Why we drive you crazy, lean beef (ok, tips), and a major announcement–>
Friends and colleagues,
I am, as many of you know, irritating.
And yes, I do see you nodding your heads, friends. And you, too, colleagues. And yes, I see you, Frank. Hurtful, but understandable.
The thing is (whatever the thing is…) my team of archers and I spend our lives solving clients’ problems, testing ideas, failing, learning, iterating, improving. We are paid to confidently plot paths forward. We believe, even when some of you don’t, that what we’re recommending and executing will, well, work. (And yes, that alliteration was deliberate and gratuitous)
That’s where we can occasionally grate on you. We will push you to trust us, to try something you haven’t before, to change, take calculated risks, to accept there is gold (ok, maybe silver) in getting it wrong as long as you do so quickly and efficiently, learn, and reap the gains that will come. Friction creates heat. Heat creates energy. Yada, yada, you get it.
Now that we’ve explained and excused ourselves for making you sweat, let me reward you with a fluffy towel and some tips to snack on.
Tips and trends
- Go down that rabbit hole!
Why? Because there’s not only dirt and half-eaten carrots down there. That is where breakthrough insight may be found. A quick example for you. A client in the medical device did some research with lapsed clients. They assumed their product’s evolving features and benefits were the reasons why. But in the branching logic of a mid-survey question, some light emerged from the darkness. Ex-clients in a specific demographic noted that a new automated customer service system put in place in the last 18 months literally didn’t work for them. In previous years, they could call a rep to solve their issue, but that was no longer an option. Pre-retirees weren’t willing to learn something new, even though they used and liked the product. The solution that seems painfully obvious in hindsight: Assign a rep to this specific group. The moral: Wash the soil off and turn those half-eaten carrots into a nutrient-rich salad. - AI-driven content is raising the floor, not the ceiling.
The average content is better than it used to be, thanks to our robot colleagues. Unfortunately, that just means there’s more average content. Chat to the G and Claude to the A (sorry, I had to) are great at getting you to good enough. But it’s still your job to make your content is still king, not the marketing equivalent of a Roomba. - Turn the marketing off. Yes, I typed that.
And no, I don’t mean all the time. But when communicating certain kinds of messages to specific kinds of audiences, you don’t want to come across as a marketer or salesperson. An example, por favor? We were inviting a local audience to a new service facility. We develop a text email and direct mail (just an enveloped letter on the facility’s stationery) from the facility’s highly respected leader. We wrote these pieces as very brief, personal, and personalized 1:1 invitations. Black and white. No HTML. The human call to action: Simply a reply via an email alias or to call a direct line we set up for those interested. Response exceeded expectations by a factor of four. A significant group called and thanked the leader for the outreach. 30% of these replies turned into memberships. Does this always work? Heck, no, but knowing when it will can be transformative. And keep your favorite pun-loving agency guy at bay. - Choose lean cuts of beef.
A group of you beat me up about my last outreach. To translate and summarize: We like you, Bower, but a baker’s dozen of tips, some of them, gasp, more than three sentences, was too much to consume without a strong beverage. With attention spans down to less than three seconds, you need to hook ‘em and engage ‘em right quick. And no, I have no idea why I’m writing with a southern twang. And yes, I know even this is very close to TLDR… - CRM hygiene, like floss, is not optional.
Your CRM, you know, Salesforce, HubSpot, Eloqua, etc., is either a growth engine or a pricey, cluttered junk drawer. If the Hatfield and McCoys (that’s you, sales and marketing) are not aligned on how it’s used, you’re not tracking a funnel. You’re tracking confusion. And 9 out of 10 dentists agree: That needs to be cleaned up. - Analytics tools don’t fix strategy problems.
GA4 didn’t make marketing harder. It just made bad measurement more obvious. If you don’t know what you’re trying to measure and why, no platform is going to solve that for you. Now, may I ask you to envision a microphone dropping out of my hand? - Take ownership, or go down with the ship.
At some point, someone has to own the system. Not the campaign. Not the content. The
A major announcement
Well, there is no major announcement. I lied. And I did it to get you here. And here you are. I’ve annoyed you. I told you I would. But here’s the truth: This approach can drive engagement. More than a few consumer marketers are using ads that say they are discontinuing a popular line and giving product away for free. But they’re not. And that’s not honest or ethical, even if it’s occasionally effective. My recommendation: Be better than that. Burnish your brand. Win the right way. #MullinsForThree
Oh, and we’re working on a new “thing” called MaaS (Marketing as a Service) that we think more than a few of you bright and attractive people will like. A lot. Stay tuned, whatever that means.
As always, if I can do anything for you – share some experience, make a connection, pester that one neighbor you don’t like – please let me know.
Thanks again for your patient indulgence.