Mapping the world

Since time immemorial accurate maps have been crucial to attaining and keeping power. Navigational maps helped first the Portuguese and Spanish, then the English to reach (and annex) new territories across the globe. Later colonialism literally redrew the map of Africa, creating countries where there were none before. Maps are critical in battle and to take stock of your resources and population.

So control of maps brings control over your subjects. As we move into a mobile device dominated future this explains the enormous battle to command mapping in your pocket, using the power of GPS and network connections to find out where you are. Nokia spent $7.7 billion on NAVTEQ, while Google StreetView has seen the search giant survey the world at a granular level. It explains why Apple ditched Google and launched its own ill-fated Maps app on the latest iPhone – the company simply didn’t want to give up control of such vital data to a third party.

Essentially knowing where you are enables companies to better understand your behaviour and target offers that fit your location and background. And that’s the positive news – it now only takes four location data points to identify a mobile user according to new research. Something that law enforcement agencies (and criminals) are no doubt very interested in.

But for all its benefits GPS isn’t as accurate as mapping companies (and advertisers) would like. Particularly in large buildings, such as shopping centres, it doesn’t give pinpoint positioning. Which is why Apple has just paid a reputed $20m for indoor mapping specialist Wifislam, which uses ambient wifi signals to offer maps accurate to 2.5m. With this level of data clever marketers could target you with an offer for Costa as you walk into Starbucks while the police could place you (or at least your phone) at the scene of a crime in a crowded city.

Apple isn’t alone in looking at indoor mapping – Google now features 10,000 floor plans submitted by businesses while Nokia’s Destination Maps product has more than 4,000 locations in 38 countries.

I often bang on about privacy and how marketers need to tread a fine line between providing targeted offers and respecting personal space. And the move to indoor mapping, combined with ways of interacting such as QR codes, augmented reality apps such as Aurasma and Near Field Communications (NFC) mean that the possibilities of tracking, understanding user behaviour and tailoring marketing could become ubiquitous. Except in the countryside, where poor mobile coverage means that if you are lucky it tells you what village you’re actually in.

The future is hyperlocal and mobile – marketers need to embrace this, but make sure that they’re getting buy-in from customers or they risk a privacy backlash from both individuals and regulators.

 

Related articles

• Apple acquires indoor GPS company WiFiSLAM for $20 million

 

Do you really Like that?

Be careful what you like on Facebook – that’s the warning to take from research carried out by the University of Cambridge. The project used algorithms to predict religion, politics, race and sexual orientation based solely on what people chose to Like on the social network.

By correlating personality tests and the demographic information of 58,000 volunteers, the researchers were able to compare Likes with an astonishing level of accuracy. The algorithm used was 88% accurate in predicting whether someone male was gay or straight and between 65-73% accurate in guessing marital status and substance abuse for example. And it wasn’t based on simple linking – fewer than 5% of gay users clicked obvious likes such as gay marriage. Instead it used information such as likes on TV shows, films and music.

This is music to the ears of marketers (and social networks desperate to sell advertising to them). It could even help Facebook’s depressed share price perk up a little. And if you can accurately predict detailed demographic information from just one part of a person’s online footprint, imagine what you can do if you add in web browsing, search and other social network data. No wonder Google wants you to sign into its multiple services so it can collect the maximum amount of data, whatever device you are using.

From a consumer point of view there’s two ways of looking at this – most people will see it as an intrusion into their privacy and change their settings, but brands may well rationalise it as offering people exactly what they want. And as Mark Earls has pointed out in his book I’ll have what she’s having a large number of people’s decisions are herd led. So offer them an easy option that means they don’t have to think and they’ll jump at it. In many cases consumers may not even realise they are being sold to – which could be very worrying when people start being segmented on sexuality, religion or political affiliation.

So marketers need to treat this data with caution. Yes, it gives unprecedented insight but be too aggressive when using it and you’ll cause a public outcry which could damage your brand – and trigger governmental action to tighten privacy settings on the likes of Facebook.

However my own view is that we’ve been here before. Remember when store loyalty cards came in everyone predicted that we’d be laser targeted with relevant offers that drove us to up our spend? But if I get a mailing from a well-known chemists the vouchers are pretty much identical to my wife’s, with obvious male/female differences. It seems that marketers haven’t got to grips with shopping data in enough granular detail to deliver the killer offers that will drive me to automatically purchase without thinking. We may have the data, and even the technology to analyse it, but until marketers move to a digital mindset we’re unlikely to be brainwashed into buying things we don’t even know we wanted.

Related articles

• ‘Facebook ‘likes’ can reveal your intimate secrets’ – Business Standard
• Researchers predict IQ, age, and more using only Facebook Likes

Standing out from the Crowd (funding)

Turning your brilliant idea into a world-beating product requires a lot of things – drive, commitment, flexibility and often a large slice of luck. But one element it can’t really do without is money – whether to develop prototypes, employ staff or simply pay your own bills.

Finding funding has never been easy, but the range of potential sources does seem to be growing. As well as traditional sources such as VCs, banks, angels and friends and family, there are a range of government grants and multiple competitions that can potentially help startups take a step forward. I’m not saying this necessarily makes gaining investment easy, but it does give more options.

And another option that is expanding rapidly is crowdfunding – sharing your idea with the world and getting them to back it before you start the expensive business of actually producing anything. If you don’t attract the pre-orders then it should probably act as a wake-up call – are you producing the right product that people actually want?

There’s been a run of successful, over-subscribed launches on sites like KickStarter. The company behind the Pebble smart watch raised over $10m and will start shipping real products this month. On a smaller scale, projects like photography book I Drink Lead Paint hit its target of £10,000, unleashing the thoughts and images of Mr Flibble onto the world. And B2B versions like Funding Circle have attracted government backing, making £20m available to British businesses over the next 12-24 months.

With growth like this, it is no wonder that Deloitte predicts that crowdfunding will double in 2013, raising £1.9 billion globally this year. Not huge in the scheme of overall investment, but potentially opening up funding options to smaller scale projects in a simple way.

But, with more and more projects out there looking for crowdfunding, how do entrepreneurs get people to view what they are doing – and potentially part with their cash? Kickstarter’s own stats show that just over 40% of projects hit their funding targets, showing it isn’t as simple as launching and waiting for the money to roll in.

This is where an enormous opportunity arises for the marketing and PR industries to get involved. Crowdfunding projects need marketing in the same way as any other product, identifying target audiences and demonstrating the benefits your new wonder widget brings to them. And then you’ve got to reach them, using both social and traditional media to identify the influencers that are likely to help you spread the word and convincing them and the world at large. Obviously the downside is that projects don’t tend to have any ready cash, but for anyone brave enough to go for payment by results the business is out there. At a time when the PR industry is suffering financially, creating smart, all-in-one services that help you get crowdfunding or launch your new iPhone app are just what it needs to be developing to recapture growth and build relationships with the next generation of smart businesses.

Tapping into the herd mind

Yesterday’s Another Marketing Conferencesaw a number of illuminating and involving presentations, designed to provide ideas and guidance for marketers of all types. Held in Cambridge, it had some great speakers, slick (but not too slick) organisation and a wide range of delegates.

English: Deep in thought………. Separate from the remainder of the herd but with a wonderful view. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One presentation that stood out for me was Mark Earls (aka @herdmeister) talking about how marketers are essentially failing to understand their customers. We treat consumers as rational, thinking beings, when essentially we’re dominated by a desire to avoid thought and follow the herd. As Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahnemann put it: “We are to thinking as cats are to swimming. We can do it if we have to, but we don’t particularly like it.”

Mark outlined four handy principles:

1. People do first and think later – they might post-rationalise their decisions and believe they acted logically, but that’s after the fact.
2. We’re far more like Captain Kirk rather than Dr Spock, so you need to make it easy for people to make decisions, rather than thinking.
3. People aren’t looking for the best, they are looking for ‘good enough’. We’re living in a universe of too much stuff, the vast majority of which doesn’t involve life or death choices. So we’ll generally go with what satisfies the need rather than spend days searching for the best possible option.
4. People harmonise with other people automatically. In an uncertain decision landscape we’re most likely to choose what our peers are choosing rather than listen to marketing around us. We learn by copying others.

What I think is really interesting is how this plays out in social media and online. We tend to Like what our friends Like, we want to follow people that our friends follow and watch the videos that they do. So once something gets momentum behind it (think Psy’s Gangnam Style) it just grows and grows.

You can see this as depressing, as essentially it explains mob behaviour, but as marketers we need to understand how customers operate if we’re going to successfully engage with them. What decisions are independent and what are herd led? Structure campaigns accordingly and you can change behaviour and ensure your message gets across.

There’s more on this in the new book Mark has co-written “I’ll have what she’s having“ which was handily included in the goodie bag from the conference and has moved to the top of my reading list. Watch this space for a fuller review.

Social media and the sales funnel

Due to its massive growth companies are flocking to social media. In today’s world you can’t be a self-respecting marketer without a Facebook page, Twitter handle, YouTube channel, LinkedIn profile, blog, Pinterestboard etc.

facebook (Photo credit: sitmonkeysupreme)

This is all very well – social media provide a completely new channel that lets your brand interact with consumers in a genuine conversation. However there’s not a lot of thought (or rigour) going into the social media presence of a lot of companies. Some are simply chasing follower numbers, despite the fact that these can be easily bought and others are launching campaigns (like the Waitrose Twitter hashtag project) which seem doomed to attract only ridicule.

Companies need to take a step back and work out where social media is going to help them. If you’re selling a toilet cleaner is it worth having a Facebook page – will people really think it is cool to Like a bottle of bleach? It is time for marketers to put their puppyish enthusiasm to one side and look at some basic marketing and sales concepts.

When it comes to generating sales there’s a well recognised marketing acronym called AIDA, standing for:

• Attention/Awareness – i.e. attracting the consumer
• Interest – piquing their interest by focusing on benefits
• Desire – making them want what you’ve got
• Action – getting them to take a positive step such as purchase

Essentially lots of social media marketing is focusing on the first point, but doesn’t have a strategy to move people through the rest of the process. I think marketers are getting confused by the speed and accessibility of social media to think that you can skip the middle sections and go straight to Action. In some cases consumers do work like that – a tweet with a special offer on a new film/book/CD is a straightforward transaction, but these are the exception rather than the rule and merely replicate what you are doing through other channels.

Building interest and engagement with your brand takes time – you need to create a community, listen to your consumers and deliver sustained benefits to them. A money off voucher may be good for short term sales, but isn’t building long term loyalty (and who’s to say they wouldn’t have bought your product anyway?)

So marketers need to take a step back and ask themselves an honest question. Do consumers want to have a conversation either with or about your brand? Would they talk about it positively down the pub or is it just something that they buy because the toilet needs disinfecting? It could be that you don’t need that all singing, all dancing Facebook page and you should focus on other offline channels. Less sexy (and not as exciting on your CV) but there could well be better ways of connecting with consumers and driving sales.

Why Ryanair doesn’t care – lessons for marketing

Today’s media is full of the latest outburst from Ryanair’s founder and chief executive. Michael O’Leary described passengers who failed to print out their boarding passes (and consequently are charged €60 per flight as a surcharge) as ‘idiots’. Responding to a Facebook campaign by disgruntled passenger Suzy McLeod who fell foul of the charges O’Leary suggested she “should pay 60 euros for being stupid.”

Disobeying the cardinal rules of marketing and abusing your customers never normally works – remember Gerard Ratner describing his jewellery as ‘crap’?

English: Michael O’Leary (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Particularly given that the Facebook campaign had gained support from over 500,000 users it seems to demonstrate that Ryanair is ignoring the power of social media to spread complaints and criticism.

But it actually reflects Ryanair’s very simple brand proposition – cheap, no-frills flights with all the extras charged for (remember O’Leary’s threat to charge for using the loo on his planes?). Extreme, yes, and in many cases comes across as unfair, particularly when charges are added on that can’t be avoided, but in general people know what they are getting. It’s a classic case of market segmentation, coupled with a flair for hitting the headlines on a regular basis to reinforce the message. People can choose to fly through other carriers so there’s no monopoly that needs to be regulated which means that generally Ryanair can get away with it.

So what lessons can we learn as tech marketers?

Have a single focus
Firstly, you have to be very focused on what your company/product/technology stands for. Build a unique proposition that solves a customer pain point and make sure that it runs through everything that you do. While it is always best to be liked by your customers, if what you are offering is compelling enough they will continue to buy from you.

Use the power of PR
Yes, O’Leary is a motormouth but he knows exactly the value that his outbursts will bring in terms of column inches. These are not off the cuff remarks but a planned campaign to reinforce Ryanair’s proposition and keep it front of mind with potential passengers.

Have a figurehead
Companies are generally faceless, so make sure you have a charismatic spokesperson to get your message across. Again, O’Leary’s positioning isn’t going to work for most businesses, but he provides an instantly recognisable face to Ryanair. Don’t use too many spokespeople, make sure they are media trained but let them demonstrate their personality and how it reflects the business. This should be easy for tech entrepreneurs who’ve put their lives into a startup, but getting them to look up from their technology to engage at a higher level can be a struggle.

Invest in marketing through the right channels
Given it claims to offer the lowest fares and operates as a no-frills company, you may think that Ryanair has a minimal marketing budget. On the contrary, over its last financial quarter Ryanair increased marketing spend six fold (to over €51 million). While that’s not going on social media it is going on eyecatching adverts designed to persuade passengers onto new routes with what appear to be compelling offers. The company knows that a combination of its brand presence, O’Leary outbursts and advertising through channels that reach its customers will translate into sales. No waste, no free iPhone apps, just a focus on what is proven to work.

Clearly, very few businesses, tech or otherwise, can get away with how Ryanair markets itself and survive. But strip off the O’Leary bluster and there are lessons that can be learnt by all companies when it comes to successfully reaching customers and making money.

 

MicroSocial?

There are a lot of people convinced that what the world needs is another social network. After all technically they’re pretty simple to set up and if half the world is on Facebook, there’s still plenty of opportunity to recruit members.

Image via CrunchBase

I’m being flippant, but in a week that saw Microsoft launch two forays into social networks, I think that’s time for a reality check in the area. To be fair to Microsoft, the mooted $1bn acquisition of social enterprise platform Yammer is a logical move. It means it can add collaboration and social network style features to Microsoft Office, helping tighten its grip on enterprise desktop software. Essentially it’s meeting the continuing corporate desire to help share information and enable collaboration that has been going on since the launch of Lotus Notes and intranets 20 years ago. So, social network yes, Facebook competitor no.

Microsoft’s other new social network So.cl is a lot more difficult to fathom. Described as ‘an experiment in open search’ it is designed to be a layer on existing social networks, with a particular focus on social search (something that Microsoft’s Bing search engine is also majoring on). All a bit confusing and really lacking a killer reason to sign up. I can only guess that successful bits of So.cl will be integrated into Windows Live and Bing – but that really relies on people using the service to test it and see if it works.

I’ve talked before about how any technology (including social networks) has to cross the chasm into the mainstream from early adopters if it is to be a lasting success. Another useful bit of business development thinking is that in mature markets there are essentially four positions to be in. You can be the market leader (Facebook), the follower (LinkedIn), the challenger (Google+) or successfully own a niche (such as Twitter). Outside these four it is difficult to build the scale you need to succeed as a decent sized social network – it really relies on getting people to sign up and use the service on an ongoing basis. As Apple has found with its Ping music social networking service, which is rumoured to be closing, brand name and access to a potential audience isn’t enough to get people to sign up.

So whether you are marketer or a social network startup take a good look at the business development textbooks before you launch and ask yourself does the world really need your social network?

Related articles

• Samsung to launch a Facebook-like Social network next year (buzzom.com)
• Microsoft Said to Be in Talks to Buy Yammer Social Network – Bloomberg (bloomberg.com)

Digital – is Don Draper worried?

Image via Wikipedia

As every marketing textbook will tell you there are five main promotional tools when it comes to reaching your customer – advertising, public relations, direct marketing, personal selling and sales promotion and all have distinct advantages (and pitfalls).

In the real world, outside the textbooks, a hierarchy has developed, certainly when it comes to big brands and their campaigns. Advertising is king, taking the largest share of budgets, driving the ideas and generally providing Mad Men-style glamour. PR has always been the poor relation, while direct mail and sales promotion have been relegated to the bottom of the list, seen as mechanical methods of distributing content. Salespeople rarely see themselves as a promotional tool so have headed off on their own outside marketing’s control.

As in many industries, the advent of the web disrupted this cosy status quo, but the model pretty much survived. Web and email were put into the direct marketing category and ad agencies continued to receive fat cheques for their work.

But there are now real signs that the world is changing – it isn’t a command and control model anymore. We’re not watching TV (or TV ads) as much (as a recent Deloitte report pointed out most people now have hard drive recorders) and new digital channels, like social media, are much more about conversations and content, not just slick one-way ideas. Adland is worried about losing control – bringing in PR people for their content skills, investing in swish digital agencies and generally reinventing themselves through new services. The question is – can they change fast enough or will savvy PR agencies step up to the mark? Time will tell, but if the PR industry fails to skill up it risks missing out on a once in a lifetime opportunity to lead integrated marketing campaigns.

Related articles

• Will PR Agencies Suffer the Campaign Mindset? (worob.com)
• Seven Ways Agencies Must Evolve in 2011 (adage.com)
• Havas Worldwide Takes Majority Stake in Social Technology Startup: Socialistic (prnewswire.com)

Waving goodbye and Crossing the Chasm

Image via CrunchBase

The news that Google is canning its Wave product has the online world in a bit of a tizzy. In my opinion it suffered as people weren’t really sure what it did (email? Instant messaging? Document collaboration? All of the above?) and it was launched by invitation – hardly the way of building a mass audience quickly

So, if the likes of Google can’t convince us to use new tools, have we reached the end of the road for social media innovation?

I think not, but as social media moves more mainstream new services need to convince people (not just early adopters) to invest time and effort in trying something new.

Let’s go back to marketing science. Social media has crossed Geoffrey Moore’s famous chasm, so to gain interest new services have to appeal to the early majority, rather than just visionaries and early adopters. It doesn’t matter that social media tools tend to be free – what costs (and puts people off) is the amount of time they need to invest in learning them and the potential payback.

The early majority aren’t interested in tech for tech’s sake, they want something that will solve a problem or replace a tried and tested solution. And it has to be easy to use and not take up too much of their time to set-up. Wave failed on pretty much all of these points, meaning it was always destined to be a niche technology. So rather than a big bang launch Google would have done better to define what it did, build a community of early adopters and then go mainstream.

Given the number of products Google launches the death of Wave isn’t a crisis, but is the perfect illustration that marketing strategy applies equally to social media as any other sector.

Apple, Antennagate and brand

Image by Victor Svensson via Flickr

The public and media storm about the iPhone 4’s antenna issues is an object lesson about changing brand perceptions and how companies need to evolve.

Like most companies, Apple has created some duff products in its time. And many of them have been down to design winning out over substance. The perfect example is the round mouse shipped with the iMac and Power Macs. Design wise it looked gorgeous and fitted in completely with the style of the product. However it was virtually impossible to use, leading to a storm of complaints and forcing customers to buy replacements.

But at the time it didn’t really matter. Macs were a niche product and users (mostly designers) weren’t going to defect to Windows over the issue.

Roll forward to the iPhone 4 and again a gorgeous design compromises the ability to actually use the product. But rather than just affecting a relatively small number of Apple fanatics, we’re talking about millions of mass market consumers. Big difference, hence Apple’s eventual issue of protective cases and heartfelt apologies.

But it took a while for Steve Jobs to stand up and admit the mistake (sort of). As it moves more and more into the mainstream Apple will need to learn to react faster if its brand is going to retain its lustre and appeal. Oh, and checking that the antenna works before shipping would also be a good idea…………

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