Bryan Kramer serves as a sort of Zen master to digital marketers. While marketers comb through social analytics,
Perhaps Kramer’s composure also rests in his belief that companies need to start acting more human. After all he reasons, companies are full of them. Despite events seen by some corporate marketers as potential liabilities, such as when a customer complains on social media, Kramer believes the best method to communicate with customers are through “Human to Human” (H2H) communications and not business speak.
“As marketers, we’ve been trained to speak “business to business” (B2B) or “business to consumer” (B2C). But instead of this creating a simple framework for dialogue between humans, it set forth an unnatural language for marketers, using words like “synergy” and “speeds and feeds” to tell the stories of products and services to their buyers and partners,” Kramer said.
Kramer is extending H2H in his latest book, Shareology, How Sharing is Powering the Human Economy, which is about the difficult art and science of sharing online. Jay Baer, the New York Times best-selling author of Youtility, calls the book a must read for anyone who wants their ideas to spread, personally or professionally.
I asked Kramer about his book, his agency and his philosophy on marketing. Here is what he told me:
1. Sharing is powering the human economy
For Kramer, throughout his 200 conversations with executives and influencers, the art and science of sharing is the currency of success online. But each of the social platforms differ in the approach for success. He discusses each of them in his book, but he told me the overriding principle can be summarized by, “to share is to care”. After a while, influential people, prospective customers and partners all take notice.
2. Marketers, focus on creative content
During the past years content marketing has become the defacto method for big results and big revenue. More and more companies have learned to appreciate it and to understand how hard it is to get it right. Content marketing has become more mainstream because of the influential few that have managed to spread the word about it through their results and the constant sharing (by others) of their experiences.
Yet, as Kramer told me, sharing needs to be combined with creative and interesting content. Story telling is important, and telling it in a creative way is key. Kramer shared with me some creative campaign examples that you can view for a deeper look.
3. Make the complex - simple
We’ve all heard that we should simplify our messages to make it easier for customers to understand our value - but as many of us know, that’s easier said than done. Since Kramer’s agency Pure Matter started off as a Branding agency, Kramer believes that experience gives his firm an edge when aiming for simplicity. “There’s so much noise out there now,” Kramer told me, “that you really need a simple yet convincing message to break through all the clutter.”
4. Measure every marketing campaign
Developing and executing a large marketing campaign can be onerous. But not understanding whether the campaign worked or not is worse. This is where companies get into trouble. “If you can’t measure it, don’t do it,” Kramer says, “This is something you have to do.”
One of Kramer’s favorite metrics is Share of Voice, which is essentially a measure of how often your company is mentioned online versus the competition. If you sell online, this is a metric you have to track.
In sum, human being are pattern seeking, story-telling individuals. These traits generally serve us well, and are locked into our human conscious. But in his book, Kramer argues that our preferences for human interaction and human story telling are being ignored by most companies and most marketers. Worse, the complex reality where different kinds of patterns and different sources of information often dominate the marketing landscape, kill a prospective customers’ enthusiasm to learn more about the products they seek to understand.
Kramer’s new book is a road map for businesses to navigate the complexities of a digital world, how to simplify it, and how to be human in it. This is a book that should be on every marketer’s list.
