How to Get the Best ROI Out of Your Marketing

The recent update to Google’s content farm algorithm had SEOs and webmasters scrambling to figure out what’s going on as it affects 12% of the search results in the US.

Even if you’re not a hardcore SEO ninja you should know that Google works hard to purify its search data regularly. After all we’re creating as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003.

In addition, with the announcement of adding social context into the search mix, Google just introduced a whole new set of algorithm in an attempt to make search more social.

If you’re a business, you have to overcome disruptive technologies in order to cope with the rapidly evolving landscape of social media and consumer behaviors.

That makes it even more challenging for modern marketers to get a true ROI (return on investment) out of every marketing dollar.

This is why it’s important than ever to have the right approach to creating your marketing strategy.

If you’re going to invest in online marketing you need to focus on the value of what you’re doing. So here then are some marketing ROI advices that I’ve picked up over the years and feel are most relevant today.

Have short-term goals with a long-term outcome in mind

Would you like to get a ton of traffic?

How about more subscribers? Or perhaps you could use a higher conversion rate?

The problem with those questions is that they’re simply too broad and abstract. When setting your goals for social media, SEO or even content marketing you need to know why you’re doing it and what the “specific” expected outcome would be in a given time frame.

And what does getting that outcome mean for your business?

How does that impact the bottom line?

No, I don’t mean in the number of retweets or Facebook likes, but in dollar figures.

In how long and at what cost?

If you’ve decided to invest in a 12-month campaign, you need to first identify incremental goals that you set out to achieve rather than just eyeing the end result.

Looking at your weekly traffic in a given month won’t tell you much, but give it enough time, you’ll be able to connect the dots between cause and effect, that’s when the story emerges.

Too many businesses abandon what might have been a successful strategy had they stick with the original plan. The trick is to focus on getting that first small success to build momentum and confidence.

Marketing Return on Investment

What are the short-term goals? What are the long-term benefits?

Having a short-term goal allows you to stay on track so you can make adjustments alone the way to get to the final outcome you had in mind.

Think like an analyst, act like a startup

We want to know more about our target customer. We want to know when, where, how and why they clicked on our links.

Historically, customer data is what enable companies to increase the effectiveness of their marketing campaigns. But at what cost?

Information has never been so widely available than it is today. The access to data is virtually free but what’s not free is how you translate data into useful insights.

These insights give us actionable steps to take and put behaviors in buckets.

The thing to remember is that all information and data are lagging indicators. They’re good references to help you develop your strategy but ultimately you’re using rational logic on irrational subject matter – human emotions.

It helps to analyze data but Internet marketing strategy requires adaptability.

This means listening to the market then translate the demands of the business environment into an action plan.

Develop your marketing strategy should be like a startup figuring out how to make money or survive until the next round of funding.

Not only do startups have to be nimble, they have to think creatively without just throwing money at their problems.

Social media is the perfect example. Not every brand is ready to let go of their reputation but the choice no longer belongs to the brand. It’s now in the hands of the customer.

This shift in power changes the relationship between business and its customers.

If you can’t change the customer, you have to change your business. Why not make updates to customer service procedures and distribute responsibility across multiple resources?

Change is hard but no business can stay at the top without staying with the rate of change.

Identify potential risks and rewards

Facebook recently rolled out all new Fan Page designs and now may even be phasing out the Share button entirely so how are you ever going to get your return on investment out of something that’s always changing?

This is where you need to make your planning and risk analysis commensurate with the size of your marketing strategy.

For large scale campaigns, contingency plans are critical. Again it comes down to asking the right questions.

If we put our money in A, what’s going to happen to B? If A works, how will we deal with C?

Pay attention to the risk vs reward metrics and know when to cut your losses if a campaign isn’t delivering the result you want. Don’t let your desire to succeed be the enemy of good judgment.

A good place to start is to have a clear justification on the next step with your team’s support or have outside opinions to help bring clarity to your process. Then establish a measurement framework that can be used to determine the value of your activities.

Needless to say, every marketing strategy has its own risks and rewards.

Ask yourself what’s the best scenario? What’s the worse that can happen?

Remember, most successful marketing strategies only works for a short period of time based on things that don’t account for the constantly evolving nature of the market.

When the next Facebook or Groupon shows up, it’s back to the drawing board developing, testing and executing new strategies.

Although all companies face different degrees of these hurdles, knowing how your customer’s behavior is the key to attenuating organizational risk.

Even CMOs worldwide have a dramatic difference in measuring social media ROI. According the eMarketer. “Asked about social media activities with the highest ROI based on older metrics with less of a focus on the bottom line, CMOs were most likely to say they did not know the return from any channel other than their company’s online community. Even Facebook and ratings and reviews, the two top venues with “significant ROI,” failed to win over more than about 15% of respondents..”

As you can see, marketers are trying to justify the value of site traffic, pages views, positive buzz, fans and followers on the impact of conversions.

There is definitely a shift in the way marketers measure social media ROI because in marketing, EVERYTHING is a test.

Know the weaknesses in your strategy

While there are a ton of free valuable content and strategy out there, that to doesn’t’ mean they’ll fit your needs. This is why some marketing strategies fail because of false assumptions based on irrelevant data.

Businesses usually implement Internet marketing strategies and would ask for help for the one of the following three reasons:

A company tried something, got good results and would like to replicate the result continuously but lacks resources.
The company is stuck and needs help to make their strategy more profitable and/or want some advice on how to do it (i.e. usually this happens if the strategy is no longer working as well as it has in the past or just can’t keep up with all the changes) and
Something happened recently and has hurt the strategy’s performance and the company is desperately seeking answers to understand why everything went wrong (i.e. What? Google changed algorithm again and all our SEO disappeared, please help!)

Which brings up an important point – if you don’t know the weak points in your strategy (and execution), it isn’t because they don’t exist but rather you haven’t discovered them yet!

In my experience, no strategy out there doesn’t have some sort of soft spot (or many) whether it’s because it doesn’t work in some niche markets or the audience just isn’t ready for that concept.

For example, according to a recent USA Today/Gallup poll shows that both Google and Facebook attract young, affluent, and educated Americans in large numbers. More than half of those are under the age of 50 with a college degrees and making more than $90,000 a year.

It may sound like a good idea to go after audience in those channels but looking into further details you’ll find that the report went on to say that the data does not include “how many times a week they visit the sites or how much time they spend on the sites, meaning this analysis gauges raw audience reach rather than engagement.”

This means that the report is only a high-level overview of the types of users that are in those channels. Not a good indicator.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket when making assumptions.

When necessary purchase useful data will save you time and money if you know how to use data to your advantage.

The take away: When looking at your marketing strategy, identify short-term goals that fits into the long-term ROI is where you’ll find value that matches your bottom line.

Many marketing activities are part of an overall strategy that won’t have immediate or direct impact on sales simply because they’re cumulative activities.

Positive marketing ROI are the results of incremental investment in time, money and resources. Just because some activities aren’t part of an ROI calculation, it doesn’t mean their costs shouldn’t be justified.

At the end, it all comes down to this: Business is about continuous profits (doing meaningful transactions) while marketing is about increase profits over time.

And strategy is a process to implement those profit generating activities for the business to measure the effectiveness of its marketing.

So, next time you’re working on a marketing strategy, take the time to ask yourself this simple question – What’s your long-term desire outcome?

4 Internet Marketing Trends For 2011

by Eric Tsai

information highway

As we’re approaching the end of the 2010 there are numerous developments with businesses using social media. I had predicted that brands will need to figure out how social fits into their overall brand strategy by identifying where the leverage is with social media and how to manage it.

Online communities are now everywhere there is access and common objectives. Even social networks are interconnected themselves pushing and pulling content across various channels.

For business owners, bloggers and marketers, we have to realize that the landscape is changing and will continue to shift towards attentive reach, not frequency.

Instead of trying to reach broad targets of demographic groups, investing in paid media we find valuable organic content becoming more powerful, ranking higher by search engines and shared by passionate communities.

Need more facts to back up the growth of social media? According to Harris Interactive:

9 out of 10 (87%) online adults use social media
Highest percentage (22%) uses social media less than 1 hour per week
Highest percentage of 18-34 yr-olds (17%) uses social media 6-10 hours per week

social media usage study by Harris

It’s indicative that the evolution of social media is not just with the tools. The real “leading indicators” will be how social media gets utilized in the real world, not how marketers want it to be used.

And because we’re living in an over-communicated society with competing and conflicting information, true engagement in this on-demand world will be the biggest challenge moving forward.

I’m not just talking about getting people’s attention in marketing; I’m referring to real meaningful conversations that open up the communication channel that leads to authentic actions.

There is so much noise and deception across all media channels that it only makes sense for most people to ignore them.

Here are 4 internet marketing trends that will be maturing in the coming year:

1) The Return of Direct Marketing

The meaning of your communication is the responses you get especially on the social web where people can simply close a window, ignore a tweet or click away to other attention grabbing links.

Everyone’s got a blog, a website, Facebook page, Twitter account or Youtube Channel. So how do you stand out in a sea of sameness?

As it turns out direct response marketing is still the most effective way to test your marketing campaigns. The difference with social media is that you need to be measuring the right metrics.

It’s essentially the same concept as great salesmanship. Great marketing is great one on one sales focusing on finding out what customers want, their pain, urgency, desire and needs.

Done right you will get insights about your customers that tells you not just what they clicked on but from where, why and how. Remember, greater marketers don’t make assumptions!

Once you have meaningful data, it’s easier to craft your direct response campaign that converts better because you’ll have a list of “high quality” leads that are more likely to buy.

Without qualified leads, you’re basically playing the guessing game, driving in the dark and often a waste of time and money.

Concentrate on appealing and selling to the top 20% of the prospects that are more likely to convert. And if you can integrate your email marketing efforts with social media, you’ll gain further insights on your customer’s media habits, which can be used to optimize your next campaign.

2) The Raise of Social Metrics

Since majority of your prospective customers will not convert immediately upon getting your communication, it’s important to follow-up with email and social media because not only will you know when someone opened the email and what they’ve clicked on; you’ll also learn their social habits and sphere of influence.

The goal is to find out your customer’s “from” and “to” path to your web properties. It could be your online store, a product(s) page, your opt-in page (landing page), a sign-up to webinar or simply a Facebook page.

Ask yourself these questions:

Where are my source of traffic? How much does it cost me? (time, money and resources)
What are the demographics (age, location, habits etc…) of my traffic? Are they on social networks?
What does my customers want? Do I have the same customers online and offline?
How much time does it take for my customers to go from the original source of traffic to my web properties? And what can I do to get them to take the action I want that aligns with what they want?
What social media metrics can bring clarity to the habits of my prospective customers?

There are some nice free tools out there that will provide you with social data to get you started.

One of my favorite way to view my engagement performance is using Hootsuite’s statistics with Google Analytics and email marketing data. This allows me to view the engagement performance across social media from blog articles to emails.

For example, in the past 12 months, I generated 16,000+ clicks from my Twitter account which allows me to see what sort of topic my followers are interested in.

twitter.com/designdamage

I can then tailor my blog content to target further engagement and sharing. The same can be applied to email and this is particularly useful if you have an ecommerce site that allows you to track sales conversions.

The key here is to link metrics to actionable options that you generate for them. That’s why you want people to visit your web properties because you will have control of the environment. Everything is a test in marketing.

3) Focus Shifts from Tactical to Strategic

From the mix of clients and prospects I’ve talked with this year, most of them fall into one of the three buckets: those still experimenting with social marketing, those using social media as an add-on tool with existing marketing tactics and those integrating social as part of their efforts to be more customer-centric.

In the coming year I see more businesses moving towards wanting to be more social embracing what Jeremiah Owyang described as the “hub and spoke” social business model.

The challenge will be how to strategize, streamline, automate, budget, and measure social media and social marketing. Simply put, the one-size-fits-all volume marketing will no longer be effective.

You want more consistent, predictable campaign that can be efficiently replicated instead of one-off campaigns that requires lots of resources and attention to operate.

So how can you achieve that?

The best way is to conduct split testing across integrated campaigns. You must become gradually efficient at implementing and optimizing your campaigns focusing on frequency and delivery of real-time value.

It also requires the big picture marketing strategy, NOT just tactics. At the end it is about getting the highest return on the value you create for your customers. Start thinking about how you can earn engagement that leads to conversation that leads to revenue.

4) Video Marketing Becomes Mainstream

Are you doing any videos? Do you know that a YouTube channel is the equivalent of a Facebook profile? Do you know that online video, yes video can help with your SEO?

Let’s take a look at some data here for you to think about.

At the 2010 Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo, Greg Jarboe, president and co-founder of SEO-PR revealed that:

Americans watch more videos a month on YouTube than they conduct searches on Google
A video is 50 times more likely to get a first-page Google ranking than a text page

If those finding aren’t stunning, coming from an SEO perspective check out Pew Internet Research’s recent study indicating that “7 in 10 adult internet users (69%) have used the internet to watch or download video. That represents 52% of all adults in the United States.”

Something to keep in mind is that while online video is exploding, other media channels are slowing down or shrinking!

According to a recent Edison Research’s study indicates that “during an average day, Americans age 12-24 spend two hours and 52 minutes on the internet, making the web the media format American young adults spend the most time consuming. Television closely follows with a daily average of two hours and 47 minutes.”

In addition, as opposed to TV ads, online videos are trackable and can be viewed repeatedly attracting the “long-tail” viewers while allowing you to measure the exact impact of the video and participate around it in the comments section or on blogs.

The bottom line is that although video (Youtube) marketing isn’t anything new, it’s gaining more momentum now because the cost of video production are dramatically reduced today than it was a few years ago.

You can now purchase high definition cameras (such as the Flip HD) for under $150 which creates amazing looking videos. Even the new iPhone4 has HD videos that enable everyone to become a video producer at all times.

Keep in mind that you should consider video marketing tactic to support your overall marketing campaign not the other way around if it doesn’t fit into your strategy. Success video marketing strategy focuses on attracting the right audience with a topic or theme that’s video-worthy and can be compelling!

The take away: We’re in the middle of a media evolution where technology has fundamentally changed the way we consume media and interact with one another. It’s not about Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube, Google, iPhone or iPad; it never has been.

It’s about how these tools and platforms support what you want to achieve with your business.

Social is just a label, the real challenge is figuring out how to deliver optimal customer experience that builds meaningful relationships between you and your customers.

Am I missing anything here? Please leave your comments and questions, I’m interested to hear how you’re using internet to market your business, products or services.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/salesmanship

What Should You Consider When Integrating Social Media

by Eric Tsai

As we progress into 2010, the rapid growth of social media has allowed more access to information, consumers, communities, and experiences. This new medium has enabled a new way to communicate and share, from B2C to B2B marketers are all trying to figure out an edge. Many brands start to focus on the hybrid approach which I believe will be the next phase of digital and web marketing. The question is what role will it play in the marketing arsenal?

Here are 3 steps to consider when integrating social media to your marketing practices:

Brand Strategy Reassessment

Understand the changing habits of your customers should be the focus of your brand. Use the 80/20 rule to segment your customers and identify the difference between your old customers and new customers. The recession has permanently altered the way people think of value and the concept of trust.

According to Decitica’s new study, “Marketing to the Post-Recession Consumers,”

The effects of the Great Recession on consumer behavior are so profound that many of the assumptions underpinning consumer segmentation are no longer valid; and
Marketing strategies that do not fully recognize the diversity of consumers’ recession experiences won’t have the desired potency in the post-recession world.

Business owners should reassess existing brand strategy to gauge the shift in their industry ecosystem. Although the above report focuses on B2C, for B2B marketers, you can expect similar shift in behavior from a high level perspective.

The key is identifying the new trends in how your customers think, feel and act. Your customers may be part of the fastest growing mobile user groups or have adopted new ways to find and share information before they buy. Every person and their sphere of influence were affected by this recession, reevaluate your existing customer segmentation should be a priority. It’s time to make adjustments as to how you view your customers.

Smart companies will always shift their brand strategy to focus on customer retention by maintaining a high level of value perception. Your customers expect you to keep your brand promise and that’s just the beginning, only those that are over delivering will earn the trust over time.

Integrated Marketing and ROI

Social media’s growth is undeniable, it seems like every company has a Facebook fan page and a Twitter account not to mention all the early adopter consumers. For example, according to a report from BabyCenter, “The number of moms who use social media regularly (e.g. Facebook, MySpace, BabyCenter Community) has significantly increased from 11% to 63% since 2006; a change of 46%. 44% use social media for word-of-mouth recommendations on brands and products and 73% feel they find trustworthy information about products and services through online communities focused on their specific interests such as parenting.”

So does this mean if you sell to moms, you must get into all the social networks? Should social media marketing be your priority? Not so fast.

According to a study from MomConnection, The Parenting Group’s nationally representative research panel of 5,000 moms, “the role of social networks in moms’ lives is still largely for entertainment and personal communication; it’s not a channel where most moms are receptive to gathering product information. Only 24% of respondents have used Facebook for product information and buying advice, while 5% have used Myspace for product info, and 3% have used Twitter.”

Social networks is still growing and evolving because it’s mass media, it’s crowdsourcing and it’s here to stay. However, instead of being hype it’s moving towards ubiquity and part of the everyday mix that works alongside email and search marketing. People will continue to search for answers online and offline regardless of B2B or B2C. Every chance you get to optimize your brand’s search ranking is an opportunity to leave a bread crumb for your prospects.

Moving forward, the challenges will be to monitor, measure and manage a fully integrated campaign due to the amount of resources and time it takes to pull together the overall picture. This is precisely the reason why you don’t need to be on all the social networks or even be on it all the time. Some companies use social media as a platform for effective one on one engagement while others utilize it as a PR tool.

Whatever the role social media plays in your organization, you have to really understand how social media is driving your business. If you’re doing social media, do you know how many sales you got out of your social media app? Are you measuring the actual incremental sales from your e-commerce store? Or is social media primarily a driver for your brand value?

Both print and digital advertising costs have come down dramatically, this presents a new opportunity for a dynamic approach to hybrid marketing. You can simultaneously capture your audience via print and web advertising but the key is to identify which channel they come from to rapidly and accurately aggregate customer and prospect data. Perhaps most of your new customers reside on the internet while your existing customers still favors the traditional channel. Regardless of how you integrate your marketing campaign, remember to benchmark them so you can gauge the ROI to improve your sale funnel and lead generation capabilities.

If you goal is to build a customer engagement program, consider incorporating it with existing and new CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tools that can be customized for each individual consumer. This helps to improve the ROI with more measurable data against the deliverable.

Here is “2010 Digital Marketing Outlook,” an excellent report from the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA).

Two Thousand and Ten Digital Marketing Outlook

Business Alignment

Businesses will emerge from the recession looking to further strengthen engagement and interaction with their customers. But what does “engagement” really mean? How much does it cost? And what will it take to engage a customer? If you have already done the first two steps by reassessing your brand strategy and integrate social media into your marketing campaigns, your next focus should be to develop a social media policy to protect your company and make incremental changes to improve every aspect of your business.

I’m hardly surprise when I read the new consumer poll by CMO Council and InfoPrint, that “consumers today are deluged and overloaded with a plethora of unwanted direct marketing and promotional messages that are blasted out via email, or mass-produced and mailed in vast quantities, ending up choking mail boxes and filling recycling bins. In most cases, recipients ignore, or have become immune, to standardized commercial overtures. And with the advent of the Internet, consumers are seeking product information and affirmation from trusted sources and referral networks online.”

That’s the path social media is on right now.

Instead of email and mass-produced mailers, it’s spam tweets and uninvited LinkedIn notifications. Marketers are forgetting that consumers and prospects are real people like you and me. At the end of the day when we go to the grocery store or eat out at a restaurant we want to be treated like a person not a prey. It’s shocking to me that “staying relevant, valued and connected to customers has become the number one challenge for marketers today” according to the report.

The biggest adjustment brands must realize is that in social media you’re no longer in control of the conversation instead you will turn over the brand experience to the community and let them define it. If you want people’s opinion they’ll give it to you the way they want how they want it. Social media will NOT fix a bad product or negative customer experience. What it will do is to force you to reveal your brand’s true persona, allow additional means for your customer to reach you, and capture relevant analytical data for product and service improvements.

If you read my previous post “The 12 Principles of Brand Strategy,” you’ll know that principle number 2 states that your brand is your business model. Well, if your customer’s behavior is changing, shouldn’t you adjust your business too?

Checkout these challenges to social marketing effectiveness, and you’ll understand why it’s not so simple to integrate social media into your existing marketing practice. Is it worth to invest in obtaining a large number of Facebook fans or Twitter followers? How do you convert them into sales?

There needs to be a transition and I believe hybrid marketing on a single integrated platform will be the next trend to emerge in an attempt to leveling the playing field across all social networks.

I hope you find the information helpful, share your thoughts what do you think? Have you integrated social media into your marketing strategy?

The Secret to Social Media Communication

by Eric Tsai

Recently a report was released by US market research firm Pear Analytics with a statement on how 40% of Twitter messages are “pointless babble.” As you can see from the comments followed, the statement rubbed some people the wrong.

Although the analysis was based from a personal value judgment on individual’s communication, it somewhat puts Twitter usage in perspective. At the end of the day nobody can speak words of wisdom every time they open their mouth (not even Warrant Buffet), but the real value of Twitter is its openness as a real-time platform for engagement opportunities.

Perhaps the report is subjective but the truth is Twitter has allowed users to utilize the platform however they like propelling this incredible movement towards the personalization of media. Simultaneous to this growing personalization of media is a stronger notion of connectivity in social media. Not just Twitter but all social media technologies must be seen as revolutionary not simply in their design, but in their redesign by people because there is really no rules or limits on how you want to use it including pushing out pointless babble.

Let’s look at some of the ways people are using the social networks that’s been created. According to a survey last month from Direct Marketing Association (DMA), “Nearly 60% of marketing and management professionals in a recent survey think social networking can have a significant influence on their company’s brand awareness… more than 45% of respondents believe social networking can be critical to capturing customer insights.”

Evidently marketers are all trying to capitalize on social media to capture customer insights.

Social media allows you to hear what’s been said enabling you to efficiently abstract more relevant information in developing a targeted marketing strategy. The catch is to draw value to the audience in a meaningful and personal way because the potential for a conversion increases drastically when you target a new audience that is already interested in what you have to say.

Understand the Communication Process: Linear to Interactive to Transactional

Whenever I discuss with clients on how to develop a brand strategy I always ensure there is an understanding of the communication process. Traditional media provides mainly a linear model of communication that’s simply a one-way process where the sender broadcasts a message to a receiver and thus communication and understanding occurs. Think of it as reading newspaper or watching TV, you’re only receiving information.

A more sophisticated interactive communication model was developed via mediums such as talk radio or online discussion forum that allows feedback to transpose over the linear communication model. As a result it builds meaning through feedback but with noises that interferes with the communication. Noise is anything that interferes with the communication of the message with the encoding and decoding process.

And finally there is the transactional communication model that requires the engagement to understand and incorporate individual’s field of experience and frame of reference into the conversation. This is ultimately how to communicate efficiently and effectively. Your audience continues to be engaged because you’ve taken encoding, decoding, receiving and sending feedback all into consideration when you communicate.

Social networks encourage a highly transactional model of communication in which people build shared meaning that assumes reciprocity. The real difference is that you’re not just telling others what you want them to understand, which is the content aspect of our messages, but you’re also conveying your understanding of the relationship you have with them. The conversation becomes more attractive when you can relate to your audience.

Why Brands are Eager to Engage

Unfortunately many brands failed to understand the concept of real transactional communication because they’ve mainly utilize the linear communication channel to “push” their marketing and message. The problem is that it doesn’t allow for efficient feedback. Furthermore what’s been broadcast influence how each and every consumer responds back, and that in turns has bearing on the next marketing message from the brand.

Traditional channels discourage open communication that social media is built on which is why today brands are eager to engage with their audience more than ever with this new platform. It’s like a real-time focus group that can give you practical feedback to improve your product or services (One way to look at it).

It’s indicative that a shift from ambient media into conversational media is underway. You must realize that people’s response has impact on your future communication with them, this is especially important in conversational media so a positive transactional exchange would be optimal.

As social media continues to gain momentum, it’s not simply about building a large following but to cultivate a community in the sphere of trust. Your brand’s actions and perception will directly impact your reputation and brand image. Executed properly, social engagement can serves as a tangible incentive that’s more effective than other marketing tactics in earning trust.

In fact, this is especially crucial during a recession when trust is at all time low and consumers are extremely selective. Today more people are using the internet because the increasingly social web offers more freedom of choice, allows for sharing and collaboration, enables customization of content, delivers cost-effective entertainment, all with on-demand speed.

Transactional communication is the preferred communication method.

However, one key concept brands must recognize is that trust is simply permission to compete, not as a differentiator. In order to become an esteemed brand, you must demonstrate that you understand and care about the consumer as well as having a valuable offering.

The take away: Social media = conversation = transactional communication = meaningful engagement = trust = allow to compete = chance to win lifetime customer.

What do you think? What’s your communication strategy? Love to hear from you in the comments.

Why Social Network Engagement is About Conversations

by Eric Tsai

With the recent acquisition of Zappos by Amazon, many companies are now taking a serious look at social innovation especially after the latest Engagement report by Wetpain and the Fluent report by Razorfish on social influence marketing. Basically these reports prove that brands with high social media activity increased revenues while the less active ones aren’t as profitable.

smreport-rf-eg

The statistics not only adds fuel to the social media hype but helps to convert the naysayers to believers.

Even Twitter is leveling the playing field by publishing its own “Twitter 101” guide, which contains ideas, tips and case studies intended for businesses to make the best of the service.

The beginner’s guide to Twitter is intended to lower the learning curve but could evolve into the ultimate Twitter knowledge base.

This is actually a good thing because it allows users to focus more on the strategic usage of Twitter rather than the tactical side.

It also forces the “experts” to elevate their game to the next proof of concept level on those “how to use social media” content.

Recently I’ve notice that there has been a lot of coverage on social media from the mainstream authorities from Wall Street Journal to Reuters, another tell that the knowledge is becoming ubiquitous.

While the nature of using social media has low barriers to entry, some brands are still struggling in defining their social media strategy.

Having a presence doesn’t necessary mean a good thing, the fundamental of networking online is essentially the same as offline – engage in meaningful conversations with your audience.

In my opinion, that’s the core element of any networking beyond the high-level fundamentals that we all agree: be authentic, credible, and identifiable. If not you can read the post “Why You Should Always Be True to Your Brand.”

Let’s look at the change in social media to better understand how it should be used in conversation marketing.

World-of-Mouth Consumption to Production

In the social marketing landscape, word-of-mouth (WOM) starts playing a factor immediately effecting restaurant reputations to box office numbers.

You no longer need to wait to meet someone in person to discuss a movie you watched, a product you’ve purchased, or an event you’ve attended to get feedback.

Simple use your internet enabled mobile device to start aggregating content into your social networks letting everyone know your views.

For live events, people are broadcasting themselves via Twitter or Ustream for real-time content production not to mention the interaction as others tweet, retweet, comment, like, or post reactions.

The traditional “push” communications techniques are becoming less effective while still costly.

We’re transitioning into a media environment meant to be about conversations where the media and its message, instead of articulating the endpoints of meaning, represent the staring point for the production of meaning in social media.

Digital media has relinquished the control to the increasingly social crowd as both the conductor and engineer.

Viewing a TV commercial, reading a blog article or listening to a radio ad are all forms of production as the viewer or listener interprets and makes sense of the message. Following the consumption of the content is a reaction which could potentially spiral into further conversations and that conversation can get into another network and so on and so forth.

If you’re actively using social media, you have a higher chance of being heard, connected and engaged because you’re part of the viral WOM network.

This is why brands care more than ever about you, what you say, and how you say it. They are actively listening and participating in order to humanize the relationship through interactions. Or simply put, managing their reputations.

Influence the influencers

Whether you’re a blogger, a marketer, or an entrepreneur your opinion counts and can be contagious.

It’s now possible and easy to circulate your message via the new digital channels like Facebook (fan page), Linkedin (groups), Twitter (tweets) or Youtube (videos).

The key is to facilitate effective word-of-mouth campaign through these communities spreading horizontally rather than vertically described in Clay Shriky’s book “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations.”

Each time you’re able to influence experts, opinion leaders, or people with authority you’ll instantaneously gain a little more credibility and access to their fan base.

Then the collective minds with shared visions will continue to spread your message forming the viral wave pushing all the way to the long-tail shores.

If you want to attract “relevant audience” to your branded social network, you must do more than just spam visitors with self-promoting ads.

In fact, you need to offer compelling value that keeps your audience engaged as well as perpetuating the interaction.

The more interactivity a social network platform allows their users to have, the more engaged users will tend to be which often leads to a greater chance of influencing the network effectively.

This is why blogs are still amongst the most influential social media because they encourage bloggers to interact with their audience in a simple and easy fashion.

A recent NY Times article points out how Procter & Gamble focuses on getting honest opinions from bloggers rather than paying for positive press is the perfect example of targeting the right influencer.

However, P&G knew they had to leverage bloggers strategically because bloggers are being viewed by their fans as one of the trusted source, thus the pay-for-favorable-endorsement doesn’t work as well as the pay-for-your-opinion.

In addition, according to a recent article from eMarkters, majority of the social media marketers “rated social media marketing effective at influencing brand reputation, increasing awareness and improving search rankings and site traffic.”

smbp

As you can see, social media is largely used as a mean to manage reputation and generating awareness.

Notice that the top 3 most effective tactics used are also the most interactive platform thus generating the most influence: user reviews or ratings, bloggers or online journalist relations, and forums or discussion groups.

Conversation and Behavioral Targeting

Great product and services can strike a stimulating discussion and ultimately leads to consumer buy-in.

The goal is to have a strategy that will allow you into the ongoing conversation or to create the opportunity to start one.

Social conversation is not about UVP (unique value proposition) or the USP (unique selling propositions), instead it’s an opportunity to discover and learn about the networking ecosystem (you, your audience, their audience etc.) in order to earn trust through caring and helping.

UVP and USP are important but should come later during the engagement cycle.

Think of the social media conversation as WOM on steroids.

Once you have an understanding of your ecosystem you can then create targeted advertising strategies within social networking.

The whole idea of collecting data is to learn and anticipate what your audience might be interested in based on their behaviors.

This enables advertisers to develop the proper call-to-action that could lead to conversions via conversation marketing rather than accumulation marketing (focus on quantity instead of quality of the traffic).

As someone who started a career as a designer (graphic/web design and product design) and now providing brand strategies, I see the core elements in social media similar to that of communication design and user experience.

The difference is that a brand must communicate like a person optimizing the experience to initiate interaction.

The intention should be to focus on adding value to the conversation, prolonging the dialogue and elevating its relevance to the participants.

Not only will people come to expect more of the same great value you’ve provided but they may become your brand evangelist spreading your messages, advocating your brand.

You can have the greatest product or the best selling book, if you don’t care about others the chance are, they won’t care about you to take actions.

Even if someone is influenced or bought the idea it doesn’t mean he or she will take action.

So position yourself as a prolific contributor will definitely help but don’t loose your personality that’s uniquely you, and if you don’t have anything to say, simply listen first.

Don’t become those annoying people who always talk about themselves and don’t listen to others. Another example what NOT to do in social networking is to just repeatedly blast out press releases or spam-like promotions ignoring the two-way communication dynamics.

socialgravity

Remember, anything that you put out there in the community can come back to you in a heartbeat.

Monitoring the conversation is the foundation of engagement.

If you’re going to play ball, be ready to follow through and make it fresh and keep it real.

Love to hear your tips, success stories, and pitfalls to avoid in the comments about your social network engagement experience, how are you engaging your audience?

Interview with an Expert: Anne Simons of Brandeo

by Eric Tsai

Today, I spoke with Anne Simons, who is the blogger behind Brandeo and the President of TBD Brand Ventures.

In this interview, Anne talks about what brands are doing today to stay competitive, her perspective of social media on branding, and advice for marketing professionals.

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3 Ways to Capitalize on the Destruction of Traditional Media and Embrace Social Media

by Eric Tsai

If you’re part of the social media movement, you’re witnessing the annihilation of traditional media.

From newspapers to cable TV, everything is converging onto the internet resulting in a more accessible, cost-effective and integrated media.

Let’s look at some statistics courtesy of Sillicon Alley Insider:

Newspaper

– “Print ad sales fell 30% year-over-year in Q1, led by a 42% year-over-year drop in classified ad sales.”

– “Newspaper classified revenues peaked above $16 billion in 2005, only to plummet to an estimated $5 billion or so in 2009.”

Cable TV

– “A Bernstein survey says 35% of Web video watchers might dump their cable TV provider in favor of online video within 5 years.”

Internet

– “Some 63% of adult Americans had broadband Internet at home in April, up from 55% last May, according to the Pew Internet & American Life project.”

– “By the end of 2008, 20% of U.S. households had unplugged their landline phones and gone exclusively wireless, say surveys by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics. That’s a huge increase from early 2005, when only about 7% of U.S. households were wireless-only.”

The Bigger Picture

Although the current recession has contributed to the decline of newspaper subscriptions and the increase in people viewing online videos; the truth of the matter is we’re no longer accessing or consuming information the same way.

This translates to a less effective advertising channel for brands and the bulk of the advertising dollars will be spent where consumers are spending their time – the web.

Furthermore, the convergence of technology has weakened the foundation of traditional media authorities especially those that didn’t have an immediate online strategy.

Even those with web1.0 strategy, the rapid expansion into web2.0 has left some without a social media strategy.

One thing is clear – internet will continue to grow as the cost of broadband continues to drop.

This means more people will have faster internet and faster internet takes us a step closer to the real-time web.

What does this mean to you?

It means instant access to data across the web with a massive coordination effort from social media.

Mass Amateurisation of Brands through Social Media

The rise of social media tools such as Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Digg, and many other social networking sites has accelerated the spread of simplified media technologies, making it easy for anyone to access, participate, and share information.

Social media in particular is leading the way on what web commentator Clay Shirky called “the mass-amateurisation of everything.”

It is now possible for individuals to choose from a wide variety of communication arsenals outside of the mainstream commercial system to reach the mass audience.

As a result of this ubiquity of social media, individually created media content that originated on the internet has started to infect mass media.

This not only challenges the traditional media authorities, but it also created dynamic conversations across the globe.

Take the latest Iran incident as an example, Twitter was the fastest medium to report what had happened as it was happening before any other traditional media could get to it.

It enabled people all over the world to rapidly react to this piece of news and participate in support and interact with the people in Iran.

Take social bookmark sites like Digg, and Delicious for example, users are encouraged to “vote” for the top content they want to appear for maximum exposure.

These services aggregates content across the web to determine what content is popular making it easy to filter for individuals.

It’s like real-time TV/radio rating and you can simply choose from a list of categories within your interest.

In addition, there is now an element of choice and coordination to establish a new content authority.

You no longer have limitations on what’s available from newspaper or what’s on TV; you have millions of content to choose from or you can create your own.

This applies to blogs as well because you only have so much time to consume information, reading from one source means not reading from another.

As a result, blogs are taking readers away from authority sites and turning them into loyal subscribers.

If you’re reading this post, either you’re a new reader or a regular subscriber to my RSS or newsletter.

3 Ways to Capitalize on Social Media

In many ways, social media is still at the “technology trigger” aspect of the hype cycle. If you can capitalize on it, you will benefit by capitalizing on the destruction of traditional media.

Here are 3 ways to capitalize on this opportunity:

1. Expose your personality – Social media is a one-to-many interaction medium, it’s the perfect platform to personify your brand and build a fan base.

Demonstrate your expertise is important but showing your personality can be the difference between choosing to engage with you versus others. This will ultimately convert visitors to fans, transform viewers to participants.

Give your audience a reason to engage by revealing your emotions and even political stance will help you to stand out, be a person not a company and have fun.

Remember, it’s impossible to be liked by everyone and you won’t be anyway, the key is to create synergy with those that like you in order to foster trust.

A great example is the CEO of Zappos who updates his every move via Twitter with what he does and how he interacts with his employees, creating a personable, likeable, transparent identity that everyone can relate to.

2. Drive engagement and visibility – One of the disadvantages of traditional media is the limitation of engagement opportunities.

This is different in social media. You can create your own opportunity to be “high touch” with your audience by sending update notifications, creating a poll, asking to join your group, conducting an offline event, or promoting a cause.

Combine engagement with marketing through conversation will reduce resistance to you brand’s message.

As a result, your fans will become your best evangelists. However, there is a fine line between a prolifically active brand and an annoy spammer.

The key is to become a good listener and allow conversations to come to you before reacting swiftly.

If you do it right, you will succeed in coordinating a massive word-of-mouth campaign, a sharing frenzy across all social media platform that increases your brand loyalty.

Get it wrong, you will need to put out the fire with reputation management strategies.

I recommend having different social media accounts to provide a focused-orientated engagement strategy.

Dell is the best example for this as the company has more than 30 Twitter accounts that they use to communicate to very specific audiences.

Ford also got more than 7 Twitter channels to handle customer service and reputation management.

3. Leverage multimedia and mobile platforms – As I’ve mentioned before, all media has converged onto the internet so why not use all of them to maximize the experience.

You can easily create your own podcast now, load it up to iTune or deliver it in mp3 format.

For images, you can use Yahoo’s Flickr, Google’s Picasa, or Twitpic to share it on Twitter.

By far the most powerful multimedia content is the use of videos through YouTube or Viemo.

Although still limited by network and bandwidth, there are a few “live” video streaming social media tool that’s making headways specifically UStream.tv, Blip.tv and Justin.tv.

Not only do people respond different via a variety of media formats enabling a broader reach, there is an increasing demand for location-based interaction as well.

Thanks for iPhone and BlackBerry, mobile web content delivery is now an important consideration of a brand’s social media marketing strategy.

The cost of mobile broadband will continue to drop enabling mobile rich-media content to be produced and distributed anywhere.

The exciting part about mobile content is the ability to target location based users then engages them with relevant content.

Are you capitalizing on the rapid growth of Social Media?

Or do you still believe in traditional media?

Why You Should Always Be True to Your Brand

by Eric Tsai

Recently I’ve had great conversations with other brand strategists about the changing landscape in brand building. There is no doubt that social media is having a profound impact on brands in all fronts of marketing, advertising, PR, and networking.

The core value of social branding is about fostering the “trusted” relationship from experiences associated with a service, a person or an entity. This is largely built on the effectiveness of the brand’s ability to communicate and influence people’s perception.

Today social media aims to bridge the gap between brands and people by providing a platform that embraces the concept of a community. It’s a new stage for brands to engage and interact with their audience. But one thing remains the same, there is always a challenge involve when it comes to creating and delivering value. Therefore, it is vital that brands demonstrate the indisputable benefits to their audience.

Strategies Vs Tactics

Described by the Chinese General, Sun Tzu:

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.

Simply put, tactics present a small picture perspective. They’re tools to fulfill your big picture strategy. Branding is not about using tactics such as scarcity, sense of urgency, risk reversal and value-for-price positioning. How about email campaigns, search engine optimization, product placements, celebrity endorsements, promotional events, telemarketing, or direct response advertising? Think again. They’re the vehicles that carry out the messages and to generate and funnel leads.

If you know what I’m talking about, you know those are techniques often used by marketers. In fact, I help clients implement those tactics regularly as part of the overall plan to achieve the stated goals. They can often be confused as strategies because within tactics there is also an element of strategy.

I see tactics as marketing triggers to gain attention, the “Hey! Look at me, I’ve got something important to say!” And when you gain people’s attention you must provide relevant and tangible value that’s meaningful to fulfill their expectations. And believe me, people have expectations when they give you a chance to deliver.

Brand Authenticity

Once you get that opportunity, it all boils down to the execution (tactic) and the authenticity of your brand (strategy). Execution focuses on conversion tactics while brand authenticity focuses on value-extraction strategies. An authentic brand fulfills the implied promise that people have come to expect. And by doing so, the brand becomes more believable and trustworthy creating the foundation to build a relationship. As a result, you need to exposed the true intention behind your tactics.

Let’s take a look at brand slogans as examples. Walmart’s slogan of “Save Money, Live Better” says nothing about the quality of products it sells nor does Taco Bell’s “Think Outside The Bun” implies to what’s inside the bun. However, Porsche’s “There Is No Substitute” or Rolex’s “The Crown Of Achievement” both allude to a sense of novelty and dominance. These brands stay true to their slogans without suggesting artificial statements about their products. Of course there is always a gap between what consumers expect versus what brands imply, the trick is to narrow the gap by being authentic.

By simply being authentic, brands that focus on fostering a healthy relationship with their customers will increase the chance of stimulating an action to buy. This is the outcome brands desire, turning prospects into lifetime customers. For personal brands, it’s turning speculators to fans.

Create Your Brand Value Proposition

It doesn’t matter if you’re building your business brand or personal brand, you should create a brand value proposition. These values act as the blueprint to create your brand strategy so you can stay consistent, cohesive and most importantly unique. By having a solid brand value proposition you will be efficient in implementing your marketing tactics. Even if you’re selling a product with lots of competition, knowing your value will allow you to be creative in finding new ways to execute those tactics.

Hers are 3 simple ways to help you identity your brand value proposition:

1. Know your audience and identify their pain points – This may sound easy but I often see companies sell too broad because they want to sell to as many customers as possible . This is a false perception because you can not be all things to everybody, follow the 80/20 rules and focus on the 20% of customers that generates 80% of your revenue. The key is to understand the decision maker’s psychology. Things that matters to a manager may mean nothing to a CEO that makes the final decision. This is typical in the technology industry where companies often sell features to department managers instead of outcome to owners or executives. Great attributes mean little when the audience is looking for the bottom line impact. Identify all the scenarios to describe the situation where you come in and solve the problem, alleviate the pain. Keep in mind that you want the “ideal customer” that already has a need for what you provide.

2. Describe what you do and what you don’t do – Write down your competencies that represent what you offer. Focus on key words or phrase to capture what makes your brand special. Make it simple and use verbs that express an action or a relation between two things. Be plain and straight forward, if your company sells software start with “we sell software” not something like “we increase sale for businesses with an innovative software application.”

3. Create your brand message and test them – Once you have some core messages to work with from the two above steps it is time to test them. Get inputs from internal and external stake holders, what you think and care about may not be what others see or remember. That’s okay. You just need to learn to drive home a few key points that will stick in their minds and inspire them to learn more. It’s more effective in an initial interaction to pare down what you talk about to weed out the non-essential information. The idea is to have different talking points tailored to different audiences. It’s important to constantly update and improve your value proposition so it stays fresh and relevant.

Now go create your brand value proposition and use them as the foundation of your bio or company description on your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg accounts or post them on your Blog .

Do you have a brand value proposition? Are they authentic? Share it right here and get some feedback!

7 Keys to Creating Social Media Strategy for Your Brand

by Eric Tsai

In the past few weeks I’ve experienced a decent amount of spam from social networking sites ranging from people marketing their books, selling “make money online” information, to promoting their personal brand.

It’s indicative of the fact that individuals and businesses are viewing the space seriously as it takes on the mainstream spotlight.

There are many ways to utilize social media to boost your brand. The key is to have a strategy around building your social proof.

Let The Truth Be Told

People naturally look for social proof in any given situation.

Social proof is a weapon of influence by which we replicate what we see others do. We tend to make assumptions in our head when we’re unable to determine the appropriate action to take.
So we turn to surrounding authorities that we assume possess more knowledge about the situation than us.

For example, if you see a bunch of people lining up outside of a restaurant you tend to think the food is good or better yet, it MUSTbe good.

Social proof is especially powerful in social media because of the available information from Twitter followers to LinkedIn connections. People get influenced real-time on their PCs or their mobile devices.

This creates little barrier to entry for people to be perceived as preeminent experts. Combine that with the limitless reach of social network; people will often evaluate others based on how “connected” they are.

The truth is – social media is a platform for engagement and building communities.

It has evolved to be part of a marketer’s arsenal and it’s on the path to be the next coming of email spam.

If you don’t want to be perceived as a spammer or someone just looking to gain free social proof, you need a solid strategy for your brand.

Aligning Your Brand And Business Strategy

There are lots of high profile people and companies using social media today but not all of them are getting the result they want.

Many brands are doing a fairly good job utilizing the right social media strategy while others clearly have no clue.

Here are 7 keys to create your social media strategy:

1. Define your outcome

This is perhaps the most important aspect of your social media strategy.

What are you trying to achieve?

What is your ideal outcome? Sales?

Lead generation? Promotions? Branding? Buzz?

Corporate brands generally use social media as part of their larger strategic initiatives for reputation management, product launches, and customer engagement tools.

Those methods apply to personal branding as well because social media is a cost-effective marketing and PR vehicle in comparison to the traditional media marketing.

2. Focus on your audience’s needs

If you want to sell a product such as a book across social media, you must focus on your audience’s pain point, solve their problems, and add value to them little by little.

Provide free advice that’s of high value, NOT something anyone can just copy and paste from a source like a blog.

For example, instead of relaying mainstream news, focus on syndicating news gear towards a specific niche area so you become the go-to source for it.

Better yet, compile the content and provide your own insight so you act as a filter for your audience.

3. Implement measurable ROI

This is actually difficult to do because social media is still a relatively new medium and remains largely unproven.

The best solution is to gauge the time spent versus the result you are able to measure such as inbound traffic, clickthroughs, impressions, comments, fans, followers, subscribers, and ask how prospects find you.

Track your data and chart them over time to find relevant cause and effects.

You may be surprise to find what people are saying about your brand or how effective your marketing triggers are after reviewing your statistics.

4. Actively participate in discussion groups

If you have something valuable to offer, people should know.

Join discussions and participate in forums will bring you opportunities to brand yourself and create awareness in the form of constructive promotion.

Further more by providing your audience with insights, educational content, or value support systems will help you gain social proof.

Knowledge transfer in social media is very powerful especially given as freebies. As a result it creates reciprocation from the recipient who will want to return the favor in the form of purchasing your product or endorsing your brand.

5. Get in front of the right people

High profile people are great leverage to give you that boost of traffic especially key opinion leaders in your niche area.

Get in touch with them and do something for them first.

Contribute to their cause and the reciprocation factor will work on them as well. Instead of asking for endorsements, participate in their discussion groups, leave comments on their blog, send them useful information, and interact with their channel are all ways to gain visibility.

Build the right relationship will also drive The Long-Tail affect in which your brand impression will be distributed amongst high profile people’s fans in significant numbers.

6. Blend online and offline social networking

This is one of the overlooked areas for social networking.

Offline networking can add more fuel to the fire especially when people aren’t able to hide behind their user name, emails or avatars.

There is nothing quite like a face-to-face conversation to get a nice dialogue started.

Not only can you hear the voice of the other person but the body language, eye contact, and physical interaction in the same space makes you more “real” and believable.

Although it can be time consuming, offline networking is more powerful than 140 words in a tweet or a two liner comment in Facebook.

It also encourages word-of-mouth marketing which is by far the most effective marketing tool today.

I highly recommend you to attend conferences, go to tradeshows, take a training course, or get with other social networkers locally. Start a MeetUp group or a monthly seminar.

7. Nurture relationships, build momentum

When implanting social media strategies, you may wan to run tests to get feedback from your network.

You should stay true to yourself but also know what worked and what doesn’t.

Ideally you want to keep doing what works and find new ways to strengthen your relationship with your audience.

Start your own discussion group, do an online survey, create joint ventures, exchange opportunities, and continue to provide free information are all ways to foster your social media relationships.

Nothing will happen when nothing is provided and you must be patient before you get results.

Whether you’re already on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or is blogging on a regular basis, my best advice is to just let go and keep on giving!

Has social media already helped your business?