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My son has finally become my technological superior.
He is 10. (I’m proud I held out so long.)
This great life-changing experience (involving a new smartphone and my inability to use it*) caused me to sit and reflect on my inadequacy in other fields of digital life, notably online marketing.
Here are seven mistakes I and many others have made, which I pass on in the hope you can stay ahead of the next generation longer than me.
You look at a social media guru’s stream of Twitter messages and think, “Holy retweet Batman, I gotta get tweeting.”
You look at big brand’s busy Facebook page and think, “Holy page update Batman, I gotta get on this Facebook thing.”
You look at the creative emails from your favorite apparel retailer and think, “Holy open rates Batman, I gotta do more email promotions.”
Not necessarily.
The profile and (apparent) success of various channel stars has a seductive pull. But none of them share your business model, goals, skills, resources or audience.
We shouldn’t seek to emulate these stars simply because they are there. Instead, we should look to them for inspiration where the channel they work in and the tactics they use also fit our situation.
As a dedicated digital hypochondriac, each day I wake with the thought “what new development will kill my business model today?”
A healthy awareness of the competitive environment is good. But panic isn’t.
Marketing headlines can leave you thinking your lack of an integrated multichannel marketing system or star status on Facebook will be the death of your business.
But it’s not like that.
There’s pressure to do certain things in online marketing. But a lot of that pressure comes from:
Journalists interested in a hot story (not in helping your business)Vendors interested in selling (not in helping your business)Experts interested in self-vindication and self-promotion (not in helping your business)Don’t ignore them, because the same sources also have a great deal to offer. But take the headlines and ask “does this make sense for me and my market?”
In many cases, “Does this make sense?” is all you need to ask.
The value of each channel to you and/or your organization guides you on where you focus efforts and how much you invest in acquisition and messaging. Among the things to consider are how different channels differ in terms of:
Acquisition costsSuitability for relationship buildingSuitability for customer dialogue/serviceSuitability for driving responses through that channel and othersAvailability of actionable analytics and subscriber dataMessage costs and reachRiskNone of that is easy to assess and compare, but a simple awareness of channel differences is an important start. They are not different ways to reach the same end, but different ways to reach various ends.
The last point in the list – risk – is often ignored online and can be reformulated as “Who owns the channel?”
Email, for example, is an intrinsic part of the Internet itself. It’s near ubiquitous, built into the very infrastructure of the online world.
Nobody “owns” email.
Your email list and website are, broadly speaking, hostage to nobody (email delivery issues notwithstanding). Nor are either likely to disappear.
Other channels, particularly new social ones, are not so fortunate.
Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. are all private entities. You have a presence there at the discretion of the owners. If any of them “dies”, your relationships there die with them. And you are hostage to the beneficence of these owners.
There is no suggestion that any of these locations intends exploiting their position of power “unfairly” or is likely to disappear anytime soon. But the risk is there.
The early hunter, crossing the plain with spear in hand, probably focused on the small deer in front of him rather than the herd of mammoths hiding in the wood.
Which might explain why we focus on the numbers right in front of us, rather than the bigger numbers hiding in the spreadsheets.
Likes on Facebook! Followers on Twitter! Open rates on emails!
We know our business goals. We know what metrics really matter. And still we fuss and obsess over the ones that don’t matter quite as much.
And this despite every article on measuring success telling us not to focus on these feel-good metrics. If you’re building a house, you’re goal isn’t “to reach 25,000 bricks”, but that’s how we behave.
I have no solution, but two suggestions:
1. The perceived importance of a metric is often proportional to how easy it is to find it.
If you know the metrics you should be paying most attention to, then set up a reporting system, spreadsheet, whatever to make getting those numbers as easy as possible.
If email marketing campaign reports started off with profit and revenue numbers and buried open rates on page 17, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
2. If you can’t kick the feel-good metrics habit, then take the trouble to understand what they truly measure and how that relates to your end goals. Then at least you have a good chance of drawing out the right insights from your analysis.
Email senders have readers. Except most of them don’t read your emails.
Twitter folk have followers, a word that is totally out of proportion to the tenuous link that joins the follower to the followed.
Even Facebook’s “like” is disingenuous, as those keen to disparage a page owner will “like” them in order to gain posting privileges.
Most “followers”, “friends” and “readers” offer their allegiance only for as long as you offer them value through your updates, posts and other messages.
If you tip the value exchange too much in your favor, then their loyalty will be exposed for the delicate thing it is.
Actions speak louder than words: don’t let the word describing a relationship lead you to overestimate the actual strength of that relationship.
And don’t forget that this relationship varies within each channel too.
For example, how many of your Twitter followers are following thousands in a never-ending dance to the tune of “I’ll follow you if you follow me”? Good luck getting any attention there.
Or do you have a segment of followers adding you to their Twitter lists to better access your words of wisdom? In such cases, the word follower has real meaning.
When we analyse results, we tend to make two errors.
The first is analysis in isolation. Did the time I spent on Twitter produce enough positive outcomes to justify the effort?
That question is incomplete.
It’s not (just) about whether the Twitter response justifies the time on Twitter, but whether the Twitter response justifies not spending that time elsewhere.
It’s not enough to get a positive ROI. It has to be better than the alternatives. An obvious concept that’s often forgotten in the rush to justify a personal channel preference.
Email experts will, rightly, tell you that investment (of time or technology) in segmentation will boost end results. If you analyse in isolation, you jump into segmentation. And you get a good return for your new investment.
But the right approach is to ask if the money or time invested in segmentation might be better used elsewhere for an even bigger response.
The promotional value I get through Twitter justifies the time I spend there. It does not, however, adequately compensate for the time lost to other activities. I’d be better off writing more content, for example.
If I was a rational human being (or had a boss), I’d spend less time on Twitter.
The second error is also analysis in isolation. Channel results are typically limited to those observable through the channel itself. So email responses are measured as opens, clicks on links in emails, and conversions that follow a click (like a sale or download).
That’s fine, but the next level is to find ways of measuring responses to email that come through other channels. When you send an email out, does it get people to, for example:
Go to Google and search for your brand/products/services?Visit your real-world store?Type in your website URL directly?There are many responses we don’t capture, but which impact the value of that channel to your overall results.
The only way to be sure of a channel’s true worth (and thus to make the right investment and tactical decisions) is to follow Kevin Hillstrom’s advice on holdout tests.
Don’t spread yourself too thin.
For many organizations, you can find justification to be active in numerous channels. Even if it’s just an obligation to appear “cutting edge”.
But the net is filled with Facebook pages, blogs, Twitter accounts and email newsletters that started strong and faded quickly. Is it better to have no presence at all than a crappy one?
Is it not better to start small and grow than start big and shrink? The latter builds expectations and fails to meet them, the latter builds expectations and exceeds them.
If you have to be present everywhere, but can’t be everywhere, then design this presence so it:
1. Still offers something meaningful there (however small)
2. Has minimal maintenance requirements
Finally, as I’ve written before:
“Are you implementing new tactics because some Englishman in Austria with a blog said they worked, because they make intrinsic sense for your audience and model, or because you tested the ideas and found them beneficial?”
Any other lessons you’d care to add?
*…but note I am still way better than him at Angry Birds.
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