Is Julia Gillard a marketer?

So how would you rate our new Prime Minister as a marketer?

If you are locked in as a voter for either of the major parties, you could easily be biased. But if you look at the PM from a marketing point of view exclusively, how would you rate her?

Is her marketing of herself and her party going to be a positive in getting her to The Lodge?

Well, obviously, it's impossible to know for sure. My instinctive answer is that yes, I think she would make a good marketer.

For starters, her sense of humour would be a good thing around the office. Every marketer has failures at some stage, so being able to laugh is very much a bonus.

But let's look at some tried and true criteria.

1. Does she have a marketing personality with flair and drive?
2. Does she walk in the shoes of her customers?
3. Does she understand numbers?
4. Can she present well and communicate effectively?
5. Is she innovative in her thinking?

(When students achieve their Master of Marketing at Monash, and I see them pick up the certificate they have worked so hard for, I sometimes ask myself these questions. In the Monash scenario, my theory is that if you have your Masters and you can tick off all those five questions, there is no reason why you can't have a wonderfully successful marketing career).

So now, how do we rate Julia Gillard? If circumstances were different, would you give her a role in your marketing department?

Obviously, I don't know her personally, but from what I have read and from what I have seen in the media, I suspect most of us would say she rates fairly well against these marketing criteria.

My brief answers to the five questions above would be:

1. Yes, absolutely.
2. Yes - I think most people would say she talks in a language that they easily understand. She certainly seems to be concerned for ordinary Australians (however, I suspect that for thoughtful people, what she really stands for is not yet obvious).
3. Not 100% sure on this, but she obviously got the numbers right regarding her 'ascension' to the top job!
4. Yes, absolutely (my guess is that we are no longer distracted by the sound of the voice, which is grating when you first hear it).
5. Yes, probably – being the first PM in 60 years to not move into The Lodge was a simple day-one example.

You might feel my answers are simplistic. That's OK. Probably everyone will have their own perception of such a public figure.

If you'd like to put forward your own ideas on JG as a marketer, please go to 'Post a comment' now.

Getting serious about your mobile strategy

Recently, I have heard a number of marketers say “we need an iPhone app”.
But this may be very superficial.

If we want to capitalise on the incredible growth in mobile, we need to think more carefully.

Mobile marketing is much deeper than a cool app or a simple SMS blast. Mobile marketing is as deep and different as every customer.

Smart companies don’t market to gadgets or platforms. They market to customers. When and if mobile marketers adopt this strategy, they can increase the value of customer relationships via the mobile channel. Essentially, mobile marketing must be addressed through a proper customer segmentation strategy.

A critical, first consideration when planning a mobile marketing campaign is that the term “phone” now refers to a landline.

Today, people use “mobile devices” to text, send pictures, talk, email and so much more. And mobile devices are not limited to just smartphones or feature phones, but include any handheld that allows for interaction and remote connectivity.

Mobile devices now offer a plethora of new features and research is starting to show a resulting change in customer behaviour.

According to Washington based CTIA – The Wireless Association (an international nonprofit membership organisation that has represented the wireless communications industry since 1984) consumers sent almost 5 billion text messages per day in the last half of 2009. That’s up a massive 25 percent from the previous year.

Plus, the number of multimedia messages – those that contain a picture or video – more than doubled year-on-year. No matter where we look, mobile data usage is increasing dramatically.

But not only that. Mobile commerce is rising quickly as well. A US Mobile Marketing Association study released a few weeks ago shows that 17 percent of all respondents used their mobile device to purchase applications, ring tones and other content.

More importantly, 6 percent used their device to receive coupons or discounts and 6 percent used their mobile device to purchase physical goods or non-mobile content or services. And you can be quite certain, those 6 percent figures will be 12 percent and 24 percent before you know it.

Today, successful mobile marketing requires a keen understanding of customer behaviours and attitudes. It comes down to the differences in how customers use their devices. Marketers that overlook customer differentiation may be wasting money and time and could be impairing their brand equity on an increasingly important channel.

The next dm Forum in Melbourne on 10 August will discuss which mobile technologies are having an impact now and those to watch out for in the near future. If you are not on the invitation list, please email Frank Chamberlin now. frank@actionwords.com.au

'Eye on Australia' report from Sweeney and Grey provides view of where consumers are at - today

Australians are exiting the recession with a growing sense of optimism.

That’s one of the major findings from the 19th annual ‘Eye on Australia’ report released at the beginning of May.

The ‘Eye on Australia’ report tracks and identifies trends in consumer attitudes across metropolitan and regional areas. It provides detailed insights on how Australians feel about work, life, environment, spending habits and the economy.

The report is jointly put together by agencies Grey Advertising and Sweeney Research. The survey questions were asked in February 2010 and they show some amazing swings since a year earlier. (Whether response would be different now, three months later, is anyone’s guess).

Unemployment and job security concerns have dropped considerably, from 33% in 2009 to just 20%, while the proportion of Australians concerned about the economic outlook is dramatically lower – at just 25% compared with 36% last year.

The report indicates that back in February this year Australians were defiantly optimistic in the face of economic gloom and that as the recession was receding, economic anxieties were receding with it.

Overall, the results show that Australians are largely upbeat about the economy, with fewer financial concerns than a year ago. Personal finance worries decreased from 46% in 2009 to 33% in 2010, while more than half the people questioned say that the economic situation is improving. GFC concerns have halved from 44% to 22%.

The reduction in economic concern is reflected by the ‘satisfaction with life’ responses. Almost half of the respondents said that they were ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ satisfied with life today. And 75% said that they were enjoying their work.

You could probably conclude that the survey answers are indicative of a ‘don’t worry, be happy’ attitude.

However, there is one exception to this overall trend. Twelve months ago, 45% of women aged 45–56 years were ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ satisfied with life. One year on, and that number has fallen to only 31%.

The women in this age group are mostly the ones running established families. While the majority of Aussies are less concerned with their finances, the women in this age bracket (traditionally big shoppers) are still carrying the burden of worry. And it’s not just worry about their own finances; it’s the finances of their elderly parents and their children as well.

More information about the report can be obtained from Grey Advertising, Level 5, 470 St Kilda Road, Melbourne VIC 3004. Phone 03 92081931. www.grey.com.au

Generating leads from your site

When you visit a website and click on a link to get information, do you expect the information to be free and with no registration requirement?

Almost always the answer is ‘yes’.

Yet, for the marketer, giving away free content without getting a contact is not a great way to collect leads.

So what’s the answer?

Maybe an option is to ‘step’ the offer. In other words, you can offer a teaser, such as an excerpt of a white paper. And for this, no registration is required.

Then, once your site visitors become intrigued by the free content, they'll be more willing to provide data for lead generation.

To get the full white paper, they have to register.

You can let them click right through to the excerpt from the white paper, but inside the white paper is a link to a landing page where they can go and get the full white paper. In that case, they do have to pay for it ... with name and email address.

Email and social media must work together - Forrester

A Forrester report released on 13 May 2010 pushes the thought that email marketers must integrate social media into their campaigns to stay relevant to consumers.

Forrester says that such integration will create new opportunities for email list growth, extend campaign reach, and harness social insights to inform targeting.

The process of integrating email with social media should be more than sporadic coordination of campaigns.

With prospects and customers interacting with companies and brands largely on their own terms, marketers will achieve better results through the integration of their communications and channels. That's the overarching message in the Forrester report that was produced by research executive, Shar VanBoskirk .

In her report, “How to Integrate Email with Social Media”, VanBoskirk points to some significant benefits of tightly aligning email and social media, including better open, click-through and conversion rates; better email list growth; and increased campaign reach and influence through viral activity.

VanBoskirk advises marketers to adopt three specific tactics for integrating marketing efforts across email and social media:

1. Drive email subscriptions within your social media presence: place email registration boxes, or links to your email registration page, on your company blog, discussion forum or Facebook page. When you do this, people can sign up for this contact as they become more engaged with your brand.

2. Encourage subscribers to share email content: apparently, very recent Forrester research is finding that people are now beginning to share email content with friends via social sharing tools. The suggestion is that we should support this trend and benefit from it by not only placing "share with a friend" icons and links in your email, but at the top of your email layout.

3. Leverage social media content for more relevant emails: as with all campaigns, relevancy is what prompts engagement and response. Forrester urges marketers to increase the attractiveness of emails by incorporating user-generated content from social media presence.

Home brands and marketing

For some years now, thoughtful marketers have been wondering about ‘home brands’.

We all know that, traditionally, retailers have not been strong in marketing. But you couldn’t help wondering about their strategy.

As the big two supermarkets in Australia have pursued a home brands policy and stated over and over that it’s the way to go, anyone with any respect for brands has had to wonder.

It’s hard to believe that proven and much-loved brands like Kraft or Kellogg’s will actually disappear.

But we kept hearing the spin. It was all about reducing inventory, improving margins and, we are told, offering the consumer a ‘better shopping experience’ (their words not mine).

Surely the best brands will always maintain their market share? Maybe the emergence of home brands makes building your brand even more important.

And then there’s the often forgotten question of the consumer. When the supermarket buyer in your household gets to the local store and finds the household’s favourite brand of breakfast cereal or jam or pasta is not available, what’s the next step?

The power of the big two supermarkets in Australia is such that, up to now at least, it seems that the consumer has been the last person considered.

Well, things may be changing.

The world’s biggest retailer has just done something against the home brands trend.

Yes, Walmart has just restored some 300 items to the shelves after a wave of consumer complaints. (Of course, that’s one area where Australian consumers are pathetic. We never complain. But in the US, consumers speak up. When you stand in a queue in the US, almost always you get invigorated when you hear a local sounding off, letting the attendant know what’s wrong!)

Walmart was obviously listening, for the decision makers there began realising that the culling actually ‘aggravated’ consumers. And so what is it doing? Restocking hundreds of brands and products eliminated or curtailed over the last twelve months, and also taking a new look at other categories where it has streamlined choice.

Of course, apart from listening to the consumer, you can probably guess what brought this on. During the last quarter of 2009 Walmart's traffic declined and sales actually fell for the first time in the retailer's history.

Walmart relies on low prices for branded products and a large assortment to differentiate itself. Sad to say, it lacks individual shopper figures that would show how decisions about store range have impacted its most-valued customers.

Social media - supporting your retention strategy

In so many situations, the soft option is to win loyalty by discounting.

Of course, we all know that retailers have trained Australians to look always for discounts and now they have to live with that. But for the rest of us, social media is here to stay and waiting for us to sweep up the opportunity.

But it’s certainly not a soft option. It’s not straightforward for most of us.

Probably no one knows where social media will play out, but the important thing right now is to get into the space. You’ll be a long way behind if you wait for a full answer to every question before you make your grand entrance into this all-embracing channel.

Relevance is the factor that drives customer loyalty today, and provides differentiation in a crowded market.

Many (maybe ‘most’) businesses are still struggling with how to engage customers in a social media-driven world. One viable solution is to use social media to change the marketing thought process. It can help you to think like a customer. For example, the growth of the internet has created a 'right now' society, so brands must recognise and respond to this change, both quickly and appropriately.

Customers demand easy access to information, whether you are Telstra or AXA or a boutique beer. When something is advertised, it's not acceptable to run out of stock or to have call centre representatives who don’t know about it. The correct, updated information has to be instantly available through any channel that the prospect chooses to use.

This process is all about convenience and adapting to customer desires to enhance their experience. Brands that are able to successfully answer questions and target the consumer in their time of need will be best positioned for growth and will be the most likely to maintain a loyal following.

Social media offers brands an excellent opportunity to connect with customers directly to handle complaints, as customers are actually much more likely to express their dissatisfaction online than in a store.

When problems arise, why not Tweet your way back into the hearts of customers? Although brands strive for positive feedback and customer recommendations, they must also be equipped to handle the bad exposure.

Participating in an online discussion to show customers that the brand is accessible and listens to what they are saying can reap tremendous benefits. A simple validation that customer suggestions are appreciated and acknowledged will earn their respect — and often their future business.

Adopting such tactics will also help to confirm that the brand really does aim to enhance the customer's experience.

Making personalisation more personal

In the olden days of direct marketing, maybe the 1980s, personalisation began and ended with putting a recipient’s name at the top of the letter and sprinkling it throughout.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

But today, personalisation must go much further. We have to take into consideration consumer behaviors and interests.The real key to personalisation is understanding your audience and providing relevant offers.

In fulfillment — whether it’s an e-commerce transaction or a request for event registration or a white paper download — the ability to use fulfillment to tease out the next level of interest is possible and it’s something we should all be aiming to do.

A truly personalised message contains relevant content for each individual recipient. Ideally, you take into account the recipient’s past interaction behaviours — whether that be pages browsed on a website, white papers downloaded, items purchased.

You should be able to leverage what a person’s online behaviour tells you. What the individual is interested in. Is it case studies, technical specifications, or something else?

Online behaviour gives you so much more insight than any sort of demographics. After all, it is based on actual movements.

Let’s use a security software company as an example, where a recipient has registered for an event.

Instead of just saying, “OK, here’s what you requested; call us if you’d like anything more”, the fulfillment registration information should give the registrant more offers.

Take the case of a person who registers for an event on ‘global security threats’. Here’s what you could do:

You could check the person’s web activity – maybe it indicates that he looked at information on how to encrypt the hard drive on a computer and also auditing employees for security.

Then, in fulfilment, you send this person the requested registration details. But you also send some teasers about the next webinars on encrypting hard drives and auditing employees for security.

In this way, you can tease out where that person is in the buying journey. Fulfillment becomes a vital link in the sales chain.

Targeting refresher - what does targeting really mean?

To effectively target customers, and connect with them successfully, you must gain in-depth customer knowledge. From that point, you then must use that knowledge appropriately across all channels.

1. See – and capture – the whole picture

Through your website analytics, you need to gain a holistic view of visitor performance. You need to track every touch point visitors use on your website –every click, conversion, abandonment, where they came from, where they went. All this information is available, so you need to be geared to use it.

As your store of data builds over time, you can better understand not only your online customer, but your customers in general.

You must be working towards turning one-way marketing initiatives into two-way dialogue.

Ideally, you create a customised experience for each customer. The benefit is that you can keep that customer coming back. Then you can devise relevant offers and personalised messages, and these should give you a higher likelihood of conversion.

2. Get deeper insights with time

Rome wasn’t built in a day. You need to continuously capture visitor behaviour – what they click, what videos they watch, what content they view – and analyse that behavior over time.

If you link current behavior to previous sessions, you may be able to unearth how likely customers are to buy or engage with you.

3. Maintain a cross-channel view

Customers interact with brands online and offline. Incorporate offline data with online data to get a more accurate, well-rounded view of customers.

Where you combine data, it’s easier to optimise the customer experience. For retailers, how does the average sale online compare with the average sale in store? Why are sales at a particular time heavier online and poorer in store? As you delve into these sorts of questions you are all the time learning about your customers.

4. Use key performance indicators to enhance paid search initiatives

Develop keywords and ads that meet your objectives. Most visitors don’t convert with a single visit. Because of this, you need to track how paid search campaigns perform on their own and how they help drive other marketing goals.

5. Make every message compelling

Use customer data to place highly relevant product and service recommendations across your site and throughout email campaigns. Such tactics help you increase cross-sell opportunities and keep customers engaged.

Getting closer to the affluent market

Who are the heaviest users of loyalty programs?

The affluent, according to Rick Ferguson, editorial director of COLLOQUY, a provider of loyalty marketing services based in the US.

Ferguson defines ‘affluent’ as households earning $125,000 or more per year in disposable income.

But marketers can't serve up the same loyalty program features to this customer segment as they do to other program members and expect to keep their business.

So what will the affluent segment value in a loyalty program?

1. Offer value and experiences that they can't get anywhere else.

Affluent people tend to be financially savvy and they crave value.

Let’s take the case of an affluent customer who enjoys golf and who buys some unrelated goods: a good offer may be "spend $200 with us during the next month, and we'll double your points and give you the opportunity to redeem those points for a three-day golfing holiday on the Gold Coast”.

Such an offer can work on many different levels. It's an opportunity the customer can't get anywhere else, and it will be a memorable one. Plus, they'll seek to repeat the behaviour that created that experience.

Of course, not every offer has to end with a golfing holiday. It can be something as simple as a discount to a local restaurant. That can be equally powerful. It's just got to create a memorable experience, and it's got to be the right experience.

2. Demonstrate your loyalty, rather than trying to gain theirs.

A loyalty program, no matter how well it's run, is not going to make a customer more loyal to a company. The purpose of the program is to demonstrate the company’s loyalty to a good customer. That's why extra value in the form of economic value can work so well.

3. Improve the emotional connection

Equally important is the emotional element. Your promotion must say to the customer, “We value you as a customer and as a person, so we’re offering you some special pricing or a special event that will make you feel more emotionally connected to the company”.

Usually, the combination of economic and emotional benefits is a very powerful and effective one.More than anything else, in the affluent sector, it's all about experiences. The idea is to use data to enable you to understand your customer and to enable you to make offers that are appealing.

For details about how the Action Words team can help you with all kinds of copywriting, please go to:
http://www.actionwords.com.au/home/

Google getting into display

With all the talk about Google withdrawing from China, you may not have noticed that Google’s CEO has said that he expects the next big thing in search will be the emergence of display and mobile advertising.

"Our display business will give advertisers the opportunity to reach people with visual stories and narratives that they couldn't with search-ad text," said Google CEO, Eric Schmidt.

He went on to say that one of the stories that has yet to come out is how successful Google has been at display.

He cited the recent sell-out of YouTube's home page – specifically, Fox's campaign for "Avatar" – as evidence that marketers are taking Google seriously as a display medium.

The president of global sales at Google, Nikesh Arora, said display advertising has moved from being "nice" to an "essential part of any campaign”.

Google has moved so rapidly on new initiatives over the last couple of years, it’s probably important to keep an eye on display and mobile developments.

Would you look at using Google display in your AdWords advertising?

For details about how the Action Words team can help you with all kinds of copywriting, please go to:
http://www.actionwords.com.au/home/

Seven social media terms you'll be hearing more often

You will no doubt recognise some of these increasingly common buzzwords, sourced from Nielsen Online Digital Strategic Services in the US:

Mobilenecking: The alarming tendency to have our necks tilted down or shifted sideways – ever glued to our mobile device. This anywhere, anyplace epidemic is increasingly evident in cars, airplanes and city streets.

Wiki Wart: A bad piece of news or an embarrassing brand episode that just won't go away in a brand's Wikipedia description (e.g., an activist protest or a social-media campaign that backfired). PR pros often give brands false hope of removing the warts, but relentless Wikipedia editors put them right back.

Faux Post: When you are talking to someone on the phone and he/she notices an unrelated tweet or Facebook status update from you showing up in real-time. Now that’s embarrassing.

Conversational Divide: The huge gap between what marketers preach about social media "conversations" and the brand's actual customer service or call centre operations.

Buck Sucked: The condition that typically slaps you in the face when reading your credit card bill and you see dozens of "dollar" charges for music and "what the heck" iPhone or mobile apps. Expect much more of this as it gets easier and more convenient to pay for online content.

Runway Rebel: That person who keeps the "electronic device" going well past the airline warnings and prohibitions. We see them everywhere, and few of us are totally innocent.

Blog Dodger: Someone who has abandoned his or her blog for Twitter or some other lower-hassle social media substitute. This was big in 2009, and we'll likely see much more of it in 2010.

Please let us know about any other social media terms that you think all marketers should be aware of!

For details about the Action Words one-day workshop that will immediately improve your team's business writing, please go to http://www.actionwords.com.au/business-writing-course/

What marketers need to know

Sometimes you can’t help wondering what marketers are doing.

A recent US survey reported by the global customer experience specialist company Right Now (1900 global clients) found that only 46% of senior marketers have good insight into customer retention rates, lifetime value, and profitability.

Let’s just tease this out a little. What this survey result seems to say is that more than half of the marketers questioned:

> did not know the retention rate for their customers – in other words, when they won 10 new customers, they did not know how many on average would still be with them in 12 months;

> did not know how much profit they obtained from a typical customer over the lifetime that the customer stayed with them; and

> did not have a clear handle on how much profit an average transaction provided for the company.

All this obviously relates to fundamental data that marketers must have, to do their job properly.

If you plan to run a campaign, you have to know about profitability in order to gauge whether your proposed initiative is worthwhile.

If you launch a blog or an e-newsletter for nurturing clients in order to keep them, you have to know about lifetime value. What’s the point of spending to keep them if their profitability does not justify such expenditure?

If you acquire customers by, say, advertising, you have to know the retention rate. You might think the advertising is effective, but if the customers walk out the door as quickly as they walk in, then it may well be that the advertising is only marginally profitable – or not profitable at all. You may be attracting the wrong people, or promising too much, or causing brand confusion, or whatever.

As a marketer, do you have access to the information you need? What is the information that you find most valuable for your decision making?

For details about how the Action Words team can help you with all kinds of copywriting, please go to: http://www.actionwords.com.au/home/

5 tips for B-to-B search marketing

More and more organisations are investing in paid search marketing, or pay-per-click advertising, as it is more commonly referred to.

In Australia, because of the dominance of Google, paid search marketing is normally Google AdWords advertising.

The following tips may help you get better value for your investment.

1. Pre-qualify

In mainstream advertising, when you want to reach Chief Executives and you choose to advertise in the Financial Review, you are pre-qualifying.

Well, you have to do exactly the same online. And you mainly do it with key phrases and keywords. You can hardly spend too much time getting your keywords right and regularly reviewing them.

The keywords should make it clear exactly what people will find when they click through to your site. If they click on ‘house and contents’ you’d better make sure that’s where you take them – and that when they get there, you explain your ‘house and contents’ policy. You may reduce the volume of clickthroughs, but that’s what qualifying involves.

2. Focus on what the user needs

If you truly understand the buying steps that your prospects typically go through, you are more likely to know exactly what it is that they need.

What is most likely to influence purchase? If it's a complex sale with multiple buyers and influencers, then you need to provide the type of detail that buyers require.

Landing pages, in particular, should highlight exactly what buyers need.

3. Hot leads go cold quickly, so nurture them

In most B-to-B sales, getting leads to your site is just the beginning.

You need to have an agreed system in place for ‘working’ your leads, and that begins with an opt-in from the prospects for regular email.

How are you going to keep in touch? Is there something of value that you can offer on an ongoing basis?

If the lead has to be passed to your technical people or to sales, then there needs to be an efficient way of doing this that you stick to every time.

4. Track all conversion points

What’s the conversion point that is usually most telling? Maybe it’s the completion of an online form by a prospect.

It’s important to know what this critical point is, but it’s also important to monitor the impact of your paid search campaign on all your sales metrics.

Only then can you be sure of the impact your investment is having.

5. Detail tells the story

Search Engine Marketing is very much a detail business. If you are going to do it effectively over time, you need to have the time to continually check it.

Maybe it’s identifying different ads that work, maybe it’s advertising on different days or at different times. Whatever the case, there are savings to be made if you can identify exactly what is going on.

For example, if you uncover that a certain ad is producing most of your response and that other ads are doing nothing, then you can improve your results significantly by dropping the ones that don’t work and putting all your budget into the one that does.

Consumer attitudes and a good cause

It seems that despite the GFC, consumers are still spending with companies and brands that have a clear social purpose.

A 2009 global study reported last month in The Wise Marketer (www.thewisemarketer.com) has some interesting stats about consumer attitudes.

Surveying 6000 people in 10 countries, the study particularly looked at whether consumers will swap brands where a brand supports a good cause. Countries surveyed include USA, UK, France, Italy, Japan, China, India and Brazil.

Some of the most interesting results were:

> 67% of consumers say they would switch brands if another brand of similar quality supported a good cause.
> 83% of consumers are willing to change their consumption habits if it can help make the world a better place to live in.
> 70% said they would prefer to live in an 'eco-friendly house' rather than a 'big house'.
> 69% of consumers would rather use a brand that supports the livelihood of local producers than a designer brand.
> 71% think brands and companies spend too much on advertising and marketing and should put more into good causes.
> 64% would recommend a brand that supports a good cause, up from 52% in 2008.
> 64% expect all brands to support a good cause.
63% are looking toward brands and companies to make it easier for them to make a difference in the world.

With the survey covering so many countries, the challenge for us is to assess how relevant these figures are for Australia in general, and for our own specific target audiences in particular.

Agency briefs on the nose

If you’ve been in marketing for more than five minutes you know about the importance of agency briefs.

If you want the best work you need the best agency, but even the best agency can’t deliver without a clear and detailed brief.

Yet it seems that many marketing departments don’t have a clue about briefs!

Well, that’s the conclusion coming out of a US survey reported recently in Advertising Age. The survey covered more than 250 senior US executives at a variety of top agencies.

The agency executives reported that at least 30% of staff time is ineffective or wasted due to poor communication from clients.

More than half of the survey respondents said fewer than 40% of client briefs give them a clear indication of what's expected.
Some 30% of agency respondents said only 1% to 10% of briefs provide clear performance expectations.

The survey results reflect an insight also gleaned from the experience of the person who commissioned the survey: Casey Jones, former VP-global marketing at Dell, who now runs a marketing consultancy called Jones & Bonevac that counts among its clients Microsoft and Walmart.

Mr. Jones said the study was prompted by observations from his time at Dell. "A lack of commitment to tight and coherent input to the agency was a major contributing factor to the struggles between Dell and the agency," he said.

There is obviously a real need for marketers to learn how to write a brief. But there’s even more to it than that. There’s the whole issue of clear thinking and a commitment to a strategic direction.

The survey highlighted a major problem about strategic thinking relating to the way briefs change along the way.

A massive 75% of agency respondents reported that client briefs go through an average of up to five significant revisions. This is AFTER the project is underway!

Maybe even more amazing, 8% said they've seen briefs go through upwards of 45 iterations.

Clearly, this is unforgivable. The marketing managers and directors responsible in these cases are obviously totally out of their depth. You have to feel sorry for the people working under them.

Engaging professionals makes sense

One of these does not fit in. Please guess which one:

1. Need printing done – call a printer
2. Need your accounts reviewed – call an auditor
3. Need computer help – call an IT specialist
4. Need quality copy written – do it yourself

If you feel that one, two or three don’t fit in, you may be right. But you must be thinking of something that’s far too deep for me.

Obviously, there are no prizes for guessing, the answer I am looking for is number 4.

And why people do this never ceases to amaze me. After all, writing is a craft, just like carpentry.

Marketing people, and business people generally, are constantly involved in scores of different activities. They have little chance to improve their writing. Whereas the full-time writer, just like the full-time carpenter, is enhancing his or her craft every day.

Take websites, for example. People spend thousands of dollars on website design and then write the copy themselves.

Yet isn’t the message conveyed through words? Good design supports the message, of course. And I am all for excellent design.

But it’s the copy that provides the message. People come to your site looking for information. Contained in the copy.

By doing the writing themselves, managers very often sell their company short. And worse, they damage their brand. Here are a few horrible examples of copy that has come unstuck:
> This week I take a look at one viewers site and what they can do to make it rank better for their key phrases.
> If your only now thinking about tax, your late.
> With enhanced productivity during the downturn our efficient and flexible processes show a convergence towards performance indicators that are heading north.
All of these (presumably) went through the approval process. Yet, to everyone’s embarrassment, they slipped through. And in the rush of day-to-day activities, it can happen. (Corrected versions appear below)

I am not for a moment suggesting you should call for a copywriter every time you need to communicate anything. But when it is an important client letter, brochure, website, report or other article, the investment will pay for itself many times over.

If you want a particular response, it’s worth paying a professional to give yourself the best possible chance of success.

And now for the corrected versions (which I am sure, if you have read this far, you will be well aware of):
Ø This week I take a look at one viewer’s site and what needs to be done to make it rank better for key phrases.
Ø If you’re only now thinking about tax, you’re late.
Ø This could mean anything! It’s a sentence some politicians might get away with, but it has no place in a business communication.

Is your green policy right for 2009, 2010, 2011?

In 2009, probably not a day has gone by without some mention of the environment, climate change, green initiatives or emissions trading policy.

At the 2007 Federal election, when Labor came to power, the climate change attitudes of the main parties were all important. Most people had a point of view on the topic.

As marketers, what we have to be careful about is that this has turned out to be a moveable feast. If you decided company policy or tactics on climate change at the time of the election, maybe you need to think again. Things have moved on.

Recently, I put the following into Google:

“Saving the planet, one . . . at a time”.

There were 45,200,000 responses.

The top response was: “Saving the planet, one bag at a time.” The next was “saving the planet, one computer at a time.”

High up on page one of Google were also one “burger”, one “flush” one “water bottle”.

The obvious thing coming out of this little experiment is that the environment is an issue for business. And not just for the few who happen to be manufacturing plastic bags or plastic bottles. It’s an issue for every business.

Almost certainly, in your business, you have already addressed environmental issues in one way or another. My point is that things are moving. What you may have decided on and agreed last year, needs to be revisited.

And you need to study the “green consumer”. Green consumers are not all the same. If you think they’re all “young lefties”, think again. A survey by the American Association of Retired Persons found that 62% of people 55 and over buy green products.

Green consumers include people who are passionate, people who are sometimes green and people who are only now moving in that direction:

Passionate: An increasing number of people are seriously passionate about the environment. They are willing to pay more for the products they see as green. These people have negative attitudes towards products that pollute the environment and incorporate green practices on a regular basis.

Sometimes green: These people are thinking green more and more, but they don’t necessarily act green all the time.

Coming soon: These are consumers who don't behave or think along environmentally-conscious lines right now, but remain on the fence about key green issues. The strong trend for the last couple of years has been for members of this group to migrate to one of the above groups.

Of course, there are also people who are not thinking green at all, and you need to know how many of these are among your customers and prospects.

At the global and national level, it seems that people are tired of talk on climate change. They want action, and many are getting irritated by political groups who are not delivering.

In your business, you need to deliver. On the green issues relevant to your business, it’s important to be in tune with where people are at right now.

So what do you expect?

In all marketing, and especially in any online initiative, it is important to manage expectations.

One sure way to lose people is to tell them one thing, and then do something else.

“Managing expectations” tends to be one of those terms that people pay lip service to. Everyone is in favour, but what is actually being done to make it happen?

If you have a newsletter, you need to let subscribers know exactly what they can expect from you BEFORE they opt in to your program:

> tell subscribers exactly what will happen;
> explain the timing;
> give step by step instructions on what they need to do to get what they want; and
> tell them exactly what you will do with their data.

Immediate contact: It can be a confirmation email, a thank you or a welcome, but whatever it is and whatever you call it, it’s essential. It should be triggered automatically as soon as someone opts in.

Briefly, in positive, clear terms, it has to give subscribers all the details they need, including:

· what is expected of them; and
· what you will do.

More and more in the online space, users expect to be treated as individuals. So if it is possible, offer multiple communication channels and different message frequencies as well as different email formats.

Warning: Don’t ask for information you know you’ll never use. If you ask for it, people will expect you to use it. If you ask for my favourite holiday destination, I expect to receive something about it.

Not new, but important: When managing expectations, it’s also a good idea to under-promise and over-deliver.

Of course, you’ve heard this before. It falls into the category of “attention to detail”. What is the promise you are making? Check it now. Then make sure you deliver that, and more.

Looking at value into the future

In cities all around Tuscany over the past month, retailers everywhere have been closed for at least two weeks. In most cases three weeks. It’s the summer holidays and everyone heads to the beach.

The exception is the tourist section of Florence. With seven million visitors a year, that part of Florence is different. But for the rest of the retail sector, July was ‘sale’ time and August was (mostly) closed.

During the sales, figures like “50% off” have been commonplace. And 70%. And 80%. You can’t help wondering how far they will go. Yet, despite the discounts, sales have been poor.

As unhappy economic conditions persist throughout Italy, retail is suffering here. But, for some of us, it is difficult to feel sorry for retailers. Customer service is rock bottom. There are exceptions, of course, but the general standard is much worse than in Australia.

It seems so crazy to have a sign on the window screaming “70% off” and then ignore people when they walk in. Or just keep talking to a girlfriend on the phone. But that’s how it works around Tuscany.

In view of that, it is no surprise that turning to the internet to find the best deal is becoming ever more popular.

Research within the last few months by the global research consultancy, Penn, Schoen & Berland, identifies what the researchers call “recession shoppers” or “online value hunters”.

In the study, these types of consumers claimed that as economic situations worsened, they increasingly looked to the internet to find the best deals. Now, as the Italian economy seems to be in an ongoing downward spiral, online shoppers are focusing on value — in quality, price, convenience and time — making “value” the new core theme among online consumers.

The research uncovered these five interesting statistics:

> 72% of value hunters look for the best value regardless of brand;
> 51% of value hunters look for incentives when making online purchases;
> 63% of value hunters have purchased something online they wouldn’t have normally because of a special offer;
> 68% of online shoppers search for value in the form of coupons and special promotions; and
> 45% of value hunters purchase something online once a week or more.

What all this says for your business and your marketing is for you and your colleagues to work out.

No doubt you have already been building value into your offering. But one thing we can say for sure: the focus on value is not going away.

As well as giving attention to the short term, you may as well start thinking now about what you can do in the longer term to build more value into your product and/or service.

What you consider as “good value” today will almost certainly not excite buyers in the future. If you don’t start to think outside the square on this one, your competitors surely will.