Canadian Marketing Blog - Canadian Marketing Association

Inbound Marketing Automation - The Time has Come

CMA on behalf of Eric Goldman — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Introduction

The pervasiveness of digital technology no longer surprises us; what does amaze us as marketers is the size of the digital marketplace. Facebook has more than 300 million subscribers. If it was a country, it would be the 4th largest. And LinkedIn would be bigger than Canada.

But for some marketers, this digital revolution spells uncertainty. Where do you stand on this digital divide? Are you still committed to the traditional, Outbound, approach to marketing? Have you embraced Inbound Marketing and its suite of Automation tools, or are you still thinking about which way to go?

If you’re a B2B marketer, the choice has been made for you. More than 90% of business buyers today begin their search for a solution online. And the overwhelming majority of them use Google to find their solutions. More than 85% of these people don’t progress beyond the first page of Google’s results: If your company’s website isn’t in the top ten results for its field, you may as well not be in business. If you’re still relying exclusively on Outbound Marketing, you soon won’t be. (For the experts among you, yes, there are other ways to drive traffic to your site, such as Pay-Per-Click ads and referral links, but organic search, the non-paid-for search results, is the best).

Strong words? Perhaps. But it’s hard to fault the theory below on how Outbound Marketing became irrelevant. And for those of you who agree with me, the rest of this post is about why its replacement should be Inbound Marketing.

My next post will describe what Inbound Marketing is, how its Automation works, and provide the 5 steps you can take to harness the power of Inbound Marketing in your company.

Outbound’s 3 Strikes

Outbound Marketing broadcasts a message to as many people as possible, hoping that it will resonate with some of them. Ads in print, direct mail, tradeshows, email blast campaigns – each one a steamroller trying to crack a nut. I believe Outbound Marketing is broken because:

1) Digital transactions have shifted power from the seller to the buyer. We all prefer to buy things rather than be sold to, and the Internet has not only enabled this, but made it compulsory.
2) In Recessionary times, the least defensible budget is the first to suffer cuts. With their notoriously difficult to calculate ROIs, traditional marketing programs are prime targets.
3) Attention Deficits caused by the overuse of Outbound techniques. Viewers, readers and listeners are tired of the noise, cynical of the claims, and fed up with the interruptions. They have simply tuned out.

A little more detail on each point

Before the rise of the world-wide-web, the seller controlled the dissemination of information to the people in his or her sightline. Today, buyers surf the net to find all the seller’s information, and their competitors’, without talking to sales professionals. They enjoy the freedom to set their own pace and to explore more and more details until they feel they know enough to make the right decision.

As for ROI, Inbound Marketing automatically calculates the Return on Marketing Investment for all your campaigns. By showing you, in real time, what each campaign is contributing to the bottom line, you can stop doing what doesn’t work and spend more on what does.

And Attention Deficits? Well Inbound solves this issue by listening instead of shouting.

For more detail on the demise of Outbound, read my blog.

In with Inbound Marketing

How Inbound works

Imagine your website has been setup to take advantage of Inbound Marketing and is fully Automated to handle it. Further imagine that Joe Visitor arrives on your website after clicking a link in Google. Let’s assume that your site matches the keyword phrase he entered to initiate the search, so he doesn’t bounce off immediately. He discovers that your content answers his questions. He finds a white paper promising to give him some information he values enough to give up his name and email address to get it. He registers, downloads the white paper, reads it, and returns for more. Each time he answers a few more questions about himself or his company, building up his Profile. And right from his first visit, and on every visit thereafter, the system:

1) Tracks his digital footprints around the site: pages visited, time on page to judge if he read it, length of visit, and many other micro-analytics.
2) Handles his requests for information, and sends him reminders and links to new information based on his previous choices. And continues to ask questions, adding to his Profile.
3) Uses all the above to grade his Profile (which indicates how interested you should be in him), and score his online footprint behaviour so you can see how interested he is in your solution.
4) Feeds his name into your Customer Relationship Management system when he reaches a predetermined grade and score.

Inbound Marketing Automation’s benefits

Inbound Marketing, and its suite of Automation tools, provides the following benefits to your organization as a whole:

More Leads: 60% of B2B buyers start their online research with search engines. Of that, 64% click on organic search engine results listed on the first page. If your website ranks on the first page for your targeted keywords, you can drive almost 40% of all potential sales leads in your industry to your website.

Higher Quality: B2B companies with “best-practice” lead management systems deliver a 250% increase in closing rates.

Lower Cost: Savings of 30% are common.

And Inbound Marketing Automation provides marketing with the following additional benefits:

1) By automating the drudge or routine tasks of lead generation and management, the system frees up your marketers to create one innovative campaign after another. And these higher quality leads, graded and scored till they are sales ready, allow your sales people to focus only on hot prospects, ending their complaints about poor sales leads.
2) The digital footprints and the person’s profile information yield priceless market insight into your prospects, for free. Even paid-for market research doesn’t yield this kind of insight: it’s provided in real time, literally while you watch your prospects interacting with your website, observe their performance on multivariate tests, and record their reactions to your latest offers.

To learn more, feel free to download these white papers:
How to gain Priceless Market Insight for Free

7 Ways to boost Profits using Sales and Marketing Automation

Next week, a brief overview of Inbound Marketing Automation and the 5 steps you can take to harness its power.

Eric Goldman is CEO of Gossamar Inc.

Watch This...

Bryan Tenenhouse — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8

Are you in?

What's Wrong with B2B Advertising? -- Not as Much as You Think

Ruth Lukaweski — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

“We’re not saying all business-to-business advertising sucks – many achieve mediocrity and a few are excellent”.
Dave and Alex

A few years ago a pair of young advertising executives (Dave and Alex) rated 200 B2B print ads: only 5% were rated as excellent; one-fifth as mediocre and the large majority (79%) as poor. Dave is still around and is currently paired with someone called Eddy (of the Dave and Eddy show) but the evidence shows that B2B advertising has matured substantially in just a few short years.

Dave and Alex received a lot of attention for their opinions – but by their own admission they admit that their approach was not very scientific: they basically selected an assortment of ads from six trade magazines. Nevertheless business advertising executives would agree with a number of their conclusions about what constitutes a poor or mediocre business ad:

No creative concept
Business ads with a simple product photo shot and headline with a poorly worded selling proposition: Everything you need is a router at half the price...Why not cut costs without cutting corners. Compare these to another ad for a healthcare company targeting HR personnel in small companies: Cut costs, not coverage – a captivating headline in bold white copy or red background which meshes with the selling proposition.

The trite analogy
B2B ads riddled with clichés such as: canyons (symbolizing depth); geysers (dependability); lurking wolves (competitive threats); bouncing balls (flexibility).

The creative misfire
Usually refers to tasteless ads such as one targeted at the beef trade featuring a live cow over the image of a cooking fire with the headline: Smoke gets in your eyes.

Sponsors of the five excellent ads mainly included large and well known companies: Microsoft; EDS; Internet Security Systems to name a few. In most cases the production values tended to be described as competent and noted for their clarity: single message and easily understood; their creative indivisibility (where the headline and visuals work well together); their restraint (simple graphics and tight copy).

Reality check
Even though this study was conducted a few shot years ago, the measly 5% of B2B ads classified as excellent would easily climb to 40% or more today:

-B2B advertisers include some of the biggest companies in the world – Intel’s Intel Inside campaign continues to be regarded as one of the best campaigns of the 20th century; and the gold standard for B2B ingredient advertising.

-BtoB Magazine in its monthly feature called 'Chasers' probes into the mechanics of B2B ads and has no trouble finding both the poor and excellent examples.

-Chasers recently compared two airline ads targeted at business customers offering 'comfort': one featured a stylized visual of a woman blissfully at rest on a flight but the rest of the copy failed to exploit this theme; the second ad featured the business class section (of a new airplane) floating on clouds and displaying extra wide comfortable seating and luxurious in-flight service.

Surprise

Bryan Tenenhouse — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Not many things surprise me after so many years in this business, but I have to admit, this did:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

Since starting my own creative consultancy two years ago, I've written many websites for clients who think that key words actually matter. So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Google doesn't use the "keywords" meta tag in their web search ranking. Obviously this isn't as earth-shattering as learning that cigarettes are bad for you or that Balloon Boy was a hoax, but it does raise an eyebrow given that Google hasn't exactly advertised this news. Thoughts?

Demand Creation Trends for 2010

Albert (Ally) Motz — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

As 2009 begins to wind down, most of us feel like we just need a breather. A breather from the breakneck pace of change over the last year. A breather from what at times seemed like a non-stop torrent of bad news. And a breather from feeling on many days like things were simply out of control. Planning season is a perfect time to take that breath, not only to reflect on what is now behind us, but more importantly to consider what is to come. In this post, I explore three core demand creation trends for 2010 that should be top of mind when key strategic discussions begin.

One: Proactive Waterfall Management
The rapid, steep decline in business over the last year has convinced most marketers that a role for their function throughout the demand waterfall – vs. only at its top – is anything but optional. In a growing number of organizations, sales is requesting help with pipeline acceleration, lead nurturing and account-based marketing (ABM), pinpoint programs that when put into place help organizations actively control waterfall performance rather than passively observe (and try to react to) the results that come out of it. Still hindering progress in many companies is the lack of common nomenclature around the types of ABM, pipeline acceleration and lead nurturing potentially at the disposal of an organization. Simply starting by understanding their options, sales and marketing can work together to determine which will address specific issues within the waterfall best, leaving others to be pursued at a later date.

Two: Automation Takes the Next Step
Though SiriusDecisions estimates only 8% to 12% of b-to-b organizations (up to 19% in the high technology space) have implemented a marketing automation platform (MAP), we do expect this number to grow to nearly 50% by 2015, fueled by an increasing number of options available as well as everexpanding functionality. Following recent briefings with a number of organizations within the MAP vendor community, we have honed in on some of the more interesting advances that will be driving the category in the near term. These include ties between social media monitoring tools and the MAP to capture and score these interactions; support for multiple scoring models (both by product and for individual prospects interested in multiple offerings); and greater predictive capabilities. For larger organizations that require it, the tighter integration of marketing resource management (MRM) functionality with the MAP adds a more robust layer of budgeting, planning and tracking. At this point, it remains troubling to us that a number of organizations that have purchased a MAP are still struggling to implement core functionality, including basic lead scoring, lead routing and portfolio marketing. With features being added regularly, these organizations risk being left far behind if they do not get help from external MAP partners, or bring in human resources that have implemented this functionality in other organizations.

Three: Measurement Missing Links
Despite all of the advances in b-to-b marketing technologies over the past 10 years, key areas of measurement that help field marketing, operations and the executive function make better tactical and resourcing decisions have been elusive. Lack of visibility into and connection with CRM/SFA systems; weaknesses in these systems that “credit” only the first or last touch with a prospect; and a weak (if any) closed loop are just three reasons why many marketers still feel like they are operating with one hand tied behind their back. Over the last 12 months, however, a growing number of marketers are finding ways to break through these barriers, typically using a combination of back-end manual processes and lighter-weight, desk-top-based business intelligence (BI) tools to do so. Though these processes help directionally, it is in the greater use of this next generation of BI by marketing operations and field marketing analysts in conjunction with sales operations that we believe the most actionable results will be generated.

For many, 2009 was frankly a year to forget. For those organizations that had put the right people, process and technology in place to drive systematic demand creation in place before the bottom fell out, however, it made all of us remember how best-in-class companies became what they are in the first place.

Recessionary Marketing, Theme #3

Patricia McQuillan — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Canada’s Emergence as a Marketing Leader

Canada has produced many award-winning marketing strategies recently that are being duplicated else where. Moving forward, Canadian marketers will have an opportunity to be innovative and creative as US markets become increasingly conservative.

Although the Canadian market is relatively mature with slow growth rates, experts believe that the recent economic turmoil created as a result of the global credit crisis will force US marketing departments to act more conservatively, thus giving global brands the opportunity to innovate and lead new marketing initiatives (through testing and metrics) in Canada. For example, BBDO worked with Frito Lay to develop the ‘Doritos Guru’ campaign, which involved the brand working with consumers to generate a name for the new flavour of Doritos as well as product marketing communications for the flavour. This brand-consumer partnership (co-creation) was launched in Canada but is now being used by other brands around the world.

As marketing programs become increasingly complex and integrated, the Canadian marketplace offers brands more simplistic measurement capabilities, compared to the larger population and logistical challenges posed by such a large geographic scope in the US. Canada also has the opportunity to own ‘green marketing’ by creating strong branding/communications models thus getting the attention of the US.

There has been a new found respect for Canada, as one executive in a recent recessionary marketing roundtable stated “we haven’t screwed things up badly”, referring to our relatively strong banking system. Five years ago there was a lot of negativity surrounding ‘Canadian’ branding, but recently there has been a shift. Focus groups conducted by RBC in the US found that American consumers wanted to have the company Canadian-branded.

Overall, American marketers are beginning to understand that there are significant differences that impact consumer behaviour in Canadian and American markets, thus beginning to buy-into the belief that Canadian markets require unique marketing programs.

What are your thoughts on the topic of Canadian marketing leadership?

Traditional Marketing is Dead

CMA on behalf of Vish Ramkissoon — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 09:07:00 -0500

In the early nineties there was a notion that the internet would alter the face of Direct Marketing. Unless you live in a cave, it has! But it is not just the Internet that has changed the way we market products or services, technology has also had a dramatic impact on how we conduct and market our businesses.

In fact, it is my position that technology has surpassed the marketer. There is a new breed of marketer that is emerging from our schools and universities. They understand the power of the web and know how to use it well. But in the world of clicks, unique clicks, soft bounces, downloads, hard bounces, followers, blogs and viewers, two basic fundamentals of marketing are slowly disappearing: accountability and measurability.

Unless the goal of an online marketing campaign is to raise awareness, business owners are solely interested in ROMI. Unfortunately, tracking mechanisms are often excluded from the Call to Action (sometimes there is no CTA) on many new initiatives and metrics such as those listed above do not demonstrate success (at least in a monetary fashion).

So what do we do?

Vish Ramkissoon, Partner FSA Datalytic, is a member of CMA’s Direct Marketing Council.

Marketing Through Customer Engagement

CMA on behalf of Jacob Ciesielski — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Over a last 6 months I’ve been hearing a lot of companies talk about changes in marketing, changes in the way we target and communicate with our customers. Recently, I attended a conference where the focus was on Customer Engagement Agency Model. The conference included good representation, with recognized industry leaders and speakers, both on the marketing service provider (MSP) and client side.

Several years ago marketers were ahead of technology, coming up with ideas and strategies that couldn’t be executed as the technology that existed then did not support most of their initiatives. Today, most if not all marketers, in order to be competitive, need to catch-up with ever-growing technology. With online marketing, especially social media, customers have more channels to share their comments and feedback more quickly, reaching millions of potential viewers instantly. New marketing models allow companies to integrate online and offline channels and, through social medial listening tools, marketers will be able to react quicker to consumers’ needs and feedback. Twitter, Facebook, My Space and other channels provide consumers with many ways to get feedback from other consumers (not from product companies directly) and to read reviews of products they are about to buy. People trust their friends and colleagues more than marketers.

The end goal is for consumers to become brand advocates and help companies market and sell their products. Online analytics coupled with technology and marketing strategies will help marketers reach out to the right people at the right time with the right offer.

Is your marketing strategy changing in order to stay ahead your competitors?

Jacob Ciesielski, Partner at FSA Datalytics, is a member of CMA’s Marketing Technology and Database Intelligence Council

What Really Gets Read

Jim Estill — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

People have limited time and even more limited attention. The key in marketing is to capture some of this limited attention and get people to read more. So it pays to understand what things people first read because these are the areas you need to grab attention.

People tend to read the following first (in no particular order):

1 - Headlines
2 - Sub titles and sub headlines
3 - photo captions
4 - short bolded or highlighted text
5 - small insert boxes
6 - hand written notes

Of course this does not mean you can overwhelm your audience with too many "things that get read" or none of them will get read.

And each of these have different uses in different contexts. For example, a hand written note in an ad on the internet does nothing where a post-it note that is hand written on a mailing gets attention.

So what sorts of things grab attention?

1 - Curiosity. if you can arouse curiosity, people will read more.

2 - Humour. If people feel they will be entertained, they will read more.

3 - Powerful benefit for the specific audience. This one is more complex because it involves find the intersection between people who have the need and value the benefit and the readership/viewership of the audience.

4 - Emotion - shock, awe, fear, sex can all grab attention. People buy first with their emotions which is why most large agency ads play to emotions.

Without attention, you do not get read. So it is worth spending time on "what people first pay attention to".

5 Free Fantastic Social Media Monitoring Tools

Selina Jane Eckersall — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Working in the social space is about more than just connecting, networking and broadcasting. You also have to listen so that you know where and how you can improve your brand's reputation. Conversations will inevitably happen with or without your involvement, so even if you’re not active in the social space, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t being talked about.

The good news is you don’t have to rush out and purchase an expensive software package to manage your social monitoring for you.

You can do it yourself… FOR FREE!

There are a number of tools available on the web to help marketers with their social media monitoring.

Check out some of these tools to help you with your listening objectives:

www.search.twitter.com
Perhaps obvious, but you’d be surprised at how many people DON’T know about the Twitter search tool. Twitter search allows you to search by keyword and monitor recent tweets.

The search tool also has a “reply” option as well as a “view tweet” option, which is great for presentations and social media monitoring reports.

www.backtype.com/
Backtype is a conversation-monitoring tool that allows you to search conversations on blogs, social networks and various other social media sites so you can find out what people are saying.

The great thing about Backtype is that it extensively monitors comments on blogs, which a lot of listening tools do not.

http://boardtracker.com/
Boardtracker is a tool that allows you to monitor conversations happening on forums. I like how specific it is, especially because a lot of important conversations happen on forums. It’s an important medium that should not be overlooked.

Boardtracker recently released a 2.0 beta version, however, I would recommend using the original version FIRST, as the results may not be the same.

www.socialmention.com
Social Mention is a tool that allows you to monitor conversations happening online in virtually any social web property. It searches blogs, microblogs, forums, comments, video and more.

While I like to use this tool a lot, I don’t recommend using it as your ONLY source of monitoring. You should use it in conjunction with others. It also tends to be slow at times.

http://blogsearch.google.ca/ (or .com if you’re from the US)
Google Blog Search is a staple. It helps you find relevant blog posts and blog authors who discuss your brand and have influence on the web. It’s important to know who these people are, so that you can engage in conversation with them or at the very least, know what they are publishing about you.

So these are just a few of my favourite tools. Of course there are search tools available on practically every social site as well. I routinely scour Digg, BlogCatalog, YouTube, and Facebook during my monitoring programs, in addition to the ones mentioned above. It's all about using the tools that you are comfortable with, that give you the best results.

Have fun out there!

Brand Management Doesn’t Stop at the Ad Campaign

Elizabeth Harvey at CMA — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

As manager of a number of CMA’s Marketing Councils, I am surprised when I am asked – more frequently than you’d think, “Why does the CMA have a Contact Centre Council? What do contact centres have to do with marketing?” I can tell you that members of the Contact Centre Council see themselves as marketers – and this mindset likely correlates to an organization’s bottom line.

The Contact Centre Council collaborated on an article in the most recent edition of Contact Management, and in the magazine’s editorial, Ron Glen quotes a speech by Diane Francis that I thought was bang on. She said “The industry can have the smartest advertising campaign the world has ever known, but if the people answering the phone turn the public off and cost you customers it is all for not. To think that brand management stops with billboards, newspaper ad, TV commercials... is crazy.”

I’m not sure why contact centres are often overlooked as marketing tools. How many Twitter posts have you seen complaining about a call centre experience ending with a declaration that they are switching suppliers or will never do business with that company again? On the flip side, have you ever upgraded your spend as a result of a great call centre experience? I certainly have.

I wonder how people question that a corporate function with implications to brand, customer service and relationship building, and up-selling and cross selling, does not have to do with marketing. If marketing departments are embracing the use of social media tools, why is there question as to the marketing value of a live, relationship building touch point with consumers? Am I wrong?

Perhaps you can help me: where does your contact centre fit within your organizational structure – in the marketing department, or is it an operational function? Does this affect how your organization sees call centres as marketing tools?

The Nature of Luxury

Laurence Bernstein — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Marketers today are increasingly focusing on the “luxury” market, as if it were an identifiable, affluent orgasm that spews money on high design and extravagance. While this may be the behavior of some affluent consumers, it is a very limited view of what luxury is and where it belongs. Luxury is any excess of anything that is not necessary but enhances the experience of life (i.e. is not negative), and therefore luxury can be the lynch pin of marketing strategies across all economic segments.

What is luxury and why does the answer matter?
The second part of the question is easy to answer: it matters because luxury adds value to any proposition, and hence an important component of just about any business. But what it is, is somewhat more complicated.

I Googled "definition of luxury", which returned 330,000 entries. After reading the top 175,230 entries, I realized that the subject needed to be revisited in a more useful way. Having spent twenty years understanding consumers and how they relate to the world around them, especially the stuff they buy, use and experience, I have developed a universal definition of "luxury" and hence a way of applying the idea of luxury at almost every level of experience of almost any product in almost any category.

To understand this a little better, let's examine some of the myths of luxury. But first, the underlying fallacy of the modern approach to luxury marketing.

Underlying fallacy
Most discussions about luxury end up being discussions about luxury things -- when Isadore Sharp of Four Seasons defines luxury he is defining "luxury experiences," and generally from the perspective of hotels (more on this later). It is important to understand that the word "luxury" derives from the Latin "luxus", which means "excess". The adjective, which is what we generally define (very often in narrow contexts), simply describes the object as "in excess" -- a luxury brand, then, would be a brand that (to give the marketers their due) promises excess.

Fifteen years ago, I introduced the notion of luxury as "waste." Again, simply put, luxury is anything that is not necessary, and anything that is necessary is not luxury. This helps explain why a hot bath to relax in the evening after a tiring day is a luxury, while a hot bath to get clean in the morning is not a luxury. Similarly, time is seen as the greatest luxury when we have extra time available to do something that is not essential, but it is certainly not a luxury when we have extra time because we are kept waiting at the dentist.

The most significant point, of course, is that in this definition of luxury we see that the object itself is not, in most cases, luxury or luxurious, but the way it is experienced may (or may not) be luxurious. As we know, one man's stale coffee is another man's added value in a no-frills hotel.

One of the most important implications of this is that the customer has to know that what he or she is experiencing is "luxury", which is by no means always the case. This is where design, merchandising and service cues play a vital role.

Now for the myths.

Myth #1: Luxury is expensive
The case of the hot bath makes this point as well as can be made. Time, too, is not expensive, it's free, except when it's priceless.

Besides which, what is expensive? A night in the Ty Warner Penthouse suite at the Four Seasons in New York runs around $35,000; however, it is little more than half the cost of The Royal Penthouse Suite at the President Wilson Hotel, Geneva ($65,000). Does this mean that the bargain basement suite at the Four Seasons is only half the luxury of the President Wilson Hotel? You get my point!

Myth #2: Luxury is the best of whatever
Luis Mogollon*, Director of Development, Quivira Los Cabos, defines luxury as
"…the best that life has to offer…" For sure this rules out the Four Seasons New York. On that subject, Isadore Sharp is quoted as defining luxury as "Luxury, by definition, means something that appears to be the best of whatever it represents."* This is of course unfortunate for a luxury hotel chain unless their hotels can always be the most everything, everywhere. Which they can’t. Did Rolls Royce cease being “luxury” when the Maybach came on to the market? On a more prosaic note, is a 320 thread count sheet any less "luxury" because there are 380 thread count sheets available? Clearly not -- it may not be the most luxurious, but it is still as luxurious as it was before they learned to twirl threads into one another to increase thread count.

Myth #3: Luxury is style and comfort
Tod Hevers*, publisher of Home and Design Magazine, perhaps not surprisingly, uses this definition (although he adds a neat, pithy, catchy twist: “Luxury is style and comfort, priced accordingly. Extravagance is style and comfort, cost be damned.”).

A comfortable style may be luxury (excessive and excessively expensive), but the same attribute can be applied to a style that is anything but comfortable (whatever you say about a Lamborghini, comfortable it's not but luxury it is).

Myth #4: Luxury is exclusive, not available to everybody
No. Hot water is available to most people in North America and time is available to everybody in, as it turns out, on a day-by-day-basis, equal quantities. Sometimes time is a luxury for some people; for most people most of the time this is actually not the case.

Myth #5: Luxury is making your dreams come true, with which we will lump, luxury is making memories
In a weird way, this is not a myth (after all, it's hard to make the case that making your dreams come true is necessary, so in a sense it fits the definition of waste = luxury). But it is only one of many luxuries, so making your dreams come true, like staying in a really expensive hotel is a luxury for some people. The two may be interlinked for some and not for others (if my dream is to stay at a luxury hotel, then yes; if I want the wasteful comfort and high end service of a luxury hotel to make my business trip more fun, then they are not).

Myth #6: Luxury is prestige
No, it's not. Some luxury things have an element of prestige, but this does not mean that luxury is prestige. Prestige is prestige, and it is not always a luxury (email me at bernstein@proteanstrategies.com and I'll explain this to you -- it's too long to get into here)

There are many other myths, but we'll skip them to get to the point: how can this progressive understanding of luxury help your business?

And finally, the helpful tips

Helpful tip #1:
There is in all probabilities a way of viewing whatever it is you are marketing, as having some luxury component. This does not mean you must view it this way (some products sell better because they are entirely functional without any frills). However, if you're are trying to increase margin, or preemptively differentiate your product or service, this idea may be the insight you have been looking for.

Helpful tip #2
By understanding what your customers (guests, whatever) consider necessary and what they consider waste (excess) will enable you to: frame your advertising to appeal to the value-added emotional mindset (or not, depending on your strategy); determine what you can eliminate to cut costs in tough times and, most importantly, determine a price-value relationship that returns the value of the luxury in the offering.

As a simple example: somebody staying at a three star hotel may have to pay $20 for breakfast in addition to their room. Based on their budget, this may be too much of a luxury (waste of money), and they will buy coffee and a muffin on their way to their first appointment. But, the hotel next door, the two star hotel, serves free breakfast. To this traveler, the two star hotel provides a luxury! The two star can entice away the guest by talking about luxury that costs less. So, the three star hotel aggressively competes by dropping their rates, but, no matter how far they drop their rates, they will also have to give away the free breakfast or be considered too expensive. (In fact, the best strategy for the three star hotel would be to add a complimentary breakfast rather than drop their rates; and the best strategy for the two star hotel would be to discount, forcing the three star hotel to react and eventually go bust)

Helpful tip #3
If you are already selling luxury stuff, an understanding of what is necessary and what is waste, and how this fits into the lives of the customers, will inform go-to-market strategies.
In some cases the "waste" is the extrinsic prestige which the branded product bestows on the owner (Luis Vuitton luggage); in other cases it is the intrinsic sense of accomplishment (Kiton suits which have no external badge). The "luxury" of each of these is entirely different, and in many cases will appeal to very different people (the Kiton purchaser would consider LV luggage to be an extravagant, showy, waste of money and the LV buyer would never see the point of a $7,000 blazer that nobody knows costs $7,000).

Helpful tip #4
Read the original paper on which this blog is based by clicking on this link or going to http://tinyurl.com/proteanluxury1

The Showroom Experience: Interaction Essential

Philippe Meyersohn — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

While on a recent trip to New York City, I visited a couple of showrooms – all senses peeled for the key elements of success. I asked myself, what does it take to successfully engage visitors in the experience of a given lifestyle brand? Two retailers in the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle took notably different approaches. The contrasting experiences further convinced me of the importance of interactions.

My visit to Aveda was memorable – as I came through the door, I was greeted with an offer of a relaxing cup of tea. From the start, I was given the impression that the sales people wanted my visit to be stress-free. Throughout my time spent there, the sales people were friendly, offering me help in selecting products. The surprising moment came at the end after my purchase – I was given a hand massage! This unexpected service at the end made my experience at Aveda very memorable.

In contrast, my visit to a well-known electronic manufaturer's store was less impressive. The company uses a showcase format, presenting all products they sell - from computers and phones to TVs. While there are many staff members on hand, their purpose is to provide help when required, rather than to offer an opportunity to experience something unique. The store does not provide the visitor with a memorable experience – the extent of interactivity is the ability to use their computers (with a 30-minute limit) to send email and postcards to friends and family.

Thinking back on these two visits, I’ve come to the conclusion that while many brands are moving towards showrooms, they need to ensure that selling and building the brand are complementary to each other. Building a beautiful showroom is not the end goal - service and interactive activities are critical to creating a memorable brand experience for the shopper. Apple stores are a great example of this blending of emotional and functional experience.

The Power of the Pitch - Elevator Pitch That Is

Shelley McQuade — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

Talk to any company and the mantra is the same – we want to grow our business. Here’s where it gets a little fuzzy. The weight of this growth falls on the shoulders of marketing and sales. It’s marketing’s job to get the leads and sale’s job to close them. Don’t get me wrong, that’s why they are there and that is their job, however there’s a hidden sales force right before your very eyes that can unearth a gold mine if you engage them. I’m talking about your entire organization – yup everyone from the receptionist to the CFO.

Here’ the thing – the # 1 reason why people buy is relationships – fyi # 2 is the company, #3 the product/service. I remember sales guru Jeffrey Gittomer’s advice to a room full of eager entrepreneurs and sales people – you want more customers – make more friends – people do business with people they like. Now here’s where it gets interesting - you have a team of employees that all have a network of friends, all you need to do is equip them with the right message. I’m not suggesting you turn your organization into a hard core group of hunters, I’m suggesting you provide them with a powerful message that compels people to say hmm tell me more or gees I should really talk to one of your salespeople. Behold the power of the elevator pitch.

I must confess, in the past I have attended many a family gathering and should have used the elevator pitch – no-one could figure out what the heck I did – hmm you’re not going to generate many referrals that way. As a result, I have fine tuned the elevator pitch so even your Aunt Martha gets it. The formula is simple (adapted from author/speaker John Assaraf).

Highlight the customer problem you solve – i.e you know how.....waiting for a heating guy to come on a sub below zero freezing day to fix your furnace drives you crazy?
Present the solution your company provides – i.e. well what we do it is......guarantee we will be there in an hour to fix it or you don’t pay.

Simple, to the point, I not only get what you do, I see why you are different than your competitors. We learn through stories and metaphors. When you tell me a mini story that highlights what you do, I start to see myself in that picture. You peaked my interest “ Wow you guarantee that you will be there in an hour, how do you do that?”

Thanksgiving is a time to get together with family and friends, break bread and test your elevator pitch. It could lead to a new customer or two, definitely something to be thankful for.

Marketing Innovation (recessionary marketing theme #2)

Patricia McQuillan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 09:00:00 -0500

As mentioned with our last post, Brand Matters conducted research on the topic marketing in a recession; what does it take to win. This is the second installment sharing our findings with theme #2, Marketing Innovation.

As companies tighten marketing budgets, marketers are increasingly expected to do more with less. The value proposition remains at the core of a brand’s offering; however, marketers are taking an innovation angle rather than price cutting.

Experts agree, in times of economic downturn brands must continue to invest in marketing. There is increased competition with value brands growing, premium brands lowering prices, and private label brands beginning to advertise. As a result, marketers are faced with the challenge of finding more innovative/compelling strategies to break through the clutter and effectively reach consumers. Marketers need to find fresh, cost-efficient ways to not only communicate with consumers, but also attract new customers as competitors eat into market share. If competitors do slash prices, this is when brands must be innovative in order to sustain their competitive value offering.

No longer are agencies providing the ‘big idea’, instead, innovation is appearing in the form of smaller, more practical tactics – for example, digital media and community building are being used to better serve the needs of a more targeted group of high-value customers. As Brenda Truant says, “With less resources, you [marketers] must work smarter not harder."

Examples of resourceful marketing tactics include:

(1) Co-creation with consumers - the Doritos Guru campaign successfully accomplished by achieve over 1.5 million exposures),
(2) Brand partnership – seeking out potential brands to partner with who share the same customers or have a similar brand character. For example, BMW.
(3) Gain deeper consumer insights – analyze user generated content to identify consumer insights and refine marketing communication tactics. As the insight analytics business continues to grow, there is an opportunity to review this consumer-generated content to truly understand their branding needs and identify the most appropriate marketing communications tactics.

Organizations lacking cross-functional internal alignment and trust, especially between marketing and finance, will find it more challenging to gain buy-in and support for new marketing communications initiatives.

Although new marketing communications initiatives are often tests, experts agree that they should not be referred to as ‘tests’ internally – instead they should be folded into an integrated marketing communications plan with more traditional tactics. These tests are important as they will help develop the marketing communications innovation pipeline which will result in future marketing communications programs. Marketing must own testing, as stated by one participant, “without experiments [tests] there is only measuring and tracking.”

Do you have more to add with examples of successful Innovation Tactics that have been developed by your organization?