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.