DMN3 Blog

Do You Market to Women Like They're a Man?

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:33:00 GMT

Marketers are like men when it comes to marketing to women. Whenever we men hear a woman describe a challenge they are facing, we want to fix it for them. In case you live in a cave, that’s a big no-no! Yet men and marketers continue to do it.

Whether in a relationship situation or part of the buying process, women do not look kindly on someone telling them they have a problem and here’s what they need to do to fix it.

Women just want someone to listen and acknowledge what they are feeling at the time. It’s part of their need to feel connected to others. Left to their own devices, they will figure out the challenge and handle it in a way that feels right for them.

Why are marketers like men? It’s because many marketing professionals still use gender-neutral or men-focused advertising. It’s also because many marketing campaigns stereotype women. Even products designed for women use pain points to advertise to them. The message is often that “you are unattractive, buy this product or service and look good.”

In my last post I cited the Greenfield Online Study from 2002 that found that 91 percent of women believed that advertisers didn’t understand them. A more recent survey of 1,300 women found that only nine percent indicated that marketers were effectively communicating with them personally.

My last post can be found here:

What Marketers Need To Know About Women Consumers

Highlighting pain points in a marketing campaign is a tried-and-true approach to getting the consumer’s attention. Why not for marketing to women? The answer is that women are different from men. You need to be very careful marketing to women because they do not like judgmental advertising messages. You are better off avoiding negative campaigns.

As the saying goes, “you can catch more women with sugar than vinegar" (a little editorial license). Show her how you can improve her life. Using a message that is positive such as “pamper yourself, you’ve earned it,” is more likely to resonate with a woman.

Advertising copy should be straight-forward, friendly and soft in tone. Women typically have a larger vocabulary than men, so you can be more expressive when describing your product or service. They also have a tendency to be more visual so the use of positive imagery appeals to them. They want advertisers to market to them in ways that distinguish them as intelligent and informed consumers. They also prefer a female as the spokesperson or voice representing the brand.

It’s all about relationships. Women are more connected to their family, friends, community and brands. They look for brands and marketing messages that share their values. They are more socially engaged than their male counterparts. According to Ernst and Young’s Groundbreakers report, women reinvest 90 percent of their income into their families and communities. Compare this to men who reinvest only 30 to 40 percent. That’s why cause marketing is especially appropriate to reach women consumers.

You will need to invest more time marketing to women. They require a relationship with a brand based on more trust than men. Organizations need to listen and engage with them. While this typically results in a longer buying cycle, it’s worth it.

Women are more valuable customers. Once a relationship is established, they are more likely to buy from that brand. They are more loyal customers. Satisfied women customers are also much more likely to refer your brand than their male counterparts.

Women are not all alike. You need to understand which women are your preferred prospects. After all it’s not your product or service that should drive your marketing efforts. It’s the prospect and her needs.

How do you approach marketing to women?

What has worked for you?

Share with us so we can all learn.

What Marketers Need To Know About Women Consumers

Tue, 07 May 2013 13:31:00 GMT

When it comes to spending in the U.S, the power lies with women. Women hold the purse strings in many areas thought to be dominated by men. Reaching women consumers requires a different marketing message than that targeted to men.

It’s no secret that today’s women have enormous purchasing power. It is estimated to be anywhere from $5 to $15 trillion annually. A recent report by Nielsen indicates that women will control two-thirds of the U.S. consumer wealth over the next decade. TD Ameritrade projects that women will manage $22 trillion of U.S. assets by 2020.

Women have a determining role in 85 percent of all consumer purchases! They manage 75 percent of all family finances. Women’s influence over consumer spending goes far beyond groceries and clothing. They are also the majority of buyers of what are thought to be traditional male products, including automobiles, home-improvement products, healthcare options and consumer electronics. Approximately 9 out of 10 financial account openings are controlled by women who sign 80 percent of all checks, business and personal.

Studies show an incredibly large and growing buying power for American women. Despite the fact that women represent the most lucrative marketing opportunity, many advertisers are not addressing their particular needs. A number of studies show women feel misunderstood by marketers. One survey found that 91 percent of women felt that advertisers don’t understand them. Marketing research data indicates that this is especially true for purchases that were historically thought to be controlled by men. Examples include healthcare, automotive and investment marketing.

Companies cannot use the same marketing messages for both men and women. Women are different from men in the way they process information and make buying decisions. It’s simple, what works for men will not be effective for women. To be successful, advertising and marketing campaigns should reflect those differences.

Many businesses that have traditionally targeted men will need to rethink that strategy. They need to recognize changing purchasing patterns and focus more of their marketing research toward understanding the needs and purchasing drivers for potential women customers.

Nielsen NeuroFocus research studies indicate that the female brain’s hardwiring has evolved differently than that of men. Women remember more and differently than men. They are better at remembering details, less reactive and impulsive, better at multitasking and more social in their approach to buying.

They place the highest priority in making memories and experiences. They enjoy saving money, spending time with their family, and being recognized for their multitasking abilities.

According to Nielsen NeuroFocus, the female brain is programmed to maintain social harmony. Marketing messaging should be based on positive emotion and avoid negative comparisons or associations.

That brings me to my last point in this post. Not all women are the same. Your research efforts should focus on identifying the specific demographic and lifestyle segments that make up your prospect base. Your objective is to create a polished marketing message that will best resonate with them. After all, it is your women, not all women, who you should be targeting.

I would like to point out that DMN3 is a woman-owned marketing agency that understands the woman consumer.

I will discuss more marketing-to-women issues in my next post.

Are you more focused on marketing to women with your products and services?

What are you doing differently to reach them?

Share with us so we can all learn.

Do You Trust Social Media Promotions?

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:19:00 GMT

Do you trust everything you read or see on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites? Whether you do or not might depend on your age, the type of content, and your ties to those who share it.

As social media continues to evolve, business organizations are still struggling to define what constitutes “success” in their social media marketing efforts. Any effort involves understanding the way social media users trust the content they come across.

A number of recent studies can provide insight to discover trends relative to trust in social media. The largest studies were conducted by Nielsen (28,000 from 56 countries) and Forrester (63,703 from North America and 20,788 from Europe). The studies by these respected research firms were done in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

While the Nielsen Trust in Advertising Survey and the Forrester Technographics Online Benchmark Surveys, were different in geographic scope, there is much in agreement between them. In both studies, consumers overwhelmingly say they trust recommendations from family or friends over all other forms of advertising.

According to the Nielsen survey, 92 percent of online adults trust earned media, such as recommendations of family and friends and word-of-mouth promotions. That compares to Forrester’s results with 70 percent of North Americans and 61% of Europeans trusting “brand or product recommendations from friends and family.”

While such surveys treat all family and friends the same, in reality relationships fall along a spectrum of highly valued friend or family member to casual acquaintance. Social science labels this “tie strength.” Research suggests that tie strength is an important variable in social media trust.

The next most trusted source of information is consumer reviews. The studies differ in that the Forrester study listed professionally listed reviews and consumer reviews as two different categories. The data is clear that consumer reviews follow recommendations of family or friends as the most credible advertising promotions.

As can be seen from the following Forrester chart on the survey results, natural search results was the next most trusted marketing channel, followed by the organizations website content. Promotional posts on social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, etc., rank low in trust by consumers. Other low trust-ranked advertising include push messages from mobile applications, text messaging and website advertising.

Social media sites continue to garner more and more trust in certain ways. A recent study by The George Washington University found that social media is now trusted similarly to traditional news sources for political information. That study found that trust was stronger for younger users (under 25) while older voters were more skeptical. Research by Forrester bears this out. Members of Generation Z, ages 18-23, are more likely than other generations to trust online communications, including social media. While the relative trust with various advertising/promotions agree with the larger studies cited above, Generation Z members are more trusting of both paid and earned media than their older counterparts.

The results are clear. Traditional one-way promotions are no longer perceived as trustworthy by today’s consumers. Consumers have little trust in paid advertising, whether on social media sites or other websites. The trend foretells decreasing effectiveness for such advertising. These survey results reflect a new reality for advertising. Consumers have more power. Consumers now decide what promotional content with which they will engage. Paid media is “out” and earned media is “in” when it comes to user trust.

Successful advertisers will seek to engage with consumers in “participatory” ways that leverage their goodwill and earn trust. They will encourage user participation and sharing of content with their family and friends to spread that trust using social media.

Remember that trust is the currency that drives consumers to take the actions that marketers desire.

What is your take on these recent surveys?

Have you noticed the trend toward earned media in garnering trust in your own experiences?

Please share your thoughts so we can all learn from them.

Related Posts:

Do You Trust the Internet?

Trust is the Currency of the Internet: How Much Do You Have?

Blogging for Lead Generation: Importance of Author

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 13:30:00 GMT

You might know that a strong B2B digital-marketing strategy should include a blog as part of building credibility and brand. But do you know that the people behind the content, i.e., author or authors, are becoming very important to achieving these objectives?

That’s because the days of anonymous content are numbered. Google is moving to linking content with authors and then creating an authority rank (Author Rank) for those authors. In the near future, Author Rank will be part of the Google algorithm for search rankings. Way back in 2005, Google filed a patent that described using a number of parameters to determine an “agent’s” position within a given subject area.

The basic premise is to use an author’s qualifications and expertise along with the quality subject matter they generate in ranking the content in search engines. Tying content to authors is very different than the current approach that only ties it to the website hosting the content.

When fully implemented by Google, Authorship will affect both search rankings and click-through rates. While no one can predict when Google will start using Author Rank, organizations that rely on blogs for lead generation should prepare for it. The things I recommend are:

1. Start using Google’s Authorship. It’s already here. It involves creating a verified Google+ profile and linking all of your authored content to it. In the case of a blog, it involves both a link from the blog post to the author’s Google+ profile as well as a link from the profile to the blog hosting the original content. If you use multiple authors, each author will need to tag their posts and link back to the blog using the “Contributes To” field in their Google+ profile.

2. Eliminate anonymous postings on your blog as well as other white papers, webinars, etc. Every post should have a specific author linked to their Google+ profile. Anonymous postings lack both credibility and a way to influence Author Rank. Remember that credibility is very important to those who will read, cite and share blog posts.

3. Build a strong Google+ profile. Google wants to become familiar with the person behind the writing. To assess the quality of the writer, Google wants to know as much as they can about the author. Authors should have credentials. Those credentials should be reflected in their social profiles. With credentials comes credibility.

4. Use content-marketing tactics to circulate the blog posts and other forms of content generated by authors as widely as possible. Google will use a variety of parameters to determine the expertise and popularity of authors. Content marketing can help with a number of possible metrics that might be used, such as sharing, citations by others, etc.

It’s easier to prepare for Author Rank if your business blog already uses authors with good credentials. If their content has been shared and cited by others, that’s another plus. It’s only a matter of creating a strong Google+ profile and linking it to their blog posts. It might be worthwhile to go back to older posts and include the author tag in those posts as well.

If you are implementing a business blog as part of an overall strategy for digital marketing and lead generation, you should begin by using the four steps I’ve listed above. Good luck in your efforts.

Are you using Google’s AuthorShip?

If so, what do you think about it? Is it just a way to market Google+?

Share your thoughts so we can all learn.

Business Blogging: An Important Part of Content Marketing

B2B Content Marketing: 6 Questions Before Tactics

Can You Manage Leads Without Automation?

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 13:23:00 GMT

If you want an effective lead-management or lead-nurturing program, then automation becomes another important part of it. While segmentation and content describe the “what,” automation becomes the “how” of such efforts.

Just how are you able to provide right content, right time to each individual prospect in the buying process without it? It defies the imagination as to how such an effort could be done manually. Of course, the degree of automation might be based on your business model, lead-generation/lead-nurturing program and available resources for such an effort.

You should look for ways to automate your efforts after you have first completed defining your objectives and the content and process to achieve them. Such a planning effort is based on research. As discussed in my previous posts on this subject, you need to know the segments that make up your likely customer base. You need to appreciate what motivates them and you need to understand their buying process. My previous posts can be found here:

Lead-Generation Strategy: Where Do You Begin?

The First Steps Of A Lead-Nurturing Process

Do You Know What Right Content, Right Time Means?

This research component should also examine your past marketing efforts and how they contributed to generating leads and turning them into customers. With this insight, you can better define a lead-management structure that mirrors the buying process of your potential customers. Once the research is understood, you can better define both the content and how it will be accessed, i.e. process.

Your efforts should lead to a lead-management strategy that includes the content, offers, message frequencies, communication channels, etc. It is at this point that you are ready to look for ways to automate the process and choose your approach to it. Marketing automation solutions run the full gamut from simple to sophisticated.

You can start “small" by looking for opportunities to automate. A relatively simple place to begin is to use triggers based on behavior. Triggers can consist of a sign-up, downloading a particular offer, an approaching contract renewal, etc. An automated sequence of messages is then sent to the prospect based on a specific act or date stamp.

At some point, such efforts should be integrated with a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) database to track prospects as they move through the sales funnel. CRM involvement means a more advanced approach to lead management.

Increasing the level of sophistication also leads to the ability to create a highly desirable user experience for leads and prospects through personalization. Personalization technologies can interact with the CRM to deliver personalized, targeted messages. They are engaged based on both previous information known about them as well as their real-time interactions with your content.

For most organizations, I would recommend that you take an incremental approach at first. Start simple and expand from there. Once you have gone through the planning process above, you can more easily prioritize where you will get the most bang for your bucks. As the saying goes; “bite off something you can chew.” Focus your efforts on a specific segment. Create offers and calls to actions. Measure the results against your goals. Find out what works and what doesn’t. In the process, you get a better understanding of the lead-generation and lead-nurturing process. It will also help you in selecting additional lead-management automation strategies as you become more sophisticated.

Automation allows you to manage a personalized dialog with many leads at the same time. It clearly increases the opportunity to turn them into buying customers.

In what ways have you automated your lead generation and nurturing efforts?

What would you do differently if you had a do over?

Share your thoughts with us so we can all learn.

Do You Know What Right Content, Right Time Means?

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Implementing an effective lead-generation and lead-nurturing program is about providing the right content at the right time. That’s easier said than done. It requires that you know your potential customers and their buying process. The next step is content.

My first two posts on the subject of lead generation and nurturing were about doing the necessary groundwork to develop such a program. The first step is to determine who is most likely to buy your products and services. Next is to understand their buying process, i.e. the sales funnel.

Once you are familiar with these aspects of those who are likely to purchase, then you need to segment them. These steps are discussed in more detail in my first two posts on this subject:

Lead-Generation Strategy: Where Do You Begin?

The First Steps of a Lead-Nurturing Process

Whether you are talking about lead development or moving leads down the sales funnel, content is king. It’s all about what content you provide and how prospects access it. Remember; “right content; right time.” It boils down to content and process.

Lead-generation content is about prospective customers finding you as they search for more information on a topic in which they have an interest. Businesses often seek information about trends affecting their industry as well as possible solutions to problems they face. Publishing good content with relevant keywords is the basis of such lead-generation or inbound-marketing programs. The content is directed at those doing research on a subject, i.e., those at the top of the marketing funnel.

Lead-nurturing content: Whether you develop leads through inbound marketing, referrals, advertising, etc., you need to cultivate those leads to build credibility and trust. Through such efforts you move them from leads to buyers.

Providing the right content at the right time involves creating content for each of your segments, e.g., customer profiles and stage of the buying process. The subject matter needs to be focused on the particular needs of the buyer at that moment in time.

While many marketers equate a lead-nurturing program with an email drip-marketing approach, it is much more. It can involve multiple marketing channels, depending on the information you’ve collected from particular leads.

Content-access process: Once you have good content matched to the needs of particular segments, the next question is how the content is accessed. For more information on segments such as industry, title/role, and buying stage see my earlier posts.

Start with your website. Does the content on it increase trust and address the questions, objections, etc. of potential customers? Can the information needed by each of the segments be easily found? Why is this important? It’s simple. You might have prospects that haven’t identified themselves to you. They are using your website and the content you have published to qualify you as a vendor. In many cases they will not identify themselves to you until they are comfortable that you are the right fit for their particular needs.

Once you have known leads, i.e., they have identified themselves with as little as an email address, your job is to engage them and qualify them. With only an email address, the “how” is simple. You need to put into place an email drip or relationship-marketing program. It can be used, along with engagement created directly through your website, as a means to progressively profile your leads.

Progressive profiling is asking for information from contacts incrementally instead of all at once. With progressive profiling, each time a lead converts on an offer, you ask for one or two additional bits of information from them. Often it begins with thought-leadership content that requires no gating, i.e., a form filled out to receive it. That is followed by a registration requirement for more highly targeted content. With each subsequent visit to download content or to register for an event, new information that is highly relevant to qualifying the lead is collected.

The value of progressive profiling is that research indicates that trying to collect too much information at one time will result in reduced conversions. Progressive profiling will increase lead generation over that approach.

Providing right content, right time requires technology to automate the personalized delivery of content, monitor prospect activity, and collect data into your CRM system. It is very difficult to manage this process without automation. That’s a subject for my next post.

Do you use progressive profiling?

What information do you collect on your lead-generation form?

What have been your experiences?

Share with us so we can all learn.

The First Steps Of A Lead Nurturing Process

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:36:00 GMT

Applying Lead nurturing best practices can overwhelm all but the largest organizations. Yet failure to do so will prevent any business from reaching its sales potential. So where do you begin?

In my last post I suggested that you begin any lead generation and nurturing initiative by first learning as much as possible about your prospects, customers and their buying process. If you haven’t read it yet, you can find it here:

Lead Generation Strategy: Where Do You Begin?

After you have gained the customer insight, how do you start using it? Your objective is to apply the insight in ways that help attract and cultivate new buyers for your products and services. If you’ve done the introspection described in my last post, then you should have a good deal of information that will help you design a successful lead generation and nurturing program. The first steps are the following:

Segmentation: Your efforts at building a relationship will involve providing prospects with the most relevant content, messaging and solutions. One size can’t fit all. That’s where segmentation comes into play. From what you learned during the self-examination, begin by segmenting your prospective customers in several ways. As you become more sophisticated in your approach, you will likely increase the ways you segment. But the following are a baseline for your efforts.

Type of Commerce: Business-to-Consumer (B2C) companies with a variety of service/product lines need to segment by prospective buyer’s interests. Business-to-Business (B2B) companies need to segment by type of commerce or industry vertical. The logic to this should be apparent. Your marketing message must be relevant to the interests of the consumer. B2B organizations cannot use the same approach to attract and nurture a financial services firm as you would a manufacturer of heavy machinery.
Buying Process Stage: Just as you would be turned off if someone you knew treated you like a perfect stranger, so it is with leads and the buying process. Potential buyers at the top of the sales funnel, i.e. at the awareness stage, have different needs than those who have progressed through it and are at the evaluation stage of the process. Your approach to messaging and content must include providing the right content at the right time, and meeting or exceeding the expectations of your prospects.

If you do nothing else, understand and refine these segments and create the content and tactics to address their needs. If you do just that you will be ahead of the game. B2B companies understand that a number of people with different titles and roles are involved in the buying process. The bigger the purchases, the more likely a number of people are involved.

That requires one or two more segments to be created over time to address this diversity of people involved in the buying process for large purchases. If your business is providing products or services that cost a lot, then you should create segments based on “titles” and “roles” in the process. Because you can often determine the role of individuals from their title I would limit segmentation to titles.

For example, a field supervisor is likely an “end user” of a product or service and would serve an advocate or champion role. The head of purchasing would act more as a comptroller to evaluate the product. The first may be more interested in how it makes their job easier, while the other is looking at reliability and return on investment.

My next post will continue to explore ways to implement an effective lead generation and lead nurturing program.

Do you segment your leads or prospects?

If so, what segments do you use and why?

Share with us so we can all learn.

Lead Generation Strategy: Where Do You Begin?

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

If you feel overwhelmed at the volume of lead generation and nurturing "do’s and don’ts," you are not alone. If you don’t have a lot of resources to devote to it, perhaps you should rethink your resource allocation priorities. In the meantime you should start your efforts with a few practical considerations.

Start by looking at how things are currently done in your organization. How focused are you in building a long term strategy to generate and nurture the leads needed by sales? Often organizations operate in a crisis mode that has a short term focus (we need sales now!) while neglecting their long term future.

While everyone recognizes that lost business and other factors that hit the bottom line suddenly may increase the need for immediate sales. The result is often frantic efforts that involve less proven methods to lead development and closing. There are two warning signs you should heed or you will position your business to fail.

If you are operating in a “crisis” mode too often. With a good process for generating and nurturing your potential customers, circumventing it by doing things like cold calling, etc should be a rare occurrence.
If during such actions you neglect your longer term approach to business development, i.e., finding qualified leads. Finding potential customers and converting them to sales should be a methodical process based on best practices. You are in it for the long term. Neglect it at your own risk.

Your self-examination should begin with sales or business development personnel. They interact with potential customers every day. They are the most knowledgeable internal source for information about prospects. They should be able to provide the information you need to start a more systematic approach to the process of generating leads and turning them into customers.

You need to know the interests, problems, desired solutions, titles, industries, roles, questions, objections etc of the prospective buyers of your products or services. It begins with sales, but doesn’t end with sales. Anyone who regularly interacts with potential and existing customers should be a resource for learning more about them.

Another aspect they can help you understand better is the buying process, i.e. sales funnel, for prospective customers. You need to understand the stages that buyers go through as they evolve from leads to purchasers.

I can’t over stress the importance of such a review process. It is relatively simple to do compared to other methods of getting at the same information. It will also reveal things you are doing well as well as issues that you had not addressed in previous efforts at creating your sales funnel.

Once you have acquired this information, you should do two things with it. The first is to validate your findings with customers and prospective customers who are willing to give you their feedback on what you found. You may need to incentivize them. This external confirmation may also uncover other issues not found in your internal review.

The second thing you should do is make the results available in a form that is readily usable by everyone involved in lead generation, lead nurturing, and making sales. It is critical information for not only marketing and sales, but also those involved in automation and analytics programs used as part of implementing and evaluating the effort to generate leads and turn them into loyal customers.

In my next post I will share a few first steps in developing an effective process for identifying and nurturing leads.

What do you think about such an internal review as a way to begin?

If you have done one, was it valuable?

Share with us so we can all learn.

Customer Insight: Why a Little Research Pays You Big Dividends

Conventional Wisdom of Advertising Demographics No Longer Applies

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 15:48:00 GMT

To many in the advertising industry, those of us over 50 are small potatoes. After all, conventional advertising wisdom is that the Adults 18-49 demographic is the only one that counts. It’s the most coveted demographic. To this author, this kind of conventional advertising wisdom defies logic.

Conventional advertising logic is that the number of viewers of a television program within the 18-49 age range is more important than the total number of viewers. Television advertising rates are still, by and large, based on this premise.

The 18-49 adult demographic was created in the seventies to label the large number of consumers that comprised the Baby Boomer generation. That generation will have completely aged beyond this demographic by the end of next year. With them go approximately 76 million Americans that make up this generation.

A recent article in the New York Times, Why Don’t Advertisers Care About Me Anymore is responsible for this post. I am at a loss to understand why advertisers still place so much importance and dollars on reaching the 18-49 demographic while discounting older demographics.

There are a number of reasons, but here are a couple that make sense to me.

Advertisers may like the current pricing methodology. With it advertisers have it both ways. Most commercials are targeted to consumers between the ages of 18 and 49. With this approach, the broadcast networks only get paid for impressions delivered to this demographic. In essence they get “free” advertising to people over 50 who might also end up buying the advertised product. Under this arrangement, television shows with an older demographic may be only able to charge half the rate per thousand viewers for advertising than a show with a younger audience, even if the former had a much larger audience overall.
Conventional wisdom defies our current understanding of consumer demographics. The reason that advertising is directed at the 18-49 age group is based on outdated research and assumptions that are no longer valid. Many of these assumptions were discussed in my previous post on this subject.

Advertising Shifting to Targeting Older Demographic Segments

Chief among these conventional marketing premises are that:

This consumer age range is more open to buying new products and changing brand loyalties than older demographics.
They also spend more on products and services as they become more independent and set up their own family and households
It takes more effort to reach the 18-49 age group, while older demographics are much easier to reach.

Because of the first two of these assumptions, advertisers spend 10 times as much trying to reach this age demographic as they do to reach the 50 and above age demographic.

A number of studies show that the first two of these premises are no longer valid for today’s 50 and over consumer. Unlike previous generations, studies by NBC, AARP, Gallup and others found that older consumers are open to changing brands. They are also increasingly tech savvy. They also spend money… lots of money. The NBC study estimated that Baby Boomers spend $1.8 trillion annually on food, cars, personal care and other products. According to research conducted by Hallmark channels unit of Hallmark Cards, Boomer households account for a high percentage of sales of products considered mainstays of a younger consumer demographic.

The first two assumptions are no longer valid. Given the third premise above, marketers for many products and services could get a greater ROI by advertising to those 50 and older. I’m reminded of the old adage, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Now add the fact that the bird in the hand controls so much wealth and spending.

Advertisers are responding as I noted in my previous post. Pharmaceuticals, luxury-car brands, financial firms and travel organizations are a few industries that understand the spending power of this demographic. Others are slow to respond, still preferring to reach young consumers.

I anticipate an increasing wave of advertising targeted to the 50 and over age demographic for many products and services. The sheer number of consumers of that age will force advertisers to reassess today’s “coveted” 18-49 age group.

Those that don’t will see a smaller ROI for their advertising dollars.

What is your experience with advertising to specific age demographics?

Do you agree with me?

Share your thoughts so we can all learn from each other.

Article Marketing As A Content Marketing Tactic

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 13:32:00 GMT

For years article marketing has been a major Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactic. Google’s Panda and Penguin algorithm changes noticeably altered SEO practices for the better. Given Google’s changes, should article marketing be part of your content marketing strategy?

The answer is a qualified “yes.” First a little background. Article marketing is creating articles with content and keywords relevant to your organization and publishing them to various sites over the Internet with links back to your site.

For years so called “content farms” manipulated the search system. They learned quickly that keyword content quantity was more important than content quality for search engine rankings. They also submitted the same content to dozens of article directories to create links back to their sites. The result was that a large number of content farms with low quality content ranked high for hundreds of thousands of key word search strings.

Beginning it 2011, Google started adjusting its search algorithms to improve the relevance of search engine results for their end users. These recent updates are called Panda and Penguin. Google’s objective was to raise the search rankings of sites with high quality content and lower the rankings of sites with low quality content.

I discussed this in some detail as the algorithm changes were implemented in my post:

Are there Implications for SEO/SEM with Google’s Search Engine Algorithm Change?

The Panda update looks at the quality of your website pages. If enough pages on your site are found to be low quality, your entire website is penalized (ranked lower). Panda penalizes keyword stuffing both in content and title tags. It also affects duplicate content. That’s the process where someone takes your work and links it back to their site as their own.

The Penguin algorithm looks at the offsite content you create to get links back to your site. It’s looking for spam and keyword-stuffed material with back links to sites. It also looks at link relevancy.

The question for this post is how these changes affect your use of article marketing as a content marketing tactic. They won’t if you just follow good practices in generating and distributing it.

You should concentrate first on developing high-quality content for your own site(s) as part of your content marketing strategy. Article marketing and other marketing tactics can then follow.
Whether for your own site or for directories, remember to not overuse keywords. Two percent is considered the maximum rate of keyword use in what you write today. Be careful not to stuff keywords in title tags as well.
If you re-purpose your content, do it in such a way to avoid duplicate content issues. My own personal road map is to have at least a third of the re-purposed content be original and exclusive to the re-purposed content.
Submit your work to highly regarded article directories that adhere to standards set by Google and other search engine algorithm updates.
Only submit to relevant directory sites or categories. The other article topics on such directories must be similar to yours or your risk Google penalties. A fast emerging strategy is the use of “guest posts” on blogs with topics relevant to your organization.
Use a variety of anchor text when you link back to your website content.

The core of any content marketing strategy is the content itself. The ideal content is original, evergreen, and valuable to your intended audience. Once it is created, adhere to evolving best practices to publish it. If you do these two things, article marketing can and should be used as a strong marketing tool.

Speaking of the evolution of search algorithms, you should stay on top of Google’s introduction of AuthorRank. I expect it to become an important consideration in content and article marketing. The intent of AuthorRank is to attribute authority to authors based upon their entire publishing history of articles that include the “author” tag with reciprocal links to the individual’s Google + profile.

Sometime in the future you will see search rankings with authority as part of the algorithm that ranks content. Sounds like a topic for a future post.

How have Panda and Penguin affected your SEO and article marketing practices?
What do you do differently these days?
Share your thoughts so we can all learn together.

Content Marketing: Brands Are Becoming Publishers

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Why is there a rush to content marketing? What does it mean for you as a marketer?
If you read my last post you already know that content marketing is a major marketing trend. If you haven’t read it, you can find it here:

2013's Most Important Digital Trend

The reason for the changing interest is that the Internet has changed the way consumers consume content and buy products. Instead of reacting to subject matter that is broadcast to them via traditional advertising channels, they now proactively seek out the content they need to satisfy their needs. Whether researching personal issues or searching for a solution to a business problem, today’s Internet user is empowered by technological advances.

Content is not just for SEO anymore. Content is now seen as an asset that is the basis for customer relationships. Businesses now realize that it is the voice of their brand.

Brands and their marketers are responding by putting a greater emphasis on content. The studies by Econsultancy cited in my last post show that 73 percent of marketers agree that brands are becoming publishers. While recognizing its importance, organizations are struggling to institute a content marketing strategy. Only 38 percent of in-house marketers and 13 percent of agencies had one in place at the time of the Econsultancy survey.

Marketers are also struggling with how to measure ROI with such a strategy. Content marketing takes time to build an audience. It is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires both quality and a certain quantity, depending on the objective, to be most effective. Web-published quality content is an asset that can be found by search engines years after it was first distributed. It can also be used a number of times by repurposing it in different formats and at different times. These issues make it very difficult to calculate an ROI, especially in a limited time frame.

If you must have an ROI that is not measured in years, then you may be better off by using advertising as opposed to content marketing. Another approach is to use advertising to help distribute your content. Advertising can call attention to your though leadership articles, research reports, etc. Advertising used this way is a more subtle approach to generate leads and create brand awareness and loyalty.

As I have said in previous posts, all content is not created equal. There is good content, bad content, and evergreen content. The latter is original content from the publisher that stays relevant. It‘s timeless and keeps on giving for years.

Bad content is worthless. It is often created as a search engine optimization (SEO) strategy laced with keywords and back links. This low quality content is then distributed to content farms.

What I call “me too” content is not much better. This is just repeating content that already exists without any original thought incorporated within it.

Creating great content consistently is very difficult. I can personally attest to that. It is what you must do to enjoy the benefits of content marketing. Remember that content marketing from a search engine perspective is relative. How well you achieve your content marketing objective is also subject to the quantity, quality and distribution strategy of your competitors as well.

Recent changes in Google’s algorithm called Panda and Penguin have changed the landscape for content marketing for the better. Quality content is the winner with these changes.

I will discuss Google’s algorithm changes relative to content in my next post.

Do you measure ROI when it comes to content?
If so how do you measure it?
Share so we can all learn.

2013's Most Important Digital Trend

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Content marketing has displaced social media engagement at the top of the list of leading digital marketing priorities. Marketers now recognize it as a standalone discipline and its importance in achieving increased engagement with their prospective customers.

Marketers have gotten the message about the importance of content marketing. A number of recent surveys from Econsultancy highlight this dramatic shift in marketing priorities. While the reports are based on surveys of marketers in Europe in two studies and worldwide in the third, the results reflect what is happening in the U.S. as well.

In an Econsultancy report sponsored by Outbrain, more than 90 percent of respondents believe that content marketing will become more important over the next 12 months. The content marketing movement has turned brands into publishers.

The survey found that the most important purpose for content marketing was “increased engagement from prospects and customers” with 52 percent of respondents citing it. The next most common end is “increasing traffic to site” with 42 percent of respondents reporting it.

There are differences in the responses of B2B and B2C marketers to the survey. B2C marketers’ goals include a greater emphasis on improving brand perception, improving search engine optimization (SEO) and increasing traffic to the site. B2B marketers put a greater stress on generating leads, thought leadership and nurturing leads

I’ve previously written on the importance of content marketing in the current B2B buying process. You can see those posts below under “Related Posts.”

According to a report from Econsultancy and Responsys, 70 percent of European marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2013. Content marketing is the most popular digital channel chosen for a budget increase.

Another global study of marketers, Quarterly Intelligence Briefing: Digital Trends for 2013, published by Econsultancy and Adobe, confirmed the trends found in the in the Econsultancy and Outbrain UK study. It found that content marketing was now at the top of leading digital marketing priorities for marketers, with 39 percent of respondents saying so. As you can see from the following table, it was followed by conversion rate optimization, social media engagement; and targeting and personalization.

Content is a marketing asset that keeps on giving. With advertising dollars, you “rent” the space in whatever advertising medium you choose. Once you stop paying, the advertising goes away and you're left with only the results of that advertising. Contrast that with content marketing. Once content is created it is yours. You can repurpose, distribute and market it any way you want. If the content is timeless, i.e. so called “evergreen” content, it can continue to generate engagement, traffic and leads for years to come.

The surveys also found that most marketers, (in-house and agency) have yet to define a content marketing strategy. Sounds very similar to what has been the history of social media marketing.

Have you developed a content marketing strategy?
How effective has it been?
Tell us so we can learn from each other.

Predictive Analytics: A Better Marketing ROI

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

Are you still haphazardly bombarding your prospective customers with marketing campaigns based on a few demographic variables? If you are not using predictive analytics you need to rethink your approach.

Predictive analytics uses past data to predict future results. That’s a lot easier said than done. For predictive analytics to work you need lots of data from a variety of sources about your target market. The data must be accurate and meaningful. We’ve all heard the saying; “garbage in, garbage out.” Once you have good data from a variety of sources, it needs to be integrated and displayed in meaningful ways. Only then can a marketer analyze it and make predictions about future behavior and the success of a particular marketing promotion.

Value of Predictive Analytics: The insight provided by predictive analytics allows marketers to better target specific promotions to those who are most likely to take action. By doing so, marketers can improve their ROI, both by reducing marketing expenses as well as achieving a better conversion rate for the promotion.

Predictive analytics makes your marketing budget go further. That’s important for those marketers who have to live within a budget, no matter what the ROI is on that budget. You spend less to get the same or better results than with a more widely targeted campaign. You get more bang for your marketing bucks.

For example, DMN3 uses predictive modeling to reduce the number of costly direct mail pieces while still achieving the kind of results that clients want. Doing so dramatically increases ROI.

Big Data’s Role: Unless you live in a cave you have probably seen a lot of content about “big data.” It’s the current buzz topic in marketing. Big data is nothing more than bigger data warehouses with even more robust views of consumers and their behaviors. The data might come from such sources as browsing behaviors, mobile device utilization, app interactions, social networking, social gaming, call center information, loyalty programs, point-of-service information, etc.

Integrating this wealth of both online and offline data allows organizations to understand consumer behaviors in ways not possible when the data existed in siloed repositories. With that understanding comes the ability to correlate data and predict specific behaviors.

Technology makes it easier. Data is not useful information unless it is actionable and can be presented in ways that allow marketers to gain insight from it. Without bid data, a host of algorithms, decision engines, connectors, etc. it would be all but impossible to bring the data together in meaningful ways. Big data takes data from a variety of sources, integrates it and provides a way to present it in a meaningful way. Only then does the data become actionable information.

Predictive Analytics in Near Real Time: What we are seeing is the rapid automation of predictive analytic routines using algorithms to automate the predicting process. A predictive engine can automatically provide stored marketing content to a particular consumer segment based upon database-stored criteria.

Whether it is real time or part of the marketing campaign planning process, predictive analytics with more and more data sources is here to stay. With vast amounts of data now available, marketers are eager to do more with it.

You should be cautious about data. Just because you can get it, doesn’t mean that you can make better decisions with it.

Are you using predictive analytics in your marketing promotions?

What have been your experiences with it?

Share with us so we can all learn.

Personalization: Key to Marketing Engagement

Conversion Optimization: Best Practices Don't Always Work

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

If you have followed this blog for any time you know I am high on using best practices to optimize conversions. Remember though that it may not work for you.

Best practices should be viewed as a starting point for optimizing your marketing efforts. Whether it’s direct mail, offline advertising, store displays, your website, landing pages, social media, online advertising or email sends, you need to determine whether those “best practices” work for you and your audience.

Your objective as a marketer is to get people to take the actions you want at the highest rate possible. If you can achieve that in the first iteration of a marketing or advertising piece, then you are alone at the top of the marketing world. You can set your own price as a marketing consultant.

Why? Because the remainder of marketers don’t get it right the first time. Testing is the only means they know will improve their work. Testing requires a lot of resources because it is not a one-time strategy. To get the greatest possible conversion means constant tweaking, based on testing, over time.

In many cases conversion testing is not done in such a systematic fashion. In too many cases very little testing is done except as a retrospective look at the results compared with other campaigns. The latter is really not testing because no single variable can be examined. It is a look back at the totality of the particular promotional piece and how it performed. If you add to it the many factors that could have influenced the results, you end up with very little actionable information.

So why don’t organizations use testing to increase conversion rates, i.e. ROI? It always comes down to time, money and expertise.

Time: Many promotions are time sensitive. There isn’t time to do testing over time to optimize the results. In these cases testing is either not done or short circuited. What often happens is either different manifestations of one critical variable are tested or two or more radically different designs are tested with a sample of the intended audience to determine which works best. The winner is the one used in the campaign.

Money: Testing means more up front expense for the particular promotional piece or campaign. Many companies have a set budget and see testing as a time and money expense that they can’t justify. Organizations that won’t pay for testing are focused on “expenses” and not “ROI.” They want their budgets spent on creative and expect their marketing agencies to get it right.

Expertise: Many organizations, including marketing agencies, don’t have a lot of expertise in designing and analyzing tests of the many variables involved in a promotional piece. The technology to do testing is relatively straightforward in both the online and offline world. It still takes good research design and analysis of the results to do it well. Organizations that lack such expertise will either be ignorant of the possibilities or will downplay testing as part of its approach to marketing.

What appears to be a modest improvement in the conversion rate achieved by testing can have profound effects on the bottom line.

The following is a real life example of email subject line testing by DMN3 for a medical device marketing email campaign.

Subject Line A: Better Marketing for Medical Devices

Unique Click-Through: 2.1%
Open Rate: 4.3%

Subject Line B: For Medical Devices Today: Think Small

Unique Click-Through: 4.4%
Open Rate: 15.6%

The total number of people that clicked through with Subject Line B was 660% higher than with Subject Line A! Changing one variable can make or break a marketing campaign. How else but testing would you have uncovered such a dramatic difference? Best practices alone would not have achieved it.

A word to the wise is sufficient!

How much testing do you incorporate into your marketing efforts?
What conversion rate changes have you gotten through testing?
Share your thoughts so we can all learn.

How To Influence Consumer Price Perceptions (Part 3 of 3)

Tue, 05 Feb 2013 06:00:00 GMT

There are a number of ways that businesses can favorably influence consumer price perceptions. One approach is to shape the “mindset” of the consumer before they even see the actual price.

In my previous two posts on the subject, I’ve discussed some of the factors that affect price perceptions by consumers. Many factors are beyond the control of businesses. Yet there are many other factors that businesses can control to make their prices seem lower or more reasonable in the minds of consumers.

Today’s post is about affecting the “mindset” of shoppers before they see the actual price of products or services. My previous posts on this subject explored some consumer research on how prices should be stated. The same price (or one cent less) stated in different ways can make a price seem less than it actually is to a consumer.

You can read the first two parts of this three-part series here:

How to Influence Consumer Price Perceptions
How to Influence Consumer Price Perceptions (Part 2 of 3)

The other way to influence price perception is to manage the mindset of the consumer before they see or hear the price. Consumer research shows that this can be done a number of ways. Retail stores, both online and brick and mortar, use them. These are what I call “mindset” techniques. They include:

Sale signs
Discounts
The word “Only”
Price comparisons
Ambiance
Display setting

Sale signs: Shoppers believe that items on sale are a better value than ones that are not on sale. To them an “on sale” sign means that the prices are lower than they were before the sale took place. The consumer mindset is that they are getting a bargain instead of wondering if the product was overpriced in the first place.

Discounts: Discounts can be stated in three different ways. Those include the “discount range; exact discount; and the upper end discount. The discount range advertises that consumers will save something in the ranges stated, e.g., “25% to 50% Off.” Exact discount promises the exact savings offered, e.g., “50% Off.”

Using the upper end discount is considered the most effective way to gain the attention of shoppers. By eliminating the lower end of the range and replacing it with “Up to,” e.g., “Up to 60% savings” means the consumer’s focus is on the higher end number, not the lower one stated in a discount range. The bigger the discount the more effective this approach can be.

Only: When “only” is applied to the price, the consumer mindset is that similar items are being sold by others for a higher cost. By doing so the price appears more appealing. Often the “only” approach is coupled with the next strategy, “price comparisons.”

Price comparisons: The use of price comparisons is favorably influencing a consumer’s perception of price by including information as to what comparable items sell for elsewhere. “Suggested retail price: SXX” or “Sold elsewhere for $XX” are examples of the way stores attempt to manipulate shoppers’ mindsets.

Using “only” and “price comparisons” together is often used to make the price appear to be more attractive. An example of this approach is “Only $XX! Compare at $YY.”

Ambiance: A store’s “no frills” character affects price perceptions. Consumers think that the money not spent on operational frills mean that those savings are being passed on through lower prices for the items sold. When shopping at “warehouse” surroundings, bargain basement stores, flea markets, etc., consumers perceive lower prices even when those prices are comparable or higher than higher end stores. A good example is the experience of the Farmer Store in Illinois. They use huge tables with sides to prevent merchandise from falling on to the floor. They found that, instead of neatly stacked merchandise, consumers bought more if the items such as apparel were left in piles on the tables. They reason that consumers perceive clothing displayed in such a way must be cheap. I would caution that such ambiance issues will likely affect the consumer’s perception of quality as well as price.

Display setting: A study in the Journal of Consumer Research a couple of years ago demonstrates that consumers are inclined to view products as more expensive when are displayed with expensive items and less expensive when grouped with inexpensive items. The study also found that businesses could impact perceptions by creating a “discriminating” consumer mindset. The results found that advertisements or displays that elicit a “generalization mindset” can lead consumers to perceive a product price to be closely related to other products in the vicinity.

"The opposite price perceptions will occur if a marketer's action encourages consumers to think about the uniqueness of a product in the set," the authors explain. In this case, when the consumer is being discriminating, a given price will be perceived as less expensive if it is viewed in the presence of other high-priced products and more expensive when viewed in the context of less-expensive products.

An example of an action setting up a discriminating mindset is emphasizing how the product is different from its competitors. In such a scenario, placing the item with more expensive comparable products will get consumers to focus on the price differences and lead to a lower-price perception.

Caution: A reminder that if the original price is outside the price range discussed in Part 1 of this series, all of these tactics for influencing the mindset of the consumer will end in failure.

There are certainly other strategies that can make prices seem lower or a better bargain.

What strategies do you use to get consumers to view your prices more favorably?
What are some other strategies?

Share with us so we can all learn.