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The Other 3 P’s

Customer Experience, DataBase Marketing, Marketing thru Operations

It’s interesting most folks that consider themselves Marketers, especially of the online variety, seem to only discuss and have ideas about Advertising.  But of the 4 P’s that make up Marketing – Product (which includes People), Price, Place (channel), and Promotion – Promotion (Advertising) is the weakest element of the four.

I say weakest because Advertising cannot fix a poorly thought out Product, Pricing Strategy, or Distribution system.  It just can’t.  Yet huge amounts of money are wasted trying to do exactly that.

Perhaps this why someone feels they need to publish a book that tells people Product is important in Marketing.  To me, that’s the most circular or redundant idea for a Marketing book I’ve ever heard.

Marketing starts with Product, which should include all the audience or market segmentation studies (People) that drive the creation of the Product – defining the need.  If you do this first and develop a Product which truly fills the need, AND you get the Pricing and Distribution right, the Product will literally sell itself to the core audience.

If you can make it that far, THEN the Product can perhaps be sold to the next segment out from the core through Advertising.  All “Marketers” should know this.

Continue reading The Other 3 P’s →

Post-Action Dissonance

Customer Experience, Marketing thru Operations

You may have heard of this concept as Post-Purchase Dissonance, an area where more research has been done, but the fact is that many actions other than purchase create dissonance.

This area of  Psychology is more generally referred to as Cognitive Dissonance.  Along with Norms of Reciprocity, Dissonance is one of the most important pieces of Psychology for today’s Marketing folks to understand.   This is doubly true if you are serious about using a two-way Social model in Marketing.

Here’s why:  The Social sword has two edges.  If you are going to use a two-way Relationship Marketing approach, you will create higher expectations with those who Engage.  If you fail to perform, or just act like an Advertiser would, then you will end up creating more damage than if you had simply ignored the two-way idea.

For Marketing, the important idea to understand is the human brain always questions actions taken, however briefly, and tries to resolve conflict.  Any unresolved conflicts tend to taint the action, they create Friction, and drive down the Potential Value of the experience.

The important action item for Marketers is to know this will happen beforehand, and take steps to counteract the Dissonance.  The result will be customers who have generally better experiences, and you know what that means, right?

In other words, by planning for Post-Action Dissonance you are using a Prediction that increases Profits or cuts Costs down the road.

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Lead Scoring and Nurturing

DataBase Marketing, Driller Q & A, Measuring Engagement, Newsletters

Jim answers questions from fellow Drillers
(More questions with answers here, Work Overview here, Index of concepts here)

Q: I received this article (Norms of Reciprocity, measuring value of Social Marketing) via a friend’s Twitter account. Very interesting.

A: Glad you enjoyed it!

Q: It has made open up my ACT! database, and my Outlook databases and add the metric of Growing / Strong / Weakening / Failed to my normal Sales and Business progress metrics. If I group those categories and correlate to traditional metrics, it’s impressive how they reflect each other.

A: Yes, most people are surprised. It’s a very, very simple idea that seems to work across just about any human activity including crime, attendance, and so forth.

The more Recently someone has done something, the more likely they are to do it again. Conversely, the longer since an activity last took place, the less likely the person will do it again. Often called Recency in Psychology and studied quite a bit.

Q: Now I have to think about how I really use and apply this. : )

A: Well, if I can guess you are in Sales from your title, typically one of the best applications is in what Strategic Marketing folks might call “allocation of resources”, which probably translates into “lead nurturing” for you.

Continue reading Lead Scoring and Nurturing →