Tag Archives: marketing

June 3, 2013 · 8:40 am

Social And Small Business

I’ve mentioned before that I keep a “blog this” file which contains articles that piqued a thought.  I went through the file over the weekend and came across a press release from the folks at Constant Contact.  They do a study about the state of small businesses and the ways they connect with and grow their audiences.  Results include responses from respondents across a range of business-to-business and business-to-consumer industries.  wkL_ccWhat piqued my interest was this:

While small business interest in, and appreciation for, social media is on the rise, small business owners continue to lack confidence in their social media skills.  More than half (54 percent) chose social media marketing as the marketing activity they need the most help with, which might explain why their frequency of use with social media is not where it needs to be.  Only 13 percent of survey respondents post to Twitter daily and ten percent post weekly to LinkedIn.

Aside from the obvious point that clearly I need to make my phone number and email address more prominent (I can help – call me, you guys!) that research shows me that these folks are being smarter than others.  They recognize that value of the various platforms and aren’t shooting the messengers due to their inability to capitalize on what those platforms offer.

Social is a conversation.  If you’re only engaging on an irregular basis (once a week) and only a fraction are even engaging that often, it’s not going to work.

The study is unclear with respect to how they’re defining social media marketing.  The owners were asked “which social media platform is the most effective for their organization” and that’s kind of nebulous.  Is it paid advertising and the “effectiveness” is measured by responses?  Or is it some other engagement metric?  One hopes the respondents can answer how they’re defining “effective” but I suspect they can’t.

Social media is not like any other form.  It requires commitment and resources far beyond what many folks have experienced buying print, TV, radio, or even display ads.  Doing it badly can do more than be ineffective – it can hurt your business (no one likes to be ignored!).  Can we agree on that?

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May 23, 2013 · 9:35 am

Off The Social Rails

One of the things I made a note to rant about was some data that came out of the 2013 Doremus Decision Dynamics study.  This is an annual survey of senior marketing executives and one of the things it found is that these folks aren’t that enthusiastic about social media marketing.  In fact, 51% of respondents feel that advertising in social media is more intrusive than advertising in a magazine or newspaper, while only one-third believe that a social media presence enhances a company’s reputation.  I find  a certain amount of irony in those results since the respondents are, in most cases, the people responsible for their company’s efforts in social.  If those efforts are lacking, maybe we ought to think about it for a second before we shoot the messenger?

My thinking is that marketers don’t like any medium they can’t really control.  Social media is a mirror and I suspect that a certain portion of the negativity about social is the result of some poor effort on the brand‘s part which is just being reflected.  As we used to say in TV, “due to circumstances beyond our control” Facebook pages get hijacked, Twitter feeds get overwhelmed, and other channels are filled with comments from consumers that may not be on brand message (to say the least).  Yes, ads in social are more intrusive but unlike those other media they’re not viewed as welcome because they’re not easily avoidable.  Which is entirely the point.

Social media evolved as ways for people to connect with one another.  Smart brands spotted that and began to use the various social channels to interact.   They listened and replied when appropriate with useful  helpful information.  In other words, brands became humanized and engaged in conversation.  At some point, it went off the rails and social became just another place to fire up the ad megaphone.  This is the equivalent of using a shoe to drive a nail.  It might work but it’s clearly not as effective as using the right tool in the right way.

I’m not surprised most marketers don’t think social is helpful.  It’s resource intensive, it’s out of their control to a large extent, and most are using it badly.  Would you agree?

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May 6, 2013 · 9:28 am

Stupid Is As…

I read something a few days ago that has stuck with me. I was going to write about it at the time but I couldn’t really figure out how not to make it a political issue because as you know we don’t do politics here on the screed. Over the weekend as I was thinking about it some more, I realized why I can’t get it out of my head.

In a word: Stupidity.

But there’s a business point in here too. Here is one article  from USAToday about what’s been going on in the state of Virginia. In a nutshell, as the article reports,

Virginia passed… a new law last month that lowers the gas tax for everyone, but slaps a $64-per-year fee on hybrid and electric car owners to help make up for what those drivers aren’t paying at the pump….Legislation that would levy a fee or tax on greener wheels is now pending in Texas, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Arizona.

Pure genius at work here. Encourage people to buy fuel-efficient vehicles to curtail gasoline consumption (as well as to help the environment) but penalize them because they’re not paying enough gasoline tax.  We could spend a lot of time here on the politics but let’s discuss the optics instead.  This seems stupid.  Is that a shallow, uniformed take on the matter?  Maybe, but I think it’s dumb, and that’s all that matters.  In fact, everyone to whom I’ve mentioned it concurs and many of them are not at all shallow people.  In fact, they’re almost universally well-informed and can take a broader view of issues than their own opinions.  Which is the business point.

From time to time we all need to take a step back and get to the place where our customers and potential customers are.  They don’t have all the facts you do nor do they share the same perspective as you.  Even if they do, they just might not care.  You need to be in that “outside” place and ask yourself if what you’re doing – a price change, a package modification, a marketing campaign, whatever – seems stupid.  For example, cutting a 12 ounce package to 11 ounces with a label that says “great new package, same great price” is stupid.

Maybe there’s a good reason to encourage a behavior and then to penalize it but I can’t figure it out.  There’s no good reason to ignore the optics of something as a businessperson.  If it appears stupid, it probably is.  You agree?

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