The Perfect Choice

In a 2000 whitepaper titled “When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper from Columbia University conducted a series of experiments that demonstrated how having too many options can be a debilitating factor for customers. This now famous experiment, set up two displays in an upscale grocery store - one which had a choice of 6 jams and one which had a choice of 24 jams.

The result? Customers were 10x more likely to buy from the display that hadfewer choices.

Fifteen years later, the concept of choice has gone through significant evolution, especially for online businesses. This can be broken into 3 phases - 

Phase 1: Choice is King (2000-2006)

During the initial dot com bubble and in subsequent years after, the focus was all on the universe of choice available. Data maturity was still nascent and the best organisations were good at managing the data that they directly owned. Content wasn’t necessarily the focus since there were limited big players in most categories. Consumers were not as overloaded and subject to around 150 - 250 pieces of marketing in a given day.

What this meant was that the best way to attract customers was to give them an unparalleled choice. Businesses such as Netflix increased their subscription base from 300k to around 4.2 million by 2005 (even though the streaming service was still 2 years away). Pandora Radio also came into being during this time, and we had access to an enormous library of music, as never before.

For a while, everyone was happy.

Phase 2: Curation is King (2006-2013)

Soon, there was a lot of data available for organisations to mine. And by making initial inroads to understanding this mountain of data, the best organisations were able to start generating smarter recommendations. Shopping carts were tracked. Previous purchases were recorded. Decision making behaviour was better understood.

Also during this time, content was starting to become more important, as marketers realised that they were operating in a noisy environment (by this time the average American consumer was exposed to between 300 - 700 pieces of marketing in a given day, depending on which report you read).

It was becoming harder to stand out.

Decision fatigue was starting to set in for some customer segments and they valued the brands that would sift through the muck and only show them the most relevant things.

Curation became mainstream and the best brands grew their base on the promise that they would only show the things that you would love. And they would constantly improve their recommendations on the basis of your behaviour. This is where businesses with sophisticated recommendation engines, like Spotify and Flipboard made inroads into the market. 

For a while, everyone was happy again.

Phase 3: Perfect Choice is King (2013-)

We’ve reached a time when Big Data isn’t just a concept, it is fundamental to how technically mature an organisation can be. Content Marketing is a regularly talked about topic for CMOs. There is a very real battle on to own as much unique content as possible. Customers are exposed to an extensive amount of marketing every day, on all devices – mobile, tablet, desktop and wearable. Decision fatigue has well and truly set in.

Choice has changed in a very different way. Many customers are tired of choice and looking for a way out. In some situations, this means that they would prefer if someone would choose for them. Businesses such as MUBI are becoming prominent, where every day you are shown the ONE movie you should be watching. Daily deal sites such as Wowcher advertise the ONE product that is currently on sale for the day. 

We are slowly reducing the choices offered, until we reach the point of singularity, i.e. perfect choice.

To succeed in such an environment, the following must happen:

• Your analytics and data maturity must be top notch.
• You must understand your most engaged customer segments and produce content that matches their engagement cycle.
• Lastly, (and definitely the most difficult to achieve) you need to have your customers’ trust.

Organisations that achieve the above have an opportunity that no one else has. They have the ability to offer perfect choice, which in turn gives opportunities for building even greater trust.

Could we see a day where Coursera tells you which course you will be signing up for next?

Or Amazon puts the next book you should be reading directly on your Kindle?

How your customers choose is changing. Are you?

Why is Content Marketing so $%&#ing difficult?

Content Marketing has been around forever. Well, almost forever, 1895 to be specific, when John Deere launched The Furrow, a publication that educated farmers on new technologies available. However, this marketing concept has really picked up in the past few years, with the best brands reorganizing themselves as publishers. In fact, recent polls show that about 30% of marketing managers believe it is the most important Digital Marketing trend for 2015. (Source: CAM Foundation).

Even with all the hype, and evangelists like Joe Pulizzi speaking highly about the value of content marketing, several organizations struggle to get this going. So, why is content marketing so $%&#ing difficult?

Observation #1 - Marketers struggle to view the world from their customer’s POV.

Look at me. I’m a shiny brand. Hear the reasons why I’m the most awesome thing since sliced bread. Me. Me. Me. Me.

This is the message that a lot of brands are guilty of broadcasting. And every year, more and more of marketing spend is unaccounted for. Brands simply love to talk and content marketing requires exactly the opposite: to listen. Many marketers struggle to start with the customer story, identify the topics that matter to them and then only build the rest of the marketing message on that basis. 

Observation #2 - Marketers are uncomfortable with activities that don’t have a direct ROI.

It’s not really their fault. This is what they are being measured on.

How many £/$/€/¥/₹  are you bringing in? No, really, how much? You DON’T know?!?! Wow, you must be pretty stupid. Maybe Brian should have your job.

The challenge with content marketing is that is not directly linked to sales. This is all about having conversations with your customers about the things they want to talk about. That may lead to a sale in a week. In a month. In a year. There is no way to know (although B2B organizations are getting much better at this, they just happen to call it lead nurturing).

You need a robust measurement and attribution model in place for you to map out the entire journey to an end sale. And a lack of such a model means that the returns for content marketing are defaulted to zero. Which would equal your bonus at the end of the year, given how most marketing teams measure success today. 

Observation #3 - Brands are afraid to take “a stand” on the topics that matter to their customers.

We’re a bank. We deal in financial products. Why do we need to get involved in a conversation about health?

And yet, that is exactly what an enterprising Russian bank did. They linked their customers' current accounts to a savings account that yielded an exceptional interest rate. For every exercise the customer did in the day, a small percentage of their balance was transferred over to the attractive savings accounts. And they supplemented this with conversations about health and fitness with their customers.

There are more examples of such behaviours. Colgate recently ran a campaign on the importance of saving water. Dove regularly champions women’s rights. These brands don’t have to get involved in these conversations. But they do. Because it helps customers under who they are.

That is the benefit of content marketing. By creating content that your customers care about, you are advertising the values of your brand at the same time, and thus building trust. 

There’s no other way to say this. Content marketing is hard. Bloody hard. It needs good data, marketers that place themselves in their customers’ shoes - backed by an organization that rewards the right long-term behaviours. This isn’t for the short sighted, ROI driven managers, who are just buying time and kidding themselves if they think throwing more money is going to solve the problem. One thing is for sure, content marketing is here to stay.

Ladies and gentlemen, fellow marketers -  time to roll up your sleeves.