The Dumbest Guy in the Room

For anyone who’s sat through a meeting with me… I often say “I’m the Dumbest Guy in the Room.”  I also tell folks the reason I know, is my wife tells me every night I get home.  Now I jest about the later… but former is absolutely my goal — to be the dumbest guy in the room.

However, I’ve sat in too many meetings where a high level Marketing Executive, Creative Director or Business Manager doesn’t listen to what is being said — by their team, agency, research team and what’s even more concerning… the customer.

Getting customer input is critical.  Once I did extensive research on how customers found our products.  How they searched, categorized and navigated on a website.  Presenting the results to Product Management was interesting.  At first they were intrigued, almost giddy with the insights from customers.  That intrigue quickly became skepticism as they picked apart every number, comment and recommendation.  

• Use a third party research company
• Include Product Management, Marketing, Executives or anyone who might throw stones at the results.  Include them from day 1 in the design, purpose and question/research development.
• Use multiple customer segments — B2B, B2C, size, geographic, income, sales, etc.
• Speak to customers and prospective customers
• Video tape the input or better yet, have your key constituents actually be at the interviews to listen to input for themselves
• For a website… setup navigation pages for customers to test… if you have the budget, you can go all high-tech and have eye navigation and tracking setup. 
• Get the correct sample size
• Get quantitative and qualitative input… it’s tough to argue with the quantitative numbers, but having the qualitative helps bring the context of those numbers out.
• Get agreement at the outset, what you want to get out of the research.  Agree that you’ll use the research to make certain decisions… basically, you don’t want the research to find it’s way on a dusty bookshelf
• Do an in-person results meeting… and follow it up with individual 1:1 meetings to ensure clarity and get consensus if needed.
• Layout a step-by-step plan to execute the plans the research has identified.  Always tie back the recommendations and changes to the research…bring it back to the customer research

Don’t let that research sit on a shelf… don’t let others “poke” holes in the research based on inaccuracies with the collection of the data…don’t keep the results under wraps…and most importantly, don’t think you’re smarter than your customer.  

Scott

Are Our Metrics Focusing on the Right Things?

It seems like every other email newsletter I receive has articles regarding metrics about social, mobile, engagement, likes, content views, GRP’s and the like.  And I’m not disputing the point of each of these are important in their own universe…. And if you can connect them, all the better.

However, let’s go back to the fundamental reason for marketing.

“All marketing investments, across ALL areas/functions/businesses, etc. is to do one thing…SELL”

     

If the above weren’t true, why would the board of directors, management and shareholders agree to marketing budgets?  Marketing is a fundamental investment with both short and long-term financial goals.  Short-term – sell product immediately, drive leads for sales, increase eCommerce traffic…. Long-term – build the brand, create advocates for the brand, drive high value leads, increase price, etc.

Which brings me to my concern…it seems to me we’ve taken our eye off the ball on the metrics which truly matter and support the reason for marketing investments.  So what top-level investment metrics should we regain focus on?  My key ones include:       

1.  Incremental Gross/Net Revenue per total marketing dollars spent

2.  Customer Acquisition Cost

3.   Both #1 and #2 but revenue per marketing employee

4.  Customer Cross Sell Ratio

5.       Recency/Frequency/Monetary Value customer model – check out Don Libey’s extensive research on this model

6.       Customer Satisfaction Levels – get down to specific detail items you’re working on and track them consistently

7.       Customer Lifetime Value

8.       Marketing Investment Payback Time

9.       Customer Attrition Rate

10.   Customer Segmentation Model and Marketing Investment

Certainly, I have additional ones I could list, but keeping things simple--the above 10 help focus your investments, strategy and executions on the things which matter.  In addition, when the boss calls you in the office, you speak management language vs. the marketing babble.

Scott