Last month, I noticed on a friend’s Facebook post a photo of a display sign that said “Chromatic Inc Welcomes Greg and Marinella.” She commented: “Love it when a printer greets you with hospitality!”
Marinella is a wonderful designer and she works with numerous printers, but this one she’ll particularly remember for how she was initially greeted at a press-run.
While on one hand it’s a lesson in customer service, it’s also a lesson in social media.
One wonders sometimes what a business should expect by having a Facebook page or a Twitter account and why anyone should be a follower. The outcome of an effective social media strategy, I’ve come to realize, rests not with what one posts on their own company page or how many times a day they tweet, but elsewhere entirely.
It’s all about what others say about you!
It’s exactly the same philosophy as PR. PR is based on the fact that unsolicited word of mouth is the best form of marketing, and the second best is what a journalist or other third-party says about you – assuming, of course, that it’s positive.
Therefore, a good social media strategy isn’t about Facebook or Twitter at all. It’s not about the “where” of the message, but the “what”: What can you do, say or sell that is fresh and valuable enough that others will be compelled to talk about you. The Holy Grail is having strong third-party endorsements. That’s the ONLY social media outcome that really generates sales.
So what can you do that creates such an amazing customer experience they’ll want to share it with their friends? Start listening carefully to your own friends and associates when they tell you what wonderful thing just happened to them with a product or service and make notes. Read “Raving Fans” by Ken Blanchard and get ideas. And then act on them.
Marinella’s Facebook friends who are in the graphic arts field now are exposed to a local printer who demonstrates customer care, and the sales power of her endorsement (with photographic evidence) goes beyond that of any ad or Facebook page the company could create.
The basis of your social media program has to be in getting your customers to tweet, post, blog or talk about the wonderful ways they were treated by your company and or how exceptional your products are in their lives.
That’s when social media in business works its magic.
– By Dan Katz, Agent of Change © 2012 LA ads – A Marketing Agency
You spend thousands, perhaps tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on your advertising and yet you’re still completely invisible to most of your audience. What’s going on? Why after all this time and all those dollars are you still the best-kept-secret in town?
Well, think about it from another perspective.
Do you need a plumber right at this moment? (If you do, let’s pretend you don’t for the sake of this illustration.) People who don’t need plumbers probably don’t see all those plumber ads in the papers, or on bus benches, or hear them on the radio. Oh, they’re there all right, lots of them, but to you, they’re completely invisible…Unless. The “unless” is if the ad happens to be really creative or interesting in some way that grabs you regardless. But most plumber ads are pretty much what you expect, and are therefore completely unnoticeable to the 98% of the audience who is not at-need. (You see where I’m going with this…)
In this case, the best that the plumber/advertiser can hope for is an equal shot along with all his competition at the time the faucet starts dripping, and not a moment before. But let’s take the plumber whose advertising is really fresh and interesting, that makes people take notice even when everything is fine. Then he’s going to be the first name on people’s minds when the sink backs up.
Human beings only pay attention to the things that interest them, and block out all the rest. It’s a natural defense mechanism that helps the brain cope with too much information. And only those things that are of immediate interest have a way of showing up as if by magic – such as when you are shopping for a particular car and suddenly, every car on the highway is that car!
For fun, try this wonderful YouTube demonstration:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ahg6qcgoay4]
It’s easy to be visible to your audience when there’s an immediate need or urgent desire. But imagine how completely invisible you are to them prior to that need – which is precisely when you most want to reach them! The more “expected” your advertising, the more invisible you become. You’re just another plumber advertising to people whose toilet’s are flushing just fine.
If you want to be noticed, you have to be noticeable. You need to rise above the general noise level with advertising and marketing that is different, fresh, unconventional and unexpected. You have to be willing to step out on a limb and surprise the audience and perhaps yourself.
I realize that only a tiny percentage of marketers will actually take this to heart and do anything amazing. That’s why 95% of ads in any medium – print, TV, billboards, direct mail – or for any industry – beer, office supplies, funeral homes, or financial services – are doomed before they leave the production house. But for those who take the risk, the reward is top-of-mind awareness before, during, and after the need.
That’s an ROI I’d take any day.
– By Dan Katz, Agent of Change © 2012 LA ads – A Marketing Agency
Failure is not fatal but failure to change might be – John Wooden
Somehow, somewhere, our basic programming got all screwed up. While throughout life, change is inevitable — in business, in our economy, in our relationships with others — we are fundamentally hard-wired by human nature to resist it.
For example, last week I spoke with the president and founder of a successful food manufacturer in Southern California. He told me about how his company was losing business for the past two years and that he was seeing the dark clouds building up on the horizon for his company and the employees he felt responsible for. B2B and B2C sales were being eaten away by competitors. And some key buyers insisted on margins he could not sustain. In short, his business was coming to a critical juncture and he knew that one primary reason was his lackluster, forgettable marketing efforts. He then said something that still bothers me today: “I know of your company’s reputation and that making a change to your firm would probably be the right thing to do, but for too many reasons, I just can’t switch agencies or strategies at this time.”
While I’m not a psychologist, 25+ years in marketing has taught me that there are some primary causes for why business executives struggle with change. You can probably add another 10 causes yourself but here are my 5 “issue buckets” for resisting change. See how many sound way too familiar.
5. The status quo is good enough…or “We’ve always done it this way and there’s no reason to change.” That’s not what one would call a rallying cry for success, yet it’s said day in and day out. Couple that with a poison called “being comfortable,” and you’ll unfortunately arrive at the intersection of “Irrelevance Blvd.” and “Vulnerable Ave.” Status quo, you know, is Latin for ‘the mess we’re in’. – Ronald Reagan
4. Not seeing the Marketplace as it really is. Without any real-world customer and competitive research, the marketplace can be seen in a very skewed manner; in essence, believing one’s own BS! Any recommended, alternative approach to what is taking place is ridiculed and discounted.
3. Change costs money. In a bad economy, logic might suggest that the best thing to do is hunker down, put your arms around the money you’ve got, hold tight and wait it out. Only here’s the truth: more companies have saved themselves into bankruptcy than spent themselves there.
2. It worked before. Past success often drives and validates current behaviors. Unfortunately, though, what got you here won’t necessarily get you there because too many other things have changed, so those old formulas will no longer work.
1. Fear. Since it’s never known for sure what will happen when one makes changes, the fear of change merely leads to inertia. But the truth is, like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights, one is sure to encounter untold damage unless there’s movement. (I supposed I could have said that a shark that doesn’t continue to move forward drowns, but that’s just too many animal metaphors!)
One needs to trust that through taking action and moving out of one’s own comfort zone, there’s an opportunity to grow, evolve, and possibly transform into something much greater. My vote is to do something. Anything.
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. – Wayne Dyer
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight. – Jim Rohn
— by Rolf Gutknecht, Agent of Change
Here’s an interesting way to measure the effectiveness of your marketing. And you can do it in two seconds. Simply ask this question: Does our advertising & marketing program make our competition nervous? Or are they thinking, “this isn’t a problem for us!”?
I’ll cut right to th
e chase. If they’re not nervous, you’re losing important ground.
Your single most important job as a marketer is to strike a chord in the marketplace and make people react…reshuffle their brain cells, if you will. If you’re successful, it will certainly raise eyebrows at the competitors’ offices. You know you’re winning when people at “the other guys” run around the office waiving your ad yelling “Did you see THIS!”
Watching the commercials during the Super Bowl, I can’t help but wonder how few competitors feel really threatened by what other advertisers spent millions to run. If you think about the four or five spots you actually remember (let alone the one or two whose products raised your interest), then imagine how much money was spent that changed nothing at all.
One of my favorite experiences came out of a campaign we created for Vivitar. We boldly compared our client’s digital camera quality with four major competing brands, visually demonstrating the quality of each camera using the same subject. Shortly after the campaign began, a letter arrived from the attorney of one of the other brands we featured demanding details on how we set up the shots. Gladly, we sent them the documentation and that was the last we heard from them. On the other hand, not surprisingly, sales of Vivitar cameras shot up.
More than once, I’ve had the joyous experience of actually listening to our clients’ competitors complaining about our clients’ campaigns (their not realizing that we created them in the first place). It’s a lovely sound.
If your marketing is really doing the job, your competition is saying things like “that’s not fair,” “this is making us look bad,” “we need to ramp up our own campaign,” and “why don’t WE do stuff like that!”
What kills a good marketing program is expectedness, complacency, just being good enough. But if you think the competition is taking notice of your marketing efforts and they don’t like it, you’re on the right path and you dare not stray at your peril.
Take the two-second test and decide if those who covet your customers are saying bad things about you in their hallways, or are high-fiving themselves all the way to the bank at your expense.
I’m sure you remember those wonderful fill-in-the-blanks books, “Mad Libs.” You know, you just insert your own verb, noun or adjective in the blanks and see how silly the sentences come out. Mad Libs are great for kids and fun at parties, but they have no place in expressing your marketing message. Yet, as I look through the pages of ads in magazines, or surf companies on the web, I see all kinds of Mad Lib slogans and taglines, which are in effect condensed marketing messages:
At the very least, many marketing messages are so generic, any competitor in the same industry could put their name in the space:
They don’t communicate anything unique about the marketer other than the category in which they operate, putting them at the same level as everyone else who provides a similar product or service.
By comparison, here are a few examples of taglines past and present that are truly distinctive and demonstrate a unique selling proposition:
If you’re in the former camp instead of the latter, it’s a perfect time to re-think what you have to say to prospective customers that gives your firm the edge.
As you begin looking forward to the new year, it’s worthwhile to look backwards to some of the strategies and tactics you’re bringing into 2012…starting with your basic marketing message. Ask yourself, is our message so familiar, expected or generic that it could apply to any of our competitors? Does it fully express our unique point of difference? Is it fresh and “sticky”?
Without having a strong point of view and a distinctive message risks your customers seeing your products or service as a commodity, and they’ll be happy to shop your competitors when they think price is the only difference.
This may require a bit of corporate soul-searching, but it belongs on your marketing must-do list for 2012. Otherwise, you’re just [ verb ]-ing your precious marketing dollars [ preposition and place ].
by Dan Katz © 2012