Conversation Agent

Taking the Measure of Marketing Conversations

We have these conversations among peers. Depending on where social media is layered inside an organization, what gets measured and valued changes. That's because there is a different way of looking at it depending on what social media is employed to achieve.

It's important to know if it is clicks, impressions, relationships or conversations that matter most, as Michael Brito writes. It is even more important to know what the business is trying to accomplish before we determine which tactics to use when and which of those metrics gets measured and has validity accordingly.

Michael has the advantage of having worked on the client side and knowing about the internal challenges we face. His points (in bold) on what one can see from the outside and my commentary:

• Organizations need to be aligned in their communication strategy - every conversation each employee has with anyone about your company is a PR impression.

If the conversation is not elevated from a mere recitation of what we do (services) to one of what problems we solve (solutions) as they map to an outcome (customer results) you miss the opportunity to create a cohesive picture of what your business does.

Most importantly, you fail the "so what?" test. This matters to your brand.

• Companies need to integrate their go-to-market strategies - this is another opportunity for good brand stewardship. What is the final customer experience you want to deliver? Can you translate that into your go-to-market strategies?

Multi-channel marketing works because it integrates many different tools and options to allow prospects to auto-select on the basis of their communication preferences and listening habits.

With the integration or layering of social media, the funnel - awareness building, stimulating consideration, driving preference and purchase intent - reverses.

Brand relationships may be formed with meeting, then intensifying encounters and integrating conversations. From those actions we create bonds and eventually/potentially advocates.

• Internal communication, planning and collaboration is the key - unclear definitions of individual roles and goals can prevent an organization from having a strong, unified presence in the marketplace.

This matters to your brand as much as how customers experience your services and products matters to your reputation.

Building on Michael's points further, Harry Joiner has an excellent digest and set of recommendations and key takeaways for recession marketing. From where I sit, here is what I see:

• Leading brands lead - branding is one of the most misunderstood allies today. My simple 5 x 5 rule is that brand is the fourth word among five very important ones. Let's take a look:

needs (wants)
story
value
brand
trust

How am I doing on the order? What would you change?

This is how marketing conversations work.

I start with the customer in mind, their story, which matches their worldview, how that and what you deliver brings the value they are willing to pay for, which takes us to brand, the sum total of what you say (story) based on their outcome (needs/wants and value) and experience. This chain of dependencies then delivers trust.

• 10 ideas to make your Web site sticky matter to leveraging SEO and SEM, they also matter to increasing conversion rates. Design and usability matter in marketing conversations - how you write what you write and how that helps answer the "so what?" question can lead to engagement.

Search is very, very important in your strategies. Research for technology buyers shows that 83% use Google. Go ahead and search your business. Do you come up when you google the keywords a prospect would use?

If not, you have an opportunity to take another look at your story - the language you use - to improve your SEO. Are you buying the right keywords for an effective SEM? The more specific (differentiated and matching) the more efficient in cost and results.

When prospects find you, have you paid attention especially to whether you are asking people to sign on to download information? Research shows that you could be losing 75-85% of the people just by putting that barrier in front of them. Find other ways to measure downloads.

Here's a place where you can take advantage of participation in social media.

After the initial search, people will gravitate towards peer to peer communities to get advice and information. Peers first, experts second. Remember that if you are layering social media tools to your company Web site, your SEO improves when your content strategy is holistic and includes the whole site.

We've discussed it here before so I won't get into that now, I believe that in the future editorial impact, marketing conversations and community (peer to peer) relationships will be horizontal instead of vertical or siloed considerations as they are today.

• Content matters as much as experience does - when you create meaning and value, you earn the opportunity to have the conversation with your customers in the first place. Yes, customer service is filled with missed marketing opportunities.

I work in the technology space and what I am observing is that in addition to the further lengthening of the sales cycle, there are many more people involved on the buyer's side.

That means that it's become more demanding to fill the content needs for all of these various buyers. In some cases, they may not know exactly what they are each after (their organization is also siloed).

The technologists have very literal questions about delivery of what and how. Business executives want to know how that technology is going to help them grow the business and the effects of it on the day to day. Hint, if it is invisible, you'll need to figure out the value to them or it becomes a commodity. The controller wants to know how much it's going to cost. In operations they want to know about customer support.

Marketing conversations can help here.

That's because despite all of your efforts to be everywhere with your content - trade shows, direct marketing, permission-based newsletters, free white papers, webinars, etc. - your customers buy when they are ready. Which means you have to be there to be top of mind.

It's easier to be there when you have developed a relationship through conversation than when you are catching up with the marketplace and stretching budgets to be everywhere your prospects might be.

Back to your question of what you are trying to achieve. In the coming days and weeks we will discuss desired outcomes, how to go about layering social media tools onto multi-channel marketing strategies and ideas on measurement.

[image courtesy of Brian Solis]

Does Main Stream Media Add Value?

Or is the sound bite starting to just be a distraction? I do not watch television, have not used my set for anything but the occasional enjoyment of a DVD for years. At work we have a television set in the bistro and I will catch a couple of minutes of CNN as I warm up my lunch. It exhausts me with its intense beat and brevity.

No time to figure out what it's about, never mind understand implications, just a veneer approach and a continuous request for input from the audience. When did journalism become so needy?

The other part of the equation is that I spend the majority of the time in front of a different screen - that of a computer. When I am online, I tend to scan the publications I syndicate, and rarely spend more than thirty minutes reading the news, unless I find a good, in depth story.

A special report, or a nice piece of reporting that goes into lots of detail and coverage earns my time. That happens more rarely than I'd like, still it happens and it is highly stimulating. When enough time passed from the immediate need to report the news piece, journalists sometimes get to the part of requiring reality to explain itself.

As I've written elsewhere, Christiane Amanpour thinks that “there are some situations that one simply cannot be neutral about. Objectivity does not mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing.” Herein lies the first lesson in thinking about news reporting - it is about being balanced in recognizing differing points of view. 

Now that I publish in a public forum, I welcome solid sources that explore facts and tell compelling stories. As main stream media is looking to use the passion of bloggers to uncover topics that are of interest to readers, as journalists use social media to do their research of the public sentiment and more, I look to main stream media to provide unassailable data points.

At the same time that main stream media is moving away from in depth coverage and reporting due to cuts in budgets and staff, they are also moving closer to the style and format of new media. Quick, snack size bites that feed but do not nourish. In that light, does in fact main stream media add value?

[image courtesy of Cox & Forkum]

Olympic Games Off Limits

Mark Cuban has an intriguing post on The NBA and the Olympics.

What he hints at is that the Olympic Games are a closed system though and through. They are closed obviously because they include only athletes that excel in a specific discipline as judged according to certain predetermined standards.

They are a closed system because everything that happens in and around the games is commercialized. The sponsors pay for the privilege of controlling our viewing and merchandising experience.

Will the summer games in Beijing be even more controlled? Will the curtain close on the back stories of the games? You know, those about the athletes and their struggles, the human angle. Or will this be an opportunity for the brand called China to carry its own torch and story to the next century as part of the global community?

Related: we had a conversation of Olympic proportions here when we talked about the new London 2012 logo.

Today at The Blog Herald, I ask whether you are a marathon blogger or a sprinter. Your answer determines how you are going about where you're going next.

100 Thing Challenge

Dave Bruno, a 37-year old Californian entrepreneur, is launching into a challenge - he calls it the 100 things challenge. He's working on cutting down what he owns to 100 items total. The fascinating conversation in the comments to his post centers mostly around how he counts the items - per pair, per collection, per category?

When I moved here from Italy, I brought only two suitcases containing clothes and books. Several years ago I finally disposed of the rest of my books I had stored in my family's garage. They were important enough to keep as my biggest love is that of learning, yet they were easy to give away after not holding them for years.

My philosophy has since been that of trading items - whenever I buy something, I give (which I prefer) or throw away something else. One spare closet has to remain empty and so it does. Yes, I park the car inside the garage without contending with piles of unused or older items. Periodically, I bring in books to work knowing that the intention is for them to not come back home again. Instead, I share them with colleagues.

I can see an economic slowdown if more of us adopt an even stricter challenge - that of not buying new stuff for one year. Imagine what wonders that would do for credit card payments and simplicity! What would be the implications of such a trend catching on for marketers?

Juliet Schor penned an interesting essay on consumerism that highlights some inverse relationship between consumerism and community. We know that we are not rational, deliberate and in control every time we buy, either.

One need only to think about brand preference to know that we make emotional connections to goods or betters. You buy Pepsi because it represents the future, Reebok shoes because the company stands for strong women. You develop a brand preference, and believe that your brand is superior in quality.

The Economist has an interesting article about the endowment effect, humankind's inner chimpanzee refusing to let go. When we own something, we associate more value with it. Hence the hesitation to letting it go. Schor states that consumption is social. The Economist adds:

Other “irrational” phenomena include:

• confirmation bias - searching for or interpreting information in a way that confirms one’s preconceptions;
• the bandwagon effect - doing things because others do them; and
• framing problems - when the conclusion reached depends on the way the data are presented.

I present this information because it should affect the way we think about marketing. As Schor puts it, there are fruitful and essential linkages between production, consumption, and the environment that we should be making.

I would go further. I think there are fundamental decisions we need to make about the noise and clutter we make with our marketing communications.

Here's why:

• Too many materials confuse your brand. What does your brand stand for? There is a reason why we call them materials - they occupy space. During my career, I've done two full audits of marketing inventories: brochures, sell sheets, technical bulletins, etc. All occupying space in warehouses, many going into different directions on content.

The temptation is to think that more is more. In many instances less is more - try a short and to the point eBook instead of a long white paper; use digital versions wherever possible, do not overproduce. Most importantly, do not inflict competing materials on employees and customers.

• Too many materials confuse your employees and customers. Resist the temptation to think that your value depends on the volumes of things you produce. Instead, look at value as the ability to extract the essential elements of your brand promise and deliver those with consistency - that includes consistency of experience.

Your customers and employees care about being in a conversation with each other where you are now a participant, not the center. How does that consideration change the way you can think about materials? Your brand is a commodity if all you're doing is talk about yourself anyway.

My challenge to me and to you: what are the 100 unnecessary things that we can eliminate from our current marketing communications? They either do not work - a case of more is not more - or are inefficient. What are the activities and dynamics we could introduce to replace the ones that are not working anymore? Remember to trade one or two for one wherever possible.

We can start small. Feel free to make suggestions here in the comments. I will call this the 100 Marketing Conversations series in future posts - we will be discussing social media, social networks, events, communities and collaborative alternatives to the practices that we discontinue.

Evolutionary Hierarchy of Communication Networks

I've come across a fascinating evolutionary hierarchy of things by the Bordalier Intitute. It shows communication networks developing from cosmic networks. The diagram did make me think about Matryoshkus Russian dolls.

[image of product by Art Lebedev Studio. Hat tip to Laughing Squid]

The image I am using makes sense also in another respect. It represents a hierarchy in order of bit, byte, kilobyte, megabyte, gigabyte & terabyte. All it's missing is petabytes. According to Wired magazine, these are stored in the cloud.

If we take the opposite approach, from the outside in, for communication networks we have:

1. Chemical bonds in protolife (Gaia)
2. Cellular energy in prokaryote (Biosphere)
3. Genetic in eucariote (Biotope)
4. Central nervous system (Ecosystem)
5. Semiotic (Social Community)
6. Food Web or trophic Web in vertebrates or quadriopodes (Biotop)
7. Ritual verbal symbolic in religion (Culture)
8. Mechanical Tools (Engineering)
9. Written verbal (History)
10. Formal symbolic (Science)
11. Binary (Computer Systems)
12. Hypertext in the World Wide Web (Internet)
13. Computer to computer (Web Services)

This sequence or evolution seems to follow the path outlined in the article, where science (causation) is superseded by correlation (data analysis without hypotheses of what it might show). Is the evolution of communication networks taking us towards Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents as conversation agents? 

Fascinating theory or potential reality?

Word Clouds

It's called Wordle and it turns every text into a word cloud. [hat tip to Bruno Giussani] Let's run an experiment, shall we? Take a communication or marketing piece you have written and run it through Worlde. What is the corresponding word cloud? Does it give you the social tags it should about the topic you covered?

Here's one for the Gettysbug Address:

And here's one for my post on Ten Ideas for Conversation:

Now go get your own! I warn you, it is addictive.

Evolution of Business

[image of the evolution of man...]

The Stanford Social Innovation review has a good article on Achieving Breakthrough Performance based on research with Bain & Company. In it, the authors talk about four management principles that are essential to creating breakthrough performance in any organization, with a focus on not for profit businesses. There are some commonalities between for profit and not for profits in the values that underscore those principles.

The one distinction the authors draw is when it comes to customers - two in not for profits, clients and funders, and one in for profits, the customers who buy your products and services.

As I was reading, I started thinking about how those principles would loosely apply to the evolution of business with the introduction of social media dynamics. These generate both feedback and feed forward movement where people hear from other people and the result of that conversation informs what kind of next experiences we have or seek. 

1. Market reputation and authority create new options

There is more to it than just collecting testimonials and case studies with a few customers. Many more could be saying negative things about you. Digital information can be fast and is permanent. People rarely go back to amend unfavorable reviews and conversations with their peers spontaneously. This means that you need to be listening to what your customers are saying, and be a good steward for your brand(s).

Many companies and brands today are listening. So few are responding and engaging in conversations that it is still possible to break through the marketing noise using that novel button called "reply" or "comment." Resist the urge to overthink what your customers will do next - in many cases you don't even know your customers. Instead, let them teach you who they are and what matters to them.

How do you get authority online? Through participation, sharing, listening and responding where the answer may not necessarily be: your product or service.

2. Consider the costs of not doing

Businesses have gotten really good at figuring out the costs of doing things. In the current economic environment they are also squeezing many costs out of the system. While it is wise to manage expenses and build efficiencies, one cannot cut their way to greatness. Especially when the cutting is done without a real understanding of its impacts.

For example, if your business has a long sales cycle, what you cut today will not hurt until "x" months from now. If you think your business does not have a long sales cycle try and imagine how long it takes you to build relationships with your customers. There is a cost in doing the wrong things, too.

The hidden cost is that of not doing the right things. You do not see what you are losing in competitive advantage and consideration because those opportunities were not open to you in the first place.

Cutting advertising down may not hurt as bad when advertising was not working in the first place. That made it a cost - it costs you efficiencies and effectiveness. Not starting a portal where your customers have access to your front line experts and can discuss common issues and get to know each other is also a cost - a hidden one, in that it may cost you business to your competition that has those mechanisms in place.

3. Customers and markets don't stand still

Your customers' needs change and markets evolve to fill those gaps in services and products. Before Starbucks made coffee retail sexy, and profitable, the money was in growing and roasting beans as well as distributing and brewing the coffee. Then a whole industry shifted - where Starbucks actually helped create an ecosystem of profitable experiences.

Coffee is a good example also when it comes to information about pricing and market economics. Tim Harford wrote about fair trade coffee pricing strategies in his book The Undercover Economist. The book centers on free market economic theory. Fair trade coffee allows businesses to find customers who are willing to pay a bit more, if given a reason to do so. Coffee drinkers who are concerned about fair trade are less careful with their cash when buying - because they have a story that supports the pricing.

Harford explains that every well-run business would seek to charge each customer the maximum price he'd be willing to pay - and they do. If price is information, what we are buying has a perceived "x" value to us. That is what we're willing to pay for it. As a marketer, and a business person, your job is to figure out where that value has shifted to for your customers.

4. Simplicity gets results

How over engineered are your products and services? Do you need a road map just to explain how they fit together, never mind what they do? Take a look and see. Chances are your customers can remember up to three reasons why they want and need something. What are they? Start there. When you can answer those three basic questions, you will have created a more complete experience.

Setting expectations is a good way to lead to a better experience. Focus on a handful of strategic priorities - focus helps with execution. Attach short-term initiatives to those priorities and re-evaluate after you begin to achieve results. Complex contracts, operating manuals, and service agreements to fill out are marketing, too. What experience do they provide?

Make it easy for people to sign up and to sign off as well. I think there are enough examples in the marketplace today that speak to how the more a system is open, the more individuals can, and thus do, choose to be part of it.

What are your feedback and feed forward mechanisms? Is your business system open?

AP Content off Limits - Guidelines to Come

I saw the news story in the New York Times and immediately felt guilty for having even mentioned the new AP report A New Model for News. I was talking about it in the context of user experience translating into circulation online. I believe I quoted more than a few words from the report - not again will I quote, maybe I will go as far as not reading for fear that my visual memory may betray me.

These are interesting times for main stream media. They are trying to figure out where they fit and how to make money. Print publications used to have nice margins, now the margins are thinner - and so are they. All thanks to the rise of citizen bloggers as well that of "free." As in classified ads, content, news, and everything in between. I thought their report was a step firmly in the right direction, that of figuring out who reads news and how we read it.

We know that execution is much harder than research. I do wonder if the recent move was a wise one. I've been following the events between AP and the Drudge report. Staci Kramer of paidContent.org covers how the story progressed at WashingtonPost.com. The Media Bloggers Association provides the time line and a few quotes about the incident. We talked about a new career for journalists writing for PaidContent, too.

As citizen journalism increases, so the responsibility for the stories we circulate grows and spreads. Bloggers now are not only assisted by an association, if they so choose, they can also get educated on the pitfalls to watch for - they are becoming more professional. Angelo Fernando at Hoi Polloi talks about a constant professional motion blur between journalists and bloggers. What is the difference between opinion and news?

My reaction to the AP news was surprise and alarm. Matthew Grant at Aquent puts it more decisively - give it away, give it away, give it away now, he writes. Considering that main stream media is now using social media tools to research their stories, check in with readers, and even promote what they publish, this case seems to be an attempt to go back in time.

Can the genie be put back in the bottle? What do you think? Will this case influence your quoting habits? Do you ever quote main stream media in your posts?

[image of most influential blogs by Vanity Fair. Hat tip to Cyberjournalist.com]

Create Meaning and Value

In other words connect ideas and people - that is classic content marketing in my book.

I was talking with someone at lunch yesterday about this. Let's say you have a newsletter, as he does. It's packed with great information. Maybe you have two versions, a 4-page and an 8-page. The longer version tends to have quite small print.

You have a good list of email addressed from customers and prospects who have given you permission to send them information.

Now take that content and edit it down, break it up, make it shorter and the print bigger. Include illustrations or photographs wherever possible. Limit one main short article per email. Include a "share with your friends button."

If you have a long article, break it up in self-contained mini articles that can be part of a series. Use the series as multiple touch points over time - in marketing we call this kind of regularity lead nurturing. It is consistent and repeated exposure to your content. The other button you put in the html of the email is for feedback. Give them also a way to contact you and opt out every single time.

This is what we call the push format. Let's say you decided to also start a blog. In fact, you make the landing page of your URL the blog, with side links for your bios and the boilerplate of what the company does. When it makes sense, you include a media kit or press area - the lines between blogging announcements and wiring press releases is blurring.

In your blog you reference the newsletter and perhaps respond to comments and conversations you had with customers who contacted you about its content. You also use the blog to provide additional links to resources, outline specific issues or challenges your customers are facing (anonymous material is fine here, too) and tips from your experience.

Expand, deepen, simplify, explain, aggregate, enrich, enliven (your voice counts).

If you are in a highly regulated industry, you might need to figure out a way to provide feedback in a format that does not say it's specific advice. Include an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) feed and you have pull. Now your program integrates and provides value for both kinds of customers - those who prefer to hear from you directly, and those who are more the self-service kind.

You have not eliminated the personal touch. You have just enhanced your ability to do more face to face and have specific conversation about personal needs.

[make your own t-shirt at Reactee]

Missed Marketing Opportunities

I've had this experience before - a service provider who dictates how things should be done. "Send the printed materials in shrink wrapped packets of 25, or else!" "We just want to make sure you understand how we work."

That is odd, given that I pay the invoices. I am not alone. Others have experienced if not such commanding circumstances, at least disappointing ones.

It's a let down on two fronts - as a customer, and as a marketer. What a wasted opportunity to win someone over and to make a good brand impression.

Rich Baker talks about two instances of making lazy: passive customer service. Scripted employees lead to mixed messages - why are we valued less once we become customers?  If you've ever received an introductory rate for a credit card or a membership that was considerably more favorable to the rate you had as a paying (and loyal) customer, you know what I mean. As Rich puts it:

Considering how many companies lean toward intrusive marketing to push products and services (I even had a mortgage company come to my door yesterday), it’s equally amazing how many become passive once you become a customer (I hope you know that periodic calls to your credit card and insurance company almost always result in lower rates).

Stephen Denny wishes companies were ready to share what they know and increase their market share through the mere act of putting experts redux in the field and on the other side of the phone. Integrated marketing means that you are closing the loop on all the opportunities you are given to be in front of your customers with a message that is relevant to their circumstances. Stephen closes the loop for them:

How could Stihl make every homeowner an expert in handling chain saws? A skip tooth chain is an upgrade. A pole saw is an additional purchase. A neighbor is a new customer. A dealer is a teacher. Knowledge spreads like rings in the water.

If you were the marketing chief at Jaeger LeCoultre, how would you get your customers to buy more very expensive watches?

Think about it. Doesn't it make sense? There is one group of people we do not seem to poll often for such conversation. They are those on the front lines - customer service reps. I have done some informal and probably highly suspect research myself and uncovered 21 secrets your customer service reps would never share (not until now). That is the topic of this week's Fast Company Expert blog post.

[image from twistory. What do you love, hate, think, believe, feel, wish?]