Photo credit: WhitejacketThis is a fun piece on Marketing Profs and there are a couple of profound points contained within it. The fun and the challenge of today's marketing landscape is that there are dozens and dozens of messaging delivery options. The fun part is that there is a lot of room for creativity and innovation. The challenge, of course, is that breaking through the noise is not easy.
However, my take away from this piece was a reminder of what we all need to do if we expect our messaging to be relevant and to break through the clutter. Peeling back the layers of the glitz and glamour of technologically advanced delivery mechanisms, there are three retro examples within this piece that give us profound insights on the directions we should be taking.
1. Michelin Guide produced by the Michelin Tire Company. This guide was free until 1920 and is still in production today. It was/is a guide to assist with car maintenance and travel. The genius??? The more Michelin helped their customers to travel in their cars, the more tires they needed!
Take Away: Don't try to sell people more of your product, help them to need more of it.
2. In 1904 Jello-O's sales volume was so low that the brand was almost written off. As a last ditch effort Frank Woodward, the brand's owner, sent his sales force out to distribute free recipe books. By 1906, Jell-O's sales reached $1 million.
Take Away: People did not know how to use Jell-O. Women needed affordable desserts for their families, Jell-O gave them a solution. Do you customers understand where your solutions fit with their needs? Have you facilitated a true understanding of your solutions?
3. GI Joe only succeeded only because GI Joe told a story. Hasbro allowed young boys to get to know him, connect with him, respect him and ultimately love him (in a mini-man love kind of way).
Take Away: We should not spend our time in B2B marketing making up fanciful stories about our products and companies. But, human beings (and our customers are human) relate to stories. In fact, story telling and connecting with stories is a core part of our humanity. This is why well done case studies can have such high impact. I realize case studies, particularly in the pharmaceutical industry are difficult. There are other ways; however, to tell application stories that your customers will be able to connect with. The key is to focus on the needs of your customer, not the features of your products.
View the Slide Show: A Brief History of Content Marketing
"Stick ‘em up."
"Let me steal your contact data."
"Now, let’s talk about building a business partnership based on mutual trust and respect."
This is ludicrous chain of logic, but it is exactly what is going on out there far too often. B2B lead generation activities, as discussed in my May 5, 2011 post, should be permission-based. “I agree to give you my contact information knowing that you will contact me in a respectful manner, in exchange for value-rich information that might help me to solve challenges I am wrestling with.”
Way too often, I see pieces of content gated with a registration form that should not be gated. Product spec sheets, marketing pieces and other documents of this nature should not be gated.
For most of us, buying a new car is probably one of the most “technical” purchases we make in our personal lives, so I believe it is a fair comparison to many B2B marketing activities for selling complex products.
I am absolutely not willing to fill out a registration form to access features & spec information for a new car. However, I would be willing to fill out a form knowing that my local dealer will likely contact me, to access objective technology and performance comparisons of hybrid, electric and traditional engine cars. If I filled out a form in good faith and end up being given access to a mere marketing piece, I will be much less likely to buy that brand of car - after being dupped once, why would I believe that my dealer or the car company will be honest as we have other conversations?
The other highly concerning activity, is publishers giving their advertisers full contact information for one of their audience members who clicked on the advertiser’s e-newsletter ad. As described in our Digital Pledge, a click is not a lead. There are interesting things that can be done with click data to serve an audience, but giving full contact information to an advertiser is not on the list. It is really data theft as I am confident that a typical audience member in our industry does not know that a click on an e-newsletter ad can result in full contact information being given to the advertiser.
The challenge is, generating value-rich content that can be gated with a registration form is not entirely simple. My next two posts will address our criteria for gateable content and ways we can help you to cost effectively generate content for your lead generation efforts.
Permission-based content marketing is built on a foundation of trust and reciprocity. The silent conversation goes something like this.
Potential Customer: I have a challenge for which I need to find a solution. Based on the description of your content, you seem to understand at least part of my challenge and it seems as though via your research, expertise and/or technology development you might be able to help me to solve at least part of my problem. I am going to trust that our exchange will be equitable, so I going to give you my contact information and answer your question or two. In exchange, I trust that I will be granted access to a rich piece of content that is inline with the quantity and value of the information I gave you.
Solution Provider: I ultimately need to sell my product or service and I believe that a great way to begin creating opportunities is to share my expertise and solutions-oriented information with customers and potential customers who have a problem I can help to solve. If I can solve a problem, I will have a solid opportunity to build or further develop a mutually beneficial client relationship. Because I understand that this opportunity creation tactic is built on mutual trust and respect, I will under promise and over deliver. The content I provide will be even more valuable than my customer or potential customer believes that it will be
prior to registering to access my content.
Potential Customer: I also trust that this solutions provider will respect my by providing information that is in-line with my needs, not spamming me and not sharing my contact information with other people without my permission. If that trust is broken, it does not bode will for our potential relationship.
I have a great number of concerns relating to this issue with the pharmaceutical manufacturing space of the b2b media industry. Trust is being broken; short cuts are being taken that ultimately are not good for anyone within the marketing value chain.
A series of three to five posts sharing thoughts, best practices and ultimately solutions on this topic will be posted during the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
Many of your know that Putman Media, the publishing company that owns Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, has invested heavily over the course of the last seven years in digital media. We have invested heavily in technology tools, continual optimization of our websites, and most importantly in human capital (knowledge and training of our people).
Digital media investment is continuing at Putman Media, there is no question about that, but I would like to call attention to our renewed investment in our print property.
Have we lost our minds? “Print is Dead” has been the rallying cry within the B2B marketing press for several years now. I could wax poetic about our emotionally attachment to the printed word (including why I still get excited when the new issue of the magazine arrives at the office or how I have always loved the smell within the stacks at a university library), but our decision to invest in print was a specific and thoughtful business decision. There are multiple reasons, but I will highlight three:
1. From audience studies, we know that half of our audience (roughly half of your clients and prospects) prefer print and engage more heavily with Pharmaceutical Manufacturing magazine than with digital media. We needed to add investment dollars to a medium half of your customers prefer – hopefully you will see the importance of this too.
2. We know that print still carries an authority that digital media does not always. How do I know this? When our editors approach their sources and share that the source's contribution will run online only, there is typically mild enthusiastic. When our editors share that the piece will run in print and online – the source is excited.
Many of our clients today only want to spend against digital media, but want their PR activity to run in print and online (the magazine typically being the priority). Hmmmmm……scratching my head over this one. If digital media is most important for advertising, shouldn’t it be most important for PR as well? From my experience, this is not the thinking of many of our clients and it does not make sense. Actually, I understand why some companies are thinking this way (measurability primarily) but, when you put the strategy/tactic against the light of reason it does not make sense.
3. Everyone’s e-mail box is jammed and their mail box is pretty sparse. We believe that we are offering an expanded opportunity for our clients to break through the marketing clutter allowing them to better communicate with clients and prospects.
So….what will this investment mean in reality?
- 18-20% more editorial pages per issue
- An even greater emphasis on content quality (and the bar was awfully high before)
- The addition of some new regular features and content approaches that we have not had the space for in a while
- More premium advertising positions to offer our advertisers
For more on these sentiments, you might be interested in a blog post on this topic: “Seven Reasons Print Will Make a Comeback in 2011”
Basically all e-mail services, servers and spam filters are set up on a point system. Spam words are assigned a point(s) and once the magic number is reached (whatever the magic number is) the given e-mail is determined to be spam and delivered to a user's junk folder rather than their inbox.
When writing e-mails and e-marketing materials we have to be careful. Some spam works are "light offenders" like the word "download" or "download now" and just cannot be used too much within a given piece. Some spam words are "heavy offenders" like the word "free" and likely should not be used at all. Other words/phrase nearly guarantee that an e-mail will go directly to the junk folder. However, most of these words are words that have no place in legitimate B2B marketing communications - words/phrases like "stop snoring," "reverses aging," "cash bonus."
I don't worry a whole lot about the extreme spam words/phrases as they are simply not part of business dialog in our space. However, light offender spam words and some heavy offender words like "free" are common and tally spam points quickly.
Newer spam words/phrases (many of which we don't have to worry about):
Reverses aging
Hidden assets
stop snoring
Free investment
Dig up dirt on friends
Stock disclaimer statement
Multi level marketing
Compare rates
Cable converter
Claims you can be removed from the list
Removes wrinkles
Compete for your business
free installation
Free grant money
Auto email removal
Collect child support
Free leads
Amazing stuff
Tells you it's an ad
Cash bonus
Promise you ...!
A more comprehensive list of words can be found within the following post: Top Spam Words and Phrases--Updated April 2010
If you are concerned about your e-communications and want to check them, there are a number of free spam checking tools like SpamCheck out there. A quick Google search will give you plenty of other options,
There are many days I feel like a broken record as I interact with our Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team internally and with our clients. To settle internal debates (and the very occasional professional spat within the ranks), my favorite response is...."I am not sure if we know how our audience will respond, let's test it." I often have a similar reply when working with our clients. "Our previous experience suggests that 'this' approach will perform the best, but we should do some testing."
Part of the reason I love digital media is that it is humbling and challenging. Every time I feel that I have the game figured out, our audiences prove me wrong. I fully believe that digital media success requires the confidence in one's professional knowledge and abilities because we will be wrong on regular occasion. But, digital marketing then requires that we dive in passionately to figure out how to fix or to optimize whatever it is we were wrong about.
Back to the question posed in the title of this post, "Is Digital Media Testing a Sign of Weakness?" The question beneath this question is..."Is a lack of certainty a sign of weakness?" Absolutely not in my opinion. In fact, I believe just the opposite it true. Too much certainty (without very specific analytical reference points) makes me nervous and it should make you nervous too. A lack of willingness to test will deliver nearly certain failure over the long haul.
There is a difference between a dedication to accomplishing the objective and knowing with 100% confidence precisely how the objective will be achieved. There have been plenty of times on the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing team in which we have an objective to achieve, but our original plan simply did not work. If Plan A does not work, the smart digital marketer starts testing Plans B and C. On particularly rough days, I am thankful that there are 26 letters in the alphabet and a frosty beer at the local sports bar.
I think that you will find this post from Marketing Profs quite interesting. "One Very Convincing Reason to Test." Fascinating and further proof that some of the sharpest minds in digital media and marketing can be dead wrong.
Happy testing!
This morning Pharmaceutical Manufacturing deployed the first edition of Pharma Replay, the newest additional to our suite of digital products. Pharma Replay will be a monthly deployment containing "Quips & Quotes Heard 'Round the Industry."
Pharma Replay is designed to deliver important information about issues within the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry in a fun and interactive manner. Although the first edition has only been out for about two and a half hours, the initial open rates and click thru rates look quite promising. Stay tuned for more information, or contact Jeanne Freedland, Sr. Digital Specialist, at jfreedland@putman.net to learn more.
