Digital marketing and the state of the mobile web: Think bigger.

From MediaPost.com, this story about the growing importance of the mobile web for advertisers (and business development programs):

Mobile experts have long advised brands and publishers to set up mobile-optimized sites that they can drive consumers to via mobile advertising. It looks like they may be catching on, with nearly half (49%) of mobile campaigns sending people to their mobile sites in April, representing a 28% increase from a year ago, according to the latest data from mobile ad network Millennial Media.

Obviously, the evolution of the mobile web as a gateway between consumers and brands is still in its infancy (and evolving slowly at that), but the potential is clear. Once advertisers finally push past the “establishing a general market presence” and “lead generation” phase, they will begin to focus on specific types of functions and services that will focus not only on customer acquisition, but also customer development and retention. (More on that below.)

One finding from Millennial Data that tends to indicate we still have a very long way to go before advertisers adopt the new realities (and capabilities) of digital is this:

Ads that involved some social component still only made up 17% of the total. By comparison, 40% of ads included a click-to-call feature.

and…

Targeting by demographic and behavioral audience made up 34% and 10% respectively.

With the effectiveness gap growing daily between the familiar sets of generalizations making up demographic modeling versus the increasing specificity of behavioral modeling through social monitoring, it is surprising to see that demographic modeling still outweighs behavioral model by a ratio of 3 to 1.

And finally this, which may be the most telling comment of all:

Social media continues to play a growing role in mobile advertising. Campaigns that let consumers take some sort of social action, from liking a Facebook page to leaving feedback on a new product, grew 39% from the prior month.

That’s great, but it means advertisers are still pushing “likes” and “follows” and “shares” as campaign outcomes. This isn’t inherently bad, mind you. These types of basic social interactions between consumers and advertisers are valuable. No question about it. But they are still 101-level outcomes reminiscent of early digital metrics like “hits” and “uniques,” which constitute only the thin (and sadly the most obvious) outer layer of metrics illustrating consumer behaviors in response to marketing, advertising and other business development activities.

Notably absent from the trends reported by Millennial’s data is an evidence of adoption of the more pioneering strategies and tactics employed by advertisers looking to distance themselves from their competitors – like Ford, Starbucks, Virgin America and even Intercontinental Hotel Group – whose use of the medium now extends beyond the obvious “presence and acquisition” play. Let me illustrate this point with a few diagrams.

First, if you are a business, let’s look at what your digital strategy should look like:

Forget for a second everything you have been told about the importance of content, reach and impressions, and typical marketing or media points of focus. Put it all aside for now, so you can focus on this. You can go back to that stuff in a few minutes.

Take a look at the above daisy chain of customer development phases. Generally speaking, a business first begins with presence (to create awareness, desire and preference), then moves into acquisition (turning a prospective customer into a transacting customer). What comes next is the development phase, where a freshly acquired customer becomes a better educated customer. This phase is often characterized by a shift from entry-level products to more advanced-level products, or from basic products to premium products. – Think of the evolution of a typical consumer in regards to a hobby like photography, triathlon or digital publishing, for example. Most people don’t start out with the pro-level stuff. They start with entry-level or mid-market products, then work their way up. This is what businesses typically focus on during the development phase. – Following this (and often overlapping it) is the retention phase, where a business and a consumer manage to keep their relationship relevant and interesting well beyond the honeymoon phase. In this phase, the consumer may have reached the end of the development journey. He or she has become a premium customer. There are no more new or exciting products to buy for a while. They’re all set. Now the trick is to make sure they don’t get bored with you, and aren’t lured away by a competitor. Finally, the last phase is the maintenance of long term loyalty (a topic we will cover again very soon).

Note that creating mechanisms of evangelism and positive WOM (word-of-mouth) can be a secondary focus for the brand in phases 2, 3, 4 and 5, which in turn help drive all five phases of development. (Again, the subject of a future post.) Worth keeping in mind as every phase, when managed properly, also enhances the others, creating new customers and developing them into loyal, frequent, eager partners for the brand.

Every business on the planet is subject to some version of this customer development process, which is why it is so relevant to our discussion today. Now let us look at what is happening today in the digital (marketing) world:

What the above diagram shows is the current digital and social media model for most brands and advertisers, the focus being on presence and acquisition, but not yet on development, retention, or long term loyalty. (Notice that I say most, not all.) This is a serious problem, and the reason why is simple: By focusing almost exclusively on presence and acquisition, current digital strategies interrupt a natural business and customer development process that must follow its course.

Think of the emphasis on presence and acquisition vs the more complete model that also encompasses development, retention and loyalty as the difference between focusing all of your energy on scoring as many one-nigh-stands with complete strangers as possible, and building healthy relationships with other human beings. The parallels aren’t exact (in business, healthy relationships still have to scale), but the metaphor helps illustrate the inherent flaw of the incomplete model: Shallow objectives produce shallow results. Not to mention that acquisition devoid of development, retention and loyalty essentially signals a slightly less than social behavior. One might even make the argument that it signals a rather anti-social type of behavior.

This isn’t to say that an incomplete digital strategy will utterly ruin a company’s efforts in the development, retention and loyalty-building phases of the process, but it will – at best – fail to support these efforts, and – at worst – either hinder or interrupt them in regards to increasingly important digital channels.

Would it not be simpler, then, to make sure that your digital strategy supports every phase of this process? Of course. Why is it, then, that so few digital strategies – with social media components or not – fail to focus on post-acquisition phases? Think about that.

Simple stuff, but you have to be aware of these types of mechanisms in order to see where marketing strategies tend to fall short. If you are an agency especially, don’t just focus on specialized tasks and familiar service models. See the bigger picture. “See the field,” as a military commander would say. For a digital strategy to be effective, for it to bear fruit, it has to be complete, it has to cover all the angles, it has to generate more opportunities for both the client and the agency than existed yesterday.

Stop and ask yourselves the question: Are your digital activities mostly geared towards establishing a presence on digital channels and attracting customers, or do they also help develop and retain them? What about long term engagement and actual relationship-building with loyal customers (not just a default ‘community management’ stopgap)? Are you really there yet? Still think all this is mostly about content, impressions, media value, follows and mentions?

Think bigger. You’re on the right track, but you’re still stuck in first gear.

Cheers,

Olivier

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Since it’s June, here are this month’s three quick little announcements:

One – If you haven’t read “Social Media ROI: Managing and measuring social media efforts in your organization” yet, you will find 300 pages of insights with which to complement this article. It won’t answer all of your questions, but it will answer many of them. If anything, the book is a pretty solid reference guide for anyone responsible for a social media program or campaign. It also makes a great gift to your boss if you want him or her to finally understand how this social media stuff works for companies.

You can sample a free chapter and find out where to buy the book by checking out www.smroi.net.

Two – If you, your agency or your client plan on attending the Cannes Lionsfrom June 19-25, I am planning something a little… “unofficial” during the festival. If you are interested in being part of it, let me know.

You can send me an email, a note via LinkedIn, a Twitter DM, or a facebook message if you want to find out more. (The right hand side of the screen should provide you with my contact information.)

Three – If the book isn’t enough and you can’t make it to Cannes later this month, you can sign up for a half day of workshops in Antwerp (Belgium) on 30 June. (Right after the Lions.) The 5 one-hour sessions will begin with an executive briefing on social media strategy and integration, followed by a best practices session on building a social media-ready marketing program, followed by a PR-friendly session on digital brand management, digital reputation management and real-time crisis management, followed by a session on social media and business measurement (half R.O.I., half not R.O.I.). We will cap off the afternoon with a full hour of open Q&A. As much as like rushing through questions in 5-10 minutes at the end of a presentation, wouldn’t it be nice to devote an entire hour to an audience’s questions? Of course it would. We’re going to give it a try. Find out more program details here. Think of it as a miniRed Chair.

The cool thing about this structure is that you are free to attend the sessions that are of interest to you, and go check your emails or make a few phone if one or two of the sessions aren’t as important. The price is the same whether you attend one or all five, and we will have a 15 minute break between each one.

The afternoon of workshops is part of Social Media Day Antwerp (the Belgian arm of Mashable’s global Social Media Day event), and I can’t help but notice that the price of tickets is ridiculously low for what is being offered. The early bird pricing is… well, nuts. Anyone can afford to come, which is a rare thing these days. (Big props to the organizers for making the event so accessible.)

The event is divided into 2 parts: The workshop in the afternoon, and the big Belgian style party in the evening. You can register for one or both (do both).

Register here: Social Media Day – Antwerp

My advice: Sign up while there are still seats available, and before #smdaybe organizers realize they forgot to add a zero at the end of the ticket prices. 

Cheers,

Olivier.

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A Better Business Doctrine – Part 1: Assholes are bad for business.

Every doctrine has to start somewhere. Even this one.

Want to boost your repeat business, get tons of free referrals, acquire bunches of new customers and get lots of positive buzz for free? There’s a pretty simple way to do it that doesn’t have to cost you a whole lot. Can you guess what it is?

Simple: Purge your company of assholes.

In fact, let me share item #1 in my Better Business Doctrine with you real quick. Are you ready? Here we go:

The customer-facing organization with the least amount of assholes wins.

That’s it.

A simple example, from the friendly skies.

Does this seem like common sense? Of course it does. And yet here we are, routinely forced to endure a passive-aggressive or plain argumentative jerks who would rather exercise their “authority” than provide customers – even stressed out customers – with pleasant experiences. Why is that? Let me answer that question: Because companies are still hiring assholes.

Let me give you a few examples just from the past week:

1a. The Continental flight I was on last week

Flight Attendant (sternly) to a passenger in the process of turning off their iPad, just not quickly enough: “SIR! I need you to turn that off right now!” (Stares angrily at passenger until the device is turned off, and walks away, visibly annoyed.)

This probably happens to flight crews 20+ times per day. Every time a plane pushes off from the gate and prepares its approach, passengers in the middle of a song, of a paragraph, of a game of Angry Birds or Brick Breaker take an extra 10-30 seconds to “comply” with the “please turn off your electronic devices at this time” announcement on the PA. I get it. It probably gets annoying after a while. But guess what: You’re a flight attendant. Asking people to turn off their electronic toys comes with the job. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. Case in point:

1b: The Delta flight I was on the following day

– Flight Attendant (with a smile, jokingly) to a passenger so absorbed by what he was reading that he missed the “turn off your electronic devices” announcement and kept his Kindle going: “Good book?”

– Passenger, sensing that he was the object of the flight attendant’s attention, looks up from his device: “I’m sorry?”

– Flight Attendant, nonchalantly points at the Kindle: “Good reading?”

– Passenger, smiling back: “Yeah. Very!” (Gets it. Laughs. Starts to look for the “off” button.)

– Flight attendant: “You can turn it back on as soon as we’re on the ground.” (Walks away. Stops. Turns around.) “The book. What is it?”

Passenger answers. Flight attendant repeats the title as if to remember it, nods as if interested, and returns to his station.

The difference between the two isn’t training or pay. It isn’t corporate policy or procedure. It isn’t even company culture. The difference between the two occurrences is this:

One of these flight attendants, at some point during the course of her day, week, month, year or career, decided to let her asshole flag fly. The other one didn’t.

The basic impact of an asshole on your customers

How every asshole on your payroll affects your brand equity and impacts your business on a daily basis.

The impact of just one asshole’s behavior in a customer-facing role doesn’t stop with the one customer they treat poorly. Ten rows of passengers witnessed the exchanges on both flights, and I can guarantee that the ten rows on the Continental flight (30 passengers) were not impressed, while those on the Delta flight surely were. The ramifications of this are simple:

Whatever shot Continental had at influencing these 30 people to develop a preference for flying its friendly skies, for being more loyal, for looking to book future flights with them first, just flew out the window, not because of price, not because of delays, not because the plane was dirty. The price was great. The plane left on time and was impeccable. Continental did everything right except one thing: Someone there allowed an asshole (and probably more than one) to take on a key customer service role. Delta, on the other hand, scored some points.

And just to be fair, I’ve run into my fair of assholes working for Delta too. Few domestic US airlines seem immune to this phenomenon these days, except for perhaps Alaska Air, whose service and hiring practices, to my knowledge are still impeccable.

That said, my experience with Delta flight crews this week was stellar, and not just because of this little anecdote. (Expect another post about what else happened very soon.) The difference between the two airlines for me was limited to my experience, as it is for all of us. Before the recommendations and the word-of-mouth and the marketing, our own experience shapes our bias.

Every positive experience creates positive associations with a brand, while every negative experience creates a negative association with a brand. More positive than negative = positive bias, preference, even loyalty. Consistent negative experiences (especially those that repeat themselves, like frequent delays, rude employees, apathetic managers, or being talked down to by an unprofessional asshole) = negative bias, preference for your competitors instead of you, and cynicism towards your brand.

The wheels of this mental equation – more emotional than empirical – start turning every time the thought of your brand comes up, and you need to understand it isn’t linear. The way we process the negative and the positive isn’t as balanced as you might think. For whatever reason, until you have grown into a loyal fan of the brand, the equation tends to be heavily weighed towards the negative: What you did right six months ago – or for the last thirty years,- doesn’t matter nearly as much as what you did wrong yesterday or just last week. That’s part 1 of how the mental math of brand experiences work. Part 2 is this: People will easily forgive incidents and accidents: Lost luggage, no available upgrades, long lines at the counter, mechanical problems, etc. Those things are out of your control, and once the anger and frustration subside, they’ll get it. Those negative impressions will evaporate. But one thing customers won’t forgive of any company: Being deliberately treated badly by an asshole.

Just as being an asshole  is a choice, – especially when dealing with a customer – hiring an asshole and keeping them on staff is also a choice. Because of this immutable fact, every company bears its part of responsibility in the hiring and promoting of assholes. Customers instinctively understand this, which is why when they run into one of your company’s assholes, they don’t blame the asshole for treating them poorly, they blame you. They blame the brand. The negative association they take home with them isn’t with that person (whose name and face they will forget inside of a week), but with you. Your assholes are faceless. All customers remember is the context: You. Your company. Your brand. The asshole just goes on being an asshole day after day, happy to have a job that pays him – even rewards him – for being a complete raging asshole all day long.

At the end of their shift, what you have to understand is that assholes in your employ don’t lose customers. You do. You spend your resources bringing them to the cash register, and every asshole on your staff spends all day making sure they never come back.

For this reason if none other, choose and evaluate your employees carefully.

The impact of just one asshole - amplified by social media

The real cost of letting assholes poison your brand from the inside.

If you are in business and have employees, let me be VERY clear about this: You are always only one asshole away from losing your best customer. The more assholes you have on staff, the faster and more often this will happen.

Not only that, but assholes tend to turn off, not only the one customer they happen to be unpleasant to, but everyone within earshot as well.

And today, ladies and gentlemen, “within earshot” isn’t just the ten rows on the plane or the ten people in the store waiting to check out. It is also potentially the hundreds of thousands of Facebook and Twitter users who might get a glimpse of that negative experience and be turned off in turn. Even millions, for that matter. (See previous 2 images, inspired by David Armano’s “Influence Ripples” theory (Edelman), below:)

David Armano's "Influence Ripples" (Edelman)

Let me give this a financial angle for you: Over the course of a year, one asshole on your staff, just one, can invalidate every dime your company has spent on advertising, marketing and PR. That’s the real liability of assholes. For small businesses, an asshole might only cost you $10,000 in wasted marketing, messaging or brand positioning. If you’re a bigger company, the same asshole (or a whole army of them, which is more likely) could cost you hundreds of millions of dollars in wasted marketing and brand management dollars.

That was part 1 of that equation. Part 2 is measured in lost revenue from disappointed customers taking their business elsewhere (your competitors thank you), lost revenue from all of the net new customers delighted customers would have recommended you to (but didn’t, because your assholes chased them away), and so on.

As a result, the higher the proportion of assholes to caring professionals a company has on staff, the more likely it is to have to spend more and more on marketing (with increasingly diminishing returns), while customer retention falls flat and even starts to dip into the red. Assholes aren’t just bad for customer service or your brand’s image. Assholes are bad for business. They are a counter-current to your hopes and dreams. They are the cancer that first weighs you down, then eventually makes your brand begin to fail, then wither, then die.

So let me repeat today’s lesson: The customer-facing organization with the least amount of assholes wins.

Don’t believe me? Ask Zappos. If you have never heard of Zappos, they sell shoes on the internet. That’s it. Well… LOTS of shoes. So many in fact that Amazon bought them for a pretty penny. Not only that, but Amazon decided not to make any major changes to Zappos’ leadership or culture. They left Zappos alone because the model works well just as it is. What’s Zappos’ secret? The customer experiences they create are stellar. Why are they stellar? Because Zappos pretty much has a “no asshole on staff” policy. Their hiring practices focus on this, and for good reason: They know that a happy customer is a loyal customer.

The simple truth (and we all know this) is that happy customers are good for business. In fact, no. They are GREAT for business: The happier a customer is, the more likely it is that they will come back, spend more, spend more often, and recommend you to all their friends. This is what you want. This is what makes businesses insanely successful. This. You don’t have to invent the iPad to be a huge success. Zappos just sells shoes on the internet. Virgin Airlines just flies people from airport to airport. Intercontinental Hotels (disclosure: client) are basically just… hotels. We’re not talking space walks or time travel, here. Your favorite restaurant, your favorite coffee shop, your favorite mechanic, none of them necessarily reinvented the wheel, right? They didn’t win a Nobel prize for revolutionizing their industries. No. What they did was this: They figured out that a happy customer is good for business, so they focused on that. They earned your trust, your respect and your loyalty. Want to know how they did that? By giving you theirs.

Let me let you in on a little secret: An asshole doesn’t think that way. An asshole doesn’t think about happy customers. He doesn’t care about happy customers. An asshole only thinks about himself: His own mood, his own frustrations, his own personal dramas, his own power trips. An asshole doesn’t give anyone their trust, respect or loyalty. Assholes just don’t think that way. And that is precisely the rub: No matter how well you pay them, you can’t make assholes give a shit. And that is bad for business. Very bad.

A fork in the road for every organization:

Do you know one way to make sure your customers are always happy? Only hire people who want your customers to be happy too. People who want to be helpful, who want to fix problems, who take pride in making someone’s day better instead of worse. People who genuinely want to see the company do well. People with pride and self respect and ambition beyond their own bank account or advancement. Do you think this is too hard? It isn’t. Just hire better.

Want to guess how to guarantee that your customers will not be happy? Hire assholes to take care of them. (It works every time.)

That’s your choice: Door A or Door B.

Door A: Hire super nice, helpful people and your business will soar.

Door B: Hire assholes, and your business will forever struggle to stay afloat.

Every time you run into one of your employees (or candidates) and he or she acts like an asshole, I want you to think about that. I want you to think about how much harder you want to have to work to make your business successful once they start pissing off every customer and client they come in contact with.

Taking a step back so you can see your entire business now, how many assholes do you really want on your payroll, and how many customers do you want to put them in front of? Pull out a piece of paper and write down a number. Do it. Write it down. How many assholes do you want on your payroll?

Next to that number, write down how many assholes you have on your payroll now. Go through your mental org chart, and start counting them in your head. When you’re done, write down how many assholes you know are in your company right now. If that number is higher than the first number you wrote down, you have some cleaning up to do.

In closing, let me leave you with the top 5 ways to make sure that your company starts becoming asshole-proof.

Top 5 ways of asshole-proofing your company:

1. Don’t hire assholes. They are bad for business, and they breed inside organizations like weeds.

2. Don’t promote assholes. The only thing worse than an asshole is an asshole with authority (including the authority to hire and promote assholes when you aren’t paying attention).

3. Give your current assholes the “opportunity” to go work for your fiercest competitor. Do this immediately. Make sure the door doesn’t hit them in the ass on their way out.

4. Once removed, replace your former assholes with nice, smart friendly people. (They’re out there and they want to work for you, but your assholes probably already turned them down. Go find them and invite them back.)

5. Reward all of your employees for NOT being assholes.

That just about takes care of it for today. Any questions?

Inspired (in a good way) by conversations with Julien Smith, Geoff Livingston, Keith Burtis, Chris Brogan, Kristi Colvin, Tyler Durden, Jeffrey Jacobs, Peter Shankman, among others.

*          *          *

And in case you haven’t picked one up yet (or your favorite client seems to be having trouble figuring out how to bring social media into their organization), you can pick up a fresh copy of Social Media ROI at fine book stores everywhere. If you have sworn off paper, you can also download it for iPad, Kindle, Nook or other e-formats at www.smroi.net.

(Click here for details, or to sample a free chapter.)

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Starbucks: Managing a brand’s expansion – Part 2

 

Source: http://www.funz.eu/2010/09/20/brand-tattoos-25-pics/

Problem: You have an established global brand but it is tied to a specific category. Your expansion plans require you to move outside of  that category. What do you do?

Solution A: Rebrand yourself in an effort to distance yourself from your core business and its ‘restrictive’ category. Become more generic in your focus while maintaining some degree of visual familiarity with an evocative but adaptable logo that can easily fit on anything, from laptops and wine glasses to media players and shampoo bottles.

Solution B: Create a hierarchy/structure for your company that allows you to expand into other categories while preserving your core business and successful brand anchors. Create a new logo if one doesn’t already exist to differentiate the corporate entity from consumer brands.

It appears that Starbucks has opted for Solution A:

I would have opted for option B:

 

Incidentally, this has been done before, and with pretty decent success:

 

 

 

GM's lineup - circa not 2011

 

Starbucks already owns at east two brands that have distanced themselves – if not from Starbucks itself – from the Starbucks logo: 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea, and Seattle’s Best. It stands to reason then, that Starbucks Corporate is perfectly capable (and willing) to manage more than just the Starbucks brand. Unfortunately, they are both coffee/coffee shop brands as well. Ideally, Starbucks should consider reversing its current model of branding various coffee endeavors under three different identities while trying to brand new business ventures under the Starbucks umbrella. The opposite – branding its coffee endeavors under the Starbucks Coffee brand while branding music, wine and everything else they experiment with as something non-Starbucks Coffee – would make more sense.

The question isn’t whether Starbucks should or shouldn’t expand into other markets – like music, wine, food, lifestyle products and even travel. Of course Starbucks should. Companies need to grow, and the coffee shop vertical simply won’t satisfy that need for the Seattle-based company. Starbucks therefore needs to expand elsewhere. Its successive attempts at creating extensions with music kiosks, wine and beer, candy, instant coffee and ice cream have all been good tests for the brand. The real question is: How does the coffee brand “uncoffee” itself enough to be able to transcend this category without diluting its brand – in that category?

Rebranding isn’t the solution. Removing “Starbucks Coffee” from the Starbucks Coffee logo isn’t it either. And making your biggest brand asset – the Starbucks cup of coffee – look bland and less than authentic isn’t it either. What this type of rebranding does is exactly what you want to avoid: It dilutes the brand, angers core customers, further increases the distance between consumers and the promise of the authentic Pike Street Starbucks experience, and does absolutely nothing to clarify Starbucks’ brand universe for consumers.

What you want to do is bring clarity to your brand environment and allow it to grow without disturbing your existing brands. You create something like this:

At the heart of the expansion puzzle for Starbucks seems to be the way the company views its own distribution channel: Starbucks coffee shops seem to have become labs for every “shift” idea. Overnight, coffee shops find themselves turned into music stores and sandwich joints and wine bars… and then back into coffee shops again when the latest idea doesn’t scale. This dependence on Starbucks Coffee stores is in and of itself a hurdle Starbucks needs to address in its quest for clarity. Truth is that if Starbucks wants to get into the wine business, Starbucks needs to start a wine business. If Starbucks wants to launch music stores, Starbucks need to launch music stores. What Starbucks cannot continue to do is dilute the coffee shop business with every new idea that comes along. This latest step – essentially “uncoffeeing” the Starbucks logo – further unanchors the Starbucks experience inside the coffee shops from the vital core coffee experience upon which Starbucks built its brand over the last 40 years. There is danger of diluting the brand in this way. Unfocused brands tend to lose relevance.

With the logo change, Starbucks’ brand narrative unravels itself into a loose brand extension grail quest:  By 2015, will we still be walking into coffee shops or will we be walking into lifestyle emporiums of music, gourmet pizza, protein smoothies and wine tastings? Will Starbucks also sell bread, like Panera? Will it sell donuts like Dunkin? Will it go after McDonalds by also offering gourmet burgers for lunch? Which begs the question:

What is Starbucks if its coffee business is no longer about coffee?

The question is much bigger than a logo redesign.

In order to change, Starbucks needs to think beyond the obvious logo update. The puzzle here, while not difficult to figure out, is a little more complex than a bit of uninspired graphic design wizardry. The company’s strategic expansion model needs a little clarity and structure. Starbucks need a plan more than it needs a new logo.

Focus, Starbucks. Focus. We love you and want to see you succeed, but you need to think this through just a little bit harder. The logo should have been just a cool little detail, not the centerpiece of what comes next.

Cheers.

 

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Social Media For Business: Taking Your Program Beyond Marketing Campaigns.

I posted a different version of this post a few months ago, but it’s time to bring it back up in case you, your client or your boss missed it.

First things first: Pushing your marketing campaign through social media channels isn’t “social.” It’s marketing. Nothing has changed.

Your marketing department or agency might be telling you that you have a social media program, but you don’t. You might be paying for “social,” but that isn’t what you are getting for your money. What is really happening is this: You are buying the same digital marketing campaigns you were buying five years ago, except now, they also include Facebook, Twitter and Youtube.

You can call it “social” all you want, but it isn’t. Let me illustrate what I mean:

A marketing campaign not using social media

This (above) is a typical example of what happens in the course of a successful marketing, PR or advertising campaign. Best case scenario: You spend money on the campaign, the campaign generates attention while it is funded, people buy some of your stuff, and when the money runs out, things go back to where they were before the campaign started.

Now let me show you what happens when you incorporate social media into the same campaign mechanism. Ready? This is going to blow your mind. Here we go:

A marketing campaign using social media

Pretty wild, huh?

If you didn’t notice the subtle sleight of hand, let me illustrate the concept slightly differently. Ready?

Your campaign without social media:

And now the same campaign with social media:

See what happened here? Totally different thing, right? (Thanks to Daniel Agee for the clever visual subterfuge. Inserting a human head onto my body was pretty impressive photoshop mastery.)

So… right. In the end, it is exactly the same thing, just wrapped in a different skin.

If you are using social media channels for “marketing” and mostly for campaigns, no wonder you aren’t getting any concrete results: You are doing the same old stuff that already was working marginally well five years ago, only it has been repackaged to sound hip with the times and include a few more channels. That’s it. The only problem is this: You aren’t doing “social.” You are still basically just creating content, pushing it out to potential customers, and hoping they will bite.

And that is why you are getting nowhere in social media, no matter how many people click “follow” or “like” on your stuff.

Fact: Calling “marketing” by another name or adding “social media” to it won’t change what it is: Marketing. Just because your ad agency’s digital department has rebranded itself a “social media” department doesn’t mean anything has changed or improved. Same products and services, different skin. That’s it. Don’t limit yourself to that. If you want to make social media work for your organization, think beyond marketing. Think beyond campaigns. See the whole field.

By the way, if you are gauging success by measuring retweets, followers, shares and “likes,” I guess you also gauge success by measuring website hits, right? Same deal. Same ridiculous, empty, diversionary metrics that mean absolutely nothing. People clicking on buttons on the internet is about as valuable to your business as counting how many cars drive by your office every day.

Want to see the difference between a company that takes its social media program seriously versus one that only uses social media for marketing campaigns?

Here is what a business that uses social media for marketing looks like:

Each one of those arrows represents a campaign. If you think of campaigns as microcycles of spend, attention and impact, the above diagram shows six subsequent campaigns and their long term impact on business growth. The orange line above the campaign microcycles illustrates temporary jumps in sales or business growth, which tend to wane between campaigns but remain relatively flat over time. This line shows anywhere between 0% to 10% annual growth.

Now let’s look at companies using social media more holistically:

Note that in the above example, social media is used for more than just campaigns. The business is using social media not only to acquire new customers or trigger a spike in business, but to retain customers as well, to develop them into active community participants, loyal repeat customers, thereby increasing their buy rate, transaction yield, and their reach into lateral networks through organic word of mouth. In this model, campaigns are merely marketing microcycles of attention in a larger growth strategy focusing on building customer relationships.

Another way to look at the process is this:

If you aren’t familiar with plateaus, the stair-like portion of the diagram illustrates what role the campaigns play in a model where social media is integrated into a business in every department: customer service, technical support, community management, product management, PR, HR, R&D, etc.

In this model, campaigns drive attention and participation, just as before. Social media activity, through community management, online customer service, customer engagement and other truly social modes of social communications help maintain (even stabilize) customer participation not only in dialog but in transactions as well. Social communications become the answer to the “now what?” question asked in the first two diagrams of this post: Use each campaign to get you to the next level of attention and activity, and instead of letting it all die back down once the campaign is over, maintain it through engagement. Once things settle at that level, get to the next plateau using another campaign.

There’s a lot more to explain, but that would make for a very long blog post. I hope this was helpful.

Cheers,

Olivier

 

 

 

 

Pre-order Social Media ROI: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization (Que Biz-Tech/Pearson) on Amazon.com or Barnes&Noble.com, or recommend it to someone today.

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Care or die: Because customer loyalty isn’t really rocket science.

If you don’t care about your customers (or as Gary Vaynerchuck would say, “if you don’t give a f*ck about your customers,”) you are wasting your time with social media.

Your customers aren’t wallet with legs. They are people, and here is the thing about people: People prefer to do business with people, companies and brands they like; people, companies and brands that make them feel good; people, companies and brands they trust; people, companies and brands they feel a connection with.

I don’t care how good your content is and how many people visit your site. Keep telling me how many fans and followers you have, and how many unique visitors your website gets. That all sounds great, and yeah, it looks pretty swell on paper. But the reality of your situation is this: If you don’t care about your customers, they will sense it, and they will return your apathy.

Do you know how to inspire loyalty in your customers? I’ll tell you: It isn’t by training them to expect 20% off or by sending them coupons in the mail. It isn’t by sending them rebate checks or making every tenth drink free. You inspire loyalty in your customers by demonstrating your loyalty towards your customers. That’s right: You have to give before you can receive. You, as a company, have to set the tone, and the only way to do that is to give a shit.

I walked into a Staples yesterday to buy a cartridge of ink toner. The plan: $22. I also walked out with an i-Omega portable hard drive and a few 4GB thumb drives for Red Chair. The outcome: $100+. You know how that happened? Simple: From the moment I walked into that store, its employees greeted me with smiles and treated me like they would a friend. They didn’t try to sell me anything, they didn’t push me towards any upgrades, and none of it felt contrived. They just seemed to care. Not only did the store increase its yield in this instance (and not by a mere 10-20%), it also ensured that next time I need something for the office, I will shop there instead of online or across the street at one of their competitors’ locations.

Staples loyalty verdict: Very high.

Compare that with my latest experiences at Bloom (a grocery store), where none of the people who work there even bother to make eye contact with me.

Bloom loyalty verdict: You must be joking.

Social media is not just another set of marketing channels for companies to push content and messaging. Sure, you can use it as a marketing channel (in moderation) but the power of the space is to scale those 1-1 interactions customers have around brands and the experiences they foster. Companies whose leaders and employees care tend to shine in Social Media. Companies whose employees and managers don’t care, even when they produce decent content, go nowhere in the space.

As a quick illustration of of what I mean, let us turn to Twitter: The marketing world’s 140-character “what the hell are we supposed to do with this channel” puzzle du jour.

I am going to show you two examples now. One of a beverage company that cares about its customers, and one of a beverage company that cares mostly about itself… and even talks to itself, though mostly to pat itself on the back for being like, awesome. You decide which is which.

Incidentally, it might be worth noting that one of these two companies has kind of struggled to acquire its 46,000 followers on Twitter over the last 2 years or so. The other has well over a million. Guess which is which. (Hint as to why: One focuses on customers and the other focuses on itself.)

Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, nothing says “I don’t really give a shit about you but heck, maybe you’ll buy something anyway” like an auto DM on Twitter. Don’t know what I am talking about? Here are some examples:

My favorite thing about those automated “hi, I really care” little nuggets of gold is the fact that so many of them get cut short: Look at the @Retail_City and @jobpsalms auto-DMs above. Okay, Job. I’ll “try to keep it REAL” if you d…

Way to make a good first impression in a SOCIAL medium. As executives, employees, brand ambassadors and representatives of your respective companies, do you walk around with a recording of yourself at parties and industry events? When someone shakes your hand, do you step aside so an assistant can hand them your card and deliver a 140-character sales pitch? When a client or customer walks up to you and says “hey, I’m glad I ran into you. I have a problem with the thing I bought from you,” do you respond by handing them a brochure and walking away? Of course not. So why is it that so many companies think that this is acceptable behavior in the social media space?

Give a shit. It really isn’t that complicated. If you just do that, if you start there, everything will fall into place. If you don’t give a shit, and you show it by monologuing with “content” and selling all day, guess what: You’ve already lost to the guy in your industry who takes the time to actually shake hands, and makes time for real dialog. It was always this way, but the integration of social media into the business world has amplified the effect: If as a company, you demonstrate daily that don’t give a shit about your customers, they will return the favor by not giving a shit about you. The implications are simple: The more customers care about you, the more likely it is that you will have a good quarter. The less they care about you, the more likely it is that you will have a lousy quarter. Some things, you can’t automate or outsource. Your relationship with customers is one of them. That applies to the web as well as the “in store” experience.

So here’s a thought: Instead of spending so much time working on your “content strategy,” your “digital strategy” and your “social media strategy,” why don’t you focus on your “we give a shit” strategy? Try that for a month and see what happens. Trust me, the “content,” “digital” and “social media” will take care of themselves. You will barely be able to keep up – and that will be a good thing.

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Social Media program planning 101: Purpose matters

The Bird Man of Notre Dame - ©2010 Olivier Blanchard

Just a quick note to start off the week: Purpose matters.

Just a year ago, many of us were bemoaning the absence of major brands on the twitternets, myself included. PR departments were too slow to get into the space. Brand managers were still, for the most part, alien to the world of Social Media. Most organizations were at best cautious to enter the space when not overtly reluctant to do so, even dismissive.

Today, as companies and their agencies are finally beginning to dip their toes and even try a few strokes on their own in the deep end of the pool, we seem faced with a different problem: An epidemic absence of purpose.

The thing (social media) has, in many instances, replaced the why.

Instead of hearing executives ask “can we use Social Media to increase our reach, to better manage our brand’s reputation, to improve customer service, to recruit better candidates or to grow our business,” what I still hear most often is “What should our Social Media strategy focus on?” Or, as it where “okay, we have a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Now what?”

Wrong approach.

Here is how it works:

Business problem –> Business Strategy to solve the problem –> Incorporate Social Media into said business strategy

Example:

Business Problem: Angry customer voices are impacting our reputation. This threatens our ability to acquire new customers and retain existing ones. We could see a drop in sales over the next 6 to 18 months if we don’t fix this.

Business Strategy: Address angry customers’ concerns. Set the record straight on fallacies, while acknowledging legitimate grievances and promising to make necessary changes.

SM Integration: Monitor conversations in digital channels. Respond to positive and negative comments and mentions. Track changes in sentiment over time (manually). Establish discussion zones on appropriate social networks and via adequate social web platforms – This will help funnel topics and showcase the way we respond to the crisis. Use the space to ask for suggestions and ideas – This will help turn negative comments into constructive recommendations and a portion of angry customers into strategic assets. etc.

See?

Here is how it does not work:

Social Media is the new big thing –> Get into Social Media –> Develop Social Media Strategy –> Wait… what?

Every program or campaign an organization funds supports some kind of business objective:

Acquiring net new customers.

Retaining existing customers.

Attenuating a PR crisis.

Managing a company’s reputation.

Amplifying the reach of a particular message.

Selling more stuff.

Gathering business intelligence.

You name it. There are dozens upon dozens of possibilities. I am not even talking about R.O.I. here, but outcomes in general: Business outcomes. The types of outcomes which serve a purpose.

Wondering what an organization’s Social Media strategy should be is very much the same as wondering about what its telephone strategy would be: It is the wrong question.

Furthermore, as we will discuss later this week, if hiring a Social Media Manager serves the purpose of driving a Social Media strategy, then the purpose of the Social Media strategy is to drive… what? A Social Media Strategy? (No.) Strategies are driven by objectives and objectives are driven by purpose.

Before jumping into the Social Media pool (and you should), consider the why of it. As an organization, why do you want to be active in Social Networks? What will your activity there aim to drive for your business?  What is your purpose for being there?

To engage more? To participate in conversations? Okay. But why? Those are activities. They are not purpose.

Before launching a program or assigning resources to a new Social Media program, figure out where you want to go with it. Think about purpose and results, not just emulating your competitors.

Cheers,

Olivier

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Which brands do you wish you could help shine?

We’re all passionate about at least one company. One brand. One little logo or mark that got under our skin in a good way for one reason or another. My father has had a love affair with Aston martin, BMW, Smalto, Cartier, Omega, RayBan and Mont Blanc for as long as I can remember. My mother: Hermes, Celine, LeNotre, Autobianchi, Corvette and Baskin Robbins. My brother: Apple, Canon and Sony. It wasn’t always so, but brands help define us. Like it or not, they are part of our identity. The brands we choose to make our own make up a very visible outward-facing layer that gives our tastes and preferences texture, language and context: You’re either a Mac or a PC, a Canon or a Nikon, a Nike or an Adidas.

On a superficial level, the Kenneth Cole pants you wear tell an onlooker as much about you as the Starbucks cup in your hand and the Panerai watch on your wrist. But on a deeper, more emotional level, the success of a brand is something we find ourselves vested in, not just because our image may be tied to that of a company’s (its success implies our own), but because we genuinely care about the welfare of a brand which – in a very real way – is as much a part of our world as a favorite sports team, favorite artist, and even a friend or close relative.

When I was a kid, Sony was one of the brands I looked up to the most. Before Apple was Apple, Sony was – at least in my mind – the leader in electronics: Their first Walkman was the “it” product for quite some time, soon followed by their bright yellow (and other special edition colors – I had a black one) sports walkman. Their TVs and stereo systems were also among the most sought-after. Sony wasn’t necessarily first to market, but they still managed to own every market they focused on. Fast forward to 2010, and the picture changes. Sony is still here, still a major player in the electronics market, but far from the pole position it enjoyed 25 years ago. And as a childhood fan of the brand, as a life-long user of Sony products, it bothers me to no end. It isn’t as if Sony stopped making great products: Their Playstation 3 console is stellar. I am typing this blog post on a Sony VAIO that is by far the best PC/laptop I have ever owned. But… Sony’s market leadership is no more. No matter how great its products may be, it has lost its touch. Things simply aren’t the same anymore. And that can be fixed, dare I say… easily.

Sadly, the idea that brands are in a very real way living, breathing entities, that they are born, that they grow and mature and eventually die is one that seldom makes in into strategic discussions in the C-suite or in most Marketing departments. Yet it should be. Market share and sales numbers alone do not define the success and relevance of a brand. They never have. Ask Cartier. Ask Apple. Ask Starbucks and McDonald’s, even.

Everywhere I look, I see brands on the rise and brands faltering: Apple’s star has never shone brighter than it does now. Ford also weathered the storm that threatened to shatter the American auto industry less than two years ago, and came out of the gauntlet a better, smarter, cooler brand. Google hasn’t fared too badly either. They’re the lucky few. Others aren’t faring so well. Whether stalled or outright slipping downward, many brands seem to be struggling to either hold on to past glories or reach the next level in their rise to success, and it pains me. As a consumer and as a brand management guy, it actually weighs on me. I wish I could help them. I wish there were some way. Sometimes, I get lucky and I have an opportunity to help, but not often enough. Not nearly often enough. I was thinking about this in my car this morning, and started making a mental list of companies I wish I could advise, companies whose brands I wish I could help rebuild, and what I came up with looks like this:

Sony: Because it should be Apple’s biggest rival, and so easily could be. In short, Sony should own every market in which a product plugs into a wall or a USB port and emits a sound. Not only that, but the Sony brand has to restore its cohesiveness: Sony, like Apple, needs to be sought again. Its line of products can’t be scattered as it is now, its success jagged and unclear. The products are there, but there’s a lot of work to be done in terms of marketing, PR, awareness and promotion.

McDonald’s (US): Because it seems to have lost track of its own identity. Who are they trying to emulate this week? Starbucks? Strangely, this identity problem doesn’t seem to have spread to the European market. I visited three McDonald’s locations in France last month (two in Paris and one in Cannes), and the general consensus was this: “Why can’t McDonald’s be like this in the US?” The question stands: Why can’t it?  Added bonus: Why hasn’t McDonald’s penetrated grocery store and toy store markets yet?

Nike*: Because in spite of the best advertising, R&D and endorsements on the planet, it is making the same mistakes Sony did in the mid 1990s: Nike cannot hope to ride the momentum of its past success forever. Change always comes one way or another.

* This isn’t so much restoring Nike to market leadership as much as it is ensuring that it doesn’t let it slip from its fingers.

Starbucks: Because, like McDonald’s, it seems to have jumped the track. Confusion kills brands faster than bad logo redesigns, and sometimes growth can happen at the expense of everything else. Starbucks simply needs to find itself again and map out its future. Inconsistent experiences between locations (as with the McDonald’s brand) and the added confusion of non-Starbucks locations using the Starbucks logo also need to be tidied-up. I won’t even touch Seattle’s Best yet, but there’s another project.

Chevrolet: Because if Ford did it, so can Chevy. The difference between the two isn’t on the factory floor or in the design suite. Again, hard work but easy fix with the right application of market insight, leadership and courage. Chevy needs to stop thinking acting like a corporation that happens to make and sell cars, and shift its mindset to that of a company whose sole purpose is to inspire, delight and serve drivers everywhere.

Print (all brands): Because newspapers and magazines don’t have to die a slow agonizing death anymore than books do. Not anymore. Distribution and content are changing fast, but this evolution is an opportunity, not a hurdle. Change here is not the enemy. I would gladly dedicate the next five years of my life to this one thing. Companies can come and go, but print news keeps real journalism alive, and we cannot afford to let this industry fail. Not here, not now.

BP, Nestle, Monsanto, Halliburton, Eurostar, Toyota: Because they need it the most of any brand right now, and not everyone there has what it takes to turn their current situations into a string of market wins. Engineering a brand’s comeback takes a very specific skillset not everyone has in their bag of tricks.

Big Pharma (all brands – US): In the US, the model is cracked. Pharmaceutical companies don’t have the best image anymore. Their practices often seem shady. Consumer confidence could be better. In order for these brands to thrive in the next two decades, and in order to take full advantage of the changes in health care on the horizon for Americans, pharmaceutical companies need a cultural, communications and brand management overhaul. Nothing major, but the devil is in the details. Starting perhaps with a shift away from terms like “pharmaceutical” and “drug” to softer words like “medicine” and “care.”

Coca-Cola and/or Pepsi: Because market saturation doesn’t have to result in stalemate. There is still much to conquer for these brands, but they need to start thinking about how to redefine their markets, not just distract them with campaigns, PR and logo redesigns. They’ve plateaued, and something has to happen to catalyze them into rolling forward and up again.

* Again, this isn’t so much restoring either Coke or Pepsi to market leadership as much as it is preventing them from being in irons for the next ten years. They’ve reached the top. Now what?

Greenpeace: Because their message needs to get through to those who still think GreenPeace is an extremist organization. It can be at times, sure, but its role is much more complex and important to our future to allow it to continue being typecast as a bunch of crazed brick-throwing tree-huggers with unreasonable demands.

The Republican Party: Because it has lost its way, and if America is to soar again, both of its biggest political parties need to continuously force the other to new levels of excellence in order to outclass the other. The truth is that Democrats need a relevant Republican party as much as Republicans do. Rivalries keep us from growing soft and complacent. For the last ten years, the level of political discourse in the US has been slipping and frankly, it has reached an all time low. It’s embarrassing and needs to change. Our political system as it stands will continue to breed mediocrity, corruption and failure until we fix this.

Delta Airlines: Because in spite of its many flaws, Delta does some things very well and could be so much more than what it is to its passengers. I really want to see Delta become a shining example of what a major US airline could be. Quality can scale.

CNN: Simply because it could be great again. It once redefined the news business. It can and should do it again.

That’s a small selection, but a good place to start. What does your list look like?

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Red Chair PDX: Social Media Training for Managers and Executives comes to Portland, OR on March 11 and 12

Those of you who have been asking for Social Media training for the C-suite and other management layers are about to get your wish: Red Chair is finally launching in the US. First stop: Portland, OR on March 11 and 12. (Details below.)

Before I go on, let me be super clear about what Red Chair training is and isn’t:

What it isn’t:

Red Chair is not another FaceBook or Twitter 101 seminar.

Red Chair is not a shady Social Media certification course.

Red Chair is not the latest “me-too” Social Media conference, a business pitch by a team of consultants, or the same old rehashed Social Media cheerleader content you’ve already seen a dozen times.

What it is:

1) (Day 1) Training specifically developed for CEOs, CMOs, Vice-Presidents, PR managers and other senior level executives on how to properly plan for, integrate, manage and measure Social Media programs.

2) (Day 2) Training specifically developed for mid-to-account-level managers on how to properly manage and grow Social Media programs (Example: Customer Service, Marketing, Business Development, PR, Brand Management, Advertising, Online Reputation Management, HR/Human Resources, Legal, Consumer Insights, etc.)

3) If you have serious questions about HOW to use Social Media for your organization and how to both operationalize and integrate it properly, Red Chair is probably what you have been looking for for.

4) If you manage an Ad agency, PR firm, or Marketing firm and want to know how to build a suite of Social Media services, we will cover that in the program (in-depth on Day 1, and outlined on Day 2).

To increase the effectiveness and specificity of the training, Red Chair divides instruction between senior roles (C-suite on down to VP and Director level executives) and junior roles (Department managers on down to account-level managers). The Portland event will thus be divided into two sessions, one held on March 11 and the other on March 12.

Day 1: (March 11) – “Red Chair: Executive” is a one-day course specifically designed to teach CMOs, CEOs, executives, Agency principals, VPs, Director level professionals and senior-level consultants how to properly build, integrate, manage and measure Social media programs across their organization. The full day session will teach key decision-makers how to properly deploy Social Media across large organization by focusing on four key areas: Program Development, Program Integration, Program Management and Program Measurement.

Though “Red Chair: Executive” training touches on complex business topics, an advanced understanding of Social Media management is not required to attend. The training will fill all of the gaps for attendees by mid-morning to get everyone caught up.

Executives who attend the full day session can expect to return to their organizations equipped with the instruction, framework and insights necessary to properly begin integrating Social Media into every facet of their business in support of their business objectives.

Day 2: (March 12) – “Red Chair: Studio” is a half day course specifically designed to teach professionals in more junior roles how to build, manage and grow specific social media programs based on their specific departmental needs. This session caters to Department managers, account-level managers, junior consultants and university students looking for valuable training they will need after they graduate. This session also offers a solid training base for small business owners looking to start plugging Social Media into their business activities. The half-day training will focus on program planning, program management and program measurement at the departmental level, rather than across a complex organization.

The idea behind Red Chair training is to teach companies how to properly integrate social media into their mix of activities from both a strategic and an operational perspective rather than just from a theoretical one. From planning and integration to management and measurement, the course touches on every step of the program building process. Aside from the instruction itself, Red Chair training provides a detailed blueprint for Social Media integration and management for organizations of any size.

Red Chair training programs are being co-developed with the help of executives from Coca Cola, Best Buy, Michelin, The Home Depot, Sungard and Microsoft and constantly adapted to follow rapid changes in the Social Media space. The Portland 2-day event is being co-produced by our Portland partner Ant Hill Marketing, with the collaboration of Webtrends and 52Ltd.

“Red Chair: Executive” will be held on Thursday March 11 – tentatively at the Oregon Executive MBA facility located downtown Portland, though we may move it to a smaller venue depending on registrations, while “Red Chair: Studio” will be held on Friday March 12 at Webtrends’ headquarters on 6^th Avenue.

Specific venue details are listed on each session’s event registration page, and attendees will be notified of any changes and updates. Registration for Red Chair Portland sessions is open to everyone, so sign up quickly: Seating for both events is limited and spaces will go fast. To sign up, click here.

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Register now and save BIG:

To help speed up the registration process a bit (hey, I’m a procrastinator too) we are running a pretty sweet early-bird price cut. The promotion will only last for a few days, so save yourself (or your boss) some cash and register before the prices go back up to the full amount. (And no, I am not telling you when the early-bird promo ends. It would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it.)

Get all the information you need by clicking here.

Register Now by clicking here.

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Where Do Brands Go To Die? Part 2: The Diagnosis

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at what it takes for business managers and CMOs to come to accept that their brand is in trouble. We also discussed why it is often difficult for them to admit that they need help, and how to get over that fear-driven reflex.

Today, we are going to look at the next step in fixing a broken or distressed brand: Diagnosing the problem – which usually involves hiring a specialized firm, agency or individual with the skills, insight and experience to help you navigate through this crucial step. (If you screw this one up, everything that comes later is based on either false or incomplete assumptions – or both, so this isn’t a part of the process you want to entrust just anyone with.)

I apologize in advance if what we discuss today seems… really basic. If your brand is doing great, you probably already know this stuff. It’s common sense. It’s unlikely that you’ll learn anything new here today. But for those of you with tanking brands, going back to basics is where you need to start, so here we go:

Priority Number One: Securing the right partnership.

We’ve established that performing surgery on yourself while you’re crashing probably isn’t the best idea. You probably want to look into hiring outside help to guide you through the steps and make sure your brand rescue doesn’t end up in a complete ass-backwards disaster. (Remember that you didn’t get in trouble by being particularly good at making all the right decisions: Be humble, be smart, put your ego(s) aside, and hire a professional.)

How do you find the right person or firm? Well, once you’ve established that they aren’t in the yellow pages, you ask around. If that doesn’t work, hit the marketing and brand development blogs. Find out who the practitioners are. It’s a small community. There may only be 100 such individuals or organizations in North America, so you won’t be overwhelmed with choices. Once you’ve narrowed down your search to this level, read their blogs and e-books. Look into what they have done for other companies, who they’ve worked with, and what kinds of recommendations they are getting. If they strike a note with you, then it’s time to make contact. If not, keep looking.

Ideally, they will be in your part of the country, but if they aren’t, that’s okay too. Business travel is a part of life nowadays, and collaborative tools make it easier than ever to work remotely as well. As the world keeps getting flatter, distance becomes less relevant each day. What is most important is finding the right fit.

Speaking of fit, here are a few questions you will want to ask yourself during the interview process:

1. Does this person or firm know what they are talking about? Do they know what they’re doing? Or is all that chatter just posturing?
2. Will this person be able to work with my staff, my bosses, and our outside agencies (PR, ad, etc.), or be a giant pain?
3. Does this person or firm fit into my budget?
4. Does this person or firm have a specific method for measuring our improvement and performance right from the start?
5. Does this person appreciate the importance of delivering short term results, not just mid-to-long term results?
6. Is this person there to sell me services, or actually deliver results?

I can’t stress this enough: You want every question to be answered by a resounding YES. If your brand is in distress, 3 out of 5 won’t cut it. Not even 5 out of 6 You can’t afford to settle for “good enough” with this type of project. Not if you want to get your brand/company back on track now and… well, actually save it.

This is your litmus test for separating a good firm, agency or practitioner from the right one for your current situation.

And if you’re lucky, the one you pick won’t already be booked solid for the next six months. (Cross your fingers.)

Beginning the diagnostic process: Finding out what is actually eating away at your brand.

Okay. Now that you’ve partnered with the right talent (hopefully) and everyone has gotten acquainted, it’s time to get busy. The process typically begins with an immediate 360-degree analysis of your business and of your industry: Who buys your stuff and why? Who buys your competitors’ stuff and why? Who loves you and why? Who hates you and why? How do you engage with your customers? How are you not engaging with your customers? Which marketing tactics work for you and which ones don’t (and why)? If you used to be the market leader once, what changed? What do your employees think about your company and your products? How does this impact core aspects of your business like innovation, talent retention and sales? The list goes on, but you get the idea. Common sense stuff right? You would think. Except if your brand is in the tank, none of this may be all that obvious to the people making decisions, is it.

The trick here is two-fold: 1) You have to know what questions to ask, which isn’t always obvious when you are knee-deep in running a business every day, and 2) You have to understand exactly how to measure performance (including but not limited to R.O.I.) and put the data in the right context for each one of these elements. This type of brand mapping is one of the key components of the diagnostic step. We’ll get more into some of these in Part 3 of the series. (Like a puzzle, the analysis is composed of MANY parts, but don’t worry: It isn’t that hard to put it all together fast if you know how.)

For now, let’s tackle the first layer of the onion. The question here is simple: If you could boil down your brand’s problem to a thirty-second assessment, what would it be? To make it easy on you, I have listed the four most common answers below. There are more, but let’s keep it simple.

Here, then, are the four most common scenarios that lead to the distress and eventual death of a brand:

1. Fading brand Relevance: Many companies either go through severe downturns in relevance. Maybe you were the “it” company in your market ten years ago, but fresh newcomers have shoved you aside. Maybe you’ve grown too big and complacent. Maybe you have lost touch with your customers’ needs and fans’ expectations. In these cases, a weakened brand can drag a business down and kill it.
2. Failure to achieve brand relevance: Many companies simply never manage to transition from being a business with a logo to being an actual brand. They just haven’t found their voice yet. Their purpose. Their place. They are little more than an “also in” company. They manage to scrape by, but with budgets shrinking and new players gaining market share, time is running out.
3. Brand implosion: You talked a good game, created inspiring and engaging marketing and PR, got people all excited about you… but you didn’t keep your promises. Customers are outraged. Your name is mud. Your customers are leaving you for your competitors. Game over?
4. Brand-rich, cash-poor: Everyone loves your products and what you stand for. Your customers (fans) have made you part of their lifestyle and you get fantastic reviews across the board. Still, the balance sheet is in the red and you can’t keep your business afloat. Maybe you’re upside down on business loans, or your next round of funding dried up. Maybe your P&L is a disaster, or your parent company has lost interest in you. Whatever the case may be, your business is dying in spite of having created a true lovebrand. How do you save yourself?

In some cases, a sick brand may be looking at more than one of the above problems (most likely a coupling of either #1, #2, or #3 with #4).

More often than not, it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out which of the above issues an ailing brand is dealing with. That being said, beware the hasty assumption: One symptom or scenario can hide another and distract you from your problem’s root cause. (One of the most immediate benefits of a properly administered 360 analysis is that it will either confirm or re-frame that initial assumption for you.)

Example: Company XYZ’s leadership is convinced that they are in situation #1 (fading brand relevance), and at first glance, they appear to be right. But as the 360 analysis starts to take shape, it becomes clear that the reason why the brand’s relevance has been fading for the last six years is because their customers are angry about a number of things, like inconsistent product quality, lousy customer service and frustrating warranty/exchange policies. Brand XYZ is actually in a #3 scenario (brand implosion), not a #1 scenario. The message got muddled because company XYZ hasn’t done a very good job at listening to its customers’ opinions (which is a topic we will revisit in the next couple of installments). The lesson here is obvious: One very nagging symptom can easily distract everyone and hide the true cause of a brand’s woes. Fail to render the correct diagnosis the first time, and your entire treatment will be worthless. This kind of mistake so late in the game can cost a brand a lot more than just time and money.

Note from the above example that if your brand practitioner only lives in the Marketing world, his/her usefulness will be… limited. A 360 analysis involves every department in the company, not just marketing (or traditionally “brand” related) functions.

Just like a good doctor makes sure to treat the disease rather than the symptoms, an experienced brand practitioner knows how to properly diagnose and treat the root cause of a distressed brand’s troubles as opposed to its more superficial problems.

Cause and Effect: Starting the process of connecting the dots.

As an added layer of complexity, brand practitioners don’t just have to concern themselves with the what and how questions, but also the why: “Why is this brand failing? Why are this company’s customers jumping ship? Why is its customer service so lousy? Why are its products not as popular as they once were? Why has the main topic of conversation shifted from design and user delight to price? This is the next layer of the 360 analysis: For every action, there is a reaction. If we can identify the reactions (sales slumping, customers switching to a competitor’s product, increases in returns or warranty claims), we can work our way back to the actions that brought them about. It takes a little bit of detective work, but the beauty of the 360 analysis mechanism is that it makes the process pretty swift.

As a bonus, the action-reaction relationships can be pretty easily mapped for the client. As we’ll see in Part 5 (making sure the brand doesn’t suffer a relapse), this mapping/clarifying process actually being delivered and taught to the client is absolutely fundamental to the success of any brand rescue endeavor: Once business managers fully understand the relationship between their customers’ behaviors and decisions made internally by their management team, they will be able to make inspired choices and effective course adjustments on their own once the brand practitioner is gone. A big part of helping a brand recover from a serious crisis involves teaching its stewards how to take better care of it in the future so it never happens again.

A Common Pitfall before we adjourn.

Far too many firms, agencies and consultants settle for a two step process in helping a client address a problem: Step 1 – Identify the problem. Step 2 – Address the problem with a specific solution: A new ad campaign. A new series of press releases. A new promotional campaign. Prettier packaging. A celebrity endorsement. This works well enough if you’re looking for a quick fix. A band-aid, if you will. But as soon as the campaign is over, as soon as the promotion ends, as soon as the big sale is over or the expensive celebrity spokesperson moves on to their next gig, what have you really gained? You may have enjoyed a spike in interest, a spike in sales, even, but you end up right where you started: Condemned to keep the campaign engine running constantly, which in your case may be little more than slapping lipstick on a pig. If your brand finds itself in a state of distress, chances are that you have already been playing this game for a while. We’ve already been over this in Part 1. More of the same isn’t what you want.

In order to see real traction, you have to go a step further in the process: Not just identifying a problem, but understanding what created it to begin with. Understanding the root cause. Understanding the why. Tracking the actual cause of that 7% drop in sales. That 12% drop in market share. That 30% drop in customer retention. You have to look deeper. You have to be able to map cause and effect, and answer not only what and how, but why. Then and only then, can you move on to the next step: Coming up with real solutions – the kind that will help your brand gain real momentum – rather than buying sales and influence for an all too finite amount of time.

Next week, in Part 3 of this series, we will go over how to use the 360 analysis employed during the diagnostic phase of the process to a) develop a treatment to get your brand back on track, and b) prioritize the elements of this treatment to start enjoying results immediately.

Cheers!

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Before you can truly talk about Change Management, you have to focus on achieving clear vision

I love the fact that the comments my readers leave on the BrandBuilder blog are an endless source of topics for me to write about. I am seriously considering devoting one or two posts per week to either giving your brilliant opinions more exposure and/or answering your questions. And in that vein, why not start today, right now?

Here’s an astute question from Sonny Gill: in regards to characteristic n.8 in my post about “Becoming P2P: Principal characteristics of the new social business“:

Company/organizational culture is something I love getting into and am still learning a lot about.

One point of interest that intrigues me – and what you mentioned – is empowering your employees. Giving them not only the tools and structure to succeed, but empowerment and reinforcement from internal leaders – the attitude that not only spreads throughout the company but outside of the office also (as we all know, work/life intermingle so much). I say it’s intriguing because it’s such an integral part in making this culture change and a P2P business a success.

The biggest thing that companies will be asking though when reading this post, let alone your upcoming book, is ‘how the hell do we accomplish this?’ It sounds/is great, as how businesses function – internally and externally – is evolving, quick. But there’s definitely got to be a huge buy-in and sense of what a P2P culture looks and feels like.

The best way I know how to answer that question:

Don’t sell change. Ever.  Instead, sell results. That’s what execs really want anyway

As always, the old adage about leading horses to water stands firm. First, you have to realize that “companies” aren’t what you’re working with. What you’re really dealing with are people. In other words, companies don’t make decisions. People make decisions. Particularly, leaders in this instance. If the leadership within a company refuses to commit to the type of change that will yield greater success for their business in the future (and starting immediately), I can’t help them. Heck, even Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Dr. Phil can’t help them.

What’s important here isn’t to sell change. Nobody likes change. It’s scary, it’s risky, it’s unpredictable. You’ll never get very far selling fear, risk and uncertainty. Especially to that crowd. So you have to approach change from a very different angle: From the end result. From what they actually want to accomplish.

First things first: Uncovering the true objectives of an organization’s leadership team

Before you do anything, you want to uncover the leaders’ specific objectives (or wishes, even) and then create a picture of what the company (as an organization) will look like in this “fantasy” version of the future. This takes more work than it sounds. You would be amazed how many CEOs have absolutely no idea where they really want to be in 5 years. They’ll tend to throw around numbers that sounds good but aren’t based in reality, like… “We’re at $8.3B in revenue this year. I want to be at $12B by 2012.” Because $12B in 2012 sounds cool and the investors will love it. But that’s bullshit. It’s all about swagger, not reality.

In cases like this, when you ask the CEO how they’re going to get there, you get an equally nonsensical answer like, “we’ll sell more stuff” or “we’ll expand into new markets” or some other such generalization. No specifics. No action plan. Nothing but pipe dream. That’s dangerous and counterproductive. What you need to do is get them off the cowboy plan and get them back to reality: You have to get specific about their goals. These types of sessions aren’t about impressing anyone. They’re about getting down to business, which starts with getting back to reality.

If they want to hit $12B by 2012, fine. Work your way backwards from that. What’s it going to take? Probably some key acquisitions, first and foremost. Is that even possible? Are they in a position to pull it off without risking too much exposure? Does it even make sense to try and grow that quickly? What else do they need to do? Look for strategic partnerships? Expand distribution? Capture more market share? All of the above? Okay, you have 24 months. Show me on a 24-month schedule/timeline how you currently plan to accomplish that.

And guess what: Most of the time, that plan doesn’t actually exist.  It got as far as being turned into a few bullet points on a slide in someone’s powerpoint presentation six months ago. So you have to start from scratch and see what’s realistic and what isn’t. You have to work out all of the contingencies. It isn’t rocket science, but it takes work. And it takes organization. And it takes commitment. Before you can even get to how a company is going to address empowering their employees through a real cultural change, before a company is ready to actually pull this off across all of its departments as a matter of policy, it has to know exactly where it wants to go and what it will take to get there. Not only that, but the leadership team has to both understand and accept that such empowerment is one of the ways they will get there.

Second: Mapping out the start, the “finish” and everything in between

Growth, change and success are hard. You have to map it all out, starting with where you are, where you want to go, and all the points in between if you want to have a shot at actually pulling it off. So change management, which is really what we’re talking about here, starts with that process. And that process starts with painting a crystal clear picture of what you want the organization to look like at the end of the process. (More like a milestone than a finish line, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Now, in order to hit the numbers the CEO threw at you, you really have to be able to create a detailed snapshot of the company in this specific future. What it looks like. Where it operates. How it operates. How it is structured. How it executes on its activities. You have to not only create a snapshot of what it looks like on the outside, but also on the inside, layer by layer, like a CAT scan.

Understanding changes in cultural dynamics and the evolution of technology, you can then zoom in from the portrait/snapshot of the company to its structure, then to its processes, then to the skills of its members. From there, you can reverse-engineer the adaptive phases that the company needs to go through.  To be realistic, the example I gave you (24 months) is too short when it comes to true cultural change for a company that didn’t have much of a culture to begin with. It takes time for organizations, especially large ones, to develop the kind of social  and emotional sophistication to do this well. It takes maturity, and maturity takes time. It isn’t something you can accelerate or optimize.

In this example then, the company’s strategy would focus a lot more on acquisitions and partnerships than growth through cultural change. But it isn’t to say that a cultural evolution couldn’t begin to happen during that time period. In order for the strategic changes to be a success, a lot of internal work needs to ensure that these changes won’t become a liability when it comes to simple things like customer service, customer experiences, internal communications between divisions, brand erosion, etc. You can’t divorce culture from infrastructure. Companies that don’t understand that always fail at creating efficient (and sustainable) versions of either.

Basic Lessons to keep in mind:

Anyway… Long story short: The most important thing when trying to get buy-in is to help clarify exactly where the company wants to be in 5, 10, 20 years. Not pie-in-the-sky bullshit, but specifics. Once you have that, you can paint a clear picture of what the future of the company NEEDS to look like. Now you’ve flipped change on its head. Instead of selling uncertainty, you’re selling clarity.

Knowing where you’re going is 90% of getting there. Most company execs are so focused on meeting numbers this month and this quarter that they just aren’t able to look beyond the here and now long enough to actually drive their businesses anywhere. They’re too busy reacting to the next pothole  or turn ahead. By helping them see 1 year into the future, then 2, then 5, than 10, you can help them impact their numbers now, this quarter, this half, this fiscal year, by giving their performance context in relation to where they want to actually take their business.

That’s a big part of what I do, and everything has to start with that. Before you can get to cultural change management, you have to make sure the leadership team knows where it wants to go and what it needs to do to get there.

The caveat: Lazy execs and the reality of horses that just won’t drink

But with all of that, if the CEO and the COO and the VP of this and that just don’t want to change their ways, if they are more committed to their game of golf and corner office and third McMansion than to the success of their business, there isn’t much I can do to help them. I already know I can’t fix stupid. I’m pretty sure I can’t fix lazy either.

People have to want to be successful, and it can be hard to convince a late career exec making seven or eight figures  and eying retirement in five to ten years that success is about more than the wealth they’ve already amassed. Success is a frame of mind they either want to have or not. The biggest lesson for them is this: Success doesn’t live in the past. Memories do. Success lives in the here and now and tomorrow. It really doesn’t matter what you accomplished ten years ago. What matters is what you’re doing today, and what you’ll accomplish next. Anything else is just ego. Throw away the plaques and the trophies. They aren’t who you are.

A guy who just wants to enjoy the trappings of success but isn’t willing to work his ass off to perpetuate that success is a guy who’s given up. That kind of individual is completely worthless to me, and more importantly, to his/her organization.

Unless the rest of the management team and I can appeal to their sense of pride and self worth, and tap into the ambition that fueled them in their youth, they’re basically in the way. Folks like that either have to get back in the game or move on if you want the organization to evolve. I can’t light a fire under their ass every single day. I can do it for a while, but eventually they have to step up and want to run the ball all on their own.

So, all this to say that you won’t win them all, Sonny. Execs who have grown complacent, live in denial and refuse to accept that their companies are headed straight to the crapper in ten years are beyond being reasoned with. I’ll only get so far with them before I move on to someone who won’t waste my time.

In the end, I can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. And since organizations are really collectives of people, you either find leadership teams made up of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to save and/or make their businesses kick ass, or management teams made up of people who are happy to pretend that everything is golden even though their business is either stalled or in the tank. Usually, the latter are the first to blame the economy or cheap imports or whatever else they can throw a cat at to explain slow, flat or negative growth rather than take the blame themselves.

I’m not a miracle worker. I wish I were, but I’m not. I help people who are serious about making their business truly successful and are looking for good honest help. The rest, I try not to waste my time with. It’s far too precious as it is.

At some point soon, I’ll actually go over how to create really solid internal cultures both from the top down (trust, leadership, mentoring and hiring practices) and from the bottom up (trust, engagement, tribe mentality, alignment with the organization’s belief system), so don’t go too far. We’ll visit this topic again.

Thanks for giving me my topic today, Sonny. Cheers.

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Don’t let “branding” kill your brand

Words of genius from Damon Dimmick, over at UX Magazine:

“When corporate marketing departments dream of brand design, they only dream as far as they need. The expensive and time consuming process of extending the brand into an interactive concept is usually pushed off until it becomes absolutely necessary.”Unfortunately, by the time some serious rethinking is required, a lot of people have gotten stuck in the mud of static branding. It’s completely natural for companies to resist straying from the handful of predefined styles that were never meant to address web forms, widgets, calendars and menuing systems.

“Of all the arguments for modifying brand attributes to better suit a digital experience, the most compelling is this: The way users feel about their experience is inseparable from the way they feel about your brand.

“This maxim holds true for brick-and-mortar experiences as well as for digital interactions. A restaurant with great food but incredibly long lines and a bad wait staff will experience brand damage. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere. The same thing will happen if your users get baffled by confusing menus, hard-to-read text, and perplexing layouts. The user experience is bad, and people will look elsewhere.

“The way a user feels when they come in contact with a brand interaction point will implicitly shape their image of the brand itself. This realization is a powerful tool for user experience professionals and can help snap clients and peers out of static thinking.

“It is helpful to remember that even the most accomplished companies have become experts at modifying brand attributes to suit interactive experiences. This is done without sacrificing brands, but rather by extending them.“

Amen.

Have a great Monday, everyone!

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You are ALWAYS in Beta.

You’re always in beta. Always. If you think you aren’t, you’re already falling behind and bleeding relevance.

What does being in Beta mean? It means being in perpetual test mode. It means constantly asking “how could I do this better,” even when this worked just fine. How can I listen better? How could I improve customer service? How can I make my billing process smoother? How could we improve the UI/UX of our websites? How can I engage my user community even better? How could this brochure have been better?

I know what you’re thinking: Poor kid. He’s terminally obsessive-compulsive. 😀 (Actually, I’m just compulsive, not obsessive, but that’s a topic for another day.)

The point is this: The moment you start thinking that you have found the perfect model, the second you start adopting a “let’s not change anything” mentality, you’re screwed. The “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke” saying I hear a lot in the South is may have been pretty good advice a hundred years ago, but it isn’t anymore. Not if you want your company to stay competitive. Not if you want to see your company grow. Not if you want to see chronic improvement in everything you do.

Check out today’s video if you haven’t already. And if it doesn’t launch for you, go watch it here. (Thanks, Viddler!)

Interestingly, the “you’re always in Beta” mindset that I am talking about today seriously reminds me of the mindset athletes and coaches get into when it comes to improving performance. Say you’re currently a 24:00 5K runner, and you want to relive your college glory days by running an 18:00 5K a year from now. How do you do it? Simple: By stressing your system one little bit at a time. By challenging your comfort zone with every run. Going from 24:00 to 23:55, then 23:50, then 23:45 for the same distance, and so on. Turning up the heat and the intensity for a few weeks, then giving your body a chance to adapt. To plateau. And then starting over with a new cycle of stress and adaptation followed by a rest period. During that time, you are constantly testing your boundaries, monitoring success and failure, learning what works and what doesn’t. (And yes, measuring your progress to know what works and what doesn’t.) Pretty basic stuff.

The alternative would be to keep running the same 5K route every day at the exact same speed, in the exact same way. What would happen? Well, you would become pretty good at running a 5K  in 24:00. Comfortable? Sure. But whatever happened to improvement? See where I am going with this?

Okay, now let’s complicate things a little bit:

As a triathlete, training and competing in what essentially amounts to three sports (swimming, cycling and running) adds some pretty substantial layers of complexity. Not only do I have to figure out how to train for three specific sports, but I have to figure out how to combine and integrate all three in a way that doesn’t lead to injury or burnout. I also have to fit all three in my already busy schedule. Then I have to consider how to time my training cycles to coincide with specific races. In addition, I have to incorporate changes in nutrition and hydration based on my workouts, my training mode, outside temperatures, etc. And if I get into my head that I am going to train for a marathon, half Ironman or full-on mac-daddy Ironman, all of these variables take on a level of complexity I can’t even begin to explain in one blog post. How much Gatorade should I drink per hour in 94 degree temperatures at 80% of my maximum heart rate? How many energy gels can I absorb per hour without getting sick to my stomach? What cadence should I adopt to sustain an average speed of 21mph for 112 miles? Only one way to find out: Test it.

And I haven’t even talked about gear. Will the improved aerodynamics gained from dropping my aerobars down 2 millimeters shave 20 seconds off my 40K time? Maybe… but as a result, will my upper body’s new angle offset my hip angle enough to reduce my power output or stress my hip flexors enough that I will start cramping up 5 miles into the run? How will I find out? There’s only one way: Getting out there and testing that theory. It’s clipboard and stopwatch time for the next six weeks.

Should I go with a disc wheel or a deep dish rim for my next race? How will I know which works better for me on a moderately hilly course in 15mph crosswinds? Only one way: I have to go test each wheel configuration on a variety of courses in completely different wind conditions. Then I’ll know what works best in specific course conditions.

Rear-mounted bottle-cages or frame-mounted? Aero helmet or regular helmet? Motion control shoes or racing flats? Test test test test test. You get the picture.

Call it an occupational benefit or a pre-existing condition, but being a triathlete kind of trains you to be in a perpetual Beta mindset. And it isn’t a stretch to jump from the world of competitive endurance sports to the world of business performance. Different application, but same principles and same basic methodology: Ask, test, observe, validate, learn, repeat.

But before you do all this – the testing, the experimentation, the analysis and learning and adaptation – you have to make a choice. You have to pick a camp. You have to decide whether you are satisfied with your business performance as it is today (“good enough” is good enough for you and your customers), or hungry for improvement.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It doesn’t matter what camp you decide to align yourself with: The one happy with the way things are or the one looking to kick ass a little more each day. What matters is that your decision work for you. But let’s be clear about the impact that your choice will have on your business: Sticking with a “let’s not change anything” mindset will not earn you more customers, increase customer loyalty or generate more sales. Where you are today is exactly where you will be tomorrow. If you’re lucky. Eventually, perhaps not next week or next month or next year, but eventually, this mindset will seal your doom. A Beta mindset, however, will help you uncover ways to innovate, earn more customers, cut costs, increase customer and employee loyalty, improve product design and performance… You name it: Whatever the opportunity to improve, do do things better and smarter, may be, you will systematically uncover it in the same way that Apple, Nike, BMW, Cervelo, HBO, Michael Phelps, IDEO, Lance Armstrong, Comcast and Zappos have.

If you want your company to be best in class, to own a market or an industry, to be the trendsetter, the example to follow, the leader in a category, you must adopt a perpetual Beta mindset. You have to constantly stress your systems and processes. You have to turn every action into a test an look at every activity as an opportunity to experiment.You have to measure, analyze, learn, adapt and repeat the cycle over and over and over again.

Question everything.

Work harder than the next guy to build the best XYZ the world has ever seen, and then find ways to make it even better.

Perfection is a process, not a milestone.

Embrace a state of perpetual Beta.

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Engagement Paradigm: Focus on Lateral Action

So we’ve been chatting about engagement these last few days, and particularly vertical action (essentially brands addressing their communities from the top-down, and creating mechanisms through which their communities can communicate vertically with them using the same channels). When you look at corporate blogs, Twitter accounts and most branded community sites, this is mostly what you see: Vertical engagement between companies and their customers/fans/friends/users.

Likewise, the breadth and depth conversation we had last week also relates to vertical action: Brand managers, Community managers and/or Social Media managers finding ways to engage customers from a brand-to-community perspective. Even when dialog exists, even when the communication channels are truly 2-way, most of what happens is vertical: Brand-to-customer and customer-to-brand. And that’s nice, but it is only half the story: In order to understand the power of the social web, the power of communities and the power of truly engaged fans, you also have to tip your hat to lateral action.

What is lateral action? Simple: Lateral action is simply peer-to-peer engagement that happens within or across communities. A brand or community manager may have planted a seed along the way (a tweet, a blog post, a comment, a promotion, etc.), but once it has hit the community, the message/info/conversation is spread from customer to customer without having to be prompted by any official brand representative.

Another example of lateral action is WOM (word-of-mouth): Peer-to-peer recommendations are classic examples of lateral action. Rumors are examples of lateral action. Community tweetup invitations are examples of lateral action. RT’s on Twitter tend to be examples of lateral action.

Lateral action is what happens when the brand, the company, the official presence of a business gives its community the opportunity to BE a community by taking a step back and letting people share what is important to them with peers.

And lateral action is often the answer to the question raised last week about breadth and depth of engagement: Once a brand has managed to scale its community to several thousand or tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands, even), how can a team of community managers possibly engage so many people properly? It’s impossible, right? (This being the logic behind some Social Media directors’ decision to focus on depth at the cost of breadth.) Truth: Vertical action alone cannot serve the purposes of engagement (breadth mostly, but depth also) in the Social Media space… or even when it comes to fostering vibrant brand-centric communities in the “real” world. Lateral Action is the yin to Vertical Action’s yang. Lateral Action is how community engagement actually scales and transcends any breadth-related engagement limitations.

And though Lateral Action is nothing new, it is not a typical strategic mode of thinking for most Marketing professionals who have spent most of their careers working in traditional media (yes, even in the world of the web). This is why MANY Marketing folks still talk about the challenge of creating “content” even in the Social Media space. This is why advertising, messaging and marketing products are still among the first things marketers try to “plug in” when it comes to leveraging Social Media “channels.” This is all top-down thinking. Vertical Action thinking. And though it has its place here, it cannot succeed in the Social Media space without an equal (and in many cases greater) measure of Lateral Action.

Brand managers, Social Media managers, Community managers – whatever their designation may be – need to understand that their job isn’t just to produce content and constantly stimulate vertical engagement. There is only so much they can accomplish this way. What they must also do is empower their communities to manage themselves to a great extent and generate conversations and motion from within. Community members have to reach out to each other. They have to reach over to other communities. They have to share and discuss and debate and organize themselves. Brand Managers in the Social Media space have to learn how to be good hosts and patrons and supporters without being mother hens 24/7. This lateral action has to be fostered, nurtured, and built into their online and offline communities.

This is a crucial point for all brand managers to understand if they want to be successful in the age of Social Significance and Community Marketing. I hope the video and this post help you understand the difference between vertical and lateral action… and their importance our ongoing discussion of community “engagement.”

Tomorrow, we will bring our engagement discussion to a close with some far less strategic yet much more valuable advice than what we’ve touched on so far. 😉

Have a great day!

Bonus Footage: Oui, en Francais! (For my Francophone readers, a question: Since I can, should I also start shooting videos in French?) And since a few of you have asked me if I would say my name in its original French so you can hear what it sounds like – Two birds, one stone. You ask, I deliver. (And yes, I take requests.) Check it out:

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Engagement Paradigm: The Breadth vs. Depth question

Yesterday, we redefined the term “follower” on Twitter and in doing so, discovered that followers are in fact not hapless little ducklings in search of a mama duck but actually community managers in their own right with a tremendous amount of power when it comes to helping brands gain traction in the social web (and particularly in communities like Twitter).

Now that we’ve covered that subtle yet fundamental topic, let’s look a little more closely at the two main strategies behind engagement: Breadth and Depth.

Breadth and depth are essentially opposite sides of any reach strategy. One focuses on quantity while the other focuses on quality.

Breadth

When it comes to engagement in the social media space (and particularly on Twitter), a focus on breadth looks like a numbers’ game: If having 5 followers is good thing, then having 10 followers is better. If having 5,000 followers is a good thing, then having 10,000 is better. And so on. (Now remember that we redefined the term “follower” yesterday and that we aren’t talking about acumulating points here.)

So in essence, a breadth strategy would look like this: 100,000 people on Twitter mention Brand X on a regular basis. The Social Media director for Brand X sees in these 100,000 people a vibrant yet untapped community. In his mind, reaching out to every single one and getting them to “follow” Brand X on Twitter would be a great thing. By doing so, that community of 100,000 fans would have access to the Brand X feed, have the opportunity to engage with it, spread their love, RT content, ask questions, etc. And that rocks.

But the flip side of that is Brand X only has a team of 3 people managing their online communities, and that isn’t enough to truly engage with 100,000 people. So what ends up happening is: While Brand X has a community of 100,000 “followers” on Twitter, its staff just can’t create deep connections with more than a few dozen of them. So by spreading itself too thin, Brand X might come across as having very superficial “engagement” on Twitter: Lots of followers, but not a lot of meaningful interaction. That doesn’t rock, and it evidently scares a number of companies looking to truly connect with their fans in Social Media.

Depth

The flip side of breadth is depth. On Twitter, a focus on depth looks like a private party: Small numbers, a tiny community, but lots of interraction between a brand and its relatively small numer of followers. The idea here being that engagement is about building relationships and true,lasting emotional connections. Numbers are the enemy here since you just can’t be “friends” with more than a few hundred people anyway.

So in essence, a depth strategy would look like this: Out of 100,000 fans of Brand X on Twitter, Brand X chooses to only truly engage with a few hundred (or a few thousand). That’s a manageable number, and any more than that would get in the way of “true” engagement.So what rocks here is that those folks with whom Brand X truly focuses on are going to feel ultra special about their relationship with Brand X, and that’s pretty solid.

But what happens to the other 99,000 or so fans Brand X chooses not to engage with? Well… hopefully, they can talk about Brand X amongst themselves and be perfectly happy. Better yet, maybe the chosen few will go out and evangelize Brand X to the other 99,000 as… good will agents of Brand X. They have big networks anyway, so why not create a tiered system of influence within Twitter? But see… that doesn’t really work. The reality of having too narrow a depth strategy is that the other 99,000 fans feel disenfranchised by Brand X. They feel ignored. Worse yet, they opt out of following Brand X and engaging with it on twitter because they find no value in what Brand X is doing on Twitter since they don’t seem to be on the Brand X radar anyway.

The result of either too rigid a depth or breadth strategy is a stalled overall engagement strategy. On the one hand, you get numbers without purpose or value. On the other hand, you get an exclusive clique effect that doesn’t scale enough to matter. Neither is a good outcome.

Red Flag Diagnosis:

Too much breadth = 500,000 followers out of 500,000 fans but interactions with only 20 of them per day and zero impact on anything relevant relating to your business.

Too much depth = Only 5,000 followers out of 500,000 fans. Outside of your core fans, either nobody knows you’re here or  nobody cares.

(And in some awful cases, you get poor execution in both, which looks like only 5,000 followers out of 500,000 fans, and interactions with only 20 per day. Ergo: Nobody cares, and you blow off the few who do. Double-whammy.)

The Engagement Strategy Trap: Depth and Breadth are not mutually exclusive

Strangely, I still see a good number of companies choosing to focus on either breadth or depth when they should instead combine both. And frankly… I wonder why any marketing professional would ever make that mistake when it’s so clear that in order to really have an impact, you always have to combine the two (not just in social media but in most other areas as well). Unless your brand is about exclusivity (Ferrari, Cartier, Ferre) “engagement” can’t stop at your core customers. Not in Social Media, and certainly not on Twitter.

Without some measure of breadth, depth becomes an exercise in navel-gazing. It becomes an echo-chamber. It goes nowhere.You end up chatting with your clique every day and congratulating each other on a job well done. Great. Awesome. Except… not.

Without some measure of depth, breadth becomes an exercise in scale without impact: You may have an enormous following, but what is it doing for you? Nothing? Ooops. It’s back to the drawing board for you.

So… if you are a major consumer brand with an engagement strategy in the Social Media space and your hundreds of thousands of followers don’t move the ball for you in some way (increased WOM, increased traffic to your website(s), increased conversations or social mentions, increased traffic to your stores, increases in transactions – remember FRY?) then you’re wasting your time “collecting” followers instead of truly building a community.

Likewise, if you are a major consumer brand with an engagement strategy in the Social Media space and in the last 12 months of activity in the space, you’ve only managed to attract 5,000 “followers” out of your 500,000 active fans and customers on Twitter, somebody’s playing too much golf or computer solitaire or something. Your “engagement” program is barely on autopilot.

If your goal is “engagement” and you ignore the majority of your fans , you’re completely missing the boat. First: Whatever you’re doing, it isn’t creating value or relevance, and you are failing in that regard. Second, if you aren’t reaching out to your fans, acknowledging them and making new connections every day, you just don’t understand what engagement is about.

Repeat after me: Engagement without reach doesn’t work.

So the key to successful engagement in Social Media, especially on Twitter is to combine breadth and depth in a way that makes sense, and in a manner consistent with the overall goal of the strategy. Reaching out to 100,000 fans doesn’t mean all 100,000 want to chat with the Brand X team every single day. Some will engage daily. Others will engage weekly. Others monthly. Many more won’t engage at all. They’ll just listen and share and be happy to be part of the community without being particularly active. Some will crave more attention than others. It’s okay. Let your fans, your “followers,” you community tell you how much engagement they need. Let them tell you what kind of engagement they want from you. Every single person is different. There is no cookie-cutter model for engagement that works for every single person who’s a fan of your brand. Don’t sweat the depth vs. breadth. Work on both. Measure both. But most importantly, LISTEN to your fans. Invite them to join you on Twitter. Give them a reason to “follow” you so that you can have that kind of dialogue and feedback. Follow them back. If many never drop by to say hi, that’s okay. Let them dictate the pace and mode of the engagement.

And believe me, they’ll tell you if you’re dropping the ball or doing a great job. 😉

Remember that engagement isn’t about YOU. Engagement is about the value you bring to your community, and the community, not you, decides what is valuable to them. Your community on Twitter is not what you want it to be, it is what IT wants to be. (If it is 500,000 strong, embrace all 500,000 even if it seems inconvenient at first.)

So stop worrying about too much or too little, stop worrying about depth vs. breadth, and just reach out. Set up shop on Twitter, listen to what is being said, introduce yourself to folks who seem to care about you (Brand X), and start there. When people say hi, say hi back. When people ask a question, answer it. When people pay you a compliment, say “thank you.” When they complain about something, try to solve their problem. When you have something cool or valuable to share, share it. When someone wants to talk to you about their cat, count that as a blessing and understand that in that interraction lives the very essence of the bond between you, the brand you are paid to represent, and the person sharing something personal with you. This is invaluable. The conversations and relationships you foster on Twitter don’t just stop with the medium. They cross the digital/real world barrier. What happens on Twitter translates into people’s perception of you in the real world.

So like the old commercial says, get out there and touch someone. Be a courteous, engaging Twitter host, and make your time in social media count for something. You’ll be glad for it.

*      *      *

Bonus Section: Outtakes from this morning’s failed video shoot.

If you’ll notice, the end of today’s video about engagement is cut off and some of the post’s points are never actually made. Why? because of lawn mowers cranking up in the background AGAIN.  The video shoot was aborted and one of the draft/backup vids was used in the post.  Pretty annoying, but kind of funny… Kind of like all of the yard debris (pollen, grass, etc.) on my black shirt. Oh, and I hope you’ll enjoy the little background music. It was so awfully generic that I just had to add it in there for good measure. Check it out:

Have a great Tuesday, everyone.;)

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Engagement Paradigm: Defining the value of “followers” on Twitter

I was chatting with PepsiCo.’s Bonin (@boughb) and Josh (@jkarpf) about engagement last week when it occurred to me that the term “follower” may have sent a lot of people (and a few companies) astray when it comes to looking at depth vs. breadth of engagement. (I love these kinds of conversations. I always walk away with tons of ideas and insights. Great stuff.)

We will actually cover depth and breadth of engagement tomorrow, so hang tight, but first things first. Today, let’s focus on redefining what a “follower” actually is (and watch the video for a deeper perspective into today’s topic):

A follower is NOT a little duckling who actually follows you around like you’re his mama duck. A follower is not an impressionable outcast looking for a cult leader on Twitter. A follower is not a faceless, mindless joiner who just happened to accidentally click “follow” when your last comment popped upon their screen. In other words, followers are not zero-value dry little seashells you can collect to show how cool you have. Followers are not points and this isn’t a game.

Followers are people (for the most part), and these people tend to follow you for a reason. If you aren’t trying to game the system to build followers for the sake of having as many of them as possible, chances are that you are creating genuine value through your activities on Twitter. Earning followers is a measure of the success of that engagement, particularly as it pertains to the value that you offer to these specific people. If you are relevant (important, even) to their world, to their experience on Twitter, they will opt-in to your “feed,” to your content by following you. If they don’t find you relevant or important, they won’t follow you. It’s that simple.

What people (and especially companies) need to understand immediately if they don’t already is that everyone on Twitter is a community manager: People on Twitter aren’t just individuals, they are at the center of a specific community that they shape every day by opting to follow or unfollow accounts that matter or don’t matter to them.

When someone opts-in to your content, to your specific voice, feed and opinions, they are bringing you into their community. They are endorsing you. They are vouching for you. And they are sharing you with everyone else in that community. Whether that community is 5-strong or 500,000 strong is inconsequential to today’s discussion. (We’ll get into it more tomorrow.) What matters to our discussion today is this: Followers are not “followers.” Followers, as  community managers, are potentially promoters, advocates, ambassadors and advisers. Followers are tremendously valuable to companies looking to foster real engagement on Twitter or in Social Media as a whole. Followers are the lifeblood of engagement in Social Media because they ARE your community. Not just that, they are the individual managers of hundreds, thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of interconnected communities that transcend the digital/real world barrier: Relevance, importance and recommendations online do impact relevance, importance recommendations and ultimately transactions offline. (If you’re a business, that last one is pretty important, whether or not you are comfortable admitting.)

So when it comes to followers, and particularly numbers associated with followers, don’t get sucked into depth vs. breadth arguments: There is no winner in the ‘less is more‘ vs. ‘more is more’ debate. It isn’t about less or more or too many or too few. The discussion you really want to have centers around whom, why, how and what: Who are our followers? Who are they really? Why do we matter to them? Why do they want to engage with us here? How do we fit into their world? How can we fit into their world even better. What are their expectations? What can we do to improve their lives or experience in some way? What can we do to engage an connect with them better?

If you can start looking at your community of followers as more than a number, as more than a gaggle of “consumers” waiting for your next campaign pitch or discount code, you will be on the path to true engagement in the Social Media space, particularly on Twitter.

If you start treating your followers like the community managers they truly are, your understanding of “engagement” in social media will already be years ahead of most of your competitors still scratching their heads about the “value” of being on Twitter. If you don’t yet glimpse how that will impact your overall success (and traction) in Socal Media and in reaching your “engagement” objectives, you’re still way behind the 8-ball. No worries though: Tomorrow we chat about engagement in terms of breadth (volume) vs. depth (connection), which will bring some clarity to this whole thing if it’s still a bit fuzzy.

Have a great day, everyone. 🙂

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Who exactly is driving the Social Media bus in the Enterprise space?

I dig Jeremiah Owyang’s blog. The guy is wicked smart, usually spot-on with everything he says, and when it comes to digital media analysis, I can’t think of anyone who does a better job (Forrester Research really scored when they landed him).  But last week, one of his posts stopped me dead in my tracks – not because he got something wrong, but because he got something so painfully right: Large consulting firms (as in the “Big Four”) are joining the social media gold rush and already looking to plant their victory flags in the enterprise space. (My words, not Jeremiah’s.)

What that version of Social Media strategy, implementation, training, execution and measurement will look like is everyone’s guess. But before we get too far into this discussion, watch this little video to get into the spirit of today’s topic:

Here’s a link to Jeremiah’s post about Social Media and the enterprise space: Click here.

The part that really jumped out at me was this point:

Large consulting firms are preparing to offer million dollar packages to enterprises for change management and social integration systems.

Incidentally, when I first read that post, I started rapid-fire-DM’ing Jeremiah on Twitter about it, but after a string of about 30 140-character comments, he politely suggested that I stop blowing up his inbox and just write a blog post about it – so here we are, and as you can tell from my relaxed demeanor in the video, I have chilled a bit about the ramifications of this whole Social Media gold rush debacle.

Even so, for the purposes of this discussion, let’s take a few steps back and put the Social Media bandwagon in perspective for you:

Prologue – Social Media becomes the marketing world’s newest buzzword. Twitter starts to explode. Everyone with half a brain sees the writing on the wall: There is money to be made in Social Media. The gold rush begins.

Phase 1 – Independent business consultants (mostly marketing consultants) start rebranding themselves as “Social Media Consultants” or “Social Media experts.” In some extreme cases, even “Social Media gurus”. They spread like locusts… By November 2008, you can’t throw a cat without hitting at least two or three Social Media experts. The epidemic reaches catastrophic proportions.

Phase 2 – Marketing firms, ad agencies and a few PR outfits start to look into this whole Social Media “thing”. Billings are shrinking and clients are asking “hey, do you guys also do Social Media?” Many of these firms stretch the truth and say “yes”. Agencies and Marketing firms now start billing clients to launch blogs, Twitter pages and Facebook groups with absolutely no concept of what they’re doing. (Overheard in the men’s room: Where does the ad go?” and “How do you write a 140-character press release anyway?”) Web analytics people get brought in to measure clickthroughs, impressions and web traffic from social sites to prove effectiveness. This methodology fails to impress. Ineffective strategic planning, poor execution and a lack of measurement insight result in  Social Media getting a bad rep in the business world.

Phase 3 – Large Consulting firms jump on the Social Media bandwagon. Better late than never, right?  There’s money to be made after all, and since they’realready the experts in everything else, why not Social Media as well? Unfortunately, it isn’t that easy… is it.

And that’s just the rub: How many people in the world really know how to strategize, implement and execute a Social Media program for a company (large or small)? I can think of maybe 50-100 in the US, and that’s stretching it.*

Now tell me how many people in the US know how to actually measure the effectiveness of Social Media programs? (Not just impact on X, but actual R.O.I.?) You can probably count them on the fingers of one hand. Maybe two.**

*/**  It won’t stop thousands of people from claiming that they can do it, but we all know where that conversation is going. ‘Nuff said.

So back to my point: If we know pretty much who belongs to the small community of truly Social Media-savvy professionals we just mentioned, and only two or three actually work for the “big four,” then who is putting these million dollar social integration packages together?

Whom within the big four is building these programs?

Whom within the big four is capable of training clients and implementing these programs/packages? Of customizing them for each individual client? For each brand, market,company culture and distinct business objective?

Whom within the big four is capable of executing on any of this? (Listening outposts, Customer Support, customer engagement, online reputation management, blogging, HR, PR, promos, true social web integration, community management, etc.)

Whom among them actually knows how to set up real measurement methodologies that look beyond web analytics? (Back to the R.O.I. discussion again.)

Will it be some guy with a digital communications background who read a few white papers about Social Media and follows a cookie-cutter methodology that a few analysts and MBAs put together, or will it be a team of Social Media-savvy pros with extensive hands-on experience (and a relevant presence) in the Social Media space?

Right now, though the latter would be 1,000 times preferable to the former, it seems pretty unlikely. What seems most likely (unless you guys prove me otherwise) is that the large consulting firms Jeremiah mentions in his post are mostly winging it, just like the rest of the Social Media hacks looking to take advantage of the Social Media gold rush.

If you disagree, that’s perfectly okay. Actually, I hope that you can prove me wrong. This is one of those rare times when I truly hope that I’ve assumed the worst and completely missed the boat. So if you want to prove me wrong, please do – and here’s how: Give me names. Tell me who the big consulting firms have hired to put these packages together and help deploy them for their clients. It’s that simple.

Once we know who they are, my quick little assessment of their “worth” in this space will be simple: Are these people we know? People who actually live and breathe this stuff? People with an ounce of credibility in this space? People who have been doing this in some way shape or form for more than… six months? Not just analysts, mind you (I know some great ones who fit the bill) but practitioners. The folks who actually DO this stuff.

If so, great.

If not, the enterprise space is about to be taken for a very expensive ride… and I don’t think I am alone in thinking that the stakes (economic, professional and contextual) are too high for this sort of nonsense to go unanswered. So… in the event that I am right, that large consulting firms are about to launch blindly and clumsily into the world of Social Media consulting, how do we come to their rescue?

1. How do we make large consulting firms realize that they have a wealth of resources out here in the real world who cold help them actually bring their social integration packages to life?
2. How do we make them understand that it is in their best interest to reach out to many of you and seek your help, advice, insights?
3. How do we give them visibility to who you are and what you have to offer, and give you the kind of access ?
4. How do we bring together large consulting firms with a need for expertise in this field with those of you who have key pieces of the Social Media puzzle they so desperately need to be effective in this space?

Am I being naive? Is this type of logical partnership strategy too much to expect from organizations that aren’t in the habit of asking for help? I don’t think so: We aren’t talking about ERP and CMS here. This isn’t a vendor-driven discussion. This is not about technology or systems integration. This is about something far more organic than that. Change Management and Social Integration don’t quite plug into a company culture as well as conventional enterprise products plug into an IT infrastructure.

So how do we fix this? How do we bring everyone to the table to actually make this work? Do we create yet another conference? Do we set up closed-door meetings with these firms in which we discuss likely candidates with specific skillsets so they can create talent pools for various contracts? Do we create a forum using the various tools at our disposal to discuss issues or trouble-shoot with them? You guys tell me. What do you think?

The forum is all yours.

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As a company, what are you really investing in?

Time for your weekly BrandBuilder reality check.

There are only two types of businesses: The ones you know are the best in their category, and… everyone else.

Advertising and marketing are nice, but too many “also in” businesses waste money on marketing and advertising when they should instead revamp one or two elements of their business that would help them actually gain market share. (The most pleasant and efficient customer service experience in your industry, a perfectly designed user interface, a 100% uptime guarantee, stunning design, impeccable ergonomics, remarkable flavor, etc.)

Advertising is basically a load of bulls**t unless you have something worth advertising to begin with. (Otherwise, what are you advertising: Hey, come buy from us! We’re the thirteenth best shoe store in the 29601!) You’re either the best at something, or you’re just another voice in the crowd getting fleeced by just another run-of-the-mill ad agency or “marketing firm.”

Before you start spending money on advertising, ask yourself what your super-special value to your users/customers/clients truly is. Maybe you have the best prices. Maybe you have the most comfortable meeting rooms. Maybe you have the most square footage of any gym in your area, or the freshest produce, or the most knowledgeable staff, or the fastest check-out. It doesn’t matter what that something is as long as it is something concrete (as opposed to another lame marketing spinfest). Is that one thing truly hitting the mark? Are you really delivering on it as well as you could? As well as you should?

Whatever your value differentiator is, whatever your brand’s value advantage is (or should be), this is what you need to invest in FIRST. Once you have that aspect of your business nailed down, THEN and only then should you even bother with advertising.

About a year ago, Seth Godin posted some great advice to college grads on his blog: Only borrow money to pay for things that increase in value. A pair of shoes or cool clothes never increase in value. An education or professional experience, however do. Great advice, especially in the crux of our current economic/credit crunch. The same applies to businesses, which is why Seth’s advice is so damn relevant to the discussion today.

Perhaps more relevant to today’s topic is a slightly tweaked version of Seth’s advice: “only invest in things that increase in value.”

Like shoes and clothes, advertising never increases in value. With advertising, you are at best buying a small percentage of the public’s attention across a very narrow sliver of space and time (and paying a premium price for it.) Before you know it, your advertising budget is gone, and so is that very expensive bubble of attention.

Investing in better products/services, better people and better processes, however, makes a whole lot more sense as these things never lose value. Great employees, great products, great customer experiences and fostering a unique relationship with your fan base are the types of things worth investing in. These are the true foundations of a great brand. These are the types of things that will help strengthen your brand equity.

Advertising rarely translates into brand equity unless these foundations exist to support it. Even so, the more solid the brand’s foundation, the less relevant advertising becomes.

Starbucks doesn’t advertise much and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Whole Foods ad anywhere, yet millions of people drop solid stacks of greenbacks there every year. I don’t shop at Target, wear Rudy Project sunglasses, drive a VW or crave a BMW because of advertising. Other than creating awareness for a product that hasn’t managed to capture anyone’s attention yet (red flag), advertising does little to impact most companies’ growth. Do they create spikes in interest, eyeballs and sales? Sure. When executed well. But growth? Over time? Nope. Growth is a completely different animal, and advertising alone, boys and girls, won’t get you there.

Building a strong reputation by developing great products, buzz-worthy experiences and generally delighting customers/users is a much stronger strategy than paying loads of cash for advertising.

Something to think about as you prioritize items on your budget for H2.

Have a great Wednesday, everyone. 🙂

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It isn’t the media, it’s you.

image by ilisu

Something Seth wrote quite a while back that still resonates with me today:

“As soon as they start using the tactics of the other guys, playing the game they play, they become them. As soon as they decide that they can buy (not earn) attention, it all changes.”

With all this talk of new vs. old media, the R.O.I. of Social Media, advertising spend and SEO, chances are that you’ve forgotten what made your company or services or products so different. So unique. So good.

Chances are that your success has driven you away from those early days, when being different from everyone else, when being better was what it was all about.

Back when taking care of every new customer was like going out on a first date.

Chances are that you’re more focused on aligning your pricing to that of your competitors now than you ever were.

Chances are that you’ve started to copy their every move. You advertise where they advertise. You offer the same services they offer. If they get a Facebook page, so do you. If they start a Twitter account, so do you. If they launch a BOGO offer, you aren’t far behind. Every day that goes by, the more like them you become. The less different and remarkable you are.

Chances are that you are slowly becoming a clone of the very people you once thought sucked.

“As soon as they start using the tactics of the other guys, playing the game they play, they become them. As soon as they decide that they can buy (not earn) attention, it all changes.”

Stop.

Take a breather.

Go back to the start.

Are your products still the best? Are they still unique? Is your company still unique? Are you who you promised yourself you would be when you started? Are you building real relationships with your customers? Do you matter?

Are you still earning attention?

If the answer is yes, congrats. You’re one of the rare few. I hope you manage to keep it up for decades to come.

If not… well, maybe it’s time to let go of the superficial tactics and get back to basics. What do you say?

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ROI vs. “Impact on X” – Understanding what Social Media ROI is and isn’t.

Don’t want to read the post? Watch the video. (It’s faster.) Note: That last little part got cut a little short, but you’ll get the point.

Okay, so it became obvious to me last week that the term R.O.I. has been seriously corrupted in Marketing and Social Media circles lately, and it might not hurt to bring some clarity to the Social Media R.O.I. discussion again.

(I swear I was going to talk about other things this week, but I keep getting pulled back in.) 😀

First things first: You have to understand the difference between Impact and Return On Investment.

Impact can be anything: Increased traffic on a website, more visitors to your store, increased participation on your blog, more mind share, being discovered by people who may become customers, a rise in positive social mention, and even increased sales. There are hundreds if not thousands of potential incidences of impact when it comes to your Social Media activities, and every single one can be easily measured using a variety of tools – from Google Analytics to Radian 6. As a matter of fact, every possible kind of impact you deem relevant should be measured and taken into account when it comes to gauging the effectiveness of a Social Media program. In this, we are all in agreement.

Impact can be measured in eyeballs. Impact can be measured in comments on a blog post. Impact may be measured in conversations. Impact can be measured in responses to a BOGO offer or discount offer. Impact can even be measured in smiles.  When it comes to impact metrics, the sky is the limit and every business has its own mapping to figure out and play with.

But then you have ROI, which is a completely different animal: ROI is a very specific subset of Impact in that it relates specifically to the business’ bottom-line. In other words, Return on Investment cannot be measured in eyeballs, unique visitors, conversations, mentions, impressions or smiles. ROI can only be measured in currency. (Think of ROI as the subset of impact that specifically addresses revenue and nothing else.)

There is no “Return on Impact”.

There is no “Return on awesomeness.”

For the sake of this discussion, there is no “Return on conversations” either.

These things are cool, they’re fun to tweet about, but they don’t exist in the world of revenue, payroll and pragmatic business decisions. “Return on investment” is simply that: A business commits a certain dollar amount to a program and expects to see that program produce just like any other investment. If it doesn’t, it gets cut and a program that will produce better R.O.I. will take its place faster than you can say “huh?”. It’s that simple.

Some businesses are okay with cost-neutral investments: If they put in $100K and get $100K back as a direct result, you’re fine. The program has paid for itself, and the collateral impact was worth it. (More visibility, more conversation, more word-of-mouth, etc.) But many don’t. When I was learning FRY from Microsoft, their R.O.I. expectations for any program they funded in their distribution channel was 10:1. In other words, for each dollar Microsoft invested, they expected to see $10 back.

Trust me: In that kind of environment, you learn how to define and calculate ROI pretty quickly. And while eyeballs, unique visitors and social mention are nice, they don’t fall into the realm of ROI. Nice try, but no dice.

All of this to say that no business will invest in a program that offers a negative return on investment. Conversations, transparency and positive WOM may be the currency of choice for many of us, but unless you can show that they generate dollars, you are not demonstrating ROI. You are only demonstrating impact, and that is not enough.

What everyone needs to start realizing right now is that the business world is not going to change in just a few months just because a few thousand of us evangelize the immense potential of the social web. Business managers are not going to change anything they are doing because you have introduced them to transparency or dialogue or the power of communities. PR directors are not going to suddenly going to stop crafting press releases or relinquish control of the “messaging” they get paid to create. CEOs aren’t going to drop what they are doing and start blogging because you tell them to. CMOs aren’t going to fire their copywriters and replace them with community managers. Customer Service managers are not going to cancel their call center contracts with India and the Philipines and hire US-based Tweeps to replace them. None of these things are going to happen UNTIL you show business owners that Social Media can actually improve their bottom-line, their balance sheet, their P&L, and how.

This starts with a basic understanding of what ROI is and isn’t: If you don’t understand what your client or boss is asking for when s/he brings up ROI, you cannot help them. If they repeatedly ask you for ROI and you keep giving them impact on X instead, how disconnected are you? Think about that.

If you can’t give them what they want, if they don’t get what they keep asking you for, before you know it, they will give up on your Social Media program. And all because you didn’t know how to connect the dots between activity, impact, and ROI.

Likewise, if you are a business manager and your resident Social Media consultant/expert doesn’t understand the difference between impact on X and ROI, it’s probaly time for a new expert.

One last thing:

Anyone who tells you that Social Media ROI cannot be calculated, that the tools don’t exist yet, or that Social Media is about conversations and not ROI is putting up a smoke screen. What they should be saying is “I don’t know how to do that yet,” but it’s a lot easier to perpetuate the myth that Social Media ROI cannot be calculated – for obvious reasons. It’s a terribly self serving and counterproductive thing to do, and “professionals” in the Social Media world need to stop hiding behind that argument before business leaders looking for real traction give up on Social Media altogether. At some point, all that hot air has to actually turn into something real.

The irony in all this is that the ROI calculation process is the same regardless of the medium: Old Media, New Media, Print media, Digital media – The medium doesn’t matter. ROI is ROI. Anyone who talks about Social Media ROI as being somehow radically different from other types of ROI is demonstrating a profound lack of understanding of ROI as a whole. Red flag. BIG red flag. Learn to spot it.

I hope this helped reframe the ROI vs. impact conversation a bit. If so, do me a big favor and pass this on to someone who will get some value out of it. The faster we help people use the right terminology when talking about this stuff (and dispel myths about ROI measurement), the more likely we are to see broad Social Media adoption for business actually happen (and be done well).

Thanks for hanging out with me, and have a great day. 🙂

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Real Social Media R.O.I. – Part 4: FRY Metrics

Before I wrap this Social Media ROI discussion together for you with a neat little bow, I have to give credit where credit is due: I didn’t come up with this stuff all on my own. I adapted this simple methodology over time to meet the needs of clients who needed real, actionable, simple metrics to determine whether or not their marketing activities were hitting the mark or not.

The real credit belongs to Microsoft for introducing me to these concepts back when I was working in the Distribution Channel. (Big shout-out to @robmoyer and Lisa Williams, by the way, without whom I would have never learned this stuff.)

Originally, F.R.Y. (Frequency/Reach/Yield) wasn’t meant to be applied to Social Media (or any media, for that matter). But as it turns out, it adapts super well to just about anything, so I kind of lucked out by being exposed to it in the first place. Pretty handy stuff, really, when you grasp just how portable it is.

Anyway, you guys have been very patient, so I won’t drag this out any longer. Here is the wrap-up of this week’s R.O.I. discussion with a basic overview of F.R.Y. (You’re going to love how easy this is):

So let’s recap:

Frequency Increasing sales revenue by shortening the interval between transactions.
Reach (breadth) Increasing sales revenue by increasing net new customer count.
Reach (Depth) Increasing sales revenue by helping customers buy deeper into the product line.
Yield Increasing sales revenue by driving customers to want to increase their average per transaction spending.

Getting comfortable with this effectively kills the argument that SM has no real ROI dead. As in: “Yeah? Well how about a mouthful of F.R.Y. there, Mr. social media skeptic?”

Bullet-in-the-head dead.

As in let’s move on and get back to work – at least those of us who know what we are doing.

Does any of this change the way you should engage with your customers? Not one bit. Does any of this make your engagement strategy any less honest, transparent or authentic? Absolutely not. All we are talking about here is giving skeptical (or even full-bore Social Media-agnostic) executives a real end-game ROI they can understand and get behind so you can get the okay to launch a kickass social media practice and blow everyone’s socks off. That’s it.

Oh… and make you accountable for results, which ought to weed out about 99% of so-called “social media experts” whose expertise in using Social Media is about on par with their expertise in eating sushi. (And just as valuable to their unfortunate clients.)

Aside from that last comment, the beauty of F.R.Y. is that it is simple, specific and highly adaptable. Social Media, PR, Advertising, Product releases, incentives campaigns… It plugs into everything. F.R.Y. is the ultimate app. for R.O.I. measurement. Once you understand how it works, you can apply it to just about anything.

One final note:

Do you know what’s really, really cool about this? You didn’t have to spend $400 to attend a Social Media e-seminar. You didn’t have to send a P.O. Box 3 payments of $39.99 plus S&H for a super top secret DVD filled with “Social Media Secrets the pros don’t want you to know”. You didn’t have to fly some overhyped blogger to your HQ to have them regurgitate some tired Social Media For Dummies presentation for a mere $15K per day. This stuff is WAY too basic to warrant that, and unlike many “consultants” jumping into Social Media these days, I wouldn’t feel right taking your money for sharing simple business advice without actually helping you implement it.

Yet, far too many companies get suckered into paying “social media gurus” substantial bank to essentially do little more than flap their mouths and state the obvious without ever delivering any actionable advice. Don’t become one of them. If all you want is a great motivational speaker, buy a set of Tony Robbins CDs. He’s good and you’ll get your money’s worth. But if you want to help your business – and I mean REALLY help your business – make sure you don’t fall into the Social Media “expert” trap: 99% of them are basically just motivational speakers with a Social Media theme. Find someone who knows how to a) measure real ROI and b) tie those metrics to engagement programs. Anything less than that is a waste of your time.

Thanks for hanging out this week. As always, feel free to comment or reach out to me. Have a great Memorial Day weekend. 🙂

Inquiries:
Tel – 864.630.7398
Inquiries@thebrandbuildermarketing.com
Twitter – @thebrandbuilder

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