Marketing Ecosystem: Communication Path

Courtesy of Flickr - cmcgough

Today we’re going to look at the persona and how they communicate on a daily basis. Not necessarily how they might potentially communicate with us or our brand, but how they interact with the various stakeholders in their lives (e.g. co workers, friends, family, neighbors, bosses, people at church, etc.). With this information we will understand their communication styles, paths, and strategies…believe it or not, we all have communication strategies, whether intrinsic or extrinsic. At the end, we will take a snapshot of these communication paths to identify where our brand communications could fit into their lifestyle.

persona(l) touch.

We all have different ways we communicate in our lives. We also all have different ways we communicate with the different groups in our lives. I wrote a post about how social media is breaking down these barriers and concluded that we are one person with many different personalities. I mean, you wouldn’t talk to your grandmother the same way you would talk to your beer-drinking college buddies, would you? This is where the importance of communication paths come into play and understanding the various strategies of that path. Just remember…these paths are customized per person, customer, prospect, etc.

example.

Let’s look at John, our hypothetical persona for a moment. John is a mid-twenty something that is on a great career path, but struggling to let go of his once forgotten free-living college lifestyle. His relationships are changing everyday which changes his communication styles and paths. They are:

• He keeps close contact with his friends from college
• He is building stronger ties with his family
• He is getting more involved at church
• His work relationships are getting more involved
• He is getting more serious with his girlfriend and her family
• He tries to stay visible to his college acquaintances, professors, past employers, past coworkers, etc.
• He is beginning his civic duty life by getting involved with local charities and communities
• He has been networking traditional networking face to face and social networking online

As you can see, John has several stakeholder groups for his life. He is faced everyday with different communication activity, let alone all the advertising and marketing communication he is bombarded with on a daily basis. John wants the very best for his life and for the life of those around him. The best way to this is through these valuable relationships and what they bring, so John knows the importance of consistent communication and building value throughout the aforementioned stakeholder groups. John also has certain goals for his life, whether materialistic, holistic, spiritual or physical which he will pursue when given the opportunity.

communication paths.

To continue with John’s example, let’s look at the different communication paths John takes to keep building the aforementioned relationships. Let’s look at them one-by-one.

Close College Friends: in person, phone conversations, texting, social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), email

Family: in person, phone conversations, some texting, some social media, email

People at Church: in person, some phone, some email

Work Relationships: in person, phone, email, very little social media

Girlfriend’s Family: in person

Past Acquaintances: Social media (LinkedIn), email, some phone

Civic relationships: In person, email, phone

Networking: In person, email, social media

what are we looking for?

Looking at the various communication strings and paths, we can identify where our brands communication strings overlap with John’s to better communicate on a personal level with him. We now know where he “is” in the communication sphere and how he interacts in that sphere. There is one thing to remember, when we do decide to begin communications with John, we can’t “sell” anything. We are only there to help John achieve his life goals, hopefully facilitated by our products or services. John, and only John, can make that decision.

when we do decide to begin communications with John, we can’t “sell” anything. We are only there to help John achieve his life goals, hopefully facilitated by our products or services. John, and only John, can make that decision.

conclusion.

Each and every one of us has our own unique communication structure in our lives. We communicate on various platforms to various stakeholder groups in our lives. In order to build an all-encompassing marketing ecosystem and begin to integrate our brands/products/services into the lifestyle of our customers, we need to know how these communication structures are built and how they are utilized by our persona individuals. Then, and only then, can we begin our communication to help our persona individuals achieve their life goals, facilitated by our products or services.

next up.

Coming up next we will look at some use case scenarios that will blow your mind. Talk about integrated marketing, we will look at communication path examples from start to finish and how they will branch off to create even more integrated communication paths.

Marketing Ecosystem: Gather Information

Photo Courtesy of Flickr - typedown

Last time we learned about the importance of goal setting as it pertains to developing an all encompassing marketing ecosystem to create fully integrated brands within our customer’s lifestyles. The next step in creating this marketing ecosystem is to gather as much useful information as possible to fully understand our global environment as we sit right now, identify possible opportunities, and begin to build personas around our best “niche” target segments (personas will be discussed next time). To gather all this information, we need to take a global, holistic approach to interviews, research, surveys, etc.

information = power

In today’s overly communicated, high speed society, information and the speed at which you send and receive is, in itself, becoming a competitive advantage for many companies. This trend is likely to continue as more social strategies are integrated throughout our lives as marketers and consumers. With this said the gathering of this information is not only important…it’s a necessity.

gathering berries.

Some of the information that we will be gathering will help us:

• identify communication paths
• understand effectiveness
• identify needs in environment
• create brand competitiveness
• identify best customer segments
• identify key entry points
• understand communication pods

To help us fulfill these obligations, there are four aspects of our business we need to fully understand, inside and out. They are listed below along with some strategies to help you begin gathering this important information.

Our Company/Brand: How can we communicate our strengths without fully understanding our company/brand/products. First things first, we need to become intimate partners with what our brand is, what it stands for, where it’s been, and where it’s going. To do this we need to conduct:

• Stakeholder Interviews
• Employee Interviews
• Customer Interviews
• Vendor Communications
• Company History Analysis

Our Competition (Known and Unknown): Understanding our competition and their communication strategies, allows us to fully understand, not only our current position, but also opportunities for position transition for different markets. Some strategies to better understand our competition are:

• Interview competition customers
• Research Industry Information
• Interview our current customers

The Brand Climate: Knowing where we’ve been and forecasting where we’re going is a powerful tool. By identifying the climate in which our brand occupies is a vital part to goal setting and communication strategies.

The Different Consumer Segments: By fully understanding your consumer base, you can begin to segment the entire base down to highly defined niche segments, if not down to the individual. Each of these segments will have specific communication, brand, and interactive needs. Understanding is the first step in fulfilling these needs and, once filled, will move toward complete lifestyle brand integration. Some strategies to get to know your customers a little better:

• Usability Testing – How the different customers use your brand/product
• Contextual Interviews – Face to face, individual interviews in their environment documenting behaviors, surroundings, self-reported experiences, attitudes, etc.
• General Surveys – gather general demographic/psychographic information
• Focus Groups – Understand similarities within groups and niche segments, identify the group communication aspects, and document interactions between members

information overload.

This may look like a lot of information to gather, but once it’s done, it’s simple maintenance as we move forward. After all, we’re not looking for a quick band-aid fix, we’re looking to completely transform the way we communicate in the business environment and our loyal customers. We’re trying to create a marketing ecosystem that learns and grows on its own. Understanding the ins, outs and what-have-yous of our business environment will give us the competitive advantage to build personas (highly defined target niche segments) and devise communication strategies to fulfill the needs of those personas; completely integrating our brand into their own personal lifestyles. Pretty cool, huh?

your thoughts.

How do you gather information on your business environment? How has information helped you in a communication debacle?

Marketing Ecosystem: Goal Setting

First things first. Before we even begin to understand our company’s marketing ecosystem we first need to know where we are going. To build effective use case scenarios, we must fully understand the end goal or objective then slowly and surely work backwards to ensure effective communication strings and paths. These goals and objectives will be quantifiable, time driven, produce measurable milestones, have the ability to evolve and adapt, as well as be something that will, not only benefit the company, but also the consumer. These goals will be segmented into different categories based on the needs of the company and specific customer niche segment.

the big kahuna.

Each and every brand should strive to be the best they can be in the marketplace. By understanding this future state, we can begin to identify the specific traits our “Future Brand” entail. Then we can derive goals and objectives to perform a gap analysis to take our brand from today to the future state. This understanding and these traits will become the big kahuna; the brand we strive everyday to become. This is our dream goal. Now, in order to reach this goal, we need to meet certain requirements to build the traits this future state entails.

big cat. (the main categories)

The following categories are the major goal categories that every company should focus on. The specific clarification across each category develops a targeted, broad understanding of where we want to drive the company with marketing. Below we will describe each goal category as well as provide you a visual explanation of how these goals create the main “big kahuna” goal and produces different milestones to prepare for the evolution and adaptation of the marketing environment and ecosystem.

Financial: This category is probably the most known and understood group of goals and objectives since it is the most easy to measure. However, these goals are merely products to the success or failure of the communication in the marketing ecosystem. These goals are good to have, since everyone in the organization can understand, but shouldn’t be the only line in the sand that you draw for your brand. Goals here could include:

• Gross Revenue
• Net Profit
• Increase in Profit Margin
• Marketing Return on Investment
• Number of Sales
• And so on

Brand Awareness: The first step in complete integration in the customer lifestyle is brand awareness. Without this necessary step, the customer will have no idea your brand even exists, let alone put the energy in comparing it for purchase decision. These metrics are harder to define as the Financial category, but can begin being understood in with the following objectives:

• Reach
• Web Traffic (searched for brand name, directly entered url, etc)
• % of Market Share
• Newsletter growth
• Number of Sales Inquiries
• And so on

Brand/Product Positioning: Simply having awareness efforts running on full speed won’t work as effective as it could. We need to also be aware of the position our brand is taking in the mind of our specific target markets. These dynamic metrics will become more qualitative than quantitative. Simply having an understanding of where your brand fits into the lifestyle of your specific target markets compared to your competition is pretty amazing. Some goals and objectives can include:

• Customer Feedback
• Customer Reviews
• Consumer Product/Service Reviews
• Public Profiling
• Customer Survey Results
• % of Market Share
• And so on

Engagement: The culmination of complete and integrated brand awareness strategies with the correct positioning messages to the correct target segments creates a culture of communication which leads to different levels of engagement throughout the customer/prospect relationship funnel.  The more engaged a customer/prospect is, the more likely our brand will become a part of their individual lifestyle. With the advent and permeation of social and business intelligence technologies, we can actually quantify the level of engagement through the relationship cycle. Some objectives to aim for are:

• Customer Service Reports/Reviews
• Social Media Conversations
• Information Sharing Among Marketplace
• Customer Retention
• Word of Mouth
• Customer Reviews
• Repeated or Increased Customer Purchases
• And so on

Fig. 1 Big Kahuna, Category Goals, and Milestones: The foundation of the Marketing Ecosystem.

conclusion.

To create the most effective, all-encompassing marketing ecosystem, we need to start with a grand understanding of our future state. Where do we want to go? What do we want to look like? Then we need to set goals, objectives, and milestones to get us there through effective marketing through highly defined communication strings and paths.

Next we are going to look at how to actually define these specific goals and objectives.

engagement.

What are your thoughts? How do you define goals for your marketing? What metrics do you currently use?