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This is a topic I’ve been discussing with many of my clients recently, so I wanted to share an excellent ‘Oldie but Goldie’:

A while ago, Byron Sharp published an article called “Why Paid Search is Like Shelf-Space.”

Here is my take on it.

I firmly believe that (Paid) Search is a fantastic channel, especially during Go-to-Market, as it can achieve highly efficient growth.

However, it’s crucial understand the channel’s role in the marketing mix. To illustrate, let’s compare an online business to a brick & mortar retail setup. In this view, search is akin to customers already being inside the shop. Once that’s the case, it’s absolutely essential that we convert as many of them as possible, both on the search engine and on our website – arguably our most vital marketing tool.

Every lost customer here should be taken personally because they were actively seeking what we have to offer.

BUT relying solely on search will always limit us to the number of people actively searching for our product or service (obviously), those who are already in-market with the highest intent.

Real growth, the kind that makes us into category leaders, will only be unlocked through what happens in other places. In channels where we can introduce our offering to people who didn’t know they needed it or might not even be aware such an offer exists.

To make this happen we need to follow Byron’s advice: “This is the magic of good creative advertising combined with broad reach media. The opportunity to reach brains that are not currently interested in the category.”

While I agree with nearly everything he says, I want to challenge one point:

In his article, Byron Sharp asserts that “paid search is like shelf-space, and, like shelf-space, it needs to be always on.”

I believe there are a few exceptional cases where it does make sense NOT to invest in search, and these are when one (or more) of these three situations exist:

1) We’re operating in a category that doesn’t generate searches because people are unaware it even exists (in such cases, our primary goal is to ‘get people into the store first’).

2) Our conversion funnel isn’t competitive compared to other players bidding on the same keywords (if so, we need to address this).

3) Our organic (non-paid) presence is so robust and there are no ads due to lack of competition that we rank on the actual top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) anyway (Congratulations!).

By the way, if you’ve made it this far and haven’t yet read Byron Sharp‘s and Jenni Romaniuk‘s book ‘How Brands Grow,’ then I strongly recommend doing so. IMO, it might just be one of the most pivotal marketing books ever written.

I’m curious to hear whether you agree or disagree.

Most organizations I have worked with have some kind of marketing performance dashboard that they look at daily or weekly. Sometimes this is built in Google Sheets or – preferably – in a sophisticated tool such as Looker.

And in most of the cases, what sits on top of these dashboards are KPIs and absolute metrics such as spending, the number of visits/leads/sales, and subsequently, unit acquisition cost metrics like CPV/L/A.

However, what most of these dashboards don’t show are conversion rates broken down by each individual funnel step. Yet, in my opinion, exactly these conversion rates are the most crucial metric. Not only do they help to understand at a glance how much you “don’t sell,” but they are a vital tool to show improvement (or the opposite) over a time period.

Let’s first look at an upper-funnel conversion rate to illustrate this.

Most performance marketing publishers, regardless of whether they let you bid for conversions or leads, essentially operate on a cost-per-click basis. Let’s look at the Conversion Rate 1, also referred to as CR1 or e-commerce rate. It calculates the conversion from site visit to the first meaningful interaction such as a lead or making an order.

With a reasonably broad targeting and a mass marketing product, your CR1 would normally be in the area of 1% to 4% (see here for more benchmarking information). There can be valid exceptions, but if it is lower, you really need to question your product-market fit and/or funnel – and if it is higher, you should see if you can broaden your targeting or diversify channels.

Why is CR1 so important? The answer is simple.

Because any efforts that you can make to increase your CR1 will have an incredible effect on your overall performance. According to an Adobe study, the global e-commerce rate benchmark is 2.58%, which means out of 100 visitors to your website, 2.58 take a meaningful action.

That’s not a lot. Imagine a shop that has 100 visitors a day and less than 3 make a purchase.

Now imagine that you put as much effort as you put into your offsite activities (ad assets, campaign management) into a hypothesis-based test and measure framework and as a result you manage to create one more purchase for each 100 visitors. You will gain 1 percentage point of CR1.

This does not sound like much, but what it means in reality is that you increased your performance by more than 38%. Remember, you already paid the publisher for all of those 100 visitors. This means you achieve a 38% performance increase at no extra cost. Not only will your ability to generate revenue go through the roof, but your unit acquisition cost will reduce dramatically.

Of course, there are already many businesses out there who built conversion machine websites (e.g. booking.com, HelloFresh, Amazon, to name a few), but in my experience, most marketing organizations still spend more time on what happens off-site than what happens on-site. Yet, the resource invested in improving conversion rates can have much higher multiples.

Where do you invest your resources?

Are you spending as much time as you should on your lead-generation funnel and form? Are you constantly thinking about the information structure of your website and landing pages? Are you permanently coming up with hypotheses about what could be done to make more of your visitors act? If not, you should.

Again, imagine you own a shop on the high street and out of 100 visitors a day, less than 3 would make a purchase. All the others just come in, browse, and leave. You could either question the quality and intent of your visitors (another story for another article) or you could take action and work every single day and test new approaches.

This is the retail mindset that we marketers need to live up to.

We are great at celebrating each sale. But, we need to look equally as closely at those people who came to us and haven’t bought, as we need to look at those who bought.

As a matter of fact, we should take every single potential customer lost on the way personally. And we should ask ourselves what we could have done better.

That’s why the conversion rate should be your most important metric.

The above illustrates the importance of the CR1, but it doesn’t stop there. If you know lead-gen businesses, then you know that in many cases, the hot leads (i.e. those that are ready to convert) get handed over to the sales department to be converted into orders.

But what happens to the ones that are not that hot? I have seen too many businesses where these just get ‘parked’ or worse, forgotten/ignored.

Also here, you should take every non-converted lead as a personal insult because a) you have paid for them already, and b) they must have been somewhat interested; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been on your site and provided their lead information.

So, find out why they didn’t buy and develop programs or tactics to get them to buy. Maybe they need to find out more about the product? So give them more information. Maybe timing wasn’t just right? So, keep them engaged until the timing is right, and they will come to you first. Or maybe it was just too expensive? Then think about a one-off discount (after all you have no more acquisition cost).

The essence is always the same, no matter which conversion rate we will look at:

Rather than investing more money into getting more visitors, the secret to success lies in making more from the visitors you have. This should have always been the case, but in the currently much more challenging startup climate, it is more important than ever.

So:

Think like a retailer. Be creative. And take every lost potential customer 100% personally. Make the conversion rate your hero metric.

Being a true G.O.A.T., he took the audience through the different stages of his exceptional career . For each of these stages, he highlighted a person who was instrumental and connected them to individual learnings .

He did this without being preachy, but yet highly emotional , full of gratitude, and with quite a bit of humor too.

What an incredible role model, hard worker , and exceptional athlete :

– Born in a small town in Bavaria (like me :-))
– Left Germany to play in the NBA at the age of twenty
– Played for the same club (Dallas Mavericks) throughout his entire professional career
– Won every title there is (NBA MVP in 2007, 14x NBA All-Star, NBA Championship in 2011)
– 6th highest scorer of all time in the NBA

But more importantly, what a person!

I had the pleasure to meet Dirk twice in the mid-00s during commercial productions when I worked for Nike. Each time, he was humble, nice, and really funny, without any superstar behavior at all. During lunch breaks, our entire crew sat around on transport boxes eating pizza together .

There is this one story where apparently all the Mavericks players were asked what personalization they would like to have for their seat in the Mavericks jet – and while most opted for gaming consoles , Dirk asked for a bookshelf . Not sure if it’s really true, but the fact that it absolutely could be says it all .

So yes, I am a Dirkules fanboy – and that is okay with me .

But even without that, his speech is an absolute gem and if you only watch one thing today, then this should be it:

Oh, and for a bit of nostalgia, here’s a little memory from the Nike Battlegrounds shoot in 2004 in Dallas .

#DirkNowitzki #RoleModel #TeamSpirit #CareerJourney #FanboyAlert #Leadership #PersonalGrowth #Memories #Throwback #Nostalgia

This was orginally published as post on Linkedin on August 14th, 2023.

As startups are pushing for more and more growth, they often encounter a unique set of marketing challenges that can either be stumbling blocks or stepping stones. In this article, I’ll first walk you through four structural growth barriers that frequently emerge during the Series A phase and in the second part I’ll explain why these are problematic and give some pointers on how to overcome them for sustained success.

1. The Home Market Comfort Zone: the launch market works really well and it is responsible for >80% of the overall revenue
2. The One-Channel Wonder: One acquisition platform does all the heavy lifting, this is mostly a performance channel such as Paid Search or Paid Social
3. Brand basics only: There is a brand (and often it is implicitly strong) but it lacks a proper manifestation and key aspects of good brand management are neglected (e.g. design or tonality)
4. A Motley Crew of marketeers: The marketing team has grown organically from a group of very talented ‘growth hackers’ but is not structured according to a strategy

So far so good. Generally, this is totally fine for the GTM phase but as a company approaches new ambitious revenue targets and potentially a next funding event – these traits quickly become bottlenecks and need to be addressed to unlock the next level of growth. 

Eliminating growing pains

To achieve the next level it is critically important that a) there is awareness in the leadership team for the need to change and b) to be prepared to invest into making the changes.

And here is why it matters and some thought-starters on how to get these 4 points right:

International expansion – Escaping The Home Market Dilemma

In almost all cases the business plans calls for a significant share of international revenue, yet we realize (often painfully) that an one-size-fits-all marketing playbook approach does not work. Founders and marketing teams have gained a fundamental and very thorough understanding of their target audience and for what performs in the years since launch. Now, they are confronted with an audience that has very different needs – and in many cases also category knowledge. What worked in the home market suddenly doesn’t work that well any more in the new market(s). This is when it becomes crucial to start working with tools that in the past didn’t need to be used, such as qualitative and quantitative research, different messaging structures and conversion funnels to really understand the new market in depth.

Diversification of acquisition channels – Leaving the Comfort Zone

The one channel that efficiently brings new customers to the business is maxed out – and more often than not, this channel is Paid Search. Performance on paid search is driven by the amount of searches for a topic and the ability to convert the traffic bought. Typically, there is not much room to grow as the wider (and thus less relevant) the keywords become the more expensive acquisition gets since CVRs are decreasing. With that, new channels are needed. Yet, they normally work very different from the existing core channel and require an entirely new setup as they may need different funnels, may sit much higher in the path to purchase and they most certainly require a different approach to creative and measurement. Get ready to (almost) start again.

Brand manifestation – From Logo to Legacy

Of course almost all companies that made it that far have defined the rudimentary foundations of a brand: there is a logo, a font, a color palette and a vision and mission statement. But often this is it and the founders or one of the very early employees act as the ‘brand manager’ and most knowledge exists in their heads. Yet, as the company gets bigger and more and more people and external partners are working with the brand, it becomes incredibly important to have a professional brand toolkit – which btw is also an invaluable item to have for the onboarding of new employees as they need to understand (and be convinced of) the brand. What is needed now is some ground work, not to reinvent the brand but much more to distill the already existing elements, refine and sharpen them, fill the gaps and put it all in really solid, workable and inspiring structure.

Marketing team – Building an organization for impact

Undoubtedly, the best teams are designed around a mission and a strategy and the objectives to be delivered upon within this strategy. But the reality in most start-ups is different. Typically, everybody in the marketing team does a little bit of everything and while some really good expertise has been built (especially around the main channel, see above) there is a lack of a professional setup of experts that are able to deliver a more complex strategy. This is when it becomes crucial to very clearly set your marketing strategy and build the team around it, ideally keeping your rockstars and helping them to grow by complimenting them with ‘A players’ that bring in outside domain expertise.

Level up

By correctly addressing these 4 points every company will be able to put themselves in a top position (from a marketing POV) to unleash their next level of growth.

If you feel that you are limited by these 4 areas and you could need help with tackling this – let’s connect and talk. I have worked with many startups and founders over the years on exactly these topics and I am more than happy to explore solutions together with you.

Last but not least, I hope this article was helpful and would love to hear what you think in the comments. Feedback is always appreciated. Thank you !

This article was originally published on Linkedin on August 11th, 2023.

They are all descriptors for groups of people that evoke pictures that are much richer than just the sum of their words that describe them.

Do you know who you are for?

To be really, really good at what you are doing, you need to understand who you are doing this for, what drives the people that will buy, consume, subscribe to your product or service.

Having worked with some of the greatest brands over the past 20 years, I want to talk about a targeting concept that is hugely powerful but almost always underutilized.

The problem with target groups and personas

In asset development marketeers work with Target groups or target audiences, these are often paragraphs consisting of demographic descriptions, category behavior (e.g. travels 2-3 times per year) with some desires and needs sprinkled onto it. These descriptions often come form the media buying side where they help to identify the right channels and properties but very rarely do they evoke a clear picture.

In product development on the other side it is very typical to work with personas. We all know these: This is Lisa, she is 32 years old, works since 4 years in a bank as a customer service representative, on her way to work she listens to podcasts about xy and in her free time she likes to… and so on… Typically a product has 3 to 4 customer personas. While these do evoke a (very detailed) picture they fail to deliver a high-level comprehensive view that can guide all of our activities as company and brand builders.

The solution: Conceptual Target

One of the most powerful approaches I have come across over the years is the approach of the conceptual target.

I first came across this in the brilliant book ‘The Hidden Agenda’ by Kevin Allen, PhD, one of the most helpful business books I have ever read – especially if you are in any way in a position where business development is part of your remit.

A conceptual target is a group of people who share a powerful, driving common agenda – be it a value or a goal. It’s a descriptor that evokes a powerful image, much richer than the mere sum of the words that make the name. It is a moniker for the group of people that is essential to grow and develop your business.

Too abstract? Let me provide some great examples.

“Soccer mums” – without the need for pictures or mood videos, these two words immediately evoke a powerful image of a suburban, SUV-driving mom who deeply cares about the wellbeing of her family and children. It is a super-powerful concept. This insight was recognized by Bill Clinton’s election campaign team in 1996, leading them to focus on this previously neglected group as a central part of their campaign efforts. By doing so, they not only established the term “soccer moms” in the common vocabulary but also secured victory in the election. According to Wikipedia: “The intense media focus stemmed in large part from the media’s belief that soccer moms had become the most sought-after group of swing voters in the 1996 elections. In the end, suburban women favored Clinton by 53 to 39 percent, while suburban men voted for Dole.”

Marriott’s ‘Road warriors’ – this is one of my favorite examples from Kevin’s book. During their pitch for Marriott, they faced the challenge of transforming the perception of the typical customer of their hotel chain, often seen as salespeople spending lonely evenings at buffet restaurants and hotel bars, into something more aspirational. They delved into the mindset of these individuals and discovered that they identify themselves as fearless fighters who venture out every week to promote and sell their company’s products. They play a vital role in driving business growth, and they are willing to sacrifice time with their families to fulfill their missions. The concept of ‘Road warriors’ embodies a powerful and aspirational image, elevating the perception of these customers beyond mere business travelers.

Nike’s ‘Football crazy kids’ – During the early 2000s, I had the opportunity to work for Wieden+Kennedy on the Nike football account, and the conceptual target was ‘Football crazy kids’ – and it is genius. Just from hearing this description, you can visualize these FCKs (as we called them) right in front of you. They are passionate about the ball at their feet, idolize footballers, and are fully immersed in the football culture. Having this conceptual target at the forefront guided the entire Nike football operation, influencing decisions such as which players to sign and which products to launch. It even played a pivotal role in creating some of the greatest ads ever made (like ‘Airport’ and ‘The other game‘). Every time a decision needed to be made, the question asked was, “Will this be right for our FCKs?”

KAYAK’s ‘Travel Pros’ – when I was responsible for travel search website KAYAK’s European Marketing we needed to find a way to distinguish ourselves from the perceived millions of other travel websites out there. So we looked inside first and defined that the core of the brand really is built around ‘confidence’: The confidence to find the best flight or hotel option for you, the confidence to get the best price, the confidence to have the best information to make the best decisions. We then looked at travellers insights and saw that people look up to those ‘pro travelers’ who travel so much that they always know which seat to choose and which hotel to go to. With that we established the conceptual target of ‘Travel Pros’ a very rich and powerful image. As a result, even those who wouldn’t typically be labeled as travel pros started using KAYAK to enhance their travel experiences.

The Conceptual Target as a Guiding Light

The conceptual target should guide all company activities from product development to distribution and service. It’s not just about branding or ads; it’s about aligning your entire business strategy with the powerful image evoked by your conceptual target.

Developing Your Conceptual Target

So, do you know the conceptual target for your business or brand? If you do then ask yourself if it is powerful and image-evoking enough. And if you don’t then you better get going and start to develop it.

Here are the (rather simplified) key steps of the process:

1. Identify what your product really stands for (e.g. change, empowerment, creativity).
2. Look at the mindset, values, or commonalities of your main and best customers.
3. Illustrate your findings through words, images, or describing actions.
4. Connect the results into the most powerful and meaningful essence.
5. Brainstorm a powerful image-evoking name with your team.

Apple’s Legendary ‘Think Different’ Ad: A Perfect Example

Undoubtedly, one of the most powerful pieces of advertising ever created has been built around the idea of a conceptual target: Apple’s legendary ‘think different’ ad. This is to ‘the crazy ones’.

Let’s Discuss Your Conceptual Target

If you need help in developing the conceptual target for your business, feel free to reach out to discuss further. Your conceptual target can be the driving force behind your business success and bring clarity to all your (marketing) efforts.

This was originally published on Linkedin on August 7th, 2023

I’ve always had a thing for monkeys and apes – primates just fascinate me. 

A few years ago, I came across Fundacion Mona (check out their great instagram), an amazing primate rescue center located near Girona, Spain and I started sponsoring one of their rescue chimps named Juanito.

A couple of weeks ago I went a little further and attended a two-day course at MONA teaching the foundations of being a primate carer. 

Disclaimer: I don’t really have the plan to give up my role as Marketing consultant (at least not yet) but I really wanted to learn something new and get out of my comfort zone.

So, on June 30th, 2023, I found myself in the teaching room of Foundation MONA alongside 17 other students. The course was taught by full-time primate experts and carers Dietmar Crailsheim, Cristina Valsera, and Pablo Rodríguez Ayuso who were our professors over those two days. Oh yes, and it was taught entirely in Spanish, which added an extra challenge to the mix (my level is B2). 

Over those two days, I learnt a lot and I realized that some insights were also good general (business) learnings. Others, like examining chimpanzee poo, were specific to primate care but equally intriguing. And in the end I even got a diploma!

Here is a short summary of some of the things we learnt.

The life of a primate carer

The course began with myth-busting about the role of a primate carer and about what you don’t get from the job:

1. Physical contact with the animals, as much as we’d love to cuddle them, it’s essential to maintain a respectful distance.

2. Spending much time with them (when you are inside, they are outside and vice versa)

3. Observing beautiful moments between animals all day as you won’t have the time to sit and watch them all day long. 

Basically wherever the apes are, you are not. 

Instead, the core tasks involve providing food, a lot of cleaning and ensuring stimulation for the primates. And dealing with a lot of shit (but more about that later).

Learning 1: Many jobs are not what they appear to be from the outside

Requirements and Opportunities for Primate Carers

To become a full-time primate carer is not easy. Here is what you need:

• Three years of relevant experience
• Strong recommendations from professionals in the field
• Secondary skills ranging from accounting to leadership
• Ethical compatibility with the principles of primate care
• Relevant courses and certifications

Also interesting, primate carers are in demand in various settings, including rescue centers, zoos, and laboratories. Surprisingly, the course taught us that the most significant impact can be made in places where animals aren’t well-cared for, such as labs. Providing good care in unfavorable conditions can make a tremendous difference and even inspire others to follow suit.

Learning 2: The most undesirable places can be those were you can make the biggest difference

Challenges and Rewards of Primate Care

The work conditions of a primate carer are tough. It involves physically and mentally challenging tasks, long hours, and an unpredictable schedule that includes weekends and holidays (the animals don’t do bank holidays). On top, carers must be available around the clock for emergencies and be willing to relocate to difficult locations (think primate rescue centers) for career advancement. And to make it worse, the pay isn’t that good either.

It is a hard job and depression is actually rather common amongst carers due to the demanding nature of the work. 

Despite the hardships, our instructors—each a seasoned carer—reiterated that it’s a fantastic job that brings immense personal satisfaction and is driven by a good cause.

Learning 3: A hard job doesn’t have to be a bad job

Primate Well-being: Preventing Stress and Enrichment

I found it fascinating and somewhat sad that the first time animal well-being became a thing in Europe was in the mid 1950s. But as so often, it wasn’t out of true consideration for the animals themselves but much rather because meat mass production started and the goal was to prevent disease and to increase productivity.

For all animals more stress means less well-being – therefore preventing stress becomes a primary objective.

However the typical indicators for stress don’t apply to primates:

• Productivity (but primates don’t produce)
• Absence of disease (but it can’t be checked all the time due to cost and capacity)
• Physiology and Biochemistry (same as above, too expensive to check a lot)
• Differences in their relationship to humans (but humans are away from the animals in the center)

So, the only feasible way to observe their well-being is to look at their behavior, which is a task for the carer.

But it’s not that easy as you don’t just need to understand the typical behavior of the species, you also need to understand each individual within the species, as they all have their own foibles.

Learning 4: Unfortunately in most circumstances caring starts once the wallet gets affected

Categorizing Primates

Next we learnt about the species itself and Primates come in a large variety, with more than 500 identified so far. 

A common way to categorize them is by their diets:

• Folivores primarily eat leaves
• Frugivores mostly eat fruit

Their diet significantly impacts their behavior. Fruit provides a lot more energy which the frugivores use to protect their scarce food source. This makes them very territorial and aggressive against intruders. On the other hand, folivores are more laid-back as they generally get less energy from their nutrition and there is no need to defend their territory given the abundance of leaves.

Other classification criteria include communication patterns, social behavior/tribe size, territorial tendencies, and movement preferences (swing vs. jump). Of all primates, chimpanzees, who sleep between 8 to 12 hours a day, are the closest to humans. It is also the only primate that eats ants by putting a stick into an ant colony and then pulling it out to lick the ants from it like a lollipop.

Learning 5: The more energy something provides the more fierce it gets protected

Primate Healthcare and the Rescue Process

Primate healthcare involves prevention, early detection, evaluation, cure, and control. Detecting issues early is essential to provide timely treatment and prevent the spread of diseases among the primate group.

For detection the stool is the most important signal. Basically, you have to read their shit. And at this point of the class we went outside, put on some gloves and dug through the daily droppings to examine the state of the monkeys at Mona. We ended up finding screws and springs that the apes ripped off their toys and ate but no indicators of disease. 

How do you know which turd belongs to which ape? Well, you can use ink, corn or edible pens for children in their individual food.

When it comes to the rescue itself it is important to understand that most animals in MONA are not there because they are illegal (even though some of the papers are false) but much rather because of the bad conditions they were kept in. Actually, all animals that arrived in Spain before 1986 are automatically legal

Typically, the rescue process involves transporting chimps without sedation to avoid the risk of them suffocating on their tongue. They get transported in a special cage that is very versatile and can be used in cars, planes and other modes of transport. The cage itself is 108kg and a grown chimp can weigh up to 90kg. It takes four strong people to carry those 200kg. We tried it (with one of the student’s inside) and it was hard!

Upon arrival at the sanctuary, the chimps go through three stages: habilitation, rehabilitation, and re-socialization. The journey from rescue to re-socialization can take anywhere from 2 to 6 months, during which the carers play a vital role in helping the chimps adapt to their new environment and coexist with their fellow primates.

Learning 6: Sometimes the shitty things can teach you the most

About Fundacion MONA:

During the course, we learnt some interesting facts about Fundacion MONA, the sanctuary itself:

• It was founded 18 years ago by the incredible OLGA FELIU, who is a trained veterinarian
• The center has four full-time carers and six carers in training.
• To prevent wild animals from being born in captivity, female chimps receive contraception.
• All animals in the sanctuary are chipped for identification purposes with the same technology as our pets at home.
• Nico, one of the first rescues at MONA, became Spain’s most famous chimp, appearing in ads and photo shoots. Even today, postcards featuring Nico are sold in Barcelona.
• Since its inception there have been two escapes from the center. It’s in their nature to try to get out, whenever a new door or window gets installed the chimps will check immediately if it gives or breaks.

The team there does an amazing job and they certainly don’t do it for money, power or fame but simply because they love what they do and the animals they care for. So if you have read until here, I must assume that you are in awe of them too. Their funds are tight and there are many ways to help them that can be found here.

And if you want to do more for them, let me know and I’d be happy to put you in touch with Olga directly.

Originally published in Linkedin on August 3rd, 2023