Atomic Ideas

Don't Keep on Truckin'

I was talking with a guy who runs a digital marketing agency. We were discussing his proposal to a client to handle a social media campaign for them, to do content marketing.

He committed to writing and sending out 20 articles a month for them, 5 articles a week. I asked him if they had that much good stuff to send out every week. He said, "It doesn't matter. We'll get their name out there even if we have to write about a truck the company buys. They want 20 articles sent out every month, then we'll make things up to write about."

I said to him that was just pushing static out onto an already crowded Internet, and after awhile people aren't going to read the dribble that comes from that company. "The search engines will pick the articles up, their rankings will go up", he said.

Writing for the search engines, not for customers. Who's your audience? Search spiders or living, breathing customers?

Content marketing is definitely a great way to be found through organic search. But people appreciate and are looking for relevant, valuable information.

Back to that mission of '20 articles per month'. I recently suggested to a client (who wanted us to send out 20 articles/month - had they been talking to that other guy??) to reframe it as '20 posts per month'. Posts can be:

• relevant articles (written to help inform customers, not spiders)
• a post on a blog
• an informative video
• a response to a question
• a podcast

Add all the posts up over the course of a month. 20 is then doable. It may be 4-5 really good articles and the rest other content. And then you're out there socializing it up in a variety of ways and in engaging conversations. Include 'next action' steps in your communication and you'll be bringing customer back for more.

The side benefit as you send out quality, next step content is that you'll be creating a reputation as a trusted resource of information, building your brand reputation. 

Not just blathering on about a truck.

Can Social Media Start a Car?

Social media is the darling of marketers and the talk of news channels. It's heralded as starting a new age in marketing, but can it start a car? In Ford Motor's case, I truly hope so.

Ford has improved their product quality eight years in a row, and the 10.27.09  Consumer Reports article gives them more props: http://tiny.cc/4RvnK.

They're beating out Acura, they're beating out Lexus (That's not a typo). J.D. Power rave ratings abound. And yet the perception that Japanese cars are better than American cars - better quality, better mileage - sticks around like a head cold that nobody can get rid of. No matter how hard you blow, there's more to blow.

And consumers need to blow this archaic perception the hell out. Social media may be the cold remedy.

GM is going big mass media spend with tons of prime-time TV commercials and a celebrity spokesperson (former football player) telling some oily actor Buick is better than people think. Ok.

But what we haven't had in the past is social media to spread the word to target audiences. Get people telling people that Ford kicks quality butt,

Have people on the Ford site, talking about their real-world experiences driving a Ford. Have me on there. I own a Mercury Mariner and I love it. Want to know why I love it, or do you want to hear a Ford (commissioned) salesperson try and sell you a car?

Less shiny happy slick web site and carefully crafted releases and more honest-to-goodness praise about an honest-to-goodness American turnaround story.
 

And Ford is doing a pretty good job doing just that, with Scott Monty watching over their social media efforts, listing them on all the social media sites, CEO Alan Mulally opening himself up to customers, and a top-notch blog with the tagline "Ford is Different – Join the Conversation" -  http://www.thefordstory.com/.

Let's see if social media can get the conversation updated faster than a :30 spot during a football game.

Go, Ford, go. Sell those quality cars.

How do you feel Ford is doing in getting the word out? Better? About the same? What do you feel they could do to jumpstart their story?

Voice Prompt Hell Taints A Customer's Relationship With Target... Or Why Customer Experience is Everything.

The other day my family had a billing issue with Target. The issue itself wasn't that complicated. Fixing it was. Why? A complicated and confusing voice prompt system that made it difficult to find or talk to a real person. Want to check your account status? Easy. Want to make a payment? Easy. Want to talk to a human? Aggravating.

Content may be king, but customer experience is EVERYTHING. Everything, from the first meeting through marketing, to the experience on your website, to the greeting at your door, to the environment and treatment in your store, to the follow up after the sale... and a thousand things in between, are critical. It's no secret that a delightful customer experience leads to loyalty and repeat sales, positive word of mouth and momentum that leads to selling more stuff.

I like Target. We shop there regularly and I can't say my family has ever had a bad experience in-store. But the experience in your store isn't everything.

My frustration with Target's voice prompt system resulted in twenty minutes of wasted time and frustration before I was finally able to talk to someone, then another twenty minutes to resolve the problem. 

It left a bad taste in my mouth and also resulted in me telling a bunch of people and, of course writing this post which will tell a whole bunch of other people.

Customer expeience is EVERYTHING. Are you looking at it that way? 

Photo Credit  http://www.flickr.com/photos/simeon_barkas/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Take me to your...common sense.

Have you seen the controversy about the Halloween costume of a space alien in an orange jumpsuit that has the words "Illegal Alien" written on it?  Now some do-good-er groups are demanding it be taken off the market as it is "insensitive."  

My question is "insensitive to who?" Space aliens? I don't think so. As intellectually superior beings (they can travel interstellar space, after all), they would quickly understand their "illegal alien" status and, if they wanted to stay here, begin filling out the proper paperwork (or blast us, depending on their intentions) . 

Insensitive to legal immigrants? I don't think so. They took the time and made the sacrifices needed to be here legally. They aren't being made fun of. 

Insensitive to illegal immigrants (of the earthly kind)? I don't think so. The costume clearly shows a space alien. It shows no one of any earthly race, creed or color -- unless there is a race of creepy, gray-green, big- headed, beady-eyed monsters that I don't know about. So why should any earthly person be upset?  

Insensitive to law breakers? Maybe. But who cares? They are criminals. They showed no sensitivity to us when they broke our laws. So why do they deserve our sensitivity? I say if the illegal aliens don't like it, they can just go back to where they came from! 

The good news?  All the free publicity has pushed sales of the "Illegal Immigrant" costume through the roof. Advertising works. If you can get your product or service in front of enough people, you can sell anything. Even aliens in orange jumpsuits, 

Mad Men...and women

Lately, nobody's madder than the typical creative. With the economy squeezing the bottom line, the pressure has never been greater to try and hang onto every client. And if that means agreeing to a client's ever-shorter deadlines, so be it.  Why risk ticking off a client just to make sure the agency has the proper time to do a good job?

What gets sacrificed is "think" time. Sure, any creative worth his or her salt can come up with some pretty good ideas in very short order. But the truly great ideas, the ideas that strike a real chord with consumers, the really new ideas that get a client noticed... well, that can take time. And isn't that the type of ideas that clients are coming to you for?

When the new British owners of Sterling Cooper didn't like the fact that the creatives seemed to be "wasting time," Don Draper said it best; "You bought us because we do it (advertising) better than you, and the way we do it better is to let our people be unproductive, until they are." He understood the value of "think time."  And that "thinking", because it does not produce a lot of outward evidence like noise, saw dust, or sparks seems to the uninitiated as something "unproductive."

Concrete takes time to harden, bread take time to rise, and creatives need time to think. The result? Better roads, better bread, and better advertising.

Steam and Mirrors

One positive result (and there aren't many) of this horrible economy, is that marketers are going out of their way to try and clearly communicate the real value of their product or service. Gone are the good old days when marketers could just trumpet any (often insignificant) difference about their product to set it apart. Take for instance, White Castle's famous "steam-grilled taste." What does steam taste like? Sure it's different, but where is the real benefit to me as a consumer? If you take a moment to think about it, a steamy burger is a soggy burger. 

Also disappearing are the hollow promises. Like that direct response ad a few years ago offering a Crocodile Dundee type knife with the promise "It's the finest knife of it's kind, we've ever sold!"  Which could simply mean they've never sold a knife of this particular kind before. Or the knives of this kind that they have sold before are crap and this one is only slightly less crappy! 

Like all sectors in this economy, advertisers are getting back to basics. 1. Understand who your best customer is. 2. Understand what their needs, pains and attitudes are. 3. Then at appropriate points in their purchase process, clearly (and hopefully memorably) communicate to them how your product or service benefits them.

That's not to say advertising has to be straightforward. It can still be entertaining, humorous, emotional, impactful, etc. It's just that the humor, emotion, etc has to help clearly communicate the real value to the consumer. And don't get me wrong, as a consumer I still enjoy a cheezy commercial with a guy's head on fire for no good reason at all -- I just won't buy from him.

-Greg

The Sun Sets on Saturn. A Sad End To a Great Brand Beginning.

Watch the video. It's a rather poignant reminder of what Saturn was able to accomplish, leading up to the brand's hope for the future... namely Roger Penske.

Of course, we now know that the Penske deal has fallen through and that, barring some eleventh hour miracle, Saturn will quietly go into the history books.

It's a shame. When Saturn came on the automotive scene in 1990, they truly were a "Different Kind of Car Company". They embraced an offline branding strategy that was very much like the online social media strategies marketers are buzzing about now, twenty years later.

They changed the game. Saturn was customer-centric. They embraced consumers like no other car company on earth and celebrated them as customers. They had fans when being fans of a brand wasn't fashionable... almost a cult-like following. As they grew, they had customer reunions and other events that brought people who bought their cars together all over the country... they built a community. They nailed social networking before those words were buzz. In short, Saturn was very much ahead of it's time.

Of course, at some point, for many reasons you can read about elsewhere, they turned into the same old kind of car company. Again, a shame.

G.M. began a bold experiment twenty years ago. They embraced and fostered innovation in a category that was stale, and at the dealership level, intimidating to customers and were able to reinvent the way cars were marketed and sold to consumers.

Unfortunately, they didn't stick with it. The overwhelming corporate culture and internal red tape that led to the ultimate demise of the entire G.M. brand and bankruptcy infected, weakened and destroyed Saturn long before the breakdown of the Penske Deal.

It's too bad that G.M. didn't learn from Saturn's initial success.

With Hal Riney's agency at the helm and a strategy of friendly, exceptional customer service, engagement and community building, they did everything right and built a brand that truly was different from any other in the category. It didn't even seem to matter that the early cars weren't really all that great.

People bought them, loved them and loved the brand. What more can you ask for? 

Website Technical Optimization - Basic Stuff, High Rewards

Guest Blogger Doug Menzer, offers up some basic advice that is definitely worth considering.

When I sit with clients, prospects and colleagues, I try to spend the time both teaching and learning.  In particular, when I coach many of the smart people that I am thankful to work with, on a variety of digital marketing and social media business strategies, I have a tendency to often lose them.  This is most likely because of the speed that I explain things.

I have a bad habit of assuming that people know what I am talking about because I get very passionate about sharing my experiences and knowledge.  Ask my wife and she will not only agree but laugh that I am stating this fact.

The critical focal point in the first sentence above, however, is learning.  I have found that as I am teaching others, I can actually learn more than I am teaching in many cases.  For example, (take a social assessment and strategy development for a B2B company) – I’ve consulted with some very intelligent and savvy business people in the B2B arena on social assessment projects – but I’ve learned to become a better listener.  Which, ( …BTW) -  allows me to be a better learner and ultimately a better teacher.

Outside of an extremely detailed assessment ( among other deliverables) – including “listening” to the social landscape of:

• Brand mentions

• Competitors

• Customers, across several industries

• Service offerings/products

Prior to developing a strategy – the recommendation to begin improving their web sites is sometimes needed first and foremost.   As my colleague Shauna Nicholson states, “It’s like dressing up before you go out to a business event.”  However, what if your client really likes their current site?  (Even if it has not been updated since 2001) Feeling that there is nothing needed for improvement.  In fact, they feel that:

• The creative is great. (In reality: It looks like 1998 is calling!)

• It has functionality and conversions are great.  (In reality:  They don't know the potential that they are missing.)

• It must be optimized correctly, right?  Just leave it and let’s move forward with Twitter and Facebook, right?

How do we explain this most basic step?  Putting your clothes on before you go out… a small (but very important) part of the overall strategy, without irritating or losing a client? Here are some slivers of the website technical optimization pie that can hit a cord with a President of a large B2B organization.

Let’s say that Google, Yahoo and Bing are the hosts of a major trade show in your industry.  Anybody that you ever dreamed of getting in front of is your audience – and they are at this trade show, which gives you many opportunities to tell them all who you are and what you do.  You go outside of your booth passing out some really great items to draw them to your booth (as well as having the opportunity for your hosts to draw traffic to your booth…) But, what happens when they get there?

Let’s look at what you are telling your hosts first:

• Page Title - Does your page title (or tradeshow banner) effectively tell Google (or your trade show host) who they should recommend visiting your booth?

(Is it relevant and descriptive to the industry you serve?

• Meta Description  - Does your meta description effectively tell Yahoo what you do?

(Does it match the visible text?)

• Meta Keywords – Are your keyword effective and relevant?

(Are they consistent with the content page by page? (Each page individually optimized?))

Then... there is your audience (what if they come):

They're Heeere!  Once your users show up, is your website clear, consistent and easy to navigate?  Or is it cold, gloomy and/or hard to understand?  I’ve personally spent more time at trade show booths that have occupied my attention (without overwhelming me) and offered great information.    The same goes for websites.  So, you have a 24-7 (365 days a year) trade show going on and your okay with a dingy booth with incomplete messages and no one hanging around, eh? 

Driving traffic to a site can be the easy part – in some cases, outside of the fact that we want to get relevant traffic – we want to look the part.  Do we have a nice outfit on, have our hair combed, teeth brushed and flossed with a smile on ready to do some business?