Conversation Agent

How People go About Hiring Products and Facebook IPO

Valeria Maltoni — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:00:00 -0700

When it comes to getting things done, we still rely on search. Google still makes most of its revenue from people searching to hire a product or service to do something.

While we use social networks to stay connected and share with others, it is conversions and not conversations that make the economic world go around.

As the Facebook IPO is fast approaching, the social network's greater stickiness is of temporary comfort if the ad revenue doesn't follow. People may be spending more time there, however ads in the middle of a social stream are just noise when they're not relevant and timely.

The numbers still support this challenge. In its current form, the network is just not performing as an ad platform. General Motors has announced it is pulling its advertising expenditure on Facebook, which according to sources was about $10 million last year, due to low direct impact on car sales.

Starting from search -- what people want to buy and do, intent -- and then adding social to keep an eye on where intent is moving seems to be the preferable way to go. Then, social media as content delivery and interaction mechanism can support:

building relationships
connecting to value
extending to influentials
engaging via education
and thus helping with conversions

To that effect, a study conducted by GroupM Search I came across a couple of years back explored the interplay of social and search together, which is still relevant for digital marketing today.

There is a connection between activities in one, and results in the other -- actually it's more appropriate to call it a lift, as in the chart below.

Some highlights in the report:

Consumers exposed to a brand’s influenced social media and paid search are 2.8 times more likely to search for that brand’s products

There's a 50% CTR increase in paid search when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search

There's a 42-point lift in searcher penetration around brand product terms when consumers were exposed to both influenced social media and paid search compared to paid alone

When we discover something, in this case a brand, we're more prone to being influenced by that discovery in our search behavior. One of the key findings in the study revealed that social media exposure is correlated with lower-funnel search behavior.

One argument often made for including Facebook in a program is that the network is too big to ignore. That may be both a good and a bad thing for businesses that have complex model like an auto manufacturer.

Brand awareness is competing with the network's own brand for attention, and regional and local distribution for conversion. Almost five years ago, we were kicking the tires on the U.S. Auto Industry. An industry insider offered the following comment about the retail end:

It is my considered opinion that the entire industry needs to be reworked, from the manufacturers and their union taskmasters to the sales floor and the service bay.

I'm not sure how to go about it exactly, but I know that it involves putting businessmen in the managerial roles, rather than some dudes who sold a lot of cars ten years ago.

Service depts need to become more responsible about how repairs are handled and billed, and finance - don't get me started on finance. Change the commission structure, create openness in pricing, and purge the sales floor of the fast-talking shysters who will say anything to make a sale.
Customer Service needs to be the watchword, respecting them, caring for them, providing them with a quality product up front, and then remarkable service after the sale.

Brand-building will come organically to the dealership that takes this philosophy to heart.

Given the social first nature of interactions on Facebook, brands that are looking for more immediate return on ad investment are (for now) better off investing elsewhere. A good place to start might well be their showrooms.

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And talking about who gets the value out of what, read this letter to Mark Zuckerberg courtesy of Dan Ariely: with friends like Morgan Stanley, who needs enemies? It's a breakdown of emotional value complete with dollar signs.

The corporation gets little value out of this deal. Corporations sail on the wind of trade, as in trading the model, and not on the ebb and flow of sentimental share prices.

Will Facebook take control of its promises, reach out from behind the platform and start to close the brand dissonance gap? It's the quality of that trade that determines value and the long term prospects of the business.

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Most Marketers Still Not Making Data-Driven Decisions Surveys Find

Valeria Maltoni — Wed, 16 May 2012 02:00:00 -0700

How do large corporate marketers collect and use data?

Are practices in marketing measurement and ROI changing? How about the integration of digital and traditional marketing?

Has the excitement around big data brought about a shift in how marketers conduct their business?

These are some of the topics for investigation in a recent study conducted by Columbia Business School’s Center on Global Brand Leadership and the New York American Marketing Association (NYAMA).

The short answer: there is still a big gap between where organizations would like to be and where they actually are in capturing, analyzing, and using data to inform business decisions.

Data is either not collected, collected too infrequently, not shared across the organization, not linked at individual customer level, or when it is collected, it is often not appropriate to real-time decision making and not used to personalize communications.

Marketers appetite for new technologies is stronger than their ability to implement them effectively.

When reviewing social media use, the authors list many of the known and popular tactical approaches: email marketing, digital content, social network outposts, and mobile ads. Consistent outcome-based measurement across media is as elusive as program integration.

Extracting value from data requires discipline

This is consistent with research conducted by Eric Brynjolfsson, an economist at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in June 2011.

In a global survey of 586 senior executives, sponsored by SAS and conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit, they looked at the state of big data, along with the organizational characteristics of companies that are adept at extracting value from data.

Companies that use “data-directed decision-making” (defined “not only by collecting data, but also by how it is used—or not—in making crucial decisions”) enjoy a 5-6% boost in productivity.

Some key findings:

There is a strong link between effective data management strategy and financial performance. These businesses understand the potential of big data and are already leveraging their data to their competitive advantage, applying them to strategy development, product direction, market development and operational efficiency.

Extracting value from big data remains elusive for many organizations. Organizations are still learning how to manage big data.

Many companies struggle with the most basic aspects of data management, such as cleaning, verifying or reconciling data across the organization. Many struggle to deliver important data to the right people within an acceptable time frame. And there is also a dearth of work force skills required to sift through, analyze and develop insights from big data.

Companies that are furthest along the data management competency continuum—strategic data managers—provide a useful model for how organizations will need to evolve if they are to extract and utilize valuable data-driven insights. Strategic data managers use data to first identify specific measurements and data points that align closely with corporate strategic goals.

The amount of data produced continues to accelerate, even as businesses large and small struggle to update their practices. There is still much to learn.

For those companies that combine a long view with advanced data management practices and cultural change, there is an opportunity to put some distance between them and their competition.

Examples of companies that mine social media data

One of the benefits of investing resources to use social technologies is the type of data points an organization can collect in real time.

Two examples of large companies that are mining social media data [hat tip digiday]:

Procter & Gamble gained an 11 percent share of market for its Pepto-Bismol brand in 12 months by listening to people complain about indigestion after weekend culinary and libation binges on Facebook. The company builds social media campaigns around issues important to consumers it wants to reach [Source: Bloomberg Businessweek].

Target uses social data to inform future marketing efforts. As published in The Power of Habit, the company is able to identify customers that are pregnant or just had a baby and then uses various marketing channels to lure them in-store to buy baby products and, since they’re already there, everything else they need. [Source: The New York Times]

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The most common obstacle for companies to extract value from data is that they have too much data and too few resources.

While it may not be practical for global organizations to save hundreds of millions of transactions to gain a clear picture of the effects of pricing adjustments, for example, many industry experts believe that larger data sets are beneficial for comprehensive analysis and that new technologies are speeding up the results more effectively.

Most marketers are still not making data-driven decisions. However, big data will always be one of the tools that companies use to inform decisions, and increasingly critical one, yet just one.

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Answering Common Inquiries About Content

Valeria Maltoni — Tue, 15 May 2012 02:00:00 -0700

Three kinds of inquiries I receive regularly:

write about us
give us your content
allow us to post

Many of you find the contact form for consulting work. In that case, I'm happy to provide a quote and scope of work. If that's not what you're after, the quickest way to find out what is accepted for review and publication is by following the link to -- submit your question on the top menu.

In all cases, the best outcomes come when the ask is appropriate. Note the term "pro" is part of the word.

Making the ask

Don't know how to ask? Here's how to write an email that stands out for your review. It looks simple enough.

As I said in the post, notice how much care and interest the author took in writing it so that it would not come across as promotional or self serving in any way. Yet it carries the message across even by making it about the presentation and the morning and not the writer.

It is the care and interest that translate into a compelling note. If you're tempted to take a casual, what-the-heck approach, this example should give you pause and ideas to test a different one.

There are other ways to make sure you don't get good help. In general, if you ask for good help without deserving it, you will be mentally blacklisted AND there is a good chance that your future requests are deeply discounted.

This is greater than "cost of asking", if you're tempted to shrug the point off.

Some thoughts on why you may be striking out.

1. Write about us

The most obvious here is when you're trying to get coverage for a product or service that is of no immediate interest or focus.

When you're pitching an expert, it's good to keep in mind people like to read about business professionals who are changing the game by innovating an industry, building a new ecosystem, or are examples of design thinking at work.

In other words, you do something interesting and get attention based upon that. For an example of the kinds of interviews published here, just view those archived under conversations.

It's about impact, not impressive-sounding bios (those can be massaged). How do you show impact to those who don't know you/of you? Glad you asked.

Use this format if you're submitting a program for consideration/publishing:

clear situation, problem, or challenge
timeline or complication
response or solution sought
outcome and results
bonus points for customer testimonials and third party validation

It can be a very brief note. Remember, your best chance to get attention is not to waste people's time. Compare this approach with "see attached press release". There's a time and place for press releases as news items, calling cards.

Another good way to generate interest is to write about your work on your own blog and site. It's PR, not propaganda, where PR is moving to public relationships.

One final consideration on this point is the halo effect in connections. After some practice organizations have learned to think about the friends and friends of friends in relationships. Yet, the opportunity with content and halo that comes from those connections is still pretty much untapped.

A good starting point is asking yourself, should you be pitching me?

2. Give us your content

This site is about thinking together on several issues related to business strategy, connecting marketing with business sense, and meaningful actions for brands. Every post is connected to every other post in one long conversation -- this is what makes the content special.

It works here because it is part of a bigger picture. And it's an investment in time and attention we do together as a community.

Indeed, there are bloggers who use reposting and cross posting as a link building or sharing strategy. I don't repost this content to other sites. You are welcome to link to posts and quote excerpts with link back as addressed by fair use.

On occasion, when the ask was aligned with my strategy and helpful to a professional community, I do interviews, answer questions, and write feature articles for other publications.

The grass is always greener, trust me on this one. A better question should be: how can you make your site a rich resource to attract a specific community? You do that, and take advantage of the long tail of search as well.

3. Allow us to post

Encouraged by the many posts on link building, these types of inquiries have gone up in volume. They all sound the same in a fascinating case of cut-and-paste copy writing. This is the first clue that you don't have a good chance of standing out.

While the quality of your post may be good, the economics may not be. The cold hard truth about guest posts is to make it worthwhile, often the approach is to write a generic advice type post, one of those that get shared on Twitter, and pitch it to as many bloggers as possible.

The writing is low level, the grammar is awful grammar, typos are having a party, and it would be easier to let the post die than trying some serious CPR editing.

Have guest posts become the fruit cake? Someone actually declared it was good quid pro quo with a smiley in an email last week. True reciprocity is a fair exchange.

Reciprocity is one of the levers in marketing by context building. Reciprocity anticipates and respects a need -- the good balance to strike between the entitled quid pro quo, and the lazy status quo.

True, I have published guest posts here. They were the direct result of me asking. I even picked the links to the work of the writer. This goes back to wanting to showcase the impact a specific person has on the community through their work.

It's about building links to human endeavors.

Social media enhances a growing confusion between reporting, sharing, and reading news/information with the actual actions of making history. Hint: it takes less thinking to do the latter.

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The May issue of the Premium Newsletter goes out at 8am EST (in case you'd like to receive it by subscribing) this morning. This month it's about deeper thoughts and resources on demand creation, conversion metrics, and product launches.

[good content is like a meal, created to nourish your community, and excuse to be social]

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Why Experience is Key to Customer Loyalty

Valeria Maltoni — Mon, 14 May 2012 02:00:00 -0700

Whenever I travel, I'm reminded of the many amazing opportunities that come from being able to reach many parts of the world relatively easily.

Let's face it, things can go wrong with the weather and with technology. It is how an airline -- or any company, for that matter -- handles customer fairness that will make a big difference to its bottom line. Will they have to discount fares more deeply so people will do business with them again next time?

There is plenty of room left for improving customer experience in the travel industry -- airlines, hotels, car services, even airports, with a few notable exceptions (thank you, Justin Meyer, for setting a new standard).

Memo to TSA: We should stop pretending that treating people poorly is a good practice. Security is not guaranteed that way, and showing some professionalism would go a long way to gain respect. I've had better screenings anywhere else in the world. How is it possible?

It would be an excellent idea to have service personnel at all of these companies, and government employees, experience a normal day of travel as a regular person, someone without the special privileges of not having to be screened, or not having to wait in line, etc. A-la mystery shopper.

That full immersion alone could help fix many issues. Would you like your own treatment or that of your organization?

There is a disconnect between what companies promise, and what they actually deliver. That gap is the reason why customers, when given the chance, will take their business elsewhere.

Because brand perception makes a big difference in premium and consideration, including recommendations, customer experience is more important than ever. More and more people are voting with their mouths, likes, and wallets.

Looking at customer complaints is not enough

Complaints are symptoms, and they will lead organizations down the reactive path every single time. Plus, only 2% of the population -- or even less -- bothers to say something, anything. In my experience, most frequent travelers, to stay with the example in this post, learn to hack the system for themselves.

Which leaves the rest of the customer base with the habits of a very select few to live with, and the business with a false picture of what customers experience. I wish ticket agents actually did measure the size of some of those carry-on bags.

The other day, I was watching a group of what looked like seasoned business travelers literally hedging an older lady and a family with young children to push their way into an early boarding line for fear of not being able to fit their large carry on bags on the flight.

It was even more ironic by the fact that they looked fit and well heeled. More the line backer kind than timid travelers. Had I taken a picture, it would have looked like any board of directors in composition. What was the experience for the rest of the travelers?

Bottom line is after a poor experience, many just won't go back, and they will tell their whole circle of friends and family why not. Or, if they go back, it will be at very reduced prices. Which in turn explains why most of the industry struggles to make a profit.

Designing the customer experience

Designing the customer experience needs to be a proactive activity and drive to wanting to make it a positive one. There are rare exceptions. Consumer advocate and journalist Chris Elliott says:

Virgin America is unashamedly retro, when if comes to service. Don’t look for solemn-faced ticket agents trying to make their weekly quota of luggage fees. They’ve been replaced by helpful employees with real-looking smiles. The flight attendants seem genuinely happy to be there, a sharp contrast to the tired counterparts at some of the more established carriers.

The image you see in this post [hat tip Beth Harte] highlights two important points for a make or break situation with customer experience:

companies do have control over those instances that can make or break customer loyalty
and they know which data they need to either collect or connect and when

So, as the chart suggests, the fundamental questions marketers and customer service groups need to work on are:

how can we make this a positive experience?
what can we do to make sure consumers come back time and time over?
where do we need data to help deliver the experience?

In some instances, the company may already have the answers. In others, it may need to rethink the way it operates and communicates in order to collect them. However, I'd say that the main difficulty many organizations have is with knowing to ask the right questions -- or, in some instances, wanting to do so.

Loyalty programs circa 1990 are quite broken. There is no amount of points you could give a customer who has had a horrible experience to go back to the same brand or organization. At best, you may get them to use the coupon or redeem the points if it's easy to get something for free.

Many mileage programs are so hard to navigate that many a business is thriving over helping people take advantage of their points. People who charge fees to help travelers use their points. A missed business opportunity, not to mention reason to be loyal, for airlines.

Imagine what could be done there that is social and helps the business deliver on promises. A whole industry bent on sticking to a money-losing model, when they could trade their assets so much more creatively -- and create experiences people would be willing to talk about to boot.

How are customer talking about you online, and worse, off line? What stories are they telling their friends, neighbors, family, and anyone who will ask?

Situations do come up. In an increasingly interconnected world, how organizations work on designing the customer experience to deliver on their promises does matter more and more to the business long term prospects.

"After all, the customer is not stupid. She is your mother, your sister or your wife,” to say it with Mr. David Ogilvy.

[updated from archives]

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Business Lessons I Learned from my Mother

Valeria Maltoni — Sun, 13 May 2012 03:00:00 -0700

My mother was Miss Romagna. Her name is Anna Laura. I wanted to have her purple blue eyes and ready smile. She has the welcoming spirit of a woman always ahead of the times and comfortable in her own skin.

In addition to being a mother of three (all girls), she has had multiple careers -- accounting, sales, public office, geriatric care, and beautician; some overlapping for years.

Mother really gets communications -- the listening part especially -- the organization of work, along with the care of the individual. Whether she negotiated credit rates or the recovery of the elderly, she made significant contributions to the health and sustainability of the relationships she helped create.

While she was busy building a customer base for the advertising agency she helped get off the ground -- her book of business was in the order of several million Euros -- she never forgot to lend a hand in our projects.

In fact, I owe it to her if I completed many a course work in University.

To this day, mother remains the Chairman of my Personal Board and my very best friend and confidant.

Along with teaching me the meaning of independence by example, here are three of the lessons I learned from mother that helped me in business:

Always leave a place and person in a better condition than you found them in -- a deceivingly simple thought that can have great ramifications. It means you show up, contribute, and remain present to what is asked of you in the moment. I've found myself wiping the water splash around a sink at an airport while thinking about this. Or stopping to chat with someone who needs to be heard even if I'm in a hurry. As a manager, this means learning to draw out the skill and talent people already have.

Tell them the truth -- if a program is not going to work, don't sell it to them. Shift your focus from making the buck in the short term to building the relationship for the long term. In a team environment, be honest and kind at the same time. As a manager, this means having frank conversations with your people. There is no need to be brutal when honest.

Stay positive -- no matter the circumstances and people, always find a way to express your energy in a way that includes and accepts. Creative people focus on the problem and challenge with an eye to finding a solution -- often this is where innovation brews. Using time and effort to move forward is wise and productive. If you think about it, what holds us back is often our thinking that we can't do it. Or looking at a closed door for too long. As a manager, this translates into providing feedback in a timely and constructive manner.

There are many more.

All revolve around the philosophy that being your real self beats being a copy of someone else any day. This is a tribute to all mothers -- teachers, friends, sisters, colleagues, bosses, heads of state, etc. They all leave a profound imprint in our lives and hearts every day.

Happy Mother's Day to all mothers, the beautiful connective tapestry of our lives.

What lessons did your mother teach you?

[recent image of mom at a party]

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