Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

Shocking news from the research community today: Blogs aren’t just for marketing or technology geeks any more.

Recent research from Ipsos surprised researchers, as noted in today’s MediaPost (free subscription may be required):

America’s business elite - executives with C-level titles or the senior-most managers just below them - are voracious users of new media such as online blogs and podcasts, and their overall usage of online media is growing faster than the general public.

“We were absolutely surprised that these people, who are middle-aged males for the most part, are very active in these new media,” says White, of the elite group representing just 0.26% of the U.S. adult population, but earning an aggregate $246 billion and having a combined net worth in excess of $1 trillion.

Nearly a third (31%) of this C-level crowd reported reading an online blog at least once a month, while 5% said they have personally contributed to a blog, statistics that surprised even the Ipsos research team.

In another shocking - but certainly unrelated (or is it?) - research discovery by Monroe Mendelsohn Research, we now know America’s wealthiest households’ magazine secret:

People is #1…

In an enlightening article over on GigaOM, Anne Jelenka (whom I subscribe to on her own right) wrote a compelling post about the move from the information age to the connected age.

She sets the stage:

“Today’s version of the web, whatever you want to call it, is notable because people and hardware and information and software and conversation are all mixed together into a hyperconnected network”

And describes very nicely the changes we’re seeing in tools and work styles as our work becomes ever more facilitated by the web. Here’s a table she got from Web Worker Daily (for whom she also blogs - she’s a busy gal!) that nicely sums it up:

She names Microsoft the example of an information age company, and Google the example of the connected age company.

I know a ton of companies who are struggling to be more like Google (I even worked on a project recently where the information age company itself was positioning itself to be more like Google) and there are ramifications beyond giving employees cool perks and time to dream:

If the currency of the connected age is attention (and I’m a firm believer it is…) tools to facilitate aggregation, filtering and retaining attention will be key to productivity and relationships. No longer will RSS readers be enough. Organizations will need to help employees capture, filter and retain essential information wherever, whenever they need it. Attensa has that nailed - with their Enterprise 2.0 RSS ecosystem.

No longer do I need to hunt for information essential to my work. With my RSS subscriptions, the information comes to me. (My burstiness of discontinuous productivity is burstier, as a result.) And no matter whether I’m at my own computer, on the road with only my Blackberry, or even at a friend’s house using their machine, I’m able to get (and manage) my feeds. Once I’ve read a feed and deleted it, it disappears from all of my capture points - and even in that, I’m so much more productive as a result.

And what are these precious feeds?

• Mentions of my clients’ companies or products
• News of competitive companies
• Updates to my favorite news and blog sites (I have a few to add as Anne stays prolific!)

I’m in-touch and smarter as a result. And my company is as well. I’ve got a well-engineered, completely interconnected network tool doing a ton of work for me so I don’t have to.

Think about that kind of perk as you’re striving to be more like Google. Ever-present beer in the kitchen perks pale in comparison to the joy of having an entire hyperconnected network system like Attensa’s enterprise RSS suite watching your back.

In a world where people are bombarded with more than 3000 messages every day, where more than 59% of college students turn to word of mouth (WOM) to research products, and with brands in the hands of consumers; marketers must approach customer engagement and acquisition in a whole new way.

No longer can we depend on a rear-view mirror approach to segmenting, positioning and promoting products and services. Today’s marketer needs to have a facile understanding of technology, combined with trust in their own insights, in order to create interest, adoption and lifetime customer value.

I propose the Four R’s of Marketing to build consumers’ trust:

Reveal:

Previously anonymous customer habits can be turned into rich customer profiles in the hands of smart marketers who use technology and analytics in real-time to reveal consumer behavior. For example, using online tools like shopping cart data and a real-world database, a national restaurant chain has the ability to segment down to the customer level:

Habits:

• Visits two locations for lunch (42% of time) and dinner (58% of time).
• Responds to free food - visit frequency increased by 540% and purchase amount increased 380% during a “free cookie” promotion (from 0.52 visits per week to 3.33 visits per week)
• Favorite sandwich is BLT; second favorite is Ham & Swiss
• $11.48 per visit (42% greater than the average customer)

Reward:

Once such detailed profiles are captured and segmented (again, using rich analytical tools and human intelligence), marketers can reward behaviors with highly targeted offers and information to further engage and delight the customer.

In the example above, Customer xxxxxx7852 (and others like him) might receive special emailed promotional offers on BLTs (or more free cookies) to entice him in on a weekend; while other segments might receive offers based on their favorites revealed.

Respect:

Highly relevant, targeted offers will result in increased trust and respect of the customer toward the marketer’s brand. Relevant, personalized messages have been proven to move from awareness to action; and can move a brand beyond the mediocrity of the masses in order to meet the higher standards of goodwill that people reward with their attention today.

Retain:

As we saw in the example above, the offer of a free cookie stimulated increased interactions by more than 380% with the brand. As switching costs become lower for most brands, and as the cost of customer acquisition grows, the value of current customers becomes more important.

I really enjoy Pete Blackshaw’s articles for CMO that I get via the ClickZ network. This morning he wrote of being at Advertising Week and getting an odd email from a panelist onstage who wrote, “Someone needs to put the word ‘conversation’ on hiatus — at least for a bit.”

Pete’s article wondered if marketers ar killing ‘conversation’ through overuse, or (worse) thinking we’re having conversations with consumers when we’re not:

“It’s like someone made a billion copies of the first page of the “Cluetrain Manifesto” and paper-bombed Madison Avenue, or wherever the marketing community lurks these days.”

There are two fascinating things I found worth noting in the article -

1. The comments on his post are from a smattering of the who’s who of the ad industry - so they’re enlightening (both good and bad)
2. Pete’s challenged his Facebook Consumer-Generated Media group to discuss subject.

And that was my tipping point to finally join Facebook. Apparently that’s where the marketing community is lurking these days…

I’m pleased to be able to claim a new title: SOB. This is an honor that’s been created and announced weekly by Liz Strauss over at Successful-Blog. There are now more than 100 weeks of Successful and Outstanding Bloggers she’s deemed worthy, and I’m fortunate enough to be one of them.

I nominated myself, sent a little note to Liz, and she let me know she announces her new SOBs on Saturdays. I have been so delinquent in roaming the blogosphere this week (is that a sob story, or a bad sign? pardon the pun, I couldn’t help myself) that I only just logged in to see the link and announcement. It’s like finding a little winning lottery ticket waiting for you when you log into your blog.

I share this week’s honor with some great business blogs:

• BizGrowth News - from Krishna De, a social media expert over in Dublin, Ireland;
• Tom Singer in Austin Texas, who has a blog called Some Assembly Required, and talks about networking and maintaining business relationships with today’s opportunities. I especially enjoyed his rant on LinkedIn.
• Jonathan Fields’ Awake@theWheel blog speaks about small businesses, and has some hilarious stories.

Thanks, Liz, for putting us all together in this week’s illustrious (?) SOB list. Because of you, I’ve got a whole new set of subscriptions to enjoy.