Be Prepared to Manage Social Media Risks

The basic difference between an ordinary person and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary person takes everything as a blessing or a curse. (Carlos Castenada) To be an effective leader, you need to look at risk as a challenge, while making sure to manage it like you do any other opportunity. Torben Rick, international executive with a strong track record in developing, driving and managing business improvement and development, change management and turn-around reminds us, “There is no brand immune to a negative event … it happens, that’s life and most companies plan for this to happen by developing action plans and the like.” Such should be the case when engaging in social media marketing.

Social media marketing affords the opportunity to create a community of fans and customers alike. According to Jim Goldstein (“Social Media + You – Brand and Reputation Management = Disaster”), “Reinforcing the positive sentiment of this audience is key to creating a long lasting positive (brand) perception. In addition a passionate following will ensure that as negative sentiment arises that the community behind you supports you. A supportive community of followers expands the number of eye and ears looking and listening on your behalf. It’s not uncommon for passionate supporters to actually take on negative sentiment directly on your behalf.”

The problem is that incidents move faster in social media, so you need to create a crisis response plan, suggests Jeremiah Owyang (“When It Comes To Social Media, Many Marketers Jump The Gun”). “For instance, how would your company react if some of its products turned up in an unflattering YouTube video on a Friday evening before a three-day weekend?” He says many companies jump into social marketing before they are ready. “The opportunities to connect with customers, learn from them and benefit from word-of-mouth marketing are irresistible. But CMOs must first establish the internal resources and processes that are necessary for their companies to be successful in social marketing.”

You don’t need to look far to find examples of business who were not prepared to handle an unforeseen crisis, manage the risks, or harness the power of social media:

• According to Owyang: Greenpeace’s organized brandjacking of Nestle SA’s Facebook page is making CMOs afraid of social media. There is good reason for this: The power has clearly turned to those that participate, and now detractors are starting to organize using the same organized marketing campaigns that companies create. Greenpeace takes issue with Nestle’s purchase of palm oil from farmers who are destroying forests. The organization prepared a frontal assault with prepared assets such as off-brand logos, detrimental videos, and called for their Twitter followers to attack Nestle’s Facebook page. Nestle, the giant food company, was unprepared. It apparently lacked qualified community managers, a community policy and an advocacy program. Proof of the power of online communities: Today the Swiss company said it will work with a nonprofit organization to probe the firm’s palm oil suppliers.
• In his article, “Better have a social media risk management plan”, Rick points out that in terms of bad online sentiment, it doesn’t get much worse than BP’s continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. He says, “a search for “BP oil spill” on YouTube returns over 900 videos about the disaster and last week BP was one of brands that was generating the most buzz on Twitter. BP seems to have a poor micro-blogging strategy and each twit is drowned by a deluge of hostile Tweets. This is partly just a question of quantity, which could be balanced if BP had a larger presence on these sites and more followers to begin with – but since it’s too late to do anything about that, the company might benefit by at least putting a more human (and humane) face on its social media communications. Let’s see the CEO make some personal twits – a symbolic gesture which might help temper the maelstrom of negative PR currently engulfing the company. Or even better – lets see the CEO apologize in a video broadcast.”

Should you be concerned about bad sentiment circulating online about you or your business? Certainly, says Goldstein, but not to the degree that it paralyzes you from doing business. Bad things will always be said about an individual or business. We can’t please everyone all of the time, but it is possible to keep bad situations (and unpredictable events) from getting ugly in the social media world…Strategically speaking turning lemons into lemonade is a critical online business strategy. You just need to plan ahead and be prepared.

Does your organization have a formal social media risk management or crisis response plan?

Your Clients Own Your Brand

You might control your brand, but you don’t own it.  It’s the (prospective) clients’/customers’ perception of the core values, personality, and positioning of your product/service/company that defines the brand. In integrated marketing, brand consistency and focus are critical to the brand’s success. But the people own your brand.

Borrowing from the Institute for the Study of Business Markets’ (ISBM) definition of a brand, Lance Baird, VP of Sales and Marketing at Godfrey in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, asserts that a brand is a “relationship:” a relationship with a market based on cumulative customer experiences, tied to trademarks and other identifying elements, which has economic impact for a firm. Baird agrees with the idea that people, not companies, own the brand. He says this is especially true in our age of social media.

In his article, “The Importance of Branding in the Digital Age,” Greg Satell tells us, “Essentially marketing communication is about how people interact with products emotionally. People love some brands, hate some others and don’t think much at all about most.  How the consumer feels about a brand will determine whether she is willing to buy it and what price she will pay.”  He believes a brand is a promise, or a bundle of promises.

Whether you consider a brand a “relationship” or a “promise,” I hope you would agree that how a client/customer feels when they encounter your brand is the essence of the brand. This should be considered and defined as part of the brand “footprint” that you create. It’s this connection or feeling that gives ownership of the brand to the client or customer.

Social media empowers people to spread and promote your brand essence. You can create meaningful client interaction to propel your brand through effective social media marketing.  A recent debate on Interbrand’s Brandchannel about what social media branding strategies will look like in the near future reminds us that millions of consumers are spending their valuable time and energy helping to market their favorite brands via Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms.  The debate suggests that “Consumers will own the brand: the democratization of information means that consumers are now in control, and brands must adapt to this.”  It goes on to say, “People will continue not only to endorse brands, but increasingly align their very own identities with them.”

Last year, I posted an emotional and thought-provoking article titled ‘The USA Brand,’ which challenges you to think about what defines any brand, and supports my points about brand ownership (even for place or destination branding).

I’d like to hear your thoughts on brand ownership. 

Differentiate Yourself, Part 2: Account Managers as Entrepreneurs

In my previous post, I provided guidelines and challenged account managers to define aggressive approaches to differentiate themselves. Recently, I came across an AdvertisingAge article from Phil Johnson, “A Vision for the Future of Account Management: Account People Should Be More Like Entrepreneurs.” The article provides advice on qualities to look for when hiring account managers. Johnson, CEO of PJA Advertising & Marketing in Cambridge, MA, asserts that account managers “are the unsung heroes of the business…taking the best innovations and convincing clients that these are not only real, but useful.”

Following is an excerpt from the article, which builds upon my challenge to define approaches to aggressively differentiate yourself as an account manager by focusing on the client/customer relationship:

The model that best captures the qualities of a star account person is that of an entrepreneur. Successful entrepreneurs bet on an idea. They assemble a team that can bring the idea to fruition. They often help people see the value of a new product that has not yet been created. They raise funds, create the economic model, and establish partnerships. They shape a culture where innovation and collaboration thrive. I don’t know, but this sounds a whole lot like the qualities we want in an account person who performs at the highest level.

When you start to think of account people as entrepreneurs, it introduces a new level of potential into the role. They are no longer suits dutifully carrying the ideas to meetings. They become catalysts for new thinking and innovation. But in order for them to grow beyond functionaries managing a piece of business, and become business people who create markets for ideas, agencies need to redefine the qualities that they want in account people.

1. I would put curiosity at the top of the list. That’s what entrepreneurs do so well. They see possibilities that most of us miss.
2. Next, I’d look for someone who has the initiative to take calculated risks and who knows when to introduce bold new thinking to clients so that it will be recognized and valued. Introduce new ideas too early and they’re often dismissed. If you wait too late, you sacrifice the opportunity to take a leadership position.
3. One underrated talent is an instinct for when to stay on the highway and when to cut across the field. Systems and process drive a lot of productive work, but at times they stifle creativity. It takes a finely tuned instinct to know when to get off the main road.
4. A sense of diplomacy has saved many a great campaign and preserved relationships between agency and client. Selling ideas requires negotiation between multiple parties. Creative teams need to accommodate client demands. Clients may need to be pushed to take greater risks. The best account people have the tact to integrate different points of view while preserving the integrity of an idea.
5. Don’t overlook pure drive and the insatiable desire to see an idea come to fruition in all its forms. The easiest way to kill a good idea is to just go though the motions. Passion, ambition, and hard work can produce miracles.

Differentiate Yourself as an Account Manager

• Be genuine, honest, ethical
• Be consistent
• Focus on the relationship
• Manage expectations of all stakeholders
• Have executive discussions about the big picture goals, objectives, challenges, frustrations, etc. your clients/customers face, as well as what is working well for them
• Show the client/customer you are on the journey with them : Understand how they run the business and how things are done in each department
• Use the ‘what if you had a magic wand’ approach with every level of contact at each client/customer
• Present a profitable solution for the client/customer (or, don’t follow your personal or corporate agenda)
• Be passionate and never satisfied
• Always deliver on your promises

The ten guidelines above are necessary for any account manager to succeed in managing client accounts. However, to really stand out and differentiate yourself as an account manager, I propose the following (more aggressive) approaches.

Work In the Business, Don’t Just Visit

John Coupland, Regional Director at Business Network International in Bromley, United Kingdom advises: Tell your client that you want to spend some time WORKING IN their business. (Not visiting!) Be absolutely clear what you want to achieve from it. Ask them how you both can work together to get around any barriers or hesitations they may have.

Plan your visit and share it with your client in advance. When you spend time IN the client’s business, have your ‘wits about you’ and ask a whole load of questions. When the working (not visit!) spell is over, go back to your client and share your findings with them. It’s amazing what you’ll uncover.

Coupland also suggests not doing this as a one-time venture. Ensure you schedule it at least yearly – ideally quarterly – and, yes, include it in your account development plan. “Not only will you differentiate yourself from your competitors, and the prior account management, the least you’ll gain is you will learn heaps,” he says.

If you’re unable to create the opportunity to actually work in your client’s business, Laurie Colbert, Strategic Relationship Manager at Digital Insight in West Palm Beach, Florida, recommends at least seeking the chance to spend time on-site with the client, ‘shadowing’ or observing individual areas of the business operation.

Conduct Regular Business Reviews

Compile your findings and recommendations into a “Business Review,” explains Colbert, and present it to the client in a large meeting forum inclusive of managers of the various departments, representatives from the executive team, and other stakeholders. This business review should be done once or twice a year, depending upon the complexity of the client. Obviously, there are ongoing meetings and discussions happening throughout the year to get us to this point.

This approach works well from a consultative perspective, and further solidifies the relationship with each client. The relationship manager is no longer considered a vendor, but rather someone who truly understands the business and helps make ongoing improvements. According to Colbert, this also makes it more difficult for a competitor since you are viewed by your clients as a member of their team with skin in the game. “The trust and loyalty gained from this approach has helped me win very long term and loyal client relationships.”

Do you use any other aggressive approaches to differentiate yourself as an account manager?

See Part 2 of this discussion, Account Managers as Entrepreneurs.

Acknowledgements: The advice and experiences of the following fellow members of the Account Management professional networking group on LinkedIn are expressed in the content of this feature through their responses to discussion on this topic: Steve Pickering, Mike Marcotte, Bob Defilet, Fred Schwarz, Steven Blaydes, Mikael Vytlacil, Christopher O’Hagan, Nauman Hamirani, John Coupland, and Laurie Colbert.

Creating Meaningful Customer Interaction via Social Media Marketing

In a recent discussion on LinkedIn, group members answered the question, “What is the biggest challenge you face when it comes to social media marketing?” Three major themes seemed to emerge:

1. The amount of time involved
2. Creating measurable value/ROI, and
3. Developing a strategy for creating meaningful interaction.

I’d like to address this third challenge and share some thoughts on and experiences with effective approaches for creating meaningful experiences and interaction with customers through social media. As Kimberlee Lucas, Motion Pictures and Film professional from Los Angeles puts it: “Social marketing says ‘I care about the people I am interacting with. I believe in what I am doing and want to share it with them.’ If you like and care about people, then you will take the time to listen to them, find out what they need, and will help them.”
 
I recently read a blog posting in which marketing expert Bernie Borges noted that marketers whose content draws people into an experience will stand out in 2010. Brands that design content strategies and campaigns around bringing their audience into an experience will enjoy more brand loyalty and more positive actions. “Seems to me that social marketing requires experiences that seem “anti-marketing” to people tuned in,” says John Kaegi, Executive in Residence at Jacksonville University. “If you can draw people into experiences that align with their values (shared values) perhaps in entertaining or educating them in some fun way, then you get to permission-based marketing.” He adds that the apparent problem with social media “is in the delicacy and tenuousness of the approach – do anything that runs counter to those shared values and you undo everything.”
 
Following are some ideas for drawing people in, considering their shared values, and using social media marketing to create engaging customer experiences for propelling business.

• Angie Schottmuller, Director of E-commerce & Interactive Marketing at Taymark in Minneapolis-St. Paul:  Relevance to customer interests / pain points is one key to generating content sharing for creating meaningful experience. Social discussions have been very helpful for our brands in terms of obtaining voice of the customer, but the number of discussions is nominal compared to the amount of ‘shared content’. The fact a customer (or reader) chose to share our content really shows that it made an impression, and by sharing the content we gain brand recognition with a virtual recommendation. Because “viral potential” is key to growing brand awareness/recognition, it’s beneficial to always include a unique concept or fresh/exciting idea in blog articles. The traditional ‘this our product and how to use it’ is not very likely to be shared. However, ‘this is our product and 7 uncanny ways to use it’ has a unique spin that’s more likely to inspire sharing.
   
• Eric Goldman, Inbound Marketing Executive & CEO at Gossamar Inc. in Toronto:  Among our biggest challenges is findings ways to bring our clients into a community, which is about enriching your customer’s experience in using your company and its products and services. We have used these techniques to accomplish this, as well as raise awareness, for ourselves and for our clients: — Using Twitter for customer support – this forges an online community around the tweets and the forums/blogs linked to by them, while providing people with rapid response times to their queries. — Searching Twitter specifically, looking for people interesting in the same things we are (Inbound Marketing, Sales and Marketing Automation and all related subjects like SEO, SMM, PPC, etc.). — Using our SM monitoring toolset to trawl the social media space, looking for people who write about, or are written up and cited as experts, or participate in discussions, all centered about our subject area. If you would like to know more about how we do these things, this post describes the way we run our Social Media Marketing campaigns: http://bit.ly/SMMProcess
   
• Zeke Camusio, Internet Marketing expert and founder of The Outsourcing Company in Aspen, Colorado:  You want your customers and fans to create “user generated content” (UGC). UGC provides you with a unique opportunity to hear what’s on the minds of your customers and prospective customers, and allows companies to monitor their online reputations and respond directly to positive and negative comments posted by customers. Some suggestions: — Actively engage in forums and discussion boards. Interact with your customers and fans and create a strong online presence. Don’t be passive and just blast out content and expect to have a following! You need to be active and consistent on these sites. — Create contests featuring customers who use your products/services. Ask customers to send in photos or videos and share their experiences. Post on video sharing sites such as YouTube. — Encourage customers and fans to share their feedback of your products on consumer/product review sites. If you are on top of your product quality and customer service, this is an easy way to monitor your reputation/branding on these sites. (See http://www.startupnation.com/articles/9477/1/customer-generated-social-media-marketing.htm )
   
• Michelle Judd, Sr. Marketing Manager, Global Communications at Ergotron, Inc. in Minneapolis-St. Paul:  We recently ran a promotion through Twitter to help drive traffic to an event and to build brand awareness through our social media sites (@Ergotron – http://www.facebook.com/ergotroninc – http://blogs.ergotron.com/ ). We started tweeting before the show and directed people to a promo site that explained the details of the contest. We also used event PR as part of the mix, video blogging, and pre-and during the show blogging. Because we had a team of about six people tweeting/blogging, etc., the message was more personable because it was told through different voices. Let’s just say we learned a lot through the whole process of executing it. But what made it work, and what we got feedback on later, was that acknowledging the pain points to our followers and remaining “personable” throughout the campaign, we managed to “humanize the brand’ to the contestants. We gained more followers, created some fun around booth traffic, got the brand message out, and learned A LOT!

Rather than focusing on the content you want to deliver, focus on the experience you’re creating for the customer. “There’s a reason why social media is such a huge phenomenon,” says Camusio. It wouldn’t work without PEOPLE – your customers and fans! The biggest mistake companies make when launching social media campaigns is forgetting about the important role their customers/fans play.”

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my fellow members of professional networking groups, as well as fellow bloggers, for your insights and contributions, which are expressed and reflected in the content of this feature.

Does Your Sales Team Live the Company Brand?

“There’s only one asset your sales force can leverage that no competitor can…and that’s your company’s brand.”

The fundamentals that underpin ALL successful brands are understanding who your target customer is, what you tell that target customer in order to make them purchase from you, in what manner that message is communicated, and when to present the message for best effect. (Thanks to Australian marketing strategy firm BrandQuest for stating it so well.)

Your sales force is your current and potential customers’ most direct and common contact with your brand, as explained in a recent article from Manage Smarter, Successfully Integrating Sales and Branding (http://bit.ly/91e1In ). Your salespeople are shaping your brand in every interaction they have with current and potential customers, every day. You should consider what your company—not your product or service—does differently that the customer wants to pay for. This compelling brand story should be woven into the context of each unique sales conversation.

“One of the key elements missing in many organizations is the ‘Brand Benefit’; that final sales tool that can close the sale in what was a feature vs. feature race against an otherwise equal competitor,” says Bill Eastwood, Sales, Marketing & Business Development Manager in Boston. “It’s that undeniable benefit the customer will realize by doing business with your value driven company, even though your competition’s product would also fill the customer’s needs. And if this ‘Brand Benefit’ is a tentacle of an actively updated (with front-line sales input) and trained/coached mission or value statement, all kinds of good revenue things often happen, widening the gap with the competition.”
 
Integrating the company brand with sales is a matter of training, according to Denis Rojas, General Manager and Associate at PriX in Brazil, who believes that most of the time the sales team is not trained enough about the brand or engaged with the direction of the company. “I have worked with a sales team that every day, from 7:30 to 8:00, discussed the day before, what went wrong, the best practices, etc. This was quite interesting. In less then 2 months, sales increased about 25% with 10% more profitability.”

The Manage Smarter article offers this basic process for working with your sales force and more fully integrating the brand into your sales activities:

1. Explore the challenges. For this process to work, the sales force must be part of it from the beginning and throughout. Sit down with the team and talk about typical sales conversations with customers, common hot-button issues that arise, and ways they may or may not be using any existing marketing materials and messages. Consider the key sales objectives and troubleshoot barriers to the sale. 
2. Apply the new knowledge. Analyze the insights you gained from the initial meetings. Next, apply the strongest points of your brand to create key messages, online sales tools, and more that hit target audiences’ hot buttons, in addition to helping sales overcome specific challenges they’re likely to encounter.
3. Test the new messages. Review new brand-based and situation-specific messages with the sales force and practice using these approaches in common sales scenarios. Keep your sessions down to earth and action-oriented, so they’re strictly information the sales force can use. Encourage them to be honest in their assessments of the messages. Then get them started testing the messages in real situations.
4. Review and improve. What’s working and what isn’t? Maintain a dialog with the sales force and seek their feedback, both to refine the new messages and address their evolving issues.

Of course, the idea of living the brand extends beyond the sales force. As a recent article from Pink Magazine, Brand-Aids for Brand Managers, (http://bit.ly/4Zqo9e) points out, your whole company is your marketing department. Advertising, sales and brand managers need to enlist and insist that their colleagues across the organization understand and care as much about the brand as they do. Marketers need to reinforce their efforts at every level of the organization to build armies of zealots. Marketing may be your message, but your company is the messenger.
 
Acknowledgements: Thanks to my fellow members of professional networking groups, as well as fellow bloggers and published authors, for your insights and contributions, which are expressed and reflected in the content of this feature.

What Customers Remember: Last Impressions Are More Critical Than First Impressions

Yes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and without a good first impression you don’t get a chance to make a last impression, and every customer touchpoint is important, but the last impression is the most critical to retain a customer and build customer loyalty. Ritu Wadhwa, MBA, Operations and Sustainability in Chicago, agrees: “With any product, even one mishap or inconvenience might mar the impression. But, how the brand is perceived at the end of consumption life cycle is really critical.”

I occasionally order from Amazon.com, which makes a great first impression with the total shopping and ordering experience, comprehensive product recommendations, ratings and reviews, and good prices. But what comes to my mind first when I think of Amazon is that every time I order something, it’s consistently delivered much sooner than I expected. It’s that last impression—quick and reliable delivery of my order—that I remember most and relate most to the Amazon experience.
 
Nobel-prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleagues have shown that what we remember about the pleasurable quality of our past experiences is almost entirely determined by two things: how the experiences felt when they were at their peak (best or worst) , and how they felt when they ended. This “peak-end” rule of Kahneman’s is what we use to summarize the experience, and then we rely on that summary later to remind ourselves of how the experience felt. The summaries in turn influence our decisions about whether to have that experience again, and factors such as the proportion of pleasure to displeasure during the course of the experience or how long the experience lasted, have almost no influence on our memory of it.

Here’s an example. Participants in a laboratory study were asked to listen to a pair of very loud, unpleasant noises played through headphones. One noise lasted for eight seconds. The other lasted sixteen. The first eight seconds of the second noise were identical to the first noise, whereas the second eight seconds, while still loud and unpleasant, were not as loud. Later, the participants were told that they would have to listen to one of the noises again, but that they could choose which one. Clearly the second noise is worse—the unpleasantness lasted twice as long. Nonetheless, the overwhelming majority of people chose the second to be repeated. Why? Because whereas both noises were unpleasant and had the same adverse peak, the second had a less unpleasant end, and so was remembered as less annoying than the first.
(The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Barry Schwartz, 2004)

According to Seth Godin, “the last interaction is responsible for virtually all of the word of mouth you’re going to get, positive or negative. That free muffin at the restaurant or the lollipop at the barber or the call from the Realtor a week after the house is sold and contracts are signed and the movers have left…believe it or not, it matters.”

And so, whether you’re marketing, branding, or selling consumer goods, professional services, or a tourist/leisure destination, while you don’t get another chance to make a first impression, with each touchpoint thereafter you have the opportunity to make a lasting impression. “The end of the transaction is not the last impression,” says Darren Corder, Sr. Mortgage Consultant at MetLife Home Loans in Philadelphia. “It’s the continuous touches to every happy person you’ve helped after the transaction that is also tremendously important.” Each last impression is critical in retaining customers and keeping them loyal to your brand.

Corinne Elletson, in Do You Give the Right First and Last Impression?, reminds us: In Hawaii, the word Aloha means both hello and goodbye. They believe you should end a meeting with the same warmth and openness that you started with, if it be a short parting between friends or an indefinite farewell between strangers. You should run your business’s prospect relationship model in the same way.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my fellow members of professional networking groups, as well as fellow bloggers and published authors, for your insights and contributions, which are expressed and reflected in the content of this feature.

Marketing Digitally and Socially

In my last post, I covered how smart organizations have continued marketing throughout the economic downturn, better positioning themselves for the long term. This economy has challenged businesses to work with smaller marketing budgets and to come up with more innovative marketing strategies. “Business as usual is not going to cut it this past year or going forward,” says Sheila Bacon, Principal at BaconGlobal Group in Dallas/Ft. Worth. For some organizations, the response has been to increase the use of digital media and social networks for reaching customers.

In January 2009, a 1to1 Media Expert Opinion article offered 10 marketing predictions for 2009. In addition to predicting that smart organizations would continue to market throughout the downturn, the article also predicted that digital media and social networks will continue to provide cost-effective delivery channels for customer messaging, but will be most effective when integrated with other marketing channels.

“With Twitter’s explosion this year, the staying power of social networks, and the thirst for information about the topic by marketers, these predictions really hit the mark,” according to Elizabeth (Clampet) Glagowski, Managing Editor at Peppers & Rogers Group, New York. She says it’s about providing relevant communication to people in the channels they prefer, and providing tools for them to participate.

“In my experience digital got a lot more recognition [in 2009], especially websites and other digital channels, like viral and email marketing,” says Laurence Botha, CMO, Johannesburg, South Africa. Similarly, Hugh M. Ryan, B2B Marketing Communications & President at Ryan Wellnitz & Associates in Providence, saw an increased reliance on social media, in large measure, he believes, because many types of marketing outreach can be made relatively inexpensively through LinkedIn, Twitter, et al.

To be effective, digital and social media marketing need to be considered as part of your complete integrated marketing strategy, rather than as add-ons or experiments. Like any other marketing approach, businesses need to have well-defined goals and consider the impact on the brand.

• “Social media is a great way to maximize money and find low-cost investments that drive marketing,” answers Chris Thornton, CMO of Definition 6. (DMNews, Toolbox: Cost-effective social media, May 18, 2009) “Like any marketing program, social media has to be done deliberately and strategically, and it has to offer real value and positive experiences to your target audience.” It’s important to be realistic, he says. “In the beginning, pick one thing to do well, and focus on one or two primary objectives,” he explains. “If you are not following that principle, you’re not going to achieve your goals — even if you are spending less. In many cases, social media may not be the best medium for ‘pure capitalism,’ especially if it doesn’t give the user something useful and interesting.”

• Social Media, which tends to have lower costs than other forms of marketing (commodity tools) can be very cost effective for those wanting to get customers to spread and share messages. On the other hand, marketers need to be careful, because doing it wrong will result in more work, and in some situations, brand backlash. (Jeremiah Owyang (blog), SF, Silicon Valley, Partner, Customer Strategy, Altimeter Group, Social Media effective during Recessions)
• As for making a more customer-centric web site, Susan Rice-Lincoln, Europe’s Leading Social Media Expert at Masterthenewnet.com, has a few suggestions: First, take a look at how you have set up your site. Most sites are built around what the company wants to tell its customers about itself. The problem with this approach is that most visitors come to you-not necessarily to find out about you but to find a solution for THEIR problems. So one way of making things more customer-centric is to build your site around buyer personas (profiles) and the needs of each type of buyer you have. This doesn’t mean you have to completely re-do your site–just add on some pages which talk directly to the different types of buyers you are targeting and try to answer their questions directly. You can also make things more interactive by adding a forum where customers can chat both with you and each other. Other ideas are adding polls or even allowing them to have live chats with you. “I am a big believer that your website should be the center of all things social,” says Rice-Lincoln, “and with a few clever additions you can make your site more interactive and a place where people can talk about issues that are troubling them.”

Aside from the cost-effectiveness and the speed-to-customers advantages of digital and social media marketing approaches, there are at least two other important factors to consider: measurement of marketing effectiveness and the strategic value of using the latest technologies to market to prospective customers.

In his blog article, 5 Reasons Why Digital Marketing Will Thrive in the Recession, Jay Baer asserts that online marketing of all types offers superior measurability and trackability in comparison to traditional tactics. “When implemented correctly, banner ads, organic search, paid search, blogs and social media, email, lifecycle marketing and all other online marketing tactics provide a user by user scoreboard that can be utilized to ascertain precise return on investment metrics for each campaign,” he says. “In this way, online marketing provides companies the ability to test a wide array of tactics, evaluate which generates the best response, and then adjust the marketing program accordingly.”

If your long-term marketing strategy doesn’t include exploiting the latest technologies for touching prospective customers, you may be missing an opportunity to establish reach to future generations of customers and positioning your business for competitive disadvantage. Technologies are being created everyday to help market. Fortune 500 companies have discovered that e-mail campaigning is a must have marketing technique, according to David Reed, E-mail Marketing Consultant, Colorado Springs. “And why not? There are 1.5 Billion people on the internet today sending 60 Billion e-mails. Many check their e-mails the moment they log onto their computers. Many have multiple e-mail accounts. And on average, they check their e-mails 3-4 times a day.” Reed also points out that social networks have given people the ability to spread the word for free. “And when you think about technologies,” he says, “you have to keep future generations in mind. How are they communicating? Those people within 5-10 years are going to be the customers. How are businesses going to get the word across to those people?”
 
Whether in a rough economy or when markets are strong, smart companies will continue to take advantage of the latest digital and social networking marketing approaches. As Mark Burwell, Owner Evolutions Business Group in Green Bay, puts it, “Marketing and understanding the new markets will be the survival for the future.”

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my fellow members of professional networking groups, as well as fellow bloggers, for your insights and contributions, which are expressed and reflected in the content of this feature.

Marketing in a Rough Economy

During this recession, businesses have been forced to cut marketing budgets, either looking for innovative lower-cost approaches to marketing, or resorting to marketing less aggressively. But are cutbacks in marketing the right thing to do in a rough economy? “Now is the time to be bold and take action to grow your business,” according to Sandra Lee, “Building a Case for Marketing in Any Economy.” She adds, “This economy demands that you become known, liked and trusted enough for people to buy from you. Trusted enough for them to allow you to become their solution”

In January 2009, a 1to1 Media Expert Opinion article, “Marketers Urged to Market Smarter in 2009,” offered 10 marketing predictions for 2009 based on Alterian’s annual forecast, “Marketing: The Year Ahead.” At the top of the list: Smart organizations will continue to market throughout the downturn.

“Marketing is a continuous process,” says Kristie Lorette, Copywriter & Marketing Consultant, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale. “Smart companies know, understand and use this to their advantage.” As Sean O’Donnell, Account Executive, New York, puts it, “This was true 20 years ago, 50 years ago and is still true today.”

Will those organizations that took a ‘business as usual’ approach to marketing have the long-term advantage? According to Shauna Peters, Marketing Manager, Washington, D.C., these smart organizations are the ones collecting what market share there is to be had right now, and that will only grow when the economy recovers. “Marketing throughout the downturn has helped a handful a smart, marketing-savvy companies,” believes Mary Adams, Principal at Sage Advice Marketing Consulting in Denver. “But so many more companies slashed budgets and marketing staff, without holding market share or revenue. It will be interesting to see if this majority can truly recapture their position in 2010.”

For those businesses that cut the marketing budget for 2009, perhaps fear was the driving force rather than rationality to propel business forward in any economy, as Sheila Bacon, Principal at BaconGlobal Group in Dallas/Ft. Worth pointed out. “I notice that ‘fear’ or let me say ‘risk aversion’ was not on the list [of predictions for 2009.] It should have been, because it is a high motivator of marketing behaviors from Main street to Wall street.” Meldrum & Fewsmith’s former Senior VP, J. Welsey Rosberg reports “ I have yet to see any study that proves timidity is the route to success. Studies consistently have proven that companies that have the intelligence and guts to maintain or increase their overall marketing and advertising efforts in times of business downturns will get the edge on their timid competitors.”
(Ed Clark, “Recession Marketing Success Requires Boldness.”)

While competitors are lying low, you have the opportunity to seize the market with the right marketing strategy. Says Lee: “You have a wider field to let people know what makes you different in a market of many without distinction. In most cases, the competition won’t be trying to contact your prospects as usual. They probably won’t even be contacting their own clients as often. This makes it all that much easier for you to get attention with clear differentiation in your market (what makes you special, different, THE desired choice?). It makes it easier for your PR, ads, in-house marketing efforts, internet marketing, etc. to be noticed … that is IF you have a plan you are implementing to put yourself out in front of your public in remarkable ways.”

Aversion to marketing risk may have opened the doors for those with more aggressive marketing strategies to step up and over the competition. “All I saw was the majority of marketers running around like headless chickens trying not to lose their jobs. This year definitely separated the chaff from the wheat,” says Laurence Botha, CMO, Johannesburg, South Africa. “The field was wide open to reach customers I had not been able to target before because of their loyalty to other brand names. Well, loyalty waned and we had our chance to get in with the right solutions.”

For some organizations, the right solution was to integrate digital media and social networks with their other marketing channels, which was also on the list of marketing predictions for 2009. I’ll touch on these cost-effective delivery channels in my next post.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my fellow members of professional networking groups, as well as fellow bloggers, for your insights and contributions, which are expressed and reflected in the content of this feature.

The Self-Confident Product Manager

A while back, I identified what I believe are the ten critical success factors for building a reputation as a trusted product manager. By focusing on and establishing goals in these areas, a product manager exhibits confidence, which helps when developing the relationships that are necessary to succeed. Those critical success factors are:

1. Practice 365/360 communication (i.e., 365 days, 360 degrees).
2. Ensure all stakeholders have a clear understanding of the business case.
3. Use your powers of influence, negotiation, leadership.
4. Provide everyone every opportunity to speak up and ask questions.
5. Manage expectations of all stakeholders.
6. Prepare a contingency plan.
7. Be an advocate for both your customers and your brand.
8. Don’t confuse yourself (or innovation) with your customer (or value).
9. Understand the financial drivers of the product.
10. Always deliver on your promises.

In a recent Harvard Business Publishing Blog posting, Marshall Goldsmith, a world authority in helping successful leaders achieve positive, lasting change in behavior, revealed how to “Build Your Self Confidence Like a Leader.” His suggestions apply to successful CEOs and Product Managers alike, and when combined with my own critical success factors, they provide a more comprehensive view of what a trusted & confident product management leader is made of. Following are Goldsmith’s five suggestions for building self confidence:

1. Don’t worry about being perfect. There are never right or wrong answers to complex business decisions. The best that you can do as a leader is to gather all of the information that you can (in a timely manner), do a cost-benefit analysis of potential options, use your best judgment — and then go for it.
2. Learn to live with failure. Great salespeople are the ones who get rejected the most often. They just ask for the order more than the other salespeople. You are going to make mistakes. You are human. Learn from these mistakes and move on.
3. After you make the final decision — commit! Don’t continually second-guess yourself. Great leaders communicate with a sense of belief in what they are doing and with positive expectations toward the achievement of their vision.
4. Show courage on the outside — even if you don’t always feel it on the inside. Everyone is afraid sometimes. If you are a leader, your direct reports will read your every expression. If you show a lack of courage, you will begin to damage your direct reports’ self-confidence.
5. Find happiness and contentment in your work. Life is short. My extensive research indicates that we are all going to die anyway. Do your best. Follow your heart. When you win, celebrate. When you lose, just start over the next day.

Product Managers are leaders. As for all leaders, exhibiting self-confidence as a product manager is critical. Whenever I take some time for self-reflection on my own leadership history and aspirations, I’m reminded of one of my own leadership pillars: Always aim higher. Don’t settle for what is easily attained or achieved. Set goals that will challenge your determination and character. In the words of soccer star Mia Hamm: “Celebrate what you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.”