I’ve long been a fan of marketing to different market segments according to their own hot buttons, as anyone knows who has read my books (especially Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green).
Here’s someone on Triple Pundit, looking at the experience of driving a Nissan Leaf from the point of view of someone who sees a lot of potential to go way beyond the green market. Nissan’s marketing and advertising departments might want to read it.
Memo to Mark Zuberberg: You are not invincible. Facebook did not get to be the top social media network because it was terrific, but only because it’s so much better than MySpace. There’s always been lots of room for improvement, and yet, in the 4 years I’ve been a Facebooker, at least half the changes make it harder to use and/or more intrusive.
And now, with Google+ waiting in the wings, your position is precarious. Just as it did with search, Google provides a qualitatively better user experience; all it needs now is an active and vibrant user base. Meanwhile, Facebook’s user experience just took a serious turn for the worse. Again.
Some of these bone-headed things I just don’t understand, especially when you think about how much of Facebook’s income stream is generated by professional marketers—marketers who have, in many cases, invested significant time and money into their fanpages and their ad campaigns.
Mind you, I’m not criticizing the changes just because they’re new and different (though it does seem that just as we learn how to navigate the latest interface, it shifts again). Some of them improve the experience. I like getting an e-mail with a whole thread worth of posts. I like the ticker. And I like that Facebook quietly introduced the long-sought feature a couple of months ago that allows owners of a fanpage to e-mail their fans (those who’ve clicked Like).
But really, you have to wonder if they’ve ever heard of beta-testing or focus groups over there. In the words of one well-known marketer who posted a comment on my annoyed post, “Google+ here we go!”
Guest Post by Gerardo A. Dada
Sucharita Mulpuru wrote a blog post about Facebook commerce that turned out to be quite controversial. Sucharita’s previous post on the topic was aptly named 500MM users.. so why can’t they show you the $$. A bold quote from the post “No one’s revenue will come from Facebook”, along with a recommendation to stop wasting time chasing F-shiny objects, and focus on fixing the basics (like search and ratings & reviews) which have proven results.
My thoughts are pretty aligned with Sucharita, in the sense that no one seems to be making money from Facebook other than Facebook, Zynga and a few agencies – in the gold rush the money was made selling picks and other mining tools. I see brands confused about how to even think about Facebook and chasing meaningless metrics such as number of fan “likes”. When marketing leaders share their goal for social marketing this year is to get to 100K or 1 million likes, I ask them what they will do with the customers that have liked the brand, usually resulting in blank stares and confusion.
So I want to share my humble opinion on the role of Facebook for marketers.
One of the principles I feel strongly about is that social media is only a set of tools to help you achieve business objectives. Then, let’s start with the basics and think about how can interactive marketers leverage Facebook to achieve business and marketing goals. “Social media goals” don’t count, unless they are leading indicators in the context of a broader strategy. Think about it: the main reason marketers care about Facebook for one simple reason: there are over half a billion potential customers using it every day. As I wrote in aprevious post, you have to fish where the fish are – but you have to bring them home (your site) to cook them (make money). It was the same with video and other new tools available to marketers.
Sounds logical, yet, brands continue spending millions of dollars in media sending customersto Facebook. The traffic should flow the other way around. Getting customers to respond to an ad is difficult enough to send them to a site where you have little control with the hopes they will “like” your brand and maybe someday somehow and up on your site or buying your product.
A couple weeks back I saw an online ad for Sierra Mist Natural, curious to learn more about the new drink I clicked on the ad, which took me to Sierra Mist’s Facebook page. Not only was this not the experience I was expecting, I was unable to learn more about the product, learn what makes it natural (is it using Stevia for sweetening, natural flavors or something else?) and landed on a Facebook page where a couple customers had quite negative comments on the product.
To sort through all the confusion it could be useful to think about Facebook as four discrete opportunities:
1. Encouraging fans to advocate your brand on Facebook
This is the most basic, but also the most powerful Facebook tactic so far and it’s free. I haveblogged about this extensively. People trust recommendations from their friends. Chances are their friends are on Facebook too.
If your brand has 50,000 fans (Sorry Facebook, “likes” does not work as well), and if you can get one of every five to tell their friends how much they like your brand, you would have 10,000 people advocating personally to an about 1.3 million potential customers about your brand. 1.3 million customers you probably can’t reach through your traditional marketing efforts. Your customers can advocate on Facebook without even having to “like” your brand. You don’t even need a brand page on Facebook – customers can advocate directly from your website.
2. Your brand’s presence on Facebook (brand page) and “Likes” associated with it
Most brand pages on Facebook are quite boring and expose visitors to customer service issues or provide irrelevant information to customers. It’s time to get creative and map a proper brand experience on Facebook. The possibilities are endless, but don’t create siloed microsites or just copy your website in the Facebook iFrame. Do something useful like providing reviews, Q&A, links to your site and resources that will engage customers in a social context. There are so many things a brand can do here that it would be impossible for me to provide best practices, so I won’t try. This is an area where a good agency can help.
3. Facebook commerce
To clarify, with F-Commerce I mean not only adding your product catalog to your Facebook page but actually enabling transactions within it: you can complete an order without ever leaving Facebook. I think it makes sense for a few select use cases: buying tractors on Farmville, buying a song using iTunes credits, etc. However, I am really skeptical this will be mainstream – ever. For a couple of reasons:
Alvendia (now 8thBridge) shared the total sales on Facebook across all the brands they serve peaked at $100K in December. That’s less than $3 million per month, a number that is largely insignificant for their client base. Brands should still make their product catalogs available on Facebook to encourage advocacy and sharing, with an easy link to the product page on the main site.
4. Advertising on Facebook
In the end, Facebook is not a social company – it’s a media company that makes money by selling advertising. Advertising on Facebook should be evaluated like you would consider advertising on any other media outlet: based on audience profiles, advertising formats, targetability and ultimately, click-through rate. I am not an expert, but it is common knowledge that CTRs for Facebook are pretty low compared to industry averages. Maybe because when customers are in “social mode” they are not so interested in ads. The risk is that customers start mentally ignoring the ad space on the right most like most of us ignore banner ads on most web sites.
Then again, for the right reasons, with the right strategy, advertising on Facebook may be the right thing to do. Back in 2004, I was one of the first to advertise on Facebook when we were promoting the Imagine Cup. That particular campaign yielded decent results.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you start with your business goals in mind (and not with “let’s do something on Facebook”) then go on to evaluate the four ways you can leverage Facebook for your business in the context of a customer experience journey, Facebook can be a really powerful tool that produces top-notch results.
[Editor’s Note: This originally appeared on Gerardo’s fascinating blog, The Adaptive Marketer. I thank him for permission to reprint.]
Remember those old ’30s movies where some cigar-chomping newspaper editor screams into the phone, “Get Me ‘Rewrite!'”
Today, I followed a link to a webpage that made ME want to scream, “Get Me ‘Rewrite!'”
Try to digest these three paragraphs (the first two are next to each other; the third is a few paragraphs down) and tell me what you think they mean:
The Danotek high-speed PMG system’s attractiveness to investors is based on a uniquely efficient stator-rotor configuration, as well as its existing relationships with wind industry manufacturers and developers such as Clipper Windpower and DeWind.
The BWP low-speed PMG system’s attractiveness is based on an innovative PMG concept that gets away from expensive rare earth metals and creates efficiencies that BWP says can make wind power competitive with traditional sources of electricity generation without the need for incentives…
One of the most distinguishing characteristics of the BWP PMG design is that its magnets are part of an axial flux air core machine which operates at relatively low temperatures and are made with a rare earth metal called neodymium. More commonly, PMG magnets are part of iron core radial flux machines like Danotek’s, operate at relatively high temperatures and require a rare earth metal called dysprosium.
OK, what is the writer trying to say? He talks about “stator-rotor configuration” and “axial flux air core machine” as if we automatically know what these things are. He says this new technology is a move away from rare-earth metals, except that it actually isn’t; it just uses a different kind. I don’t believe in dumbing things down, but I do think a reasonably intelligent person ought to be able to understand the gist of a piece of writing.
The “translator” acquaintance who posted the original link summarized it as “they can do unsubsidised wind for cheaper than coal.” (Thank you, Ian Gordon.) I guess we can extrapolate that from “make wind power competitive with traditional sources of electricity generation without the need for incentives.”
So why didn’t they say so in the first place?
The purpose of written communication, IMHO, is to communicate. While I’m not a techie or an engineer, I am reasonably familiar with the concepts of alternative energy; I’ve been reading about it for more than 30 years after all. And this one left me scratching my head.
In fairness, this appeared on a green technology trade journal website, where, presumably, many of their readers will be familiar with at least some of the jargon. But I think this one is over the top. Someone just beginning to research the field ought to be able to read the article and have some idea of what it’s about. Without Ian’s help (or five or six readings), I would have very little clue. Someone new to the field would be lost entirely.
Get me “Rewrite.”
(If you’re struggling to create a piece of writing that’s understandable without talking down to your reader, I’d be glad to help. I do that for a living, at reasonable prices. Contact me here.)
I finally got up the courage to visit our garden, which had been swamped by Hurricane Irene.
The Friday before the storm hit, we busied ourselves hauling out tomatoes, soybeans, basil…anything that was ready to pick. Sunday, when the rain stopped, we thought we’d come through unscathed—until Monday morning, when we got up and saw that the Connecticut River, normally in that area at least 500 yards from the state highway, was lapping at the edges of the road. The entire corn and hayfield surrounding our garden was under water. The gate, about three feet above the ground, was at the water line.
While the water receded within a couple of days, we were strongly advised NOT to eat anything else from the garden—and once we found out that Greenfield, farther upriver, was not treating its sewage after the storm, we weren’t all that interested in harvesting anything else anyway. and I couldn’t bring myself to even go down there to view the wreckage until now.
On the good side, the hayfield is coming back. Fresh green growth has come up over the silt and if you don’t look too closely, it looks normal.
But the garden was another matter. All the corn, sesame, tomatoes, some of the broccoli, some of the beans, and nearly all the eggplant was dead. The whole place stank. About the three of the broccoli plants and one eggplant had survived, and the broccoli actually looked quite good (not that I was going to take any). One eggplant had grown on the surviving plant.
While I recognize that we got off very easy compared to neighbors just a few miles north, or the farmers whose farm we live on who lost 30 acres of cow corn and hay, it still made me deeply sad.
Next year, perhaps, we’ll start a small garden up by the house, which is on a hill and stayed totally fine during the storm.
It made me thank about how lucky we are to have essentially unlimited supplies of food; when our garden fails, we do not starve. We can go buy some just a few miles away. Many people in the world are not so fortunate, and if their crops fail, they face starvation. As a society, we should set up distribution networks to eliminate that kind of threat.
If you’re in the marketing world, you’ve probably heard people say “I want this to go viral” or even “I’m going to make a viral video.”
The problem with that is that none of us can control what takes off in the public imagination, or even in the imaginations of enough of a cult that something goes viral within a niche.
Sometimes, the deliberate efforts of creators are successful. I am guessing the “Will It Blend?” ad series was designed very carefully to be passed around a lot. But other times, all the careful design in the world still results in only a few thousand pass-alongs. I’d say the vast majority of projects designed to go viral achieve very little traction—because the market recognizes when it’s being manipulated, and most attempts at deliberate “virality” contain a strong, obvious commercial element
And yet, the ones that really do go viral often don’t try to make any money. I am quite sure that Susan Boyle never dreamed that her video audition for “Britain’s Got Talent” would be seen by more than 86 million people (the combined view stats for just the first two out of 1,460,000 results for a Google search on “susan boyle britains got talent”). I just watched it again, and am still amazed by not only the power of her singing, but the contrast with her frumpy appearance and clueless personality. How could you not fall in love with that video?
Thinking about this today as I look over the comments for two recent blog entries: My 10-year reflection on 9/11 and the lost opportunity for peace, posted September 11, and a guest post by a conservative Christian friend, Steve Jennings, reflecting on his friendship with me—an unabashed progressive—despite our huge political differences, posted September 15.
I had some hopes in writing the 9/11 piece that it might go viral: posted on the tenth anniversary when everyone was once again talking about the attacks, talking about the better world that could have been created had we been blessed with visionary leadership instead of the small-minded vengeance of George W. Bush and his cronies. I tweeted the link a few times, a few other people picked it up, and response was very positive—but very limited. It did not bring me new audiences, though was reasonably popular among my existing readers. It has so far earned four comments and a bunch of retweets. and it somehow managed not to draw even a single attack from the right-wing lunatic fringe.
Steve’s post, which I didn’t promote as heavily, drew a number of retweets (which are, oddly, not showing up on the blog page), though only one comment. Again, uniformly positive, though not big numbers.
Steve’s post was not tied to a particular day and will be timely for many years; it may yet build more comments over time. The 9/11 article, other than from those reading here, is not likely to draw much attention now that almost a week has gone by.
Of course, I never had any dream that my 9/11 post would get as big as Susan Boyle, or even as big as “United Breaks Guitars” (10 million+ views). I’d have been thrilled if a couple of thousand people read it and a few dozen commented, because I’m just trying to get my ideas into the world, and I’m not using sound, video, or even pictures to do it. I still believe in the power of words.
If you find that either of those posts (or this one, for that matter) inspires you to say something, I hope you’ll share it on the comment page, Like it on Facebook, etc. Meanwhile, I’ll keep sharing my ideas, and hoping they make a difference in at least a few people’s lives.
Guest Post by Steve Jennings
[Editor’s Note: Steve, good and gracious person that he is, sent me an advance copy of this post to make sure I didn’t have any issues with him posting it. I wrote back that I was honored, loved the post, and would welcome permission to use it as a guest post, which he granted. And my life is richer for knowing him, as well. It Unlikely Friends
Sometimes you meet someone and you become instant friends. That happened to me awhile back. I went to Massachusetts for some training on media interviews with one of the more brilliant marketing experts in the country, Shel Horowitz (https://shelhorowitz.com/). He’s the author of Principled Profit, Grassroots Marketing (a must-have for bootstrap marketers), The Penny Pinching Hedonist, Marketing without Megabucks and his latest, Guerilla Marketing Goes Green. He’s a true wordsmith and a master at getting the most bang for your marketing buck.
The odd thing about our friendship is that Shel and I disagree on a whole host of issues. Shel is liberal on most issues. I’m mostly conservative. Our religious views are quite different. Yet despite our apparent incompatibility, our friendship quickly flourished.
Why?
First, we found our common ground. Shel and I both believe in leading a simple, responsible lifestyle. We both enjoy hiking and drinking in nature’s wonders as we go. We both get riled at the sight of injustice and corruption. It didn’t take us long to find lots of other areas where we agreed.
Second is integrity. Shel lives what he believes. He does what he says he’ll do, and he won’t be shy about telling the truth. I try to be the same way in my life. Unfortunately, integrity seems to be a dying value in much of our culture. So when I meet someone who has it, I am drawn to them.
Third, it’s OK to disagree. We accepted our differences and voiced our positions in friendly, reasonable conversation. You can’t bring everybody to your side. Jesus didn’t even reach everybody he came in contact with. So Shel and I both took time to listen and learn from each other. We didn’t change each other’s opinions, but we broadened our minds.
It’s not hard to get along with people. Instead of focusing on our differences, try to find some common ground. There’s more of that kind of real estate than you can imagine. From that starting point, make an effort to truly listen. Digest what the other person is saying. In far too many discussions we humans are guilty of concentrating on how we will advance our position and fail to truly hear the views of the other person. You don’t have to agree, but you must try to understand.
Yes, Shel and I are unlikely friends. I can’t speak for him, but my life is richer for it.
God’s grace to you,
Steve Jennings, Executive Director
Ten years ago, 19 criminal thugs seized control of four planes—and the world as we knew it was shed like the skin of a snake, replaced with a new and very unpleasant reality.
On this anniversary, I want to publicly thank the hundreds of brave men and women who unselfishly, courageously faced death and yet still went back into the flaming buildings…wrested control of Flight 93 back from its hijackers and crashed it in an empty field, instead of a major government building…poured into New York and Washington to see how they could help, knowing they were risking their own health, their own lives. Also, the thousands of brave soldiers from the US and elsewhere who have put their lives on the line every day. It is not their fault that we shouldn’t have even been in those wars.
But I also want to remember what might have been. In the vast emotional outpouring following the attacks, we were, for almost the only time in our history other than Pearl Harbor, united as a people. And also, for perhaps the first time ever, we had the sympathy and compassion of the whole world.
It was the first President George Bush who had called, ten years earlier, for “A New World Order, where the rule of law, not the rule of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.” His son had a chance to make that happen.
What was needed was a powerful, emotional speech recognizing that the old, imperialist model of conduct among nations didn’t work anymore…and seizing this terrible moment as a bridge to world peace, a chance for the world to re-invent itself as something new—as a collaborative body determined to achieve greatness as a place where war is an archaic and never-again-used way to settle disputes, no one starves, everyone can get an education and decent health care, the environment is given a chance to heal, and the enemies of industrialized societies cannot get any traction. I thought at the time that this is what Bush should have done and I still think so.
Not that the perpetrators would get off, though. Bush could have called for an international criminal manhunt to bring Bin Laden and his gang of thugs to justice for mass murder, and the world would have supported it. Especially as the US, coming off the Clinton period of prosperity and massive surpluses, had the resources to fund that manhunt.
What an outpouring of support that would have caused! People of all nations would have embraced Bush as a hero, and more importantly, would have striven to put those magnificent words into practice. The United States would have been seen as giving a precious and lasting gift to the entire world. And Bin Laden probably would have been captured early on, with no negative impact on the people unlucky enough to live in Afghanistan or Iraq.
Instead, Bush told us to go shopping…squandered the surplus in two illegal, immoral, unjust—and extremely expensive—wars (not counting the domestic war on Muslims, Arabs, and poor people)…initiated dozens of repressive practices at home…blew up our credibility in the world of nations by acting as a “rogue state” (turning us into either a hated enemy or a laughingstock, in various parts of the world)…and completely failed in his pursuit of Bin Laden (Obama had to come in and finish that one). And his actions caused so much resentment against the US that it turned Al Qaeda from a tiny cell into a massive terrorist organization spanning many countries. He made the enemy much bigger.
I have always perceived George W. Bush as a small-minded bully surrounded by smart and evil advisors, and I was not surprised that he could not step into greatness. But I’d have loved to have been proven wrong. And how much safer I’d feel today if he had somehow risen to the task. He could have been our greatest President. Instead, in my opinion, he was the worst.
On this 10th anniversary of 9/11, let us think how we can still achieve that world of peace. It will be much harder now—but it is not impossible.
According to the New York Times, it seems the Chinese want to have their cake and eat it too when it comes to electric cars. With only a minuscule budget for R&D, the Chinese want to coerce their way into access to expensively developed technologies for electric cars by making that access a precondition for foreign manufacturers who want to sell electric vehicles in China, if they want the same subsidies that Chinese-made electric cars enjoy. (This happens to be a violation of the World Trade Organization’s rules, and China is a WTO member)
Here’s how I think that would play out:
General Motors is actively resisting and protesting; Nissan doesn’t even want to go into the market under these conditions; yet Ford apparently plans to cave.
This is one time I find myself agreeing with General Motors. This is a bad idea!
There’s a popular deli and bakery in my area that we’d been patronizing for about 25 years—but I’m not in a rush to go back right now.
Knowing that we were gong to have a series of small memorial gatherings for my late mother (according to the Jewish custom, “sitting shiva”), a friend of Dina’s ordered a bunch of pastries to be delivered to us Wednesday between 3-5 (the gathering started at 7). We were delighted, and made a point of rushing home to be here when the precious goodies showed up.
Except that they didn’t. And at 5:15 p.m., when Dina called to find out where they were, she got a clueless young man who said the delivery driver had already left for the day. “I see your order right here, and I don’t know why it didn’t go out” was about the extent of what he could think of. He implied that he could have the brownies delivered the following day, and Dina told him she expected fresh ones, not those getting stale after never being delivered when they were supposed to.
It didn’t occur to him that he could call somebody to come in and make the delivery. It didn’t occur to him that he could offer any kind of make-good (or even a credit to our friend who had ordered the undelivered merchandise). And it didn’t occur to him that it was the store’s responsibility to remedy the situation—even after some prompting. He told her to call back tomorrow. Dina suggested that it was more appropriate under the circumstances for the store to call us, and he took down our number (after some more prompting).
Thursday came and went with no call from the store. Slightly earlier in the day, Dina called again and was met with a slightly more intelligent person who said she’d been at the store when she’d called the previous day, and that she would make sure the owner took care of it the following morning. I didn’t understand why if there were two people working, one of them couldn’t have gotten the order out to us when we called the first day. And she also told Dina to call back the following day, which got Dina pretty irritated. She told the woman she’d already wasted a lot of time on this and it was the store’s responsibility to call back.
And in fact, the following morning (Friday), the owner called back personally with an appropriate, if tardy, apology and make-good: a full credit for our friend, and a gift certificate (unknown amount) for us. For this reason, I’m not naming the offender. Hopefully, the gift cert will show up in ample time to use for the large public memorial we’ll host in November.
But think about the cost to this store: a number of our friends in the area (plus of course, the out-of-towner who’d given the gift) know which store did this, and will will likely go elsewhere if they need anything delivered at a specific time. And we, quite frankly, will be much less likely to go there at all, despite a relationship of more than two decades. Meanwhile, the friend who placed the order left left a withering review on Yelp, which will haunt the store for a long time to come.
It wasn’t the mistake; mistakes happen. It was the shabby way we were treated once the mistake was acknowledged that left a bad impression, the more so because we are actively grieving the loss of my mother, and it was made clear that this delivery was for a memorial gathering.
Unfortunately, wretched customer service is all-too-common in our society. Business owners don’t realize that these experiences undo a lot of their marketing and a lot of their good will.
Here are three lessons you can take away and implement in your own business, so that you’re not the one getting bad word-of-mouth/word-of-mouse: