The part that stuck out for me; According to O2’s survey, 16 per cent said they had saved more than £5,000 on marketing and recruitment costs, while almost a third had saved more than £1,000 since joining Twitter.
These are not unsubstantial sums for a small business. It will be interesting to see further reports that put a dollar value to Twitter activities, whilst this one refers to marketing and hiring costs I think a far larger figure would be that of referral value passed through Twitter. I have already passed three or four business referrals through Twitter that have converted into business for the parties involved and find giving referrals an easy way to add value to your network.
(NB – the full article is behind a free registration page)
I’m finding myself saying this a bit lately. Not out of any need to be overtly critical but in answering a fundamental question – why does your business have a website? I see a lot of sites that are built purely with the objective of having a net presence instead of really thinking it through as a marketing tool. That begins with thinking about your sites visitor.
It’s not an interruption medium – they are there for an immediate answer to a problem and if your site opens with you, you, you they’ll be another bounce statistic on your Google Analytics (you are using analytics of some sort, aren’t you?)
Firstly, eliminate all the weasel words and phrases;
Company X is a leading provider in…
..we employ best practice to…
…results oriented…
…maximize…
You get the picture.
Obviously the language you use should be what suits who you are trying to sell to, some sectors may require a degree of obtuseness (but I doubt it). People are not buying your product/service, they don’t care about your product/service, they care about a solution to one of their problems.
Some other things to consider when looking at your site and assessing if it needs a refresh:
Has your site been reviewed in the last three years?
You’re not using brochures from three years ago are you? What on earth makes your website any different? Your website should be the most dynamic piece of marketing you have leading onto the next point.
Does your site have a CMS that allows you to quickly and easily modify content and add pages if need be?
This need not be expensive and it is crucial. How can you test landing pages or different copy if you have to call your designer every time you want to do something?
Is your site built in Flash?
Get rid of it. Unless you are well known enough that people are going to type your exact name into search engines to get to your site then a building your site in flash has just made you invisible to search engines. If you want fancy graphics with nice transitions then make it a PART of your page but building your whole page inside Flash will nullify any potential marketing benefit to having a website – that is what you have a website for, isn’t it?
Has it been optimised for SEO?
URL names, meta-data, keywords, file structures, alt tags. There’s a whole range of on-site SEO that should just be standard in your sites build. Ask your designer about this. In looking at peoples sites I have seen designers that have put only THEIR details into the meta-tags for a clients site – not polite.
Then there’s the whole Social Media bit, but that’s what the rest of this site is about. This is just a few things to get you thinking. If your copy is about YOU, if your site requires a third party to change something as basic as contact info or add more pages, if you have no idea what SEO your site has had done, you may want to think about a rebuild.
We spend a lot of time thinking of ways to ‘value add’ – to provide that defining extra bit on top of normal service so as to stand out and really make a difference. It is now second nature for most people to be looking for ways to add value. It is the new normal.
But what about your marketing?
Is your marketing of the interruption based ‘me me me me’ type?
Brochures that talk all about you.
Website focused on you and what you do and how good you are at it.
Your message.
Where is your potential customer in all of this?
It can be a rude shock to explain to people that no-one cares about your message. They care only about the problem they have, and they are interested in whether or not you can solve it, but are they going to work that out based on your current marketing material? I’m still surprised by the number of companies who insist on using such empty phrases as ‘we utilise the latest technology to…’, ‘cutting edge’, ‘a leader in…’. ‘committed to providing you with (insert generic superlative here) service’….empty phrases.
Value added marketing is creating material that is genuine use to those you would like as customers, not an arrogant noisy interruption. It may be a blog, or a series of podcasts, or instructional videos, or a forum, or a program to connect users of your product/service, or a feedback mechanism to allow customers to help you enhance what you do, or even allowing them to improve it themselves. It may be as simple as entertaining people.
I think it’s about being human, and treating your customers like humans instead of a demographic to be broadcast at.
For those who don’t spend the stupid number of hours that I do on-line there has been a bit of brou-ha-ha in Australian marketing/adverising circles in the last couple of days because of a fake marketing campaign.
It all starts here:
The ’story’ was picked up by mainstream media however from early on web observers were crying ‘fake’. Unsurprisingly this turned out to be the case as the campaign was outed on the internet with mUmBRELLA reporting on the hoax campaign being from the agency Naked.
Around the same time an even more grating follow-up confession video was posted on Youtube, and then the boss of Naked, Adam Ferrier, responded along the lines that people in Social Media don’t know what they’re talking about.
Naked and their client Witchery have been hauled over the coals on-line for lying and being deceitful, which I think misses the point entirely (to be fair to Naked there has been some overt chest beating around what social media is and isn’t, but there has also been a lot of fair criticism for the failings of this work).
I think their sin is having done it so poorly and without any regard as to where to from here.
Now, in their defense, Adam Ferrier has spoken about this on his blog and amongst other things said:
“Who in social media understands marketing strategy: Campaigns using social media need to be judged, not on how well they abide by the so called rules of social media, but rather the effectiveness of the communications.”
I agree – effectiveness of the communication is crucial. Which is the problem I have with this, it is just badly done, and more importantly now what?
Column inches gained, people talking, great, but in what context? How does all of the criticism of the communication convert into purchasing action?
And what comes next? Now that you’ve gotten this attention what is to follow? Is there a strategy to expand upon this and maintain the momentum? Will this kind of attention convert into sales?
It might. It would be very interesting to see if Witchery tracks sales and reports back.
But at this stage it looks like all that has happened is the client looks a little foolish for having gotten embroiled in what is essentially a PR stunt that has no follow up.
And this is the issue I have with Adam Ferriers comments about Social Media practitioners – Naked have poorly executed a campaign that they claim to be ’social media campaign’.
It isn’t. It is an attempt at viral marketing (and you could argue a successful one for its viral effect).
Adam criticises Social Media practitioners for not understanding the importance of effectiveness so I would ask the following;
Where is the campaign here? Where is the value-add? Where is the community build? Where is the engagement and conversation? In what way has this been effective?
Naked have done a lot of good work and Adam Ferrier is obviously a pretty smart guy (read his bio) which makes the defensive posturing around this work all the more grating to people who work in Social Media and understand that we are here to help build business for our clients. We care about strategy, and we care deeply about getting results. We also care just as much about effectiveness as Adam does – so we can understand the pain for all involved when something doesn’t work. But please quit shooting at the messenger.
As mentioned previously I take part in a weekly networking group and this year we are changing venues. An email came from our chapter president that we are moving to a place called the EQ Bar at the Arts Centre with views over the Yarra. Sounds nice so I thought I’d check it out on-line.
After finding them I clicked on the gallery page link and was promptly asked to click another link to get to the images…mildly annoying.
Clicked on that link and this is what greeted me:
I have to be a ‘member’ to see your venue?
Why would I hand over my personal details when I have had no contact with you yet and I am using your website to do some background research?
The only explanation I can come up with is they want to build their database – nothing wrong with that, but don’t you think you’d have a better chance of doing that with say, oh, the people who have actually come to your venue and experienced your business first hand?
If you do want to build a list of prospective clients on-line then what are you going to offer me in return for my personal information, apart from the privilege of seeing photos of your venue?
There are plenty of mailing lists I have joined on-line, however it has always been after I have had a positive experience of the product or service on offer.
EQ Bar – I’m happy for you to permission market to me once we know each other, but if I fill in that form now I fear that all I am going to get is:
Although some people are claiming it is.
They talk about it not scaling, about it being a fad, they deride Social Media advocates for treating it as a universal panacea (it’s not).
And they have completely missed the point.
If you run a small or medium business this stuff is manna from heaven -
You suddenly have a platform from which to engage.
You can measure what happened.
You can keep it affordable.
I ran a small business for six years before selling my share late last year and moving into this area – I understand very keenly the need for there to be a measurable result for every dollar spent and I understand how tight cashflow can get. I’ve also been fortunate to work both in Australia and overseas directing TVC’s and experienced first hand the orgy of spending that most TVC production is (and don’t get me started on media).
This is not to say that TV doesn’t work or traditional media should be dispensed with, but there is a huge number of businesses who cannot afford to play in those areas in any meaningful way.
Social Media gives them the chance to compete for attention – I’ve covered this before in Media Meritocracy but raise it again because the criticism I have heard levelled at Social Media comes from those used to dealing in large corporations and on large scale.
And some of their issues are real concerns (creating scale, management across a large organisation etc) at that level.
For the smaller operators this stuff is a great equalizer as they now have access to these marketing tools and are not encumbered by a lot of the issues that can make larger corporations slow to act.
Social Media is not trendy, it is a new fundamental.
I freely admit that some of the things I have said that people think are smart (hey it happens) have indeed come from David Meerman Scott – but I always attribute so that’s ok. He has written several books about marketing using the internet, and, when I get around to setting up a book section you’ll be able to order them here through Amazon and pay me a few cents!
I was fortunate enough to be given an autographed copy of David’s book ‘The New Rules of Marketing & PR‘ by a friend who had the pleasure of hearing David speak and meeting him. Part of the very nice personal inscription he wrote really struck me at the time – ‘On the web you are what you publish’. To me this really encapsulated the power of what Social Media and the Web can be for smart SME’s – it is their opportunity to really compete against large companies in a Media Meritocracy.
Because David writes really useful actionable stuff around Social Media, he provides great case studies of how people are using the web and social media, and he gets you thinking very deeply about what you can do.
And, if you look carefully on the World Wide Rave blog you’ll see a handsome man with a Husky.
SEO is the buzz word du jour amongst business people I speak to in Australia right now. Given the current economic situation SEO has been bumped way up the list of priorities for people as they work to wring every last bit of benefit from every single dollar that goes out the door. For most of you it will be a waste of time.
Why?
Because once you’ve had your copy written to maximise key words yet still read like a human being, paid for a bucket of links, got your page rank up to 6 or above, submitted to directories, optimised url’s and everything else your SEO expert asks you to do you will turn around and see that so has everyone else. In 2009 it’s the price of entry
So what can we do?!
Don’t panic.
Take a deep breath.
It’s pretty simple.
Add value by creating content worth consuming.
Content that shows off why someone would want to buy from you (no, not advertising -though it does have its place).
Content that engages or forms the basis of a community.
We are now in the age of Media Meritocracy and you have access to better, cheaper, easier to use tools and people for content creation than at any time in history. Oh, and by the way, all this stuff done well and in concert with your other SEO stuff will send you through the roof.
SEO is important. But stopping at just SEO is like launching a new car on the market and stopping at giving it four wheels.
Why should your business get involved in Social Media in 2009?
Media Meritocracy.
Getting on TV, radio, and in-print in any substantial way is expensive which has meant that gaining a share of attention has been a game of who spends wins. Now, this year, 2009, you can be your own publisher and broadcaster. You can run ‘Channel You’ 24/7. All for a lot less than any significant media spend would have cost.
What is going to matter now is the quality of your content, are you adding value? Have you given a potential viewer/reader a reason to stick around? Or are you trying to stuff your marketing message down their throat (or your tongue as Chris Brogan put it in his amusing analogy)?
Big companies with large budgets do not have a monopoly on good ideas, on content, in fact they can’t compete with you if you are creating unique compelling content that is true to who you are and what you do. How can they? They’re not you.
I think we are entering the era of Media Meritocracy where the size of your budget will not be important as the size of your brain.
From Wikipedia: “Social media are primarily Internet-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences”.
That is perhaps not so helpful, I think one of the best definitions comes from Antony Maynard of iCrossing who wrote in this e-book;
“What is social media?
Social media is best understood as a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics:
participation
social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. it blurs the line between media and audience.
openness
most social media services are open to feedback and participation. they encourage voting, comments and the sharing of information. there are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content – password-protected content is frowned on.
conversation
whereas traditional media is about “broadcast” (content transmitted or distributed to an audience) social media is better seen as a two-way conversation.
community
social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively. Communities share common interests, such as a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite tv show.
connectedness
most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, making use of links to other sites, resources and people.”
Ok, well what does that mean for your business?
Social Media tools provide an opportunity to engage in conversation with your customers, to add value to them, and ultimately to your bottom line.
Social Media is not a quick fix but it will provide a depth of engagement that will more than justify the effort involved.
Social Media is about rethinking how you may have approached your marketing in the past – it’s seeing your marketing in a different way, as a chance to really show what makes you and your company unique.
A recent article in the Financial Times quotes findings from a report by phone operator O2 summed up in the title “Small Businesses find big value in Twitter”.
