Gee Ranasinha

Somewhere in China – or Sri Lanka, or the Philippines, or Mexico – there’s a business that’s selling the same thing that you do, but at a fraction of the price. There’s a restaurant not far away that not only serves food as good as yours, but also offers valet parking and a loyalty program for regular customers – all for 20% less than you’re charging.

Not so long ago starting a business meant finding staff, sourcing equipment and building infrastructure. Today a 15 year-old can start a business in their bedroom and sell it for $30 million two years later.

Today The Rule Is ‘There Are No Rules’

Investors and middlemen are less important today than at any point in the modern history of commerce. It used to be the case that if you listened to the right advice, and did the right things, your business had a better-then-even chance of succeeding.

But now that’s no longer the case.

Today you can do all the things that they’re saying you should do, and yet still fail. Why? Because the world is changing too fast.

Is it because of the global economic meltdown that we’ve all been living through for the past few years?

I don’t think so. Recessions are cyclical. There’s nothing unique about today’s economic uncertainties compared to ones we went through the early 90s, the early 80s, or even the two big energy crises in the 1970s (the OPEC-led one in 1973, followed by the Iranian-led one in 1979).

Where To Pin The Blame?

So is it because of social media? Well, yes and no.

Buyer evolution isn’t happening because of social media. Rather, social media channels are fanning the flames of opinion from a newly-empowered, networked customer whose level of expectation and tolerance continue to evolve.

Even before social media channels became so ingrained into so much of what we do, as consumers we had reached the limit of tolerating outdated sales, marketing and service models put in place to serve the supplier rather than ourselves. The growing discontent in buyer expectations has been brewing for years – if not decades. But without being able to find like-minded individuals who shared our discontent, we were doomed to suffer in silence and apparent isolation. Social media came along and just happened to be a really good way of venting our frustrations, only to find out that we weren’t alone.

If you want to blame something for today’s business uncertainties, then blame business itself.

Most businesses today are soulless, faceless organizations designed from the ground-up to be singularly focussed on efficiencies, profitability, management and P&L. Reduce costs, increase profits. Six-sigma this, outsource that. To hell with the customer. Consumers, being on the receiving end of this, have had enough.

Now I’m not suggesting that companies become charities: we can all accept that a business needs to make money in order to succeed and grow. But the customer expectation assumptions made by business owners when they drew up their marketing plans and business models of yesterday are no longer applicable. Moreover, no matter what you’re selling customers today have a choice – and they’re exerting their right to choose.

Marketing Today Is About Finding Your Own Way

That’s means, in terms of marketing your business, doing something that your customer hasn’t seen before. Something unique and original. Something new. Something “you“.

Stop doing what someone else is doing, if it’s simply because they’re doing it and you’re not. You need to find your own way. Customers very often don’t know what they want. However, they usually know what they don’t want. If they’re coming to you it’s because there’s something that they don’t like from the competition. They’re looking for a different buying experience. It’s your job to convey that experience to them at every marketing touchpoint.

“Choice” is about having a preference of one thing over another. If you’re appearing to be the same company as your competition, then you’re throwing away all that makes your business the unique organization that it is.

In the good old days (i.e. anything more than about five years ago), companies had it easy.
Pretty much whatever a company said or did was (or could be) controlled and directed to present a particular notion towards their audience. The downside to this was that a lot of companies started believing their own BS.

We had Mission Statements and Vision Statements and Corporate Strategies that were self-serving exercises in how to waste time, money and effort, and were produced for no other reason than to please shareholders, stakeholders or venture capitalists.

“Our Mission is to scout profitable growth opportunities in relationships, both internally and externally, in emerging, mission-inclusive markets, and explore new paradigms and then filter and communicate and evangelize the findings.”

Sorry, what??

A lot of companies underestimate what the culture of their organizations really are. Looking at the above (real) company Mission Statement it’s really hard to image that, at some point, a human being actually uttered those words.

Could the company CEO regurgitate such nonsensical prose upon suggestion? I’d say that it’s doubtful. Such business verbiage has clearly been generated from the Marketing department, just as so many so-called quotes and statements ostensibly attributed to C-Suite personnel are actually crafted by the PR department, corporate communications, or even an external PR agency.

The Decline – Or Even Death – Of Corporate BS

What we’re seeing today, however, in an era of extreme transparency is that people are using technology to become more informed, more connected, and more empowered. One of the results of this new behavior (whether realized or not) is that customer expectations are going through the roof. The kinds of things that today’s customers expect from you as a business are things that most businesses aren’t addressing today. Moreover most businesses have no idea that this change is even occurring, let alone investigating possible initiatives to remedy the situation.

When customer expectations are increasing as they are, it’s important for companies to take a step back and evaluate their position. What do we really want to accomplish? What do today’s (or tomorrow’s) ideal customer relationships look like? What are the sorts of experiences that we want them to have before, during and after the transaction? What does a customer lifecycle actually mean?

Part of the disconnect lies in a company’s own perception of it’s value proposition, compared to the reality as experienced by the customer. Look at how most companies describe themselves on their website, then go out and speak to customers and get their own take. The result is – invariably – two sets of words that have zero perceptual overlap. In the short-to-medium term, that’s a problem. In the long term, that’s potentially fatal.

Speaking The Language Of Your Customer

The words and phrases used by customers need to match a company’s own self-awareness position in order for the business to maintain its relevance in the minds of its audience. The problem is that there is often a HUGE gap between one and the other. Look at what people are saying about pretty much any cable TV company, airline, or mobile phone network for examples.

Customer buying behavior is changing because of the almost ubiquitous access to connected technologies. However commerce’s answer to the problem doesn’t simply lie in the adoption of technology. Yes, technology is important. Of course it is. But what’s more important – and what’s happening at the same time – is that customer behavioral psychology is changing. Customers no longer simply expect better buying experiences. They feel that they’re entitled to them.

As a result, your own company’s social behavior / culture / mindset should be changing and adapting at at least the same rate, if not faster. Once you can measure what a customer experience is, against what the customer experience should be, then your mission becomes clearer. Once you have that clarity, then technology can be rolled-in to help bring that experience to life.

Information needs to be packaged differently. You have to take a different approach if you want to connect with today’s customers.

But perhaps your company isn’t currently feeling the turn of the tide. Perhaps business is thriving, profit margins remain fat, and priorities lie with shareholders and/or stakeholders.

That’s all well and good, but then remember you’re not competing for the moment. The question you have to ask is what’s going to happen five years from now. You already know how long it takes to change, and the pain that change creates. So what are you investing in? How are you changing the inside of the organization to help sow the seeds required to compete in the future? If consumer behavior is changing at such an incredible rate, then so must the approach that you’re adopting to marketing, selling and interacting in terms of what customers are going to expect – and insist upon – three, five or ten years from now.

So Does This Mean That Branding Is Dead?

So in an age of customer discovery, eCommerce and order fulfillment, does this mean that branding – at least in the traditional sense of the word – is dead or dying?

Not at all. However branding is most definitely evolving into a tangible where customers are firmly in control.

For the longest time corporate marketing has been able to control and direct brand perception because we could outspend customers in traditional media, or out-market customers in other communications spaces. Companies could pretty much tell their audience what they wanted them to hear and, by and large, customers believed them.

Today’s new customer journey has that concept going, if not gone. Whatever your customers are saying – whether that’s online, word of mouth, social media, wherever – THAT’s your brand. The future of brands – if not commerce itself – lies in shared experiences between customers and vendors that aggregates value compelling enough to be shared, remarked upon and – since it’s discoverable – helps reinforce the generally-perceived reputation and trust of the brand concerned.

Customer experiences are becoming ever more concerted and connected every day. The result, through sheer weight of numbers if nothing else, is that this breed of ‘always-on’, empowered consumer is out-gunning and out-marketing even the largest corporate heavyweights. What’s your response?

You can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution.

I’ve never been much of an athlete. I’ve been known to get out of breath taking a brisk walk to the fridge.

When world-class athletes are in training, often much of their preparation involves doing everything else apart from the actual event they’re competing in.

Track athletes often spend hours swimming, for example. Coaches of sports such as fencing, curling and even archery often prescribe weight training to their champions in the making.

The reasoning behind such cross-training is that, sometimes, the path to the goal is better achieved indirectly. Strengthen your core by lifting weights, for example, and it’ll help you better guide that arrow to the bullseye.

Business First, Branding Second

But you can take that premise further. There are some things that you can only achieve by indirect means. More than that: sometimes the very act of trying to do something makes it pretty much impossible to do.

Ever tried to go to sleep when you’re stressed / excited / worried about something? A pretty fruitless exercise, I think you’ll agree. Similarly you can’t “will” yourself to be happy. If you’re stressed about something and can’t sleep, you might try a mug of warm milk and reading a book. If you want to be happy maybe you’ll go out and play with the kids, or tidy the kitchen junk drawer, or play a game on your Playstation.

You know what else can’t be done if that’s what you’re trying to do? Branding.

Speak to the majority of people who like to think that they know a bit about marketing, and they’ll tell you about how important it is for companies to work on building their brand. The problem with such thinking, as I’ve said before, is that today companies aren’t in control of their brands: customers are.

Can companies influence how their brand is perceived by their customers? Of course they can. How? By making sure that all the other things that a business is seen to be doing, is being done right.

• Making sure that the product / service that you’re offering is the best it can be.
• Ensuring that the customer buying experience – before, during and after the sale – is the best it can be.
• Taking care that marketing, messaging and communications (stop me if you’ve heard this before) are the best they can be.

Marketing activities that exist purely on the basis that they’re “good for branding” usually aren’t. There’s a joke in advertising circles that if an ad sells product, then it’s an advertisement. If it doesn’t, then it’s a “branding piece.”

The thing is, all the branding investment in the world isn’t going to matter if your basic business value stinks. Think Microsoft Zune, or New Coke. Even Apple, today’s tech darling, isn’t immune to a poor product damaging its brand.

Your Customers Determine Your Brand

But in today’s world of soundbites, Likes, Tweets, and Plusses, business owners often think that they can sidestep all of that icky emotional and organic essence of a company that makes up a ‘real’ brand. Instead, we have an ill-fitting appendage, seemingly attached with Scotch tape and string, with all the authenticity and quintessence of a botox-ridden C-list celebrity on a reality TV show.

Successful companies don’t become great brands by getting a gazillion people to “Like” them on Facebook. They become great by having a passion, effectively communicating that passion to like-minded customers, and delivering on their business value (i.e. making great products or services). It’s not about customers buying because we’ve persuaded them to fall in love with our brand. It’s about customers falling in love with our brand because they’ve bought from us.

Working on building a brand for your business has a place – of course it has. But there are 1001 other things that you need to get right first. Get that other stuff right and – like the athlete – your game will naturally improve. Get that stuff wrong and no amount of branding is going to dig you out.

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Finance types don’t “get” what marketing’s about. In fact, they usually try to put as much daylight between them and marketing types as they can.

Why? Because the bean-counting ROI nerds think that marketing’s all about abstract, intangible notions. About feelings and emotions.

Finance types don’t like that kind of thinking. As far as they’re concerned it’s heresy and anyone caught talking about such claptrap should be burned at the stake for being a witch.

Instead, finance types like measuring things. They like numbers. They think in terms of cause-and-effect. Do this, and something happens. That ‘something’ is a result of you doing the first thing – the event is interpreted as being the consequence of the initial action.

Are you with me so far? Good.

The problem with such “if / then / or” thinking is that, within a marketing environment, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t start a marketing initiative today and measure results attributed to be a direct result of that action tomorrow.

Marketing Is Like Exercise

Marketing is like dieting. Or learning to play the piano. Or exercise.

Supposing, as part of you wanting to get fit, you decide to sign-up and join a gym. You turn up on the first day and hit the treadmill for half an hour, maybe the stationary bike for another 20 mins, and then maybe lift some weights. Your exercise regimen has started. After an hour or so you go home.

How do you feel the next day? Do you feel fitter? Stronger? Healthier? Of course not. In fact you probably feel like death warmed-up.

It’s the same with marketing (not the bit about feeling like death warmed-up. But you get my point.)

Marketing’s about ‘little and often’, not sudden frantic bursts of effort followed by inactivity. If you implement a strategic and targeted marketing plan for your business today, you’re not going to rake in a gazillion Dollars / Pounds / Euros / Whatever tomorrow. Not even the the day after tomorrow.

A Little Bit Every Day

However, if you devote some time / money / resources to marketing your business a little every day, then there’s a good chance that – like regular exercise – after some time your business may be fitter, stronger and healthier.

Is that a cast-iron guarantee? No, of course not. You could visit the gym tomorrow and drop dead after 10 minutes on the treadmill. Similarly, you could be marketing your business for a year and end up in the same place that you are now.

But take a look at some successful companies out there. Whether they’re selling iPads, sneakers, fizzy sugared water or something else, they’re marketing their business value Every Single Day.

How come a computer with a fruity logo is worth double the price of one without? It’s not because of the Tweet that you read yesterday, or the TV commercial you saw last night. It’s because of the Tweets / ads / websites / articles / whatever that you’ve seen every day for the past 10 years.

So is that the secret to business success? A bit of marketing every day and you’re on your way to business heaven?

No. But you can be pretty darn sure that, without it, you’re pretty much headed to business hell.

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Features tell, benefits sell.

Whether it’s the process of creating a product or service, or communicating the value of what you’re selling, there’s one thing that seems to unite businesses. No matter how large or small they may be, few businesses seem to know the difference between “How” and “What”.

Take a look at the vast majority of customer-facing material from most companies and you’ll see what I mean. Most organizations are focussed on the “How”. By that, I mean that most businesses design and communicate their value based upon how a product / service does what it does.

It’s Not About How. It’s About What

“The Okey-Cokey 2000 combines Wi-fi 802.11n with a secure, cloud-based repository for platform and location-independent data access.”

Eh?

Unless you’re a geek selling to geeks, positioning your communication around how your product or service does what it does is missing the point. Why? Because it’s not how buyers think.

By talking about how your product / service works you’re asking the buyer to jump the chasm between feature and benefit, asking them to form their own hypothesis about what it brings them. “Aha! So if I buy the Okey Cokey 2000 I’ll be able to share such-and-such with so-and-so, I don’t have to worry about A, B and C – plus it’ll be better/faster/cheaper than X, Y and Z.”

Sell the hole, not the drill

By and large, customers don’t care about you. They want to know what’s in it for them. By (only) talking about how your product or service does what it does, you’re talking about yourself. In contrast, communicating what it brings to the customer not only are you reducing the friction between abstract technical considerations and buyer benefits. You’re also delivering the value benefit under your terms, not theirs. By you taking responsibility in clearly stating the what, the chances of them making the wrong benefit assumptions are removed.

As well as credited with coining the term “globalization”, former Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt is quoted as saying “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.” Sell the hole, not the drill.

Companies whose products or services have a strong technical or engineering-based foundation are often the worst culprits for missing out on benefits. It’s too easy to focus on what’s under the hood – especially in today’s increasingly-competitive commercial environment. Rather than taking a step back and looking at the best way to solve the customer’s problem, many businesses look no further than the technical aspects of a competitor’s product.

Apple – as is so often the case – are an example of doing it right. You’ll never hear about how fast the processor is in an iPhone or iPad, or how much RAM is in there. Why? Because it doesn’t matter. As long as the user doesn’t feel the device to be ‘slow’, such features are immaterial. Similarly, for many years if you ever asked a Rolls-Royce salesperson about how much horsepower the engine produced, the answer they gave was “The power is sufficient.“

However, this is not to say that features don’t have their place. Buyers need tech specs in order to make comparisons – size, weight, power consumption, available colors, whatever. But unless whatever you’re selling is seen as being a commodity (in which case you have a whole heap of other problems) buyers won’t buy on features alone.

But focussing on benefits rather than features is hard. It’s easy to talk about bits and bytes, about terminology and jargon and acronyms. It’s far harder to take the time and effort to get to know customers, to know their concerns, and communicate business value accordingly. But that’s the point, and one of the ways of creating awareness and differentiation.

Identify what you do, and why. Only then get to the how.

Do you know which page on your website is the homepage? A simple enough question, right? Well, maybe not.

Most companies believe that their website does a half decent job of introducing themselves to their customers. However, their conclusion is often based upon the assumption that every visitor is entering the website from the front door: the home page.

What You’re Saying vs. What They’re Searching

Many business websites – consciously or otherwise – are designed to lead a visitor down a determined path or paths. There a “Home page”, where the company assumes the web visitor will land. From there, the visitor is taken to “Our Products” or whatever. The visitor is then encouraged to visit such-and-such-a-page, followed by some other page. Finally they’re expected to visit the “Contact Us” page where they’ll hopefully get in touch, or submit their contact details. A salesperson then gets in touch, does the deal, and all’s right with the world. The End.

Except that’s not usually how it happens. Many visitors who come to your site arrive there thanks to search engines. Not thanks to you. And search engines aren’t generally too fussed about home pages.

“We’re Ranked #1 On Google!”

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard this from business owners (or even marketing people, who really ought to know better). We’ll enter into a conversation about the optimization of their online content for search engines, and I’m told in no uncertain terms that there’s nothing to worry about from that side. “We consistently appear as the top search result on Google, Bing, and the rest,” I’m told.

When I ask what search terms are being used to bring that result, I’m invariably told that it’s the name of their business! Once again (in case you didn’t catch it the first time): The name of their business. I’m sorry people, but if your business is called XYZ Accounting and you don’t come up in at least the top three results when someone does a search for “XYZ Accounting”, then you may as well go home right now.

Most people don’t type in the name of a business in a search engine. They’ll enter some key words about the information that they’re looking for, or the problem that they’re trying to solve. What they click on when the results page pops-up is based upon the title and description of the particular web page that the search engine has decided to display.

And – more often than not – the page they’re clicking on is not your homepage. And that highlights a number of problems.

Firstly, if your business value messaging is solely built around what your company does, rather than around the customer issues it addresses, your page may not even appear on those search engine results. Secondly, if your website is structured on the basis of leading the visitor from one page to another, what happens when their starting-point is not where you imagined it to be?

Take a look a one of the sub-pages of your website. How does it look? Imagine that it’s the first page that a visitor sees when they come to your website. Does the content stand on its own two feet, or does its reason for being depend on other pages? Are there important links or content on your “real” homepage that are not immediately accessible from this page? Can the visitor easily get to your “About” page and “Contact” page (probably the two most-visited pages on your website) in one click?

“Which Page Is Your Homepage?”

You don’t get to decide on which page your visitors join your website. That control has been given over to the search engines. Google, and the rest, are effectively deciding which page on your website is the “homepage” for the visitor. Every page on your website needs to be strong enough to stand on its own, as much as being part of a wider, integrated brand experience.

There’s no place like Home. Wherever that may be.

Supposing you’re a business who’s revenue is reliant on a proportion of customers to buy from you again and again. What makes you think that your customers aren’t getting bored with you?

Pretty much every business has had the experience with a customer who they thought was happy ended up going somewhere else. Internally the reason is often rationalized by price (“the competition offered them a crazy-low price”), function (“if only we had XYZ feature we would’ve kept the business”) or knowledge (“the new decision maker doesn’t understand our real value”).

Are your customers still ‘in love’ with your solution to their problem? Are they still chomping at the bit to find out all the ins and outs of the new versions of your products or services when you launch them? How loyal are they to you? How sure are you that they’re not only with you because they can’t find something else? How do you know that they’re not actively looking for that alternative right now?

If you’re like most companies you don’t really know the answer. Oh sure, you’d like to think you do, but at best you can only answer the above questions based upon speaking with one or two individual customers (who may not even be decision makers).

That’s a problem. A big problem.

Market Research Is Only Half Of It

A few businesses might think that they’re addressing this by the occasional market research activity. That may be something as formal as commissioning a market research company. Alternatively, it could simply be feedback from sales teams, product management and / or customer services. All of this is great. But it’s superficial, cursory and incomplete.

Why? Because bad news travels faster than good news. It’s a bit like finding out how many people don’t like you.

Yes, knowing such things are important. But it’s also important to know how many people like you, why they like you, and what you need to do to keep them liking you.

I’ve seen it a million times. A business spends a dumper-load of time, energy and resources to develop some idea or another, only to see it fall flat on its face. But what’s even more crazy is that – for not a lot of investment – the situation may have been saved by the business having a better understanding of what makes their customers love them.

For years, all but the largest businesses were pretty much waving a wet finger in the air when it came to market research. The reason – more often than not – was that market research was time-consuming, complex and (above all) expensive.

But that’s no longer the case. Today, any business has a realtime barometer that gives them detailed information on customer opinion, sentiment, loyalty and – yes – love.

It’s Customer Research, Jim, But Not As We Know It

Social media channels, and the associated monitoring tools can be a company’s ear to the ground. You can create a survey using any of the numerous online services, using Google Docs, or even from Facebook. You can run your own webinars or Hangouts. Or you can send out a questionnaire by email. No matter what customer information you’re trying to find, there’s probably a fast, easy-to-use (and cost-effective) way of getting it. None of us have an excuse any longer.

But finding a tape measure is the easy part. The hard part is knowing what to measure. Here are some thoughts:

• Remember Why You’re Asking. There’s no point asking a question if the answer doesn’t help you to make a decision. We’re not here to make ourselves look big, and make pretty graphs to slam into PowerPoint presentations that we parade at board meetings to get stakeholders off our backs.
• Don’t Go For Ego Numbers. Most people’s gut reaction is to look into traditional metrics such as brand awareness. Yeah, great. Surely what’s more useful is to find out what are the obstacles to purchase, in your customers’ minds. Knowing their problems and frustrations provides an opportunity to differentiate, add value and increase customer fidelity.
• Ask The Hard Questions. What don’t your customers like about your products/services, the buying experience, and customer service? How do those answers stack up against those of your competitors?

If you don’t understand your customers, then you don’t understand how your business integrates with your customers – it’s that simple. It’s a hop, skip and jump from being the answer to all of their prayers to them getting bored of you or (even worse) feeling that you’re becoming less relevant.

Speak with your customers, and speak with them often. Learn about their hopes, their goals – and their fears. Because if you’re not doing it, you can bet that your competitors are.

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When is media not media? When it’s marketing. Confused? Let me explain.

Remember the days when flying was seen as something glamorous and romantic, rather than the “I’d rather have a root canal” endurance that it is today?

When you get on a plane to travel to some far-off land, at some point during the flight you usually get a tray of food. The tray is divided up into sections. This corner here is for the salad, below is the main course, while over there is the desert. In whatever space is left you’ll probably find a bread roll, and a cup that will later be filled with tepid brown water euphemistically described as coffee (or maybe tea – it’s often difficult to tell).

Even though everything arrives at the same time, you know that the desert is supposed to come after the main course. That the butter is supposed to be spread on the bread roll, and not smeared on the salad. Every part of the meal lives together – but separately – in harmony. (Sure, you’re free to eat your meal in whatever order you choose – in which case you’re probably an anarchist and not to be trusted anyway).

The tray doesn’t come with an instruction manual, or any marketing fluff. Nor will the flight crew spend time explaining what you’re supposed to do with the tray, even if they do feel it necessary to show you how to fasten your seat belt.

Media Was Media. Marketing Was Marketing.

In a similar vein, a few years ago it wasn’t difficult to know a TV ad from a TV show. We knew when we were reading a magazine or newspaper article and when we were looking at a print ad. It was an easier time. Life was simple.

Then things started getting weird. The way that we consumed media changed. Companies that created content – any content – began to fall into four distinct camps:

• Traditional. The ones that you and I remember from old, and are probably still the most familiar with. Organizations running business models and legacy businesses in pretty much the same way as they’ve always done. Newspapers that still put ink on paper, for example.
• Online. A media company that exists purely in the digital space. These can be young and trendy upstarts such as The Verge, BuzzFeed or Mashable, or long-established companies that have evolved into digital-native business models (such as NewsWeek).
• Owned. This is where any company gets to play being a publisher or media company. It’s marketing content that’s everything from a white paper or customer testimonial video at one end, all the way up to something like the American Express Open Forum at the other end.
• Social. Hopefully this one needs little introduction. It’s the Facebooks, Twitters, Google+’s and whatever else is around the corner waiting for us to complete a sign-up form.

Today it’s harder and harder to know what’s editorial and what’s advertising. Everything’s jumbled up together. Social media channels such as Twitter now give me Promoted Tweets. Magazines run something that they call Native Advertising (which I used to think was just a fancy-schmancy name for an advertorial, but now I’m not so sure).

What did I just see? Was it an ad, an advertorial, an editorial or a piece of owned media? We can no longer tell where social ends and where media begins. Not only is there social in media, but there’s media in social. The business models are intertwined.

It’s as though someone’s mixed my Blueberry Cheesecake into my Waldorf Salad. My coffee’s been poured over my Thai-Spiced Chicken. And you really don’t want to know where that bread roll has gone…

That’s the state of play with media right now: Everything’s shmushed together. Marketing is media…is marketing.

The Inevitable Meeting Of Media And Marketing

Why does that matter? Because the business models required to support such evolution haven’t emerged in the same way.

The business models that we have – and are currently working with – are still based upon the salad never touching the cheesecake. But today’s content consumption is everything blended together. Distinctions between what’s media and what’s marketing are in a state of flux, if not eroding altogether. The inevitable result is a convergence and integration of the two.

But what does that mean?

We’re seeing the implications already. It’s when non-media brands hire journalists to create content and make their website look like a magazine. It’s when you, as a media company, look at how you could help your advertisers create content on your platform.

While the lines of delineation seem set to continue to blur, the end-game seems to be a constant: the challenge to create compelling stories in multiple formats that not only find their audience, but are worth finding in their own right.

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A business can’t go very far, for very long, without having sales. But finding customers is often easier said than done.

Generating sales leads is a key part of most companies efforts to keep the sales funnel active. It’s an often frustrating and expensive process in terms of time, money and resources. But, hey, if it were easy everyone would be doing it, right?

The thing is, all sales leads aren’t created equal, which is why many sales teams ‘rank’ incoming leads by how likely it is that they’ll buy within a prescribed timeframe. Salespeople, since they’re usually a) up against a sales target and b) paid on commission, inevitably focus on the “hot” leads emerging from the sales funnel. The ones that, based upon their assessment, will result in a sale in the shortest space of time.

That’s all great, super, and wonderful. But while that’s going on, who’s looking after the other leads?

Lead Nurturing: Keeping Them On The Boil

One of the great things about the internet is that buyers can engage with sellers earlier in their buying process. However the other side of the coin is that, for many companies, new sales leads are often not ready to engage from Day One – even if they may be ready in the medium to long term.

So what do you do? Hope that the lead will contact you again when they’re ready to buy? Perhaps risk them getting lost or ignored in the sales funnel – or scooped-up by the competition? That’s where Lead Nurturing comes in.

Lead nurturing is the process of building and maintaining a relationship with a qualified sales prospect – regardless of their buying timeline – to help ensure that their business comes to you rather than goes to someone else. It’s a very different animal from Lead Generation, which is about feeding (usually) the Sales department qualified leads that wish to buy within a specified timeframe.

Both functions are equally important. However, in most companies these two distinctly separate roles are handled by the same department: Sales. And that’s wrong.

Why? Because salespeople don’t want to nurture. Salespeople want to sell. Salespeople want to take over when the prospect’s ready to buy – because when they buy is when the salespeople gets paid. However, since the process of buying has changed (forever), the issue of who’s responsible with managing the “warm” leads – ones that may be only just in the sales funnel – is only going to get more important.

Buyers are doing more of their research on their own – using search, social media, etc. Part of this change means that, while they can be engaging with brands earlier than ever, they’re not in a position – or are even willing – to be “sold” to. This changes many of the fundamental tenets that most company marketing departments were built upon (and, unfortunately, haven’t changed ever since).

Buying Isn’t What It Used To Be.
But Then, Neither Is Selling.

Marketing used to be about little more than generating leads to pass to Sales. Today, however, it needs to be about a synchronized initiative that follows and enhances the lead’s buying experience and helps them make their decision, providing contextually-relevant content that is seen as having value.

When I say “having value”, I mean to them. Not to you. Lead nurturing may be many things, but it’s not:

• Blasting everyone who’s ever contacted the company about anything ever with a email newsletter talking about how great the company thinks it is;
• Emails/phone calls every now and again to see “how they’re doing” and if they’re any nearer to a purchasing decision;
• “Like Us on Facebook / Follow Us On Twitter” outreaches that link to an account that isn’t regularly updated and shows no audience engagement;
• Providing content that talks all about the company, its products/services, its people, etc. without taking into account the prospect’s interests, needs, or buying decision criteria.

Most research suggests that this “internet-empowered” customer (who, you’ll remember, is doing all the legwork themselves because they trust their own networks more than they trust you) only expects to get in front of a salesperson once they’ve made it two-thirds down the sales funnel. To get to that point, a certain amount of knowledge transfer needs to happen (quite a lot, in the case of complex sales).

The question that you need to consider is whether they’re getting that information from you, or someone else?

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Has the use of social media in business finally come of age? I’d like to think so.

I get the feeling that when speaking to business owners about using social media, I don’t see the same “bulldog chewing a wasp” grimace that I used to. There seems to be a more receptive attitude, and more of an acceptance of opportunities that a social media presence can bring to many companies.

I think that there exists a growing realization that, actually, maybe there is some value being brought to the table after all. That perhaps this whole social media thing isn’t just some hippie trend, and that maybe getting on board might be worth doing after all.

Alternatively, the reason may also be that companies are seeing how some forward-thinking competitors investing in social media a few years ago are now reaping the benefits. No-one wants to miss the bus, right?

Dipping Your Toe In The Social Media Water

If there’s one question that we seem to get asked more than any other when it comes to a business getting their feet wet in the world of social media, it’s how many social media channels should they be on.

And this is where many organizations get it wrong. Because the action of creating a social media presence is perceived as being “free” (generally speaking, that is), there’s a temptation for a company to be everywhere, to try everything and “see what sticks.”

Which is probably the fastest way of falling over with all of this.

One of the reasons that there are so many social media channels out there is precisely because there isn’t a single “one size fits all” network. Moreover, judicious and selective deployment of the most appropriate social media channels (as part of a wider inbound marketing initiative, complete with rule-of-engagement plan and content strategy) is an imperative prerequisite to social media success – now more than ever.

A couple of years ago, most of us exploring social media deployment were taking a “suck-it-and-see” approach. Try something, see how it worked (or didn’t), rinse and repeat. These early stages could be seen as an inevitable part of social media’s “rite of passage” prior to its systematic inclusion within a company’s marketing activities. However, spreading oneself too thinly across too wide a social media landscape today offers less concession when getting things wrong, and brings with it a set of problems that can work against the good intentions that were there in the first place.

The temptation is to implement by replication. If in doubt look at how the biggest, most successful companies are doing it – and ape their actions. The problem with such thinking is that many huge brands are on every social media network you can think of (and many that you’ve never even heard of). Sure, there are the Facebook pages to “like” and the Twitter accounts to “follow”. But what about Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr, Posterous, Flickr, FourSquare, Yelp, Vine – and the hundreds of others?

So, on how many social media channels should your business be present?

Less Is More

The answer is definitely not all of them, and most probably not even most of them.

Most companies are looking for their social media presence to help increase sales, and/or offer better customer service. In other words: directed to new and existing customers. It therefore follows that the social media channels where your company should be present are the social media channels that your target audience frequents.

So if you’re a B2B manufacturer making industrial widgets that are sold in their millions to companies that make bathroom fittings, it’s a fair bet that the business people you’re looking to connect with don’t expect (or even want) to see your brand in their Facebook timeline.

If you’re looking to enhance your customer service, then it’s more the likely that the real-time conversational nature of Twitter is going to benefit your brand. Not only for addressing the issues of your customers, but also from the marketing implications of being seen as reactive and helpful.

If you’re a consumer brand then Facebook, Pinterest and/or Instagram may be on your list.

Regardless of what social media channel(s) you opt for, the more important audience deliverable is a frequent and proactive (and useful) presence as far as your audience is concerned. Nothing smells worse than (for example) a company Twitter account that hasn’t been updated in a month. Don’t have time to update a particular social media channel, and can’t increase resources accordingly? Then you shouldn’t be on it.

Implementing a social mindset within the organization is already a major task for most companies, regardless of size. By biting off more than you can chew by setting-up too many social channels will inevitably lead to disappointment and missed opportunities. Far better to do a few – or maybe just one – really well, than deliver a sub-par presence across too many.

While the rules of engagement are still being defined, and will doubtless continue to evolve and change, what’s imperative is remembering why you’re on social media in the first place: the delivery of an enhanced brand experience.

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