I was lucky enough to have some time to attend a number of the sessions at the Inbound Marketing Summit run by Chris Brogan . I did not get to every session due to some client commitments but I was impressed by the sessions I did attend.
Here are my key takeaways organized into several themes:
The website is part of your sales force and should be treated that way (we can do some more work on that…)
A reason for advertising ineffectiveness is a lack of consistency and continuity – there is a disconnect with what’s offered and the reality of what people get from a business
There are some advanced techniques that allow you to use rules based on web behavior to provide a more customized web experience for users, one example is Tom’s hardware which can direct users to useful content based on how they arrived at the site.
The Changing Marketing Landscape: Brian Halligan from Hubspot gave a interesting presentation on why outbound marketing is dead. Key takeways:
Outbound marketing is dead..well not completely but certainly the mass media model is far less effective for marketers than ever before
Being found is more critical than ever
Drawing customers in by providing valuable content that addressed their pain points – be “remark” able to coin Seth Godin
Online Product Launch: Loic Le Meur from Seesmic presented on his learning’s from launch many online products over the years (the link is his story on funded Seesmic worth reading). Key Takeaways:
Get to market as fast as possible – launch, listen and watch behavior then move forward fast
Look especially for negative feedback as this can drive improvements and highlight weak spots
If you are not being talked about (good or bad) there is a problem…
New ways to develop customer insight: Justin Levy led a great panel discussion on how social media can provide companies with deeper customer insights, my takeaways:
Millions of conversations are happening that relate to you or what you offer, that is a source of information you cannot risk not working out how to harvest
It really is a marketers dream, most marketers are sitting in their offices wondering what customers are thinking or how they will behave, the social media landscape provides the answers. A simple ROI is the cost savings in market research…..
Insights are being used across the business not just marketing and PR but also to deal with customer service issues (think Frank at comcast) as well as internal collaboration and networking
The Changing Media Landscape: Paul Gillin gave a great presentation on how the print and TV media are continuing to lose control, my takeaways:
Daily Newspaper reader demographics in the US – ave age 57yrs
Media does not control the message anymore and looks to the web for story ideas and sources, journalists google rather than go to their blackbooks
Customers need be listened to and allowed to shape strategy – Is twitter the new newspaper?
Implications – media is in the hands of individuals, customers will speak up, companies will be forced to listen
I have been reflecting recently on viral marketing and it’s capacity to build global awareness almost instantly…
Like every great marketing technique there is a formula:
It has to be interesting and in a way that really stands out whether its wacky, creative, controversial, unexpected or inspirational.
This is one of my favorites (maybe the world’s best? – that probably depends on your criteria…..), it connects with viewers emotionally with a simple powerful idea that connects people around the globe…enjoy!
I came across this short video of Forrester researcher Peter Kim today which outlines their view on what it takes to make customer-centric real:
While I agree there are 3 ingredients to making customer centric real for customers, the cultural aspect is by far the largest challenge. Metrics and technology are enablers of culture change but ultimately people have to believe that the purpose of their organization is to create value for customers and as a result generate profits rather than the other way around. Without this mindset built into to the dna of the organization the goal of customer-centricity will always be off in the distance….
I read an interesting post by Scott Anthony on the Harvard Business Publishing site today called “Better through whose eyes?”
He makes the point that innovation needs to be seen through the customers lens. I couldn’t agree more, in fact if it isn’t adding value to the customer then in my view it is not innovation to begin with….
The second criteria should be whether the business can do it cost effectively, as an innvoation should add customer value but also add profitablity to the company.
Scott provided the example of the new feature on Bank of Amercia ATMs that allows customers to scan checks, he proposed the idea that it was really just saving BoA money and inconveniencing customers but it was interesting to see that the comments were fairly evenly split on this one with many actually believing it saved them time and was easy to use. So one could conclude that it was innovative for some customers but not others?
This leads to the question of segmentation and how to introduce new benefits that only some customers will value. Perhaps BoA could have provided the old method of banking checks as well as the new scanning method, watched customer behavior and phased out the older method over time?
I just read a great post by Jeremiah Owyang that included this video on how best buy are using social media in a variety of ways to positively impact on their culture:
I think a key point here is that to be successful in social media, the underlying values of the users need to be about adding value, being transparent, being authentic. When these values filter into the broader organization great things can happen, new ideas evolve, changes happen faster, customer service gets better. In fact increasing Iam seeing examples of how social media can be a key enabler of what we at MCS call marketculture.
Another example is GE which uses SupportCentral as a internal tool that has been ahead of the curve since 2000 according to comments by a reader on a recent McKinsey article. Anna All also references GE in this great article about its impact and Chuck Hollis from EMC illuminates us further with his first encounter with the system.
Which tools do you think are having the greatest impact on your corporate culture?
The component that stood out for me was the inhibitor of organizational culture. We do a lot of work in this area and it comes up time and time again in relation to many changes that affect companies and large companies particularly struggle to change quickly because of embedded cultural traits.
Gary Hamel adds a different dimension to this conversation in a great post on the WSJ Management Web 2.0 called “The Facebook Generation Vs Fortune 500″ where he outlines the differences between the online culture of generation f (and I think X and Y) and the traditional corporate culture which are almost polar opposites. I think this goes some way to explaining the cultural resistance, to summarize some of the best ones:
Ideas compete equally
Contribution trumps credentials
Hierarchies develop are not dictated
Leaders serve rather than preside
Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
Groups are self-defining and organizing.
Resources get attracted, not allocated.
Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
Intrinsic rewards matter most.
If you combine Gary’s observations with the inherent values of the social web which are being reinforced as key influencers (See Eric Brantner on social media etiquette and Chris Brogan on Etiquette in the Age of Social Media ) propose ways to approach social media you end up with values like:
Transparency, Share and Collaborate, Respect others, Always add value…. or even better put them into practice like Tony from Zappos has done here.
Many of these values seem to disappear in the politics of large organizations. I see social media as a real change agent that forces management to reflect on the way they treat employees, customers and suppliers. Are they holding customer’s hostage? or are they trying to create value for them?
Its not all bad for big business, in fact we think its great for big business and some of the greatest corporates are embracing social media, see this presentation by Adam Christiensen of IBM because ultimately social media will help organizations become more innovative.
What do you think, will corporate cultures be positively changed by social media? How?
Its hard to tell whether an assessment survey has any value at all. In fact, I’m inclined to believe that most are misleading and potentially harmful.
Every survey starts with an author writing out questions, hoping that they will measure certain things. Almost always, the process ends there. Who is to know if the question actually measures what the author intended? What delineates a high score? A low score?
Our new assessment tool, currently in its last stage of development, is no typical survey. I secretly think of it as a super hero among surveys. Its not like Superman, because it wasn’t born great. Its more like the Six Million Dollar Man because it was made great through a long and expensive process called ’survey validity and reliability assessment.’
Validity and reliability assessments answer the questions that determine if a survey has value:
Does this measure something real?
What are the relationships between the concepts measured?
Are there correlations between the concepts measure and performance factors?
What’s a high score on this survey? Low score?
You may be thinking, ‘the post title is misleading, this isn’t an update. Get to the update.’
Here it is. We’ve almost completed the entire validity and reliability assessment of our scale (lots of heavy statistical equations and computer modeling involved) and I already have the definitive answers to the bullet questions above, for you:
Yes! our survey does measure statistically significant and meaningful concepts.
There are many interrelations within the scale, but I can’t share the specifics right now.
Yes! Each concept in the survey has been determined by the data to be statistically correlated to one or more performance items. I can’t share the numbers, but I can tell you that we’re excited by the strength of the correlations we’re seeing.
We’ve figured this one out too. All data from our study is compiled in a database, against which we are benchmarking all new data. As such, the score for newly assessed companies will be translated into a percentile ranked against all existing companies in the database. In this way one can determine exactly where they stand.
In the near future we’ll be wrapping up the analysis and gearing up to present the results of the study to company participants. In fact, next Wednesday we’re giving a sneak peak of results to a company because the brass for the parent organization is in town and is interested to see the results.
r through whose eyes?”
