Posts tagged business strategy


The writing's on the wall: An interview with Sharpie's Twitter Queen

Jun 2nd

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When I first learned that Sharpie pens had its own Twitter-er, I couldn’t believe it. How in the world could you spend your day writing 140-character statements about INK PENS?
I decided to “follow” SharpieSusan and see for myself. I’m hooked. The enthusiasm, authenticity and wit driving her stream of tweets is addictive!

A former newspaper reporter and PR counsel to Kraft, Honeywell, American Airlines and others, Susan Wassel now combines “traditional” with “new” as both PR and social media manager for Sharpie. This week, Susan and her company launched a new community website and social media strategy. Amid this chaos, she had time to talk to me about her social media job and challenges.

How did you become the Twitter Queen of Sharpie?

Like the rest of us, I was reading about the Twitter phenomenon and the opportunity it offered marketers to connect informally with their audiences. It also worked out that Twitter was a platform that seemed most successful when a “personality” was involved. Let’s just say Twitter and I were a match made in heaven. I was lucky that lots of passionate Sharpie users were already Tweeting away and welcomed me into the conversation.

Does your company participate in other social media channels? Which seem to work best for your brand and why??

We just officially launched Sharpie’s Facebook fan page and You Tube site. Both are part of a larger initiative to celebrate Sharpie’s passionate users and the amazing things they create with our product. Our community channels are all housed on this new community site, http://www.sharpieuncapped.com/, along with a Sharpie gallery, a how-to video section, a virtual product test drive app, and of course the Sharpie blog, which I edit and which was our very first foray into social media.?

How do you measure the effectiveness of your Twitter-based promotional dialogue?

To date, we’ve only looked at number of followers, not because we didn’t want to know more but because we didn’t have the resources in place to dig deeper. The launch of our new community website includes an analytics initiative led by our agency Draftfcb that will take a closer look at some of our social media properties and Sharpie’s share of voice overall in the social media sphere. While we’ll get some fairly immediate feedback, we’re looking at measurement over the course of 6 months to give us broader measure of Sharpie conversation over time.

Other than raising awareness for your brand, have there been other, unexpected benefits of your Twitter campaign?

Again, nothing quantitative yet but more anecdotal. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Twitterers in general love Sharpie. They often express how surprised and excited they are to see Sharpie on Twitter. Everybody seems to have a Sharpie story they want to share – whether it’s a favorite color or a great idea about how to use Sharpies — from the Sharpie dress one sculptor sent me to the giant Sharpie-shaped birthday cake a fan made for a friend. People send me Twitpics of Sharpies on their desks at work, in their backpacks at art school, in the hands of celebrities at rock concerts and Broadway performances. It really is an amazing thing to see so many people so passionate about a little ol’ marker!?????

How do you explain to mainstream management what you do and why you do it?

Mainstream management isn’t so mainstream any more. I think you’d have to be living in a cave to have missed the social media movement and the power it can wield over brands. While not all execs have it figured out, they know it’s big, they know it matters and they couldn’t be more supportive of efforts at Sharpie to open a dialogue with our consumers and find out how we can continue to make them happy.

Everyone knows you are blatantly promoting a product … yet you remain so authentic and endearing! What advice do you have for others learning to promote their products through social media channels?

Ah, this is where the magic comes in. This is the part you can’t buy at the store. I think that for the most part, the people today who have stepped up to the plate within corporations to commandeer social media are those with their own deep passion for the product. And it is that genuine passion that consumers connect with.?I use Sharpies, my family uses Sharpies, my friends, my relatives — who doesn’t use Sharpies? There’s just something about their shiny cigar-shaped barrels, the bold, brilliant colors, the bright and smooth way the ink lays down, that I love! Not a day goes by that I don’t use them to label one of my kids’ lunch bags or make a Christmas ornament with the cousins or create big loopy bubble letters on my daughter’s 8th?grade graduation poster. So I have lots to of real-life Sharpie fodder for my Tweets. And then of course I always get off on these talk tangents. There is a group of us addicted to NPR, another caught up in the Jon & Kate crisis. It’s not just all Sharpie all the time and I think that’s important too.

Photo credit Promo magazine
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More marketing for less: Think inside the box.

May 26th

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Constant innovation should be a central part of your business strategy but when the budgets get crunched, there is still plenty of value in the “old-school” marketing basics.

Bargains in traditional media. Marketing dollars are moving toward Internet marketing, but there is still a place for TV, radio and newspaper — and the value has NEVER BEEN BETTER! Newspaper ad sales were down 38% in 2008 – it’s a buyer’s market. More than 90% of Americans spend an average of 236 minutes a day with TV. I recently worked with a customer who was paying $9 for a 30-second commercial on a targeted cable TV demographic.

Focus on existing customers. Up-sell, cross-sell and micro-market to your existing customers. It’s 80 percent less expensive to sell more to existing clients than attracting new ones. How have their needs changed during the recession? There are probably new product and service niches being created with your valued customers. Go find them before the other guy!

Is your website alive? You’ve probably already invested in the website infrastructure and this is a highly cost-effective way to attract new customers. Is your site aligned with current customer needs? Does it have fresh, compelling content? A bold call to action? How is it differentiated from competitors?

Service essentials. Follow up on every lead quickly. 88 percent of people are happy to hear from a vendor after download within 24 hours. Waiting 96 hours drops that number by half. And think about using personal, hand-written notes to cut through the clutter and really delight your customers. Writing a letter … now that is REALLY old school!

Destroy complacency. I see so many customers spending money on advertising channels simply because this is what they have always done. Are your channels still relevant and targeted? Have your customers shifted to another gathering place? Here’s a more detailed article on this topic: http://tiny.cc/9VYRI

Measure what you treasure. It takes no capital investment to make sure the way you measure your success is still appropriate and driving the right actions in your business. Is your marketing plan integrated and measurable?

Re-discover email marketing. This can be an easy and inexpensive way to stay in front of customers, especially if you have a built-in mailing list. This is a tricky channel, but done right, can be highly effective.

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Ten reasons your website is killing your business

May 22nd

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I’m alarmed by the number of otherwise brilliant businesspeople who are allowing their website to kill their company.
Many business leaders I meet have abdicated their responsibility to market and sell their products by handing this power to a web designer – believing their website IS their marketing plan. The web has become too prevalent, too easy. The Internet has lulled us into becoming lazy marketers! Here are 10 ways websites can sub-optimize a business strategy, drive away customers and make your competitors look great:
1. No purpose. Before you start a website, be clear about your purpose, audience, message, and call to action. You must have a clear marketing strategy BEFORE you have a website. Your website must be part of an integrated and measurable initiative to build a link between customers and your company, brand and products.
2. No promotion. A website only works if people see it and respond to it. Once you have built your site, work it! Drive traffic to your website with advertising, promotions, mailings, placing the web address on your company literature, business cards, etc. “Build it and they will come” is a line from a movie — not a marketing strategy.
3. Ego trip. It’s heady to see your product in cyberspace for the first time, but don’t let personal interests and emotions get in the way of effective marketing. A majority of websites focus on their company and not on the visitor, customer, or potential customer. A website should address your customer’s needs, pain, goals and educate them on how you can help them. Look at your website through the eyes of your customer. Is your website all about you? Don’t sell what you DO. Sell what they NEED.
4. One size fits all. Don’t try to sell too much, to too many people, in one place. Micro-market wherever possible. Design web pages for every market segment and customer need. That’s the beauty of the web – slice up that target market and communicate to them effectively and often.
5. Unrealistic expectations. A website is not a marketing plan. It is an OUTPUT of a marketing plan and is only as effective as the preparation behind its execution. No website can overcome an inferior business strategy or lousy products. I have encountered people who think they will make money just by having an online presence. Business is business and you have to follow the fundamentals to achieve profitable growth. And remember, a website often is NOT the most effective way to reach your customers.
6. Lack of measurement. My teacher and mentor Peter Drucker, the famous management consultant would tell us, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Web analytics track every page a visitor sees on your website and a lot more. By analyzing your traffic you can see what needs to be improved and what people are responding to.
7. Becoming stale. It’s easy to build a website, relax and expect new customers. But nothing turns off visitors faster than an outdated website. Keep your site fresh, expand it, improve it. Keep making it easier and more fun to do business with you. Keep it alive and relevant.
8. Forgetting your customers. Don’t rely on customers to come back to your site on their own. Instead, capture their email and stay in contact with them. Send them new product announcements, press releases, follow-up messages, surveys, and newsletters. And when you do, make them happy you did it. Always leave them with some new information or insight that will make them glad they are doing business with you.
9. Focusing on traffic, not conversions. The ultimate goal for most businesses is to turn a website visitor into a buying customer. But a conversion might also mean the visitor signs up for a newsletter, contributes an idea, responds to a poll, provides feedback on a product, calls a sales rep for an appointment, or donates money to your non-profit organization. Conversions lead to business growth, not page views.
10. No SEO. In the past 12 months, I bought a car, house and $5,000 in consumer electronics. My first stop for research? A search engine. And I’m not alone. Today, the Internet is overwhelmingly the first place to go for shopping, entertainment, education and information. Not having your business show up in the top level of searches probably means you’re leaving money on the table. SEO has become a key, stand-alone marketing skill. Underestimating the need to keep your site atop search engine results provides an enormous edge to your competitors.
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Most painful marketing mistakes — Part 5 "complacency"

May 8th

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Success does not breed success. Success breeds lethargy.
The people and companies I admire most are the ones who have had the guts to re-invent themselves IN THE MIDST OF SUCCESS.
About 10 years ago, there was a small Wal-Mart store a couple miles from my home. The parking lot was packed at almost any time of day. I was shocked when they announced they were building a new store five miles away and closing the original store. Of course the new store was a five times larger, with more parking, more services and yes, it was packed any time of day.
Think of this boldness — would you close a store that was wildly successful if you didn’t have to? Wal-Mart has the vision to constantly re-invent itself. It built a new store to put itself out of business! They didn’t have a competitor brash enough to take themselves on so they attacked themselves.
My favorite example of re-invention is Apple and the breathtaking innovation occurring with its iPod and iTunes format. The product was successful, but the real story is how it sustained that success by innovating so furiously that no competitor could keep up.
We can learn some valuable lessons from these examples and apply them to the everyday reality of the small business owner. How are you fighting complacency and the lethargy induced by success? This is the time to take a fine-tooth comb to your business processes and look for re-invention opportunities.
Ten questions toward re-invention
Here are some questions to help you kick-start your re-invention process. If you spend some time on the answers you will certainly develop insights to improve your competitive advantage.
1. How have your customer’s needs changed during this economic downturn and what do you need to do to respond aggressively?
2. What are your industry’s best practices in lean manufacturing, accounting and marketing? How fast can you adopt these practices and create new customer value?
3. If your competitor knew your company’s biggest vulnerabilities, what would it do? What can you do to protect my flanks before this happens?
4. What new technology might disrupt your business model? How do you put it to use before somebody else does?
5. What is the rate of innovation in your marketplace? What would be the implication if you invested and doubled that rate?
6. Have you made any changes to the way you market and advertise to capitalize on cost-effective media channels?
7. Has technology and supply-chain efficiencies opened up new doors in global markets? Is there a new way to work with suppliers that can provide competitive advantage?
8. Do I have the right human skill sets in my company to compete today?
9. How do you measure success? Is it still the right measure?
10. Do you have a handle on which operations are making you the most profits? How has your product mix and profitability changed and how is it likely to change? How can it be re-invigorated?
Though difficult, a leader has no choice but to unseat complacency. You must find a way to move to that better idea or technology, even if it threatens your base business.
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