Storytelling Takes Sources

When it isn't how-to, most marketing content you encounter is pure myth, uniformed and unsubstantiated.

Myth-making isn't storytelling.

Storytelling takes sources, and sources must be cultivated.

In The Art and Craft of Feature Writing, Bill Blundell, former editor at The Wall Street Journal, chides the journalist who fails to cultivate sources.

"Like so many others, he has been counting on plucking ideas out of the air through some kind of immaculate conception," Blundell says.

"But this is backward thinking. He should be using his best-informed and most cooperative sources to help him originate those ideas."

Sources not only spur story ideas, but supply the facts that bring stories to life—even when those facts aren't brought to bear.

When novelist John O'Hara decided the main character in Appointment in Samarra would asphyxiate himself, O'Hara spared no effort to cultivate sources.

"When I wrote Appointment in Samarra," he told a friend, "I established a dummy garage business, took my papers to a guy I know who is a v.p. at General Motors (who wanted to know when the hell I had run a garage), and he in turn passed me on to a fellow at the Automobile Chamber of Commerce. Not much of that appears in the book, but everything that does appear is accurate and sound. I also boned up on toxicology with the late Yandell Henderson so that the carbon monoxide suicide would be all right."

Hard facts and direct illustrations from life "hammer stories into the reader's memory," Bill Blundell says.

How far do you go to gather them? 

Or are you satisfied just to make myths?

Customer Retention: Not My Job

B2B marketers spend 60% of their budgets to land customers, but only 30% to keep them, according to a recent study by Demand Metric.

The imbalance shouldn't surprise you.

It costs more to attract new customers.

But you might be surprised to learn more than half (55%) of B2B marketers spend little to nothing to keep customers.

And three in four think keeping customers "is not my job" (instead, it's the job of sales or customer support).

The disconnect handicaps all B2B companies, no matter the business model.

For those with “subscription” business models, the value of a customer is realized in installments, so profits depend on keeping customers.

In others, that value is realized after multiple, independent and relatively small purchases, so profits also depend on keeping customers.

HAT TIP: Kudos to Ann Ramsey for suggesting this post.

Poser = Loser

Authenticity isn't a strategy, says "hippie marketer" Tad Hargrave, so "stop trying to be so authentic."

Authenticity isn't a target or a tagline or a tone; and you can't get it by posing.

"There’s the old story of the archer who misses his shot because his eye is on the trophy he wants to win and not the bullseye," Hargrave says.

Forget authenticity. Aim, instead, for transparency.

If your organization is sales driven, be salesy. If it's tech focused, be geeky. If it's bureaucratic, be stately.

To win customers' trust, first trust yourself.

By playing a game of bait and switch, posers wind up losers.

Customers aren't gullible.

As Mad Man David Ogilvy said, "The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife.”

Content Marketing and the Agony of Defeat

We have met the enemy and he is us.

Digital agency Sticky Content asked 283 marketers what's defeating their content efforts.

Their answers are no surprise:

• 37% said they have no strategy

• 33% said management dings content

• 46% said demands change after content has been created

• 66% said their organizations waste a quarter of all content; 15% said, half

Is your organization lumbering toward self-defeat? If so, ask:

• Is management serious, or not, about content? Are they merely entranced by this year's "shiny object?" If they're in earnest, then what's our strategy?

• Do reviewers understand what to approve? Message? Accuracy? Style? The reason the content exists? What are the ground-rules?

• Does management trust the content creators? If not, why not? Do they rewrite the lawyers' briefs and the developers' code, too?

• Does management care about waste? One way to boost marketing's ROI isn't to create more content, but to publish and promote what's been created.

• Can I improve things? Or is our situation impossible? (Remember what Napoleon said: "Impossible is a word found only in the dictionary of fools.")

Tomorrow's Agencies Will be More Consultative

Rick Whelan contributed today's post. He is president of Marketing General, a full-service membership marketing agency based in Alexandria, VA.

What will my agency look like five years from now?

We’ll look exactly the same, but different. 

I say the same, because the need for great strategy, consulting, creativity, program implementation and back-end results reporting and analysis will be the same; but different because the speed at which all the components will be needed, and the constant evolution of tools, technique and technology, will force us out of our comfort zone. We'll have to test new media and new methods to get ever better, faster results for our clients, all for less cost.

Other changes I think we’ll see are fewer full-time on-site staff, and the increased use of freelance specialists worldwide who are employed for their expertise in a certain areas and for a particular project or program, and then let go until they are needed again. This will maximize my agency’s talent pool, but also allow me the convenience of “just in time” experts to match clients' needs, budgets and expectations.

One thing that will not change is the need for some sort of agency orchestration of all the moving parts of a marketing campaign. If anything, agencies will be more much more consultative in nature and challenged to prove and then reprove their worth to a client over and over. 

Finally the biggest change (and one that's been building all along) will be the use of better, bigger and more encompassing data on prospects and customers alike to drive all facets of the marketing spend.

Series continues.

A Team of Trusted Advisors

Jean Whiddon contributed today's post. She is president and CEO of Fixation Marketing, a woman-owned, full-service marketing communications company based in Bethesda, MD.

Last week I met with a new primary care doctor. As I approached the desk of the new practice, I noticed a significant display of business cards: on the left, about 10 card holders for the primary care docs; on the right, a smaller cluster for the related specialists. Ah, I thought, one-stop shopping for integrated medical care.

I bring this up because the medical practice somewhat mirrors my vision for the marketing firm of five years from now. 

At the center is a core of hands-on creative strategists and designers, able to conceive, write and/or help execute the solid building blocks of an effective multimedia campaign—advertising, direct mail, email, websites, print and digital collateral. They’re agile, experienced and savvy (clients are in a hurry, so they need adept problem solvers). 

In our “one stop shop” for strategic campaigns, the extended team includes “specialist partners,” incorporating, but not limited, to a researcher, media planner, SEO/SMM/SEM pro, developer and focus group/meeting facilitator. All these subject matter masters may be independent, but are vetted, curated and managed by Fixation with complete transparency (and with as much direct contact as warranted between client and partner). It’s a model that’s heavy on custom collaboration and light on overhead, because that’s what works best.

What a far different model than the “all in-house” agency I joined nearly 25 years ago, but one driven by client needs and a changing marketplace. And really, it’s been evolving for a long time.

Series continues.

What Will Our Agency Look Like Five Years from Now?

Gary Slack provided today's post. He is chief experience officer of Slack and Company, LLC, a leading global B2B marketing strategy and services provider based in Chicago.

What will we look like in five years?

We're going to be much more diverse.

Mirroring clients, more people with engineering, science and software backgrounds. A data scientist or two and even people with nutrition, life sciences and other technical training. 

Practically everyone will be coders. “Growth hacker,” a term emerging from Silicon Valley, will describe more of us.

More people who see themselves as marketing technologists.

More experiential specialists, as events, private and public, are only going to grow.

More B2B e-commerce experts (although we already have four), as this area will boom and bloom big time.

More B2B sales and marketing strategy experts. We’ve already taken some of this kind of work from McKinsey.

Probably a professional comedian or two to create “edutainment” to capture more attention and interest. Look at what Tim Washer has done for Cisco. Hiring journalists for content will be old hat.

More history majors. They just “get” the outside world better.

More senior women, although we’re not doing badly.

More African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Indians and Muslims. All to better mirror B2B buyers and clients.

Not just homegrown diversity. More people coming our way from exchange programs with the 30 members of WorldwideB2BPartners, our global B2B agency network.

For sure, no prima donnas, jerks or worse. Actually, we're already pretty good here by hiring team players and asking every new employee to read Choosing Civility.

As many dreamers and woolgatherers as we can find.

And, finally, a bunch more slackers. We just can’t get enough of ‘em!

Series continues.

Buying Brazil

An old joke goes, "The CEO asked for coffee. The company bought Brazil."

In middle managers' eyes, decisions by CEOs—even bad ones—are unassailable.

That might-makes-right is why your B2B messaging should mirror CEOs' aspirations.

Even when wrong-headed, those aspirations matter—more than anything.

When J. Bruce Ismay decided to cut the number of lifeboats on Titanic by 66% to fit more luxury cafés, White Star Line "bought Brazil." Why? Ismay aspired to attract super-wealthy customers.

When Gregg Steinhafel decided to fast-track the opening of 124 stores in Canada, Target "bought Brazil." Why? Steinhafel aspired to outgrow Walmart.

No, you don't want to abet disasters (you'll never get testimonials). But you do want to abet CEOs' aspirations—because they're what matter to buyers.

Buyers don’t want to save money. They don't want free trials. They don't want comprehensive solutions.

Buyers want to fulfill the CEO's vision.

They want to buy Brazil.

Junk Content Pushing Europeans to Rebel

Impersonal, junk content is pushing Europeans to rebel against brands, according to new research by Coleman Parkes.

84% of Europeans say their patience with junk has reached its limit; and 18% have taken their business elsewhere, as a result.

Other consequences:

• 65% of Europeans feel less loyal to spammy brands
• 64% think brands aren't doing enough personalization
• 63%  would spend less money with spammy brands
• 57% would stop buying those brands altogether

Compared to Americans' junk-tolerance, Europeans' seems low: they consider just 25% of the content they receive to be junk.

Will Americans soon grow as discerning?

When is Advertising a Waste?

Marketing maestro Edward Segal contributed today's post. Edward helps REALTOR® associations generate publicity about their activities and shows their leaders, staff and members how to deliver effective presentations.

John Wanamaker, a merchandising pioneer in the 19th and early 20th centuries, said, “Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Many people still regard advertising as the best way to help position, promote, and sell their products, services, or expertise. After all, if you have enough money, you can say whatever you want, wherever you want, and for as long as you want, to anybody you want. And in today’s competitive marketplace, there are advertising opportunities that simply did not exist a few years ago, such as Facebook.

The trouble with advertising, however, is that unless you are careful, some or all the money you spend on it can be wasted. 

But how can you guarantee every penny of your advertising budget is well spent?

Check your ego

Think you can do it yourself? 

Do not let your ego get in the way of your advertising success. 

The reality is that there is a lot involved in successful advertising, ranging from strategy and creativity to messaging and placement, and you need to know what you are doing every step of the way. Put another way, would you ask a lawyer to perform brain survey on you? Of course not. So why would you believe that you can do your own advertising if you’ve never done it before, or well?

No one cares about your product

You think everyone in the world will want to buy whatever you are selling. Face it: just because you may be in love with what you are promoting does not mean that anyone else will be, or will even care about it. A marketing professional can help ensure that you are reaching the right audience for the right reasons and in right way.

Money pits abound

Here are other major potential budget-wasting mistakes to avoid. You:

• Do not have a clear marketing message or effective marketing strategy.
• Do not know your niche in the marketplace, or who your target market is. 
• Have not weighed the pros and cons of the different advertising outlets. 
• Don’t know whether a particular advertising medium is the best one to use in order to communicate your message, or if that medium will even reach your target audience.
• Do not know how often you will have to advertise in order to have an impact.
• Do not know much money will you have to spend in order to be effective.
• Do not experiment or test market your messages or strategy before launching your campaign.
• Pull your advertising before you have given it enough time to work.

Until you have taken steps to avoid these fundamental mistakes, it might make sense to place your advertising plans on hold, and consult a competent marketing professional.

Perhaps if John Wannamker had followed the advice above, half of what he spent on advertising would not have been wasted.

How to Write a Killer Abstract for Your Next Presentation

Marketer Tony Compton contributed today's post. He is the founder and managing director of communication coaching consultancy GettingPresence.

When you’re scheduled to give a presentation, chances are you’ll have to provide a session abstract that titles your talk and describes your session.

Session abstracts enable readers to evaluate an event in advance, playing a vital role in helping them determine if the event is worth the investment in attendance.

On site, abstracts compete for attendees, as they choose which sessions to attend when multiple presentations are being given.

Unfortunately, far too many session abstracts are poorly written. Writing one is an afterthought to most presenters, and is usually delegated to a marketing manager who isn’t the presenter and who's largely unfamiliar with the presenter's content.

Writing concise and compelling abstracts for your presentations will give you a clear competitive advantage.

My recommendation is to write your abstract as a condensed case study:

• Title your session with the solution to a common business challenge; for example, “Increasing Customer Retention by 30% with Predictive Analytics." 

• When writing the session description, state a common problem your audience faces; summarize your strategy behind solution-development; and itemize supporting tools you have used to help solve the problem.

• Close by hinting at the payoff of the work, using several bullet points that quantitatively highlight results.

Remember, too, that audiences see through thinly-veiled sales pitches, and their session descriptions. Always keep in mind what the audience will learn from your presentation, and your session abstract will be a winner.

All Marketing Rules are Stupid

We love simple rules.

They make our worklives easier, by absolving us of judgement.

Simple rules, in fact, form the bedrock of business strategy.

But I've heard in my time lots of rules purporting to assure marketing success that are simply stupid. 

For example:

Latinos hate purple.

Content needs to be sincere.

Infographics are out.

Avoid pastel colors.

Product names must be literal.

Innovate or die.

Your average skeptic would insist, for simple rules like these to be effective, they'd have to be verifiable. These examples aren't.

A hardline skeptic would go farther, insisting there are no effective rules.

No course of action can be determined by a rule, because any course of action can be understood to obey that rule.

I might, for example, avoid pastels in my web pages. Great, I've obeyed that rule! 

Then another, colorblind marketer comes along and publishes web pages full of pastels.

He's also obeyed the rule.

Stupid marketing rules abound.

It's smart to be skeptical of them, especially when facts aren't handy to back them up.

HAT TIP: Greg Satell inspired much of this post. 

The Web is Too Much with Us

Our Tower of Babel has been under siege for well over 500 years.

Peeved about the patchwork of books in Renaissance libraries, bibliographer Konrad von Gesner complained in 1545 of "the silliness of useless writings of our time."

Annoyed by the algorithms that drive content-streams, blogger Hossein Derakhshan complained last month that, while homely people's brilliance is ignored, "the silly ramblings of a celebrity gain instant internet presence."

Griping about TMI in fact began with the birth of literacy, each generation thereafter seeing hobgoblins on the horizon.

But maybe, just maybe, the web is too much with us.

So before you release more pap, ask yourself if it's on strategy.

Because, as writer Arjun Basu says, "Without strategy, content is just stuff, and the world has enough stuff."

HAT TIP: Mark Schaefer's blog {grow} brought Hossein Derakshan to my attention. I urge you to listen to Mr. Schaefer's recent podcast.

Marketers, Keep Out

The chief reason Adobe's CMO.com is among the web's best branded content titles is its chief editor, Tim Moran.

When it comes to repulsing over-eager marketers, he's combat hardened, thanks to 20 years' experience as a trade editor.

Moran has kept Adobe's marketers from meddling with the corporate blog—without resorting to hands-off policies.

"We don’t have any official or formal policies about church-and-state," he told Velocity.

"The traditional marketers at Adobe have simply come to realize that CMO.com’s job is not to push brand or sell products—there are many other places for that to be done within and around Adobe. They understand our role as the purveyor of thought leadership and insight and have been quite clever about finding ways to get the Adobe POV across on the site in ways that are perfectly acceptable to our media image."

Adobe bought Moran's blog six years ago because it wanted to become a thought leader.

Moran has made it clear to marketers in the meanwhile thought leadership is different from lead generation, and that the two don't mix.

If you want to understand the difference, check out The CMO's Guide to Brand Journalism, courtesy of Hubspot.

How to Take Advantage of the Challenges Facing News Organizations

PR expert Edward Segal contributed today's post. He has placed stories in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, and is author of Profit by Publicity.

The challenges you face in convincing the media to do stories about you or your company is matched only by the challenges editors and reporters face in gathering and reporting the news.

In order to produce their news products—such as a daily newspaper, the latest posts on their Web site or social media platforms, or nightly TV news program—editors, producers and their staff must contend with a never-ending series hurdles. These include:

• Making decisions on which events or activities to cover, especially in the face of late-breaking news.

• Weeding out the truly newsworthy press releases from the hundreds of apparently superfluous, irrelevant or poorly written ones that they receive every day.

• Fact-checking stories.

• Finding the best available experts to interview, explain or provide perspective on  technical or complex stories.

• Maintaining staff morale in the face of budget cutbacks, mergers and acquisitions among news organizations, and the creeping influence of some advertising departments on the news judgments of editorial personnel.

• Providing enough time and resources so reporters can adequately research stories and be properly prepared to interview people for them.

• Ensuring that the work of their reporters, editors and producers meets the criteria of good journalism. 

How do you turn the media’s lemons into your lemonade? To ensure that, despite their problems and difficulties, you’re able to convince news organizations to do the stories you or your company want done? By going the extra mile to help make their jobs—and their decision to do stories about you—as easy as possible. Here’s how:

Help them with their homework. Provide them with as much background information as you think is appropriate about your story, including news releases, fact sheets or other stories that have been written about you or the topic. 

Don’t wait until it’s too late. Give editors and reporters as much advance notice as possible about scheduled events such as news-making special events.

Show them the story. Find the best possible visuals to "show" your story as well as tell it; and be sure to let the news organizations know about your visuals when you contact them. 

Give them ideas. Call editors and reporters with story ideas that you think they may be interested in, even though those ideas may not result in news coverage about you. By showing them you are a resource of information and ideas, they will be more receptive to your calls later when you pitch them a story about yourself. 

Provide good sound bites. Once you have the media’s attention, take full advantage of the opportunity by providing them with the quotes they need to help tell their story to their audiences. The better your quotes, the more likely it is that they’ll be used… and that the reporters will come back to you in the future for more interviews.

3 Phrases You Must Not Use in 2016

The year's about to end.

It's list time.

Mine consists of three pretentious phrases everyone in business should retire.

Across the enterprise. Romulans fired torpedoes across the Enterprise. Throughout the company is clear enough.

Take offline. Employed by teleconference leaders to quash unwelcome discussions. If drop it is too brusque, hold that thought would work.

Go viral. Shared content shouldn't be likened to SARS and Ebola. Become popular sounds just fine.

Which phrases would you ban?

2016: The Creative Comeback

The Creative Revolution inspirited marketers in the mid '60s.

Will the Creative Comeback do so again in the mid teens?

CMO predicts it will, in a year-end roundup of expert opinions.

The technicians have had their day.

The results?

One in three campaigns fizzle.

Perhaps the creatives' time has returned.

"Blow up any process that isn't dynamic and collaborative," Darren McColl, SapientNitro, told CMO. "Creativity in a world of technology takes constant collaboration, not process."

Here's what others had to say:

Marketers, please come out from behind your tech and data and start acting like humans. You’ll be amazed at what can happen. — Jeff Pundyk, The Economist Group

Do something unexpected, launch a breakthrough, challenge a leader, 'wow' consumers, make memorable moments, engage in new conversations. — Ed Vlacich, National Brands

Effective creativity now requires pairing shrewd psychology with showmanship. In 2016, I resolve to channel, daily, Daniel Kahneman and P.T. Barnum. — Marsha Lindsay, Lindsay, Stone & Briggs

In an age where brands know more than ever about our customers, embracing creativity and fearlessness should no longer be seen as risk taking but instead as smart, innovational thinking. — James Earp, Razorfish

Be bold, be creative, but be human. Think beyond getting attention; design for engagement. And design beyond impressions, think expressions. — Brian Solis, Altimeter Group

Next year, we’re daring to go from being valued to being loved. We’ll be showcasing the power and value of creating an emotional connection. — Susan Ganeshan, Clarabridge

A Nation of Quitters

Where have you gone, Evelyn Wood?

We need you.

Steve Peck, writing for Heinz Marketing, reports the average reader devotes no more than two minutes to branded long-form content.

No matter the content's quality, after two minutes, the average reader quits.

Peck reaches this conclusion after a study of 180,000 readers and 1,700 white papers, e-books, reports and guides.

Because Americans' average skim-reading speed runs from 400 to 700 words per minute, most content exceeding 1,400 words is wasted.

"Blink and you’ve lost them," Peck says.

While in the White House, self-taught speed-reader John F. Kennedy sent a dozen members of his the staff to the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute, so they could keep pace with the cerebral president.

Mrs. Wood promised students she could teach them to read at the rate of 1,500 words per minute, and produced some who could read four times that many.

The Death of Social Media Marketing

In a recent survey by Hubspot, marketers claim social media is the third "most overrated" marketing tactic (only traditional and digital advertising are more so).

Hubspot blogger Lindsay Kolowich attributes marketers' weariness to four causes:

• Marketers struggle with the choice of the best social media tools

• They find social marketing wasteful and inefficient

• They lack a social media strategy

• They can't distinguish idle chatter from meaningful conversation

Before sealing the lid on social marketing's coffin, I'll repeat the most famous statement ever made by a marketer, Philadelphia retailer John Wanamaker:

"Half my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half."

A career in marketing has convinced me the activity is inherently inefficient; that there's no magic bullet; and that, above all else, clarity, frequency and consistency matter.

Who told you it would be easy?

The Positive Side of Rejection

Washington, DC-based freelance writer Dan Bailes contributed today's post. His clients include the MacArthur Foundation, National Geographic, the Smithsonian and the State Department. Between assignments, Dan explores storytelling through his blog, The Vision Thing.

Whenever I present a creative project to a client, there's always the possibility they'll have problems, will want to change it, or just won't like it. No one wants to have their work rejected or sent back for fixes. Still, there's a positive side to rejection. After creating and presenting hundreds of projects for clients, here's what I've discovered:

1. Not everyone will "get it" or like it, whatever "it" is. You should expect that.

2. When you present your project for review or comment, people rarely say, "It's great!" It's more likely they'll say something needs to be changed or fixed. If you expect that, it won't upset you when it happens.

3. It's not personal. Learn to keep a professional distance between you and your work. Stay objective and keep an open mind.

4. Everyone has an opinion. Just because they have one doesn't mean they're "right." Even so, listen to the comments and try to understand what they are telling you.

5. Ultimately, you have to decide if the criticism is useful. That's why keeping an open mind is important. A comment may ultimately help you think about a problem in a new light.

6. When someone criticizes your work, listen to what they tell you, then repeat back what you hear so you both know you're on the same page.

7. Don't be afraid of criticism—it can help you improve the work. You should be focused on improving the work too.

8. Instead of trying to defend your work, ask questions until you are clear about what underlies the comments and criticism. Then you have an opportunity to find a solution that will work for everyone.

9. Stay positive and don't be discouraged. Follow these guidelines and you can turn rejection into an opportunity.