Tag Archives: Marketing

Surprise! Conversations with the customer pay off!

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What has been the most effective thing you’ve done to grow your business?

What tools, software or otherwise, have been invaluable to you? Have you used any social media tools?

I asked this in LinkedIn this past week, and I got news for you, Just when my faith is beginning to waver in how business is conducted these days, I got alot of great answers. Here are some snippets of those responses. see if you can come up with what the end all be all answer is yo the question.

Tim Brown of In The News “Number one with me sounds SO much like “consultant-speak”, but I stop myself and think about how the customer experience is working. I’m constantly trying to make that emotional connection and deliver an enjoyable buying experience. Our product is a non-critical item, easily deleted from the budget. If we build the relationship and make it easy, customers will still buy.”

Brian McCarthy of Tipping Point Media “Build a solid engagement strategy for business development that can be repeated within the sales organization. Once everyone is speaking the same language, it’s easier to push new customer development.”

Jolie O’dell “IRL conferences, LinkedIn, Twitter, and (surprisingly) Chatterous. Through these tools, I was able to start my own business and network with people who could tell me how to do that in all the right ways. The three social nets I named are repositories for best practices in new media, marketing, and technology, the latter two because they’re teeming with brilliant early adopters.

And immersion in the right kinds of social media can make things happen very quickly, as well. It’s often like being at an IRL conference 24/7… As long as you learn how to use it properly!”

Kent Lewis of Anvil Media puts it this way:  This may not be the answer you’re looking for, but I would advise you not to be distracted by tools, software and social media. They are enablers, but not solutions. Start with a unique vision and world class product, then market your story. Oh, and read Good to Great and First Break All The Rules.

Second, we spend a great deal of time evolving and perfecting our product offering and ensure we provide world class service. The end result is that we’ve averaged 75% annual growth over the past 3 years, without having a sales staff or a marketing budget. Our team and our clients are our sales force and with high retention in both areas, it makes the work easier and much more enjoyable.

That said, the more pat answers to grow a business have largely been answered, but I’d say:
-public relations (builds a brand)
-search engine and social media marketing (go hand-in-hand)
-online and offline advertising (protects the brand)

Just make sure all of your marketing efforts are fully integrated…your Twitter and LinkedIn profiles are embedded in your email signature file, etc. It’s a brave new world, and everyone knows your a dog these days, so be authentic and remarkable

Or maybe Lisa Van Allen nails it on the head with her short but succinct list?

Most effective (in order):
1. live (in person) networking
2. public speaking
3. publication of articles in local media and online (blogs, e-newsletters)
4. website
5. social media (LI, Facebook, Twitter)

I think we’re getting warmer, Look what Karen Schultz says: “Listen without selling. Learn what works toward the customer’s team’s success. Choose a customer who matches your definition of partnership. Have their healthy growth in mind. How can you help their success. Be prepared to embrace the customer needs while exceeding their expectations, not yours. It is all about the customer. You are the customer’s advocate. Without the customer, you are not in business. The business you are in should be your passion, not about the weekend, not about the money ( I believe it will come in a fair fashion and you will feel great for your accomplishments, people will like to do business with you, people will advertise for you, and your customers will grow your business for you).

Ultimtaley they were all great answers but I will leave you with Tina Indalecio’s response: To be honest – the most effective thing I’ve done to grow my business has been offline.

My firm consistently used social media, blogs, html newsletters, surveys to get feedback on customer experience, etc. But those have really just been ways to stay in contact with the customer so they don’t forget us.

The conversion to actual business has always been through face-to-face interactions. I always asked for referrals and repeat business (online and offline). I created incentive programs to increase repeat business and referrals – then used online tools as one way to deliver the messages – but always followed up with a call or face-to-face meeting.

We would also hold a client thank you mixer every year and invite our clients and encourage them to bring a friend that could use our services. It was a great way for them to get new business as well from our other clients and they all loved it.

Ultimately, personal interaction has grown my business and the “phone” has been invaluable. For online items, they have helped in the following ways:

– Survey’s have been good at getting feedback. (I’ve used survey monkey regularly during and after each project closed)

– Html newsletters have been good at staying in front of the customer – but be sure to ask them what they want in the newsletter and then deliver it. (I’ve used constant contact and cooleremail)

– online social networks have been valuable at bouncing ideas off other professionals, etc. (like linkedin)

– offline social networks have been valuable for keeping a presence in the business community (like membership to your local business association)

Good way to head off into the weekend I think!

Traditional Media is afraid of Web 2.0

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Jake McKee promised that this might be the most significant thing I see/read/watch this year. In a sense he’s right. I love when people make me think. Clay Shirky made me think. And what he says makes sense. You might have to watch it twice but what I take away from it and told Jake essentially the same thing, are three things. 1) traditional media is scared shitless about what is happening right now. Consumers with voices? And the ability to use them? 2) We all have a surplusof cognitive surplus and 3) The old, one voice marketing to many with traditional channels of one way communication are dying on the vine.

Conversation Killers

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Joseph Jaffe has a great article called “Conversation Killers: Why most viral marketing amounts to lazy, clueless chatter“. Much to comment on, but I wanted to throw it there for now.

Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?

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As anyone who follows the business of culture is aware, the profits of cultural industries depend disproportionately on the occasional outsize success — a blockbuster movie, a best-selling book or a superstar artist — to offset the many investments that fail dismally. Read on-

What will be social media’s tipping point?

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Malcom Gladwell defines a tipping point as a sociological term, “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point. Tipping points are “the levels at which the momentum for change becomes unstoppable.” Joe Marchese said back in October that:

 As advertisers and agencies rely ever increasingly on individuals to pass along their marketing message, the advertising and marketing messages themselves must now achieve their own tipping points within the social media communities in order for marketing and advertising to continue to be an effective tool for brand advertisers.

Ok I get that. Perhaps advertisers and marketers have reached the tipping point in regards to how they are reaching the users of social networks, but ultimately I think they haven’t reached that point. I think the conversations that abound right now are of a substance that says, this is the conversation, do you know how to join it? Do you know how to leverage it? Are you aware of how it works? Do you get that the conversation does not start with your brand, it starts with the people that dig your brand?

As a marketer, you need to listen before you speak.

The answer for me is that no, marketers, and branders do not completely “Get it”. Thus the need for the social media evangelists, the brand evangelists, and the Seth Godins of the world to dumb it down for us and for them.  Why do they have to dumb it down? Because we, they, us, just cannot completely wrap our hands, our arms, our minds, arounud the monolithic beast that is the social networking phenomenon. There are a lot of moving parts. And I find myself daily explaining “it” to n00bs and people who actually know more than they let on.

For a marketer using social newtorks, a tipping point could be construed as a viral effect or a WOMM effect in which they can virtually sit back and watch the machine roll. To them, it means they have done their job, or so they think. To truly engage the user and the customer to use them as their champions is to create a conversation that breeds success beyond their wildest dreams. Because they have created buy-in on an exponential level.

Problem is, it has not happened often enough. And though it can be duplicated, and replicated, the moving parts, the variables, and the uncertainty of a social networks eco-system dictate that it will change and evolve and be ruled by the members and factors that you can never account for and not the marketers. But what happens AFTER a tipping point for a marketer in a social network setting? What is the life expectancy of the product, the user, the marketer, and the network? Can anyone provide me a case study for the “aftermath” of a tipping point for the aformentioned in a social network setting?

Has it happened yet? I doubt it. What’s intriguing is that in Geoff Livingston’s   blog in which he has a weekly round up called Blogs of fire, author Marinel Mones linked to Nick O’Neill of Social Times in which he states that social networking sites will die in two years. Does that mean SN’s will have flamed out, reached their tipping points and then crash and burned? Do we just move on? I dare to say we don’t and that saying something as ambitious as SN’s will die in 2 years is more of an attempt to grab some eyeballs than anything else. What do you think? I believe I asked a number of people in the 20 million strong soon to be dead  in 2 years Linkedin network where they thought social media and networks would be in 5 years and the answers were varied and deep and thoughtfull and none approached the answer of Nick O’Neill.

Do I think Social Networks will approach some type of tipping point? Yes, we will reach  some type of saturation point, but I don’t think we have yet, much to the consternation of Daniel Riveong, but much has changed in the 2 years since he wrote that it had already started to happen.

The saturation point might just be a case or situation where out personal saturation point will be determined by what we can manage and not neccessarily a case of too many choices. But…invariably our choices are determined by our friends, our niches, our desires, and huh? Marketers? and so it has now come full circle…

In conclusion I pull an excerpt from the NY Times in which Duncan Watts writes about culture, Hollywood and Justin Timberlake. Check out the sublte social networking undertone to this statement.

The common-sense view, however, makes a big assumption: that when people make decisions about what they like, they do so independently of one another. But people almost never make decisions independently — in part because the world abounds with so many choices that we have little hope of ever finding what we want on our own; in part because we are never really sure what we want anyway; and in part because what we often want is not so much to experience the “best” of everything as it is to experience the same things as other people and thereby also experience the benefits of sharing.

So 2 questions that I will continue to explore:

What is social medias tipping point?

and..

What is our own personal saturation level for social media?

 

4 More Social Media Luminaries

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First I wanted to thank some of the gracious people who got back to me in regards to my post about 30 social media experts, evangelists and pundits. It was a fun list to compile and did not really expect to hear from some, and am surprised I did not hear from others. So much for the conversation? too busy? traveling? 3 day weekend? Nevertheless I want to thank Chris Brogan, B.L Ochman, Valeria Maltoni, Phil Gomes and Toby Bloomberg, Their responses to this post were more than gracious and reinforces why I read their blogs on a regular basis.

Sure, I know I should be bashing twitter right now, but Chris is all over it like a cheap suit, and there’s nothing I can think of thats going to change it except to say that Twitter is effin up in a big way. Maybe IT IS time to go over to Friend Feed? Actually I have, I just don’t use it as much…yet.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, One of our Top 30, who rocks the effin house, has graciously provided me with 4 more peeps/peers that we can add to the list. Here they are, and I must admit, they were great additions to this list.

Geoff Livingston
Rajesh Lalwani
Jeneane Sessum
Paul Chaney

I’m still open to add to this list as it might be a pretty cool list to maybe work up to 50. or maybe this is it? Maybe the conversation only consists of 34? You tell me.

Peace

-MM

 

 

The dumbing down of America

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Last week on HBO, they reran  CostasNow, a “sort of” sports oriented talk show hosted by Bob Costas, one of this nations most gifted sports authorities, scribes, oracle and overall mouth pieces for all things related to sport.  One of the segments featured  concerned the Internet and the impact of bloggers, as it pertains to sports. The guests were, Deadspin.com editor Will Leitch,  Pulitzer Prize-winning author Buzz Bissinger, and Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards.

First, let me say that Buzz Bizzinger was so caustic, so adamant, and frankly so foul mouthed in his opinion that the current state of blogging, Deadspin in particular, was taking writing, sports writing in particular, in a direction that demeans everything that he ever stood for, that I had a hard time really agreeing with anything he said regardless of his pulitzer prize winning credentials.

At least I think that’s what he was saying, when he wasn’t yelling and cursing. I was ready for him to blame the demise of sports writing on that “damn rock and roll”! But alas, he didn’t. I’m guessing he’s just a completely jaded sports writer that’s mad that athletes make more than him.

So I sat and watched this exchange and started to think about what has the blogging community, and social media, and really the internet, created? Or what has it taken away? It’s pretty simple to see what is has created. It has created this:

Lots of talking, lots of conversations and lot’s of communication.

But what has happened is that the users expectations are starting to be raised. The user wants to be engaged, entertained and dazzled by the latest technological advance when it comes to communications and media. The days of relying on a newspaper and Time magazine are slowly being replaced by the rise of the blogosphere, the kindle and podcasts.

So are the users expectations rising? Or better yet, are we raising expectations while lowering the barrier to understand and comprehend? Or, dare I say it, are we simplifying the way we want users to get their info? Are we compartmentalizing their intake of information in such a way that it now can be treated as fast food. Information that is gathered at the take-out window. To be digested before you get home.

Funny thing though, the more we as technologists try to simplify things, the more time we demand of others to use the things that will “simplify” our lives. Email streamlines our lives so that we can communicate with our frinds and family. Text messaging so that we can give or receive an immediate response. Our phone allows us to not only call or text but also allows us to go online and do research and or check email! If you’re worn out already and wondering how one folds this time into one’s busy schedule, keep in mind that currently the average American spends 30 hours per month onliine according to emarketer.

If you take into account all of the current activities that a U.S. adult uses the internet for: Email, Local search, IM, blog reading, watching video, and podcasting to name a few-The average internet user needs their info quick and dirty (pun intended), easy to read, to digest and ultimately easy to discard. It can’t be complicated, they don’t have the time nor the patience to wait. If it is any of the former, expect the bounce.

The internet is taking away our patience. We expect our results, our information, to be delivered to us now. What this breeds are expectations in other social settings that might not necessarily be realistic. We wait longer at traffic lights or so it seems, so we run lights that are more red than they are yellow, and for what? Because we don’t want to be late. We grow impatient in a line when trying to check out at a store because the sales person is having trouble with the RFID scanner. We want product now and are unwilling to wait. We expect service now because it’s the way it’s delivered to us online. Fast with no bullshit. If any exists, we are OUT OF THERE.

OUR EXPECTATIONS OFFLINE ARE NOW IN LINE WITH OUR EXPECTATIONS ONLINE

THEY’RE UNREALISTIC!

When they do not meet those expectations, we complain. Why are our experiences online so unrealistic? Because the online world has eliminated the human element. It delivers what we need and want instantly. That is not reality.  Online, the old adage “Good things come to those who wait”, never meant less that ever before.

In turn, if we can get what we want without having to deal with a human, that suits some of us just fine. Some desire as little human interaction as possible. Coupled with our desire to speed up things, is the desire to simplify. These 2 elements have prompted companies and developers to try and speed things up by over simplifying the processes involved in creating the speed. In essence THEY ARE DUMBING THINGS DOWN

Thus the more a developer can dumb down the learning curve by not sacrificing the performance of the app, the higher the chance that it will be embraced by not only the casual user, but also the development comunity as well as investors. Investors love something that is sexy and easy to understand or can be pitched in the elevator. If it can, and it’s fast and solves a problem, and speeds up a process, it’s a winner.

Tim Ferris comes right out and states that he receives 500 to 1000 emails a day…

To contend with this, I have virtual assistants in Canada and sub-assistants in Bangalore who filter my inboxes using processing rules in Google Docs. Connected via Skype and compensated via PayPal, this team translates a 10-hour task into a 20-minute phone call.

Simplification? Hardly. E-mail has dramatically increased the number of coping mechanisms required to handle communication, the net complexity as compared with previous alternatives.

“If the promise of technology is to simplify our lives, it is failing.” The wording of this proposition is tricky. To quote Bill Clinton: “It all depends on what the definition of is is.”

Ironically,  Tim is the author of the 4 hour work week and thus may or may not be a good proponent of encouraging more humanistic encounters with a hint of challenging the intellect of the masses. With that being said, Seth Godin puts it pretty bluntly when he says, “When you dumb stuff down, you get dumb customers.”

 

Seth Godin must see video

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In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to ignore the ordinary stuff. Marketing guru Seth Godin  awhile back, spells out why, when it comes to getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. And early adopters, not the mainstream’s bell curve, are the new sweet spot of the market.

Would you rather have a budget for offline marketing, online marketing or sales?

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Below is a conversation I had with Fred Yee, President of ActiveConversion/FoundPages in regards to a question that I had posed to the Linkedin group. The Question Details are below, but the main question is in the title of this post.
——————–

Me: I once had a colleague who told me he rather would have a 2 sales people rather than x amount for marketing. I had another colleague or vigorously defended marketing and branding as something that could not be ignored. It ended in a stalemate. Is it possible to have one without the other and still be realtively successful?

On 4/23/08 11:50 AM, Fred Yee wrote:
——————–
Marc, I think I understand your question and although the ‘mix’ is important, and having all is important, I may have your answer if there is only one allowed.
Today I would say online marketing. You can do a lot with a website, search marketing and email marketing, which is low cost and bring leads in, so that even non-sales (owner, manager, admin and technician even) can engage to produce sales. It’s also why Google has 800,000 customers now…
Offline is good for branding and credibility but short on producing tangible sales. Sales people can close but they need leads and without decent marketing, it’s expensive sales.
Of course, there are situations and industries where online marketing doesn’t work that well or is outperformed by the others but in general I have noticed that it works well for most.

Links:
http://www.activeconversion.com


On 4/23/08 12:52 PM, Marc Meyer wrote:
——————–
Fred, I would have to agree with you in that given all of the online productivity tools that are out there, the advent and rapid acceleration of user generated content and the ability to leveredge them at little or no cost, an inhouse team that consists of everyone from the folks in HR to the folks in IT, to the people down the hall in management, all have the opportunity to brand and market and create sales leads and marketing materials and opportunities. Which means that a collaborative effort and a sense of ownership can do more for growing a company selling a product than a single marketing department operating out of a vacuum, an autonomous sales force working without sales leads or a management team demanding results without a budget.

Thanks for responding to a great thread.

Marc, what can I say? Having been pained by this for over 15 years, I totally agree. Great minds must think alike! Fred.

Marc