The thing is...

Why a #directmail letter is better than a #sales rep

From Siegried Vogele's "Handbook of Direct Mail"

"Paper actually does have certain advantages over a representative. It waits longer, it can be put to one side and picked up again later, it can be shown to someone else, can be read quickly or slowly, several times or simple filed away for later. But above all, it does not complain when we throw it in the waste paper basket if it annoys us or if we do not like what it says, or if it does not tell us anything we want to know. This conscious throwing away could even be seen as a sort of substitute handling of the otherwise unpleasant task of getting rid of an unwelcome representative."

The thing is...he's (often) right. But only if you know how to write the letter!

5 Ways my iPad has changed my life...in one week

Having spent the last several months working out of my home office---and driving my family crazy--I needed to buy a computer. I was using my iMac, which I love, but it's pretty stationary.  

 

So I was faced with a choice:  Laptop or iPad?

I did some research, spoke to a bunch of friends and boiled the choice down to the following premise:  

"A laptop does laptop things but no iPad things.  An iPad does iPad things and a whole mess of laptop things."  

 No contest.  The iPad wins.  

 Less than a week ago, my iPad2 (32GB, refurb, WiFi, from the Apple Store) arrived from China.  Then I rigged it up with a wireless keyboard and a great case from Targus.

The thing is...Since then, this device has changed my life.  Read how.

To drive change, define the problem FIRST

 

Recently a friend of mine completed a pretty good-sized renovation of his basement. 

It wasn’t a voluntary project; rather it was driven by some water issues he had down there.  For months he had various contractors visit and offer their solutions, each of which had a very expensive price tag, and none of which would have solved the water issues. 

And that’s because none of these well meaning contractors identified the source of the water.   They tried—“It’s ground water leaking in through the slab,” “It’s a leak in the heating system,” “You have an underground spring”—but they never got it.

In the end, the homeowner found the source (a minor plumbing issue) and was able to remediate the problem once and for all, more quickly and cheaply. 

The thing is… the water in the basement wasn’t the problem. 

It was a SYMPTOM of the problem.  The problem was the plumbing.  Fix the plumbing, the water goes away.

 

You see this in organizations all the time.  People identify something that presents as a problem, but it’s really just a symptom of it.  For instance, a client of mine came to me and said he a had problem with his website.  It was difficult to maintain, it didn’t reflect the company’s values and no one was using it.

Fixing a website these days is pretty easy, and I could have done it.  But the website wasn’t the problem.  It was only a symptom—albeit a very public and visual symptom.

 The problem, as it turned out, was a total lack of process and ownership over all communications channels.  

• No editorial work-flow
• Wrong people in the wrong jobs
• Lack of expertise
• No shared mission/vision/goals
• No oversight

 And the list goes on.

Guess what?  Not only were there problems with the website, there were problems with direct mail pieces, email distribution, list management and print advertising.   The staff was bickering because no one understood their role in the process.  You get the idea.

Once we exposed the problem, and got everyone to agree that we had identified it—measured by significant and persistent head-nodding—we began a process to fix it.   We will wind up addressing everything, rather than just the website.

Most problems have a solution, but you have to define the problem first.  Don’t mistake a symptom for the disease.

 

Make LinkedIn about your work, not about YOU

There is a tool for every job, and every job has a tool. 

You want to bang in a nail?  Grab a hammer.
You want to twist in a screw?   Grab the Phillips head screwdriver. 

But don’t ask the hammer to do a screwdriver’s job.  It won’t work.   It’s not good at it.  A hammer is great at hammer’s a job.  Ask it to do that, and it will deliver every time.

Same thing goes for marketing channels.  TV is good at certain jobs.  Search is good at certain jobs.  Display advertising is good at certain jobs.   Assign them the right jobs, and they will deliver every time.  Ask TV to do search’s job, however, and it will fail.

 Recently I didn’t listen to my own advice.  I asked a hammer to do a screwdriver’s job.  A very smart woman, Janice Waterman, who focuses on c-level career coaching in the areas of strategy, marketing, communications, and execution, helped me see the error of my ways.

You see, my so-called “killer app” has always been…me.  Whether it’s searching for my next consulting project, negotiating the price of a new car or helping a non-profit with organizational design, I know I can be most effective in person.  Get me in front of a group of people and I knock it out of the park (most of the time).

Knowing that, I used my LinkedIn profile to, in a sense, re-create ME.  It was written  in a conversational tone and conveyed information about my personality that I thought would help whomever viewed my profile get a feel for who I was, as though we were already in a face-to-face situation.

 

 

The thing is…that’s NOT LinkedIn’s job.  LinkedIn’s job is to display your WORK.

• The things you’ve done in your career. 
• The job’s you’ve had. 
• The companies you’ve worked for. 

 

It’s great at those jobs.  It’s not great at other jobs. So, I changed the profile.  Lesson (re) learned.  Thanks Janice.

 

If your client doesn't "get it" look in the mirror

In a recent interview on Techcrunch, Buddy Media co-founder Mike Lazerow (@lazerow) spoke about how insular the world of digital marketing and media is.  He's right, and that insularity is expressed everyday in the phrase:  They don't "get it."   The world of digital is divided into the "us" who get it and the "them" who don't.  Usually the agency is the "us" and the client is the "them" as in "Sigh, my client doesn't get it!"  Say the previous sentence with dramatic frustration.  It also applies to your boss who doesn't get it.

The thing is...If your client or your boss doesn't get it, look in the mirror.  It means you have failed.  Most likely you client doesn't get it for one of three reasons:

• You have not asked the right questions
• You have failed to explain it clearly
• You have not demonstrated it

So next time, instead of complaining to your colleagues, ask better questions, and then answer them clearly.  And then show them how to do it, whatever the "it" is.

Bridges = Life

The other day I met my friend Mike LeBeau at his new company Weld Media.  

 

Weld is a new breed of digital agency that is focusing on driving consumers into bricks-and-mortar retail stores (see the “store back” concept from P&G).  I won’t reveal Weld’s secret sauce but their insights are driving them to a new concept called “path through purchase.”  Any CPG brand that wants a fresh look at how to leverage digital channels to drive in-store sales should contact Mike.

In his presentation, Mike positions his agency as a "bridge" between the virtual and physical worlds, as well as between two parts of a traditional CPG organization.  Since then, I've been thinking about bridges, both actual bridges and conceptual bridges.

The thing is…It seems to me that often we are focused the destination, and not how we get there. 

 A bridge not only helps us get from point A to point B, it can transform us in the process.  Anyone who has driven across the Golden Gate Bridge on a foggy summer day and gone through the Rainbow Tunnel into the glorious Marin sunshine knows what I mean.

 

Our world is full of bridges.  Here are a few. 

• Process is the bridge between creativity and art
• Strategy is the bridge between an idea and reality
• A plan is the bridge between the short term and the long term
• Getting engaged is the bridge between being single and being married
• Pregnancy is the bridge between an empty house and parenthood
• Life is the bridge between birth and death

 Don’t forget about the bridges.  They are important.  They are life.

 

The big secret: Marketing is still difficult, or what no one wants to admit about technology

So you are a company and you have 100 people in your audience.  By audience I mean all the people who are active customers, past customers, potential customers and those who are interested in your products and services.  Not everyone buys your stuff, at least not all the time.  Some people just really like your company and follow it in one way or another.  Other people are just browsing.

You'll find over time that the Pareto principle (sometimes described as the "80.20" rule) takes shape.  Only a small portion of your audience drives that vast majority of your revenue.   Let's say your version of the 80/20 rule is more like 75/25, meaning 25% of your audience generates 75% of your revenue.  In this case, those 25 people drive $75 in revenue.  

The big secret marketing is still difficult

View more presentations from David Levy.

 So, how do you grow?  There are really only two ways to do it (yes, I'm oversimplifying, but go with it). 

If you want to double that revenue, you can find another 100 similar people and it's pretty likely that, over time, you see that 25% will be your buyers.  For each new "set" of 100 people, you'll get another $75.  The key is to find a whole bunch of new "sets" of people.

Sometimes, this method of growth is called "scale."  That's the first way to grow.

The second way to grow is through "efficiency."  Efficiency means doing a better job of turning your current audience into buyers:  After all, the vast majority (75%) doesn’t buy your stuff.  That's a lot of waste.  To be more efficient you need to leverage data, insights, offers, promotions and other cross-sell and up-sell techniques to turn some of those non-buyers into buyers.  To double your revenue, you need to convert 25 of those slackers into buyers.  Now half the audience buys.  Ultimately, you have changed your own 75/25 rule into a 50/50 rule!  

Generally, scale is easier yet more expensive and wasteful.  Efficiency is more difficult yet more enduring and profitable.  Companies often have to choose between the two as a primary business strategy.  

Now into the conference room strides a group of white suited concepts designed to make you a better marketer, particularly if you are using digital channels such as search and display advertising to find those new audiences.  Each has a business card with a three letter acronym, including real time bidding (RTB), demand side platform (DSP), data management platform (DMP) and supply side platform (SSP). There are a lot of them, and they all come from this very scary place.

They have a great story to tell you.  They tell you that you no longer need to make the trade off between scale and efficiency.  You can get both quality and quantity.  All you need to do is let manage your digital media spend, or at least tag all your digital media and email, and maybe drive your off line media to a landing page and the technology will take care of the rest.

First, they'll help you better understand the buyers in your audience.  The technologies will look at what your buyers do on the web, add a whole bunch of third party data and ask some smart analysts, who will use still more technologies, to create a more accurate portrait of your buyers.  Once you understand your buyers better, you can use those insights to convert more of the NON-buyers to buyers (there are lots of ways to do this, such as email, re-targeting, etc.).  You will be more efficient!  You will change the 75/25 rule into 50/50.

Now, armed with that information, you can then go out and seek...people who look just like those buyers!!  You no longer need to spend your resources acquiring the mass of un-differentiated non-buying slackers. Instead, feed the technology machine with all that data, and allow it to bring in only those people who are more likely to purchase your stuff.  

But wait!  There's more. You can buy those "audiences" over and over and over and over and over again. Now, you are not only finding customers more efficiently, but you are finding them at scale.  VOILA!  No more trade offs necessary!! 

The thing is...it's not that simple.  Turns out, not all of those little niche audiences of buyers can achieve any meaningful scale.  At some point, and a lot sooner than we all thought, the ability to scale any individual audience tops out.  In other words, the technologies will help you better understand who your buyers are likely to be, but there are just not as many out there as we thought.

No technology will solve everything.  That's the big secret that no one will talk about, or at least we willfully forget when the conference room door opens.  We so desperately want our jobs to be easier that we hope, HOPE, that something will come along and be the magic potion.  But it doesn't exist.

Make sure you, and your agencies understand this.  And be very skeptical of any technology vendor that oversells its value.

By the way, one company, [x +1], is owning up to the limits of these technologies.  At a recent conference, they went through a case study of how they have helped a client address the situation.  

So now what?

Well that's where it gets interesting, meaning you just are going to have to think a bit harder. 

• You are going to have to incorporate these technologies into your marketing mix, but you can't rely on them totally.  
• You are going to need to investigate other technologies that will help you better manage your upfront awareness (i.e. CPM/scale media) so you can keep finding new people, whether or not they are exactly the "buyers" you are looking for.
• You may have to live with your 75/25 rule for a while
• You need to beef up your CRM efforts and your creative to make sure you are talking to your customers, and listening to your customers in a way that best meets their needs
• You need to incorporate other buying tactics into your media plans (such as cost-per-engagement, cost-per-action) to help generate ROI throughout the purchase process
• You are going to have to get social
• You are going to have to experiment with mobile
• You are going to have to test advertising on the iPad, and other tablets

Wherever your consumers are, and however they interact with your company, you will need to be there.

Make no mistake.  It's not going to be easy, but it will be fun.

 

Looking for a Senior Planner, Digital

Senior Planner, Digital  

Position Summary:

 The Senior Planner is frequently the person the client turns to first as the Senior Planner is typically in daily contact with the client responding to requests and solving any media-related issues. To be most effective the Senior Planner must thoroughly understand the client business. In general this means a current knowledge of competitive activity gained through rigorous analysis; understanding and bearing in mind the perspective of the client(s) customer especially when participating in strategy discussions; having a comprehension of and appreciation for digital media, and actively including digital counterpart.

This individual will serve as the central contact for reporting and invoicing and will work with internal team members, clients and vendors while furthering their knowledge and experience of digital media buying and planning. Responsibilities will include but not limited to research, planning, trafficking, reporting, monthly reconciliation and insertion order development in relation to a number of digital marketing channels including:  email, banner, co-registration, lead generation and contextual campaigns. They will work with the management team to evaluate channel performance for various Singer Direct clients and will help drive marketing strategies.  In this role, the candidate will disseminate daily action items to both clients and media partners

By nature, a Senior Planner has to be curious and open to investigating unique opportunities to reach the target consumer, yet prepared to provide a point-of-view, recommendations, and alternatives regarding the various media channels. The Senior Planner is accountable for results, which can in part be defined as execution of the media plan; negotiating for the best value (price and impact); measuring media performance and optimizing site/placement after reviewing campaign results; offering tactical alternatives based on client needs and requests. The Senior Planner is the primary guide to take assigned Digital Specialist through the fundamentals of the planning process, to delegate responsibilities that will simultaneously meet business goals and contribute to the Digital Specialist’s development, and to provide directional and timely feedback.

 Responsibilities:   

• Daily/Weekly/Monthly reporting to clients and media partners
• Compile and issue monthly client invoicing and internal reconciliation documents
• Working with ad-ops to ensure all plans have been set up properly in DART
• Trafficking of creative and other deliverables
• Creation of media buy authorizations and insertion orders
• Work with supervisor to develop media plan strategy
• Work closely with clients and vendors to maintain media buy performance and resolve any potential issues
• Analyze results and develop detailed campaign-end summaries 
• Research and recruit potential new media partners
• Provide support during development of media plans for both existing and new business

 

Desired Skills:

 

• Basic knowledge of Digital Advertising Account Management and Production processes
• Pushes self to learn ever more about the application of the principles of media, marketing and advertising.
• Possesses a basic knowledge of the disciplines underlying these principles e.g. economics, journalism, psychology
• Student of the client industry and environment in which client operates 
• Capable user of multi-digital vehicles; vigorously strengthens knowledge of the relationship opportunities between on-and-offline media 
• Proficient mathematical abilities, aptitude for mathematical concepts
• Fluent user of Microsoft office especially Excel and PowerPoint
• Solves problems with a minimum of noise
• Excellent presentation skill
• Conveys thoughts, ideas, feelings and decisions in a clear, concise and appropriate manner.
• Demonstrates both good verbal and written skills.
• Is a good listener
• Detail-oriented and organized with strong attention to follow-through
• Dependable, thorough and a keen ability to meet deadlines for assigned tasks
• Eager to grow and increase knowledge in digital marketing
• Knowledge in 3^rd Party Ad Servers (DART, Atlas, MOJO, etc.) and online research tools (Nielsen, @Plan, AdRelevance, etc.) a plus

 

 

 

Qualifications:

 

• BA/BS in marketing, communications or related field
• 1-2 years of digital media planning/buying experience
• Ideal candidate must be an adaptable, hands-on learner; possess superior organizational skills, and be able to coordinate multiple projects/assignments at one time