Alan See

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal (Recovery Losses Momentum) stated that consumers have seen little growth in their wallets and remain skittish about the economy’s prospects.  Of course, if you own a business that depends on people having jobs and disposable income you didn’t need research from the U.S. Commerce Department to tell you that consumer spending is sluggish.  Economists are currently cutting forecasts for the second half, and your calls and foot traffic are already down.  So, what’s your plan?  Take more costs out of the business?  My guess is that you’ve already cut expenses to the bone.  But hold the presses! Do you really need a marketing recovery plan?  After all, Business Week reported (The New Abnormal) that while Americans are broke and depressed they are still swilling $3 lattes and waiting in line for iPhones.  Are you from Apple or Starbucks?  I’m not either; so here are some quick tips to consider in our “unusually uncertain” economy.

1. Focus on the consumer.
a. Translation: Make sure you address competitive weaknesses within the four stages of the consumer purchasing process lifecycle, including: Awareness, Information Search, Evaluation, and Purchase / After-Sale Service.  In addition, you may need to think smaller by breaking large marketing initiatives into several highly targeted micro campaigns based on continuous selection of the best (most profitable) of the best (ready-to-buy).

2. You will not get a do-over, mulligan or practice shot.
a. Translation: Do your P&L homework upfront and structure your best offer immediately. Don’t hold back; consumers with cash and a willingness to spend it are in short supply right now.

3. Don’t wait until there is a problem to contact or follow up with customers.
a. Translation: Monitor trigger events (contract dates, service calls, etc) closely and nurture two-way relationship building conversations. For example, my cell phone contract expired back in February and I still have not been contacted.  When you do follow up make sure you have something valuable or significant to relate.  By the way, a call merely to say you “just wanted to touch base” is not value-add.

4. Keep asking, listening, analyzing and improving.
a. Translation: Keep asking for and listening to your customer’s feedback.  And make sure you are leveraging and engaging your entire organization as it relates to that feedback.  Social media platforms are an excellent channel to help you both listen and engage in conversation.

There is a story that is told of Henry Ford about a breakdown in his assembly line that no one on his staff could fix.  As the story goes, his production lines were down for hours; hours turned into days, and Henry was frustrated.  In desperation he called an electrical engineer friend whom he trusted to come to his plant, diagnose, and repair the problem.  His friend promptly arrived and after spending about ten minutes the Ford lines were up and running.  A most grateful Henry Ford thanked him and told his friend to invoice the Ford Company for the repairs.  A few days later Henry Ford received an invoice from his friend in the amount of $10,000.  Flabbergasted, Henry called his friend on the telephone and protested, “You only tinkered around for ten minutes!  Ten-thousand dollars?!”  His friend agreed that he would re-invoice the repairs.  A few days later Henry Ford received a modified invoice:

Tinkering - $10

Knowing where to Tinker - $9,990

Knowing where to Twitter …

There is a structured path to becoming an electrical engineer.  And based on the outcome of the story, Henry’s friend was either very lucky - or clearly knew what he was doing.  The road to becoming a social media marketing expert isn’t as clear.  In fact, in today’s environment it’s often the subject line of marketing agency jokes.  Still, if you believe there is a breakdown in your strategic marketing plan related to social media here are a few questions to consider before calling in an expert:

1.     Are my customers, prospects or other constituents on social media?  That may sound like a ridiculous question to ask first; but why did you get into social media?  Are you sure you need social media platforms?

2.     Can you describe the elements of your program that don’t seem to be working?  Again, that may come across as a silly question; but are your challenges related to strategy, technology or processes?  At the risk of some shameless self-promotion you might consider taking the Berry Network Social-Ready Assessment in order to establish a baseline measurement on those key competencies areas.

3.    What does the expert’s reputation appear to be in the social media space?  Do I trust them?  Are they practicing what they preach, and if so, are they any good?  Engaging your brand in social media is easier said than done.  So you may need to make room in your budget for paid council.

Most people will agree that practical experience is a good thing.  In fact, if you’ve been around the block a time or two, the old adage “experience is the best teacher” is probably anchored in your mindset.   When I reflect on my lessons learned through practical experience I always find Will Rogers’ perspective insightful, but also at times, troublesome:

“The trouble with using experience as your guide is that sometimes the final exam comes first, then the lesson.”

Why troublesome?  After all, at one point or another we all start out as greenhorns.  And let’s face it; there are situations we occasionally experience that are really not possible to prepare for.  What I find troublesome is the negative impact on organizations when key executives continue to scoff at the lessons offered, or worse, they refuse to acknowledge they were even handed an exam.

Are senior executives in your organization still scoffing at social media?  In today’s environment your customer’s are testing your organizations ability to interact with them on social platforms in the same way you communicate with them through email and over the phone.  In fact, you’ve probably seen the following factoids in a dozen presentations over the last six months:

·         75% of all active U.S. Internet households visited a social networking site.

·         22% of the time spent online is attributed to social networking sites.

·         20% of U.S. adults online publish or own a blog.

·         55% have at least one or more social networking profiles.

·         70% of consumers want to interact with businesses using social media while less than one-third of companies have the strategies, policies, and processes in place to meet this demand.

And yet some of your peers are still hesitant, or openly against implementing social media strategies into your organization.  I suspect some are hesitant because they are not personally using social media, and if the truth were known, they’re still not concerned with learning.  Even so, it’s time to let go of the notion that social media is just for kids and has no business value.  In short, you don’t want the adage “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks” to begin to be associated with your brand (personal or corporate).  Here are some brief observations to share with your leadership peers that might motivate them to sign up for a lesson or two.

1.       Your words and actions are magnified by your position.  Most of your actions will seem more important to your employees than you intend; merely teasing about the use or value of social media on your part may become dangerously distorted by your workers.  It’s a critical time for you to provide executive level support for this new and emerging engagement channel.  Keep this in mind; it’s not about you, it’s about your customers.  If your customers want to communicate through LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook who are you to stop them?

2.       No need to boil the ocean.  There are scores of social media related platforms and applications, so don’t be afraid to narrow your focus during your initial learning process.  It’s too early to declare with authority the platforms that will remain standing, those that will be absorbed, or the ones that will fade away.  For senior executives I would recommend focusing on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, in that order.  Sidebar applications that help with efficiency and effectiveness (for example, TweetDeck for Twitter or various mobile applications for Facebook, etc) can wait.

3.       You can’t learn to swim without getting wet, so jump in.  If nothing else, just commit to spending 15 – 20 minutes per day learning the ins and outs of a single platform.  Once you develop a comfort level move to the next platform or application.  If you have a trusted friend or colleague who is already social media savvy consider asking them to breakfast or out for a beer.  Use the opportunity to pick their mind on the platforms they like to use, and how they strategically leverage those applications.  If all else fails, hire someone to help you with your social media education.  Based on my faculty, and consulting background I kind of like this idea!  However, you may want to start out by making an author happy and simply purchasing one of the many social media related publications on the market today.

4.       The clock is ticking.  We’re quickly moving from a time of mass communications to one of masses of communicators; your customers are sharing their experiences through Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms at a rate that will continue to accelerate.  As a result, social media should become a part of every organizations risk management and customer engagement strategy.  That means the entire leadership team (CEO, CIO, CFO, CMO, Sales, Legal and HR) will feel the impact.  You know from experience that it always takes more time than expected to secure cross functional support.  So, it’s time to start building bridges.

Are you friending, linking, tweeting and blogging? Social media is driving a wave of human interaction around the world. My @AlanSee twitter page currently references over 4,300 tweets and nearly 7,100 followers. Those are fairly low numbers when compared to many avid twitter users; although high enough to rank in the top one percent of users according to Twitter Grader. But what does it all mean? Do social media sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of connections rather than build actual relationships? Is social media best used by individuals; or will it really change the way organizations engage their customers? And what about the ROI; is the return on relationships something that can (or should) be measured?

Some marketer’s are still eager to list the reasons why they don’t believe in social media platforms:

• It’s for self-promoters or the unemployed.
• It’s for teenagers.
• It’s just over-sharing too much trivial babble.
• It doesn’t directly drive sales leads.
• I can’t control the marketing message.
• There is no measurable ROI.

While all those may be true in isolated cases, you’re not doing your organization any favors by dismissing the game changing power behind the new social media applications. At a high-level social media marketing is about influencing the customer experience by engaging in dialogue with the customer in order to build a trusted relationship over time. To make a social-ready transformation an organization may need to adopt a new mindset. Enterprise transformations involve strategy, technology and processes and a social media transformation is no different in that respect.

1. Strategy: How well does your social media plan support your overall marketing strategy and desired customer experience?

2. Technology: Do you have the technology and infrastructure support to achieve your social media goals and objectives?

3. Processes: Do you have the operational processes in place to support your social media goals and objectives?

Many organizations tend to fall in the following broad categories as it relates to the key transformation areas above:

The Broadcaster:
The Broadcaster is typically focused on one way communications and is most comfortable in the traditional media world of mass marketing. Leveraging typical “push marketing” tools and tactics the Broadcaster pushes their product towards the audience which may or may not be aware of it. The Broadcaster largely focuses on the features of their product or service and seeks a direct response from the mass audience. Often times the Broadcaster is focused on a short-term strategy that involves a specific event or time-based campaign (Christmas deals, Back-to-School, etc).

The Listener:
The Listener tends to focus on push marketing tactics; but also considers customer feedback. The Listener may have customer listening posts established in the form of brand monitoring initiatives, although those initiatives may be fairly informal.

The Conversationalist:
The Conversationalist is more in the “pull marketing” camp. The Conversationalist is typically interested in interacting with their target market at a deeper level of engagement through tighter relevance, content and stronger brand identification. The Conversationalist is focused on the development of trust and perceived value.

The Community Builder:
The Community Builder is fully in the pull marketing camp. The Community Builder looks for ways to engage their customers and prospects in two-way conversations, and is comfortable with the concepts of user created content and co-creation. The Community Builder is focused on influencing and involving vs. educating and controlling their audience.

If you’d like to measure your social media maturity level set aside a few minutes to take the Berry Network Social-Ready Assessment. Building a social-ready organization is an on-going journey. And that journey as well as your organizations position on the social media continuum is determined by several factors, including; overall marketing strategy, desired customer experience, business model, and the competitive environment. Social media isn’t going away so you need to set a course that’s right for your corporate goals and objectives.

I was in Junior High School during the early 1970s recession and I can still remember my parent’s struggle to keep our small family business from closing. In the late 70s I enrolled in college and completed my undergraduate degree just in time to enter the job market during the recession of the early 1980s. According to a study by Yale University’s Lisa Kahn, college graduates who entered the job market during that time period made significantly less money for at least a decade, compared with those who graduated in more prosperous times. I’m really not complaining, although I will add that I went back to school and completed my MBA just in time for the 1987 stock market crash. Is that funny or what? OK, my timing seems to be a little off, and my children have heard all my … “the snow was always deeper” … type of stories. Still, how is your organization listening and learning to what’s important to today’s cautious consumer?

In my post “How to Engage the 2009 Customer Mindset” I mentioned that sensitivity to total price, intolerance of poor customer service responses, and a focus on quality and trust was very important. I still stand by those recommendations, but when your customer’s appear to be hunkering down for the long-haul how do you find out what they really value? Consumer needs and preferences are shifting. That means marketers should take extra care as it relates to adjusting their marketing mix and one of the best ways to know what adjustments are needed is to listen. Is your organization listening? Social networking platforms are valuable listening posts and provide a rare opportunity to quickly learn what consumers really value. While reading their words you have the freedom to focus on what’s truly important to the writer. Whether the dialogues are in a group discussion on LinkedIn or referenced in 140 character tweets on Twitter; take time to listen and understand the conversation.

My post “Using Marketing Booth Babes” sparked some lively discussion. The original post asked marketer’s for their opinion on the practice of using booth babes (scantily clad women … or men) to attract attention to their organizations booth at conferences and trade-shows. The use of sexual tension to create a direction for a movie plot or to sell products is an age-old strategy. However, many readers agreed that using sex as a way to suggest product “sizzle” was no longer very original, and in fact could be risky if it actually alienated potential purchasers.

So what is your opinion of the practice of using “Twitter Babes” to promote and draw in page followers? I’m not talking about spam accounts that are pornographic in nature. You can hit the block function on spammers easily enough. And I’m not talking about the properties where you might actually expect to see scantily clad women; for example, individuals who follow pages selling Victoria’s Secret like brands and products probably expect to see women in lingerie. What I’m thinking about are those Twitter pages where the bio, homepage URL and even the customized background suggest a professional intention that in no way requires a string bikini woman or ripped abs man as the picture icon. The “June 2009 State of the Twittersphere” report from the folks at HubSpot lists some interesting Twitter factoids:

• 79.79% fail to provide a homepage URL
• 75.86% of users have not entered a bio in their profile
• 68.68% have not specified a location
• 54.88% have never tweeted

Why are these factoids important? Because, when people are deciding whether to follow your page they look at your recent updates, bio, URL, location and picture icon to get a sense of who you really are. In short, Twitter is an extension of your brand. For that reason you should make sure your profile details, including your picture, supports your strategic goals and objectives.

Are you friending, linking, tweeting and blogging? Social media is driving a wave of human interaction around the world. In fact, I find myself approaching the triple 3K mark on twitter; 3,000 tweets, 3,000 followers and 3,000 connections. Those are fairly low numbers when compared to many avid twitter users; although high enough to rank in the top one percent of users, at least according to Twitter Grader . But what does it all mean? Do social media sites encourage people to concentrate on their number of connections rather than build actual relationships? Is social media best used by individuals; or will it really change the way organizations engage their customers? And what about the ROI; is the return on relationships something that can (or should) be measured?

Some marketer’s are still eager to list the reasons why they don’t believe in social media platforms.

• It’s for self-promoters or the unemployed.
• It’s for teenagers.
• It’s just over-sharing too much trivial babble.
• It doesn’t directly drive sales leads.
• I can’t control the marketing message.
• There is no measurable ROI.

While all those may be true in some cases, you’re not doing your organization any favors by dismissing the game changing power behind the new social media applications. At a high-level social media marketing is about influencing the customer experience by engaging in dialogue with the customer in order to build a trusted relationship over time. The customer experience refers to all touch points people have from the moment they are aware of a need until they have fulfilled the need or reached a certain goal. To make the social-ready transformation an organization may need to adopt a new mindset. Most transformations involve strategy, technology and processes and a social media transformation is no different in that respect.

1. Strategy: How well does your social media plan support your overall marketing strategy?

2. Technology: Do you have the technology and infrastructure to support your social media goals and objectives?

3. Processes: Do you have the operational processes in place to support your social media goals and objectives?

In the last few months we’ve noticed that many organizations tend to fall in the following broad categories as it relates to the key transformation areas above:

The Broadcaster:
The Broadcaster is typically focused on one way communications and is most comfortable in the traditional media world of mass marketing. Leveraging typical “push marketing” tools and tactics the Broadcaster pushes their product towards the audience which may or may not be aware of it. The Broadcaster largely focuses on the features of their product or service and seeks a direct response from the mass audience. Often times the Broadcaster is focused on a short-term strategy that involves a specific event or time-based campaign (Christmas deals, Back-to-School, etc).

The Listener:
The Listener tends to focus on push marketing tactics; but also considers customer feedback. The Listener may have customer listening posts established in the form of brand monitoring initiatives, although those initiatives may be fairly informal.

The Conversationalist:
The Conversationalist is more in the “pull marketing” camp. The Conversationalist is typically interested in interacting with their target market at a deeper level of engagement through tighter relevance, content and stronger brand identification. The Conversationalist is focused on the development of trust and perceived value.

The Community Builder:
The Community Builder is fully in the pull marketing camp. The Community Builder looks for ways to engage their customers and prospects in two-way conversations, and is comfortable with the concepts of user created content and co-creation. The Community Builder is focused on influencing and involving vs. educating and controlling their audience.

Building a social-ready organization is an on-going journey. And that journey as well as an organizations position on the social media continuum is determined by several factors, including; overall marketing strategy, desired customer experience, business model, and the competitive environment. Social media isn’t going away so you need to set a course that’s right for your corporate goals and objectives.