Yesterday, I attended this great webinar given by @RickBurnes, Marketing Manager at Hubspot. He obviously talks about the power of social media to generate traffic to your site (s) but in this one, he emphasizes on the importance to convert these visitors into customers. The proposed approaches are simple and effective.
If you are about to go through the difficult task of selling the idea of Social Media to your boss nor to the management team of your company. I recently did it. It went well but it would have been better if I had grabbed this stuff before I also highly recommend that you “invest” 1hr of your time to present social media the right way. Download Chris Brogan‘s presentation and watch the video here. Remember, you only have one chance to make a good first impression and Social Media is often perceived as a funny thing not serious enough to be related to “real” business. You need to break this paradigm prior to any action in social media.
iMediaConnection.com has tons of great resources for Social Media Marketers like me who are learning everyday about new communication/conversation techniques. I am always looking for nice examples of Corporate Blogs. Most of the blogs I have seen so far were BIG Corporation blogs. The following article by Chris Bagott is characterized by blogs maintained by relatively small companies which have given outstanding results for their owners. Enjoy! Click here to access the article.
I guess that if you are working in marketing, you have been hearing a lot about social media and especially Twitter in the past few months. If you are more of a traditional marketer, you are probably wondering how to leverage social media for your business? Where do I start? What should I avoid? And so on. You know, all the questions that your boss is asking you before moving forward with these new trendy tools? Right?
Well, I have found some meat for you.
While I was working on my Social Media strategy, I had most of those questions answered about my Twitter business strategy watching this Slide Share presentation by Ian Green from Green Communications. Thanks to Ann who made me aware that Mr Green just decided to delete its nice presentation from slideshare.net without advising the ones who promoted it on their blog… Luckily, I have been able to find this one from hubspot which is even better.
BONUS: A nice gadget that anyone on Twitter can use: The Twitter Mosaic. Look at mine at the bottom right page of my blog. I take this opportunity to thank all my great followers! I had to remove the Twitter Mosaic from my blog because, s my number of followers kept on growing, it was taking up too much space on this page!
It is not in every aspect of my life that I think that Smaller is better but marketing-wise, I believe smaller organizations will be in a better position to face the challenges of the post-recession economy.
Let’s face it, I love Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs). I always liked the entrepreneurial culture that often emerge from them. It ignites me. However, as a marketer, I went through many frustrations in the past because most SME cannot afford the old School marketing tools (TV Advertising on TV, major promotional campaigns, billboards, big sponsorships and so on). This stuff was meant for Big National brands… Although the cost of traditional marketing is expected to go down, I do not think that lower costs should drive SME to use more the aforementioned traditional tactics to build their brand and be successful.
Seth Godin, recently did also a nice post about The Right Size of organizations. He gave numerous examples that show that bigger is often worse. He advocates that companies should not aim to get bigger.
And that is the whole point, we use to hear the bigger, the better? (it is sometime part of corporate mission statements) Yah right. I think this era is about to end. The post recession-era will greatly favor the Small and Medium Sized organizations. Why? It is plain and bold common sense. Let me give you just a few arguments
The new economy requires more flexibility than ever. Organizations must be able to adapt their business model to the new reality.
Post recession consumers will be seeking for “trustable” brands. Big corporations will have to re-build that link with their consumer base and one-way traditional marketing campaigns will not be enough. (And that should start with the big financial corporations…)
The era of conversational marketing has begun and small companies will be better equipped to leverage the new 2-way marketing communication tools (blogs, social media, etc). Why? Because of their human scale and their true authenticity. Also, the very affordable nature of the new tools make them awfully attractive to SME.
Post-recession consumers will buy more locally. To encourage the smaller local manufacturers and to show a greener attitude.
Smaller companies, because of their size, are more capable to adapt their business model to serve The Long Tail.
Small companies are usually more agile in their market-based decisions. Therefore, they are less liklely to be stucked in the “paralysis by analysis” syndrome that often affect larger organizations.
They are also more willing to take risks, I mean calculated risks. In that sense, the new marketing tools represent very low risk alternatives to traditional marketing media.
So those are the few top-of-mind-reasons why I think smaller organizations will succeed in the post-recession era. As a SME marketer, I can tell you that we are presently sowing all the seeds required to harvest market success when the economic storm will be behind us. What about you? Are you busy managing the status quo or preparing the ground to build your future growth?
Ok. As usual my Friday post is lighter. This week, I decided to share with you my Top 5 Tweets. As I am a marketing guy. They are marketing related. You can take it as my “pre-digested past week on Twitter”. Highlights of 140 characters or less. Some great links here. Enjoy.
And a bonus one I took while reading Seth Godin’s book Tribes:
At work, the easiest thing is to react. 2nd easiest thing is to respond. Hardest thing is to initiate. -S.Godin What did U initiate today?5:10 PM Mar 25thfrom TweetDeck
RSS Feed is an amazing invention. However, everyday I meet with people who do not know the purpose and value of RSS Feeding. I am trying to explain the concept the best I can but they do not seem to get what is the simple principle behind it. I can’t blame them, I was clueless about RSS feeds 3 years ago and now I am a power user.
Wanna know what are RSS Feeds and how they can help you save time? See the 3 minutes video below. And do not forget to subscribe to my blog’s RSS Feed in your preferred reader!
Marketers, you will enjoy this video on the “Evolution of marketing”. I found it on www.youtube.com tonight. It comes from Germany but it is damn valuable for North American marketers.
Frequent readers of my blog will be able to better understand why I think Old School marketing principles will no longer apply as we are moving into this new era. Seth Godin describes it as the “New Marketing” in his book Meat Ball Sundae.
We are in 2009 and the NFL Superbowl still remains THE North American marketers annual rendez-vous. We wait 12 long months to enjoy what the Big Advertisers have prepared to get out attention, make us laugh and by any chance, get their brand remembered for a few days.
You haven’t seen this ad last Sunday. The official PETA ad has been banned for Superbowl braodcasting, it seems it attract lots of traffic online. (Note: This is R-Rated Stuff)
God, as a meat lover, I think I will turn veggie today!
You can watch all the TV spots on the Advertising Age Web site or on www.youtube.com. I do not want to debate on the creative aspects or the “remarkability factor” of these ads. Many other advertising experts already did it .
Although I gotta admit that my preferred ones are Monster.com with the Moose and Doritos’ Power of the crunch ;-) . Funny ads seem to catch more attention in such circumstances. See them below.
Simple but dawn effective!
Frito Lay didn’t reinvented the wheel here but it made me laugh and fits perfectly with Doritos brand positioning.
For those interested, Bob Garfield of Advertising Age shares his views on the Best and Worst commercials of this year’ Superbowl.
NOW, THE DEBATE.
As a marketer, I am questioning what are the reasons that push national advertisers continue to spend $2.6 million advertising dollars for each 30 seconds when there are plenty of other effective and measurable ways to spend their money. Yes I know, according to Nielsen Media Research, the broadcast of the game typically drawns between 87 million and 93 million people. That is a lot. And we do not even count the single views on www.youtube.com and other web channels after the game. But still, the ROI of one , two or 5 spots is very difficult to measure. That sum could buy several different product placements on TV shows, movies, songs and video games. Moreover, it could implement tons of web 2.0 initiatives, email campaigns, viral initiatives, etc. It could also buy two massive billboards in the middle of New York City’s Times Square, where a million people would see the ads each day for a full year, according to media services firm Zenith Media.
Did you know that these national advertisers pay up to 85% more to reach the same number of people they would reach during prime-time network programming?
To me, Superbowl ads are just noise and waste of money fro the advertisers. They do not help to build stronger brands; most advertised brands are already well recognized mass consumer brands (Coke, Bud, Doritos, etc) so what is the point to pay these huge amounts of money to continue to reinforce their brands while they could reinforce them with much cheaper methods? (Only exception might be godaddy.com but still, it became an household name over the past few years).
We often hear that if they do it, it is because they get a payback on their marketing investment. I doubt.
I believe that new marketing methods will make obsolete the iconic 30 seconds Superbowl spot. These new methods help the advertiser to surgically target their customers and also let them measure the impact of their investments. It is hard to compete with that.
Agree? Disagree? Express yourself by hitting the Comment link below.
Since I started blogging (and this is quite recent…), a few people are asking me how I can write posts on such a frequent basis? The question should be in fact, how can you write original and insightful posts on an almost daily basis knowing that you have a day job and 3 kids that awaits for their dad at home? I do not pretend that is what I did so far but at least, this is what I am aiming for. Follow me on this blog and judge by yourself!
In terms of post frequency, there are several schools of thoughts in the community of bloggers. Some are saying you should just post ultra-original content even if it only happens once or twice a month.I disagree. It is a matter of perspective. Your content could always be original for someone. It is a matter of reaching these people. Some others are saying, you should post a minimum of 2-3 posts a week to keep your blog alive. It could be true…
Seth Godin , the famous marketing guru, is posting on a daily basis since many months, see the Advertising Age interview here about his posting frequency strategy. His blogging goals are:
To spread ideas
To put his ideas out there and get them out of the way of the next idea
To encourage people to add alacrity to their diet
You could also add, to relentlessly build HIS brand, which is a very noble objective when your day job is to write and sell marketing books.
Mine are somewhat different.
My objectives with this blog are to:
Create an exchange platform where marketing decision makers could spread and share ideas and experiences. If I can act as an igniter or at least an idea funnel, this will be a great achievement.
Build a better marketing practice. Especially within Small and Medium sized Businesses that are often struggling with the challenges brought by modern marketplaces.
Have fun! This is why the tone of this blog will NOT be 100% serious and professional.
To achieve that, I will post every time I think I have something that could help me attain one or many of the above-mentioned objectives. It could be daily or once every 2 weeks.
I am my own editor so if I fail to bring you content in-line with these objectives, be honest and drop a comment. I will rectify.
PS: For the non-geeks, RSS feeding is an amazing tool. Subscribe to it for free on this blog and receive the headlines of my posts directly in your reader. You will be able to filter by yourself what is interesting for you.
La qualité a longtemps été un attribut distinctif. C’est vrai. Rappellez-vous les années 90 ou les entreprises qui obtenaient leurs accrédiation ISO 9001, se servaient de cela pour faire la promotion de leurs bébélles: “Hey, mon usine est certifiée ISO faque mes bébelles sont de ben meilleure qualité que les tiennes”.
Ca ne fonctionne plus aujourd’hui.
Je ne veux pas confondre l’importance d’avoir un système de contrôle de qualité de production avec celle de développer des produits de qualité. Ici je veux parler de l’importance pour les départements de R&D et de production de maintenir des hauts standards de qualité dans la conception de leurs produits.
La qualité (d’un produit ou d’un service) est devenue un critère minimal et non négociable dans l’esprit des consommateurs. Par contre, la qualité est toujours en relation directe avec votre positionnement de prix. Et c’est là que la notion de valeur entre en ligne de compte. Mais même si votre terrain de jeu se situe dans les prix d’entrée de gamme, vous devez être très prudents avant de faire des compromis sur la qualité de votre produit. Les attentes des consommateurs en matière de qualité présentes même pour des produits d’entrée de gamme. Ca veut dire que tu ne peux plus vendre de la scrap ben longtemps. Ca finit par se savoir assez vite.
Regardez nos tinamis chinois qui tentent de pénétrer le marché européen des VUS (video ci-bas). Y’ont pas compris. Y se sont pas assez pratiqué longtemps sur leurs autres cossins en plastique.
Mêmes si les allemands, qui possèdent L’AUTORITÉ morale en matière de qualité et d’ingénierie à l’échelle de la planète, les craignent, je crois qu’à court terme, le manque de rigueur des chinois servira les marques allemandes et japonaises. Dans le cas présent, on parle carrément d’un laisser-aller inacceptable au niveau de la sécurité des passagers qui se traduit, dans l’esprit des consommateurs, comme un manque à gagner flagrant au chapitre de la qualité globale du véhicule.
Imaginez le nombre de personnes qui verront ce video sur youtube? Imaginez le tort que ca fera aux marques chinoises dans leurs efforts de pénétration des marchés occidentaux de l’automobile?
Combien d’efforts marketing devront être mis en oeuvre pour contrer les mauvaises perceptions baties au fil des mois dans l’esprit de millions de consommateurs potentiels? Des tonnes!
Si la Hyundai Pony avait été lancée en 2009, il y aurait eu pas mal moins de “poissons” pour l’acheter que dans les années 80. Dès que quelques acheteurs auraient eu mis en ligne leur mauvaise expérience, la courbe de croissance des ventes de ce fabuleux véhicule aurait pris une toute autre tournure. Oui, le prix aggressif était là mais la qualité n’était pas au rendez-vous.
Dans votre entreprise, prenez-vous des risques avec la qualité de vos produits pour économiser à court terme? Pensez aux conséquences marketing des ces décisions à plus long terme pour la réputation de votre entreprise et de vos marques. Le jeux en vaut peut-être pas la chandelle.
I also highly recommend that you “invest” 1hr of your time to present social media the right way. Download Chris Brogan‘s presentation and watch the video here. Remember, you only have one chance to make a good first impression and Social Media is often perceived as a funny thing not serious enough to be related to “real” business. You need to break this paradigm prior to any action in social media.
