Marmite shortage "Marmageddon" by Global Culture
And so I think we’ve changed some of the ways we shop and how we socially engage while shopping and afterwards how we talk about our experiences.
Have you done these things in a shop:
- Photographed an item you like but aren’t ready to buy yet
- Compared prices in store with online websites
- Recorded price or size information on your phone rather than writing it longhand
I nearly got kicked out of a furniture store yesterday.
Wanna guess why?
He was caught red handed photographing some of the merchandise. Not with malicious intent but with a view to comparing it to the space available in his house to fit it into.
The storm of commentary proves that this is not an isolated case. I’ve done exactly the same thing – photographed price tags or descriptions in order to get dimensions or colours or to show it to friends before deciding to buy.
Retailers – When you review your mobile marketing strategy (see our posts here and here) think hard about how you can encourage your customers to buy and share the experience all the steps along the way through photography.
P.S. have you noticed how Pinterest is full of boards about things people want to buy in the future?
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easy. Today we showcase a client and their challenges and a book and a blog post. Together they give you the one principle you need to write a B2B online brand strategy.
How to get customer community integrated into your marketing
Three things we read and discussed coincided this week:
- Planning with the Silver Fern Farms marketing team
- Reading The B2B Social Media Book
- Commenting on Confused of Calcutta’s blog post – Musings about communities and prices
Start with the blog post - there are three main points: Everyone in the community is a customer; Communities expect a range of prices for each product or service; A connected community converges to act as a single, composite customer.
Take the range of prices – some customers are happy to read free offerings; others will contribute to comments or test purchase items while others are avid fans. The Silver Fern Farms team were discussing how to organise messaging across different geographical marketplaces – not all their range is sold in each country. [They sell lamb and venison in supermarkets.]
Treating all the customers and prospects as a single, composite customer enables us to deliver into separate marketplaces with variable messaging. Yes, we do not use the same message to each group. BUT we know the customer is smart and can read. Being clear about what products are available in which supermarkets matters. It builds awareness of the wider product range and helps customers appreciate the global nature of the Silver Fern Farms business.
Is B2B any different for online?
Slant these ideas into the business to business B2B world. This is where I find clients have the greatest problems “coping” with a singular community. And ironically, this is where the greatest opportunities exist for B2B.
Read this quote from the Book
Most B2B companies live with fear. The fear of giving away too much information, saying something wrong, giving competitors an advantage.
But I know B2B companies have another fear. Integrated messaging.
This is perceived as hard to do. Mainly because of the territoriality of the agencies and staff who service the brand.
Each market, each customer, each group of buyers fits into a hierarchy of customer-types. From the inquirer who wants to read for free but not participate up through to the possible purchaser. Your brand needs to set up its marketing to allow and
enable each customer type to engage at the participation level the customer chooses.
I wrote that in bold because this principle is the key to your strategic marketing plan.
How does engagement work in practice?
Set up a range of marketing activities that allow any customer from the vast pool of possibles to enable customers to get what they need.
Think of it as a staircase, each step has an increasing level of engagement and possibly a higher price.
When planning your online messaging think of your brand’s online presence as if it were a niche magazine. You should aim to be the best ‘trade journal’ magazine you possibly can be. Dominate your niche and the customer will figure out which of your offerings (from free to paid) she wants and where/how to acquire for herself.
Talent.me
A Facebook app that sets out to connect you to business partners.
I joined, it connected me to all my contacts (I know them already) and then set about asking me to endorse people…
It suggested I endorse someone – Alan Moore. So I clicked and because he hasn’t listed any ‘talent’s I can’t endorse him…. well that isn’t great – what If I want to endorse you about a talent (friendliness, humour) that you haven’t listed?
I tried again, Chris Lenton, It even suggested a sentence I could use (doesn’t that negate the value of the endorsement if it isn’t my own words?).
MeetingAngels.com
Try this one – an opportunity to get meetings or set up meetings as an intermediary with targets. I want to meet people working at the commercial ports of Auckland, Tauranga, Wellington and Christchurch here in New Zealand. So I listed that …. now every working day I get an identical email from Omri Horowitz. Adding no value, explaining nothing and definitely putting me off the site. Here’s what he says
Daily email from Meeting Angels
Is ‘social business’ really happening?
Haydn Shaughnessy writes in Forbes that he fears Social Business will fail. But that’s because it isn’t replacing capitalist enterprise, it’s trying to become something different. He sets out a case of a wider definition than just connecting with other members of staff.
Social business on this limited definition is an adaptation of your Intranet. It might be a great, big, wonderful Intranet, but it serves the same objectives and it will look and function like an Intranet.
That will not create new business opportunities, nor allow a company to transform itself without leadership forging a movement for change that impinges on employees, customers, and partners, bringing additional value to them all. That, on the other hand, is a social business.
Doing ‘good’ and enabling connections are, in my opinion subsdiary to the profit motive and will remain so for a long time. Rawn Shah defines social business as
“how to use the power of network relationships, and online social interactivity to empower the processes of any business”
Writing in the comments of Haydn’s article, I added
I fear for the ‘bandwagon’ effect on the combined words ‘social’ and ‘business’.
This week I’ve been exposed to two new apps: Talent.me and Meetingangels.com
Both purport to be ‘social business apps’ and both are failing to deliver. The first seems to link to my network but not offer any subsequent steps, the latter just sends me spammy emails confirming that I’ve asked for an introduction to an organisation.
I’ve also spoken to another organisation, conenza.com who use alumni networks to leverage new business development. This seems better-conceived and I’m investigating further.
I like the idea of social business on a B2B level, it is not yet even at the starting blocks of delivering value.
Wouldn’t you love to be able to use networks of networks to get the connections you need to drive new business for your firm? Have you tried out these apps? Do they work for you? Please send us your examples.
Related articles
- Will The Real Social Business Experts Please Stand Up? (darmano.typepad.com)
- Musing about shared value (confusedofcalcutta.com)
- 2012 the year of social business and shared value (delphineremyboutang.wordpress.com)
If you think that that was a coincidence, think again. It was newsjacking.
Interview with David Meerman Scott
On an episode of the radio show Internet Marketing for Smart People, Copyblogger interviewed David Meerman Scott, marketing strategist and author of Newsjacking: How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage.
So what is newsjacking?
Newsjacking is a marketing technique where a company strategically coincides a product development, company promotion, etc. with a larger-scale news-worthy event. Essentially, a company rides the wave of another news piece, gaining coverage and promoting their product with minimal effort.
Meerman Scott identified the insurance company TIO as a prime example of a newsjacking success story. When the company heard that President Obama was visiting Australia for the first time in his Presidency (an event sure to gain extreme media coverage), they decided to offer him an insurance policy against crocodile attacks. It may sound ridiculous, and in truth it is a little, but it worked. For the short amount of time that it took TIO to announce that they were offering Obama the policy, they gained a huge amount of media attention.
But why does it work?
During his interview Meerman Scott explained that there has been a shift in journalism. Where it used to be that companies would seek out journalists for coverage, journalists now venture out themselves and seek news. Their search includes a variety of sources, including blogs, twitter, and more. That’s how a company can release one snippet of information into the cyber tide pool and have it become viral, often gaining a second paragraph nod.
The benefits of newsjacking are enormous…
- minimal time input
- avoidance of through-the-roof PR expenses
- viral media coverage
- anyone can do it
All it takes is a post and well-planned timing!
Have a listen to this show and decide for yourself: is newsjacking the PR technique of the future?
Take a look around the other books written by David Meerman Scott - yes that’s an affiliate link. Thanks for supporting Creative Agency Secrets.
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We had a client commission us to do a lovely campaign to promote a national holiday with “21 Things to do ….” type of activity. Trouble was, the main focus was to build social media followers on Facebook.
Making a landing page on a website is easy. Facebook was a challenge.
We like challenges.
Our first big discovery was the ebook How to Master Facebook Marketing in 10 Days. Here we learnt that you can create custom welcome tabs with an iFrame application and set it as the default landing page for visitors who have yet to “like” your product.
A welcome tab fit right in line with our purpose, because it encourages liking and boosts followers while highlighting our clients creative holiday campaign. But it had some shortcomings too.
As suggested in the ebook, we used the Wildfire iFrame app. For this clients’ needs, the welcome page was to be predominately made up of text, which meant that it was time to roll up our sleeves and do some coding.
Having to translate our text to HTML programming was doable, but a bit of a pain. Ensuring that our page had the look and feel that we wanted required switching between the html backstage look, and the finished product, to check and recheck that our links were in fact opening in another tab, that the right words were bold and underlined, and that we approved of the overall look of the page. It was tedious, but we did it.
Our ‘hack’ here was to create the page in our WordPress blog and when we were satisfied with the look and feel, to then copy the HTML into Facebook.
Next step was to take it live.
To set the newly-created welcome tab as the default landing page, we (as admins of the page) hit the ‘Edit Page’ button in the top right hand corner, taking us to the Manage Permissions tab of the Page Dashboard. Selecting the drop-down menu next to the Default Landing Tab section, we chose the name of our newly created welcome tab (which, unless you change the name yourself, will automatically show up as ‘Welcome’). Our page was up.
But the happy “ta-da” moment quickly wore off, when we refreshed and still ended up, by default, on the wall of our page, rather than our sparkly new welcome tab.
Did the hack fail?
By testing different accounts and comparing, we discovered that only viewers who have not yet liked our page will automatically land on the welcome tab. Admins and consumers who have already liked your page will be taken directly to the wall, skipping the welcome tab altogether.
Well, that just wasn’t going to work for us. To get around this unfortunate feature, for each post that we made about our list, we linked back to the welcome tab, which featured the list in whole. Although, something to note, each time we posted a link to the Welcome Tab, a preview of our ‘about’ section showed up.
But with all of the glitches, our Facebook welcome tab did just what we had hoped. Before the welcome tab launch our client had under 50 followers, now, not even a week later, they have over 500.
It was a learning process, but a successful one.
Tell us about your experiences – ever tried something like this?
]]>If we all agree that people need to be safe before they make a purchase decision and we agree that most purchase decisions are made emotionally, then it is safe to say compelling stories go a long way in accelerating the sale.
How? Let me illustrate four ways stories contribute to strong sales and marketing strategy.
1. Stories are much easier to understand, remember and share than complex 
details. Features and benefits cause our brains to work hard and ultimately like all our organs, brains that work hard need to rest. Stories, on the other hand, are processed by a different part of our brain. That’s why good ones are so easy to remember.
2. People actually like sharing stories. Good, bad or ugly, they like having information that they think other people will find valuable. That’s why bad experiences are shared 10 times more than good experiences. We are trying to prove our value by helping others stay away from bad experiences.
3. Social media accelerates story sharing. In the old days (three years ago) people told stories to other people. Today, people post stories, they blog about their experiences, they convert stories into reviews and those stories are carried across the web and out through a variety of social media.
4. Stories are told in a variety of mediums. There are three different learning styles, visual (learn by seeing and looking), auditory (learn by hearing and listening), and kinesthetic (touching and doing). Research shows that 60% of the population are visual learners. This means stories need to be visual and written. So when you create your stories, keep YouTube in mind.
To learn how to get stories into your marketing, download this Free Report – 9 Steps to Creating a Content Marketing Strategy for Your Business.
Here is something you can do today to get stories into your business.
B2B Marketing Pinterest boards
There’s been a profusion of interest in the new(ish) social media site, Pinterest – see my boards .
One of the advantages of Pinterest – compared to Facebook you can’t create a page where people find your interest easily, unless you’re already connected to each other. On Pinterest you can search for Tennis shoes, or Apple accessories or B2B marketing. You see, it’s so much more powerful for search and discovery.
Pinterest uses the Youtube algorithm for popularity and so if your pins get relayed/repinned quickly and you get some momentum the popularity of your boards move up fast.
7 things to do today on Pinterest
Here are our suggestions on things you can do to earn revenues, SEO backlinks and more from using the service for your business.
- Pin things from your own blog – get people reading what you write
- pin a book on Amazon using your affiliate link – copy the link and paste it into the Pinterest add button… it pulls the picture and makes it part of your page… if it gets re-pinned by anyone else, your affiliate button goes with it!
- Drive SEO from Pinterest by naming your board creatively – your board name becomes the title of that page (see this one we created on Creative Agency Infographics). When you create a board the first word of the board name becomes the meta description… So don’t use “Things I like” it gets you nowhere.
- Use key words for your business or service when describing your pictures AND your boards….like this one for Rowing Gifts for Rowers
- Don’t forget, it’s also a social site – the more comments and likes you get the higher they show up in search.
- Write headlines using key words and in a manner that drives traffic ‘I can’t believe this hasn’t got sugar in it…‘ people click to see what it does have in it!
- Use it for the niche research… find which boards have likes and repins – if you find a board which has both then it may a good product – maybe you should feature it or use for your own site.
Getting legal with brands
Yo need to know that there is a clause in the Terms of use that says no commercial use…But plenty of people are advocating using it for marketing and so Pinterest may have to change TOU. Let’s face it, the worst thing they’ll do is shut down your board.
Downsides of Pinterest
You have to have more than one Faceboook account to get more than one Pinterest account….so go create!
You’re interested in becoming smarter and more knowledgable about new business development. You want to win more customers and clients for your business and build an online presence for your organisation or brand…
Join our Weekly Newsletter Group and find out why an investment of 20 minutes a week will improve your business development
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Here are our top 5 tips
- Write a blog
- When you write this blog make the title H1 header something people will search for in google in future. This makes it really good SEO for your brand. ”Seeking new sports equipment for our retail enterprise” or “Looking for document management software applications” or “Researching new web design agencies”
- When you physically visit or arrive at the event. Find the hashtag#, tweet that you arrived and are free to meet anyone. Check in on other social apps if you use them.
- While browsing the trade show and you are there in front of each stand, take 2 minutes to tweet that you’re with XYZ co looking at their product ABC at the #showhashtag.
- Ask folks on the trade stands what their twitter id is so you can personally follow and mention them as well.
in advance to say that you’re going and what you’re looking for e.g. researching new suppliers or getting price quotes to buy new equipment
In this way you’ll get traction from anyone else at the show who sees you using the show hashtag, the brands themselves wil pick up on your mention, and probably the show organizers too. Many will RT your work and show off your twitter ID in association with their own. And hopefully your advance mention will bring in some messages from businesses who want to trade with you or supply to you or use your company to supply them as well.
Go forth and conquer trade show twitter promotion.
Check out our other blog posts about Profile Raising for new business development.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
We just found this new site called Let’s Talk About. Using a FB login, it allows you to set topics and add friends and other users interested in joining your discussion.
Good points on Lets Talk About
- Simple display of topics.
- You can’t see any topics unless you join that list.
- You get an alert noise (a tad irritating as I can’t see how to turn it off) when a new message is added
- You can embed a URL to the discussion so viewers can also see your starting point – there’s one up for the movie In Time at present.
- Hover over someone’s avatar and it shows their name.
- By only allowing FB logins you probably get more ‘real’ people involved.
Uses of Lets Talk About
I could see this as a useful ‘backchannel’ for a webinar which could also allow you to continue discussion after the webinar chat room closes.
Brands can’t get user data for dialogue in other forums or sites so you’re tied to keeping the chat on LTA.
Check it out for yourself and tell us what you think.
Check out our other blog posts about Relationship Development. Step 5 in New Business Development.
Image via Wikipedia
Reading the rules the IOC is imposing on athletes competing at London 2012, makes me cry out loud. IOC, STOP and THINK. You are potentially challenging the largest consumer-powered communication engine to a fight to the death and I think I know who’ll win.
What is social media best known for – quick updates and fast thinking sound bites. Here’s what people accredited for the Games can do “…postings, blogs or tweets should be in a first-person, diary type format and should not be in the role of a journalist – i.e. they must not report on competition or comment on the activities of other participants or accredited persons.”
So I can say what I’m doing but not that I just beat someone else or noticed them eating, breathing or taking off an (unbranded) shirt.
All sounds unworkable and just too onerous – except that the threat of being chucked out and de-accredited may mean athletes decide just not to do any social media at all to be on the safe side.
As one commentator, Chris Matyszczyk, says
…the IOC might not yet understand the instant impulses that tweeting engenders. You grab your phone. You cradle your laptop. Out pop words whose speed is that of a Usain Bolt from the blue.
The long history of regulation and control of the Olympic branding and logo is well known (A client of ours, Rowperfect even got a “cease and desist” letter in 2000 for using a photo of an athlete in GB kit and mentioning that they trained using their product).
So the rules include the statement “Participants and other accredited persons must not use the Olympic Symbol – i.e. the five interlocking rings used alone on their postings, blogs or tweets on any social media platforms or on any websites.” You also can’t create a website with the word olympic in the URL but can create a sub-page like rowperfect.co.uk/olympics – for the duration of the games….till 15th August 2012. What’s the point? Make and leave a legacy not create and take down.
And above all there’s full personal legal liability AND the Games police will be watching from the Olympic offices www.olympicgamesmonitoring.com password protected and restricted access.
Read the full IOC Social Media Internet and blogging guidelines.
