Prediction: In 2018, Resistance Will Become a Competitive Advantage

In May, I suggested more brands would seek to differentiate themselves by publicly resisting Trump.

I'm going on record to predict that, in 2018, hundreds of brands—large and small—will do so.

From among the many issues at stake in the culture wars—economic justice, gender equality, racial equality, access to healthcare, access to education, immigration, globalization, global warming, diversity, privacy, and incivility—each brand will choose the issue most closely aligned with its essence. 

That's simply Marketing 101.

What's not Marketing 101 is the wisdom resistance will take.

Not Our People

Hidebound execs often don't grasp why you'd recommend multichannel marketing.

They project their own media habits onto customers.

"Our people don't watch videos. Not our people." (Translation: "I don't watch videos.")

"Our people don't attend webinars. Not our people." (Translation: "I don't don't attend webinars.") 

"Our people don't read newsletters. Not our people." (Translation: "I don't read newsletters.")

Foreclosing the use of entire channels based on your own media habits is foolery. A diversified marketing spend is a smart one.

And yet execs do it all the time. At their own peril.

A new study by IEEE reveals, for example, that many engineers like videos, webinars, and  newsletters. They also like many other channels:

• 67% routinely watch videos on YouTube
• 64% routinely read online catalogs (and 40% read printed ones)
• 36% routinely attend webinars
• 33% routinely read free newsletters
• 30% routinely visit online communities
• 22% routinely attend trade shows and conferences

No matter who they are—doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs—you need a firm grasp of your customers' media habits, to counter the recalcitrant exec who says, "Not our people."

If you don't have that data, get it now. A simple online survey will do.

Every Service Failure Levels the Playing Field

A mammoth corporation like this―it embodies too much experience. 

It possesses in fact a sort of group mind.

― Philip K. Dick

Organizational theorists believe every big business is a collective mind, and that performance "depends on coordinating the distributed knowledge and activities of the collective’s members."

When a big business screws up a simple transaction―more and more the norm―it obliterates the value of that vast, collective mind―opening the way for a small business to steal the disaffected customer.

Execs should think about that when tempted to cut more corners on talent, technology and time-frames.

All the money, bravado and best-practice babble in the world won't make you stronger than your weakest link.

Where Should a B2B Marketer Spend Her Money?

It's September. You're being bugged for next year's marketing budget.

Spending is an art form. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Sure, year-over-year analytics tell you which channels have produced, but—like any investment—"past performance is no guarantee of future results." We'd all still be buying full-page ads in trade magazines, if that were so.

For my money, your mix next year (ranked by percent of total spend) should look like this:

1. Events
2. Telemarketing
3. Direct mail
4. Retargeting
5. Email
6. SEO
7. PPC
8. Social

Too many channels for your paltry budget? Then work the list from the top down. You can't go wrong.

Don't be tempted to lay all your money on low-cost channels (like email and social), just because they're low cost.

A handful of proprietary events or an exhibit in a couple trade shows, done well, can generate enough leads to keep you in the black for 12 months. A well-conceived telemarketing campaign can do the same. Even a regular stream of pretty postcards can.

Heads Up

Repeat customers produce 41% of revenue, according to Forrester.

Yet B2B marketers spend nearly all their money on lead gen.

Jay Baer at Convince & Convert calls it a Ponzi Scheme.

The fault lies with senior management: it makes lead gen marketers' key performance indicator.

Baer hopes "all B2B marketers muster the courage to look beyond the monthly and quarterly sales-qualified leads numbers that dangle over their collective necks like a guillotine."

You should spend more marketing money on retention.

Just a heads up.

Trade Show Organizer: Is Your Agency Giving You a Bum Steer?

March's edition of Trade Show Executive includes an article by a marketing agency head who claims direct mail, the perennial attendance-acquisition "workhorse," is dying.

"Direct mail isn't dead," she writes. "Yet. Savvy event marketers are, however, anticipating and preparing for the moment the direct mail death knell finally rings."

In the same edition of the magazine, another writer claims, "Telemarketing as a marketing tool appears to be on its way to the 'outdated' bin."

Direct mail dying? Telemarketing outdated?

Rubbish.

In terms of marketing spend, in fact, both channels have held steady during the past four years, according to the latest survey of organizers by the Center for Exhibition Industry Research.

During the same period, the survey shows, email's effectiveness as an attendance-acquisition tool has declined.

Wrong-headed pronouncements like these―regardless of the intentions behind them―pose a real danger to any show organizer who buys into them.

They amount to what our grandfathers and great grandfathers would have called a "bum steer."

That expression―meaning bad advice intentionally given―came into fashion during World War I, when American troops fought alongside Australian ones on the Western Front.

Australians would call defective advice (which "steered" you) "bum," an Old English word referring to the buttocks.

Trade show organizer: Beware the bum steer.

CMOs Must Overcome Specialist's Bias

Once upon a time, a CMO could count on her agency for leadership. The firm was her "agency of record" and served in the role of "brand steward."

No longer. Today, the agency is merely one member in an orchestra of suppliers. It's no longer the conductor; it's not even the first chair.

Conductor-less, the CMO must make sense of a cacophony of instruments, most of which belong to martech firms beating the drum for their own solutions.

It's easy in this situation for CMOs to fall into the trap of specialist's bias.

Studies of medical practitioners show specialists over-treat patients with the therapy they specialize in. 

CMOs can fall victim to specialist's bias as readily as doctors.

The former digital marketer will glorify viral Tweets; the former ad man, four-color placements; the former sales exec, fancy collateral; the former video producer, lavish productions; the former researcher, elaborate studies; the former PR guy, puffy product mentions; and so on.

Without the touchstone once provided by the agency of record, agnosticism is no longer a phone call away.

"Look around," says John Ounpu in Brand Quarterly, "and it’s not hard to find brands doing too much with no gravitational center to hold it all together. Letting tactics overshadow strategy. Setting the marketing agenda based on vendor capabilities instead of customer needs. Creating a disjointed, fragmented customer experience with too many moving pieces."

Ounpu offers a way out: make marketing strategy another speciality. The strategist's specialty would be to align the moving pieces and watchdog the other specialists. 

"Strategy must be a practice, not an event," he says.

The strategist would look 'beyond channels and quarterly plans" into "how teams are structured, how priorities are determined, how agencies are selected, briefed and managed, how technology is assessed and invested in, and how performance is measured."

Sounds awesome. But I can't imagine it working.

Is the marketing strategist some kind of internal auditor? Can she poke her nose into every team and every supplier relationship? Can she dictate everyone's metics? And who, really, would take orders from the in-house "strategy cop," unless the cop also signed all the paychecks?

People and organizations aren't built like that. 

The leadership has to come from the CMO. And the CMO must find a way to overcome specialist's bias.

One smart way to do so is to read relentlessly.

The other is to attend marketing conferences.

CMO, Want to Avoid Extinction?

No CMO wants to be left on the sidelines. Sidestepping the confines of traditional marketing to deliver a more relevant and integrated customer experience will ensure the future of the CMO on the digital playing field.

— Accenture White Paper

Dear CMO:

Afraid you'll be banished to the North Pole?

Ready to declare every conventional marketing tactic passé?

Well, be warned: your rush to "embrace digital" is abominable.

The reason's simple.

Just like people who use an online dating service, B2B customers use digital to eliminate you from consideration. They don't use it to start a relationship.

Relationships come from face-to-face.

And relationships are the wellspring of growth, the most valuable off-balance-sheet asset your company has.

So why on earth would you "sidestep" face-to-face?

Do you want to avoid extinction—or accelerate it?

Marketing Myopia 2016

Our “measure everything” age has engendered a new form of marketing myopia, says Todd Ebert in Convince & Convert.

"While marketers once accepted as fact that they didn’t know which half of their ad budget was wasted, today they’ve done a 180 and believe that if it can’t be measured, it’s not worth doing," Ebert says.

Marketers' new myopia causes them to put all their money on one number, whether that's SEO, podcasts or white papers, and to walk away from proven, but less measurable, tactics like advertising, PR and exhibiting at trade shows.

A riskier bet you couldn't imagine.

Betting only on search, for example, ignores every buyer who hasn't started her product research; while betting only on podcasts or white papers ignores every buyer who thinks she's finished it.

In fact, betting it all on one number—no matter how measurable—undermines the marketer's tactic of choice, Ebert says.

"If you don’t do anything to drive brand familiarity and interest at the beginning of the journey, then it won’t matter how well you optimize at the end because you won’t be invited into the buyer’s consideration set."

Boldly Go

I need not follow the beaten path; I do not hunt for any path; I will go where there is no path, and leave a trail.

— Protestant hymn

Most executives don't know it, but business strategy and marketing strategy are on a collision course.

• A business strategy comprises proven rules.

• A marketing strategy comprises broken rules. At least, it should.

Marketers who win, Kirk-like, boldly go where there is no path.

Digital marketer Mitch Joel calls it "getting over the lazy."

Sadly, most marketers hope they can manage—or, more precisely, administer—their way to success by bossing around agencies and in-house teams, Joel says.

But that's just "the lazy."

"Maybe 'lazy' is a bad choice of words," he says in Cntl Alt Delete, "but a majority of marketers are simply doing everything that they have always done. The easy path. The road that was laid out by their predecessors."

The beaten path's lazy—and lazy's the reason CMOs survive only 26 months.

"There is no doubt certain strategies and tactics work, but it's the lazy mentality that will take you down."