Worse than Being Hated – Being Ignored

It’s hard to feel sorry for some brands that receive a lot of attention. Dell, Motrin and Enfatico come quickly to mind. Sure, they receive their share of criticism and more advice than anyone would know what to do with. Still, it’s a rather enviable position they find themselves in. They have attention – they have the eyeballs. There is an audience ripe to change perceptions. The brands I really feel sorry for are the ones largely ignored.

I revisited Cluetrain the other day. In addition to being a good read, it pointed to the kiss of death for digital campaigns – being ignored.

Before concerning ourselves with reach, attention and engagement metrics, we should first consider whether anyone cares.

Digital media is not television. We can not count on networks to craft programming that will reach certain demographic segments. We can’t rely on that content to drive eyeballs to our messages. In the digital world, everything else is just one click away.

This is certainly a large jump for marketers. The game has changed. We are now tasked with first being interesting. Without something of value, there is not reason to find our information. And without interest, consumers will punnish us. We won’t be punnished with backlash or negative sentiment. We are punnished with much worse – nothing. At least the Midol Moms campaign was interesting enough to rouse some souls into action. At least Dell’s customer service was bad enough to generate action.

Today, the kiss of death for digital marketers is not negativity. Rather, the dreaded word should be meh.

I started this blog to gain a better understanding of what it takes to provide interesting and compelling content. We all hear that content is king. So what does it take? Solid research? Compelling graphics? Interesting thought?

I wish I could say, but this is still (and probably will always be) a work in progress. As it has only been a short time, a retrospective seems to be a little presumptious.

Yet, I get away from the point. In order to affect customer behavior in a digital world, the first goal should always be to generate interest. Without that, no gates will be open.

Top 9 of ’09 – #6 Ownership

I’m always impressed by the ideas from Valeria Maltoni of Conversation Agent. Yesterday, she wrote a piece on conversation. The title sums it up: “Change the Conversation, Change the Game.”

As marketers, we are used to owning the conversation. Brand standard guides exist to ensure every level of communication is uniform and pushes the right levers. Experiential brands remain experiential. Time savers focus on time.

The challenge with digital media has been gaining an understanding on how to own the conversation in new channels. Most brands have retained tried and true methods of communicating while only shifting channels. Print and broadcast are ported to digital channels whether or not they fit the destination. Banner ads have been forced on the web even though they do not fit the medium – doubt it, check out conversion rates.

Digital mediums are prime marketing tools. You have users with expressed intent devoting their sole attention to your brand. They have the ability to take action immediately. Users are able to interact in ways television, radio and print never allowed. It’s now conversation and not messaging.

I expect 2009 to be a turning point in the way marketers interact with consumers online. They will adapt to the conversational nature of the medium and begin to own the conversation again. The biggest hurdle I expect to be overcome is the ability to react to existing content rather than to create.

While consumers have long discussed products and brands in their own circles, a true authoritative voice has been missing. We have already seen the extent a connected voice can have with Dell, Zappos and Starbucks. We have seen the impact of a lack of that voice with Motrin.

Brands will begin to retake ownership again in 2009. However, this will not be done through messaging – it will be dependent on reaction. The ability to respond to niche markets and disparate voices with one unified and authoritative voice will again shift ownership of the conversation from consumers to brands.

Consumers will welcome this shift as participation provides a win-win scenario where consumers retain their voice and gain clarity. Brands retain and win consumers in addition to controlling expectations.

In the end, consumers can learn to refine their expectations while brands can learn to better serve their markets. This will be done by owning the conversation and not the message.

Into the Cloud (aka Where the Magic Happens)

Inside The Cloud

Clearly, users of digital technology are driven into the cloud by intent. What happens then is the digital magic that has allowed the Internet to thrive going on ten years.

The idea of a cloud is not new. In fact, it is gaining traction with large players (IBM, Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Rackspace) fighting for our share of data. As physical storage moves closer to free, more of our daily interactions will happen inside the cloud. When our data is stored remotely, we come to expect access at increasing touchpoints. This is already blurring the lines between computers and mobile devices and will further blur the lines between applications and services. Marketers need to become aware of the cloud and the magical potential of the data within.

Once online, we are innundated with choices. A great deal of clutter already exists and is growing every day. With the new generation of digital users growing immune to messaging through clutter, a larger focus on utility is being created. LinkedIn has opened up its services to external applications in an effort to build greater utility around the original service. Now, in addition to business networking, ideas, trips, decks and buzz can be shared.

Of course, the ultimate goal of marketing is to drive consideration for products and services. Without consideration, no action can occur. While digital technologies are highly adept at driving consideration, a complete understanding of the process remains lacking. The age of “build a site and they will come” has long passed. With a wealth of choices for consumers, a site alone will no longer suffice. Yet, most brands remain content with their properties. Efforts to bolster sales revolve around enhancements to these properties with no consideration given to what drives consumers to these locations in the first place.

It’s not a stretch to think of branded sites as no more than destinations for transactions. In supermarket terms, the sites act as the registers. They are a location to bring our assorted thoughts, products, services and needs to a single point for action. Achieving that action is another story.

Awareness:

With innumerable choices for information online today, it is unrealistic to think that customers will seek you out. Thus, awareness is the first step inside the cloud. Ensuring your customers can find you when they need you should be a top priority. Again, this goes well beyond the banner ad and the web site. Awareness is everywhere. If you don’t believe me, take a look at Dell’s findings over the past eight years. Starting with Jeff Jarvis, Dell has learned that their customers will define the company regardless of any corporate stance.

Awareness is now generated anywhere interested parties meet. The effective messaging of today is being sent by existing customers. They are using SMS on their mobile devices, posting images on Flickr, shooting video to post on YouTube, participating in Forums and user groups, writing and commenting on their Blogs and talking in all sorts of new channels with funny names like Twitter and Mahalo.

Interaction:

This can seem daunting at first, but trust me, it’s actually very positive. These are customers and potential customers singing your praises (hopefully). This drives interaction. More clearly stated, this drives people to your properties. You didn’t think they all saw your television commercial, wrote down the URL and called it up a day later, did you? At some point in the digital process, they refined their intent and landed on your properties looking for an authorative voice.

This is where our analysts thrive. They want to know where people are coming from, what opinions they have formed, what they are seeing, what they are trying to see, where they are leaving, and how they are using those pretty pages we spent many days and many dollars trying to create.

Unfortunately, there’s an inherent problem here with digital technologies. Unlike the supermarket where those physical beings are staffing the registers (true, they are disappearing in some places), we have no human point of contact for users. There’s nobody to relate the praises and problems being reported in real time. Some sites are now beginning to incorporate live chat to provide customer service, but even in these cases, it is unlikely that the data is being used to improve performance.

All interaction needs to focus on one idea – evolution. Both corporation and customer need to evolve. We put a great deal of effort into training customers to be better customers while largely ignoring the need to become better suppliers.

Organize, profile and repeat. Find out where the problems lie and fix them. Learn about the most popular channels and stress them. The beauty of digital technologies is their flexibility. They can learn, adapt and be recreated. It’s not a billboard you’re committed to for a month or a television spot that needs to be reshot. It’s a string of digital characters that can be pushed, pulled and prodded every day.

Engagement:

This process builds user engagement. They are participating with systems in one way or another. Whether they are buying from your site, through Amazon, browsing on eBay or posting on CraigsList, they are engaging in some fashion. Take this information and learn from it.

Consideration:

Depending on either how well you have served this customer or how limited the other options in the market are, you have driven consideration. This should be the ultimate goal of digital marketing within the cloud.

When done well, you can pat yourself on the back, take a deep breat and sit back – until tomorrow. Because, in digital marketing, no campaign is ever complete.

Digital Marketing Starts With Intent

And now we return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

While the traditional marketing funnel adequately models a traditional marketing plan, digital marketing requires something that’s anything but traditional. While I heard the above phrase plenty in my youth, it’s becoming less common these days. It may be due to my spending the majority of time in digital mediums. In digital, there is no regularly scheduled programming.

Internet, mobile, digital television and digital radio have abandoned the idea of schedules. This is truly genius. Why should an otherwise appealing offering suffer due to a scheduling conflict (sporting events aside). We all have to make choices. Sometimes we must select Option A over Option B. The beauty of the digital world is our ability to select both. We only need give one immediate attention and save the other for later. Rather than either/or, we prioritize.

This does not mean that we get to everything on our priority list. Ask anyone that records programs on their DVR or Tivo. Some chaff falls to the bottom. If this is too high tech for you, you can ask my wife. She would prefer that everything that needs to get done around the house gets completed. Maybe in a more perfect world with four day weekends. As it stands now, the most important tasks get tackled first with the others falling to the bottom.

And so it goes in the digital world. We prefer and we prioritize. We do not schedule. The result of such a shift leads to a major impact on the traditional marketing funnel. The traditional funnel was predicated on the fact that awareness need be generated before anything else. If a prospect weren’t aware of the offering, they would never convert.

The digital model turns this idea on its head. It is not for lack of awareness. In fact, awareness is a very important concept in digital marketing. In fact, billions will be spent on it year after year. Web pages, SEO, SEM, landing pages, emails and widgets aim to build awareness around your offerings. However, the thought process has been based on the traditional funnel. Build awareness, create relevance, drive intent and reap the rewards.

With email conversion rates wallowing in the single digits, the failure of this seems rather obvious. And these conversion rates even being among those customers who have given permission to be marketed to. But given the low costs of sending an email, the conversion rates will suffice for now so long as the ROI remains more favorable than traditional means.

So what’s the fix. Currently, the trend has been increased relevance. True enough. Including a simple birthday greeting in an email can increase conversions.

But relevance is only the end product of a larger perspective on digital. Success starts with re-examining the marketing funnel. In digital, the funnel starts with Intent. Digital exist to answer intent. Yet, we persist on starting with awareness.

Digital is not a channel, there is no regularly scheduled programming and building something does not equate to eyeballs. The success of SEO and SEM has depended highly on the idea that digital users have intentions. Depending on search terms, marketers can buy relevant eyeballs. No longer is there a need to push fountain drinks on customers that only want a candy bar.

Think about the digital tools used everyday. Internet browsers, mobile phones, video games and PDAs – to a much lesser extent. These are not passive tools. They exist to solve problems. Users only engage with these devices when they have an explicit intent. A majority of online users have set their starting pages to search engines. This should tell us that the most common use for the Internet is finding. This is an active process driven by intent.

On the eve of an election, think about how often potential consumers looking at election results online or on a mobile device will be swayed through a banner ad on CNN.com selling Vista. Is that really the time someone decides that Vista is the solution?

I’d be willing to guess the number between 0.02% and 0.4%. Standard attention figures to be sure.