Marketing departments seem to be perpetual training grounds for employees who have arrived from sales, services, and product development in search of a new career path: hence the importance of being a mentor.

For years the memorable, powerful 4P marketing mix mnemonic has been a staple in this role. When a new product manager delivered a product strategy that is inevitably less of a strategy and more of the world according to Employee X, I reminded him of the 4Ps, starting with the P for product. The employee was then reminded that product strategies are driven by customer (current and prospective) needs.

Next, we would move to pricing, place and promotions, repeatedly reiterating the customers defining role. Normally the employee offers a threefold answer, something like, needing to check with: Finance to get costs and margin requirements, sales about distribution, and a colleague about promotions. These answers are all wrong, prodding me to politely say, “It’s called the marketing mix, not the sales and finance and marketing mix for a reason. Marketing has responsibility for knowing everything about the customer and then translating this knowledge to define the right mix. No other department has these responsibilities.”

The predominant role played by the customer when deciding what products to build, what prices to charge, how to distribute products, and what promotions to execute, is something that needs to be repeated so often I feel like a broken record.

Frequently an employee responds that there isn’t time to do customer research, presenting the opportunity to choke on another repetitive phrase: Do we have the time to launch a product with a high probability of failure? There are so many ways to quickly and cost-effectively conduct customer research, saying there isn’t time to do this job is a pretty unimaginative reply. Any marketer who wants to go to marketing’s school of hard knocks can see how easy it is to conduct research by launching a non-customer driven product. Social networks that catch the scent, in no time at all, will offer an embarrassing supply of customer research.

Conducting customer research that will give the marketer the tools they need to embrace the customer’s position as the driver of the 4Ps is so essential to the creation of successful marketing strategies that I have incorporated customer orientation as a 5th P into the mnemonic. This P is for people, and its role is to define the behavioral profile of the people or consumers in targeted segments. Even though it’s labeled the 5th P, it should guide the definition of the other Ps and squarely place the customer at the fore and the core of all marketing mix decisions.

Marketer’s who think first and foremost about the behavioral profiles of targeted consumers can have a profound effect on the development of marketing strategies, while eliminating one of the strongest criticism of the 4Ps: their seller rather than buyer orientation.

Now, when it comes to products, the marketer will first contemplate what products consumers in different segments want to buy. This is followed by how and if their company can reasonably meet the consumer’s needs with a competitive product. When determining price, understanding what consumers will pay in each segment, will take precedence over defining a required margin.

If a company can’t meet their margin requirements, they’ll need to return to the cost reducing drawing board or forgo the opportunity. When deciding on the P for place, attention will first be given to how and where different consumer segments prefer to buy, and their expectations for pre- and post-sales service. Then a company can decide how and which segments to serve. Evaluating promotions first requires an understanding of consumer media and messaging preferences by segment. This will then guide the media mix, the messages related to competitive positioning, branding considerations and calculating ROI. Voila. Like magic, just by placing the consumer foremost in the marketer’s thought process, we can eliminate the greatest source of reducible error in marketing strategies.

Creating these behavioral profiles does take a bit of work, but it’s an effort with an attractive return. These profiles are central to creating segmentation strategies that drive success and ROI by permitting resources to be used more efficiently than that required to execute a targeting strategy that is loosely defined and reaches unqualified segments.

I generally find that absent a concerted effort, profiles are austerely defined. They usually consist of variables like, company size, job title and prior purchases in the case of B2B or slicing and dicing limited demographic data and purchase histories, in the case of B2C. In either case the actual definitions are hamstrung by data availability within company databases or third-party-data-broker services. These sources, besides being behaviorally light, have another constraint; the data is often dated. Situations change: people change jobs, companies merge, employees get promoted, they move, change email carriers, their incomes change, etc. and many companies lack the processes or commitments to maintaining what should be the company’s crown jewels. Even when data is accurate, the limitations noted above prevent painting the picture needed for adequately defining the 5th P.

The data has to be current but getting it right also requires a little more data on consumers and their behaviors than is normally collected. Developing consumer profiles that really give the marketer data to build solid segments requires collecting data in four categories: (1) psychographics, (2) product usage, (3) demographics and (4) clickstream data (when it’s available). A consumer profile that pulls from all of these sources will define who buys, what motivates them to buy or why they buy, and in the case of online consumers where they are likely to be in the buying process.

Psychographic data gets into the nitty gritty of what people do, what they enjoy and think. It answers the question: What motivates a person to buy a certain product? To do this it looks at product-related activities that consumers participate in, such as, work, hobbies, memberships, reading, athletic activities, social events, social networking, web surfing, dining out, community involvement, traveling, and shopping preferences. It looks at more cerebral interests like are they followers of fashion, gadget freaks, music lovers, health conscious or sports fans. It also looks at what target consumers think about any number of topics or issues, such as, themselves, varying social issues, politics, technology, economics, business, certain products, cultural differences or the future.

Product usage refers to whether a consumer is or will be a power user, a casual user, a one-time-user or something in between. It answers questions about the frequency and intensity of product use by different segments.

Demographics refer to qualities like the consumer’s age, generation, gender, family structure, social class, income, ethnicity and geography. Demographics broadly answer the question who buys. In a couple of recent articles I’ve read, writers have questioned the value of demographics, calling it old school and praising psychographics as the new school for segmentation. There is no doubt that psychographics are powerful, but demographics still has a place in the marketer’s segmentation toolkit.

Gaining that power does require using psychographics, and right now it’s likely they are underused. In a survey of marketing professionals recently conducted we found that only 6% of those surveyed said they used psychographics when developing segmentation strategies. In part, it’s likely that there were a lot of respondents struggling with what the term meant, telling me that psychographics needed to be added to a CMO’s mentoring program if they hope to leverage this powerful segmentation tool.

As to clickstream data; most of you probably know that there are tools available to monitor online consumer activities as well as report on aggregate and visitor-specific page views and elected paths to, from and through a website. This data can identify what stage of the buying cycle a visitor appears to be in at any point in time.

Often it’s not enough to talk to employees about the importance of the 5th P – the importance of developing behavioral profiles — because they are uncertain or have insufficient knowledge to go about the process. It’s another job for the CMO as mentor to take on.

The process for developing and segmenting profiles starts with defining product-relevant psychographics. What do consumer like to do and how do they think? For business consumers (B2B), principle interests may be defined by one or more job titles. More importantly, since there are no standard job titles, what are the specific job responsibilities that would benefit from a product? There may have related interests that could vary by job title, such as memberships in relevant industry associations, or subscriptions to industry journals, ezines, or blogs. Some buyers may have strong opinions on products that are environmentally friendly, or on future product requirements, and they may have strong opinions about certain brands. For end-user consumers (B2C), what they like to do and think must again be product-related, but it will be focused on interests that are external to work.

Defining relevant psychographics gets the segmentation process underway. Defining consumer usage of a product will take the process one step further. The interests and use of a product by a power user can be quite different from those of a casual user, signaling different needs that must be addressed for either group. Relevant demographics are the next consideration. For B2B, the demographics offering the most value will generally be related to the company rather than the buyer, such as company size, industry, and geography. For B2C, demographics of interest will accommodate distinct variations in product usage by variables, such as, age or generation, social class, gender, ethnic background, geographic location and income.

Further segmentation can take place when clickstream data or other data is available that can identify where online consumers are within the four stage buying process (brand awareness, information gathering, product evaluation and decision making). Keep in mind that clickstream data is significantly different in a few ways from the other sources of behavioral data: captured behaviors are generally website (and product) specific; behaviors can be ephemeral; data is often anonymous and aggregated and cannot be directly tied to other behavioral segmentation variables; and behaviors can be random, owing to site design, or because visitors are surfing without any real purpose. We’re still at an early stage experimenting with clickstream data for segmentation. It may be that the product-specific but transient nature of this source is a better tool for realtime consumer ad targeting, than for building consumer behavioral profiles that will define strategic segmentations.

In completing the process of developing segments for each of the simple B2B and B2C scenarios above, 100 plus distinct segments were created: each different in some material way. In any exercise like this, the number of tangibly different segments will often be numerous, highlighting the value of the segmentation process for illustrating the challenges inherent in truly reaching qualified buyers with a compelling offering, and for identifying the most promising segments to target.

Fully appraising the most promising segments entails evaluating the marketing mix requirements for each segment. Moving through the evaluation, it will become evident that all segments are not created equal. Some segments may have requirements that: are not in present or future product or company roadmaps, some may require products that are unprofitable, that exceed promotional capabilities, or cannot be logistically served. Prioritizing segments based on some combination of company capabilities and ROI will almost always be required. One thing that may be worth considering in the prioritization process is looking at segments that have similar product, price and place requirements, differing only with respect to promotions.

If these segments target consumers that have a preference for online media sources, it may be possible to create micro-segmented-targeted campaigns. Having to customize the other Ps will usually be more challenging.

The 5th P is for people, or defining consumer behavioral profiles. It will be very powerful for guiding the development of targeted marketing strategies: from people to products to pricing to place to promotions. If you clearly address the 5th P as the 1st P in the marketing mix, you can be confidant that you will achieve superior outcomes to the spray and pray, skimming, low hanging fruit, or whatever name may apply to the expeditious but sub-optimal campaigns and strategies that are commonly executed.

You absolutely can effectively target using the Internet, and it’s more important than ever. Cost-effective qualified lead generation is an inviolable objective of marketing. This does not change just because you are working with new media options, larger potential audiences and more data to process. Indeed, the ease of reaching vast audiences with countless online media alternatives is a reason why targeting is more important than ever. You have to minimize the possibility of being inundated with junk leads that can hamstring your system for lead follow-up.

Or worse, alienate your sales people because they’re tired of calling on college kids who downloaded information on your products for a term paper. Success hinges on using today’s sophisticated Web analytics tools in combination with a deliberate strategy to reach the target market and buyer with linking, e-mail and search strategies and, very importantly, making sure your communications are crafted for your target buyer.

The double-edged-sword of search engines

Thousands of articles on search engine optimization (SEO) have been written to help companies increase their search engine rankings. What these articles don’t tell you is that some of the things you may do to increase your search engine rankings can negatively affect your efforts at targeting, such as, the drives to increase links and paid search click throughs.

The drive to have more and more inbound links to increase search engine rankings is probably the single greatest source of unqualified visitors. Links from Web sites that are offering products and services that do not attract a common target buyer are a prime source of junk visits. Programs that focus on links, such as link exchanges, paper or logo partnerships, and unmanaged affiliate free-for-alls may increase your search engine rankings but like any haphazard campaign, will generate tons of junk leads.

A well-conceived linking strategy, on the other hand, will improve search engine rankings and drive qualified visitors to your site. Take public relations activities, such as press releases and articles that contain that all important inbound link. You need these vehicles to consistently reach and speak to the visitors you really want. If a PR activity is geared toward multiple-audiences, you’ll need to develop multiple constituency communications – but make sure you never forget to focus on the target buyer.

Another source of wayward visitors comes from partnerships where the first objective (and often the last) is to exchange logos with embedded links. When the principle objective of a partnership is lead generation, focus on partners with a common target buyer.

To successfully target buyers through search, paid or organic, you have to know how your target buyer thinks about the products you are promoting. I once sat in a room full of employees and asked them to identify the search terms that we needed to incorporate into our paid and organic search plans. I then sat down with a group of customers and asked them the same question and then repeated the process with a group of prospects.

There was some overlap, but even more variations. In most companies I have worked with, search terms are determined internally and by looking at what competitors are using: competitors that are probably relying on the instincts of their employees rather than reaching out to the target buyers. If you want search engines to bring target buyers to your site, you need to speak their language.

The true cost of free e-mail blasts

The ability to send targeted e-mail has advanced greatly beyond the days where the only throttle was excluding folks that opted-out. Still because e-mail is viewed as free or nearly so, e-mail campaigns often blast way beyond the borders of the target buyer’s universe. The problem with this is twofold: (1) following up on junk leads is not free; and (2) you may cause qualified buyers for one of your products to opt out of your communications, because you’ve polluted their inbox with information about product they have no interest in. When defining the reach for an e-mail blast you should always select recipients based on the profile of the target buyer. Your database may not contain all of the target buyer characteristics that you would like to select on, but work with what’s available. It will reduce the two problems noted above. Meanwhile, put a plan in place to build out your customer profiles, and reduce those two problems further.

Analyzing if page view and visitor counts are the work of the target buyer

Targeting with new media is similar to targeting with old media, with one gigantic and invaluable difference: you have real and current data to analyze a campaign’s success – which will be intricately tied to the definition of your target buyer and whether you have reached and communicated with the buyer. I have seen many who toil over reams of data analyzing page view, visitor and click-through quantities and trends. This data has some value because it let’s you know that someone has actually viewed your promotions, if only for a split second, but it is nearly as nebulous for understanding the success of your targeting as the old media metrics of readership, audience share or the number of direct mail pieces posted.

Better information is in store if you look at the paths and patterns of visitor behaviors. Try looking at what your Web analytics are telling you about your visitors. What information did they view and very importantly, for how long? How many times did they visit your site and over what time period? Did their views or visits follow an orderly path, perhaps inspired by a cleverly crafted integrated campaign that indicated they were working their way through a normal new customer process: first becoming educated on a product and a brand; then looking for more in-depth information on a solution and competitive offerings, and finally moving into purchase mode.

Even with all of this data, you will still fail to possess the identity and characteristics of your visitors, forcing you to draw inferences on whether you have really reached and communicated with your target buyer. However, if visitors are following a somewhat orderly path, with or without campaign guidance, even if the path takes months to complete, or if they’re returning over and over again and spending time on their visits looking at product-related information, with some confidence you can infer that you are reaching your target buyer.

Visitors completing the forms for a sale, and those creatively encouraged to register on your site can help minimize the need for inferring success in reaching the target buyer, because now you have some information on the identity of the visitor. Depending on the data required to complete the registration or visitor willingness to volunteer information, you may have access to demographics, information on why a product was purchased, and even psychographics, such as buyer interests and preferred activities. This additional data can assist in evaluating: if you have reached your defined target; aid the process of really sharpening your segmentation, communications and promotional mix, and facilitate targeted follow-on sales and marketing outreach.

Communicating with the target buyer

If you are confident that your promotions are reaching the target buyer, but they are abandoning the process too early, you may have defined your target buyer too broadly or even incorrectly or perhaps you are not effectively communicating with the buyer. When crafting communications try following these simple guidelines:

(1) Understand what unmet need(s) target buyers are seeking solutions for from your products, and then communicate how your solution meets the need — in their terms. The writer relying on insulated internal sources to develop copy is doomed.

(2) Determine to what degree the target buyer is interested in production orientation versus marketing orientation: how something is built versus how a product helps them solve problems. Technology companies are often guilty of piling on production-oriented technical jargon that may appeal to an IT professional but means nothing to a non-technical target buyer.

(3) Decide if you need a global or multi-domestic communications strategy. If clients around the world view the benefits of your product similarly, you can use a global strategy – with translations as needed. If not, use a multi-domestic strategy. With technology products I have found the world at large often does not adopt simultaneously. Adoption varies among continents and countries, and so do the problems they are trying to solve at any given time. If your Web site is globally beaming solutions to the most complex problems, you may be building innovation into your brand, yet alienating prospects looking for solutions to modest problems.

(4) Decide to what degree your target buyers need to be educated about the benefits of a category of products (primary demand sell), versus why your product is the best (secondary demand). When companies incorrectly assume that a secondary demand strategy should be followed, target buyers often abandon a Web site scratching their heads and wondering what your product actually does. When companies focus too heavily on primary demand, they can serve as lead generators for their competitors. Have you ever wondered why so many visitors leave your site and next surf to your competitor’s site?

Winning strategy

Visitors can arrive at your site from many sources. Haphazard approaches to linking, e-mail and search can easily result in millions of unqualified visitors. Instead take a deliberate approach. Find out what Web sites your target buyer frequents, what their needs are and how they think about your products. Then target your plans for using links, search engines, direct marketing, advertising and communications to reach this buyer. Use Web analytics to monitor the results and to guide efforts that will further fine-tune your online promotions and presence.

Not to freak you out, but remember: there are myriad new markets, millions of new buyers, countless new media options, and new innovative research and analysis tools all driving the need for a major skills upgrade. Marketers must be able to examine global opportunities, rather than domestic.

Direct marketing, once primarily paper and physically-based now take digital, virtual and mobile forms. The four-color, high-gloss corporate brochure is now the company Web site. Breakfast seminars with 25 people in single city, are being replaced with 7×24 global webcasts and podcasts. Mass media once considered impersonal, in some forms can now be personalized. Campaigns targeting finite sedentary audiences now contemplate mobile and infinite.

Manual tallying of campaign results is now — indeed has to be — automated in order to keep up with the pace of activities and vast volumes of data. Integrated marketing campaigns once offline and thought a ruse for vast unsubstantiated marketing expenditures are now online and offline and measurable at every step of the way. We have gone from subjective marketing campaigns to objective marketing campaigns.

We are living in a world where change is pervasive, and the impact on the marketer is profound. Marketers are being forced to master international skills, online skills, analysis skills, innovations in marketing technologies, and more. Curiously, one thing has not changed: the need for strong knowledge of fundamental marketing skills. Unfortunately, what I have witnessed over the past several years of running marketing departments is that there is a severe and growing shortage of these fundamental skills.

My experiences were supported in a series of interviews with a number of marketing managers. It seems as though the last decade’s emphasis on mastering new media and using Web-based technologies to track the results of marketing initiatives are having the desired effect. That is the good news and the bad news. These skills have been improving at the expense of the core skills that have always been essential to the development of effective campaigns and to diagnosing the root cause of why campaigns falter. Without these skills marketing professionals are experiencing campaigns with global reach that can sing and dance across the computer screen of anyone who responds, generating millions of visitors, downloads, and page views, but that produce poor ROI and cannot support an organization’s revenue objectives. Worse, marketers are ill-prepared to diagnose why the campaigns have failed.

To succeed in marketing today, a marketing professional must incorporate the newest skills for online, international, analysis and technological innovations into a strong fundamental marketing skill set, which includes: (1) conducting effective marketing research; (2) developing successful marketing strategies; and (3) understanding the effectiveness of promotional mix elements for a given strategy.

Marketing research skills are required to: identify the attractiveness of market opportunities anywhere in the world; to help identify the elements of a successful product that will be positioned to be competitively superior in some valuable and sustainable way; to define the characteristics (behaviors, psychographic, demographics, etc.) of the various target buyers, influencers and target markets (geographic, horizontal and vertical), and to understand the best ways to reach the targets.

When it comes to online campaign design, marketing research is needed to help answer questions, such as: What is the profile of your target buyer and/or target organization? What target buyers are receptive to online initiatives? What Web sites do target buyers visit? Why do they visit these sites? What interests them? When do they visit? Are they using search? What engines do they use? How do they think about your solutions – what terms might they type in? The good news is that a lot of this research can be conducted online. Gone are the days of trekking to the public library and sorting through some periodicals guide to literature and schlepping across the country to conduct a focus group.

Marketing research, done right, will provide a foundation that permits the development of an informed marketing strategy – which is a plan that cannot lose. This plan revolves around a product whose sources of differentiation and value to the target buyer are central to the product’s evolution and to all communications. But, talking about sources of differentiation is necessary but not sufficient. Communications strategies must also address whether you are communicating to local or global audiences. Are you communicating with end users, resellers or suppliers?

Do your target buyers care about how your product has been built or are they more interested in the benefits it delivers — how it can help them? Will you need to educate your targets on what your product does and how it can help them, or are they informed and more interested in how your product is better than competitive offerings? Having these strategic elements thoughtfully defined will guard against the execution of marketing campaigns that generate lots of visitors and page views from all corners of the earth but few interested buyers.

Beyond being strategically rooted, an effective campaign must incorporate the right mix of promotions; a task that has reached a new level of complexity. With customers spanning the globe, creating promotions that target specific customer types can be an exercise in micro-segmentation. Fortunately the sophisticated web analytics tools available today permit this micro possibility.

As to media selection; for every type of old media there is a new e-media analogue, complete with thousands of vehicles to choose from. Then there is the completely new and powerful world of online search. Which online and offline mix elements you choose must be tied to the preferences of your target markets and buyers, with consideration of course to budgets, ROI and other stated objectives. You can be sure of one thing though, marketing budgets will continue to shift from offline to online and the options for online marketing will continue to evolve. One reason is greater ROI but the other is the ability to monitor and measure performance.

This brings up yet another skill that marketers must have in their tool bags. Marketers must be skilled at analysis and building integrated campaigns with measurable objectives. Gone are the days of hiding behind that cloak of no measurable data or an inability to track diverse initiatives. With that, gone too are the excuses for why marketers cannot create reports on campaign ROI — with details on performance metrics for each integrated initiative. Today these reports are required and offer a great barometer of what is working and what is not.

A marketing career today offers an incredibly rich and rewarding experience, but you have to have the right up-to-date skill mix. Failing this, your career will be plagued by products and campaigns that can’t fulfill their objectives. Your skill mix must be framed around a solid core of marketing fundamentals, which now incorporates international marketing, new media, framing ROI and the latest in marketing technology innovations. Because change is pervasive you’ll need to keep your skills fresh.

A career in marketing can be fun and exciting. It can also be fulfilling; you can take pride that you are playing a significant role in the success of your company. A career in marketing is for the adventurous, those who love to learn and those who want to make a difference.

Swoosh. The next thing marketers know, their budgets are slashed. The only money left is for initiatives that can be directly correlated to a qualified lead or sale. Now there is a new problem: initiatives executed in isolation don’t produce.

When promotional initiatives can’t demonstrate measurable results, they should be cut –in a healthy or an unhealthy economy. When the market takes a downturn, however, every marketing program has to go above and beyond to meet its return on investment (ROI) or return on advertising spend (ROAS) objective. Today, this may mean saying goodbye to activities such as trade shows and their sky-high costs per lead, unmeasurable “brand building” event sponsorships and high-cost advertising’s unquantifiable results. Instead, say hello to the specific measurability, low cost and high ROI of a well-planned integrated online marketing campaign. In this article, we’ll walk you through some key success factors and a model you can use or customize to build an effective integrated online campaign.

Building an Effective Campaign

One key to your success will be the ability to define and promote the results of an integrated campaign to the executives charged with both top and bottom line responsibility. This will limit the possibility that your campaign will be killed before it’s been fully executed. Doing this will require you to surmount a few challenges: (1) Educating decision makers on what constitutes an effective integrated campaign. (2) Adequately communicating the results, progress and mid-course corrections of the campaign over time. (3) Ultimately, delivering a campaign that maximizes ROI and achieves other defined objectives.

Before you begin, or in parallel with the campaign-planning process, you have to educate executives on why a multi-step, integrated online campaign is the best avenue for proven results. Now proven, traceable results may be as rare as a unicorn sighting, but there is no shortage of executives looking for a silver bullet to immediately deliver on a company’s revenue goals. The 90-day fix presented below, if properly presented and reported on, may be fast enough for even the most impatient, but business-savvy, executive.

You’ll need to convey a few important concepts. One is that successful online campaigns use multiple marketing vehicles to touch each individual prospect 7-11 times over a 45-90 day period. This is because prospects need to be repeatedly exposed to your brand, so your company or product name registers. Then you need to captivate the prospects desire to learn more.

Now, you’ll need to communicate expectations, and subsequently, the progress toward meeting the objectives. In order to do this, you’ll need to define and track multiple metrics for each marketing initiative. Because you will have the metrics defined in every step of the campaign, and your online monitoring tools will be in place, reporting is baked right into the overall design of the campaign.