Fizz from ConsumerPop

Marketing 101. Chapter 7: Tracking, Metrics and Measurement

In order to ensure the effectiveness of your marketing in getting you to meet or exceed your business goals you need to measure your results and adjust your plan accordingly. You need to choose a set of measurements or metrics to track and then you need to analyze them and compare them against your goals so that you can do more of what works and less of what does not.

For marketing methods such as television or print advertising there exist well established measurements. You know that spending $X advertising on certain television shows, with particular networks, during specific hours of the day or times of year, in magazines based on their readership that Y number of people will see your advertisement. By tracking how much you sell before, during and after the advertising runs you can develop a recipe for hitting your targets.



For instance if you know that spending $1 million on television advertising during the two weeks prior to Easter leads to sales of 1,000 of your custom egg baskets you can include that in your plan. Perhaps you would choose to do that every year. Possibly you might find less expensive ways to drive those 1,000 sales. Or maybe after those 1,000 customers find you they are loyal year after year and you can re-deploy your $1 million to other areas of your marketing or business plan.

Another way to think about measurement is to look at how much extra you get with your marketing efforts. For example, if you sell aprons on Etsy and without doing anything beyond listing the aprons for sale you sell 20 aprons a month. Those 20 sales would be your baseline. Let's say for marketing purposes you offered a discount code on twitter and that brought in 5 additional sales. Those 5 sales would be incremental sales. Comparing differences in base versus incremental sales volume can give you rich insights into how to adjust your marketing and branding efforts.

Even if you are not marketing a product or service, tracking key metrics can still be a useful exercise. Perhaps you want to increase your blog readership. You might want to track page views by subject, which topics people add to social bookmark sites or on their Facebook page or posts that readers are moved to Stumble or Kirtsy. Looking at those numbers can lead you to fine-tune your writing and topic selection in ways that increase readership and engagement.

Regardless of your goals, establishing key metrics related to your goals and then tracking and measuring them will help you both better understand the effectiveness of your efforts and reach those goals.

Homework

Pick a few (1-3) metrics and then track and start to measure. The information you get will be very helpful and give you a much fuller picture of how effective your efforts are.

Marketing 101. Chapter 6: Branding

A brand is often thought of as the name of, logo for or symbols used by a business, product, service or person. But branding is actually much more than just the visual representation. A brand includes all the experiences consumers have with and perceptions they have of those companies, products, services or people.

Logos

Certain images immediately bring to mind the brand associated with them. Do you know what each of these pictures represents?



Names

What do the following words mean to you? Jell-O, Kleenex, Netflix? Are you imagining a bowl of colorful gelatin, a box of facial tissues and a red envelope with a DVD inside? If so it is because each of those words is a powerful brand name. Many brands further reinforce their name with their logo through the use of specific typeface and color. For example, Jell-O, Coca-Cola and Netflix use red. Google and eBay use multi-colors.

Taglines and Slogans

1. All the news that's fit to print.
2. When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
3. Have it your way.
4. The ultimate driving machine.
5. Finger lickin' good.
6. Let your fingers do the walking.
7. Just do it.
8. Good to the last drop.
9. Breakfast of champions.
10. Melts in your mouth, not in your hands.
11. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
12. Be all that you can be.

Each of these famous advertising slogans not only reminds you of the brand they are advertising but also some of the features, benefits, experiences or emotions associated with the brand.

Brand Essence

This is the fundamental or core nature of the brand. It guides all marketing efforts in that it provides a consistent standard that consumers should expect to experience every time they interact with a brand. One of the simplest and clearest examples of a brand essence is Volvo's: safety. Whether you are viewing a television commercial about Volvo cars, entering a showroom for a test drive, checking out the features, noticing any price premiums versus similar cars, having yours repaired after an accident or contemplating whether or not you would purchase another one the value of safety should be communicated and experienced.

Brand Experience

What is it like (or what would you imagine it would be like) to stay in a W hotel, a Sheraton, a Four Points, a Westin, a St. Regis or a Le Meridian? How would those experiences be similar and how would they be different? Where would you find each of these hotels? How much would it cost you to spend the night? What would you find on the room service menu, the in-room snack bar or on the cocktail menu in the bar or restaurant? What kind of merchandise would you find in the gift shop?

I imagine you would have a very different set of expectations for what you would expect to experience with each of those hotel brands. Each of those brands is owned by the same company: Starwood. Through the use of different brand names, logos, essences and other branding elements they are able to effectively market hotel, resort and meeting space a wide variety of market segments. The hipsters who want the club music in the elevators, a Bliss Spa and the condom kit in the mini-bar W boutique hotel experience are different than the seekers of the high end, 5 star, destination resort experience the St. Regis offers. Branding allows Starwood to offer each of those consumers the experience they prefer.

Personal and Blog Branding

It is not just your business that can benefit from branding. You can as an individual, as a writer and as a blogger. In 1997 Tom Peters wrote a now-classic article for Fast Company magazine titled "The Brand Called You" in which he discussed how you can use branding principles to manage your career. James Patterson is a former advertising executive turned blockbuster best-selling author who has deftly used branding techniques to reach the top of the charts time after time. Broadly, Kalyn's Kitchen, The Pioneer Woman and Simply Recipes are three blogs that cover food. Yet each offers a clear, unique differentiated experience. You know what to expect when you visit those blogs because they are well branded.

Branding is a huge topic and I've given you a broad overview. Please chime in with questions or comments. I'd love to hear about your branding experiences or challenges, as well.

Homework

Write a mission statement or brand essence. This can be for yourself, your blog, your business, a business you are dreaming of or an existing blog or business that is not your own just to get a feel for how to write one.

Marketing 101. Chapter 5: Understanding The Consumer

Market segmentation and positioning sound dry and reading about them can be. However, I find this to be one of the most fun and enjoyable aspects of developing a strategic marketing plan.

Once you've determined your target market and done some market research it is time to work on market segmentation. This is a process of identifying sub groups within a broader market. For example women might be a broad target market because we control most of the household spending in this country. However that's such a massive group that it would be impossible to market to all women. You probably want to focus on a particular group of women.

Market segmentation allows you to understand and serve your consumers, customers, clients, contributors or readers. It also makes your job easier because you can better communicate the features, benefits and value you offer with your product, service, blogging or whatever you offer to the world. Your market may only have one segment and that's fine; in that case you'll just be describing your target consumers but the same principles apply.



image credit: Christian Gidlöf from Wikimedia Commons used under CC by-sa 3.0 license

Demographics

Demographics are group classifications like age, gender, race, geographic location, household income and other measures. For example, married women between the ages of 35 and 49, employed part-time outside the home who live in urban areas and who have two children under the age of 12 living in the home would be examples of a group's demographics.

Psychographics

Psychographic attributes have to do with individual interests, activities, mindsets and ways of thinking. For example a market could be segmented into birdwatchers who practice yoga and engage in green practices such as recycling and composting.

Here's a very simplified example from my days working on the Jell-O brand: There are several products under the Jell-O brand umbrella. One key group of Jell-O consumers are mothers who buy Jell-O products for their children to eat. All mothers want to show their children love. Some mothers do this through cooking with their children. Other mothers spend time doing other activities with their children and so prepared foods can give them more time for non-cooking activities. Moms in the first group might prefer making Jell-O eggs with their kids and use boxed gelatin. Moms in the second group likely would appreciate refrigerated pudding cups. So demographically the two groups could be similar (i.e. women, with children, between the ages of say 5 and 13, who purchase snacks) but psychographically distinct thus creating different market segments for the two products and leading to different marketing mixes.

Creating a Consumer Portrait

One of my favorite techniques is to give the target consumer a name, a face, a story and even a theme song. There are a variety of approaches out there. Some marketers model their theoretical consumer after a real person. Others make up a fictional character. I like to use characters from TV shows and movies just because it makes it a bit easier for most people to quickly and easily understand the portrait I am trying to paint.

Positioning

Once you've described your market segments you'll want to determine the best marketing mix for reaching that segment. This is positioning and sometimes called the 5th P and allows you to best adjust the 4 Ps to reach your market segment. For example, if consumers in a market segment are value conscious or price sensitive you will want to price accordingly (e.g. lower margin, higher volume), create effective promotions (e.g. coupons), communicate benefits (e.g. cost per wearing or use), possibly adjust your product or service (e.g. max sizes or bundles) and certainly ensure you are available at the places they shop (e.g. Dollar Stores vs. 5th Avenue).

Homework

This is the fun part! Create a story about a typical consumer in your market segment (or at least one if you have more). If you sell a product or service this would be the ideal buyer or if you are looking at your blog then think about readers. If you are interested in partnering with companies as sponsors or advertisers then this exercise will give you useful material to include in your media kit. Alternatively, you could look at products or services you use or admire and see if you can understand their market segment. Any of these exercises will help you better understand the process of market segmentation and positioning and, if interested, seek out potential partnerships for your blog or business.

Some approaches:

1. Start with the broadest market you can think of and put it in a large circle. Narrow down and refine the group and place each smaller group inside the circle until you have a bullseye.

2. If your blog is a personal blog likely your readers are much like you. So write your bio. Who would play you in the movie of your life story? What is your theme song? How would you give a quick demographic and psychographic description of yourself?

3. Pick a favorite product, service, blog or blogger and see if you can understand their market segment. Say you are an Apple fanatic... What's the market segment for their laptops, their desktops, the iPhone, the iPod, the Mac Mini...? How are they similar, how are they different and who is the consumer for each?

Marketing 101. Chapter 4: Marketing Research

Market research and marketing research are two functions that help in the development of business and marketing plans.

Market research is a broader look at business environments and can be used to help define your target market. In one example from the previous chapter we looked at a baker who determined that her target market was wedding cakes. Market research for this baker would then involve determining things like how many weddings take place every year within a certain distance from her bakery and how many other bakers are operating in her geographic location. That information will help her determine the potential size and members of her target market.

Marketing research however will help her further understand the consumers within the target market. This function within companies is sometimes called "consumer insights" Marketing research is crucial to business success because in many cases you (the marketer) are not your consumer. It is important to understand what the potential customers of your product or service need and want so that you can best meet those desires. In the case of blogging or certain types of small businesses, however, you will attract readers or customers precisely because you are like your consumers. If you are blogging about the ups and downs of parenting small children you are likely going to appeal to readers who are also parents of small children. If you design a gorgeous fitted dress that flatters women with curves and uses affordable fabrics and unique nature-inspired embellishments because you can't find what you want to wear in stores, chances are that the potential customers for your line of dresses are women who are very much like you. However, you can still learn a great deal about how to better serve your consumers by doing some research which can be inexpensive or free.

Types of Research

Quantitative Research

Quantitative research collects measurable data. Surveys are a prime example of a research tool often used for collecting quantitative data. Use of questions that give a limited set of options for answering generally result in sets of numbers that can be then further analyzed and used to reach specific conclusions or to make findings that can be extrapolated out to larger populations.

Qualitative Research

Qualitative research results in data that requires interpretation and non-mathematical analysis. As compared to quantitative research which seeks to validate hypotheses, qualitative research can be used to explore ideas through techniques such as asking open-ended questions and observing behavior. Focus Groups are a common method of qualitative marketing research. Ethnography (derived from cultural anthropology) is a growing qualitative method used in marketing research.


Focus Group image by WhyOhGee from Flickr used under Creative Commons license.

Research Sources

Primary research is simply research you do or sponsor yourself and secondary research which already exists and uses data collected by other researchers not specifically for your business.

Homework

Either conduct some primary research for your blog or business or find a source of secondary research and gather some data.

If you are seeking advertisers, sponsors, promotions or giveaways for your blog it will be helpful for you to know a bit about who your readers are. This information can also help you create better blog posts based on what your readers are most interested in.

For your blog you can use a built in stats program or install one like Google Analytics to gather data like which blog topics garner the most viewers, where do your readers arrive from, how long do visitors stay at your blog. You can also conduct a reader survey using tools like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang to ask a few simple questions such as what subjects they most enjoy on your blog, how they found you, what time of day they usually read you or basic demographic information like age, gender, age ranges of any children, and so on.

To find secondary research you can check the Census Bureau for U.S. information or try About.com: Small Business: Canada for resources. Or hit your local library or SBA office to find data about your industry or topic.

My Next Adventure

Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

~ Oh! The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss

Short version: BlogHer

Much longer (now-spoiled but still totally worth grabbing a cup of tea and sitting down to read) version:

After graduating from business school I embarked on the consumer brand management phase of my career. That path led to some tremendous learning opportunities and incredible experiences for me. Then, over five years ago I stepped off that path and moved to running my own small branding and marketing consulting and research company. Life as an entrepreneur has introduced me to a whole new world of challenges and it has been rewarding. But, I won't lie, it's also a life that can be difficult and often frustrating.

Over the years the types and scope of engagements I've had the opportunity to pursue have changed. And the kind of challenges I'd like to work on in the future have become clearer.

I've had the great fortune to work on some very cool early social media efforts including some by the kind of big consumer-facing brands I'd worked for previously. My background in both classical brand management and digital marketing was sufficiently unique that my skills put me in a position to be a part of some fascinating projects.

Over the past 18 months or so business has been tougher and less rewarding for a variety of reasons. The great recession has been part of it, certainly. However, at the same time there has been quite a bit of growth in boutique agencies and an explosion of social media consultants. Though I am clear that I am a marketer not a social media guru (though, I will accept "goddess"), these days social media is where the demand for marketing is at.

I'm someone who needs challenges, preferably big ones. And so I've considered two paths. The first is building my business out into an agency. The other is to bring my skills and experience to either an established agency or back to a consumer brand company to help them build their in-house digital and social media expertise. I've believed for a while that companies must and will build their knowledge of social tools and integrate that learning across the company. I agree 1,000% with Susan Getgood in her post at Shamable: "Who owns social media?"

If there is an owner of social media, it is the marketing function within the organization. Note: not a social media function.Social media is one of the marketing functions, just like PR and advertising, but the top, and bottom, line is the chief marketing officer. Marketing sets the strategy. Owns the business results. And calls on its agencies for support.

Agencies are partners — in developing strategies, executing programs, handling crises — but the agency role is first to help the company “learn to fish,” — to understand the social media environment, and then to work with it to develop exciting social media campaigns, programs, endeavors that will engage the customers.

Ultimately that's where I realized I wanted to be; I want to help build expertise in service of driving business results.

So I decided to seek out a new challenge. And, coming full circle, to that end I'm joining BlogHer as a project manager. It's not a marketing role. It will be a little along the lines of looking for Herbies (shout out to fans of The Goal, the most awesome book ever about operations management in the form of a love story and novel) and developing processes to better manage the hike except not in a factory. Also it's somewhat similar to my team's MAP for my Ross alumni friends. [Don't worry - those previous two sentences won't make sense to most of you reading this] But bottom line is it is an opportunity to contribute to BlogHer's growth and success which I welcome.

Some of you might be surprised to read this and find out that I don't already work for BlogHer. That's the best part of this move for me. I'm joining a group of people I already know and love and with whom I've worked with since the beginning. And now I won't have to go through my long winding explanations about how I'm representing BlogHer at that event or I'm making inquiries on behalf of the company that I'm closely associated with but don't actually work for.

I started my business shortly before discovering business blogs and Elisa Camahort at Worker Bees and soon after that the idea for the first BlogHer conference was born. As a result, I raised my hand, offered to help in any way I could and I was tasked with planning a dinner and some other activities at the first conference. From there I've spoken at several of the conferences, served on conference programming advisory boards, worked on a variety of initiatives including BlogHers Act, BlogHer's political coverage, the holiday cooking videos, the creation of the ad network and several others. Most prominently, Lisa Stone invited me to join the inaugural group of contributing editors and 400+ posts later, the first result for my name in Google is not my business, my name domain or any of my own blogs - not even the one that pre-dates BlogHer - but my writing at BlogHer.

I know Elisa Camahort is now Elisa Camahort Page because I officiated her wedding to her S.O. who I also count as a dear friend. Jory Des Jardins was my neighbor for most of BlogHer's life and I've enjoyed spending social time with her and her charming husband. Lisa (sometimes along with her partner Chris) has entertained, amused and killed me dead in restaurants and for hours on airplanes with her wicked wit. I've broken bread and come to love their parents, sisters, partners and children. I treasure their friendships as well as those of many BlogHer employees, my co-CE's and scores of people I've met as part of the BlogHer community.

It feels destined. I'm thrilled that Monday I start my next phase and new adventure. I'm looking forward to the challenge, the opportunity and most of all officially being part of the BlogHer team in addition to the community.

Marketing 101. Chapter 3: The Marketing Mix

One of the core fundamentals of marketing is the marketing mix also known as the four P's. The marketing mix is used to determine your target market and to guide development of your strategic marketing plan. While additional elements have been added and the original ones renamed by those trying to make their stamp and in efforts to update the model for new markets and means of marketing, the classic framework has proven durable and still useful.

1. Product

Your product is whatever you sell or offer. This could be a physical thing like handmade jewelry, it could be your writing, or it could be a service like coaching, consulting or photography.

Form is an integral consideration of the product element. Writing could be offered in a bound book, a downloadable e-book or it could be a service you offer such as say copywriting or take the form of speeches that you or others deliver. If it is a tangible item then things like packaging are part of the product element. Other considerations include the product name, features, quality of materials, and more.

2. Price

Decisions about how to price your product include choosing basics like the suggested or list price (including zero or free). Beyond that, additional considerations include discounts such as for volume, such as buy three get one free or price drops with every 10 units purchased, e.g. the per hour cost of your time is lower if a client purchases 10-20 hours vs. 1-9 hours; or a giving a discount if you receive an early payment.

3. Place (Distribution)

Distribution is called place so that it neatly fits the framework without disrupting the alliteration and because it refers to the place(s) where you sell your product. If you are selling a tangible product you might sell it in a brick and mortar store or at an online store. Let's think about the example of shoes from Chapter 1. Shoes are sold in many places including in department stores, boutiques, shoe stores, online via sites like Zappos or through auction at sites like eBay.

Considerations for distribution include delivery and logistics and questions such as do you send products to a retailer's warehouse, use drop shipping or ship from your inventory to customers; do customers buy your services directly from you or through a broker (such as an agency); do you restrict (exclusive dealers) or expand (affiliates) sales; and whether or not to take returns.

4. Promotion

This is the stuff many people think of when they think marketing. Promotion includes advertising, public relations (PR), giveaways, events, and coupons.

Homework:

Define your four P's and list every relevant element you can think of. Then define your target market accordingly.

For example, one episode of CNN's late show The Turnaround in which small business owners were mentored by successful business people at large companies featured a small bakery. The baker had a small shop but offered a wide range of baked goods. Using a 4P framework, brand managers from Dreyer's ice cream showed her how they used it to help guide the marketing of Dibs as a new product. Applying it to her baked goods, the bakery owner, Denise, was able to see that weddings cakes were her most promising target market and she could focus accordingly.

Previous Chapters

Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Setting Goals and Creating a P&L Statement

Additional Resources

Marketing 101. Chapter 2: Setting Goals

Businesses are concerned with making a profit. Very simplified, profit is what you make when your revenue or income exceeds your expenses. When expenses exceed your revenue, you have a loss. These elements are tracked through a profit and loss (or P&L) statement.

Thus there are two ways to make or increase a profit: either bring in more money or spend less. This is often referred to as either top-line or bottom-line growth. Marketing helps you grow your top-line and can be used to manage some bottom-line expenses.

In order to guide your marketing efforts, it is helpful to first establish your goals. Once you set a target for how much you want to make, you can then figure out the steps to take in order to reach your goal.

There are two primary routes to generating revenue. The first is sometimes called Household Penetration. Let's say you earn $1 each time you sell a widget. The more families who buy your widget, the more you make. The other approach is often called Frequency. Let's say there are 100 people who buy from you, and they buy once a year. If some of those same 100 people bought from you twice a year, you would increase your revenue without having to find any new customers.

So, when you set your top-line growth goals, decide if you want to increase your household penetration (customer base, membership, readership, reach ...), frequency or size of purchase, or both. Do you need to find more new customers or sell more to existing ones?

You can apply these formulas to non-business concerns as well. For instance, in your personal finances, you can increase your income or cut your expenses. With your blog, you might want to focus on finding more new readers or having your existing community read your posts more regularly.

In order to set your goals, you first need to know where you are starting. Collect some data. Determine all your sources of revenue -- or readers -- or whatever it is that you want to grow. Do some measurement over time. Establish a baseline - how many customers do you have in a year? How often do they buy from you on average? What is the amount that they spend in an average transaction?

See if the 80-20 rule (or some variation) applies; i.e., do 20% of your customers drive 80% of your sales? If so, what do their stats look like? For example, maybe 20% of your customers buy from you 10 times a year and the other 80% buy one time. What do your projections look like if you find new one-time buyers and what do they look like if your 10-time-a-year buyers increase to 12 times a year, or the existing one-time-a-year buyers increase to two times a year? Play around with the numbers. And if you are just starting out, look at what others are doing and make some estimates of what you could potentially achieve in one month, six months, one year, five years.

Next, list out all your expenses, such as the cost of materials; anything you are paying to employees; what it costs to operate your workspace; fees for services; and so on. Look at which ones are the same no matter how much you sell and which ones vary as sales go up. If you find more readers for your blog, eventually you might have to pay for more bandwidth. If you create aprons that you sell on Etsy, finding a source of lower-cost fabric would reduce your expenses. In both cases, your attorney fees for incorporating or securing a trademark would be the same regardless of how many readers you have or aprons you sell.

Once you've gathered this data and made a simple P&L statement,it should be easier to see whether your goal should be to increase household penetration, frequency or both. And once you have your goals in place, you can start to plan how marketing can help you reach them.

_____

Thanks for your questions so far, please keep them coming!

Previously:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Additional Resources:

TSH at Simple Mom: Manage the Family Finances by Cutting Expenses AND Increasing Income

Tricia Okin at The Marketing Mix: What's your ideal day?

Reviewing that schedule, it looks like roughly 5 hours a day, or 25 hours a week, is dedicated to client work besides email. How many clients do I or you need to bring in each month or each quarter to fit an ideal day? How much marketing do we have to do to attract those clients?

As it stands with my current need to meet $5,000 a month, I would need to bring in roughly 2 projects a month....

To get those projects and clients, Dani and I calculated: 2 projects/month = 10 proposals/month = talking to 60 people/month. This means I have to speak to or follow up with 2 new people per day to reach my goal.

Julie Chance at WebProNews: Reach Vs. Frequency

Seth Godin in his book Permission Marketing uses an analogy of seeds and water to demonstrate the importance of assuring adequate frequency in your promotional campaigns. If you were given 100 seeds with enough water to water each seed once would you plant all 100 seeds and water each one once or would you be more successful if you planted 25 seeds and used all of the water on those 25 seeds?...

When faced with the decision of mailing one direct mail piece to 10,000 people or mailing to 2,500 people four times think about the fate of those 100 seeds you can water only once. Unless you have water rights and can obtain additional water, opt for less reach and more frequency.

Eddie Yoon at Harvard Business Review: Tap into Your Super-Consumers

In any product category, roughly 10% of the consumers account for more than 50% of the profits. These super-consumers, as we call them, are the hot dog buyers who eat five pounds of hot dogs a month, wolfing down as many as 4 per sitting. They are the stapler users who own 8 different staplers. They know what they want, they'll buy a lot of it, and they'll pay a premium for it. They're passionate and engaged — sometimes even a little obsessive — and they exist in every category, from soft drinks and air travel to fast-food and oral care products....

We've found that companies that listen to their super-consumers and use their insights to refine their message ultimately grow sales and margins across all segments. These companies aren't trying to convert light users into heavy users. Rather, they're figuring out what it is the super-consumers like so much and then offering it to them.

Phil Weslow at Feedback Secrets: Contact Adhesion in Social Networking

In banking circles you’ll often hear marketing VPs talk about household penetration. The concept refers to the number of the bank’s products and services that a given household currently has. One of the ongoing goals, from the banks point of view is to increase household penetration....

So let’s extend this idea to social media marketing (SMM). If you are starting out in a SMM campaign your first goal is to build a list of contacts. Your second goal is to develop a decent level of interaction with as many of these contacts as possible.

Cross posted at BlogHer.

Marketing 101. Chapter 1: Introduction

Welcome to Marketing 101!

This is the first in a series of about some of the basics of marketing. The series is designed for everyone – whether you’re already a social media smartypants or you’re working on building your blog, your brand, or your business; whether you need to know more about all the marketers approaching you about your blog, or you’re just curious about the marketing jargon flying around the internet and the stories behind those crazy companies who try to sell you stuff.

To help set the stage, let me tell you a bit about my background. I received an MBA from the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan and have worked in marketing for more than a decade including for companies like Kraft Foods and Campbell's Soup. Many of my examples will be from the world of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) or, in other words, stuff you can buy in a grocery store. Both because that's a marketing world I know well and because we have all shopped in a grocery store, so such examples should be easy to grok.

I hope you'll all jump in and add your perspective, understanding and questions. I have a set of topics planned but I would love to cover the topics and questions you have. So with that, let's get started!

What is Marketing?

The exchange of information between buyers and sellers

I wear shoes. I like cute, functional shoes. If all the people who make and sell shoes never told me about their shoes, I would be frustrated and barefoot. I really hate going barefoot, so I’m happy to learn about their shoes. But as much as I hate going barefoot, I also hate ugly, painful shoes. I'm not going to continue to buy ugly shoes that hurt my feet. If I tell the people who make and sell the shoes what I think is cute, and functional -- what I would gladly pay for -- the shoe manufacturers are happy because ultimately they can offer shoes that people like me are happy to buy.

Sellers gather information from buyers and develop goods and services. They communicate what they have to sell, and the benefits of their products (which is an umbrella term for goods, services, ideas, etc...), to potential buyers. Buyers then exchange money or other forms of payment for products from sellers.

This system of communication –- the exchange of information to facilitate the trading of products for payment (which can be money, credit, time, labor, attention, etc...) -- is marketing. As you can see, when done well it is a win-win for both buyers and sellers.

Who Are The Buyers?

Customers and Consumers

You'll frequently see the terms "consumer" and "customer" bandied about, often used interchangeably. From my CPG perspective, there is a clear distinction. A manufacturer sells the goods they produce to a grocery store. Grocery stores are therefore their customers. Grocery stores however don't use the products that the manufacturers make. The people who do are the consumers (or, in tech terms, sometimes referred to as "end users") of the manufacturer's products. In this equation the manufacturer's consumers would be the grocery store's customers. Got that? Customers pay you for goods and services, consumers use goods and services. And sometimes they are one in the same.

Not everyone makes that distinction, however. Social media types in particular seem to have a deep distaste for the word "consumer" so customer is a safer choice to use when you're having a social media conversation. But, if you are getting pitched by or want to work with or consult for a company that does use this terminology (and many, if not most, of the companies who approach you do) it is important that you understand this fundamental difference.

Who Are The Sellers?

B2C and B2B

Manufacturers who sell to retailers and whose products are used by consumers have different ways of marketing to customers and consumers. When they approach you to feature, advertise or promote something on your blog, they are marketing to consumers. The shorthand lingo for this is B2C or Business-to-Consumer.

Another example of B2C is television advertising of grocery store items. Manufacturers hire advertising agencies to create the ads and pay for the time to air them even though consumers don't buy products directly from them. However, by letting consumers know about the products they make, consumers will go to grocery stores and purchase them. This means then that grocery stores have to stock their shelves by buying the products from the manufacturers. Therefore B2C is a major and crucial component of a CPG marketing strategy.

B2B is another term you frequently see. An example of Business-to-Business marketing is shown on the show The Office. The fictional Dunder Mifflin sells paper to business customers not to individual consumers. Another example might be companies that manufacture copiers and printers. The manufacturer of copiers would use B2B marketing for selling to offices and would use B2C marketing for individual printers for home use.

Why Should Bloggers Or Anybody Else Care About Marketing

Let me give an example that can help you think about where you might fit in this marketing system as a blogger. Not all payments have to come in the form of cold hard cash. As a blogger you are selling your words and you might hope to be rewarded in the form of readers. You can then market yourself by providing information about your product, soliciting feedback from your readers and improving your product by writing more of what they want to read and less of what they don't.

Even if you aren't a blogger, we all market ourselves in some way in many situations. And we can be better and smarter as consumers and help marketers do a better job of communicating with us and providing the information we need and want when we understand the process.

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In this series I am going to primarily focus on B2C marketing and will generally use the term consumers.

Now that we are on to the same page with our lingo we are ready to go! Let me know what you'd like to learn and I'll do my best to help.

A few smart marketing blogs:

Susan Getgood - Marketing Roadmaps

Toby Bloomberg - Diva Marketing Blog

Nancy Friedman - Fritinancy

Cross posted at BlogHer.

Mobile, Search and Product Placement

Each of these continues to grow in either practice or importance. I always sit up and take notice when others agree with my perspective and so allow me to share with you a few affirmations I've noticed of late of my focus on two of the three.

On the mobile front I'm no savant when it comes to noticing that the new Google Phone, the Nexus One, screams that Google is all about seeing mobile as the future. Both Google and Apple have purchased mobile ad companies recently which only reinforces what I (and many others) have been seeing and saying for years now:

Here's my prediction. I think it's all about mobile. It's about making mobile faster, easier, smaller, more powerful. It's about carrying the Internet in your pocket.

Virginia DeBolt at BlogHer: Voice Apps: Have You Talked *To* Your Phone Yet?

Personally, I saw our mobile everything-on-our-phones future by observing my niece. So let me amend my previous statement. Mobile and children are our future.

As is product placement. Amanda Congdon brought the idea up in the panel we held on the future of television in a digital world at new comm forum a couple years ago and ever since it has become increasingly evident. latest data point comes from return of the show Chuck.

Ultimately, Subway may have saved “Chuck” when it struck a sponsorship deal for the show’s third season, helping to offset the hundreds of thousands of dollars that producers agreed to cut from their per-episode budgets. (As they did last season, Subway sandwiches and stores will turn up in logical places in Chuck’s life, like the mall where he works.) Dave Itzkoff at The New York Times Pulling Out All the Stops to Rescue a TV Hero

I'm certain that as video entertainment shifts to the web that product placement will grow as a key method of financing production costs for all forms of television whether it be delivered via broadcast, cable or internet allowing advertising outside the show to do less of the heavy lifting and deliver profits.

Read Me On BlogHer Today

The kind editors at BlogHer have chosen a post of mine from here at Fizz to feature on BlogHer today. Please do check it out!

Marketers vs. Bloggers: Why We Need to Understand Each Other Better