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Marketing Executives Are Now Pumping Out Content Daily or Hourly

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Is the world becoming swamped with content?

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

A recent survey by 10Fold has revealed that marketing executives now focus a substantial portion of their budget on creating and constantly delivering new content at an ever-increasing frequency. According to the research findings, nearly one-third of respondents are now producing content daily or hourly.

The report looks at current and planned content marketing budgets, frequency, type, development and measurement of content programs. It found that three-quarters of technology marketers plan to generate three times more content in the next 12 months than they did in the previous year; and 42 percent will spend €250,000 or more in the next 12 months on content.

Measuring the effectiveness of content is still a challenge for marketing executives. But it seems that soliciting customer feedback never goes out of style.

Key Research Findings:

  • Social media, video and webinars are cited as the best content “types” among all respondents
  • Top executives prefer video as a content medium
  • 44 percent of respondents say that lack of domain expertise is the top barrier for creating quality content
  • 99 percent of respondents use third parties to create at least 25 percent of their content
  • 83 percent of respondents report that third party generated content is at least above average
  • 80 percent leverage basic tools (Google Analytics) to track and measure content impact; followed by 60 percent using marketing automation systems

“The marketplace is constantly changing,” said David Gehringer, principal of Dimensional Research. “Based on the results of our research for 10Fold, there is no doubt that there is an insatiable demand among technology companies for content that has technical relevancy and that is delivered in a form, such as video and blogs, that is appealing to their buyers.”

It seems that the saying “content is king” still rings true, for now.

 

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What Consumers Buy to Feel More Powerful

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By MediaStreet Staff Writers

It’s all about the face.

Research has found that people prefer wider faces on products if they are seeking to show dominance or would like to project importance. People are typically averse to wider human faces because they elicit fears of being dominated. However, consumers might like wider faces on some products they buy, such as watches or cars, when they want to be seen in a position of power in certain situations, according to a new study led by a marketing researcher.

“When consumers are motivated to dominate others, or when they use the product in public, their liking will be heightened toward high-ratio product faces,” said Ahreum Maeng, assistant professor in marketing at the KU School of Business.

In five experiments, respondents examined photos of human faces that varied from low width-to-height ratio (narrow) to ones with a higher ratio (wider) to establish the perception of dominance when seeing higher-ratio faces. The researchers also had respondents view photos of products that might have a design resembling a human face, such as watch and clock faces and automobiles, from low to high width-to-height ratios.

“These kinds of things are automatically going on in people’s brains,” Maeng said. “When we see those shapes resembling a human face in the product design, we can’t help but perceive it that way.”

Researchers have established that people are evolutionarily adapted to read facial cues, especially those signalling dominance, and the width-to-height ratio of face is a cue to attribute dominance to the face. In the notion of anthropomorphism, scholars have found people often attribute human traits to non-human entities, such as products.

In addition, the researchers had participants view the images while they thought about different scenarios, such as preparing to encounter either an old high school bully or a former sweetheart at a 10-year-old high school reunion or a business trip that might require a difficult negotiation.

Their main finding was that when people felt they were in a situation where they might want to be perceived as dominant – such as that business negotiation or when seeing an old bully at a high-school reunion – people were inclined to select the wider product design for a watch or car they might be renting for the trip.

Maeng said this differs from how people tend to see dominance in the human face. They typically become averse to a higher width-to-height ratio because they feel threatened or intimated.

“But when it comes to a dominant-looking product face, they really like it,” she said. “It’s probably because people view the product as part of themselves and they would think, it’s my possession. I have control over it when I need it, and I can demonstrate my dominance through the product.”

In scenarios where participants did not feel the need to project any dominance, such as a more laid-back time with their children or family, the width-to-height ratio of the products became less important, the researchers found.

Maeng said the findings have important implications for marketers of products that might resemble a human face, such as watches with a circular face and cars. They found consumers’ preferences for dominant-looking product faces is not the same as people’s preference simply for luxury or expensive items.

Also, typically, product-design efforts have focused on visual aesthetics and ergonomics, an assumption that beauty and functionality covers the entire canvas of product design. However, more recent contrary findings by marketing researchers suggest that product design can signal a specific personality trait about the product.

Maeng said this type of preference means that manufacturers and marketers would be able to charge higher prices for products that have wider faces. They have already found a positive relationship in examining 2013 prices of automobiles based on the width-to-height ratio, and their study likely supports those types of decisions.

“Brand managers and product designers may be particularly interested in these findings,” the researchers said, “because a simple design feature, namely product face ratio, can have marketplace impact – by significantly improving the company’s bottom line.”

 

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Your brand is talking about itself too much

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By John Long.

You’re at a cocktail party, and you find yourself standing next to a guy you’ve never met. He seems pleasant enough at first, offering his name — let’s call him Eric — and a friendly handshake.

But then, unprompted, Eric tells you what he does for a living, where he’s from, where he went to college and what he majored in. And then Eric rattles off all the places he’s worked, what he did at those places — and babbles on about a new project he’s working on — in painstaking, mind-numbing detail — as he produces his business card. Just minutes after meeting him, you’re frantically scanning the room for any to get away.

We’ve all run into that guy. We hate that guy. So don’t let your brand be that guy.

These days, everyone’s trying to figure out “content” (a terrible term, but that’s for another piece) — while, every year, advertising spend on social media spending keeps going up. Given those two trends, it’s surprising how many brands still prattle on incessantly about themselves like that blowhard Eric.

I’m not saying brands no longer need artfully crafted communications about their products and services that are compelling and grounded in a human truth—they still do, and always will. But an important question marketers should be asking today is:

What should my brand talk about other than itself?

This isn’t a new concept. I’m an Ogilvy guy, and one of my favorite ads from the archives is this one for Guinness that ran in Esquire in the early 1950s.

1950s Guinness ad

Now that’s what the kids today call “native content.” And it’s great. A lot of people love oysters, but almost no one knows anything about them. So in addition to its eye-catching art direction that immediately draws you in, the copy holds your interest, in part, because it’s not about Guinness — it’s about a delicious mollusk. And it wasn’t a one-off. There were ads about cheeses, game birds, and steaks. In short, it was a beautiful and highly effective campaign for Guinness that wasn’t about Guinness.

Let’s pause for a minute.

Think about the kind of people you find interesting and enjoy being around. They don’t ramble on endlessly about themselves. They’ve got a knack for finding what interests you—and they always seem to have some interesting tidbit about that subject that captures your attention. They meet you on your level. They listen. They fascinate. And so should brands.

A lot of brands understand this.

Nike doesn’t just talk shoes, they talk about hard work and human achievement. REI doesn’t just talk about ski equipment, they talk about the transformational power of being outdoors. And Apple doesn’t just talk about smartphones, they talk about design and creativity.

But other brands have some catching up to do. Take the major pizza delivery chains. Why do they seem to talk about pizza and prices and little else? People already love pizza, and a dollar here or there isn’t going to buy their loyalty for the long haul. Or consider retailers that dominate a category — like say, toys or music. These brands have a wonderful opportunity to talk about something other than themselves and they’re mostly not taking advantage of it.

So let’s say you’ve accepted my premise. How do you know what your brand should talk about? Two things you need right off the bat are a razor-sharp definition of your brand — yes, brand still really matters — and a deep understanding of your customer. But tread carefully. To enter certain conversations, brands need credibility.

Guinness could credibly talk about oysters and cheese because beer goes pretty well with both. And almost anyone can talk about say, the Olympics. But even if they had done so in a less ham-fisted way, Pepsi didn’t have the credibility to talk about the Arab Spring and Black Lives Matter.

The bottom line: in an increasingly distracting world, brands can’t expect people to be interested in them just because they show up on their television or tablet. They must start with the premise that people just don’t care about their heritage, their ingredients, their propriety processes or their “solutions.”

To attract interest and build loyalty, they need to talk about something besides themselves that’s relevant to their customers in an entertaining or provocative way. In other words, brands should be more like REI and hell of a lot less like Eric.

By John Long.

Sourced from THEDRUM

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New Research Suggests That Sex Doesn’t Sell Anymore

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Sex doesn’t sell… so, what now?

By Mediastreet Staff Writers

Could it be that sex actually does not sell? An analysis of nearly 80 advertising studies published over more than three decades suggests that’s the case.

Says University of Illinois advertising professor John Wirtz, “We found that people remember ads with sexual appeal more than those without. But that effect doesn’t extend to the brands or products that are featured in the ads.”

Wirtz and his co-authors conducted a first-of-its-kind meta-analysis of 78 peer-reviewed studies looking at the effects of sexual appeals in advertising. Their findings were posted online this week by the International Journal of Advertising.

Their research found that not only were study participants no more likely to remember the brands featured in ads with sexual appeals, they were more likely to have a negative attitude toward those brands, Wirtz said.

Participants also showed no greater interest in making a purchase. “We found literally zero effect on participants’ intention to buy products in ads with a sexual appeal,” Wirtz said. The assumption that sex sells is entirely wrong.  “There’s no indication that there’s a positive effect.”

As defined in the research, sexual appeals included models who were partially or fully nude; models who were engaged in sexual touching or in positions that suggested a sexual encounter was imminent; sexual innuendoes; and sexual embeds, which are partially hidden words or pictures that communicate a sexual message.

“The strongest finding was probably the least surprising, which is that males, on average, like ads with sexual appeals, and females dislike them,” Wirtz said. “However, we were surprised at how negative female attitudes were toward these ads.”

Wirtz said he decided to pursue this research because he sees meta-analysis – the application of statistical procedures to data from a range of studies – as a powerful tool. “The average number of participants in each individual study was about 225, but by using a meta-analysis, we could combine studies and conduct some analyses with more than 5,000 participants – in one analysis, with more than 11,000. This means that our results present a more accurate picture of what happens when someone sees an ad with a sexual appeal.”

The implications of the research for advertising practitioners are mixed, given that ads with sexual appeals are remembered more – and advertisers want people to remember their ads, Wirtz said – yet they don’t appear to help in selling brands or products. “Certainly the evidence indicates that the carryover effect to liking the ads doesn’t influence whether they’re going to make a purchase.”

This could be one reason why a national restaurant chain, known in recent years for ads selling its sandwiches with scantily clad models in suggestive poses, made a very public break with that approach in a three-minute commercial in the last Super Bowl, Wirtz said.

“If the ‘sexy ads’ had been effective, it’s unlikely the company or ad agency would have made such a drastic change. When product is moving, people don’t make changes.”

 

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The future of media agencies

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By Sam Garrity

Media agencies are facing the greatest level of disruption in our vertical we have ever seen.

I mean bigger than when we decoupled creative agencies from media buying agencies, when we were back in the day when everything was full-service, and bigger than the event of digital advertising and digital media in itself.

That moment when agencies like us were born, with new capabilities that the market did not have. This is bigger than that, because it’s fundamentally about the root-to-branch adoption of digital technology, and changes within the media landscape that affect the entire advertising and publishing supply chain.

How digital adoption effects the advertising and publishing chain

From a media owner perspective – and I’m not just talking publisher here, I’m talking about television, outdoor, radio – there are pressures upon these media owners right now to trade their inventory in a different way. That means changes to their technology, changes to their actual business plan, the way that they run their company.

Advertisers, thinking about them as businesses, they’re the driving force behind these changes that I want to talk about. They are going through transformational changes, which mean that they need a different type of agency today, right now. These pressures, either side of us from businesses, brands, advertisers and on the media/owner side, it’s meaning that a new type of agency needs to evolve right now. At an individual level, that sets a challenge for all of us in terms of the type of marketer we are going to need to become.

Where this is already happening

These are tectonic changes I’m talking about, and if you keep your eyes open, it’s happening right in front of you, in the headlines of our trade press, every single day.

Accenture, in terms of digital, have historically been involved in the big transformational discussions with the C-suite. They have now purchased businesses like The Monkeys and Karmarama. These businesses now, they are big players across the entire advertising supply chain, and within digital transformation. They are in our world. Huge networks, like Dentsu Aegis, have purchased Merkle. The agency landscape is completely changing.

The catalysts behind this movement

Buying people in real time

Firstly, this is about the personalisation of media. It’s about the fact that now, through technology, through digital advertising, we’re interested in buying people in real time for advertisers. We don’t want to buy a huge, expensive television slot with dramatic amounts of wastage. We want to buy people in real time, based upon data that we know about them.

The necessity of digital transformation

Digital, and specifically technological changes, is placing a transformational necessity upon companies globally. It’s about the experience they provide to consumers. Think about it; where do you set the bar?

How should we execute media buying in the future?

Let’s have a quick look at how we might execute media buying looking forwards. To some extent, this is in play right now. From a data perspective, you have things like analytics, CRM, first- and third-party data, all being fed into something like a data management platform, where we segment an audience based upon their propensity to do business with an advertiser, which we then feed into our ad tech, and we purchase media.

I’m talking about buying people in real time. We can now buy TV. We, as a business, as an agency, we’ve purchased radio, using data. These doors are opening for us, as an agency, and for advertisers. And this is what it’s going to look like. We’ll be trading across the entire piece, in real time. This is a data-activated, omni-channel buying machine. It’s about an experience. You want to be plumbing in personalised creative into all this. This is about a digital experience, that we would execute on behalf of an advertiser.

What type of marketers do we need to be?

This new world that we’re talking about, where transformation is taking place, and where there is a need for a new type of media and creative agency, it’s causing debate at the minute within our industry, about what type of marketer do we need to be?

Some people are saying, we need to be left-brained. Left-brained, think probably historically Accenture, mathematics.

Some people believe we need to be right-brained, which is creative. It’s the realm of traditional marketing. That is intuition, right-brain, but I’m with my counterpart at Accenture Interactive, who believes we need to be whole-brained marketers. The whole-brained marketer needs to exist within a framework like this, where analytics, CRM, media buying and creative augment a central pillar of activity, which is based around the transformational element, the strategy and, obviously comms. It has data at its core, and it also concerns itself perpetually with every single output around customer experience. That must sit at the very core of any organisational structure.

What my message is really about, and what I want to kind of get home to you all is that we will not be digital marketing agencies in the very near future. I don’t believe we’ll even be a marketing or a media agency in the very near future. I think we are now in the business of providing a customer experience. The quicker our industry orientates itself around that central theme, I think the quicker we’re going to mirror the type of value that our clients so desperately need, as they themselves transform

By Sam Garrity

Sam Garrity is managing director at RocketMill.

Sourced from THEDRUM

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Why B2B Marketers Need To Implement Marketing Automation?

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By Amberlynn Adam.

If you have ever been part of a marketing team of a corporate, you will know how hectic the work can be. Along with focusing on industry needs, the marketers are also supposed to concentrate on day-to-day tasks which are generally repetitive in nature. Imagine spending your time on sending the same welcome mail every time a new customer logs into your portal, sending emails on discount offers to existing customers every time a clearance sale happens or directly engaging with every new individual who enters into the company’s social media profiles. There is no point in blaming the marketers if they get fed up with doing the extra work and loose their focus on the original task. This is where the importance of Marketing Automation comes into the picture.

Why Marketing Automation?

The chances that you have heard the term before but do not exactly have a clear idea about what it is-Can happen. In simple words, marketing automation refers to the software that can be used to execute marketing actions without manual effort. So why should you be interested in having marketing automation software? The answer is simple. In today’s corporate world, marketers who use the software tend to outperform the ones who don’t use it for performing their tasks.

The Origin Of Marketing Automation

Marketing automation emerged as a way for marketers to reach out to potential customers through multiple marketing channels. The origins of marketing automation can be traced back along with the origin of CRM platforms. Majority marketers will agree that marketing automation & CRM platforms go hand in hand.

The marketing automation started taking shape and became more distinct during the middle of the 2000s and in the past few years, it has become a $1.62 billion industry garnering over 142,700 users worldwide.

Moreover, the cost of marketing automation tools has become affordable in a way that nowadays even start-ups who have just entered the market have started using them. Earlier, it was only accessible to large multinational corporations and their likes.

Previously marketing automation mainly revolved around email marketing but it was the time when the internet was just getting popular among the general public. Later it developed as an amalgamation of much-needed marketing technology, namely web analytics, email and marketing resource management. With the arrival of social media channels, mobile commerce, and landing pages, marketing automation tools started developing themselves to become an all-in-one marketing and sales platform.

Marketing Automation Is High tech but Tech Friendly

One awesome feature of marketing automation is that even if it is developed as per the most sophisticated technology, it’s very simple to handle. The best marketing solutions are designed specifically to overcome the need for a technical team to run it. A marketing manager with basic digital knowledge will be enough to properly handle the marketing automation tool.

Possibilities in marketing Automation

  • Email marketing
  • Landing page creation
  • Cross-channel marketing campaigns
  • Lead generation
  • Segmentation
  • Lead nurturing and scoring
  • Cross-sell and up-sell
  • Retention
  • Measuring ROI
  • Website personalization

These strategies are familiar to all the marketers out there, but without the right equipment, they can be hard to accomplish. When a company’s marketing team grows above the primary level, there comes a point where it won’t be possible to manage 1:1 connections with customers using the manual tools available. That’s when automation comes in handy.

6 Benefits Of Marketing Automation:

Better Leads

One of the best benefits of marketing automation is that it can help you reach out to potential customers at the exact point in the sales funnel, for example, where they’ve expressed an interest in your newsletter or browsed your blog for long enough, etc. This means that the lead list will be more targeted, and potentially useful instead of just a list of random email addresses.

 Better Client Relationships

Marketing campaigns carried out through the automation software would be done at regular intervals and at a specified frequency. Marketers can use it to gain the trust of the customers through repeated efforts and by maintaining consistency.The software will play an important role to fill up the communication gap between the business and the customers.

Multi-Channel Campaign Automation

Marketers understand the need to coordinate their campaigns across multiple platforms, channels, and devices, because today’s customers often jump from one to another, spontaneously. Marketing automation can make this omnipresent status significantly easier for marketers to achieve.

Marketers can target customers with hyper-relevant product recommendations, conditional content, and smart segmentation, not just through email, but also social interactions, SMS messaging, push notifications, targeted ads, and more with the help of marketing automation.

Customer Retention through automation

Customer retention is one of the easiest ways to raise profits. Certain automation tools such as win-back and abandoned cart campaigns can have a huge impact on customer retention.

Automating those retention programs, prompted by an abandoned cart or a defined period of inactivity, constructed with timely and relevant messaging, can be the approach to bring the customer back and re-engage them with the product.

Avoiding human error

One of the most useful marketing automation benefits is that software can’t make the same kind of mistakes that we humans sometimes make. This ensures avoiding small, silly manual errors that sometimes have large, catastrophic results.

Understanding the correct message and applying it

Through the help of marketing automation, marketers can instantly understand which message is suitable for each target audience, as well as where, when, and how to send them for best results. Marketers can continuously test, optimize, and re-test messages, creative executions, and even subject lines. This type of information is needed to optimize content, resulting in getting the job done in less time and money not going to waste.

The potential of marketing automation is endless and it is the future of digital for brands. Marketers around the world are pursuing marketing automation tools as it is essential for attaining that competitive edge over the rest. Marketing Automation not only benefits your business but, it also helps in improving the relationship with your customers.

Feature Image Credit: Štefan Štefančík on Unsplash

By Amberlynn Adam

Sourced from iamWIRE

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Don’t Get Too Fancy in Your Marketing — Authenticity Always Wins

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By .

Focus less on the product and more on the company and the people who work there.

When building a messaging strategy, the first question young startups typically asks themselves is, What do my customers want? In the digital-first world that we live in today, consumers value authenticity more than ever before, and it’s the brand’s job to make sure the messaging delivers on those values. According to a survey conducted by Label Insight, over 40 percent of customers would switch from their current preferred brand to one that offers more authenticity in their marketing strategies.

One of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make is they talk too much about their product and not enough about their company and the people who work there. And yes, there is a difference. A company’s most attractive qualities aren’t always the services it offers, but rather the type of experience it’s providing its customers.

Failing to exude authenticity is one mistake that startups cannot afford to make, so here are three brand guidelines to keep in mind when developing a messaging strategy.

Forgo a professional online presence in favor of an honest one.

So your website is super professional and legitimate — doesn’t sound so bad does it? While maintaining a strong brand reputation online is important, there is more authenticity in the startup sphere when you showcase your company’s personality. Social media is an obvious place in which to do so, with 83 percent of consumers preferring brand personality on Facebook above all social channels, according to Sprout Social, but updating your brand’s website is just as valuable to telling your brand story; and we all know that every startup has a good story.

Include short and sweet videos about the team on the about us page like these profiles by Nextiny or spice up your blog with how-tos like this Trello video that addresses relevant customer questions (Full disclosure: Both were made using Wistia’s platform). Making these adjustments can go a long way when it comes to showing off what type of company you are.

Be your own customer.

A good way to retain brand authenticity is by offering solutions for your customers based on how you address your own problems that arise internally. If you can identify your own business need or point of pain, chances are there are other companies out there facing the same problem. By modifying or creating products and services that also better serve your own customers, you’ve become more relatable and more importantly, reliable. In the tech space, there is no “one size fits all” for the way customers incorporate products into their framework, so creating customized solutions for your clients based on what you know about how they do business, better serves your customer base and makes you a better business partner in the long run.

For example, we realized that our videos were more successful when we showed a human face next to the content we were presenting so we relied on that partnership heavily. When we set out to make Soapbox, a browser-based screen and webcam recording tool, we made sure it was easy for non-professional video makers to do the same so they could be equally as successful.

People don’t care about products, so stop marketing them.

Every day, consumers are exposed to as many as 5,000 product-centric messages. That means that even if your company makes use of a unique and differentiated value proposition, content with this focus can easily get lost in the mix. The best content marketing tactic to drive traffic that converts is to standardize your messaging to be less about your product and more about your brand’s mission. This may involve a collective effort to revise your company mission statement, but this should be an exciting time for your business, not a stressful one. It’s also a great way to reconnect with the underlying purpose of your company and a reminder of why you started the business in the first place.

84 Lumber is privately held, second generation, woman-owned supplier of building materials that understands how to create content focused on more than just the products its selling. This year, 84 Lumber used its history and mission to create a commercial, The Journey Begins, that followed a young girl on her journey toward a better life, which connected with consumers on a common level and highlighted its desire to help build both hope and homes.

The overall lesson here? Your customers are not programmable machines, and they want to be sold a reliable solution that gets them one step closer to their business goals. The best way to earn long-term customer loyalty and set yourself apart from industry competitors is to be honest, and incorporate more holistic conversations into your content strategy and overall brand narrative. Be your own customer, show off those fun and creative employees you hired, and keep lines of communication wide open, because authenticity will always win.

Feature Image Credit: Shutterstock 

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Sourced from Entrepreneur

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Facebook follows Google to enable advertisers to evaluate their campaigns with new cross-platform ad tool

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By Taruka Srivastav.

Facebook has introduced Facebook Cross-Platform Brand Lift in the US and UK which along with Nielsen Total Brand Effect with Lift will help advertisers optimize their Facebook and TV campaigns using actionable results according to a blog post.

The platform will see Facebook will match rival Google which launched Brand Lift for TV some years back in order to help marketers understand how YouTube campaigns can impact metrics such as awareness.

Facebook’s advertising partners who are expanding from digital advertising into cross-media campaigns will be able to leverage Facebook Cross-Platform Brand Lift solution.

Margo Arton, senior director of Ad Effectiveness at BuzzFeed said: “Now that Buzzfeed has begun to diversify our media strategies to include both Television and Digital, having the option to leverage solutions such as Facebook’s Cross-Platform Brand Lift and Nielsen Total Brand Effect with Lift presents a great opportunity.”

“We look forward to using cross-platform brand lift measurement to both receive valuable insights about our multi-media campaign performance in a single reporting surface, and also to optimize campaign elements such as spend and creative across both platforms.”

Facebook cited an example of household brand Shark’s campaign which was deemed a success as measured by Nielsen Total Brand Effect with Lift.

Ajay Kapoor, VP, Digital Transformation & Strategy, SharkNinja said: “We proved that Facebook video ads are a natural complement to TV campaigns. We experienced better brand results among people who saw ads on both versus just TV or Facebook alone. We saw the ‘better together’ impact first-hand. Facebook and TV are powerful individually, but deliver a stronger message to our audience when used in tandem.”

Facebook recently introduced more ways to help marketers re-engage offline audiences.

By Taruka Srivastav

Sourced from THEDRUM

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8 Rules Of Positioning

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By Harsh Pamnani.

In a market crowded with a lot of brands offering similar products, a good positioning makes a brand and its products stand out from the competition

Getting in front of customers and prospects is an important thing, but more important thing is what you will communicate about your brand and product when you are in front of your audience. Positioning helps marketers to connect their brand and products best with their target audience. In a market crowded with a lot of brands offering similar products, a good positioning makes a brand and its products stand out from the competition.

Positioning is one of the most important components of marketing strategy and vital to success of any brand. Al Ries and Jack Trout, in their book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, introduce the subject by saying: Positioning is not what you do to a product. Positioning is what you do to the mind of the prospect. That is, you position the product in the mind of the prospect.

Let’s have a look at a few important rules of positioning:

1.    Positioning drives marketing strategy: The process of creating positioning statement requires identifying target audience; product category; product’s specific benefit, strengths and weaknesses and differentiation from the nearest competitor. Positioning drives all components of marketing strategy such as advertising, packaging, pricing, distribution, public relations, merchandising and brand communication. Additionally, strong positioning attracts partners, employees, investors, customers to associate with a company owning top positioned brands. Moreover, good positioning attracts influencers such as journalists, analysts, thought leaders etc. to cover a brand in their articles and reports. For example, in extremely competitive, coffee selling business, Starbucks has positioned itself as an upscale brand. Its stores’ locations, service, products display, packaging, socializing environment, pricing etc. are designed according to its positioning of an upscale brand.

2.    Positioning is relative: In any category, customers think about brands relative to other brands in the same category. To gain strong position for its brands, a company must differentiate its brands and products from others in the market. The most important point is that differentiation has to be sustainable. Differentiations such as price and features can be surpassed by competition in some time but it is difficult for competition to surpass the differentiation of quality, service, availability and leadership. For example, there are many digital wallets such as PayTm, MobiKwik, Freecharge, BHIM, State Bank of India’s SBI Buddy etc. All of these wallets have almost similar features and pricing and solve the similar purpose, but in customers’ mind PayTm has taken up the top position and has strong perception of quality and leadership.

3.    Positioning changes as market changes: In today’s fast changing world, products change, markets change, customers’ demands change, competition change, technologies change, regulations change and so on. These changes can create an opportunity for a new player to shake the positioning of an established player. For example, non-polluting electric vehicles are seen as norm of the future and Tesla is a prominent player in elegant electric vehicles. As per an article in recode, the 14-year-old company Tesla is now worth more than 113 year old company Ford. In a way, Tesla’s positioning seems to be surpassing Ford’s position.

4.    Positioning is multidimensional: Positioning has multiple dimensions such as product positioning, market positioning, industry positioning and leaders’ positioning. Product positioning is defined by a company based on its strategy, focus on market segment, price point, distribution channel etc. Market positioning of a brand or product is defined by word of mouth of influencers such as customers, analysts, retailers, journalists, partners etc. Industry positioning is defined by revenue and profit of a company. And most importantly, success of company elevates the positioning of its leader. For example, iPhone is a product brand, Apple is a company brand and Steve Jobs is a leader brand.  iPhone is positioned as a premium smart phone with higher price point targeted towards upper middle class and rich customers and available through selective channels. Positive word of mouth by influencers including customers has helped iPhone in gaining market recognition as the top positioned smart phone. Revenue through sales of iPhone helps Apple in achieving better positions in rankings such as Fortune 500. Success of Apple’s products such as iPhone has contributed to Steve Jobs’ position as one of the best business leaders. Again, Steve Jobs’ positioning as one of the best leaders drives positioning of his company, company’s products and so on.

5.    Positioning evolves over time: As company grows over time, its market segments evolve, its products evolve and it’s positioning in market evolves. If a company is focussed on niche market segment then it has to position itself for niche customers. But over the time, when market segment evolves or when company tries to enter into adjacent market segments then its positioning evolves. For example, when Uber was new in India, smart phones were available with limited number of people and taxi riding was not a preferred option as compared to auto rickshaws. Initially, Uber targeted customers who were looking to enjoy a luxury experience, had smart phones and credit cards. It was positioned as a taxi ride service for classes. Later on, Uber expanded its offerings such as low cost small cars, medium cost sedans and higher cost big cars. It also expanded its services from point to point transfer to outstation travel, taxi hire for personal usage, economical ride sharing etc. Moreover, along with credit card, it started accepting money through PayTm and cash. This evolution not only expanded Uber’s market segment, but also their positions from a transportation option for classes to a transportation option for masses.

6.    Positioning is strongest in the new category: In a mature category, there are already established players and to create its position, a brand has to compete with existing brands. But if a brand is able to create a new category then it can achieve leadership status in that category. For example, fast food is an overcrowded category with many popular brands such as McDonald’s, KFC, Subway, Taco Bell, Dominos, Dunkin Donuts, and Starbucks etc.  But all of these brands have created their leadership positions in separate subcategories within fast food category. For example, McDonald’s is known for burgers, KFC is known for chicken, Subway for sandwiches, Taco Bell for Mexican food, Dominos for pizza delivery, Dunkin Donuts for donuts, Starbucks for coffee and so on. Though all these players try to enter into each other’s’ offerings but their positioning is strongest around their key fast food offerings.

7.    Positioning is internal: The purpose of positioning statement is to align internal stakeholders such as marketing team, sales team, delivery team etc. on a common view of market. This alignment helps in having common interpretation of target audience, product category, differentiation from competitors, benefits for customers and so on. When everybody internally is on the same page, external communication becomes homogenous, relevant, targeted and clear.  For example Harley-Davidson’s internal positioning statement is: The only motorcycle manufacturer that makes big, loud motorcycles for macho guys (and “macho wannabes”) mostly in the United States who wants to join a gang of cowboys in an era of decreasing personal freedom. Taglines are external facing catch phrases that summarize positioning statement extremely concisely. For Harley-Davidson, tagline is “Define your world in a whole new way.”

8.    Positioning gets spoiled by brand extension: Brand extension is a common method used by companies to launch a new product by using an existing brand name on a new product in a different category. A company using brand extension hopes to leverage its existing customer base and brand loyalty to increase its profits with a new product offering. If a company expands its business too fast by launching multiple products using its powerful brand name, then it is necessary for it to maintain quality. If quality of a few of the products of a respected brand is bad, then customers no matter how loyal they are will start rethinking about the brand. Lowered image of a few products in customers’ mind would eventually impact the brand position and the business’ revenue. For example, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali brand has a strong positioning in Ayurvedic products. But since last few years, Patanjali has been launching many new products in different categories and that’s too fast. There have been incidences when government’s food safety departments have raised questions on a few of the Patanjali’s products. Though strong brand name of Baba Ramdev and Patanjali have helped the company to launch and distribute many new products, quality concerns on a few products, effect overall positioning of the brand Patanjali.

(Views expressed are author’s personal and don’t necessarily represent any company’s opinions.)

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house. Unless otherwise noted, the author is writing in his/her personal capacity. They are not intended and should not be thought to represent official ideas, attitudes, or policies of any agency or institution.

 

By Harsh Pamnani

The author is a Marketer & Author. He is an alumnus of XLRI, Jamshedpur  More From The Author >>

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Has your marketing effectiveness reached a plateau?

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When it comes to marketing strategy, every business is different. You have to be: It’s a key part of your USP.  However, some businesses are better than others in applying the marketing process because of their focus, how evolved their capabilities are, and the level of resources they make available.  

From experience the most effective marketing businesses are the ones that focus on the customer, use insightful data to inform every decision and invest resources to exploit opportunities that best meet their customers’ needs. They have evolved their marketing capabilities to enable them to engage their customers with the most relevant products and services through the most appropriate channel at the most opportune time that yields the best result for both the customer and the business.

Getting to this level is not an easy journey. Established businesses may have amassed years of knowledge, skills and capabilities, but ensuring their data, legacy systems and thinking stay ahead of the game takes significant investment. Younger businesses might be able to leap-frog straight to the latest thinking, but the experience to truly exploit it doesn’t come cheap.

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First steps: Direct Marketing and Automation
Businesses often start out with simple direct marketing techniques to select lists of prospective or existing customers that meet a short-term demand to drive (e.g.) increased sales. These lists can be produced using simple database tools and specialist technical resources, but as the number, complexity and speed of discrete campaign requirements grow, it quickly becomes a difficult problem to govern and remain agile so, marketing effectiveness can plateau.

The first major evolution is to invest in fit-for-purpose marketing automation tools that increase efficiency by helping the marketer to govern the overall activity schedule, embed test and learn techniques to help improve future targeting effectiveness, and manage the creation and execution of multiple, simultaneous activities to keep up with demand from whichever parts of the business are shouting loudest to meet immediate targets.

It is at this point that many businesses find their marketing effectiveness reaches another plateau and they get stuck just keeping up with business-as-usual. Marketing automation tools are good at ‘pushing’ campaigns that are driven by the business’ agenda and marketing calendar, but they’re not so good at being customer-friendly – e.g. was there a missed opportunity to do something better to engage the customer at a more opportune time and maximise customer value?

Being more customer-centric: Decisioning
To evolve further means overlaying a ‘pull’ approach where activity is driven by customer need and behaviour. Business rules and predictive analytics are applied through a decision engine to determine which, of all possible actions, is best in any given situation, often in ‘customer time’ during a transaction or interaction.

This personalisation process usually considers, for each individual customer: whether they are eligible for the action; whether it is the right timing; whether it’s the right level of relevance and appropriateness; whether it would generate the right outcome; and what the relative priority is in achieving the business goal.

​Consequently, businesses tend to arrive at the third plateau of marketing effectiveness when the complexity of managing this decisioning process becomes too great: The number of different situations or actions has grown significantly, or overarching goals and constraints such as budgets, capacity or targets are inappropriate to apply at a customer level.

The next generation: Optimisation
The last evolutionary step is to optimise each decision to maximise the overall objective, such as return on investment and profitability, while satisfying all constraints, such as budget spend and enhancing customer engagement. This involves sophisticated algorithms to trade-off the different decision factors in each action to determine which best meet the overall objective while satisfying the constraints.

This might sound complicated…and it often is, but the pay-off is the business performance uplift it can provide, which can be significant. It also provides true, top-down control over marketing activity so, for example, flexing the decision factors provides an opportunity to explore different ‘what-if?’ scenarios and see which gives the best mix of business and customer benefits.

Keep moving forward
Whilst making optimal decisions could be the ultimate evolution, marketing effectiveness can still reach a plateau because your data, predictions and actions can quickly go ‘out of date’ in today’s marketplace: Every customer is different and has constantly evolving needs and interests that someone will be able to satisfy.

Consequently, the most important tools in your toolbox are insight and agility: Continually testing new ideas, actions and situations with customers to learn what works and what needs refining (or discarding) and then quickly adapting the capabilities of the business to generate value for your customers.

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