Measuring Marketing Wins

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Missie

Every organization wants to measure return on investment. Marketing budgets are often on the chopping block. So how do marketing departments determine the return on investment for each of their activities? There’s an old adage that says half of all advertising dollars are wasted, the problem is figuring out which half. Umm, that’s a problem.

Baseline statistics are out there for all kinds of marketing initiatives, which people can compare to their own numbers. Tools and tips for measuring response from direct mail (use of special URLs or phone numbers to measure which piece generates leads, expected response rate of 1-2%), web advertising (number of times an ad is served up, the click through rate, the number of conversions, average click through rate of banner ads is currently 0.2-0.3%), number of impressions combined with detailed audience segmentation information from media outlets, etc. All of this data, of course, then gets paired and parsed with business financial information showing sales numbers across products, product lines, and the company’s product mix.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of math. Marketing includes a ton of statistical analysis. It’s like the analytics movement in the NBA in the early 2000s or the recent movie Moneyball with Brad Pitt, except instead of trying to build a baseball team built on statistics that is most likely to generate wins, marketing teams are trying to build a marketing program built on statistics that is most likely to resonate with the audience. Marketing’s win equals influence. Influence is different from a purchase.

Most people think of marketing as something that tries to get us to buy something. Most of the commercials on TV want us to spend money on something, right? Yes. But a purchase is only one aspect of marketing. An important part, a measurable part, but not the only part.

What if a company or organization isn’t selling a commodity that can be easily quantified? What if it’s an organization that works to clean the ocean? What if it’s an organization that provides free educational webinars? What if it’s an organization that promotes healthy eating? I have one book on my shelf about strategic communications for non-profits. This 266-page book has nine pages dedicated to measurement and evaluation strategies. Nine pages! Running a quick statistical analysis, that means marketing in non-profits should only spend three percent of their time on measuring success.

Wow. Do non-profits not care about measuring the return of their marketing efforts? Absolutely not. In fact, many non-profits are finding their budgets particularly depleted during this economic downturn and are trying hard to make strategic decisions to maintain effectiveness. They know that they need marketing to make a difference, but they don’t have answers about what is particularly effective. Sure, many non-profits can measure against different metrics, like how many people walked through the front door, how many square miles of ocean were cleaned, how many people logged into the webinars, but let’s look more closely at the healthy eating example. Let’s hypothesize that you work for this organization and that your top three communications objectives are to educate the community about:

1. the benefits of eating healthy food
2. what foods are healthy
3. how to prepare food

How do you measure if you have been successful? Surveys, focus groups, key informant interviews…these are all possible, but they’re not all-inclusive. You could partner with local markets and ask for reports about types of food purchased, which may or may not be possible, prohibitively expensive, or an effective measure. And how do you know if the results of the campaign are long-lasting? Suddenly, measuring the impact of an organization’s marketing efforts just became even more challenging than it already was. How do you quantify social change?

I would love to hear your thoughts, suggestions, ideas! I’m always looking to improve our methods of measuring effectiveness. Please comment, shoot me an email, or send me a message on twitter (@missiethurston).

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Everybody Online Thinks Like Me

Posted on February 28, 2012 by Missie

We all know that the internet is in a continual state of growth and change. The common sentiment is that the internet has opened the gates for increased dissemination of information; everyone and their mother now has a blog (like this one).

This means unparalleled access to information, right? Wrong. More and more of what we are exposed to on the internet is being filtered, and it’s a filter that we have little to no control over. This is one of the biggest shifts in the internet, and this is something people should be talking about.

People do discuss paid advertising, which is filtering information served to the viewer. Many businesses have been impacted negatively or positively by increased paid advertising on Google search pages, for example. Paid search results at the top of the page and along the entire right-hand side of the page encourage people to visit paid advertisers, limiting the other search result content and its positioning.

The paid advertising filter, in my opinion, is at least transparent. My concern revolves around the “other” search engine content. Search engines like Google no longer have any regular search engine results. Every search in Google is customized for the person searching for it. Google’s algorithms calculate you in order to determine your search results, including your location, your browser, your computer, and what it knows about your web history.

What does this mean? It means that if you’re looking for shoes and live in Seattle, you’re likely to get shoe stores that are located in Seattle. Well, that’s helpful. But it also means that if you click on articles and photos relating to liberal or conservative viewpoints, your search results could categorically remove viewpoints opposing your own. It means instead of being exposed to a diverse collection of information, we could be exposed to a more and more narrow field of information…potentially without ever noticing it. This applies to events, politics, art, music, sports, and products. And it expands beyond Google.

Facebook has removed the chronological news feeds, which means that people now view Facebook posts according to importance assigned by Facebook’s algorithms. Among other things, these algorithms place weight on viewers’ previous engagement with content and advertisements. Yahoo! News also customizes which stories it displays based on information about the person visiting the site. In a TED talk, Eli Pariser describes in better detail the inherent dangers with these filters.

I know that sites are vying for attention in an internet of millions of pieces of content, which means every site needs an edge to attract visitors. I understand that some search engines and social media sites are trying to gain an edge by maximizing relevance. They’re trying to provide content that aligns with viewer interests and opinions, but they do the viewer a disservice. People will always be able to filter information for themselves, and then it is a conscious and more informed decision.

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Strengthen Your Brand by Doing Good

Posted on February 21, 2012 by Missie

By now, we’re all familiar with cause marketing. Why? Because more and more businesses, whether product or service or entertainment-focused, are using cause marketing to strengthen their brand.

Cause marketing happens when brands tie their marketing efforts with support for good causes, such as donating a portion of the purchase price to the local foodbank or annual donations to cancer research. This type of cause marketing has become increasingly popular because it’s being proven more and more effective with the public.

The 2010 Cone Cause Evolution Study found that 83 percent of Americans wish that more businesses supported causes. This remarkable number has doubled since 1993 and businesses are taking note, using cause marketing as a positioning tool to differentiate themselves.

Toms Shoes donates a pair of shoes to those in need for every purchase.

TOMS shoes donates a pair of shoes to those in need for every pair of shoes purchased.

The amazing statistic, I think, is the fact that consumers find cause marketing more important in a down economy. In this 2010 survey, 19 percent of those surveyed said they would pay more for a product if it was associated with a cause. (What an opportunity to improve the world!) And beyond the importance for consumers, cause marketing has enormous impacts for the business and its employees.

I discovered early in my career that I needed my professional career to contribute toward the betterment of communities. I am naturally drawn toward organizations whose missions reflect this same commitment. For me, as an employee, I would find more satisfaction, more involvement, and more identification with employers who faithfully and genuinely supported a cause. The 2010 Cone survey finds that this is the case for many employees and that dedication to a cause can increase employee involvement and satisfaction.

Companies are being expected to move toward cause marketing and they are finding expected and unexpected rewards. Are there challenges? Of course. For instance, it is becoming clear that the use of social media and other venues for consumers to select a company’s cause isn’t strong cause marketing strategy. Just like brand consistency, cause consistency is important. It’s also becoming clear that having a portion of each purchase or project go toward a cause gives consumers the feeling of involvement and tends to resonate more than an annual company donation.

Cause marketing strategy will undoubtedly continue to develop and grow, which bodes well for our communities as long as companies stay genuine in their efforts to donate to meaningful causes. When Bruce Burtch, a cause marketing leader, was asked his purpose in life, he said “do well by doing good.” Consumers, employees, and companies all benefit from giving back to the community.

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An Unusual Mission in Vermont Media

Posted on February 14, 2012 by Missie

When I graduated from college, I was afraid. Afraid I was going to have to choose a single medium for my storytelling “career.” Instead of choosing, I combined my skills with those of a fellow storyteller, my dad. We looked at modern day media and realized that most “news” is filled with negative stories. Our mission: let’s bring positive stories to TV, radio, newspaper, and the internet.

Sounds simple. Now what? Well, we started with our location: Vermont. We ended up with a plan to tell a story from Vermont’s history, every day. The stories were funny, sad, historical, or quirky…and there were a lot of stories. (365 stories per year and 366 on leap year, to be exact.)

The program, “The Vermont Book Of Days,” was designed as a vignette. We put together demo kits and presented them to Vermont media outlets. And we had the naïveté to think that the outlets would pay for content that was meaningful to its audience. Nope.

One year after our first demo kits were distributed, we launched the program. It took almost one year before we had our media network. “The Vermont Book Of Days” would air three times per day on Vermont’s National Public Television affiliate, three times per day in a network of 11 radio stations, in four newspapers, and on our website www.vtbookofdays.com.

The stations and newspapers weren’t paying us for the content, but they did air the program at specific, high-volume or targeted audience times. We redesigned the program with sponsorship pods, so we could find program sponsors who would benefit from affiliation with the program content in these media outlets.

The program, the sponsors, the media outlets, and Vermonters all benefited from the multi-media nature of the program. The stories were powerful, and each medium brought a different element. Television, for example, brought viewers on-location with live footage and newspapers gave the audience unlimited time to study historic or current photos.

A few things I learned:

1. Some media outlets will immediately recognize content that’s going to resonate with its audience. Others will need to have that proven to them. A very few either don’t know, don’t care, or don’t have the ability to step outside the pre-determined content box.

2. Vermont is rural. (Okay, I knew that.) But I expected this to naturally lead to collaboration amongst media outlets, since there aren’t many of them and they face similar challenges of trying to survive in rural America. I did find collaboration, but I also encountered fierce competition. The most surprising element to me was that the competition varied primarily (though not always) according to medium. Print: cut-throat. Radio: teamwork. Certain TV stations: cut-throat; other TV stations: teamwork.

A few things I knew that were confirmed:

1. “The Vermont Book Of Days” was created for Vermonters and it resonated with Vermonters. The program ran for more than six years and, due to popular demand, we published a full-color, hard-cover compendium of stories which sold more than 1,000 copies in the first 10 days of release.

2. Much media in Vermont is put together by very hard-working people, working too many hours for too few dollars, working miracles with limited resources. To these storytellers, information gatherers, and pillars of community – thank you.

The demands of “The Vermont Book Of Days” were many. A two-person crew to research, write, film, produce, edit, and deliver daily stories for TV, radio, newspaper, and the web is not a small task. But the gifts of “The Vermont Book Of Days” were also many. Vermont is an amazing place, and I’m grateful to have shared some of her stories filled with some of her people.

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Thank you for being a little different.

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Missie

It’s not often that you can point to a single trigger to explain a purchase. Usually it’s a myriad of beliefs and habits, combined with convenience, that lead almost unconsciously to a purchase decision. As a marketer, it can be incredibly frustrating. It’s one of the biggest challenges of market research: people cannot always accurately account for why they buy something.

But I can tell you why I bought insurance from PEMCO: I loved their marketing campaign.

Did anyone I know recommend them? No. Did extensive research prove them to be superior? No. Was it more convenient? No. Were they cheaper? No.

Their campaign “We’re a lot like you. A little different.” resonated with me. I enjoyed seeing it on buses and billboards. I wanted to see what the next profile was going to be. Why? Because the profiles were funny and accurate. Pacific Northwesterners already talked and laughed about these traits.

PEMCO ad on the side of the bus

PEMCO ad on the side of the bus

In this campaign, PEMCO proved that they knew us (We’re a lot like you). They got their market research right. And they positioned themselves in a way no other insurance company did (A little different). This campaign was for me, not for the nation. In fact, other than the Northwest profiles, I don’t remember a single service or product being included on the ads.

It takes a strong stimulus for someone to take on an inconvenient task like changing their insurance coverage, and it’s easy for them to change their mind and hang up (at least for me, it is). The reason PEMCO got our household as a customer was because I got through to a real person immediately. He was actually located in Seattle and his name was Mike. Mike walked me through everything and and gave me his number. Two weeks later I got the paperwork and there was one tiny error. I called and Mike answered. Wow, that’s a lot different.

A few PEMCO profiles

Since switching to PEMCO about 18 months ago, I have continued to be impressed. My rates are a little bit higher, but it’s worth it for me to be able to call and talk to someone within minutes of the first ring. Everyone I have ever spoken to has been within the state of Washington and they’ve all worked hard to get me the best rate PEMCO can offer us. They’re a lot like me. A little different.

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