Return on Intention

As a culture, we seem to have an obsession with features. We always want it to do more and do it faster. Or, at lease thats what we think we want. 

In marketing, having more features does not mean “better”. In software, having more features isn’t better either. What more features will do is make things complicated. In marketing its hard to get across a compelling message when there are 8 pretty good messages. Good is the enemy of great. Its the same deal in software. The more options you have the more buttons you need. The more buttons you have the more crowded the UI (user interface) becomes making the software harder to use. 

One of the biggest reasons we go feature crazy is because when we are trying to grow our business, or create a new product in the market place, we tend to believe that adding one more feature will make our product stand out. Sometimes this is true, but if you do enough iterations of this processes, you end up with a mess. Sometimes finding a better, more elegant way of doing the same thing is a better proposition that trying to do more things.

The success of Palm was attributed to their resistance to feature creep. The Palm doesn’t do everything, but what it did do, it did well. This is also the reason that Basecamp is so successful. If you want full featured software, go away. If you want elegant software that works really well, buy from Apple… I mean use Basecamp (sorry, I try to control the Mac Freak within).

Whether in marketing communication, or software development, focus and elegance should be first priority. If that fails, add some new features :).

In the information economy he who has the most information wins. Well, thats not exactly true. He who has the most relevant information that leads to insight wins. Trying to move forward and make positive changes without data is like trying to drive without a dash board. No, its worse than that. Its like trying to fly a plane without the instrument panel, at night, in a storm. Its a disaster. Imagine being on flight at 1:00 am and hearing the pilots voice comes over the intercom to say “Well everyone, we’ve lost power and have no visibility, but I feel like we should go left. Lets try that, I’m sure it will all work out”.  I can guarantee there is not enough tiny bottles of alcohol on the plane to make that announcement go over. We need information to make good decisions, without it we can only make changes based on our best guess, like going left and hoping it works out. 

One of the greatest things about doing business online is the ability to gain data about what is going on. Because of its nature, the internet allows us to closely track user interactions to a greater extent than any other channel. The truly amazing thing about this is not how much good data can be had, but the fact that so few companies actually use it. Perhaps its lack of knowledge, experience, budget or (I fear to suggest) care. To try and overcome some of these barriers, allow me to suggest a few simple, and cheap (or free) ways to gain better insight. 

1. Track your website usage. Tracking your website can offer you a chance to see how people are actually using your website. This means you can see how many people are showing up, but more importantly, what they are showing up for. You will be able to see what content they are reading, and what they aren’t. You can see how they move through your site and how they found you to begin with. This is the data that guides you to make the right decisions on what content to put up, and what your audience wants. Without this data, your really just guessing. 

It is true that in the past, getting this data required a software investment, and in some cases, a pretty substantial one. Alas, those days are over and you can now get a really great set of tools for free from google. Google Analytics takes nothing more than pasting a few lines of javascript on the bottom of each page of your website. Thats its, and did i mention its free? There is no reason not to use this. If you don’t already have it, go get it here. Right now.

2. Unique Contact Information. The internet has replaced the yellow pages as the number one way for people to find companies, products and services. Even the products and services that many people think are not “web” related, like plumbing. A client we work with wanted to know how many people were directed to them from their website. One of the largest revenue sources for this company was plumbing services. Not very techie is it. They weren’t getting a lot of responses from their “contact us” web form. Thats not really surprising, many people don’t use those. Many people like to call a phone number and talking to a real person. Imagine that. This companies market was no different.

To answer the question of how effective their website was at generating business, they published a phone number on their website that was different than all of there other collateral. On their trucks and service vans they have one number, on their phone book listings another. Because of this simple tactic they are able to track where people got the phone number. As it turns out, 63% of their business comes in through the web site number. Go ahead, steal this tactic. See where your customers find you. 

3. Ask. Yep, its that simple. Ask your customer questions. This doesn’t have to be a huge indevor, just ask. Think about this, when was the last time you were doing business with someone and they asked you for anything over “do you want fries with that”?  You can do surveys, paper or on the web. You could conduct focus groups if you have some extra budget allocation you need to spend. You could also pick up the phone and ask some of your customers how they are doing. Is your product / service working correctly? Is there anything that could make it better? It can take as little as three seconds to ask someone when they come into your store how they are doing. You might be surprised at what you find out. What have you got to lose, other than the opportunity to make a difference to your customers?

A lot of money is spent on experts to get a short cut to insight. This can very helpful, but consider this,  they are experts because they do this stuff over and over until they notice patterns in how people react to similar situations. They do this stuff over and over. Why not do some of that yourself and gain some expertise? It can only help. 

There are many other things that can be done to get a clear picture of what is going on. Many ways to slice the data and gain real bottom line shaping insight from it. This is where professionals can help. I hope this can at least get you started down the path of getting cleaner information so you can start to make decisions based on insight, not guesswork. When you have a good base of information, then call in the experts to help take you to the next level. 

The advice that follows pertains really to hiring or partnering with anyone, but for the purposes here we will focus on web development firms. 

There are many choices in the market place for nearly anything. Employees, stock brokers, financial advisors and of course web developers. In web development you will find usability firms, creative boutiques, consultants and many more specialties. We have been told that competition (read choices) are good for the economy, good for keeping vendors competitive in price and technology and good for the consumer. To a certain extent, this is true. Monopolies don’t help the market self regulate. The problems comes in when too many choices are introduced. In the case of web developers, it comes down to specialties. 

As the internet continues to mature and businesses find ways to leverage the internet, a multitude of specialties have grown into the field. While this is good overall because it gives us more people dedicated to expanding our understanding of the internets possiblities, technologies and applications; however, it also becomes harder for businesses to sort out what type of help they need. Due to the specialization of the web industry, not all firms can offer the same level of service across the board.

Imagine being the owner of small business trying to take that exceptionally hard leap to “medium” size. There are many things on your plate to think about. How will your operations expand to the needed size? Where are the economies of scale you can leverage? What infrastructure changes will be needed? What will it cost? How does the internet, social media and search marketing fit in? There’s a lot to do. Your going to need help. But from who?

If you hire a technology company, you will surely get great technology solutions. But will they understand usability? If you hire a creative firm you can probably get a really great looking web site. It might even win some awards. But do they understand how to leverage the internet to meet your business goals? How will you determine which skill set is right for you? How will you ensure you don’t make the wrong decision, potentially losing precision time and money? Its simple. Don’t worry about it. 

Don’t worry about it? Thats my advice? Well… Yes. Let me rephrase. Don’t worry about it YET. The internet is a fast changing environment. Its ok to make some mistakes. The best internet strategy to have is one based on failing fast and fixing fast. Keep that in mind and use it as a reason to not worry about hiring the wrong group. 

Forget the technology. This applies in two ways. First, it doesn’t matter if your developer wants to use ruby on rails, php, or .NET. You can’t compare firms by what language they want to use. Why? See this post. Second, technology is a means to an end, not and end in itself. At this point in the game, getting the strategy right is much more important. 

Forget the portfolio. Well, don’t totally forget the portfolio. Look at it, read the case studies, download the white papers and ebooks, but don’t base your entire decision on it, there is something more important. 

So what should you worry about? First and foremost, do you get along with them? Do they think like you where it matters and think different where you have less experience? Do you like them? This may sound a little touchy-feely, but I’m not making this up. The best case I have ever heard for this argument comes from Jim Collins. Jim Collins is an author among other things, and his two best know books are “Built to Last” and “Good to Great“. These are mandatory reading for any business executive in my humble opinion. In his writing, Jim makes a remarkable case for why all the important questions are “Who” questions, not “What” questions. Best of all his cases are built from massive research studies and empirical evidence, not just opinion. He sites many companies such as HP and Sony that started by assembling the right team before they even knew what they were going to do for a business.

So what does this mean to you? Start by identifying some possible firms. Ask other professionals you know, check out their websites, search google or the yellow pages (if web firms even advertise there anymore). Get your list however you can, then create a short list based on initial impression and the attitude you feel when your are on their website. Look at their work, must most importantly see what they think is important. Then, one at a time call your short list and invite them over. Sit down and talk to them. Don’t start with what you need (read “think” you need) or ask what they know. Start by talking about business in general. How is your business going. How is there’s. What challenges do you have at the business level? What challenges do they have? What books are they reading? Basically, anything that allows you to start a conversation based on anything EXCEPT why you want to hire them or your project. If you think this will be awkward, heres a tip: Arrange to meet with your perspective firm with a few people from your company. Have someone from you company run a few minutes late, so you can initiate the conversation without the pressure of “getting started”.

A good partner in business is just like a marriage, make sure you like the person (firm) first. If you don’t see eye to eye on imperative strategic  direction, it doesn’t matter how good they are at coding. If you don’t get along with your perspective vendor at a fundamental personal level, it doesn’t matter how good they can design. Your ability to work with your chosen partner is more important to the outcome of your project than anything else. Its just like dating, find a group that inspires you. Find a firm that talks and acts the way that you believe in. The foundation of the relationship should be about trust and mutual respect. If you don’t respect your chosen business partners, you are in for a rough ride. Don’t skip this step. Use the technology and specialization’s to choose between the firms you get along with, no the other way around. 

At the end of the day we are all people. We require the help and assistance of others to make it through this world. Brands are great and companies are too, but behind it all we spend our day with people. Make sure that you do business with people who you don’t mind interacting with. There is no web development shop out there that has the market corned on everything. Keep looking until you find the right group and your project will most likely turn out great. 

In the professional services business, it’s common to come across a few sayings. “Use the right tool for the job”, and “When all your problems look like nails, all your solutions look like hammers”. Each of these sayings is reminder to the service professional, or rationality to the client, about the approach that is taken on a project. They both make very valid points, but I think there is a problem in the way we apply these sayings, and as a result the pressure we put on our clients and ourselves. 

“Use the right tool for the job.” It’s impossible to know everything about anything. There are so many hours in a day, and most of it is devoted to production. We all have to get paid. In order to cope, specialization happens. People and even companies start to play in a niche in order to be able to know as much as they can about a specific topic, and become an expert in it. After all, that’s what clients want, experts. This knowledge leads to bias. If you know more about hammers, then every problem looks like a nail. This obviously is where the second saying comes from. 

“When all your problems look like nails, all your solutions look like hammers”. This saying is usually used as a warning to keep an open mind. It works along the lines of  â€œIf you want a different result, you can’t do the same thing.” This makes sense, but if you look at the other side of the coin, you will also notice its implication for professional service providers.

 If you need to increase your bottom line, you have two basic options: 1.) Reduce Expenses or 2.) Increase Revenue. Either of these will work (in our hypothetical perfect world). If you ask an efficiency expert, he will tell you that reducing expenses is the best way to go. If you ask a marketer, he will tell you that Increasing Revenue is the better option. In both cases, your asking the hammers to look at your problem and they see nails. This leads us to two points.

1.) The nail is not the same.  The nail in our metaphor is dependant of the perspective of the person looking at. Just like “Don’t ask your lawyer health advice, ask your Doctor”. Your doctor sees nails based on his experience, and so does the lawyer. If you get into an auto accident and it causes damage to your health, you will need both the Doctor and the Lawyer to pound the nails that they are good at.

2.) Hammers will always see nails, and sell hammering services. This leaves a lot of stress on the client, because most often, they will not hire out a solution that can solve by themselves. They look for experts to help out. Each expert has their own hammer and their own view of nails. If you need someone to put in screws, a hammer will never sell you that. They are more likely to convince you that screws could work, but so will nails. Then they will try and sell the hammer instead of the screwdriver. Not because they are malicious, they might be right, nails will work just as well as screws, but they have experience in seeing that nails work, more than they do with screws. They can’t know it all and they are experts with nails, so a hammer is what you need.

The real lynch pin of all this is that the above statements work well for strategy, less well for tactics, and almost irrelevant for execution or production. Lets look at an example.Imaging that you are the in charge of a new technology startup. The product is a solid first version and can be purchased over the internet as a digital download. It’s time to sell some products. You need to market your product and start to make some sales. Two marketing firms with two different core ideas present their plans to you. The first group lays out a plan to build your brand awareness with the largest group of people in your potential target market. The plan includes direct response including direct mail and email, print ads in trade magazines, digital advertising and a website that shows all the features and benefits. The entire campaign is directed to the person most often responsible for purchasing, the purchasing managers of companies. For this example you are buying hammers for nails.

The second marketing group comes in and suggests aiming the campaign at early adopters to grow the user base of the product. The idea is that while purchasing managers do purchase the products; it is the users that will influence the purchasing manger to pick a certain product. The best way to get exposure to a new technology is to go after the smaller market segment of early adopters, because the rest of the main stream will be to opposed to new technology until they hear a buzz about it. To grow the buzz they will target the early adopters. Their plan includes blogger outreach programs, conversational marketing in tech communities, participation in relevant trade shows and un-conferences and a website that is built for community interactions. For this example you are buying screwdrivers for screws.

To choose between the two you have to figure out if you need hammers or screwdrivers. Are the problems nails or screws? This is a very important question at the strategy level. Do you go after purchasing managers or early adopters?  When we apply the questions further down, it makes less of a difference. 

If we ignore the strategy, and start to apply the question to the tactics, it makes less of an impact. Is it better to do a blogger outreach program or print ads in a trade magazine? In theory you can do a blogger outreach program to reach the purchasing managers, and you can probably use a print ad to reach some early adopters. The effectiveness may vary so it still matters somewhat, but you can impact both the nails and the screws with the tactics.

Now lets take our example down to the execution or production level. In the first strategy, we need to build a website that shows features and benefits. In the second strategy we need build a website with community features. On a tactical level, we could build a site that does both, so the questions isn’t very important, but from a production standpoint, does it matter what language the site is built in? Lets say that the first marketing group that is selling hammers to pound nails has built a specialty in Microsoft’s .NET environment, and they build dynamic websites using the language C# (c-sharp).  The second group that is selling screwdrivers for screws uses open-source technology, and builds their dynamic websites using the language PHP (hypertext pre-processor).  The question becomes, does it matter what the website is written in?

The answer is yes and no. In one way, the question is irrelevant. You can build a site that shows features and benefits in either language. You can also build a site that has community features in either language. Yes there are differences, but it can, and has been done both ways, and they both work. In comparison to the whether the strategy is the right tool is infinitely more important than this production question.  For this reason, I say that the question is irrelevant. That is the “no” part of the answer; here comes the “yes”. 

Questions of execution are not usually a zero sum proposition. It is rare that there is one “right” way and every other way is wrong. There’s more than one way to skin a cat. The real point is that due to the specialization of talent and ability each person or firm will be better at a few ways of doing something, and less good at other perfectly acceptable ways of doing things. Most often, it’s better to the let the people responsible for execution or production to do it “their” way. They will be better and more proficient at it, and because of that it will make a difference. If your professional service team prefers hammers to screwdrivers, let them drive nails. At the end of the day, what you really want is two pieces of wood joined together, whether it was done with nails or screws.

The long and the short of it this, pay attention to the decisions that matter, and don’t make decisions based the lower level pieces. You wouldn’t make the decision on what advertising agency to use based on their copywriters use of the word “pleased” instead of “happy”.  You make the decision based on the brand strategy, and the copywriter’s ability to use the right “voice”. Make the decision based on the big picture, and let the people who make the product worry about the production.

“You get better at what you measure,” or so it goes. Metrics are an important part of business. It allows us to focus on key areas and ensure that progress is being made. The good thing about good measurement is that it takes the guesswork out of improvement, and makes a more equal environment. If you notice an employee who is not doing a good job and you tell them, they will more than likely get angry and think you don’t like them. If you have a solid measurement system in place then you just show the employee the data. They can understand it and see the need to improve without a lot of emotion.

All this is well and good, but it does seem to raise one problem. We know that people are motivated by WIIFM (What’s In It For Me). You can’t motivate someone to care about something they just don’t care about. To solve this problem it has become common practice to use a bonus or reward system tied to a set of metrics. “If you can bring up production levels 10% by the end of the quarter, you will get a $500 bonus.” On the surface this tactic sounds good. It allows us to help motivate our employees to do better because if they do, they get a reward. It’s the carrot and the stick at work. Do good, get a carrot, do bad, get the stick!!! There are two evident problems with the carrot and the stick as we know it.

1.) It doesn’t matter what you measure, the better you get at something, the harder it is to get better. Lets say that you are measuring production of a product. You find out that you are running at about 20% of what you could be running at. You set up a system of measurement, create a reward structure, train and educate your workforce about the system and then get to work. In the first quarter, you get an increase to 30%. Everyone gets bonuses and everyone is happy. The next quarter you get to 50%. More bonuses are handed out and life is good. Then you go on to get 60%, 65% and then 70%. Then all of sudden your increases are now lucky to grow at 1 or 2%, if they grow at all. What Happened???

There is a certain amount of energy that takes place maintaining a position. Its a lot more work to stay at 70% than it did at 20%. This is predictable and can be planned for, but more often that not when the numbers stop growing at a rapid pace, many people get complacent again as they don’t seem to be making as much of an impact. It hard to get the troops worked up over 1%. How much of a bonus can you get for that extra 1%? Is the work required to maintain your position PLUS the amount of work to get even better worth that 1% bonus? This brings us to point number 2.

2.) The carrot and the stick deal with very shallow motivational tactics. Don’t get me wrong. Money isn’t everything, but stop paying your employee’s and see how many show up to volunteer. The problem is that the prospect of more money is a superficial motivator. Many people want to do a great job. Given the choice between work that is mediocre (or working for a company that is) and working for an industry leader, or at least a strong competitor at the head of the market, almost everyone wants the latter. It is also apparent that most people understand that good work done smartly is the key to a great company. The carrot and the stick relies too much on such a shallow premise that it can actually work to lower motivation.

There is a part in most of us that wants to succeed, and have a part on the winning team. The sense of satisfaction that comes from knowing we did important work for a winning team feels better to us than the satisfaction we get from an extra $50. By focusing on the money (the carrot) we degrade the mission to one of greed, and most people do not want to be seen as greedy, or to be thought of as someone who can be bought. The metrics we use and the processes that surround them should be used and presented as tools given to a skilled and valuable worker. They should not be presented as a “program” or “an initiative”. Rewards should still be given, but they should be done as a thank you in the background, and not the focus of a project. Let the business purpose stand out and be the purpose, not the prospect of a bonus. Let your employees have a deeper since of purpose by completing identified key objectives instead of chasing a carrot.

In the commercials that play before movies, at the theater, there is an All State Insurance commercial that asks “Do you know the name of your insurance agent?” I’m not sure how common it is for people to be able to answer that question. While sitting there with my family in the theater, when the All State guy asked the question, both my wife and I knew the answer. Not only the name of my agent, but we know the names of most of the people who work in that office. So do my Mom, Dad and Sister. Unfortunately for All State, I’m with State Farm.

It is no coincidence that my whole family uses the same agent. They know who we are. They know all about us and our policies. They know the name of my kids and how old they are. After my son totaled his car a few days ago, the local office called to make sure he was OK after getting word that it happened from the regional office. The bottom line is that they care about us.

I like a lot of the insurance company ads that are running right now. I love the Geiko gecko and the cave man. I also think the All State campaign is right on, but at the end of the day I won’t even consider getting a quote from anyone else. Even if I am paying more than I would from another company (which I don’t think I do) I wouldn’t switch. The bottom line is that if you want your customer to be loyal, be loyal to them first. It worked for State Farm, from my family alone they are insuring 2 trucks, 3 SUV’s, 2 cars, 3 motorcycles and 5 life insurance policies.

I have been reading a lot of blog posts lately where the agency side is trying to convince clients to stop coming to them with solutions, and start to bring them problems. I don’t know why anyone would want more problems, but maybe that’s just me. All kidding aside, the premise of the argument is that agencies feel that if they are brought the problems the company has (I need more market share, I need higher positive brand recognition) that the agency can use their insights to help create the solution (the strategy).

There is a lot of merit in this argument. Because most agencies work with many different kinds of markets they are in a good position to help move things that work in one sector into another. Often times, the ideas and strategies they bring are new to a particular market and if works wonders. When you spend your days thinking about brands and markets, you get good at it. This is very different than taking an agency your solutions. This is often spec work, and a lot of agencies and independents don’t like it. As an example, lets say you need to increase your brand awareness. You have read a lot about the migration of markets to the web, so you decided you need to beef up your web presence in order to fulfill your need for brand awareness. You decide that you need a website that does a, b and c. So you shop around, get some referrals and call a digital agency. They get on board, do a great job and launch a site that has the best execution of a, b and c. Then 6 months later you measure you progress to find that the web initiative failed. As it turns out your focus on a, b and c made no difference to your brand awareness. You should have focused on d. If the agency we’re brought the problem (I need more brand awareness) they could have helped identify that d was what will make the difference, not a, b or c. That’s the way the story goes anyway, not all agencies would have identified that d is the best option anymore than their client-side counterparts.

The part where this all gets interesting is that, don’t we get taught in brand / business 101 that to be really successful, you need to identify the need and wants of your market and then fulfill those needs? I have heard a million agencies tell their clients exactly that. Try to go with the market instead of trying change the market to fit the business practices? If this is true (you decide if it is) then do agencies practice what they preach?

I received a twitter from David Armano from the Logic + Emotion blog, that pointed to a story on Marketing Vox about whether size matters (size of the agency) to clients. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter that much. But in the article was the list of top reasons marketers choose one agency over another. Here is the list:

1. Quality customer insights
2. Chemistry
3. Creative work
4. Service level / response to needs ongoing
5. Cost control
6. Innovative / strategic thinking
7. Case for ROI
8. Client list
9. Strict adherence to brief
10. Seniority of account team
11. Location
12. Size

It does indeed show that size doesn’t matter, but look at what else it implies. Innovative / strategic thinking didn’t even break the top 5, and neither did Case for ROI. Chemistry and Creative work are at the top of list. With these priorities, does it seem like many clients are searching for help with strategy as agencies think they should (the problem), or are clients searching for great execution (the solution)? It would seem the latter.