My favorite comments - thank you to the LinkedIn community

Since starting to contribute posts for LinkedIn's influencer project, I've been struck by the comments I've been getting. Many in the marketing world talk about engagement, and it's great to see it in action around the issues that are shaping marketing today. I wanted to highlight a few of the comments that really struck me but also to thank the LinkedIn community for being so generous with their time and consideration. And thanks to @Jeff Weiner and LinkedIn team for pushing this important initiative. Keep the comments and feedback coming.


1. Suffering from "Shiny Object Syndrome"? The Modern Marketer's Nemesis

From Stephen Dann
Most organisations are pretty good at setting objectives, but many then leap straight into marketing tactics without pausing to agree the strategy on the way. Typical example: "We want to increase sales by 100% over the next year, so what are we doing on Twitter?" Defining how best to achieve the objectives is the fundamental step that will show you what tactics are relevant and whether they should be "shiny" or not. Beyond this, I believe every marketer should be allowed to slice off a moderate budget to experiment with new ideas with no expectation of immediate return - a marketing R&D budget. This is the creative bit that ensures you have some new ideas ready for when your current approach begins to fail - as it will at some stage.

Haren Ghosh
Wondering if the shiny object syndrome is synonymous to the quest of bringing new ideas to the market. My limited experience suggests that marketers (i.e., budget decision makers) aren’t moving as fast as they should be. In other words, marketers are discussing what should market do, but in reality they are not practicing what they are preaching. As evidence, if you look at the media distribution across different media channels (i.e., TV, Print, etc.) in the US market for last 6-7 years, you’ll find that nothing has practically changed. TV was at 50% of all media (aggregated across categories) years ago, and still it has the same allocation today. Years ago, everyone predicted that online would take TV’s role - I hardly see any evidence of that (other than some popular blogs) in the data. Certainly, I do agree that marketers should rely more on the science side of the marketing. At the same time, they should take some risk of coming out of their cocoon and try out new ideas and approaches.

2. The Funnel is Dead. The New Consumer Decision Journey

Harald R. R.
In the beginning of the consumerization of the internet, markekeers and category managers often asked me what type of products were ranked on the Top 10 selling list. Their thinking was product driven rather than consumer and behavior driven. Together with my team and leading clients I was then working on a consumer journey model based on consumer processes which are zipping with corresponding cyclic and iterative corporate processes. Afterwards I aligned this model to different buying motives and consumer roles which are driving the ultimate buying process. Basically we are buying in three different modes: 1) Staples: routine, high frequency,.. 2) Solutions: one of a kind, selection process important,.. 3) Experience: impulsive, convenience. In all of these roles consumers want to contact very differently with the company and you can disturb the entire relationship if you provide the wrong interaction. It is not about traditional fixed segmentation based on income, age and so on. It is a flexible model in which a consumer can take on different roles. For example if someone is buying the tenth Porsche he or she may be in a staple role with different interaction patterns than the experience role. It is absolutely critical for trust and loyalty to build the entire consumer interaction based on such a motive based model rather on a fixed and only process based one.

3. Video: The #1 Problem CMOs face

Jonathan W.
You know those kind of meetings in the marketing department (usually B2B) where everyone sits around coming up with ideas for how to launch the latest product? The way it seems that everything is reinvented every time? Someone puts their hand up and says "I reckon a mobile marketing element would be good", while someone else pushes for a print ad campaign or some other FMA idea? For years, I’ve watched CMOs struggling to get their minds (and budgets) around the principles and techniques of integrated marketing. And I’ve watched them attempt to put together communication plans that combine offline with online activities. Unfortunately, time after time they kept running into the same challenge: The lack of a cohesive strategic framework that encompasses marketing in all of its aspects—starting with a single view of today’s much-evolved buyers, which leads in turn to tightly integrated communications efforts (whether online or offline is immaterial) that cater to this buyer's current and future needs. Without that holistic framework, marketing is inevitably less than the sum of its parts.

4. Social media and the consumer decision journey

Miriam M.
Social media has definitely changed how marketers must approach the challenge of building awareness, consideration and preference for their brands. It provides another layer to make a brand relevant to customers in a far more targeted (and measurable) way. One of the more effective tools used by companies today is to create brand experiences that zero in on a particular passion point or unique interest of the target consumer. These experiences must be a part of the Brand DNA to drive relevance. Properly done, these experiences or digital events can create a platform for conversation and sharing with other like-minded individuals and in so doing, help to build further top of mind awareness for brands.

Brian R. 
The first thing you should read is Mazlow's Hierarchy of Needs before you get into this mess. Marketing is roughly divided into ten component parts. First, obviously are products and services or the combination of both aka a car dealer and decisions are made taking into consideration based on value which is the combination of price and quality. Following that can be a host of marketing issues like distribution [availability], price, promotion, PR, advertising, customer service, packaging, merchandising etc. A brand is simply the sum of your experience with the aforementioned products and or services i.e. all the touch points. Customer segmentation falls out of Mazlow and a host of other demographic and h considerations which is not hard, but takes considerable time to get right - and keep right in an ever evolving marketplace.

Learn more about these topics at our Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum site. And please follow me on Twitter @davidedelman.