Situation Analysis Archives - PR Smith Marketing https://prsmith.org/category/situation-analysis/ Founder of SOSTAC®️ Planning methodology Sat, 06 Apr 2024 11:32:43 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.1 https://prsmith.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/favicon.fw_.png Situation Analysis Archives - PR Smith Marketing https://prsmith.org/category/situation-analysis/ 32 32 67588066 Marketing Communications 8th ed Released! https://prsmith.org/2024/03/21/marketing-communications-8th-ed-released/ https://prsmith.org/2024/03/21/marketing-communications-8th-ed-released/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2024 11:56:28 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=3257 Best-selling Marketing Communications – Integrating online and offline, customer engagement and digital technologies, 8th edition is released! Enjoy this best-selling updated 8th edition – packed with new material, keeping abreast with AI, AR, VR, MR, MA and other innovative approaches to marketing communications. All integrated with the world’s most popular SOSTAC® Planning methodology that delivers […]

The post Marketing Communications 8th ed Released! appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Best-selling Marketing Communications – Integrating online and offline, customer engagement and digital technologies, 8th edition is released!

A lightbeam highlights Marketing Communications 8th ed - high above the city's skyline

Enjoy this best-selling updated 8th edition – packed with new material, keeping abreast with AI, AR, VR, MR, MA and other innovative approaches to marketing communications. All integrated with the world’s most popular SOSTAC® Planning methodology that delivers a reassuring sense of order in a chaotic digital world and also that delivers success from better, MarComms’ ‘information-based’ decisions.

In Part 2 – all ten marcomms tactical tools (incl ads, PR, sponsorship, Owned, Earned and Paid Media etc.)  has a sample SOSTAC® Plan at the end of chapter.

Ze Zook and I are so pleased with it.  So much new material including AI integrating with MarComms.  We’ve tried to keep the edutainment angle so readers actually enjoy discovering some cutting-edge examples, tips and tools throughout the book. Thanks to the team at @Kogan Page including: Alison, Donna, Bruna and  Jack, Jeylan, Susie and of course, Helen Kogan.

Marketing Communications 8th ed Book Cover

What New Marketing and What Classic Marketing is in the 8th ed.?

What’s new and what’s old in Marketing Communications 8th ed.?

20% author’s discount can be used legitimately by following these instructions.

  1. Go to koganpage.com/MC8
  2. Click ‘Add to Cart’
  3. Click ‘Checkout’ on the top right corner of the screen.
  4. Complete your Billing & Delivery Information
  5. Click ‘Continue to Review & Pay’
  6. Scroll down to ‘Review Items’
  7. In this section, click the ‘Add an offer code’ button – bottom right
  8. Enter your code AMK20 in the box provided
  9. Scroll down to input your payment information
  10. Click the ‘Buy Now’ button at the bottom of the screen.

Enjoy Your Book

The post Marketing Communications 8th ed Released! appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2024/03/21/marketing-communications-8th-ed-released/feed/ 4 3257
Develop your own Chat-Bot – SOSTAC® Project Plan https://prsmith.org/2021/08/01/sostac-plan-for-developing-your-own-chatbot/ https://prsmith.org/2021/08/01/sostac-plan-for-developing-your-own-chatbot/#comments Sun, 01 Aug 2021 12:36:07 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=2041 Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column. Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in […]

The post Develop your own Chat-Bot – SOSTAC® Project Plan appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column.
Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in the Clubhouse App on Fridays at 1pm.

Chatbots can create competitive advantage. Ignore them at your peril. Here, we apply a #SOSTAC ®  Plan for developing your own chatbot.  Written by PR Smith and Tom Sickert.

 

 

robot chat bots

Image by Parker_West from Pixabay

SOSTAC(r) Planning Framework

SOSTAC ® Planning Framework www.sostac.org

SITUATION ANALYSIS

Hyper-competition is here to stay and chatbots have a role to play. Data, AI, and chatbots in particular can create a new competitive advantage. Ignore these at your peril.

AI-driven chatbots can boost the CX (customer experience), strengthen existing customer relationships, reach new prospects, screen enquiries, identify best prospects, give them personalised answers/services instantaneously, convert to sales and thereafter be used to nurture stronger (potentially , lifetime, relationships).  Ignore chatbots at your peril.

Typical customer service staff feedback reveals: “We have all this excellent information on our public website – product description, prices, delivery times & costs, return policies… but still we get countless calls and emails about these.” It appears that many people are just not willing to work their way through websites, searching, scrolling and hoping to find a solution.

Chat Bots are creating a gap in the market for better service

Should you have a Bot?

 

All customers have a ‘job to be done’ (Christensen et al 2016) when they visit a website (or an app). They want to find product information, check a price, read reviews, buy a product, be entertained, informed etc. Customers just want, access to the information or experience as quickly as possible (with or without a bot).

Chatbots or Humans - survey: what do people want?

Chatbots or Humans – survey: what do people want?

 

Would anyone prefer to queue in a bank to withdraw money from a human or queue for an faceless automated cash withdrawal machine in the wall?

Bots present an opportunity to improve the relationship with both existing and potential new customers. This strengthens, what are arguably, your two greatest assets today: your brand, and your customer data in a new AI-supported world of chatbots. Let us apply this to a fictitious washing machine company.

OBJECTIVES

Be clear about why you want a chatbot? ‘Because everyone else has one’ is not a good enough answer. ‘Reduce costs’ is a popular answer but misses the real opportunity. The ultimate answer is to help customers to have a better CX (customer experience) and also identify your best potential lifetime customers. An AI-driven chatbot can instantaneously answer product questions, share advice, book appointments (for salespeople or technicians), take orders, trigger a follow-up onboarding series of messages in a personalised way 24/7/365.

All of these can, and should, be quantified objectives – in fact, SMART Objectives e.g. Boost CX Satisfaction Scores from 50% to 70 to 90% in years 1, 2 & 3 (or in Q1, Q2 and Q3?); Boost Net Promoter Scores (likelihood to recommend your service to a friend from 10 to 30 to 50); Reduce time taken for the visitor to purchase (reducing these times makes customers happy).

Cost-saving operational objectives are popular e.g. To reduce the number of calls/emails handled by 25% in the first 12 months.

More specific MVP (Minimum Viable Product) objectives can also be set. e.g.  the chatbot must help customers to:

  • Find serial numbers and product names for all units produced by the company;
  • Solving the top ten common problems – using images, links or text based on customer input;
  • Create a service ticket for ALL ENQUIRIES (which includes capturing the customer phone number) so the helpdesk can call and resolve the customer’s issue via phone.

Be very clear about why you want an AI-Driven ChatBot. Think about how chatbots might help your business even more in, say, 3 years from now?    

Is ignoring chatbot potential to save money (and boost CX) like either  burying your head in the ground

Sculpture of someone burying their head in the ground

Burying your head in the ground doesn’t solve any problems nor exploit any opportunities

or like throwing money down the toilet as you pay for slower, less personalised, human customer service?

Money thrown down the toilet

Wasting Money

STRATEGY

Stage 1: Build a pilot AI ChatBot for Brand X washing machine website  –  aimed at helping customers find what washing machine is best for them, in a personalised, friendly and reassuring way. The chatbot dialogue must be knowledgeable yet friendly (to match the brand personality). Helping the customer in an informal way, yet demonstrating common sense knowledge (without jargon).

The chatbot must at all times support the values and the purpose of the overall business.   Environmentalism is an important issue for our customers, so and useful green guidance and tips should be offered where relevant and whenever the customer expresses interest (or wherever interest is detected e.g. if a visitor watches any of our green content e.g. ‘3 Tops Tips to Save Energy‘ video).

Data collection is critical to the long-term success of the AI-Supported chatbot and the business overall. Customer preferences, interests, demographics and other data feed into each customer profile, which in turn helps to find correlations to further improve both specially tailored offers and new products in the future.

Stage 2: Roll out to all other white good product range (e.g. washing machines,  dishwashers and microwaves) within 18 months and increasing NPS scores from 30 to 50 (as listed in the objectives).

Chess set (represents strategy

Strategy

TACTICS

There are several tactical choices available when developing a chatbot .

  1. Out-Of-The-Box Solutions, provided by vendors that have predefined models and features and functionalities, that can be customized based on your requirements. These solutions as well are powered (depending on your budget) by high performance AI solutions and features and functionalities. The provider of the chatbot solution can help you to assess your needs and find the optimal solution. There are now many chatbot companies including: Ada, AWS, Botsify, Chatfuel, Hubspot, Liveperson, Mobile Monkey, Microsoft’s Bot Framework and Cognitive Services

 

  1. In-house Solution Created by ‘Citizen Developers’. These require NO code or LOW code experience and can be created by anybody who is able to create email rules in Microsoft Outlook. Yes, it is (mostly) that simple – these drag & drop (communication flow) solutions are offered by Microsoft and AMAZON alike. It gives you not too many options to customize and apply specific functionalities, but it sure is enough to for professional use. NB Citizen Development – no technical and programming skills needed.

 

  1. Developed From Scratch – by coders and other IT professionals, in collaboration with your subject matter experts. These chatbots are powered either by custom AI with sophisticated algorithms and enhanced features and functionalities.

 

Sometimes out-of-the-box AI models are used as the basic framework e.g. Amazon’s LEX and Microsoft’s  Bot Framework and Cognitive Services solutions (object and image recognition, speech and sound recognition and reasoning). These can be tweaked later (either the interface or the code itself).

 

ACTIONS

In the end, the chatbot is just a little icon on your website.  However, there is still much work to be done. Miss these detailed ‘Actions’ and the AI Chatbot project will fail. Depending on which option you take will determine the details of the actions required.  Remember a chat project is never really finished. It can and should be continually improving via small tweaks and/or more data helping the chatbot to become more user helpful. So now the detailed work (actions) – we create the topics/answer, the question and 5-10 iterations of each question that can trigger the relevant answer.

Conversation Flows (marketing language)  / Decision Trees   

This In-house solution was created by ‘Citizen Developers’ (Tactical Option no.2).

Decision Trees - conversation flows - from Microsoft Virtual Agents

Decision trees- conversation flows – from Microsoft Virtual Agents

You do not need any programme/development skills.   Conditions = scenarios – in this case, a condition can be whether you have a front loader washing machine or a top loader washing machine (see below).

Sample questions:

  • When is the special sales weekend for your washing machines?
  • When does my warranty expire?
  • My washing machine is leaking, what should I do
  • My washing turned pink, what can I do?
  • I washed all my knives and forks in my washing machine by mistake – what should I do?

A script to help chatbot converse with a human customer/visitor

Chatbot message Human entry
Hello, my name is <name>, I am here to help you. What can I do for you?
My washing machine leaks water.
I’m sorry to hear that. Let me see how I can maybe help you to fix the problem.

What brand is your washing machine from (just click on the one applicable>?

<option 1> <option 2> … <option n>

Clicks on applicable option
Thank you – I see you have a <option selected by customer> washing machine. What type is it (just click on the applicable option)?

<front loader> <top loader>

Clicks on applicable option
Perfect – now let me know the specific model

<displays model list as drop down>

Selects model
When does the leakage appear – when you start of the washing program or at the end?
 

 

Answers

 

Here is an overview if things you can check for yourself. <links to information sources on YouTube, Company website…>.

 

If this does not help you – I’d be happy to connect you directly with one of our agents or arrange for a technician to pass by your house.

 

Or would you like to see some self service options <links to information>

 

or would you prefer me to book an engineer for you now? <links to  engineers calendar>

 

 

Reviews self-service options and/or decides to be connected to a human and/or schedules an appointment.

 

 

Optimised Resource Planning (also called RSO Resource Scheduling Optimization) is where AI can help customers to book the most appropriate technician (based on the particular problem description plus the items the customer has already checked) plus the customer’s and technician’s time and availability. The booking data is obviously also made accessible for the engineer.

Meanwhile, last but not least, is deployment. You have the chatbot developed and ready to go but how do you deploy it can determine its ultimate success or failure.  The key missing piece in the actions section of many plans is ‘internal marketing’ which comprise: communication, motivation and training.

Make sure people know about the chatbot development early on. Bring them with you. Communicate to them and motivate them about how this will help the business to survive in a hyper-competitive world. Remove fears of redundancy because of chatbots. Get people behind the idea. Perhaps consider redeploying staff into new jobs if the chatbot proves to be very successful – many of which will require training. Managing the chatbots may well require training and certainly going forward maintenance, coding, data analytics and reporting are just some of the jobs required.

NB It is critical that one person takes ownership of the chatbot from the very start, which leads us nicely into the final stage of SOSTAC(r) PLanning – Control – ‘how do we know we are getting there?’.

CONTROL

How do you measure success? Measure the KPIs you wrote in the Objectives section. NPS scores etc.

During the chatbot development stages, measure the MVP you have set . Then when you start testing/training the chatbot – watch closely, make fast changes and repeat.

Stay very close.  Watch your KPI Objectives. After that, you can start comparing last month’s KPIs to next month’s projections.  Don’t overcomplicate things.

Check the data you are collecting. Can it be used to give you insights on customer needs, what they like/don’t like?  What they need more help with? What helps you to identify your ideal customers? You will get a lot of data and insights that will allow you to dig deeper and drive     continual improvements.

Agree Your MVP (Minimum Viable Product) –  your version 1.0   and check to see if its working

e.g. “Tom and Paul agree that their MVP V1 must have following features & functionalities before deployment:

  1. Include all washing machine types of their company with pictures and serial numbers so customers can easily identify their product
  2. Know the top 10 problems customers can fix themselves and so that the chatbot can provide solutions via images, links or text based on customer input
  3. Must have the function to immediately create a service ticket for the helpdesk to directly call the customer via phone
  4. Must be able to converse in English and German for the aforementioned 3 features since UK and Germany are they key markets and pilot regions

 

Stay Calm. Chatbots are complex. Stay on a non-technical level and focus on your business and marketing objectives.

Stay calm. Chatbots are complex.

In the end, it’s like driving a car – you are probably not an engineer – you simply use the technology. If things need to be fixed or improved – you go to the people whose job it is to do just that.

Supervising Your Chatbot’s Learning

An AI powered chatbot needs to be supervised to ensure that it LEARNS properly. In other words – you must TEACH it, give it supporting guidance and directions. That is achieved with defining “confidence scores” for each intent and related answers or information sources. Example:

  • Customer asks: “How is the weather outside?”
    • The bot’s NLU and NLP identify “weather” and “outside” – giving a 99% confidence score that you are asking about the weather.
  • Customer asks: “Is it sunny or rainy?”
    • The bot, in the beginning, will not be able to associate “sunny” and “rainy” with a question about the weather. So, it will give a very low confidence score. It might even respond with a wrong answer.

 

Managing Confidence Scores

Here is where managing confidence scores allow you to manage the responses. You screen the questions asked – filter, based on the automated confidence score the bot gave and begin to fine-tune and manually train your bot. That will take more time in the beginning – but with increased usage – it will take less time and provide better results.

Based on NLU (Natural Language Understanding) and NLP (Processing), the user’s intent is determined and, based on a confidence score – the answer selected is the one that is most feasible. Defining confidence levels is a balancing act   between say “I don’t know” vs giving the wrong answer.

This depends on how important a topic is from the customer’s perspective. And that goes already quite far into AI, machine learning and a bit into deep learning.  You ask:

  • “What is the temperature tomorrow in Dublin” an 80% confidence score for the AI thinking you mean “what is the weather tomorrow in Dublin” is OK.
  • “How long are the shops open today” a 99% confidence score for the AI would be needed to know that you mean “How long is the mall around the corner open today”?

Here are some examples for confidence scores and features you can apply:

If a question is asked and the bot does not fully understand (e.g. confidence score between 60% and 80%) – the bot could clarify it by suggesting topics e.g. “Did you ask about <topic x>”).

If the initial question has a confidence score between 75-90%, but the question has a typo – the chatbot will specifically reply: “You typed Dutsche Bnudselagi – did you mean Deutsche Bundesliga or Deutsche Bundesbank or Deutsche Bundespost?”.  Each option then could be directly selectable.

If the confidence score is below 50% (or any threshold you define), you can have the bot offering to connect directly to a person for a live-chat or simply respond “I am sorry, I do not understand what you ask. I know about <topic 1>, <topic 2>,…<topic x>. A properly phrased question could be this: “What is the cost for a top loader washing machine with energy level B?>”

Confidence scores should be reviewed and evaluated topic by topic and adjusted as needed to avoid giving out false information.

The Route to Success
is to define and create proper topics and help the AI to identify the intent based on keywords. If a question causes a confidence score lower than 50% the bot will basically say “I don’t understand” and send a message to the human team to check (and categorise) the question. Based on our review we then can create a completely new topic, adjust the confidence score to relate to an applicable answer, or connect with our developers in case there was actually a technical issue preventing the bot from answering.

Feed the AI with Questions and Answers
If we had 10 basic questions. And say, possibly 5 variations of each question. This is a very crude example of data set. This could be presented as a 3 column table or an excel sheet (see below).

Creat Variations (or 'iterations') of a basic question

Creat Variations (or ‘iterations’) of a basic question

Doing this manually is a citizen development approach but other approaches will often have some manual approaches too.

We attach an answer for each FAQ.   Each question and its variety of similar questions (‘iterations’ which basically ask the same question) will have an answer Linkedin to it. You can write all imaginable iterations of a question and then link it to the same answer.

Say you have 5 versions (iterations) of a question the chatbot identifies the INTENT (from the use of the keywords in the question) and then provides the answer.

Answers as well can be in various types and formats e.g. pictures and/or videos or text attached to an answer? E.g. take the live weather feed from youtube.

RESOURCES (the 4Ms)

What Resources Do You Need (The 4 Ms)?

Men and Women (human resource) + money (budgets)  + minutes (timescales) +megadata (data – structured and unstructured). ‘Resources Required’ depend on the company’s maturity and readiness in various areas.

MEN AND WOMEN  A different company that created an internal chatbot had the following resources: a strategic leader, 3 subject matter experts from the team, 4 external developers and 4 Microsoft specialists who’s support was included in the contract with Microsoft. They needed 9 months from version 0.0 to deploy version 1.0.

MONEY  (budget) A project manager can allocate a number of hours each week to the project. This can be fully costed. Then there are also license costs which vary enormously e.g. from $400 pm to $4,000 pm for, say, 10,000 requests p.m. Alternatively, a Flat Fee can be fixed at whether you have 1 enquiry or 1m enquiries.  Ask the question: ‘If I get x000,000 viewers/enquiries how much will it cost?’

Hosting – you need to check if the above costs include the cost to host the application (the bot itself) on (a) CSP (Cloud Service Provider) like Microsoft, Google, IBM, AWS plus give the bot access to your data or (b) on-premises (data centre). You can easily spend hundreds of thousands on a solution that makes AMAZON jealous with dozens of developers and features and functionalities and with connections to data sources. Here is where a Solution Architect, Solution Designer or a representative from a vendor can help to calculate and estimate costs and feasibility.

MEGA-DATA Data includes all data – both structured and unstructured. This effectively includes all data and information that can be used – whether (a) a database of customers (and their preferences plus their previous purchases) for personalising answers,  (b) Q&A lists (for recognising questions and ‘intent’ as well as the sending the right answers (c) data readiness.

Establishing information & data readiness for chatbot is a critical step in any AI (or even CRM project).   Is your data ready to be used (is it clean and consistent in, say, the use of first name, second name with first letter in capitals, plus does every customer list the type of washing machine they bought?) etc. If the data is not OK – you may need dozens of people cleaning it up. This can take weeks or even months. However – if everything is OK, you may need no more than a handful of people in total.

Data Readiness is more complex than capital letters for names. It means that data is ready to be used at different levels and angles:

  1. Accuracy – is any data we provide correct, consistent, cohesive, always up-to-date and owned by us?
  2. Security – can data access be misused to breach our network? Accessibility – chatbot is given access to read, write, modify and create content (access includes diaries)
  3. Compliance – are we only displaying data that is needed?
  4. Technical – is accessing the data actually possible?

MegaData – ensure all the data and information is ready for the chatbot to communicate to users. This includes Conversation Flows/Decision Trees.

Security  –  protect your business from ‘malicious intents’ (a) hackers accessing your data (b) attacks from say an aggressive competitor 10,000 enquiries per second which creates –   DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) = system overload = systems crash.  There are 7 layers of security including network security, application security and data security.

MINUTES  / TIMESCALES   how long does it take to get a chatbot up and running?  Again depending on the solution you want to see after completion. And how fast you want things done. So using a basic project framework setup triangle might bring everybody in alignment (resource & scope & cost à Quality). In uncertain/ambiguous situations like these – going agile for execution is the best option.  Set an exact number of hours p.w. on this project.  Assign people and say “GO! See what you can do with the money we have in 12 months”.

Incidentally, Speed of Bot-Response should be agreed: 3-5 seconds or instantaneous + volume of enquiries/interactions from visitors (5 an hour or 500,000 a day) affects costs & solution design and architecture.

—end—

Many thanks to Tom Sickert. This is an early draft and so we welcome your comments, queries, challenges or improved examples. Please do post a comment.

If you liked this you might also enjoy:

Chinese GirlBot With 465m Boyfriends

Artificial Influencers – Meet Shudu & Miquela

Artificial Influencers Use My Magic Marketing Formula (IRD)

Here Come The Really Clever Bots – where AI meets customer needs

Join me in Clubhouse in my club called SOSTAC® Plans any Friday 3.30pm – 4.00pm BST for a chat, Q&A, observations about SOSTAC(r) Plans and any other marketing related issues including AI Driven Bots.

 

The post Develop your own Chat-Bot – SOSTAC® Project Plan appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2021/08/01/sostac-plan-for-developing-your-own-chatbot/feed/ 2 2041
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) – Opportunity to Boost CX or a Threat of Closure? (Part 1) https://prsmith.org/2017/05/19/gdpr-general-data-protection-regulations-opportunity-to-boost-cx-or-threat-of-closure-part-1/ https://prsmith.org/2017/05/19/gdpr-general-data-protection-regulations-opportunity-to-boost-cx-or-threat-of-closure-part-1/#comments Fri, 19 May 2017 13:02:11 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=1231 Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column. Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in […]

The post GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) – Opportunity to Boost CX or a Threat of Closure? (Part 1) appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column.
Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in the Clubhouse App on Fridays at 1pm.

Is GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) an opportunity to boost CX (Customer Experience) or a threat that could put you out of business? It’s both. A great opportunity, if you work with it. A threat, if you dare to ignore it. You’ve only got until 25th May 2018 before it is fully applicable in the EU and elsewhere. We’ll use the SOSTAC® Planning framework to help you plan for your own GDPR adoption.

PR Smith’s SOSTAC® planning framework is used around the world by both blue chips and start-ups to write business plans, marketing plans, digital marketing plans, campaign plans, project plans, health & Safety plans, digital transformation plans, and now, GDPR transformation plans. Voted in the Top 3 Business Models around the world by the Chartered Institute of Marketing’s Centenary Poll, SOSTAC® has recently by adopted by Linkedin and KPMG Digital HQ and an array of other organisations as their preferred planning framework. It’s popular because of its simplicity and solid logic.

PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Planning Framework

Situation Analysis means where are we now?’

Objectives – where do we want to go?

Strategy – how do we get there?

Tactics – the details of strategy

Action – how to ensure excellent execution (internal marketing)

Control – how do we know we are getting there.

+  the 3Ms: the 3 key Resources Men (men and women – the human resource), Money (budgets) & Minutes (timescales)

Here’s PR Smith’s 4 minute SOSTAC®summary on video. Let’s have a look at how SOSTAC®  help you to prepare for GDPR.

 

SITUATION

Data is the Lifeblood of Any Business

Data can give you competitive advantage. Data (or lack of) can destroy a business. How long could you continue without access to your data? So data is the life blood of any organisation. Data is also deemed to be the most valuable resource in the world (more valuable than oil) states The Economist (see Part 2).

 

Do We Really Need General Data Protection Regulations?

The answer is ‘yes’ and here’s 6 big reasons why:

 

1. Falling Customer Trust (with their personal data)

Yet only one in four adults trust businesses with their information. UK adults fear sharing their information for marketing as much as sharing with criminals (Garreth Cameron, ICO 2017).

 

2.  Data Criminals Are Growing

Con-men, criminals, and even hackers see opportunities online. Many of the opportunities are in the form of data. Irresponsible organisations, sloppy organisations and unethical organisations all help potential criminals to exploit your data, your identity and possibly your money.  There is a global increase in cyber attacks. Hackers are everywhere, preying, probing, testing, pushing, waiting for a brief drop in security. And now that IoT is here (the Internet Of Things), it just takes one weak link in a chain of connected devices to give hackers access – watch your kettle in the kitchen!

Scary looking man with red eyes

Hackers are waiting for just one momentary lapse in security

The world’s largest reported hack was Yahoo (2013).  Yahoo lost $1 billion share value because of poor security (Jonathan Armstrong, 2017).

40,000 TESCO bank accounts were hacked with money disappearing from 20,000 of them (Ardi Kolah, 2017).

Equifax hackers access 143m US consumers (McLannahan & Cornish, FT 2017)

Mobile operators now report 210,000 accounts were hacked (not 133,827) as reported to CIO Nov 2016 (Ardi Kolah 2017).

Masked hacker working

Global Increase In Cyber Attacks (image courtesy of Henley Business School)

Lawrence Tracey (Data Specialist in Vancouver) says ‘Did you know the easiest path for a hacker to get through the corporate security is via an employee’s car? Cars are easy to hack into; you just have to do a quick scan of YouTube to see a frightening list of possibilities. Most of them show a hacker taking control of a car, however, many people have their smartphones set to auto connect to their car and to auto connect to their home network and the corporate network when in the office. Speaking of the office, the printer is deemed to be the most vunerable access point to a business system (see the frightening Wolf ads)

https://youtu.be/DkajtSOAyec

Christian Slater as the chilling Wolf revealing the importance of network security

 

3. GDPR Breach (Poor Data Security) Incurs Big Fines

€20 million or 4% of global turnover for primary infringement (if it impacts a data subject/individual) or €10 million or 2% set for secondary infringement (a breach of the regulations e.g. not carrying out technical and organisational measures as required) – whichever is the greater. We can also be compensated for stress, for data loss, for identity theft, from funds being stolen and or a class action suit. There are exemptions for companies with less than 250 staff.  Subject to the nature of the personal data breach /infringement of the GDPR, the Data Controller, Joint Data Controller or Data Processor could be subject to a financial penalty of up to 4% of global turnover of the preceding year or €20m (whichever is the greater).

The sanctions and fines can apply to both the Data Controller, Joint Data Controller and the Data Processor. “Remember there’s now under the GDPR,  joint and several liability” (Ardi Kolah 2017).  Note: Media Tactics (UK) were fined £270,000 and more recently, Keurboom Communications (UK),  £400,000 fine (May 2017) for breach of privacy with nuisance telephone calls.

Money thrown down the toilet

A £400k fine means a company (with 10% margins) must find £4m extra sales to cover this loss.

 

 4. GDPR Breach Can Close Your Business

You can be forced to stop processing personal data i.e. it can stop your business. ‘ICO has the power to order temporary or permanent ban on personal data processing.’ In the UK, the ICO has the power to order temporary or permanent ban on personal data processing.  Very detailed contractual arrangements are now required between DC (Data Controller) and DP (Data Processor). In fact, all contractual arrangements extending past 25 May 2018 need to be GDPR compliant.

Restaurant with 'Sorry We Are Closed' sign

A breach of GDPR could kill your business

 

5. GDPR Breach Can Send You To Prison

You can go to prison for both a breach (of security) and also for non-compliance with GDPR i.e. even if you don’t suffer a breach, if you are inspected and found not to be GDPR compliant, they can go after you.  ‘Under the GDPR, Member States have powers to bring in criminal sanctions for failure to comply with the GDPR. This will apply where there are serious infringements and where the accountable individual at Board level is responsible as Data Controller’ (Ardi Kolah 2017).

person behind bars of a prison cell

A breach of GDPR could send you to prison

 

6. GDPR Protects Individuals & Your Customers

This should really be the number 1 reason. Genuinely customer centric businesses will list this as the number one reason.The General Data Protection Regulations protects individuals and their private data. It came into force 24th May 2016 (ie it was adopted by the European commission) and after a two year transition period, it becomes fully applicable 25th May 2018 across all 28 EU member states (UK is supposedly adopting EU laws). Are you ready? 

Shaking hands with each other

Adhering to GDPR can improve customer trust

 

Everyone Has Rights Under GDPR

Personal Data includes: genetic data, bio data, voice data, finger prints and recognition data, CCTV, photos, recorded calls, CRM and after sales, search strings, web reports systems log IP addresses, accounts and finance, financial records, HR records, communications tools such as emails messenger messages, social networks and marketing databases and profiles*.

Placard with 'Customers have Rights'

Customers have rights.

 

Customer Rights

Consent means that the customer freely gives his/her information and is informed of why it is being collected.

This should be documented and verifiable.

Data should be easy to find and easy to withdraw (if an individual, or ‘subject’ requests this).

Collecting & using data should be legitimate. NB using data for marketing may not be legitimate (unless you explicitly explain how it will be used e.g. to send you weekly emails).

Rights to information: transparency; concise policies in plain language; accountability; individual rights; Subject Access Request (SAR) is free of charge must be completed within one month.

  • Right to rectification: if data is inaccurate or incomplete.
  • Right to object to the Marketing Profiling and automated decision-making.
  • Right to data portability. Can get a copy that other companies can use in the required format. Provide all data in a format which third-party companies can easily process.
  • Right to erasure (the ‘right to be forgotten’)

Customer Rights: Nigel Miller, Fox Williams, Individuals Rights

Blurred man - the right to his data being erased

The right to be forgotten. Customers can ask for their data to be erased, wiped out or ‘forgotten’.

 

Essentially, GDPR requires ethical capture and ethical use of all customers’ personal data.

 

GDPR Applies to Every Organisation

GDPR applies to both B2C and B2B businesses and organisations established in the EU either as a Data Controller (DC) or a Data Processor (DP).  It also applies to ‘non EU DCs & DPs that offer goods or services in the EU (or who monitor the behaviour of individuals who are in the EU’) Ardi Kolah, Henley Business School.

GDPR even applies to robots – well if you consider Artificial Intelligence to be at the heart of robotics (more on AI and Robotics).

Accountability goes all the way up to the CEO.

 

GDPR Opportunity or Threat?

Some companies will go bust because of it. Some companies will see it as an opportunity to create/strengthen competitive advantage by improving the CX (Customer Experience) & adopt world-class marketing standards in data collection & protection, that reassure and satisfy customers.

Now It Is Easy To Report A Nuisance Call or Message 

It is getting easier for customers to complain about how they are being harassed by =nuisance phonecalls and spam emails. Here’s how easy it is in the UK to complain via the Information Commissioners Office (ICO).

How to complain about misuse of your data

ICO Tips on how to complain about misuse of your personal data

Summary

So there’s the Situation Analysis – customers, courts and regulatory bodies are tired of personal-data mis-use, or even sloppy personal-data management. So, manage your data very very carefully as neither customers nor courts will forgive you for any breaches of GDPR. Part 2 addresses setting your Objectives (where do you want to go with GDPR) and Strategies (how you are going to get there) i.e. to help you to plan to embrace GDPR in your business. Part 3 will look at the Tactics (the details of strategy), Actions (required to ensure excellent execution of GDPR) and finally, Control (how do you know you are always fully compliant with GDPR).

SOSTAC circle

 

References

Armstrong, Jonathan (2017) Cordery: ‘All you need to know about GDPR but were too afraid to ask’, GDPR Conference Europe, 27 Apr

Cameron, Gareth (2017) ICO: ‘The pathway to implementation’, GDPR Conference Europe, 27 Apr

Kolah, Ardi (2017) Henley Business School: Sizing the risk – carrying out a data protection impact assessment Lite

Miller, Nigel (2017) Fox Williams:  Individuals’ Rights Under The GDPR, GDPR Conference Europe, 27 Apr

McLannahan, B. &  & Cornish, C. (2017) Equifax hackers access details of 143m US consumers, FT 8 Sep

Smith, PR (2017) SOSTAC® Guide to your perfect digital marketing plan

SOSTAC® Portal for SOSTAC® Certified Planners

Thanks to 

Ardi Kolah, Executive Fellow & Programme Co-Director, GDPR Transition Programme, Henley Business school, University of Reading.

Nick James, CEO of Amplified Business Content, hosts of GDPR Europe Conference

 

If you enjoyed this, you might also like:

GDPR Opportunity or Threat To Your Business? (Part 2)

How Trump Won by analysing data to deliver extremely relevant and highly targeted messages that worked.

How To Write The Perfect Plan in 4 minutes using the SOSTAC ® Planning Framework (4 min. video)

The post GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) – Opportunity to Boost CX or a Threat of Closure? (Part 1) appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2017/05/19/gdpr-general-data-protection-regulations-opportunity-to-boost-cx-or-threat-of-closure-part-1/feed/ 9 1231
How Trump Won (a SOSTAC Analysis) – Part 1 https://prsmith.org/2017/01/20/how-trump-won-a-sostac-analysis/ https://prsmith.org/2017/01/20/how-trump-won-a-sostac-analysis/#comments Fri, 20 Jan 2017 18:39:28 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=1137 Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column. Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in […]

The post How Trump Won (a SOSTAC Analysis) – Part 1 appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column.
Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in the Clubhouse App on Fridays at 1pm.

Many are still wondering how Donald Trump became president of the United States Of America, despite himself? Here’s an analysis, using SOSTAC® Planning Framework to explore some of Trump’s plan and to give some insights into his subsequent successful campaign. Comments are most welcome. Situation analysis (where are you now) , Objectives (where are you going?), Strategy (how do you get there?), Tactics (the details of strategy), Action (how do you ensure excellent execution) and Control (how do you know you are getting there – what will you measure?). I will use these to categorise various aspect of the Trump campaign but please remember this is just an outline not an in-dept detailed analysis.

SOSTAC circular graphic showing all 6 steps

PR Smith’s SOSTAC® Planning Framework

 

Situation Analysis

Customer Analysis

Who – are Trump’s potential voters?

Trump focused on “left-behind” voters, specifically white working-class men (and women). He initially gambled on targeting one powerful voting bloc, (some pollsters thought this would alienate too many people) suggests Harvard’s professor Stephen Greyse (Fottrell 2016).   Clinton’s target audience was far broader, reaching out to the middle-class and “left-out” voters and black and Latino ‘left-out’ voters (many of whom had not yet a slice of the American pie). A month before the elections Trump had 57k transactors (contributors) of whom 68% were male and 32% were female, compared to Clinton who had 914k transactors of whom 36% were male and 64%  were female. Far more variables were eventually used to segment the market into dozens of target segments. In fact, a small English company who had also worked on the Brexit ‘Leave’ campaign for UKIP, worked for Trump and divided the US population into 32 personality types, and focused on just 17 states (see part 3).

Why – do Trump’s potential voters vote (what are their needs)?

Many people wanted change. Many others were frustrated and maybe even angry about their lives. Some have fears rather than hope. Is it possible that Trump’s upbeat’ #MakeAmericaGreatAgain or #MAGA hashtag played into the unconscious fears that if you don’t vote for Trump, America will get worse ie whatever is bad about America will become far worse? See the word-cloud graphics (in the final, ‘Control’ section) which demonstrates how Trump repeated these messages.

What the elite missed was the sources of the anger & resentment that has lead to the populist upheavals in the US & Britain & many other parts of the world (Harvard’s Professor Michael Sandel 2017).

Why were voters angry? What the elite missed was the sources of the anger & resentment that has lead to the populist upheavals in the US & Britain & many other parts of the world. (They) assumed it’s anger against immigration and trade and at the heart of that is jobs. But it’s also about even bigger things., about the loss of community, disempowerment, & social esteem (a sense that the work that ordinary people do is no longer honoured & recognised (& rewarded).’ Sandel 2017)

How – do Trump’s potential voters decide (how do they process information)?

Shorter attention spans. Research from Harvard revealed that attention spans for the first ever telivised political debate between JFK and Nixon back in 1960, was only 42 seconds (the maximum time to get a serious political message across). This fell to just 5 seconds in 2008 and even less since in 2012. There are many other variables involved here also, but, short attention spans is significant and perhaps gives a clue why Britain voted marginally for Brexit (short anti-EU messages had far more impact than long economic pro EU messages). 

Voter Personality Analysis – Cambridge Analytica & Trump

UK Company Cambridge Analytica analysed facebook data of millions of adult Americans, so that they could categorise personality types and then subsequently send them tailored messages that reflect their specific needs. ‘The company’s former boss, Alexander Nix, claimed, before the election, to have predicted the Big 5 score (personality analysis) of every adult in America. On Facebook, hundreds of ads were posted everyday targeted at specific personality types tailored towards people’s innermost fears, needs and emotions.’ BBC News 2018

It used an algorithm that analyses what people like (and don’t like ) on facebook to predict your personality. With just 10 likes it can predict what kind of person your are, better than your colleagues can. With 300 likes analysed, it knows your personality more accurately than your spouse does.

For more frightening insights into how this analytic tools and subsequent tailor-made ads were targeted precisely to each personality type, see The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture – Using Data & IRD when a Cambridge Analytica whistleblower reveals the dark marketing techniques that were employed.

Major Market Trend – A Gap In The Market

We live in a post truth-era. ‘Dishonesty in politics is nothing new; but the manner in which some politicians now lie, and the havoc they may wreak by doing so, are worrying’ says the  Economist magazine (2016). The worrying phrase ‘post-truth’ was even named Word Of The Year by Oxford Dictionaries (Flood 2016). Defined by the dictionary as an adjective “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”. The spike in usage, it said, is “in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States”.

This is compounded by the moral vacuum which opens the gates for extremist politicians. Here is Harvard Professor Michael Sandel’s chilling observation: “… in the face of pluralism  and for the sake of toleration … to insist on a non-judgemental, value-free politics .. that creates a moral vacuum , a void, that will invariably will be filled  by narrow, intolerant moralisms.” Sandel (2017)

 

Competitor Analysis

During the Republican nomination race, Trump saw a right-wing gap and went for it. He also analysed the political establishment through the eyes of disenchanted voters. Trump became the Republican candidate for the presidential election. Next, he analysed his opposition, the Democrats’, Hilary Clinton. When he found a perceived weakness that resonated with his voters (see the Control section in part 2) he went for it. President Obama had unprecedented success in targeting, organizing and motivating voters, we imagine Trump’s team studied this blog post How Obama Became America’s First Black President to understand his competitor’s strategy and tactics.

This photo of Obama's Chair from behind, in the Oval office, This image went viral during the 2008 campaign with the caption: 'This seat is taken'

This image went viral during the 2008 campaign with the caption: ‘This seat is taken’

Current Performance

With the election just a month away, donations raised by October 2016: Clinton had $298m from 914,000 transactors (donors) and Trump had just $50.1m from 57,000 donors (Cortana et al).

Opinion polls favoured Clinton.

Objectives

Originally to win the Republican Nomination and then, win the presidential election (after that we just don’t know).

 

Strategy

Old Strategy

Trump initially raised his own profile by making headline-grabbing statements, often by calling in to television shows, supplemented by a rally once or twice a week to provide the appearance of a traditional campaign (Bertoni 2016).

New Strategy

Trump’s crystal clear positioning as the ‘controversial (non-establishment) ordinary guy’  was supported by data driven highly targeted tailored messages on facebook & twitter to “left-behind”  white working-class men (and women), combined with sentiment manipulation, machine learning, constant beta culture and, almost instant, reactions to audience mood swings

Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner, took over the campaign, created this new strategy and, amongst other things,  set up a secret data operation-like a Silicon Valley startup. ‘Kushner eventually tipped the states that swung the election. And he did so in a manner that will change the way future elections will be won and lost.’ (Bertoni 2016).

Positioning

Trump positioned himself as a non-establishment guy. An ‘outsider’a ‘non-political establishment guy’.   He simultaneously positioned Clinton as an establishment person. An ‘insider’ (a politician linked to Obama’s policies) (Kanski 2016). Trump played the confrontational card which helped him to establish authenticity amongst frustrated voters. So he became a ‘controversial (non-establishment) ordinary guy’.

Meanwhile, Trump positioned Clinton as an untrustworthy ‘insider’ and threatened to take her to court after the election. Clinton’s authenticity was challenged by high-lighting the fact that ‘she seemed to say one thing in her speeches and another behind the scenes, illustrated in her emails leaked by Wikileaks and “basket of deplorables” comments (Kanski 2016). The CIA revelations days before the vote appeared to attack Clinton’s authenticity. Or was all this information fed by the Russians? There’s definitely a movie in this story.

‘controversial (non-establishment) ordinary guy’    v     untrustworthy ‘insider’ establishment lady

 

Was it like this?

a perceptual map showing trump positioned as a non-establishment reasonably trustworthy guy and Clinton as an establishment lady and untrustworthy

a possible perceptual map

 

Apart from Clinton’s followers, one wonders whether the average American could relate to Clinton as easily as they could to Trump (or Obama in the previous two elections).

The ‘Ordinary (non-establishment) Guy’ Created Authenticity

While Trump followers believed Trump had authenticity as he, rightly or wrongly, ‘says it like it is’.  The difference in authenticity, according to Kanski, was simply that ‘People can relate to bankruptcies, to locker room talk, to tough talk on terrorism, and that was the difference. Whilst Trump might be a billionaire, but he’s been bankrupt, uses locker-room talk i.e. his life experiences somehow seemed to resonate more with the average undecided voter.’  

People viewing New York

ordinary people

Freight trains

white working class

Industrial buildings

blue collar workers

Targeting

Trump stayed focused on the “left-behind” voters, specifically white working-class men (and women). As mentioned earlier, this was deemed risky (targeting one powerful voting bloc).  Clinton’s target audience, on the other hand, was far broader, reaching out to the middle-class and black and Latino ‘left-out’ voters (many of whom had not yet a slice of the American pie). Trump’s relentless use of data continually sharpened his targeting of those battleground states (the ‘swing states’, that over recent elections have gone both ways). They are the key to winning the election. In recent elections Florida and Ohio (3rd and 7th largest states, with 29 and 18 electoral votes respectively) have been swinging back and forth between the parties.

Data-driven Decision Making

Within three weeks, in a nondescript building outside San Antonio, Kushner had built what would become a 100-person data hub designed to make more informed decisions (which leveraged the magic marketing formula – see part 2) across a selection of decision points regarding:

  • messages (topics of speeches)
  • targeting
  • travelling / rally locations
  • fundraising

Arial view of on American city showing the grids

Kushner built a custom geo-location tool that plotted the location density of about 20 voter types over a live Google Maps interface

Trump combined his crystal clear ‘non-establishment’ positioning, data-driven targeting, with agile use of the Magic Marketing Formula to win. His subsequent tactics were driven by the over-riding strategy. Part 2 explores the second half of SOSTAC® – Tactics (including the Magic Marketing Formula), Action and Control.

See How Trump Won (part 2) – using The Magic Marketing Formula – a SOSTAC® Analysis and later  – How Big data was used to win the election (part 3).

You might also enjoy:How Obama Became America’s First Black President

You might not enjoy, but perhaps need to see this video on behavioural analytics and precision targeting:
The Dark Arts Of Marketing – Breaking Down Society to Create a New Culture – Using Data & IRD

How SOSTAC® Works – a 4 minute video by PR Smith

The SOSTAC® Guide to your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan 

For more on SOSTAC® Planning System and Certified SOSTAC® Planners see www.PRSmith.org/SOSTAC

SOSTAC Guide To Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan

The new SOSTAC (r) Guide for Digital Marketers

Become a SOSTAC® Certified Planner  visit www.SOSTAC.org

 

Sources:

Bertoni, S. (2016)   How Jared Kushner Won Trump The White House , Forbes December 20

Economist (2016) The post-truth world: Yes, I’d lie to you, 10 Sep 

Flood, A. (2016) ‘Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries, The Guardian, 15 Nov.

Kanski, A. (2016) Change and authenticity: The messages that won over American voters, PR Week 09 Nov.

The post How Trump Won (a SOSTAC Analysis) – Part 1 appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2017/01/20/how-trump-won-a-sostac-analysis/feed/ 12 1137
SOSTAC ® Planning – integration, engagement & analytics https://prsmith.org/2016/05/12/sostac-planning-integration-engaement-analytics/ https://prsmith.org/2016/05/12/sostac-planning-integration-engaement-analytics/#respond Thu, 12 May 2016 15:12:02 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=1059 Short post – just a slide show for you – how to use SOSTAC® Planning – integration, engagement & analytics presented at the SOSTAC® Planning – integration, engagement & analytics  Vlerick Marketing Colloquium #COLLO16 . Any problems with the above link – try this http://www.slideshare.net/prsmith Good luck with it. SOSTAC Certification Portal          

The post SOSTAC ® Planning – integration, engagement & analytics appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Short post – just a slide show for you – how to use SOSTAC® Planning – integration, engagement & analytics presented at the SOSTAC® Planning – integration, engagement & analytics  Vlerick Marketing Colloquium #COLLO16 .

SOSTAC(r) Planning - offline & online -integration, innovation & engagement

SOSTAC(r) Planning – offline & online -integration, innovation & engagement

Any problems with the above link – try this http://www.slideshare.net/prsmith

Good luck with it.

SOSTAC Certification Portal

 

 

 

 

 

The post SOSTAC ® Planning – integration, engagement & analytics appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2016/05/12/sostac-planning-integration-engaement-analytics/feed/ 0 1059
Persuasion & Motivation: Cialdini’s 6 Rules Of Persuasion https://prsmith.org/2015/09/26/persuasion-motivation-cialdinis-6-rules-of-persuasion/ https://prsmith.org/2015/09/26/persuasion-motivation-cialdinis-6-rules-of-persuasion/#comments Sat, 26 Sep 2015 14:25:00 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=844 Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column. Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in […]

The post Persuasion & Motivation: Cialdini’s 6 Rules Of Persuasion appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column.
Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in the Clubhouse App on Fridays at 1pm.

Robert Cialdini’s, Influence – the psychology of persuasion is one of the all time classic books on marketing psychology. Although originally written in the 1980s, digital marketing gurus refer to it today as a digital marketing mantra. It really is an amazing book. One that can change your  perspective on the world around us, as well as boost your marketing skills enormously. Amongst other things, Cialdini reveals how brain washing American Soldiers occurs and most interestingly, Cialdini makes a plea at the end of the book to boycott TV programmes with false laughter (as we are being manipulated!). Anyways, here’s Cialdini’s 6 rules of persuasion distilled onto one page. Essential stuff in our quest to answer customer question number 2 (‘Why do they buy/not buy or visit /not visit) from the big 3 customer questions which form a large part of the Situation Analysis in any plan. 


Situation Analysis Customer Analysis Has 3 Key Questions. Here’s the first:

1. Why do your customers buy/not buy?  

To answer this we need to understand motivation and persuasion. Here’s the masterpiece by Robert Cialdini and his 6 Rules of Persuasion – they help to answer this big question (particularly when applied online).

Two arms outstretched with fingers almost touching

The art of persuasion has many dimensions

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 1.   Reciprocity‘if I do something for you, you will probably do something for me’   e.g. free samples 
 2.   Liking – People are easily persuaded by other people they like e.g. ‘like’ my page (hence physical attractive staff in a store)  
 3.    Social proofing – People will do things what they see others do e.g. product  ratings on a web site; Linkedin Endorsements & Recommendations, Customer Comments
 4.   Scarcity – the products that are almost out of stock are the most attractive ones e.g. Booking.com: only 3 rooms left; 2 seats left on plane
 5.   Commitment – If people commit, orally or in writing, to an idea or goal, they  are more likely to honor that commitment  e.g. Amazon’s wish list 
 6.   Authority – People do what authorities or experts (will) do e.g. Expert Recommendations; Awards; Qualifications; Trade Body Memberships

Cialdini, R (1984, 2007) Influence – the psychology of persuasion, Collins

The ‘Why?’ question is arguably the most difficult of the 3 key customer questions, which you must be able to answer as a world-class marketer. Why do people buy or not buy? Why do they visit your site once but not return? Why did they visit a competitor’s site? Why did they visit a second time but not complete their purchase? Why did Trump win? Why did BREXIT happen (see The Dark Web & Subliminal Seduction)?

Carole Cadwalladr TED Talk

Carole Cadwalladr TED Talk explores how data, images and ads in the dark-web influenced voters to vote for BREXIT without them really knowing why!

‘Why do our customers do what they do?’ is a really perplexing, yet critical, question all marketers need to answer, with crystal clear clarity.

The other two big customer questions you need to master are ‘Who? and ‘How?’. Each of these has 10 sub-questions all answered in SOSTAC® Guide To Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan, (PR Smith 2019). Answering these questions will help you to boost results with better marketing.  To see how to write an integrated digital marketing plan (including strategy) and/or the perfect structure for a marketing plan or even a business plan, watch this 4 minute (video www.prsmith.org/sostac).

See also Research Driven Shock Motivation Ad Uses Magic Formula & Goes Viral .

Finally, you might also enjoy Ian Clery’s 5 min video Influence and the Sales Funnel using Cialdini’s 6 rules as it helps to answer this most difficult question ‘Why?’.

 

 

The post Persuasion & Motivation: Cialdini’s 6 Rules Of Persuasion appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2015/09/26/persuasion-motivation-cialdinis-6-rules-of-persuasion/feed/ 2 844
Beware: Customers See Your Competitive Advantage Differently https://prsmith.org/2015/09/10/beware-customers-see-your-competitive-advantage-differently/ https://prsmith.org/2015/09/10/beware-customers-see-your-competitive-advantage-differently/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2015 17:11:06 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=837 Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column. Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in […]

The post Beware: Customers See Your Competitive Advantage Differently appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column.
Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in the Clubhouse App on Fridays at 1pm.

You simply have to see the world through your customers eyes. Customer empathy is a great skill. Not just for tactical marketers but for CEOs searching restlessly for competitive advantage.  Urbany & Davis (2007) Competitive Advantage ‘The 3 Circle Model’ is simply brilliant. It can be explained in 3 minutes in the this video or read the notes below.

 

So here’s the very simple yet enlightening Urbany and Davis 3 circle model.  Consider the 3 core concepts of Company, Customers and Competition. This is the Customer Circle

 

circle

It represents the value sought by the customer – the requirements and benefits that they seek.  These requirements and benefits may include deeper values. Essentially the Customer Circle represents what the customer wants or what value the customer is seeking.

 

The second circle is your Company Circle.

circle2

It represents the value customers perceive, or think, you offer to them.  This is the way they see it. You have to understand this. The area in the middle within the broken lines (i.e. the overlapping area in the middle) and this is Positive Value. This is the value you/your brand is perceived to deliver to satisfy customer needs. The area on the left  is ‘Non-Value’, which Urbany and Davis describe as ‘the product or service you produce that the customer either doesn’t care about, or perhaps, doesn’t know about.’   The area on the right is called ‘Unmet Need’. Urbany and Davis describe these as ‘customer needs that are not satisfied by your products and services and hence they offer a possible future growth opportunity.’

 

The third circle (below the other two circles) is called the Competitor Circle.circle3

The competitor circle is the piece of the jig saw. It soon opens up a whole new way of thinking…… The competitor circle represents what value does the customer perceive in your competitor’s offering.  It’s a Venn diagram. The overlapping shaded area at the top is ‘the pure definition of competitive advantage’.   As Urbany and Davis say, ‘this is the value that you create that matters to customers, but, that is different to competition. This is why people choose us.’ This is part of your Strengths & Weakness Analysis which is part of the Situation Analysis is the first part of  your marketing plan  (using SOSTAC ® Plan)

So the next big question for you is ‘What’s your competitive advantage?’ This excellent question forces you to begin the process of defining your distinctive competitive advantage.  Try asking six different members of your team, you might just get six different answers! You’ve got more work to do with your internal communications…….!

The above is extracted from PR Smith SOSTAC® Guide To Your Perfect Digital Marketing Plan (2015) and Professor Urbani’s Youtube video (see above).

Footnote:
2/3 Companies Think They Deeply Know Their Customers  But Only 1/3 Of Customers Agree
 Shaded waist coat man talking to women 1 copy

A recent survey by Pegasystems to see how well businesses in service-centric industries like banking and telco believe they serve their customers compared to what customers are actually experiencing revealed that 66 percent of companies think they deeply know their customers, but only 34 percent of consumers agree with them (Tas 2015). So perhaps your customers do not see your products’ competitive advantage the way, you think, they should see it! Your  competitive advantage may actually be a lot more than that which customers perceive. But it is what customers think, & not reality, that actually creates competitive advantage in the mind of your customers. Urbani captures this brilliantly.

–end—

Regarding Competitive Advantage, How Integrated Content Marketing Creates Competitive Advantage shows you how to use marketing content to create competitive advantage.

The post Beware: Customers See Your Competitive Advantage Differently appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2015/09/10/beware-customers-see-your-competitive-advantage-differently/feed/ 8 837
Social Listening Skills (part 2/2) https://prsmith.org/2014/02/02/listening-skills-digital-media-listening-tools-part-22/ https://prsmith.org/2014/02/02/listening-skills-digital-media-listening-tools-part-22/#comments Sun, 02 Feb 2014 13:10:07 +0000 https://prsmith.org/?p=534 Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column. Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in […]

The post Social Listening Skills (part 2/2) appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
Thank you for reading this. If you would like alerts about my future posts please enter your email address in the ‘Subscribe to Marketing Insights’ in the right-hand column.
Perhaps also connect with me on   Twitter      Linkedin     Instagram       Youtube    or in our weekly chat in the SOSTAC® Plans Club in the Clubhouse App on Fridays at 1pm.

In Part 1, I talked about the old marketing ship is sinking. Less interruption and more listening, including how harnessing the listening process can change a business’s modus operandi.  Now let’s explore the different Listening Tools and how to choose one that might work for you.

Social Listening

Social Listening is now part of the discipline of marketing

Photo: Courtesy of DavyMac.com

There are many types of listening tools (also  called ‘social listening tools’ or ‘social monitoring tools’), some free, others are not. Major brands, with active online conversations, tend to prefer the paid-for tools as they are designed for efficient workflow (data integration, linked to prospecting/sales funnel systems, CRM systems and data reports). While smaller businesses or brands that operate in discrete niches often find the paid- for tools to be less effective, and prefer to use the free tools.

Paid For Listening Tools:

There are many other paid-for listening tools – each has their own free trials and demonstrations which are worth exploring:

Free Listening Tools:

  • IMG_0819Google Alerts (basic monitoring for key words across online publications mentioned under ‘influencers’ also)
  • Social Mention   searches user-generated content such as blogs, comments, bookmarks, events, news, videos, and more.
  • TwitterSearch as mentioned you can search  search by topic, people, hashtags,  words, exact phrase,  near this place
  • BoardReader is a search engine for forums and boards.  
  • Google Blog Search – searches millions of feed-enabled blogs. Users can search for blogs or blog posts, and can narrow their search.
  • YahooPipes   is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor.
  • WhosTalkin.com searches for conversations around your topics.

More on social listening on p235- 240 in Emarketing Excellence (2012) which I  co-authored with Dave Chaffey.     

Listen To Your Logo

You can now track your logo usage online across the world to measure sponsorship, social media (e.g. photos with your logo in them) or to track illegal use of your logo. Talkwalker.com now uses facial recognition technology to offer this paid-for service.

Which Social Listening Tool?

Check if the listening tools deduplicate comments, chuck out spam etc. Can the tool go backwards in time (monitor the last 12 months of conversations)? Check who collects the information – the tool itself or if they use 3rd parties (and if 3rd parties how long can they search backwards)?

Does the tool identify influencers in specific conversations or across complete sectors? Can the tool identify which topics generate volume of responses or which topics affect sentiment? How do you pay for it? Is it pay per search, per license, per month or per client.  Costs and charges can be per annum, per month, per license/user, per search, per client, number of profiles tracked, volume of data collected,, number of users (check for ‘no hidden costs’).

Check if the social monitoring tool can:

  • Monitor heavy traffic sites like twitter and youtube to identify new threats (or opportunities) before they go viral.
  • Measure how much traffic and/or conversions (sales) are generated by these ‘conversations
  • See how brand sentiment changes during  after (or during) a communications campaign

For more issues to consider when buying a social media listening tool  see my Emarketing Excellence, co-author, Dave Chaffey’s  Smart Insights summary of the requirements .  It is critical to decide what exactly you want to find out and how you might want to use this information.

Here’s a free comparison of 36 social media listening tools and although it is 2009 (and many tools have changed) it does discuss criteria in a succinct way.  Alternatively you could pay £3,500 for a comparison of social media tools report from Ideya (2013). There are now some 250 social media listening tools available now (about 50 are free or partially free). Here’s a selection of free tools.

Measure

Results metrics

By measuring and reporting the results on a regular basis, e.g. monthly, it does help to focus the mind on how you are performing online across a range of social media platforms. Some basic metrics include:

  • Number of Followers / Fans / Friends
  • Engagement Level (% that are engaging /sharing/commenting/liking)
  • Klout Score (measures your twitter influence ie followers and engagement)
  • Mentions (brand)
  • Sentiment Score (positive or negative mentions)
  • Inbound Links
  • Traffic from specific sources
  • Share Of Voice (SOV) today is more than the old  ‘volume of advertising you own in your market market’. It is more complex and includes total number of mentions on Blogs,   Boards and Forums, Social     Networks, Video and Photo Sharing not to mention, aggregating the  positive and negative comments.

 

 

 

 

Benefits Of Social Listening

 

  • Listening-2_thumb.jpgAccess free market research
  • Build credibility (show you care by answering questions, offering advice and helpful tips)
  • Reinforce brand values (maintain the brand values, brand personality and brand tone)
  • Build a presence – boost awareness
  • Boost Traffic & SEO Rankings via your digital footprint  inbound links to your website will increase
  • Eventually sell more via identifying needs/issues/problems/desires and occasionally offering relevant solutions.

Summary

For now, if you are a small business about to explore social listening try the free tools such as Google Alerts, Twitter search and Social Mention. If you are a bigger business with more established brands, use the paid-for tools that easily integrate into your workflow systems (see criteria above). Either way,  a process needs to be developed to (a) extract the insights and (b) take action (based on the insights). Be active yet be selective – you can’t cover everything so select carefully the topics and the range of platforms but don’t leave conversations that you engage in unanswered. Build ‘listening’ into your team’s daily operations. Allocate resource to it. Social Listening is now part of the systematic discipline of marketing.

 

References

Chaffey, D. & Smith, PR  (2012) Emarketing Excellence (4th ed) – planning and optimizing your digital marketing, Routledge

Johnson, R. (2010) Why Share of Voice Is Important for Brands, Social Media Today

Smith, PR (2013) Listening Skills & Digital Marketing Listening Tools (part 1/2)

The post Social Listening Skills (part 2/2) appeared first on PR Smith Marketing.

]]>
https://prsmith.org/2014/02/02/listening-skills-digital-media-listening-tools-part-22/feed/ 15 534