Integrating web marketing to Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC)

It was in the 1990's that IMC started getting popular in marketing. The Internet was just getting started and social media was in the distant horizon.By the early 2000's  organizations particularly in consumer products started figuring out IMC between their packaging,billboards,TV ads,magazine and newspaper ads and Point of Sale materials. The time has now come to integrate web marketing efforts with the off-line marketing efforts. And not just for consumer product organizations but for all types of organizations that need to communicate with prospects,customers,suppliers,shareholders or any other stakeholders.

The idea of having the same colors on the soap package and the ad on the bill-board is old and it is exactly the same thing that organizations need to do between their websites and physical artifacts. You don't need to paint your building the color of your website page, but an active consideration of how to convey the same message across your web presence and physical presence is something that all organizations should consider.

So should you lead with changes on the website or with the direct mail and bill boards? For efficient execution it's probably better to start with the website,social media pages and follow with other physical content. This way the firm repainting the bill boards can just log on to the website and know what the purpose is and the same with the printer trying to get the direct mail piece together. Best of all,branches (of say a bank) can have posters that reflect the look and feel of their website.

It's really easy to change the look and feel of the colors and logos on your website but for global organizations there may be millions of physical touch-points like retailers,branches that might be difficult to reach. So it's important to be careful with the change of the look  and feel of your  website just so that your physical materials get a chance to come into sync with the website.

The fun part of digital marketing is that it is only the look and feel that needs to be consistent with your off-line communications. Content is king in the digital world and more detailed your material,more current and exciting your material ,more engaged is your audience. So when the customer,supplier or stakeholder actually visits you in say a retail store, the poster has only to remind them for they would have already done their research online and might actually do research from their smart phones while at the store! Contact StratoServe.

Search marketing explains the 15% rise in online sales?

In a slow US economy it's refreshing to know that online sales grew by 15% over last year. This huge increase is really because customers searched on line for the best deals and took them! The ability of customers to search and initiate contact is a fundamental shift in marketing that organizations have not fully grasped.

Media planning is based on what a target audience might see and is in turn based on the notion of firm initiated contact. The firm puts out an Ad and  faces to quote John Wanamaker: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

Well recent B2B research by Wiesel,Pauwels and Arts (2011) suggests customer initiated contacts are about 15 times more profitable than firm initiated contacts like flyers(leaflets),faxes or email. Their research was at Inofec in the Netherlands (English translation of Inofec website) who are B2B furniture suppliers and installers in the Netherlands. The research suggested that spending 1 Euro on Google AdWords provided a return of 55+ Euros compared to a return of 0.57 Euro on every Euro spent on Flyers. See Table 4 on Page 608 of the article. The research is also featured as a Practice Prize Video at the Marketing Science Institute. The authors suggest that the company spend less on flyers and more on AdWords.

In other words, the above research now provides evidence from an organization's point of view that tapping into search marketing can really help in B2B marketing apart from certainly helping in zooming holiday consumer or B2C sales.

USPS to slow down first class mail: how the Internet affects your business

First class mail at the USPS is down. In fact down from 104 Billion pieces in 2001 to 73.5 Billion pieces last year and is projected to go down to 39 Billion pieces in 2020. As a result the post office is cutting half its mail processing facilities besides planning huge cuts in deliveries and post offices. There is just not enough volume of mail.The most poignant comment in all of this was from a TV news anchor who said that at least the holiday packages will get delivered on time this year as the cuts will happen from next year.Obviously all the ordering has been done on line and when the product is relatively in-expensive and you are not paying for speed the USPS delivers the product to you – faithfully and reliably. In the process a third party vendor for Amazon gets to make a sale.The USPS situation is once again a wake up call for every business – no matter what your business.

Consider that strangely, news stories about the decline of the USPS business rarely mentions Fedex or UPS its competitors in the package delivery business. It is the first class mail which is the culprit and clearly it is where the Internet has hit the USPS hard. People have got used to paying bills online  and that alone cuts the first class mail volume hugely. And if you consider that people might not respond by letter to offers (that are opened) in the junk mail – USPS has a problem. Today, if you like an offer in the mail – you are always given a convenient web address to respond. Thus,cutting out the chance to send a letter.

Here are a few questions to ask for your business, whether you have a product or service:

  1. Can the customer order online? Are we giving her/him an easy opportunity to do so?
  2. Can we deliver our product digitally (think books,music,training, movies, gaming, entertainment)? Are we doing so?
  3. Can the customer pay online? Are we making it easy for the customer to do so?
  4. Are we keeping all our product related information easily accessible online? Think of a customer who has lost your appliance’s manual and just Google’s it. Do they find the manual information at a forum or at the official website of your organization? 
  5. Are we able to converse with the customer online for service matters?

A hard look at your business should uncover gaps in all of these areas. Your business has changed both in the way you attract new customers and how you service them. Can you re-define your business mission for the digital world ?

About StratoServe

Website Re-Design: do not remove old content if you want your audience to find you

All manner of organizations seem to get tired of the look and feel of their advertising and communication material. Consequently billions are spent worldwide on re-launch, re-branding, re-design just because the audience is "supposed" to have got tired of the "old" design. If you notice only the biggest brands (like Coca Cola and McDonald's ) do not redesign their logos and have extremely detailed and thick design manuals to follow throughout the world. A can supplier to Coca Cola in Brazil needs to match the exact red on the can. These mega brands were onto something – much before the Internet and search engines.

In a non-Internet world you cannot have even minor changes in your brand communication without some loss of audience traction. In the Internet world when your audience (customers,suppliers and stakeholders) search for you or some particular aspect of your activity.It's really important to be found.

Between organizational leaders,advertising agencies,digital marketers and website folks   somehow "looks" sometimes counts more than the "content." Suddenly everyone is so ashamed of the old content that they simply take it off-line. This is just disastrous for Search Engine Optimization(SEO) and particularly ironical as there is no additional cost to keeping the old digital content up.

Now the Google bot (yes Google's eyes are mechanical – OK I mean digital) had classified and stored your old content over months and years. As you added more content and more people found you,  refered you- your search engine rankings improved or you became better in SEO terms.

Now your organization takes off the old content and there is some time gap between putting up the new content. In this period all your search engine visitors find broken links and are disappointed. If the search engine bots can't find your old content – guess what:  your web ranking and credibility declines.

Just think of a retail store or coffee shop in the brick world. Would you as the store-owner smother the building with tarpaulin including its signs – as you renovate?  No. And that's what happens when you take off old web content.

Granted that  if you are re-launching,re-branding or re-designing you are doing so because you are not Coca Cola or McDonald's. But ask your web folks to make sure that all website content is never taken off and only added to. Contact StratoServe.

Dow over 12,000: Globalization can work on the governance side as six Central Banks Co-ordinate.

That the Dow closed over 12,000 today is great news.The European debt crisis had cast a pall of gloom across stock markets worldwide  and in the US things looked bleak till the news that six Central Banks of the world had come together to enhance financial liquidity in their respective markets.

If  the "Occupy Movement" can be a global movement on the beleaguered citizens part – the coordination by the Central banks is equally unprecedented on the governance side. Before globalization and social media different central bankers would only meet periodically at academic or global banking conferences and have some real difficulty in co-ordination of their community of practice. And central bankers have to consider delicate issues of sovereignty. So each of the Central Bankers have been careful to point out that you can see what that particular Central Bank is doing to help their respective economies. Here is a listing of the web pages from each Central Bank website :

  1. The Federal Reserve Bank announcement lists the other Central Bank websites.
  2. The Bank of Canada lists the other websites. 
  3. The Bank of England lists the other websites. 
  4. The Bank of Japan is a PDF file and llists the other websites.
  5. The European Central Bank  lists the other websites. 
  6. The Swiss National Bank is a PDF file and lists the other Central Bank Websites.

The fact that six different Central Banks  in parts of the globe, with very different cultures, are actually able to have the announcement on their websites simultaneously is quite  amazing! Given that one frequently sees otherwise  leading companies quite unable to articulate what they really want to say for their websites. Not that the company or agency web folks are  slow- the internal organization is just not geared to coming out clearly and saying what it is trying to do. That the six Central Banks have been able to first figure out and then communicate fairly uniformly to their own countries and the world deserves praise.

If similar global governance co-ordination activities continue, perhaps there are happier times ahead for businesses worldwide.

Supply Chain CSR: tracing child labor in growing cocoa beans for chocolates

Just as we get into the holiday mood and enjoy chocolates the focus is on where the cocoa beans come from that go into making chocolate that brings so much holiday cheer to the affluent- worldwide. The BBC Story highlights Nestle's efforts in trying to bring traceability to the labor aspects of the cocoa bean supply chain that is grown and moves through many transactions before reaching the chocolate factory.

Earlier this year Tulane University's Payson Center prepared a report  in March 2011 that suggests that while Ghana has made substantial  progress in curbing child labor in cocoa cultivation there is much more needed to be done in country of  Ivory Coast in West  Africa. It notes that the chocolate industry needs to do more in taking  ownership of the problem. Consequently, Nestle is gearing up to bring traceability of the labor component in the cocoa bean.

This development is remarkable when you think of the traditional technical traceability in supply chains. Wal-Mart likes to put RFID tags on its pallets to keep track of SKU's while individual packages allow the bar codes to keep track of customer check-out pricing. At each point behind the pallets of  goods that arrive at Wal-Mart -including the Nestle Chocolate  and Hershey Chocolate holiday baking ingredients there is really no system of knowing whether child labor was used in the cultivation of the cocoa bean in another country like the Ivory Coast in Africa.

Over ten years ago Nike's use of child labor overseas had become  a major example of managing Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the global supply chain in manufacturing. Since then, Nike supply chain managers make sure that they visit supplier factories to confirm that child labor is not employed. There are also controls in this regard on Tier-2 suppliers of say shoe fabrics or parts.

In the agricultural global supply chain the Cocoa bean child labor problem is among the first. With an inter-connected world the mere ability of a social activist to report from Africa via social media puts enormous responsibility on the Chocolate supply chain managers to prove with processes that they are monitoring this CSR variable. While earlier cocoa bean procurement was like simply buying a commodity that required only a quality check now the question is of traceability of the labor content. Challenging work for the global agricultural commodity supply chain managers but indeed  for a worthy cause.

“Unexpected” is why the Justin Beiber Macy’s commercial is so successful

If you have seen Justin Beiber concerts on TV (NBC at least twice recently as one can remember) you wonder why the teenage fans seem to get so hysterical with the girls screaming loudly. In fact the "I can't understand this" look is obvious on the anchor's faces as they are with Beiber on the NBC Plaza and the crowd seems to swoon. And it is this incredulity among the older audience that the Justin Beiber commercial captures beautifully. Older guys screaming like the typical teenager Beiber fan upon seeing Justin is completely unexpected and ridiculous. The ad was aired at the 85th Macy's Annual Thanksgiving Parade today.

With about 1.6 million views on YouTube and counting the commercial should eventually count among the most successful commercials of all time. The Ad successfully reaches the older audience and does a great job of multi-generational marketing right at the start of the holiday shopping season. And Macy's brand comes through pretty well despite the celebrity. Congratulations are in order for the marketing folks at Macy's and their Ad Agency for both the creative idea and the brilliant execution.

This blog wishes a Very Happy Thanksgiving to readers!

Customer Service: what organizations do not seem to know

Nothing like a tight economy to have consumers try and get that little extra value for their money. And sure enough the customer service arms of most organizations do not know their customer FAQ's or have not been able to prepare their front-line employees to deal with a customer's typical problem. As a result we have ten tips from CNN on" my secret to super customer service." These ten secrets provide huge clues to leaders in organizations to review exactly what is happening on the front-line:

  1. It never hurts to ask  when a deal is only for new customers.This example is from a strange industry practice, in several industries, of giving sweet deals to new customers and cutting out old- loyal customers. This despite the huge amount of research on customer relationships and customer life time value.
  2. Shift blame away from customer rep has lots to do with customer service organizations blaming the messenger. The front-line employee needs to have the full support of management so that what feedback they give is seen as market feedback and not a failing of the rep.
  3. Go to the CEO  works but obviously the CEO's organization is not working!
  4. Sharing constructive criticism also works but only with great companies who are ready to listen anyway. The guitar company is not mentioned by name in this story but if you are in the market for a guitar, you should consider them.
  5. Staying calm and taking notes  is great consumer advise because reps are supposed to keep notes and frequently deal with irate customers and probably feel happy when someone treats them decently.
  6. Propose your own solution works again with better customer service organizations where the front-line employee is authorized to solve the problem in the quickest manner possible. American Airlines is the good example here.
  7. Be persistent when you are not getting the service and they won't let you go. Here the CEO  approach did not work and this was satellite TV and mentioning the FCC helped resolve things. If a customer calls more than twice on the same matter it's time for the senior managers to call back.
  8. Be kind to the customer service rep. A variation of number 5 without really expecting much but being pleasantly surprised.
  9. Loyalty programs  seemed to help the customer in this story. Obviously they are not equally effective within an industry or across industries. Tying up loyalty programs to the point #1 problem of giving good deals to only new customers might be something to think about.
  10. Reasonable and polite customers seem to do better and sort of reflects #2, #5 and # 8 above.

Many organizations relegate customer service away from mainstream marketing and sales and that is probably the big reason why customers need to think of new ways to just get the value they are paying for. At the operational level given that four out of the ten points suggest politeness as a customer side strategy – organizations need to keep their customer reps responses to angry customers in context and not as a reflection of the reps performance.  The other big take-way for organizations is that treat loyal customers better– for they are the ones that are paying your bills.

What an 80 year old workforce means for organizations and innovation opportunities

Working till you are 80 years old is not a happy thought, particularly if you want to retire  at 65 or 67. But 25% Americans think that they might have no other alternative.  From an older worker's point of view not being able to retire is hard as is dealing with the stereotype of being old and incompetent. In addition, older people are also perceived as blocking the chances of entry and growth for younger workers. In a knowledge economy however, the older worker (65 or 67+) has some clear advantages:

  • Dependability of the older worker is huge simply because the person knows the job, may not be able to perform at super-speed  but you know it'll get done.
  • Informal organization knowledge. Although this cuts both ways – in a positive sense the older worker can help organizations innovate  and change because…
    • Of a legacy mindset. You want your organization to do better after you !

The innovation opportunities on the supply side change radically if the older worker does not retire but instead continues to work. These innovation opportunities could be:

  • Wellness services like gyms and training equipment for the elderly
  • More segmented wellness OTC products like vitamins and supplements
  • Leisure activities that are shorter duration than the 21 day cruise for the retired market
  • Electronics and computer screens that are more age-friendly for the working old
  • Re-training services for the older worker
  • Better safety products from railings,  boots that prevent falls and injury for the aged in the workplace.
  • Low cost retirement options 

Low cost retirement options might be  an idea worth pushing for low cost locations within the US and abroad.

Why is online holiday sales set to grow 15% in a slow economy?

With high US unemployment,nervous stock markets a volatile Europe and general uncertainty you have to wonder at the 15% growth estimates for on-line sales this year. Forrester estimates that this year online holiday sales will be  $59.9B  up 15% from the 2010 number of $51.7B. The growth rate and the sheer large numbers imply a huge shift in the Internet adoption behavior of consumers. Makes me recall an early piece of research on differentiating the Internet User-Non User and Online Buyer a topic of much interest in the early 2000's. It's fun to think of what has changed in the on-line space that allows sales to grow at 15% when most other parts of the economy is crawling at 1-2%. Here are some changes that are helping online sales:

  • It's cheaper to shop online – no driving and gas costs and much less time spent on searching through each mall and store physically. Searching on Google or Yahoo is seen as free !
  • Transaction trust was a huge problem in the early days of online shopping. That bad people would hack your credit card details was a huge concern that never seemed to go away. Today we are all far more comfortable giving out our credit card details on-line.
  • Online and social media reviews allow a huge level of confidence in buying something that you have not seen or touched. If your friends are saying good things – it must be good!
  • Returns are easy with most online retailers. Those with a brick and mortar store allow you to bring back the item you want to return to the store- so again there is a reduction in risk perception.
  • Mobile and tablet devices make online shopping an anytime anywhere activity perhaps the first time in the human history of trade?

This shift in Internet buying behavior for holiday items signals a fundamental shift in the economy even if you do not sell Christmas gifts. Because no matter what your business is – your customers  are ready more than ever to deal with you via the Internet.