Posts Tagged marketing
Playing to customer emotions in B2B
Posted by Kris Kaneta in Marketing & Branding, Random Musings on July 11, 2011
This post is in reaction to an interesting blog from @econsultancy. If you read through it, though I don’t advocate the notion of attacking a competitor, you’ll likely find it common sense. But the thing about common sense is that its often rare in practice. How often do we really consider how our customers feel emotionally about their problems or our products in the B2B environment?
It seems to me we, as marketers, spend way too much time articulating features / benefits and not necessarily about what drives customers emotionally. Some key emotions that come to mind relevant to B2B -
1) Security and peace of mind
2) Fear of complexity (and a need for simplicity)
3) Fear of obsolescence
4) Disdain for the big, evil OEM or corporation (that could even be you)
5) Need to be top dog or seen as a thought leader (not necessarily as an organization but as an individual)
6) Fear of unpredictability, inconsistency or failure (not at the product level but as a team or organization)
7) Desire to be perceived as charitable or benevolent
Obviously not every customer in your world is going to share all (or even one) of these emotional needs (that’s where the segmentation comes in). But when it’s all said and done, hard as we try, people are irrational decision makers.
How often have you tried to rationalize a purchase that in your head you knew was irrational? We see it all the time in the consumer world – products and services become emotional extensions of ourselves and we rationalize in our heads why we need something that we really don’t. I refuse to believe the same can’t be said in B2B. Buyers are still people, and people are still irrational. There are just different emotions at play.
In my current role we are commercializing a new solution playing to some extent on #s 4, 5 and 6 from above. That said, we’re still in the early phases so I won’t try and convince you of my genius…yet. In the meantime I would love to hear about what others have seen or done to tackle emotional needs in B2B. I’m all ears, so what have you got?
To be a kid again (Making Make-sense Marketing)
Posted by Kris Kaneta in Marketing & Branding on July 7, 2011
A few weeks ago I was in Chicago wandering through the water tower shopping plaza with my family. Foot traffic was light to moderate with the exception of two stores.
The Lego Store – Looking beyond the life-sized Darth Vader, the store was standing room only. At the pinnacle of co-branding from Starwars to Cars to Toy Story, there is no end in sight to Lego’s product evolution. All the while you could argue the fundamental product hasn’t changed or evolved since inception. More importantly people love it. My kid loves Starwars and he loves Legos (I know, apple…tree). Together, they’re a co-branding force (no pun intended).
The American Girl – I’ll admit I’d never heard of this brand until a few weeks ago. But just about every little girl below the age of 10 was carrying around an American Girl doll. I didn’t think much of it until my wife pointed out The American Girl’s store front. In it was a packed floor of girls and their moms. Of course the dads were all huddled to the side staring into their smartphones, no doubt reading ESPN to compensate for a general lack of testosterone… but you get the picture.
Now I’m not sure how much market research these organizations invested in (I’m sure they did enough) but clearly these two companies have their target audience hanging on every word. More importantly, whether or not they did any market research is completely irrelevant. My point is that these concepts just make sense. And sometimes that’s all it takes; finding whatever it is that excites us as a user. Case in point the movie clip below, from one of my favorite movies growing up…
Walking through through both of the stores mentioned above, I was reminded of this scene from the movie “Big”. It serves as an important reminder not to get caught up in nailing down all the facts and figures. Forget for a moment the conjoint. Forget the exact market size.
Does the idea make sense?
Clearly, the idea of a Transformers skyscraper made little sense what-so-ever. But, two of the coolest innovations of all time, Legos and Starwars make perfect sense. Dare I say like chocolate and peanut butter. And while I’m not exactly the most female savvy consumer, a customize-able doll that little girls can carry around and build as a reflection of themselves, something they can actually create – that too, makes sense.
I’ll end with this thought. We all (myself included) need to do a better job of embracing our inner child. Embrace that impulse to just run out and do something if it makes sense; to let ourselves get excited about an idea, not about a market size; to get passionate about creating something, not selling something. You just may find yourself on the verge of something big.
Hubris
Posted by Sam Kale in Product Marketing on July 1, 2011
In classical mythology, the concept of hubris is often illustrated by the story of Icarus. The son of the master craftsman Daedelus, Icarus let his pride overpower his humility and paid dearly for his mistake. Wikipedia says it best:
Before they took off from the island, Daedalus warned his son not to fly too close to the sun, nor too close to the sea. Overcome by the giddiness that flying lent him, Icarus soared through the sky curiously, but in the process he came too close to the sun, which melted the wax. Icarus kept flapping his wings but soon realized that he had no feathers left and that he was only flapping his bare arms.
How many times have you been in a meeting where the topic of competitive threats come up? And how many times are those threats answered by assertions of “Maybe, but we’re better!” Better technologically, better in some specific attribute, or just downright better overall. Whether or not the customers believe you (and one only look to the sales and market share numbers to quickly learn the answer to that question), some people will forever hold on to the idea that being better is enough.
This morning Dave Winer posted on Google+ and an incumbent’s ability to innovate against the status quo. It’s an interesting piece, especially when he argues that the incumbents become too enamoured with the status quo (aka “Why would we leave money on the table?” syndrome), while anyone they could bring in to shake up the status quo would probably fall prey to office politics. I’m not sure how much I agree with those conclusions, but they are interesting food for thought.
The larger question here is whether it’s possible to get out of your own way long enough to attack the big issues head on. While it might be true that your product is technically superior to the competition’s, if the customer is buying the competition’s products, you’ve got a problem in desperate need of solving (viz: Kris’ piece on Being Good Enough).
If you’ve got yourself convinced that you’re infallible, impervious, or otherwise untouchable, you might spend some time thinking about what happened to IBM, Microsoft, and DEC, or what’s currently happening to Nokia and RIM, or will no doubt ultimately happen to Google, Facebook, and even my beloved Apple, when a young, small, agile upstart comes along and puts a technically superior product out of business.
The schizophrenic marketer
Posted by Kris Kaneta in Communications & Social Media on June 30, 2011
Schizophrenia – noun - a severe mental disorder characterized by some, but not necessarily all, of the following features: emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations (dictionary.com)
Sound like anyone you know? How about us marketers? Well maybe not you, specifically, but I’d argue that many of our peers seem to be showing signs of schizophrenia. See if any of these sound familiar…
Exhibit 1: Company X wants to promote a new mission or vision or product. So they hit up Twitter with some spiffy new hashtag. At first glance Company X is ready to proclaim the short endeavor a success but then realize the only ones using the hashtag are employees. Moreover, it is the same few constantly talking among themselves, or more to the point, to themselves.
Exhibit 2: So Company X decides to give LinkedIn a try. They’re a B2B firm and they know from market research that their target segment is actively involved on LinkedIn. So what do they do? Duh, start a group. Start yet ANOTHER LinkedIn group. But this one will (of course) stand out because it has THEIR brand on it. Who *wouldn’t* want to be part of a conversation sponsored by their brand. Knock knock, it’s reality. Please come on back.
Exhibit 3: My favorite still is the Facebook promotion. Company X starts promoting a Facebook page. “Like” them and earn a chance at a winning some prize, or get a 5% discount on your next order. I’m probably in the minority, but my loyalty or endorsement has to be worth more than that. And even if it’s not worth more, human nature is to assume that it is. Now as for the “like” sluts out there (you know who you are), does Company X really even want those endorsements? The “like” button has become a hyper-inflationary currency. Marketers can’t print it fast enough, and the more they print the less valuable it becomes.
So my dear marketers – I beseech you to do the following…
1) Stop talking to yourselves out loud. Frankly, it’s weird and uncomfortable.
2) Stop assuming that the conversations you start are necessarily going to be the most relevant.
3) Don’t act so desperate. It’s not becoming and certainly isn’t going to drive customer loyalty.
Instead – be sincere. Go to where the conversations are already taking place. And for goodness sake, you don’t have to do all the talking. Listening from time to time may also be helpful.
Kathy Sierra: Pixie Dust & The Mountain of Mediocrity
Posted by Sam Kale in Communications & Social Media, Marketing & Branding on June 20, 2011
Kathy Sierra: Pixie Dust & The Mountain of Mediocrity
I never understood how any of this made sense, given that very little of what I see “brands” (or their human spokestweeters) do on social media is changing the fundamental nature of how users interact with their products. “But that is not the point! It is about being human!”. Nope, I still don’t get it. Why would anyone want to compete on *that*? It felt fragile to be in essentially a marketing arms-race of who-is-the-most-engaging-social-media rock star. What does that really have to do with what users do with the product?
A nice companion read to Kris’ Going beyond the sizzle (of technology marketing).
Seth: Are you a scientist?
Posted by Sam Kale in Marketing & Branding, Random Musings on June 7, 2011
Ask a physicist what will happen if you fire a projectile like this in that direction, and she’ll know. Ask a chemist what happens if you mix x and y, and you’ll get the right answer. Even quantum mechanics mechanics can give you probabilities that work out in the long run.
I’m not always the biggest fan of Seth Godin’s brand of “crackerjack marketing” – for my taste it generally lacks the subtlety and nuance that paints life in anything other than primary colors 1– but I do have to admit that most of his observations are sound, at least in the broad strokes.
As someone who spent the better part of his life as a scientist, I can tell you that while Seth’s observation might be technically right, it does lack the subtlety of insight. Scientists spend vast tracts of time testing and observing the world, and only after gathering, collating, and interpreting the data do they build hypotheses of how the world works.
Scientists make predictions, and predicting the future is far more valuable than explaining the past.
In reality, scientists predict the future by explaining the past. And to be fair, they don’t so much “predict the future” as tell you what would be consistent with past observations.
But buried somewhere here is a lesson, whether you’re in science, marketing, or any other knowledge worker driven field: future insights are only as good as the summation of your past observances. It is, at times, attractively expedient2 to rely on “key thought leaders in the field”3 to generate your “insights” rather than a full-fledged primary marketing research study. We can’t do large-scale marketing research studies, the argument goes, because we don’t have the budget.
But ask yourself this question: what’s more expensive – fielding and executing a good primary marketing research study, or better on a product that only a small handful of people will like?
Or as I’ve heard said before, “The plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘evidence’.”4
- I know there are a great many “Seth-heads” out there. Please understand that I’m in no way saying that being a “Seth-head” is wrong, only that he doesn’t suite my taste. It would be a shame if the only thing you took from this article was this comment about Seth, as I’m trying to address a larger point, which you’ll hopefully see below.
↩ - READ: Cheap and fast.
↩ - READ: A few good customers.
↩ - I can’t seem to find the original source of this quote, so I’ll link to where I first remember hearing it. It now graces a crude printed sign hanging on my own cubicle wall.
↩
VW gears up underserved segment
Posted by Kris Kaneta in Sports, Entertainment and Media on May 20, 2011
Every now and then I come across some really great advertising and when I do I try to make a point of calling it out. Though usually just post it on Facebook, occasionally I may also blog about it. This is one of those times.
Volkswagen has over the last several months put out a handful of really good commercials, a couple in particular that I would say are great. That said, before I make my case, I’ll let you decide for yourself.
OK – so here’s why I think these stand out in particular…
VW tells a compelling story in under a minute. And it’s a story that resonates with a generation of parents across the nation. StarWars, yeah we get that. Heck, that particular commercial could have been filmed in my house, it was so close to home (minus the VW in the driveway). And the parental fear of a kid sneaking off with the car… again, we get that. But they told it without the tired father-son speech about someday this car will be his, blah blah blah.
Besides a great story, and perhaps more importantly, VW demonstrates a clear understanding of their target segment and show cases the brand in a context meaningful to that segment. Affluent suburbanites, Gen-Xers with kids, above average tech savvy, who want functionality as well as aesthetics.
VW doesn’t try to go after BMW here or any other “performance” brand. I mean, it is German engineered and no one would have been surprised nor faulted them if they had. But the car never even leaves the driveway!!! Much less fly around some curvy hillside with the disclaimer of “professional driver, closed course”. Instead, there was a clear focus on NOT being BMW. VW is “your” car… you, the hard working, white collar, family-values parent that clearly has a desire for something above average, but without being extravagant or superfluous.
I love what VW has done. Some might perceive this as a risky route. They’re not talking performance (BMW), they’re not talking safety (Volvo), they’re certainly not competing at the entry level value segment (Hyundai). And yet, I’d argue they’ve captured a valuable segment, one that has long been overlooked.
Well done, VW. Das marketing.
HBR: The Risks of Quantification
Posted by Sam Kale in Data Visualization, Product Marketing on May 19, 2011
Admitting uncertainty means facing reality — and our own needs for security. But admitting uncertainty is not enough. We must learn to actively embrace uncertainty and work with ambiguity.
As I sit in a two day meeting about drawing insights from data quantification, this article is very timely. Obviously there’s merit in looking at your data and trying to draw as many insights as possible, but we as marketers can sometimes end up hiding behind the data, using them as an excuse to take no action in favor of gathering and analyzing more data.
There comes a time, however, where you have to accept whatever level of ambiguity you’re willing to accept, make a decision, and take action. The question then becomes: When is the right time? A better question might be: What do I get by delaying and gathering more data? Am I falling prey to the law of diminishing returns?
As the ever-prescient Merlin Mann likes to say, “How do you know when you have enough [information] to get started? What can you not do with the [information] you have right now?” 1
How do you overcome “Analysis Paralysis”?
RIM: One more nail in the coffin?
Posted by Sam Kale in Product Marketing on May 18, 2011
RIM recalling over 900 faulty BlackBerry PlayBooks, is yours on the list?
Sadly, no explanation of what, exactly was faulty in the devices nor has any official communication come across as of yet…
Yet another nail in the coffin of a company that was too late in admitting it had competitive problems. 1
While it seems clear that RIM isn’t ignoring iOS or Android, per se, what does seem clear is that RIM is caught in the unenviable position of having to choose between what they know – their existing consumer base – and what they should know – that the future isn’t going to embrace their past with open arms (see ComScore link above).
MacWorld has a nice write-up of some of the other “nails” in the coffin.
So why bother? That’s the only conclusion to draw from RIM’s latest grand plan. It should stop pretending it has any other strategy than to hope it will wake up one morning to discover the iPhone and Android phenomenon was just a bad dream. That storyline doesn’t even work in soap operas, much less the real world.
Ouch …
-
If you scroll down in the commeents, you learn that the problem is that the software license agreement won’t load, rendering the device useless. Ironic, isn’t it?
Dan Ariely: Wait for another cookie?
Posted by Sam Kale in Marketing & Branding on May 17, 2011
There is not much place for waiting in today’s marketplace. In fact you can think about the whole capitalist system as being designed to get us to take actions and spend money now – and those businesses that are more successful in that do better and prosper (at least in the short term).
A recent study by colleagues of mine at Duke** demonstrates very convincingly the role that self control plays not only in better cognitive and social outcomes in adolescence, but also in many other factors and into adulthood … Controlling for socioeconomic status and IQ, they show that individuals with lower self-control experienced negative outcomes in [health, wealth, and public safety]…These results show that self-control can have a deep influence on a wide range of activities. And there is some good news: if we can find a way to improve self-control, maybe we could do better.
An interesting analysis. Ariely’s thesis is that over time, people who are better at resisting temptation tend to do better in life (at least with respect to health, wealth, and public safety).
What he doesn’t explore, however, is what happens to companies that are able to resist the allure of immediate gratification. Put another way, is there any material difference in “prosperity”1 between a company that focuses on quarterly profits versus a similar company that looks quarters or years down the road?
In many ways, Jim Collins’ Built to Last tried to answer this question. It profiled 18 companies and compared how they conducted themselves both internally and externally. And while Collins and co-author Jerry Porras concluded that it was better to focus on the long-term, what they couldn’t predict was that nearly half of the companies they profiled have had one trouble or the other in the decade since the book was originally published.
Ten years on, almost half of the visionary companies on the list have slipped dramatically in performance and reputation, and their vision currently seems more blurred than clairvoyant. Consider the fates of Motorola, Ford, Sony, Walt Disney, Boeing, Nordstrom, and Merck. Each has struggled in recent years, and all have faced serious questions about their leadership and strategy. Odds are, none of them today would meet BTL‘s criteria for visionary companies, which required that they be the premier player in their industry and be widely admired by people in the know.
So it seems that if we look long term and the companies that focused on the long term, not all have done well. What’s more, if we look long term at the companies that focus on the short term, some of them have done well, calling into question at very least the applicability of Collins’ conclusions.
And so the question remains: is it better to resist temptation and pursue long term profits, or is it better to give in to the temptation of short-term profits?
- However we choose to define that word, whether it be stock price, market cap, quarterly or yearly profits, or any other metric.
Kris
Sam
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