Jun 4, 2013 | Branding, Collaboration, Communication, Leadership, Social Media
Hugh MacLeod
There are many people I would like to meet, but a special group of them are the thinkers in the “new media” space.
Brian Solis is one of them, along with Clay Shirky, Hugh McLeod, Mitch Joel, and Seth Godin. These are all people who are shaping the manner in which we perceive the explosion of connectability that is driving our lives, enterprises, and the world we live in.
A current report of the Altimeter group of which Brian is a principal is called “The evolution of Social Business: Six stages of business transformation”. The report, and embedded slideshare presentation puts a framework around the bumbling most organisations are experiencing as they grapple with the opportunities, complications and costs of social, and socialised media.
Two last guests. First, someone who does a fantastic job of curating the content and thinking that is going on, is generous enough to share it all, and who knows all of the above blokes in person as a result of that generosity, Mike Stelzner. Second, an Aussie bird, for a bit of balance to the testosterone, and an alternative way of looking at things, Bernadette Jiwa.
What a truly great dinner group, the conversation would redefine “out of the box”, what pity I suck as a cook.
Jun 3, 2013 | Communication, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
Amongst the most common questions I get is “how do we make it viral?”
In the minds of most, “Viral” amounts to “Free” and it may be, but it costs to get there, even if the costs are often less obvious than an invoice from an ad agency.
Word of Mouth has always been the most effective form of advertising, and it still is. An endorsement from a friend or known expert, is marketing Gold. However, in the “old days” of word of mouth, you never heard what Mrs Jones said to Mrs Brown over the back fence, you just hoped you had done enough that it would be an endorsement rather than a panning, but on an individual basis, it really did not matter, so long as the balance was right.
No longer.
Word of mouth has changed into word of mouse, and the while the upside is seductive, the downside is the loss of control, and the immediacy of the impact.
You simply cannot control what is said, or the outcome of the saying, all you can do is respond, and the quicker the better, and with a healthy dose of common sense, a rare commodity it often seems.
May 29, 2013 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
This afternoon I saw the best example of marketing I have seen in ages, a metaphor for what it takes to be successful in this crowded, commoditised world.
Two youngsters, dressed in jeans and the T-Shirt of the Cancer Council were stopping people in the street and trying to have a chat with a view to extracting a donation. Both were working hard, were well presented, earnest, spoke well, and had big welcoming grins on their faces. However, one was far more successful than the other in both successfully stopping people, engaging in a conversation, and then extracting a donation.
The less successful was approaching people with the grin, and welcoming patter, only to have most people just brush by. The second did one more very simple thing, he offered his hand, and in almost every case, it was taken, the person stopped, and a conversation started.
The automatic reaction to the simple generosity of offering a hand in welcome was almost irresistible, even to total strangers, in a situation where they knew the “bite” was coming.
Amazing.
Think about your marketing, traditional or social, do you offer the metaphoric hand? Is the follow up “conversation” sufficiently interesting that it has the chance of engaging a potential customer to the point where they will give you their business?
I think offering a hand is the original Social Media, and it still works better than anything else.
May 27, 2013 | Branding, Marketing, Social Media
While writing the future proofing of marketing post recently , it also occurred to me that we have a generation of kids now becoming serious adults who have grown up immersed in the web 2.0. They are a different breed, even different to their almost generational siblings born in the late 70’s and 80’s who were around in the development days, these kids leaving school now did not know a world without an i in front of it.
iadults?
The sale of 6 year old Tumblr, created by a young high-school dropout David Karp for $1.1 billion, to Yahoo this week just highlights the point. Whilst there are not many smart enough, motivated enough, and commercially capable enough to create a startup that turns into a billion dollar baby, we are not teaching our kids anything like the creativity, agility of mind, and determination necessary to do so.
It scares the daylights out of me, as we are spending billions trying to educate our kids into the mould that made us.
Wrong.
Ken Robinson is clearly right, the traditional, industrial age education is failing our kids, we are not giving them the tools to be successful and happy in a world we cannot forecast. How can a cariculum designed in the nineties be relevent to the intellectual tools and practises necessary on the 2020’s and beyond?
All we talk about is the money it costs, not what we get out the other end, education is not an expense, it is an investment, and we better figure out how to be better at it.
May 21, 2013 | Branding, Category, Marketing, retail, Sales, Small business
I am old enough to remember doing warehouse withdrawals by hand. Heavens.
Then we had early data managers automate the process, an evolution that pottered on for 25 years, through to category management based on scan data, some of which can dive remarkably deep.
However, we ain’t seen nothing yet!.
The combination of retail data, personal card data, social media and the proximity capabilities of mobile applications will set off another revolution promotional and sales strategies.
Some of the technology is becoming pretty standard, the components of so called Big Data, and there is plenty around to tell you what to do, like this McKinsey article.
However, it takes resources and deep capabilities to effectively leverage the emerging possibilities, so how do SME’s compete?
It seems there are a few strategies that will become mandatory for those who actually want to survive:
- Develop scale. This does not just mean individual enterprises, which is by definition not possible for SME’s, but I see the emergence of “data co-operatives” groups of category marketers (some may even be competitors) who contribute to resourcing the necessary data science.
- Develop deep domain knowledge. This is like suggesting breathing is good for health, but the transitory and superficial culture surrounding product and brand management counters deep knowledge. This is a challenge of leadership, and personnel management, difficult topics for most businesses up to a substantial size. It is however, an opportunity to absorb the skills of the baby boomer marketers that are around, whose Intellectual Capital is becoming available for hire, as a contractor, consultant or often as a Director.
- Do extensive “Environmental Research“, and learn from what is happening elsewhere. For 30 years I have pretty well predicted what will happen in the Australian market by deeply engaging with 2 sources. Firstly the trends originating in the UK, which almost inevitably translate to the Australian scene at some point, and secondly being wrapped in social research, the stuff that details the behavior and attitudes of Australians. The original and still the best is the McKay Report. Hugh McKay has an enormous ability to articulate the complication of peoples lives and break them down into things you can use.
- Recognise and act on the simple truth that marketing is now fully accountable. No longer can marketers argue that the impact of their decisions are too hard to tie back to specific activities and costs. The ROI on marketing activity is now almost as transparent as that on capital expenditure, you just have to understand how to go about it, and get the right tools and capabilities in place.
- Differentiate. Notwithstanding the point above, you still need to stand out from the crowd, and the only way to do that is to be noticeably different, to engage with and serve consumers better than anyone else. The genuine creativity needed to do this will attract a premium, simply because it is so rare, and now the impact can be quantified, albeit after the fact.
Need help thinking about all that, give me a call, I have been there before.
May 13, 2013 | Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Creating content, the stuff that engages people, preferably customers, potential customers, and influencers of these two groups people (otherwise why are you doing it?) is a real challenge, but one that successful use of social media demands is addressed. There are plenty of resources out there offering tips and templates, but they do not get the job done.
When you have addressed the challenges, and have great content, if nobody reads and shares it, why bother?
SEO tools also abound, just behind the seeming hordes of people offering to lift your Google ranking, for a fee. It seems to me that SEO has spawned a host of shysters matched only by the easy money opportunities emanating from Nigeria.
So where do you go in all this? How do you make the tough choices about how to allocate scarce resources? SEO or Content?
A couple of general thoughts that I have offered to clients over a while now, and which seem to work.
- Have very clear objectives. An investment in Social media is like any other investment, the first step is to be crystal clear about what it is you are trying to achieve. Setting out to get to the top of Google requires a different set of activities to engaging existing customers, building a position as an industry expert, or creating a sales pipeline. These objectives are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but using SEO strategies that build general awareness when you are looking for specific outcomes such as increasing your share of existing customers wallet, is as appropriate as taking the family car to a competitive hill-climb.
- Use analytics. Facts should always be the basis for decision-making, and the facts are there when you go looking for them. Marketing for the first time in its history as a profession can be held accountable to metrics that accurately measure outcomes, rather than just activity. It can be a daunting task, data analysis often can be to many, but there are free resources and tools available that offer an unprecedented accountability and transparency of marketing investments. A Google analytics dashboard at the very least should be compulsory. If you need a resource to assist your thinking, the very very, best is the Occum’s Razor blog written by Avinash Kaushik. A really good strategy is to take your device on holidays, and spend the week reading and understanding the stuff that Avinash writes. It is gold!
- Be prepared to experiment. Social media is a bit like the finches in the Galapagos, many may look the same at a fleeting and uninformed glance, but the detail of the evolution, the way individual groups have evolved to maximise their effectiveness in a specific environment is extraordinarily different. This has happened to the Galapagos finches over millennia, but is happening as we speak to social media tools and strategies, and the only way to leverage the specific circumstances you find yourself in, is to be completely agile, and committed to responding positively to changes in the environment and new information.
- Remove the rules and barriers to customer engagement. It can be confronting for many (particularly older, and dictatorial managers) to consider allowing personnel who actually interact face to face with your marketplace to have the authority to make decisions and respond on the spot to needs and opportunities as they emerge. Whilst there needs to be some general rules of engagement, that reflect the business model and values of the organisation, empowering employees can be remarkably effective.
- “Social” implies interaction.” Social media is a two way beast, whilst there is enormous potential to build value, the flip side is that the risks of social media becoming a problem are very real. The immediacy of the potential negative impact of social media needs to be recognised, and there needs to be very clearly understood strategies to deal with any such outbreak of negativity. If you cock up, social media can destroy you, particularly if you try and cover up the cock-up, and there is also the opportunity for malicious and competitive attack. This risk also needs to be acknowledged, and ideally “war-gamed” even if in a small way.
- We are stuck with Social Media. The final thing to remember is that Social media will not go away. We have seen it before, when Guttenberg got his press working, the world of the printed message changed forever, and it has happened again. Hoping it will go away, that the impact will not reach you is fantasy land, so get with the program, with all its challenges.
