I don't suggest, of course, that VC money flowing to a startup or a category is a pure measure of market potential. In the cited case, however, it is an interesting fact.
Doc
On Sep 6, 2013, at 9:31 AM, Peter Cranstone <
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> wrote:
Think about it for a moment. $307 million dollars for a mobile app to hail a driver… Seriously? One downtick
in the economy and people will be reaching for a different app.
I agree with Iain - VRM is a tool in the same way CRM is a tool. They're all tools - the key is to do something that creates value with those tools. The cost of the mobile app for Uber wasn't more than $300k which makes you wonder where all the other money
is being spent.
Peter Cranstone
From: Doc Searls <
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>
Date: Friday, September 6, 2013 7:01 AM
To: Graham Hill <
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>
Cc: Iain Henderson <
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>, ProjectVRM list <
">
>
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] The Explosive Growth in Intent Marketing
On Sep 6, 2013, at 5:10 AM, Graham Hill <
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> wrote:
Hi Iain
I agree 100% about the value of intent signalled by customers. Event/trigger data is already far more effective at signalling intent than predictive models. True intent data takes that to its logical conclusion. It provides salesmen with their ultimate
hot lead: I want this type of product, at this price-point, at this point in time. Look at how successful financial services aggregators are at relaying real-time intent to the financial services product factories.
But there are still many problems to overcome.
The obvious one is why should customers bother with intent casting at all. To do so would require - in Christensens jobs parlance - for VRM to offer a significantly better tool, to the masses of Average Joes, to do important customer jobs-to-be-done, significantly
better than the tools available at that time.
Uber is pure intentcasting. It has 300 employees and $307 million in financing, including $258 million from Google Ventures. Its main competitor, Lyft, has 60 employees and $82/5 million in financing. And lots of traction.
It is not clear that VRM is a better tool for customers than passively ignoring marketing and actively searching.
First, VRM is not "a tool." It is a big box in which there can be many tools and services. A few are already there. Many more will come.
Have you checked out Craigslist, or Intently, btw? Both provide means for casting intentions. Craigslist is a huge success in the U.S., because it made for far better signaling between buyers and sellers than the old paper-based advertising did. Intently,
and other intentcasting newcomers, advance beyond passive search with an active means for the customer to clearly state their buying interest. Search engines alone don't do that.
Google's ZMOT data and impulse-buying research both suggest that customers are far from the economic optimisers VRM requires.
VRM doesn't require economic optimizers alone. First, that's not all that's involved in shopping, and never was. Second, VRM is about relating and not just buying. It's the serve/own cycle and not just the buy cycle.
Nor is it clear that even if it were a better tool, that enough Average Joes will take it up to make make it economicically attractive. VRM will not work well economically without it becoming a mass-market proposition. And it is not clear that the relentless
advance of passive, real-time, intent-driven marketing will not provide good enough tools for customers in the future. Customers are creatures of habit driven by comfortable cognitive pathways that seek to minimise their mental workload. In contrast to passive
marketing, VRM is increased cognitive workload.
There are other problems too including recruitment to the multi-sided market platforms that are most likely to host VRM solutions, developing customer capabilities to use the platforms effectively and sub-optimal search on the solution landscape to name
but three.
None of this means that I don't think there is a role for VRM in the future customer marketing landscape, I do. The $64,000 question is what role? And when?
One reason Uber and Lyft are succeeding is because there are no CRM or complex marketing systems on the sellers' side. Taxis and limos mostly just respond to direct customer demand. Thanks to these new intentcasting systems, however, the livery business is
likely to start marketing more intelligently than they have in the past, if for no other reason than the better signaling they are getting from customers.
I would be interested to hear what you think about the UK Govt MiData initiative too. It has all the makings of a a great idea poorly implemented from what I have seen to-date. One of my clients is listed on the MiData website as a partner but none of
the seior Marketing staff know anything about it and when I described it to them they were somewhat hostile.
I think it's a good idea, but I don't know enough about it to say. Others on the list are more familiar with it.
Doc
Best regards from Cologne, Graham
Am 06.09.2013 um 09:29 schrieb Iain Henderson:
Agreed, as discussed previously, the VRM-informed solutions that will ultimately do well will be those that benefit both buyer and seller; e.g. saves time for a buyer AND improves acquisition rates for organisation, and does so at some
scale.
In my day job, I sit on top of a big CRM system, with all sorts of fancy bells and whistles switched on; and I buy a lot of data. I know how much I pay for it, I know its strengths and weaknesses, I know how it compares and plays with other data sources, and
I know the return I can expect on it. A flow of VRM-style data into that system would undoubtedly perform better, at lower cost; that simple logic is what will enable marketers to engage with VRM.
Iain
On 5 Sep 2013, at 10:00, Graham Hill <
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> wrote:
Hi Iain
I hear what you say.
We all know marketers. Indeed, many of us are marketers. An alarming prospect! (Pun intended). The dominant mental model for most marketers is a goods-dominant logic one. This is manifest in the _expression_ that 'the purpose of marketing
is to create a hot lead'. Assuming this to be the case, most marketers will hire those tools that helps them do that with the highest return on their effort. Today, the tools of choice inrceasingly revolve around real-time personalisation through ever bigger
data, real-time intent analytics and dynamic content exchanges. The arrival of yet more intent data, better intent modelling tools and better content exchanges simply raises the capabilities of marketers. The bigger question is whether it results in better
offers for customers from marketers armed with intent data. There is nothing inherently wrong with marketing per se. As a source of information to aid customer decisioning, it is a natural and desirable component of free and open markets. It is the poor targeting,
timing and offers made by current marketing activities that is the problem. But one can easily imagine a situation where marketers know enough about customers' intent to make attractive enough offers to make VRM irrelevant. Marketers don't need to know everything
about a customer's intent - and VRM as intentcasting doesn't provide that anyway - just enough to make a good enough offer, at the right time, to the right customer.
I don't believe that seeing better intent marketing and the potential introduction of VRM as mutually antagonistic components in an implied zero-sum game is either inevitable or desirable. What is desirable is a solution that meets the
needs of both parties: marketers ability to market their products to customers and customers ability to get the right products to help them get on with their lives.
Best regards from Cologne, Graham
Am 05.09.2013 um 09:06 schrieb Iain Henderson:
Hi Graham,
To answer your question, we need to refer back to the often-made point in Project VRM that the scenario we see unfolding is not an 'either/ or'; it's a 'both'. Sellers needs tools, and buyers need tools; if they play well together then
that works better for both parties.
So marketers can use the tools in the article to do their thing, individuals will use VRM tools to do their thing, and the real action comes in making them speak the same language. In that sense, the seller side firming up on 'Intent'
data and the VRM community firming up on 'Intentcasting' as preferred terms will make that journey a bit easier.
Hope that helps.
Iain
On 5 Sep 2013, at 06:36, Graham Hill <
">
> wrote:
Hi Doc
At its heart VRM is about SIGNALLING intent. There is a whole ecosystem of marketers, tools and data collection being developed to HARVEST customer intent in real-time and to act upon it. This article sets out some of the key players
in the explosive growth of the ecosystem.
http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/208273/kbs-simplifies-internet-marketing-drops-an-r-a.html#axzz2drCFrSLh
As the intent data ecosystem rapidly grows in size and caability, why SHOULD a marketer look to VRM as the solution to his intent data chalenges rather than to one of these tools. This is a question, not a rhetorical statement.
Best regards from Cologne, Graham
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Optima Partners
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