Marketing Tactegy

The top 3 Marketing Inventions/Innovations

Last week I kicked off a short survey of what the top 3 marketing inventions/innovations are.  The answers break down into a few categories.  You may disagree with my classifications, but here are the results:

Historical (not listed in historical order)

• The Internet
• Television & radio
• The Gutenberg printing press
• The wheel
• The microprocessor
• Fire

Market modeling related

• Predictive modeling/churn modeling
• ROMI/ROO, MMM, Return on Brand Investment

Great marketers

• Steve Jobs
• Guy Kawasaki
• Mark Cuban

Technology and tools

• Internet (also mentioned above)
• LinkedIn
• Spell Check
• Personalized broadcast Integrated email and CRM
• Internet
• Social Media
• Twitter
• Online advertising
• Infomercials
• FSIs

Marketing Concepts

• Understanding consumer behavior
• Value appropriation
• Adaptation to new technologies
• Fully integrated Marcom processes
• SPIN
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Lead nurturing
• Strategy
• Retention
• Innovation
• SWOT Analysis
• Ansoff’s Matrix
• The art of differentiation
• Become part of the customer’s life
• Continuous product innovation
• Listen to the customer
• Alphabet soup:

The 4Ps (Product, Price, Place, Promotion)

The 3Cs (Customers, Channel, Competition)

The 4Cs (Customer needs, Cost to customer, Convenience to customer, Communication)

+3Ps (People, Process, Physical evidence)

The 4Rs and a P (Referrals, Retention, Repeat business, Reactivation, Prospecting)

The 16Ps

• AIDA (Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action)
• Changing people’s attitude

Blatant self-promotion

• (none repeated here)

It’s great to see the diversity of input on various marketing terms and techniques.  I also like the historical references which make it all possible.  It is also a pretty good list of different concepts that marketers feel strongly about.

As for the three top marketers offered, they represent sources of great ideas and to stay abreast of hot new topics we should be following their blogs and other writings.

Thanks to everyone that provided feedback.  Let me know if you have any other thoughts.

Interesting read on the marketing effectiveness of commercials…

At the 2009 Joint Statistical Meetings in Washington, DC, August 1st – 6th there was an interesting presentation about the effectiveness of advertising and commercial viewership.  (as summarized by Laura Sanders in Science News, August 29,2009).  I was unable to find the original article electronically, but here are a few summary points.

Advertising Effectiveness of commercials

For example, during the research period the cooking reality television show Hell’s Kitchen drew 2.96% share as measured by the cable box, but its commercial audience was 2.42% for a drop of 18%.  On the other hand, high retention took place for NUMB3RS drawing 1.90% and 1.78% during the commercials.
David Schweidel of the University of Wisconsin – Madison did the research and looked at the drop off rates based on:

• Audience size
• Genre
• Network
• Time of day

Some conclusions:

• People were less likely to avoid a commercial late at night.
• The length of the commercial break
• Whether there were other channels with simultaneous commercials
• Dramas did better than reality TV

This is an interesting initial research based on a regional analysis (a large West Coast metropolitan area.)  Losing up to 20% of an audience during the commercial break is a big difference and clearly will have an impact when the commercial ratings system starts to be implemented.

Let me know if you have any other research along these lines.  Or if you attended the presentation, and have any other insights, I would love to see it.

Social Media - To measure or not to measure? That is the question

I've been following a number of blogs and other posts and thoght I would put this out there.  Obviously, I think you know where I believe the answer to the title question lies, but it also shows the trepdidation that many marketers have in  measurement and ROI, especially when it comes to a new media channel.

Measuring Social Media ROI

It's very interesting to read these discussions about ROI when it comes to social media.  They are very similar to the discussions from 10 years ago when it was also 'impossible' to measure ROI from a website.  Now Internet ROI is measured everyday and generally very accurately.  ROI needs to be thought of as a tool to not necessarily get approval, but as a method to do better. We may not know how much incremental revenue social media marketing is going to deliver, but we know that it is worth the risk.

Companies that have never done TV advertising before, set up their first spots so they can test to see if they worked.  If they do, they invest more.  If they don't they tweak their plan to make it work.  We need to think of social media in the same way.

1) Take the risk and take the plunge
2) Measure results to see where we can improve
3) Determine whether it's making a difference and keep measuring.

No one disagrees with the fact that social media is the place to be and that it will be a major place to be for a very long time. 

Our company has been measuring the impact of social communities for a few years now.  It isn't that hard.  You just need to want to do it and have the measurement know-how.  Please reach out to me on twitter at @GuyPowell or go to my book site at http://www.marketing-calculator.com