What Is Adding Value And How It Applies To Social Networking

by Eric Tsai

As a social media advocate I often discuss adding value to the conversations, to the communities or to the relationships. I guess I assumed everyone already knew what the term means and how it applies to them until I started to get questions from people.

So what exactly is adding value and how? Is it just an over-used marketing jargon? An illusion of a feel-good emotion? The more I use the term “value” the more I feel like it’s loosing its soul (I’m guilty as charge at times).

One of my favorite artists, the awesome Hugh MacLeod had a great piece about Adding Value with the quote, “The aim of “adding value” is a hard one to argue with… who doesn’t want to add value to their current enterprise? But it’s also utterly meaningless…”

Well, obviously there are many ways to look at it but here is how I perceive the meaning of adding value.

Let’s face it, most businesses wants to add value to the bottom line which means making sales and growing profits.

In sales, adding value used to mean networking in the best interest of your company or your career which is to sell, sell, sell!

Today it means helping people to make informed decisions, finding out their needs first and showing an interest to solve their problems not yours. The one way sales pitch broadcasting simply becomes part of the meaningless noise in a sea of noises.

The Meaning of Knowledge

In sales, either the product sells itself (more of an affirmation and emotional validation) or it’s selling via education (information and data).

A Porsche salesman don’t sell the 911 Turbo, they sell the experience of buying a Porsche (great products drives emotions). On the other hand, a Honda salesman sells the features and benefits against competitors like Toyota and Nissan (value proposition, more needs than wants).

In both scenarios, the goal is to ensure that the person feels good about the decisions that they’ve made (or going to make) on the purchase which leads to trust building. And trust is built on relationships from knowledge and actions.

The more knowledge you have, the less fear you have, the less stress you feel and the better you feel about your decision making process.

You could think of having knowledge as freedom from limitations and having information is empowerment. The ability to make your own decision is valuable because who wants to be pressured into buying?

Emotion Trumps Logic

Now you know the importance of adding value through knowledge transfer, you then need to know how to take actions with your knowledge.

Besides physically helping someone, the action part comes down to communication. And because emotions are the essence of the communication, marketers need to focus on the emotional needs of the customers at the time when feelings are vivid. This mean to empathize with your customers and truly focus on how to make their lives better.

You can not make people’s lives better if you don’t understand their lives.

When you solve someone’s problem, they’ll usually remember it not because of the facts but because of how they felt when it was happening. Simply put, memory is tied to emotions and emotions are more real than thoughts.

Now apply that to marketing and you’ll realize that providing useful and meaningful information does exactly that – it makes people remember you if you satisfy their needs by providing value!

This is why the increasingly Social Web is a great place to find those that are in need of knowledge (also why information product sells). When you need an answer, you want it now, you Google it (you can Yahoo or Bing it too of course).

The online conversation across all social networks are as authentic as it gets, besides the offline in-person engagements, because it’s taking place when people are still feeling the emotions dealing with their problems – what is, how-to, why is, who can…you get the point.

The rest of it is about the context of adding value, at the right place at the right time.

The optimal time to email your subscribers, the suitable LinkedIn group to contribute knowledge or the people you engage on Twitter – they’re all channels to add your value to the conversation within the communities to forge solid relationships.

Motives and Actions

The last point in adding value is the motives behind such actions. Why are you doing this? Why are businesses embracing the freemium model?

Most of the time the objective is to create brand awareness, build credibility and what I keep pounding the table on: to create social proof around the topics of health, wealth and relationships.

However; there is always a trade-off, you get free Gmail with all the awesome features of other Google Apps because Google advertises around your inbox.The same applies to most of the social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn. You’re exchanging personal information to use their products.

My take is that if you’re honest about your intentions and focus on serving only those that matters to your business, you will attract the customers you want.

Like what Seth Godin wrote in his book Purple Cow, “the key to failure is trying to please everyone.” Well, he’s right, everyone is NOT your customers.

And the science behind motivation isn’t as clear cut as features and benefits or even monetary rewards. Checkout this video by RSA animation adapted from Dan Pink’s talk at the RSA on “The surprising truth about what motivates us.”

The take away: Identify your customer’s problem is where adding value starts. And listening when they talk is your opportunity to fill the value gaps.

Think of it as facilitating the process of buying on their terms not yours. You have to create the right environment that entices people, and if you do it well, then they will show up and join the party.

It is only by adding value you will be remembered, reciprocated and passed on (via word-of-mouth).

There are simply too much information and too little time. Marketing messages are everywhere and people have developed ad blindness, seeing doesn’t mean retaining.

Are you adding value?

5 Ways to Engage Social and Mobile Customers

by Eric Tsai

If you’ve been keeping up with the current marketing trends, you should be in the process of exploring how to utilize social media to benefit your business.

By now, most of the “how to use” social media content is everywhere especially from reputation resources such as Mashable, Social Media Examiner or Twitip to name a few.

While most large organizations such as Fortune 500 companies are slow in adopting social media, many have started pilot programs to experiment with this new tool.  Brands such as Dell, Coke Cola, Ford, Starbucks, Zappos, Best Buy and even sports league like NBA and NFL have found rapid growth by allowing fans to engage directly with athletes.

Share content that people find useful and want to share with others is the new mantra for new media marketing.

Particularly small businesses have found social media as a way to demonstrate leadership and command influence in niche communities.

The latest data from the Small Business Success Index shows that “Social media adoption by small businesses doubled from 12% in 2008 to 24% in 2009. The biggest expectation small business owners have from social media is expanding external marketing and engagement, including identifying and attracting new customers, building brand awareness and staying engaged with customers.”

The small and medium size businesses (SMBs) get it.  They are using this recession as an opportunity to connect and expand their sphere of influence.

While social media is still in its early phase, the business benefits of social networks are very real.

Every small business is looking to integrate “social” into their eCommerce sites, direct mail campaigns, webinars, blogs and SEO tactics hoping to build top-of-mind brand awareness.

Certainly you’ve heard that it’s about conversation, customer engagement and providing value.

However; it’s also quickly becoming a spam destination and experienced users have started to be very selective on who to connect and how to communicate.

Sure, you can learn all the tricks and tactics in getting followers on Twitter, ramp up fans from Facebook and connects with hundreds of professionals through Linkedin but the real engagement is when you involve the entire community to take action and interact with your brand.

Understand Social Media Users

Social media is about conversations. It is important to understand why and what kind of conversation users are more incline to engage themselves in.

Accordingly to the latest survey of social media users conducted by Crowd Science, “Users want to be heard. Overall, 45% reported liking when others notice them—leading some to stretch the truth or reveal too much personal information… But 36% believed others are simply interested in what they have to say. That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise to marketers, who know many users will tell all their contacts about good (and bad) experiences with products and services.”


Detailed Study Results

These new social customers will look up Yelp for reviews and tweet customer service for support.

It all boils down to the fact that every single customer from B2B to B2C has increased their influence throughout the buying process, gaining control of your brand’s perceived value, commanding more attention to satisfy their needs.

Lior Arussy wrote an excellent article in CRM magazine describes exactly that: “There’s a significant gap between the transaction as perceived by the employee and the outcome value as perceived by the customer. In short, what you sell is not what they buy.”

The truth is, even if you have the most market share in your industry it doesn’t translate to loyalty, and loyalty generates word-of-mouth.  This is the reason why customers today are able to demand more for less, a loyal customer is worth more than a passive one and brands are fighting to gain trust.  With the space getting crowded, consumers are already flooded with choices not to mention most don’t have the desire to spend in the first place.

In an effort to drive business success, companies must become more customer-centric by focusing on the needs of each individual customer to earn their trust and meet their needs.

More social means more conversations and when you add in the increasingly mobile factor, you have a whole new dynamic to reposition your brand to deliver a differentiated value proposition.

Here are 5 ways to help you address the increasingly social and mobile customer needs.

1. Start with local

Just because the internet can reach across the world doesn’t mean you need to do an all out global campaign.

Often you will find hyperlocal campaigns to be more cost-effective and can benefit from hybrid campaign where you combine online with offline promotions.

Find mobile advertising vendors that can help you target your local customers to drive traffic to your local stores or promote an event.

2. Provide free resources

With the emerging trend of the Freemium business model, free is the new standard.

In fact, it gives your prospects a reason to give you the time of the day so you have an opportunity to earn their trust.  Establish yourself as a resource by sharing your knowledge.

Add value to the conversation by offering your thoughts and commenting on blog posts that your audience read, tweet resourceful information from your Twitter account, or by answering a question on LinkedIn Answers.

Free resource such as buying guide, e-books, product recommendations from third parties or even free trials on your product are great ways to nurture leads with drip marketing campaigns.

According to the recently released ChoiceStream 2009 Personalization Survey, “65% of m-commerce shoppers indicate that they would buy more products from their mobile devices if it were easier to find products on them from trusted retailers.”

3. Mark it easy to pass along

A simple word-of-mouth tactics that’s often overlooked as companies look to pack in all the features and benefits of their products and solutions on their brochures and websites.

Go with something that’s easy to pass along without making it difficult for your customers to explain to their social network.

Just like Twitter with 140 character limitations, mobile devices have limited viewing real estate so make sure your messages are simple and to the point.

Provide a link to your content if you have more content to disclose, but make sure the link is short by using a URL shortener.

4. Use location based advertising (LBA)

Since people almost always have their mobile phone with them, LBA provides highly targeted reach.

And because customers are in control on how they receive ads on their mobile devices, customers receive more personalized, relevant information in real-time resulting in greater customer satisfaction to help you build brand awareness, create loyalty, and drive purchase decision.

Keep in mind that successful LBA is a permission based so establishing trust will be important and a privacy policy must be in place.

5. Tell a story, create passion

– Reporters loves a great story because they know readers love them too.  Often times a great story can get viral because well, it’s a great story!

The increasingly social web has vastly increased the fragmentation of media. Leverage sequential advertising to tell a story and lead your prospects down a path of related messages with continuity of the call-to-action.

Each engagement touch point should evoke a compelling response with fresh information and unique impression.

Don’t forget to keep any eye on the emerging trend of Augmented Reality on the social web and on mobile platforms:

Samsung

Home Depot

Esquire Magazine

The Take away: The real challenge for company embracing social media is finding the sweet spot that fits their business needs without draining their resources.

The key to success is to understand and measure the direct business impact of social media campaigns and identify the gaps between the customer experience and expectations as we continue to become more social and mobile.

Ask yourself, what do you want to achieve with social media?

Where do you see your brand go in the next 18 months?

What do you think?

Are you looking to do any mobile marketing in 2010?

I’d love to hear what you’re doing to engage social and mobile customers.

UPDATE 1 (2/24/2010)

Business Insider just published an new research from the Federal Communications Commission indicating that 86% of American adults now own cellphones.

Detail FCC Broadband Adoption Study 2010 below:


FCCSurvey –

The Long Tail of Trust in New Media Marketing

by Eric Tsai

In today’s fragmented media world where we all have some attention deficit in our busy lives, there are simply too many sources of information thus finding a filter that we trust is extremely important.

Most people tend to prefer value, look for key opinion leaders and trust one-on-one communication sources.

Accordingly to a recent “Purchaser Influence Survey” by EXPO provided to eMarketer, over 92% of US mom internet users trust peer review more than manufacturer’s brand information.

This data should not be a surprise because if you want recommendations for a restaurant or suggestions on buying a new cell phone, you’re pretty much going to first ask your friends.

If you’re really serious about the purchase, you will do your “homework” first by reading bunch of online reviews from Yelp to Amazon before accessing your trusted sources.

Thanks to the increasingly social web, everyone can have a voice in their sphere of influence.

As a result word-of-mouth has become the ultimate marketing arsenal for marketers to tap into their loyal customers and advocates to help spread their marketing messages through what it’s called earned media.

Earned Media vs Paid Media

As opposed to paid media where publicity are gained through advertising, earned media usually are from real people, not marketers, which explains why consumers tend to trust them more.

It’s indicative from the survey conducted by Synovate for word-of-mouth ad network PostRelease, over 50% of the word-of-mouth activity was to help a friend or family member with a purchase decision, as well as sharing information they found on the web offline.

While these finding are insightful, it’s simply a confirmation that earned media is what’s working and will continue to lead the way as we crawl out of this recession.

Obviously, there are other factors that contributes to the buying decision that aligns with the “four Ps of marketing” (price, product, promotion and placement), but there is a definite shift in the perception of value that builds on trust.

So how what does trust mean to brands today?

According to the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer from PR firm Edelman, transparent and honest practices and trustworthiness are extremely important while financial return have fallen below those factors.

One thing I must point out is that these data can be misleading because financial returns actually increased but have fallen behind other factors so there is merely a shift in value perception.

We’ve gone from push advertising to social influence marketing.  Online users have learned to focus on content and ignore online banners (banner blindness) simply because display focus too much on getting attention and have failed to deliver.

The concept of getting attention as a way to create brand awareness is being seen as noise which leads to resistance.

People have caught on to the fact that more marketers are increasingly behind influential bloggers, social media rock stars and even popular portals by endorsing their content diluting the credibility of peer-to-peer networks.

Long Tail of Trust

In the ear of new media, brands have quickly learned social marketing is build on the idea that people trust their friends more than they trust authorities, but on the other hand, consumers also start to question the intend and authenticity of their social networks.

As I’ve mentioned previous in “7 Keys to Creating Social Media Strategy for Your Brand”, social proof plays a key factor as a weapon of influence, the challenge for marketers is to earn trust as skepticism remains about how long trust will last.

When it comes to trust and brand loyalty there is no silver bullet, but knowing what value proposition to focus on and how to make adjustments can help marketers to acquire high level of trust over time.

If you truly want to earn the trust of your audience, don’t get sucked into the numbers game.

How many Twitter followers, Facebook fans or Linkedin connections you have on is far less important than how you interact with them.

Instead of concentrating on how many social network participants you have, try instead to gauge success on how engage they are with your brand.

The take away: When it comes to trust, it pays to earn it over time via high targeted more personalized channel that drives engagement and loyalty.

Mass media may reach a wider audience faster but the conversion rate is low and the experience becomes de-personalize.

There is still a place for mass media, but there is growing concerns over the value and ROI in the long run.

Moving forward companies should focus on shifting towards a customer centric strategy that retains long term customer loyalty as a sustainable competitive advantage.

Unless your brand connects with the customer, your chance of earning trust will be slim.

The role of marketing is only going to become even more important and integrated closely with customer interactions.

Get back to the basics in the context of customer feedback.

It should be more about starting the conversation to understand the customer’s point of view in an holistic effort to co-create value that defines your brand strategy.

3 Social Media Marketing Tips for Business to Consumer Brands

by Eric Tsai

I’ve been busy with end of the year work and now I’m back on track.  For those of you that follow the designdamage blog since the beginning, I want to take this opportunity to thank you for the support and hope I can continue to provide value for your time.

Although no new entries were posted for the past weeks, I continue to follow industry trends and send out useful content via my Twitter account.  You can follow me via @designdamage

Now back to work.

After reviewing some important data and content from 2009, I’ve come to these conclusions that in 2010 social media will follow the footsteps of SEO and other forms of digital advertising: on the path to commoditization. As I’ve mentioned in the post “When to Adopt Social Media for Your Business?” that social media is still in the early adopters stage, but it’s heading towards early majority phase as the concept of connecting and sharing information online are gradually accepted.

According to eMarketer’s report supported by research from Cone “More than one-half of new media users (53%) believe brands should have a presence in new media, interacting with consumers as needed or by request only, while a further 36% demand a new media presence with regular interaction.” These type of users wants experience, dialogue and immediacy so if you want in on social media, you must provide a combination of those attributes.

So what can you do that’s different in 2010 that you haven’t try in 2009?  Here are some ideas to get you started:

Create New Brands & Co-Branding

The shift in consumer behavior will continue towards “value” even for luxury brands so private label brands and sub-brands will stand to benefit moving forward as we emerge out of the recession slowly.

For companies with strong core brand, creating a sub-brand or a new one that targets new customer base has been a popular strategy.

For businesses looking for cost-effective and fast-to-market ideas you can try partnering with other companies for a co-branding effort that creates exposure in other markets while extends your brand story.

Develop a Fascinating Story For Your Brand

The word-of-mouth marketing will continue to grow acting as trust agents providing top of mind reference for consumers.  Brands will shift advertising strategy to focus more on storytelling rather than push advertising.

This means developing a story that demonstrate the personality of the brand in campaigns such as supporting non-profit initiatives (social responsibility, cause marketing), co-branding to create unique content, or collect and promote stories about your customers.

The idea is to implement customer engagement strategies for the company to build a strong human connection that helps build brand loyalty.  Incorporating free resources to help educate your audience is another way to develop a story.

Another great way to build a rewards program around your social network fans by rewarding their participation. Another great way to ramp up your fans is to offer them something they can’t get elsewhere

Collect Valuable Customer Data

It’s time to review your customer data collection process especially if you’re going to use social media with traditional media.

Information such as where they are, what they spend money on, what are the key influences, and what content or applications they download can provide you some advantage for tailoring future product/service experiences to the individual.  Just knowing their demographic or what they buy will not be enough, leverage social media’s crowdsourcing feature and establish

The take away: It’s indicative from this past holiday shopping data that consumers simply wants more for less.  This is where smart companies find ways to cut costs so they can pass on the savings to the consumers.

It’s about keeping the customers coming back, allowing word-of-mouth to work in favor of value for money incentives, and maintaining a healthy relationship with your customers. Why would customers come back or past on your name to others when you didn’t provide value beyond what they paid for?

If you’re a small business, think of ways you can leverage technology instead of people and be creative with your marketing dollar.

Discounts, promotions, rewards programs are all vehicles to build a relationship with your customers.  You may see smaller profits and longer time to get the ROI (return on investment), but that’s all part of investing in your customer for the long haul.

If you want customers to be loyal to your brand, be prepare to deliver a consistent level of value and experience that they can come to expect in 2010.

The goal is to build and maintain customer trust, a key to gaining access to more profitable relationships with customers and competitive differentiation.

We’ll be looking at B2B ideas next to help with strategy planning in 2010.

3 Brand Marketing Trends That Will Continue

by Eric Tsai

3 brand marketing trends

When you hear something enough times, it may be a fad.  But when you start to see email spam about it, you know it’s a trend.

That’s the case with marketing trends such as email marketing and social media.

The problem with trends is that it’s usually a lagging indicator which means to seize the opportunity you may need to be an early adopters to reap the rewards.

If adopting new strategy and implementing fresh tactics sounds too risky, just take a look at the troubled newspaper and magazine companies and you’ll realize what I mean.

Similar to technology innovation, brand strategy is taking on an increasingly strategic role focusing not just on the bottom line but the ability to produce desirable financial outcomes.  It’s no surprise that the most innovative brands also fail more frequently, it’s the nature of the tried-and-true culture.

However, it takes discipline, research, analysis and creativity to find the right fit that works for your organization. Whether you’re promoting your personal brand or your corporate brand, here are the 3 brand marketing trends to look for in 2010:

1.Brands Must Become More Social Online

It’s no secret that B2B or B2C customers have been talking about your industry and your brand. Now with social media it’s simply going to be “on the record” somewhere over the internet, searchable and conversable.

If you can deal with customers in person, why couldn’t you deal with them online?

Engagement with your audience creates brand awareness, increase brand loyalty and the opportunity to get feedback that can help to improve your product and services.  Social engagement encourages crowdsourcing, use it wisely it can energize both you and your audience.

Provide transparency in what you do and demonstrate authenticity in what you say are the keys to building your online “street cred.” Organizations must look at the bigger picture and realize the emerging trend of social business branding and how it will impact all aspect of the company from internal collaboration to external engagement.

Becoming more social for brands means establishing a collaborative infrastructure within the organization to support the core brand strategy. There is no doubt that consumer wants to engage through social media so if brands don’t get into it, consumers will leave.

Ideas for action: Learn the tools of the trade in social media and (please!) put someone that cares about your brand to the task.

Research and identify where you customers are at talking about you, listen and monitor before you jump in.  Analyze the conversation around any product, topics, or category and identify any detractors and advocates to take actions.

More importantly learn to communicate well online, respond on time, be clear and to the point.  Provide value when interacting with your audience, focus on helping not selling and always deliver relevant and effective communications.

In addition, make sure you have a policy in place so you have a focused, consistent and cohesive approach in reacting to the situation regardless of which platform you’re using. The bottom line is that social media engagement without governance is a recipe for disaster.

It’s possible that your customers may not be on an open social network but on several discussion boards (forums/BBS), a private professional community, or even a popular blog where comments serve as dialogues.  speak to your customers directly to identify where they get their information, use a survey and provide rewards if needed.

Myths to consider: We can’t quantify the ROI (return on investment), so let’s just not measure them.  First of all, there are ways to measure all the marketing activities whether they’re meaningful to your organization is another story (yes you want the meaningful ones!).

The important thing is to cultivate accountability in your actions so you get results that can give you the insight to make real informed decisions.

My recommendation is to rank your marketing priorities that are most likely to pay off or generate the impact your want first.  If your strategy is to aim for awareness and exposure, then put reach and volume first instead of experience and frequency.

Keep in mind that you need to be able to quantity to a certain degree so you don’t drain your marketing resource and budget.

2.Shift in Value Perception Creates Opportunities for Brands

Generic brands are nothing new especially in the grocery store where the house brands are marketed and sold side by side with the leading brands.

The economy has shifted the perception of value fundamentally into a do-more-with-less and value-for-money mode.

According to the latest IRI Times & Trends Report: Game-Changing Economy Taking Private Label to New Heights, “private label unit share has grown 1.2 points to 22.8% and dollar share has grown 0.7 points to 17.6% across all outlets in the past 12 months.” Simply put, private label brands are gaining momentum across all tiers of product categories from premium tier to value tier because they have the advantage to compete on quality as well as price.

This represents a significant opportunity for less known brands (startups, SMBs, personal brands) to compete for new businesses while leading brands still has their eyes on cutting costs (overheads, infrastructure) and reorganizing operations.

In addition with the explosion of social media, unknown brand can go viral instantly followed by awareness because brands no longer control the buying space or the conversation, it only needs credibility to explode.

Ideas for action: This is the time to take your brand to another level especially with more cost effective tools and technologies, why not take a hard look at your current setup for operations, sales and marketing?

Reallocate your investments and prioritize your marketing, branding or product development strategies.

Many out-of-your-budget marketing avenues have dropped in price dramatically, check your local advertising channels you may be in for a surprise on how cheap it is now to run radio, print and even TV ads.

It’s a good time to build your email marketing campaign, run promotion events or even redo your old website so it’s more social media friendly.

You can even try partnering with someone locally to share the cost or co-brand some offerings together.  Another idea is to create a new brand allowing you to expand into other categories or verticals utilizing the resources you already have.

Brand extension can help secure new revenues and reinforce brand strength without compromising your current brand equities.

This is the time to drive appeal and awareness to build recognition.  Use today’s digital communication platforms to collect meaningful customer data, conduct surveys and optimize your digital presence via social networks.

Reevaluate your brand strategy, be innovative with your products and services, create a culture that reward your people and update your performance metrics.

Myths to consider: We don’t have the time, money or resources for marketing and nobody is buying!

If you don’t have a plan to convert data to actionable insight, a process to collectively review the effectiveness of your marketing strategy, how do you know what you’re doing works?

If you don’t invest in marketing or advertising, how are you going to differentiate the unique meaning of your brand?  Without differentiation you will loose pricing power and competitiveness.

If your brand isn’t even in the run for consideration, how will your customers know that you exist? And people are spending, just selectively in a timely matter.  According to the American Express Spending & Saving Tracker, “amid their (consumers) cautiousness we are seeing some areas where people are willing to increase spending.”

There is a shift in how businesses and consumers are expressing their priorities, but that doesn’t mean you should be reactive, in fact I would argue that being proactive now will benefit your ROI in the long haul.

3. Community Building is Now a Priority

Moving forward, brands will have to focus on fostering their own community to own the communication distribution network.

Building a community is about connecting and sharing experiences, I’ve outlined this previously specifically in social networks, which still applies to other platform as well.

The fact is that the adoption of new communication platform (ie. email, radio) has led to a new wave of user experience in which the context (ie. direct mail, website) and the message (ie. ads, PR) must stay relevant.

If the community is trusted by the members, they will extend the trust through word-of-mouth that could mean more opportunities for brands to increase buying frequency using content or conversation marketing tactics.

Keep in mind that you should get involved in the right channel and passively direct customers to your community.  Effective engagement can also lead to permission-based marketing. According to a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by ExactTarget, “One-half of consumers said unsolicited messages were unacceptable even from companies they did business with regularly. That was up from about one-quarter in 2008.”  When your audience allows you to contact them, you essentially have a direct line to access a targeted customer base.

Ideas for action: For low barrier to entry options, look into building a community using one of these: Facebook fan page, Twitter account, Google group, LinkedIn group, Yahoo groups; or create your own social network (with blog, discussion forums etc.), Ning, KickApps, ThePort, SharePoint, Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, Posterous, Moveable Type, SocialText, SixApart, and Pringo just to name a few.

If you’re tech or internet savvy, you can use a combination of them but I suggest to focus on becoming versed in 1-2 first then expand to others.  Personally, I’m using a combination of a WordPress blog (you’re reading it now) and Twitter (@designdamage).

You can also use video sharing sites like Youtube and Vimeo to help funnel traffic to your community. Another import tip is to leverage RSS feeds to push your message from one-to-many networks.

It’s easy for someone to discover if there’s any participation in your community or not so if you’re going to have a community, you need to be there for your audience.

Dedicate a set amount of time to regularly check the activities in your community, answer questions, drive conversations and connect with members. People have short attention span especially on the internet, so make sure you work on your message (goes to number 1 above) and keep your audience interested.

The goal is to mobilize brand advocates to drive word-of-mouth for greater engagement.

Myths to consider: We’ll just hire an expert and let them do the work like how we outsource web design and SEO.

Although we’re at the age of outsource-anything today and get it done tomorrow, it’s hardly a sustainable long-term strategy especially when it’s about your brand’s core value and mission.

Too often we forget that people are at the center of any holistic effort to improve business performance and accountability.

Outsource to gurus may get things done, but you need to take the time and effort to work with them not to mention they’re hard to find, afford and keep.  I’ve clean up some mess for clients before where the outsourced expert created more problems than what they were hired to solve.

This is why so many brands fail to update their websites regularly or refresh their SEO campaigns.  Take the time to educate yourself some of the trends will benefit you in the long run, or get your team involve and split the workload across multiple heads.

The takeaway: The evolving marketing and media ecosystem is putting pressure on brands to innovate and evolve, or risk becoming extinct.

These trends will be here to stay and is essential for brands to be successful moving forward.

Have you made the transition yet to accommodate these trends?  What are you doing to make the necessary changes to your brand strategy?

I will be reviewing the trends in digital marketing, specifically social business branding next, stay tuned.

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A Social Media Marketing Handbook

by Eric Tsai

In an effort to keep up with the rate of change in the marketing landscape, it’s important to understand the tools available to drive results.  Social media is the fastest growing tactic according to a survey by virtual events provider Unisfair, “Marketers’ top priorities for 2010 will be customer acquisition and retention and the most common tactics marketers plant to increase was social media, selected by three-quarters of marketers polled, followed by search (51%) and e-mail (49%).”

It’s indicative as the internet gets more social, the speed at which information is shared through platforms like Twitter and Facebook will continue to expand.

There is no argument that social media can benefit a brand but the problem is most companies are operating with a limited supply of resources.  And with TMI (too much information) flowing around the internet you can easily lost yourself in a sea of information resulting in analysis paralysis.

fiends_w_benefits_bookIn order to utilize the time on hand, it’s important to maintain focus on what’s relevant and wrap your head around a resource that walks you through the social media maze. Rarely is there a silver bullet that can solve all the marketing challenges so the key is to research and learn as much as  you need before you jump in.  However, research can be the source of wasted time so it’s better to approach experts within their respective disciplines or pick up a book like Friends with Benefits: A Social Media Marketing Handbook, by Darren Barefoot and Julie Szabo.

I had the opportunity to read a preview copy so I’m going to go straight to the highlights from the book:

– Chapters 1-2 provide an excellent overview on the history of social media and how it has evolved today.  I believe this is important for marketers especially those that are looking to transition to the web2.0 platform.  Without knowledge of the social landscape as a whole, it’s difficult to decide what you should use and why.  Furthermore it paints a picture on the opportunities that exist on the social web and a step by step guide to prepare your blog and leverage RSS.

– Chapters 3-6 focus on the strategy behind building a community and networking with the right bloggers as well as communication tactics.  I consider these chapters the “meat” of the book, where most marketers failed to understand the meaning behind using these tools, Friends with Benefits nailed it.  In addition, it’s got use cases from the perspective of business, product and measurement to illustrate the impact of each tactics.  If you’re operating without reliable metrics and measurement, you’re essentially operating blindly in social media. Although chapter 6 does a good job on performance tracking, it could use more financial models to further the topic of social media ROI (return on investment). If you are using social media but aren’t sure about the tactics, strategies, and practices to get them right, there are some good case studies on what to do and what not to do.

– Chapters 7-8 are guides to deal with scenarios from pre-launch to post-launch of social media campaigns.  They’re good resources for damage control in social media marketing and explain the risk implications during crisis.  Particularly the “Rules for Making Social Media Work for You in a Crisis” provides 6 valuable resolutions even for experienced marketers to quickly put out fires and can serve as reference to develop corporate social media policies.

– Chapters 9-12 goes into details on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube (and other video marketing tools), and Twitter.  These sections are essential case studies to the leading social media platform which is a good beginner’s guide.  As for people already using those tools frequently, it’s just common sense nothing you shouldn’t already know.

The take away: This is not a Twitter or Facebook for dummies, or how to setup your social media account.  What’s different between this book and other social media guides is that it tends to focus on the outcome rather than just the features and benefits.

It’s a resourceful book for those wanting to hop on the social media marketing train to learn this new viral platform and to leverage word-of-mouth tactics.  You will find plenty of answers to why and how as well as what’s in it for you.  For experienced marketers looking to keep up on their own industries as well as learn the intricate details of social media, I recommend adding this book to your reading list.

For your information, this book is scheduled to be published in next month (November) and you can pre-order the book now from No Starch Press.

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?

3 Keys to Improve Your Brand in Social Marketing

by Eric Tsai

Many businesses continue to operate under the assumption that a website, a basic product offering or great brochure will bring profits and revenue to their bottom line. Those days are over.  Brands are now crossing over into the hybrid marketing era that incorporates some form of social media.

You already know the importance of product, price, placement and promotion, but none of that matters without people. People is what build relationship and creates opportunities.  And that’s exactly what social media has added: the fifth “P” of marketing.

Whether your brand provides information products, consumer goods or services, one thing still remains the same: the most effective marketing is still word-of-mouth (WOM).

WOM generates buzz and it gets passed along over and over and over again in a highly influential way. It’s how friends tell friends about the things that excite them or what business owners tell other business owners on what works for their business.

According to the latest Nielsen Global Consumer Survey: 90% of consumers said they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trusted consumer opinions posted online.
trust_in_advertising

It’s indicative that all forms of advertising retains certain level of pervasiveness to them. In the case of WOM, it contributes to instant social proof and is particularly effective in social media.

Consider social media the new viral marketing tactic and will typically involve the following steps in launching a campaign:

An effective message: How you position your brand and the message you’re trying to get across.  Knowing your audience (the influencers, decision makers) is the key to build a winning message.  It’s all about getting the right message to the right people while being authentically efficient.  Communication is the heart of your customer acquisition and engagement strategies, the key is fostering a high quality relationship that aims to build long-term value: the foundation of a trusted connection.

A targeted channel: Although many brands are still utilizing traditional media outlets, ideally you want to target the most cost-effective channel that’s appropriate for your brand.  Social network advertising channel is rapidly becoming the favor platform for brands because online advertising is cheaper compared to other mediums such as TV and print and is far more targeted.  With that said, face-to-face interaction is still the top channel for people engagement.  Nothing will ever replace the old fashioned hand shake, a lunch or even that discovery phone call.

A viral network: Social media has created a new instantaneous viral network, Facebook has more than 250 million users and Twitter has 20 million growing more than 1000% year over year.  There are other social networks you can tap in such as LinkedIn or even the blogsphere.  The point is your customers are already on those networks connected and connecting with other like-minded individuals, sharing and commenting in groups with detail profiles and pictures.  Consider social network that’s a directory with the domino effect.

Now that you’ve got your killer message and a channel to distribute it, how do you get the viral network to be, well, viral?

The answer is simple: you need to be trusted.

Relationships And Conversations

In order to be trusted, you need to build influence on your audiences’ terms and be truly authentic in sharing and informing.  I’ve discussed being authentic before so I won’t get into the detail again, but recently I’ve found that there are some low level engagement that are both ineffective and deceiving.

In a recent article “Who cares about your news”, Valeria Maltoni clearly illustrated the problem with inadequate engagement and I encourage you to read her post.  In fact, I too received similar email from Gary Vaynerchuk’s publicist on July 9:

Hey, this is xxx from xxx. I’m working with Gary Vaynerchuk to help promote his new book: Crush It: Why Now Is the Time To Cash In on Your Passion.  Because the book deals heavily with social media strategy and branding, which is obviously something this blog talks about as well, we thought it might be something you’d be interested in checking out…

Ironically on the same day I received another email from a personal branding expert which I will not disclose here asking me to boost his rating on Amazon:

…my book, xxx, is being sabotaged on Amazon.com. Basically, 5 people are giving it bad ratings, just to be negative and then at the end of each review where it says “Was this review helpful to you?”, they (and their friends) are selecting “yes,” which pushes up those negative ratings to the top and hurts the brand of the book.

As a favor to me, could you please go to Amazon link here and press “no” under the bad reviews and “yes” under the good reviews…

Honestly, I wasn’t offended but rather disappointed with the meaningless connection attempts by both media “celebrities.” Not only do they have a large following, they’re also role models to many. It’s obvious that both emails wanted me to do something but why would I care about someone that doesn’t care about me?  Have they read my blog or know what their readers are about? Is it all about selling books?

You simply have to apply those questions to your audience to start thinking about the meaning in your engagement.  Often time it will lead to questioning the value of your product and the impact of your offering.

People can be impressed easily but that doesn’t mean they’ll act on it to buy your product or do what you’ve asked.  You’re audience can be your best word-of-mouth marketing campaign but that comes from within the quality of the engagement.

As a marketer myself I understand the “selling” tactics but it only works best if you bring value to the connection and develop a consistent long-term relationship with your audience.

Why waste the time to reach out if you aren’t ready to have a meaningful conversation?

Owning The Social Distribution Network

Social media is about having a presence then connecting and sharing meaningful information with your audience for the long haul.  I’ve covered the pillar strategies in “7 Keys to Creating Social Media Strategy for Your Brand” as a high-level overview, so now let’s look the desired outcome of branding in social media.

social_marketing_network

Conceptually, you are the center of the network universe and social media is the tool that enables you to build a community around a product or service in forging your brand’s marketing distribution channel. Once you’ve earn the trust, it spreads like WOM marketing expanding to all directions reaching your potential prospects.

Whether you have a brilliant product or the perfect message, developing your channel takes time and precision while owning it takes relentless focus on your audience’s ongoing needs.

The downside to the network is that it can work against you destroying your reputation just as fast. This means knowing your brand strategy in social marketing will be extremely important to maintain the sphere of trust.

Here are 3 keys to improve your brand while marketing in social media:

1) Move the “free” line
If you want to be part of the decision making process, you need to be considered as a key opinion leader or resource. Supply your audience with free resources such as reports, statistics and guides that can help elevate your perceived expertise.  With the amount of information on the internet today, your audience can find almost anything but if you can quantify the information that leads to a path of knowledge enrichment, you will certainly earn a few brownie points to be considered as the prime candidate. Google does this very well with their how-to videos extending their brand with social learning.

Your customer will compare before they a purchase anyway so why not give them a reason to start liking you because you’ve willing to share the wealth. If the free information you provide is valuable, you’re already a step ahead of your competition not to mention that you’re turning them into your “A” customers by providing all the necessary training and education.

2) Crowdsource for improvements
While the success of your brand’s often comes down to the effectiveness of your message, it pays to ask questions.  Companies like Starbucks, Best Buy and Pizza Hut are all using customer feedback to improve product innovation and service experience. Starbucks even let’s their customers suggest on new product ideas. Social marketing shouldn’t just be about the outbound messages; it’s an ongoing dialogue to better serve your audience.

The customers that give you feedback are often your most loyal customers so why not reward them by fulfilling a few of their suggestions.  Keep in mind that providing what they want should not be the main source of innovation, rather it’s a good starting point.

3) Embrace brand transparency
People appreciate honesty and integrity so all you have to do is stay consistent and admit when you’re wrong.  If you try to twist the truth, you’ll not last long and people won’t forget manipulations and deceptions.

This can be seen by how Major League Baseball players are forgiven about steroid use if they admit their wrongdoing rather than lie about it. The players that got caught were all given a chance to show their remorse, the ones that lied never get to play the game again because they simply can not be trusted.

In addition, when you show progress or improvement as a brand, your customer will empathize with you for the openness and sincerity. Similar to the examples I gave above on the two media celebrities, if they actually took time to get to know me, I may very well assist them with their requests, but now it’s back to square one again.

How are you improving your brand in social media?  What kind of success did you have with your social marketing efforts?  I’d like to know your thoughts.

8 Tips on How to Add Value to Your Brand Effectively

by Eric Tsai

This weekend, I went to my usual barber shop to get a haircut.  When I got done, my barber gave me a customer rewards card for one free haircut after I get nine.

Interestingly, I’ve been going to this same barber shop for 10 years and it’s the first time they’ve started a rewards program of any kind.

The purpose of such a program is to keep the customers returning.  It’s a simple tactic to create stickiness by recompensing the loyal clients.

This is a proven marketing tactic that increases the impression of value – the trick is knowing what value means to your customers.

What Does Value Mean To Your Customers?

Most business owners already understand the importance of continually adding value to their business.  It’s by knowing and consistently adding value, brands remains competitive and have the opportunity to grow.  Companies must focus on:

  • Increasing customer retention
  • Knowing what value means to your customer not to you

So what does value mean to your prospective buyers?  Is it the competitive pricing?  The free add-on services ? Or is it the customer loyalty program?

The answer: focus on customer needs and always demonstrate value through trust. In my article on “How Opinions Disrupt and Transform,” I observed that public opinions are good indicators of what’s important to consumers, especially when opinions shift from “wants” to “needs” like it is now.

Creating value is about staying relevant in your customer’s minds. It enables you to connect with what you do with what they value so your message resonate with them emotionally.

You’re not going to stop a consumer from purchasing generic soup over Campbell’s or picking up no-name tissues over Kleenex. You can either compete on price, value or both.

Here is a sample comparison for the two types of customers:

Buy Name Brand

42-15556081– Quality is priority
– Price is important but not the main concern, it should meet my needs
– Had good experience in the past, going to stick with what I know
– Saw lots of marketing about it, going to try it
– Heard good things about it from trusted source

Buy Generic Brand

– Price is priority
– Quality is important but I’ll settle for second – it should meet my budget
– Had good experience with generic brands in other categories
– I may get more value with generic brands since all the money goes into the product instead of marketing
– Fits my basic needs – I am willing to try if it means I save money

Clearly the two types of customers have very different needs.

Depending on the product or service, a customer may choose name brand at times and generic under other circumstances.

Pricing competition will shrink profit margins over time. Competing on value must be consistent with the change in the perception of value. This goes back to knowing your customer’s needs and bridging the gap between their needs and wants.

For example: a few years back Coca-Cola started selling the 8 ounce mini-cans.  They anticipated a consumer trend towards counting calories and becoming more health conscious.

Per ounce,  the mini-can isn’t cheaper than the regular can. In some cases the price could even be the same as the regular 12 ounce can.

So why would someone pay the same stuff for less?

Don’t we all want a deal?

Coke did its homework and found that the mini-cans reduced the amount of guilt that a consumer felt for snacking while minimizing the chances of overeating.

Coke realized that consumers were no longer relying on the value-for-money as the sole factor for deciding to buy.

Instead, consumers wanted to eat smaller portions, particularly in the sub-100 calories area which Kraft originally started with its mini snack packs of chips, cookies and crackers.

The company understood the emotional needs of their customers and they provided a solution to solve their problem without loosing their brand integrity or customer perceived value.  The product is still the same…just smaller portions.

In similar fashion, the smaller portion strategy has recently been implemented by many fast food chains.

Jack-in-the-Box’s “mini sirloin burgers,” Burger king’s “BK Burger Shots” and Quiznos “Toasty Torpedo,” are all tactics to tempt consumer.

Consumers who are spending less on meals away from home due to the recession NOT for health reasons.

8 Tips to Increase Your Brand Value

Here are 8 tips on what you can do to have an immediate impact on adding value to your brand:

1. Stay on top of your customer needs – Be “high touch” with your A-level customers, build solid relationships, and keep tabs on their problems.

Setup Google alerts, search on Twitter or discussion forums, read all reviews (yes, don’t ignore them!).

Visit customers regularly not only when they need something, and attend network events are great ways to strengthen the relationship and expand your reach at the same time.

2. Be visible to your customers – Make sure they’re aware of your value continuously; try to remind them of your value strategically.

Offering an updated version of your product or tagging on a free service are good ways of letting your customer know you are constantly improving.

Convince your customer that your existence makes their lives easier, better, happier by providing them with information they value and care for.

3. Know your competition – Always be on the lookout for what others are doing out there.  Be ready to explain your value proposition versus your competitors’.

You must be able to provide the facts to back up your claims.

It will make you more competitive if you can level the playing field just like how all the restaurants are offering smaller portion meals in their own way.

4. Go the extra mile – Do things that are outside the scope of your business.   Go above and beyond your normal routine by solving their “other” problems.

This will help you stand out from the competition.

5. Reward loyalty – Similar to the rewards program, give your customer something more for sticking with you or using your products and services.

It could be tickets to a baseball game, gift certificates or discounts for doing business with you in the future. You want to build a relationship that extends as long as possible so focus on customer lifetime value.

6. Try new ideas – If you’re in a highly commoditized market, you need to think about where you make your profits.  Most of times there is no point in competing on price or service alone.

Try new ideas like the “freemium model” where it may be worth it to give some of your products or services away for free and charge for value-adds or premium account later in exchange for maintaining the relationship.

Gmail is free because Google makes their money from ads displayed in Gmail, giving them more advertising channels.  Some Apple iPhone basic apps are free because they have a full version that will cost money.

7. Improve experience – The entire experience in doing business with your company should be present from start to finish.

Try to make every step as frictionless as possible and think from your customer’s perspective.

They should know that they can contact you with their concerns with the expectation that you will respond quickly and effectively.

This also creates great leverage for word-of-mouth marketing.

8. Include a human element – Many companies don’t focus enough on humanizing their brand.  As a result, customers can feel out of touch.

They need to feel like they are more than customers.

Logos, slogans, taglines and websites are just references, they’re marketing vehicles.

Besides receiving your newsletters, brochures, emails and phone calls, allowing your customer to reach you in other engaging ways can help your company grow.

Don’t be afraid to be creative about it; throw events, create a blog, or connect via social networking tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.