The Science of Marketing

I recently decided that marketing needs a few more Ps.  Don’t worry, the classics; Product, Place, Promotion and Price; still apply.  But over the past year, the more I worked with clients on company, technology and product launches, the more I encountered four new Ps: Problem, Promise, Progress and Proof.  Here’s why I’ve added them to my marketing lexicon.

Problem

Just as all good stories have a villain, all good products have a problem (in high tech marketing, that’s why "solution" is such a popular word).  But many times in marketing, we acknowledge that there is a problem, but we don’t spend enough effort getting to know it, and we certainly don’t spend enough time talking about it.  The problem your product solves is the villain in your story – so build it up, show the reader how evil the villain can be and what effects it has on its victims.  The better we are at articulating the problem, the more our attractive our solution becomes.  Here’s a problem from last year that many companies are still playing to: gas is wicked expensive.

Promise

When we launch a product – ahem – solution, we make a promise.  Example: to develop a car that goes 40 miles without burning a drop of gas.  As you think about your company’s promise (or promises), try to balance the bold and the relevant – making a strong statement, but making sure it appeals to the people that can make or break your company.  And by all means, remember to link it to the problem you’ve identified and promoted.  If you find that your company’s promise has nothing to do with your market’s problem, go back and rethink one or the other.

Progress

I’ve identified a problem, and promised the market that my product is going to save the day.  Now what?  Pretty quickly, we have to show progress, demonstrating that we’re on the right path to delivery.  The need to show progress is most acute when there is a long gap between the promise and the delivery of a solution.  Think about GM’s announcement of the Volt in 2007.  Here we are two years later, and still nothing.  But that’s cool, right?  Because every six months or so, the company has provided updates on its progress – announcing the availability date of the first production model, leaking photos of the new design, and indicating that testing has begun.  Many of my clients develop complex solutions to difficult problems, and that can take awhile, so I spend a lot of time working with them to keep the progress flowing.

Proof

Here’s the big finish, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the end result of lots of progress made delivering on a promise to solve a problem.  Proof can come in many flavors – quantitative, qualitative, case-by-case, market wide, from an analyst, from a test lab, from a customer, or even from a simple photo.  When GM finally rolls the first Chevy Volt off the line, pictures will be taken.  But is a photo adequate proof that they’ve delivered on the promise?  How about when the first Volt owner drives her car 40 miles without a drop of gas – is that enough?  Maybe a stellar M.P.G. rating from the E.P.A.?  GM’s first profitable quarter?  We’ve all got our own burden of proof when it comes to the promises companies make, so it’s only fair that our constituents will have their own benchmarks too.  For that reason, when it comes to proof, too much is never enough.

I’ve been using these four Ps for some time to help keep my clients (and myself) on a path to good marketing.  I like to create a simple table with a column for each of the new four Ps, and start by listing each of the promises made in marketing.  Then I fill in the problem, progress and proof columns for each promise to see where the voids are.  Give it a try- it’s a simple excercise that can tell you a lot.  I promise.

Awhile back, Seth Godin proclaimed that marketing is both an art and a science, "and that’s the problem".  With all due respect, Seth, I have to disagree.  More specifically, yes- marketing is both an art and a science, but no- that’s not a problem. 

The notion that we must choose between the art and science of marketing neglects that people have a left brain and a right brain, and we use them both simultaneously.  This applies to the marketers doing the work, and the consumers and business professionals we’re trying to reach.

When I contemplate buying a car, my logical side needs to hear that it’s safe, reliable and affordable.  But those aren’t the only characteristics that interest me, because my emotional side wants to know that it has a killer sound system, wicked acceleration, and comes in a hot color.  Marketers must hit me with science and art to win me over.

Similarly, when I plan a campaign to introduce a new high tech product to the market, I must appeal to both the logical and the emotional. To do so, I might highlight how the product can save a business tons of money, while making the professional look like a genius in front of the boss.  I, too, must hit the target with science and art to win them over.

Is marketing an art or a science?  It’s both.  Must we choose one at the expense of the other?  No.  Do I ask and answer my own questions?  Sometimes.

Raise your hand if you’ve received marketing "advice" lately from someone who’s not in marketing.  Come on, don’t be shy…get em’ up there.  Yeah, I thought so.  I see a lot of hands out there.  Oooo, I even see a few scowls!  You guys must be in high-tech marketing!

The thing about marketing, especially if you’re good at it, is that it looks easy.  Tell some stuff to some people.  Write something.  Build a presentation.  Buy some ad space.  Send an e-mail. Pick some colors.  Shoot video.  These things all look easy.  And, hey, some of them are.  Not only that, some of them are down right fun.

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise when someone outside the marketing realm offers their opinion on the way things should be.  That press release should have focused more on this product.  The image you chose for an ad had nothing to do with our company.  Our web site is hard to navigate.  All things I’ve heard from non-marketers.  And all annoyed me at the time.

It’s a lot easier to look at these comments in retrospect, and cut people some slack.  The way I deal with it is to think about it this way:  All of these know-it-alls care about making the marketing effort better.  Now, they may have no idea what the implications or budget requirements are for their request, but at least they care. 

I look at the Everyone’s in Marketing Phenomenon (EMP) as an opportunity to listen to what’s on people’s minds, but then I let it go.  Because I know that marketing is not always easy.  I know that marketing is not always fun.  And I know that not everyone can do marketing well.  That’s how I deal with it anyway. 

How do you deal with it?

Now even auto dealers are finding ways to leverage the social medium of blogging to make their businesses better.  On NPR’s "The Bottom Line" segment, Herb Chambers – who owns the largest string of car dealerships in New England – discussed how he is using a blog called herbcares.com to help give his customers a voice – and his bottom line a jolt. 

Here’s how it works.  Customers buy a car or have some work done at one of the many Herb Chambers dealers, after which they are encouraged to share their experience on Herb’s blog.  They visit the web site, key in a little information about themselves and their activity with the dealer, and they’re off and running.  They can type anything – positive or negative – and when they click submit it shows up unfiltered on the site.  Herb requires that his dealers answer all negative postings directly and quickly, offering solutions to customer issues and returning Herb’s reputation to good standing.  The customer walks away feeling empowered, probably willing to deal with Herb in the future.  Herb gets a living case study for his dealers’ customer service prowess, and leaves a string of satisfied customers in his wake.  A win/win.

Looking at what Herb Chambers is doing, I can’t help but think – if a car dealer can leverage social media to strengthen its relationships with customers and help its business in the process, we all can do it.  So what’s it going to take to put you into a new blog?  Why don’t you think it over, while I go ask my manger if I can give you a deal.

This one’s for all you high-tech companies out there.  I’m talking about companies with products that have complex value propositions, long sales cycles, and multiple buyers.  For these types of companies, white papers are a key arrow in the marketing quiver.

For most companies, white papers are developed in one of three ways:

1. A member of the product team has an idea, writes a paper, and marketing rewrites it so it’s readable
2. A member of the marketing team has an idea, writes a paper, and the product team rewrites it so it’s accurate
3. Someone has an idea, but they have no time to write, so they hire someone to write it for them – then rewrite it just because

But there’s a new option out there, and recently I’ve seen it produce some highly readable, highly accurate white papers.  Find an independent expert, someone who knows your market and your company better than anyone else, and make them your white paper editor-in-chief.  Whether it’s a consultant, an analyst or even a journalist with some spare time, an educated, external viewpoint can be a huge asset in developing highly relevant works.

But don’t simply assign your expert a topic and dictate an outline for them to follow.  Empower them to guide the topic and direction of the paper, and let them do what they do in assembling a flow, gathering the details and writing the paper.  From what I’ve seen the results can be extremely compelling- the kind of paper your audience will want to read.  And that’s a nice change for you and the reader.

Recently, I have been engaged in an ongoing discussion with a colleague (a financial guy, no less) about the use of serif versus sans serif fonts.  I just expected it to drag on in a Seinfeld-esque could-Mighty-Mouse-take-Superman?** standoff.  In fact, I was firmly in the sans serif camp – always used Arial, always would – and didn’t take much stock in what the money man had to say.  He claimed to have a book that argued why serif fonts were better but never produced it.

Our Billy Madison argument went something like this.

Me: Sans serif fonts are cleaner and have more aesthetic appeal.

Him: Serif fonts are easier on the eyes.

Long on opinion and short on data.

Finally, last Friday, I decided to consult The Google.  I found that we are both right.  The common wisdom is that serif fonts are more readable (i.e., easier on the eyes) except on computer screens where sans serif fonts are more legible (due to varying screen resolutions).  This is why the Wall Street Journal is publised in a serif font while WSJ.com is in sans serif.

Anyone have another preference or opinion?

**Ironically, the writer who created Superman was named "Jerry Siegel" – look it up.

Recent data from Marketing Sherpa, and a recent post by Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions peel back the curtain on one of the biggest misconceptions in e-mail marketing- people ignore or unsubscribe from your e-mails because their inboxes are just too crowded.  The reality, supported by Marketing Sherpa’s numbers, tells us a very different story- that quite often it’s not them, it’s you.

Yes, people are busy.  Yes, e-mail gets overwhelming.  But most business professionals still consider their inboxes a key driver for daily activities and decisions.  It seems the problem is not that valuable messages are being tuned out due to overload, but that irrelevant e-mails are being ignored because, well, they’re irrelevant. 

When I think about it, the marketing e-mails I delete or opt out of are the ones that have little or nothing to do with my priorities in life or my goals at work.  Sometimes I ignore them even if they are relevant, but not a priority in the moment.  When I’m trying to create value for clients during the work day, I probably won’t look at a list of vacation bargains.  When I’m planning a vacation at night, I probably won’t open a message on best practices in B2B marketing. 

My own behavior tells me that e-mail marketing activities have to be pretty relevant these days if they are going to be effective.  We better know our audiences, understand their interests, and if possible, factor in how time-of-day can affect our success.  And in case Ardath didn’t make it clear enough, we must do all that we can to segment our audiences and make sure that the subjects, content and assets of our e-mails are relevent to small groups with specific interests.

Occasionally I get the question- "Are marketing activities really worth it?"  Sure, it sometimes takes the more direct form of "Is this really going to help my company?" or the skeptical tone of "How much is that going to cost me?"  But the theme remains the same- people would love to measure the return on their marketing investments.  But is measurement really possible?

More and more, the answer is "yes".  The rise of direct marketing has yielded a wealth of statistics on open rates and click-throughs.  As more and more media move to the Internet, we can track referrals from a news story to a company web site.  And once visitors hit a site, we can track their every click, how much time they spent, and what resources they downloaded.  Our ability to measure is better than ever.  But are measurable results the only game in town?

While business managers and investors alike might nod in agreement, I’d argue that we have to continue to leverage "old school" activities that don’t produce oodles of statistics or fancy line graphs.  Don’t get me wrong, I love activities that produce measurable results- after all, this is The Science of Marketing and here we like things we can prove.  But to do the best job we can, we have to deploy the right mix of programs, some of which we can measure, some of which we can only believe to be effective.

We must continue to brief analysts on our strategies, and trust that they’ll provide better guidance to their clients and be better references for the press because of it.  We must continue to advertise in print publications and exhibit at trade shows, because sometimes people need a reminder that our companies exist and are active participants in their market.  And we must get out and talk to audiences about our latest solutions to their most vexing problems, because there is no substitute for personal touch.

There are plenty of activities we cannot measure, but that doesn’t mean we should scrap them all in exchange for stat-filled spreadsheets and fancy bar graphs.  We must continue to mix it up and do things that we can only trust will produce results.  We ust continue to believe.

A few short years ago, effective marketing was measured in column inches, impressions and the cost per thousand of generating impressions.  How well could we spin it, how many people could we get to read it, and how could we get the biggest bang for our marketing buck?  Most of the marketer’s worth was measured by the ability to generate awareness- to talk to the market.  But then something changed…

Slowly, then not-so-slowly, the pool of media we marketers were targeting began to dry out- readership, page counts, ad revenue and staff began to dwindle.  And the marketing practice of leveraging these conduits to generate awareness began losing its effectiveness.  And so began the shift…

The major movement underway begins with our audience, who have reduced their reliance on the media to tell them what’s up, and instead have turned to one another for information.  Through user reviews, product ratings, online forums, blogs, tweets, homemade videos, and social networks, the mass collective of customers for just about any product has found a voice of its own.  Your customers are no longer only consumers of information, they are also producers of content.  They are both informing and being informed – about the prospect of a new storage array before it’s even launched, or the problems with a software update for a router before its first "official" review.  And this shift is forcing an evolution in the role of the marketer.

Read the rest of this entry »

Did anyone else see Barack Obama’s address to Congress this week?  Whether or not you agree with this president’s politics and policies, you have to admit that there was a lot of substance behind his words.  In discussing enerygy, education and the economy, Obama talked at a level of specificity that we haven’t seen in Washington for some time- leaving me with the impression that, good or bad, he has a plan for leading this country through some tough times. 

Obama’s speech got me thinking about my recent experiences marketing high-tech B2B products, and how the more substance I included in a campaign, the better results I achieved.  Some marketers believe that in building awareness it’s better to keep things general than it is to dwell on the details.  After all, you have to cast a wide net if you’re going to catch a lot of fish.  But here are a few reasons I think it makes sense to err on the side of substance:

• There are a lot of choices out there- so prospective buyers need substance to hone in on the right product for their needs. 
• Information is everywhere- so consumers will do their own research to find the details fast. If they can’t get the information they’re looking for directly from your company, they’ll find it elsewhere- and chances are they’ll stumble upon information that is outdated, innaccurate or less than flattering in the process.
• Details drive perception- so proving that your company is more than an empty message will send the impression that you have a plan (much like Obama accomplished in his speech).