Sunday, March 22, 2009

Media Management Seminar Idea Proposal

Seminar or workshop ideas for improving the effect and efficiency of media investments

Media Brief And Strategy Checklist

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

How Digital Agencies Can Work With Media Agencies

All companies should develop a set of preferred working processes to optimize the cooperation of specialist vendors
The following example illustrates a possible working relationship between a digital agency and media agency

This model is based on an assumption that a yearly brief has been provided to both vendors which contains the overall marketing objectives, KPI’s, and marketing strategies.
Note: a marketing strategy is not a tactical media strategy, it is higher within the KPI hierarchy. An example of the hierarchy to illustrate would be this:
Business objective: increase sales
Marketing objective: increase awareness
Marketing strategy: Utilize mass media channels with high reach in a short time
Media channel strategy: Use TV, Print, Banners
Media tactic strategy: Use channel 1,2,3, New York Times, Affiliate networks, Major online publishers

In this example, the Brief stage asssumes that the Advertiser invites both vendors to the same brief. Each vendor should be clear on their roles and responsibilities from the start of the brief so ears are tuned in appropriately.

The Strategy development stage in this example is meant to be on the short term or campaign strategy stage. The digital agency should be responsible for determining the appropriate channel. By channel it is meant for example; Search engine marketing, Social media, Email, Newsletters, Banners, application development, links sponsorships, etc. The media agency should be responsible for determining the tactical media that provides the best value for the money, fx; Facebook, My space, Google, Yahoo, MSN, You tube, The New York Times or the New York Post site.

The Production responsibility of creative material and or technical applications should belong to the agency who has this specialization. In some full service digital agencies, this lies in house, other times another vendor is required. The media agency has also a significant role in producing a comprehensible media plan that shows all activities in alignment, cost and estimated KPI effect

The execution stage should be seperated so that the expertise counterbalances each other from each vendor. The digital agency can provide a neutral evaluation of the effect and efficiency of each tactical media performance and provide continual updates to both advertiser and media agency. This assumes the digital agency is tracking the digital performance! The media agency should be continually striving to optimize the media selection on the basis of the performance on the advertisers site...not on the clicks or impressions!

The Evaluation stage should be a joint effort of digital agency and media agency to bring to the advertisers attention the most valuable insight on how to improve future performance. Vendors who are truly thinking on behalf of a client will strive to improve efficiency and effect with every future campaign. This is how everyone stays in business and competitive edges are gained.

Tv Negotiation Strategy Methodology By Robert Johnson

The following presentation was made to introduce and document a self made methodology for approaching yearly TV negotiations in the nordic markets. The method is called PRAGUE. I was previously responsible for about 50 million euro annual media spend and I applied this methodology with success for major nordic blue chip advertisers yielding continual annual improvement to media costs...despite annual decreases in media investment. Deeper case histories available upon request.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Media Management Consultancy Intro1

Check out the first presentation I made in order to introduce my original company concept. Perhaps the concept will take off someday. I would look forward to hear feedback.

Regards,

Robert

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Which marketing channel is most effective?

Even if a PPC ad has double the conversion to sale versus a banner ad or email campaign, it does not necessarily mean that PPC should receive the highest allocation of marketing investment. Smart advertisers have learned to track and study the contribution of each marketing channel in order to map the effectiveness and efficiency toward delivering one or several stages. The stages could apply to the AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire and Action) or to standard models used that chart Awareness, Consideration, Trial, Use, Useage Frequency, Loyalty.

While TV and Print are often used to build brand awareness and consideration, online marketing often impacts trial, use, frequency and loyalty. Today however, online offers plenty of opportunity to cover the full marketing spectrum from awareness to loyalty. However, to optimize efficiency and effect of marketing investments, we must be able to determine which channels are the most effective and efficient means to achieve a desired marketing objective. Here are a handful of examples of online opportunities and their strengths:
Web advertising is used often to communicate the brand's position, build consideration, raise awareness for new products and maintain top-of-mind awareness for established products. In addition it works well to encourage trial, acquire new customers as well as retain established customers and increase loyalty.
Online promotions are often used to encourage trial, stimulate word-of-mouth and improve use or purchase frequency
Search marketing is often used to encourage trial.
Email is often used to encourage trial, stimulate purchase frequency and improve customer loyalty.
All marketing channels have a synergy and contribution to one or several marketing measurement stages. (Aware - Loyalty) To begin to understand the direct effect and contribution of each marketing channel, tracking must be set up in advance to capture performance. To use brand awareness as an example, we would need to know how brand awareness will be measured, what metrics will be used in the calculation, and how much weight of importance should be assigned to each metric. Relationships with customers takes place over time. How they interact with any single campaign is just one touch point. To understand the true impact of marketing campaigns, we need to study how consumers interact with those campaigns over time.
The more competitive the marketplace, the higher the need to measure performance and the more potential marketing strategies exist to fulfill marketing objectives. In order to best navigate the opportunities, the contribution of all marketing activities to site visits and subsequent purchase behavior must be understood. The triggers to sales conversion must be identified.
An important role of a marketing strategist is to maintain a comprehensive and accurate insight into every click of every visitor, and how those relate to sales and other conversions.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Getting the CEO to "Get" Marketing

Getting the CEO to "Get" Marketing
By John Graham, Contributing Editor Industrial Distribution May 1, 2006

This may seem like an exercise in frustration to marketing directors, sales managers and others, but it's a battle worth fighting.

"What does it take to do good marketing?" This is the question a speaker asked of 50 seminar participants from financial services companies. No sooner had the question been asked when a woman said, "Keep the CEO out of it." Along with laughter, heads were nodding all over the room.
"How can I get my CEO into a marketing mode?" Many a company president would be surprised to learn that I've been asked this question more than any other over the years. It comes from entry-level employees and sophisticated sales executives—from engineers and frustrated marketing directors. The question is always serious, and the voice, more often than not, conveys signs of desperation and discouragement.
"The president can't see how we're slipping," says a frustrated sales manager. "He thinks the problems are only 'temporary.' He sees us like we were 30 years ago. But nobody knows us today. How can I get him to understand what's going on?"


Then there's the thoughtful and well-educated marketing person who reports that her job is "churning out proposals." This is her boss's uninformed view of marketing.
Perhaps the most common form of idiocy is a CEO's benighted belief that the role of marketing is to make sales. Instead of looking at the sales force to see if it is following up on the leads generated by marketing and actually closing sales, marketing gets the blame. Far fetched? Check it out by asking any marketing manager.
Marketing strategy is a source of conflict in many companies, but it's a concept worth fighting for.
Sales vs. marketing
It's not surprising that CEOs focus on sales. That's what gave them their starts and that's where they were successful, so that's what they see as the solution to the problem. "Make more calls" is their mantra and magic solution to everything.
"I just can't understand how this guy can be so blind," said a confused young marketer at a manufacturing company. "He's on top of so many things, but marketing is certainly not one of them."
Those CEOs who are blind when it comes to marketing tend to view themselves as entrepreneurs, and everyone knows that an entrepreneur is an "expert on everything," including marketing.
Marketing can be all but irrelevant to a CEO, other than providing "glitzy" sales materials and puffed-up press releases filled with unsubstantiated claims and finessed figures. And under the guise of marketing, there are the countless vendor-funded "events" specifically designed to showcase the CEO as the head duck in a not-too-large pond.
All that's not marketing; it's B.S., a technical term brilliantly articulated by Princeton professor Harry Frankfurt in his ground-breaking book, On Bullshit, and ably articulated by another academic, Laura Penny, in Your Call is Important to Us.
Ignorance is never bliss, and in the case of marketing it only leads to unsatisfactory results. As the art of attracting and holding customers, marketing is too important to be thwarted and dismissed by ignorance, misunderstanding and misinformation.
Aside from not having a clue how to move recalcitrant CEOs to see the light and embrace marketing, there are a couple of questions that may be worth discussing:
1. Where does growth come from? For many companies, it comes from acquisitions, increased prices and just plain luck.Being able to say, "We're the third-largest widget works in the world," floats some boats, even though the achievement may be built on something other than growth in actual sales.In the insurance industry, for example, luck plays a key role. Every insurance executive lives for what is called "a hard market"—the increase in insurance rates by insurance companies or the regulators. Higher rates mean higher commissions, which translate into higher revenues, all without raising a finger. Every industry has such gimmicks for pseudo growth.Getting new customers can be more of an exercise in customer replacement, rather than an activity of growing the customer base.
2. Why should anyone want to do business with us? A real estate broker showing an attractive condo regaled prospective buyers during an open house with the virtues of the property. Realizing that none of the visitors expressed an interest, an observer recognized that the salesperson made little or no attempt to discover what the prospective buyers were looking for in a home. Without understanding customer dreams and expectations, how can the salesperson make a sale?Just because we want to make a sale doesn't mean someone wants to buy. The only reason anyone chooses to do business with a company is because of that company's ability to meet customer needs. It's not an accident that Apple Computer's incredible success has come at the moment when it has been rated as "the most innovative company." Apple is about marketing—understanding what the customer wants—not about technology.
Fighting the good fight
So, where does this leave us with attempting to help CEOs recognize the role marketing can play in growing the business? Here are a few thoughts for consideration:
1. Admit to marketing ignorance. No one is expected be an expert on everything; we all have our blind spots. And believe it or not, that goes for CEOs, particularly when it comes to marketing.Marketing is not about personal preferences ("I don't like green"), or individual likes and dislikes ("Nobody reads mail today"). But it's sometimes shocking to hear a company president display what in other circles would be called ignorance.There's nothing wrong with asking questions, and there's everything right about relying on those with specialized knowledge and experience for recommendations. One can certainly hope that the CEO finally sees the light and acknowledges that marketing isn't about the company, but about its customers. It's a difficult concept, but another worth fighting for.
2. Become brand conscious. As difficult as it is to grasp, marketing is about value to the customer. This is not the ever-popular "value-added" idea, but something far more important and rare. We call it "value-inherent," and it's what sets one company apart from everyone else in the same business.
3. Stop chasing the competition. While they appear strong, CEOs are often vulnerable, particularly when it comes to following the competition. They jump around from one sure-to-fail initiative to the next, aping competitors. The truth is that competitors are doing the same thing. Just because they are advertising in a particular publication doesn't mean it's effective.
4. Figure out what's going on. Far too much money and time is wasted on fooling around with the CEO's "great ideas." Chances are, these almost other-worldly insights are "borrowed" from a competitor or another company, but they instantly become the "property" of the CEO. The tragedy is that the entire organization must stop in its tracks and make the useless and unproductive nonsense happen.
On the other hand, it's often difficult or impossible for CEOs to grasp the value of research. They are so committed to "going with their gut" that facts are unnecessary, even irrelevant. If you know everything, then research is borderline ridiculous, right? It's far too easy to be exuberant, excited and totally committed to the brilliance of our own untested ideas.
Marketing myopia
Here's the point: today's General Motors is the poster company for enterprises where those in charge don't have a clue about marketing. The Big GM blinds them. The ideas of their executives are often far different from those in the heads of their customers.
More than 40 years ago, marketing guru Theodore Leavitt of the Harvard Business School labeled this CEO disease "marketing myopia." Unfortunately, his insight continues to stand the test of time.