Mythology - The Meaning Behind the Marketing

Build or Borrow a Social Community?

The mad dash to set up Facebook fan or group pages by businesses has reached the early majority and may be entering into the late majority. Even United Airlines has a "fan" page (Is anyone really a fan of an airline? Notice they seem to have turned off posts. Perhaps JetBlue or Southwest Airlines in their early days?).

The social media platform player Ning has grown quite a bit recently as more organizations determine they want more control and functionality over their organization-sponsored social network. Ning allows you to brand your site to your liking (for the most part), set up your own profiles and integrate more content than a public social network like Facebook.

However, if you set up your own network, you'll have to work harder to get people to join and participate. Facebook's beauty is its inherent viral functionality; when someone signs up for your page, all of their friends see that they've done it and some will sign up also.

We think it is useful to think of using each tool at different points of the customer adoption funnel. For example, a Facebook fan page will probably generate more members at the earlier stage of commitment, but due to its light functionality, it is less likely to deeply engage. 

A customer social community, on the other hand, is more likely to attract true advocates who are seriously ready to engage with like-minded advocates. This one that  designed and manages for the Hatfield-McCoy off-road trail system is a great example. Fans of HMT are already deeply engaged in answering questions, connecting with each other, and providing feedback. 

In some cases, companies and non-profits are forgoing a traditional web site and just launching a Ning-based site as their primary web presence. In many cases, especially where deep interaction with customers or constituents is important, this is a smart move.

Does your company participate in social communities? On what level? We'd love to hear about your successes and challenges in this ever-evolving world of social marketing.

Jones Soda Puts its Customers on the Map

We've often used Jones Soda, the spunky upstart soda and juice company in Seattle, as a great example of a company who has collaborated in the development of their brand (and product) with actual customers.

Now Jones Soda is putting their customers on the map, literally. Using a Frappr Guest Map by Platial, Jones Soda fans can upload themselves and find each other. Just another way Jones stays connected to customers by helping them stay connected to each other.

Empowering Your Customers to Share

When considering that up to 55% of people share their experience with services and products it is easy to see how important it is to ensure your customers have a positive experience with your product or service and as a marketer to create a platform that empowers your customers to share these positive experiences with other potential customers.  Here is an analysis of a great example.

A national pet supplies retailer has recognized the significance of fostering customer stories. In addition, they have recognized the importance that emotions play into customer experiences.  On their website, Petco has created the ability to allow their customers to share their stories.

Notice that they titled it "The Moment Your Pet Changed Your Life." Clearly they are tapping into the core emotional element of owning and caring for a pet.  Then they ask their customers to share that emotional moment on their website.  They have created a lead-in page that explains the idea and allows them to review all the stories that are posted. This establishes trust with the customer that their story is important and that they are not going to do any nasty marketing tricks with them or the story.

After the customer logs in with an email (that's it, no long form to collect information) they are presented with a simple form that has "Helpful Hints" if needed.  Once the story is submitted the customer can preview it, then send it.  I am guessing Petco has an internal review process to ensure the quality and authenticity of the stories.

Once the story is public, they have also provided the opportunity for those reading the stories to share them on Facebook, Digg, and Delicious.  This is great on multiple levels, viral sharing of emotional stories and a deep linking campaign for search engine optimization.  A great story about who a pet changed your life sent around the web linking back to Petco.

It is quite fascinating to see a retailer use some basic marketing principles, emotions sell and empower your customer, combined with the reality that the web is a great hub for customer engagement to build a great campaign.  

Mapping Marketing to Purchase Funnel Decisions

IDG Communications released a report recently demonstrating how the web site content provided by technology marketers is not relevant to the needs of their customers 50% of the time. The online research conducted last October captured feedback from 400 technologists and business buyers on what they prefer as they move from general education to business case development to final decisions in purchasing products and services.

In other words, as prospects moved through the purchase funnel, they did not find the relevant content they needed to make a decision. (This problem is addressed by  Mythology's first pillar of Empowered Marketing: Understanding.)

On average, the report found that six decision-makers from IT, business units and finance were involved in a typical IT product/service purchase. Note how influential each source of information was in their decision-making:

In addition to finding relevant educational and transactional content on a vendor's web site, the decision-makers reported that peer dialogue and independent authority dialogue were major influencers. Are you building this into your marketing engagement plans to assist prospects in making informed, credible decisions?

Tactics such as featuring a blog with guest posts from actual customers, or video clips featuring industry experts speaking about your products are very powerful influencers and are a welcome part of the decision process with customers.

The survey respondents reported that they could find relevant content on IT vendor sites only 42% of the time. The lack of relevant content reduced a vendor's chance of a sale by 45%! In light of this lack of information, decisions often go to the vendor who answered their questions and connected them with peer and expert content.

Your web site is your conversation hub, and a rigorous content management approach is critical to using the web to help move customers down the purchase funnel from Awareness to Purchase...and hopefully over time, Advocacy.

A Reminder from the Past on Relationships and Relevancy

A friend of mine, Gary Beach, Publisher Emeritus of CIO Magazine, sent me this vintage reminder from McGraw Hill in 1958 of the challenges that marketing must overcome in order to drive sales:

Loyalty Program Members Drive Word-of-Mouth

Relationship marketing and loyalty programs were the rage in the Nineties, but the rapid advent of social media and online communities have shifted the attention away from - or at least changed - their focus.

"Word of mouth" (WOM) is all the rage, and for good reason. WOM is the most influential channel of communication for convincing people to try a new product or service.

A new study by Colloquy called "The New Champion Customers" demonstrates a compelling link between traditional loyalty programs and WOM. It found that rewards or loyalty program members are 70% more likely to be WOM champions, defined as those customers who actively recommend a product, service or brand.

Loyalty programs tend to draw in those customers who are most likely to be fans of the brand. 55% of loyalty program members indicate they are WOM champions, while only 32% of non-program customers are self-described WOM champions.

Many organizations captured a great deal of customer contact information since the advent of email, but it sits idly in their databases unscrubbed and unmonetized. It's a smart thing to evaluate how you could activate these contacts by crafting a low-cost, high-yield loyalty program and connecting it to a social community. 

Get Yourself Together For Satisfied, Repeat Customers

According to a recent CMO Council study:

• 58% of the 480 executives surveyed said their companies do not compensate any employees or executives based on customer loyalty, satisfaction improvements or analytics
• 38% said their companies have no programs in place to track or propagate positive word of mouth among customers

• Only 29% said their companies rate highly in their ability to handle and resolve customer problems or complaints

The report goes on to share very informative, and scary, stats on just how poorly most companies are internally aligned to ensure strong customer experiences that lead to loyalty, repeat business and advocacy.

That's why at Mythology we continue to evangelize the "10 Pillars" approach to addressing the 80% of your marketing "iceberg" that is below the water so that the 20% that is visible to the outside world is accurate and effective. Without a serious focus on the foundational aspects of marketing - customer segmentation, deep intimacy with their functional and emotional needs, differentiated value propositions, intelligent engagement plans, etc. - ROI on marketing budgets will continue to disappoint.

In this economy, it's more critical than ever to develop discipline before developing the creative.

Whopper Sacrifice: Monetizing Facebook and Other Social Networks

Facebook is one of the most powerful marketing tools developed to date on the Internet. The willingness of people to post their personal and career-related interests and activities and share them with both their network of friends and the Facebook advertising engine is quite amazing.

The ability to target not just on demographics but on psychographics is impressive. However, like many new marketing tools that arise quickly on the scene, the platform is ripe for misuse and disappointment.

Although plastering a well-targeted banner ad next to a targeted user's profile is certainly better than plastering one on an untargeted page, it's still not exactly enough to generate significant ROI. For example, whereas a pay-per-click link on Google's search engine is "double qualified" because the person is actively searching for your keyword, Facebook's targeting does not capture those "in market" users who are actively looking for your type of product or services.

Facebook users are there to socialize. What is more annoying than trying to be sold something while you're socializing?

That's why the most effective Facebook marketers know that in order to effectively market on Facebook and other social media sites, you must understand and commit to the concept of "community." What is community? While scientists and Wikipedia posters debate the exact definition, one thing is for sure about online communities: it's a group that has voluntarily come together around a common interest or affinity.

Sometimes that interest is buying stuff, but rarely. More commonly, a marketer must understand what common interests are worthing tapping into, and then decide how to add value to that community vs. distracting it with a pitch. You can add value through information, enabling people with common interests to find each other (a major benefit of any community) or humor, among others.

Unless you are a brand with inherent community-building appeal, or have established a cult-like following already, you may not want to start with a "fan page". Instead, think of a cause or topic related to your brand that you could build a community around. For example, if you're a hybrid car manufacturer, sponsor a "green motoring" group. You'll attract far more people while gaining credit in the community for building on this topic.

Another way to generate interest, buzz and action is to address the social network in terms that are relevant and contextual to the situation. Burger King's Whopper Sacrifice campaign is a good example in which they challenged users to delete ten of their friends in order to get a free Whopper. It was humorous as well as effective. In fact, perhaps it was too effective from Facebook's point of view, but Burger King is craftily keeping the buzz going by offering to help you send an angry-gram if you were de-friended over a hamburger.

Here is my steam-release angry gram to "Brandie."

Connecting Offline and Online Social Network Efforts

With the flurry of growth around social media, it's easy to forget a critical strategic rule of marketing: make all of your marketing channels work together to build a bigger impact.

Integrating media campaigns took quite a while back in the late 90's and early 00's as companies and agencies set up separate Internet advertising teams outside of their mainstream advertising/marketing groups. As social media campaigns ramp up, I hope we've learned to think about integration from the start.

We humans are social creatures, a trait that Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and others are successfully exploiting. However, there is still a difference between a virtual connection and an in-person meeting. The more senses engaged, the more memorable and meaningful it is to our minds and emotions.

Here in Charleston, WV, where I reside, we have an active group of Tweeters who meet each other in Tweet Ups at the local coffee shop. The in-person meetings have really solidified who I'm interested in following and how closely and influence my ongoing conversations. It's always a blast to compare a person's "live" personality and vibe vs. what you derived from their Tweets.

We advise clients to consider the customer purchase funnel: What aspects of online social media can fill the top stages of the funnel, and how can offline social efforts (sports marketing, entertainment, conferences, seminars, etc.) activate the relationship towards the next step towards purchase?

Ignore the Purpose, Abuse the Medium

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, but Forrester (registration required) recently reported that only 1 in 6 people trust corporate blogs. But aren't blogs supposed to be how companies put on their human face and show the "real" brand?

Hearken back to the rise of email and database-driven marketing in the Nineties. Remember the big push for customers to sign up for company "newsletters"? It was supposed to be about producing "news" that built a long-term relationship. Instead, most newsletters turned out to be glorified spam with companies training their consumers to ignore a barage of special offers. No news, no real value. Email open rates and click-through rates plummeted over time as consumers learned this medium wasn't that new after all in terms of the value companies sent them.

It's happening again with blogs, at least among the over-managed, stylized corporate blogs that are little more than a thin veneer of "authenticity." By the time the corporate PR and legal team approve the CEO's post, it says next to nothing that a promotional email wouldn't have said.

Why does this happen?

For one reason, marketers focus on the medium as opposed to the purpose and nature of the communication. During the email marketing frenzy, hundreds of database analysis firms were there to help you determine how many emails you need to send in order to achieve a certain return. But who was focused on actually putting value in the email itself so that consumers were trained to look forward to the content?

Why do marketers focus more on spinning up a cool new medium, such as a blog, as opposed to focusing on what matters, which is what consumers need and want in order to build a long-term value-driven relationship with a company? Because it's easier.

Let's be honest. Everyone is busy. Few marketers truly understand their customers or their market as deeply as they should. Few spend enough time listening to customers' needs or desires enough to know what would be considered valuable. Therefore, it's easier to crank out a vanilla blog than it is to produce a meaningful, value-building conversation.