iMediaConnection Blog » Creative Best Practices

Mobile Roundtable (Pt 3): Dorrian Porter, CEO of Mozes – On Rocking The Mobile Revolution

Rick Mathieson — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:01:28 +0000

You might say Mozes is on a rock-n-roll these days.

Within just the last few weeks, Wired ran a feature on how the Palo Alto, Calif-based Mozes powers Umphrey’s McGee’s interactive UMBowl, a concert series that enables fans to shape the concert – in real time – using their mobiles phones.

And just this last week, The Silicon Valley Business Journal ran a profile on the company, which focuses on mobile engagement at live events for brand clients such as Coca-Cola, Ford Motor Company and Rock The Vote, among many others.

In part three of tour May Mobile Marketing Roundtable, we get the inside scoop from founder Dorrian Porter (full disclosure: A longtime friend, client, and sponsor of this blog), on how brands are leveraging the power of mobile at the all-important "point of inspiration."

MOBILE ROUNDTABLE (PT 3): MOZES ROCKS THE MOBILE REVOLUTION

Click here to listen to: Mobile Roundtable (Pt 3): Dorrian Porter - Mozes Rocks The Mobile Revolution

(11:07)

ALSO LISTEN TO:

MOBILE ROUNDTABLE (PT 1): Julie Fajgenbaum - How AMEX Banks on Mobile Marketing

MOBILE MARKETING ROUNDTABLE (PT 2): Organic's Rachel Pasqua - Kimberly Clark, Specialized Bicycles Ramp Up Mobile Marketing

How the A/E/C Community Uses Social Media These Days

Neal Leavitt — Wed, 23 May 2012 15:09:26 +0000

Architecture, engineering and construction firms, often lumped together under the moniker ‘A/E/C’, have until recently lagged considerably behind other professions in jumping on the social media bandwagon.

The numbers are steadily increasing but a white paper issued in August 2011 by the Society of Marketing Professional Services (SMPS), entitled, ‘The Client’s Use of Social Media and Social Networking’ demonstrated it’s still an uphill climb. More than 1,600 surveys were distributed; 160 responses received. The breakdown of firms using some form of social media was 36% engineering; 24% architecture; and 17% for construction, landscape design and facility owners.

“For many construction firms, all their work is about getting a project off the ground,” said Daryl Andrews, vice president of marketing and business development at 360 Construct, a building management firm. He added that it’s still a slow-go for the construction industry to use social media as part of their business strategy.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Most architectural firms currently using social media tend to be larger, primarily due to the investment in time/labor and having the requisite skills to navigate/communicate effectively on key social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

The engineering community, on the other hand, has been quicker to adapt social media. Way back in Fall 2009 (probably equates to about 50 years in tech time), CE News conducted a survey on social media and mobile devices that was sent to about 750 civil engineering firms. Slightly more than half- 51% - said they use regularly use professional networking sites like LinkedIn; 30% said they use social networking mediums like Facebook to promote their business; 20% use Twitter or blogs. Those percentages have undoubtedly increased.

“Engineering firms can take advantage of social computing tools for knowledge management, expertise sharing and information retention, which is especially critical with the pending retirement of baby boomers and incoming millennial generation,” said Brian Zeve, managing director, Microsoft Professional Services Industry. “Web-based collaboration through wikis, blogs, tagging, and other content management tools can provide firms with a whole new way of architecting knowledge and enabling input and expertise to bubble-up within the firm.”

The current social media flavor of the month, Pinterest, has exploded onto the scene in recent months and quite a few A/E/C firms are now sharing their ‘pins’ in the form of visual portfolios of previous jobs, ideas, and designs conducive to their respective business. Most A/E/C firms usually have a welter of images for key projects so Pinterest is fast becoming an attractive forum to showcase work.

So with the aforementioned in mind, here are a few examples of how a handful of A/E/C firms in the U.S. and abroad are effectively using social media:

Burns & McDonnell

Established in 1898, the venerable Kansas City, MO-based firm has more than 3,400 employee-owners including engineers, architects, construction experts, planners, estimators, economists, technicians and scientists. Burns & McDonnell plans, designs, permits, constructs and manages facilities worldwide. The company also ranks 26th in Fortune’s 2012 list of ‘100 Best Companies to Work For.’

While the 113-year-old firm has roots dating back to the 19th Century, Burns & McDonnell hasn’t rested on its laurels and has readily embraced 21st Century social media avenues.

For starters, the company maintains a comprehensive Careers Blog; recent posts have included ‘How to Establish Your Online Presence’ (see YouTube video in this post; the company also maintains a dedicated YouTube page containing numerous videos); ‘LinkedIn: 4 Things You Need to Know About This Powerful Tool;’ ‘7 Tips for Stress-Free Business Travel;’ and ‘What Recruiters See When They Read Your Resume.’ Posts are cross-linked to the company’s LinkedIn site and tweeted.

Burns & McDonnell also uses LinkedIn for recruiting - two recent posts, for instance, advertise openings for a telecommunications coordinator in the Kansas City headquarters, and a project manager-substation design, in Wallingford, CT.

The Facebook home page currently has 915 Likes; it also features numerous shared links to stories in the news that are of interest to employees, project photos, even volunteer opportunities – a recent one was for Jazzoo, the Kansas City Zoo’s largest annual fundraising event.

As of today, the company had 3,271 followers on Twitter (@BurnsMcDonnell). In addition to company-related tweets and retweets, Burns & McDonnell also uses Twitter for recruiting. Here’s one example from yesterday: #Engineering student looking for the coolest jobs? Check out @BurnsMcDCareers.

Snow Architects

Located in Liverpool, United Kingdom, Snow Architects is a RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) Chartered Practice; projects range across the board – residential properties, apartments, restaurants, hotels, mixed-use city center developments.

The firm utilizes a wide variety of the most popular social media tools – Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter; posts photos/videos on Flickr, Vimeo and YouTube. The company’s director, Dave Cornett, is also using QR codes and Augmented Reality (AR) to help with practice development.

“We’ve been using QR codes in our printed brochure to link to additional information on the website, such as videos or additional photographs of the project,” said Cornett.

Cornett’s enthusiastic about how AR can be applied to architecture.

“We’ve done some image based AR and 3D models to show clients; they’ve been impressed when I pull out my iPhone and guide them through their building,” said Cornett.

He added that the company has also been looking at geo located models – these are superimposed over a phone’s camera as you look at the site.

“We’ve had a lot of Twitter interest in this worldwide, which is something I didn’t expect. The main disadvantage right now is that there isn’t a single app which can do all the things I would want to so it’s a case of switching from app to app,” said Cornett.

Cornett said that social media has helped increase brand awareness for his practice.

“Most people have actually now heard of us when we go to industry events in Liverpool and Manchester; we have also had job enquiries via Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook on the back of a tweet or status update which jogs someone’s memory,” said Cornett.

Martell Home Builders

The Moncton, New Brunswick construction firm is one of Canada’s largest home builders.

The company made the plunge into social media because of a key problem – customers didn’t know where to find them when they needed them. So Martell resolved this by adding a ‘Where’s My Contractor’ feature on the web site which lists Twitter accounts of the firm’s managers – this way clients could see what they were doing and know how to find them. The web page is also connected to a Google Map API (application programming interface), which puts a stickpin on a map, making it even easier for customers to find their contractor.

Martell’s Twitter page is popular – to date, @martellhomes has 12,495 followers and the company tweets about a half-dozen times each day on a wide variety of topics – some recent tweets (with links) have included: ‘21 ways of turning pallets into unique pieces of furniture;’ ‘Top 10 ways to add value to your home;’ and ‘What tool can you not live without? 14 must-have tools for new homeowners.’

The company has an extensive YouTube archive – there are currently 79 videos for viewing covering a wide expanse of helpful homeowner-related topics. Some of these include:

How to fix a door latch
How to adjust or replace a shower
Maritime energy solutions

While the jury is still out on whether social media is generating billable projects, it’s definitely helping the A/E/C industry connect with the public and ultimately may lead to new collaborations and clients.

Jing Liu, principal of Brooklyn, NY-based Solid Objectives-Idenburg Liu, an architectural design firm, believes social media will gain momentum across the A/E/C divide over time but with a caveat:

“Younger people who are in their 20s are very much in touch with the technology,” said Liu. “Online there is so much information, however, that I don’t think people completely trust what they read. They need to get know you personally before they give you a project.”

Stay tuned.

Top Ten: More proof of visuals driving engagement and sharing on Facebook

Doug Schumacher — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:56:41 +0000

We've written about how photos and videos are driving higher engagement, and beyond that, sharing. This is a perfect exampler of that. While this post is from Reb Bull's main Facebook page, it's a video pulled from the brand's German website. And, the post headline and the ensuing video are both in German. Of course, the content was still enjoyed by people around the world. Powerful visuals speak all languages.

Red Bull's Facebook post in which over 17% of engagements were shares

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About Zuum

Zuum is a tool that helps brands increase their engagement level with their Facebook fans by knowing what works on Facebook. For their brand and their competitors.
www.ZuumSocial.com

The Sprint and the Marathon: 2 Ways to Look at Your Audiences and Campaigns

Greg Kihlström — Tue, 22 May 2012 16:12:57 +0000

As an agency, my team and I are brought in to help brands and organizations with a variety of challenges. These range from the short-term (“We need help launching a campaign to introduce a new initiative this Spring”) to the long-term (“We need help aligning our digital strategy with a shift in organizational goals”).

The Challenge

As head of digital strategy at my agency, I am frequently brought in to help with a variety of goals and objectives for my clients – some short-term, some long-term. The challenge is then to determine the proper strategy and tactics that should be used for each. Over the years, we’ve come to define these as two distinct types of campaigns. I like to think of them as sprints and marathons.

The Sprint

I am not a runner by any means (anyone who actually knows me will more than attest to this), but I know a little bit about sprints. The goal of the sprint is simple: be the first person to cross the finish line in as short of time as possible. It requires a large burst of energy, instead of a sustainable amount of exertion over time.

Many times you are given a short-term challenge. This might be a campaign around a single event or point in time, or simply one whose duration is for a fixed amount of time. The goals will vary widely depending on the company and the product or service you are selling, but for the purposes of this example, let’s just use the metaphor of a company selling widgets.

The widget company is rolling out a new product this summer and needs a campaign in the month of June to draw people to a website that sells its widgets. This, my friends, is a sprint. The obvious goal is sales. What you want is huge initial numbers and a dramatic opening launch that gets the attention of the press and builds a huge base of advocates that you can target additional upgrades, future products and related sales to over the coming months.

Not all of them will even buy your product, but you are still building an audience who has been keeping an eye on all the positive press and reviews your product has gotten. These people might not be early adopters, but they are still receiving and consuming your messaging and advertisements. They might even be talking about your products with others without even owning one.

The Marathon

I said I wasn’t a short-distance runner earlier, and you can safely assume that I am even less of a marathon runner. But when it comes to your campaigns (and not my athletic abilities), the goal of a marathon requires a level of planning and subtlety that isn’t required in a sprint, because the duration of the race is now in miles, not feet.

You can think of the marathon as one of two things: 1) your long-term goal of brand awareness and exposure, or 2) the manifestation of your marketing or digital strategy.

In the widgets scenario, the marathon would look something like this: You had that product launch mentioned earlier in this article about six months ago. Things went really well, but your initial advertising and marketing budget is now a little different. Instead of your initial launch budget, you have now switched your marketing to a more sustained effort. Your product, while still new, is no longer ‘brand new’ and thus you need to turn the initial buzz you created, and the brand advocates you fostered with your initial campaign, into long-term supporters.

How They Work Together

The true challenge of these ways of thinking is to make two unique approaches complement each other in order to amplify your investment of time and money.

What you want is to not only sell a record number of widgets in the month of June, but you want to put a program in place that can do repeat sales to those initial buyers and activate them as brand advocates who can reach the widget-buying population as a whole. This is the strategy behind using the sprint and the marathon together.

So how do you do both, while keeping the uniqueness and novelty of the sprint, and the sustainability of the marathon? There are several ways to make the most of the sprint and the marathon in conjunction with each other:

1) Build Your List
The sprint helps you build a customer base that will be open to future messaging from you. This might include building an email list, Facebook fans, or a Twitter following. Even if all of your efforts don’t directly translate into sales, building your list means that you will have an audience to market to long after your initial ‘sprint’ campaign is over. You can then use your marathon tactics to market to this newly activated base of supporters. Remember, the lifetime value of a constituent is far more important of a metric than their initial interaction with your brand.

2) Get Useful Data

A large surge of sales, customer feedback and foot traffic to your stores as a result of a sprint campaign gives you a lot of data in a short period of time that can then be analyzed in order to make your long-term strategies more effective. This is valuable information that would otherwise require months to obtain.

3) Learn When to Sprint

Similar to how the sprint gives you a lot of data in a short period of time, you can use the longer-term data you get from a marathon to plan out when your most effective sprint campaigns can be run. You can analyze weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual data to see anything from the best time of week and day to send an email, to the month of the year to do a clearance sale and more.

Summary

It is important to know the value that both sprint and marathon campaigns can bring to your marketing efforts. Use them together to amplify the effectiveness of your campaigns and maximize the engagement you have with your audience. While most of the time, a sprint campaign might precede a marathon, make sure you understand the benefits of each and how they can be used to best complement each other.

Taking Off Your Pants and Swinging Them Over Your Head is One Way of Making an Impression At a Party

Jon Steinberg — Mon, 21 May 2012 19:37:18 +0000

[Originally posted at jonsteinberg.com]

If someone walks into a party and takes his pants of and swings them over his head, wears a toga, or does a dance with a lampshade on it'll be memorable. Or in the case of Jim Belushi, wearing a toga and smashing a guitar:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What's interesting is the next morning, you'll probably just recall "some crazy guy doing something crazy." You won't know his name or anything about him. Everyone remembers Belushi doing crazy things in Animal House, but who remembers his name was Bluto, or anything about him?

In contrast, how many parties have you been to when everyone leaves having met the soft spoken, brilliant artist, businessman, or college student. Maybe this person made a clever point over dinner, or just circulated in an easy fashion listening and chatting intelligently about the ideas and events. Perhaps, he or she was a guest speaker who was invited to say a few words between cocktails and dinner?

The next morning, you turn to you wife or husband and recall this Memorable Person by name. You maybe even Facebook message the Memorable Person with ideas social or business. The Pants Taker Offer - he's just a crazy story you tell. You don't need to take your pants off to make an impact. And in fact, if you're remembered for doing so, no one knows who you are, and no one would think of reaching out to you.

Large interstitial ads, push downs, and skins are the crazy guy at the party. You kind of know something happened that was jarring but not much else. This is why typical display advertising only has a brand lift (increase in favorability or purchase intent as a result of seeing a banner) of say 30% at best.

In contrast, Social Advertising, can see lifts that are multiples higher:

We've seen similar results in our work with GE and Virgin, among others.

What's amazing is how soft-spoken this social messaging can be. A small icon saying, "Post by Brand X," or a Twitter feed or even just a Facebook post. If the content is produced by the brand and exemplifies what the brand aspires to, no one misses who the message it from.

Click here to view the embedded video.

(Jump to 3:35 to see ad great Lee Clow explaining this phenomenon)

It makes people love and respect the soft-spoken thoughtful brand - there is no reason to wear a toga.

And so when I'm asked, "is there enough branding?" I point to the data.

The data shows, you don't need to wear a lampshade online to be noticed and remembered. And in fact, if you do don the toga, the results are pretty clear - when was the last time the guy who twirled his pants was remembered by name, respected, or asked to lunch. You're jarred by the crazy behavior, but that's about it.

The way to behave at a party for the long term is pretty clear, and on the social web, it's just the same.

Creativing :: Ford accelerates Facebook spending, HuffPo ex’s chart new course, and how online video mirrors TVs early days

Doug Schumacher — Thu, 17 May 2012 16:06:31 +0000

Links pointing to the future of marketing, from the co-founder of Facebook strategy tool Zuum.

In a SoHo Lab, HuffPo Mafia rekindles the old magic

A story not only about how corporate dysfunction is killing the creative spirit, but also about how easy it is for the creative thinkers to find a different path. Like water running downhill.

Via @Britopian

GM Cuts Facebook Ad Spending, But Ford Steps on the Gas

Clearly GMs move wasn’t the last word on this issue. But what’s hidden in many of the articles I’ve read is that GM is still pouring a lot of money into Facebook content creation. They may have come in with a bad direct response mindset thinking they could spin Facebook ads into gold, but the fact that they’re still spending considerable sums on their Facebook pages content shows they aren’t anywhere near giving up on Facebook.

Via @Aerocles

Facebook’s Purchases May Hint at Its Future

This really demonstrates the challenges so many large companies are having keeping up. Companies like Facebook are foregoing much of the typical legwork around acquisitions, playing things more from the gut. Of course, the story isn’t over yet, but in the meanwhile, with Facebook able to make large acquisitions like Instagram quickly, it’s making things difficult for their less-nimble competitors.

How Users Are App-ifying The Web, With or Without Publishers

This app vs web story has been an interesting one, and as the article points out, it’s not shaking out the way either side thought. Another example of how lowering production and startup costs add constant forks in the pathway of technology.

Via @bradberens

What the Web Could Learn From Dawn of TV

Despite the relative recency of mass communications, it’s remarkable how cyclical they are. Mobile is following so many of the same routes Web 1.0 took. This article draws the parallels between online video content, and the early days of TV.

Via @learmonth

Facebook giveth, Facebook taketh: A curious case of video apps

Whether or not you saw the NY Times article about Facebook’s ability to predict the future of apps, this is a good alternate view.

Via @mcarney7

Twitter Campaign Donates Your Unused Characters

Another example of advertising seeping into every nook and cranny it can find.

Via @mashable

Gone Viral: Learning From the Dollar Shave Club

James Trumbly — Thu, 17 May 2012 02:12:01 +0000

Click here to view the embedded video.

Six months ago, if you had mentioned Dollar Shave Club to a room of people, you would have gotten all blank stares (even though the company has been around since June of last year). Today, there are over 4.5 million people who would nod their heads and smile. 4.5 million YouTube views. In just a few weeks. How did they do it?

A viral video incorporates strong planning, careful execution, and a little bit of luck. Fortunately for those of us who have never won the lottery, the strong planning and careful execution part carries a little more weight than the luck part. Can you design a video and guarantee that it will go viral? Maybe not, but by incorporating these lessons from Dollar Shave Club, you can at least ensure that it earns the right to be seen and shared.

Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

Humor is something Dollar Shave Club does really well. Seriously. There’s hardly a straight line in the entire video. But they’re not just cracking jokes either. Some of the humor is obvious and some is a little more under the radar, but all of it works together to communicate the vital information you need to know about the company. And it leaves you with that “You’ve gotta see this!” feeling.

Create a Unified Approach

Take a long look at your existing website and craft your video so that it supports your current marketing strategy. When you visit the Dollar Shave Club site, every element hangs together and sends the same vibes you received in the video. Your website visitors shouldn’t wonder whether you’re the same company as the one that produced the video they loved.

Put the Most Important Stuff First

In the first ten seconds, we know what Dollar Shave Club does, how much it costs, and what the quality of the product is. We get our questions answered: How can they afford it and are the razors any good? If we decide to stop viewing (which we won’t, because their fabulous style holds our attention) we still have everything we need to know to pique our interest and entice us over to the website.

Put a Face On Your Company

Even if you don’t have the marketing background and camera-ease that Dollar Shave Club’s founder, Mike Dubin does, it still helps viewers connect with your company when you put a face behind the name. Make the story human and people will relate to it.

Creating videos people love begins with understanding how to communicate a message they can relate to and want to share. After that, who knows? You just might win the lottery.

Future-Proof Digital

Tony Quin — Wed, 16 May 2012 15:21:44 +0000

By Rachel Peters - Senior Experience Architect, IQ

How to create for the multi-device world (SlideShare presentation)

So you built a website and it seems to do everything you need. Then someone points out that it looks pretty terrible on a phone, so you build a mobile website. Then you realize that it isn’t optimized for touch screens and doesn’t work on an iPad, so you build an iPad version. Then you get a memo from the Chairman asking why it doesn’t work right on his wife’s new Kindle Fire, and your sales director calls and says it looks terrible on his Mac Mini, which he is viewing on his 42” living room TV, and then...well, you get the idea.

The moral of the story is that the one thing you can count on in our technology drenched world is change, which is why you need a better way to approach creating things for digital channels. That better way is called Responsive Web Design. Not very catchy, but as you’ll see in a minute, the name pretty much sums it up.

What is Responsive Web Design?

Responsive Web Design is where the layout and content of a website adapt to the user's environment, which includes screen size, platform, and even orientation.

Basically, it means writing code to create a site that will work on the majority of devices, including those that haven't been invented yet.

To see more examples of sites using responsive design, go to http://mediaqueri.es/.

Why you should care

Your customers and prospects are discovering your brand on all sorts of devices now, and there just isn’t any excuse for not having a good digital experience waiting for them every time. Consumers expect brands to care enough about them to get it right, so when they come upon a brand that hasn’t produced a good user experience they infer the obvious; that your brand doesn’t care.

This is all part of the customer experience puzzle that a brand must get right if it wants to be a competitor today. Responsive Web Design solves a part of the digital piece of this puzzle.

How does it work?

The basic idea is you only have to create or edit a website once and it appears the way it should on a multitude of screen sizes and formats.

Responsive Web Designs contain three core ingredients:

Flexible, grid-based layout
Flexible images and media (show only what you want to)
Media queries, a module from the CSS3 specification

Responsive Web Design is Device future-friendly

Mobile use is big and getting bigger. It’s predicted to outpace desktop browsing by 2015, and by then there will be more devices than people.

Maybe your current website works great on desktops, mobile phones, and tablets, but will it work on projectors, TVs, netbooks, eReaders, game systems, and all the devices that haven’t been thought of yet?

Responsive Web Design is not perfect, but you get closer to ensuring that your content can flow into any device; designed once for all platforms. Of course it also cuts down on the production and maintenance costs, because you’re only programming and designing once, and not each time a new device explodes onto the scene.

Responsive Web Design helps Search

Search engine rankings are strongly influenced by the amount of traffic you generate, but search engines keep the search traffic from different versions of your site separate. Now with Responsive Web Design all your traffic is combined into one big number.

In the example below you see how Google doesn’t combine your main website (domain.com) and its mobile counterpart (m.domain.com) and you lose the search ranking that a 10 million number might deliver. Responsive Web Design solves this.

By creating one site with one URL, all traffic to your site—no matter where it comes from—is counted in the total. That means your search rankings go up. This is particularly important if you already have a legacy of great SEO for your main website.

How do you apply?

Responsive Web Design still requires innovation. There’s not a single model that fits all websites. However, patterns are starting to emerge. Luke Wroblewski documented many of these patterns in his article “Multi-Device Layout Patterns.” The following are two examples he shared.

Which pattern is right for your site?

Each site is unique, so yours may not fit neatly into a pattern. This is where a good UX/design agency can help:

Content strategists review your current content and help you think about future content. Then they inventory what you have and what you’ll have eventually, so you know what to allow for.

Experience architects help you figure out what features and functions you want the site to have and then prioritize those with your content. They can also help you determine what size points to use (i.e., the screen sizes you already know you must design for).

Designers create a visual language for your site and determine the best way to scale the content, features, and functions for each screen size.

Developers build the site. They follow coding standards to ensure your site works across as many devices and platform types as possible and scales smoothly from one screen size to the next.

Is Responsive Web Design right for your site?

Nobody wants to change, especially if you already have a website that’s working well. But user experience problems will only multiply as devices proliferate.

Consumer adoption of new devices has been so fast that most existing brand sites are only now waking up to the demands of the multi-device marketplace. Designing Responsive sites is more expensive, but it’s cheaper than making custom sites for each device.

An easy first step would be to shift your site to a fluid layout instead of fixed layout. This is where the width of the site automatically adjusts. But even this has been slow to catch on. Our recent review of the Alexa Top 50 U.S. Sites showed that only 6 were 'fluid'.

Support for media queries is broad and growing

Most modern desktop browsers support Media queries, the technology involved powering Responsive Web Design. Most mobile browsers also support Media queries. This is great news, because mobile devices are one of the areas where Responsive Web Design is needed most.

Understand your users’ needs.

Some argue that users looking at your site on a phone have different needs than users looking at your site on a desktop so you need to create a separate mobile website. For example, someone looking at a restaurant’s website while walking down the street probably needs an address and a basic menu. They are not interested in large images of the food.

Be wary of this argument.

It’s true that context (e.g., user on the street versus sitting on their couch) should influence design, but knowing what device a person is using does not necessarily tell you their context. The good news, however, is that Responsive Web Design allows you to turn on or off and content on your site depending on the device or platform it will appear on.

Sometimes a separate mobile site may be appropriate, such as with a conference site that requires specific capabilities. But this may mean you really need a mobile app vs. a mobile website (check out IQ’s white paper on mobile web vs. native apps if you’re facing that decision).

A final thought

Responsive Design is not a magic bullet, but it goes a long way to solve the multi-device problem. It should, of course, be part of a bigger process of understanding your consumer’s needs, when and where they are likely to use digital channels, and what they are trying to accomplish in each context.

Technology will continue to evolve and brands will continue to have to adapt, the question is when is the right time to move. The speed that device technology, like tablets, is being adopted seems to indicate that brands can’t afford to sit on the sidelines and allow second-rate user experiences much longer.

Creativing :: Vail Resorts marketing case study, Facebook’s good advice to brands, and the problems around short CMO tenures

Doug Schumacher — Thu, 10 May 2012 18:10:24 +0000

Links pointing to the future of marketing, from the co-founder of content strategy tool Zuum.

Banishing Short-Term and Shiny: A Look at Vail Resorts

This is how everyone should be thinking about digital marketing.

Via @ClarkKokich

Your Company Has Social Media Nailed. Now What?

An excellent series of questions to ask after you’ve reach the first level.

Via @RichardLevick

Facebook to Brands: You’re Posting Stuff Wrong

The subjects brands post about is the key to engagement. That’s why text analysis is the key to knowing what works on Facebook.

Why CMO Tenure is so Short

This has long been a known problem for both clients and agencies, and it’s interesting reading what some of these industry leaders have to say about it.

Via @emarxe & @djgeoffe

Facebook Dominates Mobile Social Networking

Facebook’s big story to me has always been the amount of time and frequency with which people use the site. Now it looks like that same behavior is tracking over to mobile. And to think they bought Instagram to better succeed in mobile.

Via @JackMarshall

Ad Account Guy Gets Man Lessons

I like this because a lot of people want to publish content, but aren’t sure what to write about. This guy found a way to get over that hump.

6 Things That Make Your Email Campaign a Success

Amy Kauffman — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:34:49 +0000

How do you define a great email campaign? Effective copy, concise subject line, clear call-to-action, sure. But putting hours of effort into an email campaign means nothing if you don’t see results. A successful campaign boils down to your brand understanding how to meet (and exceed) the expectations of your audience.

I, like most of us, am subscribed to numerous newsletters for a wide variety of reasons. Some for aggregated news purposes, business tips, daily deals or retail companies that offer value. I think we all know our favorites by the excitement we get seeing the new email freshly unopened in our inbox. This for marketers is a dream come true; these loyal subscribers are the pulse of the messages they create and move the needle for what’s to come.

A company recently caught my attention and now goes into a short list of brands that I not only enjoy watching, but admire their email campaigns and overall integrated marketing.

One night, killing some time before dinner I walked around downtown San Diego and went into the Goorin Bros. hat shop. The store pulled us in and almost back in time as we tried on hats reminiscent of the 1960s, old derby days that radiated class. It was so fun spending time in the store that on my way out I wrote my name in a book to be added to their newsletter list.

A few days later I received my first email from the Goorin Bros. and I was able to open it on my phone without a hitch. I thought the email looked very clean, sharp and with closer notice to this and emails to come, I was continually impressed with the beautiful, thoughtful design, clear messaging and access to information.

Here are a few of many things that the Goorin Bros. have clearly mastered:

1. Short, accurate subject lines. They tell you what to expect and deliver.

2. An aesthetically pleasing design. All emails are consistently focused, highlighting one product. Rich in image but light in content makes this easy on the eye and on-the-go. Familiarity is also nice for consumers receiving hundreds of messages a day.

3. Access to information. Simple layout with light and light hearted copy gives you direction and not too much data at once. This allows men and women to know quickly where to click to see selected styles. They also offer quick links to the “Goorin Bros. Story,” Blog and Customer Service. These tabs allow subscribers to easily choose to learn or view more, and for the Goorin Bros. these links are trackable and offer consumer insights.

4. Transparency and accessibility. The Goorin Bros. provides a real email address. Not a “Do Not Reply” email, giving off the stigma that they do not want to hear from you.

5. No falloff when directed to the main site. When you do click to see more gorgeous hats, the main web site is compatible with a laptop or mobile device and stays as clean and simple as the original message. This almost ensures a lower bounce rate and keeps customers digging on their own and not overwhelmed with selections.

6. Social. In the email viewers are invited to an event with an RSVP on Facebook. While this did eliminate some subscribers as the event was in select cities, it added value letting everyone know they are present in the social world. Another way to stay engaged and connected with an audience, and turns out they are doing well in that arena too.

So a great email campaign should definitely strive to possess as many of the above characteristics as possible, but more importantly your communication needs to be consistent and cohesive among all platforms; representing more than a product or service. It was immediately clear to me that the Goorin Bros. is a company tuned into their identity who is doing a lot right in the realm of email and branding, marketing a nostalgic essence and modern appeal. Hats off to ‘em.

If you’re looking to partner with an agency who understands branding and email marketing, we may just be the right fit. Feel free to give me a call to chat. After all, a conversation will cost you nothing: 858-255-0027.

Amy

How Your Company Can Capitalize on Pinterest

Amy Kauffman — Tue, 08 May 2012 21:26:24 +0000

You cannot ignore Pinterest if you try. Everywhere you look is a headline about the exponential growth and popularity of the social-sharing website, how to get invited to be a Pinterest user, and what to do after you are officially a “Pinner.”

I admit my first encounters with Pinterest were not positive ones. My brother’s self-indulged fiancée spent hours on the site “pinning” wedding rings, dresses and boot socks. Yes, boot socks. All during the last meeting of the Texas Longhorns and Texas A&M on Thanksgiving. Let’s just say this doesn’t bode well in a UT alumni household. But, with time (and a newly registered account), my eyes were soon opened to the endless visual candy that the site provided, and I was not alone.

The social network exploded late last year beginning in August when Time Magazine deemed Pinterest one of the, “50 Best Websites of 2011.” Since then, Pinterest’s unique visitors increased over 329% by December and garnered more traffic than Google +, You Tube and Linked In combined. The site clearly proved itself worthy of the attention and marketers took notice of the phenomenon.

Why should you and your company care about this virtual bulletin board? Because your customers and consumers care and are actively sharing information on the site. Pinterest’s mission is to “connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting;” a.k.a an intimate window into users’ lives, desires and purchase decisions. To a communicator it is a gold mine of customer insight and a focus group served on a silver platter.

While you can experiment and create your own rules when you launch your company on Pinterest, there are some basic guidelines to follow and others to avoid:

Pinterest Do’s:

Be Engaging

Like all social networking, you must engage users through relevant content and provide valuable information your target demographic cares about. Also, follow users who have similar interests and re-pin images of users that are relevant to your brand. One idea is to have a board reserved solely for user generated content. This is one more way for users to engage directly with your company and shows them that you care about their participation and feedback. Most importantly: Listen – a key component to know how to engage.

Be Consistent

Promote a lifestyle that your audience enjoys and strives to maintain. You must use the site as an extension of your brand, messaging and stay on-point with your company personality and that of your customers. Don’t stray from what people already love about your company, enhance it!

Be Fun

This is, after all, a social bulletin board and a positive environment. Be light-hearted and inspire users and also your employees to participate. Have a contest, crowd-source for ideas or give users some inside scoop to your event, office or next big product.

Pinterest Don’ts:

Don’t Over Self-Promote

Users will quickly tune out if your sole purpose is to push product and direct to a shopping cart. Visual catalogs are great, but not if that is the only content you provide. While Pinterest should absolutely be used to direct traffic to your site, don’t overwhelm people or push them away by only talking about your products.

Don’t Limit Yourself

Pinterst content isn’t just limited to images; you can post videos as well. And hashtags aren’t just for Twitter anymore, you can use them on Pinterest to categorize posts and also help boost search results. And don’t forget to add a “Pin Button” to your site. Make it easy for users to connect and share content.

Don’t Forget to Watch for Innovative Ideas and Best Practices

The best way we learn in advertising, PR and marketing is from each other. When in doubt, shop the world for ideas and adapt to make them your own. Take notes of what has succeeded for you, for other companies and also what has failed. There is no right or wrong with Pinterest and there is no cookie-cutter plan that works for everyone. So read articles, search Pinterest for yourself and get inspired. Need a jump-start? Here is a great list of the top 100 companies on Pinterst (http://goo.gl/LxrvT), my favorite of the bunch, Chobani.

Happy Pinning, Y’all.

Did you create or find inspiring innovation on Pinterest? Feel free to share in the comments!

Have any personal feedback for me? Drop me a line at: amy (@) hmgcreative.com

@amykauffman

Channeling Buyer-Based Experiences in SMB

Tony Zambito — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:56:38 +0000

This is part 4 of a series on the challenge of targeting SMB markets and how the use of buyer-based modeling and buyer-based marketing help organizations to grow their SMB customer base.

When it comes to the SMB segment and the multiple sub-markets, it is just a plain fact that you cannot be everywhere. We addressed the segmentation thought process crucial for buyer-based marketing to the SMB segment in the previous article, Grow SMB Revenues With Buyer-Based Marketing, as a means to know where to have a presence. Therein lays the new buyer realities of today. Having a presence that creates a gravitational pull of SMB buyers towards your organization is the new realty of mastering the SMB challenge.

SMB marketing and sales began to become more than just an afterthought in the early ‘90’s through the early 2000's. Considerable investments were made in establishing inside sales organizations and in outbound marketing activities specifically to reach the SMB base of customers and prospective buyers. Newly created inside sales organizations endured the trials and tribulations of field sales entrenched infrastructure as well as the ownership battle of the mid-size customer gray area. Marketing discovered that outbound tools for inside sales and for marketing to the SMB segment varied greatly from that of a focus on large field accounts.

In a span of 5-7 years we find ourselves in a drastically different world. The notion of reaching buyers is becoming a huge hurdle to climb for those wedded to predominantly outbound activities related to inside sales. As mentioned, establishing an inside sales function can be a sizable investment. The Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 today find themselves with inside sales units loaded with personnel, technology, software, and etc. that were installed and aimed at outbound efforts. What we now have is the challenge of turning on a dime to repurpose inside sales and marketing support to at least gain balance in inbound marketing while succeeding at a level of outbound demand generation as well.

This has more to do with transformation shifts in buyer behaviors with new technologies being the driving force behind these changes. What is profound is that this is more than the labels of the elusive, invisible, or buyer 2.0. No, they didn’t go anywhere and they are not hiding. Nor, should we be of the mind that buyers are now just empowered – as if sellers gave them the empowerment. Buyers today - with SMB buyers a significant part of this picture - are creating new ways of working and conducting business. Here’s the smell the coffee moment for sellers: SMB buyers, in addition to larger accounts, are creating a new world of buyer-driven economies whereby as sellers - if you do not fit or adapt – it is a world in which you will not be participating within.

While I may be seemingly digressing here, I do so to make a very salient point. SMB buyers are adapting new technologies in the entrepreneurial fashion they have started their business with in the first place. Unburdened by large scale infrastructures, they can see how to make new uses of technologies nimbly and drive new ways of conducting business as well as expand their own customer bases. SMB businesses, not so surprisingly, may be surpassing larger enterprises in their adoption of new technologies for interacting with buyers.

What Does This All Mean?

If you are part of a larger enterprise marketing to SMB buyers, what this all points to is a higher stakes challenge. Expectations on buyer experience are being renewed at a constant rate for the reasons mentioned above. Many of today’s new technologies, which for the most part had their original invention in non-business pursuits, have balanced the equation. While larger enterprises enjoyed an advantage in acquiring newer technologies over that of SMB businesses, this may no longer be true. In fact, the opposite in many cases may be true with SMB businesses able to leap frog into newer technologies as cost factors continue to be driven lower.

With this being the case, larger enterprises need to focus on creating seamless buyer-based experiences that allow SMB businesses to act quickly, make choices, and do so in the channels they prefer. This applies to both inbound and outbound efforts. A key focus for inbound efforts is that of enriching the buyer experience. Darren Pleasance, a Principal with McKinsey & Company, recently covered this topic in an excellent article entitled, Serious about SMB experience? Focus on your web site, on McKinsey's Chief Marketing & Sales Officer Forum site. Darren mentions the importance of the web site experience, providing the ability to buy seamlessly through multiple channels, and investing in post-purchase experiences as keys to success in the SMB segment. All of these contributing to enriched buyer experiences. The core of SMB buyer-based marketing and selling will not only be the web site as Darren articulates, but I believe the totality of the buyer experience now becoming the driving force behind how SMB buyers choose.

This brings us back to outbound. Does this mean inside sales and other outbound activities will simply go away? Far from it I believe. A fundamental shift however needs to take place in how organizations view and orient their outbound efforts such as inside sales. This shift relates to transforming from a tools-based approach to a buyer-based experience approach. Here’s the voice of one SMB business executive articulating this point:

“The thing that kills you is that you get what you need from the web site but contacting them directly is a whole different matter. It’s as if they are clueless that I may have visited their site and got information to review. On top of that, I get calls from their people saying they are my account manager. Really? Then how come they don’t know that I talked to someone in their company already?”

This exemplifies what happens when organizations fail to connect their inbound activities with outbound activities in SMB buyer-based marketing and selling. On the other hand, connecting the two tightly enriches the experience as this SMB business owner says:

“I was really impressed to be honest. I went on the site and found a few items I wanted to read so downloaded them. I got a call from the company; his name was Steve, first acknowledging that I had downloaded the papers and then asking if I had questions. We wound up having a discussion on some of things we’ve been working on. Wasn’t pushy or anything like that.”

To create impressive buyer experiences, this integration of inbound and outbound cannot be ignored. While the shiny object these days is inbound and the incessant promotion of content marketing, for some products and services, the ultimate deciding factor will continue to come down to the buyer conversation taking place. One thing we can count on is that more and more SMB buyers today come to table ready for a conversation – are you?

Next Up: Closing the deal in SMB with Buyer-Based Selling

Follow @TonyZambito

Grow SMB Revenues With Buyer-Based Marketing (buyerology.com)
How To Get To Know The New SMB Buyer (buyerology.com)
Your Top Priority Is Growing The SMB Revenue Base - Now What? (buyerology.com)
Channeling Buyer-Based Experiences in SMB (buyerology.com)

The Digital Hunger Games

Rick Gardinier — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:03:08 +0000

Today, agencies and client organizations all over the world are having the same conversation. How do we prepare ourselves to deliver on the never-ending deluge of digital options? How do we grow our existing team to get there? Is that even feasible, or do we need to find new digital talent? But, if we do that, then are we prepared to lose good people with other skills that are important to us?

Certainly this is not a new phenomenon, but there does seem to be an urgency that wasn’t there even a year ago. To be quite candid, our effort to get our organization up to snuff has been a struggle for many years—even with a successful digital practice that has been critical to our growth for more than 15 years now.

A very senior-level colleague of mine, who grew up in the traditional agency world as a creative, recently said, “I’ve come to the realization that it’s time to evolve or die.” Essentially he’s applying the “Digital Darwinism” principle to our talent. The statement struck me—no longer is training enough. No longer is hiring new digitally savvy talent enough. And, no longer is it enough to talk about evolving your culture to a more digital mindset. It’s now time for all of us—even those of us who grew up in the technology sector—to evolve quickly or watch our careers die quick deaths.

Is it a harsh reality or overreaction?

The idea that people should lose their jobs because they haven’t holistically embraced digital is harsh. Does that mean that they have to give up their other skills as planners, brand managers, PR specialists, or writers? Of course not. But if brand teams and agencies don’t have this “fight to the death” approach, there is a realistic chance that entire agencies will go out of business, and once-mighty brands will cease to exist. There are numerous recent examples, but just take a look at Best Buy, RIM, Barnes & Noble and Radio Shack to name a few. Digital Darwinism—according to the many writings of Brian Solis—essentially says that many companies have gone out of business (or will soon) because they have not figured out how to adapt as quickly as consumers’ use of new technology. I would contend that the only way to combat that is with your most valuable asset—your people.

As a leader in your organization, what should you do to win in this ever-evolving digital arena?

1) Throw everyone in the game. But, give them a short leash.

In the book The Hunger Games, there are those who are known as “Careers”—those who have trained and prepared all of their lives for a battle to the death. In our industry, there are Careers as well—those digital natives who have a digital title and have spent the past 15 or more years honing their digital skills. But just because they have “digital” in their title doesn’t mean they are equipped for today’s front line. They have a head start, but they certainly can’t rest on their laurels. They need to evolve just like everyone else. On the flip side, we need to give everyone the chance to shine to make sure we don’t overlook some real talent.

2) Selection day... Make it count.

Smart recruiting is critical! Build a digital index to help guide your hiring process... and insist on 100 percent adherence. People who adamantly request training at the first interview is a red flag for the wrong type of talent. We are in a “just figure it out era.” If an employee hasn’t done some preliminary exploration before asking their question, find someone else. It is one thing to do your homework and then talk “digital.” It is another to know how to DO digital in a way that moves the needle for your brand or your clients.

3) Reward the self-starters.

Here’s the tough part. Some employees—even the “Careers”—aren’t going to make it. Not every brand manager, CMO, or agency employee who needs to “learn digital” will have the ability or motivation to do it—even if you build it into their performance plans. In each case, some will rise to the top and show a spark. In the Hunger Games “arena,” those who show promise, and show a spark, are rewarded by “sponsors” with tangible items that keep them going strong. These items build confidence and prepare them further for battle. In our world this could be extra budget for training, landing the better projects or even personal mentoring time. By ferreting out, and then rewarding, those who have the most potential, you’ll give your team the best chance to not only survive, but thrive.

4) Allow there to be more than one winner.

This is critical. We all need to feed off each other. No one can be an “expert” in all things digital. If you meet someone who claims to be, be very skeptical. It’s impossible, and we all need each other to survive. The best digital strategists will freely admit that they don’t know everything. But, it’s been my experience that when they don’t know something, they work very hard very quickly to learn it. And, your digital experts also need to be willing to be teachers. The “I have power because I know something you don’t” approach needs to end. If you have employees who have that approach, they need to change quickly—or they need to go.

Really? Evolve or die?

If you haven’t noticed it is cutthroat out there. The best digital employees have more choices than ever before. The competition for talent goes well beyond other marketers and agencies.

As I test this notion out on many of my peers it seems that everyone feels the same way. Enough talk. Over the next 12 months your plan should include ferreting out those who try to get by as digital experts by showing that they have a great Twitter follower base. Recognize that sending a bevy of employees to SXSW or some other conference does not constitute as “training” or preparation to lead. Accountability for doing, practicing, failing quickly but learning along the way is the only way. My guess is that most agency and brand teams will be up for that challenge.

Creativing :: The rise of visuals in social media, PR agencies moving into agency territory, and digital agencies' big 2011 revenue gains

Doug Schumacher — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:00:37 +0000

Links pointing to the future of marketing, from the co-founder of content strategy tool Zuum.

The Rise of the Visual Social Network

Infographic on the increasing use of photos in social media. Several weeks ago I posted a report on the Zuum blog on research we found that indicates that photos and videos drive sharing much more than status updates and links. Although these visual forms of content are often more difficult (read: expensive) to produce for brands, they're also seeing better response rates. And that can justify the added expense.

Via @adverblog

Mark Zuckerberg joins Viddy – it might really become ‘Instagram for video’ now

If you're wondering what the next Instagram might be, that headline pretty much covers it. Unless you want to see Zuckerberg's first video upload -- of his dog. To manage your expectations, I'll just say that David Fincher's job isn't in jeopardy with this.

Via @Aerocles

Hertz Creates Their Own Groupon Style Deals on Facebook

While this isn't a new idea, that doesn't mean it can't work. I guess the real question is, What's a Share worth? If it's $20 like this offer would indicate, then a lot of speculators are going to have to recalculate what a Facebook fan is worth.

Via @jasonkeath

More PR Agencies Get Into Media-Buying Game

This is a big indicator of the content marketing trend. PR agencies as much as anyone understand the media value of a good story. Once you have a good story, paid media becomes a way to distribute it. Of course, the biggest question is still, What makes a good story. That's where understanding what engages your audience comes in. And developing content accordingly.

Via @alexbruell

How Microsoft Leveraged Bloggers for a Successful Product Launch

Remember when a social media campaign was mainly about engaging bloggers? It can still work.

Via @Mike_Stelzner

Not-So-Slow Recovery: U.S. Agency Revenue Surges Nearly 8% in 2011

Remarkable, industry-leading 17% revenue increase last year for digital shops.

Via @bradage

No UGC, please – but will the Olympics’ social media strategy work?

The Olympic Committee's dilemma captures the challenges media companies and corporations all over the world are facing regarding social media. And like most, they don't have a clear cut policy, which is probably impossible outside of complete openness, anyway. Click through to see one of the better editorial images I've seen in a while.

Via @gigaom

TopTen: Oreo puts a face on a Facebook fan

Doug Schumacher — Tue, 01 May 2012 20:02:07 +0000

This is a nice way to celebrate one Fam out of the millions on their page. While the majority of communities this large will always feel faceless, occasionally featuring or acknowledging someone brings a sense of humanity to the community.

Oreo's post this week: "Fan Lisa T. was born in 1912 - the same year Oreo cookies were introduced. Wish her a special happy birthday below!"

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Grow SMB Revenues With Buyer-Based Marketing

Tony Zambito — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 12:49:39 +0000

This is part 3 of a series on the challenge of targeting SMB markets and how the use of buyer-based modeling and buyer-based marketing help organizations to grow their SMB customer base.

The sheer size of the SMB makes for a daunting task for any organization intent on marketing to the SMB segment. When you consider some Fortune 1000 or Global 2000 organizations can have in the 10’s or 100’s of thousands of companies in their customer bases, the expression of zeroing in on your target buyer can sound near impossible. It is a dilemma however that cannot be ignored. The U.S. Small business Administration estimates that the SMB segment accounts for better than 98% of all businesses in the United States.

In the previous article in this series, How To Get To Know The New SMB Buyer, I touched upon the means to get to know the SMB buyer. Marketing to the SMB segment and buyers should first start with visiting the segmentation issue a little deeper. There have been many means tried for SMB segmentation whether it is by size, type, vertical, products, solutions, and etc. To some degree, they have helped to manage the challenge of bringing a tighter focus to the SMB segment and its’ sub-market segments. Analytics of your SMB customer database is like fighting numbers with numbers – you can contain the data but without behavioral insight – you will not be able to get inside them. The call to action now is for organizations to bring more science and evolution to the challenge. Why? Because buyers in general have changed so rapidly in the last three years alone that gaining a competitive edge has become much more complex.

Getting Descriptive

Going beyond conventional methods of segmenting the SMB customer base means getting more descriptive about how SMB buyers behave and how goals drive their behaviors. This includes getting a good sense about their Buyergraphics – their attitudes, perceptions, values, information needs, and more. The attempt here is to answer some tough questions that help to bring more focus to an SMB strategy:

Who are our best customers in the SMB segments and why?

In what SMB sub-market segments are our best customers?

Who are our best prospects and in which SMB sub-market segment are they?

What are the best means of engaging our best SMB customers and best SMB prospects?

Descriptive buyer modeling helps you to get answers to these questions and gives you insight into the data as well. In the previous article I stressed the importance of buyer modeling to help get to know your SMB buyers. Modeling buyers and portraying them via buyer personas and scenarios helps you get to the first two questions mentioned. To help round out the SMB buyer picture, learning their attitudes towards your product, service, or technology and how these attitudes drive information needs help to get deeply descriptive. There are three specific buyer modeling efforts that can help shed light on the attitudes and goals driving SMB buyer behavior and help inform buyer-based marketing strategies:

Buyer Mental Models: collecting a picture of SMB buyer attitudes, perceptions, and goals that influence buying decisions can be a descriptive means for segmenting as well as buyer-based communicating. For example if your product technology is getting high marks for user-friendliness and there is strong attitudinal resistance to perceived complex technology in 3 out 5 identified sub-markets, then creating buyer-based marketing strategies around this mental model is one way of segmenting.

Buyer Content Models: identifying the information needs and goals of buyers today extends well beyond just the concept of content marketing. With the rise of SMB sub-market segments engaging not only in new technologies but forming new ecosystem, the information needs of SMB buyers are vastly different and changing rapidly. Carrying the above example further, the information needs of the 3 sub-markets may vary differently in context and how information is shared amongst both suppliers and partners. More and more, organizations will need to think context-based marketing and context-based selling as opposed to just content-based marketing. While this will apply to all types of businesses, I believe this will be especially true for the SMB markets.

Buyer Experience Models: how SMB buyers view, perceive, and expect experience is undergoing transformative gyrations. The way SMB buyers experience inbound marketing and other newer technology-based marketing and sales is certain to be different than larger enterprises. There are many more what I call Buyer Moment of Truth in SMB that are frankly invisible to marketers and sellers today. Not identifying where these moments of truth are can be a significant disadvantage in laying out both inbound and outbound marketing and sales strategies. Understanding experiences is important since they are instrumental in shaping attitudes, perceptions, and perceived values. For the examples mentioned, previous experiences with technology not yet cleared of bugs may have created entrenched resistance to both new and complex. Reshaping thinking around experience can then become an important strategy.

Modeling SMB buyers to a deeper level and around the three modeling efforts mentioned gets organizations closer to a true buyer-based marketing effort. In addition, it gives more robust ability to segment SMB by behavior and context. Buyer-based marketing can be most effective when it addresses how buyers behave and understanding the context of why they make purchase decisions.

Informed with behavioral buyergraphics that hone in on buyer behaviors and how they are influenced by mental models, information needs, and experience can be a powerful way to resonate with SMB buyers. Getting at the heart of their contextual environments, which will vary by sub-market segments, gives the insight needed to develop specific buyer-based marketing strategies that defies one-size fits all. When it comes to the dilemma of how to make sense of thousands of SMB customers and prospects, taking these steps eliminates wasteful guessing and pinpoints buyer-based marketing at the right buyer, the right sub-market, the right context, and the right time.

Next Up: Connect With SMB Buyer Through Buyer-Based Selling

Follow @TonyZambito

Your Top Priority Is Growing The SMB Revenue Base - Now What? (buyerology.com)
How To Get To Know The New SMB Buyer (buyerology.com)
How B2B Leaders Are Understanding Buyers Better With Behavioral Buyergraphics (buyerology.com)
How To Get To Know The New SMB Buyer (blogs.imediaconnection.com)
Grow SMB Revenues With Buyer-Based Marketing (buyerology.com)
Use Buyer-Based Selling To Engage The New SMB Buyer (buyerology.com)
Your Top Priority Is Growing The SMB Revenue Base - Now What? (blogs.imediaconnection.com)

Hispanic smartphone experiences miss the mark

Lara Haehle — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 20:26:53 +0000

As a digital agency, we place a lot of focus on User and Customer Experience. From our recently released report with multicultural digital advertising agency Sensis, “Hispanic In-Store Mobile Experience: Social Shopping,” we have culled a few statistics about Hispanic shoppers who use smartphones. The primary finding from this study was that Hispanic shoppers are social shoppers, which means the mobile environments (typically targeted toward individuals) with which they interact at a higher rate than the general market is not friendly for their experience.

Let us know your personal experiences shopping with retail sites or apps - what improvements do you recommend?

Creativing :: The AP’s social strategy, Nike’s ‘Bid Your Sweat’ campaign, and marketing messages with primal urges

Doug Schumacher — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 16:28:07 +0000

Links pointing to the future of marketing, from the co-founder of content strategy tool Zuum.

Inside The AP’s Social Strategy

Great read for both a brief but interesting backdrop to the APs history, as well as how a 150 year old news organization is using Facebook and Twitter. They state that Twitter is their primary engagement vehicle, but Twitter is where they find the breaking stories, which I definitely agree with.

Via @joshsternberg & @bmorrissey

Market With Messages That Tap Into Man’s Primal Urges

Sometimes we get caught up in trying to rationalize strategies and key product benefits. I like this level-set on how it all tracks back to very core emotions.

Nike Auction – Bid Your Sweat

I really like this as a way of rewarding what in this case is literally Nike’s ‘most active’ customers. It would obviously have to be a very limited offer, but instead of just throwing out a 10% off sale, why not give the discount to loyal customer’s who’ve worked for it?

Via @adverblog

Content Strategy Ain’t Just For Large Companies

Good article with three key points for getting started in content marketing. Not only is it also for small businesses, when you consider the costs of paid media, it could be even more for small businesses than large.

Via @Robert_Rose

Top 5 News

A very simple content curation site. The top 5 stories from the top news publications.

Via @learmonth

How tech’s giants want to re-invent journalism

Since we have a bit of a news theme on this post, I’ll continue with a look at how news publishing really isn’t changing, despite the technical advances. In a content marketing world, how news is gathered and distributed will always be a key topic to be on top of.

Via @ckanal

Facebook Now Has 901 Million Users

On track to hit 1b by end of year. Remarkable.

Via @AdTech

Facebook generates $1.21 per user on average worldwide in Q1

With all the talk about what a Facebook Fan is worth, this is what they’re worth to Facebook.

Via @brittanydarwell

Creativing :: Fortune 500s choose Facebook over blogs, Creative Timeline examples, and an insiders view of mobile

Doug Schumacher — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 19:20:30 +0000

Links pointing to the future of marketing, from the co-founder of content strategy tool Zuum.

Confessions of an Agency Mobile Specialist

This is a good series from Digiday. Kind of the WikiLeaks for advertising.

Via @JackMarshall

INFOGRAPHIC: How Fortune 500s Use Social Media

23% of Fortune 500 companies have a public facing blog. 58% of Fortune 500 companies have a corporate Facebook page. I get the argument that brands should be driving traffic to their site, but you also have to consider where the masses are gathering. To follow the money, you have to follow the traffic. With these numbers, the top brands are basically saying the money’s on Facebook.

5 Ways Businesses Are Using Facebook Timelines

A quick, fun read with good visuals.

Via @KentHuffman

CP+B Taps Henry to Get Creative With Insights

The best bite is in the last paragraph. Quote: “From a right-brain standpoint, where analytics is really heading is storytelling. Analytics has too often been columns and rows of data, and where that needs to evolve to is creative narratives. There’s a very creative element in driving action out of insights. Left and right brain both need to be used to maximize the impact of what can be seen simply as raw data.”

Via @NoreenOLeary

Facebook becomes No. 1 most visited site in Brazil, according to Experian Hitwise

Brazil has always been an interesting social media study to me, because it’s the one place where Google, via Orkut, has experiences social media dominance over Facebook. Perhaps it’s confusion over Google+, and the Brazilian Orkut users got lost in the shuffle. But even if that was the case, it’s interesting that users there seem to be making the shift to Facebook and not Google+.

Via @brittanydarwell

Proof that Facebook fans are worth more to brands

The finding is that Facebook fans of a brand are significantly more likely to purchase, consider, or recommend the brand than those who aren’t page fans. The obvious caveat is that this survey seems to have been given to consumers in general, and thus the ones who are Facebook fans are also likely already customers. And naturally current customers would be more likely to purchase than non-customers.

Great copywriting in a Craig’s List ad

Artful, long form copywriting is not dead. It’s just moved to Craig’s list. And if you want ROI on this, it sold within two days. Bidding wars, I hear.

Via @_GregCollins

Don’t just hear them, LISTEN to them: Using customer insights to drive innovation

Dan Roche — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 17:45:48 +0000

How do Apple, Google and Facebook become leaders in their industry? The two biggest factors both lie with their customers. These companies are able to innovate and predict consumer desires and needs, but they also listen to feedback and wish lists. It is this combination of understanding what will work and accepting that there are always areas for improvement that make them successful.

Customers are increasingly more knowledgeable about products and services, and they aren't afraid to share their feedback. The key is to ask. Clients don’t only drive the market; they ultimately are the market, so it’s critical to align product development and advancements with your client base.

In the technology industry, it can be difficult to anticipate customer needs as each client uses the technology differently. Plus, with SaaS-based tools, changes and updates can be completed immediately, so regular monitoring of current trends as well as customer insight, usage and behavior patterns is essential to maintain competiveness. Companies like SalesForce are even encouraging direct innovation from its users and offering CRM app builds on its platform. After all, if you aren’t obtaining this pertinent customer data today, customers can easily switch providers tomorrow.

Here are some considerations when garnering customer insight:

Compatibility – While it would be great to cater to every customer wish, it isn’t always practical or profitable. Before asking for customer feedback, it’s important to have a full understanding of how changes to your product or service may impact security, scalability or performance. Will these functions work across a variety of platforms or operating systems? Verify that you can uphold these standards before making promises to your client(s).

User Groups/Customer Testing – Companies should always incorporate product testing as part of their development process. This will help determine if your product/service is competitive with others on the market or if changes need to be made to stand out from the crowd. The added bonus of customer testing is that you can use your budget more effectively to focus on these key areas of improvement and/or innovation.

Wish Lists – Ask your customers for their feature wish list. These requests may or may not be feasible to implement, but these “if only” statements will give your company a better handle on how your client operates and the functions that are necessary for their business.

Report Cards – In addition to wish lists, it’s important that your clients have a place to share what works and doesn’t work for them. What needs to be adjusted? What function has really helped? What feature is difficult to use? Remind clients that you are looking for honest feedback - good and bad - in order to better suit their needs. This is a great opportunity for client(s) to reflect on what functions are essential to their business and for providers to make the necessary updates.

Customer Budgets – Customers will ask for the sun and the moon, but they may only be willing to pay for one. Make sure that your clients prioritize the features and functionality that benefits their business most.

Including your customers in the decision-making process will simultaneously help your company provide the solutions wanted in the marketplace and strengthen client relationships. Ensure that all employees are asking for customer feedback because a customer-centric team is the foundation of innovation.

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Don’t just hear them, LISTEN to them: Using customer insights to drive innovation