Posts tagged Internet marketing
Authenticity and the new world of "earned media"
May 18th
“Being real” has always been a keystone of marketing and advertising, but in a digital world where impressions are fast and last forever, authenticity is more important than ever.
I recently engaged in a discussion with Michael Torano, President at Sevens Full (a consultant who works on digital out-of-home advertising), who had some great insights into becoming a successful participant in social media:
“The old adage “Content is King” also applies to social networking, social media and online community efforts for business. Advertising has historically been a one-way conversation as marketers “shout” their message in whatever medium reaches potential customers. Social media should be treated as “EARNED MEDIA” and is an opportunity to engage and participate in the conversation rather than direct it.
“For this reason, successful and efficient social media marketing tactics should be a participatory engagement with the sharing of information, tips, etc. relevant to your business. If your engeagement (updates, tweets, blog, etc.) is delivered as yet another “media channel” with a constant stream of offers, ads, coupons, etc. you’ll find that it is treated as advertising and “tuned out.” Who wants to “follow” an advertiser for commercials anyway?
“Regarding online communities and other social networking media, be prepared to surrender control of the conversation. You’ll have to take the bad with the good and respond to both. This provides an inexpensive, real-time opportunity to hear/read what your customers and prospective customers have to say about your product and/or service.
“Many firms utilize social media as an additional channel for customer service and FAQ support rather than marketing. There’s nothing wrong with adding a little “personality” (humor, daily activities, opinions, etc.) to the stream of updates. Most will consider it pleasant and even reply; this places a real person in your stream and invites even further engagement. Place a marketing message in your stream. Just be sure it’s surrounded by non-advertising related content to keep the dialogue going and to attract followers and community.”
It’s midnight. Do you know where your ad is?
May 11th
I love history and was scanning a website about Medieval Europe when I noticed this ad for Bob Evans family restaurants … embedded in the middle of an article about the Black Plague, the most devastating disease in history. I wondered … was this to introduce their new farm-fresh “plague on a plate” value meal? Hey, can I have some ketchup with that?
Obviously this is a disastrous placement for the restaurant and it made me wonder … how did it get there in the first place? And if I were the marketing manager for Bob Evans, what could have been done to prevent it? I sought the opinions of some trusted professionals:
Ludmila Zadayannaya is a marketing manager for Russia’s Ekodar and had this to say: “The advertisment was placed through some service, such as Google AdWords. The advertisers chose an option of CONTENT TARGETING in the advertising network without specifying places.
“In this case they could not control the location of their ad at the page … somehow the key words for the ad agreed with the key words of this website, or before visiting this website, you had searched for something connected with restaurants/ food/ Bob Evans, etc. … as a result, the advertising system ‘decided’ that the ad about Bob Evans restaurant would be relevant to the content of the page or to your previous search request, and it showed the ad to you. The fact that the ad is shown in the middle of the text about the Black Plague is entirely the fault of the site owner.”
Stephen Rowe of Dirextion adds this comment: “It really depends on what type of a campaign Bob Evans was running. By that I mean, was it run of site, run of network, behavioral targeting, etc. The reality is that no matter what type of campaign that they ran, if the campaign was not managed correctly, this type of thing will happen. That is why the agency needs to speak with their service providers to determine the potential pitfalls of any particular buy.
“Further, it is one of the pitfalls of relying entirely on the optimization programs without human interaction. Advertising is a business of nuance, and to date I have never seen the level of nuance in a computer program that a human being has. It all goes back to Advertising 101, The right message in the right place at the right time. When someone develops the program to do that, then we can plug into the program and not worry about monitoring it.”
Thanks to Stephen and Ludmilla for these insights! With the inherent danger of having your ads run in the wrong places, how would you ever know unless it shows up in a blog like this? You probably wouldn’t. One way I try to prevent this happening for my clients is that I rarely choose the “content” option. This way I have much more control over the keywords associated with the advertisement.
Most painful marketing mistakes — Part 5 "complacency"
May 8th
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.
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.
Can social media be successful in B2B?
May 6th
Most of the professional marketing forums are clogged with endless debate over questions like “Is Twitter for real?” and “Getting sales leads from Facebook.”
Usually I sit back and let people knock themselves out, but occasionally I join the fray, especially when people make outlandish claims about how social media platforms should be at the heart of every marketing campaign. Poppycock. (Did I actually just use that word? Gentle readers I am turning into a curmudgeon before your eyes).
Here’s a post I made in a heated debate on the viability of social media in B2B (business-to-business, as opposed to B2C — business to consumer) …
Demonstrable B2B results are scant unless you define success as “number of mentions” or “number of hits.” How is it driving top line growth?
Social media has vast opportunities to increase visibility, which hopefully will contribute to brand awareness and growth in the long-term. It also has amazing potential for consumer research. However, I am working on a class presentation and have been stymied coming up with any significant, measurable B2B growth success stories.
Why it’s not catching on
One contributor to this vacuum is the fact that many mainstream B2B companies have been slow to get into it. And why should they? Their customers aren’t pulling them into it, marketing budgets and resources have been slashed to the bone, and the focus is delivering near-term sales results. Let’s face it, a company selling wheels to Chrysler is not going to Twitter its way to success.
Another reason is that the apps to measure and quantify social media contributions are really just emerging. The technology is literally weeks or months old. The channel is not going to get attention until it can be quantified.
Finally, social media depends on the power of community. There are significant hurdles in the B2B world that do not encourage a community of all information, everywhere, all the time. One hurdle is called the SEC. Another is the risk of competitors monitoring the buzz. A third is an entrenched and tightly-controlled communication hierarchy at most major companies. For these reasons, B2B will lag significantly behind B2C in this emerging marketing channel.
Show me the money!
One of the forum participants referenced a site that claimed to have examples of mainstream businesses using social media to increase sales. I explored the link but did not see one viable case study of B2B social media success.
One article claiming “proof” that social media is relevant to B2B cites a niche restaurant site “with more than 1,000 videos posted, 10,000 images, and an average of 300 blog posts per month.” Activity does not necessarily equal economic success.
I’m not a naysayer — I DO SEE POTENTIAL and amazing progress, especially in B2C! It is only a matter of time before we start seeing B2B successes. I only hope professional marketers evangelize based on data, business fundamentals and economic realities, not simply unbridled enthusiasm and hope.
Don’t forget the lessons of the Internet bust. You cannot sustain an economic model based on site hits and video posts.
NOTE: Since I wrote this article, I’ve softened my position in this area after studying what some B2B companies are beginning to accomplish through social media. I wrote a series of articles on this topic, which include the best and worst B2B companies for social media and a post on why companies eventually MUST get into this arena: http://snipurl.com/kt4vm
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