It’s Not About the News

Sep 20
2009
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Newspapers are crashing and burning. I’m not talking about in their own medium — although there’s sad news on that front.  No, I mean in the social media world.  Why?  Because they refuse to modify their message to the medium. It’s an odd commentary for a medium built solidly in the communications world, but one thing newspaper publishers, editors and writers don’t understand is how to use a blog to their best advantage (not to mention Twitter and other social media).

Publishers. Publishers care about publishing. They want the funds to print another day.  Hence, they are concerned with revenue.  Guess what? Blogs are not great revenue producers — at least at first — and publishers are not patient people. They want the ads in today for tomorrow’s edition.  The result?  They are looking for posts that will bring in advertisers. They keep trying to develop content that the Advertising department can sell, rather than content the community wants to read or engage in.  It’s not a good model and it hasn’t worked.

Editors. Editors are a bit better, but also don’t understand the medium.  Great editors understand the need for personality and the public thirst for the news behind the news.  One of my favorite Sunday columns was a local editor’s post on how his reporters got the latest, greatest story — literally the story behind the news. However, the insights were saved for the precious Sunday paper and not posted on the paper’s website.

Another young editor at a different local paper, started a community blog. She inherently understood the need for community voice on the paper’s website, but didn’t understand that community in the blogging world means individuals not organizations.  She approached non-profits in the State with the opportunity to post on a blog set up for local causes. The result is a series of mini-press releases on golf outings and benefactor and grant news rather than insights into the causes.  I can guarantee you that the only people reading the blog are the marketing folks at other non-profits.  The real community isn’t interested.

Writers. Writers understand writing and followings, but newspaper writers are in competition with themselves. They are saving their stories for the paper, hoping to get in the Sunday edition. Their blog posts are bland and again, tend not to tell the story behind the story.  Why was it a difficult story to write?  How did they get a crying mother to admit her son had gone sour? How did they learn about the story in the first place?  Don’t just tell me you wrote a great story. Tell me why you felt it was worthy of the newspaper. Then, you might draw me to your story in the paper, but mostly, I’m not going to bother to read your current blog. It’s not giving me any insight into your craft.

Newspapers are built for blogging.  They just haven’t realized it yet, or approached it in the right way. I wish they would. I’m a news junkie at heart and would eat it up — as would a huge segment of the online world.

Written by Rhona in: Communication, General Business, Newspaper Marketing, Social Media | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Profit and Loss

Aug 13
2009
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In the business world, one would assume that the concept of profit and loss is basic and easy to understand. Not true. The idea of profit is laced with subtleties.

In marketing, you first come across this when you encounter one of the famous 5 P’s — namely Price. You’re taught about price points not in terms of profit, but in terms of consumer appeal — what price will the market bear?

Profit becomes muddied in the real marketing world when you start working with a motivated sales force — motivated to create commissions. This can include selling products at a loss, or selling products that don’t have the highest profit margins, meet current company goals, or match the true growth potential for the company. I have sat through many a sales meeting where reps received public accolades for sales that I knew had not yet helped the company turn a profit. I knew, because the sales revenue had not covered marketing costs or even taken them into consideration and those costs were high.

I’m now reading the book Free by Chris Anderson, a business writer well worth following from his original book The Long Tail to today’s best seller. In it, he writes: “People are making lots of money charging nothing.” How, you ask? Well, that is the paradox of free in today’s world. As he goes on to write while discussing an historical example: “Free didn’t mean profitless. It just meant that the route from product to revenue was indirect, something that would become enshrined in the retail playbook as the concept of “loss leader.”

The real problem with profit and loss is that we’ve relegated it to our accountants, who literally take a literal look at it. It’s one of the main reasons that marketing people have such a difficult “sell” with accountants, and a reason why businesses should be supported but never led by accountants. Profit and loss are not easy concepts, short-term concepts, or as obvious as black and white. Today’s loss is tomorrow’s potential best-seller — that is if the business has vision, goals, an understanding of the product and what it will take to bring it into the public conscious. And bringing a product into the public conscious — well, that’s true marketing!

Written by Rhona in: Budgets, Marketing, Measurements, Sales | Tags: , , , , ,

Active Tense

Apr 13
2009
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Marketing is a verb.  Seth Godin points it out in his book Tribes, but the fact is any dictionary will tell you the same thing.  The point is that, as a verb, marketing is about doing something. 

As with anything in life, action creates reaction.  It's a basic law of physics that also applies to51drpze7irL._SL160_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-dp,TopRight,12,-18_SH30_OU01_AA115_ marketing. Not all marketing gets the reaction you want.  Some seems to fall on totally deaf ears, but in reality, may be softening a final sale. It's what makes marketing maddening.  Sometimes you can't prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what works, but you do know what doesn't.  Doing nothing doesn't work.  

The goal of marketing is to get your company into the customer's conversation zone.  If you're not talked about, considered, or part of the discussion, you're invisible.  That's not a good marketing strategy, and yet it's the summary of most marketing plans in the industry.  

In the days of yore (probably only 10 years ago), marketing was thought to be reserved for big companies with big budgets.  The world has changed, and some of the most effective marketing is not expensive, close to free, does take time and thought, and has flattened access to all companies big and small.  In fact, smaller companies may be able to do modern marketing better. 

"Big budgets may be more of a hindrance than a help for many package-goods brands coming up with ideas that resonate with consumers, " stated Unilever's Chief Marketing Officer Simon Clift at the Advertising Age Digital Conference.  As one of the largest companies in the world, Unilever still has a decent marketing budget, but Clift implied the healthy budget may make it too easy for Unilever's team to fall back on old ways rather than come up with innovative marketing ideas.  Necessity continues to be the mother of invention, and even if your budget is small to nonexistent it doesn't mean your marketing should be as well.  Rather, it means you need to be smarter about how you market, but market you must. 

Full disclosure: I used to work for a Unilever company.  It was a great experience, and probably gave me my first taste of the power and importance of marketing. If there's one thing consumer goods companies don't take for granted, it's marketing.  You shouldn't either.  B:B can learn much from B:C companies, not the least of which is the importance of being front of mind with a consumer, client or prospect long before the sale is made.  

Don't have time or the desire to do a marketing plan?  Just start by asking yourself one simple question: "What do you need to do be more top of mind with your ideal customer?"   Whatever the answer, that is your first marketing action step. Get started today. Remember action creates reaction, so just get moving, or as marketing genius company Nike would advise: "Just do it."
Written by Rhona Bronson in: Books, Budgets, Marketing | Tags: , , , , , ,
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