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Marketing and Movies: Moneyball

I am a sucker for shows or documentaries that detail how a business started from nothing and became a success. I’m also a big fan of sports movies. Moneyball is both, so of course it’s one of my favorite movies.

Moneyball follows the 2001 offseason and 2002 season that saw the Oakland Athletics overcome massive budget constraints and the loss of its star players to set the American League record for consecutive wins, and make the postseason. I think the story of Moneyball will resonate with a lot of business owners who are having to take a long, hard look at its direction given the economic and business uncertainty we are all facing heading into 2021.

In the 2001 offseason, Oakland lost its two ‘star’ players, Johnny Damon and Jason Giambi to rivals who could afford to pay far richer salaries than the Athletics could. General Manager Bill Beane went to the Athletics owner and told him he needed more money to make the Athletics competitive. The owner said there was no more money for Beane and that he should do the best he can. Beane then went to his scouts who were focused on trying to replace Giambi and Damon. Beane became frustrated with this mentality because he knew that the Athletics couldn’t afford players that could hit the same number of HRs and who had the same batting average as Giambi and Damon. And even if they could find a couple of players that could put up similar stats to Giambi and Damon, the Athletics would lose them in a year or two when a richer ballclub offered them a higher salary that the Athletics couldn’t match.

Beane knew that the Athletics needed to change the way they viewed acquiring players. At first he tried to get the best players the Athletics could afford. He visited the Indians, and proposed several trades or player acquisitions, but Beane noticed that these offers were all rejected after advisor Peter Brand spoke to management. Beane left the meeting frustrated, and decided to speak to Brand directly to find out what he told Indians management to get them to kill his player offers.

Brand then explained to Beane that many baseball teams were making a grave mistake in evaluating players. Most teams at the time were focusing on stats like home runs, runs batted in and batting average. Brand explained “your goal shouldn’t be to buy players, it should be to buy wins. And in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs.” Beane was impressed by Brand’s new approach to player evaluation and hired him from the Indians to help him rebuild the Athletics team.

In part of doing that, Beane and Brand began evaluating offensive players based not on HRs, RBIs or BA, but instead on whether or not they got on base. In this scene, Beane meets with the Athletics’ scouts and explains the change in philosophy when it comes to evaluating players:

As you can see, the scouts were confused by this approach as soon as they heard it. As Beane and Brand continued to acquire players who didn’t have flashy stats (but who did get on base), the fans and rest of the league scratched their heads at what the Athletics were doing. Then, the team began to struggle mightily, resulting in huge pressure being put on Beane to change his ‘moneyball’ approach to building his team in order to save his job. Beane decided to see the season through, even trading Carlos Pena, who was projected as a future All-Star, simply because he wasn’t the best fit for his new ‘moneyball’ system. That decision led to Brand asking him to please reconsider, and Beane told him that if they believed in their ‘moneyball’ approach, that they needed to commit to it:

Over time, Beane and Brand worked with the players to help educate them on how to get on base more often and how to play smart once they did. In one scene, Beane explains to a player that he wants him to focus on getting on base, not on stealing bases.  The player replies “but you pay me to steal bases, that’s what I do”, to which Beane replies “I pay you to get on first, not get thrown out at second.”

They worked with the players to stress to them the importance of waiting for their perfect pitch. Brand used analytics to show the players when to take pitches and when to swing, based on their hitting history. The play of the team improved dramatically, as the Athletics went from one of the worst teams in baseball to one of the best. Along the way, the Athletics won 20-straight games, setting an American League record that would stand for 15 years.

Now there’s several themes from Moneyball that I think tie nicely to successful marketing and business. First, there’s having the courage to try something new if your current strategy has proven not to work. Beane faced a ton of resistance to his Moneyball approach both within the Athletics organization, and in the sport of baseball. He was trying something new, and quite honestly a lot of people wanted to see him fail. That leads to the second key lesson, to commit to your strategy and give it a chance. When the Athletics actually did start losing, that just increased the pressure on Beane to drop the ‘moneyball’ approach. But Beane trusted in the strategy that he and Brand had developed, and committed to seeing it through.

But what really resonated for me personally was the idea of evaluating players based on whether or not they get on base versus if they have flashy stats. Getting on base can be done in some very unsexy ways, like taking 12 pitches and a walk, or getting hit by a pitch. Beane just wanted to see his players get on base, he didn’t care how they did it. At the time, many teams wanted a player that would hit 40 HRs, and didn’t really care if his on-base percentage was .250.

For years, I approached blogging and content creation as if I was constantly chasing home runs. Or in terms of blogging, a home run would be an ‘awesome post’. So every post was supposed to be a home run, or ‘awesome’. And we constantly hear this, don’t we?  ‘It’s about quality, not quantity!’ or ‘If you can’t write a great post, wait till you can!’

The reality is, no blogger writes a great post every time. But for years, that was my goal, write a great post every time. And write a lot of them.

I used to love Kathy Sierra’s blog Creating Passionate Users. Kathy was a very infrequent blogger. She would typically blog once, maybe twice a month at most. But almost every post she wrote, was incredible. Whenever a new Kathy Sierra post was published, it would create an immediate ripple throughout the blogging and tech community.

Kathy hit a home run every time she posted. I thought that was the standard. That’s what I wanted to do.

So every time I would start out to blog, I wanted to make every post be an awesome one. By the 3rd or 4th day, I had typically run out of ‘awesome’ ideas for posts. So I would tell myself ‘if you can’t write an awesome blog post today, then don’t write anything’. So I wouldn’t. Then the next day I would try again. Before I knew it, I was blogging once a week, then once every other week.

This process repeated itself over the years. This year, I decided to try something different. Before, I told myself “Your job is to write an awesome blog post today”.  Now, I tell myself “Your job is to write a blog post today”.

See the difference? Before I was shooting to hit a ‘home run’ at every at bat, which is completely unrealistic.  Now, I focus on getting on base.  Just writing a blog post.

Because the reality is, the more you write, the better you become at writing.  The more often you blog, the better you become at blogging, the better you become at writing awesome posts.

So that’s my ‘moneyball’ approach to blogging; Don’t worry about hitting a home run, just get on base.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Tik Tok Partners with Oracle, Digital Body Language, How Gen Zers View Brands

Hey y’all! Let’s get cracking with another week of business and marketing goodness!

 

Tik Tok rejected Microsoft’s offer to buy the company then an hour or so later turned around and agreed to partner with Oracle as a ‘trusted tech partner’. This is not a sale (at least not yet), and it appears Oracle will help manage US operations for Tik Tok, likely lending its cloud computing technology.

 

Digital body language is a wonderful topic that too few marketers think about.  My dear friend Kelly shared this fabulous article that breaks down what can be happening on your site and how you can convince the visitor to become a buyer:

 

 

Now this graph in this tweet immediately caught my attention:

First, it’s ridiculous to combine Gen Xers with our Boomer parents as we are completely different groups, but whatevs. But what really caught my attention was note the percentage that choose brands based on friend/family recommendations falls with every age group. Now I checked the fine print and the results are coming from a survey of Snapchat users, so that will likely skew the results some.

But I found this quote from the article about how Gen Zers view recommendations from friends and family to be fascinating:

“Part of that, of course, is that such recommendations are now much easier to come by, as you can see what people like and advocate for via social media. Past generations didn’t always have this as a reference point, so it makes sense that they’re less instinctively reliant on the same.

But Gen Z has adapted to the modern communications environment, which underlines the importance of facilitating advocacy through influencers and regular customers on social networks.”

This tends to suggest that who Gen Zers consider to be ‘friends’ could be much broader than their older counterparts. In fact, could this even be suggesting that Gen Zers view influencers they like as their ‘friends’? I think this is a very interesting area to explore and research further. Perhaps the definition of who a ‘friend’ is more abstract for the youngest digital natives, and becomes more literal as we age? Again, I find this fascinating and worthy of further research.

 

Oh Twitter…you just can’t help yourself, can you? It appears that Twitter is now positioning itself to be in a position to censor any election day tweets that discuss who has won or lost any of the races on Election Day in November:

This is so scary for so many reasons. Here’s a hypothetical; Let’s say a group of hardcore Trump supporters were put in charge of monitoring tweets on election day. And let’s say these Trump supporters are ACTIVIST supporters, who are put in charge of monitoring. In theory, they could delete any tweet that contains phrases like ‘Biden will win’ or ‘I think Biden will win’ and claim it is ‘unverified election results’. That would result in there appearing to be almost no excitement for the Biden campaign, which could easily influence undecided independent voters. Moves like this are why we are likely headed toward a day when big social media sites are regulated by the government as publishers, not platforms.

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Marketing and Movies: Memento

The customer is always right and always ‘remembers’ things from their POV.

Christopher Nolan’s resume as a director is spectacular. Interstellar, Inception, Dunkirk, The Prestige, and The Dark Knight, which in my opinion includes the finest performance by an actor ever; Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker.

But I think Nolan’s masterwork as a director and storyteller is a movie you may have never heard of; Memento.  Memento follows a man named Leonard Shelby with a very unique condition; He cannot make new memories. Throughout the course of the movie, Leonard tells us of the an attacker who broke into his home, attacked him and his wife. The attacker killed Leonard’s wife and in the process of fighting with Leonard, Leonard was knocked unconscious resulting in Leonard’s ‘condition’. Leonard has this scene where he recalls that night to Natalie:

 

Natalie: “What’s the last thing that you do remember?”

Leonard: “My wife…”

Natalie: “That’s sweet.”

Leonard: “…dying.”

 

Leonard’s life since that point has been focused on finding his wife’s killer and extracting vengeance. This quest is obviously made much more difficult by the fact that Leonard cannot form new memories.  In general, he can remember the last 5 minutes or so, but if something startles him, such as a loud noise like a car backfiring, his short-term memory will ‘reset’ and he will forget even the last few minutes. He could be talking to someone and know who that person is, and suddenly forget who that person is or why he’s talking to him. Here’s an example where Leonard is running and trying to figure out why he is running. He then sees a man running too, and mistakenly assumes he is chasing the man:

 

To help put the audience in Leonard’s shoes, Nolan brilliantly organizes the story into 5-minute or so segments. The segments then alternate so that you actually see the ‘end’ of the story at the first of the movie. Then the following segment shows you the first few minutes of the story, then the following segment shows you the next to last segment of the story, so on and so forth until the movie ends in the actual ‘middle’ of the story. Nolan does this purposely to help the audience understand what Leonard’s life is like with his condition. A life lived in 5-minute increments.

Since Leonard cannot make new memories, he created an elaborate system of note-taking to help him make up for not being able to create new memories. He takes Polaroid pictures of important people and places he encounters, and then writes notes on the pictures so he knows why they are relevant to his quest to find his wife’s killer. Leonard even went so far as to cover his body with tattoos which are a list of the most basic ‘facts’ of the case, such as the name of the man he is looking for, his description, and other important information that Leonard needed to have with him at all times.

But the one element of this story that I find absolutely fascinating is how Leonard’s world of truth and fiction, right and wrong, is recreated every five minutes due to his memory condition. In fact, multiple characters in the film use Leonard’s inability to keep his memory to their advantage. In one scene, Natalie tells Leonard that she is about to lie to him, but that it will be a few minutes in the future and Leonard won’t remember that she’s now telling him this. She walks outside and Leonard begins frantically searching for a pen and paper so he can write down what she just told him. As he is searching, Natalie walks back in the house and slams the front door.  The slamming of the front door jars Leonard and causes his short-term memory of Natalie’s previous conversation to disappear.

This creates an ongoing puzzle for the audience to solve when watching this movie.  Because at any time, any character, including Leonard, could be lying, or they could be telling the truth. And if what Natalie is saying now is the truth, that means what Teddy told Leonard in the previous scene was a lie or vice versa. And Nolan gives us at least one example of every character in the movie telling at least one lie. So we are constantly having to evaluate each scene based on who seems truthful and who doesn’t.

But throughout the course of the movie, we learn that Leonard’s version of what happened on and since the night he lost his ability to make new memories, may not be what actually happened. In other words, Leonard through the retelling of the story in his own mind, has likely altered events to make his actions more pure, and to give his quest to find his wife’s killer more meaning.

Now, how does all this relate to marketing?

Let’s go back to that first line in this post: The customer is always right and always ‘remembers’ things from their POV. If you think about it, we all do this. All human beings tend to remember things differently than they actually happened. Maybe by a tiny bit, maybe by a lottabit. For years I remembered my childhood home as being on this sprawling plot of land, with massive fields surrounding it where I played as a child. The entire area seemed to cover miles in my memory. A few years ago, I drove back to visit that area and was stunned at how small everything actually was. What I remembered as being a massive area of land was only a couple of acres at best.

So when it comes to marketing, you need to remember this lesson that we tend to ‘remember’ things more positively when it comes to our own actions.  This is especially relevant when you are working in customer service and dealing with angry customers. Often, these customers can clearly see the company’s fault, and be totally oblivious to what they may have done to contribute to their support issue. The lesson for the company is to not lose its temper and to have empathy for the customer.  Understand the customer’s POV and don’t take any criticism seriously. Studies have shown than when we become angry and upset, our ability to think rationally is diminished, and this increases as we become more upset.

If you can show the customer that you have empathy for them and their situation, that will go a long way toward putting them at ease and you can have a much more productive interaction. The customer as a group IS always right because if you don’t satisfy your customers, you will lose them. Now this doesn’t mean every INDIVIDUAL customer is ‘right’ and this is where some people are confused by the true meaning of the phrase ‘the customer is always right’.

Just understand that we all have a unique POV and we all tend to view ourselves in the best possible light. That’s just human nature. Accept that, show empathy to your customers, listen to them, and a productive interaction, whether as a support issue or as a purchase, will be the result.

PS: Hopefully this post has piqued your interest to check out Memento. Here’s the trailer for the movie:

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: The Relaunch

So starting today, you will see a LOT more activity here. One of the things I have always struggled with when it comes to content creation is the content calendar. Figuring out what to write about and when to write it. I think I’ve finally hit on a content creation system I can use and replicate.

Starting today, there will 6 new posts a week.  Yes, I said SIX! And the content will be arranged similar to how a newspaper is organized into sections, or how a TV’s primetime schedule is organized.  Here’s what you can expect:

Monday – Monday’s Marketing Minute. A post with a few of the top marketing, content. customer service and digital stories that caught my eye within the last few days.

Tuesday – On Tuesdays I will have an ‘opinion’ post, similar to the Editorial section of a newspaper.

Wednesday – Marketing & Movies. This series is going to be SO much fun! Every Wednesday I take one of my favorite movies and talk about a great marketing or business example from the movie.

Thursday – Marketing Educational/Thought Leadership posts. These will cover a marketing topic, often related to digital, customer experience, brand loyalty, etc.

Friday – Friday Free-For-All. I’ve given myself permission to blog about ANY topic I want on Fridays. It could be marketing, it could be Egyptian archaeology, it could be astronomy. But I’d suspect business and marketing topics will be discussed more often than not.

Saturday – Since this is the weekend, posts on Saturday will focus on tools, how to get better at blogging or some other digital tool or application.  Much like how PBS, for instance, always runs programs devoted to home improvement, travel, cooking or crafting on the weekends.

I’m really excited about getting back to writing regularly and focusing on blogging, which is my first digital love and one I’ve been wanting to get back to for a long time.  I hope you’ll enjoy the copious amounts of content coming here.  On with the show!

 

So one of the biggest changes we’ve all experienced in regards to covid in 2020 is shifting our personal spending from offline to online. Yet while eCommerce sales are setting records in the US, eMarketer has found that digital display ad spending for retailers won’t increase that much. Why do you think this is?  My first guess would be that retailers are restricting ad budgets across the board in response to overall lost sales as a result of covid. Let’s hope for a strong economic rebound later this year and in 2021.

 

 

We talk a lot about building great brand ambassador programs here, so I loved Goldie Chan’s article on B2B Ambassador programs because she asked several influencers with experience in this area to share what they have learned.  Plus it was exciting to see friends like Kerry Gorgone and Lee Odden featured! As a fellow member of Adobe’s Insiders Program, I can agree with Lee and Kerry on how well-structured the program is.

 

 

Joe Rogan is an interesting guy that often makes some really good points about business and politics on his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience. I thought this quote about Twitter was spot-on: “There is no empathy in these conversations and that’s a big part of the problem [with Twitter].”  He thinks Twitter won’t be around much longer, and I agree with him.  I don’t think we will have a Twitter in 2025.

 

I love this tweet from former Alabama/Oklahoma standout QB Jalen Hurts:

Companies are always wondering how they create and cultivate more fans. 90% of it is simply taking the time to acknowledge the ones you already have.

 

Finally, congratulations to my blogging friend, Helen Rittersporn on recently blogging for 2,000 straight days! Helen is a #Blogchat alum and has in the past sent me special postcards to mark her blogging anniversaries.  Here’s the ones she sent for her 2000th straight post:

You can learn more about Helen at her blog Anchored Scraps, which is devoted to ‘old-style correspondence through handwritten letters between kindred souls’. Lovely, thanks again Helen, I’m going to try to channel some of your blogging dedication in getting my blog back off the ground!

See y’all tomorrow!

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The Difference Between a Brand Ambassador and a Brand ‘Spokesperson’

brand ambassador, brand spokesperson The terms ‘brand ambassador’, ‘brand spokesperson’ and ‘influencers’ are used almost interchangeably these days, so let’s talk about how each group is different. Once you understand the differences, you will have a much better idea of how to use each in your marketing strategies.

A brand ambassador is a person who works to promote and represent a brand in its marketplace. Brand ambassadors are often current customers who were already advocating for brands before they started working with them. Brand ambassadors have a working relationship with the brands they represent, and are given instruction on how to interact with customers in the marketplace, based on the business goals for that brand. Typically, a brand will have multiple ambassadors, and their involvement with the brand is organized and executed via a formal brand ambassador program.

 

A brand spokesperson is a person who works to promote and represent a brand in its marketplace. Brand spokespeople are typically chosen because they have a following either online or offline. Often, these people are viewed as ‘celebrities’ and are often known outside the industry where the brand exists. The term influencer is used almost interchangeably here with brand spokesperson. An influencer is more often someone who has built a following online, whereas a spokesperson is more often someone who has built a following offline. In either case, whether a brand is working with a spokesperson or influencer, there is typically a financial relationship in place. In short, the spokesperson or influencer will leverage their following to promote the brand and drive attention to the brand.

 

How to Select and Work With Brand Ambassadors

In my experience working with companies to help them create brand ambassador programs and in talking to companies that have launched their own efforts, the ultimate success of the brand ambassador program is typically impacted by the selection process for the ambassadors.  Your brand ambassador program will be more successful, all other things being equal, if the people you choose as ambassadors for your brand are currently fans of your brand.  Existing brand advocates make the best brand ambassadors.  Brand advocates have a higher level of understanding and passion for your brand.  They are already actively promoting your brand to other customers, you are simply going to better organize and empower their efforts by making them part of a formal brand ambassador program.

Another option is the so-called ‘open cattle call’ approach to finding brand ambassadors.  Typically, anyone is accepted (first come, first served), and the incentives offered are a chance to make money or get free products, etc.  Often, it can be positioned as a chance to get free products from major brands, and maybe even be paid for creating content that promotes the brand.

The problem with the ‘open cattle call’ approach is obvious.  That person’s prime motivation for wanting to become an ‘ambassador’ for a particular brand is to get free products and to be paid for creating content that promotes the brand.  Basically, they aren’t participating because they love the brand, they are participating because they love getting paid.

When money is the primary motivation for being involved in a brand ambassador program, it changes the behavior of that person.  The ‘ambassador’ will typically create content that isn’t authentic and based on actual opinions, but instead will focus on creating promotional content that the person feels the brand will pay them for.  And readers of the content can easily see the disconnect, it would be odd if I suddenly started blogging about how amazing Luv diapers are (as someone who has no kids), and noted at the end of my post that I was paid to write said post.

On the other hand, existing brand advocates want to become ambassadors for your brand because their motivation is based on seeing your brand succeed.  They literally LOVE your brand and will usually jump at the chance to work with it to better connect with customers and help move the brand forward.  Although compensation is involved with them as well, brand advocates usually prefer more direct access to the brand and maybe advance access to upcoming products versus simply getting paid.  Brand advocates prefer access over cash in most cases.

So if your company is thinking about creating a brand ambassador program, carefully consider who you want to be involved as ambassadors for your brand.  Do you want to bring in existing customers that love your brand, or ‘brand spokespeople’ that have little to no natural affinity for your brand?  The smart bet is on your existing customers that love your brand and want to see it succeed just as much as you do.

 

How to Select and Work With Brand Spokespeople and Influencers

Over the last 15 years, I’ve worked with many companies on their influencer and spokesperson campaigns. In fact, I’m in a bit of a unique position as I have ample experience working with brands to help them create and launch influencer programs, and I’ve also worked with brands AS an influencer in their influencer programs. So I can speak to this topic from both the brand and influencer perspective.

The biggest mistake I see brands make in choosing an influencer to work with, is the brand only looks at the size of the influencer’s following. The second biggest mistake I see brands make when choosing influencers is to ignore how much engagement the influencer can create around their content. These two areas work in tandem, because it is very difficult for an influencer to have personal interactions with their followers once the influencer’s following reaches a certain level. The influencers ability to connect individually does not scale very well. (Note: the one exception to this rule seems to be Twitch streamers. They have found a very unique way to reach a mass audience, at scale.)

When I work with companies to select and vet influencers to work with, I tell them to focus on the following:

  • Always select influencers who are actual customers of your brand. The importance of this cannot be overstated, as you want to work with influencers that already use and love your products if at all possilble.
  • The influencer’s ability to drive engagement is always more important than their following. What is influence? It’s a person’s ability to create a change of behavior in someone else. If an influencer can’t create engagement around their content, then they likely don’t have much influence over their network. In other words, their ability to create engagement is a great indicator of their ability to influence others.
  • When possible, select influencers who have a long history of working with brands. These influencers are more familiar with the process and more likely to understand what the brand wants from the arrangement.

 

The Key Differences Between Brand Ambassadors and Brand Spokespeople/Influencers

  • Compensation: An influencer will typically be compensated financially. An ambassador can be compensated financially, or with other perks such as products or early access to new products, access to key executives at the brand, etc.
  • A brand ambassador is typically a current customer of the brand, an influencer often is not.
  • Brand ambassadors often have a long-time working relationship with the brand that’s organized via a formal brand ambassador program. Most brands work with influencers on a more limited or specific amount of time.

 

Hopefully this helps you understand the differences from the brand’s perspective when it comes to working with ambassadors, spokespeople, and influencers. I’ve worked with brands since 2008 as both an influencer, and in helping brands craft amazing ambassador and influencer programs. If you have a question about how these processes work, feel free to contact me:

 

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What’s the ‘Purpose’ of Your Marketing?

We all need a purpose in our lives and day to day activities. Sure, we get up, go to work, pay bills, and live life. But beyond that, we need to live a life of purpose. We need something to motivate and inspire us to get up in the morning. We need something to look forward to, we need to feel like we are accomplishing something worthwhile.

We need to feel like our life has a purpose.

In much the same way, your brand’s marketing needs a purpose. I’m not talking about separating your customers from their wallet, that’s not inspiring or motivating for the brand or customer. Does your marketing simply broadcast and promote on behalf of your brand, or does it have a purpose?

At Maker’s Mark, the brand gives its marketing purpose by reframing who its customers are. The brand views its customers as ‘friends’, and as such holds all marketing communications through the lense of ‘how would we talk to our friends?’ Additionally, the brand understands that you don’t broadcast to your friends, you have a one-to-one conversation with them. For years, the brand’s founders did this literally in the state of Kentucky where Maker’s Mark originated. But as the brand grew and became a nationwide sensation, it obviously became impossible for founders in Kentucky to have a one-to-one conversation with its customers all across the nation.

But Maker’s Mark held true to the ‘purpose’ of its marketing; to treat its customers as friends and have a one-to-one conversation with them. This led to the creation of a brand ambassador program, which allowed its ambassadors to scale those one-to-one conversations with customers all across the country. By holding true to the ‘purpose’ of its marketing, to treat its customers as friends, the brand was able to create an incredibly profitable brand ambassador program, which allowed the brand to have those one-to-one conversations with their friends.

The ‘purpose’ of Pedigree’s marketing isn’t to sell dog food, it’s to create happier and healthier dogs. This is also a focus that motivates its customers to pay attention to Pedigree’s marketing. Pedigree’s customers don’t care about dog food, they care about the health and well-being of their dogs, of all dogs.  Pedigree also uses its marketing to draw attention to dog adoption, to supporting your local pet shelter. All of these things tie into the ‘purpose’ of creating happier and healthier dogs.

If you’re trying to wrap your head around what the ‘purpose’ of your marketing is, think about how your brand’s products and services fit into the lives of your customers, and more importantly, how do those products and services improve the lives of your customers? If you can understand how your brand’s products and services improve your customer’s lives, that can become what you market.  That can become your marketing’s ‘purpose’ and what drives and inspires you as a marketer.

Don’t market your product, market how your product fits into my life and makes it better.  That should be the purpose of your marketing.

 

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Research: CMOs Say Social Media Budgets Are Surging, But Finding Solid Results Still a Struggle

Companies are spending more on social media marketing according to CMO Survey, but they also continue to struggle to see quantitative results from their digital efforts.

The survey of 324 marketers sheds light on where CMOs will be focusing their budgets and attention in 2019.

  • Spending on digital marketing will increase by 12.3% over the next 12 months, while spending on traditional marketing will fall by 1.2%
  • Currently, digital marketing accounts for 44.3% of all marketing budgets. Over the next 5 years, digital spending is forecast to increase to 54.1% of total marketing spend.
  • Spending on Social Media is expected to increase by 66% over the next 5 years

Even though spending on Social Media is surging, marketers are struggling to show the actual business impact of its Social Media efforts.

The CMO Survey found that 39.3% of respondents could not show any business impact from using Social Media. Another 36% said they are seeing a qualitative impact, with 24.7% seeing an quantitative impact.  In short, that means 25% of marketers can show the ROI for their Social Media efforts.

So obviously, companies won’t continue to increase spending on Social Media without being able to show a return on those dollars. Digging deeper into the numbers, I believe I spotted two reasons why some of these marketers are struggling to prove the effectiveness of Social Media for their companies.

First, one of the questions posed to respondents was “How Effectively Does Your Company Integrate Social Media?” The question was scaled from 1 to 7, with 1 being “not at all effectively” and 7 being “very effectively”. When it came to “integration level for linking social media to marketing strategy”, the score was 4.2.  When it came to “integration level for integrating customer information across purchasing, communication, and social media channels”, that score was 3.5. So while companies are doing better at integrating its social media strategies into their larger marketing strategies, they continue to fall short when it comes to sharing customer information and communications across the enterprise. This hurts overall marketing effectiveness and can lead to a disjointed and inconsistent service experience for the customer.

Second, only 3.9% of marketing budgets are devoted to employee training and development. This amount actually represents an 8% decline over the last 6 months. What’s worse, for B2C companies, that figure is only 2.8%.

So you can see how these two areas would be related, to a degree. First, I’m a big believer in equipping your employees with the proper training and skills they need to do their jobs effectively. It increases employee productivity, as well as their satisfaction with their work. And research has shown that just a 10% increase in the efficiency of your social media strategy nets a 2% increase in revenue. Corporate training is a smart way to increase production and employee satisfaction.

Check out the entire CMO Survey here. It’s got a ton of great takeaways on where marketers will be focusing their attention in 2019.

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Marketing Conferences; Here’s What to Look For on Post-Event Surveys From Attendees

Marketing conferences, for the most part, are divided into two seasons; Spring and Fall. The Fall season began earlier this month, with a few big events already happening, and more on tap for October and November. So I thought this would be a good time to talk a bit about the post-event surveys that all these conferences will send out to attendees.

For the most part, these surveys are boilerplate, you answer a series of questions about the event from a scale of 1 to 5.  At the end, there will typically be a “Are there any additional comments you’d like to leave?” chance for attendees to get one last chance to speak their mind.

Typically, the feedback given in these open-ended answers falls into four catergories:

1 – The attendee talks about the event

2 – The attendee talks about themselves

3 – The attendee talks about the venue

4 – The attendee talks about the organizers

 

Obviously, there can be some overlapping among those four areas of potential feedback, and often is. But the question becomes, “Which type of attendee feedback is best?”

The answer is simple; You want your attendees to talk about themselves. You want them to tell you that attending your event sparked a positive change in their behavior.

Here’s an example of the type of feedback you want: “I had hit a wall in implementing a digital marketing strategy at my company, but the sessions at your event helped bring clarity to my efforts. I came to your event hoping to learn more about measuring results, engaging customers online, and generating better content. Three sessions stuck out in my mind, Kami Huyse’s session on Digital Marketing ROI, Mack Collier’s Think Like a Rock Star session (customer engagement) and Andy Crestodina’s session on Building Better Content. I got so much value from these and other sessions that I actually took a break from the conference on Thurs to go back to my hotel room and have a GoToMeeting session with my team to share some of the things I had learned so they could immediately start implementing those changes. I will be leading an All Hands meeting next week at my company and cannot wait to share everything I have learned. This was money well spent and I will be returning next year.”

This is the perfect post-event feedback. Note that throughout this comment, the attendee is detailing how your event made a positive impact on their work. This is what you want to see, it’s not enough to have a great event with great socializing at a cool venue.  That stuff is WAY too easy to copy and improve upon.

What’s much harder to do, is send your attendees home having solved business problems they were facing. If your event can do that, you’ll not only win their repeat business, you will get them to bring you more attendees the following year(s).

So when you realize that the best type of feedback from attendees is when they talk about themselves (ie you helped them solve their business problems), then how could you change the structure of your event so that you increase the chances of getting that type of feedback from more attendees?

For instance, you could go to your speakers and stress to them the need to focus on solving specific problems for attendees.  Have them create their presentation so that it solves particular problems, and that it clearly provides those solutions to attendees.

Another thing you could do is have one on one consulting sessions with attendees. I know the Marketing Profs events have done this in the past. Maybe schedule them for the last day as a sort of catch-all, if an attendee came to the event needing certain questions answered and still didn’t get a solution by the last day, then schedule a quick consulting session with an expert.

What about having a designated ‘note taker’ in each session who takes detailed notes and captures takeaways from each session?  Then at the end of the day/event, the summaries for each session are made available to all attendees. Or better yet, ask the speakers to provide these beforehand to give to attendees.

By focusing on trying to elicit a particular type of feedback from attendees, you can completely restructure your event in a way that provides much more value to those attendees. If you would like to work with me to improve your event in 2019, please email me as I am happy to help either in a consulting or speaking capacity.

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Marketing Shouldn’t be a Nuisance, it Should Be Sexy


Writing about marketing can be challenging. If it’s treated as merely a business function, writing on marketing can get very boring, very quickly. Not just for the reader, for the writer as well.

But marketing can often be so much more than it is. The best marketing is never noticed, and you could argue that the worst marketing isn’t either. The difference is, we immediately know bad marketing when we see it, but we often view great marketing as being anything but….marketing.

The challenge is, how do you teach companies to market better if they simply view marketing as a way to get more sales? And how do you create marketing that’s more interesting and even alluring to customers who have been conditioned all their lives to know that marketing is a nuisance?

I was pondering this as I came across this quote from Kathy Sierra:

“Knowledge cannot be pushed into someone’s head while they sit passively reading or listening. Knowledge is a co-creation… the learner must construct the new knowledge in his own head. And usually (or some say ALWAYS), the new knowledge must be mapped into something that’s already IN the learner’s head.”

Now obviously, Kathy’s point was concerning the learning process, and how people learn better when they do more than simply read content. If you can involve them in the process and give them a way to apply what they are reading as they are reading it, you increase learning. Basically, you learn by doing.

But the ‘co-creation’ part grabbed my attention, as did the part about mapping new knowledge to something that’s already IN the learner’s head. If you change ‘knowledge’ to ‘marketing’ and change the ‘learner’ to ‘customer’, you get: ‘marketing must be mapped to something that’s already IN the customer’s head’.

In other words, marketing must tap into something that the customer finds value and relevance in.

For example, think of the Volvo print ads from many years ago with the safety pin. That helped associate ‘safety’ with Volvo vehicles, and it’s a connection that carries over to today. The key is that customers were already interested in having a safe vehicle, so Volvo was smart enough to associate itself with something that was already important to the customer.

So in order for marketing to be effective and win the attention of the potential customer, it has to be related to something that the potential customer already values. This is the classic mistake that most companies make, they try to immediately close the sale with potential customers. A potential customer has little to no idea who you are or why they should buy from you. So obviously, you should not sell to these people UNTIL they understand who you are, what you sell and why it fits into their lives.

The key then is to market to what’s important to the customer. Volvo didn’t market their cars, they marketed safety to potential customers. That got the attention of those potential customers.

I’ve talked about this before, but in order to gain awareness with a group of customers who don’t know who you are, you must focus your marketing completely on the customer.  THAT is how you gain their attention. Once you have their attention, then you can market yourself to them. But not before.

This is why the best marketing doesn’t feel like marketing to your customers. Because we view marketing as being a nuisance, but if marketing is focused on what we as customers want and need, then it becomes USEFUL to us, and we actually can seek it out. We don’t view it as marketing and we don’t even realize we are being marketed to. But if marketing is bad, we immediately notice it, and ignore it.

The best marketing is invisible. The worst marketing becomes invisible.

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How Much Does a Brand Ambassador Program Cost?

cost of a brand ambassador program

Organized brand ambassador programs are becoming more popular with companies, but there’s very little information out there about the prices companies can expect to pay for creating and maintaining a brand ambassador program.

So I wanted to give you some information on pricing with this post.  Let me state up front that the prices you see in this post are intended to be used as a guide and a starting point for your research.  The prices you are quoted might be completely different, or they could be exactly in line with what’s listed here.  The prices listed here are based on my experience working with companies on  similar programs, information gained from talking to industry peers and from good old-fashioned online research.

First, let’s start with a definition of a brand ambassador program for the purposes of this post:

A Brand Ambassador Program is an ongoing business initiative designed to create a relationship with select customers that helps the brand work with these customers to reach certain business goals.

Keep in mind that a Brand Ambassador Program is more robust than a Brand or Customer Advocacy program.  These programs typically revolve around engaging with fans to help promote the brand and spread certain messaging about the brand.  A Brand Ambassador Program typically has a self-promotional element for the brand, but it’s also focused on other key business drivers, such as customer feedback, customer service and generating sales.

It’s also important to note that the brand ambassador program is ongoing.  Often when companies think of a brand ambassador program, they are considering something closer to a brand advocate outreach program, or an influencer outreach program.  Both of these are closer to a campaign in structure in that it typically has a starting and ending point.  A brand ambassador program is an ongoing effort.

Since a brand ambassador program is ongoing, there are two major considerations:

1 – Startup and maintenance costs are typically higher

2 – Business gains realized from the program are typically higher

So the answer to the question ‘How Much Does a Brand Ambassador Program Cost?’ is typically ‘it depends’.  Let’s look at the factors that influence the costs of launching a brand ambassador program:

1 – Determining the strategy and desired outcomes from the brand ambassador program.  Answer the ‘what will success look like?’ question.  What needs to happen as a result of this brand ambassador program in order for it to be deemed successful?  You’ll need to do an audit and strategy creation for the proposed program.  This is also where you can decide if it’s financially feasible to go forward and launch your brand ambassador program.

2 – The scope of the program.  Will your program have 5 members initially or 500?  The size of the program at both onset and over time will play a huge role in its cost.  Also, what type of relationship do you want to have with your Ambassadors?  Many brands are excited about the idea of launching a Brand Ambassador program because they like the idea of having passionate customers spread the brand’s message.  Brand promotion is only one way that ambassadors can help grow your brand.  Since ambassadors are constantly in direct contact with other customers, besides selling directly to them, your ambassadors can collect valuable feedback about your brand.  This feedback can then be applied to improve your brand’s existing marketing. design and customer service efforts.  These improvements can lead to a real decrease in business costs that should be considered when calculating the return of having a brand ambassador program.

3 – How many employees will be required to work with the program?  This ties into the previous point.  Keep in mind that the costs associated with this point and the previous one are typically far less when the program is launched, but will likely increase over time as the program matures.  However, as the program matures and grows, it will self-fund any additional staff that’s necessary to the program.

So as you can see, there are a lot of moving parts in place and it is difficult to get exact dollar amounts on the cost of your brand ambassador program.  A good rule of thumb is to shoot for breaking even during the first year of your brand ambassador program.  What I mean by that is have the costs associated with launching the program at least equal the amount of revenue/business value generated from the program’s first year.  Keep in mind that these projections should be included in the strategy plan and audit that’s created in the first point above.  Also keep in mind that in the first year you’ll incur some startup expenses that won’ be a factor after the program is up and running.  So once you factor in program growth and running it more efficiently over time, if you can break even during the first year, you’ll be in good shape.

So What Are the Actual Costs to Launch and Run a Brand Ambassador Program?

First, let’s look at the cost of the Brand Ambassador Audit.  This will give you the strategy for your proposed program, and help you decide if it is financially feasible to launch.

For a Small Business (Up to 500 employees) – cost for the Brand Ambassador Audit is typically $1,500 – $5,000.

For a Medium-Sized Company (500-10,000 employees) – cost for the Brand Ambassador Audit is typically $3,500-$25,000.

For a Large Company (Over 10,000 employees) – cost for the Brand Ambassador Audit is typically $10,000-$50,000

In short, the bigger the company the more extensive the audit required.  This audit is a one-time fee paid before you launch the program.

Next, let’s look at training and ongoing maintenance.  This is where you work directly with your chosen ambassadors to train them on how you want them to engage with customers, and what they should be working to accomplish.  Also included is time devoted to working directly with your ambassadors.  Keep in mind that, as mentioned above, the scope of your brand ambassador program is critical when calculating ongoing costs, as well as returns.  For example, many brands are simply interested in a program that helps them use fans/advocates for self-promotion.  To that end there are plenty of vendors that are focused on helping brands ‘activate’ their brand advocates, such as SocialToaster, Zuberance and Social Chorus.  However, if you also want your program to focus on other areas such as customer feedback, improved customer loyalty, etc, then additional costs will be accrued.

Monthly training and maintenance costs:

Small business – typically $500-$2,500 a month

Mid-sized company – typically $1,000-$10,000 a month

Large company – typically $5,000-$25,000 a month

Again, the main factors here are number of ambassadors (fewer means less cost) and scope of the program (more limited means less cost).

Employee and Ambassador Compensation Costs

Let’s look at the third major area of expense in a Brand Ambassador Program, the costs to compensate employees and ambassadors.  First, keep in mind that you should expect to compensate your ambassadors if you are asking them to perform certain functions on behalf of the brand that they normally would not do.  You will not only spend time training them, you will also be asking them to spend actual time working on behalf of your brand to connect with other customers.  They deserve to be compensated for their time.

This expense will be difficult to nail down, especially at first.  As the program matures you will get a much firmer handle on how much time is needed from both your employees and brand ambassadors and can budget accordingly.  Also as your brand’s ambassador program matures, the amount of time required for training and maintenance per ambassador will decrease to a degree as your processes become more efficient

In short, this expense fluctuates wildly based on what you expect from your brand ambassadors.  Also, keep in mind that you may not need to pay all ambassadors (In fact, paying ambassadors money is often the worst way to compensate them).  In general, if you are asking ambassadors to let you train them, or to jump on regularly scheduled conference calls, or in any way adjust their normal schedules to accommodate an ongoing relationship with your brand that benefits your brand, then you should consider paying the ambassadors.  But if all you are asking your ambassadors to do is hand out a coupon to any customer that expresses an interest in your brand’s products, then maybe not.  It’s a fine line between working with your brand’s fans to do what they want to do anyway (spread their love of your brand), and asking them to invest more time than they would normally.  In short, if it feels like you are asking them to work for your brand, then you should pay them as if they are workers.

For purposes of this post and to give you some numbers to use as a guideline, assume that 10% of your ambassadors will be paid at a rate of 5-10 hours a week.  Also assume that your employees will spend 10 hours a week managing your first 50 ambassadors, and 15 a week managing from 50-100.  Amount of employee time per ambassador will decrease as you add more ambassadors to your program.

So for example, if you have 100 ambassadors in your program, you would pay 10 of them 5-10 hours a week, and your employees would spend 15 hours a week managing the program.  That would total 65-115 hours a week for your brand ambassador program.  And again, this is just an estimate to give you an example of how you could budget time and how many hours compensation the plan would need.  Your actual hours required could be more or less.

So lets now total up the costs:

For a small business, the expenses are:

Brand Ambassador Audit (One-time fee) – $2,500 – $10,000

Monthly training and maintenance – $500 – $2,500

Monthly employee and Ambassador compensation (estimated) – $250 – $1,000

Total Year One costs for a small business to launch a Brand Ambassador program – $11,500 – $52,000

Yearly ongoing costs for a small business to maintain a Brand Ambassador program  – $9,000 – $42,000 each year

For a mid-sized company the expenses are:

Brand Ambassador Audit (One-time fee) – $5,000 – $25,000

Monthly training and maintenance – $1,000 – $10,000

Monthly employee and Ambassador compensation (estimated) – $1,000 – $5,000

Total Year One costs for a mid-sized company to launch a Brand Ambassador program – $29,000 – $205,000

Yearly ongoing costs for a mid-sized company to maintain a Brand Ambassador program  – $24,000 – $180,000 each year

For a large company the expenses are:

Brand Ambassador Audit (One-time fee) – $10,000 – $50,000

Monthly training and maintenance – $5,000 – $25,000

Monthly employee and Ambassador compensation (estimated) – $5,000 – $15,000

Total Year One costs for a large company to launch a Brand Ambassador program – $130,000 – $530,000

Yearly ongoing costs for a large company to maintain a Brand Ambassador program  – $120,000 – $480,000 each year

And again, let me reiterate that all of these numbers and figures are not absolute and should be considered a guide or starting point.

Now that you have the numbers in place based on the size of your company, you can take those numbers and compare them against the projected benefits from a brand ambassador program to decide if such a program makes sense for your brand.

For example, let’s say that you are a mid-sized company that, based on the above formula and numbers, decides that it will cost your brand approximately $50,000 in Year One, and $40,000 annually thereafter to create a brand ambassador program.  Now that you have a handle on the costs of the program, you can then look at the projected benefits from the program and decide if it makes good fiscal sense.

This is why it’s important to understand that in order to get the budget necessary to fund a brand ambassador program, you are going to need to be able to show that the program will generate more than it will cost.  So if you go to your boss with a plan to start a brand ambassador program that will cost $25,000 a year and generate $15,000 annually in sales, you won’t get that check signed.

Here’s a real-world example:  When Fiskars launched the Fiskateers brand ambassador program, it had two key goals:

1 – Increase product sales by 10% in 4 specific cities within 9 months

2 – Increase online mentions of the Fiskars brand by 10% within 9 months

With these specific goals, Fiskars can track the profit it would make from these sales as well as the sales generated from the increase in online mentions, and compare that to the cost of the program, and know if it makes sense.  BTW according to the book Brains on Fire, the Fiskateers program doubled sales in those 4 cities within 9 months and increased online mentions by 240% in the first 4 months.

Again, keep in mind that these numbers are a guide, and your figures might vary greatly.  For example, former Maker’s Mark CEO Bill Samuels Jr has claimed that it cost the brand $2 Million to launch its wildly successful brand ambassador program.  That program is now rumored to have over 500,000 ambassadors, all of which consider it their job to promote the Maker’s Mark brand.

On the other hand, let’s say your brand would love to launch an ambassador program, but you simply don’t have the budget to outsource the creation of such a program.  Here’s an excellent recap of how Paper.li is launching its brand ambassador program in-house.

UPDATE: Kelly Hungerford, who is spearheading Paper.li’s Brand Ambassador program, left a fascinating comment with more information on its program, make sure you check it out.

 

Are you considering launching a Brand Ambassador Program for your company and want to know what it would cost?  I’ll be happy to help answer any questions you have, simply email me!