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Get Your Coat, You've PulledMonday 30th June 2008 Interruption marketing no longer works. People are more adept than ever at being able to filter you out. They ignore banner ads, they skim through commercials on Sky Plus and TIVO, they click to another site in seconds if they don't see what they're looking for. Pull marketing, on the other hand, is about engaging your prospects and clients in a way that attracts them towards you.
The dynamic has changed from interruption to attraction. Companies can no longer market at people, they must connect with them. The focus has switched from reactive marketing to interactive marketing. There's a new kind of ROI, not just Return on Investment but Return on Involvement. As we move from a strictly rational level of engagement to embrace that all important emotional dimension, it's high time financial marketers went out on the pull.
Real QuotesFriday 27th June 2008 "It is not slickness, polish, uniqueness, or cleverness that makes a brand a brand. It is truth." "A brand that captures your mind gains behavior. A brand that captures your heart gains commitment." "A brand is a living entity - and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures" Reputational QuotesThursday 26th June 2008 "A brand for a company is like a reputation for a person. You earn reputation by trying to do hard things well." "Google actually relies on our users to help with our marketing. We have a very high percentage of our users who often tell others about our search engine." "Ordinary people can spread good and bad information about brands faster than marketers." Remarkable QuotesWednesday 25th June 2008 "Something remarkable is worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It's a Purple Cow. Boring stuff is invisible. It's a brown cow. Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service." A lady, sitting next to Raymond Loewy at dinner, struck up a conversation. "Marketing and innovation produce results; all the rest are costs. Marketing is the distinguishing, unique function of the business." Relevant QuotesTuesday 24th June 2008 "Customers must recognise that you stand for something." "Marketing is the art of meaningful differentiation." "A brand is a set of differentiating promises that link a product to its customers." "To uncover hidden category needs, don't ask 'How can I differentiate my brand from its competition?' but rather ask 'What are the unmet needs that no brand is addressing?' " Legendary Marketing Quotes SeriesMonday 23rd June 2008 Brand stories, quotations and anecdotes make a point real to people and imbed these truths in their memories. As they are told and retold, they can raise the brand to a mythological level. This week, I'd like to share with you some quotes that I find interesting and inspiring. For those of you who have been on the journey with me through the development of the 4Rs methodology, I have collated these under the headings: Relevant, Remarkable, Reputational and Real. Innovation - A Choice of DefinitionsFriday 20th June 2008 I recently spoke about the 10 Immutable Laws of Innovation. Here are some other thoughts:
“Innovation is the sum of invention plus the commercialisation of that invention.” (Ireland)
“A major innovation is one that sparks further innovations and investment (e.g. the computer), as opposed to other “Innovation is a process by which a company:
“An Invention is a new product; an Innovation is a new customer benefit.” (Doyle) “...the ability to look where everyone else is looking and see what no one else can see.” (R. J. Duggan) "Innovation is the introduction of change via something new.” (Rouse). "Innovation (is) the process of taking a discovery or idea to the market." (Brinkman) "Research is the transformation of money into knowledge; innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money." (Bayer). How to Choose an AgencyThursday 19th June 2008 Choosing the right agency to communicate your business edge is a tough call, particularly if you haven’t had to do it before or if your existing agency hasn’t delivered. Here’s Strand Financial’s Ten Point ‘How To” Guide.
What's Your Social Networking Strategy?Wednesday 18th June 2008 The distinction between b2b networks and consumer networks is becoming blurred.
Social networking is about people talking and when people talk, financial marketers should always be ready to listen. Having a LinkedIn profile or a space on Ecademy does not a social networking strategy make!
Twitter is emerging as an interactive b2b marketing tool, particularly for tech company pitches but how long will it be before financial marketers catch on?
According to Business Week, Facebook is now being searched increasingly by the over-35s for potential business contacts. This substantial segment now represents 41% of the Facebook community. Although it is primarily intended to be a social networking site, its search functionality is being used by marketers, freelancers and owner managers of SMEs to interrogate the base to determine both contacts and gain consumer insights. It's time to become even more socially aware.
Online Marketing Briefing ToolTuesday 17th June 2008 As a class-leading financial marketing agency, we want to give you access to a superb 'best practice' Online Marketing Briefing tool. Developed collaboratively and endorsed by the ISBA, IPA, PRCA and MCCA, this resource has been designed to help you develop briefing documents quickly, easily and for FREE. Here’s how it works. The information you enter is transmitted between your PC and the server in an encrypted format. Once you have finished the brief, you can email it to yourself (or anyone else you choose) - no record remains on the Client Brief server. When you press the submit button, the system sends an email to your specified address. The information contained in your brief is attached as a file, in MS Word format, for you to read or distribute. Send us your latest brief. Click on the link below to try it out: Remember, our email address is space@strandfinancial.com Your Customer's Mind - the Ultimate Search EngineMonday 16th June 2008 I’m a fervent believer in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). I’ve seen what it can do for our financial clients. Organisations who are enjoying number one rankings in Google for key industry search terms and consequently driving record levels of quality enquiry. However, I’m also an advocate of MEO – Mind Engine Optimisation. Here, clients approach their browsers with your brand already in pole position in their mental search engine. So, for example, if you’re thinking of a book seller, you’d go to Amazon.com. By extension, if you’re thinking of a financial marketing agency, you’d go to strandfinancial.com, naturally – and you’d get this site, which I hope you’d think is a good thing. And if you then put financial marketing agency into Google on a UK search, you’d find financialmarketingagency.co.uk standing out at number one. Which, when you look at the people section, brings us full circle to the fact that you can’t ignore search! Think brand. Think search. Think ahead! Friday 13th - The Brief From Hell!!Friday 13th June 2008 It would have to be Friday 13th:
“We brainstormed a design idea in-house with all the marketing executives involving a wind farm against a blue sky and I'm really happy with the concept. I found the image on Google, not sure if we can use it or what the quality may be or anything. There’s not really enough budget to get any new photographs for this ad but we’ve got a pic on our web site of our chairman who's very well known. Can you blow this up inside front.
I’ve sketched out some ideas fora layout on the back of a napkin from our internal lunch – maybe you could put all those together – I’ve seen something like that before on our competitor’s brochure. We can give you a pretty good idea of the spec in three days but we need it printed in five.
I’ve written some text but you’ll need to squeeze it in a bit to fit, maybe a smaller point size or maybe reduce the pics. Why not design both and I’ll take a look when I get back to the office next week - I'm off at 3 as my mother's cat is unwell.
We could put our logo on the front page centred and fairly large. We could also get the printing done by a guy I know in Cornwall where it‘s bound to be cheaper. He doesn’t have Quark so can you put it together as a pdf file and can you bike a CD to him as he hasn’t got broadband.“
Ok it didn't happen today but there are times...
Emerging MarketsThursday 12th June 2008 In a mother of all projects, BrandZ asked over 650,000 consumers and professionals across 31 countries to compare 23,000+ brands. Just by way of background, BRANDZ is a diagnostic and predictive brand equity measurement tool that was developed for WPP's operating companies. Notably, their 2007 Top 100 Brands Report highlights the following trends within the financial services industries: "As financial markets in developed countries become saturated, financial institutions are extending into emerging markets. Multi-national banks are eager to tap into China's banking sector as the country deregulates its financial institutions. India's retail banking is expected to grow 18% a year until 2010. Most global players entering the market have realized the need to focus on marketing issues to establish brand awareness and gain a share of the market. Globally, an increase in the number of wealthy individuals has led banks to introduce or strengthen wealth management services. Meanwhile, insurers are focusing on a single brand strategy that has proven effective. Large insurers such as AIG ($5,880 million) are re-branding acquisitions to their own brands." Chaordic TheoryWednesday 11th June 2008 Dee Hock, the founder of Visa International, developed a vision of what he calls a "chaordic" organisation - a loosely organised confederation designed to enhance both focus and flexibility – combining the management of chaos and order. A nucleus of intelligent people, complemented by the creation of small teams that would offer the right blend of talent for any given project. This is the ideal model for the new style agency ecology, such as that of Strand Financial - which has no wish to be limited by the talents and scope of a conventional hierarchy of account management tiers. Dee Hock says, "In Visa, we tried to create an invisible organisation and keep it that way. It's the results, not the structure or management that should be apparent." No-one who has witnessed the explosive growth of Visa can doubt he’s right. Five out of SixtyTuesday 10th June 2008 I read recently that only five out of the top sixty superbrands in Britain are financial services brands – and the same is true in Japan, America and other markets. Facing overcapacity and product proliferation, many financial organisations have become or are drifting towards being regarded as commodities with very few points of differentiation and a growing emphasis on price. Creating differentiation – the only alternative strategy to price-dominated competition – becomes an imperative. There has never been a better time for you to Create Your Own Space. Click on the link below to see the key note speech at the launch event for Financial Marketing TV. Text in ContextMonday 09th June 2008 Text and email are in many ways just like talking. However, in a business context these are also all-too permanent records of a marketing conversation. Businesses must be aware that all communications, however seemingly informal, can have serious marketing and legal repercussions for a brand. We use these communications channels so much but none of us should ever take them lightly. I have seen countless examples of poor communications by text and email that are not only unprofessional, they could damage a brand irreparably. Here are some of the main Dos and Don’ts. DO DON’T Practical PsychologyFriday 06th June 2008 Thank you for your emails and feedback. I really enjoy receiving them and respond to them all personally and in my blogs. Last week, I was asked by a marketing executive of a US financial services firm about the Cognitive, Connective and Conative Space-States concept that I have defined and specifically how these can be used in a practical business context. I believe that this form of psychological analysis can be applied to any aspect of new business acquisition and I have chosen online marketing as an example, largely because of the practical nature of tracking and measurement available with digital media. Cognitive (Thinking) Connective (Feeling) Conative (Doing) Top Web 2.0 ToolsThursday 05th June 2008 As part of this series on Web 2.0, I researched countless directories, each containing over 200 Web 2.0 Tools, but I think that a marketer’s life is far too short to trial every single one. This is a much more refined guide with helpful commentary on each posted by users (in true Web 2.0 style): http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/Top100Tools/toolset.html The opportunities for marketers are stunning. Here are some Web 2.0 Tools that I will be living with over the coming weeks: http://del.icio.us/
Creating (computer independent) bookmarks of useful sites for use anywhere you go. http://www.google.com/google-d-s/intl/en/tour1.html Sharing word documents with clients / designers for amends / collaboration – keeping the latest copy online as a reference. http://www.netvibes.com/#General http://www.flickr.com/ I hope you find these practical toolsets useful. I look forward to sharing more with you more about these developments during the coming weeks, as well as some fresh insights into differentiation. How can you use these new toolsets to Create Your Own Space? Please do write and tell me. Testing Web 2.0 FeaturesWednesday 04th June 2008 The concept of "Web 2.0" began with a conference brainstorming session between Tim O'Reilly and MediaLive International. Far from a DotCom 'crash', they recognised that new brands were emerging where the platform IS the Web! The next time a company claims that it's 'Web 2.0', test their features against the list below: - Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability What is Web 2.0?Tuesday 03rd June 2008 Even if you don’t fully understand what Web 2.0 is, the chances are that you make regular use of services which operate on the Web 2.0 platform. Web 2.0 services use the Internet as an operating platform, in order to create products and/or services that could not exist outside of the World Wide Web. I’m talking here about web services, not packaged software. So, we don't just read and publish stuff any more, we participate. We don't just use directories, we provide the content and add our own tags so other people can find them (something that's known as 'folksonomy'). It's ours to share. We're harnessing collective intelligence. We view user generated content on Wikipedia, we see what other people have bought on Amazon, we communicate our ideas with blogs. We get in touch with people on Linked In, Facebook or MySpace. You’ve all heard of Wi-Fi in the context of online broadcast media, now one of our major clients, Vision Critical, is developing what we have branded Fi-Wi. Financial Widgets that pull data together automatically (in what the technical guys refer to as mash ups) and present the customer financial data back to us graphically in precisely the way we want to view it. Now that's pure, true Web 2.0!! Web 2.0 Series - Welcome to Wiki WorldMonday 02nd June 2008 "Wikis will start to affect advertising in a positive way and help us identify constituents we want to touch," said Rod Smith, VP-Internet emerging technology at IBM Corp. Wikis can "help us position a new product and can provide good intelligence as we segment our advertising." Opening up IBM's wikis to customers "would be a great way to engage folks in our ecosystem about a new ad campaign before spending a dollar." "The hardest part of communications is to explain a new product, and sometimes we get too technical. But wikis allow nontechnical folks to talk about what their expectations are for a new product. You can feed off that from a marketing and advertising perspective. As wikis take off, I need to ask people in our markets: How can I engage you and how does that translate into product features that can touch those markets?". Financial brands and their trade associations have an opportunity to build a 'Wikipedia' about their industry and invite participants who are steeped in that subject matter to engage in a collaborative way. |
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