SteveOlenski

The Eleven Letter Word That Continues To Elude All CMOs And Marketers

It’s a rather simple word to say, just four syllables. It’s an easily understood word on the surface – at least I think it is. Its meaning is quite apparent the moment you hear it. Yet so many CMO’s and marketers treat this 11-letter word as if it were a 4-letter word.

And I don’t know why for the life of me.

The word that continues to elude and evade CMOs and marketers is *I*N*T*E*G*R*A*T*I*O*N.

And as anyone who knows me knows this about me – I am a Scorpio who enjoys hot chocolate in August. No wait, not that.

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Are brands wielding more influence in Social Media than we thought?

As one who has read, dissected and written about many a study regarding social media, brands and consumers, I can tell you I for one was quite surprised to see read the findings of a survey recently conducted by Market Force – a worldwide leader in customer intelligence solutions.

In querying more than 12,000 consumers in the US and UK, they wanted to see how consumers engaged with varying industries – retail, restaurant, travel, entertainment and financial businesses to be specific, via the big dogs of social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+.

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Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat But Complacency Will Kill The Marketer

Recently I told you of the One Quarter Of American Consumers (who) Are Brand Loyal. That indeed is a very telling statistic which came from a survey conducted by Ernst & Young. Today comes the results of another survey, this one done jointly by Acxiom and Loyalty360, which sheds some light on why so few consumers are brand loyal. And it all comes to down one word.

com·pla·cen·cy – a feeling of quiet pleasure or security, often while unaware of some potential danger

I give you exhibit A:

 

 

That’s right boys and girls, 60% of all the respondents – who were comprised of executives in both B2B and B2C companies from a cross section of industries, dedicate less than 20% of their marketing budget to customer retention.

See where I’m going here with the whole “complacency” thing?

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The Lines Between Social Media And Sports Continue To Blur

The Philadelphia Wings of the National Lacrosse League (NLL) made history yesterday by becoming the first professional sports team in North America to don jerseys that had their Twitter names on the back of their jerseys. Could this be the sign of things to come as more sports teams look for ways to engage their fans through the use of social media?

Social media is all about engagement–engaging in conversations that heretofore were not possible. And when it comes to sports and athletes, we fans love to engage with our favorite players.

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Brand Managers Who Want More Loyal Customers Need To Do This

Every brand manager and product manager in the world wants more loyal customers, right? Well if they can master the art of one-simple 6-letter word they would be well on their way to achieving their goals.

Unknown ObjectThis seemingly innocuous or harmless word can be very harmful and quite damaging to a brand’s long term success if not done properly and consistently.The word is “engage” or “engagement” if you prefer. No matter what you call it interacting and engaging with your customers and prospects is the key to establishing, fostering and maintaining brand loyalty. However as know from a recent post, Engagement Is The Most Important Digital Challenge For Marketers… “According to a recent McKinsey quarterly report, having the ability to engage their customers and leverage those relationships is the number one digitally-related challenge facing marketers today.”

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Marketing Integration – The Number 1 Thing B2B And B2C Marketers Want To And Need To Learn

Not Search Engine Marketing. Not PPC. Not even Social Media Marketing. No, the #1 thing B2B Marketers and B2C Marketers alike want to learn more about is marketing integration and creating a true integrated marketing strategy.

This not-shocking-to-me finding came from a report released by Webmarketing123, who surveyed over 500 marketing professionals. There are other findings which I will share with you, but after reading the report and reading it over, I knew right away the one finding that stood out from all others and it happened to be the very last chart in the report.

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Marketers And Advertisers: Women Are Driving The Purchasing Bus, Get Used To It

“Women control the majority of purchasing decisions in a household and their influence is growing.” That’s just one of the many key findings from a Nielsen Study which showed that women the world over are in control of purchasing decisions which should serve as a wake up call to business to consumer (B2C) marketers and advertisers across the globe. 

The study, titled Women of Tomorrow: A Study of Women Around the World, provides insight into how current and future generations of female consumers shop and use media differently and presents many cases where marketers have a “massive opportunity to better connect women with the products they buy and the media technologies they use to make a positive impact both in their lives and in the bottom line.” The study also provides even more proof as to the importance of creating and integrated marketing and advertising message.

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CMOs Struggling To Keep Up With The Digital Revolution

In a wide-ranging survey of more than 1,700 chief marketing officers from 64 countries and 19 industries, IBM’s 2011 Global CMO Study revealed that a large portion of CMOs, while excited at all the changes happening in the marketplace – are ill-equipped to deal with and manage it. 

Back in July I shared with you the results of the State of Marketing Report from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council which revealed that “Social Media And Integration is Chief Among Marketers’ Priorities.” Then in September it was the results of a study conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business that showed that “CMO’s To Increase Spending On Social Media But Integration Still Lacking.”

And today I want to share some of the results of the aforementioned IBM 2011 Global CMO Study which revealed four (4) key challenges that CMOs feel unprepared to manage:

  1. The explosion of data. It goes without saying we are ALL swimming in a sea of data. It’s all around us and the key will be not only managing all of it but measuring it and gleaning



    the right information from it. Yes the operative word is “right.” One CMO survey put it very bluntly “At this moment, I don’t know how our marketing department will cope with the expected data explosion.”

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CMO’s To Increase Spending On Social Media But Integration Still Lacking

A survey of nearly 250 marketing top marketing executives revealed an overall increase of spending of 9.1% over the next 12 months but… the survey also revealed that integration is still a long way off.

Conducted by Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the twice a year survey “collects and disseminates the opinions of top marketers in order to predict the future of markets, track marketing excellence, and improve the value of marketing in firms and society.”

And just as I did with the Trends In Social Advertising Survey by Brian Solis and The Pivot Conference, I am once again… going behind the numbers. My natural curiosity must come from watching all those mystery and copy shows growing up… is there such a thing as too much Columbo?

Nah…

Anyway, while I am happy to report that overall marketing spending is expected to increase over 9% over the next 12 months as per the survey findings – there are some intriguing, if not disconcerting, additional findings form the survey I want to bring to your attention.

The first one has to do with the overall spending increase itself. Look at the chart below…

Now, you’ll see the aforementioned 9.1% increase but look at the trend from the February to August for each of 2010 and 2011. I realize it’s only two years we’re talking about but why the up and down from February to August each year? When the CMOs were asked in February about spending were they coming off poor holiday, end-of-year numbers and thus indicated via the survey they don’t plan on spending as much as they indicated a few months later in August?

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