The Biggest Marketing Challenge of the Next 10 Years (Part One)

These past two years have been incredibly challenging. As the global economic crisis settled in, we all tried to figure out what that would mean for our organizations. Some organizations failed. Many launched emergency fundraising appeals. And recently, we are beginning to see the questioning of major business practices, from preview performances to selling subscriptions. New technologies are changing the way audiences interact with "art," some major metropolitan areas are showing significant declines in arts participation, and many states are slashing their arts funding.

Even with the recent craziness, it looks as if there might be a light at the end of the crisis tunnel. Many of us have been in the trenches for awhile, making strategic planning difficult as we tend to the fire of the moment. However, as we emerge from the financial crisis, we should start thinking about what lies ahead. As we enter a new decade, I began to wonder what the biggest marketing challenge of the next ten years would be, and it occurred to me that I would love to hear what some of my colleagues thought. So I asked them.

This will be part one in a series of posts where I bring you the thoughts of several leaders in the field as they respond to the question: "What is the biggest marketing challenge the arts will face in the next 10 years?"


Thomas Cott
Director of Marketing, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater

I think some of the biggest marketing challenges of the next ten years will be linked inevitably to changes in artistic programming that have already begun. We can expect a disconnect between the more traditional art forms and things like amateur art, participatory art, mixed-media art and site-specific works. Also, the demographic shifts in the U.S – the rise of the so-called ‘minority majority’ -- should have a big impact on programming, and thus arts marketing.

Another challenge is how we deal with younger generations of Americans who did not grow up attending theater, dance or classical music and who didn’t have much (if any) arts education in school. Arts marketers will need to provide ad hoc arts education for these adults.

In addition, as fundraising goals are harder to achieve, there will be more pressure on marketers to make up the difference. But there is a limit to how much we can charge for tickets. And more to the point, while there will probably always be people who will gladly pay for 'premium seats' and plenty of others with an appetite for bargain prices... how do you convince audience members who used to buy in the middle price range to do so when they are worried about affording their basic costs of living? Even if the economy improves significantly in the next 1-2 years, there is a strong indication that some Americans’ buying habits have been irrevocably altered. The widening income gap in this country is deeply worrisome.

Last but not least, a myriad of technological advances – although they can provide wonderful marketing tools – offer big challenges to arts groups, especially those with limited budgets, staff and understanding of technology. Web 3.0 is upon us, but most arts organizations are still grappling with Web 2.0 ideas.

But. Take a big breath, everyone. All of the above challenges notwithstanding, I can’t imagine a better time to be involved in the arts. Look at the incredible opportunity we have. Over the next decade, we as marketers (along with the rest of our colleagues) get to be involved in this seismic realignment of our country. We are the ones who will determine the future of the arts in the country. Who can resist that challenge?


Rick Lester
CEO, Target Resource Group

Today may be the good old days for arts marketing. Very good organizations are running against a tide of numbers that could ultimately prove overwhelming. Three decades of selling tickets, raising money and balancing unbalance-able budgets frame this view, but it’s what we see in TRG’s cumulative data on arts and culture buyers that is alarming.

Thirty years ago, a high proportion of subscribers were seriously engaged. In the orchestra world, the audience included avocational musicians. They studied seriously. They performed chamber music in their homes. This generation departed from the scene and marketers successfully made a clever transition of message. To “Subscribe Today,” one could find happiness as a spectator. Participation was no longer required.

This strategy worked. Across the country we added thousands of new subscribers and single ticket buyers. Admittedly, these new folks no longer wanted to attend 24 Saturday night performances. Simple, we said. We’ll sell you twelve performances – or nine. Or six. And it worked. Unfortunately, another force was in play. Demographics.

As theatre, opera, orchestra and ballet companies replaced one generation with another, the new target market came of age -- Baby Boomers. Today marks the best of times for serving Boomers. Right now the target pool is 60 million of us who were born between 1946 and 1964. Any current marketing or fundraising effort need not be as efficient as those programs implemented twenty years ago. There are so many people who fit the current target, one can miss the bulls eye and still be okay.

What happens in 2020? The members of Gen X finally begin reaching the target life stage. Even if we forget the cultural divide that resulted from the demise of public arts education when this group passed through our schools, the arithmetic boils down to one number: 20 Million. That’s how many Americans were born between 1964 and 1981 -- 60 million Boomers will be replaced by 20 million Gen X’ers.

The math is simple - and it doesn’t work. Everything an arts organization does well today must be three times more efficient in 2020 if they are to maintain today’s level of success. We could, of course, wait and see what happens when Gen Y (born between 1982 and 1995) replaces Gen X. These so-called Echo Boomers are almost as big a group as its parent generation. But our data suggests waiting is a high-risk option.

Is there a solution? Yes, but it won’t be easy. The rate of audience attrition today is unacceptably high. Nationally, TRG analysis shows that 80% of all new single ticket buyers never return for a second visit. Unchecked, attrition will continue depressing audience growth and feeding decline. Smart organizations, however, won’t ignore the danger signs or wait for the generational echo. By 2020, the best among us will have long since stopped over-prospecting for new stealth patrons and will retain almost everyone they touch.

Future posts will feature responses by:
Anne Trites, Director of Marketing and Communications, Yale Repertory Theater
Ken Davenport, Producer, Davenport Theatricals Enterprises
Eugene Carr, President of Patron Technology
Ilene Rosen, Director of Business Development, SpotCo
Jim Royce, Director of Marketing, Communications and Sales, Center Theatre Group
Julie Peeler, Vice President of Private Sector Initiatives, Americans for the Arts

Sell to the Benefit - e-Statements

Think about the information on your bank/credit union statements ... name, address, account numbers, spending habits. Now think about this information being left - unprotected - in an outside mailbox.

Pretty scary stuff, huh?

With e-statements, you remove one more worry for your customers to protecting their good name.

And your bank/credit union will save from printing paper statements every month.

"Saving a tree" is nice, but selling to the security benefit for e-statements will really speak to your target.

Sell to the Benefit - Debit Card & Online Banking

When your customers use cash, the ability to track it seems to go up in smoke!

But, when they use a debit card for everyday purchases, they can track every penny right from their home computer using online banking.

Your customers can better track how much they spend on coffee, restaurants, gas, or anything at all ... and get a better handle on their budget.

And you will enjoy more loyal customers with 2 additional key products ... thanks to basic product bundling and selling to the benefit, rather than the feature.

Beyond Alignment to Collaboration

One of the hot topics today in B2B marketing is the need to create better alignment between marketing and sales.  There is a growing recognition that marketing and sales are out of sync in many B2B companies.  They often have widely different views about such fundamental issues as what kinds of companies make the best prospects and what constitutes a sales-ready lead.  One major objective of improving the alignment between marketing and sales is to develop a common view regarding these basic issues.

Creating better alignment between marketing and sales is certainly important, but "alignment" doesn't adequately describe the kind of relationship that's really needed between marketing and sales.  Today, a growing number of B2B companies realize that both marketing and sales activities are components of a single demand generation process.  And to create and sustain a demand generation process that produces significant revenue growth, what's really needed is an active and close collaboration between marketers and salespeople.

Not that long ago, such active and close collaboration wasn't absolutely essential.  In most B2B companies, the roles and responsibilities of marketing and sales were fairly distinct and independent.  Marketing ran campaigns to raise brand awareness and generate sales leads, produced marketing collateral materials, and coordinated the participation in trade shows.  Leads generated by marketing were passed along to sales and were rarely seen by marketing again.  Salespeople had two basic jobs - to generate leads (prospect) and to take those leads (plus those supplied by marketing) and close sales.

This siloed approach to marketing and sales is simply not effective in today's business environment.  Companies are encountering potential buyers long before they are ready to meet with a salesperson.  So, marketing must play a larger role in nurturing prospects until they are ready to have a meaningful conversation with sales.  And when a prospect does talk with a salesperson, he or she expects the sales rep to build on the existing relationship, not start over from scratch.

A collaborative relationship can help make the transition from marketing to sales nearly seamless, but the benefits of collaboration don't stop there.  Salespeople are talking with prospects and customers every day, and they can provide marketers with real-time input about the issues that prospects are actively thinking about.  Marketers can then use this information to develop new marketing content or modify existing content.  On the flip side, marketers can provide salespeople with information about strategic developments and trends that are affecting potential buyers.

The bottom line is that B2B companies need an effective demand generation process in order to drive consistent revenue growth, and an effective demand generation process requires that marketers and salespeople work as a cohesive team.

Lessons From An Entrepreneur: The 8 Keys To A Thriving vs. Dying Business

The 8 Keys to Profit Acceleration

Many people ask me, "How did you do it?"

That is, how did I leave the comfort of a nice, corporate job (and salary, I might add) as Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for the Internet's top online publisher and launch a new business in a tough economy (back in March of 2009).

And, on top of that, launching a new business on the heels of becoming a mom and taking care of my newborn son and busy household.

Launching a new business always lends itself to some apprehension. But now, more than ever, during such a volatile time when many businesses are closing their doors and millions are losing their jobs ... makes it a tad more intimidating.

However, my business didn't only survive, it thrived. And it is still flourishing. I had taken a company with $0 and catapulted it to more than a six figure revenue generator in only 10 short months.

So, back to the original question, "How did I do it?"

Well, timing sure wasn't on my side. The state of our economy over the last few years makes it quite a challenge to get and keep clients. However, I owe the success of my business to a few critical drivers that I'm going to share with you. You can take these principals and apply or adapt them to your own business efforts as you see fit.

1. Market Smarter, Not Harder. This is a no-brainer. Any start up entrepreneur will tell you they have little to no marketing budget. So how do you build your brand and create awareness? It's being a strategic AND creative thinker. And it's also taking something most companies have (that's content) and leveraging it. Using a systematic approach I developed called the SONAR Content Distribution Method TM
http://www.precisionmarketingmedia.com/sonar.html .SONAR is simply taking your content and disseminating the release of it on the Web in a strategic and synchronized manner. The platforms you're releasing it to is targeted, highly visible, and free. This helps create a momentum in traffic, buzz, and then you help monetize that traffic though lead generation (or sales).

2. Relationship Cultivation. Networking, and tapping into your network, is key when launching a new business OR gaining market share with an existing business. I happen to have a very strong Rolodex of friends, colleagues, and professional acquaintances that helped create a good foundation for my launch efforts. They either hired me right off the bat as some of my very first clients OR referred me to their colleagues OR advertised my services to their lists. Always keep relationships open. Touch base with your network regularly. Offer assistance (gratis) if they have questions. People will reciprocate the gesture and it could lead to a multitude of benefits.

3. Strong Work Ethic/Reputation. People that know me ... that I worked for ... or know my experience, know what I bring to the table. They also know that I am committed to any task on my plate. It's a strong work ethic that people remember and helps build your reputation in whatever niche you're in. My reputation speaks for itself in the industry. And that doesn't just help with new business or referrals, but also helps with getting testimonials from those I worked with. Those testimonials are invaluable as a marketing tool on your website and in collateral material. Prospects can get a good idea of what to expect from those few "sound bites" about your work.

4. Leveraging Social Media. I have fully utilized social media. It's cost effective and casts a wide net. Where else can you get your message out to the masses for zero advertising cost? I've had the most success with LinkedIn.com as well as doing free press releases (that get picked up by bloggers and online news aggregators). LinkedIn is a professional networking community. I joined several "groups" where my target client would be and started writing relevant, useful articles. Soon, people started contacting me (on average 5 per week) with requests for proposals. I actually had so much success with LinkedIn I spoke on the subject matter at the SIPA Mid-Year Marketing Event this past December in Miami. If you're interested in a copy of that presentation, please contact me.

5. Contribute Content. I happen to enjoy writing and enjoy sharing my knowledge. In addition to syndicating my blog's content on the Web, I also reached out to relevant marketing newsletters and magazines and asked about being an editorial contributor or guest author, providing strong, valuable editorial. I also speak at industry conferences. From these efforts I gain exposure for my business, build credibility, and also get leads.

6. Business Basics. Create a strategic plan. Determine where you want to be in 1 or 2 years and what tactics you're going to do to achieve your goal. Go over your break-even point per month and how many clients/customers it will take to maintain or exceed that point. Keep little overhead. Establish a "true" home office. Share office space. Rent space or time at a business office center. Or get a "virtual office". When you're just starting out, cash flow is vital. If you need to outsource work, look into college interns related to the field you're in or bid out jobs in places like elance.com or ifreelance.com.

7. Confidence is Crucial. I don't just talk the talk, I walk the walk. I can back up everything I say by my past experience and future actions. Bottom line: I'm damn good at what I do and I make people money. I know it, and the companies or clients I've worked for (that take my advice and implement what I recommend) know it. This comes, however, with being in the marketing world for over 16 years. It also comes with being an accomplished professional. Once you have several successful tenures under your belt you know your worth and can set a value for your time. There's a difference between being confident and cocky. Confidence is self assured. Cocky is obnoxious. You need to know the difference and become your own advocate. This is conveyed in all that you do and is transparent to potential prospects.

8. Balancing Act. Any start-up business can be a drain on your life and family. A lot of time and effort goes into the launch, maintenance, and client relationship management. Then of course there's the administrative functions like daily accounting and record keeping. But it doesn't have to be that way. Make sure you set specific time for your work and time for your family. When work is done, leave it in the office (even if your office is another room of your house). Enjoy time with your loved ones and soon you all can reap the rewards of a successful company.

After all, you work to live, not live to work!

Leveraging Actionable Customer Data for Revenue Growth

By Laura Patterson

Peter Drucker is attributed to having said, “the purpose of business is to create a customer.” Delving deeper into what matters to your customers is the key to growing revenue. Focusing on the profitable sources of revenue takes ensuring your organization, especially your marketing team, has the data mining tools, customer research, marketing automation software, and the ability to perform customer analytics. As the CEO, you most likely expect your marketing organization to allocate its marketing dollars, people and time toward your most profitable channels and your most profitable customers.

Therefore you’ve probably have already chartered your marketing team to collect relevant customer-related information. But does your marketing organization have the ability to analyze this information in a way that provides your sales organization and leadership team with valuable insights into customer behavior? This capability requires that your marketing organization be able to perform customer analytics. Applying customer analytics methodologies to your customer information helps identify, attract and retain your best and most profitable customers. Customer analytics leverages customer behavior, trends, psychographic and demographic data to design more effective customer experiences and customer marketing. When done effectively, your organization can use the information derived from the customer analytics to strategically influence interactions with customers’ and prospects.

How might your organization benefit from customer analytics? For example, if keeping customers over a specific time period and having them purchase particular products is important to your profitability and return against the cost to acquire, you can use analytics to determine the components of customer lifetime value, the profitability of each customer, and the likelihood of attrition over a certain period of time. With this information your organization can develop a targeted retention strategy, cross-selling and/or up-selling programs, and leverage the desired communication channels in order to improve the lifetime value of customers. All of these initiatives fall into the domain of your marketing organization.

It takes a number of key elements to adequately deploy customer analytics so that your marketing organization can more effectively address customer and market opportunities. Your marketing organization will need the right people, processes, data and technology. Organizations who make these investments and leverage customer analytics are better able to anticipate, influence and measure customer behavior.

For many organizations, data is one of the primary challenges they face when it comes to customer analytics. Often the required data exists in disparate non-integrated systems creating a number of issues. Top that off with the increase in the number of channels organizations have at their disposal today to reach customers, and the data challenge can quickly become overwhelming. Therefore before most organizations can perform customer analytics, they need to address their data.

Here are three steps you may want to make sure your marketing organization has address:

1. Clean customer data that is updated regularly. We live in a dynamic environment where change is constant and that goes for customer data. The quality of your customer data greatly affects the data analysis. Clean data is imperative to develop valid actionable insight that will improve marketing effectiveness.

2. A customer data management technology that serves as a centralized source for all customer data. As we’ve already noted, data is the lynchpin for justifying and optimizing marketing investments.

3. The integration of all your customer data into the customer data management system. Customer data exists in a number of disparate systems, such as your web analytics tool, your social media monitoring tool, customer feedback and surveys, and your marketing campaign automation tool. It generally takes technology to collect, aggregate and integrate all of your customer data. But it is essential that all your data be integrated into one robust system.

Now you and your marketing organization will be able to answer these kinds of questions about your customers.

1. Who are your most profitable customers?
2. What do they buy?
3. What do they need?
4. What motivates them to buy?

Once you have all your customer data in a robust database, you can apply analytical methodology to the data to derive insights into your customers’ behavior and preferences. Performing this type of analysis enables your organization to use data to create customized marketing initiatives and develop personalized marketing programs that will engage your prospects and customers. Performing customer analytics takes process, tools, and analytical skills but the payoff is better targeted relevant interactions with prospects and customers in order to improve customer loyalty, profitability and of course your marketing organization’s effectiveness.

About Laura Patterson

Laura Patterson’s marketing and sales career spans nearly 30 years having worked for both large public companies such as State Farm and Motorola and as well as start ups. In 1999 she co-founded VisionEdge Marketing (http://www.visionedgemarketing.com), a data-driven metrics based strategic and product marketing company that specializes in improving marketing performance and helping organizations create a competitive advantage designed to attract, secure and retain profitable customers. Author of dozens of published marketing and branding articles and the books Gone Fishin' and Measure What Matters and the recently published Metrics in Action: Creating Performance-Driven Organizations.

Getting Philosophical

My son turned 7 this week and it got me to thinking about parenthood.

It seems that we don't raise our children to be like us, but rather ... we raise them to be like the people we WANT to be.

If it also follows that the most influential teaching is to teach by example ... then the act of parenting, by it's very nature, should make each of us more like the people we strive to be.

I would think that this same philosophy applies to management.

No matter your management style, your staff will learn and are are motivated by example. Does the sheer act of being a manager make you a better employee?

Should it?

Take care,

Eric

Getting Specific About Value

We now know that providing relevant content to potential buyers is essential for effective B2B marketing.  One key to increasing the relevancy of marketing content is to make it more specific.  Consider the following two statements:

• "Our new ProWidget can enable you to reduce equipment downtime and improve manufacturing efficiency."
• "Customers using our new ProWidget have reduced the cost of equipment downtime by an average of $100,000 per year."

Which of these statements is more compelling?  I think it's clear that the second statement is more powerful because it's more specific.

To make marketing content more specific, you need to have a thorough understanding of how your products and services produce value for customers.  In an earlier post, I explained how to build a customer value matrix that will provide detailed insights about this critical issue.

Now for a confession.  You may need more than one customer value matrix to get a complete picture of how your products and services produce value for customers.  This is likely to be true if you sell to more than one industry or type of business.

To understand why, we need to review a few principles about value.  All products and services have features and attributes that enable certain jobs to get done.  By providing ways to get things done, features and attributes produce benefits for the people and companies that use the product or service.  The value of any product or service depends on the value of the benefits the product or service produces.

The catch is that the value of any particular benefit can vary significantly from customer to customer depending on the nature of each customer's business. 

To capture these differences, you need to create a separate customer value matrix for each industry or major type of business you serve.  After you've created your initial "catch-all" matrix, think about one of the industries of major types of business your serve.  Go back through your catch-all matrix and create a separate version that is targeted to that industry or type of business.  What you are likely to find is that some benefits or sources of value become much more important when you're focused on one particular type of business.  This insight will enable you to develop content that is more specific, and therefore more relevant, to that industry.

Using Social Media...

OK...this past Friday, we delivered a Brown Bag Lunch Series session on social media.  HUGE audience and lots of insightful questions.  The good news is that from a session we did in May of 2009 until this session, the industry...and many of the attendees...have picked up steam on their way to integrating social media into their marketing strategies.

Thanks to Jason Kincy (Arvest Bank) for his Guest Commentary and sharing of his expertise, experience and words of wisdom...very well done!

Three key insights for ALL bankers and CU marketers:

• Find the social media that is appropriate to YOUR institution
• Use social media yourself...the best place to start is small and learn as you go
• Compliance is an evolving practice, as it applies to Social Media...document everything!

Here is a humorous reminder of the largest caveat to social media.  If you use it, be prepared for its broad access and sharing.  It will live forever in electronic media so be sure what you share it what you want to share (and have potentially millions of people read it).  Don't be scared, but be prudent!

CHEERS!

Bruce

Marketing Effectiveness vs. Marketing Efficiency

Today's B2B marketers are facing growing pressure from the C-suite to improve the value provided by the marketing function.  The value created by marketing depends on both the effectiveness and the efficiency of marketing activities.  Marketing effectiveness and marketing efficiency are not conflicting objectives, but they are different.  And both are necessary for marketing to create value.

The essence of marketing effectiveness is producing the required results.  Are your lead generation programs producing enough new inquiries?  Is your lead nurturing program converting enough inquiries into sales-ready leads?  The measures of marketing effectiveness tend to be absolute numbers:  number of inquiries, number of marketing-qualified leads, number of sales-ready leads, etc.

Marketing efficiency is all about delivering effective marketing programs at the lowest possible cost.  Measures of marketing efficiency are typically expressed in dollars and are usually ratios:  cost per inquiry, cost per sales-ready lead, etc.

Many of today's "best practices" in B2B marketing can improve both marketing effectiveness and marketing efficiency.  For example, profiling your ideal customer, developing buyer personas for the people who make up your buying group, and creating content for each buyer persona can improve the effectiveness of your lead generation programs by increasing response rates.  These same activities can also improve marketing efficiency by enabling you to target lead generation campaigns more narrowly.

So far, most efforts to improve marketing efficiency have focused on individual campaigns and programs.  But recently, marketers have begun to focus on improving the efficiency of marketing operations.  Marketing operations is the term for all of the activities required to perform the marketing function.  Therefore, marketing operations would include coordinating the work of external marketing services firms, performing marketing research, and managing the procurement, production, and distribution of marketing collateral materials.

Marketers have started to realize that improving the efficiency of marketing operations can be a great way to conserve marketing dollars and stretch marketing budgets.

The bottom line - marketers must improve both marketing effectiveness and marketing efficiency to increase the value that marketing provides.

A Collection of Worst Practices

A couple of weeks ago while sitting on a funding panel, I said to a representative of a very large funder that I didn't understand why people were so afraid to fail, and then discuss their failures openly so that everyone could learn from them. Especially in the fields of technology and audience development, more advances come out of failure than anything else. The funding representative said that she felt the same way, but heard from companies that they were afraid to admit their failures because they feared it would affect future funding opportunities.

Well, I thought I might get the ball rolling by discussing some of my biggest failures and what they taught me:

Always give the exclusive to your best customers. I have made this mistake a couple of times, but trust me, I have learned the lesson. Every now and again, you might have a big news story that a major news outlet will want an exclusive on. They might even promise you front page or prime time coverage, in exchange for the opportunity to be the exclusive outlet to break the story. In the past to protect an exclusive, I have made the decision not to release any information until after the story broke. However, imagine how your subscribers might feel if they first learn of this news by reading the front page of the newspaper? Do you think they would feel like part of the family? or a VIP? NO! I still work with our media relations staff regularly to negotiate exclusives with major news outlets, but we always inform our subscribers first. It might only be an hour or two before the mainstream news breaks it, but they are first to know.

When hiring, a fire in the belly trumps experience. The old saying that "90% of directing is casting" is applicable to all walks of life. By far the most important responsibility I have is hiring. In the last several years, I have been faced with a similar dilemma--a choice between someone with a ton of drive and less experience vs. someone with a ton of experience and less drive. The first time I made this decision, I went with more experience and less drive. Big mistake. You can teach skills, but you cannot teach strong work ethic.

If you don't have the support of artistic staff, don't consider launching a blog. I have launched blogs at Virginia Stage Company (VSC) and Americans for the Arts, and relaunched a blog at Arena Stage. My first attempt at VSC failed miserably. As a communications outlet, I made the decision that I would serve as the principal writer, mostly because it was my job and secondarily because I couldn't get artistic staff to buy into the idea. So I started writing, and I couldn't get a single reader. Why? People don't care what a marketing director thinks. They want to hear from the cool people --artists, designers, actors, etc.

All that glitters isn't gold -- especially with technology. I have always been an early adopter of technology to help market cultural experiences. I used to jump on every new idea that came out spending hours and hours developing ways to use new technological advances to communicate with stakeholders. After building podcasts, Second Life sites, NING communities and discussion boards that have all failed, I take more time now to think about the overall strategy before jumping in. A year and a half ago, Next to Normal was coming to Arena Stage, and we knew there was a good chance it would be going directly to Broadway. The show already had a large number of dedicated fans, so I wanted to build a community where they could all interact with each other in anticipation of a commercial run. We set up a NING site (http://www.n2nfans.com/) and started to promote it like crazy. After two months of promotion, we had 45 fans. The show had a huge following, but the idea failed. Why? When I asked fans later why they didn't join, they said they didn't want to create yet another log-in and profile. To participate, NING makes you do both, and people were tired of having multiple log-ins and profiles (Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Yahoo! Groups, etc). The idea was good, but the technology was flawed.

Small cuts can negate million dollar advertising plans. Early in my career, when I had to look at budget cuts, I made a decision to protect advertising expenses at all costs, opting instead to try to find operational expenses to cut. Together with my team, we looked at every little expense we thought we could shave. Despite not cutting any advertising expenses, I noticed a drop in ticket sales the following year. This concerned me, so we sent out an email survey to lapsed subscribers to figure out what happened. Two stories came back that will always stick with me: 1) a subscriber said that she stopped coming because she couldn't get a house manager to help her get a taxi home (we had released a part-time house manager to save money), and 2) one woman stopped subscribing because she had a hard time walking to the theater because of ice on the sidewalk (the city was notoriously bad about clearing sidewalks, so we used to set aside money to salt the major sidewalks that led to the theater, but we cut that). I did what I set out to accomplish which was to protect our advertising expenditures, but in doing so I compromised the experience. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of advertising, so the experience has to come first.

To Gate, or Not to Gate, Marketing Content?

An ongoing debate in the B2B marketing community is whether a person should be required to register in order to gain access to marketing content.  Requiring registration is usually called putting the content behind a "gate."

The arguments for and against registration are fairly easy to summarize.  Proponents of requiring registration argue that for most B2B companies, the purpose of offering content is to generate leads, and you don't have a lead until a person identifies himself/herself.  Without registration, content offers simply can't generate actionable leads.

Proponents of making content available without registration argue that this approach will cause your content to spread much further and thus make many more potential customers aware of your company.  David Meerman Scott is an advocate of this view, and he shared an example to make his point in this blog post.

My view this that a significant amount of content should be made available without any registration requirement.  Ungated content is becoming a critical component of B2B marketing because the way business buyers make purchasing decisions has changed dramatically.

We now know that B2B buyers are researching potential purchases long before they are ready to talk with a salesperson.  Most of this research is conducted online and, increasingly, through the use of social media.  We also know that B2B buyers are performing a lot of research anonymously.  A recent survey by DemandGen Report and Genius found that:

• 70% of buyers began their research by using online search or by visiting a vendor Website
• 78% of buyers started their purchasing process with informal information gathering
• 44% or buyers conducted anonymous online research

The reality today is that many early-stage buyers are out there actively looking for useful information, but they aren't ready to "raise their hand" and identify themselves.  Yet, many of these buyers will be prepared to engage with potential sellers later in the buying process.  If you make valuable, high-quality content freely available to these early-stage buyers, you can create a favorable "first impression" and provide these buyers a powerful reason to engage with your company when the time is right.

Community Service Lessons from the Boy Scouts

This year the Boy Scouts of America are commemorating their 100th Anniversary and, to celebrate, they have created a program that we all can learn from.

They have created a Centennial Award. It is a special patch with slots for 5 ribbons - each ribbon signifies completion of achievements in a particular category:

• Leadership
• Achievement
• Community Service
• Character
• Outdoors

To earn a ribbon, a scout (or adult leader) must complete 3 of 5 specific tasks.

So, how would this work at your institution?

You could create a program for your staff and for your customers/members. You can create any categories you like, but let's use Community Service, since it makes the most sense. How about outlining the following standards:

1. Participate in one American Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity project
2. Donate food or time to any local food bank
3. Volunteer at least 1 hour to any local high school function
4. Participate in or donate to the American Cancer Society Relay for Life
5. Organize a litter pick up in your neighborhood

After completing any 3 of the 5 activities above, your customer or staff member get honored in some way.

Don't make it too complicated, base the program on the honor system and take their word for it. The idea is simply to motivate people to participate, not to create a program-policing nightmare.

By creating standards in areas like Community Service, Leadership and Financial Fitness you can have a complete program that would surely effect your community for the better and provide your bank or credit union with unique and positive public relations.

And in this time of negative publicity for financial institutions, wouldn't now be a great time for some good-will in your neighborhood?

Take care,

Eric

Personalization Alone Doesn't Create Relevance

Today's B2B marketers have more ways to reach out to customers and prospects than ever before.  Digital technologies have created new marketing channels and enabled marketing techniques that would have been impractical, if not completely impossible, only a few years ago.

But despite the new marketing channels and technology tools, most B2B marketers are finding it more difficult to capture the attention of potential buyers and create the kind of engagement that leads to new business.  Easy access to information makes B2B buyers less dependent on sellers than in the past, and our environment is filled with advertising and marketing clutter.

As I've written before, the real solution to overcoming these hurdles is to use marketing messages that are relevant to the problems and issues B2B buyers are facing.

The good news is that B2B marketers now have an array of tools to improve the relevance of marketing communications.  Personalization technologies can enable marketers to create marketing messages that are customized for individual prospects.  For example, marketers can use variable data printing to create direct mail pieces that are customized for each recipient.  Other personalization technologies make it possible to create customized e-mail messages and Web pages.

The capabilities of personalization technologies are impressive, but it's important to remember that personalization alone does not necessarily create relevance.  For some time, marketers have been personalizing marketing messages by including specific facts about the recipient - her name, job title, or company affiliation, for example - in the message.  I call this explicit personalization, and the reality is that explicit personalization alone won't make an irrelevant message relevant.

Effective marketing can be defined as getting the right offer in front of a potential buyer at the right time.  Information about a potential buyer - particularly the buyer's behavior - can be a powerful tool for determining what the right offer should be and when that offer should be presented.  When personal information is used this way, the result is a personalized, customized, and relevant marketing message.  What makes this kind of message different from one based only on explicit personalization is that the personalization is embodied in what the offer is and how it is presented, rather than in a collection of "facts" about the recipient.

All relevant marketing messages are in a very real sense personalized, but not all personalized messages are relevant.

TGIM...

TGIM.

That's right...Thank God its MONDAY!

Changing my opinion of Mondays and making 2010 sing!

In case you have not read it, Thank God is Mondays, by Roxanne Emmerich is a quality read. It simply helps you refocus on the important little things that make the important big things easy.

Its all about making the environment in which you work the best it can be...positive, focused, constructive and engineered for team success.

Its kind of like the Staples "easy button"....that was easy!

With the full and complete knowledge that it IS that easy...and at the same time it is NOT that easy. The difference?  Attitude. Confidence. Team Focus.

At MarketMatch we are all about Focus. Momentum. Results. Three key words that sum up our mantra and keep us all working on the same goals with clients and rowing in the same direction.

I encourage you and your team to find that same type of razor sharp focus for you and your team.

It WILL make the difference and help to create a FUN/PRODUCTIVE/ENERGIZED working environment that will be creating great results along the way....

Cheers!

Bruce

The CMO's Guide to the Social Media Landscape

Here is a nice overview of the social media landscape that will help you understand how to best leverage major social media sites for your marketing. The guide lists the major social media platforms and rates their value for driving customer communication, brand exposure, traffic to your site, and SEO - check it out: http://bit.ly/aZrsox.

For Effective Content Marketing, "Form Follows Function"

When marketers decide to implement a content marketing program, there is a tendency to think first about content in terms of format.  You might, for example, hear a marketer say something like, "We're going to need a few articles, two or three white papers, at least four customer case studies, and a Webinar."

This approach misses the mark.  When you start planning the development of marketing content, the first thing to think about is the purpose or function of the content.  As a whole, your marketing content has to perform three basic functions.  I call these functions educate, demonstrate, and reassure.

Educate - This type of content is designed to help potential buyers understand the problem or issue they're facing and how the problem or issue can be addressed.  Educational content is factual and mostly non-promotional.  It focuses on your prospects' challenges and not on your company or your products or services.  Educational content includes content that:

• Explains the root cause of the problem/issue
• Describes the ramifications of the problem/issue
• Explains why it's important to address the problem/issue now
• Describes how other companies have successfully addressed the problem/issue
• Explains how to evaluate potential solutions

Demonstrate - Those of us who advocate content marketing stress the importance of providing content that is not self-promotional and not focused primarily on your company or your products or services.  But prospective buyers who reach a certain point in the buying cycle will want and need to learn about a prospective vendor's solutions.  So, you still need marketing content that "demonstrates" how your solution works and what specific benefits it provides.  This includes marketing content that:

• Describes the features/functionality of your solution
• Describes the unique or differentiated benefits that your solution provides
• Describes your company (history, values, etc.)
• Demonstrates the value of your solution

Reassure - This type of content is designed to alleviate the fear that always surrounds a major purchase decision.  In its groundbreaking BuyerSphere research project, Enquiro found that B2B buying decisions are usually driven by fear.  More specifically, B2B buying is all about minimizing fear by reducing or eliminating risk.  "Reassurance" content is content that helps buyers feel comfortable about purchasing your solution.  The best kind of reassurance content is content that involves third parties - customers, industry experts, industry analysts, etc.  Some examples are:

• Customer success stories that prove the value of your solution
• Customer success stories that validate ease of implementation and use
• Analyst reports that show the financial stability of your company

In general, educational content is most relevant for buyers who are in the early stages of the buying cycle, demonstration-oriented content becomes important for those in the middle stages of the buying cycle, and reassurance content takes center stage in the later stages of the buying cycle.

Once you're sure that your content plan includes content that performs all three of these functions, then you can focus on specific formats.

5 Easy Steps to Increase Website Traffic and Buzz

On the recent "Content 2.0" teleseminar I did with Bob Bly, I spoke about not having SEO on your website is similar to not having any contact information in your telephone book ad ... no one will find you, which defeats the purpose.

Many businesses, large and small, spend the time and effort to develop a website only to forget to take it one step further by incorporating SEO to the site as well as creating buzz about the site. And what happens is the end result is a nice, pretty site, but no visitors. No traffic. No point to having the site.

But that can all be avoided.

The below is an article I wrote while I was VP of Marketing at Agora Publishing/Early to Rise. I’m republishing it because unfortunately, I see many websites that have all the bells and whistles you can possibly ask for, but it’s lost in the “Internet black hole”.

Check it out…

###

Rescue Your Website From the Internet "Black Hole"
By Wendy Montes de Oca

Okay, so you have a website. You’ve spent time and money getting this thing up. You’ve used all your creative juices to get the words just right. And you added some nice graphics to make the site aesthetically pleasing. Now what?

A website is of little use if nobody can find it.

Mastering organic search ranking has proven to be a fundamental part of the online marketing mix. (By "organic," I mean the "natural," as opposed to "paid/PPC," listing that appears when someone conducts a search on Google or other search engines. Optimal placement is typically within the first 20 listings or three pages.)

Search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) – the ability to increase your site’s visibility in organic search listings and refine the content structure on the site itself – are critical for market awareness and customer acquisition. According to WebProNews, 66.3 percent of searchers click on organic listings before they click on a sponsored link. Even more important, a recent study by CreativeWebsiteMarketing.com indicates that most people who buy online start with a search engine.

Don’t let your site get lost in Internet obscurity. Here are five simple ways to help boost your website’s traffic and optimization.

1. Create online buzz about your site, product, or service.
You can do this by generating online press releases. There are services on the Web, such as PRWeb.com or Free-press-release.com, that do this for free or at a nominal cost. Another idea is to post comments to high-traffic blogs, bulletin boards, chat rooms, or forums.

Do a Web search for top blogs or news forums that are related to whatever it is that you’re selling. Go to each site, one by one, and post a comment. (Start a new topic or reply to an existing one.) This helps in two ways: One, you create buzz in the marketplace. Depending on your tactics, your message can even go viral. Two, you get a "back-link" to your site that helps when the site is indexed by search engine spiders.

An important note: Your post should be relevant and genuine. Your comment should be relevant to the question you’re replying to, have some sort of value to the readers that view it, and be in the proper area/subject matter on the forum you’re posting to. Stay away from posts that are blatantly self-serving. These posts are viewed as spam by forum webmasters and could get you banned from the forum, or at least be deleted.

For example, MaryEllen Tribby (ETR’s Publisher) had the good fortune to interview Newt Gingrich in March. Immediately after the interview, we posted a press release to several online press distribution services. We also uploaded comments about the interview to news-aggregating services, blogs, and political forums (with a back-link to the release posted in our Investors Daily Edge archive).

Within the weeks following the initial interview, website visits and traffic ranking more than doubled and conversion also showed a spike. Three months later, this release is still being picked up by the media and through syndication… and the Investors Daily Edge website is enjoying residual traffic and back-links from this effort.

Year-to-date, these techniques and the others I’m about to go into have helped increase traffic nearly 80 percent with a monetization of more than 150 percent ROI.

Which leads me to my next strategy…

2. Initiate a relevant inbound link program.
Set up a reciprocal link page or blog roll (a listing of URLs on a blog, as opposed to a website) that can house links from industry sites. Contact these sites to see if they’d be willing to swap links with you – a link to your site for a link to theirs. Again, relevance is key. Search engines shun link harvesting (collecting links from random websites that have no relevance to your site), so these links should be from sites that are similar in nature to your business.

3. Give Web searchers great content and a link back to your site.
Upload relevant content to sites that make such information available to other sites that want to publish it, such as ArticleDashboard.com or ArticlesFactory.com. This is a great way to increase market awareness as well as establish an inbound link to your site. There is also a syndication opportunity, as third-party sites may come across your article when doing a Web search and republish your content on their own websites. As long as third-parties give your site editorial attribution and a link, getting them to republish your content is just another distribution channel for you to consider.

4. Website pages should be keyword rich and related to your business.
Make a list of your top 20 keywords and variations of those words, and incorporate them into the copy on your site (avoiding the obvious repetition of words). Search engine "spiders" crawl Web pages from top to bottom, so your strongest keywords should be in that order on your home page and sub-pages (the most relevant on the top, the least relevant on the bottom).
You’ll want to do the same for your tagging. Make sure your title tags (the descriptions at the top of each page) and meta tags are unique and chock full of keywords. And your alt tags (images) should have relevant descriptions as well.

5. List your site in online directories by related category or region.
This is an effective way to increase exposure and get found by prospects searching specifically for information on your product or service by keyword topic. Popular directories (like Business.com) typically have a nominal fee. But there are many other directories (like Dmoz.org, Info.com, and Superpages.com) that are free.

Most important, before you start your SEO initiatives, don’t forget to establish a baseline for your site so you can measure pre- vs. post-SEO tactics. Upload a site counter (which counts the number of visits to your website), obtain your site’s Alexa traffic ranking at Alexa.com, or get your site’s daily visit average (from Google Analytics or another application) – and then chart your weekly progress in Excel. Understand that it typically takes two to three months for a site to be optimized… so be patient. You will eventually see results.

[The above article appears courtesy of Early to Rise http://www.earlytorise.com/]

It's Time for March Madness!

College basketball fans all over are getting excited about the upcoming national college basketball championship referred to as "March Madness." I am no exception! The intensity and quality of play as teams are eliminated provides a great deal of entertainment.

Productivity drops as countless office pools surface and conversations around the copier, water cooler, etc. last longer. Although most only invest one dollar in the office pool, they probably spend more time researching and picking their teams than they spend researching and picking a stock for their portfolio.

March also signals an opportunity for community banks and credit unions. People are receiving their tax refunds and need a place to put those refunds that is safe and secure. The effects of winter has taken a toll on landscapes, property, etc.. People are returning to the showrooms to replace that automobile that they made last "just one more year." Consumer confidence is returning and people once again are thinking about and planning that much needed vacation.

In short, "March Madness" might also refer to the consumer loan demand that is out there!

Is you institution prepared to respond?

How long has it been since your institution took a hard look at whether your consumer loan product line is competitive?

Does your market recognize your institution as the "best place" to go for a consumer loan?

If you answered "no" to any of the above questions, the time to act is now!

Have a great week/weekend!

Mike

Where's the Restroom?

So, how did the Ritz-Carlton get it's rep as one of the best customer service providers in the world? I can sum it up in one question ... and answer.

When Pat Mene, Ritz V.P. of Quality (yes, they have a V.P. of Quality!!!) was asked what would happen if a customer asked an employee where the restroom was and the employee politely pointed them in the right direction, Pat said:

"We would make life unpleasant for them."

You see, at the Ritz, the staff is expected to WALK a customer rather than point a customer in the right direction. They just won't walk you INTO the bathroom.

So what does this mean to your branch level. Do your tellers point customers or members to the new accounts and lending staff or do they walk around the teller line and ESCORT the customers to the desk and make formal introductions?

The Ritz adheres to the following Quality Strategy and you can too:

1. Find out what the customer psychologically wants most. They've identifies the following basic psychological wants:

• Beautiful surroundings

• Recognition of regular guest’s needs

• Warm, courteous people

• Consistent delivery

2. Develop standards that respond to the customer’s needs

3. Design processes to assure delivery EVERY TIME!

Take care,

Eric

Content Marketing Basics: Create Content for All Buying Stages

To create engagement with today's B2B buyers, marketers must develop and use relevant and compelling marketing communications and marketing content.  There is simply no substitute for relevancy when it comes to establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships with potential buyers.

In an earlier post, I described how to develop buyer personas.  Personas enable us to create relevant marketing content because the process of creating personas forces us to develop a deeper understanding of the individual buyers we work with.  Personas enable us to identify the issues and problems that our buyers are facing, and this allows us to develop marketing messages and marketing content that speaks directly to those concerns.

Developing content for each buyer persona is essential, but it's also critical to have content that speaks to where the buyer is in the buying process.  That's because the kind of information that is most relevant to a buyer changes as he or she moves through the buying cycle.

The key to developing content for each stage of the buying cycle is to put yourself in the buyer's shoes and identify the questions that he or she is likely to have at each stage.  Then, you create content that answers those questions.

There are many ways to describe the B2B buying cycle.  Ardath Albee, author of eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale and the Marketing Interactions blog, uses a seven-step framework:  Status Quo - Priority Shift - Research - Options - Step Backs - Validation - Choice.

Using Albee's framework, we can identify some of the questions that a buyer is likely to have at each stage of the process.

Status Quo - Why do I need to change?  What are the ramifications of not changing?  Has something happened in my industry that makes change necessary?

Priority Shift - Can the issue/problem be solved?  What are the benefits of addressing the issue/problem?  How have my peers and/or competitors dealt with the issue/problem?

Research - What are the alternative ways to address the issue/problem?  What are the risks and benefits of the alternative approaches?

Options - What specific solutions should I consider?  Which potential solution providers should I include in my short list?  What are the features and functionality of each possible solution?

Step Backs - What happens if I don't have the resources to implement the proposed solution?  What if I don't have real buy-in from my end users?  What if the solution doesn't produce the promised results?

Validation - Why should I trust your company?  What is my ROI if I purchase your solution?  How can I be sure that the estimated ROI will actually be realized?

As you develop your questions, be as specific as possible, and keep in mind that you will need a separate set of questions for each buyer persona you've identified.  This approach will enable you to develop rich and compelling content that will resonate with your buyers.

Monday, Monday...

Good morning financial marketers...

In the spirit of Robin Williams in "Good Morning Vietnam", I share a hearty greeting!

IT'S MONDAY...

I have been reading Roxanne Emmerich's book entitled, "Thank God its Monday!"  A really good read!  The premise is building a team and environment that is the most conducive to success as possible.

So, I ask you to look around your office and institution...1st at yourself.  Are you excited to come to work on Monday?  Full of energy and ideas?  YOU have to be the emotional leader...

If you are coming in excited and ready to go...your team will, too!

I know we have all heard of "walk the walk and talk the talk", it is true!  People watch and make notes of the exec's leadership style and actions. Everything matters!  If we don't follow-thru, soon our staff will take that same cue and slow their efforts, too.  We ALL need to working toward the same goal and we have to be the lead.

Look for more ideas and thoughts about focusing your team and creating and environment that welcomes Mondays!

Cheers!

Bruce

The Truth About Attracting Younger Audiences

In the past few weeks, I have served on a couple of panels and delivered a few speeches about attracting younger audiences. In doing so I found that many people harbor some misconceptions about attracting younger audiences. I understand that younger audiences are a sexy topic to funders and board members, but there are a few things we all need to think about before launching our assault on the Gen X'ers and Millenials.

• Product. Of the four Ps of marketing, most will agree that product is the most important. So why then is it the least considered when looking at ways in which to attract younger audiences? If your core artistic product is not appealing to younger audiences, then you will almost assuredly fail to get them to fully engage with your organization. Throwing an after hours party, turning a performing space into a disco or hosting themed young professional events might get targeted demographics into the door, but what we really want is for them to engage with the mission of the organization. If the mission precludes the organization from programming attractive art or an artistic leader isn't sensitive to the programming desires of young adults, you might be able to get them in the door, but they will never be a stakeholder of your institution. Just as location is king in real estate, in the arts, nothing is as powerful as the programming.
• Price. News Flash -- many younger audience members have money, and are not as price sensitive as some of us assume. Consider this study that reports that the 37 million young adults from 25 to 34 years of age in the U.S. have an aggregate income of more than $1.1 trillion. In an attempt to explain the absences of young people, I think we have jumped to price as the primary issue because it is much easier to change than product. However, I would argue that those who have to adjust tickets to bargain basement prices to attract younger audiences primarily have a problem with the product. Consider that in 2008, Ticketmaster reported that the average price for a ticket to a Coldplay concert was $217. For those lucky enough to have seen Coldplay, you know their events are filled with Gen X'ers.
• Place. Secondary to product, we should be asking ourselves if our institutions are welcoming to younger audiences. Churches and theaters are both struggling to attract younger members, and I believe are failing for many of the same reasons. Things to ponder: 1) what is the average age of your ushers? if they are the first people to welcome your audience, would someone in their 20s be welcomed by a peer or by someone that could be their grandparent? 2) Gen X'ers can barely remember a life without computers. Millenials have never been without the Internet. Yet we expect audiences to disconnect and remain in a dome of silence when they are at our institutions. Why not provide free wifi? configure our websites to work on handheld devices? 3) Is your organization's virtual presence as inviting as your real world location? can I purchase tickets, get answers to my questions, and engage with you on my schedule?
• Promotion. Secondary to price, this is the area that most institutions focus on. Video + Facebook + Podcasts does not automatically = younger audiences. You should think of new media tools as just a means of communicating. Nothing more, nothing less. Like any other tool, you have to know how to properly use it, and then use it to put the right message in front of the right audience. Most new media initiatives require two separate, but crucial steps to properly execute a campaign: the building of a communications infrastructure and the creation of content. You can have amazing content, but no friends to connect with. Or you can build a network of thousands of friends, and lose them quickly with the mediocre content. But for new media tools to work, you must have a product, place and price which are all conducive to younger audiences, and then you can concentrate on perfecting your new media skills.

As marketing directors, we have the least amount of control over product and place, and the most amount of control over price and promotion. Therefore we concentrate our efforts in the areas that we can affect, but if you don't get the first two right, you are wasting your time with the last two.

Yes, You Still Need "Promotional" Content

In two recent articles, MarketingSherpa described the results of research into how technology buyers view e-mail offer content.  The research was conducted by Bob Johnson with IDG Connect in partnership with MarketingSherpa, and it involved two surveys.  One survey was directed to technology buyers.  The second survey presented the same questions to B2B marketers.  The marketers were asked to answer the survey questions based on what they believed motivated buyers.

One of the survey questions was, "Do each of the following offer types increase the likelihood a prospective buyer will click on a link to additional information and insight?"

Here are the top five types of content offers identified by buyers - based on the percentage of surveyed buyers who answered "yes" to the above question:

• News and Articles - 84%
• Competitive Comparisons and Buying Guides - 73%
• Promotional Content - 70%
• Educational Content - 65%
• Free Research Reports - 64%

Here are the top five types of content offers identified by marketers:

• Educational Content - 92%
• Free Research Reports - 86%
• Peer Best Practices - 79%
• Competitive Comparisons and Buying Guides - 77%
• Interactive Peer Comparison Tool - 74%

Only 42% of marketers said that an offer of promotional content would motivate buyers to act.  Seems like we marketers may not know buyers as well as we would like to think.

Those of us who advocate content marketing stress the importance of using buyer-centric informational and educational content, and we argue that most marketing content should not be self-promotional (focused on my company or the features and attributes of my product or service).  This is the right approach, but the key word in the previous sentence is most.

Prospective buyers who reach a certain point in the buying cycle will want and need to learn about a prospective vendor's products or services.  Therefore, every company needs "promotional" marketing content that provides that information.  The problem with promotional content comes when you use it with prospects who aren't ready for it.

In my next post, I'll explain the importance of mapping content to all stages of the buying cycle.

"What Endears Endures"

Holy Cow, we can all learn a lesson from Chick-Fil-A!

With nearly half of the industry average in front-line turn-over and always packed dining rooms, Chick-Fil-A is doing something right. And any service industry - be it bank, credit union or shoe shine - can learn a significant lesson.

You see, Chick-Fil-A credits one simple reason for why they have not been effected severely by the economic downturn...

"What endears endures."

Chick-Fil-A strives to look at each customer interaction as more than a basic transaction ... it's a relationship building opportunity.

Chick-Fil-A, a fast food company, strives to be part of their customer's life. Now, many of you reading this are in the financial industry. We deal with people's money ... their mortgage ... their retirement. What could possibly be more personal and life altering?!?!

We have an opportunity, as the Grand Marketing Poo Bahs of our organizations to build these relationships and capitalize on them.

Chick-Fil-A says that they do not have to create customer stories, they only have to listen, harness them and connect them together. We can do the same, our tellers, new accounts and lending team are changing lives every day. Teach them to LISTEN and understand that what may be common place for them may be a great story. Make sure they share their stories with you.

Finally, use social media. Encourage your customers/members to share their stories with you too.

You simply need to provide your staff the tools to provide outstanding "customer experiences" (not customer service), the autonomy to do what's right and encourage them to share their stories.

Take care,

Eric

Content Marketing Basics: Developing Buyer Personas

Effective content marketing requires a thorough understanding of your prospective buyers.  Let's face it.  It's awfully hard to really connect with someone you don't understand.  That's why buyer personas must be a core component of your content marketing effort.

According to Adele Revella, author of the Buyer Persona blog, a buyer persona is, "a detailed profile of an example buyer that represents the real audience - an archetype of the target buyer."  In her book, eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale, Ardath Albee defines a buyer persona as, "a composite sketch representative of a type of customer you serve."

Just to be clear, a buyer persona is a biograhpical sketch of a typical buyer.  It is more than a job description.  Buyer personas are written in narrative form, and they are written as if the archetypical buyer is a real human being.  Buyer personas enable you to create more relevant and personalized communications, which is why they are so important for effective content marketing.

You will need to create a persona for each type of buyer who makes or significantly influences the decision to purchase your product or service.  Most sales methodologies use categories to indentify buying roles.  So, for example, you may have economic buyers, technical buyers, user buyers, and so on.  I prefer to describe buyer types by job title or job function in additon to these buying role categories.

It's also important to identify the type of business the buyer works for.  Buyers performing the same job function in different industries can have different issues, problems, or concerns.  Therefore, you may need to create "industry specific" personas.

The next step in developing a buyer persona is to answer a series of questions about the buyer.  Here are some examples:

• What are the buyer's major business objectives and job responsibilities?
• What strategies and tactics does the buyer use to achieve his objectives and fulfill his responsibilities?
• What meaures are used to evaluate the buyer's job performance?
• What issues and problems keep the buyer awake at night?
• How old is the typical buyer? [Age range is OK]
• Is the buyer typically male or female?
• What is the buyer's educational background?
• What sources does the buyer turn to for information?
• How would the buyer describe the issues he or she is facing?

In my earlier post about developing a customer value matrix, I recommended using a cross-functional team that includes both marketing and sales personnel.  That approach also works well for developing buyer personas.