Marketers Are Stuck
Are Marketers Technically Illiterate? Marketers Need to Get Technology and Development
Being called a computer geek before I ever worked professionally, I am sometimes shocked by the clashes between web and software and hardware developers, and marketing. In my mind, they both need to work together in order for the company to achieve its goals. I assumed developers understood the need for a clear message, and, like me, I thought marketers loved technology and computing.
In this first post, I will discuss why marketers need to be technically literate and understand developer and tech speak. In my next post, I will discuss why developers need to understand the language of business.
Marketers need to speak the language of technology – particularly their own, like web technologies, and their target products’, to craft the right messages, and position their products in the proper market niche.
Marketers need to get digital platforms: today’s core communication channels. In the old days of print, this may have been unnecessary for traditional marketers, with graphic designed easily outsourced. With the requirements of e-commerce affecting nearly all businesses, even service and physical stores, digital platforms have become essential touchpoints that need frequent adaptation – even minor – which require, at a minimum, basic web development and simple graphic design skills.
While the basic rules of strategy hasn’t changed, technology has always been a core component in formulating market strategy, and strategists need to develop a plan that makes sense when implemented in the real world. If it’s based on a misunderstanding of how the web works, a fancy obsession with the latest new toy, or a Luddite aversion to technology, that strategy will fail.
Technological literacy is becoming a necessary requirement for marketers, whether they are selling software or sofas. Whether purchasing online or just researching, platforms such as a website, blogs, mobile applications, and email, purchasing decisions take place over technical channels. The sales funnel happens online. Marketers need to understand this in order to develop and carry out correct strategy.
At a minimum, this means that marketers need to have the technical literacy and competency to know web development – at least the capability to handle basic tasks like content updating in a CMS, understanding the basics of SEO, which includes issues like clean code, web server load time, and page redirects and social media. They also need to know basic website management, even if the heavy lifting is handled by your web developer. With marketers that have a print background, the focus was on the final look of the deliverable to the viewer. With digital platforms, effectiveness isn’t just how it looks to the end-user but also the technical infrastructure on which it’s based on. If your website looks pretty, but can’t be indexed by the search engines, how useful is it?
This is true regardless of your product.
When selling hardware or software, technical literacy is even more important.
The role of the marketing strategist is to develop the market position. When selling technical products, the marketers need to have an understanding of the product, the position it belongs in, and the problem it is intended to solve. It’s the marketers that create the communication and messaging. They can’t derive messages or build a brand for something that they don’t understand. If the target audience is a foreign species, how can they craft an effective message and communicate authentically with them?
A thorough technical understanding of the product can also help find more channels to help promote your product. A few weeks ago, my company launched its first product for Linux. I’ve used the Ubuntu Linux distribution for several years. I’m not a Linux guru or a top sysadmin, but I can make my way around the command line when needed. In fact, I’m writing this post in Linux. This knowledge of Linux assisted in helping to craft a message that will be perceived as authentic to the Linux audience – coming from a Linux user itself – and identifying and locating more media outlets and channels to promote the product, which has already lead to increased product awareness.
Of course, marketing isn’t responsible for developing the product and development is not responsible for marketing the product.
Hence, the two sides need to work together and bridge the gaps.
In the next post, I will write about how software and hardware developers also need to understand marketing.
7 Social Media Marketing Lessons from Mad Men
Mad Men may depict the ad world of the 1960s, but the lessons of this successful AMC show depicting the Madison Avenue world of 50 years ago still has a lot of relevance in today’s digital environment of 2010 and beyond.
While Don Draper barely respected the world of the television commercial and certainly couldn’t have imagined Wikipedia or Facebook, there is still a lot we can learn — including the mistakes — from the Sterling Cooper team.
Apologies but I can’t embed most clips that are on YouTube, so check out the links.
7. The Medium is the Message – While a bit anachronistic in the preceding clip, the phrase the medium is the message is even more true over social media.
The phrase was introduced in Marshall McLuhan’s most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964. McLuhan proposes that a medium itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. For example, McLuhan claimed in Understanding Media that all media have characteristics that engage the viewer in different ways; for instance, a passage in a book could be reread at will, but a movie had to be screened again in its entirety to study any individual part of it. So the medium through which a person encounters a particular piece of content would have an effect on the individual’s understanding of it.
This is true today as well. Different social networks should be utilized differently. Content appropriate for Twitter may not be appropriate for Facebook. Different people use and create material differently, as well – what Forrester calls the Social Technographics Profile. McLuhan’s research is just as relevant today.
6. Strategy is the strength. The core of marketing is still key — branding and positioning rule. Strategy matters. Social media requires more than just an ability to update a Facebook status or send a tweet. It requires an understanding of branding and strategy. The message still matters. Knowing your target audience is key — as clearly Don Draper gets it when he convinces a client that the ad agency gets it and Sterling Cooper’s strategy will lead to success – instead of the company’s initial ideas- in the clip here.
5. Write Well – Copy and creativity matter. The Sterling Cooper team turned the drab idea of the Kodak Slideshow – which defined a generation – into the iconic Kodak Carousel. The product was the same: a common slide projector. But would people have bought the Kodak Wheel? Probably not. The same product, but different branding and a different story: a product that defined a generation.
There will be a difference in the number of fans and attractors depending on what your brand’s name is, depending on what your website’s URL is, what your Facebook page is named or your twitter handle. What content you send out matters. Good writing matters and, yes, content is still king — just the definion of good content takes many more factors into account. It’s not about the product, it’s about the experience.
Don Draper turned a slide projector into an iconic moment in this clip.
4. Efficiency Matters because an Upstart is Around the Corner — While the Sterling Cooper is drinking all day, taking expensive vacations, and going to the upper-crust parties, someone is just around the corner, being more efficient, and out to get your business. Today that kind of waste doesn’t cut it. And while you were out drinking, someone else is coding today and developing the next startup. Do you want to remain relevant? Then stay on your toes.
3. It’s about feeling, not feature – Social is the first word in “social media.” The job title of the person in charge of implementing your brand’s presence on social networks is frequently referred to as “community management.” People need to feel a part of a community. They need to feel good about your brand. Your customers don’t care about your latest engineering feat or that your classes use video and audio. These are important things that may be needed in order to the end result but it won’t sell. Instead, people care about how it makes them feel. Peggy is right: “What we are selling is confidence, a better you.” It’s about feeling, not feature.
2. Change is Inevitable – It’s not by accident that Mad Men begins in the 1960s. The sexual revolution. The move from print to radio to television. The iconic role that television played during that generation in people’s experiences – from the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Vietnam War and the rise of feminism was a dramatic change. Bert Cooper started Sterling Cooper but he needed the younger Don Draper and Roger Sterling, Jr. (son of the co-founder, along with Bert, of Sterling Cooper) to continue it. Draper and Sterling then needed the younger team of Peggy and Pete and Harry to remain relevant and implement for the future. Draper and Sterling’s business acumen was much higher but they needed their younger and more inexperienced team to keep them relevant. Embrace change because it is today.
Embrace change and your younger team. If you want it to work, treat your younger team with respect, as Peggy explains in this clip.
1. Embrace New Technology – Today’s social media is yesterday’s TV. Yesterday’s TV is last week’s radio and newspaper.
Today’s new technology is tomorrow’s old technology. When Harry Crane decides that television is important, the team laughs at him. In the end, they make him the TV department — because they didn’t value TV. In the end, Harry is one of the most important members of the team. Do you have an intern or recent grad in charge of social media? What does that say about your priorities? Are you putting Harry Crane in charge of your most important department? In a few years, they’ll be the entire organization and the only one left.
Don Draper has descended – but still plays a role and is still the figurehead. But Harry Crane is the one that does the work and gets the job done.