Bill Freedman

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Social Networks for Business: Starting Strategy and Tactics

By Bill Freedman

I’ve recently been asked by a client about defining their “social strategy.” For the client this meant “how can I leverage blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and other social networks for business?” My answer shocked: “the more important question is how will you deliver social channel activity?”

Social Networks for Business Landscape

Social Networks for Business via BuddyMedia, Inc.

The debate, in other words, was over the semantics of social network participation: is it strategic or tactical. The client was asserting that social is a strategic endeavor than needs planning. I was advocating that it is a tactic that needs consistent execution, and to analyze if it was necessary to apply this strategy to a product using a sample size calculator is the best choice to learn this.

As with most semantics arguments, both sides are right. Social network participation benefits from a strategic foundation: funding, staffing, tools, policies and processes, for example to manage the payments on a company getting the paystubs online could be the best choice. And social networking is defined by action: posts, tweets, comments, etc. The strategic foundation is a benefit, not a requirement, as anyone who has set up and account and messaged “Hello world” knows.

Neither of us dealt with the real issue: outcomes. How will social networks drive awareness, generate leads, provide service and build an online community? What are the measures of success? How does the marketing budget and promotion mix change with a focus on social?

Social Networks for Business

The solution was simple: start now and evolve participation over time. We chose a company blog as the primary content delivery channel to be supported by Twitter and LinkedIn posts, commenting and monitoring. YouTube and Facebook are left for another day.

The deliverables will evolve a marketing strategy with indexsy.com. A blog post. Tweets. A blog calendar. Requests for follows. Retweets. Updates to LinkedIn. Blog comments. Lather, rinse, repeat ( and measure).

Content is targeted to be 60% educational, 30% entertainment and 10% shameless sales pitches to start.

Strategy complete. Now the client’s social networks for business journey begins…

How would you do it differently…leave a comment. Thanks!

Ideas in the Social Media Era: I’ll Get It Right the 5th Time

By Bill Freedman

I love this chart. Not only is it funny, it gets to the core of how the social media era is disrupting creativity.

The chart puts its focus on article length (and perhaps the quantity of postings and/or impressions). The chart is silent on quality.

Great ideas have always been distilled to their essence through pity catchphrases. With social media, any idea, even before it’s refined (let alone great) is distilled for social network impact. The network for disseminating ideas is becoming more powerful than ideas themselves.

This is a new challenge for the creator and innovator. When is an idea ready to be published? What are readers’ expectations for quality and accuracy of new ideas? Does it help or hurt your reputation to publish many unrefined ideas? Is your idea sharing risk tolerance dependent on the size and nature of your social network? Are facts and accuracy destined to become endangered species during the social media era?

I don’t know, but I’m going to publish this now and refine it later. My sense of optimism suggests that we’ll muddle through.

Say NO to Marketing Gimmicks

By Bill Freedman

As a consumer and marketing professional, I’m not a fan of marketing gimmicks. In my opinion, they are the pornography of marketing: hard to define, but you know them when you see them. Teaser offers on credit cards, no money down home purchases, ROI studies that promise 400% returns.

marketing gimmicks, Joe Izuzu

Do you remember Joe Isuzu?

If you’re like me, you make a mental accounting of businesses that overuse marketing gimmicks and think twice about doing business with those companies and brands.

Before continuing my rant against gimmicks, let me acknowledge something important: sometimes gimmicks drive results. And because they can work, they deserve a place in the marketing toolbox.

Unfortunately, too many of us marketers lack the discipline to reserve gimmicks for the rare occasions when they might be effective. They are such a large part of marketing folklore that they overshadow the important long term efforts behind building sustainable brands and companies. As a result, I council my clients to take gimmicks out of the everyday toolbox and put them in the dark and dank storage room of once-in-a-blue-moon tactics.

Protect Your Brand from Marketing Gimmicks

Here’s why gimmicks can hurt more then help:

  • Gimmicks place tactical expedience ahead of strategic advantage. The products you worked hard to build over many months, that solve real problems, that create business value are trumped by the output of a 20 minute conference room brainstorm.
  • Gimmicks attract the wrong kind of attention. Instead of demonstrating that your product has value, they showcase that you are willing to make your sales team dress up in an egg salad sandwich costume and play “Let’s Make a Deal.” All too often your silly gimmick becomes more memorable than your advantages. And desperation is hardly attractive or persuasive.
  • Gimmicks are unfocused and defocusing. By their nature, gimmicks are loud and attractive. They’ll generate measurable results like new web site visitors or crowded trade show booths. Like a sugar high, the results are short lived without setting you up for medium and long term success. Instead, you would have been better served by focusing on measuring actionable sales opportunities.

In the process of creating something new, it’s crucial to engage customers on multiple fronts. Instead of solely focusing on grabbing attention, channel your marketing expertise into articulating the intrinsic value of your business and positioning yourself as a reliable and trustworthy partner. Unlike short-term marketing gimmicks, these endeavors demand time and dedication, yet they offer enduring value. Incorporating effective SEO strategies into your marketing approach can further amplify the visibility and long-term impact of your business, check the website linked here for more info.

Winning Customer Reference Programs in the Internet Age

By Bill Freedman

Virtually everyone can agree that customer references are critical tools for B2B sales efforts. In my career I’ve headed up numerous customer reference programs, interviewed a number of heroes at customer sites and written a lot of success stories. The sales team could never get enough customer stories.

Did these programs drive sales results? Yes. Were they what the prospective customer wanted? No.

The plain fact is that prospective customers want to hear directly from current customers…without any vendor involvement, filtering, positioning or influence. None. Nada. This is simply because:

  • End users generally trust each other
  • Customers are far less trusting of vendors

Can you earn a prospective customer’s trust while you are selling? Of course.  But that doesn’t change their preference for communicating directly with each other. With social networks and other Web tools, it has never been easier to bypass the vendor when checking references.

Try Peer-to-Peer Customer Reference Programs

Peer to peer conversations between prospects and customers isn’t a problem to solve but a fact to accommodate. Below are best practices for leveraging your installed base to create a winning customer reference program:

  1. Keep publishing success stories on your web site. They are extremely useful for establishing the facts around the business you serve and problems you solve. Accept the limitations of written endorsements and do more.
  2. Embrace transparency. Enable customers and prospects to share their experiences. Affinity groups on social network sites like LinkedIn are a start, but public forums and wikis running on your web site are better for customers, prospects and your brand.
  3. Don’t fret a few negative reviews. Everyone knows that your company and product aren’t perfect. Negative reviews give your prospects a chance to see how your business relates to customers. You may also use the Delighted platform if you want to create free customer surveys.
  4. Keep things lively. Nobody likes to show up to a dead party. Assign a community leader who contributes authoritatively and consistently, and who inspires reciprocity from your customers.
  5. Achieve critical mass. You want to get to the point where there are enough customer “ambassadors” who can and will respond on your behalf.

Points 3, 4 and 5 are very important as a whole. The biggest negative for any peer-based customer reference program is indifference.

A Fresh Look at Conversion Rate

By Bill Freedman

Conversion rate is the one of the most critical macro-level statistics and trends monitored by Web marketers. Simply put, conversion rate is the relationship between two easily measured quantities:

conversion rate formula

Tools like Webtrends, Omniture and Google Analytics simplify the collection and calculation of raw Web traffic and conversion rate. Investment decisions on lead generation campaigns and programs are now based on hard numbers such as conversion rate and program cost.

The easy job for the marketing team is establishing a “natural conversion rate” for your brand, products and company. Just implement an analytics tool, create conversion forms on your site or e-store and measure the results. The harder job, and the true measure of marketing success, is to steadily improve your conversion rate over time.

Improving your conversion rate at the macro level means that you’ve improved your effectiveness in one or more of identifying prospective customers, creating affinity with your brand and changing the individual behavior of Web visitors.

brain_image

Conversions happen in buyers’ heads and are only measured on your web site. Changing people’s behavior by getting them to consider and purchase a new product is a difficult and worthy marketing task. Think about it: do you give out your email address and name with each and every site you visit? Do you want site owners to contact you after your first visit to the web site?

Improving Conversion Rate: the Real Job of Marketing

Knowing your conversion rate is one thing. Having the skills to improve and optimize conversion rates over time is the real job of marketing. Communicating information of value, establishing trust and persuasion are the critical and harder tasks that require significant attention, deliberation and skill. Without an analytics tool hard-wired to customer brains, skill, experience, artistry and tenacity remain essential marketing skills.