Lessons from a horrible social media strategy
May 20th
Last week a bizarre decision by the prestigious Mayo Clinic had my college class rumbling with outrage.
One of the most popular class exercises I use to demonstrate the importance of blogging and content strategy is dividing the class up to dissect and discuss various corporate blogs. Since the pharmaceutical and health care industries are so prominent in New Jersey, I often use the Mayo Clinic’s blog as a case study.
The Mayo Clinic generally does a good job using its blog to establish a voice of authority for its principle core disciplines of stress management, cancer treatment and other health categories. They have doctors providing regular columns on these subjects and they attract a lot of comments (although they generally do not respond to the comments, probably for legal reasons). I like using this blog as an example because in an industry that is so gun-shy about using social media, this prominent clinic seemed to be moving forward in a powerful way.
A strategy gone horribly wrong
Last year I noticed they started taking paid advertising on their blog, mostly from drug companies. I thought this was a strange decision. Clearly the goal of the blog was to establish community contact and voice of authority. Why cheapen the outstanding reputation of the clinic through annoying advertising that pushed drugs on people?
The strategy completely blew up on the medical center last week when my class discovered that right next to a blog post about the grief of pregnancy loss, the clinic was displaying ads for cute children’s clothing. Look carefully at the picture at the top of the blog post. Utterly tasteless. Incomprehensible.
Of course I don’t think anybody mindfully placed this exact ad in this exact place. I’m sure they had a deal with this advertiser to automatically rotate ads for cute clothes on a column about pregnancy, never thinking it could backfire like this. Only problem is, the mothers reading the blog don’t know that. They trust Mayo Clinic. Why wouldn’t they?
Here is a word I rarely use on my my blog: Stupid. But I think it is an unavoidable description when an organization sells the soul of their brand for a few advertising dollars with a mindless strategy of advertising children’s clothes to women who have just lost their child.
Lessons learned?
Here is the lesson to take out of this disaster. Everything you do, and everything you don’t do, communicates about your brand. Once you have your brand strategy set, protect it fiercely and stick to it relentlessly. Never, ever take your eye off of what you do and why you exist.
In this case, somebody in the Mayo Clinic PR Department got some very bad advice. Maybe they were wide-eyed about the prospect of turning their customer-facing communications into a profit center. But what they really did was turn the clinic’s stellar reputation as a premier international healthcare center into a shuckster ready turn to tricks in any tasteless manner for a few bucks. Instead of passionately and sensitively helping people who are suffering, they are shilling baby clothes and drugs to them, This proud institution totally lost their vision of why they exist.
Think about what you’re doing with your marketing strategy. Is every activity lined up in a way that relentlessly communicates your core values and brand promise?
Conspiracy Theory. A {growtoon}.
May 18th
Join the growtoonists each Friday for a humorous take on marketing, social media, and current business events.
Joey Strawn is a social media strategist that loves enjoying a good book and then drawing in it. Check him out on Twitter: @joey_strawn
Following your passion – Easier said than done
May 17th
A guest post from {grow} community member Jeremy Floyd
From Donald Trump to Oprah Winfrey, the “secret” to success seems always to be “follow your passion.” I get lost with this directive. To me, it’s akin to telling someone to embrace their “freedom.” Okay, what the hell am I supposed to do with that?
Passion is a loaded term. That soup of spiritual, emotional, mental, physical/social longing, and satisfaction each have unique ingredients. The challenge is to bring alignment that satisfies all elements of your person. I’ve found myself chasing mental “passion” only to drain all energy from my physical body and vice versa.
So what’s alignment? Most of us have spent much of our lives with the question, “what do you want to be when you grow up?” The real question is WHY do you want to be when you grow up? Below the surface of the what is a reason that drives you. The alignment of the why, how, and what are the critical recipe to figuring out the “passion” question.
Simon Sinek does a nice job of explaining the approach of the what versus the why by illustrating the Golden Circle. (If you haven’t seen his TED talk check it out.)
When I was 15, my deepest longing was to direct movies. I spent years in the theatre trying my hand at acting, directing, and a ton of time in the technical production. Other masters came into my life, and in the pursuit of their satisfaction I quashed the dream. At 27, I thought my passion was to be a lawyer. But I focused on the “what” of being a lawyer – power, money and success – rather than the “why,” which is helping people. I went down a ridiculously difficult road to discover the inside of the “what” was different than the outside of the “why.”
So, how do you get to the true heart of your passion?
- Remove the “whats.” We spend a great deal of time in our culture driving to the features of our lives: what clothes we wear to work; what car we will drive; what kind of house we’ll live in. etc. These are all results, or features, and they cannot drive the decision.
- What is the problem in the world that gets you excited? After years of searching, I believe that people and organizations are uniquely situated to be incredible, but they don’t always discern their path to excellence.
- What can you do better than anyone else to solve that problem? In marketing terms, what is the “point of differentiation?” For me, I believe that by spending time with people and organizations, listening to them, and bringing into focus the “thing” that really drives them, I am helping to unleash potential.
- There lies the WHY. Why? That is the real center, isn’t it? My purpose or WHY statement is to unleash potential. The purpose should be boiled down to one or two words and be very simple.
- How do you do it? The how is the bridge from the why to the what. It becomes the rules or framework that directs the purpose into the action.
- Finally, what’s the what? At this point it is easier to determine what you can do, but more importantly it determines what you can’t do. The realm of opportunity is limited by the answers to the preceding questions. So, it is easy for me to say based on my purpose and promises that I would not, for example, be satisfied as a scientist working in a lab all day because I would not be unleashing the potential of people.
One day while wandering, I came across three bricklayers. I asked the first bricklayer what he was doing.
“Laying bricks,” he told me.
I asked the second what he was doing.
“Making a brick wall,” he told me.
I asked the third.
“Building a cathedral,” he explained.
Once you’ve identified the purpose, every action that you make in your life has greater meaning and significance. Suddenly, there is alignment between your actions and your goals.
And only then, I would say, you can truly be passionate.
I know this is a very different perspective. How does it land on you?
Jeremy Floyd, President of Bluegill Creative, facilitates corporate and board retreats to help organizations discover their reason for being. He also posts about marketing and digital media on his blog.
If you do just one analysis for your business…
May 16th
By Neicole Crepeau, Contibuting {grow} Columnist
Are you a small business owner or manager looking to improve your marketing and sales? If so, you’re also probably seriously time-constrained. So it’s important that the time you do spend yields tangible results with conclusions that can translate into actions that improve your bottom line. Based on my experience working with small businesses, if you only have time to do one thing, it should be becoming acquainted with your sales funnel.
In my experience, discussing and documenting the sales funnel has never failed to provide new insights, identify holes, and uncover opportunities to improve marketing, reach more target customers, and increase actual sales/conversions.
In this day of digital marketing, social media, and mobile, a simple sales funnel analysis may seem passé. But I guarantee that if you do the analysis and ask the right questions, you’ll find ways to improve all those aspects of your marketing … and more. That’s because reviewing how you acquire customers and the stages they go through to buy from you exposes the rocks in the stream.
Who should analyze the sales funnel?
One of the great things about sales funnel analysis is that it applies to all types of businesses—and even non-profits. B2B and B2C companies can benefit from looking at how they acquire customers. Non-profits can use the same process to evaluate how they acquire donors.
You don’t have to limit your analysis strictly to sales, either. For example, I worked with a services firm recently who uses subcontractors. We used the same analysis technique to examine how they acquire subcontractors, especially for key positions. Since doing that is critical to their business, it warranted a thorough evaluation, so we could find new ways for the company to “market” to contractors.
It’s best to perform the analysis with a small group of people, rather than trying to do it alone. In a small business, the CEO is very often in the analysis meetings. If the goal is to improve marketing/sales, then the marketing owner should certainly be involved. Other likely candidates: any consultant you are working with on marketing/sales, a key sales person or the manager of sales (if you separate marketing and sales), whoever owns digital, social media, or content marketing (if you are doing those), and whoever owns your website and watches the analytics. You may also find it valuable to include someone from customer support or, if you provide services, project or account managers who work with customers after the sale.
What funnels should you create?
To start, determine which products or services or markets you’ll analyze. If you have multiple products and they appeal to very different customers or are marketed in very different ways, you’ll want to analyze each. If you market different services or to different types of clients, then you may need to model each sales process separately. If you’re not sure whether you need to model them separately, start with one funnel. As you begin discussing the process, if you find yourself saying “Well, if it’s this product then xyz, but if it’s that product then abc,” you know you need to model each one separately.
How do I do the analysis?
I always draw a funnel on the white board. Begin at the top and work your way down. The basic stages are generally the same, though you might end up modifying them as the discussion ensues. I usually start with:
- Awareness of problem/need—Customer realizes that he/she has a problem or a need
- Awareness of product/service solution to the problem—Customer realizes that there are products that can fill his/her need or vendors who can provide services to solve it
- Awareness of your company’s specific product/solution—The customer discovers your product or service as an option
- Shortlisting available products/solutions—The customer narrows down the products or vendors under consideration
- Comparing shortlist products/solutions—The customer does additional research and comparison of the products/vendors. This step may only apply to large purchases.
- Proposal and negotiation—The customer puts out an RFP and/or contacts you, you provide a proposal and/or cost, and negotiations ensue. This step may or may not apply to your business (typically a b2b step).
- Sale—Sold! The customer purchases
Asking the right questions
The key to getting value from this analysis is asking the right questions. Start by trying to understand who your customers are. Include questions such as:
- The role or title of the customer (in B2B sales)
- The age, gender, and other demographics of the customer
- The demeanor of your customer, at the time they are in this sales process. Is your customer frustrated, worried, in a hurry or taking their time, in the store or at home or on the move, under the gun from upper management?
- The online behaviors and activity level of your customer. Is this a person comfortable researching or buying online? Is he or she a mobile user?
At this stage, you may decide to diagram separate funnels for different types of customers.
Now, for each stage, ask the right questions to prompt ideas, identify problems, and determine where you need more information.
Awareness
- How do customers describe their problem/need? In what terms do they think of their issue?
- How pressing is the problem? How likely are they to look for information about how to solve it?
- Will customers know already that there is a product or vendor to solve this need?
- How do customers learn about your company or product? What are all the possible ways now? How do they learn about competing products/vendors?
Short-listing
- What’s the checklist in the customer’s head? What requirements have to be met for you to even be considered?
- How do customers find out whether you meet these requirements? Where do they look for information? How hard do they look?
- How short is the customer’s short-list? What are the determining factors as customers narrow down their choices?
- Is there anything about a product or vendor that would cause customers to move directly to the next stage or even skip the comparison stage?
Comparison
- How do customers do a detailed comparison? Who is involved at this stage in making decisions?
- Where do they get the information they need?
- What are the deciding factors for selecting a product/vendor?
- How long does this process take and what can derail it?
Proposal/Negotiation
- Is the process formal or informal?
- How transparent are customers about their budget?
- What approvals are necessary and what other stakeholders become involved at this stage?
These are just seed questions to get you started. You may find that you don’t have the answers to even key questions, suggesting the need for further research. You’ll certainly see places where you may be able to improve. For example, you may realize that you don’t have the kind of information customers want to do a detailed comparison, at least not in a way that’s easily accessible to them. You may find that customers short-list by looking for reviews—and you don’t have any reviews on popular sites.
All of these represent opportunities to improve your marketing, and grow your sales. Of course, that’s only half the battle. Next, you have to actually use that information, create a plan, and execute on it. A sales funnel analysis is a excellent and relatively easy way to take the first step in improving your sales and marketing.
Have you used a process like this in your business? What would you add?
Neicole Crepeau a blogger at Coherent Social Media and the creator of CurateXpress, a content curation tool. She works at Coherent Interactive on social media, website design, mobile apps, & marketing. Connect with Neicole on Twitter at @neicolec
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-Mark SchaeferFollow Mark
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