Since we are both startup advisors and business school professors, we keep our eyes open for academic research that might be useful for startups. One important iceberg in the marketing ocean is Tactical Implementation. It’s easy to make mistakes in promoting a business that can be both expensive and a waste of money.
Over the last decade, there’s been quite the debate in marketing circles about which are the most important customers.
We mostly focus on startups and let’s be clear that few startups have the budget for a Super Bowl ad. Still, the Tactical Implementation iceberg in the Marketing Ocean is so fraught with challenges that it’s good to look anywhere for clues about what works. And, the Super Bowl is the equivalent to the Olympics when it comes to advertising.
Coming into the 2021 Super Bowl, no one knew what to expect of the ads and advertisers. 2020 was a crazy year. Most NFL teams are still trying to figure out how to best connect with fans. Add to the mayhem, the NFL sold 30,000 cardboard cutouts of fans to place in stadium seats for $100 each, or $3,000,000, to help defray lost ticket sales.
If you’ve read our book, The Titanic Effect, you know that we are strong proponents of picking a customer segment to target at the start. Then you can expand by segments over time to grow. But, you really have to know who is your ideal customer. If you need more ideas about what an “ideal customer” is, check out our interview on the Creative Warriors podcast. Once you know who your ideal customer is, you have to frame your ideas in the language they use.
Hopefully, you have the ability to do deep, insightful research with them. But, if you don’t there are unobtrusive ways you can figure this out, too. You can start by using some online tools to better understand the language people are using with they think about your product. While not perfect, keyword planning tools available from companies like Google, Google Trends, Keyword Generator, Keyword Sheeter, Answer the Public, and others will give you lists of keywords for both broad and narrow topics. They start with the keyword(s) you provide and give lots of related words. Some will also give you search volume estimates. Traditionally, this is the first step in SEO (search engine optimization) which you should also do. But it can also be used to develop a hierarchy of language around your offering.
When macroenvironmental challenges (like a recession or a pandemic) occur, many companies immediately slash their marketing budgets. We saw this in the recession of 2008 to 2009. We are seeing it again in the coronavirus pandemic. The argument goes like this: 1) we are not generating as much sales revenue, 2) we need to cut costs, and 3) let’s just cut all costs.
If marketing dollars are included in these moves, they are being treated like an expense. Well-spent marketing dollars can and should generate sales levels that are multiples of the spend. When this happens they are like an investment with a positive ROI.
You know that restaurant you love to visit. You walk in the door, they say hello, and they call you by name. You chat with the server. It could be any server, because you’ve chatted with all of them. Now the pandemic hits and you can no longer visit your favorite restaurant. Guess what, they probably don’t even really know who you are.
Most small and new companies have never put together a customer database. Yes, they know frequent customers when they see them. But how does that work when you no longer “see” your customers? It doesn’t. Now is the time to pull together a useful customer database so you can see insights about who your customers are.
With the “lean startup,” a generation of entrepreneurs have become enamored with “the pivot.” For those unfamiliar with these terms, the lean startup is an approach to launching a startup by creating a product as quickly as possible and putting it in customers’ hands to get feedback. Once customers have the product, the focus moves to experimentation to get the product right over time. This approach is contrasted to incessant planning and completing a giant business plan before launch - or even talking to a customer. Pivoting is how startups redirect their product and/or target customer through experimentation.
Since we are business school professors, one of the things we do is read and review academic research on business topics. Specifically, Kim is an associate editor for the Journal of Advertising Research. Of course, this journal focuses on what makes advertising effective. And the bulk of academic research is on TV advertising which might be beyond the reach of most startups. Kim also gets to vote on the “best” article of the year. So we thought we might review the best articles from 2019 and give you the highlights that are relevant to startup advertising. Here are top four facts about advertising we learned last year:
Let’s start by making sure we all know what we are talking about. First, “B2C” means Business-to-Consumer -- startups that sell products to consumers as end users. We can contrast B2C with B2B, which is businesses selling to other businesses. Each type – B2C and B2B – have different selling processes. So today, we are going to focus on B2C and the challenges they might experience selling through e-commerce sites.
So far, so good. But, what’s a “Walled Garden?” It is just what it sounds like. It comes from olden days when rich people had beautiful, luscious gardens that they locked behind a wall so that others could not see in. We use the term to describe the big tech giants. Here’s a more specific definition from mediarithmics_what is: “A Walled Garden is a closed ecosystem in which all the operations are controlled by the ecosystem operator.” Think Google, Facebook, Amazon to start. They’ve created a really interesting marketplace in which they make the rules and they have all of the data. Together, these three companies control 70% of the all the digital ad spend.
One of the toughest questions startups have to answer is how they create value for customers. We’ve already shared how to avoid the customer value void. But recently, we were reminded about just how powerful getting customer input can be. So, we wanted to share three examples to inspire you to get your own feedback.
