CEO of Photofy John Andrews considers how collaboration with your employees could make your digital content sing…
Digital marketing today is a crowded arena. It’s become the primary tool for marketers in terms of dollars spent. But as spending has increased, saturation and diminishing returns have occurred at an alarming rate. There’s simply a finite amount of human attention and too much noise. More dollars continue to flow into programmatic media all seeking to reach the right shopper with the right message at the right time… in the fastest and easiest way possible.
No thank you… is that really so hard to say? I get that people are busy, and that we all get a little overwhelmed sometimes from all the marketing that we see. But if we’ve got a long-standing relationship and I’m reaching out with an offer, a favor for a friend, someone looking for a job, or just to run something by you, then I would really, really like to see a response other than pure silence. Wouldn’t you? Occasionally a call, email, or bit of social outreach simply slips through the cracks. I get that. But you should make an effort to respond. It doesn’t have to be a yes, but anything is better than crickets!
Ever unsubscribe from a mailing list only to keep getting emails from the brand in question? You’re not alone. It’s actually one of my biggest pet peeves, and here’s why.
Isn’t it great when you unsubscribe and start getting more emails?
Signing up for any type of email marketing list is always a leap of faith, but when everyone is professional about the process, the risk is supposed to be minimal. I sign up, see what you have to offer, and decide whether I want to stick around for more. You hold up your end of the bargain by sending quality content or offers and providing an easy way to unsubscribe if I decide it’s not for me. If I do choose to unsubscribe, then that should be the end of it. But that’s where things most often get tricky these days.
Empowering your employees will result in success for your brand…
Every retail employee is an individual with their own unique skills, outlook, and ability to solve problems. With the right training, an employee can learn to be a true ambassador for your brand, an asset to your company’s image, and a key reason that loyal customers keep coming back to your business. However, many brands put their public-facing employees into a box, with a selection of scripted responses and not many tools for genuinely addressing the problems of their customers. For them, promoting the brand is an afterthought and customer service is a means to an end.
Not every brand operates that way, of course, and the smart ones empower their employees to be more than robots. Treating your retail employees more like Mary Kay reps, rather than cogs in the machine, is crucial for establishing a better customer experience.
Why marketers need to really understand what their audiences want, before they – and their products – become irrelevant…
Does it appear that you’re followed around online with ads for things you already own? A case in point… I own three Nests, nine Nest smoke detectors and two Nest cams. So, why am I continually seeing ads for this product? Yes, I like the brand. That much was probably obvious after my first few purchases. But I’ve got enough Nests! With all the data they get from me, they really can’t find a way to stop showing me ads for products I already own, and show me something new instead?
I learned very quickly to be careful about looking back too much. I made sure to learn from my mistakes, but tried not to second guess myself.
I have always done everything I can to build relationships and surround myself with friends and colleagues I trust… A Network gives you Reach, BUT a Community gives you Power!
Relationships are like muscle tissue, the more you engage them, the stronger and more valuable they become.
Why EMPATHY for your CONSUMER will always result in a Better, More Effective Marketing Plan.
It’s pretty easy to sit in a room and come up with a flashy marketing plan that’s sure to please other marketing experts. That doesn’t mean it will be a good marketing plan or that it will be at all relevant to your consumers, but you’re certainly free to try the locked room method. Plenty do. The plan often fails; the team repeats the process all over again, and somehow nobody realizes that the key ingredient for success has been missing the whole time.
I’m not talking about data here. It’s easy to get seduced by numbers and graphs and demographics. However, if you want to create effective marketing for your consumers, then you need to walk a mile (or ten) in their shoes.
Are bloggers/influencers, worth the money to influence consumers?
My take…
#1… it’s all about the situation, the context, and the bloggers/influencers. #2… it’s most often, although not always, more about the content than the “influence.” #3… everyone influences someone, so empower your customers, potential customers, and especially employees personal influence. #4… most of what the marketing community refers to as “influence” is simply media.
You are buying media impressions (hopefully contextual and/or interesting ones) so measure and invest in them that way.
Buzzing off those results you secured for your company? Feeling confident? Maybe even a little self-important? Time to check yourself people.
Ever work with someone who always had all the answers, even if they weren’t paying any attention to the questions? Have you ever been that person? It’s human nature for success to breed confidence; however, allowing that confidence to veer into arrogance is a dangerous thing in business and marketing. It’s hard to build a team-first culture when key members of the team think they are above the rules and above the rest of the group. And when a whole team becomes arrogant, success gives way to complacency. Beware of these risks at every level of your business.
When confidence turns sour
It’s hard to overstate how important confidence is to success, and how easy it is for confidence to become arrogance. It can grow from little things. Maybe you contributed a big idea to the project but felt that you didn’t get enough credit. Or maybe you got too much credit. Perhaps you see the positive trajectory of the team you’re a part of and overstate your part in it. It’s OK to be proud of your work and to foster pride in teamwork, but when that morphs into feelings of superiority, your whole team can start assuming that past results guarantee future success.
“A confident, level-headed leader knows that arrogance is bad for business, and that times of success are when they need to temper confidence.
No matter where it originates, arrogance is bad for business. A confident, level-headed leader knows this, and knows that times of success are when they need to temper confidence. You want team members to feel they’ve contributed, but not that they are more valuable than the rest of the team. As a leader or a team member, you also need to check yourself constantly, to make sure you’re not sowing the seeds of over-confidence in your business and marketing.
It’s important to stay vigilant because arrogance can destroy a successful business or team from the inside. When one team member feels they’re more important than the rest and their attitude goes unchecked, suddenly the rest of the team may not be so willing to engage and share their own ideas. An arrogant team member is willing to sacrifice the good of the whole to continue to feel important.
It starts with you
Of course, this isn’t just a risk for teams. It’s also something that we all must address on a personal level. When you come up with a great idea, put in the work to bring it to reality, and see your idea lead to success for your business, of course you should be feeling confident! However, stay humble and don’t let complacency creep in or the damage can escalate. You feel the confidence of success, so maybe next time around you put in a little less effort and expect to get the same results. Then, what happens when that lesser effort doesn’t lead to the results you hoped? Well, it’s got to be someone else’s fault, right? Arrogance might tell you to look outside of yourself and place blame, when the real problem is much closer to home.
Practice self-reflection
The cure for arrogance is a willingness to look at your actions through a lens of humility. Honest self-evaluation can be hard, but it’s incredibly valuable. In good times and bad, it starts with asking: How can I do a better job? No matter how well you and your team are doing, there is always room for improvement. Just as importantly, no matter how well something has worked in the past, there’s no guarantee that it will continue to be the best thing for your business moving forward. The old saying that “pride goeth before the fall” is true! People who take a step back and reflect periodically, often find more ways to improve their performance than their self-important colleagues.
Beware the dangers of pride and arrogance in business. You never want to feel like you have ‘arrived’ – no matter how well things are going, how hard you worked to contribute to that success, and how much your team values your input. Confidence is a powerful, positive thing, but only when it’s tempered by a healthy dose of humility.
The following is my comment and viewpoint. Unfortunately very few HBR contributors engage commenters…
In my opinion Blockchain Technology does nothing to solve this problem. It’s NOT a technology problem, it’s a marketing/sales mindset problem.
It’s the marketers who value this bombarding of consumers, and use of programmatic ads… they have the ability/technology to stop, they simply don’t want to. Every marketer can see a campaign had a 1.5% industry average click rate, they don’t need blockchain to know it’s 98.5% spam – and… consumers share their data now without blockchain, it’s just so many marketers are not JUST lazy… they only interested in what they deem the ‘additional” sale. For the most part they don’t care how many times they need to knock you over the head.
They only look at the upsides of bombarding consumers, they do not take the time, or have the inclination, to take the downside into account. Until they do, there is no technology that will make a significant difference.
