You, the marketer, may be the most important person in your company. Did you know that? You ought to be the engineer of your firm's success. Yep, that is right, you, more than the product guys and more than even your CEO. Why? Because: "competition among companies today is less about competition between products but more about competition as to who can get attention from buyers. It is a competition between marketing communications.", says Prof. Manfred Bruhn in a book that I picked up last week during my vacation in Germany. I don't believe this book has been translated into English yet. Published by Torsten Schwarz, it is the "Guide for Integrated Communication", i.e. just another name for integrated multichannel marketing really.
So, how should we communicate in order for our communications to be competitive and have the upper hand in getting buyers' attention? Hmmm, lets spam more people than the competitor, yell louder and use more neon colors in our TV ads. Yeah, right. Not! That doesn't work because buyers by now have developed the equivalent of a noise cancelling headphone in order to tune out even the loudest market criers among us.
In order to be relevant we have to embrace integrated communication, i.e. integrated multichannel marketing. You have heard that over and over again. So if your firm has not embraced it yet, what then has been holding your team up?
Prof. Bruhn has conducted a survey among German enterprises on the subject. In his chapter within the book, Prof. Bruhn lists many of the challenges that companies have cited. Some responses confirm exactly the discussion in the two previous posts on this blog. Namely, multichannel marketing requires cooperation between the employees who are expert in each channel (especially online) vs. generalists that are expert in ensuring consistency across all channels. This requires down-up management rather than top-down or bottom-up management. Even pure office politics can be a challenge that needs to be overcome before these folks open up towards working together. But among the technical challenges that companies mentioned there was one that was mentioned most frequently. Guess which one that was? It was controlling, i.e. results measurement of multichannel marketing activities. Especially, when a buyer is touched by multiple communications before making a purchase, which one(s) should get the credit?
Now, multichannel analytics and response attribution happen to be exactly our expertise here at Unica. These kinds of analytics are a challenge that Unica customers have solved over and over again. To hear a portion of the methods used by Unica customers tune in to our upcoming free Webcast: Using Web Analytics to Impress Your CMO, Featuring Jim Sterne, President Web Analytics Association . Hope to meet you there!
Having worked at big multichannel retailers for a very long time, I can tell you that I literally refused to embrace your vision for multichannel marketing because it was a "vendor-promoted" vision.
In other words, when a vendor suggests a vision (maybe even based on actual, valid customer feedback), then tries to sell you something as a solution, you become skeptical about embracing multichannel marketing.
Further, there are elements of multichannel marketing and integrated communications that literally don't work --- i.e., don't drive customer response. You measure those things when you work as a Database Marketer at a big multichannel retailer --- but those things you learn are proprietary to that company. You don't communicate those things with vendors trying to sell you solutions.
Posted by: Kevin Hillstrom | July 15, 2007 at 01:39 PM
Hi Kevin,
Thank you for reading, and thank you for the comment! You have a healthy dose of mistrust in vendors. I imagine that this has been justified more often that not unfortunately.
In this case however, I was quoting from books by various authors and not making up any vision. For example, these researchers have measured to confirm that an orchestrated crosschannel marketing campaign typically raises response rates and brand recognition beyond uncoordinated ad campaigns. That means potentially more results from your marketing dollars if you can implement multichannel marketing efficiently.
But how would you know that your company is breaking even on multichannel marketing unless you measure it so that you can improve results over time?
Do you happen to have a blog somewhere as it would be of great interest to hear your view of multichannel retailing as much as you are willing to share publicly.
Thank you for reading and keep the comments coming!
Posted by: Akin | July 16, 2007 at 12:10 PM
You'll be happy to know that I am very fond of one vendor in particular ... Unica! You're great folks helped us with Affinium at Nordstrom.
There are about a half-dozen vendors I've worked with in my industry that I fully support. On average, their people and products sell themselves. I get frustrated with all the advice about how a brand 'has to do these six things', etc.
At a conference last week, a presenter (from a reputable vendor) told an audience of humble small business owners that if they didn't make changes to their shopping cart experience, it would be "death".
By the way, he sold a product that helped businesses make enhancements to their shopping cart experiences.
Posted by: Kevin Hillstrom | July 18, 2007 at 11:59 AM
Thank you for the kudos Kevin! My colleagues and I are much obliged. As a vendor one is always one step away from making a biased pitch. It just amounts to bad marketing when that happens. Makes me appreciate the great intellectual effort that marketers like yourself invest when you are promoting convenience/value rather than: "Me, me, me".
Posted by: Akin | July 19, 2007 at 03:04 PM
This requires down-up management rather than top-down or bottom-up management.
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