Kevin Hillstrom: MineThatData

No Awareness

Modern prospecting and awareness are intertwined.

I decided to look at a brand called Potpourri. I visited the website, and was promptly interrupted.

Why did I visit the website? I wanted to find links to their social media presence.

There were no links.

As best I can tell, there's not much of a social media presence. Maybe I am missing it.

Honestly, Potpourri is part of a conglomerate, so they can prospect off of sister company lists. That helps ... a lot!!

Long-term, your organic social presence promotes events ... the events convert prospects into shoppers that become buyers that can be nudged toward loyalty yielding profit.

I mean, it's 2026. The best time to start the organic social stuff was in 2010. The second best time to start is tomorrow. But you have to have something to say. Create an event every three weeks, events that fuel the prospecting part of your universe, that seed the search/ai aspect of your business.

Every Three Weeks

Back to our playbook.

Every three weeks there needs to be an event. Again, not "40% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING", that's not an event, that's a bribe that devalues the customer relationship.

Events are important, because they fill your marketing ecosystem ... the kids call this stuff content and engagement ... it's so much more than that. You are giving the customer a reason to pay attention to you, and better you do that with merchandise that leads to content than to do it with content alone.

All this stuff helps you retain customers ... and based on your feedback, you much prefer retaining customers than acquiring customers (though most of you benefit more by acquiring customers than retaining customers).

The Playbook: A Missing Element

Here's our playbook.

You, of course, are a play caller. You make decisions. You have a playbook with all sorts of "plays".

Those of you in old-school cataloging ask a common question.

"If we didn't have a catalog, we wouldn't have anything to say. How do we close that gap?"

Yeah, there's a missing element for those folks ... an element that (some) ecommerce brands possess.

The missing element?

Events.

You just watched the Super Bowl a few days ago. That, ladies and gentlemen, is an "event". The entire football calendar is built around events.

Events can be sales, but they should be more than sales. Customers don't care about your MARCH SALE - HURRY, 50% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING when the customer knows that a month later there will be an APRIL SALE - HURRY, 50% OFF PLUS FREE SHIPPING. Those are events by definition only.

The old-school cataloger essentially had monthly events ... a catalog delivered to a mailbox. Take the catalog away and there is a void.

The void must be filled ... with events.

Here's Olive and Cocoa (click here). That's a business based on events ... they don't have to create events because the entire business model is based on events.

You remember Amazon? Prime Days? Yes, there is a price component to that ... but not all prices are cut, and it isn't a sale with a blanket 30% off everything.

Williams Sonoma has virtual events (click here) to complement in-store events. How hard is it to create virtual events?

The catalog is going to go away (for my catalog-centric readers) - your partners are going to increase costs to unmanageable levels ... it has already happened and will continue to happen. You will replace catalogs with events. You have no choice.

The Playbook

A rudimentary drawing of what you are dealing with.

Print the image.

Review all of the "connectors" in the image ... this isn't perfect information so I'm not looking for an email that says "you don't have display ads in here, so the whole framework collapses" ... this is designed to get you to think, not criticize.

Prospects align with the channels below them.

Shoppers align with the channels below them.

Buyers / Loyalists frequently align with the channels west/southwest of them.

We're trying to push prospects to loyalists, right?

The Play Caller

That's what you are. You are a playcaller. Your job is to call plays to score points (i.e. profit) for your company. It isn't necessarily an easy job.

Readers ask "what do you look to for inspiration?" ... well, it sure isn't marketing literature ... six miles of unimaginable dreck coated in sugary frosting".

One of my daily reads is called "One Play A Day" ... you can subscribe here if you are a football fan. The coach sends one play design per day, showing how a play caller baffles the defense.

You just watched the Super Bowl. Did the play caller run the same play over and over and over and over? No! The play caller mixes things up, deceives the defense, runs a play in the first quarter then runs a completely different play out of the same formation in the third quarter.

The play caller adjusts to the strengths of his/her team.

The play caller uses analytics ... sometimes agreeing with analytics, sometimes disagreeing, sometimes simply leveraging gut feel and instinct.

The play caller knows that yards (net sales) are kind of irrelevant ... the play caller knows that points (profit) are highly relevant. The play caller knows that chunk plays (rushes of 12+ yards or passes of 16+ yards) make a big difference ... they are like events in marketing.

The play caller adjusts when his players aren't capable of performing at a high level ... no different than the marketer adjusting when customers don't embrace merchandise. Players in football are comparable to individual items in a merchandise assortment. Everything needs to work in harmony.

In upcoming posts, we're going to talk about retention and acquisition in terms of a play caller. You are no different than an NFL or College play caller. Which means, of course, that you have an important job that requires creativity, imagination, flexibility, and raw skills/knowledge.

P.S.: You can't always trust AI to produce an accurate image ... look at the flaws in this one.