One of the perennial dilemmas when approaching an organization’s marketing strategy is the type of appeal (e.g. factual/evidence-based, emotional, etc.) that should be made to the target audience. After all, the strategy can have a huge impact on the response. For example, in the early 80s Pepsi always seemed to win it’s head-to-head taste tests with Coke in its Pepsi Challenges. However, for as much as the anecdotal evidence suggested that Pepsi was preferred to Coke, it never could eclipse it in sales. According to Beverage America’s 2008 report on soft drinks, Coke has 12% more market share than Pepsi). Of course there are many issues contributing to Pepsi failure to overtake the leadership position in the Cola Wars, one of which is the wrong marketing approach.

According to Hall & Stamp’s (2002), studies suggest that facts are meaningful to left-brainers and right-brainers are best sold using energy, personal relationships and emotion.

Additional research of business executives found that left-brain people respond best to presentation where the salesperson was more serious, very knowledgeable, and highly organized, with clear command of the facts and specific recommendations…Right-brain people responded best to sales approaches where the salesperson was more humorous, animated, relationship-oriented, and focused on their personal needs more than their own company’s needs.

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Tim Newhard, Business Development Manager

Wow! Social Media sure is popular. And its use as a marketing vehicle has greatly accelerated as social media networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook have been inundated with Babyboomers. In fact, the research organization Forester predicts that spending on social media marketing will soon outpace spending for email marketing (which is in some circles a form of social media marketing).

So what does it all mean?

In short, since social media marketing has come about so quickly – a lot of people probably don’t know how to use it. As a result, there are lots of businesses wasting time and money on a medium that is rich with data and buzz, but no clear use for the average business.

The average dialogue regarding social media probably goes like this: Gosh, everyone I know uses social media, in fact, I read in an article that the average Facebook user spends ONE HOUR a day on Facebook (true fact). I should open up a Facebook account. End Quote.

This idea has good intentions, but it lacks direction, goals, and any resemblance to a strategy.

Like any new thing, people are bound to grope around for answers while other people will claim to have all the answers in an effort to lead the groping masses to higher profitability. In an effort to help the masses, while not proclaiming to have all the answers, here are some social media tips from a real marketing strategy consulting and design firm: Continue reading →

According to studies by Kalyanaram et. al., Urban et. al, and Urban et. al., forecasted market share for consumer packaged goods and prescription anti-ulcer drugs divided by the first entrant’s market share roughly equals one divided by the square root of the order of market entry.

In other words, those who aren’t first to the market have significantly less market share than the first entrant into the market/industry.

The lesson to be learned is that being first counts for a lot.

See Hanssens, D., ed. (2009). Empirical Generalizations About Marketing Impact, Marketing Science Institute. Cambridge, Mass.

In a recent article published by Mediaweek, author Denise Lee Yohn postulated that the drive toward social media and analytics by CMOs was causing marketing to lose its creativity. Lee Lohn wrote:

All this focus on social media and analytics seems to be sucking the creativity out of marketing. Time was, brands developed big ideas and delivered and communicated them in unique and creative ways. Now it seems marketers are only interested in tactics and metrics…Certainly media and communications have changed, so a big TV spot or newspaper campaign probably isn’t the right approach for transformational marketing.  But lately it seems the pursuit of breakthrough marketing creativity has taken a backseat to work on more predictable and achievable efforts.

While there is no question to Lee Lohn’s notion that creativity plays a vital role in the effectiveness of marketing, the concerning part about Lee Lohn’s article is that it positions creativity as the finality of the marketing process. Continue reading →

As a follow up on our recent post about standardized marketing metrics, we explore the conversation as it progresses within the marketing community. Marketing NPV published an interesting article furthering the case for (and against) a standardized set of marketing metrics. In particular, they argue that CMOs should be spending more time asking a set of difficult, yet critical, questions about their marketing strategies and efforts then working to develop a standardized set of marketing metrics. Continue reading →