It’s fairly typical to hear marketing leaders lament their inability to prove out the return on investment of the tactics they’ve deployed.   By nature, the relative return on investment of many marketing tactics is practically measured by level of activity versus level of results.  For example, numbers of qualified leads, number of impressions or growth in website traffic are frequent success measures used to evaluate return on marketing investment. 

Activity-based marketing analysis is a result of many factors, but typically has its roots in lack of data, business-process and infrastructure that hamper true line-of –site between tactic and result.  Best-in-breed consumer packaged goods companies or retailers have built results-based analytics capabilities over decades, but for most companies, this capability remains elusive.  Complexity in the B2B purchase-cycle exacerbates this gap.  Merger or acquisition activity that mismatches data, process and infrastructure can set back even the most proficient results-based marketer.     

Activity-based measures do provide timely feedback to manage marketing tactics and course-correct in real-time.  But, although activity-based measures are valuable to understand relative performance to manage marketing tactics, they quickly become irrelevant in an executive-level conversation regarding profitable revenue growth or EBITDA contribution.  Since marketing budgets are typically one of the few operating expense levers available to manage quarterly financial performance, aggressive short-term reductions in marketing budgets is often more palatable to an organization than reductions in research and development or headcount.

To balance short-term management with long-term strategy, marketing is ideally suited to play a major role, or perhaps even lead, strategic planning.  By definition, marketing should be closest to critical business levers including market dynamics, voice of the customer, competitive actions, pricing, channel efficacy and product assortment.  

A leadership role in strategic planning provides a unique opportunity to position marketing initiatives as critical contributors to achievement of strategic business goals such as customer acquisition, channel efficiency or customer retention.  This alignment in the strategic planning stages provides a platform to temper the pressures on marketing of short-term financial performance with achievement of the longer-term strategic goals of an organization.  

The closer this alignment, the greater the chances that short term adjustments don’t distract an organization from reaching its long-term strategic destination.

As marketers, we know what we need to do.  The idea of matching the right content to the right person in the right place at the right stage in the purchase life cycle to accomplish a marketing objective is pretty straightforward.  It's a concept that fits nicely onto a Powerpoint slide.

But, myriad communication channels exist to facilitate our conversations with the market.  The most important channels being those that our customers prefer to utilize.  As we fire up our content delivery machine to be more targeted, more personalized, and more social with the hope of becoming more credible, more relevant and more effective, the fuel for our multi-channel machine – our content – becomes a critical consideration.

A recent Seth Godin post defined today’s market as a swarm of fleas with our customers and prospects flitting about from one attraction to another with steadily decreasing spans of attention (and an ever increasing buzz of influence from their fellow fleas).  I like the metaphor.  That the life span of a flea is about 90 days reinforces how fleeting the relationship with our customers can sometimes be.   As marketers, we’re seeking to connect with an individual flea (and those in the swarm which influence that flea) with relevant and credible content where and when it matters to drive a behavior.

To improve our chances, the machine for personalized conversations exists.  Database analytics and modeling provide a pretty good idea of who our targets are and how they will probably behave.  Implicit profiling which our customers and prospects carry in their digital footprint provides an introduction.  Explicit profiling through which our customers tell us about themselves can be the foundation for a powerful dialog and a longstanding relationship.

But, we need to live up to our end of the bargain.  If we commit to a customer that we will get to know them and tailor our engagement to meet their specific wants and needs, we have to deliver.  Once we don’t deliver on our promise of personalized, compelling content delivered how our customers prefer, we lose credibility, we lose relevance and we may lose permission to continue our conversation.

The type of content needed to realize the potential of personalized engagement is new to many brands.  To engage in a fleeting moment, we need storytellers.  But, a new breed of storyteller who can establish a customer-needs based narrative – sometimes in a simple headline., sometimes in a multi-media format such as video.   And, create with things like brand voice, social media and organic search in mind.

Also, the volume of content needed to realize the potential of personalized engagement can be staggering.  A new paradigm for content creation is needed– one that produces content with reuse across multiple channels in mind from the beginning.   A content creation paradigm that strikes a balance between the effectiveness of personalized content, and the efficiency of a thoughtful production model.   One that enables core content to be tailored to multiple audiences.    One that aggressively leverages user-generated content.

Personalized engagement promises rich dividends in improved performance against key marketing objectives such as conversion rates and brand loyalty.   Just remember, once the machine is unleashed, it will always be hungry for fresh, compelling, relevant content.  

I am a true believer in the power of Organizational Purpose, the articulation and manifestation of the difference a brand makes in the world.  I have seen firsthand the ability of Purpose to inspire and engage an organization to deliver value to the market with passion and focus, and create sustainable competitive advantage.  It’s true, however, that to be effective (as with any Marketing), what you say must be clear, compelling, relevant and credible to your audiences. 

Credibility is a hard thing to earn and an easy thing to lose.  Since its founding, Walmart has experienced phenomenal growth anchored in its core purpose of saving people money so they can live better. Walmart’s purpose-based branding has never varied too far from this core idea; Walmart today promotes the brand promise of Saving Money and Living Better and it is reinforced across all internal and external audiences, across all touch points, with an almost fierce consistency.  Walmart has established a self-propagating credibility engine fueled by its Purpose.   

Southwest Airlines remains one of the most profitable airlines in an exceptionally challenging category.  It was founded around the idea of the democratization of the air; a core Purpose to give people the freedom to fly.  With the introduction of boarding classes on their planes and a focus more on freedom from fees, than freedom to fly, Southwest is subtly deviating from the core Purpose that made it great, eroding credibility with employees and customers along the way.      

When it comes to credibility, not many organizations can match Google for truly delivering against its Purpose of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful.  Google has stayed true to its Purpose and refused to do business in main land China due to Internet censoring concerns that are contrary to its core Purpose.  Google is postponing aggressive business growth in the world’s largest Internet market, 400 million users (double the U.S.), to stay true to itself.  Recently in Egypt, Google executive Wael Ghonim became a de facto leader of government opposition groups in a country that had just shut down the Internet to quell revolt.  The best way to establish credibility with both internal and external audiences is through actions that unflinchingly and without compromise back your words.

The role of Marketing within an organization can sometimes be limited.  Despite academic definitions and best-selling books by guru marketers, many times Marketing continues to be defined by the broader business by the tactics that are executed; advertising, events, sales tools.  Unless you’re a consumer packaged goods company with institutional mechanisms to measure purchase behavior, many of these tactics are only measurable by activity versus results.  It’s easy to measure how many people attend an event, use a tool or visit a website.  It’s hard to measure what impact these individual marketing tactics have on the financial metrics of an organization.  The inability to prove out Marketing as an investment that drives financial results versus an expense that drains quarterly budgets continues to challenge most Marketing departments. 

The evolution of digital marketing and the ability to tie online and offline customer behavior to sales force automation and financial systems continues to close the gap between investment and expense, but in the meantime, Marketing as a function needs to show its relevance to an organization in strategic areas which don’t have visible ties to short-term business results. 

A strategic area that is receiving attention lately is the idea of organizational purpose – the need to create a clear sense of internal value within an organization as a driving force behind organization, investment, behavior, and long-term relationships with employees and customers.  A great summary of this idea accompanied by case studies of organizations that have embraced the idea and thrived as a consequence is the book It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For  by Roy M. Spence Jr. 

Defining organizational purpose leverages the core strengths of Marketing.  It’s an exercise in developing a unique, clear and credible value proposition based upon the strengths of your organization, your culture and belief system, and where you can make money.  It’s an exercise in targeting a message against a core audience segment (and a surprising number of sub-segments) which is often times not paid its due in the marketing mix:  the internal constituents of an organization.  It’s an exercise in redefining the marketing mix to include vehicles that aren’t typically considered such as recruiting, performance management, rewards and training platforms.  It’s an exercise in complex and cascading communication that combines rational and emotional cues. 

Making Marketing relevant at a strategic level is a worthy aspiration within any organization.  Organizational Purpose may provide the path toward that relevance.

The smart phone has truly become a mobile extension of the online shopping experience. 

It has changed online shopping behavior by adding mobility and immediacy.  The in-store experience is blending together with the benefits of on-line shopping, in real-time.  Applications such as Google Goggles or RedLaser  accelerate the ability to compare features and prices from a smart phone, product ratings based on all sorts of criteria are now available real-time on a smart phone through applications like GoodGuide , and smart phone applications which enable real-time recommendations from a consumer’s social network are now launching.  Consumers can experience a product at a retailer, and then buy the product from the website of another retailer in real time. 

Intersecting elements of the fundamental value proposition of mobile (e.g. it moves with you, it connects you, it can tell others where you are, it supports rich media experiences, it has immediacy…) and social media (e.g. it’s authentic, it’s relevant, it’s personalized, it scales, it’s opt-in….) will result in an unparalleled pursuit of the monetization of social-centric mobile commerce applications.

Having access to a consumer with knowledge of information like who they are, where they are, what they like, what they own, what they want to own, who they listen to for advice, where they shop and how they like to receive information and offers represents an unbelievable opportunity.

Recent research from InsightExpress   surveyed the intended shopping behavior of smart phone owners. Study data reveals that during this holiday season, 29% of all smart phone owners intend to use their device to compare prices, 23% for product reviews, 22% for sales alerts and 20% to search for products at another store. Shoppers also plan to make use of additional features such as barcode scanning  (19%) and mobile couponing (19%).  34% plan to take pictures of products in store and 25% plan to send pictures to other people to solicit opinions.  According to Google’s retail advertising blog  “while m-commerce (buying over phones) is still small, shoppers plan to use smart phones during Holiday 2010 by comparing prices, locating retailers, looking for promotions, etc.”

There are still technology issues to work out (e.g. robustness of location based services, viability of mobile sharing technologies, interoperable networks to support rich media, application interfaces…), business issues to work out (e.g. how to monetize, how to deliver accurate and actionable database analytics, privacy…) and societal issues to work out. A failure may result in feeling the amplified wrath of the same socially networked consumer a company is trying to engage.

We’re in a classic technology adoption curve with the early adopters from both retailers and consumers jumping in. Ultimately, consumers will define how they want to be engaged, challenges will be overcome and it will all get figured out. Combine location-based services inherent in smart phones with savvy retailers, and a new world of local, targeted, personalized, crowd-sourced, rich-media offers sent real-time to smart phones will emerge and further revolutionize the online shopping experience. 

Not to mention redefine the impulse buy.

When considering a multi-channel, integrated marketing program, an often overlooked channel are your employees.  There are more efficient channels which can reach thousands, or millions, of current and potential customers.  But, there may be no channel as effective as a customer service representative or a front line salesperson to unlock customer lifetime value within a company’s best customers.  I’ve often observed that integrated marketing programs treat internal audiences as just that, another audience.  Usually, not a primary audience.  Usually the recipient of downstream visibility and training just prior to launch.

As a powerful alternative, I’ve also observed what can happen when internal audiences are considered as the most important audience.  Informed way up front and included in a brand building exercise or the development of a marketing program.  Inspired by a program and how it relates down to a very personal and individual level.  Asked to engage and become an ambassador of the brand and an extension of the program.  Empowered to take action.  Encouraged to unlock the passion.  Human Resources can be a non-traditional, but powerful ally and advocate to make it happen. 

Think not about employees as an audience, think about employees as The Audience. 

In the ever-evolving world of search engine marketing, organic search still prevails as the great equalizer.  With thoughtful keyword management, search-centric content creation and tagging; a search friendly infrastructure and an ongoing strategy to adapt and evolve to manage rankings, David can seem like Goliath in the page rankings.  Knowing that the majority of click-throughs and conversions come from organic search listings versus paid truly enable you to outsmart instead of outspend the competition. 

A gap does currently exist, however, during the time it takes for search engine crawlers to discover something new that you’ve posted and optimized.  Sometimes it’s not a big deal.  In the case of a major event such as a product launch, it’s a very big deal.  If the product launch isn’t accompanied by a major promotional investment, it can be a very, very big deal.  A strategic investment in paid search can be a great bridge to accompany a product launch to establish online presence and credibility until the algorithms of the search engines take over.  And, the keywords associated with a new product can sometimes be exceptionally affordable.

So, build that bridge.   

Very challenging economic times have resulted in an interesting bifurcation of marketing strategies.  As to be expected, many companies have looked to the bottom-line, reducing marketing spend to help manage near-term profitability as an alternative to head-count or R&D reductions.  Reductions in marketing spend and headcount leads to re-organization and oftentimes chaos that can easily translate into a defensive marketing stance; a reactionary approach dictated by market forces.  Some companies have taken a seemingly contrarian view, not necessarily investing in additional marketing spend, but taking an opportunity to “sharpen the saw” so that when the economic conditions improve, they will be the firms best suited to take advantage of the inevitable upturn.  One major opportunity is a transformation of talent.  Whereas many marketers will stay put in time of downturn until security is assured, these are not necessarily the marketers needed to drive transformation. 

Those that can embrace risk and bring optimism and enthusiasm in this market environment can be a tonic to an organization on the verge of greatness.  Another major opportunity is a fine-tuning of marketing strategy, which can pay rich dividends as customer, and prospects, begin to plan their way into growth cycles.  As competition waits to react and economic pressures redefine markets, a reassessment of the unique value a company can deliver articulated through a uniquely relevant and credible brand strategy can be of significant advantage. And can represent significant share gain or new market growth opportunities.  George Bailey (a great fictional niche marketer with the Bailey Building and Loan in the classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”) recognized the savvy of his nemesis old man Potter when he observed during a financial panic, “Everyone-else is selling, but Potter’s buying!”  Leave the malicious intent of Potter aside, but as marketers, now is the “time to buy” or your market just might become Potterville!