Marketing in Real Life

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am a believer in good old fashioned market research and testing. But I am also fan of moving (and winning or failing) fast. Often times we as marketers let the perfect be the enemy of the good when it comes to testing. There is unquestionably a place for scientific rigor but how do we get the list of things that make it to that stage. To me, it's simply putting things in market and seeing what happens, even if the results are only directional. Because directional is certainly better than directionless.

Late last week Simply Measured  put out a widely covered story talking about how engagement was 46% for brands on Facebook since converting to Timeline.  A timely (and very tweet-able) headline for sure as brand pages were being forced into Timeline.  Being a researcher at heart I felt it was my duty to read beyond the headline and check out the sample used for the study.  And what I found was an examination of a handful of brands, most of whom were of Fortune 500 size.  So, while the headline was great,  the data was misleading and of minimal relevance to most readers. In a blurb centric world this kind of reporting can be dangerous and highlights why headlines and small sample sizes don't mix well.

Inspired by Martin Lieberman's blog (www.martinlieberman.com) post about change, I decided to try something new. Other than hitting the gym, the thing I have been most frustrated about lately is not getting to write more on the personal blog. So, while I fully realize its harder to write short than to write long I'll be shifting this blog (at least for a few months) to do posts that are six sentences long. I'll still write about market research, marketing, and social media... just shorter and more often. What do you think of the six sentence experiment? I'm looking forward to it!

One of my big pet peeves is when men and women who work within a company insist on using terms that de-humanize the people on the other end of the product or service they offer. I'm not saying that they use demeaning terms, but they choose words that make it okay to treat your best customers as abstract numbers or demographics. In the world of market research, the term most often applied to people like you and I who take surveys is "respondents." It's okay to give respondents a 30 minute questionnaire to complete. It's okay to ask respondents to go though numerous and repetitive choice sets. It's okay to speak to respondents in formal, stilted language. But would you do any of that to your college roommate? Your grandmother? Your child? Your neighbor? Probably not. In fact, most researchers cringe at the idea of even testing their own questionnaires. So before you put a new research study or product implementation or marketing campaign into the world...

This year was my first visit to SXSW Interactive, the annual tech and social media geek convention (wait, is it marketed differently than this?) in Austin, Texas that overlaps with an amazing film and equally amazing festival. I have been to a lot of conferences in the past ten years, but this one was definitely less about the presentation content (although some of that was good too) and more about the people you meet and the conversations you have. Part of team’s mission at “South By,” as it’s known among the SXSW veterans, was to interview interesting people on the state of social media marketing and email marketing for small businesses. We got lots of great interviews, but here are 4 of my favorites. Enjoy!  (I have more content related summaries on social media marketing and monitoring for small businesses that you can check out on the Constant Contact Blog here , here , and here .)

After spending over 10 years working primarily on the supplier side of the client/supplier relationship it is a very different view I am experiencing now. Especially as it pertains to working with market research firms, I have three Observations that I feel the need to share and offer as advice to my supplier side friends. 1) Ask questions when you get an RFP, even if you know the business. The fact is that RFPs while well intentioned, can not possibly explain the entire situation that has led to a market research project. Amd even more importantly, they are not always as fully thought out as suppliers might assume. By asking a few questions before you write a proposal you are investing in you chance to win, building rapport, making it possible to have creative ideas, and confirming your assumptions. All important pieces to winning and successfully executing a project. 2) Don't show mostly numbers in a qualitative presentation. Honestly, I can't believe this even needs to...

In today’s edition of eMarketer there is an article stating that most business to business referrals from social sites are uninterested in products and services. The article, however, goes on to state that visitors from Facebook were most likely to check out a company’s “about” page or blog posts. As a B2B services marketer those are exactly the desired effects of social media that feed our sales process. While it would be great if potential clients saw something we posted on Twitter , LinkedIn , or Facebook and rushed to buy a project from my firm, the reality is that our sales process is not short or direct. Our value proposition is made up of the smarts, personalities, and creativity of our people and our sales cycle can take months (and occasionally years.) Barring the rare immediate project opportunity, our goal is to drive prospects to the elements of our site that let us different ourselves – the blog, the about us, the leadership team, etc. and encourage prospects to contact ...

I spend a lot of time in this blog taking panel companies to task, but I really liked and appreciated what I saw in this new video from Toluna. They are thinking from a panelist perspective (at least in this video) and what makes it worthwhile to be part of the Toluna community. Nice work.

Originally posted at the CMB Research Blog Recently I have been playing around with Foursquare , the geo-targeting based social media application that allows me to "check in" at certain locations, share my "check in" with friends via Twitter and Facebook, and earn "badges" based on how much I use it. I'll be honest, as a consumer I don't fully get it (yet). But as a marketer in 2010 I want to understand where things are going and be able to speak to them as they relate to our clients. And with this week's eMarketer report that 53% of mobile app users are willing to share their locations, there is no question that there is a huge opportunity for brands to utilize this technology. Certainly geo-targeting is not for everyone, but some major brands are going beyond mobile ads and jumping in to help increase the impact of their loyalty programs and reward their best customers in real-time. And as many companies seek to evolve their loyalty progr...

One of my first posts on this blog was about the way online research panels bombard panelists with requests to participate in research. It seemed like I was being invited to take part in surveys that were not relevant and getting these invitations at an alarming rate. How companies treat panelists came to my mind again last week as I listed to speakers at the Social Media and Community Strategies 2.0 Conference. It seemed like as a research panelist I was only treated as product, not as a part of a community where I had any real control over my own experience. After tweeting out the question “do panel companies think of their panelists as customers?” (I received a nice reply from iTracks saying that they do and I have no reason to dispute it.) There is no doubt an opportunity to get more engagement and insight from people who have agreed to be a part of your panel. Or at least to better understand my preferences as a panelist, but instead I just get requests to take a survey… and re...

My last post was about how we conducted internally feedback and a few people asked if they could see the actual questionnaire. As I said, it is far from perfect, but it got us moving in the right direction! What is your role in the company? - Executive - Project manager -Research associate -Admin/Finance/IT -Senior consultant/director -Business development -Other 0-10 agree/disagree scale: On the whole, the marketing team is doing its part to help its CMB internal customers to meet/exceed their goals Why do you rate the marketing team that way? (open end) 0-10 agree/disagree scale: The marketing team follows through on requests quickly and thoroughly Why do you rate the marketing team that way? (open end) 0-10 agree/disagree scale: The marketing team delivers work of the highest quality Why do you rate the marketing team that way? (open end) Overall, has the marketing team improved from 2008 to 2009? Yes/No/don’t know Where do you see room for improvement? (open end) What do you think...

It recently occurred to me that since starting my current role over a year ago I have revamped the entire marketing infrastructure in my organization – from technology, to strategy, to staff, to measurement. Over the next few months I’ll be posting on a lot of those changes – both in terms of why and how we did it – and offer tips for people looking to put the same principles to work in their companies. Today’s topic is a simple one – establishing an internal benchmark for effectiveness/ performance. Background The marketing function in a small-medium sized company like mine can be very different than what people thinking of as “marketing” in a large organization. Traditionally marketers play a sales support role and defer to content experts on the substance of all communications. This makes it very hard to truly measure the success of a group. So while many of the changes we have made are designed to make it easier to measure success, I knew that there was a lot to learn from our inte...

“WE WILL NOW BE CLOSED ON SUNDAYS DUE TO LACK OF CUSTOMERS” That is what the sign said in the window of a new barber shop around the corner from my house when I walked by with my dog last week. It’s a sign that has stuck with me since seeing it, even though it was gone by the time I came back the next morning. The message is clear – they feel like they aren’t making any money on Sundays because they have no one coming in, which may be true. I have no problem with the concept, but as a marketer it pains me when I see a better solution to a situation than this. Here is the situation… The barber shop opened less than three months ago There was no banner or otherwise attention grabbing sign outside to announce its opening (just one door down from a hair salon I might add). They were open 7 days a week. I never received an announcement about their opening or why I should go there and only knew about it because it is on my morning walk. Nothing stated above is that out of the ordinary, so ma...

Much to the chagrin of my number loving colleagues, one of the things that always perks up prospective clients is the fact that my firm, Chadwick Martin Bailey, has a graphic designer on staff to help make reports easier on the eyes. (Chagrin is too strong a word, they just wish that advanced analytics perked prospects up more!) Clients love this because it means less work for them after a report is delivered and shows a commitment to making sure deliverables are easy to share internally. As we move more and more towards increased visualization – and interactivity of research data, I have been having fun playing with some of the interactive tools available online for free. Fast company had a great write-up recently of some of the new offerings from Google, Tableau and others. Play around and let me know what you think has the most potential. As a Fantasy Football junkie, I particularly enjoyed this one in Tableau Public. (or see it more clearly here .) Powered by Tableau

Brand tracking research usually focuses on how customers and prospects get brand impressions through market communications. However, research shows that once a person begins interacting with a brand, their actual experiences have a far greater impact on their perceptions and likelihood to shop, buy, or recommend. Too often companies' brand tracking research doesn't account for this dynamic in any significant way, thus missing the opportunity to tell a more complete story. That's why I believe that the most effective brand tracking research incorporates both: Impact of the Brand: The extent to which market communications are delivering the most compelling brand promises; and Impact of Experience: The extent to which people's experiences at every touch point (e.g., the product, the store/purchase, personnel, problem resolution) match up with what the brand led them to expect So where does social media fall into the equation? Obviously social media has both a brand elemen...

If you missed the recent CMB webinar on The Marketing Performance Advantage conducted with our friends at CMG Partners , one of the top challenges facing marketers we discussed was a perceived lack of the right data or processes to make informed key decisions. In fact, 40% of the 400+ businesses we interviewed saw getting the right data as a challenge that needed addressing: "We don't really have a formal insight gathering process" "We're not sure what the right data is and the data gathered is not trusted" Furthermore, many marketers struggle to connect the data they do have from market research and internal systems to their current decision making process or to the rest of the organization: "We don't often tie the results of surveys to action plans" "We don't have senior level buy-in due to the lack of hard data results against programs" "It is difficult to find talent who can think strategically and manipulate data" ...

I love the Winter Olympics - from curling to hockey to freestyle skiing to the biathlon. And of course, I am always fascinated by the sponsors and the fees those sponsors pay to be involved. When we looked at the impact of Super Bowl ads on people's propensity to go online and learn more, big ticket sports advertising didn't seem worth it. But this week's research on the Olympics told a different story as not only were people aware of the sponsorships, they saw significant brand benefits (read more in the article at MediaPost ). The other interesting note was that many competing brands were also getting lifted by sponsorships. Maybe its a side effect of the fact that Verizon and AT&T (for example) are so embedded in one another's commercials but certainly everyone is benefiting from perceived Olympic affiliation .

Welcome to this month's issue of 1 topic, 5 blogs. Todays topic is DIY surveys. Links to my fellow bloggers Bernie Malinoff, Joel Rubinson, Annie Petit and Brandon Bertelsen can be found below. Since the day I joined the market research industry a decade ago (and much longer I assume), researchers have been yearning for wider use of market research within organizations and the proverbial "seat at the table." And while I fully understand and recognize the concerns that MR professionals have about Do IT Yourself surveys like Survey Monkey and Zoomerang, these tools present the much sought after opportunity for research to be more widely adopted and valued in large companies and more widely used in smaller organizations. Why are these tools attractive to clients? One of the driving forces I have seen behind the use of DIY surveys are frustrations with internal and external research organizations. So before shuddering at the thought of someone who has not been trained as a re...

Here in Boston it has become tough to digest a Super Bowl week without our beloved Patriots involved. Given my love for the food and music of New Orleans and the fact that CMB's President, Anne Bailey Berman is from Louisiana, I'll be wearing black and gold when big event arrives. But what are other people thinking and tweeting about as the "big event" approaches? Using Voxtrot Opinion (a cool way to monitor and analyze online conversations from our friends at Crimson Hexagon) I looked at what people in the Twitterverse (Twitter users) are talking about this week. The first finding, "the big event" isn't necessarily the game itself. In fact, just 38% of tweets related to the game and the two teams involved (24% in favor of the Saints, 14% in favor of the Colts). So what else is on the table? From discussions of who is (Focus on the Family featuring Tim Tebow) and who isn't (Pepsi) advertising this year to planning and attending parties to questions...

I love Domino's new ads as both a consumer and someone who works in the market research industry. And before research purists jump down my throat, I know that Domino's new Focus group centric ads seem to show a single focus group, that the information used is merely directional and we'd like to assume that this research is probably part of a bigger study or perhaps even faked for the purposes of the advertising. I also don't know what other techniques were used, nor do I really care that much. What I do care about is the impact of the ads on the "brand" of the industry. In recent years the industry has come under fire and mocked continuously on televisions (see the office's brilliant customer satisfaction scores episode), so I am excited to see a positive portrayal of what we do and how company's use information to better serve their customers. In addition to the fact that Domino's has done an excellent job being self-deprecating and recognizing co...