What Time of Day Are You Most Creative?

One of the first lessons I learned in college was to learn what times of day you are personally most productive. It takes some time and discipline, to monitor one's own efficiency, but in the end, I do not believe there is ONE time of day that is best for everyone, I believe it is up to YOU to decide.  

Unfortunately, professionally speaking, we often don't have the luxury to CHOOSE what time of day we want to brainstorm. As a marketer, I find "mind mapping" an extremely effective exercise to spark creativity.

Mind Mapping is a technique used to enhance thinking processes. Whether while taking notes during class, brainstorming a process or creatively collaborating on a project, it allows the user to record raw facts and pieces of information that fit together but that might not be noticed otherwise.

• Starting a Mind Map is easy. Simply write the name of the subject you are interested in the center of a blank piece of paper and draw a circle around it. All further levels will work from this starting point.
• Important facts or questions make up the second level. These are connected directly to the center point. For example, if using “Tell a Story” as the central idea, the second level could be the standard “Who, What , Where, When, How” questions.
• Delve deeper for more information. From this second level, all additional levels are connected. For example, under the “Who” heading, there could be sub-levels of “Who are the characters” and “Who is the audience.” Additional levels and ideas are placed on the Mind Map making sure they connect somewhere to the diagram. Using colors coded to the levels you are working on can also assist with the visual information. If one part of your map connects to another, link them.

To get more information on Mind Mapping, there is a video on YouTube of Tony Buzan explaining the concept.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/  

Twitter... Are You Missing The Boat?

If you tuned into The Apprentice Sunday, March 8, you would have watched the "boys and girls" come up with a new slogan for Zappos. The CEO of www.zappos.com was the judge and selected the "gals" proposal. 

What stunned me, while watching the show, I happened to Tweet @zappos, and got a reply within 3 minutes. What I didn't realize at the time, that it was the CEO Tony Hsieh, sending me a message. 

Whats remarkable, here is a CEO of a $1B company, watching with the rest of us, probably his biggest marketing exposure (and expense) on national TV and he is on Twitter, tweeting to anyone that sends a message. 

How many CEO's of $1B companies do you know, that even know what a Tweet is, actually use it and are using it to their corporate advantage?

So are you missing the boat?

I became a fan of The Apprentice early on in the series. As a marketer I found it interesting to see so many promising young professional spread their marketing wings at the many tasks surrounding such high-end brands.

I saw the Zappos.com Celebrity Apprentice episode. I am struggling as a fan of the show with the Celebrity episodes as these individuals are not marketers and it is so painful to watch them fumble through fundamental marketing challenges.

I’ve seen Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, featured many times before and find his business plan completely refreshing. It is no doubt that his emphasis on customer service and corporate culture is responsible for his huge success as a brand and, ultimately, their sales growth of 1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008. I did find, however, that the show was either edited poorly or the part he played in the “RFP” process was below par. He did not discuss the target consumer at all, rather, broad stroking it; and, although he did mention customer service, I do not feel he placed appropriate emphasis on this core competency given its direct relationship to their success. (Note: I am a loyal Zappos consumer because of their customer service.)

Many companies are looking for guidance with branding on Twitter. To begin with, they need to know how to use Twitter, what it’s all about, who should handle Twitter (marketing sales, PR,) who to follow, etc.

Then to the question: Should the CEO or business owner also have a Twitter profile? This is a great question and one that takes some time and thought. Good social media consultants will tell you that social media marketing requires a strategy – and it’s not necessarily the type of “boiler plate” marketing strategy companies may be used to.

This key question – should the CEO (and other key management) have a Twitter profile to be part of the social media strategy?

Tony Hsieh is a highly visible CEO on Twitter right now (his profile is Zappos.com CEO.) This strategy blends the brand. This is definitely a trend we’ll be seeing more of. Tony even posted a Beginner’s Guide that can be helpful to business owners and entrepreneurs:

http://twitter.zappos.com/start 

It is important to know that while good personal branding involves self-promotion, there’s more to it. The social media world is all about “Give to Get” and engaging in two-way conversations. The value comes from not what you are doing; rather it comes from what you are thinking and sharing. It is about conversations and building relationships; not hard sell marketing, broadcasting or ego-driven tweets.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

What is The Social Funnel?...

And Why You Need to Build One.

Social media channels increasing the venues of choice for consumers to collect information and connect with brands, presents a strategic opportunity for companies to create a “Social Funnel” above the traditional marketing and sales funnel – where consumers take the lead in finding information and content that ultimately drives brand preference and sales.
 
In Winning the Consumer Decision Journey, McKinsey & Company’s David Court shares that, in the new social and digital age, “the path to purchase and loyalty is now complex, iterative, and dynamic.” In this new environment, creating a Social Funnel allows brands to identify and have access to buyers long before the buying process begins.

The Social Funnel Defined

The Social Funnel is a dynamic collection of consumer activity across social media channels, which sits on top of the traditional marketing and sales funnel. Developing a Social Funnel requires a systematic process of identifying and capturing consumer interactions across a variety of social media channels, aggregating this activity in a social customer relationship management (SCRM) infrastructure, and continually mining this insight to deliver relevant content to the right social profile at the right time. The chart below describes the Social Funnel and its tie to the traditional marketing and sales funnel:

To be effective, Social Funnels need to be tightly integrated with traditional customer relationship management (CRM) systems to create a 360-degree view of a prospect to allow marketers to nurture this relationship over time using a combination of social and traditional, experts agree that this integration holds a lot of potential. “Integrating social deeper into existing CRMs is going to be very popular in 2011 – we expect to see a growing number of brands tying customer records to public social profiles and bread crumbs”, says Nathaniel Perez, head of social experience at SapientNitro.

The integration of social media with the traditional funnel is one of the key priorities for brands in 2011. Although only 6% of companies today report that they fully integrate social with traditional marketing funnels

David Berkowitz, senior director of emerging media and innovation for digital marketing agency 360i, agrees but tempers things by saying that “we are still early in the process but tying social profiles to CRM systems will be big.”

We see a growing number of companies starting to tie social profiles to their CRM systems. As this process continues to evolve, we expect to see social media becoming more of a critical component throughout the entire customer lifecycle. Systems that support the integration of social with CRM will increase in adoption over the course of the next 12 to 18 months, giving organizations the ability to seamlessly combine data from multiple systems easily and efficiently.

 

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/


Source: MarketingSherpa Benchmark Report: 2011 Social Media Marketing

The Loyalists Shall Take You To The Promised Land

Members pay an annual fee to belong to a retailer's loyalty program and they receive discounts on the retailer's most popular products, invitations to member-only events, and reward vouchers for reaching certain spending levels.

What other creative ways can this retailer reward its loyal customers?

Your customers are swimming in messages. And they’re being pursued by countless brands. How can you keep their attention, their time, and their dollar?

Gone are the days of a one-size-fits-all loyalty program. Building a creative campaign that your customers will respond to can only begin once you have a clear understanding of their buying motivations. By using real insights you can cultivate stronger relationships customers so your brand stands out. Ultimately your message motivates action… then your bottom line.

Depending on what inspires your customers craft programs which also meet your internal objectives along with actionable metrics for program refinement. More common loyalty program objectives include:

• Stimulate sales and improve gross margins

• Encourage purchase of new and better/best products
• Establish competitive differentiation
• Motivate employee performance
• Boost retention of high-value customers
• Build stronger long-term relationships
• Drive key behaviors

To understand what your customers truly value, conduct focus groups, one-on-one interviews and quantitative research. From this, determine the core elements needed to create a lasting relationship with your customers.

The mandatory requirements for an effective loyalty program are – Creative Conceptualization, Feasible Program Development, Systematic and Time Bound Program Execution and Measurement. 

Here are some proven loyalty concepts which can be customized to your customers buying motives:

• Club Cards (pay for membership for regular discounts, points programs, reward vouchers)

• Email Only Promotions
• Premium Shipping Clubs (for ecommerce)
• Subscriptions (asking customers to go steady and purchase product to be fulfilled at regular intervals)
• Service Extensions
• Recycling Programs
• Loyalty Affiliates
• Gift Reminder Service
• Value Propositions (Not loyalty per se, but extremely successful in customer retainment; think Zappos.com and their exceptional customer service)

Marketers are racing to keep up with customer expectations for personalized services and wnhancements, and well-designed loyalty programs are a tremendous opportunity to communicate directly with enticing offers that will keep customers coming back.

"The dogs on Main Street howl
'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land"

- Bruce Springsteen

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
http://www.phantompower.co/

1 in 5 Smartphone Owners Are “Checking-In”What This Means for Real Estate

Did you check-in today on Foursquare? How about Facebook Places? Gowalla?

For me, “checking in” is a part of pretty much my daily routine. I love seeing where my friends and colleagues are checking into, I love all the “badges” and gaming aspect of it, and of course I love the specials that may places are now (finally) offering for those of us who check-in.

Checking in is becoming more and more popular. The latest ComScore report, released a few days ago revealed that nearly 1 in 5 smartphone owners access check-in services via their mobile device.

I was pretty amazed by that statistic. I remember just a little over a year ago – January 2010, sitting backstage at Real Estate Connect NYC and hearing Dennis Crowley explain Foursquare. At the time I had heard of it, had even downloaded the app onto my phone, but really didn’t “get it.” Fast-forward 14 months later, and now I’m a bit “check-in obsessed!”

Here are a few interesting facts from the report:

• 70 percent of mobile users are “checking-in” from an Android or Apple phone
• 16.7 million U.S. mobile subscribers used location-based “check-in” services on their phones in March 2011, representing 7.1 percent of the entire mobile population. 1
• 2.7 million check-in users did so on a smartphone, representing 17.6 percent of the smartphone population.

“Although still in their relative infancy, location-based mobile check-in services are seeing rather impressive adoption among smartphone users,” said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. “The ability to interact with consumers on this micro-local level through special offers, deals and other incentives provides brands with the real-time opportunity to engage consumers through their mobile device.”

So who exactly is checking in? I sadly do not fall into this demographic anymore , but according to the report, 18-34 year-olds account for nearly 60% of check-in service user.

So how exactly does this affect real estate? Well, we are starting to see brokerages adopting creative social media strategies, like the ‘Race for the Home’ event that Prudential Georgia Realty is doing. They are a real estate brokerage based in metro Atlanta, and have teamed up with property search site HomeFinder.com and mobile gaming platform SCVNGR to offer some 500 prospective homebuyers the chance to compete for a $15,000 down payment on a home purchase. We’ve also see The Corcoran Group embrace Foursquare and is now a major brand on Foursquare. Foursquare fits beautifully into Corcoran’s core brand ideas in that the process of searching for a home is just as much about what’s outside of the 4 walls than it is inside.

Beyond checking in – I think there is a greater lesson here: mobile check-in service users display strong propensity for mobile media usage.

According to the report, more than 95 percent of check-in service users used their mobile browser or applications. Nearly 62 percent accessed news. Check-in user behavior was also consistent with that of traditional early adopters, with 40.3 percent of users accessing tech news and 28.2 percent owning a media tablet, both significantly higher than average.

Still wondering where I am going with this? Here’s my point – if 1 in 5 people who have a smartphone are “checking in” around town AND 60% of 18-34 year olds are checking in – then that means a huge portion of your clientele (or perhaps your clientele’s adult children who are also potential clients) are using mobile devices when searching for property.

Contrary to popular belief, a mobile version of your site is not just a smaller version of your site on a tiny screen! A mobile optimized version of your site is a site that displays information accurately and in an easy to read format on a smartphone. If your website is not mobile optimized – you are missing a HUGE portion of your audience. Do you get clients who talk to you about listings they saw on Realtor.com, Zillow or Trulia instead of your site or your broker site? Why do you think that is? This could be a whole other blog post in and of itself – but a possible reason is all of those sites are mobile optimized AND they all have awesome apps that make searching for homes for sale super easy.

What is really exciting is that optimizing your site for mobile is probably easier than most people would think. There are tons of qualified web designers out there that can do this for you and/or create an app for your site. Not sure where to start? Ask your colleagues? Post a note on Facebook that you are looking for local recomendations.

Creating a real estate app with MLS data is also easier than you think. Boopsie and Smarter Agent are two excellent real estate choices I would recommend.

What do you think is the future of the check-in and location based marketing? Is your site mobile optimized or do you have an app your clients can use to search for homes? I would really like to have a discussion about this and get your thoughts – please leave me a comment below!

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  

Source: Katie Lance, Social Media Director, Inman News

Email Marketing Tips for Targeting Inactive Subscribers

I've been managing an email marketing campaign for one of my clients for the past few years. The database grows slow and steady but it seems it is the same people consistently opening and interacting with the email content.

How can I get the others to participate?

Well, the first critical step is complete, I've identified those recipients of your email campaign who are inactive.

The point of identifying your inactive recipients is to treat them differently - not to delete them, ignore them or cry over their inactivity. Your goal after identifying and segmenting your "active" and "inactive" subscribers is to spend more productive time on actives and attempt to re-engage inactives.

Here are some things one can do to re-engage inactives:

• Special Offers
  If you are a retailer, for example, consider a special offer such as discounts or free shipping. If you are a B2B marketer you might offer a special white paper that will motivate the recipient to re-engage with your communications.
• Survey Subscribers
  While you are not likely to get a significant response, consider surveying these recipients to help provide insight into their inactivity.
• Update Profile
  Using incentives, drive subscribers to your profile update page where they can change email addresses, update format preferences, demographics and interests. This updated information may now enable you to send them targeted and relevant emails.
• Understand Their Demographics/Profile
  Perhaps a large percentage of your inactives share a common trait. Perhaps they opted in as part of registering for a white paper or seminar or promotional offer. Or perhaps a majority are women, while your content is oriented toward men.
• Try Different Send Days/Times
  If you always mail on the same day or time of day, try some different distribution times (what do you have to lose?).
• Modify Frequency
  Now that you've segmented your list by actives and inactives, consider adjusting the frequency of your sends. If you normally send twice per month, you may want to test sending three times to active subscribers, but only once to inactives.
• Create Different Content
  If your analysis has been able to uncover some common threads among inactives, consider packaging the content differently for this group. For example, a newsletter from a job search-oriented business might logically find many subscribers becoming inactive after completing their job search. For these recipients, the company might want to focus its newsletter content on managing people, careers and the hiring process. Uncovering this type of trend should lead to providing different newsletters or dynamic versions based on a person's profile or stated preferences.
• Try Different Formats
  Test using a text version, for example, that is very simple but with specific links and messaging intended to drive action.
• Test Different Styles of Subject Lines
  If you've used a particular style of subject line, try a different approach with the inactives. Creative subject lines could be one of your most effective strategies in getting recipients to re-engage.
• Monitor Seed/Proof Lists
  Send your messages to proof and seed lists for key domains. Monitor if content or images are causing your messages to be filtered or treated differently with specific ISPs and companies. If problems are detected, consider developing different versions of the messages that may not trip filters.
• Send a Postcard
  If you have your subscribers' mailing addresses, consider sending them a postcard that offers an incentive if they'll update their email preferences and profile.
• Re-engaged to Active Status
  After each email message sent to the inactives, change the demographic status of those recipients that clicked a link to "active." This helps keep your focus on converting the inactives and tracking your success in those efforts.

GET A FREE 60-DAY TRIAL OF CONSTANT CONTACT

Easy to use Email Marketing Software
Courtesy of PHANTOM POWER

Here is an extremely useful blog post from Seth Godin where he discusses the efficiencies and inefficiencies of two different email marketing campaign case studies.

What are you doing to re-engage inactives?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  


Five Major Marketing Challenges Faced by Event Vendors and Ways to Cope

Special guest post by Jeff Copeland, owner of Simple Weddings and Tampa Bay Search.

I’m a marketing guy, and I’m also a wedding vendor. Sometimes the two complement each other nicely. But the wedding industry is unique in many ways and, frankly, wedding vendors are sometimes better off ignoring traditional marketing and advertising advice aimed at other industries.

Here are five major challenges faced by businesses in the wedding industry and some ways to cope with them:

1.   Marketing to a steady stream of new prospects instead of a “cycle” of repeat customers

The wedding industry is unique in that you only get one shot to market to your prospects. Generally speaking, couples only get married once. So, even if they are absolutely thrilled with the service you provided, they aren’t likely to be a repeat customer anytime soon. This fundamental difference from many other industries makes a lot of typical marketing advice null and void, and makes things like email marketing very difficult.

Ways to cope:

• SEO – Increasingly, today’s brides and grooms aren’t picking up the yellow pages or watching many television commercials. They get their news and entertainment online, and if they need something, they Google (or Bing) it. You have to be there when they search! If you have not invested the time and effort in search engine optimization, you are missing more and more potential customers every day. [Check out my "What the Heck is SEO?" series and "How Google Instant Affects SEO and What It Means for Your Website" for more info]
• Social Media – Granted, your wedding clients probably aren’t coming back. But their friends might! That is what makes social media platforms such as Facebook so powerful. If your happy clients “friend” you on Facebook, all of their friends and contacts are introduced to your Facebook profile. Some of them may be in the wedding market soon.
• Reviews – When you shop for something on Amazon, what is the first thing you read about a product? I don’t know about you, but I always scroll down to the customer reviews section before anything else, and it’s often the only thing I read before making a purchase. Your prospects are hungry for feedback from people who have already used your service…feed them! Choose a single, reputable platform (such as Google Places, OneWed, or WeddingWire) to capture all of your customer reviews and make getting these reviews an integral part of your follow-up with clients after their wedding (we have had great success by offering a free gift such as a wedding picture). And most importantly, make these reviews prominent and easy for new prospects to find and read!
• Diversify – Think of some ways you might be able to get your wedding clients to come back or use your skills  and equipment for other related opportunities . Family portraits (for photographers), vow renewals, other special events? 

2.   The long buying cycle

Brides and grooms often have a very long lead time from the time they enter the market until their wedding date. What this means for you as a wedding vendor is brides may be checking out your website, blog, social media presence, and customer reviews a year or more before their wedding day, and possibly months before they even contact you.

Ways to cope:

• Quality content – Give your prospects a reason to keep coming back! If a bride visits your website or blog, saves you to their favorites, then comes back a couple of months later only to find nothing has changed, she probably won’t come back a third time. It’s fine for your website content to be relatively static (as long as it is current and accurate), but you can always add pictures from recent weddings or stream your blog’s RSS feed to your website to keep things fresh.
• Blog – Your blog, on the other hand, needs to have a steady stream of quality fresh content. You should be posting your favorite pictures from your recent weddings, planning tips, advice, and guest posts from industry professionals on a regular basis in order to give your prospects a reason to come back on a regular basis. Remember, if nothing else, time spent looking at your website or blog is time spent staring at your logo!
• Pictures – I can’t stress enough how important it is to have high quality pictures on your website, blog, and social media presence. Brides love pictures. Let me repeat that – BRIDES LOVE PICTURES! And this is one area where the wedding industry has a leg up – If you’re not a wedding photographer, chances are you work with a few on a regular basis. Most would be thrilled to share some of their work with you for display on your website or blog as long as they are credited for the picture. 

3.   The seasonal nature of bookings, weddings, and cash flow

In most areas, January and February are the busiest time of year for wedding inquiries and new bookings (people tend to get engaged over the holidays and start their wedding planning after the first of the year). Unfortunately, the holidays and the beginning of the year also tend to be the slowest time of year for actual weddings – meaning your cash flow is probably at its lowest at the very time you need to be out there advertising to new brides!

Ways to cope:

• While it’s sometimes easier said than done, try to save some money and plan your advertising spending for maximum impact. Often, this means spending as much as 50% of your annual advertising budget from January through March in order to lock in those Spring and Summer weddings.
• Consider offering payment plans. Many wedding vendors take a deposit when the wedding is booked, then collect the remaining balance on or just before the wedding date. If a couple has six months or more between the time they book and their wedding date, consider letting them make interest free monthly payments in the months leading up to their wedding. This has the double benefit of spreading out your cash flow more equitably throughout the year, and decreasing the likelihood of cancellations. 

4.   The Economy, Stupid

Every wedding vendor knows that our industry closely follows national economic trends. Let’s face it, many wedding services are “optional” and aren’t absolutely necessary to ensure a beautiful wedding. When the economy goes south, so does wedding spending by brides and grooms-to-be.

Ways to cope:

• Go where the money is - consider offering lower cost alternatives to your typical services or well-conceived discounts to brides on a budget or including more services in your current prices.
• Partner – could you package your services with those of another vendor (or group of vendors) to offer a broader range of services and increase the perceived value to your prospects? 

5.   Low cost competition

Some segments of the wedding industry have low barriers to entry. Let’s face it, anyone with good organization skills can call themselves a wedding planner, and anyone who can afford a decent camera could conceivably take someone’s wedding pictures.

Ways to cope:

• Educate your prospects and clients – many of your prospects would be shocked to find our how much your equipment cost or how much time you spend on pre- and post- wedding activities. Pull back the veil (no pun intended!) and give them an inside look at how you prepare their wedding venue or edit their wedding pictures [Note: Your blog is the perfect place to do this!]. If your prospects and clients really understand your art, they’ll value it accordingly.
• Build your brand – Imagine you are looking at two rental cars. You have to choose one for your trip, but both are under a cover, and all you can see is the hood ornament. One says Mercedes. The other says Kia. Which one do you choose and why? Obviously, Mercedes is the stronger brand, and (all other things being equal) consumers will choose the trusted brand everytime. Your brand has value. I want to stress that this has nothing to do with your logo, and everything to do with your business model, marketing, copywriting, and reputation. This takes time to build, but it serves as insurance against upstart competition!
• Find your target market – Once you truly understand your target market, the competition dwindles. This is called your unique selling position. Focus on doing one thing and doing it like no one else can. If you are truly unique, there is no competition, is there? 

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  

15 Key Social Media Analytics Terms

1. Social Reach

The total number of users associated with a brand on different social media platforms.

(For example, a company with 10,000 Twitter followers, 7,000 Facebook fans, 3,000 blog subscribers and 1,000 YouTube subscribers has a total Social Reach of 21,000)

2. Social Reach Velocity

A percentage representing a brand’s capacity to increase its social reach over time.

(For example, if a company’s social reach was 10,000 in January of 2011 and became 15,000 six months later, then it has 50% social reach velocity.)

3. Social Profile

The aggregated shares, comments, and overall brand-related activities of a social media user.

(Social profile examples include: Twitter followers, Facebook fans, RSS subscribers and so forth )

4. Social Conversion

The percentage of visitors originating from social media who take a desired action.

(Examples of desired actions include product sales, downloads, newsletter subscriptions, membership registrations and so forth.)

5. Social Mention

The overall mentions of your brand on social media in a positive/neutral/negative context over a specific period of time.

(SocialMention.com is an excellent tool that offers four important social mention metrics: strength, sentiment, passion and reach)

6. Brand Sentiment

The ratio of positive brand mentions to negative mentions.

7. Share of Voice

Brand share of voice = (total number of mentions of you + your competitors)/ your mentions.

8. Share of Social Conversations

Brand Share of Social Conversations= Social Brand Mentions/All Relevant Conversations

9. Social Media Impressions

The number of users’ reactions to your own content on social media, including retweeting, commenting, sharing and so forth.

10. Optimal Engagement Times

The best times to share content or engage with your network on social media.

(Studies have shown that many social media sites (such as Twitter and Facebook) have peak hours: the times when it’s most effective to share updates or interact with user )

11. Content-to-Contact Ratio

The ratio between a brand content and social network expansion.

(For example, if your content-to-contact ratio is 3:1, it means that for every 3 pieces of content you publish, a new user is added to your social network.)

12. Content-to-Share Ratio

The ratio between your brand content and social network sharing.

(For example, if your content-to-share ratio is 3:1, it means that for every 3 pieces of content you publish, one piece of content is shared on social media channels.)

13. Activity Ratio

The ratio of active members of your brand’s social network versus total members.

14. Bounce Rate

The time it takes site/blog visitors originating from social media to lose interest and leave your site.

15. Targeted Social Traffic

The percentage of social media traffic to your site/blog that results in sales compared to the overall social media traffic.

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co

NOTE: This glossary is not presented in alphabetical order because some terms are related to each other. So, I figured it’s best to order them in a way that will help you understand all of them without having to skim back and forth.

Achieving The Coveted:Viral Marketing

Viral campaigns yield the highest ROI... Information about your product spreads naturally, like a contagious disease... only a good one...

I once read up on the 5 C’s of viral marketing:Community, Compelling, Comedy, Charity, and Contest

Let's talk Community...

We all know that viral marketing in the social media space is all about communities. In fact, I would argue that communities play a larger role than most people think, both online and offline. They can build a brand, kill a brand, make a career, break a career, influence elections, etc. Think about it; from an offline perspective, life is community driven through PTA organizations, church groups, sports leagues, stay-at-home mommy groups, and various school organizations (sororities, fraternities) to name a few. And of course online, you have Myspace, Facebook, Linkedin, Digg, Stumbledupon and hundreds of other social media sites jumping in the scene daily.

Within each of these online/offline communities consumers are talking and having conversations with each other. And, they are sharing opinions, experiences, advice, recommendations and commentary about products, services and companies usually based on real personal experience.

THIS IS VIRAL MARKETING.

The challenge with viral marketing is that it’s not always viral, if that makes any sense... Often, marketers plan for and label their marketing plans as “viral” but 9 times out of 10, it never catches on. It’s the things that just happen by accident that become viral. Remember the Diet Coke and Mentos video? At first, Coca-Cola distanced themselves from the exploding Diet Coke and Mentos viral video phenomenon, fearing it would damage their reputation and brand; however, just recently that have fully embraced the concept and now there are over 7,000 consumer generated videos on YouTube, millions of pageviews, hundreds of comments, and favored by thousands of fans. The community here is not only the millions of YouTube enthusiasts, but also the micro-communities of people and their offline conversations about these videos.

So, while I do believe it is impossible to craft a viral campaign, you can certainly try to influence one:

• Formulate your marketing message.  Think about the product or service you are advertising and create a message that communicates the benefits and uses of what you are selling.  A website is nonnegotiable.  
• Make the content on your website sharable. For example, you can allow readers to embed a funny video from your website onto their own blogs. An "email this article to your friend" link is another way information spreads from one person to another.
• Use email as a viral marketing tool. Include a marketing message about your product or service in the tag lines of your emails and also include your advertising message in auto responder emails you send to those who email you.
• Post your content on other Internet sites such as message boards and blogs. However, do this carefully; many forum managers are now aware of this practice and may delete your messages if they think it's spam.
• Incorporate your marketing message into rich media. Video clips and Flash games are very popular on the Internet, so if you have a great idea for this medium your message will spread like wildfire.
• Spread your message off line as well. Tell your friends and colleagues about your product or service and hand them business cards with the URL on them along with a catchy tag line, perhaps the same one you use in your emails.

What are you doing to boost your buzz factor?

PHANTOM POWER
Marketing by Design
www.phantompower.co  

Google Instant Search and its impact on SEO

During Tuesday’s major search event in San Francisco Google announced a new search feature called Google Instant which will significantly change the way users search for information on Google Search.

Google Instant - Live updating search result page

This new interface updates as a user types in the search query. Not only will the regular search results update as a user types in letters in the search field, but elements from Universal Search (maps, news, shopping, etc) as well as AdWords ads will also update in real time. This results in a user seeing a much larger set of search results as the query is being typed in and refined. In addition, the query suggestions (Google Suggest) play a more central role in discovering possible queries and relevant websites.

Why Google Instant is cool?

• Dynamic Results  Google dynamically displays relevant search results as you type so you can quickly interact and click through to the web content you need.
• Preditions  One of the key technologies in Google Instant is that the rest of your query is predicted before you finish typing?  See what you need?  Stop typing, look down and find what you're looking for.
• Scroll to Search  Scroll through predictions and see results instantly for each as you arrow down.

To the Webmaster, Google Instant is cool because as users are shown a much larger set of search results, there is a higher chance of your pages being displayed in the SERPs.  In addition, users can now more easily modify their search which results in more specific query that will drive more relevant traffic to your website (See my post on The Importance of Longtail Keywords).  And relevant traffic means conversion!



Impact of Google Instant Search on SEO

In general this new feature won’t change the basic rules of SEO since Google’s algorithms will continue evaluating webpages in the same way as before. Webmasters should hence continue focusing on their content, traffic, and conversions.

What will change, however, is the way users will go about finding information, how they interact with search results as they learn to use more specific search queries, and how they review the results before making a choice.

• CTR is the new ranking. The click-through rate for organic listings becomes more important than pure rankings since users will see many more search results in each session.
• Creating relevant content which better targets specific queries will drive more traffic as users learn to perform better searches.
• Experimenting with page titles and snippets and tracking the changes in CTR becomes even more important.
• Universal Search listings (images, video thumbnails, maps, shopping, etc) will attract more clicks since dense graphic elements will draw more attention in a fast updating interface.
• The traditional Golden Triangle theory regarding the users’ eye movements on search result pages is no longer true. Earlier you performed a search, sat back and studied the results and the ads before either clicking on a listing, or modifying your query. This will now be substantially different as the users’ eyes will wander up and down between the query field, listings, Universal Search entries, and AdWords ads. I’m looking forward to the first eye tracking study for the new search page.
• Searches with short queries will fall considerably since people usually come to Google with a very specific goal in mind. The now interactive search result page allows users to dig deeper into a subject until they’ve found a reasonable set of search results which better fits their intent.

For those proclaiming the death of SEO, I would actually argue the opposite.  This is definitely a game changer but it does not change the way serious SEOs have worked for a long period of time. That includes focusing on important Key Performance Indicator’s other than rankings. Instant Search is however a massive headache for those who still treat SEO as a magic formula and have been focusing on optimizing for mere nuances in Google’s search algorithm. They will continue wasting their time focusing on the petty details in the algorithms instead of working on improving the overall value of the sites they are promoting.

All in all, no matter what some people wrongly proclaim, SEO is certainly not dead - it just got more interesting.

How will you change your SEO strategy given Google Instant?

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