Truth in Advertising – To the Extreme (must see ad)
Truth in Advertising – How often have you brain-stormed ways to make every aspect of your business, or the business of one of your clients, a big glowing positive review? It’s only natural. Why would you ever want to say something negative? After all, you’re trying to get these people to spend their hard earned dollars with you. Very few marketers take advantage of the fact that if you admit a negative you get a positive. P&G did it with Listerine mouth wash. It tastes bad but it works great. Makers Mark Whiskey is promoting that they’re not hip, they’re not on the A list but they make a good whiskey.
In my past life I worked for a phone company and management was a bit shocked by an ad we did. It was for a program called “not to be named phone company Extras” and the ad read “Isn’t it about time you got something extra from the phone company”. Phone companies had a reputation of raising rates, and nickel and diming their customers for any and every feature available so when we admitted it and then said we were doing something about it, the response was fantastic.
Now Robert Lee, who sells mobile homes in Alabama takes this to a whole new level. You won’t get any surprises when you show up at his lot! Enjoy and think about admitting that you’re not perfect. Your customers already know it and don’t expect you to be.
A Facebook Page Strategy – Why your business can’t afford not to have one
Facebook has over 750 million ACTIVE users and half of them login to Facebook on any given day making it the most powerful social network on the planet. With that kind of volume, and Facebook’s efforts to become friendly to businesses the potential is significant for Business to Consumer companies. The potential is lower for Business to Business companies as Facebook in the workplace is frowned upon by many firms and even blocked in their servers.
Facebook pages, as part of an on-line strategy are relatively new. In late 2007 the page was introduced to allow brands to exist on Facebook but in a relatively static way. Before that, the terms of use allowed only individual users. In March of 2009, pages became far more interactive with a format very similar to that of an individual’s profile and it continues to evolve increasing the interactivity that visitors can have with the page. You might be thinking that your webpage is enough so what’s the big deal with having a Facebook page?
The average Facebook user has 130 friends. If they visit your Facebook page and you encourage them to click the “like” button, those 130 friends see a message that one of their friends likes your page which is a strong endorsement that it might be worth a visit. If 10 of those 130 decide to like your page it just got endorsed to 1300 more people and the pyramid builds. It’s a world where viral sharing is made easy and referrals are more impactful than ads. This of course assumes that you create the type of content that people enjoy enough to click the “like” button . We’ll talk more about this in later posts. In addition, you get to communicate with those people that like your page on a regular basis. When you post to your wall it appears on theirs. This is a significant opportunity to get your message out and build a relationship. Use it correctly and your fans will continue to grow. Abuse it and you’ll find your page is pretty lonely (more on this in later posts). If the content is interesting or valuable enough they will share it with others and market for you.
Spend some time on Facebook typing brand names into the search box and see what you find. Try cars for example and see which ones make you want to “like” them to get more information, which ones look like a newspaper ad and which ones provide you tools to make your car buying experience easier. You might even find yourself confused by the search in general (Ford has lots of individual car pages but very little if you click on the main page that shows up first in search). See who’s page is actually many well organized pages or just one. See which page they choose to start you on or did it default to the wall leaving you somewhat lost?
Remember to be the customer and look at the page from their eyes and decide if you think the target audience would share the page with their friends. Axe sells body sprays, soap and deodorant targeted to teenage boys positioning it as a product to attract girls. Visit the Axe page and see if they got the content properly targeted and if their visitors will click the “like” button. I think they will. Decide if you think it reinforces their brand positioning.
Try your company’s brand and those of your competitors, what did you find? Is there opportunity or reason for concern? If you find a company that you think is really doing it right, please share it with the other marketing badgers by replying to this post. If you’d like the badgers to look at your page and give you some honest feedback, please ask.
While Facebook pages are relatively new, the volume of data that is generated everyday is staggering. Doing well means having a strategy and following a process that will lead to success. Marketing badgers don’t just create a page and hope that something magical happens. They use the tools and data available to them and Facebook is going out of its way to help. New posts will cover the process from strategy development to page creation to performance analysis so click that Facebook “like” button on the Marketing Badger blog so that you don’t miss any posts! Whenever possible, we’ll use the Symphony Marketing Facebook page to demonstrate page options.
Usage statistics quoted in this post are from the Facebook Statistics page.
Free Social Media Book for Amazon Kindle through 8/27/11
You can get a free Amazon Kinde book, no strings attached, at:
Zarrella's Hierarchy of Contagiousness: The Science, Design, and Engineering of Contagious Ideas [Kindle Edition]
It's only free through 8-27 so don't put it off.
It's an 80 page book covering social media. I've began to read it and it looks worthwhile. Instead of talking about social media from a touchy feely standpoint, the author talks to the numbers and how to make it work for you.
If you don't own a Kindle, don't worry. You can download the free Kindle ap for your PC, MAC, Smartphone, iPAD or all of the above. I have it on all of my devices and they all sync so I'm always on the same page no matter what I use to open the book.
What you are seeing here is marketing in action. The author markets his book, with some sponsor support, to an audience that they believe will like the subject matter and will help drive paying customers to through their other purchases and recommending it to friends. Welcome to the new world of free.
I got an email from AMazon telling me about the book as well as a Facebook post from someone I follow in the Internet Marketing space and now I'm sharing it with you!
Talk about getting the word out. This is what I call real Marketing Badger behavior.
Enjoy,
John
A Marketing Lesson from Caddy Shack
If I were allowed to share only one concept with you to improve your marketing and sales results, it would be to put yourself in the customers shoes and see the world from their persepctive. It should be the guiding principal behind every customer or prospect interaction regardless of if it’s in your advertising, during a sales call, on your website or blog, on Face Book or Twitter, on a phone call with a customer or any other customer interaction that you can think of. Whether you work for a large corporation or you run a small business.
Everyone’s favorite subject is themselves. What’s in it for me? Now before you go off and say “hey wait a minute, I know people who care far more about others than they do about themselves” I agree with you. But what’s in it for them, is what it can do for others that they care about like their kids, or a cause.
To be successful you have to do something difficult, you have to take your biases, or biases being imposed on you by others, out of the equation and learn to think and speak like different types of customers. Greens keeper Carl in Caddy Shack, played by Bill Murray said it well while talking to himself after many failed attempts at capturing the gophor, “ I have to laugh, because I've outsmarted even myself … I have to learn to think like an animal. And, whenever possible, to look like one. I've gotta get inside this guy's pelt and crawl around for a few days.” Did you impersonate Carl when you read it? I did. I can’t help myself.
Caddy Shack – 1980 Orion Pictures Corp.
While this seems so obvious, I see well meaning marketing and sales people violating it regularly. It happens because we spend our entire day thinking about our business while our customers and prospects may think about it for 5 minutes every month when a bill arrives and we begin to assume that what is the center of our universe is the center of theirs. It’s not. Have you ever had a boss tell you what they would like to buy and how all your customers must like the same thing? How hard is it to push back? Have you ever sat in a conference room and been part of the “I think” conversation? “I think the customer would like this”, “no I think the customer would like this” and end up with a complex message that no customer would take the time to read? “We said all the right things, heck we had ten benefit statements, I can’t imagine why the response was so low.” They didn’t read it because they are not as interested as you are. Tell them what's in it for them in a simple way that they will understand.
I met with a high tech firm in San Jose which shall remain nameless and the CEO laid out how they positioned both their products and price to their prospects and how they weren’t getting any sales. Putting myself into the shoes of a prospect I explained to him how I would react and he said “that’s exactly what the prospects said”. Now I figured I was about to land some business but he continued “and they don’t get it” and explained to me why his prospects were stupid. His message was all about his firm and the financial terms locked them into long term commitments with this brand new company and put them at significant risk. It looked amazing on a spreadsheet and he sold investors on it. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough and this startup, with a pretty nice product, failed to ever get off the ground. They were so focused on themselves and their future success that they forgot where the revenues would come from.
You’re not the average marketing or sales person, you’re a marketing badger and marketing badgers dramatically out perform their peers. You put yourself in the customer’s shoes and realize that they are not as knowledgeable as you are on your products and most of them will never be. You simplify your message and you get their attention with a big what’s in it for them opening. If you’re in sales, you listen before you respond. You have the benefit of being able to ask the customer what they would like to be in it for them and if you can’t help, move on, you won’t get the sale and you’re wasting your time.
In future posts I’ll share with you tools we use to keep ourselves focused on the customer. You’ll be asking yourself some tough questions but you can handle it, you’re a marketing badger!
John
Definitions: Customer – someone who spends money on your products and services. Prospect – someone you think should be spending money on your products and services.
Caddy Shack quote from the Internet Movie Database at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080487/quotes
What is the Marketing Badger Blog?
Badgers are known for their strength, speed and exceptional digging qualities. They are intelligent animals that are capable of using tools. Because of their strength and persistence, they are difficult to deter and their thick skin is almost impervious to arrows and spears. Badgers may look cute but they are exceptionally tough. To badger means to ask again and again. Successful marketers have the same qualities and the Marketing Badger Blog is a place to learn, share experiences and be part of a conversation on marketing in today's environment..
Marketing, for decades had been about talking to prospects telling them about a product and offer to encourage them to make a purchase. In the not so distance past, with developments in the Internet, creating a two way conversation with the prospect became the goal of more progressive marketers. The company still tells the prospect what they have to sell but asks them to engage in providing feedback. Over the past 5 years, with the advent of blogs and social media, prospects took over the conversation and began talking to each other. They trust their friends and others reviewers on blogs far more than the company providing the product or service. Traditional media has also become less effective as prospects can more easily ignore it. When the BP oil spin occurred in the gulf, approximately 18,000 people followed BP’s tweets while a single blogger on the spill had over 180,000 followers.
Losing control of the conversation doesn’t feel good but there are some amazing upsides to customers talking to each other. If they like what you have to offer, they’ll do the marketing for you. What you need to do is to make it easy for them to help you. To do this you’ll need to understand the language they speak, what they are interested in and how to give them the tools to spread the word, without overly interrupting their conversations as they will kick you out. We’ll kick off the conversations on the marketing badger blog and interview experts with experiences that you can learn from. But most of all, we want you to join the conversation by asking questions and sharing your experiences. Without you there is no conversation. Be part of our marketing badger sett, the official name for a group of badgers.
You can find out about activity on the blog and other marketing facts by following it on Face Book, Twitter, by subscribing to our RSS feed or via email. The four color buttons on the upper right sidebar will get you to these links.