Archive for the 'Marketing Wednesdays' Tag

The article:

“People love to talk about JetBlue because the experience is so unexpected. Most airline travel has a particular pattern: small seats, bad entertainment, and little (if any) food. JetBlue breaks this pattern. Leather seats, your own entertainment system with dozens of channels, and at least some choice of food. People can’t stop talking about the experience because they have to express their surprise especially given the “value” price. They are so used to airline travel being poor, late, or uncomfortable these days that cases where a company seems to care and provide good service seems noteworthy. Satisfaction itself is unexpected.”

Other companies should be listening.

One of my friends runs an online marketing education conference. Social Media is the new hot thing. I think a couple of years ago, it was search engine optimization, and please don’t ask about my opinion on that. Anyway, his blog network is teeming with posts about Social Media. The top request for education is that newfangled “Twitter thing” and tips about “Facebook.”

I met one of the social characters at one of these events, which I thought was the coolest thing. Nevertheless, the mass market was indifferent, and still doesn’t get the whole CNN call for tweets. Whatever. Nobody cares, right?

I like posting on Facebook as much as the next social media geek. I think last Monday, I talked about my new haircut. But, I recognize that posting about what I’m going to eat on Twitter doesn’t make me some kind of expert. It just means I use it. I don’t charge an arm and a leg for my advice, and I’m still amazed at the impact of Social Media on sites even though some of my friends consider me ahead of the curve. Myself and a few of my friends have been lucky to work in some Social Media environments (MySpace, for example), and even we don’t consider ourselves experts.

Social Media and even User Experience experts shouldn’t be able to call themselves that if they’ve been on one or two panels and read a book. They should have some successes and failures behind them and grown to tell the story. The truly great experts not only know how to leverage their personal brand, but point out the obvious while doing it, for free. Here are some ways to tell if your Social Media Expert is full of crap:

Your Social Media Expert spends more time blogging than working.

Self promotion can be high art on the web. Tila Tequila? Dane Cook? I mean, who really laughs at Dane Cook’s jokes? My friends talk about all the Ringo Starrs out there. You know them; they were with one company as someone inconsequential. The company made it big and found a way to parlay it into selling several books and evangelizing ideas. They are their own personal brand.

That said, there’s a really bad sign if your Social Media Expert spends more time blogging than working. Think about this: one post of this length takes about an hour of write. It’s like the cook with the great cookies; the last thing they are going to do is tell everyone the recipe, right?

If they are spending all their time writing blog posts about how much they know about Social Media, they aren’t helping your company do Social Media.

Your Social Media Expert thinks social media started with Facebook and Twitter.

The reality is that the core foundation of social media has been around since two people talked around the campfire about inventing the wheel. It’s just moved to a different medium, and that medium as we know it, the Internet, started on October 29, 1969. A lot of us older people — you know, the one’s that had jobs before an email address — remember bulletin board systems.

Technically, my first social media message that I sent to a friend of mine on Usenet was in 1987. Seriously, that’s longer ago than the age some of the experts I’ve seen. The message took four days to get there. The distance traveled was from Irvine, California to Claremont, California.

Real Social Media Experts understand conversations, and how those conversations interact on whatever medium they are on. That could mean a letter to the editor sent via a mail carrier in the 1950′s or a page established on Facebook in 2009. It’s the conversation that’s important.

Your Social Media Expert thinks that Twitter is the start of your brand.

One of the great aspects of Social Media is that, if you do it right, your customers have the conversation for you, promote your business and make you lots of money all for the cost of good service. One of the biggest mistakes we all make is where brand starts.

What is brand? Is your your name and the experiences tied to your name. It’s not a twitter post or a blog entry or the color you have or the logo you are designing. It’s the name of your company, and how every representative of your company is associated with it.

If a stupid Twitter post goes out about how Memphis sucks or 15,000 people complain on Facebook that your company uses slave labor, that hurts your brand. Social Media conversations shouldn’t be measured in just metrics but also in quality of the conversation, because that relates back to your brand. The linked article is a good example, because it talks about the success of Comcast. Ask any of their customers.

Your Social Media Expert always has a clown in the pocket.

This a famous phrase I’m going to attribute to a friend of mine. Whenever a company was going down the drain, especially during the late 1990′s, there was always a skunk-works project that was shown off in front of the venture capitalists. This was to distract them from the fact that the company was burning $15 million a month, they were surrounded by $1,000 Herman Miller Aeron chairs, the core product still hadn’t launched, and the CEO was doing coke.

Look, online video! We can put that on our Geocities pages!

Real consultants offer some kind of road-map, including what the deliverables are, what they are going to do and what should be the result, hopefully. It doesn’t always have to succeed, and sometimes you can’t always measure it. Even the biggest agencies have a hard time generating good numbers around social media. At the end of the day, if sales go up, it’s a good campaign.

It’s about the strategy, kids. Plan. Plan. Plan, again. It’s not rocket science, and it doesn’t take a 25-year-old to tell you otherwise.

Your Social Media Expert speaks in 140 character sentences.

If the only way they promote themselves is through Twitter, fire them.

Yesterday.

Why?

Twitter is the Apple of the Internet without the cool products. Their market reach is under two percent, which is interesting because MySpace is still in the 30′s and Facebook is way, way over that in the 50′s. I look at it as the “mom test.” If my mom has heard about it, it’s gone mainstream. We had dinner a few weeks ago, and the conversation started something like, “They wanted me to get on Facebook, but I don’t see time for it. I wish they would have called me up.” Twitter never entered the conversation.

The truth is that Twitter has some great uses, including being the new RSS feed and a great way to watch conversations around specific topics or events.

Your Social Media Expert recommends Delicious and Stumble Upon for an audience of seniors.

It’s all about the audience, right? If your consultant doesn’t know who to talk to, then how can they have a conversation. That’s what blow my mind about some of the people that recommend Twitter for everyone. The first question asked should be, “Where can I have a conversation with this audience?” For example, Email is still relevant. About 46 percent of all embedded links are still through email, yet the Social Media Expert wants you to use hashtags.

Figure out where your audience is, and talk to it. For some, it’s Foursquare. For others, it’s Facebook. For other people, it’s Etsy.

For every audience  there’s a proper venue, and your Social Media Expert should know where to look.

What to do? What to do?

If you really need a Social Media Expert that is one, email me, even if the “expert” doesn’t call himself one.

The running joke is that you know something has jumped the shark once Corporate America has grabbed a hold of it.

Church of the Customer predicts that this is the year Social Media really starts becoming part of Corporate America. Boring isn’t necessarily bad, because it means it’s profitable.

My prediction for 2010: social gets integrated into business functions. That means: social media policies, aligning social media strategies and tactics with overall business objectives and revenue goals, and realigning functional teams. Yeah, not as exciting as another viral video but those are as reliable as a Vegas roulette table. Social media process is hard work, so it’s time for social media to get boring! For process geeks like me, that’s pretty exciting.

Get out all of your company’s printed materials – your business cards, letterhead, brochures, fliers, ads, newsletters, etc., as well as a printout of your website’s home page – and spread them out on your desk. Take a good look at what you see and ask yourself: Is it visually obvious that all of these items are from the same company?

If not, why not?

A big part of branding is recognition. Having a “look” that you use across all of your marketing materials makes it easy for your customers and potential customers to recognize that a message is from your company. So what are the elements of this “look”?

The Four Important Elements of Your Brand’s Visual Image

1. Your logo symbolizes your company. Make sure it is easily recognizable and works well in a wide range of advertising media. Overly creative logos can sometimes harm you rather than help you — make sure you pick something that can be remembered for it’s elegance and simplicity, not forgotten because it’s too complex.
2. Your color scheme should be uniform throughout all of your materials, and appropriate for your goals. Some color combinations are relaxing and soothing, others suggest excitement and enthusiasm, while others project a very “corporate” image.
3. Your overall “look” (including colors, fonts, pictures, layout, etc.) needs to visually reinforce the feeling that you want your product or service to convey. For example, a company marketing “mom’s apple pie” to senior citizens will have a much different look than one selling the latest electronic gadgets to teenage boys.
4. Your printed materials need to reflect important elements of the “look and feel” of your website (or vice versa). There’s nothing worse than having printed materials that don’t look like the website — your prospective clients will usually refer to printed materials first on their desk.

Remember, it often takes multiple exposures to an advertising/marketing message before a consumer will decide to make a purchase or inquiry. If your materials are a mismatched hodge-podge of colors, designs and messages, it will be very difficult for you to build a recognizable presence in the market place.

Before you can create a successful ad, website, brochure, direct mail letter or other marketing piece, you must first ask an important question: Exactly who is the target audience? After all, your business most likely has a number of different target audiences, each of which has their own particular hot buttons, needs and wants. The most successful marketing campaigns are those that target the specific needs and wants of a particular market segment.

Identify All of Your Target Audiences

For example, say you manufacture a product that is sold both to retail stores and direct to consumers through a website. Your list of target audiences might include:

• Potential, current and past customers; people who inquired about your product in the past but did not make a purchase at the time
• Potential, current, past and inquiring retail stores and distributors
• Influencers (people in positions of authority who could recommend your product to consumers)
• Media (trade and consumer publications, newsletters, e-zines, radio, TV, etc.)
• And more

Tailor Your Message

Rank your list in order of importance, and then decide which group or groups you will focus on with this marketing piece. Think about the specific benefits that your product or service brings to these groups and tailor your message accordingly. For example, while retail stores might want to know about your product’s compact and attractive packaging, consumers are probably much more interested in your product’s durability.

Finally, make sure that everything about your marketing piece – words, colors, overall layout, photos used, etc. – speaks directly to your chosen audience.

As the Cheshire Cat said to Alice in Lewis Carol’s Alice in Wonderland, “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” Your business’ marketing plan is your roadmap for success; without one you’re just wandering blindly through the forest.

Your marketing plan can be a simple 1- or 2-page document or a detailed 60-page booklet, complete with charts and graphs. Either way, the exercise of creating a formal marketing plan can help you determine exactly what it is that you want your marketing program to accomplish, how you intend to reach these goals and what yardstick you will use to measure the results.

A basic short-form marketing plan should include the following elements:

• Business/financial objectives – What are your business’ overall goals? Be as specific as possible.
• Market overview – Description of your market, product and competition.
• Marketing objectives – What are the goals of your marketing program? For example, you may want to increase sales, introduce a product to a new market and/or increase product awareness among a particular group of people.
• Target audience definitions – Who are you marketing to? In addition to all of the people who may want to purchase your product, you may also plan to market to those who can influence their purchasing decision, members of the media, current or past customers and more.
• Key creative, media and promotional strategies and tactics – This is the “guts” of your marketing plan, the details of how you plan to accomplish your objectives.
• Infrastructure issues – Are there any known issues which may impact your ability to reach your goals, such as personnel, supplier or cash flow problems? If so, how do you intend to address them?

Do you have a marketing plan? If not, now’s the time to create this critical document.

How are your marketing programs doing? What’s your average response rate, cost per sale and size of sale? Which publications, venues, ads and offers have received the best response?

If you’re like many business owners you’ve got a gut feeling about all of these things, but a dearth of hard data. If so, you’re really flying blind…and you may be wasting much of your marketing budget as a result.

Better Data = Better Decisions

Every business should systematically track and analyze responses to their marketing programs, so that future decisions can be based on historical results. What data should you capture? As much as you can! For example, for print ads I recommend that you track the publication name and circulation; ad name, date and cost; offer and coupon code (if applicable); date and amount of customer’s purchase; and customer name and contact information (if appropriate). Remember, it’s not enough to know that a customer saw your ad in XYZ Publication; you want to know if she saw this month’s ad or the one you ran last fall.

Analyzing Your Responses

So what do you do with all of this data? Start by looking at your response rates for each marketing program. This is the number of people who received or had the opportunity to see a particular ad or marketing piece divided by the number who actually responded to it. Look to see how this response rate changed if you changed the ad, offer, publication, mailing list or other factor. How many sales were made? Compare the average cost per sale and size of sale of each program, and then look at the return on investment (ROI) by comparing the total net sales (or the anticipated lifetime sales to these new customers) to the cost of the program itself.

Think of your historical data as a valuable treasure trove of information, and use it to fine tune and maximize the success of your marketing program.

Have you ever stopped to think about what it is that you’re really selling?

When it comes right down to it, you’re not selling a product or service. You’re selling solutions to the problems, needs or desires that your ideal clients have. Does your local gym sell hard work, major time commitments and exercise? Of course not! They sell sexy bodies and good health. Likewise, Mercedes doesn’t just sell transportation – they sell status.

Different Messages for Different Audiences

Of course, you’re probably selling more than one thing. For example, a restaurant might sell “convenience” to one target audience, a “fun evening out” to another group of people and a “way to connect with family and friends” to others.

The important thing is to figure out what solution you’re offering to the particular group you’re targeting, and then focus your message on this.

Customers Don’t Buy “Things”

People don’t buy things; they buy what things can do for them. For example, people who buy my book, “What’s to Eat? The Milk-Free, Egg-Free, Nut-Free Food Allergy Cookbook,” aren’t buying recipes. They’re buying a way to feed delicious food to their entire family, including a family member who is on a restricted diet.

This adage is equally true for services. For example, your neighbor goes to the chiropractor to relieve his back pain. The chiropractor is selling pain relief, not spinal adjustments.

To really connect with your customers and potential customers, keep in mind that you’re selling solutions, not products or services.