thefunnel

Most B-2-B marketing is all about the marketing contribution to achieve a business objective. Often there’s a high emphasis on easy to measure direct contributions such as collateral (brochures, catalogs, etc.) leads, visits, responses or new names, and not much weight is given to marketing “influencers” such as brand equity, awareness, loyalty, etc. (although these can be more valuable for the success of a business in the long run). The reason for this is simply because some things are easier to measure than others, and the short term focus of many companies leads to a very tactical approach. For many marketers, digital marketing has been great, with more measurable things, but the marketing contribution problem still remains, because yes there are more things to measure, but yes they are still very tactical or activity based rather than based on a real outcome. Why am I writing this? Here’s why. The bigger problem as I see it is that the business environment is changing and most of the “generic and measurable” marketing contributions are showing a diminishing return. For example: email marketing response rates are going down, trade show participation is down, most companies are catching on to search and web marketing, so the way in which marketing used to show its (tactical) business contribution is soon no longer being there, and yet, not much emphasis is being put onto measuring the indirect contribution of marketing. What can a marketer do, to avoid going back to be just a servant of sales and a production house for brochures and flyers?

I’m currently evaluating various (inexpensive) tools for enabling an easy way for users to to give website feedback / feedback through the web site.  The ideal is a tab based approach available on each page. Hard to find something that’s just right. Not too heavy, not too light and moderately customizable. So far I’ve looked at getsatisfaction, uservoice and suggestionbox. Getsatisfaction didn’t really fit because it was “too community” oriented and I think our customers would have had a hard time figuring out how to leave anonymous feedback or felt frustrated having to log in twice (separate logins for the site and the satisfaction tool, in the case they didn’t use their face book account the register). Uservoice in play -looks promising.

A brand starts with a vision to solve something (a problem), by providing a service, or a product. This vision includes elements such as whom, what, where, how much, unlike others, etc., forming the basis of segmentation, targeting and positioning, from which a position statement, a value proposition and messaging can be created.

In addition to the above, the vision also includes intangible elements, providing an answer to the question. How does the organization go about “delivering a solution to the problem”? This is where culture, values and company personality comes into play. These are generally more challenging to understand, as they are often only experienced by clients during or after a service interaction.

Customers who interact with the organization, then forms an overall perception of value for the company services, interaction and relationship, in relation to other similar solutions or substitutes?

To understand the perception of value, the brand attributes, strengths and weaknesses must be measured. Since attributes can be perceived or real, and all are not equal, the relative importance of these also needs to be understood. Typically there are basic ones that are required to play in a particular industry, and then the ones that drive value. In addition, brand attributes often need to be categorized into, for example, company level, service level, category level, industry segment level, etc. The job of brand tracking is to closely monitor attributes, providing facts, data and support for the organization in strategic marketing (segmenting, targeting, positioning) and all its marketing communication (both internally and externally).

 The summary of all this is a brand system including:

• Brand Essence, Promise, Personality (culture) and Association
• A Message Architecture with Messages, Supporting Messages (or proof points)
• Communication guidelines (including social media)
• Visual Brand Identity guidelines (both print and online)
• Basic Attributes and Value Driver Attributes, grouped into some higher level categories such as the company, service, etc.
• Measurements and tracking of Familiarity, Consideration, Mindshare and the Net Promoter Score