Canadian Marketing Blog

Does LTV even exist any more?

As a traditional Direct Marketer, I was raised in this business to focus on response, results and the bottom line. If you didn’t have a sense of a customer’s lifetime value – you were doing something wrong. At the risk of sounding outdated, CLTV was the catch-phrase of ‘the day’. Obviously, this is no longer the case. I know this because I’m still a direct marketer – but rooted much more in the online space. I said to a co-worker the other day: “Do we have a sense of the CLTV? It will make the response projections much more meaningful.” Not only did I get a blank stare in return, not even the client in question had this figure readily available.

So if not CLTV, what’s the new accepted standard of measurement online? We talk about click-throughs, unique visitors, conversion…but even these terms are meaningless outside of specific industries and without knowledge of the online offering. Is it an e-commerce site? Well then traffic and conversion are King. Is it a brand site just looking for consumer attention? If so, length of time on site and volume of user generated content may be relevant. Regardless, the evolution of the World Wide Web (in the form of Web 2.0) has brought about significant change to not only what we measure, but how we benchmark and classify ROI across the board.

So here is my own 2 cents based on constant banter and discussion around the topic of measuring truly interactive, two way online properties.

Instead of talking about CLTV as the be all and end all, we start thinking about results in a different light. Perhaps it is at times less tangible then what we grew up with in this industry, but still valuable in a marketplace that is constantly changing.

I call it E3: Exposure, Experience & Engagement.

Exposure…obviously, how many people hear about your site, visit the site, passively browse around your pages, etc. The starting point for any analysis and a critical measure that is a carry over from the traditional advertising days.

Experience…where we start to divert from days past. How many of those exposed to your site actually experienced your brand? Did they go deep in the site? Did they read product reviews? Did they view consumer generated videos? Did they link through to related properties? It’s exposure on caffeine.

Engagement…think active experience. Not just sitting in the audience but volunteering to be part of the show. Posing a question to an Ask and Answer forum, uploading your favourite tv commercial, ordering product, posting an article to your Facebook page. Engagement is difficult to achieve and getting more and more challenging as brands realize the need to truly connect with consumers in an honest, relevant and open manner. Without mentioning names, we’ve all heard the horror stories of big brands seeding comments in blogs and so forth. Engagement can’t be forced – it must connect to real consumer insights and answer the timeless question of “what’s in it for me?”

When analyzing online activity, it’s critical to look beyond session-based data as it only reveals a partial picture. By reviewing a multitude of variables from the passive (exposure) to the interested (experience) to the involved (engagement) – the value of your brand online begins to clear up – and reveal the new value in your customer.

So what’s the new CLTV? Is it E3? Maybe. Is it some other formula? Possibly. At this point, the only sure thing is that measurement will continue to evolve and it’s up to us Marketers to look for ways of showing the different dimensions of ROI.

Measurement Help is on the Way

With increased discussion this year around traditional marketers shifting media budgets online, what remains to be seen is how these marketers will measure their digital spending vis a vis their traditional marketing allocations. In the past, hesitation to shift budgets online has been largely attributed to a lack of commonly accepted ways to measure the impact of online efforts. Tools available to marketers today range from Web analytics programs, to control vs. test measurement, to the more complex Econometric or marketing mix models. Unfortunately, within marketing mix models, companies have continued to struggle with how to incorporate the results of their search, banner advertising, sponsorship, social media, and other interactive programs to establish a reasonable comparison.

It now appears that some progress on this exercise is finally being made. The "Marketing When Customer Equity Matters" article in the Harvard Business Review in May focused on Wachovia Financial's efforts to find an effective, data based method to make the company's marketing spend, including online, more accountable.
Going beyond measuring the short term impact of marketing spend on revenue or unit sales, Wachovia is exciting in that it successfully found a means to value customer equity and to compare everything from traditional to direct and digital media spends.

For those of us concentrating on helping mainly traditional marketers find value in the digital space, one can only hope that the Wachovia example is a sign that times are changing. It would be great to see further successful examples from industries beyond financial services coming to light over the next year - even better if Canadian marketers were driving some of these best in class studies. As the Wachovia article concludes, with the right models in place, marketing dollars spent in digital media can make the shift from being logical based on consumer habits and analytics to being comparable and quantifiable.

Solutions Marketing: The Evolution of Product Marketing

To look at their Web sites and read their collateral, you might think that the majority of b-to-b organizations have effectively made the transition into becoming “solutions providers.” Peel away the veneer, however, and we continue to see shockingly little evidence of a shift away from the same-old product focus. One of the major red flags is the lack of changes in the staffing and processes around product marketing, a function that should be dramatically impacted by a move toward solutions. Here we identify 10 critical product marketing activities that are retained in any transition to solutions marketing, albeit with different requirements and tasks.

1. Messaging: Instead of focusing on specific products and features, solutions marketers focus on value propositions and core business needs within specific solutions groups. The key is to build a strong solutions architecture that teaches prospects (as well as salespeople) how their problems can be better solved with a broader solutions versus a point product.

2. Positioning: Traditional product marketing compares one product to similar products within a competitive space; solutions marketing casts a wider net as it tries to solve a range of business pains. When positioning this change, it is important not to negate or cannibalize the value propositions of individual products, which for certain groups are still very viable on their own.

3. Defining target markets and buyers: Target markets for solutions are much wider than those for products, and must include the full range of audiences that play a role throughout the buying process. Product marketers must learn to work together and to leverage their individual target market exercises to understand commonalities that may lend themselves well to solutions positioning.

4. Launch plans: A product launch plan is a repeatable process with little variation: release dates are set; sales objectives are defined; customer service and sales are trained and armed with new collateral; and public relations efforts, analyst briefings and advertising campaigns are created and scheduled. A solutions launch should share the same repeatable nature, but will be much more complex, and involve numerous product marketers as well as sales readiness to have any chance of absorption and success.

5. Competitive threats and opportunities: Product marketing identifies competitors for each product and regularly tracks them. Selling solutions introduces the organization to a new universe of competitors, forcing marketers to cast a wider research net. A win/loss database should house relevant data to create institutional memory and expose additional opportunities and strategies for dealing with specific competitors.

6. Pricing: Marketing groups that influence pricing decisions typically produce a pricing book that details guidelines for each product and any available discounts. In pricing solutions, there is often a tendency to total the prices of the included products and services, an approach that not only ignores the realities of what the market will pay, but doesn’t take into consideration what the competition is charging. As a result, solutions require more complex pricing models, and should leverage the knowledge of other organizational constituents including sales and finance.

7. Demand creation programs: Product marketers are historically used to developing programs and incentives in a competitive fashion, as they are constantly trying to get the attention of sales to spend time on what they sell. A shift to solutions marketing means that these product marketers must now be collaborative, building, sharing, fielding and measuring programs together, and finding success not only when their own product is sold, but when it is part of a greater solution.

8. Collateral: The process for creating product collateral has historically been fairly straightforward; list features and benefits of the product on a data sheet or white paper, throw in a couple of customer quotes and post it on a sales portal for reps to decide which audience gets what piece. Solutions collateral must be created dynamically, in order to tailor it to the wide range of prospect needs and interactions that will now occur.

9. Sales tools: Similarly with collateral, sales tools need to take the “next step” in a solutions environment; specifically, salespeople should be able to search a Web portal or go through a guided process to find or create a targeted presentation or script. Customized Sales Communications (CSC) platforms can be helpful with this need, and are especially necessary once the number of solutions groups and options becomes sufficiently complex.

10. Sales and channel training: Product-focused training modules are relatively easy to create, as they generally go through a product’s features and competitive position. Marketers creating training modules for solutions will find that more in-person, interactive sessions are necessary to allow role playing and question/answer sections that cover the range of features and competition that sales reps will encounter when selling the solutions.

In summary, the move from product marketing to solutions marketing requires more than just flipping a switch or repackaging existing products and services. It requires an honest evaluation of current in-house marketing talent and, if necessary, the willingness to acquire the skills needed to make the transition happen. But the commitment to becoming a solutions marketer can reap numerous rewards, including a broader and more loyal customer base.

Marketing and My Mat Leave

Those of you who happen to be my Facebook friends may have noticed my recent posting, “Want My Job? Hiring Yahoo! Trade Marketing Manager” and will know my news. My husband and I are expecting. So in just three short months, I’ll go from Marketing Manager to Mom. Maternity leave, which I’ll be taking for up to 1 year, is going to be a huge change, personally and professionally, impacting both my family and co-workers.

There’s few of us in marketing who will go through our careers without being affected by a maternity leave, whether it’s our own, our spouse’s, or a co-worker we rely on.

In 2000, parental leave was greatly expanded in Canada from 10 weeks to 35 weeks divided as desired between two parents. This is in addition to 15 weeks maternity leave, giving a total possible period of 50 weeks paid leave for a mother. There is still no paid leave for new fathers, however. (Wikipedia).

So how does mat leave impact marketers? And how do you start planning your own mat leave contingency plan to keep your marketing projects chugging along, while you’ll be busy chugging the choo choo train with junior? I can’t say I have all the answers. But here are the Do’s and Don’ts I have gathered from my time being pregnant and starting to plan for my leave:

• Don’t rely too much on HR or your bosses to guide you on all the aspects. Don’t get me wrong, my managers and HR staff were extremely supportive and informative when I told them my news. But the truth is, depending on the company where you work, your mat leave may be a situation they haven’t had a lot experience dealing with. There may or may not be a set company plan in place for employees who take mat leave, especially at companies or agencies with a young (or male) demographic skew where they’re not yet accustomed to the situation among their staff.
If they’re doing their jobs, like my HR and management team is, they will provide you with info on your legal rights, the benefits you’re entitled to from EI, and info on how your compensation, insurance, RSPs, etc. will be impacted. What you likely won’t get guidance on is doing the mat leave version of temporary succession planning. I.e. setting someone up do successfully take up – for up to one year – where you left off.

• Do start recruiting early and be active in the hiring process. As I’ve discovered, it’s not easy to trust someone to take on your job, or to find the ideal person with the perfect mix of skills and experience. Luckily, I am getting lots of support from HR and my company’s recruiter to aid in the search. But whether you’re hiring someone external, or recruiting internally, no one knows your job better than you. You want someone who can match the level of work you do, be just as trusted by your colleagues, but also have the flair and initiative to add their own creative twist to projects so they’re not lying fallow for a year.

• Don’t expect to have any control over what happens when you’re away. This is a tough one for us Crackberry (or now iPhone) addicts. If your company is an 11pm email culture like Yahoo! is, where even a few unplugged days away means coming back to a mountain of email, it’s pretty hard to contemplate being away from that constant change and upheaval for up to a year. You’d be pretty much coming back to almost a brand new company and job. I’m not going to pretend I have any advice in this arena. But my action plan is to not be completely unplugged (OK Moms who have been on mat leave…I can hear you laughing!) I’d love to hear from other readers for a reality check on how you handled this. But my plan now is - I will try and be copied on emails for major projects and to check in every month or so to see what’s going on. The idea is to try and help without being a constant hovering presence that prevents people from doing their jobs.

• Do – relax and try to slow down. If you’re like me, you may be in a state of denial of how pregnancy will physically and psychologically affect you doing your job. It’s better to accept and listen to your body when you are hungry, dead tired or sick. Also, give a heads up to your colleagues, as well as learn to delegate and ask for the support when you need it. As you will need to be out for numerous appointments, ultrasounds, doctor visits, etc.. at least once or twice per month. Nobody expects you to go to as many industry parties as you did before. But the drive to remain visible, relevant and appear just as capable is still there. Still, you don’t want to stress out to the point where it’s impacting the baby. Baby’s and Mom’s health are your number one priorities, and you may need to be more assertive and ask for some flexibility in deadlines and workloads to accommodate that. Again my plans and advice do not always equal my own reality. But at some point in the next few weeks I do plan to do work from home (or..gasp, vacation day) on Fridays.

There is no doubt this is a women’s issue as well as an industry one. Much has been written on whether women who step off the ladder from their fast paced careers bump right into the glass ceiling when they try and get back on, tot in tow. The whispered rumblings you may not always hear among the congratulations, mazel tovs and smiles is sometimes a hidden resentment, often among old-school male management and less progressive companies. “You hire these women, invest in them, then they go on mat leave for over a year,” is sometimes the unspoken (or in my case with another job – spoken!) complaint. So does that mean your prospects of promotion and advancement get sucked up like the soiled sausages in the Diaper Genie when you decide to take that year off?

While this hasn’t been an issue at my current job, I have heard this before from employers in more traditional businesses I’ve worked for. And it’s true to a large extent…your mat leave is going to be disruptive to the flow of business and to the company. But a responsible and progressive employer knows that a parent who is supported on their mat leave often returns as a more committed, loyal and motivated employee who is less likely to move around, especially when they have a family to support.

I’d love to hear some more from those of you who are or have been on mat leave, and how you, your spouse and your work team dealt with it. It should be a fun three months..and lots of change to come. But in the meanwhile… I’m dying for anything lemon flavored.

It's A Hot Summer For Mobile

It’s been a July full of activity in the mobile space, most notably a 60,000 signature petition to reduce data fees, the launch of the iPhone in Canada and the announcement by Bell and Telus that SMS fees will be both sending AND receiving party pay.

I’ll breakdown each of these announcements and what it means for marketers:

1. 60,000 signatures to reduce data rates.
This is good news for marketers! It means more pressure to bring down data rates. Eventually rates will fall – it’s a question of when NOT if - so brands continue to develop your mobile internet and mobile display strategy. The petition by Canadians is also putting added pressure on wireless carriers to adopt an “all you can eat” plan, which leads me to my next point.

2. The iPhone effect
In a previous post I discussed the implications of the iPhone effect and I talked about the symbiotic relationship between data rates and the Apple brand. Therefore I wasn’t surprised to hear the news about Apple pulling its phones from its Canadian stores in disgust. In addition, despite low penetration rates of iPhones in Canada, it’s been a catalyst for marketers to think not only about their mobile internet presence, but also downloadable iPhone apps. It’s still early days for widgets, gadgets and apps but these “Full clients” are raising eyebrows. (Note an example of “thin clients” are RSS feeds on a mobile Internet site – example: http://pcworldcanada.mobi - best viewed on your mobile browser). The important thing to consider when you’re evaluating apps is that your app must be platform agnostic. That app must port across various mobile operating platforms, such as Symbian, Blackberry, Android, Windows mobile...etc.

3. Consumers charged to receive SMS
Bell and Telus’ announcement that consumers will be charged two ways (for sending and receiving text messages) has no doubt been a PR nightmare. I have received confirmation that text messages received via standard rated shortcodes will NOT be charged to Bell consumers. I am still waiting to receive confirmation from Telus if they will follow suit. (I really hope they do). If Telus does start charging to receive incoming SMS via a standard shortcode then I suggest you speak to your mobile partner to re-evaluate the setup of that shortcode. My company, Vortex Mobile, will take appropriate measures to ensure that no brand associated mobile marketing will charge consumers to receive promotional alerts.

So, how do these announcements impact your mobile strategy?

Increasing Marketing’s Impact on Sales Success

What’s wrong with marketing and sales at most companies?

Marketing and sales departments are notorious for not getting along. A lot of talent and money is invested in two groups that should have the same end goal – selling more stuff – but they often act like each other is the enemy. This disconnect, however, has reached a day of reckoning. Executive management is demanding that sales forces become more effective—and that marketing departments help get them there. No more blame game… no more finger pointing. The visionary marketing and sales executives believe better marketing and sales alignment actually represents the next big competitive advantage in markets where it’s hard to distinguish one competitor’s offering from another.

What’s at risk if companies don’t get their marketing and sales teams aligned?

Our company, CustomerCentric believes that there are four strategic areas at risk or “at opportunity” for companies willing to make the effort:

1. Avoiding parity in value propositions. The top concern among both sales and marketing people is that they will not be able to differentiate their company from same competition. Proper alignment around the customer buying process and the conversations one needs to have in order to set them apart in the marketplace is how companies will avoid parity and create a compelling difference. It’s not going to happen at the 30,000-foot-level with their advertising, PR, trade shows or campaigns. It’s going to happen at the 3.5-foot-level when sales are face-to-face with a decision maker.

2. Elevating from products to solutions. Everyone wants to move their companies from selling products or services to selling solutions. But, just saying it doesn’t make it so. Just changing words in our brochures doesn’t magically transform yesterday’s product into a solution. It requires a connected and concerted effort between marketing and sales to identify customers’ biggest problems, needs and goals and then align the company’s assets to respond to each of these opportunities, in order to create a true customer-relevant (not company-relevant) solution.

3. Training and equipping more effective sales people. Only 10% of any sales force can be considered “naturals” when it comes to facilitating customers through a solution development and value creation process – where the customer truly senses that a company can better solve their problems versus the competition. The other 90% are in competitive bake-offs where products are pitched against each other and price is the only mediator. Enabling sales people to be more effective in their customer conversations, presentations and communications is what will separate great brands from commoditized products pushers.

4. Generating meaningful Marketing ROI. The only ROI that counts is connected to revenue and profitability. The main engine for generating this is the sales channel. Yet, most of the marketing effort aimed at supporting the sales force goes to limited use. Some surveys say upwards of 90% of what marketing creates goes unused in the field. So, when management questions marketing’s impact on revenue-generating activities, the budget looks big in comparison to the documented impact. Marketers that can show greater utility and adoption of their messaging and tools, deeper into the sales cycle, will be the ones that can show greater impact on top and bottom line results.

Isn’t the biggest complaint that marketing never generates enough leads?

Everyone seems to think if marketing just gives sales people more “leads” then they will improve the marketing-sales disconnect. While generating enough sales opportunities is still a concern, several hundred sales people told us in a recent survey that their biggest concern related to the disconnect is “the usefulness of marketing messages, training and tools.” As one salesperson told us, “It’s not about where I show up…it’s about what I say when I get there.” Too often leads tell us who’s already in the market for something we’ve got to sell. By that time it’s really too late to have the desired impact on a sales cycle.

Sales people need to be speaking with prospects and customers well before that decision is made. In fact, they need to be equipped to be a part of the up-front strategic decision-making dialogue where opportunities are created based on business needs. This dialogue is going on at every one of their seller’s potential prospects, the question is: Are their sales people part of these conversations or are they waiting for leads? When marketing and sales are getting the message creation and delivery piece right, they are in a position to lead sales cycles versus wait for so-called sales leads.

Why are marketers not more aggressive in the area of sales messaging and tools?

Unfortunately, too many marketing strategists, schools and other experts keep telling marketers that sales support isn’t a strategic issue. It’s relegated to a tactical blip on the product launch checklist. Sellers spend lots of money on creating tools, but they don’t spend the time necessary to see if they are right… and whether they really work. We recently ran across a chart in a marketer’s office from a well-known product marketing training company and it showed sales support on the far right-hand-side as the most “tactical” part of the marketer’s job. This only serves to perpetuate the hit-or-miss approach too many marketers take toward their sales support responsibility.

Yet, no matter how you look at its customers, especially, B2B companies rely on sales people to help them sift through all of the hype, claims and indistinguishable marketing driven branding and value propositions. Sales people, and what comes out of their mouths, need to be viewed as the most strategic asset marketers have at their disposal when it comes to building a brand and selling more product or services.

What’s wrong with most companies’ value propositions?

Just that—they are company value propositions based on who the company is and what they have to sell. One big problem with this approach is that the seller often forgets about the customer and their most pressing business needs. Seller’s value propositions end up as nothing more than glorified feature-function-benefit statements. A true determination of value can only be made by the customer. So, if the seller neglects to put their messages into the customers’ context – in a way that the customer will see the seller helping them accomplish something – the seller is not equipping their sales people with true value messaging.

Value messaging needs to start with the customer target, their most pressing business objectives and relevant challenges and then align the seller’s capabilities that respond to those challenges and help meet the objectives. At this “intersection,” between the customer decision-maker, what they want to accomplish, and the seller’s aligned assets is the opportunity to create meaningful value messaging. We prefer to call this “value creation” versus “value proposition.”

Can’t this problem be fixed with good sales training?

The problem occurs when the seller’s sales skills training, such as solutions selling-type training sessions, are completely disconnected from our product training. It’s like building a racecar, but not putting the right gas in the tank. The seller wants salespeople to engage in more consultative conversations, but thesSeller isn’t equipping them with the necessary messaging and sales tools. The seller expects them to conduct customer-centric discovery sessions to discover what the customer wants to accomplish, but they train them on everything they need to know about their product and what it does. Now, that’s a disconnect.

Companies looking for a competitive advantage and a differentiated market presence need to re-orient their product messaging and align it with the consultative sales training approach – which starts with the customer and their business needs, not your product and its features. Transforming from a company and product-centric training approach to a customer-relevant training approach – in terms of both content and skills will elevate your sales-customer conversations and dramatically differentiate you from the competition.

If you would like to explore these topics further and learn how to create your own customized tools, consider attending the upcoming CMA roundtable “Aligning Marketing with Sales: Turning theory into reality” in Toronto Sept 4th.

Are You Your Best Client?

For an Internet marketer who is charged with the task of promoting their own product or service, one of the best things about being your own 'client' is that you don't have to spend a ton of time convincing The Client that there may actually be something to this newfangled Internet thingee. And the second best thing, in my opinion, is that you don't have to be secretive (to the public) about the tactics you are using, or the results. And the third thing is you can move really fast. And the fourth thing is...

OK, you get my point.

I recently found myself in the position of being my own client again. This time, however, The Client insisted I really embrace the notion of transparency. Henceforth, over at my blog I've started publishing what I am calling "My Internet Marketer's Diary" and the goal of it is to lift up the curtain and share some of the marketing tactics I am using to promote Hollywoozy, my newest online venture.

There's no point in me regurgitating the entire post here (not to mention the fact that I promised the CMA that I wouldn't do that), but what I can tell you is that the five key tactics I deployed can be summarized as follows:

1. Build the Site with Search Engines in Mind
2. Invite the Search Engines to Crawl the Website Prior to Launch
3. Use Tags to Define the Content of the Website
4. Generate Targeted Traffic via a Multiple Domain Name Strategy
5. Invite Some Enthusiasts to a Sneak Peek

While I consider these tactics some of the essential building blocks of a good online marketing campaign, I doubt I would have had the opportunity to execute all of them had I not been my own client. The realization of that hit me all of a sudden, and it got me thinking.

What kind of work do you do when you are your own client? And how do the results compare to the work you do for 'real' clients? The difference between the two, if there is one, is worth pondering...

Word of Mouth Survey

Sean Moffitt, President of Agent Wildfire and recent chair of CMA's "From Mass to Grass" Word of Mouth Conference is hosting a survey on the word of mouth habits, behaviours and beliefs among Canadian marketers, agencies and researchers.

The survey questions explore a number of uncharted landscapes for Canadian marketers covering off the topics of word of mouth, social media, user generated content, community building, buzz and vrial marketing amongst other new marketing, emdia and research strategies and tactics and Sean has promised to share the topline results with all who take the survey and the opportunity to win one of 10 business books of your choice that cover off the subject.

Have a tour through the survey here and spread the buzz.