Nearly 400,000 Views Later ...

About once every five years, something I write "goes viral".

This week's blog post (click here) was converted to one that should draw LinkedIn attention. It did, with more than 380,000 views as of the time of this writing (here it is), making this post one of my top five in terms of views/impressions of all time. For me, 380,000 is "viral". Your mileage will vary.

• 380,000 views.
• 94 comments, nearly all from people not remotely connected to me, a handful quite salty ... like randos driving by your vehicle, pelting it with tomatoes.
• Three (3) individuals asked to connect to me on LinkedIn, total.
• No business inquiries (obviously, that could change).

It is far more important to connect with the "right" 350 people on an appropriate topic to 350 people than it is to "go viral".

An Imaging Issue

I asked ChatGPT to create an image of a CEO yelling at an Executive Team for creating a drawing of a person with three arms. This is the image ChatGPT created.

Back in 2010 I consulted with a retail brand. The brand brought in a crusty marketing consultant ... a guy in his mid-60s who had seen everything and consequently "knew everything". I presented a slide showing that the brand needed to greatly increase the investment in paid search ... having left Nordstrom three years prior, I knew exactly what a brand generated when it took $36,000,000 in catalog marketing expense and converted it into $18,000,000 in paid search spend yielding a sales increase.

I finished presenting the slide.

The crusty consultant went off, describing how stupid it was to pay for "keywords".

• "Are you telling this room of seasoned professionals that they should stop mailing a 64 page catalog featuring more than 350 products, and instead pay $0.50 four million times for the phrase "functional goretex?" Lunacy, Kevin. Lunacy. 

In the afternoon session, we obtained a document from the digital marketing team, showing the top 100 keywords, the investment in each keyword, and the sales associated with each keyword.

1. "Look at this, Kevin. We invested $10,000 in the term "Softshell", generating $25,000. What do you want them to do, spend another $5,000? What happens if nobody else searches for the term? What happens if they search for the term and they lose money? You don't run a business with analytics and keywords. You generate sales with a catalog, Kevin. You know better. This is the kind of advice you're giving people? 

The crusty consultant was essentially mocking the image that AI generated above. He couldn't see the future.

If you can't see the future via the image at the top of this post, you are the crusty consultant I described from 2010. A fusion of AI, Community, and Video is coming. Unavoidable. Already happening. While I think AI is going to muck up a ton of brands while greatly benefiting others ... while making dumb people look smart ... and getting dumb people fired in the process ... I still am not stupid enough to think this is the future.

And how the heck do we know if AI was / was not in on the joke in the image it created?

Being Replaced by AI is Delayed ... For Now

You know about my diminishing returns relationship.

I asked ChatGPT to create an answer to a diminishing returns relationship. It figured out the diminishing returns part. It didn't figure out a credible answer. For now. The credible answer is clearly on the horizon. So is a whole lot of change to ecommerce.

Ready?

To estimate next year’s sales based on your advertising investment, let’s analyze the return on ad spend (ROAS) from previous years:

Last Year:

• Ad Spend: $50,000

• Sales: $200,000

• ROAS: $200,000 / $50,000 = 4.0

This Year:

• Ad Spend: $100,000

• Sales: $300,000

• ROAS: $300,000 / $100,000 = 3.0

The ROAS is decreasing as spending increases, which is typical due to diminishing returns.

To predict next year’s sales with a $150,000 ad spend, we can estimate ROAS will continue to decline. If the ROAS drops linearly:

• Change in ROAS: 4.0 → 3.0 (drop of 1.0 when increasing spend by $50,000)

• If it continues, the next $50,000 increase may bring ROAS down to 2.0

Projected Sales Next Year:

• Estimated ROAS: 2.0

• Ad Spend: $150,000

• Projected Sales: $150,000 × 2.0 = $300,000

Alternatively, using a weighted average ROAS:

• Total past spend: $50K + $100K = $150K

• Total past sales: $200K + $300K = $500K

• Average ROAS: $500K / $150K ≈ 3.33

• Projected Sales: $150K × 3.33 = $500,000

Conclusion:

Depending on how you model ROAS:

• Conservative (diminishing returns): ~$300,000

• Average performance: ~$500,000

Let me know if you want a more precise forecast using regression or another model.

Summer!

A note of thanks for following along during the past thirty-eight weeks, where more than one-hundred-and-eighty posts were published (I'm up to 5,480 in total).

In summer, I post less often ... maybe 2-3 times per week. It's been this way for a long time.

Enjoy the break! Summer is an important time. You get fourteen weeks, and you only get 70 or 80 of 'em if you are lucky. Explore your hobbies. Explore!

Just Tell Me What They're Doing

Here's the framework, once again.

Here's the feedback I get.

Reader:  Just tell me something that one of your clients is doing that is working.

Kevin:  I can't tell you. Would you want me to tell my clients your business secrets?

Reader:  Absolutely not.

Kevin:  Ok then.

Reader:  Is somebody else doing this stuff, and you know it is working?

Kevin:  Yes.

Reader:  Give me the example.

Kevin:  I've shared Headphones.com numerous times.

Reader:  They don't count. Give me an example of a company in my vertical that we directly compete against who does this stuff and it works perfectly. My vertical is all that matters to me.

The "they don't count" line of reasoning is always telling. It means the reader doesn't really want to employ anything different - the reader just wants to approach tactics from a point of superiority. "Yes, my business is struggling, but it isn't my fault, I follow best practices." It would be like having a CNN executive criticize Joe Rogan or even This American Life, though both have a far larger and more loyal audience.

Every one of you knows that the bottom 80% of your customer file is leaking out of a hole in your bucket. Every one of you knows that. It's a bigger hole than it used to be. Amazon clearly made that hole bigger, no question about it ... but you have to compete against Amazon while simultaneously selling on Amazon ... which must be fun ... for Amazon.

Something else is making the hole bigger ... it's all of these marketers in what I'd call the "Shopify/Etsy Ecosystem" ... those smaller brands are employing modern marketing tactics that don't include renting a list of Lands' End customers. When I share what some of these tactics are, you're free to bark at me about it, sure, but I'm free to point out that you might not be willing to modernize.

And yes, I have clients employing Customer Media Marketing tactics.

P.S.: The amount of fun that some of my clients are having ... they're having FUN! They're creating. They're building. They're taking chances. They're iterating. They fail often. They are inventing the best practices you'll employ in five years. There is energy in their work. Optimism. I realize some of you will unsubscribe after reading this (my unsubs are 2x/3x of normal if I publish the image I published at the top of this post). But if you are about to unsubscribe, at least employ a moment of introspection regarding your tactics. I'm done now. I appreciate all of you for getting this far with me on this topic.

Repurposing Content

Here's the working hypothesis ... I believe that transactions that used to reside in Direct Response are leaking out into Customer Media Marketing, lowering response in Direct Response while also increasing costs as Direct Response customers "try harder" and compete with each other.

One of the first steps you'll see businesses take is what I call "repurposing". Head out to YouTube and you'll see Progressive doing a full-on "repurposing" job (click here). Repurposing isn't terribly effective, of course ... they have tens of thousands of people watching the commercials online ... who knows how many 64 year olds are forced to watch the commercials on television ... maybe a half-million to a million per day? Don't know.

Customer Media Marketing starts online ... that's the trunk of the tree ... branching out from there. Repurposing content is a good first start. It's not likely to work. And when it doesn't work you'll remind me that the discipline doesn't work. It does work if it isn't an afterthought.

The Evolution Has Been Happening For Five Years - We're Noticing It Now

Here's the framework I am working on ... as I learn more, I reserve the right to change the framework.

My hypothesis.

• COVID changed how marketers "market" to customers, teaching a generation of marketers how to use a fusion of video and community (which both existed prior to COVID) increasingly fueled by AI (#tiktok) to sell to customers who "trust" those making the content.
• As more brands become good at Customer Media Marketing, response leaks out of Direct Response Marketing and Brand Marketing, causing those disciplines to become less effective.
• As Direct Response Marketing becomes less effective, more brands attempt to get the clicks that remain, driving up costs in a discipline that is simultaneously becoming less effective.
• Direct Response Marketers, instead of embracing Customer Media Marketing, embrace Product Marketing channels like Marketplaces (i.e. Amazon), where they continue the tradition of paying a nominal fee for access to customers ... ultimately transitioning from being a Direct Response Marketer to being a supplier for a Marketplace. The Direct Response Marketer becomes the "Dries Van Noten" to Nordstrom.

Obviously, Direct Response Marketing isn't "dead" as a small number of pundits might say. Rather, this is the end of an era. At some point, Customer Media Marketing will become too crowded, and a newer and more relevant version of Direct Response Marketing will emerge. But for today? Change is in the air.

Why do I think change is in the air?

When I analyze your data, there are clear trends, trends that accelerated post-COVID.

• Loyal Customers generally have similar repurchase rates over time.
• All other Customers generally have lower repurchase rates than they had in 2015-2019.
• Regardless of Direct Response business model, it is becoming VERY difficult to acquire new customers at a reasonable cost.

There was a day a year ago when this all really started to click for me. I'm analyzing customer behavior (a hollowed-out middle of the customer file paired with customer acquisition challenges) while watching a Headphones.com video about open-backed headphones ... meanwhile my wife is in her office watching live coverage of a "national de-cluttering day" ... an all-day seminar hosted by de-cluttering experts. I don't even know if this is the right link, if wrong, it's similar ... maybe this one. That woman has a million followers and several hundred thousand views of popular videos. I mean, Joe Rogan and his ilk gets all the attention ... but this stuff is everywhere, bubbling under the surface ... and it is increasingly linked to ecommerce (i.e. Headphones.com).

As a commenter said to me on LinkedIn ... "YouTube is now the primary lead gen source for many businesses".

Once you see this ... and then see the connection to Community and Action Streams (capturing customer interactions like visiting your forum or website ... then sending streams of emails to customers based on their forum/website activity) ... you realize that a chunk of activity that used to reside in Direct Response now resides in Customer Media Marketing.

This evolution has been happening for the past five years ... we're just noticing it now.

It's Time ... Again!

Tomorrow we'll get back to Customer Media Marketing.

Today, it's time ... again ... for the next run of The MineThatData Elite Program. It's an evaluation of how your direct response marketing activities impact customer behavior. For a nominal fee ($1,800 pre-paid for new clients, $1,000 pre-paid for existing clients) you get my standard suite of analyses (rolling twelve-month, comp new/reactivated customers and comp segment, annual repurchase activity, a forecast for the next year based on high-level customer segments).

Contact me now (kevinh@minethatdata.com) to get started. Given what happened in April, I'm anticipating heavy demand for this inexpensive view of customer behavior ... I expect to be exceptionally busy in June as a consequence.

Timing:

• 5 Years of Customer Data Through 5/31/2025.
• Payment Due by 6/10/2025.
• Data Due by 6/15/2025.
• Analysis Delivered by 6/30/2025.

A Possible Framework

Below you'll find a hypothesis I'm working on ... one with a category I call "Customer Media Marketing".

COVID changed marketing. We didn't know it at the time. We trained a generation of marketers to become mini-movie makers. Instead of having a movie theater of fans eating buttered popcorn, we created communities of customers/prospects who care about what we sell, and we developed mini-movies to entertain and educate our communities.

This shift pulled customers out of Direct Response Marketing, lowering response, causing problems (lower response + higher costs = trouble).

This shift pulled marketers out of Brand Marketing. Why try to dream up a branding solution when you can create 650 videos that fully explain who you are to the customer?

Review the image ... let me know your thoughts (kevinh@minethatdata.com). I'm confident that customers are leaking out of Direct Response and Branding into Customer Media Marketing.

Fallow

Is it fun to watch Beat Bobby Flay or Guy's Grocery Games? Sure. It's a fusion of Brand Marketing and Entertainment designed to provide an audience for advertisers (that's you) to interrupt the customer with a marketing message.

Last week about 365,000 people watched the new episode of Beat Bobby Flay, with 63% of the audience age 55+.

Have you watched Fallow on YouTube (click here)? This is an altogether different proposition. Two chefs in London teaching you all of the secrets of cooking in an informative and entertaining manner, with a humble, humorous, honest history-based approach. They've created more than 600 videos. They have 1.2 million subscribers. Average video clunkers attract a half-million views ... the gems attract more than three million views.

• Point of View Video:  Head Chef at a Top London Restaurant.
• Every Way to Fry an Egg.
• The Three Salmon Techniques Every Chef Should Learn.
• Is British Food Actually That Bad?
• This Is Why Vegetables Taste Better In Restaurants.
• We Cooked The Best Michelin Star Dish From Every Decade.

This is the opposite of Direct Response Marketing.

It's also the opposite of Brand Marketing. Toyota's Brand Marketing goal is to get you to buy a car. It cannot be the goal of these two chefs to teach you how to make something so you don't have to go to a restaurant, much less their restaurants, which you'll never visit anyway because you don't live on their continent.

What would you call this style of marketing? It's not vapid Influencer Marketing. It's something fundamentally different ... no different really than what Ryan Hall Y'All has done with Weather.

If you are a Direct Response Marketer dealing with dying marketing channels and/or expensive clicks and/or decreased response ... you are blessed ... somebody has opened a door for you.

P.S.: Here's a video that got over 800,000 views of a reviewer sampling the menu at Fallow. It's hard to be successful at this fusion of mini-movie-making and community and not have fabulous products/merchandise.

P.P.S.:  They freely give away all of their secrets. All of 'em. If you run a restaurant, you can copy them. Have at it. When I launched my business in 2007, I freely gave away everything I did - every technique - even today when I went through Action Streams, I shared everything in the booklet with you for two months before publishing the information for a nominal cost. You can give everything away AND still run a healthy business. Back in the 2007 - 2010 timeframe, service providers would corner me at a conference and inform me of what a moron I was for giving everything away ... "YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO MONETIZE A BUSINESS". Sure I do. I'm using a very different business model than they were(are) using. Right now, the fusion of community and mini-movie-making is trending toward a different business model ... and from the outside, one might think these folks are morons. Time will tell.

Direct Response vs. Brand Pendulum

Here's USPS marketing mail volume since the fiscal year ending September 2008:

Aside ... when people tell you that #printisback, they fail to realize that every year the USPS publishes facts saying that marketing mail volume is contracting. The facts, publicly shared by the USPS, suggest otherwise.

When a marketing channel dies, costs within the channel disconnect with the reality of the marketing channel. Post-COVID, that is the reality of print ... paper / printing / postage costs escalate, while the effectiveness of the channel erodes. This causes those who use the channel to spend less, which causes service providers to charge more. If you believe this story doesn't end well, trust your instincts.

Those of you paying more for clicks in paid search and paid social ... pay attention to how this story plays out ... your destiny is connected.

Remember your homework assignment?

In some ways, it feels like an era is ending in ecommerce. Now, ecommerce is thriving, don't get me wrong. But an era is ending. The "direct response" era is ending. Is it "ending ending"? No. But it is ending.

Think about ecommerce as a pendulum. On one side is Direct Response. On the other side is Brand Marketing. Neither side gets along. Both sides serve a very different purpose. You don't leverage Direct Response marketing to get a customer to buy a Toyota Highlander. You can leverage Brand Marketing to get a customer to purchase Griot's Garage Speed Shine, though Direct Response is likely more appropriate.

The importance of Brand Marketing becomes painfully apparent when a Direct Response channel either becomes too expensive, unresponsive, or both. All of which is happening in 2025 ... paid search and paid social yield expensive clicks that are less responsive than they used to be. Marketplaces are a logical outcome of expensive clicks ... the Direct Response marketer leverages "somebody else's" traffic from a Marketplace to overcome expensive clicks ... paying a fixed percentage for each order instead of a variable cost for each click. Marketplaces are death, of course ... do you really want to be known as a supplier for Amazon or "that Etsy person with the cute stuff?"

Marketplaces are the digital version of a Mall. 

We all know what happened to Malls.

Your homework assignment should lead you to a realization.

• Direct Response in an optimized state with decaying channels = trouble.
• Brand Marketing is generally wasteful (sometimes due to the incompetence of the marketer employing the tactic ... and yes, I have the receipts).
• Marketplaces in 2025 are the refuge for Direct Response marketers without a Strong Brand. This may well be the right place for a weaker brand to be ... to become an Amazon supplier. Better than not being in business at all, right?
• If your choices follow a pendulum between Direct Response and Brand Marketing, you probably feel like you have an unsatisfying future.

Yes, you should realize, by this point, that there is a different approach you'll need to consider going forward. You're probably not going to like my answer. That's fine. Tomorrow, I'll share an example to get the process started.

When Marketing Channels Die

Remember your homework assignment from last week?

In 1998, 35,000,000 people would watch a Thursday night episode of Seinfeld. 24,000,000 would stick around to watch the dreck known as "Veronica's Closet" that appeared after Seinfeld.

Yeah, network television was a blockbuster marketing channel.

And then?

Not.

It was already dying back then, to be fair. Once cable television existed and you could watch the World Wrestling Federation on USA or see Larry King interview Donald Trump where he considered running for President in the 90s (click here), why watch Veronica's Closet?

If your marketing dollars were invested in network television (like Total Hair Fitness for example, click here) and you lose that bucket of opportunity, what do you do?

Advertising generally follows a law of diminishing returns.

One of the problems with the law of diminishing returns is that when a channel begins to die, performance gets worse, but the costs associated with the channel frequently remain constant or increase for a period of time ... by the time the economics of the channel force costs down, marketing effectiveness gets even worse. Example:

• 1998:  20,000,000 viewers. Spend $1,000,000, get $3,000,000 in sales at a 40% profit factor = $3,000,000 * 0.40 - $1,000,000 = $200,000 profit.
• 2012:   8,000,000 viewers.  Spend $600,000, get $1,200,000 in sales at a 40% profit factor = $1,200,000 * 0.40 - $600,000 = ($120,000) profit.
• 2025:   4,000,000 viewers.  Spend $500,000, get $600,000 in sales at a 40% profit factor = $600,000 * 0.40 - $500,000 = ($260,000) profit.

Diminishing returns continue, unabated ... but the death of the channel overrides diminishing returns. As viewers disappear, advertisers demand the absolute best prices and smaller advertisers are pushed out. Smaller advertisers go elsewhere ... they head into the digital wilderness where costs on Facebook / Google increase while response decreases (seems like a common theme), chasing advertisers elsewhere.

I worked with a company that doubled merchandise productivity over the course of a decade. That's one important way to overcome what happens when channels die ... as a channel dies, you find ways to get customers to spend more, offsetting channel death (for awhile).

If you're going to go down the "channel optimization path" where (as described in the document at the start of this post) you focus on short-term ROAS, you have to have a plan to account for channel death. Yes, especially for digital marketers. What the heck do you do when Google becomes untenable, as will most certainly happen?

• Answering that question takes you to the "balancing direct response and brand" section of the document, FYI.
• "Balancing Direct Response and Brand" ... FYI, is a difficult proposition.
• By the end of the week, I'll share where that balance is happening ... in what I call Customer Media Marketing ... a shift away from endless variable costs that yield clicks ... a shift to something different.

Discounts / Promotions / Clicks / Channels: The "Local Maxima"

Let's go back to your homework assignment from last week (click here). Read the green section (Resilient Base of New Customer Contribution $ Via Owned and Organic Traffic) and the red section (% of Revenue on Discount). In particular, focus on the red row ... read the comment in the column titled "The Realization That You Need To Change".

• "The marketing calendar is built around discount events as much as it is around new product launches. Seems like a necessary evil in order to keep growing revenue."

One of my favorite quotes from my time at Eddie Bauer was our CEO saying that we couldn't add a 34th promotional week to the calendar because we had to maintain the integrity of the promotional calendar. Via analysis or gut feel, the hill to die on was at 33 weeks. Imagine being at 31 weeks and somebody says, "yeah, let's add another week, no integrity issue there."

There's this bowl of promotional soup that interacts with direct response ... it always, always works for awhile (ask Macy's). Always. And then, it doesn't work. Years of trying to "make it work again" lead to one of those comments from marketers:

• "Facebook and Google are too expensive and the clicks they send us don't convert as well as they used to convert."

Blame is placed on Facebook and Google ... and oh yeah, they deserve blame.

The brand deserves more blame.

• It shifted from "what" it sells to "how" to sell it (discounts, promos, clicks, channels). This is a familiar transition, one that always looks good in the short term and is harmful in the long term.

This shift maroons a brand on what in math is called a "local maxima".

Look at the peak next to the arrow. That's what happens when a brand shifts to discounts / promos / clicks / channels. Any movement in any direction away from what is "optimal" (which, by the way, is most certainly not optimal) yields a sub-optimal solution, paralyzing the brand.

Where is your business on The Brand Lifecycle image? I have a feeling I know where it is, or you wouldn't be emailing me about the higher costs and lower performance of paid search.

I spent considerable time working on a framework for thinking about "what comes next". On LinkedIn I floated the framework to readers and a thousand people quickly read the argument. What comes next is already here ... I call it "Customer Media Marketing".

Via One of Our Intrepid Readers!

Every once in awhile you run across something compelling. One of our loyal readers forwarded this post on LinkedIn from the Co-Founder of Chubbies (click here). Heck, the writing style is reminiscent of the my days of writing Gliebers Dresses episodes (click here for the Shark Tank edition).

In the post, he references a document called "The Brand Lifecycle". Your homework assignment? Please review this link, we'll talk about it next week, ok?

Wanting to Belong

Below is what I originally wrote for today ... then I saw this story and thought that it is important you see the importance of community, of belonging (all of which your company already provides, either formally or most likely informally). Click here for the video from CBS Sunday Morning.

Ok, time for the original post.

The emailer told me he couldn't get access to magazine lists anymore (his magazine lists he rented stopped publishing via print a few years ago) and he told me that Google had become "too expensive". I privately wondered if his customers believed in his business? Did his customers want to belong to the ecosystem his brand was part of? Could his own customers share his story?

I suppose it's always been this way, but for many of you, your customers want to belong to something.

I was at the NASCAR Cup race in Phoenix two months ago. There was a long line at the Busch Light beer stand. I'd frequently hear patrons say how they won't drink Bud Light ("they don't get my money anymore") ... think about that, they won't give their money to one brand but will give their money to a sister brand, which means the customer wants to belong to something and Capitalism wins regardless. Welcome to 2025.

It's no different with the Costco / Target stuff that is going on. You'll harm Target if you don't feel like you belong to their overarching messaging ... if you don't feel like you are welcome anymore. Except there the money isn't flowing to the same parent company ... it's truly going to the competition.

There are, of course, the obvious financial implications of "not belonging". Ask Bud Light and Target.

There are the non-obvious financial implications. In a recent project (numbers dummied up here to protect the innocent), each website visit that didn't deliver a conversion added precisely one dollar to the future value of the customer. Five percent of the 0-48 month file visited the website in a given month, so this $30,000,000 brand generated $200,000 per month ... $2,400,000 per year (8% of annual sales) by simply "engaging" the customer.

Yes, there's a difference between the phony "engagement" created by gimmicks and the community building that causes a customer to want to belong, thereby visiting your website and adding $2.4 million per year because the customer feels like s/he belongs.

Maybe your customer wants to belong to something meaningful.

You likely provide something meaningful to the customer.

Connect the two.

When You Run Out Of Lists And Clicks ...

There's two trends happening ... have been happening for quite some time:

• Old-School brands lamenting that "lists don't work" or that "lists aren't available anymore".
• Ecommerce brands lamenting that "clicks don't work like they used to" ... via Facebook or Google.
  

I've yet to find one of either brand making these statements who have a strong community presence.

Here's an example from drop.com:

I can't express more clearly how much people dislike hearing about communities ... maybe 2 in 3 that I speak with or email with just get grumpy about the topic.

I can't fix the list issue ... those days are over.

I can't fix the click issue ... that entire world/ecosystem is changing.

I can recommend partnering with your own customers and your own visitors.

The Greatest Marketing Analytics Equation of All Time

It's 1992 at Lands' End, and I'm responsible for analyzing mail/holdout tests ... you execute email and/or print mail/holdout tests in 2025, right?

Here's the results of a mail/holdout test.

An average professional doesn't bother with mail/holdout tests.

A smart professional measures profit via the "Increment" line in the table above. The smart professional doesn't overstate results via matchbacks, they leverage the incremental contribution (which likely means they'll spend fewer marketing dollars).

The curious professional notices a relationship.

• 0/3 mailings = $0.
• 2/3 mailings = $8.40.
• 3/3 mailings = $10.50.

The curious professional adjusts the relationship, converting both sides of the relationship to fractions.

• 0.000 mailings = 0.000 spent.
• 0.667 mailings = 0.800 spent.
• 1.000 mailings = 1.000 spent.

The curious professional plots the relationship, then fits a line through the relationship.

The relationship above is fit via what I call a "Power Function". I use CurveExpert software (click here) if you are interested in fitting the equation.

What is the structure of a Power Function?

• Fraction of Demand = a*(Fraction of Mailings) ^ b.

The equation above?

• Fraction of Demand = 1.00 * (Fraction of Mailings) ^ 0.583.

In marketing, your ROAS relationships and/or investment decisions follow a Power Function. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. In fact, the Power Function is everywhere.

• Price Elasticity.
• The Difference in Customer Segment Performance.
• Paid Social Advertising.
• Product Listing Ad Spend.
• Catalog Mailing Frequency.
• Email Marketing Weekly Contact Frequency.
• Merchandise Assortment Size.
• Creative "Winners" vs. "Experimental Photography".
• Winners vs. Contenders vs. Others within your Assortment.

I could go on and on, for hours.

Power Functions explain most of your investment decisions in marketing. The functions are different ... your Paid Social "b" coefficient is different from your Email Weekly Contact Frequency "b" coefficient.

This is the point in the post where the curious marketer will take the topic further. You're free to email me (kevinh@minethatdata.com) and ask questions. The Power Function is the greatest marketing analytics equation of all time! The equation unlocks the secrets of your business.

Raising Cane's

Have you ever eaten there?

Unless you are trying to feed 1,243 people, they realistically have five (5) items on the menu. Five.

Now, did I enjoy eating this styrofoam-infused pile of mediocrity? Not really. But somebody enjoys eating it. According to Google, an average Raising Cane's franchise might pull in $4,000,000 to $6,000,000 a year.

Meanwhile, a Burger King franchise might pull in $1,500,000 a year.

Burger King has nine burgers you can order, not counting chicken / fish / salads & veggies / breakfasts / sides / dessert ... and other choices. A much broader assortment, one that doesn't sell anything compared to Raising Cane's.

Why am I sharing this information?

Some of you are going to have problems sourcing products this fall, and the stuff you do have could potentially cost more. Your Government caused this problem, not you. Regardless, it's your job to overcome challenges. The challenge should not stop you, the brilliant marketer, from selling the heck out of what you DO have available. If Raising Cane's can outsell Burger King three-to-one with only five flippin' items on the menu, there's hope for you. A LOT of hope!

It's time to laser-focus your customers on the stuff you sell that matters. Sure, you used to have 800 styles / 5,000 skus available to the customer ... you might only have 350 styles and 2,200 skus available come November. The customer doesn't know what struggles you are having, the customer wants to know your point of view on what you have available.

Take full advantage of what you have available. You are a Marketer. Start marketing to the customer.

Oh, Kohl's

Right out of a soap opera (click here).

A few years ago a Vice President told me that she could not longer hire "the best people" ... "they just won't work in a dying industry".

There are stupid people everywhere. Two situations seem to attract an altogether different animal ... the amoral clown.

• New Industries (think crypto, AI, pickleball).
• Dying Industries (think retail, politics).

Amoral clowns like to break rules, eliminate rules, and prioritize power.

Things go in cycles ... the past decade has been a celebration of the amoral clown cycle. Better times are coming.