Oct 23, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Courtesy: “First dog on the moon”
I am getting pretty annoyed with the enthusiastic panting of the toothy self appointed social media guru brigade extolling the ‘awesomeness’ (my current second most hated word) of social media.
They give the serious advisors amongst us a bad name.
It happened again during the week. At a casual SME meetup, there was one of these types there flogging the line that all you had to do was give him some money, and you would make it back 10X (actual claim) because he was able to focus his specialist and exclusive Social Media expertise on your objective and ‘Abra Cadabra’ money would appear.
The loaves & fish story have nothing on this lot.
Social media is just a fragment of the challenge of Social Marketing enabled by the technology that not just encourages, but demands that your ‘targets’ (will have to think of another word) have the opportunity and means to communicate with the marketer.
As I have heard it said, ‘it is not communication until the intended message is received, understood and has elicited a response’.
Seems to me there are a few questions you should ask yourself about your message:
- To what extent does it assist the prospect move along the journey to a transaction?. We do not engage in social marketing for our health, it is for a commercial outcome. Therefore measure it against the progress towards that outcome, recognising there are probably many other things in your message mix, from deliberate marketing communication aimed at the prospect, to random stuff like how clean was the company delivery truck was when it passed your prospect at the lights last week.
- How does the communication add value to the prospect?. If you cannot add value in some way, why should the message assist the journey to a transaction?
- What do they do next as a result of seeing your message?. If they do nothing, it is just another of the 95 gazillion messages they might see today, if they do something as a result of seeing it, whole new ball-game? It is great to have someone take action as a result of your message, greater if that action not just moves them down the transaction path, but if they also share it with their networks. In effect they are not only acknowledging the value of your message, they are endorsing it to their networks. This is the gold at the end of the social marketing rainbow.
Social marketing is pretty easy to write and talk about in a superficial way, but very hard to put into meaningful practice. It takes careful and creative analysis of your prospects and your own value proposition, as well as the construction, content and nature of the messages sent. This is not an exercise conducted with a fairy wand and pixie dust, it takes serious marketing thinking and experience.
If it sounds almost too good to be true, grab your wallet and get out, because it almost certainly is.
Oct 21, 2015 | Branding, Governance, Marketing, Social Media
Fundamental things apply
Great line for a song?
We all know the words, written by Herman Hupfeld from the song ‘As time goes by’, made famous in the movie Casablanca.
It also applies to marketing, particularly the explosion of techniques and tricks that have emerged with digital technology.
Despite all the rumors and offers of instant success, there is no algorithm for great marketing, no sure fire way of short-cutting the risks and uncertainty.
Great marketing takes time, effort, resources, curiosity and a willingness to be different, to see things others have not seen, to create the uncreatable.
You do not do that in front of a screen, the best you can do there is look at the results of stuff you have tried, get a superficial look at what others have tried, and manage digital development and deployment.
Instead of relying on digital bits to do the work, you have to get out and talk to customers, potential customers and others who may have an influence on the way a product is produced, delivered and valued by customers, whether they be a consumer of a simple product or a major corporation making a significant investment.
The fundamental things apply, the same things that have always applied, they have not been replaced by digital tricks.
We can now deliver a message to a tightly defined audience, as small as one, but if the message is poor, wrongly targeted, the product fails to deliver value, you may as well whistle in a hurricane for all the good it will do you.
Make sure the basics are covered, ensure the fundamental things that make a marketing program work are in place. There is no substitute.
Oct 6, 2015 | Branding, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
VW advertising has helped redefine the practise of marketing and advertising over 60 years, and in the process built a brand valued in their last balance sheet at $US23 billion
How much of that 23 Billion has been trashed by the unfolding fraud?
The value of a brand is made up of thousands of individual things over a long period, all adding to a disposition or feeling in consumers minds.
In VW’s case, it really started with advertising in the early 50’s, the original “Lemon” ads that changed the way we thought about advertising, to the more recent “Star Wars” ad series.
I wonder about the impact of the recent publicity on the new car buyer.
Will they now be more likely to add another brand choice to the list of possibles as they consider and research their new car purchase? Will current owners be more or less likely to believe the message on the dash that tells them a service is now due?,
Every business from MNC’s like VW to the bakery around the corner has to be aware of the value of their brand, and the added vulnerability it now faces with the advent of social media, and its ability to generate commentary. United airlines found this to their detriment when they broke a songwriters guitar. This particular piece of payback has been viewed over 15 million times, spawned a host of parodies, song series, covers and even books, and it is a wonderful case study on corporate response to customer service for people like me.
Marketing people are now pretty quick to extol the virtue of social media as a tool to build brands, and some (the few who read balance sheets) even recognise the goodwill you can reflect in the accounts, but are they as vigilant on the flip side?
Rarely.
Investment in brands should be considered as a long term investment, something that will keep on delivering if you get the basics right and nurture it. For small businesses, they have the opportunity to appear to be much larger and sophisticated than perhaps they are if they think about the basics of brand building,.
Unlike physical assets, brands appreciate with use, care and attention, but the flip side is there as well, as VW has discovered.
I will watch their next set of accounts with interest.
Sep 28, 2015 | Branding, Customers, Marketing, Social Media
courtesy: Hugh McLeod Gaping void
Social media presents enormous opportunities for small businesses to connect with their customers in ways not imaginable just a few years ago.
However, like every new tool that comes along, it can be misused and certainly abused, and is certain to be touted by carpetbaggers. Considering the following list may save you some heartache.
- It will not address failings in your band positioning and execution. Get those right, and Social media can be a great addition, but it will not backfill the failures of creative, customer and problem focused strategic thinking.
- It will not make your brand interesting to potential customers who are not interested in what you have to offer.
- It cannot help you when all you talk about is yourself. People are more interested in themselves than in you, and unless you grapple with and answer the “What’s in it for me” question, you will end up talking to yourself.
- It cannot guarantee to go viral. Very few things go viral, it is like winning the lottery, the more tickets, the greater the chance, but each ticket has the same chance as all the others.
- It will not make up for poor content. In fact, poor content can kill any potential success your strategy may have, stone dead.
- It does not operate in an objectiveless world, so cannot deliver on objectives you have failed to articulate and plan for.
- It will not compensate for poor customer service. In fact, one of the great things is that those with poor customer service will be exposed quicker than ever, and go broke, reducing the ‘noise’ in the market.
- It rarely seems to ignore the things you may rather have it ignore, like lousy customer service.
- It will not change the world, although there is evidence that it can make a major contribution in that direction.
- It is not free. Posting of social platforms may be free, but there is considerable effort and many challenges before you will have any chance of being noticed. That effort will incur at least opportunity cost if you do it yourself, or professional costs if you outsource.
- It does not just happen. Being good at leveraging the opportunities of Social media is like anything else, you can only get out after you have put in. Success always takes take considerable effort.
The message is that social media is not the panacea for anything, not a silver bullet for any problem, it is just a tool in the marketing toolbox. It might be new and shiny, and seemingly changing daily, and being touted as the next big thing, which to some extent it is, but it remains just a means to an end, not the end itself.
Sep 18, 2015 | Communication, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
Blogging is a journey
Writing a blog can be confronting, and often small business owners shy away for the commitment. Make no mistake it is a commitment, but so is anything worth doing.
After 6 years and 1400 posts, and a lot of reading of posts by others, I have learned a bit, I hope, and assembled a few tips:
Be selective. Starting out you cannot do everything, so pick the platforms that suit you. Logically this follows some thought about where your target market hangs out digitally. This particularly relates to those in your field who are influencers.
Create an engaging profile. Every platform offers the opportunity to create a profile. Do it thoughtfully, considering the things that your preferred readers might like to see. Too often I see profiles that are incomplete or look like resumes, in the latter case, unless you are actively looking for a job, it is not of much interest to anyone but your Mum.
Upload a photo that does you justice. Your profile photo is like the headline photo in the front page of a newspaper, and you only get one chance to make a first impression.
Background images. Again, most offer the opportunity for a background image, this is the opportunity to confirm your expertise, or the thing you want to be remembered for. Unless, you are a Vet, no cats allowed.
Understand the platform. Whichever platform(s) you choose to start with, spend a bit of time understanding how they work, the features, and how you might be able to use them. Just having a profile up is useless, you need to be able to actively engage in the features of the platform to be noticed.
Follow and comment. Engagement starts somewhere, in most cases following those with whom you feel you would like to share a coffee with in real life is a good start. Once following, make comments on their posts, refer to other things they may be interested in, link to your posts, and create debates, offer an alternative point of view.
Learn from others. Social media has been exploding for the last 15 years. There are some real gurus out there along with all the wannabe’s. By watching and listening you will figure out quickly who they are, learn from them, model your digital behaviour on theirs, without copying, as you need your own ‘voice”. One of the gurus I have watched is Jeff Bullas, a true guru who lives almost around the corner in Sydney. By simply watching what he does, I have leant a lot.
Endorse and share. Sharing is an endorsement, if you feel something, is worthwhile, share it amongst your networks with a short note. These days it is easy to share on all platforms, but taking the time to write and endorse a post makes a lot of difference. Just clicking the ‘like’ button really means little any more.
Join groups. This is a great way to come to know those in a market who are the opinion leaders, and make a thoughtful contribution. I much prefer the closed groups, firstly because the rules can be set and you are less likely to be bombarded by irrelevant advertising messages, but more importantly because there is a common reason to be a member of a group, and if the reason is at the core of your businesses, it is clearly a good place to be.
Consistency. This all takes time and effort, but you have to be in the game to win. Those who find you worth following will get used to a rhythm, so once that is established, do your best to keep it up. Consistency in tone of ‘voice’ is also important. A blog is a personal thing, that is why people have followed in many cases, so outsourcing it can be a mistake. By contrast, having guest bloggers can be a great way to add value to your readers, and for your it offers the opportunity to attract new readers, point is that the guest post is explicitly written by a guest. I guest post regularly in a food industry magazine, it helps them with original and relevant articles and thoughts, and drives traffic for me.
Don’t pitch. When you use blog posts to pitch, if you do it too hard, you will lose readers. By all means offer access to landing pages that do pitch products or events, but they should be elsewhere beyond a soft invitation to readers who may be interested to click and go there. Hard selling on a blog post is the quickest way to put off readers other than being irrelevant or committing the sin of bad writing, I have seen.
Be visual. Human beings are visual animals, we respond to visual stimuli. Look at the reaction around the world to the photo of the little drowned Syrian boy being lifted out of the water. 
He is not the first to have been reported to have drowned, this was not the first story, it probably ranks at a number well over a million in the words written, but it grabbed the attention of the world like nothing that has gone before.
Be visible. Use social icons at every opportunity giving people as many opportunities to sample and connect as possible. It is a numbers game after all, and getting them to the front door counts.
Extend courtesy to others. Digital interaction is no different to face to face, apart for the obvious . People like to be thanked, acknowledged for their contributions, and have their efforts reciprocated. However, being selective in the reciprocity can be useful. There are many tools out there that just automatically do stuff, like follow or like. Following back an automated system is not the same as following back a person, so be selective and be careful who you like.
Start. Always the hardest thing, to make the commitment to yourself, and get on with it, dismiss the voice in your ear that tell you that you do not know enough, it is too hard, or that nobody will come. As we all know, the journey stats with the first step.
Sep 14, 2015 | Branding, Marketing, Small business, Social Media
My small business clients ask me this all the time.
They know they have to stand out on Social Media, but the question is how?
The necessary steps and supporting processes are now pretty well understood, but not easy to execute.
1. Find a niche and own it.
This is about the most common piece of advice out there, because it is right, yet so few small businesses do it well. They are seduced by the numbers. ‘there are a billion people on India, if we could sell a widget to .0000015% of them we would be right.’ In contrast, success comes to those who find a niche that fits their expertise, and offer a product that is both differentiated and the best around in some way for the very specific target market. A friend of mine has a potential very deep niche in highly specialised light bulbs. He has access to the products from specialist producers around the world and combined with the specialist technical knowledge he has necessary to understand the best combination of characteristics for a particular use. However, he keeps on being distracted by the opportunity of selling a box of common bulbs available in a suburban lighting shop.
2. Understand the market intimately.
This follows from the point above. People are being bombarded by all sorts of messages, you need to know the ones that will cut through because they promise to deliver a unique benefit of some sort to the target specialised audience. A message about a “light bulb for printers” will not get through the mental defenses of a professional printer, but offering an “Ultra Vitalux lamp with double the normal lamp-life” almost certainly would.
3. Identify and connect with influencers.
In every market, there those who lead, who experiment, and are not afraid to take a shot, and there are the rest. If you can identify and connect with those thought leaders, their endorsement will influence the views and behaviour of the rest.
4. Create a “tribe”.
Seth Godin and Clay Shirky brought the notion of “Tribes” into the vernacular. If you can build one around your particular expertise, those in the tribe will become advocates for your product and expertise. The mistake most make at this point is that they take the opportunity to turn the group or tribe into something that is about them. It has to be about the group, any step beyond a hint of commercialism will kill it dead.
5. Build a brand.
A brand in this context is not the sort of investment exercise necessary in a mass B2C market, it can be done on very small budgets, with a bit of imagination, and a genuine and unique story. Brands are at their core stories about the products, so tell yours.
6. Have a point of view.
Being different makes you stand out, but different just for the sake of being different is flimsy. Stake out a position that is a key part of your brand story that will not resonate with everyone, and be the advocate for that position, defend it against the naysayers and the status quo.
7. Communicate consistently.
In this instance, consistently means communicating not just regularly, but with a consistent message and tone of voice across all the digital platforms and media you use. Digital marketing is a content hungry channel, so the trick is to pick which combination of platforms and media generate the best returns and stick to them, while perhaps experimenting on the fringes. To try and use all the options just a bit is a sure road to failure, much better to pick a small number that are relevant to your prospects and do them really well.
8. Engage with your audience.
Success in digital media is all about the level of engagement you can build with your audience , and subsequently their relevant networks, and those interested in the topic. This takes work, particularly as engagement evolves towards a transaction. Generally it becomes harder to automate the closer you get to a transaction, depending on the products being sold. For many B2B products, the close is face to face.
9. Be opportunistic as appropriate.
None of the above should remove the motivation to use circumstances as they occur to your advantage. Digital media offers great opportunities to become part of a trend, even initiators of trends by the use of hashtags, particularly in Twitter. The downside is that the opportunity must be empathetic with your niche, brand, and everything else you are doing or it may depreciate what your other efforts are delivering.
The huge advance that digital has made that makes the effort necessary to compete is that you can now see clearly what works and what does not, almost in real time.
