by KSL on August 16, 2010
When your interaction with a business makes you feel like they know you, doesn’t it feel good? Doesn’t your loyalty and satisfaction level pop up when, lets say the service center that works on your car every 5k miles knows your name and knows that you prefer a text message to a phone call when your ride is ready. Doesn’t it make you feel “good” somehow when you go to a restaurant that you’ve only been to a couple of times and are greeted and treated like you’re a regular? You feel valued because they took the time to recognize you and how you like to interact.
For me, something as simple as my name can really be very complicated. My preference, being called “Kelley”, “Kelley-Sue”, “Mrs. LeBlanc” or “KSL” varies, depending on what I’m doing and where I’m doing it. If I’m someplace that I feel very comfortable and very familiar, like when I’m with “my peeps”, then I expect to be called “KSL”. If I am out with a client, or making a significant purchase with a business I don’t frequent then “Mrs. LeBlanc” is appropriate, anything less than that would feel presumptuous and maybe even rude to me. The key to that statement was “to me“- because I’m not the same as you, and that’s the point. It’s also the point of multi-touch marketing because there is no marketing multi-pass.
You cannot, in one message, or even one campaign of messaging, touch everyone, the way they most prefer to be touched, using one medium. Yeah we need social, paid search, print, video, mobile and email but more importantly you need to know who likes which medium and when they like it if you’re going to be able to tie it altogether and develop the relationships that will make your prospects feel like customers and your customers feel like family.
Ok “Multi-Touch Marketing” sounds fab but you’re a small business and you can’t afford to be everywhere all at once. You have a job to do and there are only so many hours in a week. I hear ya, I truly do, so lets make a system that brings people into your fold gently at certain touch points and talk with your client base every few months to see if the system is working.
Part One
I’d recommend starting with a little research project.
- Ask your customers every chance and every way that you can, use your employees, surveys, and third party tools.
- Ask your customers what and how they would like to be able to stay in touch with you.
- Find out what they are wanting to know and what will make them tune out.
- Ask them about how they interact with other businesses? Do they get text reminders from the dentist before an appointment, would they like to be reminded by text the next time they are due for an appointment, or a customer appreciation event?
- Have they received updates or coupons through Facebook?
- Would they like to subscribe to a newsletter?
- Have they ever seen those Blendtec videos? What did they think about them?
Make getting to know your customer part of the workflow. Do they like “Mrs LeBlanc” or “Kelley-Sue”, when is their birthday? What do they like, golf or fishing, nascar or soccer? Once you know your folks, you can really begin to interact with them. Gaining this insight is part of the fuel that helps you get better results from each and every marketing channel from telemarketing to email campaigns.
In Part Two I’ll talk about incentives and explore some quick tools to manage direct mail and email campaigns. Part Three I’ll talk about designing the interaction, the life-cycle, from stranger to evangelist.
I am totally frustrated. A nonprofit organization that I care about just closed up shop. They claim it as a victory, as if the people they served no longer need the services but that’s a load a crap. It’s such a waste because they had lots of what they needed to sustain the programs and even grow their membership but they had no one holding the reins that understood what to do with them. Too much changed too quickly. The idea that the way they had always communicated was not how their audience wanted to communicate was simply lost on them.
It kills me that I can’t read a blog that isn’t talking about blogging, or pick up a book that isn’t talking about writing a book about social media but the “Social” folks are writing blogs and books for each other because the people “at work” still aren’t in the loop. It’s like they are thrashing around in the water and unless someone gets them to listen and appreciate the value in all this change, more will drown, not realizing they didn’t have to swim so hard they only needed to stand up.
Case in point, organization in question had some great content and they sent email newsletters with regularity but they didn’t put that content in a blog, or on Facebook or anywhere that anyone else could see it. So it got sent to the same people, over and over, most of whom were already moving on. The great content that took so much time and care to prepare never reached the people it actually deserved to serve. See the writer didn’t prefer to get content from the social web and so projected a value on email that just wasn’t reflected by the membership and prospective members. More over the single voice outbound never became a conversation. A newsletter never let all the recipients talk to each other about the topic they were reading. It never enabled them to work together and for each other. It never called back those on the way out to come back in and lend a hand to the newbs. Urgh! Wasted.
Communication is not only about what you have to say, it is about packaging and delivering that message so that the recipient will receive it with the least barrier and highest ability to arrive at the thought or emotion you wanted to bring to them. Think about the voyage of your messages not just the destination. Ok I’m done for now.
When working with clients on social media projects, it seems we always start in “Marketing Land” and over some time I educate my clients about the importance of developing their Social Media Plans and Policies. It is paramount that they understand their own goals and define their rules of engagement before they start participating. Otherwise how will they know if it is worth their time and energy? Once we get to planning activities they begin to expand their thinking, as it’s almost always more than just Marketing that can be served by Social Media depending on the organization’s goals.
To me Social Media is more like “Operations”. It’s called Social Media because it is about the social interaction between people. It’s about who we recommend. Who inspires us. Who we inspire. What we value, crave, trust. It’s not a single task that can be executed and tied to a dollar bill, it’s really more holistic than that.
I’ve only had two engagements in the past three plus years where I feel I wasn’t … successful. Both involved organizations who felt they wanted and needed social media marketing but were not prepared to support the activities. They still had a very “traditional marketing” mindset and they were in a corporate cultures that were still very “top-down” and somewhat oppressive. AJ of MFG.com really nailed it when he talked about manufactures coming to grips to with social media, as he said “Many are trying it out with the ‘Broccoli Mentality’ – ‘I don’t really like it, but I’m eating it because I’ve heard it’s good for me.’”
They’re probably right. It is “good-for-you”, unless… its not … good for you. Then you get your nutrients from other green leafy substances, or a dietary supplement. If your environment doesn’t promote social activity then social media may not be the right choice for you. Forrester Research predicts 54 billion dollars in the US for B2B Social Media Marketing spending by 2014, but you can bet that plenty of those dollars are being spent on unsuccessful social media efforts.
If you think of your organization and the words, “people centric”, “transparent”, “inclusive”, spring to mind then you’re probably in good shape. But if words like “control”, “exclusive”, or “formal”, are what comes to your lips, then you may have some cultural challenges that social media will only exacerbate.
Things to consider: Do you promote each employee’s education and encourage their interaction with each other to educate and propel their careers? Do you showcase your Sales representatives for their thought leadership, command of the domain and contribution to the company? Do you talk about more than your product and/or service? Do you focus on something other than the bottom line? Do you practice listening to customers and employees regularly? If you answered “yes”, or “we try”, to most of these questions then social media can be a great asset to your organization. If you answered no to most of these questions then you may want to consider more traditional advertising initiatives. You may want to try advertising on social media sites. 
Often times when I talk about social media strategies, I explain that social media lets everyone be the center of their universe. Each and every one of us should be able to feel like the center of the universe. If your customer happens to use LinkedIn on a day to day basis, then access to everything relevant for your product, service, business, or mission should be available from within that environment. The customer or “user” shouldn’t have to change their preferred environmental preference to associate with, learn from, contribute to, or promote your business. If they live and breath on Facebook then all the same applies, and if they live in a mobile environment they should be able to access all the relevant parts of the business from within their mobile browser, mobile application or messaging program. This requires research and planning. Where do your customers live and breath online? What conversations do they want to have and where are they comfortable having them? Once you understand their environment and preferences you can begin to create your social media plans delivering information in the appropriate orbits.
Thinking about your business in 360 degrees is important for today’s customer relationships too. Your customer wants to know about all the ways you share similar interests or concerns. About all they ways your partnership can accomplish a common goal. Sharing lots of information about who you are as individuals and as an organization will turn some people away but those few were never going to be the customers who evangelized your product, service or cause. The people who will be drawn to you will stay and they will be exponentially more powerful forces on your business than those who find you’re “not a match”. My Dad always told me that in order to be successful you had to be brave enough to be loved for who you really are and for what you really value. It’s the same in business. Smart brands are living and breathing brands, sharing more than the polished messages and inspiring ideas instead of controlling conversation.
When you look at your business from the outside in, can you see who and what it is all the way around? Can you see your core values? Your sense of humor? Can you see the universe of which you are the center? If not, then you need to share the parts that are missing in consumable sharable ways. If you can then keep on keeping it real and share a story about how this level of access has impacted your organization.
KTF
-KSL
