3 Keys to Content Strategy

Why invest in content marketing? Do you actually have a content strategy? Why use social media? Consider these questions and get prudent answers …

Simply stated, content marketing is useless without a content strategy. Recently, I read an article “Moving From Content Marketing to Content Strategy” According to the article, 8 in 10 companies use content marketing, but less than 4 in 10 enterprises have and use a buyer journey. Thus, I want to share with three considerations for a content strategy.

1) Start with a Brand Definition and Product Positioning Statement

The brand is at the core of it all. You cannot have a successful product/service, content plan, and communication execution without a solid brand definition and position. “The goal of brand marketing is to link your identity, values, and personality with communications to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer. Brand marketing is not just about putting your logo and business name in as many places as possible and expecting to generate sales. Many times, the importance of brand marketing gets overlooked, as it takes time. Many marketing departments are focused on short-term goals, rather than nurturing long-term goals that impact the entire business, like building a brand.” (Source)

What is a brand strategy? 

A brand strategy can be hard to define but encompasses:

• What your brand stands for.
• What promises your brand makes to customers.
• What personality your brand conveys through its marketing.

Here are three things every brand needs to define:

• What is your brand’s objective?
• Who are your customers?
• How does your brand define long-term success?

 (Source)

Product Strategy

So you believe you have a strong product or service for a defined target market. Your next step is that you need a positioning statement that succinctly defines your offering. Here is the product positioning statement:

• For …………….………… [target customer]
• Who ……………….……. [key qualifier – form]
• Our product is a ….. [product category]
• That provides ………. [key benefit]
• Unlike ………………….. [main competitor]
• Our product ……….… [key point of differentiation]

This positioning statement is for internal use only. It is not explicitly communicated. The positioning statement should drive your content and communication plan. All content and communication should support and reinforce the product/service positioning statement.

Content Strategy

Your content strategy is the intersection of the brand and product strategy coupled with your target audience behaviors, needs, wants, and motivations. You should lean more to what is compelling to your audience than pushing your own brand agenda. Your content strategy objective is to get your target audience emotionally attached to your brand. 

I have written an extremely detailed content strategy playbook that can be found here:

The series provides the following:

• Content Marketing Goals and Objectives
• Determining your Target Audience for Content
• Leveraging Your Brand Position to Produce Compelling Content
• Social Audits to Drive Content Marketing
• Messaging Strategy Before Content Strategy
• Developing a Content Marketing Strategy
• How Do You Know Your Content Will Pay Dividends
• Content Marketing Metrics
• The Power of Orchestrated UGC – (User Generated Content)
• Earned Media – Finding Influencers to Distribute your Content
• What Does It Mean to Produce Data Driven Content?
• How to Determine Which Content is Driving Success for Your Brand

Communication Strategy

The communication strategy should be driven by your target audience behaviors – the platforms they are active on and how they are influenced. Understanding your audience behavior will drive you to a communication plan. Your communication methodology must include a plan that utilizes owned, earned, and paid media. It also needs to address the use of original, curated, user-generated, and influencer content.

2) Integrating Owned, Earned, and Paid Media

Look at the figure above. Across the x axis, you can see there are three time phases of a campaign defined – pre-reveal, reveal, and post reveal. The horizontals on the y axis are three different media types. Starting with owned media, it is good to leak some content early on. This could be in the form of a teaser, trailer, or even releasing excerpts before the big promotion or reveal. By doing so, you start to create some interests and following. It primes earned media for the official reveal, promotion, or release. Obviously the reveal or promotion time is when most of your content is released. But there is also an opportunity to produce and release content after the promotion. Content that talks to and summarizes the event or launch and reinforces the reveal in a compelling and entertaining way.

“Earned media is coverage or promotion of your brand through organic means. It’s a very effective form of content marketing and is also the toughest media type to get.” It includes reviews, media coverage, guest posts, mentions, social shares, and (free) influencers. (Source) Earned media is leveraging your audience and advocates to help circulate and further promote your content. It starts by having content that is worthy of sharing. Assuming that is in place, you seed your content or provide references to it in places where your audience exists. 

Paid media execution should take place during the actual promotion time. This is both an economical and strategic decision. Economic because you want to minimize expenses; strategic in that it focuses at the premiere time. Maximize exposure – minimize expenses doing so.

3) Understand the A-Path for Social Media to Optimize Users’ Experience and Content Marketing Results

This chart above is referred to as the “A-Path.” As a brand, first you want to get your targets’ “Attention.” Then you want them to be “Attracted” to you. Once the targets are attracted to the brand, we want them to build “Affinity” for the brand. As they start to build affinity for the brand, we want the targets to literally opt-in to be part of the brand “Audience.” A subset of the Audience will be power users and look to turn these individuals into brand “Advocates.”

In the beginning of this A-Path we work off of the brand’s assets (or the non-brand digital assets – the whole universe of digital conversations that are not owned by the brand). We monitor the entire digital space for relevant conversations and engage with the consumer where the conversations are happening. We then refer these people to the brand’s digital assets and build Affinity by producing valuable (informative and entertaining) content. As we build Affinity, we offer opportunities to join the brand assets (follow, like, register). We then identify the power users and engage one-on-one to build advocates.

Note that the strategy of following this A-Path approach is to start to attract your target audience in digital spaces they participate in and slowly bring them to your digital assets. Company pages on platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Tik-Tok, etc are NOT your digital assets. You do not own them and you are subject to their rules, and regulations. They should be perceived as gateways to YOUR digital assets such as your website, blog, and landing pages.

CONCLUSION AND HELP TO MAKE IT HAPPEN

Content strategy is the essence of brand communication. A content strategy should be aimed at increasing your audience and their “stickiness” to your brand. Don’t just produce content. Align a content strategy with the journey of your customer/client.  Invest in the upfront work and see measurable results.

Key to Successful Lead Generation

Lead generation requires a couple of prerequisite steps in order to yield winning results. Are your conversion campaigns driving the results you are looking for? If not, maybe you are missing a key element.

This past week I had a call with a prospective client. She wanted to run a paid ad promo to get people to purchase her “service” for Mother’s Day – 1 month away. She shared with me that she ran a similar paid ad promo for Valentine’s Day and needless to say it bombed. Her expectation was that she would run targeted paid media ads on Facebook and get people to sign up for a monthly subscription. I basically told her there was little chance of success because she was missing two key elements.

When was the last time you saw a sponsored ad, did not know anything about the brand, and followed through on the brand’s CTA (call to action)? If you have never acted in this manner, how can you expect others to do it when you run your marketing campaigns?

Brand Building is key to successful lead generation success. There are two elements of brand building that must be in place before you run lead generation campaigns.

Brand Strategy

Brand Building starts with brand strategy.

A brand strategy can be hard to define but encompasses:

• What your brand stands for.
• What promises your brand makes to customers.
• What personality your brand conveys through its marketing.

Here are three things every brand needs to define:

• What is your brand’s objective?
• Who are your customers?
• How does your brand define long-term success?

(Source)

Audience Development

Audience Development is part of brand building and is a key prerequisite of lead generation. You can Google “touch points before purchase” and find various reports that indicate numerous touch points are required before a purchase is made. One source states that it takes 5 to 20 touch points. Granted, this is quite a wide spread that really does not zero in on the exact number, but suffice it to say, it is not one ad that will lead to a conversion. You need to communicate your brand story and product positioning to your target audience before hitting them with a CTA ad.

“Audience development is all about: building and nurturing a crowd of loyal people and customers around your brand who constantly engage with you and keep coming back for more.” (Source) You might ask, “how can you use audience development to generate leads if audience development conditions existing customers?”

I will give you an example of an approach that I am using with a current client. The client is a start up with minimal following and awareness of their service. 

Step 1 – define brand strategy and product position. (Info here)

Step 2 – Build a content plan. (Info here)

Step 3 – Publish content on your blog and social media channels.

Step 4 – Boost your post to your targeted audience using a set audience definition on social platforms driven by behaviors and demographics.

Step 5 – When people “like” your post, invite them to follow your brand.

These five steps result in increased awareness for your product/brand and increase your audience following. This means that subsequent posts and paid media will increase your audience reach. Thus you are building an audience prior to producing CTA ads. If you work on brand building (brand strategy and audience development) prior to lead generation activities, I guarantee you that your lead generation will yield higher measurable results.

While brand building is not a short term objective, it makes your short term lead generation more successful. 

Know the Difference of Storytelling and Copywriting – Your Brand Success Depends on It

Like many of you stuck within the confines of our home, my family and I try to figure out what to watch on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and/or Hulu on any given night. One night, my wife suggested Hillbilly Elegy – she read the book and loved it. I checked the critic reviews on Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes – and the movie was pretty much panned. I mentioned this to her and she said, yes, but it is a worthwhile story to hear. 

Should we watch a movie (or consume any content) if it is a good story but poor content production? Or for that matter, what happens when you don’t have a good story from the start?

I want to focus on this point as it relates to successful marketing as I highlighted in the article Brand Communication Methodology That Drives Success.

Storytelling – Part of the Brand Definition

If you read that article, you might recall my Brand-Product-Content-Communication model where I emphasized the “brand” is the core of marketing. “The goal of brand marketing is to link your identity, values, and personality with communications to your audience. Essentially, your brand is the bridge between your product and your customer.” (Source: https://blog.rebrandly.com/what-is-brand-marketing/) Storytelling needs to happen within brand definition. The “why” and the storytelling of your brand product/service should strongly resonate with your target audience.

“To become a brand storyteller, you must find the great stories to tell, have a process of telling them, and have the right people to tell the stories. The brand is never the protagonist in storytelling; rather, it plays the part of the solution or the vehicle through which the story is told. The story is instead focused on what people care about, which humanizes the story. The effect is often subtle, but impactful.” (Source: Mohanbir Sawhney –  https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-become-brand-storyteller-mohanbir-sawhney

Copywriting – Because Words Are Important

At one point in my career, I was the head of product marketing and my boss, a brilliant Chief Marketing Officer with a PhD in Cognitive Psychology would always remind me, words matter.

Copywriting is the act or occupation of writing text for the purpose of advertising or other forms of marketing. The product, called copy or sales copy, is written content that aims to increase brand awareness and ultimately persuade a person or group to take a particular action. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copywriting

But notice a big difference here – as I state in my Brand-Product-Content-Communication Model copywriting happens in content strategy/planning. Storytelling happens in brand strategy/planning. 

Wrap Up

Storytelling is not the same as copywriting. A “copywriter” is not necessarily a storyteller. 

Storytelling and copywriting are different skill sets (although, an individual may have both proficiencies) and in successful marketing what we really need is both. Storytelling, as an endeavor, happens in a different marketing function than copywriters typically practice. Far too many brands ignore brand development and the importance of storytelling scripts as an imperative function within brand development.

It is easy to think of storytelling and copywriting as the same, but they really are different and happen in different stages of Marketing Strategy and Planning. But the outcome of both storytelling and copywriting are executed in “Communication.” 

A Case For Changing Up Your Marketing

If you have been a regular reader of the Social Steve blog, you may have noticed that I have not posted for a bit – apologies. I have been blogging for about seven years and posting a weekly article, regularly. Recently, I have felt that my posts got a bit stagnant. I continually emphasized the importance of listening, engaging, and creating the ultimate customer experience for your audience. After about 300 articles, I find myself thinking maybe I have covered the topic in too many ways.

I had gotten a bit bored with my own writings so I figured maybe my audience had too. (Although I continue to get a strong number of pageviews – and I am very thankful to many for reading them.) But that is not always the case – especially when it comes to consumer or professional brands. I know it and you know it. We have all experienced a decrease marketing results at some point in our career.

Unfortunately I find an abundance of marketers that are “stuck in the same story” challenge. Each morning I Google “marketing” and look at the latest news. As I have suggested to others, “Great Marketers are Perpetual Students”. I want to keep up on everything – the latest trends, success stories, and information from experts. But I have to tell you that lately when I Google “marketing”, I feel like I am reading the same thing over and over again. I am bored and uninspired. The marketing world and people covering it need a kick in the @$$.

Could this be happening to your target audience – they are bored and uninspired because they are getting tired of your digital and mobile presence. Are you saying the same thing over and over again with a slightly different tone or shade of color?

If you want to continue to keep your audience engaged, interested, and advocating on your behalf, you must change it up a bit. Make sure you have data that shows what people are coming back to read. What people interact with, comment on, share, and like. And then everything else, change it up.

I have been leading social marketing and audience development for a startup since July 2015. In this position I had been producing a very good increase of marketing results as measured by growth of audience, followers, subscribers, and other KPIs (key performance indicators). In the past couple of weeks however, things began to diminish a bit. So my team and I started experimenting with some new things – the way we present our content, the content we cover, using new writers, curating different types of content. Mixing many things up. After a week and a half of doing so, we are seeing measured results snap back.

As I mentioned, I have been doing this since July 2015 … less than nine months. In that short period of time, it is easy to get overwhelmed by numerous responsibilities and stay comfortable in what you present to your audience. The lesson to be learned is that you need to regroup and brainstorm some new approaches to keep your existing audience engaged and excited while at the same time assessing new ways to capture a larger audience. I am sure your experience dictates that you need to do this. So …

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

The New Way of Getting People Motivated to Do What the Brand Wants

I get it – marketing is all about getting your target audience to move in a direction that is beneficial to the brand. It is a company initiative that must turn measureable results. It is a business function that must be accountable to company goals and objectives. It is not an altruistic function.

But something has dramatically changed. Your audience is skeptical of your marketing ploys. Your audience rejects your marketing push if it is interruptive and lacks relevance. Remember, your audience engages with their own network. They often market for your brand and also against your brand. Your audience’s behavior and influence of your brand success has changed, so you must change your marketing approach.

In marketing, we aim to have our audience respond to brand “call to actions.” But we can no longer go straight for desired brand outcomes. We must first build relationships, build trust, and cultivate our audience. Old school marketing communication no longer works. Marketing communications cannot push brand agenda and be a way one pushes brand content. Audiences no longer react positively to this form of brand marketing.

Look, I know I go by the pen name “Social Steve” so you would expect me to push the importance of social media, social marketing, social media marketing – call it what you want. My recommendations and actions are driven by one facet – audience behavior. Current audience behavior dictates the need for you to change your marketing approach. Not social media hype, but mainstream audience behavior.

Last week I presented to 60+ top level executives at an executive forum. I stressed the importance of their need to change their understanding and participation in social marketing. I would say my message resonated with about 1/3 of the audience. The other 2/3’s of the audience seemed very uncomfortable with my push for them to change their marketing approach given current audience behavior. Far too many seasoned professionals are stagnant in their leadership approach. The need to change makes them uncomfortable. All I can say is “shame.” If you are a leader, you must lead based upon the behavior of the audience you want to capture.

So what is the change that must occur to “Getting People Motivated to Do What the Brand Wants?” From a theoretical approach that is easy. You want to build relationships so that your target not only loves your product or service, but they love your brand as well. They love what you stand for and your commitment to customers. The hard part is the execution of this because it takes times. There is rarely love at first sight from a customer to a brand. You must earn their trust, love, and commitment to your brand.

I’ll give you an example. I currently head up audience development for a start up. I am constantly under pressure to increase the number of subscribers. I understand that is the company’s main objective. I get directions from my executive management to communicate, “respond by signing up today.” I know that I cannot ask for that call to action until I have built up some trust from the individuals I look to convert. While my management measures my success on number of sign ups, I must stay committed to building relationships with my audience. I cannot give in to the pressure of pushing for sign ups too early. That will not turn winning results. So while everyone wants results immediately, I have been cautious not to push my audience too early in the relationship. Now, four months into my stint at the start up I am seeing inertia and momentum. I am building strong relationships with the target market and our audience is responding most positively.

Moral of the story, it is easy to give into the objectives and KPIs (key performance indictors) of your company. But in the long run, the results will not be successful. Patience and commitment is required.

If you want to motivate your audience and drive brand objectives, understand your audience first. Play to the audience’s whims and do not be myopic to your company goals. This may sound trite, but play nice, make friends, and then ask for what you want to accomplish. Think about it.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Storytelling Must Be In-Line with Brand Persona

Everyone is talking about storytelling like it is the Messiah for marketing. Actually, I think it is pretty important. Not the Messiah, but definitely a very important part of a brand’s marketing mix. But here’s the question no one has really put on the table. What if the brand story is fiction rather than non-fiction? Or to be a bit more direct, what if the stories the brand produces have nothing to do with the brand value proposition or the brand’s persona?

I bring up the question of brand storytelling alignment with what the brand stands for in light of a recent marketing campaign by McDonald’s. Rick Ferguson did an excellent job capturing “The Danger of McStorytelling.” He highlights McDonald’s “Signs” commercial and its debacle. The ads show McDonald’s Golden arch signs with caring messages rooted in the community.

McDonald’s attempts to show a soft side by trying to say “At McDonald’s, we care. We’re more than just purveyors of empty calories; we’re a part of your community, too.” Seems nice and compelling like motherhood and apple pie. And while there are questions whether the signs are fictitious or not (Photoshop can do wonders), the real issue is that the campaign and story is totally out of line with McDonald’s value proposition and brand persona. People do not believe that McDonald’s cares as much as the signs display. It does not fit their personality. It is outside of the value proposition they deliver to their market. And thus, the public used digital and social platforms to create an uproar and protest.

There are a number of other brands that have failed in the same vein. I know this seems a bit twisted, but even though storytelling is a strong marketing ploy, you cannot just tell stories. Your stories must synch with your brand position and persona.

In an article I wrote back in 2010 “Marketing Leadership (with a hint of Social Media)”, I talked about the need for having a position statement defined. The positioning statement template looks like this:

• For …………….………… [target customer]
• Who ……………….……. [key qualifier – form]
• Our product is a ….. [product category]
• That provides ………. [key benefit]
• Unlike ………………….. [main competitor]
• Our product ……….… [key point of differentiation]

I stated, “The formation of the positioning statement is done to know exactly who you are.” I later go on to explain that all marketing communication should be tested against the positioning statement to make sure the brand persona is reinforced or at least not in opposition to what the brand value is.

Some think that taking time to define their positioning statement is just an academic exercise. But when we look at marketing campaigns like the McDonald’s campaign above, you got to wonder if “creative marketing leaders” really understand some fundamentals of successful marketing.

You should start with defining the brand position at a minimum. But I think you should take it a step further. What does your brand stand for? What is the …

• Brand vision
• Brand promise
• Brand personality

Define these. Make pretend your brand is a person. What would that person’s characteristics be? When you have this in place you are ready to do your marketing. Then you are ready to do some storytelling (among other activities).

If you just go ahead and produce a creative campaign without making sure it is in line with your brand persona, you end up getting egg on your face. Or is that Egg McMuffin on your face.

Be smart. Start with the basics before you get creative.

Make It Happen!
Social Steve

9 Factors Separate Social Marketers that are Ready to Kick Butt

It was seven years ago that my marketing career took a new turn to the world of social marketing. I noticed early, that brands would lose some control of their position and reputation as dictated by the democratized public. The people had a strong set of platforms to share their likes and dislikes for companies, brands, and products. In fact these objective opinions and declarations trump brand-marketing communication. The audiences’ voice is loud and moves fast.

Then I felt like I was pushing a boulder uphill in social marketing. But now I see the struggle easing and a good deal of the smoke clearing. I see that brands want to plug into their audiences’ behaviors and actions. Companies have a strong interest in leveraging digital and social technologies. Trepidation has been replaced by exuberance and to outsource or employ knowledgeable and experienced social marketers. And now I see that there are a number of social marketers ready to kick butt and make a real difference in empirical results that align to companies’ KPIs (key performance indicators).

So what are those successful social marketers doing that set them apart from wanna-bes? There are nine factors or social marketing practices that when executed together distinguish social marketers that will rise to the top.

1) Strategy – A while back I wrote an article “Where You Start in Social Media Strategy Defines Where You End Up.” You cannot just “do social.” You must start with a mission, goal and objective, and follow up the documented strategy with a plan.

2) Listening – When it comes to social marketing, I know you are talking, but are you listening. A key element to building a relationship is listening. I always liked the line; “we have two ears and one mouth so we should listen twice as mush as we talk.” Social marketing champions listen to people talking on the brand’s digital and social assets and the ones that the brand does not own. They listen for brand mentions as well as keywords that are relevant in the brand category.

3) Empathy – probably the greatest factor in social marketing success is having complete understanding and empathy for your audience. Successful marketers understand their audience. They know what turns them on and turns them off as well as what motivates them to deliver word of mouth marketing for the brand.

4) Messaging Strategy – this is a function straight out of marketing communications 101, but at the same time not an area the social marketer always tackles. Shrewd social marketers know exactly how they want their brand to look and sound in social channels. They make sure all communication and correspondence uphold the brand image they desire in social communications.

5) Content Strategy and Plan – In order to have a successful brand social presence, you need to have a continuous and compelling stream of content. Brands need to think like media companies. Many marketers find it difficult to shift from an advertorial mentality to a softer content marketing approach. (Required as a function of target audience perception and behavior.) To help here, I have offered advice. Start with three articles from this year – a) “4 Tips for Winning Content,” “Delivering the Content Your Audience Wants,” and “The Content Development Plan Every Marketer Should Use.”

6) Sharing – the best social marketers understand and plan how to get their brand content shared. It is more than simply having social widgets attached to a blog article. Rich relationship building and seeding various calls to action spawn greater brand sharing.

7) Personalization and Engagement Plan – in the day and age where just about every brand is going to partake in social media, successful brands need to be most relevant to their audience. Relevance comes from understanding individuals through engagement and personalization. Leading social marketers increase relevancy to their audience by having personalized communication and well defined engagement plans and then fine-tuning them based upon executional results.

8) Community – More and more social marketers and community managers are learning from the strengths and shortcomings of having a brand presence on Facebook. They are learning the true value of having an online community of loyalists and advocates that can be unleashed to do marketing on behalf of a brand. Now, Facebook has practically abandoned non-paid brand presence. At the same time, brand communities activate loyalists to produce advocates. Given these circumstances, I recommend you check out “Successful Social Marketing – Integrating Content and Community.”

9) Know How to Measure Results – I do not care what role anyone has in any line of business. You have to show results that are meaningful to the executive team. For social marketers this means going beyond “reach and engagement” because most executives I know cannot translate “reach and engagement” to their KPIs. If this is an area that still has you befuddled read “Here is the ROI for Social Marketing.”

So yes … I think there is a fair share of movers and shakers in the social marketing arena. And yes there are still a greater number of fakers out there. But the point is that you now have a large enough talent pool to go after to make a difference in your business. Drill into your candidates and make sure they have experience in the 9 areas I outlined above. And as always, if you have a question or need some help, contact me.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

Why Your Budget Must Include Website Re-Investment

Yes, it is that time of the year. Sure the leaves are falling and nature reinforces her beauty, but I am not talking about that. It is budget season and everyone is looking at what they have done in the past year and tweaking allocation numbers.

But before you finalize your budget by simply modifying last year’s budget, you need to take a fresh look. What will truly yield growth of brand awareness, consideration, sale, loyalty, and advocacy? I’d expect website revitalization was not on last year’s budget. I will also bet that many say, “websites – oh that is so ‘90’s,” but I will tell you a “correctly designed” website is so 2020’s. Let’s explore why.

First, let me state that I am very bullish on social marketing as a way to win over an audience and turn them into your most valued customers – advocates. But if we look at social media platforms today, we see that the platform evolution now hinders brand engagement with target audiences. Just look at Facebook. They have practically eliminated organic reach of brand postings. And you know just about all social platforms main objective is to optimize their own monetization. They also look to appeal to their audience. Not the brand’s audience. Social platform’s first concern is their success; not marketers success. Don’t be naive.

Second, I always state that marketers must have complete empathy for their target audience. Culture has been transformed by digital technologies. More people get information online (social networking, mobile, and the Internet) as a primary source. This consumer/client behavior means your website would be extremely compelling if it was a) dynamic with continuous content updates (posts), b) more interactive and social, and c) mobile ready.

The first step in revitalizing your website is to start thinking like a media company. Think about being the “Buzz Feed” for your brand category news, information, and entertainment. Produce original content regularly. Curate relevant content and include it on your website. Think about what it takes to be a resource for your audience such that they want to go to your website daily to get up-to-date information.

The next step in revitalizing your website is to make it more interactive and social. If we look at human behavior, we see that they do want to engage with brands. That is, if the brand makes it worth their while. Converse with your audience. Listen to your audiences needs and wants. Produce compelling content based on their input and comments. Build sustainable relationships. Facebook and other social networks have clamped your ability to engage. So bring that functionality to the digital platform you own and you control – your website. Consider building a community integrated within your website. True, you may not get as many subscribers as Facebook likes or Twitter followers, but certainly you will get individuals that want to remain engaged and are likely your best customers/clients.

At the same time, various social platforms do continue to be an important part of your marketing mix. They should be used to proliferate the content on your website. Additionally, paid media of social platforms is a very important budgetary consideration. The greatest value of paid media on social platforms is the ability to target specific demographics. I have seen paid media deliver very strong click through results (back to your website).

I hope it goes without saying that your website MUST be mobile ready. More and more people access the Internet via mobile device. Do you really want to eliminate access of your website to a majority of the population because you have not made the investment to make it mobile ready?

I have given you the three areas to focus on with regards to the revitalization of your website. Staying consistent in numerology, there are three reasons why website revitalization must be part of your 2015 budget:

1) Audience use of digital is not only ubiquitous but their individual use is very strong,
2) Your website is something you completely own and control … you do not have to worry about the usage rules being changed, and
3) Your website is likely the strongest digital source to monetize your brand.

Make sense? Can do?

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

The Power of Audience Trumps the Power of Your Marketing

It is a reality all brands and marketers must come to. Who has stronger influence on the awareness, consideration, purchase, and loyalty of your brand? You the marketer or others telling friends, family, and colleagues about the positives and negatives of your product or service? It is time to stop drinking your own Kool-Aid and recognize that the greatest power of brand conversion lies in the hands of the audience you target. The power comes from them advocating on your behalf.

More than ever, the entire user experience shapes the value and “goodness” (or lack there of) of your brand as perceived by the audience you wish to capture. All the elements of a user experience (corporate positioning, product positioning, product/service value, sales process, brand engagement, and customer support and service) must be integrated and orchestrated.

The next contributing factor to the power of your audience is their (not your) use of digital and social platforms. People talk about brands without being prompted by the brand to do so. This sharing and word of mouth marketing is usually instigated by user experience – either a positive one or a negative one.

All of this change in customer behavior does not mean that marketing is any less important than the days prior to the Internet, digital technologies, and smart mobile devices. It just means that marketers need to form strategies and plans differently. First off, the responsibilities of the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) need to expand to that of a Chief Engagement Officer (as I have written about before).

Second, marketers need to have strong empathy and complete understanding of their audiences’ needs, wants, desires, motivations, and turn offs. Social media monitoring tools enable much greater listening to individuals, but most companies use monitoring merely for sales opportunities as opposed to shaping their product position, roadmap, and go-to-market strategy.

The last point I will make is that marketing approaches must change due to audience behavior and their influence of brand reputation. You can no longer simply develop Hollywood-like advertisement and be content that will grab your audience. Marketers need to pre-plan how the creative will support and enhance the entire user experience. You need to think about how the content will be shared in a positive light. You need to think about activating your audience to become a brand advocate. And this brand advocacy and activation should be the pinnacle results you aim for. Remember – the power of your audience trumps the power of your marketing. So motivate and activate your audience to do your marketing. Think audience first.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve

3 Motivators for Interaction in Social Marketing

How many times have you discussed a social marketing program that asks your audience to where you look for your audience to take a picture or make a video to rally some UGC (user generated content) and sharing? If you are in marketing, I will bet this is suggested (and maybe attempted) many times. And then you do it and the outcome is poor … so few participate. I am sure And now I’ll bet everyone is looking at the ALS Cold Bucket Challenge and wishing they could have the success of would be thrilled to capture even 10% ALS’ results.

Before you try to do a social marketing program and aim for even a fraction of the success of the ALS Cold Bucket Challenge, you need to understand three motivators of interaction that has made this so productive from your audience.

1) WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) – In order for someone to actively participate in your social marketing program, they need to believe something is in it for them. No matter how much someone loves your brand; they need to believe there is a compelling reason for them to act.

2) Passion – There are few brands that people get passionate about. But certainly there is an opportunity to create a reason to be passionate about what a brand stands for. A great example of this is Dove. It is pretty hard to get people excited about a cleansing soap, but if you look at the various programs they have developed for women’s self esteem, you can see how a social movement creates brand passion.

3) Make People Feel Good About Themselves – This area could actually fall under the WIIFM umbrella, but I explicitly separate it out because this is more of a subconscious user action.

There are a couple more attributes of social interaction that the ALS Challenge highlights. First off, the ALS challenge has been extremely successful because it was designed it in a way that they (the brand) did not ask people to participate, but rather had friends challenge others to act. This not only motivated people but shines light on the second important attribute. That is social pressure. When challenged to do something by someone you know, there is a societal pressure that you must act upon.

Look how emotions drive desired marketing behavior. Tech Crunch ran great article this week titled “Startup Marketing And How Emotion Drives Customer Action” by Kobie Fuller () that has some very interesting psychological information for marketing for all companies. I quote …

Psychologist Robert Plutchik discovered eight basic, primary emotions that guide all behaviors: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger and disgust. These emotions are product-agnostic, and over time, establish brand-to-consumer relationships that transcend traditional boundaries of engagement.

The question is, which emotions should marketers target, and how do they solicit these emotions? Elbert outlines the following correlations in emotion with user behavior:

Intrigue and mystery – creates a curiosity that drives initial exploration and clicks; important for advertising and emails
Desire and aspiration – stokes consideration; helpful for site imagery, product pages and lookbooks
Urgency and fear – provokes a feeling of missing out, which triggers a purchase
Surprise and laughter – drives sharing, as seen on April Fools’ Day

(Source: http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/20/startup-marketing-how-emotion-drives-customer-action/)

So when you are thinking about an audience participation program consider ways THEY (the audience) are motivated. There are a few more considerations I suggest:

1) Make sure the task you set up is easy to achieve.
2) Consider share-ability – that is, make it a task that people want to share with others.
3) Audience development – form a task that naturally builds an extended audience beyond your initial targets

The beauty of social marketing is that your marketing comes from objective people as opposed to the brands subjective team. Getting user interaction is an excellent marketing tactic – if you plan accordingly and do it right.

Make It Happen,
Social Steve