Business & Content Consultant

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 20

The Wrap Up

This has been a fun journey looking at the Future of Marketing.  Here is a quick wrap up post that you can use to follow the journey.

Marketing in the Past

Part 1 - Yellow Pages were the fastest way for small to medium sized businesses to get their marketing done in under 30 minutes every year.

Part 2 - How the early days of the internet were a little more challenging from a marketing perspective but with a website and good keyword management it wasn’t that difficult.

Marketing in the Present

Part 3 - How the large companies like Facebook and Google are the name of the game today but buyer beware, they can quickly change the rules on you.

Part 4 - How to use Google Micro-Moments to map out the customer journey.

Part 5 - Calculating Return on Investment (ROI) for you marketing spend.

Marketing in the Future

Part 6 - Overview of what the future looks like.

Part 7 - How lights out manufacturing are changing how factories work.

Part 8 - How companies are changing because they don’t make anything anymore.  They just private label or white label it instead.

Part 9 - What do companies really sell today?  Zappos sells customer experience, not shoes.

Part 10 - The talent pool for the future.  Most know the tip of the iceberg but not what goes into keeping it afloat.

Part 11 - Dr. James McQuivey’s Ecosystem --> Experience --> Device business model.

Part 12 - The Amazon dash button as face of the growing trend of machines talking to each other with minimal human involvement. 

Part 13 - If machines are able to make purchases, will they pay for marketing budgets?  Lean manufacturing says no.

Part 14 - Have we seen the golden age of small market products?

Part 15 - Who will write the reviews if computers are doing the purchasing?

Part 16 - How much will our computers really know about us or the companies they work for?

Part 17 - Is an AI (artificial intelligence) machine really a person that can sign contracts?

Part 18 - An example of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Automation

Part 19 - The future of marketing will be all about the experience... not the details.

I hope you enjoyed my sometimes rambling diatribe about the future of Marketing.  It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot from it.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD atSyracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 19

How will Companies Adapt to the Future of Marketing?

I believe that companies will need to change what they market to people.  Currently, we get marketed to through the whole supply chain of our lives.  Every thing we drink, everything consumable in our house, the clothes we wear (even the clothes others don’t see), our food, and on and on.  

There is nothing that we don’t touch that someone is trying to package in an appealing way so they can separate us from our dollars faster than the competition.

But what about a world described in my last post (part 18)?  What if we no longer care about the minor details of our lives?  Our house search engine that is voice controlled now makes 90% of our daily decisions.  That computer doesn’t care about the color of a box or the sexy model on the commercial.  It only cares about the specs of the product that it perceives will make their master’s (hopefully us) life better.

Marketing will need to adapt to an experience based marketing system.  You do see this today with cruise ships that own their own island (1).  They are catering to an experience.  Most are fully inclusive meaning you don’t pay for anything once you are on board.  The marketing job’s function is to build a scenario for you that is stress free and tons of fun.

This, I believe, will become the norm, not the exception.  Bottles of detergent will come in plain white bottles with the word “detergent” written on the side.  Why shouldn’t it.  My computer won’t pay for the branding effort that went into making the bottle look pretty so why waste the money.

Marketing will be about getting humans to pick a direction to go in life (even if just for the night) and then let the computers fill in the details.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

(1) https://www.dreamsunlimitedtravel.com/cruise/excursions_castawaycay.cfm

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 18

An Example of Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Automation

You are home and decide you need to get out of the house.  You start talking out loud that you would like to catch the new action movie at the high end theater after you have dinner with your wife.  Your always on listening device hears you and starts providing you with movie titles and times and then asks you what type of food you are interested in.  Once you have made some high level choices you are done and now it is time for the computer to take over.

It schedules an autonomous car to pick you and your wife up at the house at 6:00

The car drops you off at the front door to the restaurant.

The car then proceeds to search available parking spaces knowing that it can’t go far because you will be done with dinner soon and the work load of the other autonomous cars that night is pretty high.

The car then contracts with the garage listed in the movie above where it is parked and stored for 45 minutes (with no human intervention) until the car is needed again.

Near the end of the meal you let the car know that you are getting close to done (from your smart watch) and that it should be waiting for you outside.

The car pays the garage with bitcoin credits and leaves.

The car takes you to the movie but this time due to it’s length it leaves for another job and lets another car pick you up when the movie is over.

So, in this scenario where did marketing fit in?  Where were machine to machine contracts being set?  How much did you really care about the details of the night?

We will discuss these issues in the next blog post (part 19).

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

Video: YouTube - Haifeng International Limited  https://youtu.be/WeDP-CpJD6o

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 17

Is Artificial Intelligence (AI) a Person?

“The above issues raise the question of whether and under what circumstances an AI system could operate as the agent of a person or corporation. Already regulatory bodies in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere are setting the conditions under which software can enter into a binding contract.[1] The more AI conducts legally salient activities, the greater the challenge to principles of agency under the law.” Stanford University, One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, 2016 Report (2)

So this could become a huge issue that could have long term implications to case law.  Can machines make contracts with other machines if they are acting on their own free will without human intervention?  What happens if they get in an accident and kill someone?  Who is responsible?

“National Highway Transportation Safety Administration has determined that a self-driving car system, rather than the vehicle occupants, can be considered the “driver” of a vehicle.” Stanford University, One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, 2016 Report (2)

How this this have anything to do with marketing?  If an AI can make contracts on their own, do they need to be marketed to in the traditional sense?  My guess is no.  AI shouldn’t care about buying something because the packaging is blue and not green.

But, if AI isn’t a human and so a human has to have SOME input into every buying decision, there becomes an opportunity for that human to be marketed to.  These may be small moments that pass quickly but marketing personnel will figure out how to convince the human that the AI is wrong in their purchase of xyz product and that is should instead override the decision and instead purchase abc product.

For marketers, this means watching the technology closely to find where the moments are that a brand can fit their message into.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

(1)  Ian R. Kerr, “Ensuring the Success of Contract Formation in Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce,” Electronic Commerce Research 1 (2001): 183-202.

(2)  Peter Stone, Rodney Brooks, Erik Brynjolfsson, Ryan Calo, Oren Etzioni, Greg Hager, Julia Hirschberg, Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan, Ece Kamar, Sarit Kraus, Kevin Leyton-Brown, David Parkes, William Press, AnnaLee Saxenian, Julie Shah, Milind Tambe, and Astro Teller.  "Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030." One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence: Report of the 2015-2016 Study Panel, Stanford University, Stanford, CA,  September 2016. Doc: http://ai100.stanford.edu/2016-report. Accessed:  September 6, 2016.

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 16

Your Machines will Know All

“The real opportunity for change... surpassing the magnitude of the consumer internet... is the Industrial Internet, an open, global network that connects people, data and machines.” Jeff Immelt, GE Chairman & CEO (1)

How will this kind of “open, global network” effect marketing?  Marketing in many ways is setup to build brands.  Brands are useful to tie people to a company or a product so the company can withstand competitors trying to steal customers away.  Because the customer feels a connection to the brand they are less likely to walk away for a penny cheaper price or a slightly better environmental policy or because the new company gives a percentage of profits to starving children.

So, as I have been harping on... what if a machine or really a collection of machines know everything about you or the company that your machines “work for.”  Let’s look at a company and how this would work.

A company is used to buying their raw ingredients from the same company over and over again.  Now, the company gets a state grant up upgrade all their equipment to new, data gathering equipment, that is tied into the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, their financial software and their Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

Will all this new found data, the company has COMPLETE vision of their company.  Now, let’s through in a customer search engine that the company installs.  Is it possible that this company will be able to set the search engine loose on the world to find the right products and the right price at the right delivery schedule and with the right specifications needed?

Yes it is.  How will brands deal with this if a brand doesn’t matter to the search engine and the machines that feed it data?  Now, a penny cheaper or a spec 1% better would be enough to sway the search engine to purchase that product.

This could be a very scary time for those large company that we looked at in part 14.  They live on their brand.  Their ability to use their market dominance to get their ads on the best TV shows and to have their products displayed on the right shelf space at eye level.  This could totally open up the market to many smaller players who focus on specific niches (versus the wide appeal of the bigger brands) that a small number of search engines could find appealing to our new machine overlords.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

(1) www.geautomation.com/industrial-internet

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 15

Who will write the Reviews?

In my last post (part 14) we went through an example of what happens when your washing machine starts purchasing their own laundry detergent when it notices that it’s well is getting low.

Things bring up an important question: If you washing machine is doing the purchasing and is using the product, who will write the review on Amazon, customer website, etc. that will get others to buy the product in the future?  In addition, how will your laundry machine know that the product does everything it says it can do?  Will the laundry machine read the reviews?

This issue is based on Google’s Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT) concept.

The ZMOT is when you start your search for a product.  It used to be while in the store but now it is in your home with your laptop or anywhere with your phone.  But, the ZMOT is heavily influenced by the Second Moment of Truth when the person buys the product then writes about it as a review.  The next person reads that review and then makes their decision based on it.

These reviews are an important part of a buying decision.  They are unbiased accounts of how the product worked for someone else (this isn’t always true but for this discussion let’s assume it is).  WHAT HAPPENS IF A MACHINE IS DOING THE PURCHASES and the “human” is only an ancillary part of the transaction?

How will the machine know that the product is truly environmentally friendly as the label or website claims?  How will they know that they can use 1/2 the amount as the other brand? 

And, let’s say that the machine has a try it once model then decide, are they going to feed back into the system a review?

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

Picture: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/collections/zero-moment-truth.html

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 14

The Golden Age of Small Market Products

If we think we have a lot of products to choose from now, wait till machines start buying products for us based on a broad set of likes and dislikes.  These broad set of likes and dislikes are not for a single product but for how we want to live our lives.  We will find ourselves not caring about individual products anymore, those are details left best to our machines.

How will this happen?  Here is an example using the washing machine concept from past posts in this series.

Currently today, there are a lot of products in the market.  But, if you aren’t one of the top tier companies it is very hard and expensive to get found.

In the future, our washing machine will be in charge of buying the detergent for us based on usage patterns and how much is left in the detergent tank located in the machine (read more here).

How will they find the right product to buy?  They could go with what we tell it to buy (All Free and Clear) or we could let it use it’s own personal search engine to scour the internet day and night.

This could lead to small, niche brands that cater directly to my goals and objectives.

This would drastically change how marketing is done.  A single web page properly annotated could be set up (doesn’t even need to be flashy) for my washing machine’s search engine to find and how to buy the product.  It would need all the details about how the product is made, the ingredients, what charities we may support with the profits, etc. but that is it.  

No more advertising on Google Adwords or Facebook.  No more writers writing long form content to try and persuade us to purchase the product.

But... how will feedback be handled?  Will I write a review of the product or will my washing machine?  May have to explore that more in a later post?

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

Picture: http://sploid.gizmodo.com/fascinating-graphic-shows-who-owns-all-the-major-brands-1599537576

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 13

In the last post (part 12) we ended with the discussion of whether your washing machine cares about the marketing and branding of products if it is the one doing the purchasing in the future.

I look towards Toyota and the Total Production System (TPS)(1) or Lean Manufacturing (2) system for the answer.  

Toyota has a concept call Muda or the 7 Wastes of Lean Manufacturing

Transport

Inventory

Motion

Waiting

Overprocessing

Overproduction

Defects (3)

I would like to focus on #5 Overprocessing.  It is described as:

“The waste of Overprocessing is where we use inappropriate techniques, oversize equipment, working to tolerances that are too tight, perform processes that are not required by the customer and so forth. All of these things cost us time and money.” Lean Manufacturing Tools (4) (emphasis mine)

In the future, will marketing and branding become a form of overprocessing?  If my washing machine is doing all the purchasing for me and only cares about my big picture ideas and goals, will marketing add in additional costs to a product that the consumer is unwilling to purchase?

There are many consequences to this that are outside the scope of this blog theme but here is one... what happens to all the free stuff we get because of branding (TV, news websites, social media, Google)?  If people don’t spend money on branding will the cost of everything else have to increase?

If big marketing budgets aren’t required to achieve huge marketing successes this could open up the golden age of small manufacturers making niche products that used to be hard to find but now, since my washing machine is doing the searching 24/7 for the best options they can be found.

This idea will be discussed in the next blog post.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

Picture: http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/

(1) http://www.toyota-global.com/company/vision_philosophy/toyota_production_system/

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lean_manufacturing

(3) http://leanmanufacturingtools.org/77/the-seven-wastes-7-mudas/

(4) http://leanmanufacturingtools.org/77/the-seven-wastes-7-mudas/

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 12

The dash button is the public face of a new trend... computers talking to other computers or as it has been fashioned the Internet of Things (IOT) (1)

I believe that the dash button has the potential to upend marketing and make it much less important.

Right now, a human is involved in a couple key ways:

a human must order the EXACT dash button they want (2)

a human must push the button on the dash button when the product is getting low

In the future this will all change.  For one, there probably won’t be any dash button.  When your laundry detergent shows up you will dump it ALL into your washing machine.  You washing machine will then dispense the right amount as you put in new laundry.  When the detergent gets to a certain point based on historic usage, the laundry machine will reorder a new container of detergent.

But the question is... what detergent will the laundry machine buy?  Will it buy the one that you set or will it buy one of it’s own choosing.  It could look at your past online behaviour to see what you are interested in and make a determination of the best product for the money is on the market right now.

Example:

Google Search History: shows you are environmentally conscious

Bank Account: Not a lot of money in it

Job: Lower paying

Purchase Options: Scented Tide, All Free and Clear or Seventh Generation

Purchase Decision: All Free and Clear (environmentally conscious but not overly expensive)

Here are some key questions I have about this transaction:

Who made the contract to purchase the laundry detergent, the laundry machine or you?

Who is responsible if you don’t pay for the detergent?

Do you want your laundry machine to know your bank account information or your online searches?

Important Point - Does your laundry machine care about marketing or branding?

I would contend that your laundry machine will care very little about marketing and it will be more about price, availability and the broad goals of their master (you).

We will explore this more in the next post.  Part 13.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

Picture: https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=10667898011

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_of_things

(2) https://www.amazon.com/Dash-Buttons/b?ie=UTF8&node=10667898011

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 11

Who is your True Lord and Master?

It is all about someone else’s ecosystem.  I got to hear Dr. James McQuivey talk about a year ago (1) and he showed us the new business model that is sprouting up everywhere.

Here is what I wrote at the time:

“The second model that McQuivey uses is the device, experience, ecosystem model.  While he didn’t designate it a business model it is essentially what it is.  Companies must figure out which piece of the circle they are going to put their stake in the ground.  Some companies may play in one or more of the circles.

Prior to the internet, a company could build just the device independent of the experience or ecosystem.  This was Sony’s sweetspot.  They pumped out product after product into the marketplace and used their superior supply chain skills to make sure they achieved the desired sales objectives.  Today, this is impossible.  Using the Zero Moment of Truth model (2) that Google writes about, customers have created a tremendously powerful feedback loop that lets other future customer know when the experience or ecosystem is lacking.  This feedback loop is more important than the supply chain.  Without those customer reviews, future customers will be much less willing to purchase a company’s product.

The important lesson here is that there are two ways to use the model; create inside out or outside in.  The is also a third way, build an “experience” product that uses someone else's device and ecosystem.

Finally, for this to be a business model there must be revenue attached to it. Pre-internet, all the money was in the device.  Post internet, McQuivey says the money is in the ecosystem.  Gather millions of transactions and charge a percentage on that transaction.  To make money, the owners of the ecosystem must get big, really big.  They now control the game that the rest of the circles have to work within.”

Here are some of the critical points that I would like to explore a little more:

“To make money, the owners of the ecosystem must get big, really big.”

There is a third way to make money, “build an “experience” product that uses someone else’s device and ecosystem.”

We are seeing the first point play out time and time again and there is little reason to believe that this won’t happen into the future.  Companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and even Uber have a lot of cash on hand and are able to buy up the competition.  Sometimes they buy them just for the people that work there, not for their product.  I believe that this is the scary part of the equation.  There are numerous examples of how the big guys change the rules at their pleasure.  Sometimes they do it for the total good (think Google changing their algorithms to get rid of spammy content (3)) but sometimes they do it to hurt a start up organization (Twitter shutting down Meerkat (4) or Google’s changes to their Keyword Planner (5) or Facebook killing Parse (6))

So, who is your true lord and master... if you play in the ecosystem game it is probably not your customers but those who own the ecosystem and their whims for what is and what isn’t competition.  If your product only works because of their technology I would work aggressively to diversify your business because one day you are in and the next day you could be out.

For marketers you will have to become experts in all the rules and regulations and terms of service contracts of your ecosystem “partners.”  They will determine how much you spend on marketing, whether posting pictures is better than videos or text and how you will be able to converse with your customers.  Marketing will become more and more important as a core business function of a business.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

(1) http://newhouseinsider.syr.edu/2016/03/new-media-management-nyc-spring-break-trip/

(2) https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/collections/zero-moment-truth.html

(3) https://moz.com/blog/google-algorithm-cheat-sheet-panda-penguin-hummingbird

(4) https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/06/meerkat-founder-on-getting-the-kill-call-from-twitter/

(5) https://www.en.advertisercommunity.com/t5/AdWords-Announcements/Updates-to-the-Keyword-Planner-Tool/td-p/601960

(6) http://blog.parse.com/announcements/moving-on/

[leebuttolph]

Do you Expect Employees to Contribute?

Do you Expect Employees to Contribute?

author: Lee Buttolph

Are you sick of being the "good idea guy/gal" in your company?  Always having to lead the discussion.  Are you the only one that ever comes up with ideas for improvements?

Well, it is your own damn fault!!! (remember: Fault of the employee is the fault of the manger)

Do you expect your employees to contribute?  Is there not only an expectation but a REQUIREMENT to contribute?  Most bosses let employees wait for them to come up with the ideas and then nod approvingly.

Seth Godin says:

“If you go to bed at night knowing that people are expecting you to initiate things all day the next day, you’ll wake up with a list.” (1)

Here is a great way to operationalize this at your company.  Start "Ideas Wednesday" during the lunch hour.

Buy lunch for your team (pizza works well)

Prior to Wednesday circulate an article (or topic) with questions for people to read prior to the meeting -- article should be something you think could breed discussion (see note below)

Spend 30-60 minutes discussing the article and how your company could adopt the ideas in it

Try to force contentious discussion -- team should not feel comfortable with the ideas

DO NOT DO: Do not talk about day-to-day work -- talk big picture ideas only -- this is a time to grow as a group

DO NOT DO: As the boss/leader, do not dominate the conversation -- just keep it flowing with a lot of questions and challenges to the team member's ideas

Goals:

It is important that employees see that the boss/leader wants them to think about new ideas and how those ideas can make the company better

It is okay if nothing gets implemented from the meeting

If there are good ideas that come out of the meeting GET THEM IMPLEMENTED ASAP so the employees see that the boss isn't all talk

Note:

Some advice on the articles.  These should be new ideas that people in your company have never heard of.  My favorite was to bring in articles that described how other companies priced their products (which was totally different than the way we or our industry did it).  I would ask my team to figure out how we could adopt the idea to our company.  I would passionately argue to implement (usually falsely because the pricing idea most likely wouldn't work) and this would get the employees to passionately oppose me.  It is important to make them work through why they were opposed.  It always ended up being a good time.

If you require your employees to always be thinking of new ways to improve your company there is a great chance they will start thinking of new ideas on their own... even outside Ideas Wednesday!

Sources:

(1) Godin, S. (2015). Poke the Box: When was the Last Time You Did Something for the First Time?. Penguin.

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 10

Tip of the Iceberg Only

I have seen this happen a couple times.  A company is so desperate to get online and to have a social media presence they decide to hire that “new kid” right out of college to fix everything.  How well did that turn out for you?

Good chance that the “new kid” was really good at the tactics of playing around on Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. but terrible at the strategy part.  They have never had to put an ad on Google Adwords for Facebook.  They don’t understand how to add Google Analytics or Facebook Pixel code to a website to track important metrics.  They surely didn’t understand the financial return on investment calculation that went into deciding how much money could be spent on a new website and ads compared to the product sold.

If marketing is going to become a core competency for many companies (read past Tumblr blogs in this series) the leadership of a company must be able to articulate a strategic vision before tactics can be employed.  Once you are ready for that, forget the “new kid.”  Go hire an expert.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

Picture: Growmap - http://growmap.com/small-business-social-media-internet-marketing-strategy/

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 9

A New Core Competency - A Case Study

What would your boss do if you had a customer service call with a customer that lasted 10 hours and 43 minutes?  You would probably get fired... not at Zappos.  You get an article written about you in Business Insider. (1)

Reading a Zappos blog post called “Your Culture is Your Brand” it occurred to me that the word “shoes” only comes up once, and it is in the negative.

“At Zappos.com, we decided a long time ago that we didn’t want our brand to be just about shoes, or clothing, or even online retailing.” (2)

So what does Zappos sell if it isn’t shoes?  They sell customer service.  And with great customer service, which leads to a strong brand, they feel they could sell anything.

I see this is a theme that will trend into the future.  Companies will move away from their core business function of making something or servicing a product or selling food at a restaurant into a much more deep philosophical understanding of who they are.

This is going to be true of marketing (which is important for any brand).  Companies will have to get good at it.  Owners will have to understand how the internet, content marketing, social media, etc. work in much more detail than they do today.  It will no longer be left to the “new kid” to figure out how to get the company online so they can start selling more stuff.

In my next post we will discuss the “new kid.”

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

Sources:

(1) Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/zappos-employee-sets-record-for-longest-customer-service-call-2016-7

(2) Zappos Blog - Your Culture is Your Brand: http://www.zappos.com/blogs/your-culture-is-your-brand/

[leebuttolph]

Marketing of the Future - Part 8

Private / White Labeling of Manufacturing

We have seen the “Made in China” trend for years now.  Large companies have used their buying power to purchase in bulk from overseas.  

But don’t we want our favorite brands to make their own product?  My guess is that in theory we delude ourselves into thinking they should but in reality the cost savings are well worth having it made in a factory not owned by the brand.

We have seen the trend continue into the grocery market where the local store has their own in-house brands that compete with the major labels.  They normally have lower costs because they don’t have to pay to market the product, the customer is already in the store.  Does the grocery store make their own products... heck no!  They let someone else make it for them, most likely the same company that made the product right next to the one they are competing against.

So by outsourcing production to another company how does that change the internal dynamics of how a company operates.  If you make something, that process had better be a core competency and all others take a back seat (ex. marketing).  But when you don’t make your own product, you can remove manufacturing as a core competency and now elevate marketing to the top slot because if you can’t sell that material you don’t have a company.

I see this trend continuing but now for much smaller companies.  The internet has opened up a whole new host of options for small owners.  

Alibaba has opened up a whole new way to outsource goods to Chinese manufacturers.  No longer is an expensive trip necessary to visit a host of factories.  You can pick and choose right from the website.

Maker’s Row helps small business owners in the apparel & accessories or home decor sector find US based manufacturing companies to bring your dream to life.  They also have a training academy to teach budding entrepreneurs the process.

The best part is thanks to companies like Amazon and their fulfillment services, a small time entrepreneur no longer has to fill up their attic, basement, garage, barn, etc. with product.  The manufacturer ships it directly to Amazon, who then ships it directly to the customer after it is ordered.  They will also take care of return orders.

And finally, thanks to ecommerce companies like Shopify you rarely ever need to interact with a customer during the ordering process.

So what is left... marketing your product to get people to your website.  This along with new product design will become the staple core business functions of a company.  If you aren’t good at marketing, there is a good chance nobody will see you above the noise of all the other people that are good (or most likely great) at marketing.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 7

Lights Out Manufacturing

This is where manufacturing is headed for many business... and not just large corporations with lots of money.  The company will be able to run by itself with little intervention from employees.

This is in stark contrast to how high tech companies like Toyota do it today.  Their “advantage, it turned out, lay not in automation but in lean-production techniques, which are mostly people-based.” (1) This doesn’t mean that Toyota doesn’t use technology, quite the opposite is true, it is that they also use people because “...production-line workers... can come up with plenty of good ideas to improve productivity.” (2) 

So what happens when there are less employees on the production floor?  In the past production was the main core businesses competency a company had.  Human Resources was probably the second most important core business competency because a company had to manage all these people and their benefits.  And coming in a distant third was marketing.  

Most small businesses wanted to make their product.  Their marketing was based on putting ads in the Yellow Pages and for that 10 minutes worth of work you were done with it.

In the future world of Lights Out Manufacturing management should have more time to spend on marketing (websites, Google Adwords, Social Media, etc.).  This should see a transition of marketing becoming a more important core business function of a business.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communication.

Sources:

Video: Youtube - Business Profile: Vanderhorst Brothers, Inc., Achieves Lights-Out Manufacturing with the Right CAM

(1)(2) The Economist - Making the future

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 6

My past blogs in this series have focused on marketing in the past.  It is now time to focus on the future.  

Here are some of the topics that we will explore going forward.

Industrial Automation - how robots will run the future and how big data will be the name of the game

Private Label of Brands - companies will chose to make very little of what they actually sell

What do you sell? - companies will not sell traditional products in the future as their core business function

Marketing as Core Competency - marketing will become what companies have to do better than anything else

What will disrupt Marketing - the Internet of Things (IOT) will make marketing much harder to pull off

Lean Manufacturing - customers won’t pay for anything that doesn’t provide value, including marketing

Future of Contracts - how legal are computer to computer contracts

I look forward to the conversation of the future...

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

I also have a business blog for my consulting company called 5 Things Consulting.

[leebuttolph]

Marketing in the Future - Part 5

The internet promised us that advertising on the internet would be different than advertising in the Yellow Pages.  Return on Investment (ROI) calculations would allow us to know exactly if our money was being spent wisely.  Yet, the word ROI is thrown around somewhat carelessly these days.

“Have you noticed over the years how the word “ROI”, a term formerly reserved for the outcome of a sophisticated in-depth investment analysis conducted by CXO Buyers, has been dumbed-down by B2B Marketers to a buzzword implying some kind of financial benefit?” Customer Think, Jack Dean August 30th, 2016 (1) (emphasis mine)

Unfortunately, to create those ROI calculations a company must know how to do the following things:

Set up a Google Analytics account and put code on a webpage

Set up a Facebook page (and do the same for other social media sites)

Set up a Facebook Pixel for capturing analytics information

Set up “Call to Actions” on a webpage that will allow for goal setting

Know how much money it is worth to a company for every email address they get off a contact us form

Be able to properly target subscribers on Facebook Ads

Be able to write a Google Ad so people will want to click on it

Be able to know what are the right keywords to buy ads for

Be able to fine tune those keywords based on click through rates and goal setting objectives

And don’t forget the amazing content that was well researched and insightful for your customers to read through

and on and on and on...

There is so much to know these days for marketing for the small to medium sized businesses.  It used to be easy and for those that didn’t care to grow big where marketing was incredibly important most people could live in wishful bliss knowing that a single Yellow Page ad was most of the marketing that they needed.

Today, if you aren’t a marketing ninja you are in trouble.  If you are not online where your customers are you will find it harder and harder to be found.  And to do that, you have to spend more and more time or hire this function out at a considerable expense.

Most small to medium sized companies just want to make their product or sell their service.  Too bad those days are long gone.

This blog post is written as part of a class assignment as I get my PHD at Syracuse University, Newhouse School of Communications.

Sources:

(1) http://customerthink.com/the-dumbing-down-of-roi-by-b2b-marketers-and-what-you-can-do-to-counter-that-customer-perception/