Not so many years ago, the more stuff companies made, and the more they advertised, the more they could sell. It was a marketplace that absorbed everything that could be “pushed” out into it. But with the flattening or globalization of the world prices have tumbled, products proliferate and options abound. Mass media has become saturated with advertising, “pushing” this growing mass of products into the marketplace. As a result, mass advertising has become inefficient and expensive. Mass media is difficult to target and has a very small percentage of return. TV ads and print ads in national publications have millions of “impressions” but very few are likely to become customers. That’s OK if you have a large consumer brand and deep media pockets. But the mass media formula breaks down for specialty products.
As the effectiveness of the mass-media approach to marketing diminishes, mass markets are evolving into mass customization and niche specialties. So how do specialized companies with niche products reach the customers whom they can benefit the most? The answer begins at the center of each company. It radiates out through everything they do and ultimately becomes their marketing. To understand, let’s start with the business manager’s vision for this.
It’s hard to get away from the push mindset. It’s a part of our western mentality, an expression of the west’s egocentric perception of the world. But it’s not the only way. The east has a “pull” perception of power, seeking to attract rather than impose. As one example, the teeth on handsaws in Asia face in towards the user, making the “pull” motion the power stroke, as opposed to the western saw tooth orientation. So what’s to learn from this?
From the perception of those in the east, the “pull” is the power stroke, not the “push.” Instead of forcing out to create action, they draw in. Applying this to a product brand, it’s easy to see in a crowded marketplace that the brand and all its marketing can’t possibly push out with enough frequency and reach to connect with the few people who might benefit the most. Instead, marketing must be set up to attract customers. The brand spirit must come from within, and draw customers towards it. How do we apply this concept to your marketing?
Instead of “pushing” and interrupting your customer, make your marketing attractive to those who are looking for a solution like your product.
Leave behind the concepts of “selling” “pitching” or “closing.” Forget about “driving” your business. These are “push” concepts. Instead, think of ways to be attractive. Start from the core of your brand, its promise of what it uniquely provides, for whom and for what purpose.
This shouldn’t sound completely unfamiliar. Some variations you may have heard of include consent marketing or permission marketing with email. Or products that advertise themselves when customers use them, like Hotmail or a cup of Starbucks. Or products that get better as more people use them, like eBay or a garage sale.
The list goes on and on. Here six things you can apply to your own approach to creating pull marketing:
1) Content: Create content that engages, informs or entertains. Your brand story will be talked about and remembered. Facts will not.
2) Contact: Stop interrupting, and go where your customer is looking for solutions such as yours. Optimize your digital presence for search.
3) Commerce: every touch point your business has with the world should lead new customers towards you. Are you a service business receiving most new business on referral? Look for ways to accelerate your referral rates.
4) Create Community. Do this online by setting list serves and idea shares. Do it in person through thought leadership events like Webinars or physical seminars.
5) Competitive Intelligence. If your promise is to be unique, you must have an understanding of your competition. Often studying your competition reveals an unmet need. Either way, make studying your competitors a continual process, a live stream of information.
6) Connectivity: Create continuity by linking all of your marketing, messages and customer touch points. Each encounter should support your unique claim and benefit for solving their pain.
Together, all of these Six C’s create areas of “pull” marketing that can draw new customers to a company’s brand.
“Pull” is not contrived. It has to be an authentic part of how you do business. You have to build “pull” into your business model, into your service practices, into your product development. When you design “pull” into everything you do, the expression of your marketing is in line with your brand and ready to present that attraction to customers in the marketplace.
How do you initiate the “pull” energy? Ask questions. Ask what job your customer will hire your product to do, what problem they wish to solve. Ask how to make customers your biggest endorsers. Look for ways to make it easy for them to talk about your product, easy to remember, easy to share. And stay in the asking mode as long as you want to stay in business.
The implications of becoming a “pull” business are deep, and affect not only your product and your marketing, but also your culture, your operations and your suppliers. The shift is not easy, because it’s a deep mindset. But the results of becoming a ‘pull’ marketing company will put the fun back in your business, hone your competitive edge and increase your opportunity to create profit.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Don't Push!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
Lessons learned at IBS
Underneath a surface of fear, a substrate of wisdom
At the International Builder Show, there's so much bluster and showmanship, it’s tough to see below the surface to what’s really going on.
On the surface, there’s a tone of nonchalance. The message is that everything is really OK—we’re just toughing it out. But when no one else is within earshot, people talk in hushed tones about their fear and uncertainty. They worry that the housing market will stay down for some time to come, that the industry may not be at the bottom yet, that inventories will continue piling up.
Beneath that fear, however, I detected signs of wisdom: wisdom about the cycles of the market, an understanding that this is how the industry works. Booms. Bubbles. Busts. Turnarounds. I noted those signs of wisdom, and many signs of vitality, throughout IBS:
Product Innovation
There were many new products in the market, and many new companies just getting started. One company, Southwire, showed off its home entertainment system wire—a wire so flat you can paint right over it.
Re-shuffling the marketing mix
Exhibitors need to commit to the show 12 months out, so in some cases traditional marketing investments have remained unchanged. In many cases, however, companies have pulled all ads from traditional media and instead invested in the Internet. Masonite made one such investment in building an extensive product configurator on their website. I couldn't help wondering if the old media buying patterns would ever come back, once the market does, after companies measure the results of such digital programs.
Focus on customer community
US Gypsum and others have turned their attention to building social applications and strengthening customer tribe relations, as reported in Sloan Management Review: Harnessing the Power of Social Applications.
Talking to customers, to see what they really want
Companies are recognizing the importance of customer-focused product development, and putting that focus into practice:
Grabber Fasteners talked to hundreds of contractors before designing its proprietary slotted fasteners and driver tools. Their focus: reducing screw failure rates.
Pasload succeeded in tailoring the design of its newest pneumatic framing nailer after learning from 500 customer interviews that contractors wanted their tools lightweight, powerful and durable.
Alternative paths to market
With so much noise and testosterone coming from the big tool houses, Rockwell takes a different approach to the market: delivering great tools at great prices, and selling through such channels as infomercials.
The media has been tracking the housing market for indications of overall economic direction. I’ve tallied the top 5 most featured topics at the conference, listed here in descending order, to get a sense for where the market is going:
1. Going green (21 seminars)
Virtually every exhibitor had a green component to their product line or message. The green seminar themes reached almost a fever pitch, as the title of one seminar shows: Go with the green wave…or get swept away!
2. Active adult housing market (17 seminars)
“Active adult” is the industry’s code word for boomers. Age-focused segmentation is increasing in the marketing vernacular, but builders are clearly tuned to the size and affluence of the peaking boomer market.
3. Turnaround (12 seminars)
From “Weathering the Storm,” to “Upswing” to “Getting un-stuck: Stalled Multi-family Turnarounds" there was a pragmatic optimism at the conference.
4. Marketing strategies for changing economies (10 seminars)
Marketing is becoming a stronger force in this traditionally sales-driven industry. Featured speaker Ken Schmidt, formerly with Harley Davidson, issued a loud-and-clear branding challenge in his seminar, "Make Some Noise." Ken asked attendees: How many of your customers go to their graves with your company's image tattooed to their bodies?
5. Multicultural markets (5 seminars)
The show is behind the curve, given the growing presence of the Hispanic homebuyer market and particularly Hispanic tradesmen. I expected to see more how-to seminars oriented toward these constituencies.
Conspicuously absent from IBS
None of the seminars addressed offshore manufacturing, despite the fact that many companies disclosed to me that they are actively using offshore manufacturing, and are getting over the fear that it means the end of US jobs. They also understand when to keep customization and fast-turn product lines on-shore. However, even the most global manufacturers are just beginning to target the biggest potential markets: India and China.
Agencies are stumbling in their stewardship of client brands
Since the abysmal performance of this year's Super Bowl TV ads, the media has been spotlighting the need for ad agencies to adapt to the new marketing needs. Agencies need to reboot and rebuild their efforts around communities, according to Forrester. I couldn't agree more.
The Bottom Line: Hard-won Wisdom Steals the Show
In the end, IBS 2008 affirmed my belief that bottom line doesn’t tell us everything about our business. Sure, it tells us what we did yesterday. But it doesn’t tell us how we did it, what’s important, or how to do it better. I believe that’s why the leaders of so many companies at IBS show a steady hand during such difficult times, even as middle management quavers. They have their eye on key measures, all right. But they’re not distracted by the bottom line during this down cycle. They are working from a deeper understanding of what drives business, and a bigger vision for what matters and why they are in the businesses they run. They are passionately innovating, creating customers and executing with as much enthusiasm and zeal as when the market was at its peak. They have a vision that they transmit into their businesses every day, leading teams on to great satisfaction of purpose and achievement. They know the market will be back. They know their efforts will be rewarded. In fact they are rewarded even at this show, as they measure the success of the things that drive the bottom line, the things that they can control and that matter most to business and achievement and competency.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Taylor Johnson & Olesker
Taylor Johnson and Olesker (TJO) has 30 years of helping real estate companies succeed in the Chicago market. Their media savvy and brand building skills have made them one of premier PR agencies in the region, and this year they took on not only a new partner, but a new identity. Torque was engaged to redefine their business brand, logo, emarketing and web site and sales tools – all in light of what they do best, giving brands a voice.
In working closely with them, we determined the key contribution they’ve made to some of Chicago’s biggest builders, realtors, property brokers was expression and a voice in the marketplace. To reinforce this we crafted a warm logo of quotation marks. This logo has become a icon for being heard, and is used throughout the marketing materials to frame 1st person testimonials told about TJO’s success, words of wisdom expressed about PR and marketplace insights. Video on the web site and in sales presentations also plays a big role in giving voice to the TJO brand.
The overall sales system, web site and identity have just been unveiled and have been well received. An elegant launch party more formally ushered in the new era for TJO and we are seeing success already.
For more about Toruqe, visit www.torquelaunch.com
Monday, February 11, 2008
The Housing Industry Makes a Stand at IBS 2008
It is no longer news that the housing industry is embattled, and that the effects are rippling through adjacent industries (Wickes Furniture Co., a venerable regional manufacturer, cites the housing slump as a key cause of furniture sales slowdown that forced last week’s Ch. 11 announcement).
This week, the International Builder Show (IBS) returns to Orlando, FL. As always, Torque will be in attendance, and we will be looking for innovative industry trends. This is a time to sharpen tools and rethink strategies. We will be reporting on what we see, and expect to find the following, many of which may seem counter-intuitive:
- Increased marketing budgets
- Increased branding, with decreased emphasis on sales
- Creative partnerships, joint offerings and sponsorships, including industry associations and chambers of commerce
- Increase in value-added services to differentiate against product-focused offerings
- Increased emphasis on return on marketing investment, not just awareness or media placement
Perhaps the Daytona 500 will help to fuel inspirations for the week.
If you’re headed to that part of the country this week, I hope to see you there!
Read more about Torque
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Have a Creative New Year
The world is verging on the new year, and is celebrating its twelve months of productivity and change. The tradition is to take stock of all that happened, then look forward to set visions for a shimmering future. Of course the big question burning in everybody’s mind is what the heck will next year bring, especially in marketing and branding.
We’ve been struck by the rate of change in business, technology and lifestyle, and how hard it is to know what opportunities will arise for companies. However, as we cut to the core of it all, we strongly feel creative marketing and business thinking will be critical in the successful businesses of 2008. This means generating, molding and reconfiguring. It’s adapting ideas as new trends arise or as old ways of doing business fall. Like our holiday card, it’s about re-envisioning things, which leads to mixing and matching pieces in order to constantly put new faces on opportunity.
To give you some insight into where you might apply your marketing and business creativity, we offer our view of critical trends coming.
Signs of Status
There is a huge rise in new wealth and disposable income around the world. This is driving the increased sale of the standard premium goods, but it’s also driving the need to rethink what constitutes luxury. As more people buy the same premium goods and brands, these premium offerings lose their status. Expect luxury goods to take on more outlandish forms and shapes, at ever-higher costs. Take the Prince of Saudi Arabia and his buying a $300MM Airbus , which will be turned into a 'flying palace' with three bedrooms, private lounges, bathrooms, offices, a steam bath and exercise machines.
More accessible is Evian's limited release of Palace bottled water, only available in high end bars and restaurants for $15-20 per bottle. Then there are luxury marshmallows from Dean & DeLuca, a 1-pound Boulé Marshmallow Sampler of lemon chiffon, passion fruit, vanilla and rose-petal flavors for $28. We can expect to see many more status icons in 2008 that touch all aspects of your day.
Trying on the New
The push for something exciting and new is not just about spending money. Society is pushing for expediency. There is a lust to have as many “experiences” as possible – to acquire new things more frequently, and then move on to newer things. Procter & Gamble’s Swash offers students dryer sheets, dewrinkling spray, stain-removing pens, odor-removing sprays and lint rollers that give their clothes the look and smell of having been washed without taking the trouble to actually do the washing. Wallstrip offers informal and easy to consume stock advice in a format that's familiar to viewers who watch YouTube instead of CNBC. 20 Minutes, a publication in Europe, which distributes more than 2.3 million copies every weekday, tailors its content to be read in 20 minutes. Adult FriendFinder, the "casual encounters" site , satisfies people’s craving for new, more expedient “relationships,” and draws over 19 million members. It’s clear to us that that people wake up expecting something different to be available to them each day, and if they don’t encounter it, they will seek it out. Creative companies everywhere are coming into being, or are adding products to meet these trends.
New Social Sets
The list of major cultural movements is long, and it keeps growing with every month of discoveries, political shifts and inventions. The best way to ride change is to focus. Tackle whatever trend most closely influences you and your business and ride the new opportunities. And all the while, I suggest that you apply ultra-responsive customer service, customization, limitless variety, and a web-enabled community where there are no secrets, no memory loss and instant access to everything.
So with all this change, and all this potential, look creatively to the new year and envision your part in it. Keep in mind, your part will constantly be changing, and it will take all the awareness you can muster and guidance you can get.
Source credits including trendwatching.com, www.psfk.com, TrendHunter.com
15 transformations successful companies will put to work in 2008
2007 has been a year of insights. 2008 will be a year of putting them to work. I suggest that the following fifteen points, born out in countless business and marketplace scenarios that we have all been observing and living through this past year, will bring success to the companies that capitalize on them. The dramatic changing power of several key trends comes from new technologies as well as customer Tribal behaviors. To capitalize on the opportunities, creative marketers will become highly interactive with their customer tribes in order to stay in relevant and valuable.
Computer repair company Geek Squad, built with no advertising. When Best Buy purchased the $3mm company, it had 60 employees. Today, it employs 12,000 men and women.
- Successful companies recognize that the marketplace is changing at an accelerating rate. Change is affecting supply chains, value chains and distribution chains. Change is blurring the lines between competitors, partners and customers. The rate of change is affecting the length of time between plan revisions, often reducing cycles from years to weeks.
- Successful companies recognize that people, cultures and special interest segments are rapidly emerging and evolving. Culture is greatly enabled by Internet communities, which thrive on abundant free information and which generates increased expectations about products, prices, service and access.
- Successful companies recognize that the use and effectiveness of media is changing. In the old world of mass media, print, broadcast and outdoor advertising media sent messages in one direction, from corporations down to individual consumers. In the new market dominated by the Internet, Tribal markets talk to each other and to companies. Savvy companies are talking directly to customer tribes through a variety of newly repurposed vehicles, from news releases to web video.
- Successful companies are creating change within themselves, adapting and leveraging changes in the new marketplace. These companies are incorporating customer feedback into the R&D process, accelerating development time, empowering employees to make autonomous decisions on behalf of customers, focusing product lines, and outsourcing non-core functions. In short, many companies are actually doing what was only talked about just a few years ago…and in some cases, doing what was not even then imagined.
- Successful companies recognize that Tribal Intelligence is emerging as the preeminent skill to navigate the new marketplace. They are finding that Tribal Intelligence, the deep understanding of needs, interests and behaviors of customer tribes, helps them identify what products to offer, as well as where and how to connect.
- Successful companies are developing Tribal Intelligence by listening to their customer tribes. They recognize that studying and interacting with their customer tribes is the most important aspect of creating more new customers and keeping them longer. It’s true for business customers and consumers.
- Successful companies are continuously engaged in conversations with their customer tribes, listening for and telling compelling stories. The heart of a brand promise is a story. To tribes, stories are more important than facts—they are remembered more vitally, they have an emotional hook, and they can be transferred among people. Stories are archetypal human and part of the Tribal narrative.
- Successful companies are using media to listen as much as to tell, to foster community and to provide rich information in useful ways and formats. Brand stories need to flow in all directions in media used for fostering conversations leading to the formation of brand communities. Unlike mass media, micro media of new marketing takes on a life of its own, with users sharing information among themselves. With the powerful capacity for rich content, the Internet is activating information and opinions about products in ways that efficiently attract passionate new customers in waves. Only the biggest marketing budgets can afford the inefficiencies of mass media awareness advertising—and the return on such campaigns has become questionable.
- Successful companies are learning the vocabulary rules of tribal language: transparency, authenticity and consistency. Every week news comes to light about companies who haven’t been consistent in their intent, message and action, and are exposed and ridiculed in large online forums. Think of Comcast’s customer service woes and Unilever’s Dove’s Real (natural) Beauty campaign caught in a compromising contrast with their sexist advertising for their Axe brand deodorant for men. For marketers, the first rule of the Internet is integrity—there are no secrets in a medium of limitless reach and access.
- Successful companies are exercising Tribal Intelligence in business planning as well as marketing, to create relevant, sustainable and valuable interactions with customers. Companies are blurring the lines between businesses and marketing planning, integrating deep customer insight into their business models. Corporate silos are collapsing and business is reorganizing around the customer. Savvy companies realize that their brand is expressed in daily operations, customer service, HR, R&D— all in addition to media and marketing.
- Successful companies are collaborating with their customer tribes to co-create products and service relationships. As savvy companies center their businesses on the nucleus of their customer, they are defining product, distribution and service features around the customer’s needs. Successful companies are leaving behind the era of generic mass production of products, mass distribution and inefficient mass media.
- Successful companies are thinking in newly creative ways about collaborating with partners, value chains and customers. Savvy companies are taking advantage of cheap outsourcing, abundant distribution options, flexible collaboration and innovative ways to meet customers’ needs. Vertical integration is gone, and successful companies are the ones who know precisely what business they are in. They are ruthlessly outsourcing all non-core functions, seeing that specialization is king.
- Successful companies are leveraging change, technology, and tribal values to better serve and delight smart customers. Savvy companies realize that a “satisfied” customer is easily wooed away by the next new product or the next great deal. They realize that customers are not loyal, but will become evangelical about great products and services.
- Smart companies are blurring the lines between market tribes and internal tribes. Smart companies recognize that their own workers are intimately familiar with their customers, and often are their customers. They realize that the workplace is fluid, and that employees move between competing companies. Savvy companies understand how important their people are, and redefining how they use them as their “biggest asset” as way to delight customers.
- Successful companies are organizing new markets around customer tribes’ priorities, rather than their own priorities. They are asking: “how can we better serve our customers,” and not; “how do we find customers to buy what we sell?” Savvy companies of all sizes are studying the success of leading companies, and finding ways to experiment and incorporate these new practices into their own firms.
Monday, November 19, 2007
No Surprise: Consumer Tribes in the U.S. still don't trust advertising
According to a recent report from Nielsen BuzzMetrics, which measures consumers' brand perceptions on the Internet, U.S. consumers most closely associate the word "false” with advertising. The study also showed that consumers typically place more trust in recommendations from other consumers than in advertising. The report goes on to recommend that advertisers need to do a better job building trust. Of course the ad industry is up in arms about such statistics.
We’d like to overlay a little more insight on these raw statistics. First of all, advertising will never be a credible vehicle for building trust. Ads are great vehicles for creating awareness and will always have a place in expanding and sustaining brands in the marketplace (more on connecting to Tribes using advertising, to come). But trust is something that must be earned and cultivated.
Fundamentally, people trust others who share a similar interest, or express positive intent towards another’s interest. We as social beings are constantly evaluating other people, sources of information, organizations and communities to determine if we should trust them, often unconsciously. This is part of what makes human communities tribal, no matter how sophisticated. If we accept this, there are good ways marketers can create trust among the tribal marketplaces they wish to cultivate.
To find the best marketing methods for building trust with your customer, begin by examining the spirit of trust rather than a communication format or medium. People trust others whom they feel are like-minded or express a positive intent. They distrust anyone from whom they sense an ulterior motive, such as a motive to “sell” them products.
All buyers are looking for trusted sources to guide their purchases. They want to purchase goods. And they want to purchase the goods that help them fit into the Tribes they identify with and belong to. Yes, consumer recommendations foster trust because they are disinterested 3rd parties. Here are a few others:
Educational content fosters trust. Marketers seeking to explain, clarify, and help buyers navigate their choices or clarify needs are likely to earn consumers’ trust. Crutchfield, the catalog retailer of consumer electronics, has it down. Visit their commerce site www.crutchfield.com to see how they market products and transact sales. However, seek advice in the Learning Center and find yourself on their parallel educational site www.crutchfieldadvisor.com. Education has fanned Crutchfield sales into a thriving business.
Third party recommendation fosters trust. This is why editorial coverage is so valuable to a brand, and prompts Al Reis to champion public relations as the superior means of building brands, in his book The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. It is why companies promote the awards they’ve won, the new coverage they’ve captured, and the writing and publishing they’ve produced in their role as experts, like Apple Computers’ early marketing through evangelists (now alive as a theme in the ad campaign Get a Mac.
Popularity fosters trust. That’s why websites list popular searches, the list of items people who searched for this item ultimately bought, like Amazon.com or CDW.com. That’s why category-leading marketers like Avis (we’re number 2 and we try harder) promote their position in the market and why it works to get new customers.
Community fosters trust. Youtube is a popular initial marketing launch space because communities go there to find out what’s happening, then link out to retail and a variety of other destinations based on what their Tribe is talking about. Victoria Secret’s Pink brand line of apparel has been very successful launching campaigns on Youtube. View commercial
Personal touch fosters trust. Long the exclusive domain of relationship sales, now the rise of customer relationship management (CRM) through the use of database tools has fostered a way to keep in touch through personalized methods that express shared values and personal interests beyond the direct business at hand. Contact methods such as greeting cards for holidays and other events keep the correspondence personal. Targeted direct marketing to consumers has come to dominate the marketing scene, as evidenced through the growing strength of direct marketing agencies and their effectiveness at helping brands grow by touching individuals in ways they trust and to which they respond.
Building trust begins with integrity and intention. Marketers are strategically building trust as a means to building their brands by thinking beyond interruption marketing formats of traditional media advertising. They’re investing in building links with the Tribes they wish to cultivate as customers.
