(This post is guest written by Saul Gowens and originally appeared on the Websand Blog)
Hello…is it me you’re looking for?
For 2015, it’s time to take some data driven marketing lessons from Lionel Richie.
Improve how we do things, score some major success and make marketing Easy…(Like a Sunday Morning)
It’s new year. Over the holidays you’ll have had some time for a bit of reflection and you’ve probably set yourself a load of new things to achieve and new targets to hit.
Part of this process will be the measurement of your progress. I’m assuming this to be health related so this could be counting your ‘points’ for each meal, counting your progress on your fitbit, or counting down the number of days left of your dryathon.
In business, and especially in marketing, the process of setting objectives and then measuring progress is a common thing.
However the reflection period that you have just enjoyed during the festive period in business is quite a rarity.
In business, things need to happen fast. As soon as you complete one urgent task, then the next urgent thing is waiting impatiently on your to do list. The thing is to get things right, you need time to reflect and think.
The lean start up philosophy teaches a process of setting micro objective. It’s a great process to adopt, but more fun with Lionel Richie leading the way.
Introducing Lean Marketing – Lionel Richie Style
A three step process based on around Lionel Richie’s secret marketing algorithm
More Haste + Less Speed = Easy (like a Sunday Morning)
Step One: Say Hello
Do a Lionel Richie, say ‘Hello‘. Assess what it is that you are really looking for. What is the one thing will really make a difference to your business
Step Two: Go ‘On Tour’
Put the plan into action by going ‘On Tour’ and measure your progress.
(I say ‘On Tour’ as tours don’t go on forever, they are for a fixed amount of time. In planning your activity it needs to be for a specific amount of time. The Lean Start Up movement tend to say ‘Get Out of the building’. However, they don’t necessarily say when you need to come back!)
Step Three: Read the reviews
Your ‘Tour’ has ended. What was the result? Did you make enough progress to go ‘On Tour’ again?
If your plan works then keep doing it and move to the next thing. As Lionel says ‘Once, Twice, Three times (a lady)‘.
However, and more importantly when it doesn’t work it encourages you to STOP. Take a look around. Review what hasn’t worked.
In some cases – sadly – this might mean stop altogether, and that’s ok. You’ll invested what you consider to be the right amount of time and money and not recieved the return you expect.
In others, you’ll realise you missed something that is now obvious. A slight change of things and you’re off again, safe in the knowledge that you’ve saved a load of time and money by not moving in the wrong direction.
When you do get it right, this process of planning, going ‘On Tour’, measuring and then reviewing should result in a logical order of continous improvement.
How Lionel has put this into practice (maybe…)
For Lionel he has been writing hits for a long time, and touring the new stuff. However, people keep asking for the old stuff, the classics.
He’s listened and perhaps measured a drop in ticket sales.
He thinks that the old stuff is what people are looking for. Hello, Easy, Dancing on the Ceiling and all the others.
So he’s back ‘On Tour’ this summer but this time only the classics.
We’ll be there. He hits Newcastle on the 7th March, after this blog post we have no choice!
How you can put this into practice
For businesses, a lot of measuring their performance when ‘On Tour’ are based around understanding the outcomes from marketing activity.
However, measurement of Opens and Clicks can be misleading.
To truly understand performance, you need to measure the end outcome and that usually means a sale or an information based response of somekind – beyond the open or click.
For Websand we are helping businesses to really understand the outcomes from their email marketing and use this knowledge to develop more responsive marketing messages that are in line with the ‘Hello‘ that their customers are looking for.
So far, we’ve helped clients achieve response rates 100% higher than industry averages, and understand what messages really make a difference to different types of customers.
If you are looking to really understand the outcomes from your marketing. Drive your business forward in 2015. Or get your business customer centric and make sure that your customers are ‘Stuck on you‘ then get in touch and say ‘Hello‘.
It could be Websand you’ve been looking for.
Saul.
CEO @websand
P.S. This Lionel Richie tribute post in in honour of the fact that 2015 will be the year of Lionel Richie, he’s back on tour and headlining the Glastonbury stage on the ‘legendary’ Sunday slot. Someone has even made a massive paper mache head and put it on kickstarter. The great man himself was one of the bidders. This is quite a story, and we won’t be upset at all if you take a look here.
