Engage Customers Online! - Internet Strategies Group

Transcription

Engage
Customers
Online!
97 Proven techniques
to build your
business Internet strategy on!
Don Philabaum
What’s in it for you?
You’ll look at this book as your bible for everything you need for social media
marketing. The research that went into this publication resulted in:
• 97 successful Internet strategies you can adopt
• 200 plus exercises to help you define your strategy
• 80+ case studies you can copy
• 50+ quotes from industry leaders and experts
Use it as your workbook to help you lead your organizations Internet strategy!
Who should read it?
• Vice Presidents, Marketing, Sales, Public Relations, HR
• Managers from all departments
• Business owners
• Presidents, CEO’s, COO’s, CIO, CFO’s
Engage Customers Online!
Copyright 2010 © by Donald R. Philabaum
All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted by any means; electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except for
providing a direct quote and providing reference to this book. No patent liability is
assumed with respect to the use of information contained herein. Although every
precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and author
assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, nor is any liability assumed for
damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.
The author has attempted throughout this book to distinguish proprietary trademarks
and service marks by following the capitalization style used by the owner.
The author cannot attest to the accuracy of this information. Use of a term in this
book should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service
mark.
Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and accurate as possible.
However, because of the possibility of human or mechanical error, the author
and publisher do not guarantee the accuracy, adequacy, or completeness of any
information, and are not responsible for any errors or omissions or the results
obtained from such information.
Managing Editor: Tracy Leigh Ritts
Supporting Editor:Jackie Ness
Cover, Interior Book Design/ Production: studio6sense • www.studio6sense.com
Interior Illustrations: Jonnie Kalmbach
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Bernie Schneier and small business owners throughout
the world. Small business owners take risks daily to create their products and
services. Along the way, they provide employment to millions of people who
need to support their families. Bernie suggests there is no greater gift you can
give someone than a job so they can support their family.
4
Introduction
I wrote Engage Customers Online! because I couldn’t find
a comprehensive publication, report or book that defined
and outlined the opportunities available to a company
like mine to use online community and social media to
acquire, retain and engage customers.
While researching this information, I found quite a few
books focused on email marketing, SEO/SEM, Social
Media Marketing and Web 2.0, but none showed me a
big picture on how the Web could help human resources, customer service, sales/
marketing and PR, product development, and other departments.
In an effort to gain a better understanding of how businesses of all sizes could
benefit from adopting Internet strategies, I attended conferences around the
country. I listened to presenters talk about transparency, authenticity, widget,
social graph, wiki, mashup, twitter, micro-blogging, and a host of other buzz
words that left me and the audience for the most part wondering if they were in
a foreign land listening to someone speak in a foreign language.
In talking to business professionals over the last few years, I kept hearing the
same comment over and over: “I know we should be doing more on the Internet,
but frankly we don’t have a clue what to do!”
If you are like most business professionals, you are already working a 50-hour
week and barely have time to catch up with what the latest and greatest Internet
5
6
Internet Dough
opportunities that were available to you three years ago, let alone the latest and
most effective opportunities today. But you must find a way. Because the Internet
is fundamentally changing your customers’ behavior and it’s moving faster than
industry specialists can keep up with, let alone your company and staff.
The methodologies and information we developed is for busy business professionals who not only need a simple explanation of all the latest opportunities the
Internet will provide them, but practical case studies that explain how businesses
like yours implemented and benefited from their Internet strategy.
It will give you a foundation on which you can build a companywide Internet
strategy. You will find 97 different ways you can acquire, engage, and retain
customers and even more case studies you can copy and adapt to your needs.
It’s proven stuff that will save you time and money and help put you where your
customers are – online!
Enjoy!
Contents
Section One: Create a Companywide Internet Strategy
I deliberately kept the introduction to this workbook short so you could
immediately dig into reading about the strategies you have available to you. If
you are interested in details on why you should create an Internet strategy for
your organization, read my book Internet Dough, Create a Business Internet
Strategy to Make More Dough!
Section Two: 97 Strategies
Building a customized Internet strategy for your organization could not be any easier. You have 97 strategies to choose from, and within each strategy, I’ll
share examples of organizations that successfully implemented the strategy.
This workbook should be an easy read for you. You can read any strategy that
catches your attention. At the end of the book, I’ve included a chart you can
photocopy and use to make a master list of which strategies and when you
want to create them.
The strategies are listed in RANDOM order!
I’ve purposely listed the strategies in a random order to encourage you to
explore all of them rather than zeroing-in on those you might be more familiar
with. Every company is different, and a strategy that works for one company
may not w
ork for another. Take your time, browse and wander around to find
strategies that fit your organization’s mission, goals, and culture!
And here they are:
11. Search Engine Optimization
1. Find More Resources
12. Mashups
2. Fun Factor
13. Brand Ambassadors
3. Blogs
14. Video Testimonials and
Endorsements
4. User-Generated Content (UGC)
5. Online Community
6. Citizen Marketers
15. Organization of MySpace and
Facebook Pages
16. Three “D” Communities
7. Social Media
17. Affiliate Marketing
8. Buzz Marketing
18. API – The New Gold Rush
9. Live casting
19. Diggs/Reddit
10. Social Shopping
20. Technorati/Blogpulse
7
8
Internet Dough
21. Lead Generation
50. Landing Pages
22. Virtual Goods
51. eBay
23. U
ser-Generated Outcome
(UGO)
52. Word-of-Mouth Marketing
24. Online Behavior Assessment
54. Special Attention
25. Wikis
55. Launching Campaign
26. Network Weaving
56. Video
27. C
onsumer-Powered
Marketing
57. Email Use Policy
28. C
onsumer Marketing
Channels
59. Quote of the Day
29. RSS Feeds
30. Photos, Flickr, and More
31. Educate Customers
32. Online Advertising
33. Email Acquisition
34. Podcasts
35. Prospective Employees
36. YouTube
37. Folksonomy/Tags
38. C
ustomer/Member Life
Stories
39. Viral Marketing
40. Push/Pull Techniques
41. Social Media Release
42. Integrated Marketing
43. Cell Phone Strategy
44. Who’s On
45. Youth
46. Reward Points
47. Analyze Participation
48. Surveys
49. Widgets
53. Video Advertising
58. Participation and Frequency
60. Endorsements
61. Customer/Member Group
Blog
62. Data Capture
63. Invite Friends
64. Social Collaboration
65. Email Marketing
66. ADA Compatible
67. Monthly eNewsletter
68. Contests
69. Seasonal eCards
70. Google Maps
71. Article Marketing
72. Personalization
73. Tell Users What to Do
74. Focus on User
75. Build Bridges to Other
Departments
76. Sports Social Networking
77. Opinion Poll
78. List New Users
79. Fix Bad/Undeliverable eMail
Addresses
Contents
80. Link Users Blogs
89. Branded Email
81. Auto Birthday Cards
90. Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce
82. 15 Minutes of Fame
91. Google and Yahoo!! Alerts
83. Internet Marketing
92. Do Good!
84. Jobs for Volunteers
93. Create an Experience
85. Collaboration Tools
94. Recommenders
86. Promote Creative Customers
95. Conversations and Listening
87. Create Community Merchandise
96. Global
88. Banners
97. eCommerce
Summary
About the Author
9
Tips to gain the most
out of reading this book
This book was written as a companion piece to the book Internet Dough.
To gain the most out of the process of developing your company Internet strategy,
read Internet Dough first, or both at the same time!
Engage Customers Online! was written so you could skip around from strategy
to strategy. You don’t have to read this workbook in order. Have fun and jump
around to whatever interests you, but keep track of what you’ve read and highlight
which strategies you want to adopt.
Don’t forget to visit the book blog www.internetdough.net to join the conversations others like you who are responsible in creating their company’s
Internet strategy are having. Share your ideas and get your immediate questions
answered.
Don’t be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of ideas and options. Pick three you
want to implement today. Then add three more each month!
Find a category and read all strategies within that category
Social Media
3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 29, 34, 94, 97
Engagement
12, 26, 31, 35, 38, 44, 45, 46, 49, 52, 54, 56, 38, 76,
78, 80, 82, 84, 86
Data Collection
24, 37, 48, 62, 72, 77, 79
10
Ti p s … t o g a i n t h e m o s t o u t o f t h i s b o o k
Marketing 11
6, 8, 9, 15, 21, 39, 40, 41, 42, 50, 54, 56, 76,
78, 80, 82, 84, 86
Communication 55, 67, 69, 71, 81
Strategy
1, 2, 12, 17, 22, 23, 27, 28, 33, 43, 47, 57, 66, 73, 74, 75, 87, 92, 93, 95, 96
Third-Party Sites 16, 18, 19, 20, 25, 30, 36, 51, 70, 90, 91
Participation
3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 33, 38, 39, 40, 42, 46, 47,
55, 56, 58, 72, 73, 80, 82, 97
Advertising 11, 32, 53
User-Gen Content 3, 4, 14, 46, 59, 60, 61, 64, 65, 85
12
Internet Dough
SECTION
1
Create a Companywide
Internet Strategy…
…to acquire, retain and engage customers!
The goal of this chapter is to encourage you to use the 97 Internet strategies
to develop a companywide Internet strategy. An email marketing strategy is
one part of a more holistic strategy.
T
o get us warmed up to create a companywide Internet strategy for your
business, allow me to review a few things we covered in Internet Dough. If
you haven’t read Internet Dough yet, I strongly urge you to do so as it will help
provide a foundation to help you take this information to the next level.
I started working with organizations as early as 1995 to help them develop
Internet strategies to acquire, retain, and engage customers. In the early days,
we introduced how to use online communities to build relationships with
customers. We created over 300 private password-protected online communities
that generated millions of dollars in contributions, gathered data, increased
communication, and reduced costs. Nearly all of our clients saw a return on
their investment within the first six months.
Then, around 2003, we saw two trends starting to appear that we recognized
gave our clients the ability to more effectively engage customers online with
minimal cost.
13
14
Engage Customers Online
1. There was a new class of tools and services that were being offered that
gave more freedom, flexibility, and opportunities to users. (See Chapter
4 of Internet Dough. Plus read Strategy 7 in this book.)
2. We started to see the behaviors of consumers changing. They were
spending more time online and less with traditional media.
We predicted this would create two problems for businesses
1. It would be harder to reach customers via mass marketing techniques as
they continued to focus more of their time and attention on Internetdelivered news, information, and entertainment.
2. If businesses did not adopt Internet strategies, they could find themselves
disintermediated by another firm almost overnight. (See Chapter 8 of
Internet Dough.)
In Internet Dough, we suggested companies that developed a companywide
Internet strategy would:
1. Increase revenue and profits.
2. Find more leads and close them faster.
3. Increase customer retention and loyalty.
4. Provide better customer service at lower costs.
5. Gain a better understanding of customer needs.
6. Engage customers in the product-development process to develop
more profitable products.
7. Amplify customers’ word-of-mouth marketing to reach a global
audience.
8. Gather more data and information about your customers.
9. Increase your marketing with less cost and effort.
10. Provide a global audience.
With all of those benefits, it’s hard to imagine a company that would not be
interested in developing a companywide Internet strategy. However, there are
thousands, if not millions of businesses that are not actively developing Internet
strategies. Why? Read on.
Introduction
15
Strip away the mystery and confusion of the Internet
I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who were interested in using the Internet to
help their organizations over the past decade, and the one thing I consistently
hear is “I know we should be doing more on the Internet, but frankly, we don’t know
what to do!”
To the vast majority of businesspeople, the Internet is a giant puzzle they either
don’t have the time to understand or put their arms around. The Internet to most
is a utility their kids use more than them. If it wasn’t for email, many still would
not use it!
The problem with the Internet for business professionals is that it’s happening so
fast and the changes are coming so rapidly that they don’t know where to begin.
What seemed to be a starting point two years ago is ancient history as new ideas,
concepts, and discoveries have been made.
The goal of this research provided in this book is to provide a solid understanding
to the reader and take away the mystery and confusion by providing practical,
proven Internet strategies that a busy executive could put into action –
immediately.
The research is a year in making and contains 14 years of my experience helping
organizations develop successful Internet strategies. In the next 300-plus pages,
I’ll present 97 different strategies and over 80 plus case studies that will provide
you many “ah ha” moments of inspiration.
Take a pen and mark up this book! Write your ideas down, underline and dog ear
the pages you want to return to! But before we get started, let’s delve more into
why you need to develop a companywide Internet strategy.
Companywide Internet strategy
If the 1980s were about quality, the 1990s about reengineering, the 2000s about
ISO9000, the 2010s will all about becoming a NET-Centered company. Our
crystal ball is suggesting that companies will literally reorganize themselves
around the Internet in order to compete locally, globally and match their
customers’ expectations.
Being ISO9000 certified is not going to be enough to compete in this next era.
You will literally have to transform your business processes, your department and
your relationship with your customers around the Internet.
16
The Internet changes everything!
Many organizations feel like they have an Internet strategy because they do
email marketing. From our viewpoint, email marketing is only part of an overall
strategy, and I might suggest it only represents 1/10 of your strategy. You need to
be developing a comprehensive companywide Internet strategy.
My hope is you will take a holistic look at your company and step back for a
moment to see how you can strategically use the Internet in every department of
your organization. There are a lot of books that address how to use the Internet
to market your products and services to consumers. We’ll do more than that.
While I am very interested in you adopting strategies to generate more leads and
revenue, I’m just as interested in you developing an Internet strategy to better
serve customers, to improve your products and services, and, in general, help
every department in your company.
By the time you have read this book and participated in the exercises you will
have a series of strategies that any of the following departments will be able to
implement:
• Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations
• Sales
• Customer Service
• Human Resources
• Product Development
• Investor Relations
• Administration
To help you get an idea of the opportunities available in each area, let’s take a
quick look at each of them. To take your company wide Internet strategy to the
next level consider taking a course, Create a Companywide Internet Strategy,
that can be found at www.internetdough.net
To help get you thinking about the possibilities available to your organization,
let’s spend a few minutes brainstorming how each of these departments would
benefit from comprehensive Internet strategies.
Introduction
17
Advertising, Marketing, and Public Relations
Today, there are thousands of examples of companies that are effectively using
the Internet in their advertising, marketing, and public relations departments.
The Internet is changing their business model almost overnight. John
Wannamaker, the successful Philadelphia merchant, said in the early 20th
century, “I know half of my advertising is wasted. I just don’t know which half.”
Advertising is undergoing a revolution like we’ve never known. The traditional
mass advertising and marketing model has worked for decades and will continue
to be effective for some time to come. But a new model, a new way to reach the
“other half ” that John Wannamaker mentions, is now available. This new model
is different than traditional advertising.
Instead of pushing information out across mass media channels, the new
advertising and marketing techniques are opening up a three-way conversation
between companies, consumers, and other consumers. The new advertising
model is offering much more targeted communication with consumers based on
their interests, age, behaviors, and buying habits. The new advertising model is
significantly less expensive than the old.
As you begin to evaluate your Internet marketing, advertising, and public
relations strategy you will be able to read specific strategies in the book Engage
Customers Online! and identify which strategies will best match your company’s
overall mission and goals.
When you do, you will learn how a:
• Design firm put photographs on Flickr and linked the photos to their
blog. After tagging the photos appropriately, the photos were found by
prospective customers who used Flickr, which then brought 900 people
to their blog, which they used to raise awareness of their expertise,
generate leads, and new revenue. This is a great example on how you can
“mashup” two different Social Media sites to benefit your strategy. Using
their strategy, you can effectively drive more leads to your Web site so
your sales force can land them!
• Pasta company was able to introduce a new healthy pasta with no brand
awareness that was able to launch and acquire 100,000 email addresses
of customers in just one year. They used the email address to send
educational information about the value of their product. They also
used their customers network of friends to increase brand awareness and
18
sales. This kind of strategy could not have been done using traditional
marketing methods for a number of reasons. The most important thing
to remember is the savings. The paper, printing and postage cost would
have been a half a million dollars in the first year alone! Eliminating the
cost to communicate with your customers will open new opportunities
to engage them.
• Beer company shot some rough footage and posted it on YouTube where
it was viewed 17,000 times. The firm felt if the ad convinced only 10
percent of the viewers to buy the $3 beer at the next joint they went to,
it would have generated over $5,100 in sales. Ideas like these are shared
(viral) with friends and are perfect for new product introductions.
• Car dealership is averaging 20 to 20 percent of their monthly sales from
leads generated from their Web site. This represents over a hundred
thousand dollars in revenue each month.
• Blender company that put a fun video of their CEO blending iPods,
iPhones, golf balls, brooms, and other objects that you would think
only a 12-year-old would have the presence of mind to do on YouTube
only to become one of the most viral success stories for business. The
videos were viewed over 10 million times, generated ad revenue, and
helped increase brand awareness and sales. The strategy designed by the
marketing director opened hundreds of doors for their sales force that
resulted in a spike of sales from organizations that were previously hard
to reach. Just think how easy it was for a salesperson to send an email
with a link to their CEO blending an iPhone. Wow, I can’t think of too
many people passing up that!
As you read examples like this, I’d like you to think about how much money you
might be leaving on the table by not having a companywide Internet strategy. I’d
also like you to be thinking of the power of creating your own marketing channel
by developing relationships with your customers and prospects. An email is a
valuable tool and a gift that you should not take lightly. Think about it this way:
When someone gives you their email address and you mail once a month to
them, you are saving at least $6 per year in marketing costs (assuming 50 cents
for paper, printing, and postage).
When you build a customer base to 2,000 or 100,000, a whole new range of
opportunities, upsells, and/or delivering educational information to increase
customer loyalty will become apparent.
Introduction
19
Sales
We are encouraging companies to look at Social Media tools as a way to not only
learn more about customers but to sell their products and services to prospects
and customers.
There are a number of ways your firm can use Social Media tools to sell products
(for the sake of brevity this is a truncated list):
• Blogs
• SEO/SEM
• Brand Ambassadors
• Word-of-mouth marketing
• Article marketing
• Buzz marketing
• Online community
We offer examples throughout the book of firms that have successfully use Social
Media like these to sell their products and services.
For example, within the 97 strategies listed in this book, you will learn how:
• An ice cream company created a fun, whimsical blog to connect with
their customers. In just two years, 16,000 people visited the site,
which the company credited for a minimum of $54,000 worth of ice
cream sold. If you look at the ten-year value of a customer, this simple
technique was worth a half a million dollars to the company. All from a
simple blog.
• An Ohio company that was nearly put out of business by big-box
marketing companies that started offering his products. The founder
considered shutting off the lights but decided to give Search Engine
Optimization and Marketing one last chance (he had used it before but
had selected a vendor who didn’t end up being the expert they claimed
they were). With the help of a knowledgeable vender, the father and
son team did so well in optimizing their Web site for search engines
that they turned the corner. The company now gets 75 percent of
their business from keeping their Search Engine Optimization in tune.
20
Having lived through the stress and risk of closing up shop and finding
a new career, this happy family is running a more successful business,
retaining customers, discounting less with less effort, and no advertising!
• Jaguar created a buzz event that built a remarkable experience for a
select group of high-end customers who will be talking about the event
for years. The successful idea that we share resulted in one day the sale
of dozens of brand new high-priced Jaguars. Their story will help you
understand how to create an event that matches your brand, how to
create a buzz that others will repeat, and how to make money along the
way. You can’t beat that! If you are looking for ideas on how to sell a
boat load of your products and services, you’ll find excellent examples to
adapt!
Plus, if you have a product that people really get into, you’ll want to learn
how to adopt a Brand Ambassador program. Microsoft understood the value
of Brand Ambassadors when they approached RepNation to help them build
on the excitement people had for their One Note product (I’m one of them!).
You’ll learn in Strategy 12 how this project not only helped intensify their
best consumers love for their product but how they channeled this excitement
and built a program around it that lead to 80,000 downloads. Hmm, 80,000
downloads at $50 per download? You do the math. Would you benefit from
having your best customers sell more products and services?
Word-of-mouth marketing is another area that is hot
In fact, a new organization WOMMA is only a few years old and has already
built a huge membership and convention schedule to focus attention on the
value of word-of-mouth marketing in today’s Internet-fueled age. While wordof-mouth marketing has always been a valued benefit in the sales and marketing
area, it had been difficult to create campaigns that you could track and expand.
The Internet, however, is opening the door for any business to benefit from
word-of-mouth. Experts are emerging that will help you craft a campaign that
can be built around your Brand Ambassadors or passionate customers that can
be extremely effective. One of the greatest benefits of word-of-mouth marketing
on the Internet is how quickly it can be amplified. Prior to the Internet, my
sphere of influence was limited to individuals I spoke to. On the Internet, my
blog can amplify my comment hundreds, thousands, or millions of times. Wow!
One comment by me on a bulletin board could, for example, dissuade others
Introduction
21
from ordering a product or service that I was not happy with!
I’m a bit new to article marketing, but I’m beginning to love it more every day.
As cousin Eddy says in the timeless movie “Christmas Vacation,” “Clark, it’s
the gift that just keeps on giving.” Imagine while you are sleeping, someone,
somewhere around the world is finding an article you placed for free on any of
hundreds of sites and then visiting your site for more information. It doesn’t get
any better!
Communispace, a provider of white label online communities for organizations,
has conducted research that showed the more people “owned” the company online
community, the more they talked with the sponsoring company. According to
their study:
People in high-ownership communities engage more with the company
sponsoring the community. For example, a financial services company
with a 58.9 percent ownership rate averages 78.7 contributions per
client-generated activity, while a comparable community with 38.9
percent ownership averages only 56 percent contributions per clientgenerated activity.
We’ll discuss in this book that your Internet strategy needs to keep an open
relationship with your customers.
In the old days, all your sales and marketing department had to do was pick up
a phone book, attend conferences, go door to door, and send gobs of mail and
advertising in any available channel. When you think about it, each of these
areas were innovations in their own right and over time have become standard
sales and marketing tools for any organization.
We’ve looked a just a few of the new tools available for the sales and marketing
professional and we’ve not even touched social networking, back linking, and the
use of other Social Media tools and consumer behaviors to market your product
and service. Yes, it is a brave new world out there, and I know it’s confusing, but
like your mother used to say, go out and try it, you’ll not only make new friends
but you’ll find a whole new profitable way to sell your products and services,.
Customer Service
I remember the day when an employee at the gas station would fill my tank,
check my tires, and check under the hood when I got gas. Over the past 30
22
years, the idea of customer service has been downgraded to “self service.” I see it
every day. When I call a company, I have to search through their menu system
to find the person I want to talk to; when I travel I no longer call Sue Hatos at
the local travel agency, I go online and book my flight, hotel, and my car. We
have become a society that has become used to serving ourselves. In some cases,
the changes are better because none of us like to wait for our services—we want
them now.
The Internet is opening interesting new ways for you to offer better customer
service to your customers. First of all, using simple Customer Relationship
Management (CRM) tools, you can build a profile on your customers so you
know what they buy, what issue you are dealing with, and who and when your
staff talked to them. Successful companies are spending on this technology to
not only improve their response time to customers but are finding the interaction
provides a terrific upsell opportunity.
Your customer service department has an enormous number of areas it can
benefit from by adopting a more comprehensive Internet strategy. For example,
it can use:
1. Blogs to provide updates on products, news, and new releases.
2. Bulletin boards to help them find information quicker and learn what
customers want.
3. Customer profiles to let customers personalize their relationship
with you.
4. User-generate content to let customers share information with other
customers.
5. Technoratti/Blogpulse to find out what your customers are saying
about you.
6. Podcasting to deliver educational product use to customers.
7. Surveys to learn what your customers want from you.
8. Online collaboration tools to let your customers collaborate on sales,
marketing, and production issues.
9. Social recognition tools recognize your customers.
10. Online community to increase customer loyalty and expand your
brand.
Introduction
23
That’s only just the beginning! The rest of the book will provide examples of
companies of all sizes that are using these strategies to build an electronic bridge
to their customers and engage them 24/7/365!
While I call this engaging customers online, you may look at this as an excellent
customer intimacy program!
Human Resources
The HR department has seen the value of developing Internet strategy by delivering
information to employees about health programs, retirement information, and
policies and procedures. Adopting these have saved time, money, and resources
for organizations. Others are now discovering the value of using online job
networks to attract the right candidates for their firms.
I personally have been promoting for the last five years that companies develop
private password online communities to engage employees and connect them
with others with similar interests.
You know the facts better than I. Salary is not the most important consideration
of employees in whether they stay or go. People put a great deal of investment in
projects, systems, and other people and, depending on how strong those are, they
are less likely to take another position. By adopting an online community that
connects employees based on interests and hobbies throughout the company,
you’ll build relationships outside of the current departments and strengthen
employees’ ties to the company. Imagine a salesperson being able to connect
with a VP based on their interest in playing golf, or a person in the shop being
able to have coffee with the president once a month to talk about their latest
photo project.
We’ll share information in the book where companies are developing white label
online communities and using social networking sites like Facebook, Ning, and
Linkedin to develop communities for their employees.
Product Development
Other companies are using customers to help customers. You’ll read about a
product Salesforce is offering their customers that enables them to build customer
feedback systems. A good example is a system designed by Dell. Dell’s Idea
Storm is designed so any customer can provide feedback on how they are using a
product or service. The Dell staff can interact with the customers, and customers
24
are able to vote on topics or submissions by others. Ideas and concepts that rise
to the top will be seriously considered in the product-development cycle. It’s a
natural way to get people to help you develop products and services.
You’ll also read about how Lego, a privately held company with a passionate
customer base, spends millions of dollars developing new products and services
and, like the movie industry, has had their share of bombs and successes. You’ll
learn how they reached out to a “self-organized” group of passionate customers
on YouTube and at a distance gained their feedback and support to create a
blockbuster new product called
Star Wars Empire Destroyer. The product became their most successful launch
and sold out in just two weeks!
The Internet is opening new opportunities for customers, vendors, and companies
to collaborate to accomplish more than they ever imagined, faster, cheaper, and
with less effort. In his book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams
suggest:
These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where
knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed
than at any time in our history – a world where value creation will be
fast, fluid, and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected
will survive. A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule
is emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail
to grasp this will find themselves ever more isolated – cut off from the
networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create
value.
Wikinomics later suggests that in the years to come, engaging customers, vendors,
and others to produce products and services will displace traditional corporation
hierarchies as the key engine of wealth creation in the economy.
In order to position your company for these changes, your organization should
take the time to provide training and knowledge to your staff. Virtually no one in
your office has had the time or experience to gain first-hand knowledge on how
all these pieces fit together. As the incredible changes continue to overwhelm our
systems, organizations that are educating their customers, clients, and employees
on how to play in this new sandbox will do well. Those that don’t will struggle
to succeed.
Introduction
25
At the end of the day, this new process to develop products and services will be
faster, cheaper, and require less stress on the company. But even more importantly,
by engaging clients, vendors, and others in your product development, you
take out a great deal of risk, which will give you an opportunity to introduce
more products and services with less resources, which will increase revenue and
profits.
Investor Relations
Public companies have always been required to keep the “door” open so investors
can determine if they are prudently investing their hard-earned dollars. However,
many companies over the decades have found ways to hide information from
investors or confuse them.
Today, successful companies are beginning to understand an open policy in
the long run will build more successful companies. The Internet is giving you
an opportunity to reach out to all investors and gain their insight and help in
developing and managing your public company. Internet technology will enable
companies to begin to make decisions based on the “wisdom of crowds.” I know
this is a sensitive area to discuss, but imagine using the kind of tools we just
discussed that Dell introduced and give your investors the opportunity to offer
suggestions and vote on specific directions.
Sure, there are strategic decisions that the executive suite should not give up, but
there are more granular areas where shareholders could gain access to a passwordprotected area of the Web site and be able to share their opinion and vote on
others’ opinions. Why should the executive team have to deal with “quack”
investors? Give the shareholder the ability to “downplay” issues so the company
doesn’t have to be the heavy!
Summary
Are you getting the picture?
Your organization has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to build integrated
Internet strategy throughout your company. The train has already left the station
and in order to catch up, you need to carve out the time right now to create the
strategy that will enable you to catch up.
You can elect to do nothing, pick up a few ideas at a time, or jump in and create
26
a comprehensive Internet strategy for your company. We designed the workbook
that goes with this book, “Create a Companywide Internet Strategy” so you
can take whatever track you want. Start slow and add in additional strategies
over time or go full tilt and infuse a coordinated Internet strategy through all
departments in your company.
The workbook is designed so pizza shops, manufactures, professional organizations, retail shops, sales and marketing, and organizations of all sizes can
develop their own customized plan.
Use your workbook to jot down notes as you are reading the strategies presented.
Also visit the book blog www.internetdough.net to pick up new ideas or share
your ideas.
Now is the time to take advantage of this opportunity. Together we can lift
everyone’s boat!
SECTION
2
97 Internet Strategies to
Create Your Companywide
Internet Strategy
T
he rest of this book is designed as a resource that you can pick up and read
whenever you want.
If you see a topic you’re interested in, just skip right to it. The strategies are
presented in no particular order.
The exercises are designed to give you the first steps you need to take to get
started!
And now, let’s take a look at YOUR 97 strategies!
27
28
Virtual Communities are social aggregations
that emerge from the net when enough people
carry on public discussions, with sufficient
human feeling, to form webs of personal
relationships in cyberspace.
Virtual Communities, Howard Reingold
1. Find More Resources
A
pple’s famous Super Bowl commercial in 1984 depicted a compliant, robotic
society where the citizens blindly followed each other. The ad showed the
citizens walking lockstep together, not questioning the realities, and eventually
following each other over a cliff.
As I enter the second decade of working with organizations to help them craft
successful Internet strategies, one common theme persists: Companies are playing
follow the leader and blindly constructing brochure-ware Web sites that engage
customers online. Only a few are breaking away from the pack and spending the
time to create integrated departmental Internet strategies using Social Media to
acquire, retain, and engage customers.
Most organizations mistakenly hire graphic designers and programmers to set
up Web sites for their organizations and think their job is done. The Web site
design and development is only the first step in developing a successful Internet
strategy. In my opinion, it is probably among the least important. At any rate,
your organization needs to provide ongoing staff and resources in order to
not only maintain your market position but to open new product and service
opportunities that will drive profits. Management has to develop a strategy that
doesn’t focus on the Internet strategy being a cost center but a revenue center.
A comprehensive Internet strategy for your company should at least include the
following departments:
• Advertising, PR, and marketing
• Customer service
• Operations
29
30
• Product development
• Finance
• Administration
For the most part, management’s focus has agreed on providing resources for
Internet initiatives where they could see a quick ROI from cost reduction. Smart
companies are developing strategies and investing in ecommerce, communication,
and tools that enable customers to self-service themselves, but they are not
investing in tools that will help organizations build online communities and
Social Media that will amplify word-of-mouth marketing and increase revenue
and profits.
Think for just a moment how much the Internet has already saved your firm.
Look at the number of emails you manage in a day. Nearly everyone I talk to is
processing a record number of emails, which is helping them multi-task, handle
more jobs and assignments, and keep all the “balls” juggling at one time. In
the old days, you would send draft changes via overnight delivery, with one
document flying across the country five or six times before it was complete.
Today, you communicate instantly, collaborating to make changes for literally
no cost. The Internet has reduced the cost of doing business for industries that
are now encouraging customers to pay bills online, that no longer send invoices
via the mail, that encourage individuals to register for events, activities, and shop
online. Now is as good a time as ever for your management to acknowledge that
and to take the next step in continuing to become a net-centered company.
Few organizations have tried to quantify the savings, but if you did, I’m sure
you would find it enormous. So having said all of that, why are you not actively
looking for other ways the Internet can reduce your costs, increase sales, better
serve customers, and expand globally?
In a study by McKinsey & Co., a survey of 2,847 executives around the world
found if they had a chance to do it all over again, 42 percent of the “early adopter”
companies would have invested more in Web 2.0 services over the past five years,
and 24 percent said they would have invested sooner. When asked about which
Web services they were using, or planning to use, the study showed:
• Web services
• Collective Intelligence
80 %
48 %
Find More Resources
31
• Peer-to- peer networking 47 %
• Social networking 37 %
• RSS
35 %
• Podcasts 35 %
• Wikis
33 %
• Blogs
32 %
• Mashups 21 %
Don’t feel like you are too far behind after reading this, however, because the
study also showed most of those surveyed were using two or less of these Social
Media tools, indicating few have written Internet strategies or have made a
serious commitment to Social Media.
Most importantly, and a fact you want to share with others in your organization,
is the survey also reported that 46 percent of the “early adopter” companies and
44 percent of the “fast follower” companies reported that their Web spending
paid off faster and/or beyond their expectations. For those sitting on the fence or
looking for supporting documentation, this is a good study to refer to.
Right now, it’s not easy to get the ears of management to fund Web 2.0 initiatives.
To most, it doesn’t make sense, as it goes against everything they know, and
few want to understand it. I can’t tell you how many people I meet in upper
management that proudly say they don’t know anything about the Web, don’t
care to, and suggest that it’s something their kids get into, that they don’t have
time for it. When I hear this, I remind them that developing a Web strategy
today that involves online community and Social Media can be as, or more,
important, depending on the industry, than receiving ISO9000 certification or
any corporate-wide initiative. Anyone that has gone through that process knows
how time consuming and expensive that was.
A study by the Internet Strategies Forum has found the two biggest issues IT
professionals who are engaged in developing their firms’ Internet strategy was
lack of staff and financial resources. The next two issues included:
1. Too many cooks in the kitchen. A common problem among
professionals is too many people are involved in developing an Internet
strategy to be effective.
32
2. The individuals who are responsible for the Web strategy are not high
enough in the organization to effect change.
Joining organizations like the Internet Strategies Forum will give you a steady
stream of information, research, and access to others who are in your shoes and
solving the same problems, which will also give you benchmarks you can present
to management. Steve Gehlen, founder of Internet Strategies Forum, rightly
envisions a “C” level position within every company for the person who is in
charge of the company Internet strategy.
As you continue to build your Internet strategy, besides the financial and
physical resources, plan to bring in experienced consultants who can help you
get where you need to go faster. Few organizations have internal staff that have
the necessary experience and skills to not only know what strategies are available,
what tools are available, what works and what doesn’t, but how to implement
them for maximum benefit.
Exercise
In my book Internet Dough, we talked about a pizza shop that began to divert 20
percent of their marketing resources online.
• Pull your team together and take a serious look at what marketing efforts
are giving you a return on your investment.
• Knowing money is tight in any organization, look for events,
conferences, trips, and other marketing expenses that are only providing
“soft” benefits and use those resources to fund your Internet strategy.
Don’t think 20 percent is that much! In the spring of 2008, General Motors
announced they were diverting 50 percent of their advertising and promotion
budget to the Internet!
Consumers are a lot more excited to get brands
to talk to them and open a dialogue so they can
show them how to do things differently.
Darrell Jursa, Liquid Intelligence
2. Fun Factor
P
eople like to be entertained. In fact, there are many businesses making a
healthy profit by providing their customers with “experiences.”
One of your strategies should be finding a way to make your brand and
experience fun for your customers. This is important, for your Web site and
online community if you have one. Adding a Fun Factor will increase the
frequency your customers and members visit your Web site, and it will increase
the likelihood they will invite their friends too.
Nearly every company or organization I’ve spoken to has indicated they want
their customers to think of them as a fun organization. Properly executed, a Fun
Factor strategy will give your organization an opportunity to “humanize” your
company and connect on a deeper level. As you continue to build your Web
strategy, your Internet site should keep abreast of these core values.
Just how fun is your Web site?
Contests are a great way to increase participation and awareness. You might
consider holding a baby picture contest where both the customers and
members can post their children or grandchildren’s baby pictures. Photographs
could be voted on, with the top vote winning a product or service from your
organization.
Mentos and Coke!
Fun sometimes happens serendipitously and gets promoted by word-of-mouth.
Over the past couple of years, kids across the country discovered that if you put
33
34
Mentos in a bottle of Diet Coke, a chemical reaction would occur that sends
a geyser of foam into the air. The idea was passed around the country in the
early 1990s from friends and cousins introducing it to each other, until, as the
story goes, Steve Spangler, a science teacher, demonstrated the effects of putting
Mentos in a Diet Coke bottle for a reporter of a Denver TV station.
The interview and demonstration was seen in Maine by an attorney and a
performance artist entertainer who got together and decided if one bottle
produced that kind of result, imagine what 100 bottles would do. Their goal
was to simulate the fountains in front of the Las Vegas hotel, Bellagio. In their
spare time, and with their own resources, they tested and then videotaped the
100 bottles erupting in a coordinated fashion, then uploaded it to YouTube and
called it Video Experiment 137. It instantly created a sensation, and by July, they
were appearing on the David Letterman show.
Now a worldwide sensation, the two were approached by the performance artists
Blue Man Group, who commissioned Steven and Friz to videotape a performance
“using new techniques BMG would use at the opening of their show, just before
the curtain goes up.” Their Experiment Number 214 used 500 bottles of Diet
Coke and 1,500 Mentos. The video is shown at the opening of each Blue Man
Group performance and is expected to be viewed by over a 1,000,000 people
attending their performances.
Besides their involvement, thousands of others got into the act and videotaped
their own experiments with Diet Coke and Mentos. Corporate officials from
Mentos estimated an additional 9,000 “do it yourself ” experiments were posted
that resulted in millions of viewings. Pete Healy, the Vice President of Marketing
at Healy, suggested the online buzz this created for their brand was worth over
10 million dollars, about half of Mentos annual advertising budget. So you’re
asking, “What’s the affect?” According to Pete, they saw a 20 percent increase
in sales and acquisition of new customers and return of old customers. In this
situation, the company serendipitously benefited from an event but got behind
it, embraced it, and supported it.
Interestingly enough, however, Coke didn’t take the same approach initially.
When their management saw the phenomena exploding (pun intended), a
spokesperson for Coke said, “We would hope people want to drink [Diet Coke]
more than try experiments with it,” she added that the “craziness with Mentos ...
doesn’t fit with the brand personality” of Diet Coke. If you had 2 billion dollars a
year to spend on advertising, I suppose you wouldn’t care about the free publicity
Fun Factor
35
you are receiving, but for most businesses, the free publicity from fun events like
this could represent a serious sales bump.
Later, we’ll detail how Blendtec built on this fun craze and created a series of
“homemade” videos of their CEO blending golf balls, iPhones, iPods, and, yes,
even a whole Coke can that have had over 10 million views on YouTube (Strategy
53).
As you continue to create a Fun Factor strategy, think about your audience and
build in as many fun elements as you can. Include ideas and concepts that will
make them laugh, share with others, and encourage them to want to return to
your site. You want alumni feeling good about your organization.
ZeFrank user photos
I nearly fell off my chair when I read about ZeFrank, an online blogger who started
a campaign that encouraged his listeners to dress up their vacuum cleaners, take
photos of them, and submit the photos online for others to view and rate. After
hearing this, I realized with a bit of humor and zaniness, literally any product or
service could be “humanized,” and a company could engage customers to give
the product more attention than it deserves.
You’ll laugh too when you learn that over 1,000 “dressed up” vacuum cleaner
photographs were submitted in less than 24 hours! When you take the creativity
of millions, you end up with some pretty funny-looking vacuum cleaners!
User-generated content can provide one of the highest ROI of any Web 2.0 tools
and services. Many organizations are reaching out to customers or supporters
to generate content. Most marketers today are settling into the concept that it’s
better to have an open environment where users can feel the information and
the dialogue is trusted. You have to be able to make that decision before it’s too
late.
Other ways to create fun in your online community and Web site:
• Allowing customers or members to post photos and make comments.
• Offer opinion polls and let them see if their opinion agrees with others.
• Provide eCards they can send to friends.
• Send a birthday card on their birthday.
36
• Hold content.
• Use tools like Twitter to show where your mascot is traveling.
Think fun first and your users will follow! Making it fun will enable you to
engage your customers and encourage them to share their experience with their
friends. Viral marketing like this is free and provides immediate results.
Exercise
Don’t try to pull this idea out of a rabbit’s hat. Get others in your organization
together to figure out your Fun Factor strategy. Go out and have a drink and
really put some time into this. It’s by far going to be one of your most important
strategies.
• Think about a contest you can adopt that uses your customers taking a
picture of themselves with your product, mascot, salespeople.
• Kick around ideas on how you can use videos at conventions and do
“man on the street” interviews with customers and prospects.
Don’t stop reading here. I’ve got dozens of easy-to-adopt Fun Factor strategies
throughout this book!
You can’t name an industry or business
that doesn’t want to get people who like
them - to talk about them more!
Jamie Tedford, Arnold Worldwide
3. Blogs
R
emember the term “newsletter”? Newsletters are a powerful public relations
tool that informs clients and prospects about your organization’s progress
in achieving your mission, vision, and goals. Newsletters require planning and
layout and carry the hefty cost of printing and distribution. Newsletters tend
to be printed monthly. Think of blogs like mini newsletters that anyone can
write at any time, about anything at anytime, with no cost. With newsletters,
you are limited on what you can say and how many pictures you can include.
With blogs, you can say as much as you want and include as many photos or
videos as you want. You send newsletters to a targeted audience. With blogs,
your audience finds you.
Blogs are a powerful Social Media strategy that will:
• Increase your exposure and influence in your industry (both personally
and for your company.
• When properly executed, will increase your firm’s rankings on search
engines.
Blogs are giving a new generation of “part-time” journalists a chance to use their
skills. Traditional print news businesses have been whacking away at their costs
and are cutting positions that once covered state politics, local politics, and
community news. In their place, a new breed of reporters is rising and publishing
their news on their own personal blogs. In most cases, bloggers are doing a better
job at reporting news because they tend to be focused on a smaller niche. Unlike
a journalist, they don’t have to go out in the marketplace and be a jack-of-alltrades knowledge expert.
37
38
Think of these groups of bloggers as your worker bees. Without them, your blog
would not have an opportunity to virally spread to thousands of others. With
them, you can rapidly get your message out to be heard and picked up by larger
blogs and traditional media.
Even though there are an estimated 60 million blogs as of mid-2007, few companies
are using them. When I talk with most business professionals and mention blogs,
the first thing they want to talk about is whether their organizations should allow
employees to blog. As you might suspect, not all companies are open to Social
Media tools. Apple has, for years, decided that Steve Jobs would be the primary
spokesperson for all of Apple. As a result, Apple has discouraged employees to
blog. On the other hand, Microsoft has embraced blogging as a way to build
relationships with their vendors, consumers, and industry contacts and has
over 3,000 employees blogging. While some companies are frightened about
the effect of their employees blogging about the company, others are downright
scared about what customers will say!
In the business world, corporations are beginning to understand the enormous
benefits of blogs. Blogs are helping companies:
• Market their products and services.
• Connect directly with their customers.
• Control crises and issues.
• Build their brand.
Many of your customers/members are creating blogs around their own interests,
hobbies, and expertise. So if everyone is getting into it, and everyone loves it,
why isn’t your organization blogging?
Anita Campbell was an early visionary on how blogs could benefit small
businesses, realtors, consultants, authors, manufactures, and the list goes on!
In early 2004, Anita created www.smallbusinessnews.com and has since become
recognized as the go-to person for news and information for small businesses and
bloggers in this space. Readership has expanded so much that advertisers are
approaching her with a desire to advertise to her unique audience As a frequent
speaker at conferences around the country and consultant for businesses that are
interested in developing a blogging strategy, Anita suggests it’s not too late for
businesses to get started. Business owners already have an existing customer base
Fun Factor
39
they can begin introducing their blog to and use their blog to ask clients to tell
their friends and colleagues about the company’s products and services. Anita
adds, “Blogging is not about reaching huge numbers, business owners have to
think differently when they start blogging. It’s really about reaching prospective
customers at a different time when they can give you more mindshare.”
While there are many different ways you can utilize blogs, here are three to get
you thinking:
1.Create a daily blog to talk about customers/members you have spoken to
that day.
2.Corporation staff could create blogs focused in their area of expertise.
The product development team could share with customers and vendors
what products are in the pipeline and solicit input from everyone. Those
in customer service could share tips and ideas and solicit feedback from
customers.
3.Sales managers could create a blog and provide daily updates to the sales
team and solicit feedback.
Blogs are an incredibly easy technique to communicate with others and gather
feedback. You will find more uses for them once you get one idea up and
running!
Blogs can drive events!
Blogs can accelerate word-of-mouth. Fleischman-Hillard Interactive was
approached by Fortune magazine in 2005 inquiring about how to use new media
strategies to increase attendance at its annual innovation conference, The Fortune
Innovation Forum. With only one month to create interest and convert interest
into registrations, the Fleischman-Hilliard team suggested Fortune:
• Create a conference-focused innovation blog that would highlight the
valuable content attendees would receive at the event.
• Connect with existing network of bloggers and online editors who
are already blogging on innovation, business, and marketing to drive
awareness to Fortune’s blog.
To accomplish their first suggestion, Fortune chose a recent Harvard graduate
who was already blogging in this area, and Fleischman-Hillard went into the
40
blog community and found independent bloggers who were writing about
innovation and entrepreneurship. With the efforts of the independent bloggers
directing readers to the new Fortune blog, over 7,000 visitors and 14,000 pages
were viewed in the thirty days prior to the conference. Was it worth it? Yes! At
the time they were contracted, only 250 people had signed up. Partly as a result
of the blogging strategy, another 150 signed up.
Blogs bring out your fans
Denali Ice Cream Company is one of the leading inventors and marketers of
specialty flavors of ice cream. Their product line has nearly thirty flavors that have
attracted a lot of fans. In 2005, John Nardini, the Vice President of Marketing
at Denali, set up a blog called www.denaliflavors.com to connect with their
customers. The blog provides a number of different categories including: Fun,
Ice Cream, News, Moostopia, Pictures, Team Moose Tracks, and more.
Is it worth it? In the two years since it was set up, over 16,000 people visited the
site, got to know a bit more about the organization, and, along the way, increased
their loyalty to the brand. If each visit resulted in only one pint of additional
ice cream sold, and assuming a cost of about $3 per pint, the site would have
been responsible for $54,000 in product sold. What we haven’t looked at is the
number of other blogs that picked up the story, and perhaps media that did a
story on the site providing free publicity.
Blog and brag at the same time!
Lincoln Sign Company is an award-winning New Hampshire sign company. They
make beautiful, colorful wood signs that provide businesses and organizations a
unique look. I know what you’re thinking, who on earth would be interested in
a blog by a sign company?
You would!
Visit their Web site at www.signsneversleep.com, and you will be absorbed
into a blog that acts as a sales piece, public relations tool, and a how-to guide on
creating signs. The authors not only blog about the project they are working on,
providing minute detail, but they also videotape the process and offer a verbal
walk-through of the process. It’s really fun and informative.
Is it worth it? I’ll let you decide, but it’s clear the site is getting traffic by the
Fun Factor
41
numerous comments, one even from Barcelona, Spain! This is a good example
of how you can amplify your message with blogs and become a global company
overnight. It is also another good way to show off your product in a non salesy
way, glamorize, and show how hard you work to provide a quality product. I
can assure you that any prospective customer walking through this Web site will
be less price resistant than they were before they had a chance to engage in the
design and production process.
Keeping the good news “flying” at the airport
The Akron/Canton airport is a fast-growing regional airport that has to work
harder to remind community members of the quality and value they provide.
Public relations and marketing is critical for them and, over the years, Fred
Krum, the airport manager, and his team have gained more than their fair share
of media attention.
Kristie Van Auken, Director of Marketing, decided to keep the positive flow
of news and information to customers. In her mind, the more people think of
you, the more chance they will think of you the next time they fly. As part of
her weekly responsibilities Kristie, as well as the airport manager and customer
service director, blog on issues or information that will be helpful to travelers.
Three-way conversation
One of the biggest benefits of blogs is they offer you an opportunity to develop
a two- and sometimes three-way conversation with your customers. I was
reading the Atlanta Journal the other day and ran across a blog started by staff
writer Carroll Rogers. Most journalists are enjoying the opportunity to express
themselves in a more casual, free-formed environment where they can put more
color between the lines. In a recent blog, Carroll was sharing his excitement upon
learning the blog had its own T-shirt. Not only that, it was recently featured on
Fox News, and then took readers on a 1,180 word trip talking about games and
memorable moments from 1998 on. Did anybody care? Yes, all 412 people who
left comments within a two-day period! The comments were not only directed to
Carroll Rogers but the readers commented and carried on conversations among
each other. The ongoing dialogue or debate provides an environment for you or
your development team to pick up valuable information.
If you are sitting on the sidelines and have not developed at least a blog strategy,
set down this book right now (I won’t be offended) and go to www.typepad.
42
com or www.wordpress.com and take fifteen minutes to create your blog. Now
take another fifteen minutes writing in a conversational style about something
about your product or service that you are interested in gaining input from
others on. Next, send an email to staff and customers asking for their input.
Congratulations, you’ve just adopted your first Social Media tool!
A word of caution
The Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMA) is passionately advocating
to their members and others that practitioners of Social Media be honest and
transparent with their audience. The WOMA recognizes that Social Media is a
great opportunity for everyone, but if it’s taken advantage of, people will distrust
it. They suggest companies be upfront and clear about who is behind a blog,
that they share who is writing, funding, and, ultimately, what the purpose of the
blog is.
Already there have been a couple of cases where companies have not been
completely honest about the intention of the blog either they, or their advertising/
PR agencies, created:
• In 2005, McDonald’s ad agency decided to post a blog to make fun
about the images of people who were being found on potato chips
and other foods. So they picked, ironically “honest Abe Lincoln,” then
created a fry with his image and posted a photo on the blog. Then they
opened the conversation up without disclosing they were behind it.
• “Walmarting Across America” was a blog developed by a journalist and
photographer who jumped in an RV and went from Wal-Mart to WalMart interviewing employees. The blog failed to mention that the blog
was subsidized by the public relations company working for Wal-Mart.
• Sony’s ad agency developed a blog called “All I want for Christmas is a
PSP” (alliwantforxmasisapsp.com) that hid the fact that it was developed
and supported by the ad agency for Sony. As the posts to the site began
to question the authenticity of the author, Cyber Sleuth solved the
mystery by checking who owned the domain name.
In each of these cases, the reaction from the blog reading community was—to
say it mildly—brutal. Once readers discovered these blogs were fakes, they told
others, who wrote in their blogs, who came and posted on the above blogs,
angry, negative comments. These posts, and the conversations that ensued, then
Fun Factor
43
caught the attention of the mainstream media, which lifted the story yet another
level, creating a PR nightmare for the firms.
The point to keep in mind is that if you want to use a blog as a marketing tool,
make sure the audience knows that. Don’t pretend to be something that you are
not, or you may find your blog campaign getting more press and “Google results
displays” than current campaigns.
Also keep in mind that your organization could have a number of different blogs
managed and updated by different people in your company. I was at a recent
conference where a marketing director of FedEx was asked what their “carbon”
policy was. The individual in the audience obviously thought that FedEx’s 632
planes and 70,000 trucks were contributing to the carbon emissions that were
responsible for some of the global warming issues. The presenter shared a number
of initiatives they were currently involved in, of which the general public had
no idea. On balance, it sounded as if they were moving as fast as they could to
control their carbon output.
This is a perfect example of where the company could show their responsiveness
to this situation by asking someone to blog about the steps and policies they area
already moving on. It doesn’t have to be someone internally. For that matter, the
person asking the question was obviously concerned enough that if the company
approached them to write a blog, as long as they promised access to information,
the company wins and the concerned citizen gains access and a platform to “do
his part” in slowing down global warming.
Dion Hinchcliffe, president and founder of Hinchcliffe & Company, founding
editor of the respected Web 2.0 Journal for SYS-CON Mediat and creator of
“Web 2.0 University in NYC,” has found that in his conference talks, when he
asks the audience if they have an easy way to create a blog on their intranet, the
answer is “yes” usually 10 to 15 percent of the time. His point is that companies
should be making it easier for employees to blog by putting the tools in front
of them. By now, you understand the amplification of your message increases
as your message is linked to other blogs. As more of employees of the same
firm begin blogging in their own areas of expertise, and share information back
and forth in each respective blog, your company gains from the pollination of
thought and idea, and your message rises among the cacophony of news and
information to reach the ears and eyeballs you want to engage.
If you are a small business, you need to listen to your customers and find out what
they are interested in hearing and learning about. If you are a larger organization,
44
your customer service department, PR, sales, and administrators will be able
to share areas they are hearing customers want to learn more about. Blogging
is opening many new opportunities for businesses. Keep your eyes open, read
others blogs, and be open to these ideas.
Exercise
Blogs are among the top three Social Media marketing strategies experts will
suggest you start doing.
• Spend an hour and do some searching on the Web to find blogs written
by others in your industry. Figure out what their angle is. Determine
their style and what their overall message is.
• Now think about what you and or your organization is passionate about.
Is it customer service, quality products, on-time delivery, or unique
applications for your product and service? Once you pick your voice,
start writing!
• Consider creating a blog that has a number of different contributors
who can spread the workload but keep a steady flow of great content.
You need to write about what you believe in, what you are dedicated and
passionate about, otherwise your writing “well” might run dry.
They will put their reputation on the line,
because in this new paradigm of message
creation and delivery, the Citizen
Marketers are the message.
Ben McConnell, Jackie Huba
4. User-Generated Content (UGC)
Y
ou may also hear this referenced as consumer-generated content (CGC).
Either way, when you hear it, the person is referring to the concept that your
user is generating content on your Web site.
Simply put, everyone who puts a video on YouTube is creating user-generated
content. Everyone who puts their photos on Flickr is creating user-generated
content. Everyone who is submitting articles to Digg is creating user-generated
content.
Since the dawning of the Internet, industry experts suggested that “content was
king.” The idea was, without continually changing, relevant content, a Web site
would fail. That’s definitely true of the above Web sites. They would not exist,
nor be worth millions of dollars, without other peoples’ content. Content they
happily produced without pay or financial compensation.
Web 1.0 technology allowed people to post information on the Web; however,
Web 2.0 technology allowed users to not only post content, but interact with it
and build community around it. A good example would be to compare the Kodak
Gallery Web site and Flickr. Kodak Gallery is a great site for people to load their
photographs to share with invited family members. Flickr, on the other hand,
provided a tool that enabled people to share their photos with anyone in the
world. It gave users the ability to create “user groups” around specific interests
and it allows users to rate and comment on photos.
Even though Kodak had a bigger name, a well-defined distribution system,
and low-cost marketing channels to market Kodak Gallery, the interactive and
community-building tools included in Flickr enabled it to grow virally almost
overnight. As participation skyrocketed, Flickr was acquired by Yahoo!!.
45
46
To encourage users to post content on your Web site, you should consider adding
Social Media tools as mentioned above, or you can look to partner with a thirdparty Web site whose users are continually providing content. When you do this,
you pick up three strategic advantages. First, you will reach a larger audience.
Second, you save money by not having to invest in the technology. Third, you
get to market quicker, which could mean the difference between becoming a
billion-dollar company and one valued at nothing.
Here are additional Web sites and tools you could consider integrating into your
Web strategy:
• Social Bookmarking/Tagging del.icio.us
• Social News Sites digg, newsvine
• Social Networking LinkedIn, MySpace
• Wiki Wikipedia
• Video Sharing YouTube
• Podcast iTunes
• Image Sharing Flickr
Let content travel
More conservative institutions will have trouble letting go of control and allowing
their users the freedom to do or say whatever they wish. I’ve worked with secondary
and higher education organizations for decades and found them to be among the
most conservative organizations. As a result, their online communities and Web
sites have not attracted as much content or use as commercial organizations.
Your organization has to decide if it is willing to let customers post anything
they want. You have to be prepared and already have had discussions on what
you will do if a user goes against your product, your people, or your philosophy.
For example:
• Let your attorneys know it’s okay if your customers want to create their
own ads about your product. If it’s good, it might spread virally and be
viewed hundreds of thousands of times. If it’s a knock on your company
and they squash it, the blogging community will make it a big enough
issue that traditional media outlets will cover it.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
47
• Give your customers an opportunity to use your logo in new and
different ways. If they are taking their own personal time to interact and
engage with your marketing material, you gotta love it!
• Give your community of users the tools and the ability to police content
and information posted by others. It seems to be working well for other
Web sites.
If you are really interested in playing in this arena, you will have to accept the
fact that you can no longer control your brand today. Your customers who are
blogging and participating in reviewing and rating systems have control of your
brand. Your goal and strategy should be to give your customers the opportunities
and tools they want to interact with your brand. When you do, you create a
snowball or ripple effect that will increase positive comments and content by
your customers.
Types of User-Generated Content
Here are three common types of user-generated content:
1.User-created videos
2.User reviews and rating
3.Photos
A popular form of user-generated content is asking your customers, supporters,
or fans to create a video that may be aired through various media. Former Vice
President Al Gore decided that governments were moving too slowly to address
the issues caused by global warming and is sponsoring a competition to create
a series of television and Internet ads to raise awareness on the issue of climate
change. The videos will be judged by an all-star cast of celebrities. This promotion
is expected to have a rather long shelf life as Mr. Gore is looking to keep it within
the public’s attention with free and paid advertising.
Another way you can add user-generated content to your Web site is to simply
ask your customers/users for their opinions and/or preferences. Amazon helped
pioneer user-evaluation software that enabled the average “Joe” to review a book,
music, and, later, other products and services. It’s really amazing to see how
well-thought-out and thorough some of the reviews are. I find myself quickly
surveying comments now before I purchase a product.
48
Netflix simplified this technique. When I go in to order a movie, I’m asked to
rate from one to five stars the previous movie I watched. As a bonus, the more
I rate movies, the more Netflix knows what I like. After a while, I’m presented
with a number of movies that match my taste but that I probably would never
have watched.
As you might expect, getting users to provide content doesn’t happen without
providing the right tools and strategies.
To help you get started, here are five ways you can encourage user-generated
content:
1. Offer them a reason to participate. In the promotion former Vice
President Al Gore is sponsoring, the winner will receive a Toyota
Highlander hybrid SUV. In other cases, you might offer a cash prize,
discounts, recognition, or free dinner.
2. Frequently communicate news and information to all participants to
keep their interest and excitement level high.
3. Immediately begin showing some of the entries to increase excitement of
others and spur on their creativity.
4. Provide immediate recognition of those who participate by including
them in news updates, judging, etc. Provide them a prepared press
release they could send to their local media.
5. Consider giving the public an opportunity to vote for their favorite
submissions. This encourages individuals to share their video with their
friends, which will expand awareness and bring in more submissions.
PETCO and User-Generated Content
It wasn’t that long ago that the only way a consumer could really dig into the
quality of a product was through commercial organizations like Consumer
Reports, syndicated reviewers, or critics. The problem with the way this worked
is you never could find a review at the time you were ready to buy a product.
In a world where you have a choice of 25,000 different types of staplers, consumers
are looking for advice, and they need it at the moment of purchase. Consumers
find themselves in a paradox of choice and, as a result, at times end up making
no decision for fear of making the wrong decision. Customer-recommendation
tools help take away that fear.
49
PETCO is an 850-store retail chain that provides pet supplies. In order to
increase online recommendations, the store created a contest that provided a
$100 gift certificate each week for eight weeks to the winning recommendation.
Web sites are finding that you need to “prime the pump” to get reviews started.
In PETCO’s situation, as reviews increased, consumers continued to participate,
and the number grew exponentially. This simple focus took their online reviews
up from 30 per day to 100 per day. All products and services were seeing an
increase in rating. Greenies, which are a 99-cent dog treat, soon reached over 700
reviews. How good can that be?
Sam Decker, Vice President of Marketing of Baazarvoice, suggests, “Usergenerated content is impactful for businesses now more than ever. Consumers
are paralyzed by choice, don’t trust marketing, and are learning how to use online
tools to turn to others for advice.” Companies that give customers an opportunity
to reach authentic opinions of others will help speed up the customer decision
process. According to Decker, Burpees, another client, experienced 43 percent
higher click-throughs when they included customer reviews with the product
information.
Yahoo!! Answers
Both Yahoo!! and Google have “Answer” products where you type in a question
and, instead of a computer providing you best-choice links to your answer, a
human actually interfaces with the question, or a question similar to it, and you
are given a response. Both have different ways to get to the same answer. Google
has 500 experts who answer the questions and you have to be willing to pay
them for providing the response, while Yahoo!! uses the “wisdom of the crowds”
and lets its millions of users work provide the right response. Yahoo!! builds
interest and participation by giving users the ability to vote on the quality of the
answers, as well as providing participants points for their answers.
Participation is voluntary, but Yahoo!!, much like Wikipedia, is building a
community where people share knowledge freely, simply motivated by generosity
and a common feeling of benevolence. On the flip side, however, as “experts”
answer more questions, they build up a profile and gain a reputation and status
for their contributions. To launch the Web site, Yahoo!! challenged some of the
world’s leading minds, like Stephen Hawkings and others, to solve some of the
world’s most pressing problems. By bringing in big-name “brains,” they wanted
to build a buzz and brand impression that their tool could help change the
world.
50
Later, Yahoo!! teamed up with GMC to launch an original video series built
around Yahoo!! Answers. A roving reporter will ask ordinary Americans
and experts to answer questions posed by the Yahoo!! community, while also
conducting fun and humorous experiments. GMC gains exposure because their
GMC Sierra will be the vehicle that will get the show’s host, Keith Van Straaten
(from Comedy Central’s Beat the Geeks) around Los Angeles.
This is one user-generated content concept that is building content on an hourly
basis. Yahoo!! claims that as of mid-2007, the site has welcomed over 90 million
unique visitors and has generated 250 million answers worldwide. That’s a pretty
smart Web site.
So how do you use this within your shop? Consider putting a series of questions
centered on your products and services on your Web site. It will pique your
audience’s interest, and you can show your expertise by providing the answers.
User Generated Content is not always complimentary
With video and photo capabilities and easy-to-use online video-editing tools,
consumers are becoming very creative on how to use Social Media. Many are
beginning to strike back at poor customer service or issues they have with
companies by documenting them and putting them on YouTube and other
video-sharing sites.
A passenger on Delta Flight 6499, JFK to DFW on June 25, 2007, did just that
as a routine delay turned into being stuck on a plane for seven hours while the
airlines worked through issues. including mechanical delays, reassigning pilots,
and traffic backed up. The passenger immediately began creating a video to
document the announcements, the crying babies, and the physical discomfort of
the passengers. The passenger posted it to YouTube, which got cycled into Digg
as well as other Social Media. The creative video had over 140,000 views and
over 600 comments in only 40 days.
The bottom line? Giving your customers the ability to interact with your product
and your brand is not only fun, but it’s a powerful customer engagement tool.
Don’t ignore it.
51
Exercise
There sure is a lot of content being put on the Web on a daily basis. How are you
going to get in on this strategy?
Of the three common UGC types—video, reviews/ratings, collaboration and
photos—
think about which one would be more relevant for your firm to adopt.
• People love to share their opinions and expertise. What can you do
to take advantage of this human behavior? How can your customers’
expertise help your customer service department?
User-generated content continues to grow with no cost or effort on your part.
A virtual community or online community is a group of
people that primarily or initially communicates or interacts
via the Internet. The dawn of the “information age” found
groups communicating electronically, rather than face to
face. A “Computer-mediated community” (CMC) uses
social software to regulate the activities of participants.
Wikipedia
5. Online Community
S
ocial networking online communities went stratospheric since 2003. Early
social networking communities like GeoCities barely climbed past 4.2
million users when Yahoo! acquired it in 1999 for over 3 billion dollars! Today,
online communities are growing at warp speed. It took MySpace less than three
years to reach an astounding 100 million registered users, and at the time I’m
writing this, is approaching 180 million users.
Facebook reinvented themselves by moving from being focused only on the
college market to anyone! The strategy is providing record growth for them at
this time reaching 30 million members.
It’s clear this trend is growing worldwide. As your consumers become savvy
at being part of an online community, experts predict they will begin joining
additional communities that match their interests. Why not yours?
Online Community
A typical online community needs services and tools that engage, involve,
and connect members. You don’t have to invest a fortune to create an online
community for your organization. Depending on what you want, you can pay a
couple hundred thousand dollars or virtually nothing for your community.
Today, literally anyone can sign up and create their own social networking
community for a few hundred dollars using open source software. Low cost
online community and Social Media tools would include:
1. Private and public profile pages
52
Online Community
53
2. Directory search
3. Groups
4. Third-party software
5. Blogs, bulletin boards
6. Podcasts
7. Photo uploads
8. RSS feeds
9. Wikis
10. Quizzes/Polls
Let’s look in more details at each of these.
1. Private and public profile pages
The private profile page can be viewed only by the owner of the profile page.
This page gives the user the ability to update and change information about
themselves. In closed directories, they include the functionality of hiding specific
fields from the public. The profile page may display only fields of information
that are generic, such as the mission and goals of your community.
2. Directory search
Online communities provide simple and advanced search capabilities. In most
cases, you can search on a word like “photography,” “Akron,” or “engineering,”
and view all records with the same information. Advanced search will enable
you to search for specific people. For example, you could search on the above
criteria and find only people who live in Akron, who love photography, and
enjoy reading fiction.
3. Groups
Groups are very popular ways to create sub-communities within your online
communities. These tools will allow a member to create a group on the fly and
invite others to join the group. A Brand Ambassador, for example, could develop
a group in their region or around specific applications/uses of products and
services.
54
4. Third-party software
As you develop your online community goal, keep in mind there are many Web
sites you can “hook” into that will increase participation and limit your need to
invest in technology. For example, you could use Meetup.com to bring together
local meetings of your product fans and Brand Ambassadors. Facebook and
MySpace have opened up their API (Application Programming Interface) that
will enable you to access their data about your community members to provide
a more enriching experience.
5. Blogs, bulletin boards
Blogs are one of the most important and easiest to implement Social Media
tools.
There are two types of blogs offered within online communities: blogs an
administrator can update at anytime, and individual blogs that each member can
update. Blogs increase participation and registrations at online communities.
Bulletin boards are a great way to get input from customers to improve your
products, develop new products, or to provide them a way to help each other
use and/or explore new uses for your products. Bulletin boards can reduce calls
coming into your call center.
6. Podcasts
I am continually amazed at the different businesses that are adopting podcasting
as a differentiation tool. Recently, I ran across an auto body shop that had
developed a series of podcasts that explained the processes they go through to
fix a car. The owner described the tools, the techniques, and, more importantly,
used the podcasting episodes to display his passion to do the job right for each
customer. Once completed, he can email these to insurance companies and
former customers to increase word-of-mouth marketing. Podcasting will become
as important to have as a Yellow Page ad for small business, because a series of
podcasts that are linked to others will also help increase the business ranking in
search engines.
7. Photo uploads
We all love to take and share photographs. If you want to have a vibrant, active
online community, you should give your users the option of updating their own
photographs whenever they want. You have two choices: use your own photo
Online Community
55
upload program or link to Web sites like Flickr and Photobucket. I’ve seen
organizations hold contests where customers submit their photo with the firm’s
product taken anywhere in the world to photos of customers getting together.
8. RSS Feeds
Successful online communities have content that changes constantly. However, few
individuals who run online communities have the time to update content. That’s
where RSS feeds come into the picture. RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication)
allow you to grab news stories from other Web sites and automatically update
it on your site. You can grab industry news from any Web site, so your users see
new information each time they visit your Web site.
9. Wiki
Your online community has to have a hot button for everyone. Think of a wiki
like a blank piece of paper that anyone in your group can add information
to at any time. Wikipedia.org is an example of a wiki that provides powerful
information by millions of people. Your community can gain the “wisdom of
crowds” and end up with valuable content people will visit regularly.
10. Quizzes/Polls
Quizzes and polls are important ways to engage your members. A simple quiz
can bring a user back over a period of days to see how their opinion compares
with others. Polls can give your members an understanding where everyone on
the whole feels about a specific policy or issue.
Fee or Free
What’s your business model? Is your online community going to be ad supported,
supported by another business unit, or charge a membership fee? As you begin to
define what your strategy is, the number one decision you’ll have to make is to
determine how it will sustain itself.
The vast majority of social networking sites are free, designed to increase
participation so they can be advertising supported. However, I envision a growing
number of social networking sites that will fulfill unique small niches that users
will be willing to pay a yearly fee, not much different than they would pay for a
subscription fee to a magazine in the future.
56
Open and Closed Online Communities
Nearly all popular online communities today are open registration, which means
anyone can register and become a part of the community. There are no restrictions
or qualifications, and depending on the rules of the online community, once you
are in, you are in!
If you are developing an online community for your firm or product, you will
probably want to have an open online community. This will enable you to
connect with as many customers as possible through your online community.
Keep in mind, open communities will give anyone an opportunity to join your
online community, even your competitors! As a community owner, you have the
right to set rules and regulations within your community. Remember, when you
sign up for software, you have to agree to the terms of the software provider. You
can create your own user agreement. If you are not sure what you want in your
user agreement, simply sign up for a couple online communities and check out
their user agreements.
Closed registration sites, on the other hand, are selective and only allow invited
or qualified individuals into the online community. Google initially introduced
Orkut as an invitation-only online community. The only qualification was you
had to be invited to join the community. If you wanted in bad enough, you just
needed to find someone and bug them if necessary to invite you to join.
Closed communities will not allow a user access to your online community
until they have been qualified. Some call this process authentication. There are a
couple of ways this can be done.
• Simple password
• Individual information
Simple password
If your group or organization wants an online community but wants to keep
it “kind of exclusive,” your group can require a simple common password. For
example, a church, club, or organization may not want to go to the expense and
time of providing a password-protected online community, but they still want
to limit who can enter their community. By requiring a common password,
they eliminate someone from happening onto their Web site and joining. The
password, known only to the members of that group, will prevent them from
accessing the site and accessing the individual members.
Online Community
57
Individual information
Let’s assume you are a corporation and you have 500 high-end users of your
product that you want to give access to your community. In a closed community,
you would preload their data. When they register at your site, they would be
required to identify key information about themselves. If they do that successfully,
they are automatically “authenticated” and gain access to your community. If, for
some reason, they are not automatically authenticated, an email with their basic
information will be forwarded to someone on your staff to compare with existing
information. If the person checks out, they can be manually authenticated and
allowed to participate in your online community. For most systems, the person
will then receive an email that indicates they are officially part of the online
community and are invited back.
Community rules and privacy policies
When your users sign up within your online community, you’ll have an opportunity
to present to them the rules and regulations of your community. Because you
own the community, you can be lord and master of the community. Members
have to abide by your rules or risk being kicked out. Most focus their rules on
encouraging civil and courteous behavior. To get examples of community rules,
join a few Web sites and take the best ideas and add in your own objectives.
Users also want to know what your privacy policy is. Your privacy policy will
share with users how you will protect their privacy, and information and spell
out completely what your policy is. For the most part, users do not want to see
you sharing their individual information but are willing to let you share your
aggregated information. For example, they could share the fact that 32 percent
of their users are 20 to 39 years old. They could not share that you were 28 years
old.
You need to keep your community members in the know.
As they continue to participate in your online community, they will begin to
assert a sense of ownership. If you make significant changes without informing
them in advance, be ready for criticism. JPG, an online photo-sharing Web site
that relies on members’ votes to determine which submitted photographs will be
printed in their magazine, raised the ire of their members when the new owners
literally wiped away any history of the founders. The members, whose loyalty
was built around the founders, began a campaign to have their information and
58
editions of the magazine they produced put back online. As the crisis mounted,
the new firm was facing alienating members, reducing participation, and the sale
of their magazine.
Using online community to expand client base
Mini Cooper has a loyal, if not fanatical client base, that share a passion for their
cars. Mini was convinced by DSSP that that their current advertising firm was
not taking advantage of their 150,000 user base to increase the customer base.
DSSP felt the car company could gain more market share, not by advertising
to the general public, but by engaging and involving their current customers
through a series of online and offline events and activities.
Mini Cooper eventually agreed and awarded their advertising contract to DSSP.
DSSP subsequently created a series of quirky yet successful marketing and
promotion campaigns designed to amplify word-of-mouth marketing and build
buzz and engagement among their client base.
• One of the key marketing campaigns involved sending a “Covert Kit”
to all 150,000 members. The kit included a tantalizing book about the
“world of small” and a secret compartment in the book that included
special glasses that allowed them to see different messages to reinforce
the campaign. The campaign involved landing pages with information
they had to search for a rabbit hole to get to the next bit of information.
• Another program they offered to their community was a unique
opt-in program that invited owners to participate in a Web-based
questionnaire that asked for things like birth date to the quirky (the
car’s nickname). Participants were mailed a key fob that used active
RFID to communicate with select billboards along the highway, or
“Motorboards,” at distances of up to 500 feet. When a Mini owner with
such a key fob comes within range of a Motorboard, the LED readout
displays a customized, often humorous message that might relate to the
owner’s profession, name, or roof design. Examples: “Nice roof graphic,
Rocket!” to an owner with a car nicknamed Rocket, or “Moving at the
speed of justice!” to a lawyer.
• Mini also offered members a chance to join other Mini owners in a
“Mini takes the States” cross-country tour. Participants were given a
“Quarantine Kit” prior to leaving that included a sign that indicated
the person (in the office/cubicle) was under quarantine for the next two
weeks.
Online Community
59
Ed Cotton of DSSP suggests, “You’ve got to find out what your community
is interested in to be able to engage them. For us, we had to find out if they
were interested in high-performance driving lessons, go-carting, or trips to the
German manufacturing plant. We found Mini owners enjoyed meeting other
owners, because they were people like themselves. All of our campaigns were
built around engaging and connecting them.”
By recognizing this, his firm was able to deliver unique and powerful media
coverage that got the message out. When you stop to think about the campaigns,
all of them not only engaged their customers, but each had a uniqueness that
stirred up conversation at multiple stops and locations around the country:
• Hundreds of Minis driving across the country made a powerful media
presence in every small town they stopped in. Conversations erupted
and were spread to blogs and local media outlets.
• The personalized billboards not only made the members feel special,
but they caught the curiosity and interests of other motorists who asked
friends if they knew about the personalized signs.
• The quirky “Quarantine Kit” sign reminded co-workers that Mini
owners have fun!
DSSP won this account because they knew word-of-mouth for Mini was a
valuable marketing platform to increase the visibility of the car and to move more
vehicles. By continuing to engage their customers’ passion for their product, by
reminding them that they made a good decision in buying the Mini Cooper, the
company is building talking points whose enthusiasm will drive new customers
to the dealers around the country.
A Tire Company Online Community?
I was talking to a friend the other day about his desire to create an online
community. He was hot on social media and wanted to get in on the game. He
was struggling with what kind of online community he should create. He owns
a game company and has an enormous amount of content that he gets from the
gaming companies about upcoming releases. I suggested that he offer a members
only online community where he offers the inside information he is getting.
Now he’s trying to decide if he should charge or make it free!
Our discussion got me thinking about the many clients I’ve spoken with who
had similar thoughts.
60
• Who would want to come to an online community for a cleaning
company?
• Who would want to come to an online community for a manufacturing
company?
• Who would want to come to an online community for a service
company?
So what do I tell them?
My suggestion is to think out of the box. Think about what your organization
can do to make the world, your community or neighborhood a better place.
What are the burning issues that people who use your product are facing? What
can you do to give your clients and others a voice in solving those issues?
The number one mistake organizations make when they create online communities
is they build them around “What’s in it for them” NOT ——-What’s in it for
the intended user!
So imagine you are the consultant to a tire company. What kind of online
community would you suggest they adopt? A community of people who are
fanatical about cars, love rubber, or want to know more about where rubber
comes from?
The Yokohama tire company took a different tack
They decided to create an online community that focused on bringing together
people who want to make a difference in our world. Here’s what they tell their
users…
Welcome to the Yokohama-EcoTreadsetters community — a forum for discussing all
things environmental. Please take a look around. Our site includes global “green”
news, exclusive interviews and performances by musicians, blogs, forums, eco tips for
your car, community and life and even calculators to measure your personal carbon
footprint.
The company is using the online community as a way to highlight their Grand
Design 100 plan which highlights their commitment to reduce the environmental
impact made by their products. It’s a fantastic way for the company to show the
company cares, but builds friends at the same time.
Online Community
61
Their www.ecotreadsetters.com site offers:
• Eco Tips
• Green tips for your car, community, recycling
• Green offsets for your carbon prints
• Tips on tire pressure, alignment, rotation and tread
Members can create profile pages, join discussions, post photographs and pick
up news and information related to “thinking green”.
I’m certain they are not expecting to become the next MySpace, but they are
showing forethought in using online community tools to give a voice to their
users.
Could they be doing more?
1. Sure, they should back a site like this by giving teachers “green”
curriculum
2. They should encourage more volunteer opportunities within local
communities
3. They should be highlighting members who are making a difference
4. They should be using a LOT more video to engage youth
5. They should be giving away green Ring tones!
Yah, there’s a lot more they could be doing, but they took the first step. What
about you? You and your organization spend more money on designing, printing
and mailing a brochure. In today’s net centered world, you should be diverting
those funds in social media projects like this.
Starbucks could have a multibillion dollar online
community!
About 6 years ago I sent an overnight letter to Starbucks headquarters suggesting
they consider offering their customers a private, password protected online
community to continue to build their brand, engage customers and gather more
data about their customers.
62
At the time my firm provided online communities to groups and organizations
in the higher education space and we were looking for a way to leverage our
product in the commercial market. The company executive I sent my letter to
was preoccupied with other issues at the time and my subsequent follow up
phone call was met with a response, well - similar to what you’ve heard from time
to time in your career – don’t call us, we’ll call you!
Fast forward to 2008 and we see Starbucks coming out with what they call their
new customer online community called Mystarbucksidea.com. The community
offers customers an opportunity to help direct where the company is going and
is modeled after a number of successful examples including Dell’s Community
Forum and Salesforce’s Ideastorm.
While I applaud Starbucks for adopting the beginnings of an Internet strategy,
they are still missing the boat. (A 15 BILLION dollar boat!) Their so called
online community does offer a two way conversation with their customer but it
does not take the next step to be a community in the social/business networking
sense.
Mystarbucksidea.com is really a tool to help their company develop a better product
and customer experience. And it has. The “discussion board” on steroids enabled
10,000 Starbucks fans to suggest they do something to plug the hole in lids to
prevent their coffee from spilling. Armed with data like this, Howard Schultz
and his team are able to go to their vendors and partners and hand the problem
to them to solve! So is this online community? Not the way I look at it. At the
end of the day this is an online suggestion box that is interactive!
So back to the letter…..
The letter I sent to Starbucks suggested they use our online community building
tool to create give their customers the ability to connect with each other online
and then to move those connections to the Starbucks of their choice. (Where
they consume more Starbucks products)
In my mind there were three types of customers:
1. Business and SOHO customers
2. Stay at home parents
3. Teens.
Many business and SOHO customers look at Starbucks as another conference
room and a place to meet people and do business.
Online Community
63
• So I thought, why not create a virtual business networking opportunity
where individuals who frequent that Starbucks find others to network
and do business with.
• Why not create a virtual Starbucks where stay at home moms and
dads could connect based on interest, hobby or kids and move that
burgeoning friendship to meeting where - at the local Starbucks.
• And of course why not create an environment where you can let kids
meet online and then hang out at Starbucks later. (Ok, maybe that
wasn’t such a good idea!)
Of course I wanted them to use our online community building tool to enable
customers to post photos, share comments, build friend lists and engage in
discussion boards. The idea was built on the white label online community
concept we started in 1995 which was inspired by the then giant online
communities AOL, GeoCities and Classmates.
The problem most online communities have is gaining the attention of the
public.
At the time, I reasoned that Starbucks had a built in audience they could promote
the online community to. I tried to find some relevant data on how many
customers Starbucks serves in a day and only found a simple reply on Wikipedia
that suggested they average 450 customer a day. Based on 15,000 stores (again a
best guess) that means they serve 6,000,000 customers in a day. All they had to
do is put the community link on every cup of coffee and they would have had a
teeming community by now.
The point I’m driving at is this.
If Starbucks had moved in this direction in the early part of this decade, or at
least by 2004, they could have a thriving online community that rivals Facebook
and MySpace - both worth billions of dollars. (It’s commonly quoted that
Facebook has a 15 billion dollar valuation based on Microsofts $254 million
dollar investment for 1. 6 percent of the company)
Had Starbucks moved in this direction they could have had a new business
division whose worth rivaled their parent company that had 15,000 stores and
170,000 employees. (Facebook has 300-400 employees and one location)
If you are looking for a way to engage your customers in developing new products
64
and services Dell, Salesforce and Starbucks customer feedback communities are
great examples to copy.
However, if you are an organization that serves hundreds, thousands or millions
of people per day, it might make sense to build a white label online community
to connect, engage and learn more about your customer. You may, like Starbucks
have a once in a lifetime opportunity to build your own media property, like
Facebook that could be worth 15 billion dollars some day!
Examine your opportunities to create a whole new media channel with your
customer base!
The American image around the world has just about reached the lowest point
we can get. The war in Iraq and now the incredible mismanagement of Wall
Street, banks and ethic issues created by businesses like Enron has tarnished our
reputation, respectability and trust.
In the midst of the mind numbing deficit numbers (now 11+ trillion debt) that
we are being forced to absorb I was thrilled to run across a story on the Daily
Camera, a newspaper in Boulder, Colorado. Apparently 10 years ago, residents
of DUSHANBE, Tajikistan, a sister city of Boulder, gave the city the Dushanbe
Teahouse as a gift from their city. (I’m assuming their town is known for tea!)
After a decade of discussion and fundraising the city of Boulder reciprocated
with funding ($1,000,000) to develop a Cyber café in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
The Café will feature food from both countries, books and information. If they
do it right, it will become a powerful International relations tool. Kudo’s to the
City of Boulder , it’s Mayor Shaun McGrath and it’s people for showing us how
to use the Internet to bring people of different countries and cultures together!
Online Communities for Sister Cities
In the spring of 2004 soon after the start of the Iraq war, I floated an idea to an
area congressmen about creating an online community to bring American and
Iraqi citizens together online.
The goal of this program was to bring common citizens from the two countries
at war to help each other, give them a chance to understand how the war is
affecting each other and in the process give them collective leverage to encourage
their countries to find rapid solutions to end the war.
Online Community
65
Here is an excerpt of what I wrote:
“The program involves using the Internet to enable families in the US to
adopt families in Iraq and Afghanistan. They will be given the opportunity
to send letters, food, supplies and money to their adopted families. It gives the
American families an opportunity to help bring peace, a reconstruction of the
image Iraq’s have of the US and do more to rebuild the country.
In this program, US families will be able to sign up online and adopt an
Iraq family. This program will encourage - people to people - diplomacy and
will enable American citizens to report locally of the events and activities
within their adopted family members communities. These engaged citizens
will help drive our foreign policy and prevent a situations we are in today in
Iraq and Afghanistan.”‘
Central to the program was the introduction of an online community where
individuals could be matched.
Plumbers, bakers, dentist, lawyers, car mechanics, construction workers, police
officers and others in Iraq could be partnered with their counterparts in America.
The idea was to encourage Americans to sponsor a family and send via a special
program with Fedex or the U.S Postal Systems, basic tools and necessities like
toothpaste and or food to their adopted persons and family.
At the time we approached the United States Council of Mayors to gain their
participation. Their job would be to motivate and communicate to their
community members the benefits of participating in the “Adopt a War Effected
Person or Family”. We assumed we’d need help from the Peace Corp aided by the
United Nations, to coordinate the efforts of educating the Iraqi citizens how to
use the computers and Internet based software.
Nearly every group, organization, club or entity could benefit from having an
online community.
66
Exercise
Online communities are hot and sophisticated online communities available
for free.
• Determine what you want to achieve with your online community.
• Build in a minimum of three major benefits and three minor benefits
they will take away with them.
• Now select the technology you want to use. Check out ning.com for
their free model.
• Pick up additional information at www.internetdough.net and
download the following white papers:
• The 6 “P”s of Building Your Online Community
• Add L.U.C.K. to Your Online Community
We believe the “human media”
is the new network!
Ryan Berger, Euro, RSCG
6. Citizen Marketers
W
ouldn’t it be great if you had passionate customers who, on their own
initiative, went out of their way to market your organization’s products
and services to friends, family, and colleagues? Not only would this save you
marketing dollars and increase sales, but it would increase the buzz happening
around your products and services.
Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba’s book, Citizen Marketers, provides a blueprint
for any company that is interested in learning how to tap into the power and
potential of user-generated marketing. They have identified four types of Citizen
Marketers: Filters, Fanatics, Facilitators, and Firecrackers. Knowing the category
your “Citizen Marketers” are in will be important in how you communicate,
inform, and reward them.
Their book identifies a Citizen Marketer that falls in the Fanatic category. An
“anonymous blogger” started a blog about McDonald’s because of his “love/hate”
for the fast-food giant. He likes it so much, he hoped through his blog he could
help keep the company true to its identity and tradition. His blog McChronicles.
com frequently criticizes McDonald’s on their marketing programs and products.
Another example of a Fanatic is a young lady who loved Target so much that she
started blogging about it. The blog picked up an audience of others who shared
her passion and love of Target. It didn’t take long for the company to begin to
notice the power she had as her readership continued to grow.
User-driven marketing comes in many forms, including:
• Small talk about the organization.
67
68
• Endorsements/Testimonials.
• Product/Service reviews.
• Examples of how to use the product.
Your users can participate in the marketing of your product through:
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Podcast interviews
• Video
• Social bookmarking
• Cell phones
Tomi T. Ahonen and Alan Moore wrote a book, Communities Dominate Brands,
that refers to this user-generated marketing as “engagement marketing.” Instead
of consumers being passive receivers of messages, engagement marketers stand
on the belief that consumers should be actively involved in the production and
creation of marketing programs. In their opinion, gone are the days when an
organization controlled their brand. Companies need to embrace their customers
and give them the tools that will help drive sales and customer acquisition.
Successful organizations in the future will be engaging their customers and
making them a part of the production, customer service, and sales process. By
adopting user-generated marketing (UGM), your organization will be opening
a new global, viral marketing channel that will augment what you are doing
today and, as your organization gains momentum and experience, you may find
yourself diverting marketing dollars from traditional sources and applying them
into your Social Media tools and processes.
Exercise
Think how much money you are currently spending on marketing. I compare
marketing to “crack.” The minute you stop, you go into withdrawal, the cash
register stops ringing, and you are forced to continue your habit of handing
checks to your TV, radio, newspaper, direct mail advertising sales people. So how
Citizen Marketers
69
are you going to break the mold?
• Takes some time to look through your customer list to find out which of
your customers fall in this category. Think about ways you can recognize
them for their participation without formalizing a relationship with
them.
• Is there a way to “assist” your Citizen Marketers to spread the word
without interfering with the message? What online Social Media tools
could you provide to make it easier for them?
Break the habit and engage your Citizen Marketers!
We have a chance to reinvent a whole set
of human relationships. How we talk to one
another, how we elect public officials, how we
engage with businesses and how we educate.
David Weinberger, Author, Small Pieces Loosely Joined
7. Social Media
What’s the buzz about Social Media?
Since the day of Johann Gutenberg, we’ve developed a series of communication
tools to share and disseminate news and information. Newspapers, magazines,
TV, radio, direct mail, and other techniques were developed and perfected.
All of these communication and marketing tools pushed information out to
consumers. In this model, the media owners decided what to push and what
to cover, and as they grew their distribution and subscription base, they were
rewarded by advertisers who wanted to reach their subscribers.
The Internet changed that.
The introduction of new technology turned the tables on the older methods of
communication and put the power of communication in the hands of the people
who were previously consuming the “packaged” news and information.
Social Media is the term the industry has applied to all Internet products, tools,
and/or services that enable people to participate in the content-creation process
so their input becomes something that others can consume and participate with.
The term suggests that people are able to individually and collaboratively interact
with or react to information presented to them. It has been suggested that Social
Media not only empowers consumers but gives them more control and input.
The term is liberally applied to Internet tools and services like:
• Blogs
• Podcasting
70
Online Community
71
• Wikis
• Tags
• Instant messaging
• Photo sharing
• Bulletin boards
• Online community
The chart below helps you see how each of these tools, while capable of standing
on their own, becomes even more powerful when you develop a strategy to
integrate them.
Social Media
Online
Community
Blogs
Social Media
Wiki
RSS
Video
Mobile
Recommendations
Social Media is all about sharing
Early Web sites accepted information but did not let people share information. Case in point is Kodak’s photo site called Kodak Gallery. It allowed you to
upload your photos but you couldn’t share them with others. The site did okay,
but then one day a Web site opened called Flickr.
Flickr was a Web site that allowed you to not only post your photographs but
you were able to “tag” your photos with where they were taken, who was in the
photo, what equipment you used, and practically anything else you wanted to
add in order for others to find them. With Fickr, people could share photos and
72
make comments on them. Here’s how I might have used Flickr: I’m interested
in photographing barns around the state of Ohio. I’m concerned that barns are
rapidly disappearing due to old age and urban sprawl. Photo-sharing sites like
Flickr will enable me to post my barn photographs and tag them so others can
find them. When they do, people with similar interests in their state can share
their barn photographs.
Suddenly out the woodwork, twenty people are now communicating and sharing
not only their barn photographs but talking about their family and personal
lives. Social Media is called that because it suddenly allows anyone, anywhere to
come together based on an interest, hobby, organization, or business.
Social Media engages people and builds relationships.
Purchasing decisions
Here’s another way to look at Social Media: In the past, you had to rely on
publications like Consumers’ Reports or a syndicated columnist to test and evaluate
products and services. Today, Social Media tools allow any consumer to share
their opinion and/or experience about a product or service. Many online stores
are putting this information at the point of purchase. If not, savvy Internet users
know they can do a quick search to see what others think of the hotel, cruise,
car, or air conditioner they are interested in buying. Social Media represents a
significant shift in how consumers research and buy their products and services,
because it gives them access to others who may have more experience or have
used the product or service.
Today, a negative comment about your product or service on a blogger’s site can
be picked up by other bloggers, which is then picked up by bloggers with even
larger reader bases, which is eventually picked up by a writer for the New York
Times who was subscribed to the blog. The writer decides it’s an interesting story
and writes an article that is then picked up by a national TV news outlet.
Social Media can benefit your organization and, in different situations, it can
have a devastating effect. Regardless, you should be creating a strategy that will
enable you to use Social Media to engage and involve your Brand Ambassadors,
Citizen Marketers, and others in the general public.
If your company is interested in maintaining an edge in your market, you
should begin to learn more about Social Media and include it in your overall
comprehensive Internet strategy. Your company has a unique opportunity to
Online Community
73
increase your reach, brand loyalty, and provide 24/7 communication with all
constituents, employees, customers, partners, and investors. By reaching out
with Social Media, people become more emotionally invested and loyal. You
normally can’t buy that!
Use Social Media to protect your turf!
One thing I wanted to impress upon you at this point is that your customers and
the organizations they are engaging with online have been using Social Media
since 2003. The time to get started to develop a companywide Internet strategy
is now! As we mentioned in Chapter 8 of Internet Dough, failure to develop an
Internet strategy will result in your company losing market share, reducing your
profitability and customer base.
To illustrate this risk, consider the story about WKSU-FM.
The Akron Beacon Journal, now a part of the Black Press newspaper chain, ran a
great article about WKSU-FM, a radio station I worked for when I was in college,
oh, so many years ago. Paula Schleis, the reporter, zeroed-in on how Al Bartholet,
WKSU Executive Director used Internet technology, online community, and
archived content to create a profitable new product.
Bartholet had three issues he knew he had to deal with. First, fewer young
people were listening to classical music and, as a result, it was increasingly
difficult to grow their listenership. Second, government support for public radio
is continuing to decline, and finally, maybe the worst of all, the behavior of his
listeners was changing rapidly. They were on the Internet participating in online
communities and using social media.
A little brainstorming produces results!
Al had a very successful program produced by Jim Blum that aired on Friday
nights. Every program was recorded and over a couple years, the station had
develop a huge number of hours “in the can.” As their team brainstormed about
how they could embrace the Internet instead of worry about it, the idea floated
up that they create an Internet radio station built around folk music.
They eventually decided to use blogs, photo albums, RSS feeds, and create an
online community built around people who dig folk music. For public radio,
this idea was not evolutionary, it was revolutionary!
74
There was no path to follow or case studies to copy. The team followed their gut
and convinced their board this was the right step to take. Bartholet put a team
together to develop the Web site, analyze the audience and begin to offer the
content that was sitting on the shelf to listeners at no cost on the Internet. The
net effect (pun intended)? In a recent online fundraising effort of only Folk Alley
listeners, the station raised $225,000! Folk Alley and Jim Blum are now famous
around the world.
There are two things I’d like you to take away from the
WKSU story
First, a number of radio stations or music stores lost mindshare of 83,000
customers while Al and his Folk Alley gained 83,000 listeners. Al understands
the Internet is all about the first mover advantage. Instead of sitting back and
waiting for someone else to do it, he put his name and reputation on the line and
created an entirely new media channel for his organization. Today, at a flick of
keyboard, his team can communicate with 83,000 people around the world. He
can promote members of his audience, build community, and sell merchandise
as well as fundraise. His station is a new power house in breaking folk music,
showcasing performers, and spreading the name of Kent State University
globally. The University brand benefits, the staff love their new responsibilities,
and WKSU is recognized as a leader among the thousands of NPR stations
nationwide.
What are you doing to prevent the Internet-savvy Al’s of the world from “kicking
your virtual butt” and stealing your customers?
The second thing I’d like you to take away from this
None of this would have happened if WKSU did not have content sitting on the
shelf doing nothing. I’d like you to think about what kind of content you have
that could be repurposed on the Web and delivered in a new format to a new
audience. The Web opens opportunities for you to take what others thought was
worthless and turn it into gold. Al and WKSU did just that. You could too!
Throughout this book we’ll share detailed information on each of these areas and
give you practical examples and case studies to help you identify what solutions
you want to implement.
Online Community
75
Exercise
Which Social Media tools should you start with? Good question! My suggestion
is you find at least three Social Media strategies to get started with.
• Put some thought into who you are, what you represent, and what
your product does for your customers. Think about which of these
technologies will help you integrate some of the other strategies we’ve
been talking about (Fun, Citizen Marketer, etc.).
• Most of the technologies are free so you don’t have to have 18 meetings
with 12 people and IT to implement them. Go out, grab the software,
and start. I don’t care if you create a channel on YouTube to show your
managers explaining about the care and quality that goes into your
products, or a series of Podcast interviews with customers on how they
are using your products and/or services. Like Nike says, just do it! Get
out there and get started.
Social Media
Companies, non-profits, and educational organizations all will benefit from
learning how to use Social Media to generate new leads, increase revenue, and
increase loyalty. Knowing that, this book is all about helping you gain a bigpicture understanding of Internet tools and strategies.
Buzz marketing captures the attention of
consumers and the media to the point where
talking about your brand or company becomes
entertaining, fascinating, and newsworthy.
Mark Hughes, Author, Buzz Marketing
8. Buzz Marketing
M
ost people associate buzz marketing as one of the key reasons we are all
aware of the legendary campaigns like Tickle Me Elmo, Beanie Babies,
Pokemon, Pet Rocks, Harry Potter, and Hush Puppies. The dream of every
entrepreneur and organization is to catch the imagination and desire of the
general public that sends demand for their product or service through the roof.
Sometimes the buzz happens by itself, but many times a firm has to develop a
strategy to create and sustain the buzz. Creating buzz is harder than it looks.
Some products have more buzz capability than others. In the above examples,
toys and books have had a long history of buzz. Fashion, the movie industry,
and, of course, Internet tools have had tremendous buzz events. The key is to
find something unique or to position it in a unique way to create buzz.
If you have a limited advertising budget for your Web site and online community,
buzz marketing should be part of your marketing strategy. The technique can be
used effectively by large and small companies.
Buzz marketing can help you:
• Increase your customer base.
• Expand beyond your current location.
• Increase profits.
You might remember hearing about Segway, an invention we were told “would
be affordable and would change the way we live our lives.” The launching of
the Segway was carefully planned. Almost eleven months before its formal
76
Buzz Marketing
77
introduction, the product was deliberately leaked to Inside.com. Inside reported
that a $250,000 book contract had been signed detailing a new, but secret
invention of Dean Kamen, which was code named “Ginger” or “IT.” The
buzz picked up when the press found out that John Doerr, a venture capitalist
who had made billions investing in dot-com companies, had invested in this
new invention, and Doerr was claimed to have said the invention was “more
significant than the World Wide Web.” Because of his reputation, the world
stood up, listened, and waited.
Within a matter of days, Dean Kamen issued a disclaimer to Doerr’s comment
that stated, “We have a promising project, but nothing of the earth-shattering
nature that people are conjuring up.” The disclaimer, of course, failed to make
many news sources, so the general public was left waiting for something
extraordinary.
The hype and excitement landed the Segway an opportunity to launch the
product on ABC’s “Good Morning America” show. The public finally had the
inside look at an invention that “would be affordable and would change the way
we live our lives.” The pent-up demand for the news also guaranteed the Segway
front-page and lead story coverage on newspapers, TVs, and radios around the
globe. The world saw for the first time a two-wheel device with a built-in gyro
that clipped an individual along at 12.5 miles per hour.
The hype created a huge focus on the story, long before we had blogs, RSS feeds,
Podcast, and other Social Media. I only wonder how wild this buzz marketing
event would have been if it was repeated today!
Keep in mind for most companies, buzz marketing starts with an idea and then
a strategic plan of implementation. Buzz marketing is not the goal. It’s all about
the end result. A buzz marketing campaign is something that is well-plannedout and follows a specific strategy designed to gain the attention of media and
consumers with a minimal budget. Buzz marketing is harder to implement than
traditional advertising and marketing. With traditional marketing, all you have
to do is pick up the phone and place ads in newspapers, magazines, phonebooks,
online ads, TV, and the hundreds of other advertising channels that someone else
distributes to customers.
The goal of the buzz marketer is to get people talking around the water cooler
and extending the conversation as many times as possible. You want the recipient
of your message to make your brand their brand. For the conversation chain
to continue, the recipient has to feel ownership of the message. It has to give
78
them a sense of being a part of the message, owning a part of the message, or
becoming the messenger of something really great and exciting that others should
experience. Buzz marketing is about letting go and letting your messengers take
ownership.
Harder than you think!
Before you get started, it’s wise to do a buzz check and see what others are saying
about you. One way you can do that is by using sites like Technorati.com. At
Technorati, you can search for blogs around the world for mentions about your
product and product category, and you can get an idea of what others are saying.
You could also use Google Quotes to gain an insight into what others in your
industry are saying. Also consider using tools like Blogpulse.com to analyze what
kind of buzz your campaign is creating. Or use the tool prior to your campaign
to gain an understanding of what is important in the marketplace, so you can
tailor your communication to reach maximum placement in blogs and news
sources.
In developing your buzz marketing campaign, you will need to:
1. Define what your product/service solves.
2. Develop a message that positions this solution in a way that is
something significantly different, an incredible deal, and worth talking
about. Your message should be fun, quirky, and entertaining.
3. Look for partners who can help distribute or enable the buzz.
4. Identify how you can encourage the offline conversations to migrate
to various Internet channels like blogs, podcasts, bulletin boards, and
shopping recommendation tools.
5. Identify techniques, such as products, offers, or free services that will
keep consumers talking and reward those who are talking (T-shirts,
pens, hats, discounts, or free services).
6. Develop hooks that will compel news sources (radio, newspaper,
magazines, TV, blogs, etc.) to “lift” your buzz marketing to another
level.
7. Put in place benchmarks/deadlines you can measure your results.
8. Make adjustments as you go along.
Buzz Marketing
79
Certainly the hardest part will be to come up with the creative, unique buzz
marketing idea that will move a listener from being passive to active. Your
campaign has to put the consumer in the position of traditional media and
give them control of how and when they want to spread the message. You are
effectively looking to them to become your sales force.
You have to get very creative when coming up with a buzz marketing idea to
propel your online community.
• Think about what makes your organization different from others.
• What idea is outrageous, different, and compelling enough to get people
talking.
• Find an industry expert or celebrity to endorse your community and
suggest the recipient will see him or her around the community.
Once you have your buzz marketing idea in place, ask yourself the following
three questions:
1. Would your significant other, kids, friends, and/or co-workers find your
story compelling enough that they would go out of their way to share it
with others?
2. Do you have a plan in place that would lift the story from the oral
discussion to other forms of media that will transport it to a much larger
scale?
3. Is your fulfillment strategy strong enough to support a surge in demand?
There are two final reasons why I think you should use buzz marketing to
promote your online community:
1. People are time-starved!
2. Advertising is getting more expensive for fewer results.
You need to keep in mind what we just talked about. People are time-starved.
You cannot build a marketing strategy around buzz marketing and expect it to
last forever. Buzz marketing provides your campaign a shot of adrenalin and
raises awareness to provide a spike on the radar. What you need to do is to
have techniques in place that will sustain this buzz. Your plan has to provide an
opportunity for your target audience to not only pass along the message, but add
to the message and become part of the message. As they take ownership for the
80
message and the content, you will increase the life expectancy of your buzz. It’s a
personal “investment” in your brand and buzz that is priceless.
Buzz Marketing can be started in house!
Ron McDaniels believes everyone in a company should be responsible for creating
buzz about your products and services. During a meeting with his staff about
how to increase business, a member of the programming team said, “Getting
new business isn’t my job!” Ron disagreed and wrote the book Buzzoodle Buzz
Marketing, a step-by-step guide that shows businesses how they can engage
employees to become part of their buzz marketing team.
Ron’s techniques are employed by companies around the country and help
employees understand that they are part of the sales and revenue-generating team.
They learn that the small buzz ripples they create can add to the profitability of
the company.
In today’s fast-paced world, nearly everyone is time-starved and has more
responsibilities and obligations than anyone who lived in the “Leave It to Beaver”
era. Today, consumers are inundated by marketing and advertising every step
they take. With limited time and budgets, they are more willing to trust the
recommendations of their friends and acquaintances. If you can build the right
buzz marketing campaign around your product and service that is compelling
enough, you will be amazed with the results.
With the hundreds of different advertising channels available to advertisers today,
the cost to reach consumers is going up. Each lead becomes more expensive,
reducing your potential profit. Without a referral program or buzz marketing
campaign to take that lead to the next level, you will find yourself stuck in
“buying” business to stay in business!
Find a Buzz Partner
Not all of us have the pull and recognition that Oprah has, but she sure knows
how to use it correctly.
You might recall in 2004 when each person in attendance at her show received
a Pontiac G6 automobile. The promotion was a match made in heaven. Oprah
wanted to celebrate her 19th season, and Pontiac wanted to introduce and create
buzz about their new G6 automobile. Pontiac agreed to provide a free car to all
Buzz Marketing
81
276 audience members, including a tape tour of the factory where their cars
were made. The audience members were handpicked from a campaign where
individuals shared why their mother needed a new car. Oprah brought eleven
people on stage and provided them a gift box with keys. Then she had gift boxes
distributed to the entire audience and indicated one lucky person would find
keys in their box. To everyone’s delight, every box had keys.
The estimated value of the 276 cars was $7.7 million, or the equivalent of 50
primetime ads. Nightly news programs, blogs, newspaper articles, and water
cooler discussions resonated for days following this, providing an avalanche of
follow-up publicity for Pontiac and Oprah.
Buzz marketing at its finest!
A memorable example of buzz marketing was created by Euro RSCG Buzz.
Working with Jaguar, they designed an event that involved beauty and beast,
and combined appropriate rock history.
The Jaguar Hogan Drive Gorgeous rally was an afternoon of fun and driving in
the Hamptons, showcasing some of Jaguar’s finest new vehicles. They invited 100
influencers to participate in a two-and-a-half-hour road rally in the Hamptons.
Seventy-five Hulk Hogan bags were given a “one-of-a-kind” Jag Bag, designed
by Hogan himself, and twenty-five were sold for $1,000 each. The guests of the
“Drive Gorgeous” event jumped into twenty Jag XKs and drove to a number
of famous locations, including a stop for dinner at the Bouvier Estate, Jackie
Kennedy’s childhood home.
Down the road, the twenty Jaguars stopped at the Memory Motel where Mick
Jagger has been rumored to have written Hannah Honey, a song about an evening
Jagger spent with a famous female singer. At the motel, participants were invited
to enjoy the historic photos in the Memory Motel Lounge and to create their
own memories in the photo booth. A contest pitted all participants against each
other, and the team that drew the room key in which Mick Jagger stayed won
tickets to an upcoming Rolling Stones concert. The tour continued on to the 40million-dollar Church Estate in Montauk, the onetime home of Andy Warhol
and considered one of the most spectacular oceanfront estates on the east coast.
The “Drive Gorgeous” event included models and famous chiefs. All of this
attention to detail not only created a memorable event that the “influentials/
participants” will be talking about for years, but it received coverage in the
82
Hampton magazine, which spread the buzz to others in the community. While
the intention was not to sell cars, the buzz, excitement, and experience will have
a trickle effect that will drive customers to the dealers for years to come. Euro
RSCG Buzz’s goal was to inspire the consumer and make them participants in
the brand narrative. I’m not sure you can get any better than that!
Buzz marketing is built around a firm offering a really great product or service.
If you don’t have a remarkable product or service, the program will collapse
before it gets started. The six-plus month iPhone campaign anxiously increased
the excitement and buzz about the new iPhone. The company expected to sell
500,000 phones within the first week and then, their partner, ATT had issues
that prevented new owners from using their phones! Imagine the disappointment
of being one of the lucky ones to get a phone but not being able to use it!
Done properly, buzz marketing is powerful and fun and can make or break your
product/service introduction. Buzz marketing is one of the more powerful tools
that can be amplified online with Social Media tools.
Exercise
So what’s your buzz strategy going to be? It’s a bit intoxicating to think how
enormously powerful this concept is. When you hit it right, you’ve got a
gusher!
• Go back to the eight steps to develop your buzz marketing campaign
that I’ve outlined above, and talk through these with your team.
• Copy and steal what you like. We’ve listed some very successful ideas
these firms already implemented. Take what you like and add them to
your strategy!
A customer’s testimonial says more about
your business than your advertising ever can.
Andy Beal, Author & Founder Trackur
9. Live Casting – Internet TV
I love this idea!
Maybe it’s because I’ve never actually used the experience and training from my
radio and TV broadcasting major, but tools are available to you and me that
enable us to broadcast a live event, activity or show.
Technology is available for the cost of a high-end home movie camera for
broadcasting live to the Internet. Yes, you can be your own broadcasting channel
with this idea. There are a number of ways you can use it:
• Show customers various ways to use your product or service.
• Have a grand opening or hold a virtual open house and take customers
around your facility and introduce them to your staff.
• Interview an industry expert, customer, or your CEO.
• Auction off excess inventory just like QVC!
• For customers who can’t make your annual conference, live-cast the
speeches.
You get the idea?
Associations and organizations could do live casting with:
• Interviews with political figures regarding legislation affecting the
organization.
• Annual conference main speaker.
83
84
Keep in mind that your goal is to engage your customers. You need to find as
many different ways to help them connect with you and your organization as
you can.
Don’t think about live casting just for the office because you could also livecast:
• The school play for grandparents to see.
• The baseball game for the traveling parent to see.
• The graduation for friends and extended family to see.
Once you understand how easy this is, there is no limit to the number of ideas
available to you. Use additional Social Media like wikis or Twitter to engage
viewers, and make sure to make it a two-way conversation between you and your
viewers.
Create your own “channel”
You can take this idea one step further by working with providers who will enable
you to create your own Internet “narrowcast” channel. Services are available for
you to record and store your live-casts on an Internet channel branded to your
organization. Not only will all of your live-casts be available for future customers
and prospects, it will provide a place for you to keep it organized.
Wine Library reaches global audience
The cable industry revolutionized the delivery of television programs by providing
you 500-plus channels. Now the Internet is opening an opportunity for t millions
of TV channels to deliver news and content to consumers’ computers and cell
phones.
This is presenting opportunities for your organization to reach consumers to
educate, inform, advertise, and gather data. One of the more successful case
studies I could share with you revolves around wine! In my 30s, Jack Daniels
gave me the courage to dance on tables. Today, I look forward to a glass of wine
at the end of a long day to relax and slow down my brain! It works. (Ask me later
about my wine diet!)
Probably the most successful way you can use Internet TV is to educate your
customers. That’s the direction Gary Vaynerchuck took when he created Wine
Live Casting – Internet TV
85
Library TV. Like the Internet, wine can be a mysterious and confusing thing. It
has its own language. Gary’s concept is simple: He has a webcam pointed at him
as he sits behind a table lined with bottles of wine, glasses, and a bucket to spit
out the wine he tastes.
It’s not a sophisticated presentation, but it works. Gary is by no stretch of the
imagination a Brad Pitt or your everyday TV personality. He not only looks like
Joe Pesci, but he sounds like him too! His rapid-fire, unscripted conversation
gets the job done with minimal preparation or time. He demystifies wine and
helps consumers feel more comfortable and confident.
His reasoning:
• The more his audience knows, they more they will buy.
• And when they buy, they will remember they guy who taught them and
that they trust!
And it works! Gary attributes the success of his Internet TV program with giving
him rock-star status resulting in invitations to radio, TV, and blog interview
shows. The net effect of all this exposure has helped the family business grow
from 5 million to over 50 million dollars a year!
All with minimal advertising! Besides increasing exposure to your product and
gaining more mindshare of your prospective customers and increasing revenue,
here are a few additional reasons why you should adopt Internet TV:
• Your product(s) take more than a few minutes to explain.
• Your sales cycle is long.
• You can’t always get through the “gate keeper.”
• Clients have more choices, which reduces customer loyalty.
Who would I recommend adopt an Internet TV program?
1. College admission offices at colleges could attract prospective students.
2. Libraries and book stores could offer live broadcast interviews with
authors.
3. Franchise companies could share best practices and educational material.
4. Retail shops could create their own QVC-type show to build excitement.
86
5. Distributors could use live Internet TV to share secrets, ideas, and new
products to their distributors, plus provide educational information to
their consumers.
6. Businesses could educate customers about how their product is made.
7. Hospitals could provide educational programs built around their
expertise.
8. Police departments could offer safety tips and use Internet TV as a
youth-engagement tool.
9. City hall could provide a spotlight on departments and staff as a way to
make government more transparent.
10. Sales professionals could use Internet TV as a way to deliver more
content to speed decisions.
11. Dentists, doctors, veterinarians could provide tips and guidance in
health care.
Nearly every one of these 11 industries have a built-in customer base with email
addresses and newsletters to which they could begin promoting their live TV
program.
Why should you do this?
• Adding content like this will position you as an expert that customers
will begin to trust.
• Customers will share this with their extended networks.
• You’ll get questions and feedback that can lead to sales and revenue.
Like anything, take a small step and pull your team together to look at www.
winelibrarytv.com and build a strategy to create your own TV channel to
acquire, retain, and engage customers. It’s one strategy among Facebook, online
community, and Social Media that can help you reach your goals.
Here are a couple places to grab the technology you need:
• Brightcove.com provides a fully supported Internet TV platform for a
fee. If you are looking for more advanced technology that will provide
you analytics and additional customer support, this might be the right
option for you.
Live Casting – Internet TV
87
• Mogulus.com is a do-it-yourself free service and a good way for any
company to get started. The only downside is they insert a short ad every
10 minutes or so, so like traditional TV, you’ll have to get ready for a
commercial break!
• Gary uses Ustream.tv. It, too, is free and a simple tool to get started
with.
Exercise
Webcasting is easy and a fun strategy.
• Pick up a quality webcam (approximately $100) and do a test Web
casting with some of your colleagues.
• Try something. Don’t hold eight meetings and try to figure out what you
want to do.
Suggestions:
• If you are a retail organization, consider live-casting a birthday party
for Grandma Jones so relatives around the world can participate, or
invite your “best customers” to model your new line.
• I would suggest B2B companies live -cast a client appreciation event
or new product announcement.
Word-of-Mouth is becoming more a part of the
overall marketing mix. It was an offshoot
that’s becoming more mainstream.
Paul Rand, Ketchum Communication
10. Social Shopping
S
ocial Shopping offers companies benefits and risks. Consumers look to
others for affirmation of their purchases. A consumer might look to their
friend with a “should I get it?” mentality. So, while the individual might be more
reluctant to make the decision on their own, their statement indicates they are
looking for help in making the decision. As long as the friend isn’t a thrifty person
or doesn’t want the other person looking better than they, the response would
normally be, “Yes, it looks great, get it.” Another important subset, Shopping
Recommendations help consumers make decisions, but those recommending
are traditionally not known to the shopper.
Napster encourages sharing favorite music
Napster has an interesting approach to Social Shopping that is more asynchronous.
First, a quick explanation of their service. For a small monthly fee with Napster,
you can download any of tens of thousands of songs to your computer or stream
the music. Once downloaded, you can listen to the music in the park, at a coffee
shop, or on an airplane as you travel around the world. I used to buy at least
100 CDs per year, but since I’ve signed up for the Napster subscription service,
I no longer buy CDs, yet I have the flexibility to download 100 CDs or more
anytime!
Napster has a budding online community strategy that increases the use of their
service and the sale of music. At any time, I can see what other Napster members
are listening to or I can view their playlists. One of the things I love about
terrestrial radio is the DJs pick the songs and I don’t have to think about what to
listen to next. To me, music provides a background to my writing projects. If I
88
Social Shopping
89
am deep in thought and a CD I listened to ended, it might take me an hour to
break concentration and change to the next CD.
Now with this tool, I can find people with similar tastes and simply play their
favorite playlists of 10 or 100 songs. I get the kind of music I want, custom
tailored by someone else, more variety, and without commercial interruption. At
the moment, this is not a full-fledged online community, but I would anticipate
they will extend the community to bring people together with similar music
interests. Currently, I can email other members to strike up discussions on music,
interests, or simply to thank them for putting together an excellent playlist.
Everything points to us replicating online what we do offline. As the technology
improves,family members in different parts of the country will virtually shop
for the grandkids’ birthday presents, and girlfriends will go from virtual mall
to virtual mall around the globe in search of that something that nobody at
their school will have. A purchasing agent will take supervisors on a virtual runthrough of the top choices and give them the final say on which product to
purchase.
Facebook and Beacon
Facebook introduced an advertising technique that enabled friends to see
what their friends were purchasing. If I ordered a movie from Blockbuster and
participated in the program, my friends would be notified of the movie title in
their daily update of news about users. The program caused quite a stir among
users who did NOT want their friends to know what books they were buying,
movies they were renting or places they were buying tickets from.
Facebook had to roll back the program, but the vision on what can be done has
sparked a great deal of discussion that will lead to further breakthroughs and new
ideas that will be tried and implemented in the future. In the fast-paced Internet
world, companies have to decide if they want to adopt the Facebook philosophy
that was the mantra of the dot-com era companies. Ready, FIRE, Aim. Or to
put it another way, Fail Fast. The point being, companies today have a great
deal at stake if they fail to explore the options and opportunities they have. In
Facebook’s case, they apologized to users, made some modifications to give them
the ability to opt in/out of the program, and eventually dropped the program.
However, they or others will be continuing to test variations on this concept in
the months and years ahead.
90
For B2C companies, technology and finding ways to give customers Social
Shopping experiences will help your firm gather more mindshare, increase
loyalty, and amplify word-of-mouth marketing, which all leads to increasing
revenue and profits.
Exercise
Take me shopping! I won’t go to the mall because I hate to take the time and
don’t like to browse around. But take me online shopping and drive me right to
things I need, and I’ll be there.
• What are you doing to welcome people to your Web site? You have
a person answer the phone. Consider having an auto attendant ask a
person when they arrive on your Web site, “May I help you?” If they say
yes, your Web site should allow them to push a button that dials your
number.
• Encourage people to browse your goods and services with others. Think
about ways you can modify your Web site so two or more people, who
don’t even need to know each other, can shop and share comments.
Your customers will expect their online experience to equal or exceed their offline
shopping experience. Put strategies in place to exceed their expectations.
Social networking’s true power lies at the intersection of
technology and traditional consumer engagement.
Kay M. Madati, Community Connect, Inc
11. Search Engine Optimization
A
t a basic level, Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of putting
keywords within your Web site for search engines to be able to identify who
you are and what you offer so they can share your information with others who
might be looking for you. It gets significantly more complicated, enough to fill
500 page books, but that’s enough information for you and I to get on the same
page!
According to a 2006 Search Marketing Benchmark Survey by Marketing Sherpa,
Inc., Search engine marketing is the number one online marketing tactic for
firms with 10 to 100 employees. Search engine marketing is a low-cost tool
that enables small businesses to gain as much exposure, and in some cases, more
exposure, than larger companies.
The old way for small businesses to compete was to put as much of their profit
into print, radio, and TV advertising as they could, while still continuing to
build their brand within their targeted community.
Trouble is, like all advertising, much of it is wasted.
Remember John Wannamaker’s comment, “I know half my advertising budget
is wasted. I just don’t know which half.” All business, particularly small business,
needs to gain the maximum return on their advertising dollars. However, as we
discussed at great length, it’s getting harder to get your message to prospective
customers.
At the same time, the behavior of consumers is changing. Many of your
customers/members are no longer thinking about the Yellow Pages when they
91
92
are looking for a product, service, or provider. They are learning not only how to
search online for information, but also for the companies to solve their particular
needs. If your customers are moving toward online search for your products and
services, you need to be there!
Yahoo!!, Google, and MSN are reinventing advertising for businesses of all
sizes. The small business owner now has the ability to employ simple targeted
marketing techniques the same way large corporations can; however, they can do
it on a local level and put their own “high-tech, high-touch” twist to it in order
to gain the attention of the surfer.
Search engine marketing has changed marketing – FOREVER!
Mike Moran, Distinguished Engineer at IBM and author of Search Engine
Marketing, Inc., suggests Web 2.0 has fundamentally changed marketing. It’s
not about pushing your message out to a broad-based audience. It’s not about
message control, either. Moran believes you have to figure out how to get your
audience to hear what you say, and then you have to learn how to respond to
what they say to you. He suggests that you need to learn what your prospective
customers are interested in, but you need to go a step further, and learn in what
forms they are interested seeing this information.
For example, good search engine optimization involves putting your message out
in a variety of buckets. In addition, to just listing your product and service, he
suggests you include a white paper that identifies how your product and service
will solve their problem. You need to showcase studies and best practices to help
them better understand how your product or service will help them. You should
show video testimonials of clients, as well as videos that show how to use your
product. And you need to buy search words built around the problem, not the
name of a product or category.
Then you have to think about how people describe their need. Are they going to
search for “toilet,” “toilet bowl cleaner,” “ring around the toilet,” and/or “clean
bathroom”? You need to know that in order to customize your Web site, so the
search engines properly categorize you. It’s really a fascinating process, but one
that once you master it, it’s as easy as riding your bike.
Search engine optimization can literally make or break a company. Consider
the following story, and if you are a small business, see if you identify with their
challenges.
Search Engine Optimization
93
Akron Novelty Company
There are tens of thousands of great search engine optimization success stories
in the naked city, but the one that really stuck out to me was a local company
that represents a beacon of opportunity for any small business, anywhere in the
world.
Akron Novelty Company is a fifty-four-year-old company in Akron, Ohio. They
are a wholesale distributor of general merchandise products with a wide variety
of toy, gift, and novelty merchandise at wholesale and closeout prices. In the
past, their key accounts were drugstores, schools, churches, and associations that,
for decades, saw Akron Novelty Company as a single source of their novelty
products. That was, until the big-box stores expanded into their product line. As
this happened, and consumers found it either less expensive or easier to find the
novelty products, the company began to see business start to nosedive.
With their traditional distribution points either no longer carrying their products
or selling less due to the competitive pressure of the big-box companies, Bill
Hargrove, the President of Akron Novelty Company, decided it was time to either
close up shop or find another way to do business. Bill, like most companies, had
a Web site provider that gave general advice on how to manage their site and
increase visits; however, the response was so low over the four years the site
was up, Bill wasn’t convinced the Internet was going to be a viable sales and
marketing tool.
Then, with a bit of old-fashioned technology, he picked up the phonebook
and located a firm that provided search engine optimization. According to Bill,
finding a credible, competent firm to help them develop their search engine
optimization plan was the key to his firm moving from relying primarily on local
business to now receiving 75 percent of his business from the Internet.
If you visit his Web site, you will find a low-key site that focuses on getting their
prospects to the specialty items they need immediately. While Bill indicated the
cost to learn how to be a player in search engine optimization was high, it was
worth it. Without it, he indicated his firm would probably not be in business
today. Bill was also fortunate that his son John was interested in learning the “art
and science” of search engine optimization.
Apparently, John was an excellent student. I was conducting research for a
different chapter of this book when I searched for “company merchandise.” The
second listing on the results page—out of all the companies in the world—was
94
Akron Novelty Company. I was blown away! Here was proof that SEO works,
and frankly, it is the reason you are reading their story right now. Once they
learned the ropes, both John and Steve have been able to manage their search
engine optimization on their own. They no longer pay outside professionals to
handle their SEO. Even more impressive is that John has gotten so good at
search engine optimization that they don’t buy search words from any of the top
three search engines.
Bill suggests business owners invest in outside help initially. “Think about the
sports industry today. Athletes are receiving very expensive training and coaching
that, honestly, if they want to be stand-out athletes, are necessary in today’s
competitive athletic environment. Business owners need to bring in trainers to
help them develop their search engine strategy.” Bill’s advice to anyone that is
new to SEO is simple: Interview a number of different SEO providers, and then
actually test their work by searching for some of the companies they currently
work for.
Like Billy Crystal was advised by Jack Palance in the movie “City Slickers” to
find that “one thing” that was the most important thing in his life, Bill suggests
you have to determine what your “stick” is, what is it that you offer that people
will search for you on. Armed with that information, people will easily find you
on the information super highway.
While we talked at great lengths in Chapter Nine of Internet Dough about
industries being disintermediated by the Internet, Akron Novelty Company is an
interesting story where his business was being devastated by big-box retailers. In
a happy turn of events, Bill and John were able to use the Internet to change their
fortunes. Your business will continue to feel external and internal competitive
pressures like Akron Novelty Company experienced. Whether you sell products
or services, by adopting search engine optimization techniques, you will be able
to look bigger than the big-box companies. In addition, you’ll expand your
marketplace to wherever people need your products and services.
Still not sure about spending the time and money to adopt professional search
engine optimization techniques? Think about how much you are currently
spending on traditional advertising. Consider diverting a small percentage of
that budget into this area.
Search Engine Optimization
95
Exercise
It might cost some money to get started, but search engine optimization is one
of the more easier Internet strategies to adopt that you will see immediate results
from.
• If you are a do-it-yourselfer, pick up any of the hundreds of books on
how to do SEO. If not call an SEO expert. You’ll find them by doing a
search on SEO!
• Identify what words you know your customers search for your products
and services and begin to optimize your Web site by including these
terms throughout your Web site.
• You can’t start and stop this strategy. It’s important that you analyze
monthly, if not weekly, your results and continue to make adjustments.
Although the term might sound alien to you, it’s really a simple strategy to
adopt.
If the 1980’s were about quality, the 1990’s about
reengineering, the 2000’s about ISO9000, the 2010’s
will be all about becoming a NET-Centered company.
Don Philabaum, Author, Internet Dough
12. Mashups
Mashups were actually named after hip hop mixes of two or more songs.
When consumers who were mixing and mashing together different services from
different Web sites were explaining what they were doing, the definition stuck!
Seth Godin, author of the book Unleashing the Ideavirus, identifies mashups this
way:
A mashup is a distinct way of spreading ideas. When a DJ takes two records and
melds and mixes them into something new, that’s a mashup. When an Obama
supporter takes a twenty-year-old commercial and splices it with some campaign
footage, that’s a mashup too.
If you want to engage and involve your customer, give them an opportunity to
help you develop new variations of your products and services online or offline
via mashups. Offline, a mashup might be encouraging a group of customers or
supporters to all converge at one location at a specific time or to all call or email
a decision-maker, leader, radio station, or celebrity at once.
Some blogs could be identified as mashups. Many blog writers will find
interesting content on other blogs or traditional news sources and paraphrase
the information in their blog. This gives them the ability to add their unique
view, but by using others’ content with credit, they add content to their site and
expand their online relationships with other bloggers.
Online mashups are combinations of data and information from two or more
sources/ Web sites that, when combined, offer new services and tools for
consumers. Web sites like Google, Yahoo!!, and even AOL are providing mashup
96
Mashups
97
opportunities; however, any company is capable of giving others access to their
data and/or using others to provide a unique user experience on their site.
We’ve already seen examples like:
• Giving photographers the ability to share where they took their
photographs and allowing others to find them via that location.
www.panoramio.com
• Providing online hiking information resources combined with features
and services offered by Amazon.
www.hikingoutpost.com
• Posting “thought clouds” to video and photographs.
www.bubbleply.com
• Providing citizens a bird’s eye view of crime in their community.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/homicidemap/
?source=local_news
• Giving those looking for homes an opportunity to find a location and
then visually see what is for rent in that location. www.housingmaps.
com
Paul Rademacher created housing maps, which is a mashup of Google Maps
and Craigslist. The idea grew out of a real-world need to make it easier to find
housing and his ability to see the potential by “mashing up” existing services. In
the spirit of “good ideas travel fast,” with no marketing effort, his housing maps
quickly reached one million visitors.
Because mashup services usually don’t own or control the data, the way most
mashups compete is by having a better or more flexible user interface, or adding
extra data. This is a crucial point about the business models for mashups: Because
the data is open, what matters is what you do with the data and how you present
or deliver it. In a way, this represents what the ideal open Web 2.0 model is all
about – free the data and innovate on top of that.
Even within existing companies, mashups are allowing companies to more easily
show where their customers are: cell towers, trucks, etc. Like blogs, vlogs, and
tagging, mashups are part of an ongoing shift toward a more interactive and
participatory Web 2.0 with more user-defined content and services.
In order to expand participation in your online community, you should be
98
thinking about how you can give your users the ability to use your data to
create interesting new services or information. Your IT, marketing, and sales
departments need to be open to sharing selected information in order to take
advantage of the opportunities mashups provide. Having a group of volunteers
who are passionate enough about your services that they are willing to spend their
time developing new ways to connect customers or help you gather opinions
and ideas or do product testing is invaluable. This concept could speed up your
product-development and marketing efforts by light years.
You should also keep your eyes open to find ways that you can partner with
“non-competing” online directories or communities where you can mashup your
membership base and give your customers/members an opportunity to learn
more or expand out of your community.
Keeping open to this concept could bring your online community and new
media tools a great deal of attention. The mashup for showing crime in Chicago,
for example, had 1.3 million page views with the first two weeks!
Alumni Association gives access to their data to get more
done!
One of the powerful aspects of the Internet that few organizations capitalize on
is the ability to take normally inaccessible information and make it available for
employees, customers, volunteers, or business partners.
The firm I founded to create online communities for alumni associations created
a unique tool that combined various databases and created a SaaS tool that
enabled alumni volunteers to contact others to encourage them to contribute to
the annual fund and participate in events and activities.
The program we created, Volunteer Call Management Tool, gave assigned
alumni the ability to find people they graduated with and those who participated
in similar events, activities and/or colleges. The individual could “tag” people
they wanted to call, which took them out of the pool so they wouldn’t receive
multiple calls. Volunteers were provided an online “suggested script” and had the
ability to update if they got through to the person, left a message, the line was
busy, etc. In order to track results, callers were asked to update the result of their
call. Will they contribute? How much? Are they coming to the event? Why not?
The manager of the program then had a report that showed who called whom
Mashups
99
and a summary of all the calls made within any time frame. For example, the
manager could see a list of all callers, the total each calle,d and a summary
of outcomes. This report gave the manager the ability to send “attaboys” and
encourage others to keep up the pace.
The end result: The alumni world reminds alumni there are three ways to give.
They could give their time, talent, or treasure. The Volunteer Call Management
tool was a fantastic way for those who did not have a great “treasure” but had the
time could help the alumni association make their goals.
Political Mashup
The same concept was employed picked five years later by the Barack Obama’s
Presidential campaign. They created a Neighbor to Neighbor online callmanagement tool that mashed up their data, voter records, a volunteer database
and Google maps.
The tool they created similar to the Volunteer Call Management tool we created
enables volunteers to identify an area where they want to call and share the
message. The Neighbor to Neighbor program is simple to use and includes
online video and a step-by-step tutorial that walks you through registration and
selecting who you want to call. Everything is point and click.
The program provides volunteers:
• A list of voters in their neighborhood
• A script and ideas on what to talk about
• Flyers to print and distribute
• Data fields to update the results of the call
• Video training and support
It took me a minute to register and I was ready to make my calls. The program
offered me 25 voters on one street that I could either call or go door to door.
To keep multiple people from calling the same person, I was given 7 days to
make my calls at which time they would go back into the pool to be assigned
to another volunteer. The Google map included flags to mark the houses I had
been assigned.
If I was going door to door, they offered flyers I could print out and hand out
100
along with a data sheet for each person that provided me the recommend “script”
and questions to ask. It appears the script and the flyer could be changed at any
time to have the volunteers focus on different themes.
If I wanted to call, all I had to do is update the fields for the voter and it instantly
updates the records. Volunteers could update the voters position on the:
1. Economy
2. Guns
3. Healthcare
4. Foreign Policy
5. Energy
6. Education
7. Immigration
8. Iraq War
And more! It also gives the volunteer the ability to update if the person was
home, asked the not to bother them, refused to talk, moved, was deceased, lived
in an inaccessible location, did not speak English, etc.
Not being privy to the campaign, I assume managers receive real-time updates on
the visit and summaries that can be used to look for trends or develop strategies
to engage and involve “on the fence” voters.
The program also provided me a dashboard that summarized my activity. It
included events hosted, events attended, calls made, doors knocked, number of
blog posts, donors, amount raised, and groups joined.
So what does this mean to you? We shared these examples to give you an ideas
on how you can use Mashups to empower your customers, volunteers, vendors,
and partners to accomplish more with less effort.
Exercise
Mashups require you to think a bit out of the box!
• What can you do to improve service to your customers by using some of
their data with your data? Find a way to give them access to both online.
Mashups
101
• Call a few vendors you’ve spoken with at conventions who are delivering
products to your customer base. Get your heads together and think
about ways you can collaborate to create a new product or service by
combining data or information you have, OR find use these techniques
to improve existing services and products.
A recruited network of ambassadors can deliver
brand messaging to their online and offline
networks as well as conduct marketing activities
and events throughout their community.
Brandon Events, RepNation
I
n their book, The Influentials, Ed Keller and Jon Berry share research they
conducted during their years at RoperASW, which showed that one in ten
adults in the United States are the people who make the society, culture, and
marketplace run.
These are the people who you turn to for advice on where to eat, what to buy,
how to vote. These people are highly involved in their community, tend to be
more educated, and are connected to many groups. You’ll find them in your
neighborhood, your workplace, and among your friends. The “Influentials”
who are engaging with your organization and products would make great Brand
Ambassadors. These people are a trusted source of news and information for
their friends, family, and colleagues.
Prior to the Internet, it was difficult for companies to find and interact with their
Brand Ambassadors. Now you can use Social Media and online communities to
not only find them and engage them, but to use their enthusiasm and talent to
increase sales.
Think of your online community as kind of a magnet that attracts your strongest
supporters/customers so you can engage with them. Once you’ve identified
them, they can begin to self-identify if they want to become part of an elite
group of your customers, your Brand Ambassadors! You don’t need an army of
Brand Ambassadors, you could start with as few as 10 or as many as 100. This
group will provide:
• Suggestions to improve your product
102
Brand Ambassadors
103
• Ideas for new products
• Feedback on marketing programs
Any one of these areas could provide huge opportunities for your organization!
One product idea could result in a runaway new product that could be worth
millions and potentially take your organization in a different direction. A
suggestion in a blog could help you acquire hundreds of new customers.
So how do you use online communities and new media to cultivate and manage
Brand Ambassadors?
Easy!
The first step is to begin to adopt the technology that will attract them. The easiest
way to get started is to offer a company blog, where fans of your products and
services can gain an insight into them. Another way is to adopt a bulletin board
where they can ask questions of various staff persons within your organization.
An online community becomes a powerful way to learn more about your
organization’s fans because it will enable them to share personal information
like hobbies and interests. Besides email information, you can gain addresses,
birthdates to send auto eBirthday cards, and much more. It will enable them
to connect with others who share the same passion for your industry, product,
and/or service. People like to be recognized for their interests, and helping them
find others with similar interests is a great way to do that.
An online community has a number of different ways you can measure activity,
and based on your criteria you will be able to find the most active persons and
invite them to become part of your Brand Ambassadors.
Your online community is a perfect vehicle to give your Brand Ambassadors
special attention. Online communities can be designed to:
• Offer them password access to special information.
• Provide public recognition as a Brand Ambassador.
• Send special offers and discounts electronically.
• Give them a platform to spread their passion with new arrivals.
• Provide banners they could put on their home page/blogs.
104
• Learn more about them.
For this recognition, you should make sure your Brand Ambassadors:
• Know what their responsibilities are.
• Help set goals and develop/improve processes.
The clearer you define the process, the better chance you will find the right
Brand Ambassadors and those you select will accomplish more. Consider holding
training seminars or webinars to keep them in the loop. Keep an eye out for those
you might want to bring on as independent contractors or put on your payroll.
Microsoft One Note
RepNation, a new media marketing company was asked by Microsoft to identify
Brand Ambassadors of the Microsoft product One Note. RepNation developed
criteria that helped them identify Brand Ambassadors. These include:
• Passion
• Creativity
• Responsibility
• Availability
This enabled them to find 100 Brand Ambassadors of One Note that they
subsequently flew into Redman, Washington, to engage and involve them.
Brand Ambassadors were told up front that the company was interested in
reaching others through their connections to spread the word about One Note.
The Brand Ambassadors were given additional training on the product, were able
to meet officials of the company, and were encouraged to network. Their overall
goal was to educate and inspire the ambassadors at this training session.
The firm created an online community to keep the Brand Ambassadors connected
to share ideas, collaborate, inform them, and keep them focused on the goal of
reaching their sphere of influence to spread the word about One Note.
And it worked. The program resulted in 80,000 software downloads. Was there
an ROI? You can do the math: the retail cost of One Note is $100!
Brand Ambassadors
105
Suggestions to improve products
Lego is a seventy-five year old privately held company in Denmark providing
toys that capture the imaginations of all ages. As the world’s sixth largest toy
company, Lego has built a brand and reputation that has been passed down
through generations.
After a series of new product introductions that failed to reach self-sustaining
levels of profitability, Lego decided to reach out to its user base to help them
develop a new toy line. Lego has a community of 10,000 members that
gather online through a variety of available Internet tools and services, sharing
information and designs.
One particular group of about 100 Lego users was using YouTube as a visual
platform to share with each other the incredible toys they were building with
Legos. It was apparent this group of customers was pushing the envelope with
Lego’s product, so the Lego product development team decided to approach
the group to see if they would be interested in helping them develop the next
generation of their Mindstorm product. To facilitate discussion, Lego turned
to Informative, a firm that provides interactive online tools that identify top
consumer priorities and form brand communities. Informative provided Lego
with custom-designed Social Media and collaborative tools that encouraged
suggestions, opened dialogue among a group, provided an opportunity for
individuals to vote, and prioritize all suggestions provided by Informative. At
the same time, it enables product development staff to listen in and join the
conversation.
The product that came out of this collaborative effort, the Star Wars Empire
Destroyer, sold out in two weeks and went on to become one of their most
successful product launches.
Bill Thompson, Senior Vice President of Informative, said, “Companies have a
difficult time getting what customers want right—the first time. By joining them
in an adaptive conversation, you help them articulate what they want. Social
Media tools used correctly help product development teams launch products
faster, at less cost, that have a higher chance of success.”
Lego received four significant benefits from collaborating online with their
customers:
106
1.Reduced the risk that the new product would flop.
2. Reduced the cost to gain feedback and suggestions by conducting the
program online instead of in-person focus groups.
3. Were able to develop the new product faster.
4. Increased sales.
It’s clear they received a return on their investment from approaching their best
users to get feedback in developing a new product. Nearly any business could
adapt this idea.
Exercise
While most Social Media marketing experts will caution you from interfering
with the discussions about your products and services, when it comes to Brand
Ambassadors you can jump right into the middle of it and help craft the
discussion.
• Dig through your customer service data and talk with your customer
service representatives to find out which customers seem to be more
engaged than others.
Write down what you want to achieve with your Brand Ambassador project,
what you are willing to give to your BAs, and what you expect of them—and
make sure you set aside a budget and time to administrate it!
Brand Ambassadors are a fun addition to your firm. They’ll energize your product
development, improve your customer service and identify new markets to which
you can take your company. The time and money will be well spent!
Consumers are a lot more excited to get brands
to talk to them and open a dialogue so they
can show them how to do things differently.
Darrell Jursa, Liquid Intelligence
14. Video Testimonials
I
f you are serious about using Internet technology to connect, engage, and
involve your users and customers, you should be adopting as many new media
tools as possible.
Video testimonials should be at the top of your list.
Text-based testimonials are out, video is in. Quotes from clients have always
been important sales tools. When used effectively in brochures, flyers, and print
advertising, businesses of all sizes have reduced buyers’ fear, shortened sales
cycles, and increased revenue.
Video testimonials provide three powerful sales benefits.
1. Consumers today are overwhelmed by a daily assault of advertising.
Everyone is trying to get their time, attention, and business. Most
consumers are becoming immune to marketing and advertising. Studies
are showing they are increasingly relying on the advice of friends, family
members, colleagues, and others before they make a purchase. Video
testimonials play to this emerging trend.
2. Video testimonials capture a great deal more emotion and excitement
from your customers. Print marketing provides limited space for
testimonials, but video testimonials can be open-ended conversations
that show a full range of emotions from your consumers. Including a
dozen of these on your Web site will be powerful conversion tools.
107
108
3. When you reduce a customer’s fear that they could make the wrong
decision, you reduce their price sensitivity. Testimonials can help you
increase your prices and continue to invest in better products and
customer service.
Tools are available today for your customers to create simple audio or video
endorsements of your product and service and to share unique applications of
your product and services. Besides increasing sales, it will also create a unique
buzz about your company and products.
Imagine a consumer visiting your Web site and being able to see a group of
smiling faces that are categorized by product/service or location. A quick click
loads a thirty-second endorsement of your product and/or service. The viewer
has the opportunity to rate the endorsement, provide feedback, and click to learn
more about the person endorsing your product or service.
Another section offers you the opportunity to see individuals sharing different
applications of your products and/or services. This is a good way to help
prospective customers understand how easy, powerful, and adaptable your
service is. EyeWonder, Inc. is a leading provider of online video and rich media
advertising products and services and is an excellent example of how you should
be using testimonials. Their home page includes a dozen testimonials from a
wide range of clients. After watching only a few, you get a strong impression that
the company is competent and committed to helping their customers.
Steve Petti, founder of New Media Image, is seeing an increasing number of
clients who are adopting testimonials and endorsements on their Web sites.
Steve said,
“Brochures can’t share the emotion and attitudes of happy customers.
Our clients are finding video testimonials to be low-cost tools their sales force
emails to prospective clients. An email campaign of happy customers will
definitely help frame a sale.”
Admission offices are looking to use video testimonials as a way of connecting them
with alumni who are in the business world and now have a better understanding
of the value of their education, faculty who are engaging the students in learning
on a daily basis, and current students who are in the middle of the experience.
This provides them two benefits. First, as testimonials are added, the prospective
student is invited to come back to the Web site and learn more about the college.
Second, the concept encourages them to share the videos with their friends.
V i d e o Te s t i m o n i a l s
109
Word-of-Mouth Association
Certainly the Word-of-Mouth Association knows the power of endorsements
and testimonials and has moved beyond the text-based endorsements to
video endorsements. Here’s a simple way you can follow their lead: At your
next conference, consider videotaping endorsements from some of your best
customers. You can use simple home video cameras and set up in a hotel room or
at your booth, or simply wander around and track down your customers. When
you get them, explain what you are doing and that you will ask them a series of
questions that you will edit and build into a fun online testimonial.
It’s relatively easy to do and definitely low budget. Once you have the tape
recordings, you can find someone to edit them and put them online. If you want
to see an example of how this works, visit the WOMMA site at www.womma.
org. In WOMMA’s case, this technique resulted in over 20 video endorsements
on their Web site.
Willis Wolf, my friend and mentor, told me that over and over. My predilection
was to use technology and automation in my sales and marketing process.
Willis repeatedly reminded me that people don’t have time to evaluate the everincreasing complicated products and services available today.
To a larger degree, people are referring to their trusted networks of business and
social groups to cut through the myriad of advertisements, PR, and marketing
they receive on a daily basis.
That’s why I’ve been a huge fan of video testimonials over the past four years. In
both my books, Alumni Online Engagement and Internet Dough, I suggest that
groups and organizations should make a strategic decision to focus on using
customer testimonials and endorsements.
Today, it’s far easier to do. You don’t have to create a $50,000 budget to create
a video testimonial program. Rather, think about using readily available Social
Media tools to accomplish it. For example, a simple email to your customers
could solicit a video testimonial using their cell phone, web cam, video-capable
still camera or video camera. We’ve even suggested that our clients consider
buying a $130 Flip It camera and send it to customers who don’t have the skill
sets or interest in using the first tools mentioned.
110
Chief Marketing Officers Club
A good example of an organization that is beginning to use video testimonials
is none other than the Chief Marketing Officers Club founded by Pete Krainik.
(It’s good to see them setting an example for the rest of us!)
At a recent event, they shot a number of short video testimonials from members
and offer them on their Web site as a technique to convert the casual viewer. They
positioned the videos prominently on the first page of their Web site, making it
stand out to the prospective member landing on the page. You can check it out
at www.thecmoclub.com.
Choose your candidates wisely
While it’s great to have any testimonial, testimonials from well-known industry
sources or individuals from respected institutions will build your brand and
make a stronger impact. In building a video testimonial strategy, take some time
to identify the people who will deliver the bang for your buck.
The right person endorsing your product is worth their weight in gold. Celebrities
are paid a great deal of money to do a short testimonial because when done right,
they have the same muscle to lift sales as an incoming hurricane storm surge lifts
barges. Take the recent campaign created by Giorgio Armani where they signed
David Beckham to display their briefs and nothing else! It’s been reported that
worldwide sales reportedly jumped 30 percent when his adoring fans took notice
of a product he brought attention to! People buy from people! People listen to
people they trust and respect.
Organize testimonials in categories
While I would encourage you to put up any video testimonial to get started,
I’d like you to take a long-term strategic look at developing a series of customer
videos that focus on:
1. Selection process
2. Customer service
3. Price
4. Dependability
V i d e o Te s t i m o n i a l s
111
5. Uniqueness
6. People
7. Ease
8. Partnership
9. Solutions
10. Saves Cost
Your goal would be to find individuals to endorse you in each of these areas.
Then, proximately on your Web, consider placing a banner that says something
to the effect, “Don’t take our word, listen to our CUSTOMERS” and give the
prospective customer the ability to click on any of the ten areas listed above.
Each prospective customer is coming from a position of either being not happy
with a current provider or are looking for an assurance that you are the right
provider. Offering them the opportunity to self select into the area that most
interests them not only will show you what people are most concerned about,
but it lets them get right to what they need to make their decision. Make sure
you include the person’s name, title, and company they work for.
Your video testimonial strategy is ongoing
Your video testimonial strategy is not something you finish. You need to continue
to add new people on a monthly basis and expand the scope and direction. Once
you have your videos you should have a strategy to use the content in multiple
places. For example, we suggest clients:
• Include the comments and link to the video in their blog.
• Create articles around the endorsement and post them on ezines to drive
consumers back to the company-endorsement page.
• Encourage their sales force to send links to the endorsements to help
close sales.
Don’t forget to build in a recognition/thank-you program to reward the person
who takes the time to endorse you. Depending on the type of endorsement and
the value to your organization, consider offering recognition, future discounts,
or repeated thank yous!
112
Take it to the next level!
If you watch Mad TV, you are probably familiar with comedian Keegan-Michael
Key series of interviews where he introduces taking things “To a whole NUTHA,
level.” If you move in this direction, you need to follow his advice and take your
video testimonials to a whole “nutha” level!
Could The CMO Club improve on what they started? Absolutely! By
implementing some of the changes we suggested, they will gain a higher ROI
from their efforts and increase membership and revenue.
So what about your organization? Share what you are doing and your ideas on
how we can collectively help others improve their video testimonial strategies.
Exercise
This is a simple strategy to adopt.
• Pick up a small “Flip It” video camera (about $150 retail) and ship it to
a client asking them to record a testimonial. Include a mailing address
for them to send it to the next customer.
• Edit their testimonials—make sure you let them see the final results—
and use this in “drip email marketing” campaigns for customer
acquisition and put on your Web site.
Don’t forget to do something nice for everyone that participates!
Everyone used to go to websites where all the jobs
were gathered together. Now companies realize
they have to take their jobs to sites where all
the great employees are already gathered.
Penelope Trunk, Author, Brazen Careerist
15. “Organization”
MySpace/Facebook Pages
MySpace and Facebook have become a marketer’s dream come true.
For literally no cost, you can create an organization page on either of them and
then wait for people to find you. Many organizations are developing MySpace
pages as a way to tap into the millions of MySpace users and drive them to their
“official” Web site.
You now have two choices:
• Create a profile page for your organization as if you are a “person”
• Create a group page for your company
The first is free and the second may cost you money depending on how customized
you want it to be. Our suggestion is create the free “organization” profile first to
get your feet wet and then learn what you want to include and or accomplish in
a group page.
Commercial companies are creating MySpace pages as a way to reach this highly
targeted audience. Some organizations, like Apple Computer, have over 500,000
friends that connected to them via MySpace and Facebook. This gives Apple the
ability to send a message to their “friends” whenever they want.
Small businesses and government agencies are creating their own MySpace pages
too. The Youngstown Business Incubator in Youngstown, Ohio, offers startups
professional help and space to start their businesses. They created a MySpace
page as a way to reach people who might not pay attention to the marketing and
public relation channels to which they promote their services. The page has a
113
114
photograph of the building available for startups, music to grab the attention of
the visitor, and contact information.
www.myspace.com/ytownbusinessincubator
According to Jim Cossler, the Chief Evangelist for the Youngstown Business
Incubator, within two weeks of creating the page, three recent graduates of
Youngstown State College contacted them about needing help in taking their
newly formed software application development company to the next level. All
lived in the area, graduated from the area, but were unaware of the services the
Incubator provided until they stumbled upon it on MySpace.
You can do the same.
It’s relatively simple to create an “organization” page on MySpace. You could
have your page up and running in minutes. Once you have the page created,
you will need to have someone reach out in the community and invite them to
become your friend. Once you get them to visit your MySpace page, your goal
will be to drive them to your official online community.
Franchise organizations like Jack in the Box are even building friends online.
Hard to believe but they have nearly 190,000 friends. Imagine the fun consumers
have sharing with others they are friends of Jack in the Box!
A couple of things to keep in mind when you create your page:
• Don’t take it too seriously. It shouldn’t be a sales-oriented page.
Keep it light.
• Update content and photographs frequently.
• Spend some time initially going out and inviting people to be your
friend. After you build a core group of friends, they’ll start introducing
you to their friends and your site will grow automatically.
This is a very inexpensive technique to expand your brand and use third-party
Web sites to drive prospective members to register and participate in your online
community. By all means, take advantage of it.
Jeep Concerts
Chrysler took their MySpace page strategy to the next level. As you are probably
aware by now, MySpace was founded to provide bands a way to reach and build
“Organization” MySpace/Facebook Pages
115
an audience. Instead of just building a group home page for their Jeep Compass
product, Chrysler created a campaign built around their MySpace page. Musicians
were hired to perform at a series of impromptu and planned “concerts” around
the country. The musicians used a specially equipped Compass so they could
plug their guitars into the sound system and “turn up the volume” to turn on
the audience.
A total of 300 concerts were performed in just four weeks across the United
States. The concerts provided an opportunity for the band members to hand out
flyers to drive fans to the MySpace page for the Jeep Compass.
The results?
The Jeep MySpace profile page had 12,000 friends register who posted over 258
comments in over twelve forums. Most importantly, they had over 1.3 million
clicks. There was also significant traffic driven to the main Jeep Compass site.
Small and large businesses will benefit from this simple marketing technique.
Building the MySpace or Facebook page will require less than an hour of your
time.
Exercise
Do I really need to encourage you to do something here? Nahh, but just in
case:
• Set down this book and go to both Facebook and MySpace and create
pages.
• Create a marketing strategy to increase your number of friends and
outline how frequently and what messages you want to deliver to your
friends.
Everyone used to go to websites where all the jobs
were gathered together. Now companies realize
they have to take their jobs to sites where all
the great employees are already gathered.
Penelope Trunk, Author, Brazen Careerist
16. Three-Dimensional
Communities
T
hree-dimensional communities have been evolving over the past five years
into exciting yet practical advertising and marketing mediums. They require
significantly more processing power and advanced software than traditional
communities, so the barriers to entry for new providers are pretty steep.
They also require a more committed user. The sign-up process and learning
curve is significantly more difficult and time consuming. In today’s “microwave”
society where millennials expect everything instantly, these sites will take longer
to grab mindshare and timeshare. Three-dimensional communities are very different from traditional “page”oriented online communities. Users adopt an “avatar” look and they can walk, run,
or teleport themselves anywhere in the community to engage in conversation with
others. Instead of a single-dimension page, users can create homes, apartments,
buildings, cities – anything they can imagine, they can create. The rooms and
buildings you can create are really stunning, actually. Three-D renditions of
expansive, modern rooms with a wide selection of paintings are available!
As I’m writing this book, the three-dimensional Web site Second Life has
2,000,000 members and is growing rapidly. It was founded in 2003 as a site
where people would have an opportunity to build the community just like in real
life. It’s been described as an online community for people who are bored with
their “real” life. Users can be escaping their current life or are technology early
adopters who pave the way for the rest of us.
Three-dimensional online communities provide users an opportunity to become
connected and engaged with others in a new and unique environment. Second
116
Three-Dimensional Communities
117
Life consists of regions made of sixteen acres that can be identified as mature
or PG. Individuals or organizations can buy regions or islands using the local
currency, Linden Dollars. Users can engage in an active social life and meet and
greet new people. The software allows users to create dramatically rich-looking
buildings and to decorate their places the way they want. After creating an exciting
place to live or work online, MySpace users will find MySpace somewhat boring
when they return to it.
Because the concept is new, all participants share a sense of wonder and excitement
to be exploring this new world. To the first-timer, it’s almost like taking a trip to
a foreign country and feeling giddy and charged with excitement as you explore
new things and meet new people.
In Second Life, you can create things, give things to others, or even hire others
to create furniture, cars, or homes for you. It’s very engaging and immersive.
You can even own property and sell to others. I’ve not met one yet, but there
are stories of members making tens of thousands of dollars a month creating
or selling things in Second Life. In order to create goods and services, you have
to buy the raw materials or land from Linden Labs, the creator of Second Life.
In 2006, it is estimated that users’ purchases totaled nearly $60 million dollars.
That’s a lot of virtual “picks and shovels.”
For the person who tires of typical social networking sites, 3-D communities
will provide their next step in moving forward. Because the learning curve
to participate is greater than typical communities, I don’t anticipate these
communities will grow at the astronomical rates page communities have; yet,
they still represent a niche area that will grow as the behavior of consumers
change and the tools become easier to use.
Many of the same companies that discovered building a MySpace or Facebook
page are finding 3-D communities to provide incredibly creative branding and
selling environments.
• Ohio University’s distance learning program uses Second Life as a new
medium to teach. An entire campus could be recreated online!
• Market research companies like Market Truths provide surveys and
conduct focus groups for clients and provide participants with Linden
dollars (research on the women’s clothing market is available for
L$5,000).
• Authors are using the environment to announce their books and being
118
interviewed by bloggers, media, and interested consumers.
• Crayon, an interactive media company, held their grand opening
in Second Life, drawing attention to the growing influence of the
community.
• College admissions offices are exploring how to use 3-D communities to
share information with prospective students.
• Pontiac has created a contest where their Second Life dealership
on Mororati Island will give away $50,000 Linden dollars. Their
Motorlympics will bring users back at scheduled times for go kart
racing, radio-controlled racing, and figure-eight racing.
Anything is possible in these worlds. Scion, for example, asked Internet 3-D
marketing firm Millions of Us to develop an online environment that would give
users the ability to design their own cars. It didn’t take long for users to come up
with the most unusual combinations of designs imaginable. The key benefit to
this was the users were engaged in putting a part of themselves into the brand,
and the more time they spent, the stronger the potential connection. Reuben
Steiger, CEO and founder of Millions of Us and an initial business development
officer for Second Life, envisions a time when all firms will have created a virtual
sales room in 3-D communities as lead generators and customer-engagement
tools. This is another good example of a business needing to be where their
customers are.
As commercial businesses develop a growing customer base, these customers, in
the spirit of Second Life, will have an opportunity to develop and sell add-on
products and services where they can turn their passion into an income stream.
For example, you could create a unique boom box that fits into the dashboard
of the cars in Second Life, which stream music you can buy. You can either sell
the boom box or decide to take a piece of the money generated from your users
buying the digital music. Second Life and 3-D companies are opening up a
whole new gold rush for everyone.
A colleague of mine, Allan Weinberger, currently in his final years in college,
researched this for me and reported that the effect and concept is not only
powerful but “scary.” His point was not that it was frightening, but that it had
incredible potential for small and large businesses in the years to come. His
opinion is the public will be slower to move into the 3-D world, but when they
do, we’ll be living in a different world!
Three-Dimensional Communities
119
Exercise
One of our summer student Interns, Allen Weinberger took a look at some of the
3-D communities and reported back. “These sites are going to scare the common
user.” He felt it will take a number of years for these to become mainstream. I
agree. So for now:
• Register for one of the 3-D online communities and begin to gain a
better understanding of the potentials.
That is, unless you have a big, big advertising budget. If you have money to
experiment, go right ahead!
We believe the “human media” is the new network.
Ryan Berger, Euro RSCG
17. Affiliate Marketing
N
early any business can benefit from Affiliate Marketing. The concept was
popularized by Amazon in the height of the dot-com period in 1998.
There was a great deal of excitement about this concept, as anyone could put
a link on their Web site, and when a visitor clicked on the link and made a
purchase at the merchants site, the “linking” site would receive a commission of
anywhere from 5 to 50 percent of the sale price.
On paper it sounded fabulous!
The firm I created to provide online communities for alumni associations saw this
as an opportunity to help alumni associations generate revenue from thousands
of alumni shopping online.
We assembled about 100 merchants from insurance, car, health, books, and
other product areas and built an online alumni shopping mall. It looked like an
exciting opportunity; however, the concept turned out to be about a decade too
early. There were not enough alumni visiting the alumni Web sites, and because
of limited budgets, the alumni associations were not promoting them.
Consumer behavior had not caught up with the opportunity.
In the late 1990s, people were still shy of sharing credit card information online,
let alone shopping. Consumers were shopping online, but not at the rates that
really drove money into clients’ pockets. So after about three years, the thirty
malls we built were dismantled. Just before we shut down, we were about to
introduce a concept where individuals could shop with a friend. For example,
120
Affiliate Marketing
121
you could contact a friend and go “virtual” shopping together, look at the same
product, and communicate back and forth, just like you were at the local mall.
Things are different today!
User behavior has caught up with the opportunity of shopping online. Consumers
have little concern about sharing their credit card information, and the nearly
three-quarters of the American population that is online is always “on” via the
magic of broadband.
A number of Web sites are now offering this opportunity to any organization
and even others are giving the individual the opportunity to create their own
store where they can sell products and services to their network.
Entrepreneurs, bloggers pick it up
In the past three years bloggers, online content sellers and entrepreneurs have
picked up on the idea of affiliate marketing to sell their products and services to
blog readers. A blogger who reaches the small business market that has 5,000 or
even 50,000 readers has an opportunity to sell relevant products and services to
their readers.
My firm, for example, publishes a Social Media Job Description guide where
we provide a 160-plus page document outlining over 70 Social Media job
descriptions. This business tool saves HR and department managers times
from trying to figure out what they should include in a Vice President of Email
Marketing, Director of New Media, Chief Internet Marketer, etc. Because these
are new and emerging positions, normally the person hiring would have to start
from scratch to figure out what is expected, what are the requirements, and what
are the expectations of the job. We’ve conducted exhaustive research and provide
this for them.
So we reach out to human resources, IT, business bloggers, and Web sites that
focus on social and new media to offer them an opportunity to sell our product.
The great thing about affiliate marketing is we can reach out to hundreds of Web
sites at no cost. Most affiliate programs are built around the pay-per-purchase
concept. In other words, they only get paid if their users/readers buy.
There are three ways your affiliate partners can promote your product:
1. By banner ad.
122
2. Writing a story about your product/service or organization.
3. Emailing their entire database.
The banner ad is a no brainer and simple to do. Most Web sites can figure out
how to grab a banner on your page and post it on their page, and writing a story
is easy enough when you provide them a template they can modify. Emailing
their database produces a quick surge of orders that will give you a good idea if
their group in interested in your product or service.
Amazon helped build the popularity of Affiliate marketing by offering 5 percent
commission on any purchase someone makes that comes from your site. But
that’s not where it stops. There are many companies today that will provide up
to 100 percent of the purchase amount. That’s right, some organizations will give
the owner of the Web site or blog every penny they collect from a person who
buys a product or service. Generally, individuals offering this kind of commission
are selling digital content that cost them nothing. Businesses that offer this kind
of commission are looking to build their customer list and sell more products
and services in the future. They know the value of an email address of a person
who has already bought their product or service.
Others offer the same commission they would have provided a salesperson to sell
it. A commission of 5 to 20 percent for companies selling a product or service is
probably more common.
It doesn’t matter if you are a B2B or B2C firm, Affiliate Marketing can benefit
you. By adopting it, you instantly expand your sales force to include people
around the world.
It’s an incredible way to increase sales without adding head count.
Exercise
Take a moment to think about who could sell your product or service if you gave
them the right tools to do so:
• Create a list of bloggers and Web sites that reach your audience.
• Offer them a commission for each product they sell.
• Manage the process and encourage those who are doing an
above-average sale
With a blog, I can write and link
articles to tens of thousands of people.
John Moore, Brand Autopsy
18. API’s the NEW Gold Rush!
API = Application Programming Interface
API stands for Application Programming Interface. It’s a great buzz phrase to
throw out at cocktail parties. To back up your knowledge, all you need to know
is an API is a program that allows different Web sites or databases to talk to each
other and share information.
An increasingly popular strategy is the process of opening up your API to
individuals and organizations so they can create programs that access your data
establishing a more engaging and rich user experience. In this situation, the
individual or organization is allowed to view the data but not allowed to take
the data.
Opening up your API provides four benefits:
1. Other sites will drive their customers to your site.
2. The more services you offer, the more time users will spend on your site.
3. As users adopt more APIs, they will increase their loyalty to your site.
4. Your users will drive more people to the site.
Google, for example, immediately saw individuals were using their map services
in unique ways. One enterprising programmer created a way that you could
locate apartments for rent on the map. Instead of going to the newspaper and
looking through the ads and mentally picturing in your head where it was, this
new tool allowed you to zero in on the location where you were interested in
living and see what apartments were available. You could even click through to
see a photograph of it.
123
124
The concept turned the old model upside down!
Amazon opened its API in 2002 and immediately attracted thousands of
companies that wanted to use Amazon’s technology platform and customer
reach. Instead of being a competitor to small bookstores, Amazon offered their
distribution and Web presence as a way for small bookstores to sell their inventory.
Today, when you search on Amazon, you have the option of purchasing used
books at a significant discount. While one company might look at this as heresy,
cannibalizing their new book sales, Amazon embraced it and is profiting as well
as helping small bookstores move inventory.
Facebook opened their API in 2007 at a conference attended by 700 programmers.
Facebook decided they could grow faster by reaching out to thousands of
programmers and invite them to create a program that Facebook members could
use. Other Web sites were interested in bringing Facebook members to their
Web site, and new aspiring programmers were attracted by Facebook’s offer to let
them keep any advertising revenue generated from the program they created.
An example of an API program interface is a music feature called iLike. ILike is
an online music site that enables you to share the music you like with others. As
you update your profile page, the site provides recommendations and even alerts
you when performers you like are coming to your area. If you decide to go to
the concert, iLike will get a commission. Although the launching of this unique
Facebook application over a holiday weekend caused a significant amount of
stress for their staff (with the need to add over 1,000 servers within days to
handle the steady flow of new users), iLike was thrilled with the addition of over
6 million downloads of their API. To keep that in perspective, Howard Stern,
while on terrestrial radio, took years to reach 10 million listeners. ILike was able
to engage 6 million in just two weeks.
In another example, PicksPal lets users predict the winners in sporting events
and awards them points when they are right. Users can redeem the points for
cash and prizes. Their service gives Facebook users the ability to challenge their
friends to bet on sports, politics, actually anything! For example, if Fred who is
a Cleveland Cavalier fan bets the team will win tonight, his friends will be sent
as a short message (“Fred has picked Cleveland over San Antonio”). The friends
have the option of betting with or against Fred.
You need to think out of the box on how you want your organization to interface
with Facebook. They are providing you access to their millions of users. You just
have to decide what your customers/supporters would be interested in doing.
A P I ’s t h e N E W G o l d R u s h !
125
Here are some quick ideas on how non-profits might use Facebook:
• Non-profits can use this concept to challenge friends to give.
• Animal lovers can use this to showcase dogs and cats that are available
for adoption with the local Humane Society as a way of living their
beliefs.
• Community volunteers can share community-service projects and
recognize people who have completed them.
• Businesses could offer their products and services.
• Government organizations could deliver news and information.
• Religious groups could deliver daily devotions.
• Hospitals could offer updates on emerging research, donations.
• Newspapers, radio, magazine and TV could repurpose their news in
API’s and deliver their information through this free channel
• Admission offices could engage prospective students and parents
• Alumni association could provide news, information and services
You have to begin thinking of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook
as giant phonebooks that give you the ability to target market individuals based
on their interests, hobbies, and knowledge. They are giving you access to their
customer base right now to increase the frequency of visits to their Web site,
and, for now, you have access for free. In return, realize you will increase their
popularity along the way.
A practical example of how your firm can use social networking information
about prospects can be found in the integration developed by Faceforce for users
of Salesforce.com. They developed a free API that enables sales and customer
service representatives to automatically pull information from their contacts’
Facebook profile page. Instantly, in their Salesforce CRM page, the salesperson
can identify hobbies, friends, and personal information that will provide a more
personalized conversation. Salesforce provides the salesperson the ability to track
conversations, send emails, and continue to work a prospect; the API designed
by Faceforce provides the salesperson with an incredible sales advantage.
The new OpenSocial movement is going to enable your team to develop an API
for one online community that will play in others. In late 2007 Google, MySpace,
126
Hi5, Beebo, Linkedin, and others came together to support OpenSocial, which
essentially allows programmers to access databases of participating “competitor”
online communities and share information. It will allow consumers to carry who
they are, who their friends are, and their activities to other sites. So what? If you
are a pizza shop and you want to offer an API that your customers can add to
their Beebo account, the same program can in a matter of minutes be converted
to work on other Web sites that support OpenSocial. Now you can reach a larger
audience and continue to be in online places where your customers roam!
You should have someone on your staff analyzing the opportunities within the
biggest online communities and then migrate the idea into the burgeoning niche
online communities. Then, have your team identify the data you have that may
benefit others. Look at business partners, customers, vendors, and others, and
identify possible opportunities for increasing participation and efficiencies by
sharing data.
Your Internet strategy should be built around engaging your customers. By
partnering with other Web sites, you not only enrich their users’ experience, but
you expand your network, which will increase participation.
Exercise
We are all discovering how to use social networking sites to build applications
to use their data. The possibilities are unlimited, but knowing what to do can be
confusing.
• To get your feet wet, take a look at some of the thousands of
applications that have already been created. Can you modify the idea to
deliver a compelling service that others will recommend to their friends.
• Identify what kind of data you can collect from this application and
what will you do with the data. Your goal should be to gather data that
you can use to continue to enrich your delivery of products and services
and engage them.
This could become one of your more powerful strategies.
19. Digg/Reddit
Y
ou have probably heard people talk about the democratizing effect of the
Internet.
The media channels that have developed over the past 100 years have been owned
by a limited number of people or organizations. Radio and TV frequencies
were limited and sold to corporations by the government, which gave them a
monopoly in communicating and advertising to the public. Newspapers became
very expensive to operate and through consolidations, became monopolies that
controlled not only what consumers read and what slant they wanted to put on
a story, but when consumers would receive it.
This centralized distribution of news increased the general population’s fear that
the truth would ultimately suffer at the hands of the few.
Take, for example, your local newspaper. A group of professionally trained editors
decide which news and information is put into the paper each day. They make
judgments based on experience, interest, and company guidelines. But are the
stories they put in their paper the ones people really want to read?
The Internet is changing that.
New Web sites are giving interested consumers an opportunity to vote on what is
the most important news. In this model, the people speak. A reader can go to the
site and quickly see what others think are the most important stories of the day.
I’ve gone from reading numerous newspapers daily and on the weekends to only
reading them when I’m out of town and a paper is thrown at hotel room door.
127
128
On a recent trip that required a Friday-night stay, I rifled through the local
newspaper and was reminded:
• How few stories were in the Saturday edition.
• How messy an ink-based paper is.
• How many ads are in the paper.
• How many trees and energy are wasted creating them.
If you are not consuming your news online, you will be in the near future as the
industry and our culture continues to shift to the Web. Sites that are showing a
new way to display news include Digg and Reddit.
Digg
Digg.com was launched in November 2004 as a site that aggregates news stories
by its members, whose votes determine the most popular news stories.
Its members actively read blogs, watch videos, and read newspapers and press
releases looking for news that interest them and might interest others. They
nominate the news stories in Digg, where the membership at large votes with a
thumbs up or a thumbs down to indicate their opinion. The site offers the results
in real time, which determines if submissions will move up or down. Think of
it as an online New York Times bestseller list, only this one focuses on the news
and information as read by people daily. The individuals who actively submit
news stories are now referred to as social bookmarkers, and the process in which
stories are rated is referred to as story hierarchy.
Reddit
Jump into your time machine and go back to 1935 and you’ll find your
grandparents sitting at the kitchen table reading a small newspaper chock full
of local and national news. Then you jump into the family car and drive with
Grandpa to work and you hear the news at the “top” and “bottom” of the hour,
interspersed with commercials that are memorable “jingles” played over and over
until you can’t get them out of your head!
Today, you have options of tuning into all news radio and TV programs, cruising
the Web for blogs, news, press releases, and practically any newspaper in the
world and you have available video, audio, and other news sources instantly,
Digg/Reddit
129
anytime you want them. For most people, this represents a problem: with limited
time, which news is most important?
Reddit is a social bookmarking site that delivers customized news. Users vote
on news and are rewarded with “karma points.” Reddit contributors focus on
the news and information you would find in your local paper. It’s a way to get
the news you want delivered to your computer uncluttered by news you are not
interested in. Reddit rewards participants by displaying the top contributors for
the current day and week and all-time-high contributors on the Web site. Besides
the recognition, the “karma points” also increase the weight of future postings.
As a news aggregator site that offers social bookmarking opportunities, it also
has built-in logic that personalizes the news experience, so the more news and
information you vote on, the more it understands the type of news you are
interested in. The concept, similar to what Netflix has developed, enables the site
to deliver more personalized news content based on your previous voting that
matches your interests, hobbies, and industry. You end up with a customized,
personalized “Web newspaper”!
Your Brand Ambassadors and client fans may not be using sites like this. Consider
showing them how it will save them time and deliver more relevant news stories.
When you do, you’ll introduce a new group of people who can vote for news
stories that could benefit your industry and cause.
So why is this important to you?
If this is the way consumers are going to get their news in the future, you need
to learn how to incorporate strategies that will get your news through the
thousands of “editors” so it rises to the top. No longer can a public relations
or marketing executive use a relationship or media buy to position a story in a
paper or publication. What worked in the past will not work in this new media
environment.
In the new media environment, your story or message will rise to the top
only when the “wisdom of the crowds” votes on it. When your news, product
announcement, contest, or idea is voted on and raises to the top of the news
stories, Digg users at large are more likely to read the article. Your public relations
and marketing strategy needs to be cognizant of this process and look for ways to
expand your traditional marketing reach to blogs and news sources so it catches
the eyes of the active Digg social bookmarkers. When you do, your campaign
will light up like a Fourth of July firecracker!
130
Exercise
If you are like me, it’s easier to learn by doing than reading.
• Assign someone on your team to become the Digg and Reddit expert,
and have them register and use these services for a month.
• Have them brief your team and begin to branstorm how your
organization can best participate in these sites, then craft a strategy that
gets your entire organization behind it.
Done correctly, Internet marketing levels the
playing fields and makes it easier for the
Davids to compete against the Goliaths.
Joan Steward, The Publicity Hound
20. Technorati/Blogpulse
Y
ou’ve probably heard of clipping services. Clipping services scour newspapers
across the country looking for mentions of your company or things you want
to keep track of. Companies use this service to track customer achievements,
purchases, or competitors.
Online tools are available to help you find out not only how popular you are
but who’s talking about you. This is important for your Social Media campaigns
because you want to stay close to the people who are talking about you. One
mention from them could be picked up by hundreds of other bloggers and
eventually make it to the mass media market.
The two Web services providing these services are Technorati and BlogPulse.
Technorati
Technorati is an Internet search engine the focuses on indexing blogs, and it
does that well. As of April 2007, the site had indexed over 75 million blogs. At
the time of this book’s publication, they are tracking over 112 million blogs, not
counting the estimated 72 million Chinese blogs.
Like Google and Yahoo!!, the site scours the Internet and creates an index of all
blogs and everything on the blogs. Once the information is accessed, Technorati,
like other search engines, cooks up a “secret formula” that analyzes and then
outputs data and information users are interested in. This process determines
which blogs are the most popular.
The information it collects could be very valuable for you and your organization.
131
132
There are a number of different ways to benefit from Technorati:
• You can use this tool to keep a steady watch on your Web site and/or
blog and see if it is getting more connected as you implement new
marketing ideas.
• Your product development office could use Technorati to search on the
product’s name or function and quickly find valuable user-generated
content that will help speed up the development of the product and get
it done right!
• If you just sent out a press release, you could use this to see how many
blogs and Web sites picked it up.
• You can use it to track what competitors are doing.
BlogPulse
BlogPulse is similar to Technorati. BlogPulse is a division of Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
It developed a blog search engine that analyzes and reports on daily activity in
the blogging world. You could search on Paris Hilton, for example, to see the
10,000 mentions in blogs during the period of time you are interested in.
If, for example, you are in sales or marketing and you like to use buzz words to get
the attention of prospective customers, you could do a search on a series of words
to see which are showing up more frequently on blogs. BlogPulse will enable you
to create a profile that automatically tracks your keywords daily and alert you of
the results. The site offers incredible trend charts that compare buzz in the blog
industry on up to three specific topics. You can use their Trend Graphs to display
visually attractive charts that support your theories and/or success.
If your firm has a blog, you’ll be able to see who links to your blog actively
through other bloggers’ own blog entries and in what context. You will also be
able to see what ranking your blog has as determined by popularity and links.
Both of these tools will provide you with information to determine if your
Internet strategy is on track. You can use the data and information to make midcourse corrections and continue to monitor your progress.
Exercise
We mentioned earlier that someone in your organization should be dedicated to
Te c h n o r a t i / B l o g p u l s e
133
finding out what the rest of the world was thinking about your organization.
• Have someone on your team sign up for Technorati and or BlogPulse
and personalize them so they track “mentions” of your company, your
competitors, and others in the industry.
This is an excellent way to measure and keep abreast of your “reputation” and
popularity on the Internet!
The future of marketing belongs to
companies that can develop ethical, responsible,
and honest relationships with consumers.
Jim Nail, Cymphony
21. Lead Generation
E
very sales organization struggles with lead generation. Sales professionals
have perfected a number of different lead-generation techniques involving:
• Networking events
• Cold calling
• Stop-in visits
• Referrals
• Direct mailing
• Conferences
The Internet opens an opportunity for sales organizations to take their lead
generation to another level through a variety of solutions. Multi-step campaigns
can be used to not only increase the number of leads, but shorten the sales
process and reduce lead acquisition.
Sound like something you’d be interested in?
It all starts with an email. I remember when I founded my first Internet business
in 1995. I was familiar with the industry and the market but I did not have a list
of prospects to call on. So I bought a contact list, sent a mailing to 3,000 people
and waited patiently for the bounce-back cards to arrive. Six showed up. When
I evaluated the cost to acquire the leads, I realized I spent $500 for each lead
– each lead was worth more than an ounce of gold! Fortunately, we were able to
convert one lead to a client so we ended up covering our cost and having enough
guts to try it again.
134
Lead Generation
135
Today, I can send out 8,000 emails to my target audience at no cost, track how
many people opened the email, how many made it to the registration page, and
how many registered. My early attempts at generating leads started with a simple
email invitation to participate in a webinar. After getting 250 people registering
for a webinar, we found more efficient ways to automatically register them. Next,
we discovered we could send HTML emails with more graphics to engage the
prospect. Today, we send broadcast emails to our target group and include audio
and video to capture prospective clients’ attention. It works. Photos, audio, and
video give you another dimension to capture prospective customers’ attention.
Additionally, you may try to extend your reach by making media buys on relevant
Web sites. Participation and response rates zoom when you have something to
offer. Popular techniques to generate leads online include the opportunity to
download a free report or industry white paper.
Auto sales goes high-tech/high-touch
The automobile industry is catching on to the value of using the Web to generate
leads. The Fred Martin Superstore in Barberton, Ohio, is consistently averaging
20 to 25 percent of its total monthly sales volume from its dealership Web site. The
Web site, which is managed by one employee since 2003, helps the organization
sell 7,000 cars per year. Each inquiry is automatically sent a thank-you response,
indicating they will be contacted shortly. A sales associate is given the contact
information to call right away. Their system is producing about 100 leads per
day, and they are converting an average of 25 percent of these to customers.
Cadillac surveyed car buyers to find out what could be done to improve the
shopping experience for them. One theme stuck out: Consumers will do
anything they can think of to reduce the amount of time they have to spend
at a car dealership buying a car. Cadillac developed an online tool that allowed
the consumer to build and price the car. Consumers were able to print out the
information, hand it to the salesperson, and cut out at least an hour of activity.
Impress your leads
Once you get the lead from your Web site, what do you do with it?
Garsite/Progress Family of Companies decided they needed to do more than
send an email response to a lead they received online, so they engaged Monsoon
Interactive to create a series of customized “digital letterheads” for their
136
salespeople. Monsoon Interactive created a customized email template that each
salesperson could include in their email responses that looked terrific.
The email template was built around the existing design and brand of the
company Web site and provided links back to the corporate Web site where the
prospect could go for immediate information. According to David Mittleman,
VP of Sales and Marketing, the attractive email template drove an additional 5
to10 percent increase in leads back to the Web site for more information. They
also saw an increase in customer conversions. Tom Martin, President and CEO
of Monsoon Interactive, said, “For a very small cost, we’ve been able to help
our customers impress their prospects. Our small clients are now looking more
professional than the big companies they are competing against.”
Text email works for everyday conversation, but when you really want to impress
a prospect or a client, consider adopting digital letterheads.
Your lead-generation program should have the following components
• A strategy to gather emails that could include:
• Collecting addresses on a daily basis
• Purchasing email addresses
• Landing pages
• Banners
• Offers of reports
There are many additional techniques to collect email addresses including trading
with non competitive customers. Don’t forget once you have the email addresses
to have a plan in place to connect and engage them at least twice a month.
Exercise
This should be within your top three Internet strategies. How can you use all the
strategies we’ve been talking about and those yet to discuss to generate leads for
your company.
• Go back to each of the strategies you like and add in the lead strategy
component.
• Analyze the results to find out which is working most effectively for you.
22. Virtual Goods
I
f I told you that you could start a Web site that sold virtual goods and services
that cost you “virtually nothing,” would you believe me?
Today, in dozens of online communities, you can purchase virtual goods and
services like homes, land, flowers, cars, toys, etc. Consumers are purchasing items
to create their virtual identity. According to a study by Charles River Ventures,
consumers in 2006 spent $1.5 billion on virtual items at Web sites like Tencent,
Habbo Hotel, Gaia Online, HotOrNot, and Cyworld.
Typically, users pay the Web site with “real money” using their credit card and
are then awarded “virtual dollars” to make purchases.
For example, Tencent, a Chinese portal provider with over 250 million active
user accounts, generated $100 million-plus in the first quarter of 2007, and of
that, 65 percent of their revenue came from virtual goods. Cyworld was one
of the first successful traditional online communities that proved people were
interested in investing in their online identity like they do their offline identity.
The phenomenally popular Korean Web site provides users secure, private
participation and generates over $100 million a year by selling virtual goods. It
sounds like a huge number, but when you divide the total number of users by
that number, it comes out to about $7 per user.
This idea caught me by surprise!
But in a world where marketers have been able to sell pet rocks as gifts, or a
certificate with your name on a star, why should selling virtual goods sound
unusual? This creates a fantastic opportunity for any organization that is looking
to gain some positive spin. For example, your business could:
137
138
• Create a useful item that you brand with your logo and give away.
• Partner with providers of “hot” items and hold a contest to give away
their products.
• Develop a storefront that offers designer virtual goods at a discount.
Coca-Cola and Tencent
Corporations are already finding innovative marketing campaigns and
partnerships to take advantage of a growing consumer interest in “pumping up”
their online identity. For example, Coca-Cola and Tencent partnered to give
Tencent’s users the ability to trade codes they received from the cans of Coke they
drank for virtual objects. Both organizations benefit. For the price of printing
a code on the product and the virtual goods, Coke sold more cans. Tencent
benefited from the new users, increase in traffic, and the revenue it generated.
If you are a company that wants to reach a younger audience, this technique
should be included in your marketing bag of tricks!
Another way to use this idea is to use Google’s “Cost per Action” advertising
tool. First, find an online community or communities that you want to partner
with that use virtual goods and services, and then offer a “virtual product” as
long as the person clicks on the Cost per Action ad. You may want the person
to understand a political issue that could affect your industry or to watch a twominute video on how your product can help them, complete a survey, or even
sign up to receive your eNewsletter.
In the phone industry, the sale of ringtones has turned into a billion-dollar
industry, so why wouldn’t we expect the sale of goods and services that allow users
to personalize their online community profile pages to also become a significant
market? In February 2007, Facebook began testing the virtual goods concept
with their users by giving away unique icons created by Susan Kare, the designer
of the original Mac icons. If the idea catches on, you might receive a cupcake on
your birthday, a heart on Valentine’s Day, or lips to remind you of your love.
If you are in a manufacturing industry, you might think this is the craziest idea
yet because your customers don’t spend any time in online communities, but
keep in mind their kids probably do. Develop a promotion that would enable
them to give something to their kids. Not only will the parents have a talking
point with their kids, your organization will have multiple talking points with
the contact to whom you are selling.
Virtual Goods
139
The idea is to get your brand out in the marketplace. By giving away your virtual
goods, you could embed a link that takes a user to an opinion poll, survey, or
your online community. This concept might not work for all businesses, but I
can’t think of any that would not benefit from the positive press and “long tail”
effect of a campaign that requires little investment.
Exercise
I guess this shouldn’t sound so crazy. After all, people have bought pet rocks and
more!
• Develop a couple of “virtual gifts” that you can include in every product
or service you sell.
• Expand your discussion to identifying partners you can create a “virtual
gift” program around.
This exercise could lead to a really fantastic buzz marketing campaign.
Conversations about your industry are
already taking place online. The only
question is – if you’re involved in them.
Jim Tobin, President, Ignite Social Media
23. User-Driven Outcome
I
t wasn’t that long ago that Web site developers and industry pundits were
focused on giving users the opportunity to personalize their experience with
the Web site.
In the alumni industry, providers of online communities like my firm created
tools that enable users to be notified when:
• A job that matched their interest was posted.
• A class note was posted by a graduate from their class.
• News about the sports team was updated.
The goal was to let the user control their experience with the Web site. As they
did, not only would the site be able to extend their brand and relationship with
them, but as they spent more time personalizing the site, the site would have a
better chance of locking in the relationship. The assumption is the user would
not go to another site because they invested so much time personalizing this
one.
Now that the Web is maturing, we can take this concept one step further by
giving users control of the outcome of an event, activity, or process. Let’s look at
a couple of examples.
Consumers vote on movie ending
The Italian automaker Fiat launched a campaign where movie theater audiences
were presented a short film clip prior to the feature film. The audience was
140
User-Driven Outcome
141
asked to text message their votes to indicate in which direction they felt the plot
should go. This is an interesting way for a company to become engaged with
consumers.
Consumers engaged in this process are excited to see if their selected storyline
would be selected by the “mob” and will tell their friends about the experience.
By continuing this concept online, those leaving the movie could virally share
the concept with their friends and drive traffic to the campaign Web site. For
a very small cost to advertise in a movie theatre, Fiat has the opportunity to
affect ripples of people, who never saw the advertising, through friends telling
friends.
For organizations that like to track results, movie theatres will be able to tell
exactly how many people observed the promotion. Traffic statistics will show
how many responded and how many went to the Web site.
Viral marketing UGO
A number of T-shirt companies have used Social Media and online communities
to develop passionate customers and fans. The firms are giving the tens of
thousands of creative designers an opportunity to submit a design that the public
can vote on. Those that receive the most votes receive a prize and recognition,
and in some cases a percentage of future sales of T-shirts using their design. In
order to kick-start their scores, designers will email their friends, family, and
colleagues asking them to vote for the site. In order to vote, their friends, family,
and colleagues will have to register in their community, which instantly grows
their emailing list.
You should be thinking about different ways you could use your Web site to help
users control the outcome of a product or service. To help you get your thinking
cap on, here are some ideas:
• Hold a contest to name “something”: product, campaign, founder’s
baby!
• Let users participate in the design of a shoe, T-shirt.
• Using wikis, let users write a theme song, poem, company vision, and/or
mission.
• Blog to share a company issue or problem and ask users to help solve it.
142
In both of the examples we reviewed, users had an opportunity to become
engaged with the company and, once engaged, had an opportunity to control
the outcome. You’ll have a great deal of fun implementing some of your ideas.
Exercise
User-generated content/marketing and now outcome? This is an exciting new
area for firms like yours to think out of the box and engage customers.
• Put some thought into how your customers or prospects can participate
in and control the outcome of a promotion or development of a
product.
• Think about how you can lock in and continue to engage the customers
once they participated in this process.
Don’t forget to copy the ideas we are presenting. The Fiat idea is fairly easy for
any local retail company to duplicate.
24. Online Behavior Assessment
O
nline communities are aggregating a tremendous amount of information
and data about their customers. This information is helping ad placement
firms direct ads based on trends and overall interests of the community.
A new technique is available today for consumers and organizations to
communicate using the Platinum Rule. The Platinum Rule is defined as “Treating
others the way they want to be treated.”
In his book The Platinum Rule, Dr. Tony Alessandra developed a technique to
help identify four basic behavior styles. Dr. Alessandra determined that the entire
population could be identified as Thinkers, Socializers, Relaters, or Directors.
1. Thinkers are people who are task-oriented, who have little time for idle
talk. They want to get to the facts right away.
2. Socializers love to get to know people. They enjoy talking and learning
about others.
3. Relaters are interested in people, and relationships are very important to
them.
4. Directors are take-charge, results-oriented people. They’re driven to
accomplish and get things done.
Within each of these behavior styles, individuals have a second, less dominant
behavior style.
After studying these styles and interviewing thousands of people, a pattern began
to emerge. Each of these behavior styles communicated in a distinct way. For
143
144
each behavior style, communication could be problematic with the other styles.
After discovering this, by simply identifying the behavior style and modifying the
way one communicated so as to match their style, there was a higher degree of
success in getting the message across, whether it was to buy a car, get a donation,
make a sale, or get a job!
Ron Finklestein and Dr. Alessandra conducted research and published the book
The Platinum Rule for Small Business Mastery. Ron, a noted small business expert,
identifies in the book how small businesses could increase employee efficiency
and retention, increase sales, and create a better company culture by inculcating
the Platinum Rule in their relations with employees, suppliers/partners, and
customers.
So what does this have to do with Social Media tools? A lot.
You have an opportunity to adopt behavior assessment tools and invite your
customers to share how they want you to communicate with them. Consider
offering customers an opportunity to take a behavior assessment and ask their
permission to share “limited” information with you. With this information
about your customers, you have an opportunity to communicate with them in
the manner in which they want to be communicated with.
According to Finklestein, “This is a revolutionary new way for brands to
communicate with their customers. This represents a new science, a new
approach.”
For example, brands and companies will be able to tailor their communication
to the behavior style of their customer. That means you could modify your
automated email marketing programs and create a communication package that
matches each of the four behavior styles.
Using this opt-in technique, you will increase loyalty and increase the likelihood
they will become part of future word-of-mouth campaigns. Additionally, as they
become more engaged with your vision and goals, there is a greater chance of them
becoming Brand Ambassadors, which will expand your product reach through
word-of-mouth conversations, and you will retain their business longer. Is this
worth a small investment in your customer? Most businesses would think so.
Online Behavior Assessment
145
Exercise
Do you know what your behavior style is? It’s really a fascinating concept; one
that not only can help you better understand friends, lovers, and family members,
but it’s a powerful way to learn how to communicate with customers.
• Consider offering the behavior test to your Brand Ambassadors and
other clients in exchange for them participating in a survey. This will
help create marketing campaigns that will deliver a message to people,
based on how they like to be communicated with.
• You can try this out at www.yourbusinesscoach.net/assessments.html
The Internet makes geography less relevant.
It lets companies get closer to their customers
wherever they are. What company doesn’t want that?
Shel Isreal, co-author Naked Conversations
25. Wikis
W
hat’s a wiki? Good Question! First of all, wiki is a Hawaiian word that
means fast!
According to www.wikipedia.org:
A wiki is a type of Web site that allows visitors to easily add, remove, or
otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without
the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a
wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. The term wiki can also
refer to the collaborative software itself (wiki engine) that facilitates the
operation of such a Web site, or to certain specific wiki sites.
If you are like me, after reading the above definition, I was still confused! Let me
try it again:
A wiki is a free online software tool that will allow multiple people to
post information in a collaborative manner, anytime, anyplace, as often
as they wish, without one person controlling the process.
Is that any better? If not, read on. We’ll look at examples on how you will be able
to use wikis.
Content, Content, Content
Developing interesting and informative content is one of the key goals of any
online community. For those involved in managing an online community, the
key is to provide concepts, technologies, and ideas that will allow the members
to participate and then just get out of the way.
146
Wikis
147
Wikis can help you do that.
The Web site www.wikipedia.org is a good place to start the discussion to
help you understand how you can use this technology. Wikipedia is actually
a volunteer Web site where anyone can make modifications and changes in a
collaborative online encyclopedia.
The Web site www.memoryarchive.org is an example of an idea you could
adopt. This Web site ask users to post their thoughts about places, times, and
people. The idea is to let them offer their thoughts about shared things. This Web
site, for example, asks visitors to post their memories about 9/11. Individuals
post where they were, who they were with, how they felt, etc.
The Web site www.everything2.com is a Web site where individuals can post
material and/or information in a collaborative way to tell a bigger story. Consider
doing something like this to engage your customers to tell a story. You pick the
story, and members continue to build on it.
Here are some other simple ways you could use wikis to engage and involve your
members:
• Depending on the mission of your company, consider inviting your
members to write a report that supports what you do. If you represent a
political group, your members could collaborate through the wiki tool to
write a position paper.
• If you are a corporation introducing a new product, you could ask your
members to collaborate and write a marketing strategy to introduce your
new product.
There are countless applications in which you can use wikis. For example, Dipen
Jobanputra, a sales manager for Digital Markets, adopted wikis as a way to keep
the sales force informed and aware of what everyone was doing, and, in the
process, cut down the time to update each other from ninety minutes to ten
minutes. Now each team leader can review each other’s information and refer
back to it whenever they want.
Need wiki software? There are many providers now! A quick Web search will give
you quite a few from which to choose.
Wikis may be a bit hard for you to put your arms around today, but in the future,
as more examples become self-evident, I’m certain you will find this technology
a valuable tool in your online community.
148
Exercise
Wikis are finding their way into the operational side of business too.
• Like any new media tool, try it!
• Think about how you can use wikis in project management, sales,
customer service, and special projects.
Sixty percent of Americans consider themselves shy!
Your job is making them feel comfortable
and expanding their circle of friends!
26. Network Weaving
I
f you are planning to include an online community in your Internet strategy,
you will want to include network weaving techniques. Why? Because 60
percent of the general public consider themselves shy.
According to The Shyness Clinic at Stanford University, the above statement
is absolutely true! All of us have experienced shyness from time to time. The
reluctance to put ourselves in social meetings, which often involves introducing
ourselves and then following up on meeting someone, is very common.
I can remember being fresh out of college and deciding to visit a local marketing
networking group. I arrived at the restaurant where the event was being held,
walked into the meeting room, and witnessed everyone partnered up or
engaged in conversation with another. It took all of three minutes for me to feel
uncomfortable enough to turn around and walk right back out the door. I was
frightened being in a room of complete strangers, and I hadn’t developed any
skills on how to professionally network.
Would my life be different today if I had not walked out so quickly? Possibly.
Who knows what contacts may have been made that would have taken my career
in a completely different direction. As a result, I might not have written this
book! Or, I might have developed a friendship that would endure today.
Let’s look at that situation again. What if I had arrived at the marketing meeting
and someone had met me at the door to take me around to introduce me to
others? That I could have handled! All I needed at that point in my career was for
someone to engage me in a short conversation to learn a little about me and then
introduce me to people they felt I would find interesting. It’s all about finding
the right comfort zone.
149
150
Shyness, while obviously an issue in the real world, does carry also over into the
virtual world.
The research that Robert Putnam did for his book Bowling Alone, showed that
nearly all traditional civic, social, and fraternal organizations (which he typified
with bowling leagues) had undergone a massive decline in membership, while at
the same time the number of people bowling had increased drastically.
In his book, he talks about two kinds of social capital: bonding and bridging
capital. Bonding happens when you are connecting with people similar to you:
same college, same job, attend the same restaurants, age, etc. He suggests that
the second form of social capital, bridging, is necessary to create diverse multiethnic societies. Bridging occurs when you are introduced to or submit yourself
to people outside your norm via events activities and organizations. In his book
Putnam says:
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever
forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations
in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types – religious,
moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very
minute…
In the context of this discussion, however, I want to focus on the importance
of helping your users connect with each other. Because the research we sited
suggests a majority of your users are shy, we believe you need to actively work to
help them “bond and bridge” with others. As you create bonds and build bridges
between members, you increase the likelihood of them feeling they belong in
your online community.
One way to do this is to adopt our Network Weaver concept. This concept will:
1. Widen your users’ connections and friendships and make them more
active within the online community.
2. Help users who have just registered, or have already registered, on the
site to connect them to others.
What exactly is Network Weaving?
The Network Weaver concept has been studied and analyzed by June Holly,
blogger and Network Weaving expert, and Valdis Krebs, founder of Orgnet, a
pioneer in the social network analysis industry.
Network Weaving
151
Holly and Krebs developed methodology to train volunteers to become effective
Network Weavers. For example, a Network Weaver could search an organization’s
online directory to look for users with similar interests, hobbies, and careers with
the intent of introducing them to others like them. A slight modification of your
online registration tool will enable users to indicate who they want to meet.
Your online community or Web site could give your customers the tools to
identify what they want to do within the online community. A drop down menu
might say:
I’m here to meet others with similar:
• Interests
• Hobbies
• Professions
• Titles
You could also give them the opportunity to identify specific groups of people
they would like to meet. For instance, users could identify that they are interested
in meeting others from the same graduation year, who participated in the same
sports, read similar books, or live in the same towns.
Armed with this information, your volunteer Network Weavers could begin to
use simple search tools to find others and introduce them. Think about this
for a second. Your volunteers can be at any computer, anywhere in the world,
and they can search the online directory, connecting users, engaging them, and
providing them more value. We like to call the volunteer weavers the “gracious
hosts” who bring people together.
As the value of your online community increases, you will begin to see increased
registration, participation, communication, and data updates.
Growing from within will ultimately create a snowball effect. By giving current
registered users a better experience and more value, they will attract others to
register and use the site more frequently.
Adopting a Network Weaver concept will require the following five steps:
1. The modification of your online directory so users can identify what
they want from the online community so Network Weavers can
accomplish their goals.
152
2. Developing a core group of ten to twenty volunteers who will network
users.
3. The creation of your network map. In order to understand your
network, you have to take an overall snapshot of your network so you
can see:
• Who IS connected
• Who IS NOT connected
• Who SHOULD BE connected
4. Training of Network Weavers so they understand their role,
responsibility, and objectives, as well as what tools they have at their
disposal to make it happen.
5. A quarterly analysis of who is connected and who has scheduled
webinars to help volunteers see how they are doing, as well as who they
need to network with and connect to in the coming months.
I’d like to drill into the third point a bit more.
Creating a network map is accomplished by a specialist in the social networking
analysis field. A social networking analyst will take the data in your online
community and analyze it, as we indicated above, to find out who is connected,
who is not connected, and who should be connected. Think of this is as a regular
check-up with your doctor. In this case, the results will tell you how healthy
your virtual community is. If your community has less connected people, it is
unhealthy, and chances are your members are not gaining much benefit from it.
An online community that shows users are connected is exactly what you want
to achieve.
Armed with the report from the social networking analyst, your Network Weavers
can zero-in on people and begin to connect them.
I am firmly convinced that your organization will have a successful online
community when you spend time bringing your users together and helping
them expand their circle of personal and business relationships.
While Robert Putnam, in his book Bowling Alone, warns us that members are
abandoning their participation in traditional groups and organizations, through
the Internet they are rapidly increasing their social networking through niche
communities. You want to be where your customers are.
Network Weaving
153
Exercise
People do business with people! Network Weaving could complement your
Brand Ambassador strategy.
• Analyze who is on your Web site and not connecting or engaging with
others.
• Locate your users who are the most active and engaged and invite them
to be Network Weavers.
• When you identify the “disconnected” users, direct your Network
Weavers to them and let them begin to introduce and engage them with
others.
The rise of the amateur culture is being fueled by this
undercurrent of democracy. The democratization
of technology is giving people opportunities to
become both publishers and broadcasters.
Ben McConnell, co Author, Citizen Marketers
27. Consumer-Powered Marketing
W
e’ve spoken about the different marketing channels available to companies
to market their products and services. Consumer-powered media is the
natural result of using Internet technologies to amplify word-of-mouth and
extend the discussion and spread it faster.
Consumer-powered media (CPM) is emerging as a new marketing channel that
business needs to determine if it’s a right fit for their company. This version of
CPM is a combination of Word-of-mouth marketing and the Social Media tools
like blogs, podcasts, wikis, and others that can amplify the word-of-mouth to
increase the geographical reach, demographic reach, and length of run.
It’s not for everyone. For example, not every company finds billboard advertising
beneficial to their business.
We are beginning to leave an era where traditional advertising is characterized
by mass reach. Ads placed in any of the marketing channels were mass targeted
on commonalities. A sports TV program will have more truck ads then perfume
ads, a magazine for girls will have clothes, acne solutions, and hair products but
it won’t have fishing ads. Advertisers and companies have, in the past, found
the tradeoff for customer acquisition acceptable. However, as reader/viewer/
listener participation decreases in traditional markets, business is becoming more
interested in how they can reach prospective customers at a lower acquisition
cost.
Word-of-mouth has been around since the dawn of time; however, the “noise” in
the marketplace and initial success stories are forcing advertisers and businesses
to look at it as a viable channel. One of the main reasons is that the Internet
154
Consumer-Powered Marketing
155
extends the reach of word-of-mouth. Now a blog article can mention an event,
product, or service and get picked up by thousands of other blogs that influence
hundreds of thousands of people. Now, instead of advertising on the billboard,
it suddenly looks more cost effective to find a way to get your message through
the “blog channel.”
Consumer-powered media is different than word-of-mouth in that the Internet
now allows consumers four new interactions. Consumers can:
Examples
1. Create content
Flickr, YouTube, eBay
2. Rate it
Amazon, Yelp
3. Tag
del.icio.us, Digg
4. Add to Wikipedia, Basecamps
When developing your marketing strategy that involves word-of-mouth, you
need to think about techniques that will extend or amplify the word-of-mouth.
These steps are important, as simple additions to your strategy have a ripple
effect that could result in a marketing tsunami!
Neutrogena builds campus and online excitement
When I think of Neutrogena, I think of women and a fancy clear soap that
delicately bubbles away dirt from a woman’s skin. I’m sure among men, I’m not
the only one who has that brand impression, as Neutrogena has spent decades
building it.
So how can Neutrogena grab my attention with a new product for me?
I think they decided a guy my age is not going to switch to their new products
for men. I’m too stuck in my ways with decades of loyalty to the same product.
Instead, they decided to go after people who had no brand allegiance yet.
To do that, Neutrogna engaged RepNation to help them develop a college
marketing plan and catch men when they were just forming their brand
relationships. Neutrogena does not have the budget of competitors in the
shaving industry, so they needed a low-cost campaign that had viral and longlasting effects. More importantly, the campaign had to focus not on pushing
their information to the target audience, but on engaging them.
156
The campaign, Undercover Hotties, centered on a micro site www.shavehisface.
com that encouraged a college student to nominate fellow students who would
be irresistible if they shaved their face. The top thirty “undercover hotties”
on the Web site at each campus participated in a Neutrogena shave clinic. To
build excitement, RepNation used Brand Ambassadors they employed on other
college campus promotions. The Brand Ambassadors used flyers, posters, online
networking, and campus events to spread the word about the promotion and
encourage participation.
Once the Brand Ambassadors generated the excitement, the Internet tools were
designed to let the consumers take over. Participants created content on the Web
site, voted, and participated in the shave clinic.
Neutrogena smiled over the results. The Web site generated 15,000 unique
visitors during the thirty-day campaign, and over 1,000 photographs were
uploaded to the site The net effect? Within these markets, Neutrogena expects to
see an uptake in the sales of their men’s shaving cream.
Exercise
Consumer-powered marketing can be a fun way to build interest and brand
loyalty and help you create a buzz about your products and services.
• Take this example and think about how you could apply it within
your lineup of products and services. Look for a product that has been
languishing for a while and needs a new approach to get it noticed in the
market again.
Word-of-mouth is becoming more a part of the
overall marketing mix. It was an offshoot
that’s becoming more mainstream.
Paul Rand, Ketchum Communication
28. Consumer Marketing Channels
T
here are few places where sponsorship or advertising is not penetrating
anymore.
When you go to public bathrooms, you view ads, people are tattooing ads on
their bodies, millennials buy clothing with the brand advertising on them, and
trucks drive around town with changing billboards. In my drive to work, I now
have an electronic billboard that grabs my attention with two ads within the
fifteen seconds that it comes into and goes out of my view.
According to PQ Media, companies invested $741 million more in 2005 than
they did in the previous year to put their products onto TV shows! We even
put up with advertising in movie theatres! I remember a few years back when
an audience member went berserk after having to watch ads prior to the movie.
Apparently, the rest of us have settled in to “expect it,” as the Cinema Advertising
Council reported that cinema advertising revenue generated $527.8 million in
2005!
You have to assume this is only going to increase as we continue to explore
the advertising capabilities of our cell phones. In Tom Cruise’s movie “Minority
Report,” his character, John Anderton, a pre-crime cop is shown walking through
a busy metropolitan area where ads talk to him, asking him about his satisfaction
with his last purchase. Cell phone technology will be alerting us as we drive past
stores we frequent about specific specials with the attempt to bring us in. It’s the
modern-day version of walking through a market area and having the butcher,
cheese, or poultry salesperson calling us to visit their booth.
157
158
In an attempt to find uncharted advertising territories, CBS plastered pictures
of its shows’ stars on postage stamps and inside elevators, and worked a deal to
laser its logo on more than 35 million eggs. With marketing programs like this
happening, it will become increasingly difficult for advertisers to find fresh ideas
to catch consumers’ attention.
Studies have suggested that the average consumer was exposed to 500 to 2,000
ads per day in the 1970s. Today the estimate is 3,000 to 5,000 ads per day. The
increase in advertising has decreased consumers’ confidence in advertising.
Five Consumer Networks
Having painted that kind of background, business-to-consumer companies are
beginning to see a great deal of value in developing word-of-mouth networks.
That, coupled with the fact that the Internet will enable them to measure the
results, is making consumer networks a viable alternative to traditional media.
These include:
Brand Ambassadors can be recruited to pass your message through their offline
and online networks by searching blogs and/or your own Social Media tools and
online communities for the most passionate customers. These are the people
who are posting, engaging with others, and frequenting the Social Media more
frequently.
2. Word-of-Mouth Influencer Network
Next level down is your Word-of-Mouth Influencer Network. These are the
people who you’ve identified as supportive of your brand and are willing to share
it with their extended network. They are not your most active, passionate brand
spokespersons. These are people who have shown an interest in your brand and
will be more likely to help share a new message that brings them recognition and
extends their influence.
3. Word-of-Mouth Sampling Network
The next level you can reach is individuals who have shown an interest in
participating in brand championing. You could approach them to test their
interest in carrying your message through their network. You might have to work
Consumer Marketing Channels
159
through third-party companies to find these kinds of groups. A marketing firm
helped place Airborne in this kind of network. This placement, coupled with
the fact that the firm was started by a school teacher to protect herself and her
kids from the wild viruses they spread in school, saw a dramatic increase in sales
and positioned the brand as a market leader in relatively no time with minimal
advertising.
4. Home Presentation Network
Another area you can reach out to consumers is piggybacking on existing home
presentation networks like Avon, vitamins, companies like Longaberger that sell
baskets. This is an emerging area that has a great deal of potential for sales people
who work for these networks, assuming their companies condone the activity.
5. Paid Network
Depending on your resources, time, and objectives, you could go out and hire
a group of Brand Ambassadors for a campaign or project. College students are
frequently hired by companies interested in reaching millennials before they
form relationships with brands. They are responsible for posting flyers, emailing,
blogging, and building excitement when the “brand” van arrives on campus
giving away samples, offering an experience, or bringing in a celebrity. This same
concept can be accomplished off campus too!
If you are adopting word-of-mouth techniques, make sure you incorporate
techniques to measure results. For offline word-of-mouth events, provide
incentives, offers, or contests and drive them to unique Web sites so you can
measure the effects. Include techniques to amplify the message by sharing
additional information to the new Web site visitors.
When you coordinate your word-of-mouth and your Internet strategy, you will
be able to show management a powerful ROI.
Exercise
You have a number of opportunities within this strategy.
• Take a look at existing sales and marketing strategies and determine
which of the five strategies would have the greatest impact on increase
sales.
Social media has revolutionized the way a
company and its stakeholders interact, share and
form relationships, with less money, in less time.
Dan Schawbel, EMC Corporation
29. RSS Feeds
RSS = Really Simple Syndication! Or, you may hear someone say Rich Site
Summary or even RDF Site Summary. Regardless, RSS has been around for
years, but few organizations are using it effectively.
Exactly what does it do? In as simple terms as I can state, RSS gives you the ability
to go to a Web site that supports RSS and automatically “pull” that information
from their site to your site, whenever new content is displayed.
Sounds simple, right? Hence its name!
The real beauty of RSS is that if used properly, you could have constantly
changing content on your Web site without ever typing a word. One of the
biggest challenges any Web site or online community has is continually updating
content relevant to the community’s theme. If the Web site is a car mechanic
Web site, the site should provide interesting news, tips, and resources. By using
RSS feeds, you can automatically pull in content from other sources on a daily
basis. Most sites don’t mind if you do that as long as you give them credit.
With continually changing information, your site will bring members back more
frequently.
Adopting RSS feeds will:
• Save you time and money.
• Provide continually changing content.
160
RSS Feeds
161
There are two ways you will use RSS feeds:
1. To update your Web site from other Web sites.
2. To give customers/members the ability to receive updates.
Update your Web site from other Web sites
In order to use RSS feeds, you will first need to modify your Web site so you
can drop in the RSS feeds into specific fields. I recommend that your front page
become more of a portal that grabs information from different Web sites. When
news changes on that site, the news will change on your site.
For example, let’s say you create three columns on your Web site front page. One
column is set up for you to grab information from an industry trade journal,
another grabs information from a blogger in the industry, and the final column
grabs information from another blogger in the company. All three will update
on your site automatically!
Give users the ability to receive updated content
RSS was looked at as a potential solution to spam. Currently, 20 percent of all
email fails to reach the intended recipient. Send 1,000 emails and only 800
intended customers get them. Ouch! What if the 200 “lost” emails included your
best customers or premier members?
You can also set up your Web site so your users can “subscribe” to the news
posted on your site. In this way, you bypass email completely, because when
news is posted on your Web site, your customers will automatically receive it via
their RSS subscription.
Compared to Web sites, RSS feeds have a few advantages for the user
experience:
• Users can be notified of new content without having to actively check
your Web site.
• The information presented to users in an aggregator is typically much
simpler than most Web sites. This spares users the mental effort of
navigating complex Web pages in order to find the information.
Another advantage of RSS is that your customers can receive RSS on personal
pages they maintain at Google, Yahoo!!, and MSN.
162
Exercise
Email may still be a reliable way to reach your customers; however, you need to
continue to explore different ways your customers can connect with you.
Online community members become advisors to brands
over time and in every aspect of their business.
Julie Wittes Schlack, Communispace
30. Photos, Flickr, and More
Y
ou know the old phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Your Web
strategy should include opportunities for users to share photos.
There are many different ways you could integrate a photo strategy on your Web
site. Here are just four of them:
1. Show unique installations or applications of your product or service.
2. Invite customers to take a photo of themselves with your product.
3. Use photo mapping technology that shows where photos were taken of
your product and customers around the world.
4. Provide a photo tour of your plant or production process.
We all love to look at photos. Photos are easy to absorb and, as the phrase suggests,
they tell a story in an instant that would take a thousand words to explain.
Buy or use?
You have the option of purchasing your own photo upload programs to your blog
or Web site or use the platform provided by sites like Flickr. If you want to approve
the photographs, you’ll want to have your own software. However, if you want
to use photographs as a way to build community and increase participation, I
always suggest you use third-party Web sites that already specialize in this area.
Whether you purchase your own photo upload and display tool or third-party
firm, each will enable your users to:
163
164
• Post their own photos.
• Interact with the photos.
• Spend more time on your Web site.
Many experts believe content is one of the principal drivers that keep users
coming back to a Web site. Allowing users to upload their own photos will
provide a constant stream of changing content with no effort on your part!
Today, there are more camera-enabled cell phones than there are digital cameras
in the market. The ability to take photographs wherever, whenever is changing the
behaviors of consumers who are taking more photographs of “casual moments”
than ever before. And as they become more Web savvy, consumers are changing
their behaviors and immediately sharing their photographs with others.
You need to be there for four reasons:
1. When someone searches on a keyword, there is a chance your photos
might be delivered to them on the results page. You have an opportunity
to engage prospective customers or reconnect with existing customers
through this process. General Motors, for example, is putting
photographs of their new cars online to generate excitement, comment,
and engagement.
2. Sites like Flickr give you an opportunity to tell a bigger story and engage
your customers. Photographs humanize your company. You could offer
photographs of staff and detailed tours of the production process.
3. They can be used to gain feedback. Your design team could post
prototypes or show products in different colors and gain important and
immediate feedback from consumers.
4. You set in motion a process where your photos are picked up by others
and put on their Web sites. You should encourage this, as the more
people who are displaying and promoting your products, the higher
your Social Media rating will be.
The bottom line is, by using third-party Internet service providers, you not only
gain access to their client base, but you eliminate the cost and time to create the
software and update it.
P h o t o s , F l i c k r, a n d M o r e
165
Design Public’s “Fresh New Spaces”
Design Public is a retailer with a specific niche. They sell very modern furniture.
They decided to create a blog to educate their clientele and to attract new clients.
Next, they effectively mashed up their blog with Flickr by using RSS feeds to
deliver Flickr photographs to their blog. This strategy maximizes their capability
to reach prospective customers.
Because design is not only their career but their passion, they created a group on
Flickr called Fresh New Spaces to share ideas and photos and engage an audience
of prospective customers. Members can not only post their own photos and
ideas, but they also participate in ongoing online discussions. They were thrilled
when their strategy resulted in nearly 900 people interested in modern furniture
design signing up to be a part of their community.
Nikon’s “Stunning Gallery”
Another example is Nikon’s very successful campaign on Flickr, which they called
the “Nikon Stunning Gallery.” Photo enthusiasts were offered an opportunity to
have their very best photographs posted in this gallery for others to see and rate.
Participants only had to “tag” their picture with “nikonstunninggallery” in order
to participate. Nikon staff evaluated and approved only the best photographs.
Although Flickr generally frowns on companies deliberately using their site to
generate business, they love it when organizations drive new users to their Web
site. They recognize the new users will go through a learning curve and after
they do, they will create and share their own photo albums with their friends.
This program was very successful for a couple of reasons. Nikon positioned their
brand with a campaign that focused on “stunning pictures” and Flickr received
hundreds of new members. Nearly 100,000 photos were uploaded to the Nikon
Stunning Gallery.
For virtually no cost, both organizations were able to increase awareness of their
products and service by engaging the public to participate. Does that sound like
something you would be interested in?
Paparazzi in your company!
Today’s digital cameras provide a perfect opportunity for organizations to engage
users. Contrary to traditional cameras, once you invest in the camera, there is no
166
film, film processing, or any development or printing costs. With digital cameras,
you can snap as many photographs as you wish without a concern for cost.
I like to remind those who are building and managing online communities that
they need to include viral marketing as well as Push/Pull techniques to bring
users back to the Web site. Taking digital photographs of the “daily” life within
your company does both. It also provides new content and continues to give
your “users” an inside view of your organization.
And it’s easy to do!
Here are some examples of photographs:
1. Shots within a specific department.
2. Photographs of how products/services are made or delivered.
3. Candid photographs of staff dressed uniquely for different holidays.
4. Photos of customers visiting the “office.”
Today, nearly every cell phone has at least a one megapixel camera built into
it, and consumers are not only learning how to use them, but they are also
starting to use them more. As their behavior changes, you need to find ways to
encourage them to use their creativity to become engaged in your product and
your brand.
Exercise
A photo strategy is one of the easiest to adopt and provides immediate results.
• Decide how you can best use photos to reach your goals.
• Determine if you are going to develop the photo-sharing programs
inhouse or use third-party Web sites.
All members of the organizational hierarchy
should be trained in these new strategies and
tactics, increasing the organization’s chances
of success in this brave new economy.
Brad Kleinman, WorkSmart eMarketing
31. Educate Your Customers
Y
our Web strategy should engage your prospective and existing customers
through education.
Consumers today have an endless amount of choices and are looking for
reasons to buy products and services. By developing a strategy to educate your
prospective clients on the value of your product, you help set yourself apart from
competitors.
There are a number of tools you can use to educate your customers on what they
can do while they are using your online community. Some of these include:
• History of the product or service.
• How it is created/manufactured.
• Testimonials and endorsements of others.
• Videos showing how others are using your product.
Your training doesn’t have to look like it was done in Hollywood or Bollywood.
YouTube helped introduce the concept that “simple is good.” What used to cost
companies tens of thousands of dollars can now be accomplished for free or
nearly free.
There are a number of tools you can use to share these stories besides video. Some
other examples are:
1. Flash presentations
167
168
2. PowerPoints
3. Video
4. Audio
5. Blogs
Blogs are a good way to keep your customers informed of things that are happening
in your organization, new product development, and historical information. The
more you share, the more engaged they will become. You can use video to show
your users how to use your products and/or follow your processes. Simple stepby-step videos are no longer just for Fortune 500 companies. Now, anyone with
a video camera and the ability to post to YouTube can provide a credible training
tool.
With the Web, you can implement online training tools that combine audio,
video, and interactive learning components. Tools like Slashcast and Camtasia
Studio are great tools to use.
You can have it SoonR than later!
Another way you can educate customers is by having them share ideas with you
and other users. SoonR is a free online tool that enables you to access your Mac
or Windows computer or laptop and open any file on your cell phone. This tool
will enable you to check your email or open documents you need for a meeting.
You can even make Skype calls or use Skype conference-calling tools.
SoonR has a simple online user-generated concept that encourages their users to
share “SoonR Moments.” Here’s an example one user posted:
“Recently while traveling to the East Coast and away from my office, I
got a call from a large retail prospect asking me to forward digital copies
of all my product line sheets, press, and photographs.
I’ve been chasing this large partnership for over two years in hopes they
would carry my product line. They called unexpectedly because another
supplier didn’t deliver items for their summer catalog, and they needed
replacement pieces ASAP. They wanted to review my products that day!
Because I have a small business, a laptop is a luxury I can’t afford, and
instead have been using SoonR to access my email while away from my
office.
E d u c a t e Yo u r C u s t o m e r s
169
This time, though, I needed documents and photographs off my hard drive
immediately! Thankfully, I had my mobile phone and my SoonR account. I
quickly logged on to my office computer, gathered all the necessary documents,
and emailed them within an hour. I couldn’t have done any of this without
SoonR!”
Simple suggestions from customers that help them understand how to use your
services will go a long way toward increasing participation.
Whatever you decide to do, research has proven that a more informed customer
will spend more. Your job is to use your online community to increase your
customers’ understanding of what your product can do and to constantly
reinforce this through a variety of training tools.
Web cam video training
You can also create a short video using your Web cam. That’s right, just you
speaking from the heart into your computer. It doesn’t have to be fancy.
A great example of a simple idea that is incredibly effective is videos offered
by Common Craft. The firm creates short, two-minutes-or-less videos they call
Paperworks. A video camera runs as the announcer posts paper explanations of
the product or service on the wall. The magic of the process is their expertise in
simplifying the things we try to make too complicated.
Why are we suggesting that you educate your users?
• Informed customers are more loyal.
• Reduce price sensitivity.
• Increased potential for word-of-mouth.
• The more they know the more they will spend.
Real-life example
M80, a consumer media company that specializes in creating Web-based viral
marketing campaigns for organizations, created a series of informational tools
to engage and involve their customers. M80 worked with Nestlé to create a
campaign that introduced their high-end product, Chocolatier, to bakers. They
created a newsletter designed to inform readers about Chocolatier that shared
recipes, coupons, and chocolate news. In a world where chocolate is chocolate,
170
the goal of the six-figure campaign was to educate the consumer why this
chocolate line was better and worth the price.
M80 created a Web-based campaign that included eNewsletters, eCards, and
peer-sharing video to reach the 1 to 2 percent of the market that qualify as brand
influencers. Their marketing team scoured the Internet to find brand influencers
and provided them access to the information and videos to share with their
trusted networks. Some had active blogs, others were simply very interested in
chocolate.
The goal of the campaign was to get 40,000 people signed up for the eNewsletter.
According to M80’s CEO, David Neupert, “Our team directors find influencers
and offer to provide the media tools we’ve created for our client. We’ve found our
efforts result in approximately 25 percent of all viewings, and the viral pick up
from trusted sources passing it around results in the other 75 percent viewings.”
The firm also helped Nestlé create a number of videos to educate clients. One
streaming video, called “Chocolate 101 from Tree to Treat,” provides the quick
overview on how chocolate is made. Another, “Chocolate Tasting and Pairing,”
provides the viewer ideas on how to pair chocolate with other food items.
With the eNewsletter expected to reach 40,000 people, the campaign reached
over 30 million impressions from the time it was created. The program had
three happy outcomes: Nestlé positioned their brand as a premium product,
they educated the customer on why the product cost more, and they connected
a group of people who love chocolate.
You love your product; your customers do too. Bring them inside your company
and give them an opportunity to become more educated and help you grow sales
and profits!
Educate customers to love whiskey!
If you are a whiskey lover, you will love subscribing to singlemalt.tv, an online
channel that provides a behind-the-scenes look at the world of whiskey.
Singlemalt.tv takes you around the world to explore how whiskey is produced
and the people who are behind it. Imagine yourself settling into your favorite
chair with your glass of your favorite whiskey, sipping away as you watch a video
that shares the intricate steps and the tender-loving care that goes into making
whiskey. You listen to the secret ingredients and are whisked away to another
world as you hear the Scotch accents of the brewers.
E d u c a t e Yo u r C u s t o m e r s
171
The site is hosted by an Akron-area company, Lost Tribe Media, which provides
organizations with robust video hosting of video education and marketing
projects like this. Mike McKenny, president of Lost Tribe Media suggests,
“Video is beginning a powerful way to educate your customers to increase their
appreciation, interest, and loyalty for your product and service.”
If you are not sure how you can do this for your industry, check out their Web site.
An online educational tool like this could be split among different organizations
to reduce the cost and increase the exposure.
Exercise
In today’s competitive business environment and increasing cost to do business,
you can’t survive for long cutting prices. Focusing on educating your customers
is an easy-to-adopt strategy.
• You already know why your product is great! Use video, photos,
webcams, write white papers, reports, do whatever it takes to get the
message to your customers.
• Identify ways your customers can get into the education game with you.
Think about ways they can show new users “the ropes.”
We have to shift away from the notion of messaging
everybody in a one way dialogue into a much
more two way or multi-way conversation.
Rich Murray, Edleman
32. Online Advertising
O
nline advertising is only getting a small percentage of the total advertising
budget.
Six-seven percent to be exact! However this number is going to change drastically
as the online behaviors of consumers mature, businesses continue to offer
practical services and the mass marketing industry continues to lose its influence
an effectiveness.
Already there are cracks are showing up the formally impenetrable mass
marketing wall. Nike announced they were converting a large percent of their
TV advertising budget and focusing on interactive marketing. General Motors
made an announcement in mid 2008 indicating they intended to switch 50% of
their advertising budget to online advertising.
An analysis by the Television Bureau of Advertising of the top ten advertising
categories for the 2nd quarter of 2008 indicates:
1. Automotive was down 17.0%
2. Communications/Telecommunications was down 2.3%
3. Restaurants was down 3.3%
4. Car & Truck Dealers was down 13.8%
5. Government and Organizations was up 19.0%
6. Travel, Hotels & Resorts was up 5.1%
172
Online Advertising
173
7. Furniture Stores was down 12.6%
8. Insurance was down 4.2%
9. Financial was down 3.1%
10. Schools, Colleges & Camps was down 1.8%.
The newspaper industry is facing additional struggles. According to the
Newspaper association of America, total print ads in the U.S. were down 16
percent in the second quarter to $8.8 billion. This marks the 9th consecutive
quarter that newspaper revenues have declined. The decline is monstrousrepresenting $1.7 billion less in print ads in the second quart than the year
before. For the year to date in 2008, the industry is down $3.1 billion dollars in
advertising revenue.
The radio and magazine industry are facing additional struggles, not to mention
increases in costs and decreases I readership.
According to ZenithOptimedia, worldwide Internet advertising will pass three
milestones in 2008:
• First, they expect it to overtake total radio advertising revenue in 2008
• Second, they expect it to attain a double-digit share of global advertising
in 2009
• Lastly they expect it to overtake total magazine advertising revenue in
2010
It’s clear a shift is happening and you will need to get your business in line with
the shift that is coming!
Many different opportunities
Just like traditional marketing, you already have a number of different advertising
opportunities. As you begin to evaluate what percentage of your advertising
dollars will go online, you need to evaluate where you want to do your advertising.
There are a number of different areas in which you can advertise. Here just some
of the channels where you can focus your online advertising and marketing:
• Broadcast email
• RSS
174
• Search engine marketing
• Social Media optimization
• Social news (Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit)
• Social networks
• Web site links (free)
• Press releases
• Online advertising
• Social Media
• Syndicated articles
• Directories
• Forums
• Web site links (paid)
Advertising is going to get more accurate and effective as the industry continues
to fine-tune strategies and best practices are shared with others.
All of this is pointing toward unique opportunities for organizations to be able
to advertise online and target their advertising with pinpoint and behavior
accuracy.
Yahoo!, for example, is introducing a new advertising system that will move
advertising from “dumb” banners to smart banners that include relevant
content applicable to the viewer. The Yahoo!! ad system will enable them to take
information you have shared – address, age, etc. – and combine them with the
current search to put in a banner; for example, the name of a car dealer that has
the car you are looking for and the price of the car. They are also introducing
technology that will give the user the ability to select within a banner the type of
information they are looking for, and, as a result, deliver different video content
to the viewer. Preliminary studies are showing a significant increase in clickthroughs, which have the potential to increase sales.
And you thought this was going to be easy!
As you are building your advertising strategy for your organization, spend a little
time to determine who your audience is and what is the most effective way for
Online Advertising
175
them to find you. When you do that, I guarantee you will find low-cost ways to
increase revenue and profits.
So how will you advertise?
You definitely should be using Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Their simple search
relevance tools put your text ad in front of people looking for your product or
services.
But you also have a growing list of companies who provide templated banner ads
and video ads that you can customize in literally minutes and select where you
want them to show up and how much you are willing to spend each day.
Google is offers a package where you can bid on left over advertising space in
newspapers and radio. Again, common to Google, you can identify what your
audience is, create a text, audio or video ad, identify geographical locations and
within minutes you could be driving consumers to your offers.
Most organizations needed an advertising agency to do this kind of stuff. Today
with a little direction, clerical staff can do this for you!
Analyze!
You also need to set aside time to analyze what you are doing. With traditional
marketing the only way you knew if it was effective if the cash register was
ringing. With online advertising you will be able to check dozens of stats to
determine how to increase click throughs and sales.
This could be your most important Internet strategy. Don’t take it lightly!
Exercise
Online advertising is another easy strategy to integrate into your business
strategy.
• The first thing you need to do is get your firm set up with Google and
Yahoo!’s advertising programs. It will take you about an hour to get
yourself set up, but you’ll see results immediately.
• Also try Google’s online partnership with traditional advertising outlets.
You can pick up bargain prices on “last-minute” radio and newspaper
spots.
176
• Check out advertising opportunities for your business on Facebook and
MySpace.
Spammers have more email addresses
of your customers- than you do
33. Email Acquisition Campaign
W
hen you think about it, spammers have the email addresses of nearly one
hundred percent of the billion people currently on the Internet. Everyone
seems to end up on spam lists. Even when you get a new position or change
Internet providers, spammers seem to quickly catch up with you!
For those of you who are developing online communities, one of the hardest jobs
you will have is to increase registrations and participation. That’s why you should
seriously consider adopting a User Acquisition Campaign. A User Acquisition
Campaign is an organized plan that has goals, assigns responsibilities, and
schedules meetings to analyze the results.
When you look at the participation in online communities, Paret’s 80/20 rule
seems to apply. The top ten online communities have 80 percent of the total
number of people registered and the thousands of online communities share the
remaining 20 percent of users.
In almost any industry, there tends to be three organizations that rise to the top
of the market. MySpace and Facebook are enjoying a surge of popularity and
viral growth. However, there are literally thousands of other social networks that
are fighting to gain a piece of their membership base, and they are finding it hard
to do. Some are forming strategic partnerships that cross-reference customers.
If you are a company, non-profit, or organization with a current customer and
user base, you already have a built-in audience you can go to. This is a critical
element of your Web strategy. Fail to do this, fail to do it properly, and your Web
site will not provide the benefits it could to your customers. And if it fails to do
that, it will fail to deliver the potential data updates and increased contributions,
177
178
as well as the customers’ engagement that could happen. Are you feeling the
pressure?
Here are a couple of ways to increase registrations:
• Use traditional marketing opportunities.
• Include information on packaging.
• Create flyers to give to customers.
• Include information on invoices or in billings.
• Promote in your newsletters.
• Partner with other organizations that can introduce you to their
customers.
• Purchase “opt-in” email lists.
• Create a traditional broadcast marketing strategy.
When done effectively, it works!
Alloy Media and Sprite partner
Alloy Media + Marketing used partnership effectively to net 32,000 email
addresses of Sprite fans. Their organizations participated in the Sprite Sublyminal
Campaign and created a number of activities to engage their customers that were
part of Sconex, a high school social networking site. Alloy Media + Marketing
embedded codes across the site, provided sweepstakes, and included videos and
message boards for them to talk on.
Get creative, let your thoughts fly, get out of the office, and think out of the box.
When you do, you will create campaigns that will increase participation in your
online community and Social Media with minimal cost and effort. I consider it
so important that I included it in my Top Ten Strategies.
Dreamfield Pasta Customer Acquisition
Dakota Growers of North Dakota introduced in June 2004 a new healthy pasta
called Dreamfields Pasta. The product had little to no brand awareness when
it was introduced to grocery stores across the country. HyperDrive Interactive,
a Cincinnati marketing firm, created a promotion campaign that included a
Email Acquisition Campaign
179
Permission Marketing program that acquired over 100,000 email addresses in
about a year.
Interested in knowing how they did it?
They started by creating a new Web site packed with useful information, recipes,
and nutritional data. Then they developed a comprehensive interactive campaign
featuring highly targeted emails to its customer segments, search engine
optimization/pay-per-click programs, online grassroots and word-of-mouth
activities, and flash banner advertising on a variety of demographic-suitable Web
sites.
All promotions were tied to the Web, even print advertising. When they did print
advertising, they led the consumer to a specific landing page for that campaign.
That way, each consumer activated was able to immediately see information
relevant to their interest in Dreamfields.
HyperDrive used email marketing software to send an email survey that involved
asking customers to share a fifty-words-or-less explanation of why they are eating
healthy. The emails opened on this campaign hit 55 percent with a 17 percent
click-through.
Another successful technique involved providing a one-dollar coupon consumers
could download and print with their own printer. They then went back to those
who participated in the campaign and asked if they would be interested in
sharing information about the product with others; in essence, their goal was to
build a group of Brand Ambassadors. They built a “kit of information, supplies,
and samples” for their Brand Ambassadors and specific instructions on how
they could help. According to Dan Heimbrock, President/CEO of Hyperdrive,
“Ninety percent of their Brand Ambassadors stayed with the program. The
average person shared the information with ten people, and 10 percent of the
group talked to twenty people.”
Besides helping Dakota Growers acquire nearly 100,000 email addresses, they’ve
helped them launch a new product whose sales are growing rapidly every month.
Exercise
Building an online community is the easy part. Managing it and increasing
registrations is the hard part. You need to have a significant budget to market
and promote it.
180
• Develop a yearly marketing strategy that incorporates on and offline
marketing promotions.
• Like the examples I presented here, think about a contest and
promotions as a way to build traffic.
• Partner with as many organizations as you can to get your message out
there.
• As we discussed earlier, adopt Network Weaving to engage and involve
participants.
Imagine having 300-400 people in a virtual room
that you can talk to all the time 24/7. Wouldn’t
it be nice to duck in the room and ask,
“What do you think about this?”
Leslie Forde, Communispace
34. Podcasts
O
ne of the goals of your Web site should be to provide continually changing
relevant content. Podcasts are just beginning to catch on with small and
midsized businesses.
As you probably know, podcasts can be listened to on your computer or
downloaded to your iPod or similar device. This flexibility allows the listener
to play the podcast while they are exercising, traveling, or even waiting at the
doctor’s office. Listeners can replay podcasts as often as they want. Listeners who
download them can share them with friends.
Here are examples of who is podcasting:
• Dentists are videotaping and explaining services to help their clients and
families understand their procedures.
• Consultants are offering three-minute consulting ideas to generate leads.
• Real estate agents are providing their own “tours of town” and showing
videos of the homes they have sold, talking about each one, and showing
prospects their style.
• Comics are creating short podcasts to increase their visibility.
• Self-help gurus are creating three-, six-, and twelve-session podcasts to
build their audience.
• Body shops use podcasts to show prospective customers the quality and
care they put into fixing customers’ cars.
181
182
One of the reasons small to midsize businesses have not adopted podcasts is
because it requires a bit of technical tinkering in order to do them. There are now
programs available on the market configured to bypass the technical difficulties.
The new generation of podcast tools requires you to pick up a phone, spend a
few minutes interviewing someone, and then hang up. This podcast is instantly
available for others to listen to!
There are many different types of podcasts your organization can offer. Some of
these include:
• Interviews with staff about new products.
• Interviews with customers on successful uses of your products and
services.
• Recording of the president providing a year-end report.
• Combination of recording of various company staff to be used by the
recruiting office.
• Interviews with vendors and partners.
You don’t have to be the person who creates your podcasts!
Your job as an administrator is to just make sure it gets done! I would suggest
you look around your company for someone who would be thrilled to have the
opportunity to interview others and, in the process, become recognized for their
participation. Every company has an in-house entertainer. Just let others know
what you want to do and someone will more than likely step forward.
There are also experienced interviewers who could do the interviews for you.
Your volunteer “reporters” can do the interviews from any phone, anywhere in
the world! You can find them at your local Toastmaster club or at a nearby college.
If you can’t, go to elance.com and post a job opportunity; you’ll find one.
You might consider contacting a local college or university’s speech/
communication/journalism or TV/radio broadcasting department. Chances are
you will find students who would be interested in the professional experience of
interviewing people and handling the posting of the interview.
Using volunteers to handle your podcasting benefits everyone:
• Students gain practical real-world experience.
Podcasts
183
• Internal staff will have to use skills they are not using in their current
job.
• Customers/venders will be honored to be interviewed and will share the
experience with family and friends.
• You gain a tremendous amount of content with minimal effort.
Why are we doing this again? You want to be in a position to push information
to users that will pull them back to the Web site. This simple strategy will pull
customers/members back to your Web site to hear the interviews. A community
with changing content looks more lively and exciting. No one wants to hang
around a “dull” Web site!
For all the benefits provided, for virtually no cost, why wouldn’t you adopt
podcasting as a way to engage and involve customers/members?
Exercise
Podcasts aren’t for everyone, but if you are an entrepreneurial type, I’m sure there
is a bit of showman in you!
• First, decide what theme, concept you are going to build your podcast
around. Is your podcast going to focus on education, entertainment, or
providing information?
• Promote your podcast through traditional channels, in your emails,
newsletters and flyers and through bloggers
Imagine having 300-400 people in a virtual room
that you can talk to all the time 24/7. Wouldn’t
it be nice to duck in the room and ask,
“What do you think about this?”
Leslie Forde, Communispace
35. Prospective Employees
Your web strategy should include techniques to find new employees!
Ask any business leader today and they will tell you one of the hardest things to
instill in employees is a passion for the product, service, and/or organization they
work for. While all of us work to get money to pay our bills, a few lucky persons
find a unique sense of passion about their work.
Whether you provide an online community or customer bulletin board watch
keep your eye out for who is participating and at what level. More active, well
spoken individuals could become candidate for openings in your office.
Your human resources department should spend time in accessing these tools to
source out people who are passionate, articulate, and committed to your product.
Your online community will help you find:
• Brand Ambassadors
• Employees
• Online community volunteers
No other online community or organization in the world can claim to be what
your online community represents to your users. No organization in the world
has the opportunity to assemble people who have shared the same interest, love,
and commitment for your products and services. None have the opportunity to
develop a fervent, passionate desire to help each other achieve as a result of these
shared experiences.
184
Prospective Employees
185
Your human resources department should keep an up-to-date listing of jobs and
opportunities available in your community.
Exercise
Whether you have a position available or not, always be on the lookout for great
talent. Many times that talent can be found in the form of a customer.
• Your Web site should have a jobs page, a video from your president, a
video testimonial from staff, and the ability for applicants to call, email
or fill in a form.
• Create a page that uses pictures to “sell” your organization as a fun place
to work.
A picture tells a thousand words, video tells a million,
and on the Web it becomes more influential.
36.YouTube
Welcome to the YouTube era!
With broadband Internet connections reaching 70 percent of the population,
YouTube ignited a nationwide interest, if not passion, in viewing user-generated
content. Founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim,
YouTube was serving up over 100 million user-generated videos within their
first year.
Today, you can find esoteric video footage of Jack Kerouac being interviewed
by Steve Allen on Steve’s show in 1958. The unique video shows Jack reading
his book while Steve plays a jazz piece on his piano! Or you can find a video
capturing Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, and
Fats Domino doing a medley. As Paris Hilton would say, “That’s hot!” In the
terminology of other eras, it was smoking, bad, tripping!
Think of it and you’ll now find it on YouTube.
YouTube has become the world’s digital video library. Users spent millions of hours
in dorms and offices around the country looking at the video “de jour.” Google,
who had their own version of online video that didn’t have the phenomenal
growth of YouTube, decided on YouTube’s eighteen-month birthday to buy it
for $1.65 billion!
Both big and small business began to realize they could put advertising videos,
training videos, and customer testimonials on this new behemoth of a marketing
tool. Studios and network TV channels offer trailers. Bootleg video of concerts
and TV programs are available along with the “Smith’s” family videos.
186
187
YouTube is revolutionizing the way your customers/members are entertaining
themselves. On YouTube, you will find your customers/members among the
participants who are posting “blog”-type videos recounting their day, their job,
their hobbies, and/or their interests. You will also find corporations that are
posting videos to promote their products and services. For the most part, it’s cool
to look “unprofessional.” The vast majority of the videos being posted are done
by individuals with their home camera. Some are vastly better than others.
However, the business world is beginning to understand YouTube can be used
to post videos for:
• Training
• Sales
• Product demos
• Tours
Any company can create their own “channel” in which they can put their
videos.
It takes minutes to sign in and set up a “channel” for your company or organization.
You can upload as many videos as you’d like with the only limitations being 10
minutes long and 100 megabytes in size.
Even if you have your videos on your own Web site, you will want to have them
on YouTube because you have an opportunity for them to be seen by over a
hundred million users. To improve the chances that others will find your video,
you will be given an opportunity to put keywords in to explain the video. When
a person searches on that keyword, a results page will list your video and others
that “tagged” their videos with the same term(s).
YouTube encourages viewers to rate videos, leave comments, and embed the
videos on their own pages. You will have options of not allowing people to
make comments or to approve the comments before they are posted. YouTube
is offering smaller business an opportunity to build their brand and increase
revenue at no cost.
Flying Dog Beer
Flying Dog Beer, like its name, is not your typical light beer company. Like any
small business, they have to think out of the box to find a way to get out the
message about their product and service.
188
Armed with a low-cost, high-definition camera, the firm shot thirty hours of video
footage of their company founder, the brewer, and others for simple YouTubestyle low-budget ads. A short twenty-seven-second ad shows their wacky sense
of humor as one friend suggests to the other that he hold the beer up to his eye
and look at the two girls across the room. When the friend does this, the girls are
transformed into stunning-looking models. Take away the beer and reality sets
in as the friend sees the girls as they really are, with squeaky voices and less-thanappealing looks. It’s offbeat and fun, and suggests that after drinking their beer,
everything looks great!
This simple video became a YouTube hit for the firm, being passed around and
viewed nearly 17,000 times. If the advertisement converted just 10 percent of
the viewers, and assuming the average beer was $3 in a bar, it generated $5,100
in sales.
Flying Dog Beer also edited the footage to provide tours of various parts of the
plant and interviews with the brewmaster.
Ice.com engages customers on YouTube
Ice.com is an online jewelry business founded in 1999 by Pinny Gniwisch and his
two brothers. Early adopters of social networking tools, Ice.com has successfully
used blogs to generate traffic to their Web sites and, based on that, decided to
explore YouTube as a marketing channel.
After a series of brainstorming sessions, Pinny decided to do a series of on-thestreet video interviews both in Times Square and at the Oscars in Hollywood.
The street interviews were focused on the benefits of giving presents on special
holidays like Valentine’s Day. The interviews were short, entertaining, and fun.
Pinny suggests: “Your videos need to have a low budget and fun element to them
or they will not go viral. You have to be thinking about putting in the right
hooks that will get people to laugh or smile and then forward it to a friend.”
The videos were placed in a YouTube channel called pinnysworld. The next
challenge was to get people to sign up on the channel, so they created a
sweepstakes to draw traffic. Within the first week, the editor of YouTube placed
one of the videos on the sign-up page of YouTube, which gave them a significant
bump in viewers and signups.
The results will make any marketing person smile. The campaign generated
over 50,000 views, 15,000 people came to Ice.com, and of those, 1,500 people
189
registered on their site. The cost to create the campaign was only $1,200, leaving
a customer acquisition cost of only eighty cents per customer. Keep that number
in mind when we go through the next step. As Ice.com nurtures these customers,
over time they will invite their friends to participate, so the 1,500 could grow to
10,000 or more. As they acquire the friends of friends’ customers, they will be
continually decreasing their original customer acquisition cost. Not bad math!
Free access to millions of prospective customers
This idea is so revolutionary it takes a bit of time to understand the power and
potential it provides for your business.
Think about what you’d have to do today to put a video ad on TV. You’d contract
with the local TV or cable provider and pay an exorbitant amount of money to
run the ad within a time slot of viewers that match your customer demographic.
Your ad would then be broadcast to thousands of people who have no interest in
your product or service but will be exposed to it and hopefully it will put money
in your cash register.
On the other hand, at YouTube your ad will be viewed by only people who are
interested in viewing it. You not only have a longer opportunity to tell your
story, but you have an opportunity to create a campaign where you encourage
them to share the video with others. For small to mid-size businesses, YouTube
provides an opportunity to find new customers for little to no cost.
Set aside a good hour of your time to look around the YouTube site to gain an
understanding of where personal entertainment is headed. Video is an excellent
way to engage your customer and give them another opportunity to “own” your
brand and feel part of the family.
Exercise
We live in a video era! Even cameras capture video today.
• Create a channel on YouTube to put all of your company videos, the
training videos, product education, sales videos, information videos, and
even videos of your company picnic.
• When you post new training or educational videos, or issue a press
release, include information in company newsletters/eNewsletters.
37. Folksonomy/Tags
Ok, this one is a bit hard to understand, but bear with me and I’ll make it as
simple as possible.
Folksonomy is an Internet-based information retrieval technique of collaboratively
produced, open-ended labels that categorize content on Internet Web sites.
Whew, that was easy enough to say! The labels are commonly known as “tags,”
and the process of labeling is called “tagging.”
Think of Folksonomy as a grassroots Dewey Decimal classification system for
the Web.
It’s really the “people’s version” of the Dewey. Where the Dewey has rigid rules
and categories, Folksonomy uses a loose, continually evolving, collaboratively
developed definition of the rules that match society’s current understandings and
interpretation. Instead of the system following a controlled hierarchical process,
it uses the collaboration of people worldwide, labeling things the way that think
they should be labeled.
Tagging helps group information, photos, people, etc. If you are a manufacturer,
you could post a series of photographs of “extruded wire molds” that would
instantly be listed along with others with that listing. If you had ten offices
around the world, you could have a group photograph taken of all of them and
tag them with your company name. Each group photo will instantly show up
when someone searches on your company name.
190
F o l k s o n o m y / Ta g s
191
Tagging became wildly popular on sites like:
• Delicious
• Flickr
• YouTube
Within social networking communities, users can tag information so it can be
associated and readily found by others looking for the same thing. For example,
in Flickr, a user may be interested in looking at all photographs with a “William”
and “Mary” tag. There could be two or 10,000 photographs posted by three or
thousands of members. You have to have some spare time when you start using
tags, because you can get caught up in going everywhere and nowhere at the
same time!
That’s one of the attractive benefits of tags, from my perspective. When added
to your Web site, your customers or members will begin to follow the tags and
end up consuming the content presented, and before they know it, an hour goes
by. One of the strategies I’d ask you to adopt is to find ways to not only keep
customers coming back to your Web site, but at the same time to keep them on
your Web site for longer periods.
Like Flickr, you could use tags to create more interest in posting and viewing
photographs. Let’s assume you have given your users the freedom to post
photographs. Besides uploading the photos, you’d give them the ability to tag
each photo. They might include the location where the photo was taken, the
event at which it was taken, the names of the people in the photograph, or even
the state of mind they were in when it was taken!
Tagging is a concept that is being picked up and used in business tools also. The
CRM tool I use to connect with prospects and customers now allows me to use
tagging to find documents, letters, and flyers that I have available to me. I don’t
have to remember the exact name of a document, just some general terms that I
would have saved it under. This technique saves staff time and makes better use
of company flyers, documents, and case studies.
My firm uses a variety of email marketing tools. One of them iContact allows
me to post tags to help search engines categorize our broadcast emails. They
then post my email to a website that along with the tags, helps people who I
didn’t even intend to receive the email find out about our opportunities. It’s just
another way to get your message out.
192
Folksonomy is going to be a key ingredient in making your Web site more practical
and keep people on your Web site longer, posting comments, integrating their
comments, and searching for others. Additionally, it will be a key technique to
taking an active step in driving the world to your “electronic” doorstep.
Exercise
Tagging is an important tool to include in your Internet strategy and should not
be limited just to your Web strategy.
• When you identify the tools and services you want to include, determine
which should include tagging capabilities.
• Analyze what keywords your customers are using for their tags, and use
this in your SEO programs.
Your customers and Brand Ambassadors deserve
fifteen minutes of fame for their achievements,
contributions, and commitment
38. Customer/Member Life Stories
Everyone deserves fifteen minutes of fame!
I love this idea because it really is simple yet provides a lot of content that will be
automatically updated on your Web site.
You have thousands of customers/members who have accomplished a lot. Your
Web site could have a “Customer Spotlight” that features a profile of your
customers and provides them the recognition they deserve. By giving them an
opportunity to share their story, you not only increase customer/member loyalty,
but increase participation because individuals who are featured will tell everyone
from their mother to Aunt Bea to visit the Web site and view their spotlight.
You can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is to automate the
process so you don’t have to do anything. First, develop an online form to ask the
questions you want them to answer.
Here are some examples:
• What hobbies and interests do you have?
• What do you consider your most significant personal or business
achievement?
• What groups and organizations are you a part of?
• Share your favorite books, movies, and music.
• If you could change the world today, what would you do?
• What advice do you have for today’s youth?
193
194
The real trick to make this work for you is to automate the process so as soon as
the information is posted, it can show up online without anyone having to modify
it. The alternative technique (the hard way) is to capture some information and
interview and then write a story on everyone. Not only is this time consuming,
but it will result in fewer customers being featured.
Ideally you should feature a customer every hour.
Keep in mind; you don’t want to have to coordinate this process. It needs to
happen 24/7 without your intervention. This is another example of how you
can use Push/Pull technology to keep your customers/members coming back to
your Web site.
Exercise
Recognizing your customers and employees is one of the easier strategies to
adopt.
• Create an online form that customers can provide information about
themselves (and photos) that will automatically populate a spotlight
frame on your Web site and rotate every time someone visits your Web
site.
• Have company officials call the customer to congratulate them on being
recognized.
More companies need to realize social media is not
going to go away. It’s changing the world we live in.
Brands and companies that don’t embrace
social media will fall by the wayside.
CC Chapman, Crayon
39. Viral Marketing
The name has its roots in the way viruses spread rapidly.
If an Internet site is growing quickly by users recommending the site to friends, it
is benefiting from viral marketing. For example, when you find a great new Web
site and you share it with your best friend, and she shares it with five friends,
and her five friends share it with five friends, and their friends share it with five
friends, you begin to understand how a Web site can grow swiftly. One person
can, through their recommendations, drive hundreds of people to your Web site
in just one day. Viral marketing is a powerful technique, one you should not
only be aware of but should be thinking of including in every Internet strategy
or concept you develop.
Well-known Web sites like YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, and Flickr are good
examples where the users/customers became involved in the production and
creation of the marketing program, and, as a result, rocketed these sites to stellar
growth within a matter of a year or two. Back in the early days of the Internet,
Netscape, GeoCities, Tripod, and Hotmail were good examples of Web sites that
grew to millions of users with zero marketing. They grew by word-of-mouth
only. While these sites had anywhere from 3 to 30 million members during that
time, today’s viral marketing is taking Web sites well past 100 million users!
In all of these examples, as the Web sites grew, they sold out to larger firms that
would benefit from their new business model. In Skype’s case, eBay realized free
phone service would be a benefit for buyers and sellers of products and services.
Viral marketing campaigns can be simple techniques that you start today. For
example:
195
196
• Dr. Dobb’s Journal sent me an email giving me the opportunity share
a special offer of a free subscription (normally $49.95) to a qualified
colleague.
• AlumniBanners.com sent emails to prospects giving them an
opportunity to share a $200 discount with their friends.
• The American Express company in their Members Project promotion
encourage people to share the idea with others and to vote on their
favorites.
In order for this to work effectively, you need to have something that is:
• New
• Free
• Fun
• Unique
Your customers, like most people, love to share things that make them mad,
laugh, or hit their shared “hot” button. With the Web, it’s easy for kindred spirits
to pass along jokes, recipes, news, or items that interest them. If I see something
that makes me laugh and I have some friends that share the same humor, I don’t
have to pick up a phone, lick an envelope, and walk to the post office. If I want
to share something, I simply click and send. We need to develop marketing
programs that will take advantage of that kind of behavior!
You probably have a friend or two who you wonder if they do anything all
day but scour the Web to find political or humorous things to send to you. I
bet you even found yourself forwarding some of the better material to your
network of friends. This is one of the things we can do to increase registrations
and participation on your Web site.
Think for a moment about what would get your members excited and engaged.
What issues would cause them to forward and share the experience with
others? Mark Kingdon, in an article from the Clickz.com Network, offers
some possibilities to keep in mind when you are crafting your viral marketing
campaign.
A successful viral technique or campaign offers:
1. Humor – It’s got to be funny, provocative, irreverent, subversive, or
Viral Marketing
197
deranged to get attention.
2. Originality – It must be fresh; something the user hasn’t seen before.
3. Simplicity – The “pay-off” must come quickly; time is at a premium.
Most good viral campaigns aren’t overly immersive. If they are
immersive, the interface is very simple.
4. Timeliness – Pop-culture references must be timely; pop culture has a
short life span.
5. Subtlety – Great viral campaigns aren’t overt product pitches. The
association is subtle. If a reader feels they’re shilling, they won’t send it
on.
Additional ways you could develop viral campaigns include:
• Create a fantastic eCard or YouTube video and encourage members to
share it with others.
• Post a funny photograph of the president in a Halloween costume and
set the stage for customers to share it. Also, give members the ability to
add comments and rate the photograph.
• Let your customers “kidnap” your company mascot and photograph
themselves with the mascot as it travels around the world from customer
to customer.
• Post an opinion poll about a controversial issue in your industry.
Really successful viral marketing campaigns are difficult to do and are as
unpredictable as the next earthquake. You need to be thinking of creating viral
marketing campaigns that will win small battles at a time. Taken over time,
collectively, this technique will go a long way in helping you increase the number
of registered users on your Web site and ultimately provide another opportunity
to engage your customers.
Chevy goes viral
There is no guarantee that a campaign will go viral, but when it does, it will
generate millions of exposures with little or no effort. Chevy was concerned that
Honda, Toyota, and Nissan were entering the sub-compact category to compete
with their Aveo, a small car but with a notably spacious interior.
198
In order to visually demonstrate how spacious the car was and to get the attention
of college students, Chevy created their “Livin’ Large Campus Challenge.” Two
students at seven different universities were selected to live in a Chevy Aveo for
five days and nights, leaving only to go to classes and bathroom breaks. A “Livin’
Large” campaign site was created, and each group was given their own portal page
in which they documented their five-day experience in a blog and via webcam.
They were encouraged to share their experience through their social networks
on Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube. The goal was to give the contestants and
campus students the tools to become engaged with the campaign, but not get
in the way or control it. Students were presented daily challenges (kind of a
Survivor concept), and held contests to draw people to their event and gave away
food and prizes. One day, for example, they had to see how many people they
could get to the car to touch it! Talk about engaging people in your brand!
The student contestants with the most votes won a Chevy Aveo. Each team
encouraged their social networks to vote online at www.aveolivinglarge.com
or by text message. In just five days, the Aveo Livin’ Large Campus challenges
resulted in 217 million audience impressions through online, traditional,
grassroots, and campus media. Campus newspapers got behind the fun and
provided ample coverage, and large newspapers like the Boston Globe and Detroit
Free Press documented the story.
The campaign Web site saw 88,000 unique visitors and had 750,000 page views
during the campaign with an average of eight page views per visit that lasted four
to five minutes. The campaign coordinators estimated over a million students
from 168 campuses got engaged in the campaign through each team’s social
networks, which resulted in 62,991 votes.
I’m not sure who dreams up these kinds of activities, but if you are looking for
a textbook case on how a few people can send a ripple effect throughout the
universe, this one stands out. The campaign was reported to have cost $325,000;
however, when you consider the campaign presented the brand as hip, fun,
practical, and affordable, the fact that it impacted so many people for so long
made it a bargain. Where would you rather spend your money? On one TV ad
on MTV or in a viral marketing campaign like this?
While a concept at this scale is out of the small businessperson’s range, a variation
of it could still be done effectively.
Viral Marketing
199
Monk-e-Mail
CareerBuilder, one of the nation’s largest online job sites with over 23 million
unique visitors per month, teamed up with Cramer-Krasselt to create a viral
marketing campaign and user-generated content campaign using talking avatar
technology by Oddcast.
Cramer-Krasselt created a campaign that challenged a viewer to confront their
dissatisfaction with their job by bringing to life an avatar monkey whose message
was, “I work with a bunch of monkeys!” The goal was to increase their brand
awareness and to increase the number of users searching through the 1.9 million
jobs listed on their site.
The campaign was fun and definitely made an impression on those who viewed
the online ad, and it encouraged them to pass it along. Working with Oddcast,
Cramer-Krasselt created Monk-e-Mail that sent emails in the form of talking
chimps that the user was able to dress and accessorize. Oddcast’s technology
allowed the sender to record their own voice or use a pre-recorded message.
According to Oddcast’s CEO, Adi Sideman, “Email recipients are 60 to 65
percent more likely to open an email form a friend rather than a brand, and 30 to
35 percent more likely to pass that email along to another person. These statistics
lend credibility to these types of campaigns and show that user-generated content
and giving a target customer the ability to express himself or herself is such an
important aspect of marketing and media strategy these days.”
The promotion was a huge success for CareerBuilder, Cramer-Krasselt, and
Oddcast.
Without a single marketing dollar invested, Monk-e-Mail became one of the
most successful, if not memorable, viral marketing campaign ever. Over 100
million Monk-e-Mails were played, resulting in over 25 million unique visitors
that spent an average of 7.5 minutes interacting, dressing up, and sending
messages to others.
With a little planning and the right technology, viral marketing can provide
ROIs that are out of this world.
200
Exercise
Viral marketing campaigns produce huge pay offs. I would challenge your entire
staff to participate in a quarterly viral marketing campaign idea submission
challenge. Get a core group together and pick an idea to follow.
• When you start thinking about developing a viral marketing program
make sure you keep the in mind the five concepts I shared above
(Humor, Originality, Simplicity, Timeliness, Subtlety).
• Give your viral campaign a push by coordinating a traditional marketing
program with it.
• Put measurement tools in place so you can track the movement of your
viral marketing campaign.
40. Push/Pull Techniques
P
ush/Pull techniques are hot. They represent a critical component of any Web
strategy. You need this technique to keep your customers coming back.
Push/Pull techniques increase participation and the frequency that your
customers/members visit your online community and Web site.
When you think about Push/Pull techniques, think about pushing information
to customers/members that pull them back to your Web site. The following are
simple Push/Pull techniques:
• Sending a monthly eNewsletter that has links back to the Web site.
• A broadcast email that suggests they take a survey.
• An eCard that asks them to update information about themselves.
• Opinion of the day.
• Customer spotlight.
• Self selection for news updates.
Push/Pull techniques are designed to get more customers/members participating
on your Web site, but more importantly to increase the frequency they come back
to your Web site. In developing your Internet strategy, you need to think about
ways your online community can automatically provide Push/Pull techniques.
Who said building an online community was easy? It isn’t, but when you think
strategically and build in Push/Pull techniques to bring customers/members
back to your Web site, you will increase their participation and frequency of
visits significantly.
201
202
Browser Toolbar
I thought Yahoo!! and Google were the only companies that had the financial
clout to create programs that would provide me a browser add-on that pulled
me back into their Web site. You’ve seen this application many times. For search
engine providers, it’s a tool you download that adds a bar to your browser to let
you instantly search the Internet, without having to go to their site.
Dynamic Toolbar proved me wrong. The firm can create for any company a
downloadable toolbar application that will drive customers back to their Web
site, instantly.
For example, a manufacturing or parts provider could give customers the ability
to search their product offering right from their browser. Much like search engines
give you instant access to the world, you give your customer instant access to your
products and services. When your toolbar is sitting on their browser, you’ve not
only won mindshare, you are keeping your brand in front of them constantly.
Exercise
You need to always be thinking, “What would bring me back to our Web site?”
• An eNewsletter is a basic Push/Pull technique you can get started
immediately. It doesn’t have to be an extensive newsletter. People don’t
have time to read it anyway. Start with two stories and a customer
feature.
• When you get a new customer, start them on an auto marketing process
where they receive a series of six emails where you educate them about
your beginnings, quality, and products you offer.
41. Social Media Release
P
ublic relations is an industry that is being disintermediated by the Internet.
In my book Internet Dough, I spend a whole chapter discussing it.
The role, the function, and the control of the public relations professional and
their tool, the press release, is weakening with every staff person cut from the
news industry, every blog that is started, and every consumer that gets engaged
with Social Media.
The industry is under fire!
When you stop to think about it, public relations has changed nearly overnight.
Just three years ago, the only way an organization could get news about their
product and service into the market (unless they were Apple!), was to create a
press release, hold press conferences, and bring in the press and public relations
influence to create a buzz about the product that hopefully would make it into
the major media distribution channels. Note the process is all about control that
started in the boardroom or management of the firm that eventually was crafted
and sent out to known and established media sources.
This process required planning and coordination and carried with it a significant
expense. Today, a firm can create a press release and release it through any number
of new PR channels that have a good opportunity to be picked up by specialized
blogs, who pass it among themselves. Hopefully it gets picked up by a major
publication, which then hits the mainstream public. News is leaked from within
companies via employee bloggers, Brand Ambassadors, or fan bloggers.
203
204
Another major change in media is that the number of reporters available to cover
a story is decreasing. Pressed by declining readership that is migrating to the
Internet and consequently lowers advertising revenue, traditional media bean
counters are slashing staff and letting those who are left do the work of many. As
a result, reporters don’t have as much time to cover stories or, for that matter, to
do in-depth news. They, like bloggers, are pressed to take news and repurpose it
in order to make their deadlines.
As all rules are changing, a group involved in the industry suggests the press
release needs to be looked at “out of the box” and given a new mission, goal, and
tools in order for it to be relevant to this Internet-savvy world.
The call for a new way to create and manage press releases has occurred primarily
though computer-mediated communications. This is generally understood as
the extended capabilities of the Internet to expand reach, engage, and provide
a measurement of the results. It is also founded on the premise that people are
now the producers of content along with the consumers of it. Moving to a Social
Media release from a text-based piece of paper includes adding the full function
of Internet capabilities to provide links, video, audio, and multimedia tools.
One has to argue, why not make a press release provide the richness of content
necessary to let the media (including bloggers) grab what they need? The original
goal of press releases was to provide enough information that the reporter wanted
to get more details. The job of the PR person would be to sell them on the bigger
story. The Internet has changed all that as millions of blogs are now the hungry
consumers of press information they can absorb and repurpose within minutes.
They don’t have time for lunch, phone calls, or in-depth interviews. The time
pressures on bloggers are simply to get a story they can post and get on with their
“real” job.
Those who are moving in the direction of Social Media releases will find a hungry
audience within the New Media writers not just in their backyard, but around
the globe. Chris Heuere, in his blog Social Media Release, suggested a typical
Social Media release should include:
1. Headline
2. Sub-Headline
3. Highlights/Key Facts
4. Summary
Social Media Release
205
5. Tags/Keywords
6. Links/URLs
7. Link Types
8. Reserved Link Types
9. Quotes
10. Embedded Audio, Video/Images
11. Embedded Micro Formats
12. Traditional Press Release
13. Company Information
14. Contact Information
15. RSS Feeds to the Company
16. Date/Time
17. Modification/Corrections
18. Geography
19. Source URL
20. Trackback URL
In a Web-based environment, Social Media releases use multimedia tools to grab
attention and provide significantly more detail for bloggers who are not always
interested in conducting personal interviews, but are interested in reading,
interpreting, and posting their story on their blog.
In promoting my book, Internet Dough, we created an extensive social media press
release that included many of these. To see an example visit www.internetdough
.net/press
It’s a new world and you need to understand how to play or you’ll be left out of
the game.
206
Exercise
You don’t have to be a pro to get a press release out. Today, press releases are
getting more recognition through free newsgathering tools like Google and
Yahoo!! Alerts.
• Learn how to use tools that “clip” news about your industry and
competitors.
• Follow the guidelines listed above and create a press release that you can
post to the public relations Web sites.
• Send the same Social Media press release to your client list.
Integrated marketing takes discipline, patience, project
management and a long-term view of customer equity.
It’s the path to a much higher return on investment.
Paul Barsch, Teradata
42. Integrated Marketing
A
s enthusiastic as I am about the potential of the online world, the truth of
the matter is only 6 percent of all advertising dollars are spent online. That
means there are still a lot of advertising opportunities in the traditional media
market.
This book isn’t about abandoning your traditional marketing strategies, but
informing and giving you the tools to understand how to participate in the
changing Web-based world. In light of that, you should be thinking of ways to
integrate old media and new media marketing campaigns.
When you promote your events and activities, create a minimum of five different
ways to market your Web site, products, and services to existing customer/
members.
Among these ideas, I would suggest:
1. Mailing via letters and postcards.
2. Broadcast, animated, and multimedia emails.
3. Alerts and reminders within your online community.
4. Automated phone calls.
5. Friend-inviting-friend campaigns.
In the past, you’ve been limited to marketing your events to one or maybe two
mailings. Combining Internet marketing techniques with traditional marketing
techniques, you can not only reach a new customer base, you will have an
207
208
opportunity to make more contacts on the same prospect base with no additional
cost. Common marketing research shows it takes five to six exposures to a
message before the consumer “gets it.” Using integrated marketing techniques
could increase response rates.
Special K
Special K cereal ran a traditional media campaign where they told the viewer to
go to Yahoo!! and search on Special K. Yahoo!! worked with Special K to design a
“special” landing page that was designed to be the very first listing. On the page,
the consumer has a number of options:
• Pick up additional product information.
• Take the Special K weight-loss challenge.
• Read SHAPE magazine.
• Learn more about your health at Yahoo!! Health.
• Join the Special K Yahoo group.
• Buy Special K at Amazon.com.
It’s a great example that you can adapt to your business needs.
American Express
What is advertising to you? To most people, it is the business process that a firm
or organization uses to push a message to you. It’s commonly stated that the
average person is presented over 3,000 advertising messages a day (including
billboards, magazines, TV, radio, and even ads in bathrooms that you are exposed
to in the average day!).
As a result, we are all getting a bit numb and are paying less attention to ads. The
Internet, however, is offering an opportunity for advertisers to engage prospective
customers and customers in the advertising and branding campaign.
Case in point is American Express. They introduced a new advertising campaign
that encourages members (card holders), prospective customers, and members of
the general public to vote on projects the American Express company will fund
that make the world a better place.
Integrated Marketing
209
Here’s how they set it up:
Organizations can sign up and put themselves in contention to receive part of
the $2.5 million dollars American Express will donate to 25 organizations. They
share:
• About their project
• The problem they are addressing
• The impact the project will have
• Their inspiration
With this information, members of the general public and customers will be able
to vote on the projects they like, which will narrow it down to the top 25, and
then a second round of voting of this group will isolate which organizations will
get the top funding.
It’s really that simple.
Think about the benefits of this program. Designed properly, American Express
customers will share this with their friends, colleagues, and family members.
This viral benefit will help expand the program and potentially generate higher
results because of the “trust” relationship between the person who forwards the
information and the receiver.
American Express is using video to educate users and testimonials to encourage
others to participate. They prominently promote and show who is on their
advisory board for this project to highlight their “impartiality” and provide a
sense of legitimacy. A bulletin board within the site gives all participants a chance
to learn more and or promote their needs.
The program entered its second year and has the opportunity to share who
received the funding the previous year and talk about the impact the funding has
made in the reach and influence of the organizations that were funded.
This is a unique advertising program that keeps on giving!
For organizations like American Express, projects like these were probably
decided by a selected group of people within the company. The key thing to
remember is they probably gave this money away previously but they did not
get the recognition or engage customers in the process. The Internet opened the
doors to get people talking, introduce a lot of different organizations to a larger
210
group of people, and provide enormous exposure to American Express.
So how successful has the program been for American Express? In 2008 as the
voting was nearing the end, 1,190 projects were submitted to vie for a portion
of the $2.5 million dollars in funding. There were 7,280 comments on the
discussion boards and 213,522 nominations.
This is a great example on how you can integrate existing marketing with your
Internet marketing.
NBC risks one billion dollars!
No one understands that the behavior of their consumers are changing more
than NBC. With nearly a billion dollars invested in paying for the rights to the
Olympics and the cost to produce it, it had a lot at stake in order to get a return
on their investment.
One of their many challenges was figuring out how to embrace the Internet and
use it as a vehicle to drive more viewers to the TV. With all that money at risk,
NBC did the unthinkable! They made the decision to deliver 2,200 live hours
of the Olympics at their NBCOlympics.com Web site. Instead of ignoring a
growing consumer demand for Web-based information, they decided to not
only offer it, but find a way to drive viewers back to their TV. The results were
incredible. The site served up 1.2 billion pages and 72 million video streams as of
August 23,2008. (according to New York Times article by Brian Stelter).
There is another side of this story and a lesson all business owners need to
understand. If you don’t move rapidly toward a companywide Internet strategy,
you risk losing your market share and mindshare of your customers. Why? Read
on!
Yahoo and AOL play for free!
We just discussed what NBC had at risk right? But other new media channels
had virtually (pun intended) nothing to lose. Both Yahoo and AOL were free to
offer photos and stories about the Olympics (NBC had exclusive rights to video).
Neither had anything at risk? Nothing! Yet Yahoo’s Web site delivered nearly
the same viewership numbers as NBC. In fact, according to Nielsen, the rating
company, Yahoo drew an average of 4.7 million unique visitors a day through
August 18 compared with 4.3 million for NBC. Even AOL’s Olympic coverage
pulled 1.3 million visitors a day.
211
Had NBC made a corporate decision to say the Internet was going to reduce
viewership, they would have left open a huge demand that would have gone
exclusively to Yahoo AND AOL for their Olympic news and information. Plus,
they would not have had an opportunity to use the Internet to drive viewers back
to their TV sets!
There is no going back!
Broadband, Social Media, practical services and a sundry other things have
changed the behavior of consumers FOREVER. There is no going back to the
days of Ozzie and Harriett. The cats out of the bag, the horse has left the barn
and the train has left the station.
Your customer’s behavior has changed.
And it’s not only changed but it’s changing faster than even the experts can
predict. According to Jimmy Pitaro, head of sports and entertainment for Yahoo,
“The demand that we’re seeing has far exceeded even our wildest expectations!” If
Yahoo, who is completely focused on the Internet, is wowed by consumer
reaction to a service they delivered, you’d better take notice and begin building a
comprehensive Internet strategy for your company before you become irrelevant
to your customers!
So the burning question is… “Did the Web steal from their TV viewership?”
That’s the 64,000 dollar question, and on the surface the numbers say no! From
the sources I could find, viewership was running an average of 10 percent higher
than the Athens Olympics. (30.8 million vs. 26.4 million)
It takes guts to put a billion dollars on the line. More guts to make decisions that
could “gut” your investment.
NBC offers us a good example of how a company repurposes their content on
the Web in order to expand their market. They may not have realized it, but as
this example shows, “If you don’t do it, someone else will!
Small business strategy
Here’s an easy-to-adopt text messaging concept you could arrange with your
local movie theatre. Let’s say you own a local pizza shop and you want to increase
your late night business.
212
One way would be to purchase an ad on local movie theaters prior to the start of
the movie that offers a special discount. Consumers watching your ad are asked
to text message “80848” to receive a coupon for a free pizza with every pizza
ordered. This same concept could be done with a target postcard mailing that
would be good for a traditionally slow night like Tuesday.
After the movie, the participant would get a reminder call or text suggesting
they take advantage of free pizza offer. This is a low-cost technique for small
businesses to participate in.
Tour de France
One of my favorite activities is riding my bike. For me, the month of July is all
about the Tour de France. I try to connect on the Web or watch the race as it
winds through a number of European countries before it ends at the Champs
E’Lysses in Paris, France.
In 2007, Saab worked with Versus, the online cable channel, and Bicycling
magazine to develop an integrated TV, Web, and print advertising campaign
and contest. The integrated marketing program captures the evolving habit of
multitasking. While watching the Tour de France (which my family reminded
me is as boring as watching golf on TV!), viewers will see a series of codes that
can be entered on the official site. Codes are also available in the August edition
of Bicycling magazine, at bicycling events nationwide, and at Saab dealerships.
Participants can enter as many codes as they’d like. The stakes are high! The grand
prize is a Saab 9-3 2.0T SportCombi and a Cervelo bicycle. The promotion
was coordinated by ePrize.com, an interactive promotion company that helps
motivate specific consumer behavior to drive immediate and measurable results.
Google AdWords
Google introduced a new advertising opportunity where they are the gateway
for Web-savvy users who want to develop integrated online advertising programs
with offline advertising. Their program allows an advertiser to search for the
newspaper, circulation size, or geographic location in which they are interested
in advertising and place an ad. The program helps newspapers pick up ads they
would not have gotten and helps businesses introduce new products, support
existing ones, or enter new market areas. One customer, a Web-based company
that helps line up contractors or cleaning services for homeowners, used the new
service in areas it was looking to increase business and saw a 20 percent increase
in lead generations.
213
Radio, TV, or newspaper
Consider developing a series of radio, TV, or newspaper advertisements that
offer a combination of offers requiring consumers to either send a text message
or visit your Web site to participate in a contest or receive a coupon.
For the most part, companies underutilize their investment in their Web site and
online community. Few organizations are effectively integrating their marketing
strategies. That’s good news for you—because you can get a jump on everyone
else and laugh all the way to the bank each day!
Exercise
The great thing about today’s business environment is that companies have a new
avenue to reach customers. In a competitive environment, you need to find an
edge. By developing an integrated marketing program, you’ll gain that edge.
• Develop a marketing program that utilizes as many of the five
recommended marketing outlets as possible.
• Track the results of the campaign to see if the slightly higher promotion
cost increased your revenues and justified the time and cost.
In 2006, there were more cell phones that
accessed the Internet than computers.
43. Cell Phone Strategy
The cell phone is about to put computers out to pasture!
That may sound like a farfetched statement, but we are rapidly moving toward
a world where the computer is driven by our voice commands, and the need for
keyboards will become less important. The total number of personal computers
that are sold each year is already beginning to level off, while cell phones that are
increasingly adopting computational and communication capabilities similar to
the computer are taking off. Currently, there are more cell phones in the world
that can access the Internet than computers.
We’ve reached, as Malcolm Gladwell would say, a new “tipping point!” (Malcolm
Gladwell is the author of the book Tipping Point.) Driving the use of the growing
features of cell phones are today’s youth, who have the time, curiosity, and peer
pressure to know what their friends know and do with their cell phones. It
started out with text messaging and expanded to online surfing and now viewing
videos online. According to the Telescope company that handles the voting for
the American Idol, the Millennial Generation was primarily responsible for the
unbelievable 65 million text message votes that were placed in Season Five.
Frankly, your online community is already dated if your customers/members are
not able to access the directory, the calendar, and their personal information from
their phone, because almost every other online community is already providing
this.
You may not be using your phone to access this information yet, but I guarantee
within the next five years you will wonder how you survived without it. Already
214
Cell Phone Strategy
215
the youth of today have changed their behavior. My seventeen-year-old son,
as an example, recently purchased a high-end cell phone with his summer job
money that acts just like a computer. But this one fits in his pocket. Not only
can he view Internet sites, but his three-inch touch-screen also makes it easier to
make selections.
Tomi T. Ahonen and Alan Moore, in their book Communities Dominate Brands,
have identified today’s youth as Generation-C – the Community Generation.
The defining and distinguishing characteristic for Gen-C is the continuous
connection to and response to the digital communities. They see a present,
not a future, where your customers and particularly the young customers are
continually connected primarily via their cell phones, not computers. Their
behavior is changing and as it does, their cell phones are giving them yet another
way to be connected 24/7/365.
As technology like this continues to enter the marketplace, your customers’
behavior will also continue to change. They will begin to “think” first about
their phone as an information tool instead of their computer. They will begin to
understand they can access this information anywhere, anytime, and anyplace
they can access their carrier.
While I don’t have as much time as teens and young adults to explore the
capabilities of my phone, I have found myself standing in line at the airport,
sitting in a taxi, or just stuck somewhere, where I pick up my phone and begin
to check news, weather, and sports. It’s only a matter of time before I become
more comfortable with this technology. As your customers’/members’ behavior
changes and they spend more time on their cell phones, they will require more
data, more information, and more content to consume.
This is a great thing!
Cell phones are already allowing us to do more with our phones than we ever
dreamed about. Think about what you can do on a cell phone now:
• Download and listen to music (goodbye iPod).
• Watch news, movies, sports, and TV programs.
• Access and participate at most commercial Web sites.
• Send and receive text messages (goodbye IMs).
216
With kids today receiving, as a “rite of passage,” a cell phone by the time
they hit their teens, it’s no wonder they view email as “the older generation’s
communication tool.”
If you are responsible for marketing in your organization, you are aware that you
have six mass media markets you can use to reach your customers. Those include
print, music, movies, radio, TV, and PC-based Internet. When you stop to think
about it, the cell phone is becoming the seventh mass media tool available to
you. As with the PC, consumers have the functionality of all of the above tools
and services.
Coca-Cola Mobile Community
Coca-Cola is one of the first major corporations that is venturing into mobile
social networking with its Sprit Yard. Targeted at teens, the social networking
community will enable users to set up personal profiles, share photos, and chat
online with friends. To increase participation, users will be giving opportunities
to type in codes from Sprite bottle caps to redeem for original content, like
ringtones, video clips, and even virtual clothing and furniture for 3D communities
like Second Life and Kaneva.
Your Web strategy has to embrace the cell phone. If you do not develop your
Web site so cell phone users can access it, you will effectively begin to cut off
a growing base of users whose behaviors have switched from surfing from their
computers to surfing from their cell phones. It’s not as difficult as you might
think to make your Web site more cell phone ready. Your Web site provider or
graphic designers need to avoid the use of frames, JavaScript/Flash navigation,
image maps, and the excessive use of photographs.
Pandora’s Music Box
Pandora is an online radio station that gives their customers the ability to create
radio stations or music channels around a “type” of sound.
Pandora offers me a chance to create music channels that would include musicians
who sound like or are in the same music genre as Bruce Springsteen, for example.
Pandora categorizes its music so I’m presented with similar musicians like Dave
Matthews, Joe Jackson, and Paul McCartney. They are among a growing number
of Web-based music delivery systems that work hard at bringing in the art of the
disc jockey and mixing music that blends well. When you tire of the sound you
Cell Phone Strategy
217
are listening to, you simply search for another performer and you’ll hear a careful
mixture of similar musicians.
Pandora has developed an innovative and simple cell phone strategy.
While on their Web site, I noticed Pandora now offers their music on the go so
I clicked to get more information and found my Samsung Sprint 920 cell phone
will work within their system. To get a one-month free trial, all I had to do is
enter my cell phone number and within minutes I received a text message with a
link to a download of software on Pandora’s Web site. Simple, effective, and if I
like it, I’ll be handing over $2.95 per month for the benefit of enjoying Pandora
when I ride my bike, travel, or write.
I already love it, because the channels I have personalized online are also
available via my cell phone. It took about one minute to push a few buttons
that will continue to engage me in the Pandora brand. This is another example
of commercial organizations making it easier for me to change my consumption
behaviors through a new distribution and delivery system. Companies that study
examples like this will have a better chance of finding new areas to take their
business. W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, authors of Blue Ocean Strategy,
suggest the successful companies of the future will not be content battling with
competitors in markets whose profits are determined by the cheapest labor (which
they describe as “red ocean” companies), but by companies that are focused on
“value innovation” (blue ocean companies). Blue ocean companies like Pandora
look for innovative ways they can take their product and service to a market and
extend their brand in an area where price sensitivity is less important.
If your organization is not currently developing strategies to deliver your brand,
your messages, and your services to your constituents by cell phone technology,
you are missing out on their dramatically changing behaviors. It doesn’t matter if
you are a pizza shop, dry cleaner, dentist, shoe repair shop, or major corporation,
your customers will be expecting – no, demanding – technologies that will
inform them their product is ready or service has been completed, or remind
them they are overdue for a visit.
Exercise
How can your business get involved in mobile marketing? You don’t have to
invest a fortune in trying things out. Just pick a few customers and offer to
personally text them when the product or service they requested is ready for
them.
218
• How about a special service where your customers receive a text message
when their shoes are repaired, reminder of an appointment or special
book order has arrived? Clothing stores could use this to inform a
customer when the product they ordered has arrived.
• How can you adapt these concepts to communicate, engage, and retain
customers?
44. Who’s On?
A
simple way to create community is to show who is on your Web site at any
given time. Community is created when your Web site automatically brings
people together who share common experiences.
Typically, this concept would show the name of the person, with their city and
state, and would also provide a link to their profile page.
A click on their name would take me to their profile page, where I would be able
to see all of the information they elected to make public. I could then elect to
“page” the person and strike up a conversation with them.
When thinking about your Web strategy, you should always think about creating
points of interactions, points where people can connect with each other – all
with the goal of giving them an opportunity to expand their career and personal
contacts.
Exercise
• Register at a Web site that offers this so you can gain a better
understanding of how it works.
• Add this feature to your current site.
219
Generation-C stands for the Community Generation.
The defining and distinguishing characteristics for
Gen-C is the continuous connection to and
response to digital communities!
Tomi T. Ahonen and Alan Moore, Authors
Communities Dominate Brands
45. Youth!
I
n his book 1996 book, Growing Up Digital, noted futurist Don Tapscott
identified that our youth would be embracing a digital lifestyle.
If Don was predicting the stock market as well as he predicted today’s youth’s
embracement of the Internet, I’d buy everything he told me. The following excerpt
from his book shows how accurately he predicted where youth are today:
A new youth culture is emerging, one which involves much more than
just pop culture of music, MTV, and the movies. This new culture in the
broadest sense, defined as the socially transmitted and shared patterns
of behavior, customs, attitude and tacit codes, beliefs and values arts,
knowledge, and social forms. The new culture is rooted in the experience
of being young and also being part of the biggest generation ever. But
most importantly, it is a culture that is stemming from the N-Gen use
of interactive digital media. We should pay attention because the culture
which flows from their experience in cyberspace foreshadows the culture
they will create as the leaders of tomorrow in the workplace and society.
While I would encourage you to develop an online community to engage and
involve all generations of your users, you should definitely look for ways to
engage and involve those under twenty-five.
Why?
Let me count six ways:
1. They have the time.
2. They are just developing their brand relationships.
220
Yo u t h !
221
3. They are more experimental.
4. They are more willing to share data.
5. They are experienced social networkers.
6. They have MONEY!
I mentioned earlier in this book that one of my first Internet online community
ventures in 1996 was designed to engage and involve college students. GeoCities
was beginning to capture the interest of venture-backed companies, and we
were looking at developing a niche market of college students. It turned out our
product was too early. Students’ behavior and Internet use was still in its infancy.
However, today youth are the most wired, socially connected and Internet-savvy
generation in the history of mankind. Your organization has a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity to begin to build an online relationship with youth that will last a
lifetime.
Bunchball and Online Games
Bunchball is a company every video player would love to work for. The
company creates multiplayer, private-labeled games for online communities and
organization Web sites. The Indianapolis Colts, for example, engaged Bunchball
to create an interactive game experience for fans that incorporated the team’s
logos and jerseys. A player on the site can immediately jump into a game or
invite a friend to play.
Engagement marketing like this keeps a customer on a Web site longer so you
can continue to deliver brand information and offers to them.
Another industry that would benefit from this type of tool is college admissions
offices. If I were in charge of the admissions office, I would use a game to engage
prospective students on my Web site while I presented historical information,
celebrities who have attended, and testimonial information from others. The
information would be presented simultaneously while the prospective student
was playing the game.
Bunchball can also test the prospective student’s absorption of the information
presented while they were playing through their trivia testing. The Web site
visitor would be presented with a quick quiz to see how much information
they absorbed. To increase participation, the admissions office might offer an
opportunity to win an iPod. One of the biggest fears incoming students have
222
is, “Will I find someone like me?” When that fear is taken away, the admissions
office is one step closer to landing another $100,000 client! Something tells me
it’s worth investing in engagement marketing tools like Bunchball.
You can’t ask for more than that. You grab more mindshare, you get to present
additional branding information, and you engage the prospective student with
another prospective student.
MySpace and Facebook are the major online communities today, but there is no
guarantee they will be tomorrow. We talked earlier about online communities
like GeoCities, AOL and others that are mere footnotes in the history of online
communities. It’s only a matter of time that youth will begin to migrate out
of the big three online communities and begin to participate in smaller nicheoriented online communities.
You want to be where they are. If you do nothing else, you should develop
an online community or at minimum adopt Social Media tools to engage and
involve youth.
Exercise
Brands definitely need a youth strategy! You know the best time to reach them is
when they are building their brand loyalties.
• Think back to some of the other examples we’ve already discussed, like
Neutrogena’s Hotties campaign, and discuss with your team what ideas
can you implement that will reach the largest audience at the least cost.
The beauty of word-of-mouth is you get back such
richer qualitative than you get in anything else.
Dan Buczacer, Denuo
46. Reward Points
How do you keep your customers/members coming back to your Web site?
Take a tip from other companies and offer reward points. Commercial
organizations from grocery stores and airlines to coffee shops reward their
customers for their frequent participation and purchases.
Reddit, a social bookmarking site that delivers customized news based on
the users’ voting, rewards its user by giving them “karma points.” To reward
participants, they display the top contributors for the current day and week
and all-time-high contributors. Besides the recognition, the “karma points” also
increase the weight of future postings.
Why not do something similar? Using this technique, it’s conceivable that users
could be rewarded for:
1. Anytime they update data
100 points
2. Post a comment 500 points
3. Buy a product
10,000 points
4. Add someone to their buddy list 1,000 points
5. Visit the Web site
500 points
6. Invite a friend
5,000 points
8,000 points
7. Suggest a product idea
You get the idea!
223
224
Now, for those customers/members who dig rewards (and believe me, there is a
sizable number of them or companies would not be in the rewards business), you
have the ability to show the top 100 point awardees. Membership and marketing
professionals would be able to use these as a way to reward the highest point
awardees with tickets, products, and services.
Don’t worry, this doesn’t represent more work for your staff! All you would initially
have to do is identify how many points each of these activities on the Web site
would earn for your participating customers/members. The program will do the
rest! It will automatically reward customers/members for each activity, tabulate
their results on their personal profile page, and display the highest participants
to encourage others to participate more.
Additionally, when your users search for others, the program could identify how
many participation points the “found” customer/member has. In fact, it could
even show what the average customer’s/member’s participation points are. Talk
about encouragement to do more! Imagine the fun your marketing team would
have dissecting, evaluating, and analyzing this kind of information. I predict
they would be able to find trends showing customers/members with higher
participation points will be more receptive to workshops, product surveys, trial
offers, etc.
Paw Points
Here’s a unique way to engage customers using existing packaging and pull them
back to your Web site. Fresh Step Litter decided to offer Paw Points to shoppers
purchasing their products and services and give them an opportunity to collect
them online. While bringing them back to the Web site to update their Paw
Points, the company had the opportunity to share information, gather additional
information and/or opinions, and engage them with their brand.
Participation was simple.
Users registered for the program with a unique email address. Once they registered,
they entered the Paw Points code found in specially marked packages of Fresh
Step cat litter products in the “Add Points” section. To further identify who
and where they are, members were required to indicate where they purchased
the product. Redeeming the points could be done through the online Rewards
Catalog.
This idea could be used by any consumer goods company. The benefits are great:
Reward Points
225
• Bring customers back to your Web site frequently.
• Gather more data about customers.
• Sell more products and services.
Inventors take notice!
Another example of how you can use point systems within your Web site is www.
cambrianhouse.com, an online inventor site. The Web site provides a forum for
you to share an idea or invention, let others interact and add to the value of the
idea, and then vote on it. Members get Cambrian dollars for their participation.
Inventors can also find developers who are willing to make their idea a reality,
and members of the community even have an opportunity to get stock! This is
inventing on steroids!
You can’t find an easier and lower-cost technique to engage your customers. Add
this to your list of strategies to adopt today.
Exercise
Customer reward systems are tremendously successful. Now you need to think
about how you can marry this with an online recognition program.
• Identify different ways you can reward your customers with points.( i.e.,
refer a friend, updating content, sharing a story, providing a profile page,
etc.).
• Have your programming team create the programs that integrates these.
Now we have tools to measure
word-of-mouth so we can standardize it.
Pinny Gnwisch, Ice.com
47. Analyze Participation
Who’s using your Web site?
While it is very important to have a written Internet strategy to identify where
you are going, it’s just as important to have a process to analyze if you are going
in the right direction to reach your goals.
As a part of your written Internet strategy, you will want to set goals on the:
1. Percentage of new customers registered per month.
2. How frequently you want them to return to your Web site.
3. Number of data updates you’d like to see.
4. Number of customers/members who are connecting/networking with
each other.
5. How long they stay on your Web site.
With TV, radio, print, and other media, you have no way to know who almost
bought your product or service. The primary way you can judge the effectiveness
of mass marketing campaigns is how much you bring in at the cash register.
However, your Web site will give you the ability to carefully “listen” to the steps
and movements of your customers. You will not only learn how many read
your email, but who clicked on it, what pages they viewed, and what page they
decided to leave from. All of this information provides you an opportunity to
change, tweak, and modify the colors, font size, copy, and photos in an attempt
to increase the number of purchases once your prospective customer makes it to
your site.
226
Analyze Participation
227
Comprehensive analysis
Your analysis should be comprehensive. You need to review survey data, identify
what they searched for on your Web site, review Web site stats and combine
them with offline data you accumulate from customers’ previous purchasing
history, and really spend some time looking for trends.
Most Web sites include tools to view the above information. If yours does not,
consider signing up your organization for Google Analytic’s Web site analysis
tool. This free tool provides a powerful set of Web site analytical tools that you
can access from any computer, at any place or time. From our analysis of this
product, it has more capabilities than most moderately priced Web site analysis
tools. Other tools like Webtrends provide extensive analytical tools that enable
you to make sense of your data.
In fact, a newer service of Webtrends offers an analytical tool that takes analytics
to another level. Tim Kopp, Chief Marketing Officer, suggests most analytic
tools provide only half the view today’s Internet marketers need in order to be
successful. At a conference held by the Internet Strategies Forum, Tim shared
how a cruise line might use their new analysis tool.
The new analysis tool will not only look at hits but will examine the behavior of
the user on the Web site to help the sales department separate the lookers from
those serious about taking a cruise. The process, which improves with continual
input from users and sales staff, looks at where visitors go and how long they are
on each page, and provides a rating for the sales department to determine if the
visitor should be contacted via sales agents. Kopp suggested, “Our tools provide
a 360-degree view of the consumer by integrating online and offline data.”
I encourage you to put on your calendar an hour at least every month where
you can sit down and analyze what happened the previous month. Your primary
objective is to see if you are on track and, if not, consider making adjustments in
your comprehensive written Internet strategy.
To help you get started, here are a few things you should be doing with the data
and stats you are reviewing:
1. Review last quarter’s goals.
2. List marketing and projects completed to achieve those goals.
3. Identify which of these worked and which didn’t work.
228
4. Review the statistics showing the results of your efforts.
5. Create corrective action.
6. Identify new goals and projects for the next quarter.
Few strategies are more important than this one. After all, if you don’t have the
right information, there’s a good chance you and your staff will be investing time
and money in areas that are not going to provide you a solid ROI.
You can’t improve your organization if you don’t analyze how you are achieving
your success. Analytics are important in order for managers to steer their company
and position it for growth.
Consider hiring outside consultants to help you coordinate this process. Outside
experts can bring in non-biased opinions and knowledge and keep you and your
team focused on what you need to do, not what others want to do.
Exercise
There is no sense spending the time and money in creating your Web strategy if
you are not analyzing the results.
• Start with the five analytics I mentioned above and add in additional
measurements that will help your organization determine not only your
ROI but what you need to do to improve registrations and participation.
• Adopt Google Analytics (free) or purchase Web-tracking software so you
have data to analyze.
• Set aside an hour a month to review the data and institute changes to
improve the numbers for the next month.
The Web is a billion-person focus group.
Rick Murray, Edleman
48. Surveys
T
he Internet provides your organization with powerful tools to get the
required feedback from customers/members regarding campus needs and
wants. Today, surveys are easy to create yet powerful ways to get immediate
responses at virtually no cost.
As easy as they are to do, I’m surprised more organizations are not using them to
gain a better understanding of what their customers/members are thinking, what
their needs are, and how you can better serve them.
There are a number of free services you can adopt that provide technology you
could be using within minutes. And just as importantly, online surveys provide
you results you can begin analyzing immediately.
Surveys will benefit nearly all departments within your company or organization.
For example:
1. Customer service may want to know how well they are serving clients.
2. Product development will want to get a better idea of what customers
like and don’t like about their product.
3. Sales could use surveys to gain an understanding of prospective customer
needs.
4. The administrative offices could survey employees’ attitudes.
You have a powerful tool that is not being used as frequently as it could – or
should – be. While you are considering offering others an opportunity to do
229
230
surveys, you’ll have to develop strategies on how frequently customers/members/
prospects can be surveyed.
When people register on your Web site or community, consider offering them
an opportunity to take surveys. You could include a field on the registration page
that allows them to opt in on surveys. Some people just love to give their opinion
on anything! Besides giving their opinion, you should make sure to provide them
the results of your survey. You can use this as another Push/Pull technique, by
sending an email to them to pull them back to the Web site to see the survey
results.
Don’t forget to give incentives for customers/members to complete surveys.
Offer game tickets or discounts or provide them special offers they can’t refuse.
Simple incentives can significantly increase participation.
Bulletin Board Focus Groups
A more sophisticated survey technique involves Bulletin Board Focus Groups.
These are online bulletin board discussions facilitated by professional surveyors
that engage and involve people over a period of time.
Oregon Public Broadcasting has both a TV and a radio network. They were
interested in reaching a group of their viewers and listeners previously identified
as “trusted communicators” to get their input on new programming and product
ideas.
Conkling, Fiskum & McCormick, Inc., was brought in on short notice and
given two weeks to conduct a survey of approximately one thousand predefined
Oregon Public Broadcasting customers. With such short notice and a large
geographical area to cover, the agency decided to use the Bulletin Board Focus
Group technique to survey the targeted group. BBFGs are an asynchronous
way to test messages, ads, and concepts and get people to talk about the issues.
Participants provide answers to questions and can react to others’ questions. The
format provides a dynamic discussion that keeps people coming back, spurring
further debate and discussion.
Oregon Public Broadcasting was interested in the opinions of their viewers and
listeners and was interested in gathering anecdotal information they could use in
a re-branding campaign that also included their new Internet initiative.
From the original one thousand people they had contacted, they selected eighty-
Surveys
231
two people who were willing to participate at least fifteen minutes per day over
three days. In this particular situation, the viewers and listeners got engaged. So
much so that they spent an average of two hours online during the course of the
survey. The concept helped Oregon Public Broadcasting finalize their branding
research and gave them ideas on how to coordinate this with their radio, TV, and
emerging Internet strategy.
Your customers are willing to take the time to help you improve your products
and services. Engage them in discussions in order to build a more powerful,
long-lasting experience for them.
Exercise
Learning more about what customers want, what they think of you and your
service is priceless. You should be adopting this strategy as a priority.
• Gain the help of survey experts to identify an overall strategy and what
language/questions to ask.
• Pick any of the four suggested ways to use surveys.
• Analyze the results and implement solutions based on the survey results.
49. Widgets
What’s a widget?
There are five primary types of widgets:
1. Web widgets include things like stock portfolio tools.
2. Google and Yahoo! Gadgets/Widgets are tools like clocks or weather
alerts you can add to your desktop.
3. Social Media Widgets enable you to subscribe to news and information.
4. Mobile widgets allow people to download to their cell phones.
5. Marketing widgets that companies give to their customers.
What’s the difference between Widgets and Applications you can write for
Facebook/MySpace and other social Web sites? I would say Widgets are smaller,
less customized programs that deliver information rather than engage users in
the information.
Widgets are add-on software/technology that provide unique and, in some cases,
practical services. There are millions of widgets out there for the person who is
interested in souping up their browser and computer with a dashboard of tools.
For the most part, widgets are free to consumers. The cost to develop them is
born by the freelance programmer with time on his/her hands or a firm that
wants to put a widget on customers’ desktops.
Yahoo!, for example, boasts over a thousand widgets.
232
Widgets
233
For the widgetholic, I’m afraid you would not see them move their eyes away
from their computer as they soak in the beauty and fun of all their widgets.
Yahoo! offers these widgets as a way to connect their customers with them. It’s
another way they can get their customers signed up for email or using other
products and services that are ad-supported.
Widgets tend to be interactive and most are designed with the viral aspect to
increase the spread of the widgets to friends and colleagues. They are great for
promotional marketing, as most will require an email address for the user to
download them, and of course the email becomes a powerful tool to engage the
prospect in your other online community and Social Media tools.
So widgets can be something as simple as a tool that looks like an odometer in
a 1956 Chevy that tells you vital functions of your computer, or it might be
a widget that will show you a webcam from a restaurant on Captiva Island (I
downloaded this, as my substitute for a long-overdue beach vacation!).
Marketing widgets
Businesses have the most to benefit by adopting widgets to communicate with
customers in real time and build their brands. Your organization or company
should consider the benefits of using widgets as a marketing tool. Widgets can be
made for less money than the trinkets McDonald’s hands out with Happy Meals
and will have the potential for a longer shelf life. When done correctly, marketing
campaigns using widgets will provide you more control over branding.
Marketing tools could be designed around fun games that involve your brand
or a popular type tool. For example, you could use a widget that would provide
a number of fortune cookies that your customers could click on and organize
and interact with. It could be designed so they could trade those they don’t want
with others.
Most businesses and organizations are just beginning to understand the potential
of widgets. I hope you have an opportunity to try them out for your organization.
At the end of the day, you will not find a cheaper, more measurable tool to
prospect, engage, and sell product.
JCPenney launches widget
JCPenney engaged Skinkers, T@, and WTG to develop a desktop widget
application that is designed to deliver in real-time sales offers, new product
234
announcements, and in-depth features directly to the customers’ desktops.
The application, which has to be downloaded to the customer desktop, allows
customers to personalize it, including adding their birthday, clothing size, and
preferences. JCPenney understands it is going to become more difficult in time
to reach customers by email and are taking this step to build an “always on”
connection with their strongest customers.
The Golden Compass widget
New Line Cinema created an incredibly gorgeous Web site in anticipation of the
December 7th release of the movie “The Golden Compass.” In an effort to build
an overall experience and excitement, they offer visitors an opportunity to create
a virtual “daemon,” an animal that is part of the film, which they will be able to
post to their social networking Web site of choice. As of July 2007, according
to New Line Cinema, 200,000 people had already created daemons and four
million people interacted with them online.
For now, marketers are getting a free ride on social networking sites as they allow
their users to download them to their Web sites even though they don’t get any
benefit or revenue from it.
Exercise
Widgets could become more important to youth as giveaways than coupons or
trinkets included in fast food Happy Meals.
• Get to know what widgets can do for your company by downloading
and using them. Ask your kids to show you their favorite widgets and to
explain why they like them.
• Now pull your team together and identify what widgets are already
out there you could adapt for your business or what new widget you
envision would benefit your company.
50. Landing Pages
L
anding pages or micro sites are Web pages designed specifically for a product
or service. These sites tend to have a unique domain name to accommodate
the product name or product solution.
Most of us think of our businesses from the traditional brick-and-mortar
perspective. As a result, we build walls around our thinking process and put all
of our eggs in one basket called the company Web site. Many businesses and
organizations think their product pages should be contained within the business
Web site.
However, experts are suggesting that for the benefit of scoring higher on search
engines, firms should de-link some of their products from their Web sites and
create landing pages focused only on a specific product. Landing pages do not
need to match your business Web site. They should be designed not around the
company style but around what you need to get the visitor to act.
Keep in mind that a search engine looks at everything as individual items. It
doesn’t care where it is. Search engines and human behavior work the same way.
Most people search for products and services based on generic terms, not the
name of the company providing them. When you create landing pages or micro
sites, you can increase the chances the site will be found by others.
Landing pages can:
1. Sell a product or service.
2. Generate leads.
235
236
3. Inform others what you need.
4. Mashup information needed for a customer need.
Honda conducted some research and found that consumers found searching
for a car online difficult and didn’t come away with a good experience. Honda
designed a landing page that provided all the elements a person would need on
one page. You will probably want to develop a unique URL for each landing
page that you can promote in print and Internet marketing techniques.
Some of the marketing techniques you can include on your landing page are:
• Opening sentence
• Headings
• Bonus gifts
• Guarantees
• Coupons
• Calls to action
• Closing sentences
• P.S. messages
There is no soft sell here. This page has got to be focused on getting the visitor
to commit.
In designing your landing pages you should keep in mind:
• What are you offering?
• Who is your target customer?
• Why would they want your product or service?
• What will encourage them to buy?
Landing Pages with Reviews
Online advertising is becoming more expensive as companies move their
advertising budgets online to premium Web sites. Keyword search cost is also
increasing, and, in some areas, significantly as more businesses understand the
benefits of keyword search advertising. So what can you do?
Landing Pages
237
One way you can get additional leads with little or no advertising cost is by
embedding organic customer ratings and reviews with the products and services
you are offering on special landing pages. User-generated customer reviews
provide search engines a constant source of authentic, fresh, and updated
content to throw back to their users. Consumers, when shopping for products
and services, are increasingly including “+reviews” in their search.
CompUSA increases click-throughs
Baazarvoice, Inc., a firm that helps organizations use Social Media to increase
sales, designed for CompUSA special landing pages for products and included
customer product reviews to take advantage of consumers becoming savvy
Internet searchers.
The landing pages were specially designed to bring in customer content to the
product and then drive the customer to CompUSA’s Web site to make the
purchase. According to Sam Decker, Vice President of Marketing, this concept
produced a 50 to 80 percent click-through rate to their site.
CompUSA is seeing over 10,000 visitors per month on their Web site from this
technique. The great thing about this is there was no advertising cost in generating
these leads. You do the math. How much are you currently paying for keyword
search leads? It doesn’t matter if you are a dentist, own a body shop or retail store,
or are a professional, this technique should be a part of your Web strategy.
Most of us are not thinking about landing pages and micro sites yet, but they
should be a part of our strategy. Not only can you use these to increase leads and sell
new products, but you will also find them to be extremely cost effective to use.
Exercise
Landing pages should be an integral part of your lead-generation program.
• Determine which of the four ways I talked about above you want to use
landing pages.
• Keep the information on the landing pages simple. Remember, all you
want is to capture their contact information and deliver whatever you
promised.
• Create automated follow-up tools to communicate with each person.
51. eBay
E
Bay has such a large client base it represents a perfect area for you to sell
overstock or discontinued items, and a lot of businesses know that already.
About seven years ago, I searched the Internet for a pair of speakers to replace
the speakers I carried around from Ohio to Telluride, Colorado, and in and
out of five homes. The speakers I settled on were about an hour drive from my
home. When I got to the warehouse that was selling them directly to the public,
I noticed one of their employees on a computer and it looked like they were on
eBay. While I was waiting to be taken care of, I asked, “Whatcha’ doing?” The
young man explained he was selling product on eBay and was actively working
bids and placing product for sale.
I didn’t realize then how advanced businesses were in using eBay as an alternative
sales channel. Today, a huge number of people have created their own virtual
businesses on eBay.
EBay offers anyone – existing businesses, startups, and weekend sellers – many
options. Your products and services can be found instantly by a worldwide
audience. In fact, your services can be found by an astounding 215 million
members.
For some organizations, it makes a great deal of sense to set up your store on
eBay. For one reason, eBay will provide a series of software and ecommerce tools
that are continually being updated at no charge. For another, they provide you
with the ability to maintain a number of different email address lists and send
out 5,000 emails per month.
238
eBay
239
EBay is spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year on search words so
prospective customers are driven to the eBay stores. You can bet they have legions
of people who are specialists at getting their store owners listed on the first page
of a search result. They are also investing in online advertising, pay-per-click, and
national print, radio, and TV ads to drive traffic to their customers’ stores.
Stitches is an online store founded by Alice Rudoph. Alice has been able to grow
her needle arts supply business to over $100,000 a year. By participating in the
eBay marketing service PowerSeller, Stiches was able to increase revenue by 600
percent in just nine months.
Depending on what you want to achieve, you’ll have to think long and hard
about investing in your own software when you are provided these benefits. If it
makes sense, adopt an eBay strategy.
Exercise
• Search eBay for your products and particularly look to see if someone
is actively selling them. Consider direct shipping out-of-date or return
items through their marketing efforts.
• Check to see if there are any interesting applications or new uses
suggested for your services.
• Set up your own online store to sell out-of-date and return items.
This is the era of word-of-mouth and Social Media.
Ted Leonsis, Vice Chairman of AOL
52. Word-of-Mouth Marketing
A
ccording to Wikipedia.org, word-of-mouth marketing is a term used in the
marketing and advertising industry to describe activities that companies
undertake to generate personal recommendations as well as referrals for brand
names, products, and services. Word-of-mouth marketing (WOMM) has been
around since the earliest profession on earth. Consumers have always been
interested in sharing with others great deals, products, services, and experiences
they have. Since the introduction of “broadcast”-type marketing strategies,
word-of-mouth has been marginalized to a non-important marketing status.
However, in the last couple of years, there has been an increase in attention in
word-of-mouth because of the capability of Social Media like blogs, podcasting,
wikis, etc., to amplify the word-of-mouth and to provide the capability to track
its movement.
In his book Word of Mouth Marketing, Andy Sernovitz reminds us that your
product or service not only has to excite your customers, but it has to be good,
really good. In fact, in today’s competitive global business environment your
product has to be remarkable. Once you have that, WOMM will work for you.
In his book, Andy says:
In many cases, word-of-mouth marketing isn’t actually “marketing” at
all. It’s about great customer service that makes people want to tell their
friends about you. It’s about fantastic products that people can’t resist
showing to everyone.
Word-of-mouth marketing is the process of using engaged consumers to market
your product and service via online and offline communication channels. Word240
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
241
of-mouth marketing is something that can happen organically, transparently,
without your knowledge. It can be either good or bad!
Word-of-mouth marketing is catching the eyes and ears of marketers because
consumers are reporting that they trust information coming from friends, or
friends’ networks, more than they do of packaged sales and marketing material.
Rating tools and testimonial tools like Amazon offers expands the network even
further beyond their friends. Word-of-mouth testimonials, endorsements, and
comments are something that is continuing to have an effect on consumers’ final
decisions.
Andy shows in his book that consumers trust word-of-mouth conversations two
times more than they trust information from newspapers. The chart below shows
how consumers have rated the top five media sources for the way they influences
their purchasing habits:
• Word-of-mouth 40.4%
• TV broadcast
24.1%
• Read article
21.3%
• Newspaper
20.2%
• Magazine
17.5%
In her book, Beyond Buzz, Lois Kelly confirms this trend and suggests the
following three trends have turned traditional marketing and communication
norms on their heads:
1. Consumers today have less trust in the message and behaviors of
companies, yet they are showing increasing trust in information shared
by individuals.
2. Technology has opened opportunities for one person to reach many
people through multiple Social Media tools. One blogger today has the
capability to make or break a company.
3. Everyone today is facing so much choice, so many options, that it is
literally impossible for them to research and make the right choice.
Leaning on trusted networks to help them make decisions is comforting.
A traditional marketing campaign may have hundreds of thousands of dollars
behind it in media placements. A combined mix of radio, print, and newspaper
242
advertising could be overshadowed by a person making a comment on a blog
that is picked up by another blog, which is again picked up and commented by
a blogger with 100,000 readers.
In the past, marketers could not quantify word-of-mouth because there was no
way to track the effect. The glory and credit for a new product launch always
went to the marketing genius and those with significant advertising budgets to
get in front of the consumer. Today, however, when marketing campaigns are
combined with word-of-mouth marketing and Internet technology, it’s easier to
see the cause and effect of word-of-mouth.
For example, your campaign could drive people to visit a unique page that only
your word-of-mouth marketers are sharing. If you had ten people, you could set
up ten identical pages with different addresses to track each person’s progress.
As you think about developing a word-of-mouth campaign for your company,
consider these four points:
1. Offering something to sign up (contests, giveaways, discounts).
2. Ask an industry expert or celebrity to endorse your product (provide
something of value to that person, perhaps a banner ad linking to their
content).
3. Ask users to invite friends.
4. Develop a core group of volunteers who will welcome new guests and
make sure they are aware of the core mission, goals, and services the site
offers.
Word-of-mouth is a great way to get people talking about your company.
However, don’t put all your eggs in this basket. It’s a great marketing strategy
as long as people are talking about you. When your product, offer, company, or
spokesperson runs out of steam and no longer excites your target audience, it will
do little to boost sales. Your word-of-mouth program needs to have sustainability
in order to provide long-term value to your company.
In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcom Gladwell shares the now-legendary story
where in late 1994, the Hush Puppy line of shoes was selling fewer than 30,000
pairs of shoes per year and the company was considering shutting it down. As
legend goes, a stylist in New York alerted the company that kids in the east village
youth were picking up vintage pairs of Hush Puppies at secondhand stores.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
243
Within months, the fashion statement that began in the East Village caught on
and spread across the country. But in this case, without the company stepping in
to build the buzz. The company immediately began making its shoes in Day-Glo
colors and sent free samples to celebrities. Then, the company tightly controlled
distribution, limiting the availability of the shoes. As the demand and the buzz
continued to peak, the company went into full distribution. In 1995, a half a
million pairs of shoes were sold. Within the next year, an estimated 1.5 million
pairs were sold. The brand was rescued, jobs were saved, and, for a time, Hush
Puppies were back on the radar screen of consumers. But nothing lasts forever.
The public’s ability to become your spokesperson follows a natural life cycle and
will eventually find more passion or need of other products.
Paid Brand Ambassador
Helio offers a high-end phone they were interested in reaching the college market
with. Research shows the over 17 million college students are more likely to
explore different products and services than other age groups. For marketers, they
represent a brand “blank slate” that can potentially become lifelong customers.
Helio approached Alloy to build a word-of-mouth marketing program on college
campuses. Because the phone was a high-end phone, they carefully selected 21
campuses that would have a higher-income student base. Their initial challenges
were to:
• Find the right Brand Ambassadors.
• Determine what events to be a part of.
• Educate Brand Ambassadors about the value of the phone.
• Get the message out.
To find the right Brand Ambassadors, Alloy was able to reach into their database
of past participants and contacts to advertise on campus. The Brand Ambassadors
were offered a combination of free phones, additional products, and cash as
incentive to participate. Once selected, they spent a couple months in conversation
and training. Gary Cohen, Vice President of Marketing for Alloy, said, “We
found Brand Ambassadors were using Facebook to communicate with each other
and to spread information about the Helio product.” To support participation
at events and the student word-of-mouth marketing, Alloy placed periodic ads
in the campus newspapers and radio stations,and had Brand Ambassadors place
flyers around the campus. Another key component to extending the dialogue
244
was the introduction of software widgets that students could take and download
to their computers.
They predefined their expected outcomes in areas like the number of events,
demonstrations of the phone, number of conversations, and the number of
phone activations.
Traditional marketing is not going to go away soon, but smart companies will
begin to integrate Social Media tools and word-of-mouth marketing into their
campaigns. Those that do will find that word-of-mouth marketing can not only
be amplified but it can be tracked and analyzed.
Exercise
It takes strategy to get people talking about your products and services. Public
Relations pros have been doing this for years.
• Go back to the four points we made earlier. Don’t take these lightly.
Assign points to creative groups in your company, and hold a series of
meetings to narrow down what you want to do.
• Bring in another company or partner who could benefit from the buzz,
and assist in setting the stage for making it spread farther and longer.
• Create a Social Media marketing plan that includes article marketing,
linking, Social Media press releases, etc.
If this was easy, everyone would be doing it. You need to invest time, creativity,
and resources to lay the ground work.
53. Video Advertising
I
spent a greater portion of my business career in the photography industry.
In my letters and marketing materials, I repeated the time-worn phrase, “A
picture is worth a thousand words.” Now that we are living in a video world, the
common person has nearly as many ways to capture the moments of their lives
as Jim Carrey’s Truman Bank character in The Truman Show. Today, a video is
worth 10,000 words.
Online video advertising is giving marketers another opportunity to reach
targeted audiences with their messages. Most marketers are having a hard time
thinking about adding video to their marketing toolchest for one reason: because
in their mind, it’s still a very expensive and time-consuming marketing tool.
They also have little to no experience with it, so they avoid it.
However, the Internet is changing all of that. Not only can anyone with a
webcam, video cell phone, or simple video camera create a video and uplink it to
a Web site, it can be done within a matter of an hour without a budget! Sure, you
can spend a great deal more time and energy at it, but I’m trying to break down
some walls here and get you thinking about keeping it simple, stupid (you’ll
KISS me later for the advice)!
Video advertising opportunities
There are a number of new companies who will provide a series of video advertising
services for your business. Right now they are falling into three categories:
245
246
• Template videos you drop your name into
• Video editing services where you send stills and self shot video
• Custom video services
Template videos
This is by far the easiest to do and one that we recommend you use to get started.
The firms in the industry have packaged video you can choose from that you add
your name and image to at the beginning and end. It’s easy to do and effortless.
On top of that by indicating what you want to spend, who you think your target
audience is, they will put your ads on sites for you. Literally in 15 minutes you
can start video advertising.
Video Editing Services
If you want a more custom approach you can take a combination of stills and
video and send them to experienced video editing companies that will put
sound, music and special effects to them for you. A beauty salon might want to
use this type of service, where a car wash could be served by the template video
concept.
Custom video production
For those who have the budget there are a custom shops who will save you time,
money and help you stay on message by guiding script development, shooting,
editing and delivering a polished sales tool.
Improve your results
I’m finding the norm in online advertising is providing me a fifteen- to thirtysecond video before I view some content I am interested in getting. You can build
your strategy around this emerging trend without offending your prospective
customers.
Here are a few ways you can position your video advertisements:
• Offer a free white paper, but require the person to watch a thirty-second
promotion or testimonial.
• As you develop leads, build into your auto-response strategy a link to a
promotional video.
Video Advertising
247
• Barter with others in non-competing businesses and send out video
advertising for them if they send yours to their list.
Lobster fishermen - do it yourself technique
This is one of my favorite applications of Social Media!
The ridiculously high run up of gas prices in just one year required even lobster
fishermen to rethink how they do business (they run on gas and diesel). When
times get tough, the tough have to think smarter, not work harder, right?
In the past, lobster fishermen were about as far removed from their customers as
the Chinese worker who assembles the products you buy from Walmart.
Brendan and John Ready, lobster fishermen from Cape Elizabeth, Maine (both
in their mid 20s and college graduates), started using Social Media and their Web
site as a strategic business tool to help them by pass the wholesale distribution
system and go right to their customers. Brendan and John decided to use the
Internet to not only reach directly to consumers but also engage and involve
them in their business.
To do that, they built a Web site called Catch a Piece of Maine. Their unique
value proposition is built around creating an experience for their customers.
They want to be your private lobster fisherman who works just for you and
deliver your lobster to you via overnight delivery services. James Gilmore and
Joseph Pine, in their ground-breaking book The Experience Economy, suggested
that people are looking for more than a commodity product and are willing
to pay more for an experience that is tied in with the product. The brothers
understood this and decided to use the Internet to build a unique experience for
their customers.
They did that by developing a business Web site that included:
• A blog to share news of daily catches, issues they faced
• Video to educate customers on the risks and rewards of their industry
• An eNewsletter to keep them in the minds of their customers
• Contests to encourage people to share their email
• Merchandise to build their brand
They even found a way for customers to become investors in their company by
248
offering them a piece of the action. For only $2,995, the brothers will give you
all the proceeds of a trap during lobster season. You are guaranteed 52 lobster,
and they donate a portion of your money to a charity!
Instead of spending thousands on professional videos, they used a simple video
camera to capture a series of videos where they:
• Talk about how they catch lobsters.
• Why they want to work JUST FOR YOU.
• Remind you that lobsters make the perfect gift.
• Suggest they can be used for special occasions.
• Provide background information on themselves so you can get to know
them.
The Experience
The brothers recognized that just setting up the Web site and using Social Media
tools was not going to fulfill their desire to become your lobster fisherman. To
add the “total” experience value, they elected to create a personalized video for
each customer and post the video on YouTube. They include in the shipment
instructions on where they will find their greeting!
As an example, I would be able to find on YouTube something like this:
“Hi Don, this is Captain John. We caught your lobster in our XXXX trap in the XXX
cove just yesterday. The conditions were rough which limited our catch and prevented
us from fulfilling some wholesale orders. Your lobster is truly special. Visit our Web site
to get tips and ideas on how to prepare your lobster!”
Why is this strategy so effective?
First of all, they are bypassing the wholesaler and end up getting more for their
lobster than they did before. A recent article in the New York Times by Katie
Zezima included a quote from Peter Eaton, a Lobsterman from Kennebunkport,
Maine, who is getting about $3.75 per lobster off his boat---a quarter less than
three months ago and about a dollar less than last summer. “Lobster is a luxury
item, and when things are tight, people don’t buy lobster.” Not only are the
brothers getting about $60 more per lobster, they are building excitement around
their product that is increasing demand.
Video Advertising
249
Secondly, their strategy has shown to be an effective viral marketing technique
that encourages their customers (and media) to share the story with others.
Finally, with absolutely no advertising, they have put their business on a
trajectory that has no customer-acquisition cost. The Internet and some savvy
Internet strategies has positioned them to “own” this technique in their industry.
By adopting this technique, they have received more press than any Lobster
fisherman in the world! ABC featured them on the Sunday morning show, and
when they did, the servers of their Web site went down for an hour due to the
enormous amount of attention their unique advertising technique made.
There you go, you now can have your own personal lobster fisherman. How
many of your friends can say that?
Think about how you could improve on this
Based on our experience, we’d advise the Ready brothers the following:
• They could use video testimonial where customers could leave a video
on how special their lobster was or as a way to thank the individual who
bought the lobster as a gift for them.
• Develop an online community environment where members can share
recipes and memories and connect with others who not only share a love
for lobster but one that is focused on the beauty of Maine and interested
in supporting the Ready brothers’ desires to protect the lobster and
environment that provides them an income and their customers’ great
tasting lobster. For example, their online community could become a
rallying point to find others willing to write letters, spread the word, and
gather more volunteers.
• For close-to-shore traps, they could lock down a laptop computer and
a Webcam in a position to catch them busy at work. At any time, their
customers, the curious, and investors could “virtually” experience a day
in the life of a lobster fisherman.
So what’s that got to do with you?
Your Internet strategy has to focus on ENGAGING YOUR CUSTOMERS.
Sure, you can use the Internet to send offers and take orders, but as the Ready
brothers have shown us, you have to use the tools and services along with a
250
unique proposition to get them involved, educate them and use their network of
friends to sell your products.
Think long and hard on the example they are blazing for you. If a lobster
fisherman can literally transform their business, you could too! Their strategy
is not only increasing their profits, but it’s making their business fun again. If a
lobster fisherman can say that, you could too!
Exercise
• Do a search for video advertising companies and select one that will
enable you to use existing video to drop in your message and distribute
it on targeted sites. It will only take you 30 minutes and you’ll see
results, or not, within hours if not days.
• Think about how you can adopt the lobster fishermen’s unique use of
video to advertise your product and service.
You don’t build the product for yourself. You need to
know what the people want and build it for them.
Walt Disney, Disney Company
54. Special Attention
Y
our organization should have a plan in place to recognize people who are
going above and beyond in their areas of helping your company reach its
goals. You will find people to recognize within your:
• Customer base
• Vendors
• Partners
• Brand Ambassadors/Volunteers
People like to feel as if they are part of an exclusive club or group or given access
to information first. With that in mind, consider developing a special club that
provides password access to:
• Updates directly from the president/CEO or Chairman
• News and information prior to others receiving it
• The ability to provide their opinion
The idea is to make those who have access to this area of your Web site feel very
special. You can do this by building some type of criteria for participation. For
example, total reward points, number of people invited to join the community,
total times they visited your community, total articles or information shared,
leadership positions, etc., are all types of criteria you could use.
251
252
Your president or CEO, for example, might present to this group an issue the
company/organization is facing and request their feedback. Customers/members
would have an opportunity to review the same documents, research, and
materials, and provide their comments and suggestions for the president and the
board to review.
Try something like Flying Dog Beer does. Reward a customer as the president
of the day, week, or month. Create a fun campaign where all “presidents’”
photos are placed in frames with their name and short bio and list the three
things they said they would accomplish as president. To engage the rest of your
customers, encourage viewers the opportunity to rate and comment on their
“achievements.”
As a member, you might be asked to participate in an opinion poll/survey each
month. You would receive an email outlining the issues and then be asked to
share your opinion. One of the benefits of participating is you would be able to
see where your position is in relation to others.
You know the old adage, “You’ve got to give in order to receive!” Many executives
are pushing their marketing departments to find ways to increase word-of-mouth
marketing among their customer base but few are investing in making customers
feel great about the company. Investing in a “Special Attention” strategy will
have a “long tail” payoff.
Exercise
You couldn’t do this before, but you can now. Now you can recognize people for
their time, effort, and loyalty with little cost or effort.
• Identify which customers, Brand Ambassadors, providers, and partners
you should include on your special-attention list.
• Create a year-long strategy that will provide them recognition at least on
a quarterly basis.
Your launch strategy should include a budget that will
enable you to use multiple marketing methods!
55. Launching Campaign
I
f you’ve heard me talk at conferences, you’ve probably heard me say, “If you
build it, they will come” (in reference to Kevin Costner’s 1989 movie “Field of
Dreams”), doesn’t apply to 90 percent of online communities and Web sites.
MySpace makes it look easy! But the reality is that the top three online communities
have 80 percent of all online community traffic. The other 20 percent have to
work their tail off to connect and engage with their niche audience. I’ve seen
hundreds of online community launches and none automatically attracted
customers/users.
Launching an online community or new Social Media tools requires you to
develop marketing strategies to reach customers/members from all walks of life.
It will require you to invest substantially more than you are investing in your
technology to market the Web site. It will require you to focus 100 percent of
your resources for at least three months to build the buzz and get involvement.
Are you willing to do that?
Most organizations are not. However, those that do not develop launching
strategies receive only limited registrations and participation by members.
Launching or re-launching your online community should be a big, really big
deal.
In his book, All Marketers Are Liars, Seth reminds us that:
Marketing is about spreading ideas, and spreading ideas is the single
most important output of our civilization.
253
254
One of your challenges will be to not only include the right kind of tools and
services, but to provide opportunities and encourage customers/members
to spread the word. One way that can be done is through testimonials and
endorsements. The average person today is flooded with thousands of ads per
day. Few have the time to sift through the clutter and determine what the right
product is for them. Your launch strategy should use examples on how the online
community will benefit them. You should have customers/members sharing why
the online community is valuable for them to reconnect with friends. Another
will suggest they see the online directory and community as a powerful new tool
to expand their business by networking with others.
Before you even consider doing an online community in house or outsourcing to
another firm, I would encourage you to create a marketing strategy that includes:
• A budget set aside for your online community that represents three to
five times of your investment in technology.
• Goals and objectives.
• Assigned responsibilities.
• Scheduled meetings to assess progress.
• Identify how your site can be promoted virally.
Once your marketing strategy is decided upon, you can move on to the launching,
or re-launching, of your Web site. Here are seven tools and techniques to assist
you:
1. Use multimedia eCards, animated cards, and html emails to garner
interest.
2. Create a press release.
3. Use automated phone calls to economically reach all customers via
phone.
4. Send short YouTube-type videos featuring popular campus faculty,
athletes, or administrators.
5. Send broadcast emails to all known email addresses.
6. Send postcards to targeted groups of customers.
7. Introduce an “Invite a Friend” campaign.
Launching Campaign
255
Each of these techniques can be effective. Taken all together, you would have a
powerful launch strategy. You don’t have ten years to grow and populate your
community or engage users in your Social Media. It’s now or never! If you really
want your online community and Social Media tools to succeed, you need to
invest in it today.
MusiChristian.com re-launch
Online communities and Social Media tools can help you find out who your
most loyal customers are. Not necessarily the ones who buy the most products
and services, but those that are passionate about your vision and mission.
MusiChristian.com was looking for a way to not only find these customers, but
also a way to engage them in promoting the re-launch of their Web site and the
corresponding summer sale.
They engaged Ground Force Network to help them create the customer online
community “Launch Force Insider’s Headquarters,” and reached out to their
customers to invite them to become a part of to their “Launch Party Insiders.”
Insiders were provided updates, special invite-friends tools, banners to put on
their blogs, MySpace page, and Web site, and an online report form to log their
activity so they could earn additional points. The special Web site also gave them
ideas on how they could spread the word to others. As part of their rewards, they
also received 24-hour advance notice of special offers built into the promotion.
The low-cost promotion generated a great deal of buzz. For only $2,000, over
3,900 people became an Insider, and over 900 of them joined as a result of an
invitation from a friend or a friend’s activity on MySpace. The send to a friend
tool was used over 10,000 times, and the volunteers turned in 4,400 activity
reports.
Needless to say, MusiChristian.com will continue to use this technique
periodically in the future to increase registrations, participation, and sales.
Exercise
This is an area I’ve seen most organizations fail at. With a great deal of effort spent
on the discussion and building phase, everyone tends to take a break at launch
time. No. This is where the rubber meets the road. Here’s what I suggest:
256
• Develop a plan! Write it down! Adopt the five bullet points to guide
your strategy.
• Remember, it takes numerous; in fact, five to seven advertising hits
to make an impression on most consumers. Your plan needs to reach
consumers by different media and you need to invest in multiple
impressions.
56. Video
W
e probably talked about the fact that 70 percent of your customers are
using broadband that provides them quick access to the Internet. (I’ve
almost forgotten that I used to access the Internet with a 14k modem that would
tie up our phone lines for hours!)
YouTube has quickly changed consumers’ behaviors. Consumers are learning new
ways to interact and create media. Just three years ago, multimedia eCards were
exciting and effective ways to increase participation in events and fundraising.
Now, you can expand your marketing techniques by including YouTube-style
videos. Besides, it’s really fun to create YouTube style videos! First of all, they
don’t have to look like they were done by a Madison Avenue marketing shop.
You can create a video with an amateur movie camera that will enable you to:
• Educate customers about quality, history, services
• Inform how to use your product/service, awards, culture, people
• Engage customers by asking them to share their video
• Advertise your products and services
You don’t have to have the vision, skills, and experience of Steven Spielberg to
create a winning video. YouTube has lowered the expectations of consumers.
Simple is hot! Less professional is in! To be accepted, in fact, it has to look
“unprofessional.”
I know you are thinking that you don’t have time to pull something like this
together, but keep in mind that you don’t have to do it. That’s what students are
257
258
for! A quick call to deans or faculty of local film and photography classes will
result in a flood of students who would love to create a series of videos for your
organization. Not only will it look great on their resume, but it will provide them
with incredible real-world experience.
Consider using video as a way to market an event or activity. You could quickly
assemble a crew of students with all the skill sets and equipment to create a short
thirty-second video.
So, how do you get started?
1. Create a script.
2. Grab a student, son, daughter, or staff person.
3. Have your kids or students in a local school edit your video.
4. Publish it on YouTube.
5. Send a broadcast email to customers asking them to share it with others.
This is just one of many different marketing methods you can use. If you are
looking for a way to engage and involve young customers/members, you have
to adopt this strategy. Making the videos will be just about as much fun as the
potential new customers or revenue they will attract. You already know you don’t
need sophisticated equipment or look, all you need are a few guidelines to help
keep your video focused:
1. Make your video believable.
Your video should provide practical reasons why what you offer will benefit them.
Avoid overstating what you can do. You might say something like, “I’ve helped
hundreds of people (whatever you do), and based on that experience, there is a
good chance I can be of value to you!”
2. Keep it short.
The good news is you don’t have to create a Hollywood script. You only have
fifteen to thirty seconds to tell a story in a typical ad. Refine your script so it tells
what your customer needs to know.
3. Tell a story.
Weave a story about a customer you helped or what a product did for someone,
Video
259
and then suggest, “We can do that for you too!” Everyone likes and remembers
stories.
4. Be conversational.
Your customers are looking for you to be truthful and transparent. What you see
is what you get. Your message might be, “We put you first.” Whatever it is, avoid
sounding like the owners of a car dealership!
5. Be creative.
Did you see the Super Bowl video for Doritos? Creative consumers worked
hard to create an ad that would bring them fame and fortune. The winning ad
cost under $15 to create. Get a few friends together and see if you collectively
can develop an ad that will be fun to make and watch and make a long-lasting
impression on your prospective and current customers.
6. Make it fun.
Homemade video ads need to be engaging and a fun experience for your viewers.
Tell a joke, poke fun at yourself, and find a way to get them to laugh. Think
about the videos that your friends send to you. Many of the most successful viral
videos were built around being humorous.
7. Look low-budget.
YouTube has set the benchmark for customer expectations and the good news:
it’s low! As long as the presenter knows his or her lines and the ad makes sense
you are in the ballpark of matching consumers’ expectations.
8. Give me something I can take away.
Consider giving the consumer something they can take away after viewing your
video. It might be interesting historical information about your product or a
glimpse into the future.
9. Let them talk back and rate you.
We are entering an era where marketing will focus more on developing a
conversation with your customers and prospective customers instead of pushing
information at them. If you are moving toward video advertising, you will
need to keep that in mind. Your video advertising is going to need to develop a
conversational tone that invites the viewer to engage in the conversation.
260
10. Include a call to action.
Ah, the most important step. Do you want them to click for more information?
Do you want them to buy right now or to give you a call? Make sure you provide
a clear call to action. Tie your call to action into their need. Also, think about
what it will take to make your video viral. Consider reminding the recipient to
forward it to a friend or colleague.
Once you create your videos, you should consider putting them in as many
places around the Web as you can. Here are just a few ideas for you to consider:
• Put them on Web sites with users that match your profile.
• Create separate landing pages for each one so search engines can
categorize them.
• Upload them to your blog.
• Place on third-party Web sites like YouTube.
• Encourage customers to put the videos on their sites.
Blendtec Marketing videos increase sales 43 percent
Blendtec’s Director of Marketing, George Wright, wandered into the company
testing room one day and was surprised with the amount of sawdust in the room.
Apparently, their CEO liked to test the power and endurance of their blenders
and impress customers by blending wooden two-by-fours! George immediately
saw a viral video marketing opportunity and decided to create a series of videos
where the CEO was blending – well, anything!
In order to create a controversial video that had the potential to go viral, George
had Tom Dickson, Blendtec’s CEO, decked out in a white lab coat and goggles
(similar to the Mentos Eppy Brothers experiment).
Dickson seemed to enjoy the opportunity to demonstrate how their heavy-duty
blenders could blend anything from iPods, iPhones, and Coke cans to cards, golf
balls, forty pens, and even a golf club. Any iPhone lover had to wince when the
wild-eyed executive dropped in an iPhone, selected “blend,” and watched to see
in thirty seconds the CEO pouring out powder and dust.
This was an experiment that any twelve-year-old would love to try at home,
probably not with their iPods, but definitely with Dad’s golf balls. Within a
Video
261
week, the “Will It Blend” videos took off on YouTube. The whole “Will It Blend”
series has had nearly 10,000,000 views. They also placed the videos on Revver.
com, another video site but one that shares advertising with high-volume videos.
Both Revver.com and Blendtec have split $18,000 in advertising revenue so far.
Not bad for a little fun at the office!
Blendtec’s Director of Marketing got it right. He took a dull product, created
a hokey video, added a great deal of fun – much like the Mentos guys – and
ended up with an incredible brand-building campaign that every one of their
salespeople will be hyping for “sales” to come!
I know, when you are running your business, it’s hard to even take the hour
that I recommended to pull together a simple video. If you don’t have the time,
find someone in your company or even a customer that would be interested in
doing it for free or for barter. Or look toward your kids, your neighbors’ kids, or
marketing and PR students in your local college. As Blendtec has demonstrated,
the exposure can be huge and the cost low!
Your customers/members are experiencing this kind of marketing on a daily
basis. The technique has even evolved to TV commercials!
A major car manufacturer is currently airing a series of YouTube-type “selfdocumentaries” of a young man who just bought his car and decided to take
up the salesman’s challenge that it was so spacious that he could live in it. So
the young man did. In a series of commercials designed to run the same night,
viewers get to see him break-in his car as he explores what it can do during his
travels.
In a digital world, the cost limitations imposed on you to market your events
and activities goes away. You need to be adopting the same techniques that
commercial organizations use to build their customer base.
Exercise
YouTube helped launch this video era. You are either in or you are out. But my
suggestion is that you do something small right away. For example:
• Develop a contest to ask your customers to create a video showing your
product in a place you would not have expected it to be.
• Work with your team to develop a fun video about your company or
product:
262
1. Create a script.
2. Grab a student, son, daughter, or staff person.
3. Have your kids or students in a local school edit your video.
4. Publish it on YouTube.
5. Send a broadcast email to customers asking them to share it with
others.
57. Email-Use Policy
Email addresses have a unique value to your organization.
One email address will enable you to communicate at least 24 times a year at
no cost and with little effort. That one email address can be used to inform
customers about new product launches or request feedback on customer service
or sales strategies. More importantly, the email addresses enable you to use their
networks of friends to sell products and services. So what is one email address
worth to you?
Having emails addresses has its “good news” and “bad news” sides.
The good news is, as you continue to collect more email addresses of your
customers, you will be able to communicate and engage them more frequently
at less cost. The bad news is other departments within your firm will also want
to communicate more frequently!
As the total number of email addresses increase, there will be greater pressure by
other departments to use the email list. The production department, product
development, public relations, marketing, and customer service will naturally
develop needs to communicate with the consumers.
You have to recognize this before it becomes an issue and develop a strategy that
will accommodate your users yet provide the various departments’ access to their
thoughts and ideas.
If you haven’t done it yet, now is the time to begin to create a companywide
email-use policy. There are seven steps you’ll need to take to create an effective
email-usage policy. These steps include:
263
264
1. Identify your goals.
2. Determine the number of times customers can be contacted by email
each month.
3. Bring departments together and use their input to draft your email use
policy.
4. Decide what types of email marketing tools can be used by all
departments.
5. Develop tools so departments can target their individual constituents.
6. Build a strategy into your plan to fix bad and undeliverable email
addresses.
7. Develop guidelines on how to write an email.
An email-use policy will help avert the issues and problems I guarantee you will
run into as more departments want to communicate with your customers by
email. When your department coordinates this, you are assured you can control
the direction the discussions take and, as a result, will have a greater ability to
affect the outcome.
Your email use policy will also have to comply with the latest Can Spam Act of
2003. The act, formally known as the Controlling the Assault of Non –Solicited
Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003, was created to protect consumers from
being assaulted from unwanted email. The law has slowed the growth of spam
by providing fines of up to $2 million dollars and penalties to those who do not
comply.
The act changes periodically so your team will have to be aware what the current
law allows. However the basis of the law was to require email marketers to:
• Clearly label commercial email as advertising.
• Use a truthful and relevant subject line.
• Use a legitimate return email address.
• Provide a valid physical email address.
• Provide a working opt out option.
• Process opt-out requests within 10 business days
Email-Use Policy
265
Staying in compliance is important for your organization or company. Willful
violations could result in triple damages!
Does this make sense to you?
I hear many people talk about their company departments functioning like a
bunch of silos with few departments knowing what the other is doing. If you are
developing an Internet strategy for your organization, you should engage and
involve other departments. Marketing, public relations, production, product
development, and other departments working together can develop a compelling
and successful Internet strategy.
Exercise
Email addresses are valuable “assets.” In fact, I might suggest you book them as
an asset as it will get everyone thinking more strategically about them.
• Determine the one-year and ten-year value of an email address to you.
• To protect your email asset, follow the seven steps outlined above and
build this process into your corporate culture and business process.
58. Participation and Frequency
F
ew organizations understand how much time, commitment, and investment
is required to increase participation and the frequency of visits at your Web
site and online community.
While many have the tools to analyze what is happening o n their sites few spend
the time necessary to watch even basic site traffic. One of our favorite and free
online tools is provided by www.compete.com. They give you the ability to
compare up to three different sites to determine number of users and how long
they stay online.
For example when I compared Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin in August of
2008, here are the number of unique visitors compete.com software provided:
People Percent up for the year
Facebook
41,181,378
57.0%
MySpace
58,389,774
-15.7%
Linkedin
7,541,266
171.4%
You can use this information to strategically compare your website traffic to
your competitors. Are they getting more visits than you? Is there traffic seasonal?
Watching your competitors by using information like this will help you craft a
more successful Internet strategy.
Most organizations launch a site and go about completing the forty-three other
things on their job description, including handling fires and attending meetings
266
Participation and Frequency
267
and conferences. Then, when they have a chance, they look over their shoulder
and glance at what is happening in the online community and Social Media
tools.
The result?
A limited number of customers/members register and even less are returning to
the Web site on any sort of consistent basis, if at all. To increase participation and
frequency of visits, you need:
• A written engagement plan.
• Funding to promote and market your Web site using various
promotional channels.
That being said, you also need to have a Web site that provides practical tools and
services for your customers/members. These services will vary depending on the
type of community you have, but should include things like:
• Photo sharing
• Network weaving
• Opinion polls
• Bulletin boards
Each of these and other Social Media tools will increase the likelihood that your
customers/members will come back to the Web site.
Your engagement plan should include using both of these concepts. Take the
extra time to commit your strategy in writing. Your plan should include:
1. What you want to accomplish.
2. What Social Media and Internet tools you need.
3. A mix of online and offline marketing tools.
4. Deadlines and timelines.
5. Benchmarking and analytics
Once you have your engagement plan in place, give yourself time to make
corrections if you are not reaching your goals. As you analyze your results,
consider adding or subtracting services. If customers are not using a specific
268
service, increase your marketing to see if you can increase participation. If you
can’t, then replace that service with another.
To determine if customers are returning to your Web site, ask your IT team
to give you a report that shows numbers of those who visited each month, as
well as how many visited within the past year. Sit down monthly to review the
numbers and look for ways to make adjustments to increase participation and
the frequency of visits.
Just a little additional effort in this area will result in thousands of additional
customers registering in your online community.
Exercise
You need a plan!
• Identify what you want to accomplish.
• Identify what new tools or more advanced tools will increase
participation.
• Continue to analyze what you are accomplishing and make
modifications.
If marketers are paying consumers to advocate
for their products, then that connection,
that payment, needs to be disclosed.
Mary Engle, Federal Trade Commission
59. Quote of the Day
This technique is a no-brainer!
One of the cardinal rules of building community is to create a great deal of
interesting content your members will want to consume. Another is to do
whatever you can to recognize your customers and put their name out to be seen
by others. People like to be recognized, and providing a quote of the day gives
them a chance to share their wit, creativity, and humor.
Here’s how you can do this.
First of all, you need to create an online form that captures quotes. To follow
the KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) philosophy, all you need to get this concept
working is to create an online form that captures the following:
• Name
• City
• Email address
• Author of the quote
• Quote category
• Quote
• Who they’d like to see the quote
Once you create the form, you’ll need to “prime the pump” to raise awareness
of the service with conventional marketing techniques and tools. Your email
269
270
should ask them to share their favorite quote from someone else or one of their
own. Depending on the resources you have available, I’d suggest you automate
this process so their quote is immediately put in queue and assigned a date to be
displayed.
If you have the ability to customize a program, I would suggest you include the
following functionalities:
1. A database for all submissions.
2. A search tool so customers/members can find quotes by name, date, or
quote category.
3. Automatically notify customers/members when their quote is posted.
4. Allow others to post a comment to the quote.
Depending on your business, you may want to include an approval process.
Finally, when you develop enough content from customers, start a quote of the
day program. Interested customers will receive a daily quote that will identify all
of the above. It’s a great way to keep them connected to you.
Exercise
• Identify what kind of quotes you are looking for: Zany, thoughtprovoking, is it going to be related to your product or company mission.
• Promote the opportunity through packaging, email, and advertising
channels.
• Try to use the recommended steps above.
60. Endorsements
The commercial world uses endorsements all the time!
Tiger Woods and Lebron James are just a few of the hundreds of professional
athletes who endorse products and services. Companies and non-profits
use celebrities to increase participation and awareness of their needs because
endorsements sell a lot of their product!
Your customers are more likely to be convinced to engage in your Internet strategy
if a peer, a fellow member, or celebrity is endorsing it. However, astonishingly
few organizations are using this simple marketing technique. In a quick review
of one hundred corporate, education, and non-profit Web sites, only a small
percentage were using testimonials and endorsements to promote their Web
site.
Can you imagine the excitement that would build around your organization
if a celebrity, business person, or athlete were endorsing it? Not only is their
endorsement more trusted, it’s usually repeated and shared with others.
Additionally, an endorsement like this will create a buzz. It induces a sense of
excitement that can initiate a snowball effect. In this case, the more customers
that are talking about your Web site, the better!
Endorsements usually include all, or some, of the following:
• Photos of the person endorsing or offering the testimonial.
• Comments on how the service has benefited them.
• Handwritten signature of the endorser.
271
272
You have the option of delivering endorsements and testimonials using any, or
all, of the following:
• Audio
• Text
• Photos
• Video
To get you started, here are five different methods you could utilize endorsements:
1. When someone visits the home page, have a photo and statement from a
satisfied user, along with their statement pop up.
2. If you have a bulletin board, include a photo of a user and a comment
on why they enjoy participating in the discussions.
3. Organizations that offer customers/members the ability to post photos
should show a photo of a user that encourages them to post their
photos.
4. If you have a famous person or celebrity, one that is respected within
your community, put their photo out in front of everyone and a
statement of what they take away from your product or service.
5. You should consider a short video that introduces the Web site, why you
founded it, and what you hope the users get out of it.
Endorsements are powerful techniques to increase traffic and participation and
can easily take your online community to the next level. In most cases, it’s free to
do yet it can be among the most effective techniques you use.
Exercise
People do business with people. Your Web strategy will enable you to take the
testimonial/endorsement strategy to the next level.
• Create a target list of 10 to 20 prospective testimonial providers. Select
them from your customer list, providers, employees, or celebrity/
industry experts.
• Use a variety of Social Media to make your testimonials more
interactive. Let users “talk back” to those providing testimonials.
61. Customer/Member Group Blog
D
avid Kline and Dan Burstein wrote an excellent book on blogging, simply
titled Blog!
The authors suggest blogging is an incredible tool for self-expression and
community-building:
Blogging, in addition to being a huge phenomenon in its own right, is the key
metaphor for interactivity, community-building, and genuine conversation; one
to one, one to many, many to one, many to many.
To their point, there are many different ways you can use blogs on your customer
online community. We’ve already suggested that you consider linking customer/
members blogs to your online community to give them more exposure, and now
I’d like you to consider creating a customer group blog.
What’s that?
A customer group blog is a blog that would be run and updated by a group that
is focusing on single issues. The benefits of a group blog are:
• They require less work.
• They build an affinity around the authors.
• They create more content to bring users back to the Web site.
To give you an idea of what a group blog could be built around, let’s consider
for a moment building a group blog around careers. You could send an email to
your customers/members asking if they would like to become part of a group
273
274
blog that focuses on issues and discussions that would interest your online
community members.
Your goal is to find customers/members who have expertise and an interest in
these areas and, of course, the knowledge and writing skills. Once you have your
volunteers in place, your objective is to get out of the way and let them run the
blog.
As the idea builds steam, you could offer more group blogs designed around a
variety of different issues. For example:
• Travel
• Health
• Cost of living
• Government programs
• Learning
• Hobbies
• Grandparenting
• Investments
Another group blog could be built around families. Consider a group blog that
has authors focused on different areas of specialties, such as:
• Parenting
• Special needs kids
• Sports
• Homework
• Friends
• Drugs
Remember, on any Web site, content is king. You need to have content for all
members of your community. I don’t need to remind you that you have customers
of all ages. Those in retirement years are not going to be interested in the job
blog, nor will they be interested in the parenting blog.
Customer/Member Group Blog
275
A Lansing, Michigan, newspaper, the Lansing State Journal, gave their readers an
opportunity to “talk back” and post blog entries in their Web site. In a little over
a year, 6,000 people registered to post 18,000 comments. Their online forums
are among the top destination on their site, and draw more than a half a million
page views. The concept they call “Story Chat” is designed to engage customers
in the story. Experience is showing them that more controversial articles develop
a firestorm of participation and comments.
This strategy fulfills your need to give your customers a forum to be seen and
heard. The more opportunities you create where you can recognize them, the
more they will promote the site to others.
Share the blog!
Sports Media Challenge was approached by the NCAA to create a blog called
“Every Game Counts.” The blog was designed to attract celebrity coaches to post
comments, develop a bit of controversy, and increase their viral marketing.
It worked.
The site engaged coaches, like the University of Texas head coach Mack Brown
and the University of Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis. Their posts provided
insight into the game and their lives. The honest and straightforward discussion
attracted readers instantly, many of whom repurposed their comments on their
own blogs, further spreading interest and attention.
For an initial $5,000 investment, the campaign generated 25,000 unique visitors
for an acquisition cost of only 20 cents per visitor. One thing you want to make
sure you build into your campaign is a reason for the visitors to give you their
email address so you can communicate with them in the future. In an earlier
discussion about the value of an email address, we suggested if you communicated
with someone twice a month and had to do so by mail, you could spend up to
$24 per year to communicate with each customer.
Exercise
• Create a “theme” blog around your product or service and invite others
who support the same thing to become guest posters or link their blog
to your blog.
62. Data Capture
Data is king!
One of the key benefits of adopting social networking tools is that your
organization will be the beneficiary of an enormous amount of data about your
prospective and current customers.
You can gather data from:
• Online surveys
• Online opinion polls
• Personal information updated in their profile page
• Bulletin board discussions
• Ratings and reviews
• Customer purchases
• Customer browsing
• Customer wish lists
Technology is also available to automatically request data updates from customers
that has not been changed during some time period. For example, a program
could run every night locating customers who have not:
• Purchased a product in six months.
• Visited your Web site within a period of time.
276
Data Capture
277
• Changed their business information within the last two years.
• Added a second email address.
• Changed their home address within the last four years.
• Updated a class note within the past three years.
You get the picture?
A properly designed HTML email would include the information that is
currently on file and request that customer make any necessary changes or fill
in any empty fields. If done correctly, customers will be able to save the updated
information right from the opened email. Convenient, fast, and effortless!
Spend a few minutes thinking through what additional information you could
gather automatically to improve the integrity and quantity of data you have
about your prospective and current customers. I think you will have fun doing
it!
Remember, the more data you gather from them, the more you will be able to
personalize communication to them. Targeted communication is more personal
and will result in more click-throughs and increased registrations.
Exercise
Your Internet strategy would not be complete without a data-capture strategy.
This is something that will change over time.
• Identify what kind of data you want to capture from your customers/
prospects.
• Develop a data-capture strategy that outlines a phased-in capture of data
over time.
• Work with production, customer service, product development and sales
and identify how you want to use that data.
• Modify it overtime as your other strategies change.
Consumers are too smart today
to believe what companies tell them.
They believe what their friends tell them.
Suzanne Fanning, Fiskars Craft
63. Invite Friends
O
ne of the biggest challenges online communities and providers of Social
Media tools face is getting more people registered in their Web site. One of
the easiest ways to grow your registrations and participation is by:
• Including Invite Friends, where individuals simply enter an email
address.
• Automated Invite Friends tools where the tools search their email
software.
Most Web sites have an “Invite a Friend” opportunity, but few have Invite
Friends opportunities. When you stop and think about it, why would you want
to give a user only one person to share your opportunity with? With just a little
extra effort, your online form can be expanded to give up to six email addresses
that your users could fill in.
You need to consider adopting a strategy that maximizes your supporters/
customers’ volunteers network. Consider designing a tool that reminds them
to consider their wider circle of friends including casual friends, close friends,
co-workers, neighbors, church and civic group acquaintances, and family
members.
“Invite a Friend” is a viral marketing tool that can steadily increase participation.
Many Web sites are doing this today, but few are doing it effectively. When I
think about an Invite a Friend method, I’m not talking about having a simple
email-forwarding tool. What I want you to think about is how to get the people
who are registered on your Web site to “actively” invite ten, twenty, or thirty
friends to register.
278
Invite Friends
279
Let’s say you have 2,000 people currently registered on your Web site. If each
person invited only five of their friends, you’d have the potential to add 10,000
new people to the Web site.
How do you marshal 2,000 customers to help you?
You create a campaign, complete with Web pages, a thermometer to show
progress, and then dig in your heels and do whatever it takes. You spend money
on postage, phone calls, flyers, eCards, and video invitations. Right now, you
and your staff are doing the best you can to grow your Web site by a few hundred
members per week. Just imagine the results you’d achieve with an army of
volunteers helping you.
Give rewards, send emails, and keep customers/members pumped about your
progress. After a thirty day campaign, do a wrap-up to see which of your
volunteers made the most contacts and how many new registrations there are.
Friends invite the right friends
Which would you choose to increase the number of your volunteers: an organic
Internet word-of-mouth program or an $8 million advertising program?
Read on and you’ll find out!
CASA is a national organization that organizes and trains adult volunteers to
become advocates for the nearly 500,000 children who are in foster care programs
nationwide. Founded by a judge who recognized children needed someone
willing to be by their side during the frequent changes of those assigned as their
guardians, CASA is a beneficiary of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Cares
Charity, and receives about eight million dollars in donated media time each
year.
CASA, like other organizations, has to continually reach out to gain new
volunteers because of increase case loads and burnout of volunteers. Not only
is the job stressful but it requires thirty hours of training and a fifteen hour
commitment each week. The challenge for the organization is not only finding
volunteers, but the right volunteers with a minimum effort.
The organization created a pilot word-of-mouth marketing program built around
the following strategies:
280
• Promotion called “Get on Board for Children” that provided two free
tickets for a Holland Cruise Line cruise to the person who recruited the
most volunteers.
• Offline referral card and information kit for volunteers to share with
others.
• Viral marketing multigenerational media sharing tool.
One of the more effective tools included was provided by Popular Media. This
tool allows a volunteer to simply open the tool they use to send and receive email
(like Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and Outlook), and one-by-one identify which of their
contacts they would like to invite to participate. Instead of blanketing all of their
friends, volunteers had the ability to identify the friends that this demanding
type of volunteer work would best fit. Volunteers were given the flexibility to
customize the emails sent to their friends or use the templates designed by CASA.
The program also enabled the volunteers to become engaged and track the results
of their invitations. It shared with them who read the email they sent and who
registered as a result of reading it.
Jim Clune, Chief Communication Officer of CASA said: “We found that
volunteers do a better job at finding other volunteers with the right skill sets and
interest that will stay with our program longer than volunteers acquired by other
media campaigns.”
Are you still wondering which would drive more qualified leads? Did you guess
the 8 million dollars in TV media ads? If you did, you are wrong! Only 8 percent
of their volunteer base has been tracked to the free media exposure.
On the other hand, the word-of-mouth campaign is expected to increase their
volunteer base by 27 percent. The word-of-mouth marketing program in the
pilot program in Chicago and San Francisco resulted in 1,300 new emails and
1,200 referrals. When the program rolls out to the 950 programs at the state level,
CASA is anticipating 140,000 emails and 130,000 referrals. Based on their 13
percent conversion history, they anticipate gathering an additional 15,000 new
committed volunteers and potential to move thousands to contribute money to
support the organization.
You have a great deal to gain by increasing the number of your registered users in
your online directory and community.
Invite Friends
Exercise
Invite Friends is a simple viral marketing strategy. You need to include it.
• Determine the type of Invite Friends strategies you want to adopt.
• Use the CASA model and modify it to fit your mission.
281
In many cases, word-of-mouth marketing isn’t actually
“marketing” at all. It’s about great customer serviced
that makes people want to tell their friends about you.
It’s about fantastic products that people can’t
resist showing everyone!
Andy Sernovitz, Author, Word of Mouth Marketing
64. Social Collaboration
E
merging software will help organizations use the power of their networks to
engage and involve willing volunteers to solve an issue, concept, and advance
a cause.
Open-source software was initially talked about in the late 1990s, and over the
next five years began to creep into companies via entrepreneurial employees and
eventually became a trusted model to build upon. IBM’s endorsement of Linux
(which has become a billion-dollar product for them) helped CEOs understand
how open source might transform their businesses. As a result, more companies
are adopting open-source software that is being built in collaboration by many
around the world.
It’s a strategy that expands an organizations’ client bases and expertise and opens
new revenue opportunities.
Today, software is available online to handle a variety of services. Available in
PHP or dot net, organizations can cable together very inexpensive software to
expand their products and services and better serve customers. Oh yes, and along
the way, increase profits!
Social collaboration software will enable you to use the time, talent, and creativity
of your customers to:
• Work on community/volunteers project together.
• Solve issues confronting the various departments within the company.
282
Social Collaboration
283
In his book, Wikinomics, How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Dan
Tapscott shares a story of a mining company whose engineers and scientists were
out of ideas on how to find new locations of gold. After attending a conference,
the president decided to put their entire database online and offered up to
$575,000 in prize money to anyone who could help them locate new areas on
their 55,000-acre property that had the best potential to have more gold. With
ideas coming in from all over the world from mathematicians, consultants,
graduate students, and military officers, literally people from all walks of life,
they dug into the data and found results. The company ended up paying the
reward and has since vaulted from a company valued at 100 million dollars to a
$9 billion valuation!
The president of the gold mining firm realized his team had maxed out their
capabilities and ideas. By going to your customers, you gain their brain power,
creativity, and out-of-the-box thinking that could take your online community
and company to the next level.
Exercise
Are you willing to use the “wisdom of the masses” to solve company issues or
problems?
If you are:
• What problem or opportunity could you give up to your customers/
community?
• What will you offer participants?
Marketing is about spreading ideas, and
spreading ideas is the single most important
output of our civilization.
Seth Godin, Author, All Marketers Are Liars
65. Email Marketing
E
mail marketing should be one of the central parts of your Internet strategy.
It’s a low-cost and powerful way to reach out to prospective and current
customers.
When I started building online communities for alumni associations in 1995, we
had to send 3,000 flyers at a typical cost including postage, printing, and paper
of about $3,000. Then we’d wait weeks for a response. Today, we can send 3,000
emails for free and within an hour get a far higher response than we ever received
waiting for someone to fill out a bounce-back card and mail it back to us.
In my book Internet Dough, I remind you that each email address has a value.
For alumni associations, the value was a combination of the savings from not
sending a letter or newsletter twice a month and the average online contributions
received as a result of their communication. In many cases, we showed them how
one email had a $1,000 ten-year value.
As I shared in the above paragraph, each email you collect represents a savings
in postage, printing, and paper costs, but it also has sales revenue tied to it.
Depending on your business and cost of your product, your ten-year value of an
email address could be tens of thousands of dollars! Knowing this, you should be
shouting for joy every time you get an email address.
Before you even start your email marketing planning and strategy, we highly
recommend you develop a strategy around acquiring emails from prospective
customers and customers. In order for your email marketing plan to succeed,
you need a strategy that will provide a fresh amount of new email addresses and
correct bad email addresses.
284
Email Marketing
285
We detail this process in the section called Email Acquisition Campaign. But
enough of that, let’s talk about how to effectively use them!
Clearly, email marketing is a cost-effective, efficient way you can:
• Build your brand
• Sell products and/or services
• Drive a prospect Web site/landing page
• Build loyalty
Before you develop your email marketing strategy, you need to keep in mind two
big issues your strategy will face:
1. Depending on which research, the typical email box has anywhere from
71 (MessageLabs) to 91.52 percent (Softscan) spam. Knowing that, you
have to spend some creative time developing email marketing strategies
that rise above the flotsam and catch the eye of your intended receiver.
2. With the rise of Social Media and particularly online community
communication channels, a segment of the population is using email
less and online community channels to communicate more. That means
your email marketing messages will need to develop techniques to reach
prospects who rarely use or check their email.
Knowing this, let’s talk about the tools, services, and techniques to create a
successful email marketing strategy.
Types of email communication
Your email marketing strategy should be built on the overall knowledge and
expertise you bring to the table in direct marketing with a few twists. Your
existing marketing tools and services probably center around mass marketing
channels (TV, radio, magazine, etc.) Many people think of email marketing as
being limited to just text emails, when in fact, there are numerous different type
of emails available to them.
We build email marketing strategies using a variety of email tools and services.
The primary email tools you have available include:
1. Text message
286
2. Html message
3. Static flash
4. eCard
5. Video message
6. Audio message
If we are building a campaign, we like to mix up the email tools to catch the
attention of the users. So the first email might be a text message, the second might
include an audio message, the third might be an eCard (flash email that includes
photos, audio, and multiple frames), the fourth might be a video message and
the final message might be an html image and final call to action.
Many marketers make the mistake of sending one email. I remember years ago
attending a public TV station presentation on marketing where they presented
their plan that included six emails to their viewers. In the presentation, they
showed how each additional emailing generated more profits. While the first
email undoubtedly generated the most profit, the remaining emails picked up
what was left on the table. Remember the 80/20 rule. You can expect it to apply
here too. Plan on getting 70 to 80 percent of your response in the initial emailing
and the rest from the subsequent emailing.
Strategy of an email
Each email needs to have one message, one call to action, one intended goal. Too
frequently email marketers put everything and the kitchen sink in an email and
confuse the recipient. Assuming you are creating a series of three to six emails,
plan on putting different messages and calls to action in each. That way, you can
measure the results to see which message is the most effective.
Your email message should not be more than three to four short paragraphs. We
consider a paragraph no more than four lines. Typically, we build emails that
start with a one- to two-line opening paragraph, a three- to four-line second
paragraph and a two-line call to action followed by a large “Click for Details”
option.
Email Marketing
287
Social Media Marketing strategy
We won’t go into detail here, but you do need to also determine how you are
going to reach consumers who are moving away from email. With that in mind,
you will need to begin to develop Internet strategies and partnerships with social
networking communities like Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and Linkedin.
Existing email delivery tools
We currently use a couple of different email marketing services. The tools will
enable us to build an email (customer) database, create a series of emails and
bring them together in a campaign or emailing.
As soon as we lay out our initial strategy, write our email copy, and identify to
whom we want to send the emails, we create our mailings in our email marketing
service provider’s software. For example: Following our own suggestions, we’ll
create six emails and then create six different campaigns that we will send to
targeted prospects and customers. In some cases, the emails are set to go out
once a day, every week, or once month. The software will allow you to set up
everything and forget about it!
Emerging email tools
A number of new email marketing tools or suites of tools are being developed
that personalize the information provided to the viewer. For example, one firm
we use enables us to send an email to a known customer and when they click on
the call to action, it delivers a Web page that is created on the fly built around
their browsing behavior or personal information they had already shared with
us.
Not everyone makes a decision immediately, and the new software that is available
to you will build on the information it gathers each time the prospective customer
acts on your call to action. This is an exciting new area for email marketing as it
is designed to let the prospective customer eventually sell themselves!
Landing pages
A primary component of your email marketing plan is a landing page. Your
email call to action normally drives them to a page to either purchase or sign
up for more information. Software is available from a number of providers that
will give you the ability to test different calls to action and find out which one
is most effective.
288
For example, if one headline says:
Fantastic new business opportunity! Retire 10 years earlier!
And the other says:
Become your own boss and leave the 9-5 world for a quality lifestyle!
The software will continually monitor both and automatically switch every
respondent to the most effective campaign. This ensures that you will gain the
best response from your email marketing.
Analyze results
Far too few people take the time to analyze the results of their email marketing.
In the past, we would send out 3,000 flyers and the only data we’d get is the
bounce-back cards that were returned by those interested in learning more.
With email marketing, your provider will tell you who opened the email, who
clicked to read more, and which emails bounced due to spam, out-of-office, or
other issues.
You should have a strategy to deal with those who open and click on the email.
The individuals who opened the email might have been tempted by the headline
to read more, but upon reading the email discovered that they were not interested.
If you have a high percentage that are opening the email but low percentage
clicking, then you might be telling too much information or not saying the
things they want to hear.
It’s important to call a number of those who opened the email to ask them what
they are looking for, why they didn’t click for more information, and/or why
they opened the email in the first place. Armed with their response, you can
modify your email marketing to increase responses.
Anyone who clicked to read the additional information but did not buy or sign
up for more information, in our world, is still a prospect. We do one of two things
with this group. First, we’ll send a letter or a postcard to them with additional
information and another call to action. Second, where appropriate, we’ll call or
send another email to them with additional information. Remember, people are
busy and have many different organizations demanding their time. You have to
find a way to get in front of them, get their attention, and get them to act.
Email Marketing
Exercises
• Read the Email Acquisition Campaign strategy and begin collecting
email addresses.
• Using the examples provided, write five to six different emails with a
variety of calls to action to send to your target audience.
• Analyze the results and make modifications to increase your response
rates.
289
Word-of-mouth is about sharing stories
that you are passionate about.
Ted Wright, Fizz
66. ADA-Compatible
T
he American Disability Act has given a great deal of freedom and newfound
respect to your users with disabilities.
Not only has the ADA required cities, buildings, organizations, and businesses
to provide ramps, accessible bathrooms, and walkways, it also requires that all
computers, software, and even Web sites be accessible to your users.
Section 508 of the Act outlines specific requirements your organization has to
comply with in order to provide an accessible Web site. Failure to do so will
ultimately resort in fines, but worse, will disenfranchise users.
For example, your Web site:
• Must have text labels on all data input boxes and photographs.
• Should not use flashing images that could cause an epileptic seizure.
• Should not use colors to indicate required data in registration forms that
blind reading programs can’t read.
Staying in compliance is a never-ending job. To make sure you are ahead of the
moving requirements of the ADA Section 508C, someone in your office should
attend conventions and continue to read industry information on an ongoing
basis.
290
ADA-Compatible
291
This is a tremendous benefit for your customers who are:
• Blind, color blind
• Epileptic
• Quadriplegic
• Deaf
As you are developing your online community, make sure you keep these
requirements in mind. It will be less expensive to create your online community
from the beginning, and you will end up attracting a greater number of users.
Do it today! It’s just makes good business sense.
Exercise
As the Web becomes a more important tool for everyone to communicate, your
Web strategy has to be inclusive of all possible users.
• First thing is to learn more about ADA requirements. They are
continually evolving.
• Determine the standards you want your organization to adhere to.
67. Monthly eNewsletter
eNewsletters are an important part of your marketing program. They are effective
tools to keep your name in front of prospects and customers.
You can use them to share news, announce new services and/or survey customers.
Regardless, eNewsletters are one of the more effective Push/Pull techniques
available to drive users back to the Web site for more information.
Besides using RSS feeds to update information on your Web site, consider
starting a monthly eNewsletter. Your eNewsletter could serve four audiences:
1. Customers/online community members
2. Employees
3. Vendors
4. Investors
eNewsletters are easy to pull together when you spread the work around. Each
department could be responsible to provide news and information about their
department.
eNewsletters could include:
• Promotions
• Individuals community involvement
• New product development
292
Monthly eNewsletter
293
• Updates on organizational goals
• New strategies
• Recognition of volunteers and community members
eNewsletters can also include audio, video, photographs, and more! I’d encourage
you to build in tools that will enable recipients to:
• Rate the story.
• Forward it to a friend.
• Add personal comments.
If you don’t spread the responsibilities around, producing the monthly eNewsletter
is a great deal of work. This responsibility has fallen, in most cases, to people with
little or no experience in creating newsletters, or worse yet, people with little
expertise in writing. On top of that, few individuals within a company have the
time to write the articles.
If you agree that a monthly eNewsletter is a good Push/Pull technique to keep
bringing users back to the Web site, I would suggest that you outsource this.
There are a number of different ways you can do this:
• Look on sites like www.elance.com and place a request for someone to
write these.
• Call a local college professor and ask him or her to recommend students.
Both have advantages and disadvantages. Students will be able to gain real-world
experience by managing your monthly eNewsletter. On the other hand, they
may not be as reliable. My experience with Elance and other sites that bring
businesspeople together has been very positive. You may end up spending more
to get your eNewsletter done, but it will probably exceed your expectations!
A couple of things to keep in mind if you use students:
• When you set up this program, ascertain that the professor agrees to be
the “heavy” and to oversee the student’s work, make sure deadlines are
met, review the quality of the work, etc.
• Give participating students some kind of title and credit on the Web site
for their participation.
294
• Line up at least six students to work on this project. This way, the work
can be evenly distributed. The average newsletter might have ten stories,
which could easily be handled by this many students.
• Develop your storylines at least a month ahead of the deadline, so the
students have plenty of time to research and complete them.
• Require the students to build the newsletter and send it out.
We’ve covered quite a few strategies. Even though this requires a bit more time and
effort, think of it as a low-cost brand-awareness campaign. Instead of investing
money in traditional media, your eNewsletters will keep your organization in
front of your customers and prospects and pull them back to your Web site and
engage them.
Exercise
ENewsletters are still strong tools to remind users about your products, services,
and aheivements.
• Determine what “columns/features” you want to include in your
eNewsletter. Start small, you can grow this over time.
• If you have an organization blog, consider repurposing some of the blog
posts.
• Incorporate other strategies like Fifteen Minutes of Fame to increase
customer/volunteer recognition and content.
68. Contests
Everybody holds contests!
Radio, television, magazines, schools, companies, churches, and organizations
are just a few that do. Contests are a proven way to engage and involve people.
They build a sense of anticipation and excitement and they’re a lot of fun!
I’d suggest you hold contests at least on a quarterly basis. The more you hold
them, the more your customers will participate.
Before you decide which type of contest you want to offer you have to decide
what you want to achieve. Do you want to:
1. Increase brand awareness and industry buzz?
2. Gather email addresses?
3. Sell more products and services?
There are a number of different types of contests you could hold. Some of these
include:
• Giveaways/Raffles (money, cars, product)
• Submission of creative work (photo, videos, articles, poems)
Giveaways are the most popular type of contests. My favorite NPR station,
WKSU-FM, has a fantastic relationship with airlines and offers premium gifts of
two free airline tickets to anywhere in the continental United States. Participants
in most giveaways simply enter an email address, and then the administrators
295
296
pick the winner. It might be the tenth caller, the caller that guesses what year
a song was written, etc. This type of contest is easy to administrate. In fact,
the hardest part is probably finding the firms willing to provide products and
services.
Raffles are also simple to administrate, profitable, and fun for the winners. A
simple Web search will produce a number of companies that produce raffle
tickets. This provides organizations an easy way to have a professional-looking
raffle program with minimal effort. If they lose them, they could print them
again.
An increasingly popular contest is engaging customers or supporters in creating
video commercials.
Doritos
Super Bowl ads have become an event within an event. Like the movie industry,
the hype about the ads starts months prior to the event and culminates in the
most expensive advertising time in history. In 2007, Doritos decided to integrate
the fun and excitement that was building in the YouTube brand and create their
own buzz by developing a contest months ahead of the Super Bowl that would
give budding cinema photographers and advertisers an opportunity to create an
ad that could be used as the Super Bowl ad.
They partnered with Yahoo! and created a site called “Crash the Super Bowl” as
a way to get the message out and collect the submissions. Yahoo! and Doritos
engaged their participants by giving them voting rights in determining who should
move on to the finals. This is always an effective technique because you then tap
into the networks of the friends of the contestants. One of the contestants ran a
series of radio ads asking for people to vote for their video, others ran newspaper
ads, and, in one case, a young lady distributed and posted flyers.
The five finalists were to receive $10,000 and trip to Miami for a private Super
Bowl viewing party. Other firms had used consumer-generated media prior to
this, but none on the scale this would become. The campaign created more buzz,
engagement, and brand awareness than they could have hoped for. In addition,
for a chance to reach 93 million viewers, the final winning ad was played millions
of times online and received additional exposure in print, TV, and radio news
stories. Oh, did I forget to mention they also saved the production cost that can
run as high as a million dollars to create a thirty-second commercial!
Contests
297
You get the picture!
Contests are incredible Push/Pull and viral marketing techniques. They push
information to your users, pull those users back, and because they are fun, your
users will share them with others. The more they share, the more visits you get.
You can’t get a better way to increase participation for such a low investment in
time, money, and effort.
You can make your contest more viral by:
• Getting contest participants to encourage their friends to vote for them.
• Requiring voters to register their email address and recommend others
to vote.
If you are going to adopt contests, go all the way. Don’t adopt just one contest,
develop a series of contests as we’ve discussed here. Get other companies involved,
and then get out of the way and let them have fun. You’ll not only engage your
customers, but you will increase the number of email addresses you collect,
registrations in your online community, and participation!
Exercise
It’s relatively easy to adopt contests online. Your printing, postage, and labor
costs drop steeply so you can put more money into the prize.
• Identify what type of contest you want to hold.
• Add a viral marketing component by requiring those that submit to ask
their friends to vote for them.
• Create a multi-channel marketing program to get maximum exposure
for your campaign.
You have to invest in the people you serve if
you want them to invest in your needs!
69. Seasonal eCards
Everyone likes to be remembered – even better when it’s unexpected.
Capitalizing on this belief, your online community could adopt a series of
seasonal eCards that are automatically sent to your users.
ECards are multimedia emails that include audio, photos, text, and, in some
cases, video. When properly done, they capture the attention of the viewer for a
longer period of time, giving you a chance to get your message and brand in front
of them. ECards can be sent out on birthdays, holidays, or as an announcement
of a new product, division, or service.
I highly suggest you develop a strategy to send eCards at least three times each
year. Here are additional holidays you could be communicating with your users
using eCards:
Holiday
Date
• New Year’s Day January 1st
• Birthday of Martin Luther King Third Monday in January
• Inauguration Day
January 20th every four years
• Memorial Day
Last Monday in May
• Independence Day
July 4th
• Labor Day
First Monday in September
• Veteran’s Day
November 11th
298
Seasonal eCards
• Thanksgiving Day
Fourth Thursday in November
• Christmas Day December 25th
• Valentine’s Day February 14th
• St. Patrick’s Day March 17th
• April Fool’s Day April 1st
• Mothers’ Day
Second Sunday in May
• Fathers’ Day
Third Sunday in June
• Grandparents’ Day
Sunday after Labor Day
• Halloween
October 31st
299
This list provides a huge opportunity for you to target individual groups without
mailing to everyone at the same time. For example, you could send mothers,
fathers, veterans, and grandparents separate greetings with messages that speak
to their heart. This not only gives them a feeling like you really know who they
are, but it will provide you an opportunity to communicate with them more
frequently.
Business is all about relationships and gaining customer mindshare. With so
many choices and so much competition, you have to put your name in front of
your customers continually.
My dentist, Dr. Robert Smith of Akron, Ohio, subscribes to a service that not
only reminds me about appointments, but I get an electronic birthday card each
year. It’s a nice touch that keeps his name in front of me. We talked about an
alumni study that showed frequent positive communication about what faculty,
students, and alumni are doing increases contributions. By communicating more
frequently, even with simple automated eCards, you gain mindshare. In my case,
the day after I received my birthday card, a colleague was complaining about
their dentist, and I was only too happy to share that I was a fan of my dentist.
As a further endorsement, I told them my wife refused to go to dentists for years
because of a couple of bad experiences, but found Dr. Smith to be an incredible
dentist.
You have to invest in the people you serve if you want them to invest in your
online community. Remembering them on these special days in their lives that
“define” who they are is a wholesome, fun, and creative experience for all involved!
300
Seasonal eCards are easy tools that can spur word-of-mouth conversations that
generate business and increase profits.
Exercise
This is a simple way to put your brand in front of consumers with minimal
effort:
• Take the above list and identify which holidays are most relevant to your
customer/user base.
• Give your customers the ability to share the eCards with others.
You have to invest in the people you serve if
you want them to invest in your needs!
70. Google Maps
I tried for months to come up with a workable way to use the “cool” Google
maps technology to show where members are from.
My colleagues and I have had discussions at lunch, at the water cooler, over a few
drinks, and each time we thought we discovered a way to use the technology in
the alumni industry, we ran into a roadblock. Our concern was that alumni may
not want to have their actual locations disclosed to others via this technology.
Then, like a flash in the night, a colleague forwarded to me an email with the
suggestion that I look at what Dickinson College has done with the Google
Maps technology.
It was a breakthrough! I loved it.
Here’s what they did, and the best part is, you can do it too! A user is shown a
page titled “Where in the USA are Dickinson Alumni?” The user enters a fivedigit zip code and then selects a twenty-five, a fifty, or a seventy-five mile radius
to see alumni who live in the area.
A map is displayed that shows where alumni live, but only provides the zip code,
the city name, and how many alumni live in that area. For example, it may show:
Harrisburg, PA 17111, forty-two alumni live in this area, No other identifying
information is divulged.
Using Google’s Satellite or Hybrid view, your alumni can see the block and house
alumni live in, but they have no idea who they are. Taken to the next level, you
could improve on this by allowing the user to click on the users “balloon” to,
301
302
assuming they have logged into the online directory and community, take them
directly to that specific alumni’s profile page.
This application could be used as a management tool to give you a graphical view
of internal and external information.
You could adapt this idea to:
• Show where your customers/clients offices are.
• Identify which stores carry your product.
• Show where your sales reps are located.
• Where your suppliers are around the world.
• How many products you sold in each city
Sales management, for example, could take down the map of the world and
replace it with a Van Gogh after using Google Maps to show where their sales
prospects are. Putting this online will help salespeople plan out their territory
sales strategy, and managers can manage by helping them find spots to fill in
between.
Let your mind wander a bit and think about how you can organize your business
processes and your relationships with your customers through this kind of online
tool.
Exercise
First, decide if this concept is relevant to your organization, either from you to
your customers or between you and your vendors:
• Pull your department team together to identify how you could use
Google Maps.
• Identify how you could use data from your servers and your vendors
to create a Mashup to improve the customer experience or reduce costs
between your companies.
• Try to find a way that your customers can participate.
For twenty years, people have been calling this the era of computers,
the Internet, and telecommunications the “information age.” But that’s
not what it is. What we’re really in now is the empowerment age.
If information is power, then this new technology – which is the first to
evenly distribute information – is really distributing power.
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Joe Trippi
71. Article Marketing
T
o anyone who grew up in traditional media marketing, article marketing is
one of the harder new marketing tools to understand. Heck, in the good
old days, all you had to do is hand an advertiser a check and be done with it.
Article marketing is one of those slow-burn Social Media tools that, when added
together with other activities, provides powerful payback with minimal to no
cost!
Article marketing is the process of putting a report, whitepaper or article at
Web sites that aggregate articles and make them accessible to search engines.
Because article marketing Web sites are repositories for thousands of articles and
are continuously updated, search engines recognize them as priority sites which
improves your articles positioning in a search result. Put the article on your Web
site and you may show up on page 35 of a search. Put it on an article marketing
Web site and you may land in the top 5.
You walk away with a number of benefits by adopting article marketing. Article
marketing will help you:
• Improve your ranking on search engine results pages
• Build an email prospect lists
• Drive traffic to your Web site
• Reach into new markets
• Promote your or your organization’s expertise
303
304
Oh, and did I mention that it’s free!
That’s right. You can put an article on virtually a thousand different Web sites
for free, nothing down, nothing later! Why? Article sites love to drive traffic to
their site so they can generate advertising. Think of them as the new specialtyinterest magazine, where you are the reporter providing them content. They get
your content, that attracts readers, and they keep the advertising revenue. Quid
quo pro.
Article marketing is all about gaining the attention of individuals who are
searching for the information you offer. Typical articles are 300 to 700 words.
Obviously, you can’t gain a great deal of expertise or knowledge out of an article
like that, but the goal is to grab the individual’s attention and to feed them to
your Web site where they can pick up more information. Think of your article as
an executive summary of a white paper with the full version on your Web site.
5 Tips in writing your articles
1. Your article should include the standard who, what, where, when, and
how and an address they can pick up more information. I like to include
information in the article about the author. It’s important that the reader
see why you are an expert and why they should follow the link to your
page and not someone else.
2. When you write your articles, be cognizant of who you want to find
the article. As a result, you should spend some time doing research to
see which keywords people are searching on to get the information you
are going to write about. Look for keywords that have low-competing
pages and high Keyword Effectiveness Index. Once you have these,
you’ll want to pepper your article with these keywords, but don’t go too
far. I’ve been told 10 to15 percent of the article could contain keywords
without becoming redundant and/or potentially overlooked as a fake by
sophisticated search engines that are hip to the trick! So if you have a
400-word article, your keyword concentration should be in the 40 to 60
range. Sounds plenty, doesn’t it?
3. Remember to put in a compelling close and make sure it’s easy for
the reader to see your link for more information. In a short article,
it’s important to grab their attention and get them to want more
information, but you have to make sure you get them to your site!
Article Marketing
305
4. Once you’ve written your article you want to optimize it for search
engines. Go back over your article and modify your title to include your
primary keyword. If possible include your primary keyword in the link
text within the article.
5. Keep in mind that article marketing is all about text. Don’t try to put a
report with beautiful graphics, pie charts, and color photographs. Here’s
how article marketing sites work. First of all, you have to go to the site,
identify what category you want to put your article in, how long you
want it to run, who you are, and links to your site. Then you will be
asked to cut and paste your article into their Web site, usually in three
areas. Headline, Body and Close. This can be time-consuming, but there
are now products available that automate this process. These products
come with a predetermined number of article marketing Web sites. One
has over 600 article marketing sites you could put your article. These
software tools are handy and available, in many cases, for under $50.
They will save you a great deal of time.
Some sites are restrictive and review the articles for quality and relevancy. Others
don’t care, they are only interested in driving traffic. Keep this in mind when you
are selecting where you want to put your articles.
It doesn’t make sense to put an article about nanotechnology on an article
marketing site that focuses on parenting. Take some time and identify where you
want to be and periodically look for new ones to expand to.
Article marketing is something that will not provide an overnight surge, but,
given time, it will become one of nearly a dozen Social Media marketing strategies
that will help your customers find you. In talking to many experts in this area,
I’ve heard over and over again that you should be spending at least an hour a
week updating articles. This is a strategy that you can’t start and then stop. You
need to be consistent and continue to add articles on your expertise.
I realize you don’t have a great deal of time to devote to this. Keep in mind you
don’t have to be the one to write the articles. You can find at least a dozen people
willing to write a series of articles for you on any subject. By outsourcing the
writing of your articles it frees you up to move in other directions.
You should also plan on using the articles in different areas. You could include it
on your blog, use it in newsletters, and make it part of the content you send as
follow-up sales literature to prospects.
306
Exercise
Think about an area of your business where you or someone can write a dozen
articles
• Set a goal of writing three articles a week for one month.
• Pick up an article marketer software package and try it out!
72. Personalization
Y
our Internet strategy should be built around giving your users the opportunity
to personalize their participation with your online community. Your Web
site should include technology that will not only recognize them, but also give
them the ability to control what it provides them and how it presents itself to
them.
As you build your Internet strategy, keep in mind how your users will want to
engage with you and other users.
Some things to keep in mind:
• Build your Web site to recognize your users when they return.
• Pre-fill data about your users when they return.
• Give users the ability to opt in and out of different services.
Here are six ways you can accomplish some of the above:
1. When accessing your Web site, give users the option of being taken to
their private profile page first.
2. Give users the option of being notified via email when others have
posted information on their profile page.
3. Provide the opportunity for users to change their username and
password anytime without admin help.
4. Give users the ability to change the look of their private profile page
(add and subtract services, changes layout design, etc.).
307
308
5. Provide users the opportunity to post their own photo albums and
provide the ability to “tag” the photos of the names of the users.
6. Give users the flexibility to show who their friends are or to hide their
information.
You should also give them control over how you communicate with them. For
example:
• Let them tell you how frequently they want emails from you.
• From what departments they want to receive emails.
• In what format they want to receive it (text, html, video, audio).
The magazine industry could benefit tremendously from personalization. Most
magazines know a great deal about their customers. Imagine if they know your
age and sex. Armed with that information, I should be able to visit their site and
see people my age and clothing that matches my prior purchases. A customer
that is in their twenties will see models that are closer to his or her age.
Spend some time with your team reviewing commercial social networking Web
sites to find out what they are doing to let their users personalize their experience
with their Web site.
The bottom line? The more users who personalize their profile page and experience
your Web site, the more ownership they will have of the site. You will increase
participation and data collection as a result of this effort. Later, you can engage
them in events and share products and other information relevant to them.
Exercise
We talked at great length about data collection. Now you need to develop a
strategy to effectively use the data to improve the experience for your customers
so they return frequently and buy more products.
• Identify how you want your customers to personalize their relationship
with you.
• Adopt as many of the six ways we’ve suggested.
• Continue to find new data sets to collect to improve the personalized
experience for them.
73. Tell Users What to Do
I
know! Nobody likes to be told what to do, but there are times, especially when
we first experience something, that we actually like to be told what to do!
Your online community is really a new concept to your users. Chances are, you’re
trying something new that doesn’t have fifty years of tradition behind it.
So, like anything else that is new, you have to spend time educating your visitors
with what your online community can do for them.
How do you do that?
A very easy way is to develop a simple list that drives them to different services
within your online community. For example, on the front page of your online
community, you could include a fancy-looking graphic that lists the top five
things for your visitors to do while they are there!
Try this list for an example:
Don’t leave until you:
1. Check out new photos.
2. Update your personal profile.
3. Post a photo of yourself.
4. Find someone like you.
5. Read our hot news.
309
310
To make it even more effective, allow the users to click on any of the above to be
taken directly to that page.
People don’t like to think!
You have to lay out your Web site so they can simply respond. In today’s world,
consumers have to make too many decisions. Build your Web pages and strategy
around eliminating decisions instead of adding to them!
When you do, you’ll increase the amount of time your customers engage with
you and your brand.
Exercise
Make my life easier. Tell me what you want me to do.
• Identify what you want your customers to do before they leave your
Web site.
• Create the technology that remembers what they have done so the
suggestions are dynamically personalized each visit.
74. Focus on Users
Why do you have a Web site or online community?
One of the common mistakes most organizations make when they initially set
up a Web site is they focus on what’s in it for their organization before they start
thinking about what’s in it for their users.
In my conversations with those involved in developing their Web strategies
around the world, I hear six common goals or outcomes companies are expecting
to receive from their Web strategy. These include:
1. Sell more products.
2. Survey customers.
3. Gather more data.
4. Test market new services.
5. Increase participation.
6. Communicate more frequently.
What do each of these goals have in common?
Right! They are all focused on what’s in it for the organization, not the customer.
In order to get the maximum return on your investment of your Internet strategy,
you need to put your customers’ needs first!
311
312
When users find value in participating in your online community, you will
attract more users faster, and, ultimately, you will be able to reach your goal. I’d
like you to consider building your core mission around providing these benefits
to customers/users:
• Why would you want to be engaged with your Web site or online
community?
• What will bring you back more frequently?
• What services would you like provided to you?
If you do, your Web strategy will change to reflect tools and services that can
deliver these benefits. When you adopt this philosophy, you will need to begin
to adapt your online community to deliver these services.
Your organization has a unique opportunity to bring together people who
have similar goals, missions, and/or achievements to help expand their circle of
friends.
Exercise
Remember radio station WIIFM (What’s In It For ME!). Your strategy has to
center on your customer and then expand out to include your needs:
• Look at your current Web site or strategy. Is it focused primarily on
“what benefits your company” or is it focused on “what benefits your
customer”?
• Include in your strategy a minimum of three unique benefits your
Internet strategy can provide that your customers can’t get anywhere
else.
75. Build Bridges to Other
Departments
R
emember the old saying, “Two heads are better than one!” When it comes
to your organization, eight heads are better than one!
This sage advice from eons ago still makes sense when you apply it to your Web
strategy. Most organizations develop departmental silos that prevent each other
from creatively collaborating on projects and initiatives.
This lack of cooperation:
• Increases costs.
• Increases the likelihood of duplicated services.
• Prevents each department from focusing on their core competence.
• Limits what can be accomplished.
With everyone running full steam ahead, there is little time to meet and develop
strategic alliances with peers in other departments. As a result, it’s not unusual to
find multiple departments:
• Developing uncoordinated Internet strategies.
• Having to train staff on the same skill sets.
However, your entire organization has a lot to gain from your department
working cooperatively with others to develop a comprehensive Internet strategy
that will benefit everyone.
313
314
For example:
• Applications for employment could be done online.
• Your product development team could gain access to online community
members to guide the development of new products and product
improvements.
• The marketing department could develop an advisory board from
active online community members and gain insight on pricing, product
placement, and marketing strategies.
• Sales could develop word-of-mouth and buzz marketing campaigns to
increase sales.
Before you do anything, create an overall vision and plan that will help everyone
understand why you should be working together to develop an integrated
Internet strategy. Things you should consider discussing are the benefits of:
• Using the same technology, but providing everyone online access.
• Coordinating the communication with online community members.
• Working together to get more email addresses from customers/prospects.
• Working together to help each other reach their goals.
When you have your plan together, you are ready to visit the different departments
within your firm. Consider developing a PowerPoint presentation to help guide
the discussion. Your PowerPoint should provide strong evidence on the benefits
of using the same technology and database.
Companies that integrate their Internet strategies will gain not only a higher
return on investment, but they will engage a greater number of customers faster,
and with less effort.
Exercise
Develop written plans!
• Require each of your departments to create a draft Internet strategy.
• Bring all departments together and have each department present their
strategy.
Build Bridges to Other Departments
• Encourage discussion that improves each department’s strategy,
pollinates good ideas, and integrates the use of technology, data,
processes, and people.
315
76. Sports Social Networking
Sports social networking? What’s that?
Actually, it’s a fantastic way to connect your customers based on their interest
and love of sports. Sports social networking allows your customer to find others
who want to play football, golf, dodge ball, soccer, horse shoes, pool, and, in fact,
over a hundred different games.
Here’s how it works:
You enter basic registration information and then indicate what sports you are
interested in playing. You can participate on two levels:
• Organizer of the games
• Participant
As an organizer, you can schedule a game at anytime or any place. When you
schedule a game, all users who have indicated they would like to participate in
the sport will receive an email asking them to “come out to play.” As a participant,
you have the option of accepting the invitation or ignoring it.
The service allows members to rate other players and leave comments about the
games. It’s interactive, fun, and when it focuses on your customers, it’s a powerful
relationship-building tool that you don’t have to be involved in.
Everyone benefits:
• Your users find others to organize “pickup games.”
316
Sports Social Networking
317
• You develop affinity groups around employees and customers’ love of
sports.
The nice thing about sports social networking is there is no need to load software,
buy hardware, or even manage the process. Your only responsibility is to make it
available to your customers. If one of your strategies is to increase the number of
events and activities, but you don’t have a lot of resources, consider promoting
sports social networking. Any organization that is in the recreation and leisure
business should look seriously at adopting this concept.
Andrew Holland, co-founder and pioneer of this concept, created the service
called www.gamesnake.com that does all of this and more. It’s an incredible
tool that encourages people to “Come out and Play.” Andrew advises companies,
“Employees that play together, stay together! Gamesnake brings together
employees with common sports interests and builds stronger relationships,
which will increase employee retention.”
While this tool has shown to be an effective employee-retention tool, it can also
be used to connect your customers and Brand Ambassadors through sports.
National Activity Day
Companies that support reducing carbon emission and increasing third-world
wages will also benefit from showing leadership in supporting the public’s interest
in supporting health and fitness.
Your organization could create a day where you encourage all of your employees
and customers to start events in Gamesnake, invite their friends, and charge
a participation fee that would be donated to a cause that focuses on helping
engage kids in sports. Your organization will look good by providing a way to
engage your customers in a program that reduces childhood obesity and, more
importantly, you don’t have to buy software or hardware to do it!
So what’s in it for you?
• Companies that play together, stay together!
• You’ll increase customer loyalty.
Nationwide and global companies will be able to increase camaraderie and
employee interaction.
318
Exercise
Always be looking for other Web 2.0-type sites that you can repurpose and
possibly white label to better serve your customers.
• Encourage everyone in your organization to participate in Gamesnake.
• Promote this activity to your customers.
Blogs will change everything! Blog or die!
Debbie Weil, Author, The Corporate Blogging Book
77. Opinion Polls
O
pinion polls not only provide your users a way to express their opinion, but
they give them a way to see where their opinion sits with others.
Generally, your opinion polls should focus on known issues that require simply
yes, no, or multiple-choice answers.
Our experience has shown the more controversial the topic, the higher number of
users that will participate. For example, if you sent an email to your users asking
them to give their opinion on a hot political issue of the day, breaking news, or a
controversial product, I can guarantee you will have a higher percentage of users
come back to give their opinions.
I’d like you to actively adopt opinion polls built around a number of categories.
Because opinion polls are inexpensive, consider offering many of them built
around:
• What kind of products you should develop.
• What social issues you should support.
• How to improve your Web site, products, and/or services.
Depending on the type of poll and the number of participants, your PR department
could issue a series of press releases to be picked up by bloggers and news sources.
The more opinion polls you offer, the more you and your administration will
begin to understand who your users are and how to communicate your needs to
them. Assuming you start this strategy today, over a period of time, you’d have a
complete history on what your users individually support.
319
320
Using social networking analysis, you could begin to offer a service where users
could find others who more closely align their positions. Your job in building
your Web strategy is to find ways to engage and involve customers and users.
You are not only in the business of gathering data, you are in the business of
networking people: your customers and employees. The more you connect
everyone in a variety of ways, the stronger your return on investment will be.
Exercise
Opinion polls provide free changing content and help bring customers back to
the Web site.
• Develop a strategy to gather opinions and store the data by customer/
user so you can deliver more targeted information and/or offers.
• Include viral and Push/Pull elements to the opinion polls.
Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types
of disposition are forever forming associations.
Robert D. Putnam, Author, Bowling Alone
78. List New Users
O
ne of the challenges you will have in managing your Web strategy and
Social Media tools is the need to continually update content.
When you have forty-three other things on your job description, it’s increasingly
difficult to find the time to continually change the content on your Web site.
We’ve offered ideas on how you can use who’s online, blogs, RSS feeds, and video
as a way to show content is changing.
Now let’s talk about an effortless way to show changing content that catches
the eye of users when they return to your Web site. Consider showing the last
ten people who have either registered or visited the Web site. This tells your
users that the site is active and, with a bit of good luck, the user will recognize
someone.
Depending on the capabilities of your IT staff, you could either just list the
names of the last ten users on the Web site, or you could include additional fields
that tell the viewer more information about the user. This additional information
will provide other connection points with members.
In the example below, if you were from Stow and/or were interested in biking,
and you saw this list, you might be inclined to check out Donna Jones’s profile
page and interact with her.
321
322
Who’s Been Here Recently!
Name
City
Hobby
Visit
Fred Smith
Akron
Photography
1st
Donna Jones
Stow
Biking
8th
Johann Iams
Kent
Reading
3rd
Jimmy Dena
Chicago
Painting
4th
When you hotlink their name to their public profile, visitors can immediately
check out the person who shares a commonality with them. Your Web strategy
has to include techniques to peak your users’ curiosity and encourage them to
look for additional information and/or engagement with others. Simple and
well-executed tools like this will help you take your Internet strategy to the next
level.
Exercise
If you require your customers to log in to your site:
• Adopt a Who’s On strategy.
• Give users the ability to automatically tell their friends they are on your
site.
79. Fix Bad/Undeliverable Email
Addresses
A
few years ago, we did extensive surveys to determine how organizations were
handling changes in bad/undeliverable email addresses for their customers.
Our survey showed that 80 percent of those survey deleted bad email addresses
and did not have a program to correct them. Additional research conducted
three years ago showed that as much as 39 percent of consumers’ email addresses
were changing each year. While we suspect this has dropped over the last two
years, your organization still has to have an effective strategy to stay ahead of this
problem.
There are four primary situations that cause bad/undeliverable email addresses:
1. Changing email address to escape spam.
2. Starting a new job.
3. Switching to a new ISP provider.
4. Getting stuck in spam/junk email filters.
Your organization needs to develop a policy that will deal with these, if not on a
daily basis, then, at the very least, on a weekly one.
I’d like you to consider the following:
• Ask customers/members to provide you three email addresses, so when
one is confirmed bad, you can switch to the next.
• Automatically send a postcard to customers/members when the email
address comes back undeliverable.
323
324
• Ask volunteers to call all bad email addresses requesting an up-to-date
address.
Sometimes it’s better to gain an understanding of how much you are losing by
not being able to reach your customers by email. If it cost you an average of 60
cents to send a letter to a customer, then the loss of an email address will cost
your organization $7.20 per year, assuming you sent a letter once a month. If
you have 1,000 bad addresses, you are losing $7,200 a year in savings. Viewing
this situation from a monetary perspective should prove the need to invest the
appropriate staff time to correcting bad email addresses.
It may take time, but if you don’t, you will disengage customers and potentially
see a drop in sales.
Does it make CENTS?
You are spending a great deal of money to acquire email addresses, but what are
you doing to fix those that go bad? In the first chapter, we discussed a formula to
help your organization put a value on email addresses. If you don’t have a policy
to fix undeliverable or bad email addresses, think about the formula and how
much each email addresses means to your organization. Chances are, it will be
worth having someone correct them for you.
Exercise
We mentioned in a previous strategy chapter that your emails should be
considered an asset and have an asset applied to them:
• Identify what your organization thinks an email is worth.
• Then create a companywide policy to actively fix bad/undeliverable
email addresses.
• Include benchmarks and analytics to show how much you have fixed
and therefore saved by fixing them.
Blogging, in addition to being a huge phenomenon in its own right, is
the key metaphor for interactivity, community-building, and genuine
conversation; one to one, one to many, many to one, many to many.
David Kline and Dan Burstein, Authors, Blog
80. Fix Bad/Undeliverable Email
Addresses
I
n the general chapter on blogs, I briefly introduced the idea of linking customer
blogs, but let’s take a moment to go into more detail.
You have some of the most creative customers in the world.
Bloggers benefit from their blog being linked to many blogs. The more blogs
that link to their blogs, the better chance search engines will display their site.
Search engines like Google have designed their software to recognize that a site
that links to it from other sites must be an important site.
I’d like you to consider creating a blog that aggregates your customers’ blogs.
You might call it “Community Members’ Blogs” with the subtitle, “A premiere
collection of members’ blogs.”
Here are a couple of ideas to consider when building a blog that aggregates your
users’ blog sites:
• Because blogs tend to focus on targeted, niche-oriented news and
information areas, put user blogs under categories such as: art, politics,
religion, etc.
• Have someone on your staff pick different members’ Web sites to
highlight and drive traffic to their blog.
It doesn’t even have to be a staff person! Consider having a couple of members
or bloggers handle this function for you. Many blogs are built around restating
what someone said on another Web site and embellishing it to fit their message.
Your members’ blogs could highlight interesting items from another member’s
blog postings, and in the process, drive traffic to them.
325
326
The benefits are obvious:
• You wind up with more content and, therefore, more reasons for
members to visit your Web site.
• Member bloggers get another audience, as well as a possible distribution
channel.
It really doesn’t take that much effort. Here are some basic steps to get you
started today:
• Send an email announcement to members telling them what you are
doing.
• Collect all blog URLs.
• Create the blog and establish categories as stated above.
• Start your first blog entry with a reference to a couple of your members’
latest posts.
You’ll be surprised how easy this is and how excited your members will be to have
this opportunity. Now that you know how to do it, JUST DO IT!
Exercise
• Talk with your best customers and users to determine if they are
interested and enlist their help in managing this.
81. Auto Birthday Cards
Happy Birthday!
What are you doing to brighten the day of your users?
If you have user birthday information in your database, along with their email
addresses, then you have a fantastic opportunity to send them a birthday card at
virtually no cost.
According to the Greeting Card Association, 90 percent of all U.S. households
buy greeting cards, with American consumers purchasing approximately seven
billion greeting cards each year. If you stretched these cards end to end, you could
almost reach around the world fifty times! If you’ve considered this idea in the
past, then the sheer cost of buying birthday cards, addressing them, and signing
them every day probably made you put it on the back burner fairly quickly.
However, electronic birthday cards that are automatically sent to users are
proving to be an exceedingly popular and effective way to recognize members
on their special day.
Here’s all you have to do.
Have your IT department create a program that runs every night, isolating
members who have a birthday that day. The program should be capable of
merging their contact information with an eBirthday card.
There are a number of options to consider adding to your program:
327
328
• Some institutions ask for a donation for the non profit your community
supports.
• You might provide links to Web sites where they can look up what
happened on the day they were born.
• The program could list on your Web site that day’s birthdays.
• The program could list other customers with the same birthday.
Birthdays are pretty special events for a lot of people. This is a great relationshipbuilding technique. Adopting this strategy will keep you in your members’ radar
in a very effective way.
Do they work? Definitely! A client in the higher-education space shared a story
with us that an alum who had not contributed in twenty-two years sent in a
$500 contribution soon after receiving their eBirthday card. You’ve got to give
before you receive.
Recognizing clients and keeping in touch with them on their birthday can only
help you retain them as a customer and to sell more products and services to
them.
Exercise
This is another tool that builds loyalty.
• The first thing you need to do is figure out how you can collect
birthdays. One way to do that is by adopting a birthday discount or gift.
It’s easier to get a birthday if you are telling someone you will be sending
a birthday greeting.
• Try to find something you can give customers, such as a copy of a
newspaper on what happened on their birthday when they were born.
• Build in a way to get their friends’ email addresses so you can remind
friends and/or offer birthday gift suggestions based on their Amazon and
other wish lists.
82. Fifteen Minutes of Fame
Y
ou will have members who have accomplished incredible things in their
lifetimes. They have reached the pinnacle of corporate America, they have
developed the stamina and physical capabilities to push the limits of the human
body, and they have given generously of their time and money to help groups,
organizations, and individuals in their communities.
The Web provides you an easy and fun way to recognize customers for these
accomplishments. This idea started to gel with me as I watched a college football
game. College football games today are not only shown in high definition, but
they are also adapting the playbook of the pro games. While college football
productions, in the past, have been sophomoric presentations with limited
camera positions, today’s college football games include the graphical glitz and
glamour of professional football games. The graphics provided make the players
look like they just descended from Zeus. Like professional athletes, they appeared
larger than life.
In the seconds between plays, graphics pop up on the screen that display the
athletes like characters in well-known video games. As their image spins 360
degrees, the announcer provides details of the athlete’s high school achievements,
volunteerism, and usually a heartwarming story about how he helped his kid
brother, stopped traffic for an elderly person, or read books at the local library.
In an effort to build more excitement and increase ratings, the networks are using
technology to connect the audience to the players. This isn’t just a football game
anymore. This technology is enabling the viewer to bond with the players and
to connect with and relate to them. It’s engaging and involving the viewer, with
329
330
the goal of increasing the number of overall viewers, which, in turn, increases
advertising dollars.
You could do something similar with Internet technology.
With technology, you could begin to make your customers larger than life.
Internet technology will also enable you to add sound, talk-back options, and
links for more information. Here are a few ideas on how you can accomplish
this:
1. Create an online form that your members can fill in their achievements
and attach their photograph.
2. Include an opportunity for members to post email addresses of people
and/or groups they would like notified when the story is posted.
3. Design an administrative interface where volunteers can access
the submissions to rewrite their entry so it has the excitement and
presentation you are looking for.
4. Create a graphic look that presents the photo and the edited story in a
professional manner.
5. Automate the process so the members and their contacts (friends, family
and colleagues) are notified of the posting of the story.
The idea is to create a system where your staff’s only responsibility is to promote
this as a resource for your members and to organize a group of volunteers who
will edit and post the stories.
The benefits are powerful:
• You provide members with a potent recognition tool that they will share
with others.
• You will see a significant increase in updates and news about other
members achievements.
You never know the effect recognition will have on others. What I do know is
that this concept will give you an opportunity to recognize many members. Oh,
and did I mention that they are the ones who are updating all of the content and
data? You do nothing but provide them the forum to share their information!
Fifteen Minutes of Fame
331
A small investment of your time, resources, and money showing off the volunteer
work, community contributions, and personal and business achievements of
your member benefits both your organization and your members.
One of your primary goals should be to make heroes out of your customers.
When you do, you will keep them engaged and involved.
Exercise
Make me look good and I’ll be loyal for life!
• Follow the steps outlined in 1-5 above.
• Develop a marketing campaign to encourage customers to participate
If you want to market effectively on the Internet, you will
have to produce as many contributions as you can.
Michael Mathiesen, Author, Marketing on the Internet
83. Internet Marketing
H
ow much marketing your organization can do is limited to what you’ve
been budgeted and how creative you can get.
What if you had an unlimited marketing budget? You’d probably see a significant
increase in participation, orders, registrations, and/or requests. Yes, but you still
have to get the increased budget, which is all but impossible at times.
So let’s focus on being creative. You can do more with less by adopting Internet
technology and Social Media marketing techniques. There are numerous
advertising channels emerging that will enable you to reach your current customers
and prospects for far less than traditional media. As an example, traditional CPM
rates for traditional media could cost as little as $20 per thousand views. Internet
marketing rates, while more targeted and benchmarked, can be bought for as
little as 15 cents per thousand.
Sit down and watch TV some night and you will marvel at the number of
times you see the same commercial within a two-hour period. The goal of the
advertising agencies is to slam a message into your head as many times as they
can. They realize they can’t get their message across in fifteen to thirty seconds,
but given multiple exposure to their message and delivering it from a variety of
different marketing channels, they have anecdotal evidence that supports the
need to spend millions on advertising!
With Internet technology, you can adopt Madison Avenue techniques and
deliver multiple messages to customers in order to break through to them---on
a limited budget.
332
Internet Marketing
333
While your budget will prevent you from adopting all, or a combination of
these marketing techniques, your steady embracement of Internet technology
will give you an almost unlimited opportunity to market to your customers and
prospects.
For most product launchings, invitations to events, or requests to participate in
an activity, a postcard or flyer invitation is sent to members, followed by, in some
cases, email reminders. I’d like you to be thinking about other email marketing
opportunities.
For example, besides sending an email reminder or primary invitation, consider
also:
• Using a video email message (there are free services like oovoo.com).
• Sending a Phone Blast (service candidates use to call your home for as
little as 5 cents a call).
• Emailing a multimedia eCard (including sound, video, text, and call to
action).
• Asking customers to invite their friends via email.
You also need to be thinking of using:
• SEO/SEM
• Banner ads
• Pay per click
• EZine ads
• Contests
• Press releases
• Online directories
• Classifieds
• Link campaigns
You also have an opportunity to advertise in Social Media sites like Facebook/
MySpace/High5/Bebo. Each are offering a number of different ways for you to
334
reach their audience. Here are 5 of the 24 different ways you can advertise on
Facebook:
1.Set up a profile page or sponsored group for your company and invite
people to be your friend.
2.Purchase Social Ads targeted by the demographics you are interested in.
3.Use polls to gather information and deliver product information.
4.Set up a formal campaign using the Facebook Platform Ad Network.
5.Participate in the Facebook Applications Platform Sponsorship.
With the different email tools and services available today, you can develop
powerful integrated marketing strategies that are guaranteed to increase
participation. All it requires is a little more coordination and time involved in
marketing your event. The upside is great.
Alternative to Mass Marketing
The world is changing faster than any of us can comprehend. While doing this
research, the United States came to the brink of insolvency only to be rescued by
the Federal Reserve stepping in to commit an initial $500 billion dollars to prop
up AIG, protect Goldman Sachs from being driven to the ground and take over
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. What a week!
So it got me thinking about the possibility that literally overnight mass marketing
channels become irrelevant because of cost, changing customer behavior, and/or
continued financial crisis that force a change in how you do business.
What if they are going into a sudden meltdown? Where would you get leads,
reach customers? Online of course!
The newspaper, radio, TV, magazine, and other mass marketing channels are
witnessing a steady decline that is rapidly reaching a tipping point that will result
in mass exodus of customers---which will give you access to fewer customers,
which will result in higher customer acquisition costs and lower profits.
Changing behaviors
Why, oh, why are we suggesting that mass marketing channels are heading for a
meltdown? It all starts with changing consumer behaviors, broadband reaching
Internet Marketing
335
70 percent of American homes, some 350 million-plus people participating in
online community and more adopting one or more Social Media tools (blogs,
photo-sharing sites, etc.).
Time Magazine reported a Yahoo/ComScore study that showed consumers were
spending 3 _ hours online vs. 2 _ hours watching TV each day. Consumers are
reading, entertaining themselves, doing business online, educating themselves,
and buying and selling things---all online. What a change in only the last decade,
and it’s all leading to a tipping point.
To remind you on just how bad things are getting, let me take you through just
a few facts and thoughts (if you want more details, download my book Internet
Dough).
Newspapers
The New York Times was founded in 1848 and took nearly 160 years to grow
to 1,000,000 subscribers. However, the changing behaviors of their readers is
forcing the organization to cut 100 newsroom jobs to correct a deficit caused by
a 3.2 decrease in weekly subscriptions and a shocking 9.2 percent decline in their
world-famous Sunday paper!
Man, times are tough for the newspaper business. The McClatchy newspaper
chain is in a virtual tailspin as they try to figure out how to pay their bills in
this new net-centered economy after they assumed $2 billion dollars in debt to
buy the the Knight Ridder Newspaper chain (McClatchy stock has dropped 90
percent).
Magazines
While subscription rates to magazines are currently flat, (much a result of
giveaway subscription prices), sales of newsstand magazines tanked from 47.1
million to 44.1 million (nearly 10 percent) over the last year. Normally topselling titles like Cosmopolitan, O and The Oprah Magazine saw sharp declines.
Magazine publishers and vendors are worried because newsstand sales are their
most profitable area!
Radio
When Huricane Ike’s strong winds knocked trees into power lines in Akron,
Ohio, we sat in the dark looking for a battery-operated radio to see what was
happening in our community and the state. I asked my 14-year-old daughter
336
how often she listened to the radio. She answered: “Only when I’m in the car”
(that’s on short trips to school and the mall. When we take longer trips, buds are
in her ears as she listens to her iPod).
The point I’m getting at is radio is facing some steep declines in the years ahead.
Twenty-seven percent of Americans are now listening to the radio less than they
did five years ago, according to a survey commissioned by American Media
Services. A recent report reflects that radio suffered its worst decline in March
since November 2001, with revenues slipping 8 percent. It’s not just a weak
economy that is affecting radio, it’s the changing behaviors of consumers!
Television
TVWeek reports that this year’s May television ratings sweeps were terrible:
Low ratings during the February sweeps may have been a fluke due to the
writers’ strike, but the May sweeps period is painting a picture of viewers out
of sync with broadcast television: Shows across multiple networks rang up
series lows during a time that historically lures in the viewers.
Stats are starting to show a continuing trend. On average, the networks are off
the mark by 10 percent from last year in total viewers and off 17 percent in the
18- to 49-year-old demographic.
So could it happen?
Over the next five years, the trend is going to accelerate as the behaviors of
consumers migrate to a digital online world. The old world as you knew it is
over. Your company should be developing comprehensive Internet strategies to
engage customers through Social Media and emerging trends, because the old
way is not going to be around to deliver the same high-quality leads and sales at
a price you can afford.
Exercise
Collecting emails is just the beginning of your Internet marketing strategy.
• Create an overall Internet marketing strategy utilizing the various
advertising techniques we discussed that complement your overall
strategy.
Internet Marketing
• If you have already collected a number of email addresses of your
customers, create a four-month email marketing strategy with four to
eight contacts.
• Evaluate the larger Social Media firms advertising opportunities.
Facebook, for example, offers a very low-cost, targeted advertising
campaign you can set up today and within hours start to see results.
337
300 online volunteers working just one hour per week
will save you $300,000 in wages in just one year!
84. Jobs for Volunteers
A
t one point in the later part of the 1990s, AOL had over ten thousand
volunteers who were manning chat rooms, bulletin boards, and updating
content on the Web site. These early pioneers and volunteers initially performed
their duties out of love of the net and interest in being a part of something really
exciting and new. They were the early adopters.
To compensate and reward them for their volunteer efforts, AOL eventually gave
them free Internet access. But as the saying goes, “All good things must come to
an end.” A group of volunteers eventually filed a class action suit claiming they
were working long hours and not receiving commensurate compensation. The
volunteer program eventually was discontinued.
You have an opportunity to use the talents of your customers to help you get
additional user-generated content and, if you have one, manage your online
community. So, how do you begin to reach out to get volunteers and, once you
have them, what do they do? Hold that question for just a minute.
First, I’d like you to identify where you need help. If you can’t think of any off the
top of your head, here are seven areas where volunteers can help.
1. Welcome wagon greeters who show new registered users around your
site.
2. Network weavers to engage and network registered users or shoppers.
3. Chat and bulletin board managers to encourage conversation.
4. Blog managers who encourage customers to link in their blogs.
338
Jobs for Volunteers
339
5. Marketing-oriented volunteers to amplify word-of-mouth marketing.
6. Members agreeing to post job opportunities within their firms.
7. Relocation advisors to help users/customers settle into new cities.
Next, you have to create an online tool that will allow members to register for
these activities, as well as tools that will enable you to manage them. You should
consider including:
• Techniques that allow volunteers to report what they did.
• Capability to send targeted emails to groups of volunteers.
• Periodic communication thanking them for their help.
• Tools that will recognize volunteers.
• As members visit the page, show which volunteers are online at that
moment.
Once you’ve built your volunteer strategy and created the technology to engage,
involve, and mange them, you are ready to get the message out and solicit
volunteers. You can do that by sending broadcast emails and cards.
You already have a great deal of work on your plate, and I’m assuming are working
a forty-hour week, so if you want to create a really effective volunteer program,
make sure it’s maintenance free for you and your staff. One of your overall goals
should be to automate your online community volunteer program, so you don’t
have to spend the time managing volunteers.
Spending the time to build a strong group of volunteers will enable you to
accomplish more than you ever dreamed you could achieve with your Web
strategy. Think about how much you’ve accomplished as of today with the
little money and the limited time you have had available to commit to your
online community. Now, think about how much you could accomplish with five
hundred volunteers!
So you’ve been patiently waiting to find out how to find your volunteers. Here a
number of different ways to find them:
• Create a series of banner ads announcing the opportunities.
• Send an email notice to all registered users.
340
• Promote the opportunity on your products, invoices.
• Create a video identifying which of the seven volunteer opportunities
you offer.
Using volunteers is a powerful way to engage and involve a greater number of
customers.
Exercise
Your Web strategy makes working with and recognizing volunteers easy.
• Identify where your Web strategy could benefit from volunteers.
• Market your opportunity to them following the above bullets.
• Create a recognition and reward program to keep them engaged.
We should pay attention because the culture which flows from
their experience in cyberspace foreshadows the culture they will
create as the leaders of tomorrow in the workplace and society.
Don Tapscott, Author, Growing Up Digital
85. Collaboration Tools
T
his concept will help your internal staff accomplish more in less time in a
more organized fashion, but it will also help you reach out to customers to
collaboratively solve company issues or improve products.
You will find over time that a core group of volunteers and/or involved members
will ask for tools to be able to collaborate on issues or projects they’ve either
picked up or you’ve asked them to resolve.
As your members become more Internet savvy, it only makes sense to help
organize the information you provide them and the responsibilities you assign to
them with Internet technology.
If you think back prior to 1996, if you had urgent information, contracts,
documents, and/or other work that required signoffs, you had to send it via
overnight carriers. Not only was it costly, but it was time-consuming to send the
documents by priority delivery. Gradually, the time and cost to do this decreased
significantly when you, or others, started sending the information to everyone
by email.
Now the natural evolutionary progression in this process is to provide more
sophisticated tools that automate the task of informing and managing your
board. You could do that by adopting a password-protected online community
where your board members can:
• Read documents.
• Collaborate on documents at the same time.
341
342
• Vote on issues.
• Post their opinions and respond to others.
• Use online conferencing tools.
• Take a part in surveys.
• Receive private information for board members only.
By including RSS technology, you can feed news stories from other sites so your
committee members and “inside customers” receive news that will help them
formulate their opinions.
Not only will this concept save you time and money, but in the long run it will:
• Help your volunteers and club members collaborative solve issues they
are working on.
• Keep your “inside” members more informed.
• Reduce the time it takes to support “volunteers.”
Dell and Ideastorm
Dell introduced Ideastorm as an online bulletin board to solicit ideas from
customers and employees. Since its inception, over 6,500 ideas have been
submitted and from those ideas, countless others have offered their suggestions
on the suggestions. Ideas submitted ranged from, “Provide all operating systems
on all platforms” to “Sell Linux PCs around the world, not just the United
States.”
There are hundreds of hours of comments, suggestions, and ideas for Dell and
their team to follow up on. As their team sifted through the ideas and concepts,
a number of common themes supported by passionate customers came to the
surface and they reacted to it. Here is a comment from their Web site showing
their user base the positive results of their comments and participation:
Many in the community have posted their design ideas and comments
to the “Design & Form Factor” idea since it was submitted on February
16, the day of IdeaStorm’s launch. But we also received a large volume
of more specific ideas for improvements – and some of the most highlypromoted ideas included requests for an integrated notebook webcam
and microphone, a fingerprint reader option for more security, notebook
C o l l a b o r a t i o n To o l s
343
color choices, a notebook LED backlight display option, and a full-size
keyboard with numeric keypad on 17-inch notebooks.
Each of these top design ideas is featured in today’s product launch.
While a few of these features had been planned before IdeaStorm
launched, based on your ongoing feedback on Direct2Dell and the Dell
Community Forums, plenty of your ideas came in just in time to be
incorporated into our latest and greatest line-up of consumer notebooks
and desktops – and now yours is here.
The discussion boards allow users to promote or demote an idea, an interesting
way to let the community decide if the idea is hot or not. If the idea has a
promote rating of 60 and I decide to demote it, the number will drop to 50.
In a democratic way, good ideas rise to the top and those that submit them will
have to accept the “wisdom of the crowds” if their idea doesn’t find favor. It’s
a great idea because Dell doesn’t have to make the judgment on the idea, the
community does.
When you stop and think about the time your staff would have invested in
sending out questionnaires, paying for focus group professionals, and then
the endless meetings sorting through the data, any executive can recognize the
incredible benefits of speed to market and customer loyalty this concept provided
Dell.
Adopting Internet technology to better manage your board is another step
in “working smarter, not harder.” You deserve technology that will reduce
the “details” that keep you from introducing ideas that will take your online
community to the next level.
Another way you can introduce collaboration is by giving your customers the
tools to become part of the product development process.
Threadless.com
The Threadless.com company turned T-shirt production on its ear by giving their
customers the opportunity to create their own designs and then automatically
present the designs to the community at large. The community is given the
opportunity to vote on their favorite T-shirt designs. If the community responds
favorably, the company will market and promote the winning designs and share
a portion of the proceeds with the developers.
344
The key to this business strategy’s success is they provide the right tools and
information for the community. Each design posted on the site includes:
• When the scoring finished
• When it was submitted
• How many people scored the design
• How many comments
• Overall rating
Collaborative tools provided to your customers is a fantastic citizen marketer
technique as designers wanting to gain recognition and a financial reward will
promote the Web site to their friends.
This concept will benefit both B2B and B2C companies. Why not try it out?
Exercise
• Pick a project that involves a variety of departments within your
company and find an online collaboration tool to test (search “online
collaboration”).
• Adopt the Dell Ideastorm concept to get your customers communicating
among themselves and your staff to improve service and products
(everyone else is!).
But Millennials are growing up. The oldest of them will soon be adults,
moving beyond the chrysalis of child safety devices, Zero Tolerance rules,
and standardized test. With their leading edge entering college,
these young people are on the brink of becoming a highly
effective social force, given the right leadership and moment.
Millennials Rising, Neil Howe and William Strauss
86. Promote Creative Customers
O
ne of the strategies I’d like you to consider adding to your Web site is
recognizing customers for their creative achievements. It’s a feel-good
strategy that will encourage individuals who are recognized to share their
recognition with friends, family, and colleagues. The net benefit for you: increase
traffic and increasing your reputation among your customers.
Earlier we talked about how American Express brought recognition to
organizations who the “community” at large decided deserved a portion of the
$2.5 million dollars they award in their Member Projects program. This is kind
of similar but in this case you are bringing a recognition to creative people. It’s a
brand building, feel good and new customer acquisition technique.
Too often, we only take the time to recognize “significant” achievers. We
recognize the politicians, CEOs, and significant volunteers. We tend to overlook
the hundreds, if not thousands, of truly creative people who labor at their art to
display an outward expression of their vision.
If you are an art supply company, you may decide to have a variety of categories
to recognize your artists. A book store might focus on poetry of their customers;
other companies could build their program around their own passions.
You can deliver a worldwide audience to your artistic members and, at the same
time, provide them additional recognition when you adopt a Creative Works
Gallery. A Creative Works Gallery is an online gallery where customers can:
• Create a profile page providing background information about
themselves.
345
346
• Post their work within specific categories.
• Upload photos of their work and provide written and audio comments
about it.
• Identify if the work is for sale and what the cost would be.
Viewers should be able to:
• Search for specific types of art or artists.
• Post comments.
• Rate each piece.
• Purchase the work.
• Send an ePostcard to friends showing the artist’s work.
• Communicate with the artist.
• Personalize the site to alert them when new postings are made.
Your Creative Works Gallery should also include an artist of the week feature.
This could be done by simply linking to the profile page of the artist or by a
blog article. I would strongly recommend you build a blog in your site that can
be updated by a series of volunteers. These volunteers will be responsible for
reviewing the artist’s work, increasing their awareness, and suggesting members
take a look at them.
Depending on the time available I would recommend you do podcast interviews
with the artists. These interviews could range from reminiscing to serious
discussions about art and to the influence of others on the work by the artists.
Part of your job is to give customers as many “fifteen minutes of fame” as you
can possibly create. By recognizing your customers for the things they consider
important, you increase loyalty and customer retention.
Exercise
• First, decide what your focus is going to be: paintings, sculpture, poetry,
script, or writing. You don’t have to invent a lot of software to do this.
• Consider using Ning.com as a foundation for this idea.
87. Create Community
Merchandise
W
hen people belong to something, they are passionate about, they like to
show off their passion and commitment.
Not sure you agree? Pay attention when you are out walking around someone to
see the number of clothing items that are adorned with the name of a designer,
celebrity, cause, or philosophy.
You can develop relatively low cost merchandise and memorabilia to engage
your customers and reward volunteers. To capture this passion and feeling of
belonging, consider developing a small inventory of T-Shirts, sweatshirts, ball
caps, and pens!
More importantly, consider developing electronic memorabilia they can add to
their home page, emails, and profile pages. These could include everything from
a logo, phrase, electronic documents, banners, buttons, and glitter.
Exercise
• Pull your team together to identify three different items you can create
to give or sell to your customers.
347
88. Banners
A
re you using conventional marketing techniques to promote the services
within your website? Our research indicates few companies are using banners
on their own websites to drive customers to specials and products they want to
draw attention to.
One easy technique to achieve this is to adopt banner advertising on your own
site. Banner ads can be easily created to:
• Draw attention to special offers, educational information, events.
• Increase registrations on your site.
• Remind users to update their profile to personalize the delivery of
information.
• Sell merchandise.
I’m not talking about screaming ads offering 10 percent off, but highly professional
ads that complement the design of the Web site. Take a cue from public TV and
radio ads low-key and non-commercial.
Creating banners is relatively easy. We’ve worked with a series of competent
graphic designers around the world to develop banners. Not only have we been
able to develop professional looking static and flash banners to put on our
websites, but we’ve been able to do it at very affordable rates. This is another area
you may want consider joining elance.com.
348
Banners
349
The nice thing about using banner ads on your Web site is that you will be able to
track how many times your users clicked through them. Over time, you’ll begin
to see a trend on what wording, colors, and styles get the highest click-throughs.
Exercise
• Create a series of low-cost banner ads by outsourcing them to providers
at elance.com (as low as $20 per banner).
89. Branded eMail
We’ve talked about techniques to reward volunteers and Brand Ambassadors.
An interesting option would be to give them branded email. Branded email is
another way to reward them for their involvement. It’s a simple way to thank
them for the time and effort they are putting in and it’s simple to do.
There are a couple options available to you. You could provide mail forwarding
only or Web-based email. The email forwarding is probably the easiest. Your
members will simply enter their current email address and indicate what email
address they want to use using your URL address. When registered, they can
use their branded email address to show off their membership and identification
with your online community.
Every time they send an email to a friend, they will be promoting your online
community. Branded email is a natural way to use your members to expand
participation.
Another option available is to provide Web-based email for your members. Webbased email is like Gmail, Yahoo!, and Hotmail. Today, they are fully functioning
email tools that enable your users to check their email from any computer in
the world. With the popularity of Gmail, Web-based email has increased in
popularity.
350
Branded eMail
351
Providing your users a branded web email address they can use for the rest of
their lives has a number of advantages:
• They have to visit a portal page to pick up their email. This gives you the
opportunity to provide information each time they check their email.
• Your community name will be promoted each time they email others.
• If the email address is a premium service, you can build requirements of
what they would need to get one.
As you continue to build your strategy, we highly recommend you include this.
Exercise
Every time I have to go to the restroom and watch the new digital advertising
screens in front of me reminds me there are still frontiers yet for advertising.
• Survey customers to learn if they are interested in branded email.
• Analyze to see what you can offer or reward them for using your email
address.
• Determine to whom you are going to give branded email.
Today we live in the empowerment age/
Joe Trippi, Author, The Revolution Will Not be Televised
90. Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce
T
witter, Jaiku, and Pownce are kind of mini blogs that could have an
application in your Social Media arsenal.
The creators of Twitter probably did not imagine that their simple tool could
become a quick news reporting tool. On July 18th, a huge explosion caused by
a ruptured steam pipe in New City sent hot steam, mud, and debris nearly 100
feet in the air. A registered user of Twitter, who was near the scene, captured the
scene on their cell phone and provided the first news reporting of the situation!
Twitter
Twitter is a simple tool built around one statement, “What are you doing?” Like
anything else, a simple tool can become more powerful when it is built around
a network of others who are using it. If you haven’t heard of it, Twitter allows
you to let people inside your world and tell them what you are doing by posting
short messages to Twitter, which then sends that to anyone subscribing to you.
I didn’t see the feasibility at first with competing services, but Twitter isn’t out
to be the new MySpace, rather to enhance it. Twitter badges enable you to post
your Twitter updates to your Facebook, MySpace, blog, or other Web site.
Unlike other social networking-type sites, Twitter isn’t about contacting with
new people. It’s geared more as a way to keep tabs on your current friends and
not your ever-growing list of MySpace friends. If your friends aren’t on Twitter,
it’s pretty useless for you to be on it too.
352
Tw i t t e r, J a i k u , P o w n c e
353
Twitter would be great for collaborative groups where group members constantly
update their progress to each other. It can help speed up the completion of a
project and reduce errors. What are some ways you see Twitter helping in a
business environment?
POWNCE
Pownce was created by Digg founder Kevin Rose. It allows you to easily send files,
messages, and events to people. The Social Media tool is designed for people who
need to collaborate. Instead of sending files through email, where they could get
lost in the inbox, Pownce makes it easy to send files to one, a few, or all of your
friends, and even the entire public. The service keeps a list of your posts like on
Twitter. It is free, but for $20 a year, you can get the pro version, which is adfree and enables sharing of larger files. This could be used for business practices
to help group collaboration by keeping messages and files in a convenient list
format.
JAIKU
Jaiku is Twitter’s rising competition in the social presence flow application
market.
Jaiku offers a program that is installed onto one’s phone. If you are a business
looking to use one of these tools as a collaborative device, you might want to
go with Jaiku, as the mobile phone application will cut down on texting fees.
Expect this service and options to grow as it is now a part of the growing Yahoo!
family.
Exercise
Twitter is rapidly becoming a powerful social networking tool.
• Before you do anything, register on Twitter and learn how simple the
tool is.
• Then spend some time with your team to brainstorm how you could
add this into your marketing, production, or sales process.
• Think through issues this might create for you.
• Then promote it to all intended users!
Today we live in the empowerment age/
Joe Trippi, Author, The Revolution Will Not be Televised
91. Google, Yahoo! Alerts
T
here are a number of tools available to you to help you keep abreast of your
competitors, plus keep a pulse on the market to see what’s on the minds of
your customers and consumers.
Both Google and Yahoo!, for example, have an alert tool that allows you to
simply type in a search box the terms you are interested in tracking. I track terms
like, “Social Media,” “online community,” “word-of-mouth.”
I can then tell the system if I want to receive the alerts by email daily or weekly
or if I want to receive them to my cell phone. Your words might reflect a product,
idea, or concept. Whether you use this tool every day or periodically, it will give
you a great deal of competitive intelligence to help you not only stay competitive,
but also help you exceed your customers’ expectations.
In today’s fast-paced Internet-driven era, you have to invest time and research
in how to reinvent the way you do business. You won’t find an easier or cheaper
way to accomplish that.
Exercise
Never before in the history of business do you have such powerful information
tools available to you. Your first step is to try out these services. Use one of them
every day!
• Set alerts to track your company, competitors, and industry buzz.
• Filter this information and share relevant updates with your colleagues
and staff.
354
92. Do Good!
T
he Internet will give your organization a number of ways to help non-profits
and organizations. I want you to begin thinking right now of including a
“Do Good” strategy into your overall strategy.
What can you do? Here’s a quick look at three organizations that included Do
Good in their Internet strategy.
One Economy Corp
Rey Ramsey is the Chief Executive Officer of One Economy Corporation, an
organization that works to help those with few resources and little understanding
of the Web, and how they could use it to improve their opportunities. Rey is a
solutions-oriented guy who looks at ways he can pull people together to solve
problems. His organization is bringing broadband to homes of more than
200,000 low-income people. More than 9 million people have utilized One
Economy’s online educational and asset-building content on its self-help Web
site, the Beehive.org.
Charityamerica.com
In 2000, Tim McCarthy founded CharityAmerica.com. While attending a 1999
Red Sox game and noticing all the empty seats, Tim thought about all the kids
who would love to be able to go to a game, even if the team was doing bad. So
he cobbled together a simple Web site that offered an opportunity for anyone
to donate a ticket to someone. That led to organizations asking him to expand
to other items and money. The Natick-based company screens charities, then
355
356
posts their profiles and needs on its Internet site. Anyone who wants to give
something away can effortlessly find a group or person who needs it. That’s one
of the unique aspects of the service. A donor can choose who the recipient of
their gifts are.
Kiva.org
Kiva.org is one of the first person-to-person micro-lending Web sites, that brings
people who have means together with people who don’t have means anywhere
on the globe. The exciting part of this use of Internet technology and strategy is
that the individuals who are loaning anywhere from ten to thousands of dollars
are able to pick and choose who they want to loan the money to.
To someone in Kenya who needs to buy an animal to support the family, $100 is
beyond their reach. However, to a middle-class person in the United States, $100
represents a slight sacrifice in the monthly entertainment budget. Kiva simply
acts as the middle person and takes the donation via PayPal and passes it along
to designated “microfinance partners” who distribute the loan to the selected
entrepreneur. Depending on the location, their partners provide training and
additional support.
Both organizations track progress and work with the recipient to work toward
repayment. The lender has the option of cashing out or reusing the repayment to
invest in another person. As Cousin Eddie says in “Christmas Vacation,” “Clark,
it’s a gift that keeps on giving.”
Even your blog can make a difference – Stephon Fuller
In late 2006, my wife started reading a blog by a little-known blogger in
Los Angeles. Stephon Fuller (www.stephonfuller.com). Stephon has been
consistently acting for the better part of his life and took up blogging to share
the knowledge and experience he had gained in auditioning, getting picked up
by an agent or manager, joining the union, handling casting directors, and the
whole emotional thing of being rejected daily, not because you weren’t great but
you were the wrong age, size, color of hair, or look.
Acting is a maddening, demoralizing business. Anyone who thinks looking for a
job every three to five years has it tough should jump into the shoes of an actor
or actress who first has to wait for the audition notice and then spend an hour
or more practicing the script, find the right clothes to dress for the part, drive an
Do Good!
357
hour (or more) through L.A. rush-hour traffic, walk into a room with 20 other
people waiting or leaving the same audition, then audition to a camera for two
minutes (or less) and drive home, in silence, slicing through the 120-second
audition second by second, criticizing themselves for the wrong inflection, look,
speed or tone! It’s a tough business!
So Stephon’s blog is a breath of fresh air to the couple hundred thousand
struggling actors/actresses and incoming thousands of parents and actors who
are all going through the same experiences. My wife found Stephon’s blog by
happenstance and began following it over a period of months. In an attempt to
turn his new emerging passion into a product or revenue tool, Stephon decided
to offer extended coaching to the many people who were following his blog. My
daughter, who has been working up the ranks and building her credibility in the
acting world, has had little interest in the Internet courses. She never got into
MySpace or Facebook and barely checks her email. So it was coincidental when
my wife found his blog and suggested that my daughter contact Stephon for
additional coaching.
Fortunately my daughter listens to my wife’s suggestions and the connection
was made. As a result, my daughter is expanding her contacts, influence, and
confidence as Stephon’s personal advice cuts through the clutter that a lessexperienced person can’t get beyond. Already she is light years ahead of where
she was just a year ago. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but every actor would like
their career to have started 10 years ago! My daughter is closer to a launching
point then she’s ever been in the seven years she’s been trying.
While some bloggers’ goals are to ramp up to reach tens or hundreds of thousands
of readers, others like Stephon are using their blogs to help individuals, one person
at a time. People like Stephon are making a difference by sharing their passion
and experience with no expectations. Stephon represents a group of emerging
mentors who are finding their audience on the Web and literally changing their
lives and the lives of those around them.
You could too!
As you build your Internet strategy, think about areas your organization can help
the local or global community that centers around collective interest, passions, or
your organization’s expertise. All you have to do is create an online form to get all
the information your committee will need in order to choose the organizations
you’d like to help or find organizations like Kiva and CharityAmerica and offer
goods, services, and/or money.
358
Exercise
• Look at your distribution system, excess product capacity, or profits and
determine where you can use them to benefit others.
• Look at your partners, vendors, and customers, and see how working
together you can take your “do good” idea and take it to another level!
93. Create an Experience
Jimi Hendrix’s song asked the listener, “Are you experienced?”
The generation that grew up in the 1960s and ‘70s helped change the social,
political, and religious foundations of our country. Along the way, as our society
changed, so did the consumption behaviors of consumers. As competition for
the hearts, minds, and wallets of consumers increased in the ‘80s, a growing
number of companies began to differentiate themselves from others by giving
consumers an “experience” along with their products and services.
James Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine captured that trend in their seminal book The
Experience Economy. The authors identified a growing trend among consumers
that showed they were willing to pay more for products and services when they
received an experience as a part of the purchase. Commonly sighted are:
• Starbucks, where you pay $4 for a specially prepared drink.
• Dicks Restaurant, where you are “nagged and abused by the staff.”
• Disneyland, where you are carried away in total experience.
By creating more than just a Web site, you not only have a better chance of
engaging your customers, but they will bring their friends and colleagues too.
Sure, it requires a commitment of time and money to take your Web site from
“brochure-ware” to providing unique “experiences,” but when you do, you will
receive a return on your time and investment for months and years to come, 24
hours a day!
359
360
Your Internet strategy should include creating experiences for your users, such
as:
1. Develop marketing campaigns they can be a part of.
2. Create customer appreciation days and provide them something of
value.
3. Remember their birthday with a gift.
4. Include a “welcome wagon” service and have a volunteer welcome them
to the site and provide them an orientation on what you do and what
they can do at your site.
5. Hold online “meets and greets” to network your members.
6. Capture more data so you can personalize their next visit.
7. Have a “member package” of products and services sent to them when
they register.
Let’s look at an example of an organization that created an experience for their
customers and engaged them in an experience they are not likely to forget.
Cold Stone Case Study
Anyone who knows me, knows I love ice cream! You can imagine my excitement
when one of my favorite ice cream companies shared the results of a very
successful marketing program that engaged their customers and provided a
unique experience.
Cold Stone is exactly the kind of company that Gilmore and Pine write about.
Instead of just scooping ice cream into a cone or cup, their staff, which they
call “crew members,” caress it and lovingly mix it up in front of the customers’
anxious eyes. With more than 1,400 stores across the country, the retail chain has
found that 70 percent of its customers are woman aged 25 to 44.
In an attempt to increase sales in the first quarter of 2006, Cold Stone approached
their PR team to help them develop a marketing campaign that integrated
Internet Social Media and in-store promotional materials. The company wanted
to capitalize on the emotional value of the brand and the upcoming Valentine’s
holiday theme, which is built around love!
The campaign, called “The Marriage of Flavors,” was created around the idea
Create an Experience
361
of showing the world that happy partnerships can still be made by combining
ice cream flavors, and proving there is such a thing as the perfect match. The
Marriage of Flavors promotion offered a sweepstakes where visitors to the Cold
Stone Web site were asked to match up the two flavors they’d most like to see
“married.” For each vote cast, Web visitors qualified to participate in a contest
that provided a romantic Hawaiian getaway for two to the winner.
The “wisdom of the crowds” suggested strawberry and cheesecake made a great
couple and decided they should be married. The company’s designers and
creative agency produced a viral video featuring a “Barry White” soulful and sexy
sounding singer with lyrics that included, “Let’s make magic on the cold stone!”
Wow, this promotion was hot enough to melt ice cream! Between MySpace,
YouTube, and their Web site, the wedding video received over 123,000 views.
The average YouTube rating was 4.5 out of 5. Most importantly, sales were up.
The campaign gave Cold Stone customers an opportunity to be part of the
“planned marriage” and to experience the wedding through the video. It’s an
experience those who participated will not likely forget.
Exercise
It’s too competitive an environment to build a strategy around price. You need to
be creating unique experiences and find the audience who loves them!
• Think about your relationship with your customers. What unique
experience tied to your mission could you offer them?
• Think about how you can deliver this experience via the Web.
The future of search is wisdom over information.
Jodi Marchewitz, CEO and Founder, iGuiders.com
94. Recommenders
R
ecommenders represent a whole new way for businesses and organizations to
connect with their customers and engage them in a shopping experience.
There are two types of Recommenders.
The first are Casual Recommenders. These are the people who provide an
occasional recommendation of your product and/or services online. Amazon
popularized the concept of consumer rating and feedback and have made it easier
for people to participate. As consumers understand the value of this service to
them, more will participate and take the time to offer their “two cents.”
The second are Power Recommenders. As the behavior shift continues and
the importance of reviewing others’ opinions on products and services, we’ll
see a growing number of specialists who gain the respect of their community.
These individuals’ opinions will rise above the rest. Others will go right to their
summary of recommendations before they make a purchase because they trust
the unsolicited opinions of someone who is “disconnected” from the company
that produces the products and services.
As this concept continues to evolve, we expect an army of “trusted shoppers” will
develop a following of customers who will search them out to do research for
them and offer them advice and recommendations on what they should buy. I
have to laugh for a moment, as this reminds me of a scene nearly forty years ago
when my cousin, Fred Lewellyn, a consummate consumer researcher, decided he
would go into the consulting business and offer advice to people interested in
stereos. Fred is a walking encyclopedia on any subject he gets excited about and,
to the typical person, would have more facts, figures, pros, and cons available to
362
Recommenders
363
help someone make the “right” decision than the CEO or manufacturer of the
product. He absorbed information, talked to repair shops, and called around
the world to get the information he felt was necessary to make a decision on a
product.
Fred ran an ad in the local paper announcing his services. I happened to be with
him when his first call came in. Nearly an hour of conversation later, Fred hung
up excited. After giving me the details of the conversation, I asked Fred how
he was going to make money from the caller and, for the first time, Fred was
speechless!
The point I am making is simple: In today’s Internet social commerce era, Fred
would be able to put out a Web-centered shingle, something as simple as a blog
combined with the offer to do product research for individuals. Fred could use
the available recommendation tools offered by shopping sites, cut and paste, and
send a portfolio and summary to the consumer. Fred could charge a monthly fee
for so many researches and/or he could charge a percentage of the sale price.
ECommerce right now represents a tiny percentage of the goods sold, but as
our behaviors change and technology continues to advance, it will become an
increasingly important tool to any business.
Exercise
What will your strategy be for Recommenders?
• How are you going to stay on top of what others are saying about your
products and services? Someone needs to be searching the Web to find
comments made by Recommenders and feeding that information back
to your team, both good and bad.
• How are you going to find the Fred Lewellyn’s of the world? What will
your strategy be to educate him or her about the value of your services?
We’ve already read on how powerful blogs have been in spreading news and
information about products and services. Recommenders should be part of your
viral marketing strategy!
We’ve been voted the best marketer of the 20th century,
but that’s because we were the biggest shouters.
In the 21st century, we want to be the best listeners.
Greg Icenhower, Proctor & Gamble
95. Conversation and Listening
T
he word conversation has its roots in the Latin word conversari, which means
to dwell, to keep company with. This strategy is all about you spending time
with your customers and joining a conversation and listening to what they are
thinking and saying, not pushing information at them.
Companies I’ve researched go through three phases in building out their online
strategy and Web sites.
1. The first Web site most organizations create pretty much replicates the
brochures they hand out on sales calls and at conventions. Customers
will learn about the company, products/services, pricing, and perhaps
have an opportunity to order.
2. The next phase an organization goes through is using the Web to reduce
their costs by providing “self-service” opportunities to customers.
3. The final phase involves taking a more holistic view of your Web site and
how it can be used by every department in your firm.
As you continue to develop your Internet strategy, you have to keep in mind that
technology can reduce the number of “opportunities” your customer service,
sales, public relations, and marketing people have in engaging customers in
conversations. If your strategy becomes too automated, you will distance yourself
from the customer and potentially lose touch with them.
One of the more important strategies you will need to develop is a conversation
and listening strategy (something women might have an edge over men on).
364
Conversation and Listening
365
A growing number of professionals are recognizing the importance of listening
to customers. Consider this comment from Greg Icenhower, speechwriter for
Procter & Gamble Chief Executive A. G. Lafley:
“We’ve been voted the best marketers of the 20th Century. But that’s
because we were the biggest shouters. In the 21st Century, we want to be
the best listeners.”
Conversation is nothing new offline. Between Louis the XIII’s reign and the
French Revolution, a group of French noblewomen met frequently and took
the concept of conversation from the casual conversations between friends to
an art form. Long before colleges gave all people an opportunity to gain a better
understanding of the world and to communicate with others, this group used
conversation and listening as a way to show others the ideals of sophisticated,
intelligent way of life.
We’ve talked at great length on how the Internet was disintermediating
industries, but it is also disintermediating business processes. Anyone involved
in public relations is painfully aware that the decreasing reporting staff in
print and broadcasting industry is making it harder to get their message into
the mainstream media. As the behavior of consumers continue to favor online
media, the traditional print and broadcast advertising opportunities will begin to
offer less favorable results and ROI.
Today, public relations professionals are beginning to learn they don’t have to
rely exclusively on using press releases to get the attention of the decreasing
number of professional journalists, but the public relations expert today can use
Social Media tools to tell genuine, engaging stories directly to the people they
want. By becoming more open, honest, and transparent, today’s PR professional
will be able to build rapport and trust with the people they want to reach.
Your organization needs to begin adopting the tools the Internet will provide
you by beginning to listen to consumers.
You can do that through a number of different Internet tools and channels
including:
• Blogs
• Discussion boards
• Emails
• Online community postings
366
Ed Cotton, founder of Influx Strategic Consulting, reminds us that that Madison
Avenue advertising techniques over the last century effectively used broadcasting’s
one-way communication techniques to push products and services on people.
Today, however, he suggests that advertising as we know it is losing its ability to
provide an effective return on investment, and that organizations need to learn
how to develop a conversation with advertising. To help get you started, he offers
six ways:
Think bigger than an ad
Find a purpose that’s bigger than the brand. Does your brand have a movement
it stands behind, something it believes in and wants others to engage in and
talk about? This isn’t about PR spin, but finding a cause and a big idea to get
behind.
Celebrate great products with creativity
You should be comparing your communication to the best in entertainment, not
the best in advertising. Get your communication talked about.
Create mechanism to let the consumer in
Provide forums, opportunities for conversation. This means more than users
creating your ads. Let them have a say in how products are created, and please
listen! Add utility to your brand experience. What can they do above and beyond
their product that adds value to their consumers’ lives?
Surprise
Surprise people, allow them to play and interact with your communication.
Take risks
You won’t get talked about if you don’t take risks.
The product matters
Advertising can no longer provide a smokescreen for a bad product. If your
product is bad, it will generate conversation, but not the kind of conversation
you are looking for.
Conversation and Listening
367
Exercise
Start listening to your customers.
• Decide which Social Media tools you will use to create a two-way
conversation with your customers.
• Assign someone in your organization to listen to the conversations and
give them the responsibility to integrate change within the company to
reflect their discussions.
What gives word of mouth most of its power is the
fact that it is an experience-delivery mechanism.
George Silverman, Author, The Secrets of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
96. Global
A
s you develop your Internet strategy, you need to be thinking about the
possibility of not only going national, but global too.
Business is shrinking the world and opening opportunities for small companies
anywhere to be able to reach out, or more correctly stated, to be found and
discovered by others using search engine marketing and Social Media tools.
Anyone can find your organization’s products and services through:
• Informative corporate blogs
• Podcasts
• Collaboration tools including wikis
We are entering an era that fulfills the prophecies of the early Internet visionaries.
Among them, that a small company can have as great a reach as a large company.
Where a small local company can develop a following of customers anywhere in
the world, and where the local baker can use overnight delivery systems to deliver
to customers their coveted goods. Where a retailer can develop customers on any
part of the globe and use low cost overnight delivery tools to customers willing
to pay additional shipping to get a customized, unique product.
The tools are there already. Giant aircraft powered by two pilots can ferry huge
amounts of product overnight for pennies per unit. To put it into perspective,
Boeing’s cargo airplane called Dreamliner picks up parts around the globe,
aircraft designed to carry parts for Boeing’s new 787 passenger jet. Its tail section
swings open so they can load entire fuselage sections in the cavernous aircraft.
368
Global
369
The 65,000 cubic feet of storage capacity is three times the capacity of a typical
747 used by UPS and FedEx. The Dreamliner could hold 42 million ping pong
balls or 80 Mini Coopers!
Understanding this, your bakery, retail shop, or packaged goods company has
the capability to become an international company and not only generate
additional revenue, but open up cross-marketing opportunities with businesses
from foreign countries.
While this might not be included in the first phase of your comprehensive
Internet strategy, you should give it serious consideration in future years.
Exercise
You may not have a product today, because of the problems in doing business
around the world.
• Set those problems aside and think about what you could offer to
anyone, anywhere in the world.
• Begin to develop business plans to move your business in this area.
97. e-Commerce
B
uilding a successful e-commerce business takes not only a capital investment,
but time and resources. Most people think starting a restaurant only requires
knowledge on how to cook. However, a restaurateur has to be a marketing and
public relations genius, boss, and leader and know how to handle customers.
Few people have all these skills and as a result, many restaurants struggle to gain
market share and profitability.
Unfortunately, many people starting e-commerce sites think the same about
selling items online. They couldn’t be further from the truth!
Selling products and services online is not about the software, it involves a whole
range of intangibles and planning.
For example, some of the things you need to be aware of are:
• What is your strategy? Is your strategy leveraging your strengths? What
are the key metrics you want to measure?
• What kind of technology do you want to use? Selecting an e-commerce
platform is a key decision. Picking the wrong platform could cost time,
money, and lost sales.
• Is your store well designed and easy to use? Does your e-commerce Web
site speak effectively to your target audience? Is the Web site easy to
navigate? Can users find what they are looking for?
• How are you going to market the e-commerce business? What is your
email marketing strategy? How are you going to get favorable rankings
on the search engines?
370
e-Commerce
371
• How will you fulfill merchandise when you get orders? What shipping
carriers (UPS, FedEx, etc.) will you partner with? Do you want a third
party to fulfill merchandise or fulfill in-house?
• Who will be following up on customer issues? What is your customer
service process?
• Who will analyze the stats your Web site provides and have the
experience to identify what changes should be made in order in order to
increase sales? Who will implement these changes?
You don’t have to do this on your own!
Emerging business models are available today where retailers, wholesalers, and
virtually any company can outsource their ecommerce business, as well as gain
the experience and expertise of industry professionals to maximize the revenue
their online stores generate.
Outsourcing your e-commerce business eliminates the need for an in-house
staff to have the expertise to develop an effective e-commerce strategy. To staff
these full-time resources would cost a company in excess of $400K per year
($100K per year x 4 positions) when you factor in salary, benefits, taxes, and
other miscellaneous employee costs. To break even, a retailer, distributor, or
manufacturer would have to generate over $1 million in annual revenue through
their e-commerce Web site. However, many retailers do not even generate $500K
in annual revenue online.
ROI Commerce
Who said this was going to be easy? If you are like me, by now you are thinking
that it makes sense to outsource the e-commerce technology and strategy so you
can concentrate on your core competence.
Fred Elabed, President of ROI Commerce, agrees, “We frequently find the
companies that come to us are completely exasperated by the challenges and
problems they have encountered running their own e-commerce stores. It’s
gratifying to be able to convert them to our scalable e-commerce platform and
process and then watch the sales continue to grow. Since we align most of our fees
towards success of the e-commerce store, owners and leaders of companies love
our business model. We are their true partner in growing e-commerce revenue.”
By partnering with ROI Commerce, companies can grow their e-commerce
372
businesses more quickly and cost effectively than they could on their own. This
allows their client partners to focus on other aspects of their business.
ROI Commerce’s partnership-centric approach makes the experience very
collaborative with their partners. ROI Commerce schedules weekly meetings
with their partners to review the e-commerce plan, devise new strategies, and
review key metrics such as gross sales, product sales, Web site traffic, keyword
search engine rankings, and other metrics important for the business. Instead of
having to guess what the report and stats are telling you, you gain the experience,
wisdom, and expertise from an industry professional who will interpret the results
and offer suggestions on modifications to make the next month to increase the
average sale, reduce the number of people who visit the site and leave without
purchasing, determine which products should receive premium real estate, etc.
The benefits
After six months of partnering with ROI Commerce, CSS Publishing, a
Christian publishing company, experienced a solid increase in sales from the
previous six months. In addition, the publisher gained a competitive edge in the
online channel and boasted a much-improved shopping experience for online
customers, and expanded services and sales by offering digital downloads of the
products that were not available in their previous model.
Exercise
Nearly every business can benefit from an e-commerce strategy.
• Determine what your e-commerce strategy is going to be.
• Find partners who are experienced in providing e-commerce solutions
to help you.
• Analyze your results monthly.
Summary
T
he purpose of this research and book was to take away the mystery and
confusion of the Web and provide you actual examples of how others
have successfully adopted Internet strategies and to share with you quotes from
respected industry leaders around the world who are encouraging you to also
adopt a strategy – today!
Remember, we have all had decades to learn how to market our businesses using
traditional mass marketing techniques. Today, however, mass marketing channels
are changing, the behavior of your customers are changing, and in order to stay
competitive in your market, you have to change too!
Developing a successful Internet strategy for your company will take time.
However, it will be time well spent because everything you do in developing
your Social Media marketing strategy will be an investment that will continue to
pay back in leads, sales, and profits!
Don’t forget to join the discussion at our blog www.internetdough.net. Should
you need additional help in developing a companywide Internet strategy, contact
our parent company Internet Strategies Group: www.internetstrategiesgroup
.com
Thanks for sharing the time with us and stay in touch.
Don Philabaum
[email protected]
373
About the Author
Don Philabaum
Word-of-mouth marketing, online communities,
customer-generated media, Brand Ambassadors, customer
evangelists, and social networking—you’ll find all this and
more in Don Philabaum’s latest book, Internet Dough and
Engage Customers Online.
In 1996, Don registered the Internet addresses - onlinecommunity.com
and onlinecommunities.com because he envisioned business, non-profits,
associations, and organizations would eventually adopt online communities.
Known as one of the early pioneers of private label online communities, he
has tirelessly promoted the benefits of online community and Social Media for
organizations as diverse as grocery stores and funeral homes.
As the business and marketing community began to understand the power of
using the Internet to intensify word-of-mouth marketing and buzz marketing,
organizations began turning to him to help them develop an online identity
that parallels their real-world organization.
Stay in touch with this information at his blog, www.internetdough.net
Don enjoys sharing this information at industry conferences by providing
keynote or session presentations. You can reach him directly at:
[email protected]
374

Engage Customers Online! - Internet Strategies Group

Transcription

Similar documents

our 2015 Guide to Advertising on ThePrizeFinder.com

Brockton Enterprise Contract Newspaper Guild

to our marketing flyer

the brandbank service makes it quick, easy and cost

Online Advertisement

McCann Truth Central - Truth about Advertising

Lawlor`s Personal Branding Checklist

Michael Belanger

Welcome to the world of advertising! M 1