It’s now been over 130 years since retail magnate John Wanamaker said “It’s the most famous problem in marketing. I know only half of my advertising works. The problem is, I don’t know which half.”

The ingredient list for today's marketing mix just keeps getting longer. The question every marketer asks themselves is how do I balance and prioritize my efforts between short-term sales activity and long-term brand building?

The Triple Threat Model
​In basketball, the most effective player on the court is the one who can impact the game in multiple ways and not just by scoring. The player is coined a “Triple Threat,” as they excel in all three key skills — passing, rebounding, and scoring.
​
How does this relate to marketing, you might ask? Well, based on my experience in marketing within agencies, technology vendors, and brands — plus supported by research performed by the “Godfathers of Advertising,” Les Binet and Peter Field — I’ve identified three key moments that marketers should master. I crafted a model which aligns the mega, macro, and micro of marketing campaigns to enable short-term results and long-term brand building.

Mega Marketing — Creating Brand Cut-Through
Audience: Mass Market
Medium: Broadcast, Print Media, and Out-Of-Home
​
A successful mega-marketing campaign drives brand awareness, sparks conversation, and ultimately, fosters loyalty. Most big brands launch a campaign like this yearly and, based on the research from Binet and Field, emotional brand building is the key to long-term profits.

Macro Marketing — Driving Sales Activation
Audience: Targeted Segments
Medium: Website, Display, Search, Social, Email & SMS
​
Effective macro-marketing campaigns target specific audiences, demand engagement, promote value and ultimately, drive sales. Most of these campaigns are tied to a commercial or seasonal calendar such as Christmas, tax time or holiday periods and excel with the use of rational-based messaging.
​

Nike is one of the few brands that doesn’t need to rely on discounts to drive sales. They provide their customers value by encouraging them to sign up to exclusive content, products, and offers via email. Throughout the different seasons, they introduce new looks and trends straight to the inbox and their customers anticipate each new release.

Micro Marketing — Earning Customer Loyalty
Audience: 1:1 Messaging
Medium: Email, SMS, Push, Direct Mail
​
Data-driven, micro-marketing campaigns typically are hyper-personalized and loyalty-focused, and ultimately, enable memorable experiences. Most of these campaigns are predictable in nature and are triggered based on a customer’s interaction with a brand.

After spending the last 10 years of my career working with marketers and leading customer experience with some of the world’s most trusted brands, I thought it was about time I grounded myself in my own research project – to speak with and learn from 50 marketers in just 50 days.

To be honest it seemed like an achievable challenge – didn’t anticipate that organising 50 different marketers diaries was near impossible. I was successful however and the conversations were invaluable. I was lucky enough to meet with CMOs from all over Asia Pacific across retail and banking to not-for-profit.

Importance of customer experience
​One thing that we all agreed on during the 50 days was how customer experience continues to become more important and is quickly becoming the new competitive battleground for brands. The investment today in global customer engagement is north of $3.6 billion dollars according to multiple marketing reports. Marketers understand the importance of technology and data to deliver great customers experiences, however most aren’t achieving the results they were promised or thought were possible.

Decreasing budgets
The fact that many marketers aren’t getting the return on their technology investment may have something to do with the fact that marketing budgets have decreased for the first time in four years according to Gartner’s latest Spend Survey. Marketing leaders must now justify their past spend and show the returns they deliver. It is clear that expectations in the boardroom are not being met and it’s time to show results that are actually delivering real business outcomes.

The biggest hit has been the investment in martech as it has fallen by 15%. CMOs are pulling back on last year’s high spending commitment amid concerns over marketing’s capability to acquire and manage technology effectively. The need today is far greater than it has ever been in re-evaluating your technology investment, reviewing the capabilities of your resources internally, and creating alignment across the whole business.

Setting Priorities
So what becomes extremely important as marketing budgets are shrinking? Combining the right marketing platform with the right people to execute your strategy successfully.

Over time the obsession for marketers investing in shiny objects has led them to some cold hard truths. In the Mad Men era marketers invested heavily in agencies to think creatively about how they could advertise and communicate their brand to the masses. Many strategically sound concepts were presented. Fast-forward to today and marketers are investing heavily into marketing clouds and futuristic-sounding technology to advertise and communicate their brand at a 1-to-1 level. Technology is not a strategy. It is an enabler to help you implement and achieve your strategic vision.

Mark Ritson, award winning columnist and marketing professor, said shiny objects such as virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence etc. are distracting us from our real jobs and the big challenges that we are all facing. He said, “The history of marketing is not filled with death. It is filled with evolution and change. Disruption use to look like a VHS recorder. When it was launched in Australia we all assumed that cinemas would die. Except they didn’t. They thrived and they had their best decade.” History tells us we learn to live together and blend together. Things slow down. This same theory goes for marketing. The tactics may be changing but the fundamentals stay the same.

Use design thinking
Elon Musk has pioneered and transformed industries with the launch of Tesla and SpaceX. Musk is the type of businessman who learns by doing. His businesses thrive using the principles of design thinking, in which they are constantly prototyping and failing quickly in order to progress. Tesla however has faced mounting public pressure amid a production slowdown for its Model 3, its lower-priced car. The company recently revealed that it missed its target to produce 2,500 cars a week, disappointing investors.

Musk made a bold statement following the news. “Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake. To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.” In this one statement he summarises the issue most marketers are facing: the relationship between people and technology. Many of us have shifted to relying more on technology than human beings.

Rely on people
​In today’s marketing landscape, you should be increasing your reliance on people and partnerships that align with your desired business outcomes. Businesses need to create internal alignment across five key organisational pillars: Brand, Strategy, Technology, Performance, and Experience.

There isn’t a magic marketing machine that will do all of this for you. You need great colleagues. You need excellent marketing partners. And in many cases, you’ll want a level of service with your marketing technology. Software has led many companies to create self-service portals and automated support, and marketers are starting to feel this backlash. Despite technological advancements, sometimes you need a pat on the back and to hear someone say, “we’ve got that covered for you.”
​
People aren’t talked about as much these days. We’re intrigued by AI, machine learning, VR, AR, and other newer technologies. After many years of marketing to marketers and cramming in 50 meetings with marketing leaders into 50 days, it is clear to me that we can start to solve the marketing performance problem with people, strategic alignment, and plain-old execution.

​How do you get people to change behaviour and do the right thing? How do you incentivise doing good? Volkswagen answered these questions with The Fun Theory. They staged four different public interventions: a piano staircase, a bin with a fifty-foot drop, the bottle-bank arcade, fast lanes in supermarkets and subways and a speed-camera lottery. Another example of a smart strategy and great design!

I was on the phone to a friend of mine the other day, and I was talking about how much I was craving Vegemite. A few hours later, when I opened up Facebook, the first thing I saw was an ad for Vegemite!! How weird!! Has Facebook been listening to my phone calls? Does this sound familiar?...Well it could actually be true!

​Earlier today I came across a tweet from Dylan McKay claiming that he'd downloaded his Facebook data as a zip file and it bizarrely included his entire call and sms history. See for yourself.​

So I decided to do some digging into my own Facebook data. After downloading my personal data directly from Facebook I realised the immense amount of data they have available on me i.e. my posts, messenger activity, timeline, friends, places I have been, ads I have interacted with, instagram specific interactions and strangely my entire phone contact list. I admit, I was aware of most of this data being available however not my phone contact list.
​
​Access your own Facebook data by going to settings and clicking on the "Download a copy" link. Example below.

​

Companies regardless of them being a fashion retailer or technology giant need to give control back to their customers. Allow your customers access to control the information you have, the information you collect and more importantly the information you use. This should also be designed in a way that is clear and simple to understand - not designed in a way that is strategically complicated so users abandon the process.

It seems Facebook has worked tirelessly over the years to gather as much data on users as it can – and to profit from it. As of the fourth quarter of 2017, Facebook had 2.2 billion monthly active users. Facebook's revenue grew from 7.87 billion in 2013 to 40.7 billion US dollars in 2017, it accumulated a net income of 15.9 billion US dollars and majority of that revenue was generated via advertising.
​

In 2004 Zuckerburg used the term “Dumb fucks” when he described the users of Facebook for trusting him with their personal data.  Zuckerberg also talked about what Facebook insiders called radical transparency, an idea that partly amounted to an insistence that old ideas about privacy were becoming outdated. “To get people to the point where there’s more openness – that’s a big challenge,” Zuckerberg said. “But I think we’ll do it. I just think it will take time. The concept that the world will be better if you share more is something that’s pretty foreign to a lot of people, and it runs into all these privacy concerns.” 

Facebook has gone to great lengths to convince members of the public that it’s all about “connecting people” and “building a global community”. In 2016 this became the tale of Facebook & Cambridge Analytica, a saga that highlights the awful mess that the biggest player in billions of online lives has enabled. If you aren’t familiar with the story Cambridge Analytica spent more than $1 million dollars harvesting personal data through Facebook so they could micro-target you with advertising. Advertising which Christopher Wylie (ex Director of Research at Cambridge Analytica) claims is grossly unethical and uses new constructs of psychology to target you based on personality. He say’s they used apps such as games that have special behaviours that harvest your data and pull all your friends data while they are at it. Once they have this data they know how to talk to you, via what medium and how often they have to show you a message in order to change your behaviour. This strategy is what most claim was used in the 2016 US presidential election which led to Donald Trumps success and in the same year Brexit. Chris says they are responsible for creating the worlds largest psychological warfare tool and full service propaganda machine who can influence how people behave and react. They did this by whispering in the ear of each and every voter using Facebook. In my opinion this is one of the worlds biggest data breaches.

To dig more into the revelations surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal click here.

​Well I’m not Elon Musk and won’t make headlines about joining the #DeleteFacebook movement, but I plan on taking a stance. Data should be treated like a precious gift and until Facebook start to take peoples data more seriously I will be deleting my personal account.

Actions speak louder then words Mark. Make it happen!

2015 was the year of the Customer Journey, 2016 was the year of Design Thinking....so what's does 2017 have in store for businesses and marketers across the globe?

To find an answer I decided to do some research on how the economy has changed over the last 50 years. It was evident that consumers are willing to pay a premium for a product or service based on it's perceived value; such as does it save me time? does it create a memorable experience? does it have long lasting qualities?

Thanks to Joseph Pine II and James H Gilmore they made it quite simple to understand with an article on HBR called 'Welcome To The Experience Economy.' They simplify the entire history of economic progress across the four stages of evolution using a birthday cake as the example:

1. The Commodities Economy: As the agrarian economy advanced, mothers made birthday cakes from scratch, mixing farm commodities such as flour, sugar, butter and eggs. That together it would cost a dollar - however it took time to buy the ingredients and make the cake.
   
   
2. The Goods Economy: As the goods-based industrial economy boomed, mothers paid a few dollars to Betty Crocker for premixed ingredients, where all you had to do was follow the recipe and bake the cake - you saved time and ingredients by buying it all in one box.
   
   
3. The Services Economy: When the service economy took hold, busy parents ordered quality made cakes from the bakery or grocery store. It would cost $10-$15, far more then packaged ingredients however it was convenient, desirable and saved you time in the kitchen.
   
   
4. The Experiences Economy: In the time starved late 90's, parents neither make the birthday cake nor even throw the party. Instead, they spend $100 or more to outsource the entire birthday event to Mc'Donald's so they can stage a memorable event for the kids - and the cake is thrown in for free.
   
   

An experience occurs when a company intentionally uses services as the stage, and goods as props, to engage individual customers in a way that creates memorable events. Experiences have always been at the heart of the entertainment business - think Walt Disney. However if you could charge admission for consumers to interact and engage with your brand, what would you do differently? - thats a good place to start brainstorming.

2. Customer Journey Management
Enabling organisations to effectively segment customers and build behaviour-driven journeys through the creation of automated activities prompted by real-time events. These activities send the right message, through the right channel, at the right time, to the right individual, based on their behaviour. The key to doing this successfully is researching and understanding the journeys your customers go through when interacting with your company; whether it be for a product, service, issue, delivery etc.

3. Marketing Automation
There are plenty of technologies designed for marketing departments and organisations to more effectively communicate on multiple channels (such as email, social media, print, websites, etc.) Marketing automation technologies also create operational efficiencies as they can automate repetitive tasks such as data imports.

Here are few marketing automation tools:

- Salesforce Marketing Cloud
- Adobe Marketing Cloud
- Marketo
- Silverpop
- Autopilot

4. Technology Understanding
​A marketer’s job is no longer about just managing the advertising agency. They now need to understand the functionality of multiple cloud based platforms and systems. I like to call it understanding your businesses 'Marketecture'; which includes everything from CRM, e-commerce, social listening, marketing automation, business intelligence and analytics.

5. SEO & SEM
Thanks to smart phones and the quick accessibility we have to the internet, according to Google it has forever changed the way we live - It has fractured the customer journey into hundreds of real-time, intent-driven micro-moments. SEO and SEM has never been more important as you fight to identify search terms that will give your website higher ranking. Optimise your content, website, and blog for organic earned search.

6. Data Analysis
​Yes...unfortunately you need to understand data, but you don't have to be a Data Scientist. Data holds you accountable, it highlights where you are successful and where there are areas for improvement. Basic data visualisation tools can help you read the data and benchmark it against previous campaigns or even industry statistics. For example Google Analytics is a great tool to analyse:

- Where leads are coming from
- Average time on site
- Bounce rate
- Average transaction value
- Most viewed products etc.

See below for an overview of how data and creativity intersect:

7. Collaborative Consumption
Marketers need to understand and recognise the new business models which are disrupting industries. Collaborative consumption describes the shift in consumer values from ownership to access. Together, entire communities and cities around the world are using network technologies to do more with less by renting, lending, swapping, bartering, gifting and sharing products on a scale never before possible.

From Airbnb to Uber to Taskrabbit, collaborative consumption is transforming business, consumerism and the way we live for a more fulfilling and sustainable quality of life.

8. Targeted Online Advertising
A recent study from Salesforce & Facebook showed that sending an email and a social ad about the same campaign to the same group resulted in 22 per cent uplift in conversion and 77 per cent uplift in reach. Salesforce's new Advertising Studio allows businesses to send targeted ads to a customers based on their CRM data.

9. Email Marketing
For every $1 invested, email marketing generates an average return of $38. Email still generates on average around a 21% open rate and 3.5% click through rate. Consumers today receive more emails than ever before and claim to have inbox fatigue - however marketers have to become better at mastering the art of timely and targeted emails.

10. Mobile Marketing
With over 50% of emails now being opened on mobiles and the boom of the app world - we now need to think mobile first. Many brands still have a website that is not mobile responsive and have no apps to make it easy for customers to engage with you. Think about the potential of geo-location push messages from a service perspective; for example you have entered the airport ready for your flight interstate and receive a real-time alert about the flight delay, followed by an offer to head into the Qantas lounge for free. 

11. Social Listening & Engagement
A brand is the sum of the conversations being had about them. Since the launch of social media, customers have found it easier to praise or call out brands about their experiences. A smart marketer would have their finger on the pulse and be listening to online behaviour to identify areas of concern or competitive advantage. Take a look at Salesforce's new Social Studio product for an overview.

12. User Experience
Pixel perfection and eye for detail is important. Design isn't just how something looks and feels, it's also about how it works. It's important to understand the different devices that consumers use like a desktop, tablet and mobile; but also how they use them. 

13. Content Creation
Content is the foundation for all marketing according to Joe Pulizzi. You need to start blogging, creating engaging images, infographics, free eBooks, and much more. Content is the main driver to generating leads.

14. Business Savvy
While I don't expect all marketers to have an MBA - they need to understand some simple metrics such as average transaction value (ATV), customer lifetime value (CLV), net promoter score (NPS) and return on investment (ROI). The list could go one but I thought I would keep it short. The line between service, sales and marketing is blending and every campaign you send needs to have a clear measurable goal. If there is no goal, then ask yourself why are you sending it in the first place?  

15. Prototyping Mindset
With the adoption of Design Thinking it has allowed employees to take their ideas and make them reality in a cost effective way that doesn't impact the business. Anyone can have an idea - it's the critical process of making that idea a tangible prototype that drives innovation. A prototype can be interacted with and reveal to the creator some valuable learnings to refine over time. We need to embrace that everything in life needs continuous improvement.