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Succeeding in a “Talk” Marketing World: Remove These Five Obstacles

By Lois Kelly
Beeline Labs

With consumers in control, marketing is no longer about telling and selling, as Procter & Gamble’s chief marketing executive Jim Stengel pointed out last year during his remarks to the 4A’s Media Conference. Marketing is now more about dialogue and conversations.

Seems like a no-brainer. So why aren’t more companies further along in conversational marketing? These five obstacles most commonly trip companies up on their road from “talking at” to “talking with” people.

1. Tied up in tag lines. Companies spend an inordinate amount of time and money on tag lines, vision statements and elevator descriptions. While these have a purpose, they don’t help people talk about your company, product or issue. They are directional and descriptive and most are written to be read – not to be talked about or to provoke meaningful conversations. Today it’s better focusing on uncovering ideas, points of view and advice that are talk-worthy than crafting a pithy tag line. If people find it difficult to talk about your company, they won’t talk about your company.

2. Nothing to talk about. It’s fairly easy to talk about our products, our companies and our strategies. But those topics are more interesting to internal audiences than external. The reality is that most companies get stuck trying to find interesting ideas to talk about, ideas that spark customers, employees and analysts to say, “Gee, that’s interesting. Tell me more.” There’s a proliferation of “talk” channels – blogs, podcasts, Webinars, industry conferences – but they are of little value without engaging ideas. The “talk idea” gap in many companies is more like the Grand Canyon, but it’s an easy problem to solve because there are nine themes that everyone likes to talk about and hear about: contrarian/counterintuitive; aspirational; David. V. Goliath; anxieties; avalanche about to fall; glitz and glam; how to; personal stories; and seasonal/event-related ideas.

3. Don’t know how to really listen. If marketing is a conversation, then at least half the job is listening. But this is a new skill for some marketers. By listening I don’t mean doing market research, but operationalizing how your company directly engages with customers and recognizes and acknowledges their views. By listening you find out what people think about your company, how to improve, where to add new products or services and how to turn customers into advocates. More importantly, research from the social networking company Communispace has found that people are much more likely to recommend and buy your products when they feel listened to.

4. Alpha fraidy cats and committee mush. Companies are rich in alpha fraidy cats who don’t want to let go of control and participate in the new customer-in-control world. These fraidy cats are the smart, persuasive, domineering and insecure types who quickly kill new ideas until there are enough best practices, ROI metrics and case studies to prove an idea is “solid.” A related obstacle is that committees get together to develop ideas worth talking about but end up watering down the ideas so much that they are “mush” and nothing most people would want to talk about. A lot of messaging motion but no business movement.

5. Oops, we forgot the communications people. Many communications people have the insights and expertise into what makes for genuine, interesting conversations – often more so than marketing professionals. The latter have been well trained in “telling” techniques like advertising, direct, and promotions. Few have the right communications expertise on their staffs, so they’re still stuck in their old ways.

In his song, “Fine Line,” Paul McCartney sings that, “there’s a fine line between recklessness and courage.” Not embracing conversational marketing is reckless because it puts a barrier up between you and your customers. Listening and adopting a conversational communications approach, however, requires just a small bit of courage.

And what CEO or CMO wants to be seen as lacking courage?

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Lois Kelly, a partner in Beeline Labs, consults, teaches and speaks about how to achieve business goals faster by operationalizing Marketing 2.0 strategies. Her book, Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word of Mouth Marketing has been praised for helping people understand how to move from a “talk at” to a “talk with” marketing world, and was rated one of the top 10 books in 2007 by WebWorkersDaily and syndicated business book reviewer Richard Pachter of The Miami Herald. The 2008 Axiom Book Awards named Beyond Buzz the best marketing/advertising/public relations book.

During her career, Lois has launched a pioneering interactive marketing agency, managed crisis communications and issues management programs, helped position companies for IPOs and led public relations agencies. Clients have included Sun Microsystems, FedEx, Dunkin’ Donuts, TJX, SAP and Sapient. She is a graduate of the University of New Hampshire and Harvard University.