Mythology - The Meaning Behind the Marketing

Advice on 21st Century Social Media Success from 1936

Recently I had the pleasure of presenting at West Virginia University's Integrated Marketing Communications Program Weekend. The IMC programat WVU has taken a leadership position in the journalism and marketing world with its unique online-only format and focus on a new approach marketing: viewing the whole marketing picture, not just the parts. Students in the program learn to see things they way the consumer sees them - as a constant flow of information from indistinguishable sources.

So what do you say to a roomful of professors, administrators, students and prospective students that they haven't heard before that will inform and inspire?

Well, you go back to 1936.

That's the year Dale Carnegie published his historic guide to social success, How to Win Friends and Influence People. In a world where the marketing and media megaphone has been replaced by collaborative conversations, Carnegie's advice seems more relevant than ever.

Here are a few of Carnegie's laws for success:

• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person's interest.
• Make the other person feel important and do it sincerely.
• Show respect for other people's opinions.
• If you're wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.
• Let the other person feel the idea is his/hers.
• Throw down a challenge.

Think you could generate a few Twitter followers and Facebook friends with that advice? My wife probably exhibits these skills more naturally than anyone else I know. People are drawn to her because, well, she makes them feel valued and really does listen intently to them. She probes them with questions, getting them to open up about things that they would never share with others. (She's declined my suggestion to get her own talk show.)

Here is a view of the rest of the presentation. What do you think about Carnegie's advice and its relevance for today's social media world? (That's me being genuinely interested in other people.)

21st Century Social Media Advice from 1936

View more OpenOffice presentations from Jeff James.

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.

Beginning with Sticky Trust in Mind

Think of your own likelihood to open an email and act upon it. Your split-second decision process might look something like this:

• Unsolicited - Unknown Source: Spam, pure and simple. You delete it quickly and are probably more than a bit annoyed.

• Unsolicited - Known Source: You may know the company, but you still didn't request it. Still annoyed, perhaps slightly less so depending on your existing opinion of the company. However, your opinion probably went down slightly after receiving their spam.

• Opt-In - Coerced: An email received from a company who required you to give them your email address in order to get to something you wanted (a free white paper, etc.). In reality, you really don't care to hear from these folks again. Most likely you'll delete it, or perhaps open .5% - 1% of the time when you're cleaning out your Hotmail. If you have the energy and time, you'll probably opt out (although most people don't, preferring instead to ignore it or flag it as junkmail that gets routed to the delete folder).

• Opt-In - Desired: This is actually becoming less common and less needed with RSS, but there are times when you actually do want something sent to you on a regular basis. Sometimes it's related to offers, most often it's related to valued information. These emails get opened, but still only 3% - 20% of the time.

• Forwarded From an Annoying Friend/Colleague: You know the ones, thinking every other joke or urban legend is worth forwarding to their entire address book. You may pay attention for a split second, but mostly just to shake your head and wonder why they have so much time on their hands. These are tougher to opt out of receiving, but mentally you're most definitely opted out.

• Forwarded from a Trusted Friend/Colleague:  Ah, now we have something. This is an email from someone who you know personally, or have placed some trust in because of others' opinions of them. You've experienced a track record of value in what they send, so most likely you open it. You may even forgive them a couple of times if they send something less than valuable, but the long-term trust remains. These are the pinnacles of influence in a word-of-web world.

The question is: Why do we plan and spend so much time and money on architecting "campaigns" that look so much like the first few scenarios, and so little on thinking of something uniquely and consistently valuable that it would earn a forward from a trusted source?

Sure, it's harder. And we're not at a point where marketers can completely rely on word-of-web to generate enough response volume. The scale just isn't there. But...If we re-prioritized our planning, if we started with that end in mind, wouldn't even the rest of our "traditional" marketing (including traditional digital marketing) be that much more effective?

If we started with "sticky" in mind, most likely it would stick to all of our communications and lead us towards higher return on marketing investment.

Marketing Manager as Community Organizer

Hey, if "community organizer" is a stepping stone to the presidency, why not as a qualification for Chief Marketing Officer? As more and more marketing tasks are shifted to the community (The latest? Get your community to design your logo.), a key issue has been drawn out in regard to hiring marketing talent: What skills are really needed? 

In the past, a thorough understanding of traditional media planning was required. Who can we find who understands reach and frequency? Who knows solid direct marketing tactics that generate ROI? 

These days, more companies are embracing the fact that they need community organizing skills within their marketing department. It's not enough to spread the "message" through Twitter and Facebook, which are just tools; you have to understand how to build true community through those tools.  

Here's a list of a just some of the skills for a good community organizer, whether it's organizing on the streets or online:

• Building coalitions, including among those who may have felt powerless
• Mobilizing large numbers of people
• Training and empowering leaders
• Effective listening skills
• Effective questioning and messaging skills

The Marin Institute, an alcohol industry watchdog and a resource for solutions nto community alcohol problems has developed their own community organizer self-assessment test to help determine whether this is a good career choice.

Perhaps we need to adopt these kinds of organizing skill assessments for hiring marketing professionals?

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 Team to Join the Conversation

Often there are two types of organization scenarios when it comes to participating in the social media revolution: those who try and lock down their employees by banning access to social media sites, and those who unleash them - but in an unprepared way.

Neither of course are very effective. The former essentially proves just how much your firm doesn't "get" how marketing has turned into a conversation. The latter often leads to unintended consequences and messes to clean up.

What about (gasp!) an enlightened approach where you encourage your employees to build the firms' brand through effective social media interaction? What if you equipped them to represent your organization effectively on Twitter, Facebook and other communities?

IBM, not necessarily a company you would think of as progressive in the Web 2.0 world, has been a leader in this area. As far back as 2005, they got ahead of the curve and realized that a) their employees have a ton of value to contribute to the world, and b) they should probably just lay down a few guidelines that they are expected to adhere to when representing the company on blogs, message boards, etc.

Here is what they came up with.

It's fantastic. It's straightforward, connected to IBM's values, and empowering. Way to go Big Blue.

What IS the Future of Advertising?

I read an interesting post recently on www.widgify.com on "The Future of Viral Marketing: Service-Oriented Advertising." The author proposes:

I call this concept Service-Oriented Advertising. People will pay to have their messages delivered across services.  It’s a bit geek-shique, but the idea is that marketers will seed the delivery of their message through multiple web services, or channels, and pay for the enhanced distribution of their messages on a performance basis.  There are some primitive versions of this that exist today.  The CPI, or cost-per-install, model for widgets is a subset of this paradigm.  People pay for their message (widget) to get distributed across a subset of channels (social networks) on a performance basis (install on a page).

It's been a mantra over the last several years (with philosophical underpinnings from the Cluetrain Manifesto) that marketing must morph into a conversation, a collaboration between vendors and their constituents/customers. While many companies still react with "Huh?", others are blazing trails on what exactly this looks like.

The conversational approach has great emotional appeal, but marketers have struggled with how to measure it, how to manage it and how to profit from it.

Whether it looks like the "pay for propagate" model as Hooman suggests, I'm not sure. But as word-of-mouth influence continues to challenge television and traditional media as THE source for new product/service information, it's clear that rallying your tribe is of utmost strategic importance.

The keys seem to be:

• Is your tribe made up of the right people?
• Is your tribe truly influencing people down the purchase funnel?
• Is managing the tribe really more efficient and effective than traditional marketing?
• Can you convince your boss of all the above?

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.

Pre-Super Bowl Thoughts: Evidence of Integrated Campaigns

As I sit here watching the 17 hour Super Bowl pre-game show, it's pretty clear that marketers still believe in traditional advertising. NBC (finally) sold out their Super Bowl ad spots and set a new record for advertising revenue at $206 million.

However, I think we'll notice that throughout the game that new media, social networks and search have permeated almost all major campaigns. Whether it be involving consumers in the creation of an ad like Doritos, integrating a Facebook experience like CareerBuilder, showing the outtakes of a commercial like E*Trade, or integrating search keywords with the media effort (70% of advertisers did this year), you probably noticed the new world of marketing in its tween years.

Now the question: is your organization leveraging best practices for integrating efforts across all marketing channels? If not, we're to help.