Social Selling Software – InsideView.com
Digital Trail
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Tagged with Marketing …
INFOGRAPHIC: How engaged is your brand? Our survey said…
The results of the 8th Alterian Annual Survey have some interesting highlights.
In the year ahead we can expect to see increased overall marketing and social media budgets, as marketers look to address the imbalance of cross-channel engagement, poor understanding of social media, and a lack of analytical competency that they reported as their overall experience of 2010. Are you part of the 77 per cent that feel their brand is somewhat at risk of not being fully engaged with their audience?
On the 12 Days of Christmas poorly targeted marketing delivered to me…
A Cheryl Cole video bundle, Father Ted Christmas special, Duran Duran EP, Fishing Kings game, Life of Pi novel, Michael Buble EP, Charlie Chaplin movie and fiiiiiiiiiive more unexciting things.
If you are an iPhone or iPod Touch user then you will be familiar with the aforementioned list as you may have downloaded the ‘12 Days of Christmas’ application and received a daily text revealing the latest free offering from iTunes. I’m not staring down the molar barrel of a gift horse here, the Father Ted episode was great but if there is one thing that iTunes means to me, is the personalised experience that I create within it. Like it or not, (and long before the socialification of iTunes via Ping) you have a relationship with iTunes, you put in the content you like and download the stuff that you find appealing to your tastes, be this books, apps, films or games. The ‘i’ in ‘iTunes’ might as well stand for idiosyncratic. No two iTunes libraries will be the same.
What does this mean? It means that the profile and persona you create is a valuable pool of data for Apple themselves. They already have the Genius feature that runs a recommendation algorithm based on your tastes and so we know they work with what you have got to enhance your media collection. If you want the science behind it all, I suggest you read this excellent post on TechnologyReview.com
So why get uptight about the 12 Days of Christmas offerings? Well, if the thinly veiled intention is to get you accustomed to the range of media available and the ease with which it can be downloaded and enjoyed on a device, would it not be of more benefit to both parties if content was supplied that tallied with a user’s existing media choices within their iTunes library? Of course you will be hard pushed to please everyone all the time but even if iTunes segmented customers into four categories across each line of media (video, podcast, music, games, books) it would undoubtedly yield a higher rate of customers making future purchases.
I like podcasts, iTunes knows this, why not use that information to suggest a new podcast for me to enjoy based on the existing knowledge of podcasts I have downloaded? You know that I have a preferred style of music that I enjoy so why offer me Cheryl Cole?
iTunes didn’t even have to work hard to collect such data, it was freely volunteered, why not use it better and keenly target their offering. Let me know if you experienced similar poorly aimed marketing campaigns. Is this wasted budget?
Can social media command and conker?
Consider this–social media–all bells and whistles and caught up in a storm of hype and false industry. Been knocking around for a while finding its feet and having many people shout about what it is but where is it going?
There is a lot of talk and trumpet blowing by those who use social media about just how great it is. This is dull, I’m guilty of it myself. If we are to take this highly polished conker and to make it last, it is imperative to talk about the ‘how’ and not the ‘what’ in order to defend its role and to gather a pool of wisdom on how best to utilise it.
You can varnish and buff up a Conker to make it look good and if your the kid in the playground you can talk it up as you take it into the challenge ahead in a Conker fight. You can blow the trumpet of social media all you want and talk it up as a great thing but that won’t keep it up there or concrete it as a true marketing practice of value and return. Just because it looks good and on the surface does not mean it has a soft and vulnerable core when the challenges come in.
I invited Brrism member Nigel Legg to offer his insight into the matter of how social media can offer value for businesses looking to get in on the act and where it fits in the marketing mix. Based on his expertise as a social media practitioner who researches its nuances and practical applications, Nigel said:
“The only way you are going to be able to measure ROI is with numbers – so it is vital that you decide what numbers you want and how you are going to measure them before you start. And the appropriate metrics for a biscuit company may well not be appropriate for a construction firm – the metrics will depend on who you are, where you are, and what you do.”
In October there is an exciting conference on the horizon that has set it’s stall out from the start in saying it will focus on the ‘How’ and less so on the ‘What’. Of particular and crucial focus is the look at return of investment to be had from social media.
I shall be in attendance at the ‘Like Minds‘ event in Exeter on Friday 16th October and will report back on the ‘How’ and we will see if we can get this sweet social media nut flourishing into a long term practice with true value and purpose.
I think it is very true that as social media users, the honeymoon period is over and the ‘What’ is a known entity. The real way to achieve longevity is to suss the ‘How’ and to use it to supplement marketing practices, not replace them.
Come on you Twits! Get on your Facebook and let’s blog our way out of the recession
Originally published by Marketing Donut in my guise as a blogger for small businesses looking to get the most from their marketing.
In a downturn, it isn’t just small businesses that look to make their pennies stretch further or spend more time investing time resources into ‘free’ marketing opportunities but they certainly have a greater opportunity to do such things. If trade is down and money is tight, things might look bleak and the marketing resources cupboard somewhat bare.
One way that you may choose to keep on top of your marketing activities, even if the budget has run out, is to try out something that requires little or no money (beyond buying a computer and internet connection). Social Networking or online media resources are a great way to make use of your time in an inexpensive manner in order to drum up trade and to make sure your business is ‘out there.’
If you are unfortunate enough to have less footfall than you are accustomed to in headier times, you may be in a position to spend more time on Twitter, Facebook and any of the hundreds of online social networking sites where you can promote, network, converse or establish your brand and make real connections. If you do this well you may see that trade picks up again and so you have less time to commit to online activities as you are dealing with fantastic customers making purchases. When trade does pick up once again, does online marketing through social networking have to give?
I believe in the cliché that tough times make us stronger but beyond that I anticipate that this recession has rewritten the rules of small business marketing and the online marketing model of the future will see social networking as a standard practice in advertising for small firms. When the tills are ringing again and the ‘R’ word is but a distant memory, try and set aside short and frequent bursts of online marketing activity, be it Twitter, Blogging or Facebook, for great results long-term.
