May 13
15
Mobile Marketing: Waiting for Darwin’s Shoe to Drop
On May 20-21, I’ll be speaking at Kontagent Konnect 2013 in San Francisco. (Register now–space is limited.) To warm things up ahead of time, the folks at Kontagent asked me to write a guest blog for them. Here it is.
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Mobile Marketing: Waiting for Darwin’s Shoe to Drop
By Matt Wilcox
IT USED TO BE STANDARD practice, almost obligatory, to open articles like this one with statistics about the number of your customers who are, or who soon will be, shopping via mobile devices. No longer. The patent ubiquity of mobile devices has rendered the use of scary, “get-with-it” statistics all but quaint. Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you already know that you can throw a stick and hit a dozen people shopping on mobile devices. And you also know that it’s imperative to accommodate these customers or risk losing them. But the question becomes how do you convince them that your mobile experience is better than the competition? … (Read the rest of my post on Kontagent’s website by clicking here now).
IT’S HARD TO NAME A VERTICAL upon which the Internet age has not wrought upheavals. In marketing alone, in-house departments and outside firms look nothing like they did as recently as when I began my career as an intern at 17, and I’m only in my 30s. (My early 30s, thank you very much.)
Successfully revamped marketing groups have some traits in common. Here are a few I have observed:
Technology and creative are one. No longer can a marketing group get away with having a writer and designer cook up an ad which they hand off to a programmer for uploading. Successful interactive work is born within the context of knowing the technology—how it works, what it can do, and how markets use it—along with that of knowing how to appeal, seize attention, and generate action. If the requisite skills do not all reside in the same people (likely they do not), then be sure these folks work together, not in separate vacuums, and not in competition.
Emphasis on search. The strongest message is useless if the right people can’t find their way to it. Expertise in organic and paid search becomes even more crucial with the rise in mobile devices, where showing up in anything lower than the Number Three spot is not much better than not showing up at all.
Emphasis on dialog. Wisely or not (I think not), marketing once largely consisted of sending out a message. Today’s markets can have true interactivity and, it turns out, they demand it. More than just letting customers reply, true interactivity means encouraging customers to get involved, listening to them, letting them know you’re listening, and acting on what you hear.
Living (not pushing) the brand. Gone are the days when you could cook up a warm, fuzzy image, buy lots of target points and, voilà, people swallowed it. Millions of customers using social media make up a powerful mass medium in their own right. This is a world where you attain a brand image not by claiming it, but by earning it. It is a two-edged sword. Just ask Delta Air Lines.
Marketing participates in policy decisions. In too many organizations, policy is made in a vacuum and, after the fact, marketing is told to make it fly. But not in smart companies. By definition, a truly interactive marketing group dialogs with your customers. If they’re doing their job, they bring perspective that you must consider when forming policy.
Preaches less, publishes more. Markets will talk about you with or without your help. Savvy marketers facilitate dialog with blog comments, forums, and user communities. User communities allow your passionate brand advocates to hold you accountable and identify when you make a bad marketing move, e.g., BMW and Vanguard. It builds customer trust and holds your feet to the fire.
Still honors craftsmanship. Having your message appear on a device in front of the right audience is still no guarantee that you have reached anyone. It’s tempting to mistake the glamor of sexy apps for marketing. It’s equally tempting to let online tools lull people who aren’t writers or designers into thinking they are. The toys are a must, but so are the crafts of connecting and persuading.
Never assumes having arrived. Interactive marketing is dynamic. Not just devices, but apps evolve daily. So do the environments in which they—and you—work. The moment you think you’ve mastered interactive marketing, you’re in danger of falling behind. The best any of us can do is to continue running as fast as we can to keep up.
Partners with IT and Analytics. Interactive marketers can no longer afford to lock horns with these two groups. Make them your best allies and you can conquer the new world.
May 13
6
Reading Survey Results with a Critical Eye
WHEN IBM SPEAKS, it’s generally a good idea to pay attention. They are, after all, IBM. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. But with this year’s iteration of their annual State of Marketing Survey due soon, this strikes me as a good time to share some observations about last year’s State of Marketing Survey.
Not familiar with the IBM survey? That’s OK. This post is really about how to read research reports with a critical eye. No matter whose research you read, the advice applies.
Let’s start with the footnotes in the back. “… The margin of error for this sample at the 90 percent confidence level with a 50 percent response rate is ±4.3 percent.” Hold on. That’s the statistical margin for error, which would be great were we dealing with empirical data. We’re not. Look at the survey questions. “How much ownership do you and your marketing organization have for …” “Please rate the level of responsibility marketing has for …” “To what extent does your organization face …” These are not the sorts of questions that get you to empirical data. They get you to personal perceptions. The answers aren’t subject so much to statistical as to human error. There is no reason to assume that respondents’ perceptions are accurate. Nor is there any reason to assume respondents are leveling. Sometimes unwittingly, sometimes not, it is not unusual for respondents to provide the “correct” answer—one that makes the company look good, makes respondents feel smart, makes them feel like they’re being fair, or that gets back at that senior vice president for being so rude. Answers will reveal more about the biases and naiveté of respondents than about the subject they’re asked to comment on.
The report compares responses from low versus high performing companies and suggests causation. The leap is unwarranted. One should equally consider reverse or even no causation. “No causation” is another way of saying “coincidence.” Despite what New Age gurus say, there really is such a thing, and mistaking it for data can be costly.
The report suggests that large differences between low and high performers are significant indicators of how to do things right. This is selection bias at its best: what makes our point matters; what fails to make it doesn’t. There are almost as many instances of no or inverse differences between high and low performers. The authors could as easily have cherry-picked those as significant.
Finally, the questions themselves fail to impress. They are not so much insightful as a marketer’s wish list dressed up as a survey. It looks designed to produce “data” for marching on management and making demands rather than to yield real information.
I’m not accusing anyone of deliberately misleading. Bias and fallacy have their way with the best of us, despite best efforts and intentions. That’s why controls are important. So is a working knowledge of logical fallacies and biases.
I’m not above fooling myself. Neither is anyone else. But if we’re serious about real data that yields real insights, we need to exercise vigilance. Even upon ourselves.
WHEN YOU SEE WORDS like “estimate” and “90 percent” flung about without supporting data, it’s wise to assume you’re dealing with a guess landing somewhere between wild and educated.
But when no less than IBM does the flinging, I’m inclined to pay attention.
IBM recently suggested that 90 percent of all data has been produced within the last two years. Whether the statement is informed or speculative, and regardless of what they include (or don’t) in “all data,” the point is well taken. We are compiling data at breakneck speed. There is no reason to believe the trend will slow, and there is every reason to believe it will accelerate.
“Accelerate” is the operative word. Marketers aren’t just upping the speed and volume of data accrual. Sophisticated tools analyze on the fly, cutting response time to seconds. The goal? To show up on mobile devices in hopes of influencing customers in the very moment they are thinking about buying.
In an article by John Adams, Ross Christi, manager of LoyaltyEdge at American Express, has this to say: “The volume of data isn’t necessarily the challenge. It’s about using it intelligently and managing it in an efficient way.”
Keeping and analyzing customer data isn’t new. Savvy marketers have done it since the early days of direct mail, the original interactive medium. They didn’t call it data back then, but a rose is a rose. Data at the time pretty much consisted of name, address, purchase type, frequency, and average spend. In today’s interactive and mobile world, data comprise much more. And while at first it seemed as though privacy fears and laws would curtail data gathering, something interesting happened, and fast: consumers began volunteering the very data that fear-mongers had earlier convinced them marketers should not be allowed to obtain on their own. Mobile device users willingly reveal the merchants and products they like, where they’re shopping or dining at the moment, what UPCs they’re scanning, and more. Add up enough of those voluntary data points (and, for existing customers, overlay them with established buying preferences), and a picture emerges of who is where and thinking about buying what. Respond to the picture fast enough with a compelling offer sent to a mobile device, and you increase the odds of winning customers while they’re still at the point of purchase and, hopefully, still in a buying frame of mind.
Fear-mongers are still at work doing their best to decry fast-responding marketers as manipulative or sneaky. Nonsense. Sound marketing is a win-win. Marketers win by creating or growing customers. Customers win by receiving usefully timed information and offers on products they actually care about. And, of course, no data is shared without express permission from the customer.
John Knuff, general manager of global financial services for Equinix, said (as quoted by Adams), “What we are seeing now with intelligent targeting is more data mining is going on and happening within the customer session—so if a consumer is getting instructions on what to do to access or redeem an offer, a lot of the information to drive that has to be transferred in real time.” Knuff adds a caution: “… if the data set is on the West coast, but the session is on the East coast, the data has to traverse three to five vendors and has to travel three thousand miles several different times during that session. That’s really going to bog things down.”
Time has always been money. But in the marketing arms race, shaving—by even an insanely infinitesimal amount—the time it takes to turn data into a well-executed marketing response will give the marketer a serious advantage over competitors.
Much has been written to the effect that Netflix original programming threatens to be a home viewing game-changer. That much may be true. Yet when it comes to TV, game-changing is par for the course.
Television began life as a game-changer. It fast grew from novelty to necessity. In the U.S., a model quickly emerged where networks produced higher-end programming, local stations produced sundry lower-end offerings, and advertisers paid for the whole thing.
Now, thanks to the interactive media, that’s all up in the air.
In my parents’ day, a television market (or ADI, for Area of Dominant Influence) with more than three VHF stations was really something. Less cool were UHF stations, which required you to endure fuzzy pictures and sound, develop a taste for tired reruns, and attach a funky circular or butterfly-shaped antenna to the standard VHF antenna, fondly referred to as “rabbit ears.” A game-changing switch from analog to digital obviated rabbit ears, bringing with it higher resolution, still rued by viewers who prefer not seeing the details of a news anchor’s every pore.
Cable and, later, satellite technology changed the way TV signals found their way into homes. The game changed again with the likes of VCRs, DVRs, and TiVo, which freed us from network schedules so we could watch when we darn well pleased. In turn, that changed the game for viewer-tracking companies like Nielsen. And, to the consternation of advertisers, these technologies freed us to zip past commercials. Pay-per-view and, later, streaming upped the ante by relieving us of even having to record.
Streaming and pay-per-view also changed video rental. Why trudge to the video store and risk returning with a DVD scratched beyond use when you can stay home and stream? Almost overnight, giants Hollywood and Blockbuster found themselves sitting on costly, superfluous real estate and inventory. As I write, cloud-based video purchasing capability threatens the DVD industry itself.
But in the most recent game, Netflix, whose streaming model once limited members to expired TV series and films no longer in theaters, has begun dabbling in original programming. They hope that people will want to see the likes of House of Cards or, if rumor pays out, new installments of Arrested Development badly enough to subscribe, and will then elect to remain subscribers. This represents a direct challenge to the cable/satellite model, where people subscribe to an overabundance of stations at a much bigger price tag solely to watch games on ESPN or to find out what fate awaits Dexter Morgan.
Since the Netflix model has no need—yet—for advertising, look for more game changing in the advertising arena. You will likely see an increase in product placement activity, and not a few network and station reps running around looking terrified.
As they say in the biz, stay tuned.
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