The Quisenblog

So which Social Media platforms are most worth your time?

That’s a question a lot of us in marketing have been asking for the past few years. There seems to be no shortage of ways for brands and marketers to get involved in Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogging, etc. Some require just a few minutes a day to keep up to speed. Others significantly more. But which platforms do users find most engaging, and which have the higher likelihood of leading to creating a new customer or sale?

We’re learning more and more about how people interact with Social Media all the time. And recently, the folks at Marketing Sherpa created a graph that took into consideration potential engagement versus the amount of time required to keep up.

The graph, show here, predictably shows that the easiest Social Media ventures to take part in (social buttons on your website or emails, for example) also drive the lowest engagement. And that those that require the most time (managing Search Engine Optimization and building relationships with noted bloggers) generally drive the most engagement.

The one platform that seems to give marketers the “most bang for the buck,” at least according to this study, is the practice of blogging. Weighing the time required to blog versus the potential payback seems to be time well spent.

Now before you jump over to Wordpress to set about creating your own blog, a word of caution. In our experience, it’s never as simple as saying “do this in Social Media and you’ll be a hit.” That’s because consumers don’t care about platforms. They care about content. Is what you’re putting out there for them (regardless of which platform you use) relevant, interesting and useful? If so, your content likely be found and passed around. If not, it doesn’t matter where the heck you put it.

Our experience has shown that the Social Media our clients are most comfortable with are usually the ones to drive engagement. For some, it’s a strong Facebook presence. For others, YouTube is the 800-lbs. gorilla. For me personally, I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of Twitter and (of course) the Quisenblog. Just depends on what you’re most comfortable using.

While I’m thankful to Marketing Sherpa for taking time to plot this stuff, I myself take it with a grain of salt. For me, it’s not so simple as picking winners and losers. It’s about finding what works best for each marketer, then sticking with it.

If you’re interested in reading more about this study, here’s a link.

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“The problem isn’t that we set our goals too high and miss them. The problem is we set our goals too low and hit them.”

The above quote, attributed to the great Michelangelo, succinctly describes one of the biggest challenges we marketers face today.

Marketing has become about incremental change, about “small victories.” The language we use to describe what we do comes straight from the battlefield: campaign, tactics, challenger brand. So marketing becomes about “winning,” regardless of how small or significant that win is.

We add tactics. We “flesh out” campaigns. We celebrate little victories.

All this is well and good. But the road to Truly Amazing isn’t paved with little victories.

Yes, it is important for marketers to set achievable goals. But I submit it’s just as important to set at least one “unachievable” one.

What’s the one account you’d love to snare, but don’t feel it’s realistic? What “game changer” in your industry would flip the market upside down? What “surprise” could be added to your offerings, regardless of cost, that would propel your brand to top-of-mind?

Rather than treating this as a pie-in-the-sky goal, set is as a long-term one. Then ask yourself a couple of questions: Is what you’re doing now moving you towards that goal? And, who do you need to be in order to attain it?

Getting these answers correct puts you on the path to something big. Suddenly that seemingly “unachievable” goal is on your radar. Verbalize it. Share it with others, and let them figure out how they can contribute to attaining it.

Since his passing a few weeks ago, much has been written about Steve Jobs and his management style. What seems to be consistent with Jobs was that nothing he proposed to his product engineering team was considered “possible.” In virtually every case, engineers would complain that the technology didn’t exist, or the time frame too narrow, or something else made it impossible for what was in Steve’s brain to make it to market.

But Jobs rarely settled for incremental change. At a time when a “small victory” would have been developing a Walkman that played both sides of the tape, Apple engineers did the impossible, and gave us the iPod. Instead of giving us a Palm Pilot with more functionality, Apple did the impossible and gave us the iPhone.

Funny thing about “aiming high.” At some point, you just might hit it.

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There’s been a lot written in many corners about the need to tell a compelling “story” about your brand. At its heart, a unique, believable story provides a great way to make a brand more “human” and more relatable to people.

While many brands are taking this advice to heart, one thing that often sets them back is that they believe the story they are crafting needs to start with the brand, product or service. But in reality, any compelling story, whether you are writing a short story, screenplay or creating a narrative for a brand, starts with the audience you’re trying to persuade. We start with the audience’s needs, desires and experiences. Then truthfully communicate how our brand is an integral part of that story.

By way of example, I’d like to share this American Airlines ad from the 1960’s that sold the idea of First Class Business Travel. First class travel for business was (and is) a hard sell—tickets could be three or four times as much as ordinary coach travel. How could a company possibly justify paying such a premium for what most CFO’s would understandably view as a commodity?

American Airlines went about it by telling a story about the importance of “freeing the businessman from the usual annoyances” so he or she could concentrate on “winning the battle.” Reading the copy from this well-worn tear sheet (which I’ve been toting around for a few decades now) is next to impossible, so I’ve transcribed it here:

Was this ad successful? Truthfully, I have no idea. But I have to believe the story a business traveler gets from this ad would mean a heck of a lot more than a photo of the airline’s airport lounge or a claim that its seats are six inches wider than coach seats. He or she would get the idea that this airline respects what I do, and it actually delivers on ways to make my life easier.

In other words, when your create your brand story, don’t forget the main character.

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When Steve Jobs passed away last week, the world not only lost the visionary that gave us (in no particular order) the personal computer, the graphic user interface, the mouse, desktop publishing, the iPod, the online music store, the animation behind the “Toy Story” trilogy, tablet computers and smart phones.

It also lost one hell of an adman.

While I can’t attest to Jobs’ level of involvement in the creation of advertising for the Apple brand, from the stories I’ve heard, he was quite involved with the ad team at TBWA/ChiatDay. One thing I’ve learned in my many years in this business is that clients tend to end up with the advertising they deserve. Clients who settle for dreck usually end up with dreck. And clients who demand and champion great work will end up with great work.

Looking at the body of work for Apple, it’s easy to surmise Steve Jobs was a great client. Most likely not an easy one. Demanding to be sure. But great, in that he refused to settle for schlock.

My favorite Jobs story (as told by TBWA Creative Chief Lee Clow) was in regard to perhaps Apple’s most famous ad–the Ridley Scott directed “1984″ Super Bowl spot that launched MacIntosh. According to Clow, the week before the Super Bowl, Apple’s board refused to air the spot. “Under no circumstances will we pay for this to air,” they were said to say. At which point Jobs turned to his partner Steve Wozniak and said “I’ll pay for half if you’ll pay for half.” The very idea that a client felt so strongly about a concept that he would reach into his own pocket to pay for it is beyond inspiring. No wonder the folks at Chiat would walk over glass to work on the business.

For an all-to-quick summary of some of Apple’s best work under Jobs, Creativity released this “Top 5″ this week focusing strictly on Apple ads. I present it here for your enjoyment.

We’ll miss ya, Steve.

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“No. Matter. What.”

When Southwest Airlines dedicated themselves to being “THE low-fare airline,” they didn’t address it by saying “we’ll cut costs wherever it’s feasible.” They said they were THE low-fare airline—no matter what. So whenever someone from within the organization presented a business case that the airline could attract more business travelers by having wider seats, or by serving hot meals or by allowing business passengers to pre-board, instead of looking for a way to implement these initiatves cheaply, they dismissed these ideas all together. Because they got in the way of them being THE low-fare airline—no matter what.

When Nordstrom dedicated themselves to providing out-of-this-world customer service, they didn’t put a lot of “ifs” or “excepts” into it. Want to return something without a receipt? No problem. Want to return it after it’s obviously been worn a time or two? Still no problem. Want to return it, even though you don’t even know for sure it was bought there? Chances are they’ll take it. And do it with a smile. (There’s one urban legend that a man actually returned tire chains for a refund, even though Nordstroms never carried tire chains.)

Without a doubt, “No matter what” will cost you money. It may cost you some sales. It may cost you some customers. It may force you to eat some expenses. But if your brand vision is truly meaningful to your customers, and if you’re delivering it uniquely as no other organization can, that doesn’t matter. You just built and owned a valuable niche in your industry. And while others may try to copy your success, they will fail, because they’ll waffle on the “no matter what.”

One of the biggest challenges in implementing what could be a break-through Brand Vision is getting the whole organization, from the C-suite down to the street level, to buy into it and “live it” in their day-to-day transactions.

“No matter what” creates a narrative for your organization that everyone can relate to and re-tell. It eliminates wiggle room for interpreting your Brand Vision. It puts it on steroids, and eliminates the need for case-by-case interpretation. If I’m a sales clerk at Nordstroms, and I know my charge is to offer “uncompromised service, no matter what” I suddenly have permission to do whatever it takes to create a great customer story, without having to run it upstairs or refer to a policy manual.

Would your business look differently, or operate differently, if you added “no matter what” to the end of your brand vision?

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Remember when your grade school principal used to threaten you with the idea that your transgressions would go on your “permanent record?” As school kids, we all envisioned this “permanent record” as a granite slab that duly recorded every spit wad, hair pull and rubber band gun for all mankind to see.

Thanks to the Internet, there is another form of a “permanent record”: once something is said online, it’s being indexed by the major search engines. And when you Google search a company, an organization or an individual, what you get is a long list of relevant postings regarding that company or person.

The much ballyhooed permanent record.

The good news is, even though we may not be able to control all the online content out there that pertains to us, we still have an opportunity to “manage” it.

Here are five things you can do to manage your reputation online:

1) Accept that knowledge is power. If you don’t know what is being said, you won’t be able to address it. Make it a best practice to survey major social networks and blogs for comments about your company, products or competitors. Free tools such as Google Alerts and SocialMention.com can help you get started.

Too often, companies don’t like to even admit that negative things are being said about their brand. Their attitude seems to be, “If I ignore it, maybe everybody else will, too.” Reality check: they won’t.

2) Take steps to “organize the speech.” While you can’t control what people are saying about you, you can organize that speech by making sure your “good stuff” indexes high, that you add fresh, interesting content on a regular basis and that you correctly “claim” the listings (Google Places and Yelp! for example) that you are entitled to.

3) Don’t be shy about rationally responding to the not-so-good stuff. And do it with an attitude of “helping.” By “respond,” we’re not talking about arguing, justifying or trying to bribe commentators into pacification. It is more of an acknowledgment that you’ve heard the person, and you are sincere in your attempt to help them work through their issues.

While it’s understandable to think of Social Media as a dialogue with many, actually, it is a one-on-one conversation that takes place in front of a very large audience. Once your community sees how you deal with comments—both positive and negative—they’ll have a fuller view of you. For a crash course in how NOT to do this, check out this experience Kathi Kruse wrote about regarding her experience with Hertz Rent-a-Car.

4) Reach out to the people and groups that love your brand. Getting others to talk about your brand, whether on your pages or elsewhere, is a terrific way to get positive comments indexed. Embrace the people who love your brand and challenging them to speak up and share the good word.

5) Check your Google results regularly, and regularly add new dynamic content to the mix. Google doesn’t index websites, it indexes “pages.” So whenever you add a new content page to your blog, you’re giving Google one more opportunity to help you show up in a positive light.

It pays to regularly to a “Google check” of your brand and other trademarks to see what’s out there. If you come across some less-than-flattering comments about some aspect of your organization or its services, indirectly answer them by writing a blog post that provides your point of view on the matter. There’s a pretty good chance your retort will show up in the same search as the original negative content.

The advantage of knowing what’s being said about you, good and bad, is that it gives you an opportunity to respond immediately. You have a lot invested in your good name. It’s worth taking a few pro-active measures to protect it.

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Pretty obvious question, you say?

Once upon a time, naming your competition was pretty simple. Your competitors were the businesses in your market area that sold the same sort of products or services as you. But thanks to the Internet (more specifically Google), all that’s changed.

Now your competition isn’t so much who you say it is. It’s who Google says it is.

When your key word search terms are entered, who shows up? Is it the “usual suspects” you’ve been going toe-to-toe with for quite some time? Or are there new “competitors” (online or offline) that show up in the search?

Whichever is the case, before you can figure out how to take on your competition, you first have to know who they are.

For the sake of simplicity, here are four different types of competitors it pays to consider:

1. Brick-and-Mortar Competition
These are the competitors you have a pretty good handle on. They’re the ones you compete with on a fairly regular basis. If you’re Staples, your brick-and-mortar competitors are mom-and-pop stationery stores, as well as chains such as OfficeMax and OfficeDepot. Chances are you know these guys pretty well, and you’ve gotten quite adept at competing head-to-head.

2. Competition That Ranks For Your Keywords
Thanks to the Internet, it’s not just local companies you need to worry about. You also have to be aware of your search competitors – the businesses that are stealing customers by ranking for the keywords you want to be found for. The Internet doesn’t care if Jenny’s Book Emporium is run out of her parent’s basement in Nogales, AZ. If Jenny’s ranking higher on the page for your search terms than you are, tough luck. There’s a pretty good shot she’s going to steal some business that under other circumstances would likely come your way.

Let’s go back to our Staples example.

If you’re Staples and you want to rank for “hanging file folders,” your competition isn’t just the brick and mortar guys. You’re also up against Amazon, The Container Store, Walmart, Sam’s Club and who-knows-else. There doesn’t need to be a physical location within 200 miles of your storefront. If their website is showing up above yours (or comparable to yours) in the search results, they’re a direct competitor.

3. Competitors Whose Social Media Pages Rank For Your Keywords
Like most organizations, you’ve probably got a website. You might even have a Facebook page. Maybe even a LinkedIn business page. But what about the competitors who are seemingly everywhere in Social Media? They blog, they contribute to industry forums, they comment on articles. They post videos on YouTube and photos on Picasa. Keep in mind that Google indexes each and every one of these pages. And the more dynamic the content (the more frequently it is updated), the higher it will generally rank, usually against the very words you’re hoping to be found with.

This is a whole new category of “search competitor”: those who get in through the side door while everyone is trying to push through the front. This is a big reason why it’s so important to have a meaningful presence in as many social platforms as you can manage, and why all digital assets related to your brand need to be optimized for search.

4. “Share of Buzz” Competitors
Thanks to social media, there’s another class of nagging competitor to think about – the ones who are winning in the “Share of Voice” battle. These are the businesses that sell similar products or services as you but who seem to be involved in every social conversation out there. People are tweeting their stuff, sharing their links on Facebook, talking up their promotions and referencing their videos or SlideShare presentations in conversations all across the web.

Bottom line, your competitors are no longer just the names you’ve always known; your competition is anyone who gets themselves in front of your customer’s line of sight.

Once you’re aware of the volume of competition you truly have, you can take action to come out on top. Yes, a big part of that is to focus on a sound SEO strategy (more on that here). And it’s also important to have a meaningful presence across several platforms. But more than that, it is important that you truly understand the value your customers consistently say they receive from you that is unique and meaningful. And turn that value proposition into a Brand Vision that is reflected throughout your organization and your communications.

Just as you compete with your local brick-and-mortar types by being uniquely “you,” so too can you successfully compete with virtual entities—as long as you narrowly focus on what you do best.

Heck, you might even show up in your competition’s searches and steal a few sales from them.

If you’d like to read more about competing with search engine competition, I recommend checking out this thoughtful blog post from TopRank.

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Back in 1947, the then-Creative Director of Grey Advertising in New York fired off a memo that began the biggest metamorphosis the advertising business has ever known. It read:

“There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately, they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that showing people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion, and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.”

The Creative Director that composed that memo was William (Bill) Bernbach (1911-1982), who two years later would co-found an agency that would become the first to demonstrate the success a marketer can attain by fully serving the interests of the reader or viewer.

Bernbach would have celebrated his 100th birthday this weekend, and this provides a fitting time to pay homage to the man who single-handedly saved us from the hacks of the “Mad Men” era.

Bill not only supervised and championed great creative work for clients like Volkswagon, Avis, American and El-Al Airlines, Polaroid, Ohrbach’s and many many others. He elevated advertising into an art form that people actually enjoyed, critiqued and talked about.

He proved that smaller clients with smaller budgets can outperform industry leaders just by forming a human connection with the audience. He changed the way agencies worked. His model of creating teams of writers AND art directors to tackle creative assignments has been the standard in the industry for going on 50 years. And above all, he inspired tens of thousands of creative people to get into the business (yours truly included) by demonstrating the ad business to be a place where creative ideas could be championed.

Bill was a storyteller. His team worked endlessly to discover the “story” DDB’s clients had to tell. Then they told them in a way that was relevant, respectful, and above all, true.

Despite being associated with some of the most attention-getting advertising of his or any era, Bernbach never gave short shrift to the business disciplines behind it. He famously said “good ideas build sales, but great advertising builds factories.”

Bernbach’s point of “art vs. science” in his memo of 64 years ago is also of relevance to marketing practitioners of today. Endless articles, ebooks and webinars are published that fill us with “best practices” and “how-tos” for the various new media and social platforms. But what often gets lost in all this is the importance of the art of persuasion.

Today, we might give such thinking a haughty name such as “permission marketing.” Bill just called it “treating the customer with respect.”

What do you say we pay that respect forward?

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That’s a question a lot of businesses are asking.

Do one-day daily deals from Groupon, Living Social and the myriad of copycat group buying sites deliver new repeat customers? Do they add incremental profit to the bottom line? Do they allow you to generate income from unused capacity?

Or are they money-losing propositions that create ill will among regular customers and attract only opportunists who’ll never show up again?

Chances are, the answer you get probably depends on who you talk to.

The major group buying sites have only been around since the fall of 2008. And while they currently boast of heavy participation (Groupon alone claims 55 million North American subscribers, of which at least 16 million have purchased at least one Groupon), we really haven’t been able to ascertain how effective Groupons are as a marketing tool.

Now, however, a few pertinent studies have been released that, while not conclusive, at least give us some hints about how customers and businesses view Groupon-like deals.

A survey conducted by Utpal M. Dholakia at Rice University revealed that new customers made up more than 77% of deal buyers for the sites studied. All spent over the deal value and, on average, about 20% became repeat customers. And a ForeSee Results study in June showed that 62% of deal purchasers are either non-customers, lapsed customers or infrequent customers, which bolsters the position that Groupons don’t just cannibalize full-price customers.

In perhaps the most interesting study, conducted by ConsumerSearch.com and the About Group, 67% of daily deal consumers claimed to have gone back to businesses where they had previously used a daily deal. In this survey, 48% of daily deal buyers were new customers, and in the case of restaurants, 83% ended up recommending that restaurant to family or friends.

I’m sure more comprehensive research will be forthcoming shortly, and what it will show is anyone’s guess. It’s safe to say, however, that at least for some businesses, the tactic of offering a Groupon or group-buying discount could pay off. So should you take the leap?

Before you do, I’d advise you to utilize some best practices. The standard Groupon deal is half off or more the everyday price. Of the other 50%, it’s split between the issuer and Groupon. So in general, Groupons seem to work for products that have huge margins, minimal incremental costs or when inventory is not an issue. And ideally, you’ll be offering a product or service that people will have use for over and over. Offering 50% off a yoga class makes sense. Offering 50% off auto body work might not.

If you’re new to Groupon, consider limiting the number of Groupons you’ll sell. Determine what the minimum is that Groupon will issue, and start there. If you see it’s a success, then you can always sign up for another one.

Another thing you could do is be creative in your offerings. Instead of just a straight “50% off” Groupon, consider putting together a special package, or a his-and-her special.

Also, consider how you’ll handle regular customers who now pay full price. One strategy could be to send an email to your very best customers, and offer them the same deal, without going through Groupon (that way you’ll be able to pocket the 25% that would go to them). Even if they opt not to participate, they will appreciate the thought, and will feel somewhat special.

Above all, recognize that Groupons are a way for people to try you out. Front line personnel can fall into the trap of viewing Grouponers as transients, so be sure to re-enforce with them that by creating an amazing experience for these trial customers, you’re setting yourself up to grow a new wave of repeat customers, loyal customers and advocates.

We’d love to hear your experiences of using Groupon, either as an issuer or as a redeemer. Let us know your opinion in the comments.

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Raising prices is never something a business looks forward to. Even the smallest, most easily-justified increases will receive some customer backlash, especially in economically challenging times. Yet, from time to time, organizations find themselves with no other choices other than to raise prices. So is there a “less painful” way to raise prices and communicate it to customers and prospects?

As with just about any marketing-related decision, the decision to announce a price increase deserves to be focused around a plan to help minimize customer pushback, cut customer churn, and mitigate bad stories circulating about the way your price increase was handled. So how’s the best way to go about it?

Following are a few considerations that might help customers better swallow an impending rate increase.

1. Be transparent. If there are legitimate reasons why you must increase prices (and most times there are), be clear about them. Cost of materials going through the roof? Transportation costs eating you alive? Let customers know. Make that information readily available on your web site. Arm sales people with information they can share with their clients. Script Customer Service Reps so they’re able to share this with customers. Give customers plenty of notice. And be as empathetic and specific as possible. Don’t fall back on corporate-speak or lawyer-approved boilerplate pap to justify an increase. Instead of saying “Due to the fact that our costs have gone up, we’re forced to raise prices,” try being just a little more human: “Over the past few years, our cost of materials have gone up 64%. While we’ve found ways to increase efficiency and have held the line on prices as long as we could, we’re now in a position where we need to raise prices. Through efficiencies we’ve enacted, we’re fortunate enough to only have to pass a percentage of those costs on to you, our valuable customers. While we understand our 20% price increase may not be easy for some of you to absorb, please understand we are doing all we can as an organization to optimize efficiencies and control costs.” There. Customers might not be happy about a price increase. But at least they understand why.

2. Point out the value that your customers are getting from you, or better yet, use the event of the price increase as an opportunity to help them get more value from your services and products. It’s human nature to feel somewhat dissed when you get charged more but are not getting more. A key role for every marketer should be to help customers get the most value out of your products and services as they possibly can. Ideally, this is an on-going process that allows for plenty of user feedback and contribution. An example of one company that used this as an opportunity is Comcast. While research shows cable subscribers generally limit their viewing to ten or fewer networks, Comcast delivers in excess of 200 different networks. Therefore, it’s safe to say there’s a lot of content Comcast delivers that you’d like, but you haven’t discovered yet. So to help customers get more “value” from their service, Comcast can curate that content, and recommend viewing options based on your personal preferences. Delivering communications such as “If you like ‘Sex And The City’ on HBO, you owe it to yourself to check out ‘Mistresses’ on BBC America” elevates Comcast from strictly being the “pipe” that delivers media to being a partner that is helping me get discover new favorites.

3. Be clear about the business reasons—and the consequences—involved in a rate increase. This past week, Netflix announced a whopping 60% price increase to their core DVD-by-mail + video-streaming service (from $9.99 a month to $15.98 per month). Apparently, Netflix executives didn’t anticipate how much flak from customers a 60% rate increase would generate. Reportedly only 30% of callers who tried to reach the company by phone were able to speak with a Customer Service Rep. And the Netflix blog post announcing the new pricing structure has already reached its 5,000-comment limit. This from a company that up to now was seen as being a very customer-centric organization. A 60% price increase, no matter what your category, is a game-changer, and there’s no excuse for the company not anticipate that. The “value quotient” has changed so radically, there is no accurate way to predict the net results of that move. While the justification for the increase has been muddy at best, one could speculate that the company is finding the DVD-by-mail part of their business more expensive to operate than the video streaming portion. If this is the case, Netflix could have used the specter of an impending price increase to actually add new users. Once the decision was made to raise rates, they could have made the new rate applicable to all NEW accounts, effective 90 days in the future. They then could have promoted the fact that for a limited time (90 days), new subscribers can get the “grandfathered” rate (winning over the “fence-sitters”), and remind existing customers they get to keep the grandfathered rate, while utilizing tactics to move more of them to online streaming.

By employing a little creativity to the process, Netflix execs could have achieved their goal of creating more revenue while stemming churn and reinforcing its position as a category leader, instead of sitting back and hoping 1/3 of their customers don’t decide to take a powder.

Bottom line, if a rate increase process is planned for like any other marketing initiative, an organization will likely suffer fewer lost customers, less bad press and fewer bad stories that make their way across the Internet.

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