Major, Major Market trends in Publishing part 2

Last week we presented two major market trends in book publishing.
Trend #1."Books are not dead...they're just shifting in how they are published and where they can be purchased."

Trend #2."eBooks will eventually outsell printed books"

Here are the next 3 major market trends (and we close with this.). Again, aside from the Manila International Book Fair exposure and observations made two weeks ago, the trends we cite below are from the MarketSquare presentation of Jim and Ellen Elwell, senior executives of Tyndale International, one of the largest Christian book publishers in the world.

Trend #3. "The democratization of publishing through new methods"
Anyone who is an aspiring author, or a writer whose manuscript submissions have been rejected by established publishers can now turn to Print on Demand or Self Publishing methods of, well, publishing.

With Print on Demand services, an author can order super small quantities (as low as one or two copies--one for your mother and one for your cat) with a turn around time of 24 to 48 hours. In the Philippines, there is Central Books (central.com.ph) which can turn your manuscript into a book in 10 days. Their website boasts of having published more than 500 titles since they introduced their service two years ago. The minimum print run is just 50 copies and service packages start at just P5,000 plus cost of printing. 

Then there is Self Publishing. According to the Elwell's almost 3/4 of the books that were published in English in 2008 were self-published. In the U.S. there are bookstores that are dedicated to displaying and selling self-published books. Boulder Book Store in, well, Boulder, Colorado practices the "micro-distribution business model" and offers authors different packages to display and sell their books. According to Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab (niemanlab.org) the Boulder Book Store "charges its consignment authors according to a tiered fee structure: $25 simply to stock a book (five copies at a time, replenished as needed by the author for no additional fee); $75 to feature a book for at least two weeks in the "Recommended" section; and $125 to, in addition to everything else, mention the book in the store's email newsletter, feature it on the Local Favorites page of the store's website for at least 60 days, and enable people to buy it online for the time it's stocked in the store.And for $255 — essentially, the platinum package — the store will throw in an in-store reading and book-signing event."

In the past few years in the Philippines, many of the well-known business and "inspirational" gurus, like Francis Kong, Bo Sanchez, Josiah Go, Francisco Colayco and Dr Ned Roberto (your Sr MRxer) have taken the self-publishing route with much success.

Self-publishing has become democratized because of the internet. Now you can turn that manuscript, powerpoint presentation, or speech (have it transcribed) and turn it into an e-book. Sell it on various websites through affiliate marketing or just give it away as a free download on your own website and you're a published e-author! Another route is Amazon.com's self-publishing company, CreateSpace.com. There are no set-up fees and you can self-publish not just books, but also audio and video. In the Philippines, Vibal Foundation (vibalfoundation.org) offers authors assistance in turning their books or manuscripts into ebooks. Apple's iPad also has between 45,000 to 60,000 ebooks now available for free or for a fee.

Trend #4. New Methods of Marketing.

Authors are leading the charge not only by self-publishing their work but also self-promoting their books through social media particularly Facebook, Twitter and Youtube. Before writing this article through Google docs, we received an email alert from Bo Sanchez's Facebook page. It was an invitation to "Like" his Truly Rich Club page and get a free chapter download for free. The thing is, Bo doesn't even know that he's done this. He has a "Social Media Marketing team" dedicated to posting  such offers, blogging about his books, populating other websites and blogs with comments about his books, uploading videos on Youtube, etc etc. The result is over P1.8M in sales every month (which funds his many ministries and charities) from digitally publishing and monetizing his book, Truly Rich, on his membership site, TrulyRich.com. (See also IM-BC.com)

Our Rx for our friends in the publishing industry:
1. Create, develop and implement a digital marketing strategy. Embrace the new technologies and the new trends.
2. Put together a social media marketing and internet marketing team who can leverage on these new methods of marketing.
3. Study further and learn from the case studies that we mentioned in the past two weeks.

WE welcome your comments and questions. Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or DrNedmarketingrx@gmail.com. God bless!
 

Major, Major Market trends in Publishing

 
Major, major market trends in book publishing




By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto
 
 
The past two weeks have been an immersion in the publishing world. First, the Jr MRxer was in Singapore to attend MarketSquare Asia 2010, an exhibit and conference for Christian Publishers. Second, was the last week's Manila International Book Fair (MIBF) at the mamoth SMX MOA convention center in Manila Bay where we received a Gintong Aklat Finalist award and did two days of book signings. So this week, we let go of the usual format of this column to answer a question that has been on every marketing professional and executive in the publishing industry: what are the major market and consumer trends in publishing? In particular, we focus on trends in the book publishing. 


Aside from the MBIF exposure and observations last week, the trends we cite below are from the MarketSquare presentation of Jim and Ellen Elwell, senior executives of Tyndale International, one of the largest Christian book publishers in the world. The Elwell's presented 9 trends in publishing, 3 or 4 of which I will share with you. 


Market Trend #1: "Books are not dead."
The good news for publishers is that books are not dead. Based on the waves and waves of books that were displayed and being sold at the MIBF, consumers are still buying books. National Book Store, the Philippines largest retailer of books, is opening 10 new bookstores this year on top of the 120 stores that it already has. The sales of the JrMRxer's publisher, OMFLiterature, for the past 3 years has been increasing; they've also expanded into retail opening 10 specialty book stores in the same period.

What was different this year at the MIBF was the presence of at least two booths featuring digital books. For the first time, homegrown VIBAL Publishers, led by it's tireless 85 year old President and Founder, Esther Vibal (who is a finalist for this year's Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award), had a booth that was almost solely dedicated to display its foray into e-books. Vibal proudly shared with me that they now have 200 book titles digitized and available on Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad among other digital readers.
The Elwell's report confidently declared: "Books are not dead...they're just shifting in how they are published and where they can be purchased."  The bad news is that, except for a few publishers like Vibal and Diwa, Filipino publishers seem to be anxious or unsure on their strategies to take advantage of this digital shift. 
The book is not dead, it's just taking a new form.
That leads us to the next trend...


Market Trend #2: "eBooks will eventually outsell printed books"
Book marketers are waking up to this eventuality. At last year's MIBF, a Publishers' Representative who sells books and journals to the school library market commented that scholarly journals are all but published digitally and sold online. The Elwell's shared a July 26, 2010 Publishers Weekly report that with the Kindle reader now priced at below $200, "sales (of ebooks) have tripled....and Kindle eBooks now outsell hardcover editions on Amazon.com" They also estimated that within the next 12 months, eBooks will also outsell softcover books! (Remember Richard Gordon's presidential campaign promise to have each Filipino student have a Kindle reader instead of lugging a ton of books in their backpacks? That alone should have been worth 10 million votes. Oh well...) 
A client gifting the SrMRxer with an iPad recently signaled for us the beginning of a new digital era. People reading some kind of book or magazine on a Kindle, iPad, or mobile phone in planes, classrooms, and cafes are becoming a common sight. When Apple launched the iPad this May, they sold more than 3 million units in just 80 days. Businessweek says that iPad sales are estimated to reach 5.5M units in 2010 and will double to 13 million in 2011. 
While sales of iPad-like readers are going to increase exponentially (China's manufacturers already have their own version of the iPad ready for sale) publishers who digitize and market their books online now have a global opportunity to supply readers with a library of ebooks. Reflect on this for a moment, the Elwell's report that 56% of China's 420 million netizens (internet users) are looking for books online. 
To illustrate the boom, the Elwell's shared that Tyndale's sales of eBooks on Amazon rose from US$20,000 to US$1M in just 24 months.(Half of which were sold in the past 4 months.)
Wait, we are not yet finished. We haven't even counted the Mobile/Smartphones that are and will be used for reading books. Yes, books on your mobile. People already have bibles uploaded in their mobile phones. In Japan, 400,000 "copies" of cellphone novels were sold in 2007. In the Philippines, the JrMRxer is helping GoNegosyo launch GO NEGOSYO SMS (Success Motivation Serye) where the public can receive daily "sachet" installations of Go Negosyo's self-help and inspirational stories of entrepreneurs for P2.50 a day (via Globe and Smart; text GONEGO to 2910). The launch of GO NEGOSYO SMS  will be held during the Go Negosyo Youth Summit at the World Trade Center this September 27th.
The implication to publishers, according to the Elwell's is "E-publish or perish!"


We'll visit 2 or 3 more market trends in publishing (touching on trends in product and promotions) in our next column!
         
WE welcome your comments and questions. Send them to us at MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net or DrNedmarketingrx@gmail.com. God bless!

Growing Your Service Business redux - The Junior MRxer at the Ayala Malls Retailers Forum

This is the link that I will promise to delegates to the Ayala Malls Merchants Forum tomorrow:

http://business.inquirer.net/money/features/view/20070420-61473/Growing_your_service_business:_the_restaurant_case

Why and when to delete brands from your portfolio

Q:  Over these past 2 to 3 Fridays, you've been basically talking about brand addition to the brand portfolio.  Isn't this the case with your preceding columns on brand extensions, new product insighting, and crafting reasons-to-believe liners for positioning a new or extended brand?    

 

But in your brand management seminars, we've heard you tell us (in passing) that if we have brand addition policy, we ought to have as well brand "deletion" policy.  This issue of brand deletion ends with just a mention in your seminars.  In fact, seminars and each seminar time preoccupy themselves with brand addition questions and issues. So please tell us why we should bother about deleting brands in our brand portfolio and when and how we should go about doing this.

     

 

A:  YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT about the current excessive attention to the brand addition issue in brand portfolio seminars and fora.  It's unfortunate that this comes at the expense of the equally important issue of brand deletion.  So we'll do something about this imbalance by answering your 3 related questions: why bother about deleting brands, when and how.   

 

Visiting websites of multinational consumer companies like Unilever, P&G, and Nestle regarding their brand portfolio management is as educational as attending seminars on the subject.  For example, in 2000, Unilever acquired Bestfoods.  At that time, Unilever's website reported that Bestfoods had 1,600 different brands worldwide.  Unilever decided that the situation clearly called for efficiency and lending a focus.  The website announced an internal campaign called "Path to Growth," which included a systematic process of deleting some 1,200 brands from among the 1,600.  Here's how the site summarized the logic of the campaign:  "The plan's cornerstone is the focus of product innovation and brand development on a portfolio of around 400 leading brands, which will lead to less fragmentation of resources and bigger hit innovations."

 

The last sentence gives the two major reasons why you should consider deleting brands.  The first is the risk of "fragmentation of (marketing) resources;"  the second, the reward of gaining "bigger hit innovations."  We now consider the first reason for brand deletion.  

 

"Excess brands"

Over time, as you continue expanding your brand portfolio via new product intros and brand acquisitions, you can be unlucky and find that your brand portfolio has become unwieldy.  Several brands formerly participating in different market segments may find themselves just in one market segment because consumers have come to treat the two segments as just one.  This happened to the fruit juice segment and the bottled water segment.  Today, more and more consumers regard the 2 as just one, namely, the thirst quenching segment.  And so we see the hybrid fruit-flavored water coming around.  Or else, you may find 2 formerly differentiated brands in the same market segment becoming undifferentiated because evolving consumer experience found them more and more to be the same.  This happened and is happening to each pharma company that carries several multi-vitamin supplement brands.  The pharma company has insisted and is insisting that its 3 or 4 multi-vitamin brands are differentiated.  But that's marketer-conceived differentiation as against consumer-perceived differentiation which in this case is absent, that is, consumers find all 3 or 4 as performing one and the same function.     

 

In either of these 2 situations, the "excess" brands if they remain in the portfolio eat up money, time and effort that are more profitably allocated elsewhere.  This is what is meant by the risk of fragmentation of resources.  

 

Focus

The second major reason for adopting a brand deletion policy is the prospect of being blessed with "bigger hit innovations."  The released budget, hours and days from the deleted unprofitable brands when now reallocated to the more profitable and more promising brands will aid those brands to grow faster and even better.  That's a consequence of more and sharper focusing of money and time to those more promising brands.

 

The preceding analysis has also somehow hinted at the answers to your questions of when and how to delete.  You delete a brand from your portfolio when it has lost its differentiator with its consumers and has become unprofitable.  We'd like to repeat that we're talking about consumer-perceived differentiation and not marketer-conceived differentiation especially when these 2 diverge. 

 

As to profitability, we refer to a protracted period of unprofitable performance.  A brand may still be selling but over, say, the past 3-5 years, its revenue no longer has been enough to pay for even just its variable costs.  It has therefore no contribution anymore to profit and to recovering fixed costs.  It is effectively being subsidized by what the other profitable brands are earning.  It's time to pull the plug on this brand.

 

Coke C2?

How to delete?  There are at least 2 ways.  The first is the simplest way and that's to pull out the brand from the market.  There's a downside to this approach, namely, another company picking up the deleted brand's trademark.  This happened to Coke C2.  Coca-Cola decided to take out Coke C2 brand in the U.S. market so it can focus on Coke Zero.  Later URC got the legal rights to the C2 trademark as the brand for its natural  bottled tea drink, now a threatening challenger brand to Coke.

 

The second way of deleting is to divest.  That's to sell the brand to another company. (Just like when San Miguel Corp sold the Magnolia ice cream brand to Nestle in 1996). This approach has the advantage of leveraging on the deleted brand's value, whatever remains of it.  Its downside is similar to the first, i.e., it can give rise to a new competitor. So be careful.

 

And there you are: your answers and Marketing Rx's for your concerns about why, when and how to delete brands in your brand portfolio.

Free condoms and measuring PR effectiveness

MarketingRx for March 19-10

 

Sec Cabral's free condoms and effectiveness metrics for PR campaigns

 

By Dr Ned Roberto with Ardy Roberto

 

 

Q:   Your recent column about measuring the effectiveness of advertising taglines was useful to me and my PR team. We're actually struggling with the same issue.  Clients are asking us to be accountable for their PR budget. What we used to give them--news clippings, press releases, TV talk show guesting, and coverage in radio commentaries, etc-- are no longer enough.  Clients want from us what they call "impact" and "response" data from the PR campaign's target audience.  Does your advice about ad tagline effectiveness apply to us? How?

  

A:  THERE ARE VERY FEW SIMILARITIES between a PR campaign and an advertising tagline.  One obviously is that both are concerned with communication.  But even as communication, the difference stands out against this narrow area of similarity. 

 

As we've pointed out, consumers process ad taglines in their sub-conscious.  PR campaigns are directed at the target consumer segment's conscious processing.  So it follows that you should have your own metrics of target audience "impact" and "response" effectiveness.  In crafting the suitable metrics, take your lead from that model of target consumer processing of the PR campaign message.

 

FREE CONDOMS case

Before you do this, there's another significant area of differentiation to consider.   In the case of a PR campaign, market segment targeting is multiple.   PR calls its target market segments as "stakeholder" segments.  Consider the specific example of what happened to Health Secretary Esperanza Cabral when she took immediate action against the spread of HIV by authorizing the free distribution of condoms in call centers. (Reports say that she ordered US$8M worth of condoms!)  It was in call centers where the DOH monitoring of HIV cases found the epidemic-like incidence of HIV infections. 

 

If Sec Cabral were to commission your PR agency to help her, you would define her major target stakeholder segments to at least include those at high risks (i.e., the call center workers), and then the general public, the media, and the legislators.  This is not to mention the "collateral" stakeholders that range over the Church and other religious organizations, the medical professionals, pharma companies, and so on.  The impact on and the response to the free sampling of condoms by any one of these stakeholder segments will naturally differ depending on how each segment consider itself as Secretary Cabral's ally, oppositionist, or a neutral spectator to what's happening.  What is known to have happened was that the Church took the role of oppositionist and demanded her resignation.

 

To lend focus and manageability to our diagnosis, let us consider the one key stakeholder segment that influence and shape other segments' responses to the emerging public issue.  This key segment is the general public.  Media responds according to how they see the general public will respond.  And so with and even more will legislators similarly respond.  This aligning of behavior will probably be true of all or most of the other stakeholder segments except for the Church who will predictably define its stand according to its own "teachings" about condom usage.

 

We now turn to your request for an effectiveness metric or metrics.  If you will recall what you read about the ad tagline effectiveness, we did not go directly to the needed metric.  Instead, we addressed first the issue of the required research from whose data the needed effectiveness metric or metrics will be derived.  This is also true in your case. 

 

Research

Start with the definition of the specific behavioral objective of the PR campaign for its targeted key stakeholder segment.  To lend concreteness to the discussion, let's continue with Secretary Cabral's free-condoms case.  For the general public, the PR campaign can seek to trigger the general public's expression of support for her continuing with the condom sampling.  The campaign's call to action for such expression of support can be via SMS messages, emails, blog entries, rallies, signature campaigns and the like. 

 

The validating research will be a sample survey of the general public quantifying the extent and duration of the different expressions of support.  For scalability, an at-the-start-of-the-controversy survey and an at-end-of-the-campaign-period survey will provide unambiguous data showing how any one of the expressions of support increased over the duration of the campaign period, or reached early plateauing, or even declined.  Probing the sample respondents for the reasons behind any of these data trends will uncover the depth or shallowness of the obtained support. 

 

A persistent issue in this kind of effectiveness research for PR campaigns is this: "What about the campaign's multiple stakeholders?  Should we not survey other stakeholders as well?"  There are two opposing schools of thought here.  One takes the position that other significant stakeholder segments should be surveyed.  Its reason is that each stakeholder has its own position on the issue and this may differ from one segment to the next.  The opposing camp believes that in the case such as Secretary Cabral's focusing is enough and even more than enough.  That is focusing the research on the general public.  The logic of this stand is as explained above.  The general public's position on the issue shapes the stand of the other significant segments such as media, legislators, regulators, and enlightened civil societies.

 

So if you take the viewpoint of the former school, then be prepared for an expensive, high budget metricating research.  If you elect the latter view, then you will obtain your effectiveness metrics with a cost-effective research budget.  It's effective both in terms of money and time line for survey completion.

The Marketing of Noynoy, Villar and Gibo - parts 1 and 2

MarketingRx for Feb 05-10

 

"The Marketing of Noynoy, Manny and Gibo"  - Part 1

 

By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto

 

 

Q:  We are another NGO who is unlike the ones who have been asking you to apply your social marketing in analyzing the coming presidential election.  

 

First of all, we DO NOT believe marketing or social marketing should further confuse what's already a confusing political scenario preparing for a critical point in this nation's history.  We think calling this manipulative practice of marketing as social marketing won't absolve the practice of its Machiavellian character.

 

We say you are confusing the voting public by calling their coming voting behavior as "low involvement behavior."  How can you say that when you know that this coming election is all about this country's next six years as continuing misery or as misery reversal? Isn't it a fundamental truth in education that if you tell a child that he's useless, he will henceforth behave as if he's useless?  That's the same with voters.  Tell them this election is low involvement and they will so regard it. (Please keep out of politics and social science--just stay in marketing.) - Mr Confidential

 

A:  WE APPRECIATE YOUR frankness.  We should be just as frank to tell you that we cannot say the same about how "politically correct" you delivered them.  Allow us to respond to each of the two major points of your note.

 

We start with the easiest, namely, your equating marketing with social marketing.  Even such grant-giving global foundations from whom most high performing and more reputable NGOs obtain their funding support, have since more than 20 years ago recognized social marketing's insightful contributions.  In fact, most now require social and economic projects to integrate social marketing into their interventions. These are global foundations like those in Japan, U.S., Canada and Europe.  If this is unknown to you, then it's unfortunate that you have allowed your knowledge of marketing and social marketing to remain in the vintage of 50s and 60s.  A little updating will do your mindset some good and lessen your distrust and understandable indignation over marketing's checkered past.

 

              

Low involvement

Your second point challenges our inference that the voting behavior in this coming election is low involvement.  That conclusion draws from the survey data from both SWS and Pulse-Asia.  When probed as to why they will vote so-and-so candidate, most Class D (borderline poor) and Class E (extreme poor) voters say something like this one who was the more articulate of those interviewed: "Sa totoo lang, para sakin parepareho lang lahat yang mga kandidatong yang.  Simula pa ke Cory, wala namang kahit isang presidentena nakapag ahon samin ni kaunti sa kahirapan."  (Truly, for me these candidates are all the same.  Starting with Cory, not a single president has brought us even a little bit out of poverty.)   

 

Some of the voting poor had also been heard to say in answer to the question of how important to them is this coming election: "Ano ba naman ang gagawin namin sa darating na election?  Sa totoo lang, yan naman ay limang minuto sa isang araw sa anim na taon sa aming buhay na pagkatapos niya ay magkakalimutan na uli tayo."  (What do we have to do in this coming election?  In truth, that's just five minutes in one day within 6 years in our life, after which we're back to forgetting each other.)  Is this kind of attitude that you would count as correlated with high involvement?  

 

All these are said out of the past 20 or more years of experience of the vast population of the poor with what they saw our past 4 presidents had done (or rather had not done) for them and their poverty.  And remember that A.C. Nielsen estimates the poor to now account for 90% of our total nationwide population! 

 

You are probably correct in thinking that voting behavior among the poor was once high involvement.  That must have been during Cory's term.  But thereafter especially with the last two administrations, it had come to what our quoted verbatims from the interviewed poor implied.  For the great majority of the poor, voting in the coming election doesn't matter anymore.  This explains why before Cory died, all leading 4 to 5 presidential candidates were very close to one another in their respective shares of votes.

 

We are out of space, so get your copy of the Inquirer next Friday to read the conclusion and discover why Villar is catching up with Noynoy (and what Noynoy can do about this) and why Gibo's advertising is keeping him from advancing in the polls.

Keep your questions coming.  Send them to us at drnedmarketingRx@gmail.com or marketingrx@pldtdsl.net . God bless!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MarketingRx for Feb 12-010

 

"The Marketing of Noynoy, Manny and Gibo"  - Part 2

 

By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto

Many of us thought that after Cory died and when suddenly Noynoy out of nowhere registered a 50% share of votes, most voters' low involvement just as suddenly transformed into high involvement.  That was more out of a sense of hope that took over our more scientific reading of the survey statistics.

 

We were brought back to the hard reality of the poor voters as the literature on low involvement in consumer behavior research predicted.  Low involvement voters like low involvement consumers behave according to the dictates of what's on top-of-mind and/or what's on top-of-heart.  What they are aware of and what draws and holds their attention drives their purchase behavior or in the present discussion their voting intention behavior registered in the SWS and Pulse-Asia surveys as a candidate's share of votes. 

 

Explaining Villar's Rise

              And those are exactly the voter responses that Manny Villar's advertising concentrated on generating: voter top-of-mind awareness and top-of-heart attention-drawing and attention-holding among both borderline poor and extreme poor voters.  These quickly translated in the last survey into an increase of Villar's share of votes from 24% to 33% to last month's 35%.  That's not at all that far from Noynoy's slowly falling 44% share of votes and last month's 42% especially when you factor in the two ratios' respective margin of error.

 

Single-mindedness.Another notable characteristic of low involvement behavior is how it is influenced by "single-minded" message.  It is easily confused by a communication message with "multiple claims."  Just consider how single-mindedness is the very essence of Villar's advertisement.  Contrast that to the Noynoy TV ad promising more than half a dozen "evils" to fight against and ending with a promise never to steal and be corrupt.  To the upper and middle class (which according to the latest estimate from A.C.Nielsen makes up only 8% to 10% of total Philippine population) this may be a top priority election concern and issue.  But to the 90% poor, according to the SWS and Pulse-Asia surveys, this ranks as a low #7 priority election issue.  And you don't need space science to appreciate how Villar's recent use of Dolphy (an icon with the poor) is going to be a real knock-out.  Of course, we'll have to wait for this month's survey to confirm or disconfirm.  But in all these, which candidate do you think will resonate more with the vast majority of the voting poor and be their top-of-mind and top-of-heart presidential choice? 

 

Gibo, the pilot?

Gibo's advertising message and execution inside an airplane that he's piloting is even more alien and most likely alienating to the poverty voters.  How many percent of the poor had ever seen the inside of a plane or the inside of the plane's pilot cockpit?  Talk of the significance of having an ad with high identification with its target audience and you'll have to give a really low failing grade to Gibo's TV commercial.

         

     Our reading of low involvement in the poor voters' regard for their voting behavior in the coming election is not an opinion.  It's drawn from solid and valid survey based data.  It's your assumption that because for you "this coming election is all about this country's future," then it must be so with the rest of the voters in the country including the 90% poor.  Just because you yourself are a voter does not mean what is high involvement to you and your NGO is also high involvement to the poor.  Learn to acquire EQ (Empathy Quotient) for the poor and you'll become of more help to them and more understanding of those outside your more noble profession.

 

What to do now, Noynoy and Gibo?

              Please do not think that our analysis is an endorsement of Villar.  The same analysis benefits the other two candidates, Noynoy and Gibo if they are to ask:  "So what do we do now?"  To Noynoy our low involvement analysis says clearly: "Stop the bleeding of your share of votes.  Consider what the low-involvement concept prescribes for you especially in your advertisement.  Stop promising too many things.  Do a Villar and be single minded."  And to Gibo?  At this point, social marketing does not know what to tell him to do but it knows what to tell him he should not do.  Stop executing your TV commercials in a context that has low-identification value to the poor voters.

 

Keep your questions coming.  Send them to us at drnedmarketingRx@gmail.com or marketingrx@pldtdsl.net . God bless!

Online Buying Behavior

MarketingRx for January 29-010

 

"What should we understand about online consumer buying behavior?"

 

By Dr Ned Roberto & Ardy Roberto

 

 

Q:  We're ready to try internet advertising and online marketing.  When the internet came around, we recalled that the gateway to the internet for consumers was dialing-up.  That technology was very restricting.  But the rapid penetration of broadband service allowed consumers quick access to the internet plus fast download and viewing.  And today, most consumers are spending more and more time on the internet.  In fact, during a conference, we heard you cite a study that found teeners spending 3 hours on the internet for every hour viewing TV. 

 

What should we understand about online consumer buying behavior?  We hope you don't mind giving us some simple and practical tips.

 

 

A:   THE STUDY YOU MENTIONED is the McCann-Erickson research on the youth.  This was a survey.  So the 3:1 ratio is a claimed proportion.  It was a young consumer's estimate when asked the question.  So in terms of actual behavior, it's doubtful that the relationship between the two figures is strictly linear.  In other words, a youth who's in front of his desktop at home and during those 3 hours is also viewing in the corner of his eyes what's on TV.  When something catches his attention on TV, he pauses his chatting or YouTube viewing and gets engaged on the TV program.  And then shifts back.  Casual observation of this back and forth multi-tasking has been reported with high frequency although we have yet to see its full and systematic documentation. 

 

As to advertising online, we suppose you know that you still remember how this all started with simple banner ads and sponsorships.  Simple as they were, they already had a distinct advantage over the traditional advertising.  Those banners and sponsorships both were able to link the viewing consumer back to their respective advertiser's web page or promo page.  There the consumer could get more information about the ad, the advertised product and the advertiser.  That was a rather crude beginning but already an engaging form of interactivity.

 

In the new and ever changing broadband (and wifi and 3G) technology, the ad campaign has become more sophisticated.  There are now video creative features that lend a dynamic character to the ads.  It's a sharp contrast to how static were banners of the previous decade of internet ads.

 

Search Marketing

And now let's go to your question: what to understand about consumer buying behavior when they do internet shopping.  Scott Berg, the Worldwide Media Director at Hewlett Packard coined the insighting discipline for this: "search marketing." 

The term "search" captures the essence of how an online consumer starts her internet shopping.  In this searching behavior, your consumer depends upon her command of "key words."  Some have very few, others a whole lot.  Those who have a few soon learn more terms.  Those who already knew a whole lot also learn much more. 

 

All learn because you, as internet advertiser and marketer, drive them.  Just look at how Amazon.com does this with (among others) its recommendations on what other books to buy when buying one title.  But this is getting ahead of the game.

 

Your search marketing program starts or has its key and lead variable in where and how you land in a search engine "listing."  The more you are at the top of a page, the more you get click-throughs.  Plus this:  The more relevant consumers find you in the listing, the more your click-throughs.  Or at least these two are what almost all of us in cyber space marketing assumes to be the case.   

 

As you can see, here what is critical to understand about the internet shoppers is what key words and terms they will use and are learning in their search buying.  That defines the insighting research you have to do and keep on doing.  We say "keep on doing" because there's continuing learning among consumers. 

 

Exciting CUR issues

When you get into this kind of consumer understanding research (CUR), the findings often challenges your assumptions.  That includes our assumption that being on top of the list is where the premium shopper "real estate" is to be found.  It's analogous to our own supermarket shopper in-store behavior study.  In most cases, that premium shelf location in the supermarket turns out to be not the entrance to the aisle but the shelf space that's in the shopper's second or third step as she enters.  This is because in most cases, she gets into an aisle fast and then slows down on her second or third step.

 

In any case, this is the kind exciting CUR issues you are up against.  But your raising the question tells us you're way ahead of other online advertisers and marketers who are proceeding with their search marketing campaign with "rules-of-thumb" and unvalidated internet consumer behavior assumptions. As Berg says in his HP blog post, Digital Ignorance, education is key for marketers (especially the CMO) in this day and age of digital marketing. Make sure that you continue asking questions AND continue searching for answers from different sources.

  

Please keep your questions coming.  Send them to us at drnedmarketingrx@gmail.com or  MarketingRx@pldtDSL.net. God bless!