand cuts. Marketing is of course an easy target. Cutting budgets doesn't have the nastiness, legal repercussions and redundancy packages associated with cutting staff, not to mention the ugly scenes and bad press that inevitably follow. So stop advertising then. Next look at the underperforming products and discontinue those making the smallest contribution and while about it why not cut back on stock too. So we have a lean company, costs all trimmed back and ready to survive the recession. But what do customers and prospects see. A company that has lost visibility in the industry, offers a limited product range - probably the same as everyone else - have annoyingly stopped making the specialist products they require occasionally and to top it all they are expected to wait for delivery. So the customer loyalty is put to the test and it is time to shop around. The chairman of a company I worked for used to respond to accountants with cost cutting plans with an anecdote about the owner of a sweet shop. In those days a sweet shop kept sweets in jars behind the counter - several shelves of them - and the shop keeper weighed them out in scales, tipped them into a paper bag and tied it of with a flourish. His shop keeper decided to reduce stock, so each week he removed the jar that sold the least. Gradually the shelves lined with jars emptied and gradually his shop emptied of customers, because he had missed the point. Part of the shopping experience was the choice and even if most customers predictably bought wine gums or mints, they could spend a few happy moments debating a more exotic option before settling on the old favourite. Once the choice was gone, so were they - off to a shop where they could indulge in this harmless pleasure. So it is not so much about cutting marketing, but marketing smarter and that might even cost more.

Declining magazine revenues prompt online move

 emarketer offers some disconcerting news for magazine publishers. According to today's report some 525 American titles folded in 2008 with others closing in 2009. All attributed to a shift in print advertising to other media, in particular the Internet. Previous blog entries have discussed the wider issue of a move away from print to the Internet. A good example is Technical Data Sheets. Often these are required by architects or consulting engineers at short notice. Fifteen or maybe twenty years ago they were faxed and a printed copy followed by mail. As a result there was little point in using colour print - sales publications could do that. Today the PDF is the preferred format and colour is back. Many architects have recognised that they do not want to use valuable office space for rows of traditional ring binders either when they can simply download what they need.  From the print side Printweek.com today reports on job cuts throughout the print industry and carries an article that conditions are right for mergers. Within this article is news of investment in digital print technology in the field of intelligent colour personalisation which is another subject and a indication that print specialisation is the future.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is still a preference for print as a preferred medium for reading away from the computer screen. Some journals have reacted to this better than others by revamping not only the design of their publication but also investing in content by providing articles that are interesting to read. In the industrial publication sector IET has done this very well with their E&T journal. The Engineer continues to offer good value content and interestingly offers the same magazine online, but most industrial sector publications have long since descended into a catalogue of paid for press releases, manufacturer sponsored articles and shrinking advertising revenues. It appears they remain alive by a combination of telesales to companies equally slow to recognise the changing times. Some publications carried by the inertia of advertisers are almost unreadable, but that is another story. Ironically although many industrial companies invest in R&D to innovate new cutting edge products, they do not do the same for their marketing but continue to roll out the same budget and formula year after year - same advertising, same magazines, attend the same exhibitions with the same people and have an amateur approach to the Internet.

So has the printed magazine a future? Good content and good design are key. In a straw poll yesterday in a client's office there was an overwhelming preference for this to be in print. News headlines are OK on the Internet where print cannot compete so well, but magazines carrying more researched in depth articles could have a good future. 

Finally my own straw poll on the train out of London last night. Several people were reading books, quite a few were skimming through the free evening papers - nobody had the paid for Evening Standard - others were plugged into iPods, some were asleep and one girl was watching a particularly blood thirsty samuri movie on her lap top. Nobody had a magazine. 

Instant marketing is not a cheap fix

As the recession deepens and gloom spreads  I have noticed an increase in articles about marketing on the cheap. Typical sub heads such as, "Instant Press Releases", "Cheap business cards", "Free Marketing Plans" and"Free Sales letters" are promoted on one  web site referred to in a marketing newsletter. It all gives the impression that marketing can be applied like a fresh coat of paint to cover up the blemishes and that by using these free tools - and of course buying the book - business success will follow. Unfortunately nothing could be further from the truth. What do cheap business cards say about a company? That the company has little substance, is amateurish and it just creates a negative early impression. And what about instant press releases? Just because you submit a piece about your company it does not mean it will get published. In fact it is very unlikely to be published in a journal that addresses your target audience. Here is the point of marketing. It is not a short term fix to be applied when sales enquiries slump. Savvy companies will already have their marketing plans in place, will have professionally designed business cards, support literature and web site; have regular editorial coverage in the appropriate trade publications because they had taken the time, given the commitment and made the investment to develop a marketing philosophy throughout the enterprise.  

Now social networking tops e-mail for popularity

 We have been experimenting with social networking and blogging with one of our clients for a while now but it is still too early to draw any conclusions as to the business value. One thing that soon became apparent was that blog content rapidly appeared on Google searches which must be a positive result if relevant in-bound links to the client's site are rewarded with higher ranking. But our adoption of social bookmarking links is even more recent  so far with no tangible results, but due to the adoption of such august organisations as the BBC and the sheer number of users (110 million according to Nielsen) it must be worth a try. I have personal anecdotal evidence from the younger (twenties) ladies in my family that Facebook in particular  is being preferred by them to e-mail as a communication tool with their friends. Recent research from Nielsen reported by Webpronews seems to confirm this through actual research and finds that over two thirds of the online population goes online to visit social networks and blogs. It also confirms that Facebook is the most popular and that more older, but not old,  users are joining. Another  finding is that mobile is "playing an increasingly important role in social networking". Of course there again the young early adopters of Facebook are prolific users of mobile communication too, so it is not perhaps surprising  now that the technology facilitates access to social networking sites from a mobile phone. Of course what is actually communicated is another matter, but unlikely to be very business oriented. Despite the undoubted prominence of Facebook it seems but a short while ago that MySpace was the place to be. An article appearing  on the BBC site posed the question - "Has MySpace lost its cool?" 

This article also points out the importance of the advertising funded business model. Will Facebook similarly lose its shine? For marketers many of these web 2.0 applications are both accessible and plausible but for those of us in B-2-B marketing still difficult to recommend with any confidence especially if they prove to be no more than a passing fad. On the other hand, it was not much more than 10 years ago when we were challenging clients to invest in a web site at all, then suddenly every business had a site. So what about e-mail then? It is  a very cost effective tool for communicating with the target audience but does require a lot of work in building and maintaining a good database and more and more organisations are blocking deliveries of messages. On the other hand, looking at the one or two web sites in the same market sectors as our clients that have a Facebook page, typically they have very few "friends" and fail to actually use or develop it. Back to the old problem then of generating content and this is where a good outsource specialist knowledgeable in the market can bring the experience and expertise to build and maintain the brand whatever channel is used to deliver the message.

Brand building with PR

A White Paper by Vocus - Maximizing the value of Your News: From Twitter to Google - underlines the changing role of PR that Web 2.0 offers. It suggests 'Rethinking your Audience' - not just media, but consumers and investors as well. To this I would add employees, dealers and agents. What the web gives us now is an opportunity to communicate beyond the traditional third party route of having news published in papers, magazines and on TV and radio and in particular what has been coined Web 2.0 enables us to not just talk to but converse with customers and prospects. This might be a very strange concept to some clients. In short PR has the tools to build brand values at all levels. The White Paper quotes research from TNS "Digital World, Digital Life", December 2008 that '81% of users worldwide used search engines to find information and 76% looked up news.' Add to that e-mail (the most popular use of the Internet) and we have communication, information and news - three primary pillars of PR and the Internet providing he tools to deliver to customers. Whether it is widely broadcast or targeted at very precisely defined groups, even to individuals it is all about favourably presenting the brand but now not just issuing press releases but joining conversations and dealing positively with negative feed back. The Virtual News Office from Technical Marketing provides the foundation for a range of publishing tools- news with image, searchable archives, e-mail news and RSS. By integrating a Virtual News Office with any company web site not only can companies easily communicate with their customers but by building highly relevant links into their site, also improving Google rankings.

Reaching B-2-B target audiences with Web 2.0 tools

Much online marketing discussion today revolves around the world of blogs and social networks. Most client discussions don’t. In the B-2-B marketing space, adoption of new ideas is notoriously slow. Despite often being technology leaders in their own field, typical industrial and commercial client companies are rarely early adopters of new marketing methods. This was certainly the case with web sites. There was a distinct process starting with ‘we don’t need it’, or ‘our competitors don’t do it’ to a sudden realisation that their competitors had been developing an implementation and now they were in catch up mode and being asked why they do not have one. B-2-B with smaller budgets has been more cautious in allocating resources to new ideas, often until the evidence is compelling, then looking to cheap solutions. In some ways the Web 2.0 opportunity is different. Many tools are free. It is instead the time commitment. Emarketer wrote that ‘corporations are using blogs to build solid relationships with customers’ and offered the information that some 47% of the online population read blogs and there has been a 300% increase in blog readership over the last 4 years. Further that blogs have more impact on purchasing decisions than social networks and 40% take action after reading a blog. Another writer quoted a question being debated, ’is Facebook is a tool to use in your leisure time or more of a tool to communicate.’ It has also been suggested that a ‘narrow topical appeal draws highly engaged users’ by cornering the market in information no doubt, on a topic relevant to the company product. On the other hand unless it is also a fast changing topic keeping the momentum going could prove a challenge when it comes to content. Consider the typical widget maker – getting regular PR content is a challenge, keeping a blog or social network site supplied with content is going to require a lot of inspiration. Unlike posting photos of a night out on Facebook, B-2-B content needs to be relevant and professional. Then again, do engineers, architects, contractors and the like actually follow blogs or connect to Facebook – it would interesting to know.

Are blogs changing PR?

An interview carried by iMedia Connection – ‘Steve Rubel on how blogs are changing the face of PR’ - brings forward a debate of the technical possibilities versus their relevance to the target market and the interest, uptake and commitment of clients to participate. The figures seem compelling. According to emarketer “Once a haven for techies, there are now blogs for everything from celebrity gossip to political commentary to the most mundane personal minutiae. By 2012, more than 145 million people - or 67% of the US Internet population - will be reading blogs at least once per month.” They reckon 12% of US internet users, some 25 million write blogs. Surprisingly more than 100 million internet users, more than 50% are also blog readers. Big numbers then. Consider now some unofficial statistics from our own research in PR activity in the UK industrial market. Whilst the most active portal web sites carry news free of charge and archive thousands of stories, a sampling revealed that the vast majority were generated by relatively few companies or their PR agencies. The larger group of companies submitted very few stories. Some just one token story before presumably losing interest or running out of news. Talking to other PR people confirmed that news output from their clients was hardly prolific. Most needed quite a good portfolio of clients to make their PR business work. In our experience many clients don’t even think they have any news and a key task of a PR professional is teasing out stories in the first place. Then few have any people in-house that can write anything about their business sufficient to interest and editor, let alone a reader. But blogs demand a far bigger commitment by company personnel as there is both an immediacy and inside knowledge that the traditional PR practitioners will find difficult to embrace. For example not just getting the story, but getting client approval introduces a delaying factor. The blog is more of a personal view and works against the secrecy culture many clients have. Only recently a PR professional was lamenting a decision by a client to stop all case studies and third party endorsement stories as they did not want their competitors to know. We all have clients like that – great stories are blocked because the credibility associated with their blue chip customer cannot be mentioned. So the challenge is getting not only the commitment to write a blog, even if ghost written by an agency but also the openness to actually reveal the sort of compelling inside news content people want to read.

Niche markets can offer opportunity during recession and build a sustainable future

For the UK manufacturing sector the current economic crisis comes not after years of boom that banking, retail and housing enjoyed, but after decades of a shrinking manufacturing base. Once the manufacturer for the world Britain as the first to enjoy an industrial revolution, that situation has long since changed culminating in recent times with the big shakeout of the 1980s seeing a major erosion of the once mighty industrial base. As other nations became major low cost suppliers volume manufacture largely moved offshore with China just the most recent of supplier nations. Meanwhile not only has British industry been addressing niche markets, but also redefining what is a niche market. Once seen as uninteresting due to low volumes today’s niche markets are not just about providing manufactured goods, but a package that includes consultancy and service support both adding value for the customer and contributing margin to the provider’s balance sheet. There is also the benefit of an on-going partnership between manufacturer and customer - a distinct advantage compared to products that would only be sold every 20 or 30 years. The combination of consultancy, manufacture and service changes the traditional demarcations and is leading to greater innovation, design flexibility and customization. The customer experience provides direct market research input and builds in loyalty and of course can lead to new opportunities. Meanwhile the beleaguered retail sector resorts to deeper and more frequent discounting. This seems an unsustainable strategy when they neither control the cost of products or design and at some stage the discount approach must run out of headroom. Likewise banks who have to some extent misused marketing methods to sell money they either did not have or was unsecured, might be forced to reappraise whether service might be more valued than selling so called financial products. Just as the manufacturing sector has reinvented itself, so may the retail and banking sector need to rethink service and support, not to mention prudence to the mix and give customers reasons to return loyalty. So niche marketing should no longer be viewed as a back water but perhaps the future. At Technical Marketing we have long espoused a similar philosophy. In short we build relationships with clients that includes advice, but also many deliverables and yes a degree of service support too.

Content marketing - a new specialism?

The Internet is probably currently responsible for creating more specialist jobs than any other business sector. Today there are niche specialities – SEO, usability testing, hosting, CMS software, social media consultants and now content marketing specialists. Ten to fifteen years ago our task then was explaining to clients that the Internet could provide a useful addition to their marketing communications programme. Many SMEs countered with the response that none of their competitors had a web site and their customers had never asked for one anyway. Back then there was an education job to do while building a web site was a collaboration between designers and programmers. In fact a typical approach was for a designer to produce the ‘look’ for the home page and how it should be applied to inside pages before the programmer coded, built and tested the site. As an Account Director it was immediately obvious that before these functional aspects could be addressed there was a need to plan the site architecture and most importantly create the content. The first was quite easy – the content however was usually a major challenge. A typical company web site is basically a distillation of what the company is about – what it does, who they are, what they sell, how to buy – but at that time the businesses I dealt with typically only had some sales leaflets and not much else. It often required meetings to identify basic facts about the company and cause them in turn to rethink what they were actually doing. It should have been amazing how little most executives understood about their business when it came to key facts, but experience showed it was commonplace. Even products were a challenge, for example one company marketed a range of floor cleaning machines that used cleaning fluids. In theory a lucrative range of consumables that could easily be sold online, but at the time relied on a storeman simply sending out stock only if asked in whatever container was to hand. There was no real process in place, no part numbers, no pricing and no packaged product so an important business opportunity was largely missed. Of course developing a web site while at the same time creating content that in turn requires creating business structures and systems can be a lengthy process. And of course adding emerging content as it became available was a poor way to deliver web sites on budget and on time. Clients simply do not understand that their lack of information is relevant. Although we tried to create and get signed off all content before starting to build a web site, the theory was always better than the reality as material persistently came through in bits and pieces. Returning to the spawning of web site specialisms the term ‘content marketing’ as noted at the beginning of this piece has now entered the lists of expert consultants. One blog talks about creating ‘remarkable content’.

Brian Halligan, CEO and co-founder of HubSpot says,

“

To be a successful marketer in today's society, you need to be half publisher and half traditional marketer. So your next hire, you might think, could be a writer, or a video producer, or a music producer, something like that, and you need to start creating remarkable content. You look at the people who really win on the internet, and who really win on Google, who rank very high on Google, its sites with lots and lots of pages inside of Google's index. So Google sort of looks at a website as, every page on a website is a unique little website that can rank for different keywords. So the key is, how do you get as much stuff in Google's index that's remarkable, that people are looking into it, that you can move up the rankings. So, we really encourage our customers to start creating remarkable content. And remarkable content spreads wildly on the internet. If you're creating boring content, it doesn't spread at all.

”

It echoes a theme we at Technical Marketing have long been espousing in less florid language, that interesting, relevant and helpful content is an important part of the marketing mix. Most companies simply do not have the time, or skills to produce their own content, so maybe it is the time of the Content Marketing Expert then.

Marketing through the credit crunch

Just as governments seem uncertain how to stop the descent into a global recession, so does the retail sector seem to be resorting to some strange marketing tactics. A ‘20% off ‘ sale a month before Christmas seems a desperate measure with the underlying suggestion that margins must have been more substantial than might have been previously inferred. The most curious promotion this week was a double whammy offer on Christmas Tree lights. Signage suggested that there were savings of up to 50% while the actual product was marked with far smaller cash savings. We picked up a box priced at around 10 pounds also marked with a previous price of a couple pound more. As it is still November one wonders when they were on sale at the higher price anyway. But stuck on each box was also a label for insurance. Although I thought it odd to advertise insurance on a ten pound box of lights, I was really surprised when a member of staff sidled up and pointed out what a great deal this was. For just 3 pounds we could insure the lights and get free replacement in event of later failure. My wife pointed out that she expected them to work and so did consumer laws. So the actual cost of purchase with insurance would have been more than the promised savings on previously displayed price. Marketing should be based on firmer foundations not flimsy gimmicks, but then hindsight is showing that the three great drivers of the British economy – retail, finance and housing – have all been based on overvalued propositions.

World economy in meltdown?

The news is dominated by failing banks, falling stock markets, falling real estate values, government rescues with multi-billion dollar sums that have little or no effect on stopping the downward dive to oblivion. Some marketing bloggs are starting to ask will it affect us, are we burying our heads in the sand? Those of us in marketing for several decades have witnessed business cycles of boom and bust, worked in high inflation environments, low inflation, high interest rates and low – but nothing like this. Who would have thought so much of British investment was in Icelandic banks for goodness sake? As the value of our savings disappears you can’t help but wonder what is next? We are at a stage of financial planning right now – what assumptions should we, indeed can we make? And yet, businesses are carrying on. Enquiries are still coming in product being shipped and paid for, so why are companies being so devalued on the stock market? The risk is that the total loss of confidence will start undermining otherwise healthy businesses if people hoard cash. But in the b-2-b sector nobody is yet talking of cutting budgets, broadly it is business as normal. Conventional wisdom advocates investing in more marketing, not less. Of course marketing is a soft target to trim or cut in recessionary times. Not a good plan. Businesses that market their way through difficult times generally emerge as the winners. Time will tell once the history of these strange times comes to be written.

Saving the planet

After many years working in the lighting industry and involvement with the electrical contracting world a visit to a wholesaler trade counter is always an interesting experience. Someone once remarked that all the best politicians are busy driving cabs and cutting hair. To these we could add ‘sparks’. The trade counter format has not noticeably changed over the years. Usually a poky place with electrical equipment manufacturers vying for the limited poster and display space. While waiting their turn contractors read the Sun, drink free coffee and express their views on the world in general. It is the ultimate word of mouth environment if your target audience is electrical installers and a great place for vox pop market research. These guys will have little hesitation in telling you what they think of your product. Today I was buying some special size fluorescent tubes and had taken in the failed lamp to make sure I got the right size. At one time the old tube would then be simply thrown away but due to new environmental regulations there is now a charge of ten pounds – to cover the licence and paper work gov you know. The new tube cost just over three pounds. Looking up from reading the Sun the next electrician in line took a deep breath and quipped – we’re saving the planet mate!

Photo: Our pond freezes over.

Movies and viral marketing

A business-to-business company Eppendorf has sparked considerable praise with their viral marketing campaign in the form of a pop band style video. It has achieved fulsome praise indeed and yet somehow it didn’t work for me. Worse I couldn’t make much sense of it first time around or feel inspired to pass it on to a viral network. Not being in the particular sector of the industrial market or familiar with the brand probably didn’t help either. Maybe it is a generation thing, or maybe it was the band. Humorous movies such as Hamlet cigars with the short clip ending with their famous music as a cigar is lit made me laugh, but a song about a product sung as a ballad was puzzling.

Servitisation

According to E&T journal ‘servitisation’ is a term originally coined in the ‘Harvard Business Review’ in 1988. In the same issue as its ‘Are you being served article?’ which discusses the reinvention of product companies as service companies is a major series to co-incide with the sixtieth anniversary of publication of George Orwells’ book ‘1984’. The journal looks at how far his scenario has been realised at least in terms of technology. Of course as with science fiction - Arthur C Clarke’s ‘2001 Space Odessy’ serves to illustrate that to imagine a future is very different from putting a realistic date on when it might happen. Both 1984 and 2001 are already history and some predicted technology inspired products have indeed become commonplace while some have come and gone. I am not sure whether much was predicted about outsourcing or off shoring sixty years ago, but today as a country the UK has outsourced production, call centres, software development, service support and arguably politics and law making. In previous blogs I have noted the problems facing one client where the traditional sales support model through development into volume production is no longer relevant. I have recently received their instructions for the launch of a new product. There is nothing new about the product except that it is produced in China and no doubt costs a whole lot less than making the same item in Birmingham. So while some companies are transforming into service organisations, keeping very close to the customer by consulting during the development phase and putting themselves into a better position to then supply product for volume manufacture others like our client are using low cost sourcing to stay in the game. I suspect the service route will prove more sustainable

How to make your customers pay for your advertising

Interesting isn’t it how as consumers we accept a role similar to the sandwich board man when we shop in the high street or shopping mall of carrying branded bags around proclaiming the names of stores we have patronised. Of course it wasn’t always like this. At one time purchases would be discretely wrapped in brown paper packages tied up with string, or smaller items in plain brown paper bags, or vegetable sold loose and tipped into our own bag or basket. But this was all a long time ago in the days when shop assistants brought out the product, before we had to do it ourselves and present our selections at a check-out. Taking your own shopping bag into a store suddenly became suspicious and to avoid accusation of shop lifting we accepted that our purchases would be shoved into a store bag that also served as a form of receipt. You also needed the bag should you return goods as some sort of proof of purchase. Before long supermarkets had piles of flimsy plastic bags at the till and you simply helped yourself to as many as you wanted. But wait, these same stores are now telling us that their plastic bags, the ones we didn’t ask for in the first place by the way, are destroying the planet. Marks & Spencer has even taken the step of charging 5 pence for every bag you accept as some sort of fine. I have refrained from shopping in their store, but should I be asked to pay I feel inclined to ask for a plain bag – or else present a rate card for my advertising fees.

Rapidly changing technologies?

A friend e-mailed a scanned clipping from a newspaper – in itself an indication of change, he would have posted it at one time – which listed a range of skills for dealing with technologies that are no longer needed. For example, changing the ribbon on a typewriter, winding a watch, getting up to change a TV channel, using the choke in a car … and plenty more. Newspapers love lists almost as much as market research into human behaviour, but it indicates the challenge facing new product development. OK so a number of these little wrinkles for using yesterday’s technology are obsolete, but on the other hand it still seems to take an age for new technologies to get into general use. Take the case of compact fluorescent lamps – CFLs – I was involved in their launch in 1980. Nearly 30 years on they are much more widespread but still way short of being universally used to replace Swan’s and Edison’s 19th century invention. Another lighting example is the promotion and take up of new dimming technologies that have been available for a decade or more but still in a tiny minority of total dimmers sold. In fact what the list actually demonstrates is not so much the advance of new technologies but easier use of the old concepts, improvement and evolution rather than invention and revolution. An iPod plays music same as a wind-up gramophone, just better; today’s motor car bristles with modern technology but most of the roads we drive it on were laid out by the Romans or ramble round ancient fields and river crossings established by the Anglo Saxons. So actions like filling a fountain pen, lowering a stylus (or needle) on to a vinyl record and using carbon paper may all be lost skills, but the tasks of writing, playing music and copying are still relevant. We just have better ways on doing things now. So the NPD marketing executive would do well to revisit the tasks his customers are needing to accomplish, to evaluate how new technologies can help in improving achieving the task and then figure out how to embody that into a product that can be successfully solved profitably. Not much to ask really!

Charging for design advice

In a recent blog – The China Syndrome – I discussed a problem that a client had identified of customer development support. The problem being encountered is that traditionally working with a customer on prototype development had been an essential part of the marketing plan; using expertise and knowledge to provide a solution through using their products. Once the product had been demonstrated at a test level then volume sales could follow thanks to this earlier specification work. It is or was a familiar business model using technical sales activity to build a specification so that boxed goods products could then be supplied for the volume production needs through distribution networks. Of course holding ‘spec’ has always been an issue, but now with the massive price difference between product produced in China and in home based factories not only are buyers switching, but the price and margins are destroyed. It leaves companies like our client with the knowledge but without a means of charging for this expertise. I return to this subject because another client, this time operating in the building services sector, has a similar problem. Here prospects might recognise they have a problem but need help in identifying its exact nature before selecting and installing products that will provide a solution. The design support required does not stand the cost of a specialist consultant but typically calls for a site visit leading to a report and recommendation for supply and fix. The real issue they have to confront is that the design advice is essential to a successful outcome, but not traditionally chargeable as it is part of the quotation process. The question now is can this be made chargeable. This is where marketing to build trust in the brand can create an environment where the relationship created in the specification phase carries over to the implementation where a price premium for the safe option can be traded against the risk of using a remote low cost supplier. It only takes a container to go over board in the South China Sea and suddenly the supply line comes to an abrupt halt and what does that do for reputation of a carefully nurtured brand?

Lies, dammed lies and statistics …

The advent of Google Analytics has ushered in a new era of web site accountability. Suddenly the colourful Webalizer charts have given way to the free to use but rather dour monochrome displays offered by Google. Now there is a heap of data that can be sifted by activity and time frame to reveal a wealth of statistics. What it doesn’t actually offer is information - that requires interpretation of the statistics. OK so we know that the bounce rate is 50% for example, but what does that mean? That half the visitors find your web site of no use to them, or half the visitors are not your prospects, or they went there by mistake, or are stupid, or just surfing anything hopefully? The problem with this data is it begs the questions of why? And what does it all mean? Then there is the mismatch between what Google says happens and what the accounts package says was actually ordered and you have to wonder whether it is most useful to indicate trends rather than give an absolute measure. Then there are some recent top-level statistics from BRMB that provide interesting statistics on the use of the Internet. Still top at 73% is e-mail followed by online research at 48% and online banking at 35%. Top sites are Travel at 48%, Weather forecasts (38%), cinema listings/events (35%), Music/mp3 (32%), Sport (27%), Jobs (26%) and News (24%). It is curious that weather sites should rate so highly – perhaps a weather forecast should feature on all sites. But as with all statistics there will be flaws in the validity of how they are collected, how they are interpreted and how they are used and this is where solid marketing experience comes into play and basic common sense. It can be useful to stand back and ask the question – does it make sense? Of course the data can be used as a guide to make changes and observe the results, but some things will remain constant. With ‘General Research’ being the second most popular use of the Internet after e-mail, first make sure people can find your web site when searching for sources of supply for their specific need. Then ensure that they can find the information they need and finally they can contact you to enquire further or place an order. And once they have found you, use means that give them a reason to return and become a loyal customer.