So, everyone I speak to these days that are involved in some sort of Web 2.0 initiative tell me how much effort they are placing on content.   I have to laugh, since many of us have been evangelizing the notion of content setting the context for a customer experience for at least a year now.

I just re-read a post by David Armano on Technorati + Authority, which discussed Technorati’s changes in its rating system.   Related to David’s last year were comments on content in general and its quality.   I’ve mentioned to David that  content “design” and the related experience seems to lag functional and interface components of experience design.  In essence, content is the stepchild of design.
So where is content in your marketing and experience design efforts?  Its been my experience that content design is a continual effort, requiring intensive attention. Your goal?  Getting your content to a level where it becomes a value added part of the customer experience?  I talk to customers weekly. What I hear is that there is always too much, not enough third party or UGC and that the content they tend to come across on on supplier sites is jargon rich.

Content is the cornerstone of a superior customer experience because it provides the context in which the experience takes place.  How do do you ensure that that cornerstone won’t crumble?

1. Dedicate a team to focus solely on the content aspects of the experience.
2. Focus on What you say  - its clear to me that most companies have a lot to say, more than they know what to do with. But what I hear from customers (and this is so obvious) is don’t tell us too much, tell us the right things.  Also, give me two perspectives, one that is role based and personalized to what I do and give me a functional view. In my work at SAP we actually saw clear geographic differences here with NA executives looking more for a role based content experience while stakeholders in EMEA were looking more for a functional perspective.  We don’t have data on APJ yet.
3. How you say it - one thing you need to spend time on is your “Content Tonality.”  Many companies have been accused, and rightly so at times, of taking a rather circuitous route to delivering a message.  To address this issue,  focusing on the source - your content producers.  Train your content producers to align their content with the Voice of the Brand.   Content should be plain spoken - we use blogs in our training as examples of the type of writing we are looking for. We are striving for a conversational tone, honest, impactful, positive etc.
4. Who do you say it to - I referenced this above. The content must align to specific personas based on who you are trying to communicate with.  What is most important is being able to personalize the content during the buying experience so that enables customers to develop an affinity for the brand which in turn will convert into revenues for said brand.

Things like radical transparency, entertainment value, co-creation are all critical elements of a next generation customer experience but without contextual based content, its all just window-dressing.

You: a young company.  What: about to bring a product to market. How: Segment your market to find those most likely to buy.   Now, sounds easy?  Its not but it can be relatively painless.  When you first bring your products to market you want to find the “sneezers” (to borrow Seth Godin’s term), those who will help develop the market for you by being advocates evangelists for your product and spread the word.  Helping to drive viral adoption.

Many marketers you hire are going to want to perform a traditional segmentation - that is, they will attack a particular geography or vertical as a way to find those sneezers. But I’d submit that’s not enough.  To truly be successful in bringing your product to market you have to segment your market by “attitude”, yes attitude… those individuals that have the inclination to buy from you… attitudinal segmentation enables companies large and small to find the sneezers, those most likely to buy and more importantly find those who just love to talk to you but will never buy, as well as those who just plain will never buy.  These last two groups represent a huge amount of wasted time, energy and money, which any sales rep worth their salt is anathema to.

Attitudinal segmentation is a best case example of the science of marketing.  Yes, this part of marketing is not art but 99% science. As part of this scientific effort you will ask the market questions to answer the following using a statistically valid sample with a combination of real time virtual, and web survey data:

• Which groups within your potential market ascribe a high degree of value to the capabilities of your solution (don’t say ALL because that’s not true!)?
• How large are these segments and where are they (you will realize that they cut across verticals AND Geos but the analysis will provide you with logical geos and verticals to start with?
• Where should you focus your scarce sales resources to get the most bang for the buck?
• Which groups of customers should we ignore? Or said better, which groups of customers should we only address opportunistically?
• What elements of your offer - product, service, pricing, ease of use, etc… do prospective customers find most appealing and what specifically about those attributes do they like?

B2C companies have been using attitudinal segmentation for quite some time as part of their Go-to-market strategies. B2B companies can and will benefit from a scientific approach to marketing as well, especially when you combine such a segmentation effort with an evaluation of your offer and its attributes. By understanding what components of your offer (product, pricing, support, etc… ) are most attractive to your potential customers, you will be able to more easily adjust it to maximize uptake by those most likely to buy.  For example, if you are selling a SaaS solution, do your customer’s prefer to be billed monthly or quarterly?  Do they want a super friendly easy to use interface that means more screens or a more crowdes interface but only takes one screen to complete the transaction?  You won’t really know until you ask!

Remember, its not enough to merely understand your market, you must determine what you should do DIFFERENTLY to maximize the economic value of understanding your market.  This type of segmentation combined with a detailed understanding of your offer enables you to pre-test each segment’s reaction to your offer and GTM strategy enabling you to make adjustments to both.

C’mon, what do you have to lose?  Customers, market share and competitive pole position.

David Armano created a fantastic visual on the steps to Brand Heaven and Hell

So.. where to begin?  In my opinion, one of the defining characteristics of Marketing 2.0 is its reliance on scientific method to segment, target and personalize the experience for customers and prospects. Over the last several years, companies such as Dell, Microsoft, Apple and yes, even SAP have been changing the way they go-to-market. Chris Koch over at the IT Services Marketing Association has a recent piece on Segmentation/Personalization. Chris says:

Customer segmentation in most companies is starting to look like a hairy knuckle dragger, mired in a Stone Age era defined mostly by demographics. The successor on the evolutionary scale, segmentation by  vertical, is so commonplace that it is going to win as many battles for business as a Bronze Age spear.

I couldn’t disagree more with this assertion.  The marketing scales have shifted dramatically over the last few years, with marketing as “science” far outweighing, marketing as “art.”  Tools such as attitudinal segmentation, conjoint analysis along with measurements like Net Promoter Score are just a few of the arrows in the marketing quiver today that have moved marketing into the 21st century with a scientific hyper-targeting capable approach.

Its clear that “new” marketers freely and without hesitation rely on “science” to make their “art” more impactful with targets.

Efforts around attitudinal segmentation and conjoint analysis give ya two things: (1) an understanding of who will buy from you and why - what do they care about, what’s their buying style and (2) what levers in your “offer stack” your pricing, your packaging, the time it takes to get your solution up and running etc… that if you optimized would drive more market share capture.  Using these two marketing as science methods also lays the foundation for a great customer experience by enabling your personalization strategy. If you understand your attitudinal segments and you understand how to deliver content that is specific to each segment, voila, you have yourself a personalization strategy.

I’ll speak further about how to move away from “traditional” segmentation to more scientific, fact-based approaches in future posts… but a question. is this what you’re looking for?

Just a quick post to say “thanks” to Francois for inviting me along on this ride. Should be fun!   I’m looking forward to exciting discussion on the nature of Marketing 2.0, which will be a subject of my first “real” post.