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.