As you'd expect at the start of a new year, a lot has been written about lessons
from the past and trends for the future...
Looking at the bigger economic picture,
GDP is forecast to grow, albeit by a small amount, but
many marketers agree that 2011 is likely to be a very challenging year,
depending on the sector you work in. Manufacturing and banking, for instance,
will arguably have a better year than the public sector. From a consumer
perspective, with VAT and many other price rises across
the market, a lot of consumers will be worse off than last year. Google Trends
figures for the UK's leading comparison websites show
that visits to these sites have boomed over the last 12 months, indicating a
tendency towards more considered purchases. Outside the UK,
the emerging world promises to be sunnier than the developed world,
particularly India.
With this challenging backdrop, I wanted to remind you of some of the core lessons we've all learnt from marketing through the downturn and the implications for 2011:
1. We don't know where the money is going and what value it's delivering.
The
recession led to a great deal of deep analysis of where money was
going and what that investment was delivering. The result was cost reduction,
cost reallocation, the creation of more robust reporting technology and KPI dashboards as well as an increased demand for benchmarking
data so that marketers could see how they compared with others.
What does it mean for 2011? Continue to invest in marketing to acquire new customers and keep
the ones you have, just make sure you're clear on the expected return so that
you can adjust and refine the course to hit the target. You'll need skills in
planning, predicting and analysis.
2. What's the right balance between optimisation and innovation?
Marketers
who invested in digital were able to focus on improving and adjusting programmes
using analytics to boost ROI. Others
embraced emerging channels such as social media, taking advantage of free
distribution platforms such as Youtube, Flickr and Facebook, and delivered some
outstanding results.
What does it mean for 2011? Keep optimising digital programmes so that they deliver more for
less; but allocate some time and money for thinking about new stuff and have a
structured approach to innovation so that you can keep experimenting, learning
and integrating.
3. We don't really know our customers.
The recession changed the rules of
many games as customers' worlds changed as did their behaviour. Many
businesses who hadn't anticipated the changes were caught out.
What does it mean for 2011? Keep close to your customers, which may be easier if you have few big
b2b clients, but is equally relevant if you have 1000s of consumer customers.
The important point is that you have a system in place for gathering, analysing
and interpreting customer feedback & behaviour so that the business can act
on this insight. Don't forget also to keep an eye on what your competitors are
up too! As well as your own analytics tool and market research programme, there
are many free tools available to provide both customer and competitive
intelligence (see further information section below).
4. We don't have a holistic view of the total experience our customers have
with our brand.
With fewer customers to go round, brands became a lot more
focused on customer retention with sophisticated 'customer development
programmes' implemented to try to keep their business and turn them into raving
fans (an objective that is hard to achieve!). To achieve this, more and more b2b
brands tried to use customer experience as a differentiator which led to a
deeper understanding of the customer journey, and the realisation that customers
are often putting up with a fairly disjointed experience with a brand.
What does it mean for 2011? Customer retention should remain a big part of marketing
programmes, but break out of silos so that you can understand and optimise the
full customer experience.
5. We treat every prospective customer the same.
Traditionally, many brands
treated every potential customer the same, irrespective of the stage of buying
they're in. Over the last few years, more sophisticated marketers, particularly
in the technology space, have now completely overhauled their messaging,
focusing more on issues rather than offers. This approach has led to an
explosion in the requirement for content
marketing which has challenged
marketers to think more like multi-media publishers. It has also led to a more
integrated way of thinking about media with digital and traditional channels
working together to deliver a more consitent and impactful message to the
marketplace, with a better ROI.
What does it mean for 2011? Understand the different stages that your prospective customers go through
and think about the content that could help those prospects move to the next
stage.
6. What technology do we need?
Throughout the recession, technology has
continued to innovate to enable marketers to increase productivity; analyse
customer behaviour and deliver far more sophisticated marketing programmes than
ever before. Depending on your perspective, marketing in 2011 is definitely a
lot more complex than it was in 2001, but also a lot more exiciting.
What does it mean for 2011? Think about what customer benefit the technology will deliver
and don't expect technology to be a silver
bullet. For instance, a
marketing automation system should will allow you to deliver more targeted
communications from a brand which must be good for the customer, but only if the
system is implemented well and used effectively. Similarly, more people are
connecting to the internet through their mobiles than their computers, a
requirement that can only be fulfilled through the use of technology.
7.
What knowledge, skills & behaviours do we need?
The recession saw many
businesses slim down their marketing departments; slash their training budgets
and outsource many of their services. With so much changing in the marketing
space, you need to keep a balance between tight cost management whilst investing
in development initiatives for your internal people so that they keep learning,
growing and delivering.
What does it mean for 2011? Create a development plan
for your key people to include technical marketing knowledge and skills as well
as other core soft skills required to enable marketers to operate effectively in
your organisation. There are some great training organisations that you can work
with which I have listed below.
8. Do we really need to do this in-house?
The reduction in marketing
departments, combined with a growth of microbusinesses has meant that marketers
are able to outsource projects to a plethora of freelance marketers in the UK
and, indeed, with internet services such as Elance, overseas. Similarly, in some cases, whole functions have been
outsourced to agencies to reduce internal overheads and provide a more flexible
resource.
What does it mean for 2011? This outsourcing trend will continue and
you should have a think about what things make econonomic sense to retain
in-house and what could be outsourced effectively. Don't forget though, the
resource required to manage and keep outsourced partners engaged to get as much
value for your money.
9. The last click won't win the long-term game.
As you'd expect, the downturn
led to a short-term focus with direct response initiatives popular. 'We want
leads'; 'We want sales', was the cry. Whilst this will never go away, many
brands took one of their most valuable assets, their brand reputation, for
granted during the recession and have paid a price.
What does it mean for 2011? Keep focused on managing and communicating your brand reputation. Why? Just
consider for a moment how your customer acquistion costs and your pricing
strategy will change if you weren't able to use the brand you currently do. The
answer of course will be different depending on the maturity of your brand.
I wish you all a very happy 2011.
Article by Lawrence Mitchell (RBI-UK)