Some CEO’s just ‘get it’ while others don’t seem to bother. We’re talking about social media, which seems to either be fully embraced by some companies while shunned by others as something that “doesn’t work for us”. If you are trying to get your CEO or company execs to embrace social media the following infographic by MBAOnline.com should help.
The Social CEO, via MBAOnline.com
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Social Media | Tagged: infographic, mbaonline, Social Media | 
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Posted by Daniel Kuperman
Looking for a recipe to get your new video to go viral? In a recent Harvard Business Review article “The New Science of Viral Ads”, assistant professor Thales Teixeira from HBS outlines the ingredients you will need:
1. Utilize “Brand Pulsing”: weave your brand throughout the ad instead of placing it front and center. Example is the “Happiness Factory” video for Coca-Cola.
2. Create joy, or surprise right away: keeping viewers involved is key to get your video watched, so you have to use both joy (hey, this is funny) and surprise (wow!). Example is Bud Light’s “Swear Jar”.
3. Build an emotional roller coaster: people are most likely to keep watching if they experience emotional ups and downs.
4. Surprise but don’t shock: this is where you’ve got to be careful not to push the video too far… some surprise is good, but shocking may diminish the virality effect (nude people in the video makes it unlikely to be shared with office co-workers).
5. Target viewers who will share the ad: sounds obvious but is more difficult than you imagine. Is hard to target viewers based on their personality, but different types of personalities (extroverted vs. introverted) are a key ingredient in ensuring the video will get shared. Some people share it for ‘status’, or to rank up higher in social media circles, or to be seen as savvy in a subject.
Interesting that the experiments Prof. Teixeira conducted made use of some high tech equipment. They setup infrared eye-tracking scanners so that they could determine where people were looking when the ads played and they used a system that analyzes facial expressions and were able to determine, based on slight changes on their facial muscles (this reminded me of micro-expressions and the Lie To Me series) what emotion they were experiencing.
High tech gear monitored users as they watched videos
Interesting that four out of five key ingredients in the study deal directly with the content of your ad or video. You shouldn’t, however, discount the last factor of who you are sending that video to because as the article explains, if people don’t share your video… it won’t go viral (duh!). What good is creating great content if the reader is not willing to share?
Makes you think not only about how to structure your content creation strategy but also how to plan for your content distribution.
Here are the videos mentioned in the article:
“Brand Pulsing” example: Coca-Cola Happiness Factory
“Open with Joy” example: Mr. Bean
“Roller Coaster” example: Bud Light Swear Jar
“Surprise but don’t shock” example: Bud Light Clothing Drive
Using all ingredients example: Evian Roller Babies
2 Comments | Content Marketing, Social Media | Tagged: hbr, Social Media, viral ads, viral video | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
Note: This is a guest post by Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North. See Brad’s bio at the end of the article.
Participating in social media is time consuming, so it’s only natural that people look for shortcuts. However, some shortcuts become disastrous detours, and this is often what happens when a company relies on automation for significant portions of its social updating.
Automatic feeds come in two flavors. Fully automatic feeds publish to a social media platform without any human intervention. An example of this is setting up your Twitter updates to automatically feed into your Facebook company page. Semi-automatic feeds require intervention. For example, my HootSuite social media interface allows me to publish the same message simultaneously on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and soon, Google+.
Why to Avoid Automatic Feeds
The catch is, while automation is tempting for publishers, it is often annoying to readers. The following three consequences of overfeeding are why you should avoid automation, or at the very least use it judiciously.
1. Stream clogging. Automation encourages publishers to over communicate. If you overload any given platform with updates, your connections will either mentally tune you out, or physically tune you out by removing you from their stream (think Facebook) or disconnecting from you altogether (think Twitter). Most social platforms enable users to finely tune and personalize their incoming content, dooming any type of mass merchandising effort. And even though you can’t stop your mail to prevent junk mail, social media users can and do stop messaging they regard as spam.
2.Redundancy. Publishers sometimes lose sight of how many of their connections frequent multiple platforms. When I see the same update on three platforms, I remember it, but not in a good way. My assumption is the sender either doesn’t understand me or doesn’t mind bombarding me. Either way, the sender is not inspiring me to interact or do business.
3. Inappropriate style. The composition of a tweet, which is limited to 140 characters, does not lend itself to doubling as an effective Facebook post. Conversely, updates from other networks feeding into Twitter may be severely truncated, rendering them cryptic or entirely incomprehensible. Each platform has its own stylistic conventions that encourage conversation and action. Ignoring them only renders your social media activity less effective.
How to Avoid Automatic Feeds
Why do companies use this sort of indiscriminate messaging? Besides the convenience factor, I believe many companies simply don’t have a clear and distinct communication strategy for each social platforms on which they engage.
For example, a B2C firm might use …
A B2B firm might use …
You’ll notice that each example necessitates targeting a particular audience segment and then theming the message to appeal to that segment.
Putting a purpose behind social communication not only eliminates the temptation to use automatic feeds, it allows companies to give audience segments a clear and persuasive reason to connect and much more important, stay connected and engaged. A constant barrage of thematically unconnected updates might accomplish the former, but never the latter.
Any business in social media for the long haul needs a strategy that employs something other than convenience as the linchpin.
About the author:
Brad Shorr is Director of Content & Social Media for Straight North, an Internet marketing, Chicago-based agency. They specialize in niche, middle market B2B industries such as flame resistant apparel and thermoplastic injection molding. Follow @bradshorr on Twitter for non-automated discussion of all things marketing.
7 Comments | Communication, Content Marketing, Marketing Automation, Social Media | Tagged: automatic feeds, b2b marketing, b2c marketing, brad shorr, facebook, linkedin, Social Media, straight north, twitter | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
“You can’t just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they’ll want something new” – Steve Jobs
Let’s do a focus group and find out. This tried-and-true approach to innovation leading to brand extensions, new product categories, and new marketing approaches has and continues to be used as a cornerstone of market research efforts.
In an interesting BusinessWeek article dating back to 2005, titled “Shoot the Focus Group”, the author states that although there are plenty of examples and ample evidence that Focus Groups fail time and again, companies keep using them.
“The old-fashioned focus group still has its believers even with fiascoes like Pepsi Edge and a decades-long new-product failure rate of about 90%.” – BusinessWeek
You probably know the famous examples of the failure of Chrysler’s Aztek car and the surprising success of PT Cruiser, Coca Cola’s “New Coke”, Ford Edsel, and plenty of others horror stories of focus groups gone wrong.
And why is that? I like Gerald Zaltman’s explanation that “The correlation between stated intent and actual behavior is usually low and negative” which also reminds me of an episode of Mad Men where Don Draper chastises a hired researcher to do a focus group for one of their clients, see below.
Excerpt from Mad Men, Season 4. “The Rejected”.
Faye: Well, I’ve done everything but finish the report.
Don: How’d we do?
Faye: Well, it turns out the hypothesis was rejected. I’d recommend a strategy that links pond’s cold cream to matrimony– a veiled promise.
Don: Hello, 1925. I’m not gonna do that, so what are we gonna tell the client?
Faye: I can’t change the truth.
Don: How do you know that’s the truth? A new idea is something they don’t know yet, so of course it’s not gonna come up as an option. Put my campaign on tv for a year, then hold your group again, maybe it’ll show up.
Faye: Well, I tried everything. I said “routine”, I tried “ritual”… all they care about is a husband. You were there. I’ll show you the transcripts.
Don: You can’t tell how people are going to behave based on how they have behaved.
In a Harvard Business Review article, Turn Customer Input into Innovation, Anthony Ulwick says “companies go about listening to customers all wrong”. Customers are asked to offer a solution to a problem but they aren’t informed enough, aren’t experts in the field and have a limited frame of reference.
“The problem, when there is one, is simple: Companies ask their customers what they want.” – Anthony Ulwick
The solution, according to Ulwick, is to focus on outcomes. This means that instead of asking for customers to submit solutions to a particular problem, they should focus on understanding what customers value most.
But how about using social media? I strongly believe that traditional marketing tactics can be greatly enhanced by using digital tools and when it comes to market research, social media channels should be top of mind. That includes paying attention to comments on your blog, using your Facebook Fan Base to test new ideas, monitoring Twitter feeds, and more.
“I’ll take the status update that someone wrote from the couch in the comfort of their own home as more accurate than the comment they made in a focus group room when they are given a $100 gift card to show up.” – Mike Volpe, CMO at HubSpot
Whether social media will replace traditional market research is up to debate, the active use of social media to complement market research can dramatically improve a company’s success ratio for new product launches and maybe take away some of that bad rap focus groups have.
Additional Reading
Here are some interesting articles if you’d like to dig deeper into this topic:
Note: Mad Men is Copyright of American Movie Classics Company LLC.
1 Comment | Communication, Marketing Strategy, Social Media | Tagged: focus group, mad men, Market Research, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
HubSpot does it again, taking content that is not necessarily new or revolutionary and putting it in a nicely formatted eBook that makes reading it a pleasure.
With “An Introduction to Inbound Marketing Analytics“, you get an overview of what to measure and why. Especially useful for small companies and those who are just starting out with their marketing programs and need some help identifying key metrics, the eBook is packed with good advice.
In the eBook you will see metrics for the following marketing tactics:
The benefits of analyzing your marketing performance according to HubSpot are:
1. Identify what’s working.
2. Identify what’s not working.
3. Identify ways to improve.
4. Implement more of the tactics that work to improve marketing performance
Agreed!
Get your free copy of the “An Introduction to Inbound Marketing Analytics” eBook.
3 Comments | Book Review, Content Marketing, Email Marketing, Lead generation, Marketing Automation, Marketing ROI, Online Marketing | Tagged: Blogging, Email Marketing, hubspot, inbound marketing, Landing Pages, Lead Nurturing, marketing analytics, SEO, Social Media, website | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
I know I don’t have to argue the value of content to readers of this blog. If you are even remotely interested in marketing it is clear that the more the web has transformed the way we promote our products, the more firmly ‘content’ has planted itself as the center of our lives.
Besides the rise of social media as marketing channel, the emergence of marketing technology, more specifically Marketing Automation systems, in which you can configure the automated distribution of content to customers and prospects has been changing the way marketers see and create conent.
The power of marketing automation is the ability to target your marketing database with specific content based on their behavior and stage in the purchasing process. According to a recent report from Forrester Research titled “B2B Marketers Must Better Prepare for Marketing Automation” (get it from Marketo for free), marketers have to really focus their efforts on content creation if they are to succeed:
“If they only push this type of content out in campaigns, they push their audiences away, since business buyers have a low tolerance for commercial messages. When companies start to tailor content to different audiences and stages of the buying cycle, they greatly increase the amount of content, and the type of content needed changes”
Marketing used to have clearly defined roles. Marketing Directors and Managers on top, Marketing Coordinators, Marketing Specialists in the middle, followed by Copywriters, Designers, Web Masters, and more at the bottom. Add a few other roles such as events coordinator and more recently email marketing specialist and maybe even something related to social media and you have the hierarchical organization of 90% of marketing departments today.
With the change and addition of new marketing channels, marketers now see themselves more as content creators than anything else. Twitter feeds need updating, Facebook pages need commenting, blog posts need editing, and YouTube videos have to be tagged. All of this new material requires some form of marketing organization, or better yet, organization and support from the marketing team.
What used to be clear roles (i.e. the copywriter writes copy for the ad while the designer makes the ad look pretty), is now morphing into a free for all. Interns are ‘liking’ pages on facebook while the events coordinator is Tweeting about the trade show giveaway at their booth. Sales reps are sharing webinar recordings with prospects, the CEO is blogging his latest thoughts on the industry, the human resources manager is updating the company’s LinkedIn page.
Does it sound familiar? And scary? Yup!
A new role is starting to take shape. I first heard a term I think will become norm at the last Power of eMarketing Conference in San Francisco, during a panel discussion in which Chris Baggott, Compendium’s CEO, talked about the “Content Coordinator“.
The Content Coordinator is basically the person on your marketing team responsible for coordinating content creation and distribution. Note that this person is not necessarily responsbile for creating the content per se, and in fact some will argue that content creation and copywriting are the same, but rather helping with maintaining a consistent message across all channels (content creation should actually be encouraged throughout the company and a good social media policy put in place).
How you think about what content is for your company will determine how big this role is. Think about:
And the list could go on a few more bullets. But you get the idea… content can be as simple or complex as you make it. The important thing is how consistent, or integrated your message and branding is across channels. And unless you have someone paying attention to it, you’re likely to lose the opportunity to influence people towards buying your product.
So while adding another person to your marketing budget may seem tricky at first, maybe you don’t have to hire an additional person (although for larger organizations that should definitely be the case). You could simply rework some job descriptions to free someone’s time to focus more on the whole content coordination aspect. This could be a good stepping stone for a promising young Marketing Coordinator, for example. The important thing is to make it official and empower this individual to really take charge of content inside your organization. This will save everyone (especially the Marketing Manager) a lot of time and avoid headaches down the road.
Larger organizations may even start thinking of a higher level role, of Chief Content Officer, created in order to plan, coordinate the execution, and report on content ROI.
Whether you decide to formally create this new marketing position or keep things the way they are for now, one thing is certain – your content is more king than ever. How you decide to work with it will determine whether you succeed or fail.
Leave a Comment » | Content Marketing, Marketing Automation, Marketing Planning, Marketing Strategy, Online Marketing, Social Media | Tagged: content marketing, linkedin, marketing roles, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
A recent question on the Marketing Over Coffee LinkedIn group about WordPress plugins generated a really great list of tools marketing professionals should consider when running a personal or company blog. To make it easier for everyone I’ve compiled the suggestions from the group into an easy-to-read list (sorted alphabetically). An Excel file is available at the end of the post with all this info.
WordPress Plugins for Marketers (click to zoom)
Note: Only WordPress.org (the free, host-it-yourself version of WordPress) allows for plugins.
The list is not all inclusive and depending on the focus of your blog you may have to search for that specific plugin elsewhere, but it seems there is an agreement that at minimum you need some kind of SEO and Analytics plugin, and if your blog has enough traffic, a cache plugin is justified. For corporate blogs using a backup plugin is probably a good investment as well and the editorial calendar plugin is a great help for planning content especially coordinating among different team members.
Click to download the WordPress Plugins for Marketers in Excel (XLS) format.
Is there a plugin you simply “must have” or recommend that I have not listed? Let us know!
3 Comments | Content Marketing, Online Marketing, Social Media | Tagged: Blogging, linkedin, Online Marketing, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
It’s February already and you keep thinking “what the heck happened to January”? You’re note alone. A few good events have come and gone, like the Digital Marketing Forum, MarketingSherpa’s Email Marketing Summit, and the Email Evolution Conference and I completely missed them.
Sure, budget is short and you can’t attend every single event, but is good to know what’s coming up so that you can prepare yourself and pick the ones you should go. Also, the earlier you register usually the better deal you can get. So here you go, this is the list of marketing events and marketing conferences coming up (US only) for the first half of 2011. Check them out, pick a couple and start planning!
Upcoming marketing conferences
==February==
Online Marketing Summit
February 7-11
San Diego, CA
Link: http://www.onlinemarketingsummit.com/
Social Media Strategies Summit
February 8-10San Francisco, CA
Link: http://socialmediastrategiessummit.com/
Frost & Sullivan Marketing World
February 8-11
New Orleans, LA
Link: http://www.frost.com/prod/servlet/summits-details.pag?eventid=200426011
Social Media Camp
February 9New York, NY
Link: http://socialmediacampny.com/
Social Media Masters
February 11San Diego, CA
Link: http://socialmediamasters.com/
Content Marketing Strategies Conference
February 16-17
Berkeley, CA
Link: http://contentmarketingstrategies-mashable.eventbrite.com/
Social Fresh Tampa
February 21-22
Tampa, FL
Link: http://socialfresh.com/tampa/
DMA Mobile Marketing Day
February 22
New York, NY
Link: http://www.the-dma.org/councilevents/mobileday/
==March==
Marketing Research Executive Forum
March 6-8
Atlanta, GA
Link: http://www.marketingpower.com/Calendar/Pages/default.aspx
Search Marketing Expo
March 8-10
San Jose, CA
Link: http://searchmarketingexpo.com/
Conversion Conference
March 14-15
San Francisco, CA
Link: http://conversionconference.com/west/home.html
Search Engine Strategies
March 21-15
New York, NY
Link: http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/newyork/
==April==
Forrester Marketing Forum
April 5-6
San Francisco, CA
Link: http://www.forrester.com/events/eventdetail/0,9179,2511,00.html
AdTech
April 11-13
San Francisco, CA
Link: http://www.ad-tech.com/sf/adtech_san_francisco.aspx
The Power of eMarketing Conference
April 19-20
San Francisco, CA
Link: http://www.emarketingassociation.com/2011/SF/index.html
Mobile Marketing Strategies Summit
April 26-28San Francisco, CA
Link: http://mobilemarketingstrategiessummit.com/
==May==
Marketing Innovation Summit
May 2-5
Boston, MA
Link: http://www.mis2011.com/Boston/Home
Sirius Decisions Summit
May 4-6
Scottsdale, AZ
Link: http://www.siriusdecisions.com/live/home/document.php?dA=ConfAnnSummit2011
Event Marketing Summit
May 16-18
Chicago, IL
Link: http://emsummit.eventmarketer.com/
==June==
International BMA Conference
June 1-3
Chicago, IL
Link: http://www.marketing.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=5288
MarketingProfs B2B Forum
June 13-15
Boston, MA
Link: TBD
==
And the following are some of the marketing conferences I’ll keep watch and decide as we get closer.
MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit Boston
09/26-27
Boston, MA
MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Summit SF
10/24-25
San Francisco, CA
Dreamforce 2011
August 30-Sept 2
San Francisco, CA
BlogWorld Expo
October 14-16
Las Vegas, NV
Conferences abound, but they are a great way to learn new things, network, and more importantly get out of the office and focus for a couple days.
P.S.: I’ll be presenting at the upcoming The Power of eMarketing Conference, so if you plan on going to that one let me know so we can meetup.
Did I forget a conference? Let me know and I’ll update the list.
5 Comments | Email Marketing, Marketing Training, Online Marketing, Social Media | Tagged: conferences, Email Marketing, events, internet marketing, linkedin, Social Media, training | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
The new research report from Aberdeen Group “Email Marketing: Customers Take it Personally” has some
very interesting insights. They talk about how the increase in the number of available marketing channels coupled with the resource constraints of most marketing organizations is the toughest challenge for marketers to overcome. If you have just started your 2011 campaigns after battling the budget process, I bet you can definitely see some relation to your own company.
So with all these new channels available, why does email marketing continue to be a top choice for marketers everywhere? According to the research “email marketing’s ability to provide a high quantity of leads combined with direct revenue gains” is what makes it still an attractive channel. Even when compared with social media, the research states:
“83% of all companies surveyed indicate they will leverage email as a core tool in the marketing mix and at a rate 54% more than social media despite that channel’s growth and popularity”
This is definitely contrary to a lot of the predictions of email marketing’s death and the rise of social media as the main communications channel for marketing that we heard throughout 2010.
In their research they also classify companies according to their results in email marketing usage. The leaders of the pack, called Best-in-Class companies, follow some best practices you can also adopt at your own organization:
And, they add that the real key critical factor is the personalization of content in your emails. They say that “companies that marry high value customers with personalized, specialized offers in their email campaigns produce far greater results on every tangible measure of effectiveness”. Content personalization is not an easy task but according to the research it will likely give you a 38% better open rate and 86% greater click-through rate than non-personalized email messages.
The lesson? Work your way through the list above and start playing with content personalization, even if only for a small segment of your database. It will likely pay off handsomely.
The report has more interesting stuff and I suggest you spend a few minutes reading it. You can get it for free for a limited time here:
Leave a Comment » | Email Marketing | Tagged: Email Marketing, linkedin, Market Research, Marketing Planning, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
At the San Francisco Marketing Book Club meeting last week we discussed “Flip the Funnel: How to use existing customers to gain new ones“, by Joseph Jaffe. 
What’s the verdict? Buy the book. OK, now the explanations and caveats.
First, the book talks about the essential function of customer service and how to leverage it with today’s current technologies, including (of course) social media. If you haven’t read much about customer service or if marketing isn’t your background, then the book will be a good starting point. For those that have some experience and background on the topic of excellence in customer service and have read one of the many classic books out there, then a lot of it will be just a review of what has already been said.
My biggest disappointed was that the author used mostly well known examples to illustrate his points. JetBlue, Domino’s, United Airlines, Zappos, and others are cases that we marketers already know. I would have liked to see other companies that he has worked with and are not so obvious and how they implemented his recommendations or how they have failed to recognize the importance of “flipping the funnel”. But then, maybe I’m not the target market for this book.
The other thing to be aware is that Mr. Jaffe is a bit verbose. If you have listened to his podcasts or seen his videos, then you know what I’m talking about. I felt like skipping a few pages just so I could get right to the point. Others may be ok with his style, but it just made it much harder for me to make progress. You should read an excerpt or check it out at the local bookstore to see if you like how he writes before buying the book.
But don’t be fooled, there are some really good ideas in the book:
Where is the money going?
Early in the book he makes the case that we’re spending money on the wrong side of the funnel. “Shouldn’t we be spending money against qualified prospective buyers versus shots in the dark at bagging a random stranger?”. He continues saying “The marketing funnel produces customers – but then does nothing with them.”
How right he is! Why is it we spend all that money and effort into getting people interested just to forget about them once we get the purchase order? There’s gold to be mined in existing customers and the book treats this as the new mantra for marketing. In Jaffe’s words “Keeping, cultivating, and nurturing existing customers and establishing unbreakable bonds with them”.
Segment and Treat Customers Differently
Although the methodology varies based on your industry and whether you are a B2B or B2C company, the big picture is clear. “The more opportunities we give our customers to engage us (as opposed to us engaging them), the more likely they’ll be able to do just that”, and I completely agree. According to Jaffe, we should segment customers into “walkers”, “talkers”, and “hybrid”, and deploy distinct approaches for each one. His new “flipped funnel” approach to doing that is called A.D.I.A (Acknowledgement, Dialogue, Incentivization, and Activation).
The Customer Experience
The whole point of the “new” flipped funnel approach is to create this unique “customer experience”, which means giving customers ways in which they can interact with the brand, and we can interact back with them. Sure, this is not new, but he suggests that “companies need to have an intensive, omnipresent approach to dealing with their customers”. Does this sound like your company? I know, everyone talks about how important the customer is, etc but very few companies really put the necessary resources behind that. The payback, he argues, is that “customers will pay a premium for higher perceived value”, and such value is likely to be how customers are treated. Customer service becomes your product, or better yet, the differentiator between your product and your competitor’s.
Social Media Still Not Treated Seriously
Where I think the book falls short is on the implementation side. It talks about companies having to deploy capabilities across every single customer touchpoint, connecting the dots between the physical and virtual world and giving customer service the strategic value it deserves, but there’s not much in terms of HOW companies are doing that. Although, if the research from MS&L mentioned in the book is correct (one third of companies are not incorporating social media in marketing efforts, and of 63% that were, a full two-thirds had not made changes to products or marketing based on customer feedback), then the problem is actually there aren’t many good examples to follow. Are we entering a new world, travelling a path very few have survived? We’ll see.
In sum, if you’ve already read a few books on the subject, you’re not going to gain anything new but for the novice or uninitiated this book may be just what you need to get your company on the right track to flipping the funnel and gaining new customers.
Leave a Comment » | Book Review, Communication, Content Marketing, Marketing Management, Social Media | Tagged: book, Communication, linkedin, Social Media | Permalink
Posted by Daniel Kuperman
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