Modern Marketing - Blog by Collaborate PR & Marketing

KPIs Not APIs

Among the issues we cover in the Digital Strategy Sessions I run are the changing roles and responsibilities required to meet the new demands of digital and networked media. These can be some of the thorniest challenges involving the nitty-gritty of who is going to be responsible for what, and crucially, what level of investment will be required for new functions. We look at how to approach this tricky area using planning frameworks that focus on bringing digital marketing in line with traditional business planning. This means moving beyond the view of digital marketing as a box-ticking exercise - or specialist technical silo - and understanding how different techniques genuinely contribute to the business and its bottom-line. It’s an exercise that often raises as many questions as answers but is helpful in moving executives teams away from shiny technology and the latest gizmos. The shorthand I use for this, ‘KPIs Not APIs’. While APIs, or application programming interfaces to give them their proper title, are a core aspect of the modern web’s plumbing, unless they have context within a company’s business plan they are fairly meaningless. Only when that context is shared and understood in an organisation through a planning framework - that can be returned to and improved - can roles and responsibilities be clarified.

Getting The Data Habit

In the Digital Strategy Sessions I run I often talk about acquiring the data habit. The world of web analytics and data can be utterly overwhelming for those who are coming to it for the first time. It’s the part of the digital marketing ecosystem where jargon and strange language goes on steroids and the whole thing can easily sound like a geeky maths class. Even when looking at simple tools, such as Google Trends, it can be easy to get lost in the vast data sets that it uses. How can so much information be so meaningless is the sense that I think a lot of people – understandably – have. That’s why it’s important to find a single business-related issue and focus on that. And then, crucially, keep on returning to that data on a regular – maybe weekly – basis. The next step is to find a way to log the changes that you see and the picture will begin to appear. You could do this with a few screen shots – or maybe download a CSV file and create a chart in Excel. It doesn't have to be too clever to begin with. Perhaps just try following a company’s brand name on Google Trends and see how it changes over time. Before you know it, you will have developed the data habit.

The Creepy Line

Whilst the constantly changing world of technology is interesting, the way it affects our lives, opinions and behaviour is where marketeers should focus. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the way technology affects our privacy. In the Digital Strategy Sessions I run, I call this The Creepy Line. It’s the feeling or idea of technology becoming too pervasive. The interesting aspect is that everyone has a different threshold. For some, being tracked their every waking moment is a positive choice, as they see immediate useful feedback, maybe in the shape of health data - such as sleep or exercise patterns. For others, the mission is to stay ‘off-grid’ to as great an extent as possible. For most, it’s somewhere in between where people are happy to offer up very intimate details about their lives in some areas, such as a fertility app, but want to keep everything else under wraps. Understanding where your customers’ Creepy Line sits and what, if anything, you can do to influence it, is increasingly important. The difficulty arises when using so-called second or third party data – or someone else’s first party data as it’s sometimes known. Third parties may guarantee the ethically sound nature of their data using, ‘privacy-safe’, ‘scrubbing’ techniques to remove Personally Identifiable Information (PIIs). However, such talk immediately takes me over The Creepy Line.

Advertising Aliens

At a Digital Strategy Session I ran the other week for a creative agency, one of the management commented that she’d recently been to an advertising conference and felt like she was at a technology show. Her comment was that if an alien had landed at the event, it would have assumed advertising was largely about software calculating small differences in consumer behavior and purchasing patterns. Certainly all very different from the days of the fabled Big Idea, where ad agencies would arrive and unveil the result of their reductive brain-mashing. These days, a lot more attention is paid to the brute-force style analytical approach where the goal is to maximise clicks, fans and followers. Undoubtedly, the apparently revolutionary advantages brought by automated markets trading signals and attention data are highly alluring for CMOs with data-hungry procurement officers breathing down their necks. However, as media companies increasingly morph into software houses and drive the big data agenda forward, it’s very easy for the power of good creative to get lost. Or become confused with innovative data management platforms or whizzy, layered look-a-like and life event targeting techniques. No doubt, it’s all just part of the ebb and flow occurring in media and marketing as the rising tide of digital and networked media continues.

Everyone Wants Answers

Everyone would like specific answers to their specific digital marketing questions. And ideally they would like them immediately and in a paint-by-numbers format. This is one lesson I have learnt from the four hundred odd Digital Strategy Sessions I have run. Generally, it’s good to give people what they want. Especially, if others are saying they can provide perfectly packaged, specific, actionable, deliverable, measurable strategic plans.  However, in my experience – unfortunately - it’s just not feasible. The world of digital is now so vast, fluid and throws up so many challenges – not to mention jargon – that I think it’s best to focus on the landscape and how digital and networked media is changing specific sectors. And how that influences business strategy – if at all. In fact, most marketing folk and brands know this to be true, and understand that the most important aspect of operating in today’s markets remains understanding what consumers (aka people) are doing differently, and how technology is changing their expectations. Along with the tools that let them operate in these new networked media environments.  So in the Digital Strategy Sessions that’s what I focus on and, generally, people find it helpful. Even if deep down they really want specific answers to their specific questions. But, hey, don’t we all?

Don't Full Stop Me

Recently, I’ve been involved with some research studies about how teenagers communicate through digital media.  It’s been really interesting to see and hear first hand how the much-fabled digital natives – or in this case mobile natives – manage their burgeoning social lives.  As is always the case with technology-led behavior change, there’s much that isn’t new.  For instance, the intensity of feeling that occurs as young individuals test out their sense of self and peer-skills  - as they always have.  However, the tiny behavioural aspects on which the groups are focused can be bewildering.  This was illustrated by the power of punctuation within text-based chat on FB Messenger, Whatsapp or Snapchat.  For one group I spoke to there was no greater social affront than to be ‘full-stopped’.  This merely meant the addition of a full-stop when answering someone in chat mode; but is viewed as the equivalent of turning around and walking away when in a physical conversation.  The other notable aspect of such social circles is the multi-channel nature of the group dynamic, where individuals are communicating, goading, joking and gossiping simultaneously across three or four different image sites and chat services.  This means that should the dreaded full-stopping ever occur its chilling effect is quickly amplified through and beyond those involved.   

Search, Display And Social Combine

Last year was the moment when social channels stopped pretending to be earned or organic and became paid media, as the market was flooded with behavioural targeting options and 'social display' exploded. Increasingly, and somewhat ironically, the only place to now gain organic reach is through search (aka Google in the UK). That said, SEO is also being turned upside-down by the rise of knowledge graphs, entities and the subsequent erosion of keyword influence. Furthermore, display and search are increasingly difficult to view separately as search marketeers call upon audience demographics to augment their keyword intent data. Returning the favour, display advertisers can use keyword data to target their brand images via data management platforms, using groovy new approaches such as content remarketing. Additionally, as vast programmatically-driven markets expand, traditional commercial models also blend. Thus, display marketeers are able to access auction-based models previously associated with search which means turning from CPM to CPC. Welcome to the new world of markets for attention data - or signals. They may seem confusing - but they aren’t going away.

Privacy Is The New, New Thing

The rise of privacy as an online issue is creating the greatest challenges to brands and marketing. Once again, it’s interesting because these issues are not primarily about technology, but consumers' (aka people’s) views about what they feel comfortable with. In some cases, this means people don’t want to hand over any information at all. For example, in the case of brand driven communities that rise and almost immediately fall. In other cases, the exchange is almost immediately recognised as a good deal and the users flood in and happily hand over very private details. Whatsapp is probably the most striking example of all in recent years. Prior to its launch the idea of handing over your phone book and contact list to an anonymous corporation may have seemed beyond the pale. However, all it took was the promise of free SMS, hardly a gigantic offer on the face of it, and the users flooded in. Neither did its acquisition by Facebook change that. The exchange was still seen as sound.

Signals

A lot is made of the differences and battles between the mega-tech players such as Google, Facebook and Twitter. However, the reality is they are all in the same business. Namely, collecting signals from the market. Call it big data, analytics, search, social, implicit, explicit, predictive – in plain English these companies pick up digital signals that consumers (aka people) send out about themselves and their lives and provide tools to target messages against those signals. It’s a vast market powered by Moore’s Law driven groovyware that is now morphing into huge markets for attention data – otherwise known as programmatic.

Understanding The New Consumer Contract

The media and marketing industry has long been guilty of beating consumers (aka people) over the head with commercial brand messages until they pay attention. This mass marketing approach is crudely military with big brands seeking maximium reach and frequency by launching campaigns that seek to cut-through and penetrate. However, modern networked media has put the power back in the hands of individuals who are simply able to turn off, fast-forward, filter out and unsubscribe from irritating ads. This has left brands in a quandary about how to reach consumers and build that illusive equity that encourages shareholders to keep investing their shekels.  However, whilst mass marketing results in the majority of folk covering their ears, the new alternative may leave them looking over their shoulders.  This is because big brands are increasingly focusing on mass-snooping exercises to gather data about individuals in the hope of identifying likely customers.  Clearly, the collection of information about people isn't new. The direct marketing industry has been with us...