Today’s marketers live in an age of volatility and transition. Instantaneous transactions, multiple touch points, and the merging of offline with online have combined with a multitude of media outlets (including social media) to create ever-savvier audiences that are harder to find and keep. (Source: Business Week survey Sept. 2009)

For those of us who have been involved with direct marketing for more years than we care to remember, the “Holy Grail” was always the goal of personalization. That meant everything from testing closed face envelopes to highly targeted copy/content aimed at establishing relevance and attracting the interest of our consumer or customer.

Amidst this fast moving environment powered by technology, today’s marketer enjoys a rich menu of options for reaching the customer. In return the marketer receives a vast amount of data from which they need to be able to capture the meaning, implication, and importance of that data. Personalization alone is no longer sufficient. Today there are two other concepts that are even more critical to achieving success.

I came across a Business Week survey from September 2009 titled “From Collaboration to Personalization”. Hence the inspiration for my post however, I felt that from my perspective it worked better turning it upside down. The survey outlines three pillars critical to success and I could not agree more. They are: Collaboration, Multichannel Marketing and Personalization.

Collaboration: (Collaboration has both internal and external resonance)

Internally, the opportunity for collaboration exists between marketing teams that transact with all relevant marketing functions stemming from online and offline activity. Without collaboration, marketers may potentially employ both online and offline data and still be unable to serve customers fully. When internal departments and their functions do not exchange customer information, marketers are unable to craft a unified view of individual customers, and thus cannot target them with tailored information, offers, and products.

Externally, collaboration is about the way a marketer coordinates the online and offline customer experiences and data. Many companies today keep what should be “team” functions separated in silos, both internally and externally. Failure to coordinate marketing across silos results in an inability to fully enable multichannel marketing, which in turn prevents an effective personalization strategy. 

Multichannel Marketing:

Multichannel marketing is the act of bringing together online and offline data and functions. By weaving together the functions and consolidating information gleaned from combining multiple marketing activities, marketers can set in motion the actions that lead to full personalization. Only when multichannel marketing is employed will a company be able to personalize and target customers.

Personalization:

Personalization is rooted in the concept that the “customer is king,” and utilizes multichannel data to target customers with products and services specific to them based on their behavior. It requires a 360-degree view of a customer’s behavior so as to provide the most complete marketer-to-customer experience. The full concept depends on an integrated approach (collaboration), which in turn depends on multichannel marketing, without which personalization cannot be attained, and all of which depend on employing the most innovative technology available.

The survey asked Marketers, “Which statement best describes marketing accountability as it relates to activities in 2010?

46% of respondents said that it was about effectiveness.

41% said it was about optimization.

39% said it was about communications strategy.

Despite this apparent focus on effectiveness, optimization and communications strategy, at present only 58% of marketers’ report that they use technology to measure and compare all channels’ performance in one view. To my mind, this appears to be a very rich new business opportunity for agencies that can truly provide a unified approach, supported by all the necessary tools, capabilities and knowledge!

The company recently created the Gatorade Mission Control Center inside of its Chicago headquarters, a room that sits in the middle of the marketing department and could best be thought of as a war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across social media. (Source: Mashable.com)

 According to a recent blog post on Mashable.com this iconic mass marketer is taking social media marketing very seriously.  The goal of this project, says Carla Hassan, is to “take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into largest participatory brand in the world.” To that end, the company’s not only monitoring its brand on social media, but giving its fans increased access to its athletes and scientists.

 In the realm of marketing, Gatorade is probably best known for splashy commercials featuring some of the world’s most famous athletes. However, a new effort behind the scenes of the sports drink maker is putting social media quite literally at the center of the way Gatorade approaches marketing. 

The company recently created the Gatorade Mission Control Center inside of its Chicago headquarters, a room that sits in the middle of the marketing department and could best be thought of as a war room for monitoring the brand in real-time across social media.

The room features six big monitors with five seats for Gatorade’s marketing team to track a number of data visualizations and dashboards (also available on to employees on their desktops). The company custom built this capability with partners that included Radian6 and IBM. Below are a few of the visualizations that Mashable.com featured in their blog post:

 This monitor is a visualization of tweets that are relevant to Gatorade; the company is tracking terms relating to its brand, including competitors, as well as its athletes and sports nutrition-related topics.

 This monitor measures blog conversations across a variety of topics and shows how hot those conversations are across the blogosphere. The company also runs detailed sentiment analysis around key topics and product and campaign launches.

Mission Control in Action 

While this certainly looks impressive visually, it’s also actually being used on a day-to-day basis, to lead product and marketing changes at the company that might not have happened without it.

Gatorade’s Sr. Marketing Director, Consumer & Shopper Engagement Carla Hassan offered a few examples, starting with the company’s monitoring of its “Gatorade has evolved” campaign. The commercials featured a song by rap artist David Banner, which, Mission Control quickly saw was being heavily discussed in social media. Within 24 hours, they had worked with Banner to put out a full-length version of the song and distribute it to Gatorade followers and fans on Twitter and Facebook, respectively.

On a day-to-day basis, the facility is also being used for more conventional marketing tactics like optimizing landing pages and making sure followers are being sent to the top performing pages. As an example, the company says it’s been able to increase engagement with its product education (mostly video) by 250% and reduce its exit rate from 25% to 9%.

What’s interesting to note is that this innovative approach to social media marketing is not being led by an agency, but more surprisingly by a large traditional mass media marketer. Is this just another missed leadership opportunity for the agency world? Given the significant up-front commitment required in terms of technology and people resources, would this not have been an ideal opportunity from a multi-client agency perspective?

Social media is no longer just a stand-alone communications channel that can exist and be managed in a silo environment. It underpins the way we all communicate with each other and with brands and the companies that own them. Marketers that understand this and embrace it the way Gatorade has will be able to maintain considerable competitive advantage. In fact to put it in their own words…“take the largest sports brand in the world and turn it into largest participatory brand in the world.”

According to the findings of the recent  Mirren/IMI Survey Report… It’s systemic! Either your company/self are excellent –good –or poor … If you don’t close 60% of new pitches or more change your approach, your team, your content, yourself! Every agency should have a minimum goal of 10+ key pitches per year with a 60%+ close rate.  (Source: 2010 Mirren Client/Agency Relationship Study)

 Survey results showed that the top 10% of agencies close 6 times as many new business pitches as compared to bottom 10%. Winning pitches range from 84%for the top 10% down to 16% for the bottom 10% with the average win rate being 43%.

What’s important to note is that performance is based on providing client solutions, experience and relationships that work , while number of pitches, types of pitches, investment in pitches, location of pitches HAS NO IMPACT.

 It is not about YOU -it is about your ability to deliver client solutions that meet or exceed their objectives.

 In 2010 and beyond Clients are buying solutions (i.e. ideas that work) for their business that are measurable –not awards, reputations, or promises. Lip service, credential pitches and talking about your agency to sell clients on what they need is over and ignored.

 Digital expertise is essential –but combining traditional/ non-traditional expertise to drive client solutions will drive your success.

 Be solution focused and media neutral –don’t just say it, do it!

 The move to digital has and will continue to happen, but caution, some of you are moving TOO FAST. According to the findings, clients don’t want you to dismiss traditional media/tactics/executions. Clients believe digital to be part of the strategy and not the total solution.

 Knowledge and expertise that demonstrates how, when and where to use social and mobile media’s is essential. Clients are looking for agencies that KNOW vs. agencies that GUESS.

 In addition, agencies that invest their own R&D $$$ on understanding, educating and providing thought leadership in digital/mobile/social medias, will leap frog other agencies. Those agencies expecting to cut their „digital teeth‟ on client’s budgets are destined to client churn and disappointment.

25% of clients surveyed intend to spend between 15% and 30% of their total marketing budgets on mobile marketing. However, agencies are going to have to demonstrate a quantifiable ROI in order toget their share of the money! (Source: R2i survey, Jan 28, 2010)

When asked what the most critical area of improvement was in mobile, 43% of respondents listed quantifying ROI as their top response. Respondents said the main goals of their current mobile campaigns were raising company awareness and generating leads. To that end, marketers were most likely to measure their success by an increase in customers or sales.

Not surprisingly, more than 50% of respondents were focused on mobile Website development, while 40% used apps for their campaigns. (With iPhone and BlackBerry being considered the most important platform for mobile development).

To date, most mobile campaigns have been developed in silos as standalone initiatives. Creative assets from other channels are often just repurposed to make it appear integrated, even though in reality it is actually nothing more than a tactic. The results of this approach are confirmed in the survey findings.

Mobile actually has an amazing capability of being not only a very effective channel in its own right, but properly integrated into a campaign it has the ability to provide a bridge between digital and traditional media. Increasing the effectiveness of both as well as delivering results within the mobile channel itself.

There is an incredible new business opportunity out there for those agencies that truly understand the role of mobile and the technology platforms and applications available. Integrate mobile into your thinking and your solutions. Explain its role and its unique ability to bridge the other media to make them all more effective. Above all, quantify its individual effectiveness and its ability to generate immediate results.

You will answer a lot of open client questions, differentiate your agency from the competition and win more new business opportunities. I believe that you will find this to be easier and more effective than you might think.

“To prepare for the future, customer experience professionals should develop multichannel personas, include social media behaviors in ethnographic research, prepare atomized content, establish an environment for testing new experiences, and seek out highly skilled interaction designers” Source: Forrester Research.

 Back in January of this year I read an article from Forrester authored by Moira Dorsey titled “The Future Of Online Customer Experience“ and it has remained top of my mind ever since. As I look at the plethora of agencies out there who all claim to be highly proficient at developing websites (and the associated customer experience), and contrast that with my actual experiences across a broad range of sites, I start to see a huge disconnect – especially when judged by the parameters described in the article!

 In her executive summary, the author gives out the following advice to marketers:

 “To prepare for the future, customer experience professionals should develop multichannel personas, include social media behaviors in ethnographic research, prepare atomized content, establish an environment for testing new experiences, and seek out highly skilled interaction designers.”

 I am not certain about your particular agency, however, I do not know of many who could deliver on the tenants listed above. What’s even more alarming is that many seem to be unaware that they need them in order to create highly engaging online customer experiences.

 After all, it’s not that hard to design a website and the optimum online experience, is it? The reality is that it’s no longer as simple as you might think:

 Information providers ranging from large companies to prolific individuals continue to flood the Internet with a tsunami of online information targeted at increasingly wired consumers. Proliferating Web sites vie for attention and in the last three years, the number of active sites has almost doubled. Literally tens of millions of additional sites divide consumer attention, making it less likely that any one site can both attract and retain mind share. So, what can we do to break through all this clutter?

 According to Forrester, there are four attributes that will define the next phase of online experiences

• Customized by the end user. Consumers will not only control what they get online, they’ll control the form that they receive it in to a much greater degree than they do today.
• Aggregated at the point of use. Content, function, and data will be pulled from different sources and combined at a common destination to create a unique experience.
• Relevant to the moment. This customized, aggregated content will appear on the device that’s best suited to the customer’s context at a given point in time.
• Social as a rule, not an exception. Social content will be integrated into most online experiences, not segregated into today’s blogs, micro blogs, and wikis.

 The article goes on to conclude that:

 Firms with poor online experiences today will fall further behind their competitors. People prefer rich online experiences — and their interest in new technologies indicates that they will love CARS experiences even more. That means the days of online experiences dominated by the page-and-PC-based paradigm are rapidly nearing their end. But even as online interaction capabilities grow, so too will the complexity of designing those experiences and the number of opportunities for mistakes that will frustrate customers. As a result, the gap between great and poor online experiences will become even more dramatic, and online customer experience leaders will gain even more of an edge over the competition. 

 Multi-touch-point evaluation and analytics will become must-haves. Measuring customer experience across multiple channels is still a major challenge for most firms. But consumers will increasingly use multiple apps, devices, and sites to complete a single goal — online and in conjunction with other channels. In response, customer experience professionals will create centralized groups to coordinate metrics and a common framework for measurement. And to make data integration manageable, they will focus on one channel pair at a time.

 I believe that for most agencies (even those digital icons within our industry) that this is a wakeup call and at very least food for thought. With the right approach, this could be an incredible opportunity for the agency world to regain that long lost position on top of the client value pyramid.

Historically, most agency reviews have been focused around reviewing agency outputs rather than the outcomes they produced. RFP documents included a plethora of questions about a broad range of agency capabilities but asked very little about the results those same campaigns produced.

Well, the game is changing and changing fast. An increasing number of the current RFI’s and RFP’s are including many more questions like the following:

“Please be sure to include results reporting actual numbers versus generic statements like; significantly exceeded target etc.” (If for confidentiality reasons you are not able to share actual numbers then please go ahead and index them)

 Clients are doing their homework and they want to know not only how creative and innovative your work is, but just as importantly how effective is it.

 This increased focus outcomes should not come as a surprise to agencies. A recent survey conducted by Anderson and Meng, found that “marketing ROI” had jumped to become the most important trend to marketing executives. Social media also cracked the top 10 this year, although many are sick of hearing about it. Interestingly Social ROI ranked in tenth place, reinforcing the importance of ROI overall.

This ROI focus has caused considerable angst for those agencies that do not bother to track results or alternatively are embarrassed to share disappointing performance or outcomes. The bottom line is that the situation is not going to get easier. In fact, I expect that it will not be long before most or all agency reviews will be significantly influenced by outcomes (results) versus outputs (The work alone).

Most ad agencies are not effectively leveraging digital channels to help drive incremental new business leads. Here are five simple steps you can implement immediately to increase your new business lead flows…

Optimize your website for SEO: Is your agency website full of flash and streaming video? Then it’s probably highly ineffective from an SEO perspective and you are probably invisible to many potential prospects conducting agency research online. Now there is new technology available that makes Flash SEO friendly. (WhittmanHart Interactive is currently at the leading edge of this technology) You now have two options to choose from. Either redesign your site with less flash or update your flash programming to be more SEO friendly.

Monitor your daily website traffic: You would be surprised how many agencies put up a website and then fail to track daily visitors to the site. Simple monitoring through Google analytics can provide you with some very useful leads. Take a look at who visited, how long they stayed, what they looked at etc. This is a very useful tool to monitor activity after a recent new business meeting, seminar presentation or capabilities presentation.

Develop and Implement an agency SEO/M strategy: When questioned on the subject, most agencies admit to not having one. Given that 100 percent of clients looking for an agency conduct online research during the process, it’s hard to imagine why this would be the case. A basic SEO/M strategy can be highly effective at generating interest and inquiries.

It’s time to become more social: A social media strategy is a must have in today’s conversation economy. If you are not involved in the conversation you are unlikely to become a consideration. And don’t think that by putting up a Facebook page, agency blog and by twittering that you have a social media strategy. You will need to implement a comprehensive approach that includes developing your content strategy and how you are going to build your following. It does not end there either…

Ongoing Social CRM: What really makes “social + CRM” work? Connecting customers/prospects, business processes, and employees. Social CRM involves multiple elements, linked together, to provide an end-to-end understanding of how your brand, product, or service is received in the marketplace and how your internal processes produce and deliver experiences that drive this reception. If you are going to reach out through social media you will need a Social CRM strategy to keep the conversation going and deliver the value exchange required to move your prospect along the sales funnel.  

Overnight success stories related to social media marketing are rare. Even more rare to find is an agency with an actual social media strategy. Last year my online agency survey (which included a diverse group of agencies) found that nearly two thirds of these agencies did not have a social media strategy!  

Putting up a blog, starting to Twitter and updating your Facebook page is quick and easy to do. Actually building a following/community is a totally different set of tasks and responsibilities that takes a lot of resources and time to do. Most agencies have no idea about the investment they will need to make to build an active following, beyond the nuts and bolts of getting it live on the Web.

One of the first considerations is to determine what your content strategy is going to be:

Content is still King and keep in mind that we are all creatures of habit. If there’s already an active community dedicated solely to what you are interested in communicating about, it’s likely you aren’t going to be able to move people from that community into your brand new “branded community.” In social media, people tend to avoid the loud “Here I am” type of marketing efforts in lieu of marketers who actually are interested in
building relationships with them in genuine ways.

Spend some time doing some buzz monitoring and take the time to really listen to what the data is telling you:

Try to understand how your different prospect segments consume content. One segment might like conversing on forums and message boards. Another segment might want more information, so a blog providing that information would be better suited for that segment . If you don’t dig into the
data, it’s tough to really know what your audience is looking for.

You have to actively build your following versus waiting for them to come to you:

This is an extremely important yet overlooked component of a successful social media strategy. You need to strategically integrate every tool and channel available in your arsenal to get the right people engaged. For example, consider content federation strategies if you happen to have a substantial amount worth sharing. Identify key influencers and follow those people who follow them as many will go ahead and follow you back. This can be a very effective strategy for building a large following quickly.

It all starts with a social media plan based on sound insights and leads to effective, sustainable engagement. You will know that you are successful when you are able to get YOUR prospects to share THEIR personal networks with you.  

If you do not believe me, I challenge you to take a walk around your agency tomorrow and ask ten different staff members to explain in a simple statement what it is you do and what your value proposition is. I have done this recently on several different occasions and the result has been consistent. Complete inconsistency!

What has been consistent is the gratuitous use of super superlatives that just add to the noise and clutter and make our industry seem naive and commoditized. Common place are words and phrases like:

• Full service integrated agency
• Proprietary planning methodology/tool
• Highly insightful creative
• Award winning creative agency
• Channel agnostic
• Outside of the box thinkers
• The industry’s leading….
• Widely known throughout the industry for our…
• Nationally recognized experts in …

The bottom line is that clients have heard all of these claims before many times. They also tell me that in their experience, no agency to date has ever delivered against their claims and the therefore their BS Meters are tuned way up. I recently heard a well known Search Consultant describe the situation as “Embarrassing”!

My advice is before you do any more new business prospecting that you sit down with your team and take a deep and considered look at how you position your agency. Try not to “drink the cool aid” as you do so. Be honest and ask yourselves the hard questions, such as:

• What do we as agency really do well?
• What is it about the way we do it that helps us do it well?
• Is there anything unique about what or how we do it and what’s our value proposition from a client perspective? Why us and not any one of the 5000 other agencies out there claiming to do the same thing?
• What proof do we have to support our claims versus just rhetoric?
• What are the characteristics of our ideal target client? ( Partner vs. vendor etc)
• What categories are we relevant to? (Not which do we aspire to)

These are just a few of the questions that every agency should answer in order to be successful at differentiating itself from the competition and winning new business. Every day I continue to be amazed at how many agencies out there have not taken the time to do so.

Today’s successful marketers have realized that it isn’t good enough just to excel in one particular channel. Multichannel marketing companies absolutely need to spend as much time on their “old” channels as they do with their “new” ones. The biggest problem these marketers face, is finding agency partners that think the same way.

While the entire buzz right now is centered on subjects like making iPhone apps, Twitter strategies, Facebook and search marketing, the reality is, if the rest of your channel marketing sucks, then an iPhone app isn’t going to make a big difference. Likewise, if your in-store (or branch) experience is disappointing, that won’t make up for a lackluster online experience. The key to success is to spend some quality time looking not only at each of the channels individually, but more importantly, at how they intersect with each other to deliver the overall brand experience.

To help understand the philosophy, I would like to share a quote from Jack Aaronson from ClickZ.

“I’ll use a folklore tale of an architect. According to the story, an architect was hired to design a college campus. He put up the buildings but created no sidewalks. When the head of the school asked him where the sidewalks were, he replied, “The students will create the sidewalks.” Sure enough, a year later the architect visited the school and built paved sidewalks where the students had created well-worn paths in the grass”.

This implies a truly customer-centric (needs-based) design approach and we can all learn from this story as we create a methodology for modeling multichannel behavior. You’re most likely aware of how consumers act within a specific channel. You may know how to create the best brick-and-mortar experience, catalog, Web site, kiosk, call center, sales office, Web 2.0 widget, and the like. In the story of the architect, these channels are the buildings. They run fairly well on their own. But how do users move between them? What paths do they create? And, most important, how can we analyze the paths’ success and value?

The first step is to understand the paths people are taking between your buildings and why. Once you create the sidewalks that let them do this easily, everything else will follow suit. The technology exists to track these sidewalks, attribute value to them, and credit the channels appropriately.

Agencies that truly understand this philosophy and embrace it will become leaders at delivering the consummate “Customer Engagement Experience” and assume their rightful place at the head of the client’s agency roster.