Marketers Can Learn from Scott Bakula

September 20, 2011 By 2 Comments

I was recently asked to speak to a marketing class here in Phoenix about Consumer Behavior. Admittedly a very broad topic, I talked with them about classic definitions, research methods, measurement and monitoring techniques. I also provided them with the story below to help them grasp the concept further as well as other aspects of the marketing profession.

Quantum LeapA popular television series ran from the late 80s to the early 90s called Quantum Leap. The show’s lead character was played by the immensely talented Scott Bakula, probably one of the most underrated actors of our generation. Quantum Leap was a comedy-drama-science fiction hybrid, but it was altogether amazing. The show’s premise was based on a time travel experiment gone awry in which Mr. Bakula’s character, Sam, randomly “leaps” into the body of another person in history. Throughout the series, Sam would move from person to person with each show providing a new setting and experience. While Sam would normally not take the place of any important individual in history, he would often influence them by coming into contact with the likes of Jack Kerouac, Buddy Holly and an adolescent Donald Trump.

Here are a few ways in which I think marketers can learn from Scott Bakula’s character in Quantum Leap.

Get in Character
To avoid upsetting the historical apple cart, Sam would have to take on the persona of his new host after each leap. If he leaped to a baseball player, he’d have to play baseball. If he leaped to a pilot, he’d have to fly a plane. If he leaped to a woman, he’d have to behave, dress and act like a lady. By making an honest attempt to take on the persona of each individual to which he would leap, he got to know them and their surroundings intimately.

Scott Bakula

As a marketer you must also strive to understand your audience. My skin crawls every time I hear a marketer start a sentence with, “Well when I search, I…” or “when I visit a website, I…” or “when I receive an email, I…”. Shut up. Stop thinking about how you would behave in a particular situation. It is paramount that you begin to feel, act and react like your customer. Become a secret shopper. Try your best to imagine what the customer’s feelings, motivations, potential influences and past experiences regarding your product might be. Sometimes this might require research, observation, or god forbid, actually talking to a customer.
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Filed Under: Analytics, General

Buckets to Oblivion

July 13, 2011 By 3 Comments

How much customer segmentation is too much? Are you slicing the pie into too many pieces? Is there real meaning and significance to your buckets?

To adequately make this point, first allow me to explain marketing segmentation in manner more formal than I am usually comfortable:

Try to avoid bucketing your way to inefficiency.Customer segmentation has often been used by marketers to break a large audience into smaller subsets. The practice of creating audience segments, sometimes referred to as ‘buckets’, allows skilled marketers to deliver unique messages to a clearly defined group and monitor that group’s response to various marketing stimuli. Each group is defined by a common set of criteria that distinguishes them from other types of customers. The lines of demarcation when classifying customers are often aided by:

  • Demographics (gender, age, employment status, location)
  • Psychographics (personality, attitudes, interests, lifestyles)
  • Technographics (ownership, usage patterns and attitudes toward specific technologies)
  • Brand-specific behavioral measures (purchase history, purchase frequency, purchase amount), also known as the RFM model
  • A mix of the four above.

If executed correctly, audience segmentation allows marketers to provide more relevance to individual groups of customers which in turn spawns greater ROI for the business.

Now, here’s the more laid back approach to describing segmentation:

There was always that kid in high school who could get along with every clique. He could talk about beer and girls with the jocks, compare notes on lyrics from The Cure with the goths, play hacky sack with the stoners and share TI-82 calculator tricks with the geeks. He could even make nice with the teachers in a way that wouldn’t alienate himself. Proper use of segmentation is the ability to be that kid.

In a perfect world, we would have the time, resources and knowledge to communicate to every individual customer in a unique way.  For most businesses, that is near impossible and most of us are not ready for retina scan marketing.  However, examination of what matters most to your customers about your offering (and why) will provide some guidance to create the right buckets.  While the merits of segmentation can be described in much more finite detail by people smarter than me, it is possible to be too good at segmentation or perhaps just overzealous. Here are a few common problems and some potential solutions. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Analytics, Email, General Tagged With: , ,

Designers Moving from Print to Digital

December 6, 2010 By Leave a Comment

“I’m a ‘traditional’ designer and have been doing design for print and outdoor campaigns for years. I’m really motivated to start doing web design as well. What would you suggest?”

If you have ever muttered or heard this statement or something similar, please read on. I tend to get this question often. While I do not provide training on how to migrate from offline to online design specifically, I do have some thoughts on a feasible approach. However, this transition can be an incredibly difficult one to make. So I also asked a couple friends of mine, an accomplished designer and a world-class developer, about why moving from print to digital is no easy task.

My Thoughts

Consider Usability First
Creating for the web goes beyond appreciation and action. It entails elements of interaction and utility. As much as those involved in producing websites, landing pages, email marketing pieces and other digital experiences would like to be in charge, the truth is the visitor is sitting in the driver’s seat. The more you know and understand how your visitors will interact with your design, the more successful you will be.

by Steve Krug

Here is one book and several online resources you can call on to familiarize yourself with the notion of web usability and the user experience (UX) design practice.

Book: Don’t Make Me Think

UX Booth
Signal vs. Noise
Jakob Nielsen’s Blog
UX Magazine
Adaptive Path Blog

Get to Know the Typical Process
For a good decade or more, developers, project managers, designers and clients have toiled over the best way to create websites. Today, there seems to be a widely adopted process into which every web shop, agency and independent code monkey has injected their own personal flavor. Web design starts with homework and research about the site’s subject and its likely audience. Those involved collaborate to build plans, schematics, blueprints and/or wireframes for the soon-to-be-created experience so that all parties are on board and on the same page. At this point, the designer or design team can take instruction from the previously developed information architecture and begin to create assets that can be provided to a capable developer to construct in the web environment. Sometimes the designer and developer are one in the same. Additionally, the “create” portion of that process can also manifest itself in a design-revise-design-etc kind of cyclical pattern.

Appreciate Great Web Design
Become a student of great web design. For as much as the web opens up a certain realm of possibility and creative license, pretty doesn’t always pay. The best and most successful designs often embrace qualities of simplicity and clarity. Further, designing for the web does have its limitations. Just ask any accomplished designer about typography for the web.

To provide resources and inspiration, here are a number of blogs and sites that are quite popular in the web design community.

Design Reviver
Web Designer Wall
Smashing Magazine
Web Design Ledger
Web Creme

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Filed Under: General Tagged With: ,

Common Sense Approach to Simple Marketing Plans

April 9, 2010 By 3 Comments
  • Failure to plan is a plan to fail.
  • Great marketing plans just don’t appear out of thin air. They are “concepted”, “carefully crafted” and “constructed”.
  • Plans are a necessary means to generating results for your business or your clients.
  • [Add your own trite, BS-laden phrase here...blah]

Despite all the marketing industry jargon about a plan’s importance and its role in the marketing process, the ability to develop a tenable marketing vision is truly invaluable. It is an exercise that I find myself repeating over and over again, whether it be for an annual forecasting project or when creating a simple Facebook page.

roland / flickr CC

My recurring frustration with marketing plans stems from the lack of a clear standard. Some are ginormous, printed manifestos constructed to impress by their sheer size and pass some unknown weight test. Others are mere mind maps sketched out on a Denny’s napkin. Both have potential to be equally effective, and their success is primarily contingent upon the talent of the people who create and implement them. But which is the right way to go? Go ahead and google “marketing plan template” and you are given 1,250,000 results bound to give you a different variation of what is correct.

If there can be no standard due to the specific demands of the project, the individual’s comfort level with the planning process, or the fact that different situations call for varying approaches, perhaps every plan can adopt a few core attributes. Further, these three elements can remain a constant no matter the complexity of the final piece.
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Filed Under: General Tagged With: , ,

Hello and Thank You’s

January 24, 2010 By 11 Comments

Hello. My name is Chris Sietsema. I live and work in the Phoenix-metro area.  For nearly ten years, I have worked in the interactive marketing space – first at a local interactive agency called Sitewire, then for Pulte Homes and most recently at an integrated marketing firm called Off Madison Ave.  About one month ago I made the decision to start a business of my own focused on teaching and guiding businesses to create digital marketing campaigns on their own (learn more about this new digital marketing consultancy).

I have experienced success in my professional career, and I attribute it all to three things:

1. A relentless work ethic

2. The desire to soak up every drop of digital marketing knowledge that time allows

3. Being lucky enough to associate with (and sometimes latch onto) some very smart people.

It’s the third item which I’d like to discuss in this post. You don’t do this by yourself, and to the following people I owe much gratitude.  While I gush over them here, please consider meeting and working with each of them.  You will be glad you did.
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Filed Under: General