Dear Reader,
Hi! I’m writing this AMG newsletter from our cold, drafty New York City apartment.
It’s not due to a shortage of heating fuel.
Table of Contents | Volume 10, Issue 46
- Marketing Lesson of The Week – How Well Do You Know Your Audience?
- Brand Beats – How Your Brand Can Get Hurt By Factors Beyond Your Control
- Social Scene – Are You Still On Twitter?
- NYC Marketing Minute – Marvel Partners With NYPL
- Marketing Reads
- Mark Your Calendar
Rather, our aging 20+ old heater stopped working because it needs a new fan. No service company we’ve contacted can or knows how to fix it since most apartments like ours use heat pumps, a much bigger investment.
Actionable Marketing Tip
- Offer parts separately on your website. This is an easy upsell offering and helps your customers keep the product they bought from you working longer. In the process, you build customer goodwill since they know that you’ll support them.
Marketing Lesson of The Week
► How Well Do You Know Your Audience?
The one point most of last week’s SparkTogether speakers consistently made was “Know your audience”. To appreciate the full impact your marketing will have and to mitigate potential issues, I recommend defining your audience to include:
- Prospects,
- Buyers,
- Purchase influencers,
- End-users,
- Employees including freelancers, agencies and your management team,
- Investors, and
- Your local community both online and in the physical world.
Before you roll your eyes and tell me you have a well documented marketing persona, follow this advice from April Dunford, author of Obviously Awesome.
“Don’t treat this as a fill-in-the-blanks Mad Libs exercise!” (Editor’s note: April referred to mission statements in her Spark Together talk but the same principle applies to describing your audience.)
Actionable Marketing Tip
- Get out of your office and talk to actual customers (and, where possible, speak with your competitors’ customers) to understand and appreciate what they want. Then position your offering to meet their needs.
► Did The Parties In The US Midterm Elections Know Their Audience?
Historically, in the US, the President’s political party loses seats across the different levels of federal, state and local government in the midterm elections. Prior to last week’s vote, political pundits across the spectrum expected the election to be a massive “Red Wave” where Republicans would win a very large majority of the vote.
Last week’s Midterm Elections underscored the problems that result when you assume you know your audience. Political campaigns are a lot like marketing. The biggest difference: Politics sells intangible ideas while marketing sells tangible products and services.
How did the 2 major US political parties position themselves to voters?
Republicans broadly focused on inflation and changing the Washington, DC status quo while some Republican candidates maintained extreme beliefs,
By contrast, Democrats focused on saving democracy. To this they added: expanded women’s right to choose; increased gun safety; improved economy; investment in green technologies and transportation; and creating future-looking jobs.
Results
- While the final results of the US 2022 Midterm Elections may not be known until some time in December, the Democrats maintained control of the Senate.
Actionable Marketing Tips
- Interview your best customers. Learn how to get more customers you want to keep.
- Understand how consumers in general have changed over the past 3 to 5 years.
Brand Beats
► How Your Brand Can Get Hurt By Factors Beyond Your Control
While branding takes time to develop and is difficult to measure precisely, it contributes significantly to your organization’s total financial value. The more valuable your brand, the more care required to ensure that its reputation and trust remain untarnished
This translates to vigilantly protecting your brand across platforms, media, devices and contexts. Consider where your brand is mentioned and the context in which it appears. While at The Economist where everyone spoke about the brand with reverence, I pulled an online advertising campaign when our ad appeared next to adult content.
With the increased volatility across social media platforms, most notably Twitter, I recommended increasing the monitoring of your organization’s privacy and security in last week’s AMG Newsletter.
After Musk announced that any account could get a verified blue check for $8 per month, a fake account appearing to be Eli Lily tweeted that its insulin would be free. While Eli Lily tried disputing the false tweet, it remained up and visible for hours. As the tweets below show, the false tweet gained more traction than the brand’s own account.
As a result, Eli Lily’s share prices dropped 4.37% or about $15+ billion in value.
Social Scene
► Are You Still On Twitter?
As a long time user of Twitter, I’ve reduced my use of the social media platform since Elon Musk took over on October 28th.
Why?
Because Musk has laid off half of the staff, often via email and without following state employment laws. Oops!
To quickly increase revenues, Musk implemented the Twitter Verification Subscription at $8 per month without following the usual product processes. The Blue Checkmark indicates that Twitter has checked that an account is actually owned by the person or organization it represents.
As businesses and high profile individuals quickly learned, it’s not working properly – causing major headaches for Twitter and others. So the product is currently on pause.
Also, major brands including Eli Lily have paused their paid advertising on the platform.
So what can you do as a marketer?
Start by downloading your Twitter archive so you have a copy of your Twitter history.
- Then either:
Leave your Twitter profile as is with a pinned tweet to route followers to another platform or your owned media. This keeps others from squatting on your name. - Or deactivate your Twitter account.
Currently, the major new alternative to Twitter is Mastodon, a more decentralized, Web 3.0 version of Twitter. You join a specific server run by an organization, individual, or group of individuals.
NYC Marketing Minute
► Marvel Partners With NYPL
Are you a Spiderman fan?
Since Peter Parker, the real identity of Spiderman, grew up in the Forest Hills section of Queens, it makes sense that Marvel partnered with the New York Public Library (aka: NYPL) to celebrate comics.
Offering the same benefits as an ordinary library card, Marvel and the NYPL created a special Spiderman branded library card. It’s free while supplies last. I got mine last week!
To encourage reading comic books and graphic novels, the NYPL spotlighted them in a display near the front of the library.
Marketing Caveat:
- Take care when using any element of licensed products like Marvel and Star Wars since their legal departments actively protect their intellectual property!
Actionable Marketing Lesson
- Partner with a related business to create a promotion that makes sense to your audience and benefits both parties. Create a list of options for your business and ask your team which ones make the most sense for your customers and your business.
Marketing Reads
With the major changes across the media environment, it’s a good time to refresh your understanding of the differences in media options and how to best use them to distribute and keep your media visible over time.
Start by understanding what media is with this 15 Point Media Definition Checklist:
The Ultimate Media Definition: 15 Point Checklist
Are you taking advantage of all of your owned media options?
Owned Media Platform Guide: 40+ Options You May Be Missing
► Reinventing Customer Service
The upheavals of the last two years have created opportunities for customer service teams to rethink service delivery and how best to support the people who
do such important work.
To understand what the future might look like, Slack talked with business and customer service leaders across industries and countries about what comes next. Get this Free eBook from Slack today!
Plan Ahead: Mark Your Calendar
► Managing Editor LIVE Fall 2022
November 17 from 10 am to 3:30 pm CT.
Rep Cap’s FREE, half-day virtual summit for content marketers.
► All About Voice
November 25 at 2pm CET/ 8am ET/ 5am PT).
Free and virtual event. Sign up at https://hopin.com/events/all-about-voice-2022 to attend.
► Did you miss last week’s SparkTogether, the virtual, real time only conference?
Then check this great visual Joyce Chou shared via Twitter.
And this useful summary of resources compiled by my colleague, Maria Delano.
► Are you hosting an event that you’d like us to add to the Marketing Calendar?
If so, let us know by using our Contact Form with the Subject Line:
Event For AMG Newsletter Calendar.
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Happy Marketing,
Heidi
P.S.: Want Heidi Cohen to contribute a quote or other commentary to your next article, presentation, video, research and/or book? Then hit reply to this email and ask.
P.P.S: Did you miss last week’s AMG Newsletter? Previous newsletters can be found in the AMG Newsletter Archive.