Social Media: Effective communication tool or just more noise?

We have seen clients just jump into social media marketing without a strategy.  They would never have thought to run a newspaper ad campaign without a clear objective, but for some reason they see social media in a different light. But if ever a sound strategy was needed, it is now (emarketing toronto services).

During the ‘mass marketing’ period when we spent a lot of money (advertising), hunted for customers (cold calling) and hoped they remembered us when it came time to purchase, we could “broad stroke” our mass media strategy and still affect enough people to cause the desired result. Many pundits have said for years “ half my ad dollars are wasted – I just don’t know which half.” We know now: it was more than half.

Then The Google Age arrived. Web 2.0. Social Media. It brought millions of people online for many hours at a time. But more important; it returned the buying power back to the consumer. It literally changed the way people buy. For almost anything we are thinking of purchasing, for business or personal, we usually Google it. We do our homework so we are a much more educated buyer.

This transformed process means we are less likely to “be sold” something today than we are “to buy” it. And that shift changes everything for marketers. Rather than ideas and promotions that sell people, we are seeing firms give away a tremendous amount of “inside information”. Information designed to help educate the public. An open and transparent way of doing business. We are educating them and allowing them to buy. Some might say the good marketers have always done that.

The transfer of power is simple: prospects can now “click a brand right out of their life”. If they are uncomfortable or annoyed – poof, they’re gone. And so are you.

So strategy has never been more important to marketers. You must:

1. Know (and speak to) a single primary target

2. Understand and articulate clearly, exactly what you are selling.

3. Understand the single, relevant issue that people need to know in order to buy.

Make sure that social media does not just become more noise. The consumer will just turn you off.

Tags: , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
May 2, 2010|emarketing Strategy|1 Comment

Marketing in The Google Age

Once in awhile you read something that just hits the nail on the head. Here is a great explanation of what’s happening to marketing in The Google Age. As quoted from the HubSpot website:
The most interesting aspect of the internet’s impact on business from HubSpot’s perspective is in how it has changed the nature of shopping and subsequently the shape of every vendor’s sales funnel. Ten years ago, if a company was interested in buying a new product/service, it started by attending trade shows, reading industry journals, and going to seminars to learn more. Early in the shopping process, it would engage directly with the key vendors’ (sales) people who would feed them asymmetric information from the top of their sales funnel to the bottom of their funnel. Today, that same process looks very different. The potential customer starts in Google by searching on relevant keywords. The prospect would spend time on each vendor’s site, subscribe to the most interesting vendor blogs, subscribe to the vendor’s customers’ blogs, join an industry discussion forum, etc. Relatively late in the prospect’s decision cycle, it would engage the vendor’s (sales) people directly. That first vendor conversation today is much different from the one a decade ago because the prospect often knows as much about the vendor’s product as the sales rep does and the prospect is already much more “qualified.”

The result of this shift in shopping patterns is that the internet has tended to make every marketplace more “efficient.” Just as Ebay makes the niche market for Pez dispensers, WWI shovels, and 1975 World Series ticket stubs more efficient, the internet as a whole is making the niche markets for intellectual property law, system dynamics consulting, and food brokerage more efficient. It used to be that the size of your firm’s sales force was the key to finding the most new customers, but that is not necessarily always the case today. The good news for small businesses is that on the internet, no one can tell if you are a one person sole proprietorship or a 1000 person consultancy. It turns out that most small businesses (and startups) have relatively niche-y products that they generally sell to companies in their rolodex and companies two degrees away from their rolodex. The internet disproportionately favors small businesses since it enables them to position their niche goods to people shopping for that particular niche good regardless of the numbers of degrees of separation from their rolodex.

At the end of the day, the consumer has changed the way they buy goods. Have you changed the way you sell them?

BFOUND’s vision is to provide great advice to small businesses enabling them to leverage these disruptive effects of the internet to “get found” by more prospects shopping in their niche and to convert a higher percentage of prospects into customers. Most small businesses have a website that behaves like their old paper-based brochures, but just sitting online. It is rarely updated, is not given significant visibility by the search engines, has low traffic levels, does not encourage return visits, does not enable/track conversions, etc. What the new way of marketing does is transform that relatively static website into a modern marketing machine that produces the right leads and helps convert a higher percentage of them into qualified opportunities.

Tags: , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
November 9, 2009|Uncategorized|4 Comments

It’s the Consumer Stupid.

On October 21, 2009 in Advertising Age,  Judy Shapiro addressed the shift that is happening in the media world. With a good grasp of the issues she talks openly abou the opportunities and what it might take to benefit from all of this change. Einstein said ” The problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created it”. In other words we need to make a shift of mindset in order to come up with a smart solution with regard to the changes in the marketplace. Fact is there is nothing usual about business today. Companies with little focus and who have relegated marketing to the basement office will most certainly pay a steep price in The Google Age.

The main issue – the single action at the core of all this change is the fact that the consumer has changed the way they make their buying decision. I did not say they changed the way they buy or where they buy, yet those can well be impacted when they change the way they make their buying decisions.

In the past they would remember ads & promotions, talk to relevant friends & family, seek advice at store level and make their choice. In studies, it was difficult to give any one of these a heavier weighting than the others. But today, although we may still seek opinions and counsel from freinds family and store clerks, by far and away, in Google we trust. Now we simply Google what we are looking for, assemble all the info we need and make our choice.

The problem is not that the consumer’s buying process has changed, it is that our marketing and sales process has not. Most businesses are no longer fishing where the fish are. The consumer has changed and we have not. Easily corrected indeed, BUT the mindset issue comes into play big time. If a marketer uses the same language, tactics and thinking when marketing online, they will likely have their hat handed to them by the communities they engage with. Go slow and LISTEN first. Act only when you have a feel for the community and the environment. This is like no medium you have ever used. Lose the corporate-speak. These are people you are talking to. In fact, we have a list of 21 marketing thoughts & ideas we live by that would serve most marketers when they go online.

Tags: , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 22, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Context Is Everything

HUNT or BE HUNTED

In order to understand what is happening to marketing at this early stage of The Google Age, we thought it best to examine the context. Said another way, context is what is at work in the background, informing our decisions. Indeed, if our context gives us our decisions and our decisions determine our actions, it would be good to understand the context in this situation.

As context is made up of many factors such as culture, experience and history, what has determined the decisions in business since the end of World War II? Even before 1945, mass media was shaping our world. What we knew and believed was heavily influenced by mass marketers and mass media owners. The technologies that we developed were, for the most part designed to reach more people at the same time. For those who grew up and entered the business world during this period, all we knew was “mass marketing”. Most of us just did not distinguish it that way. It just was the way it was.

It is believed that a fish has no distinction called water. It just is what the fish swims in. A fish can only get the distinction “water” if you take it out of the water. So lets pull ourselves out of the business world for a moment and look at what might be at work. The only business context we could have had for years is “mass marketing”. Given that, we spent our time and brainpower developing smarter, more creative ways to HUNT for new customers. We used every new technology to get an edge over our competition, and more important, we used genuine creativity. But HUNTING was still HUNTING. Given our mass marketing context, that was all we could distinguish.

We would SPEND significant ad, promotion and sales dollars.

HUNT for customers everywhere.

HOPE we can then catch them at the right time, or

HOPE they remember us when it comes time to buy.

We refer to it as the shhh model and the media owners were hoping to keep it very,very quiet. After all it was the source of their wealth. We have to pay the gatekeeper if we want access to the eyeballs that the gatekeeper controls. It is just how it works. The media owner invests millions in developing properties that your target audience is interested in, so they can sell you advertising and sponsorship opportunities at significant premiums. The transaction must be based on a fair, consistent factor so we have come to buy media on a cost per thousand (CPM) basis. As marketers we then had to separately weigh the quality of the audience (how targeted they were vs our ideal targets) as well as the CPM required to reach them. It is a subjective process that is extremely hard to measure.

Tags: , , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 16, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Left-Handed Monkey Wrenches For Left-Handed Plumbers

Co-founder of Hub Spot, Dharmesh Shah says, the internet is great at connecting makers of left-handed monkey wrenches with left-handed plumbers around the world.

But the makers of left-handed monkey wrenches must:

  1. be very clear that they make left-handed monkeys wrenches
  2. not tell everyone about their full line of wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers and saws
  3. talk directly to left-handed plumbers and not be tempted to include right-handed plumbers, general contractors, the owners of hardware stores, the local handymen across America and anyone else interested in buying any household or industrial tool.

Inbound Marketing is, like the internet itself, far more efficient. Shah’s partner, Brian Halligan uses the example of eBay. Apparently the Founder started it because he wanted to expand the number of people to trade PEZ dispensers with, after he had traded with his entire rolodex. The internet offered free access to a lot of other people interested in his unusual hobby. Now eBay is the ultimate connector of buyer and seller in the world. Like Brian said – a very efficient system.

A more efficient marketplace truly allows for specialization amongst small business. So now the average small business does not have to be everything to everybody in order to survive. Due to the long tail effect ( see Chris Anderson’s Blog ) one could build a solid business making left-handed monkey wrenches for left-handed plumbers. And they can reach them all over the world.

In the old SPEND, HUNT and HOPE model, (spend lots of money, hunt for customers and hope they remember you when it comes time to buy) using mass media that was expensive and played to the large Company’s advantage, many small business owners believed they had to supplement their main offering with additional products and services, just to make ends meet. They had to add right handed wrenches and small saws, hammers and screwdrivers. The more products they offered, the more potential audiences they could identify to sell to so they forgot about the left-handed plumber and their left-handed wrenches. They lost themselves – but even worse, they collapsed sales and marketing into one big mess. In this state they want (believe they need to) tell everybody about all of the things they sell. Their ads lose focus. Their promotions are at best desperate grabs at low hanging fruit and they spend a lot of money on a lot of things. In other words marketing goes down the toilet. In this world they must sell hard and often to survive.

We conduct inbound marketing campaigns and as a professional marketer I see the Internet as the savior of marketing. The Google Era will put marketing back in the corner office. I will explain.

If a small business takes their traditional marketing mentality to inbound marketing it will fail. No ifs ands or buts. The keys to inbound marketing are:

  1. be very clear about what you sell.
  2. be very clear who your ideal buyer is
  3. put out content that educates that buyer about that product

If the business also has other things for sale, they need to run separate campaigns. That’s marketing. In this model customers buy and because they are in control of the transaction, they often enjoy it. So that left-handed plumber can easily find a left-handed wrench online.

emarketing toronto

Tags: , , , ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
October 15, 2009|Inbound Marketing, emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »

Social Media: Don’t Throw The Baby Out With The Bathwater

A good friend, Andrew Jenkins, just posted a thought provoking article Social Media is So 1999 on the Community Marketing Blog, basically questioning the frenzy around Social Media applications.   While I agree with several of his key points, (people can easily jump on a bandwagon and ride it into the ground), I offer a caution to his request to be cautious.

This is no dot com bust. Google has proven that FREE is indeed a viable business model. But it is a business model that requires incredible discipline. They have worked out, without question and PRECISELY, what their “reason for being” is. They understand that a business needs to align behind a single, relevant idea. In their case, it is “that every individual can find what she/he wants, when he/she wants it”. It is so simple it is very complex. What I mean is the idea is simple, the execution is complex. In a business world that was all about the almighty dollar, Google knew that if they made all of their decisions such that  ”every individual can find what she/he wants, when he/she wants it”, the rest would all work out. We have watched them become the largest Company in the world in less than 10 years, yet they don’t make the smallest or the biggest decisions based on “how much revenue will it produce”, like most businesses we grew up admiring. They make their decisions based on “will that help every individual can find what she/he wants, when he/she wants it”. Most businesses spend a lot of time focusing on quarterly reports and doing whatever it takes to drive the stock price up. They spend a lot of time and effort working on the wrong things. Google knows that the best way to affect their stock price is to ensure that ” every individual can find what she/he wants, when he/she wants it”. Again, very simple, yet incredibly difficult to execute. They take a long term view that’s in the best interest of their constituents.

But back to Andrew’s comments, there are other factors at work here as well. Competition in every business sector has permantly changed. In 2007 Marketing Sherpa posted a statistic that hit me right between the eyes: “83% of a B2B purchases found their Vendor online”. Most brands’ prospects (potential customers) have completly changed the way they find what they need. So it stands to reason that marketers would completely change the way they reach them. But alas, most Company’s marketing practices have not changed enough to make the difference. I think we have a lot of half-pregnant marketing plans.

Lets think about the context for a moment, rather than looking at each Social Media site individually. Social media is to the Internet what the Internet was to the Personal Computer. The first stage of personal computing featured games, while the second stage featured word processing and tremendous time-saving number crunching applications in the form of spreadsheets. But the third stage – the addition of the Internet attracted a whole new personal computer user. A similar phenomenom is at work regarding the Internet. On the World Wide Web you could send email and look up information on almost any subject. The second stage was most businesses have posted “brochureware” – they have a minimal presence online. And now the third stage –  Social Media or Web 2.0 has been introduced.  Collectively, it is the catalyst – the reason for people (by the billions) to be online. When billions of people are online, engaged and participating, it creates a medium that we have little to no experience with – one that actually talks back. Sure some applications will come and some will go, but the genre (Social Media) is here to stay and it’s impact on the way we do business will be profound.

For example, early in this game, we have noticed that when you combine Social Media with PPC and SEO you can generate new business at previously unknown rates. For less cost than we could ever imagine. That levels the playing field in many industry sectors: if I am looking for new windows for my home, I would likely Google “new windows oakville”. The little guys are on page one. With the right presentation, the “big guys” in the business will never even make my short list, if they are not there when I am looking. People are calling this “Inbound Marketing”. Now we can distinguish what we have been doing as “Outbound Marketing” (we had never distinguished it as that was our only option.)

The Google Age (of which Social Media is an honoured guest) hails a fundamental change in the marketing mindset of every business. And the Marketing Strategists are only now beginning to understand the power of the medium, working with the SEO fanatics to produce business results. After many years of every business spending huge amounts of advertising and promotion dollars, as well as cold calling and investing a tremendous amount of sales effort (what we call HUNTING for customers – or the SPEND, HUNT and HOPE model), we have now entered The Google Era – a period when you must make the fundamental shift to learning to BE HUNTED – to be found when people are looking for your product or service. It requires a whole different approach to marketing. In fact, it actually forces Companies to return to the basics of sound marketing. No longer will business be able to “throw enough &^%#$&^ against the wall and be satisfied with what sticks” (AKA: half my ad budget is a waste – I just don’t know which half.

And the part I  love the most – I am predicting a serious comeback of marketing. It will be back in the corner office. The Google Age will force brands to know exactly who their ideal customer is and precisely what they are selling. Or die. Getting crystal clear and then being easy to be found for exactly THAT is the key to doing business in The Google Age. Every marketer will be able to LISTEN so they can stop telling people what they think they need to hear in order to buy their product. Without direct feedback, the best we could ever do was guess. Now we can “talk with” our ideal prospects rather than “talk at” them.

So call me a zealot – not for social media, but for The Google Era and the impact it will have on the way we do business: worldwide.

Tags: ,

Permalink|Comments RSS Feed|Trackback URL
September 14, 2009|emarketing Strategy|Post Comment »