Prairie Orange

A Marketer’s Confession — I am just going to say it. I have not figured out how to keep a steady, pithy, insightful stream of original content flowing into Prairie Orange’s blog. “Straight Up”.

Here I am am a marketing-advisor-to-clients and I don’t have the prescriptive, go-to formula for clients, let alone myself, to follow. Seems to me that maintaining your blog is a little like working out. You know should do it, but do ya? Do ya?

Photo: Weinberg/Clark Photography

Life has gotten in my way of keeping Prairie Orange’s blog up to date these last 4 months, including  a very intense client work schedule and very challenging issues in my personal life with a terminally ill parent. Yet, I know the stream of content must beat on. What do you do, put on a happy face? That does not seem authentic or real. BS will surely show through as BS.

I call this breathing blog dragon the “Feed The Beast” phenomena. I honestly have not figured out how to feed the beast yet without sapping precious energy and resources out of me. Some would say ”outsource it”! But again, I honestly don’t think that is right decision for any company’s blog. Your content marketing, which is what a blog is, needs to be home-grown. So I know how hard it is for clients to do this even when they have in-house staff to help them.

Stay tuned for the next Feed The Beast post, which will have some new ideas and strategies for how to best keep your blog alive and vibrant.

There are no easy answers.

The Big Data Revolution is here. Are you ready? Here’s a great video from Link Analytics that poses all the right questions.

The facts are absolutely compelling. The questions posed are the right way to start the next meeting with your CMO and CEO.

http://bit.ly/RcGkCO

(Hat Tip: Andrew Sullivan, The Dish)

UPDATE:  All Facebook Blog has excellent post on Facebook’s blackbox as well. Check it out here.

There they go again. Facebook is acting all “blackbox” again on us marketers.

This week I am helping a client decipher their recent Facebook campaign results. Here’s the background:

• Facebook Objectives
  • Add incremental new “likes” to Facebook community
  • Drive views of new video we’re featuring our Facebook promotion page
• Campaign Dates – last over 4 weeks
  • Start Date: Mon, 10/1/12
  • End Date: Sun, 10/28/12
• Facebook Target Audience: Teens and Young Adults, 15 to 24 years, Male and Female (Heavy mobile users)
• Week 1 Ad Type Weight/ Distribution:
  • Traditional Ads, 95%  – click to promotion page to drive video views, plus drive new fans
  • Sponsored Stories, 5% (including the mobile version of “Pages You May Like”) — driving new fans/likes
• RESULTS: Week 1 Results are completely in the reverse of the ad type weight. The Sponsored Stories, with 5% of the ad weight, are driving 95% of the new fans. Since so few people (less than 10 clicks with 95% of the ad weight!) are clicking on the ads, we have virtually no new video views

These results are mathematically counter-intuitive. After days of questions and research, the only explanation I can come up with right now is Facebook is once again changing the formulas in their blackbox. And marketers are left in the dust, at least for awhile.

Geoffrey Fowler at the Wall Street Journal on 10/1/12 outlines how Facebook is selling more access to its 900+ million members, using a series of “test and learn” experiments with some big-brand marketers. It’s smart on Facebook’s part. It’s also dizzyingly complex as marketers are left holding the bag, trying to figure out which ad products are working and why, as well as which ad products will stick around or go away. Fowler goes on to say:

“Facebook is making the moves, which show some early success, as it faces investor pressure to become a bigger player in digital advertising. But in doing so, the Menlo Park, Calif., company treads a fine line between using consumer data to attract marketer dollars and living up to its promises to users and regulators to keep that data private.”

At this point, I feel my clients and I are being played. As a smart marketer, it’s a feeling I don’t like at all.

What are you experiencing with Facebook? What do you think of Facebook’s newer products like Sponsored Stories and Pages You May Like? Straight Up will summarize and post your responses.

The Power and Peril of Customer Relationship Management

Popular culture has been exploding with entertaining instructional moments that beautifully illustrate abstract high level marketing concepts. From Mad Men segments that reveal the thinking behind a powerful communications strategy that deeply resonates with prospective customers; to the movie Moneyball illustrating the power of predictive modeling in building a team that can win baseball games and do it within a tight budget. I use both of these in my classroom to generate understanding and conversation.

The latest addition to my teaching toolbox is an article from the  New York Times Magazine  (2/16/12) entitled How Companies Learn Your Secret by Charles Duhigg. It talks about the convergence of some key trends…a golden age of behavioral research including consumer behavior and the development of the science of habit formation as a major field of research in neurology and psychology departments. As a result, data geeks and mathematicians are in high demand because they can make or break the marketing success of any large retail corporation.

But there’s a downside to all of this and that’s my teaching moment. To illustrate the  power of Target’s predictive model the author reveals the retailer’s efforts to identify households that are expecting a baby. Exhausted, time-pressured parents are ripe for one-stop shopping options. Target identified 25 products including scent-free lotions and dietary supplements that allowed Target to assign a pregnancy “prediction score”. These households received sales promotions highlighting baby-related products.  It worked… a little too well. A father complained to his local Target manager about the mailers they were sending to his teenage daughter.  He called the manager back a week later to apologize. His daughter was pregnant.

This cautionary tale is the peril in CRM. The science of CRM has come this far that we need to pay more attention to the art of CRM. Let’s not overestimate the value of the relationship with the customer…it’s not a personal relationship but a business relationship. I’m a fan of CRM but I’ll share with you what I tell my students. If it feels creepy to you, then it probably will feel creepy to the people you’re reaching. So tread smartly and lightly.

Barbara Weaver has spent her entire career in relationship marketing where she has worn many hats including copywriting, creative direction, strategy development, and planning. In addition to operating as an independent marketing consultant, she also teaches The Fundamentals of Database Marketing in the IMC program at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

In spite of our formidable problems, we have so much to be thankful for in the United States of America. May you and your loved ones enjoy celebrating our freedom today. I also want to acknowledge and thank the men and women in our armed forces, who play such an important role in protecting our freedom.

Last night I celebrated at Fitzgerald’s 32nd Great American Music Festival in Berwyn, IL, just a few miles from Chicago’s west side. The programming is always brilliant and the artists performing are show-stoppers. It’s pure Americana — roots music, waving flags, shorts ‘n flip flops, grilled sausage, jambalaya, cold beer, young and old, musicians and fans having a great time. Come join us next year!

Tritbutosaurus becomes Creedence Clearwater Revival

Chuck Prophet and Mission Express — absolutely smokin’!

(Photos above by DT Kindler Photo)

Festival Schedule

Lydia Loveless — “country music with balls!”

(Photos above by Donal Hughes)