Digital marketing news by the number
With more consumers than ever relying on mobile devices for their shopping needs and wants, it’s no longer optional for retailers to ignore the necessity of connecting their physical store to a digital presence. U.S. consumers are projected to spend more…
Innovate or die. It never made sense to me to be protective or secretive.
Sinking resources into competition vs customer solutions will bury your biz either way.
If that is the case, then it’s clear what your focus is anyways and the laws of nature will guide your path.
Be customer focused/centric/obsessed. Maximizing shareholder value is directly influenced by customer happiness and success. Look at the best brands in the world. When people win, you win.
Marketing can be confusing. I mean really confusing. Have you looked at the lumascapes lately?
Where does one begin? What does one focus on?
I am not going to cover off on the A-Z playbook, or basic, foundational knowledge for that matter. There are far better and vetted sources for that such as David Ogilvy, Phil Kotler and Seth Godin for that.
Rather, let me tell you what makes me tick. What I care about when crafting a marketing program.
That’s it.
If you see your activities through each of these lenses, and ultimately, a mix of the the three, you will be on the right path.
Remember, marketing isn’t perfection, but rather finding the right direction. A successful journey together is far greater than a perfect one apart-
I read a lot from David Cummings, the founder of Pardot. After selling the company to SalesForce he’s become a strong thought leader on SaaS businesses and supporter of the Atlanta tech community. While nice to hear about people building tech hubs outside of the Valley, the former is what keeps me coming back for his wisdom.
Beyond the gems, his writing style is perfect. Short, yet still tells a story. He offers bullets that are easily digestible. About once a week, he has a gem that is worth forwarding or sharing. This week, this simple formula for SasS success really stood out:
The ideal SaaS business will have high gross margins (> 80%), low cost of customer acquisition (< first year’s revenue), high lifetime value of the customer (many times the acquisition cost), high renewal rates (> 90% per year), and copious amounts of leads.
Thoughts? Anything he’s missing?
Dear Marissa-
The Yahoo brand needs something fresh. The logo is great, but the story isn’t there yet. It’s missing empowerment.
Instead of spending millions like Microsoft has on doing Bing vs Google challenges to gain market share, be different. It doesn’t seem like that route has won anyway. In order to be different you must think differently. The focus on a better search experience isn’t going to win. Why? Because that’s not what matters.
What matters is the consumers digital life, which today equates to Google. Starting with, and most importantly, Gmail. If you own the time spent with their most personal communication channel, things may magically change. It is their lifeline, and while loyal, they are also frustrated.
To quantify the opportunity, what percentage of web searches originate from mail? Additional browsing for content? And finally the path it sends them down so you have opportunities to offer a richer experience? Many, many more. And importantly, this unlocks the gateway to new planes of monetization potential.
Instead of why we are better, how about, “Isn’t it time for a fresh start? Find your fresh start today with the new Yahoo!”
People want to escape the years-worth and thousands of emails, not to mention ridiculous spam, clutter and email lists they don’t know how they got on.
Empower them with a clean inbox, and let them break away from the past. Offer them a fresh start and I think you’ll be amazed at the possibilities. I know the product has been revamped, and it’s truly great. Yet what’s left is the story. The campaign. The urge to take back their lives and start fresh.
Give them a new life and they will give you a new Yahoo!
-Erik
After posting a snapshot of Scott Bedbury’s (the guy that branded Nike and Starbucks) thoughts on a brand, some great conversation ensued: https://www.facebook.com/eriktford/posts/10100202412515738:0
One of the challenges we face as marketers is a seemingly paradoxical position in external vs internal perception. After a great comment by fellow pro Dayna Rothman, I had this to share. She runs content marketing at Marketo, the leader in marketing automation, and is always looking to push the envelop. On including more storytelling:
If there’s one thing about marketing, it’s the very fact that the story remains unfinished. We embark on a never-ending journey.
Yet it is often over-simplified, ridiculed and downright undervalued… And those perceptions can be humiliating as marketers stare down a complex maze of uncertainty. The closer to the challenge the more overwhelming it can be. Often, we do not know where to begin, what to say or how to measure effectiveness.
Marketo inherently strikes a chord, as it brings light to all of these emotions and concerns. Offering clarity, relief and most importantly, empowerment-
Marketing offers such an opportunity to challenge status quo, show those around you the world of opportunity.
How will you seize the opportunity to tell your brand’s story and create more value?
So I’ve been kicking around evaluating the notion of product market fit vs something even earlier to help determine whether or not you should pursue, invest and build an idea.
One thing I believe many do not understand is level of “Fit” and how it is broken into stages. Today I’d like to focus on better explaining this at a high level, as there are a wealth of resources out there by top entrepreneurs and VCs that walk through each more granularly.
On determining fit first:
Steve Blank is notorious in pointing out validation should require the least amount of development effort possible. Identifying use cases and ideal customers, not just your friends and family are integral to validating an idea/concept without bias.
Value Prop Before Product / Market Fit
The notion of finding product market fit before scaling is relatively sound, but there’s been much work done on breaking up the steps leading up to true Product/Market Fit first. Some have called it validating your Value Hypothesis, then your growth hypothesis. Steve and Eric recommend that entrepreneurs first solidify their value hypothesis before tackling their growth hypothesis.
Recently I was talking to some SaaS pros about these concepts as they are very timely and always on people’s radar in the Bay Area. After speaking with a twice-venture backed Series B SaaS product guy, he had this to say about focus at an early stage in the development of a business:
“The customer’s success comes first, and then it’s all about product. If you do that, success will follow.” - Peter K.
Understanding that you must support customers through the funnel, or as some say, through the customer loop makes all the difference. Channelling enthusiasm to serve your customers will create unparalleled opportunities for a win/win outcome.
Marketing is not a business activity, it’s a relationship opportunity-
Bottom Line: Control your own destiny.
Excellent leaders see options through the dynamic market and investor conditions. Know your options, and know what you believe will yield success in a manner that makes you most comfortable. Take advice from investors, advisors and others that provide relevant guidance, yet remember, this is advice. Not your decision. Weigh all pros and cons of said advice on paper, sleep on it, and know that no one but you can make the best decision for the circumstance-
The road from millions to billions is not always a straight line. Filled with many curves, executive leadership should do it’s best to balance internal priorities with external opportunities. Depending on company stage, this balance is often shifted to help accelerate growth or stabilize revenue.
With a decent pulse on transactions, direction and technology in the digital media landscape, Millennial Media certainly has tremendous potential to capitalize on the opportunity to go from hundreds of millions to tens of billions in the next 5 years.
Tied to an article on AdExchanger regarding JiWire, I believe Millennial Media will continue to be aggressive in the acquisition field. Thus far they’ve acquired two programmatic players, MetaResolver and most recently JumpTap in the last 6 months. If JiWire isn’t on the table then companies like PlaceIQ will be. Should be very interesting to see how this plays out! Millennial really needs to bolster three more areas of their business before they can aggressively address Google and Apple globally:
Global Market Share - Acquisitions, Preparedness and Appropriate Positioning
While the US looks good for them right now, Google and Apple have an inherent advantage through hardware. Beyond that, players like inMobi aggressively address the global landscape. Either through acquisition, or coming up with a go-to international plan that builds on key infrastructure, opportunity is waning. A key success factor in priming the pump will be making sure the current tech/product infrastructure can handle international efforts in terms of language, data scale and control (think regulations that may hinder how programs are executed.) Beyond this, having the right pricing and delivery model to partner with key players will help reduce barrier to entry while also consolidating media partners that agencies and advertisers work with. Remember, the rest of the world is generally less advanced than the US and as such, ripe for penetration with the appropriate hand holding.
Extraordinary Customer Insights - Cross Device Inventory. Penetration & Measurement to Deliver Ultimate Visibility into the Path to Purchase
Now that Programmatic is on the right track in terms of business and technology, the next frontier is securing and expanding the cross-device footprint. Innately a strong-suit with Google and Apple because of platform ownership through hardware and operation systems, one of the few ways to outpace them and tackle market share is to continue to be nimble. This will require pushing the envelope technologically with regards to offerings that directly connect to the advertiser’s bottom line. Offering cutting edge cross-device opportunities and importantly, the measurement to support these campaigns will create massive short term demand. In servicing this demand, there’s exists a small window to convert these new value customers to longer and much larger engagements by promising them something that no-one else has: their very own cross-device audiences mapped out farther than anyone has taken it before.
While the quest for attribution and cross-device reach continues to be the Holy Grail in digital media, presenting opportunities that leverage this technology as a foundation, not the end-game, will be a key differentiator. Many can match/provide bonus media, better targeting for lower CPMs, etc. Yet, very few can provide the service level insights that make businesses yearn for more information about their customers; and subsequently, be hooked to buy more.
I’ve seen great success across many ad:tech plays, data insights and professional services make the difference in business retention and expansion. Teach your customers about their customers. It will change the game.
Cutting Edge Media Products - Meta-data to drive hyper relevance and weave together better opportunities and recommendations
With the proliferation of data, there are so many opportunities to pursue in terms either expanding value in current product offerings or creating new value opps altogether. At a basic level, this is how businesses should look at Product/market fit, value delivery to customers and ultimately revenue opportunities. To keep it short, the expansion of value under the current product scheme focus on addressing competitive threats and key customer pain-points. In delivering new value (a primary way to multiple revenue opportunities), the key is to find and prioritize complimentary features, customer pain points and validated products (seed through B round funded players in the space). Unfortunately far too many companies make the mistake of baking in additional product features into the current product or product roadmap, rather than charter a new business unit altogether. There are many ways to kick-start this path safely utilizing only the resources had today, yet I will save that for another post.
Expanding on the data opportunity, here are some high potential plays:
What do you think? Anything I am missing that would be opportunistic?
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