Throw-Away Conversation

It's easy for me to forget that The BeanCast Marketing Podcast is having an impact. Lost in the details of show prep, guest scheduling and surrounding conversation, I rarely get accurate glimpses of what the audience thinks about the show and about me. That's why this post by D.A. Schweiss caught me off guard. 

Yesterday I asked the audience (half jokingly, mind you) to handle my promotion since I would be traveling. Dieter took me up on this challenge, though, and spent the day promoting my links. Then, rounding off the day he wrote the above piece, pulling some quotes from my own past blog posts that make me look pretty darn good. 

Obviously I was humbled by the experience. But I also learned an important lesson about conversational marketing: Everything we say is important. Every interaction, every thought and every details matters. Dieter even specifically called out my video game and family tweets as an important part of the whole that made me interesting to follow. That fact is not inconsequential.

Most of us would negate such idle chatter as video game talk — this "throw-away" conversation — as worthless distraction from our focused efforts online. But Dieter's post shows that it added unquantifiable color to the aggregate whole of my promotional efforts. It may have even been the driving force that inspired his advocacy on my part yesterday. So while on the surface it is disposable chatter, in the end it's what really drove loyalty.

Take this message to heart, you who manage brands online: People don't have relationships with brands, they have relationships with people who work at those brands and with fellow brand loyalists. So how are you coloring these relationships with real and meaningful personality?

Social Is A Media, Not A Tactic

I got a great question the other day via email. Mike Johnston wondered why so many of the guests "..have such a difficult time describing the principles of creating an effective social media campaign for a brand." 

In his estimation, "It’s the purest form of brand advertising I’ve ever seen...I’m always amazed at how many advertising professionals aren’t able to articulate how/why it works. I don’t want to come off negative because I really like your show, but could you invite on a guest to discuss the basics."

I thought I'd share a slightly edited version of my answer:

Well, trouble is I've invited on the show all the real experts I respect the most and I get somewhat different answers from each, so I don't think there are any true "basics" to share yet, per se. However, as I've articulated on my blog a few times, the aggregate answer is that there are two ways to look at social: As a media you buy or as a slow-build opportunity to encourage advocacy.
In the first camp, we find the branders and the sellers using social networks for pushing out a message in a personal way. Whether that's a brand or a "buy-now" push, it essentially comes down to a numbers game, just like any other media. The more folks you reach, the more chances you have to make an impact. And the more targeted and engaged the audience is, the more likely they will be to hear you.

In other words, social influencer strategies are about "buying" (literally or figuratively) an audience to make an impression, much as traditional media buyers purchase time on a prime time show. The only perceived advantage is that the social audience is probably going to be more engaged with a message coming from someone they respect.
In the second camp, we find those who are infusing a transparency throughout an organization and encouraging conversation around the brand, usually initiated by the customer, but always nurtured by the brand. The object is to do whatever possible to encourage and nurture true advocates for the brand so that they end up sharing your message with honest enthusiasm for the product. It tends not to rely on tricks that create false conversation centered on a promotion. It's more about finding advocates who are already expressing appreciation and giving them more reasons to do so. 
Both are valid approaches but very different, and it behooves a brand to understand these differences before initiating a social campaign. The first requires critical mass in terms of followers and can be achieved by buying the attention of a few folks with a million followers. The second is a slow build that relies on persistent relationship building and one-on-one engagement. And the approaches can be blended together to a certain extent as well, so they are not exclusive to each other. But they need to be recognized as separate initiatives with different goals.

Social is being lumped as a single "discipline" and that serves no one well. It's like saying TV is all about branding, when DRTV also uses the medium of television effectively. Social media is a media, not a strategy, and the tactics you employ will define the type of outcome you receive.
At least that's where I land on things. I would say this more on the show, but I try not to grandstand. It makes for a better program to just let the guests take center stage.

Hope this helps a few people to understand social tactics a little better and maybe sparks some conversation on the subject.

Why We Promote Others

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One of the unusual aspects of HumongoNation, the self-promotional tour organized by Connecticut agency Humongo, is how little self-promotion they do. They literally travel the country searching for other agencies and businesses to promote, with nary a word about their own agency.

So here's how it goes: They gets sponsors, they roll around the country in a borrowed Ford Flex, they stop by businesses, they shoot video, then post the video. Rinse and repeat.

How can this be good business?

Seeing that The BeanCast Marketing Podcast has a very similar strategy of promoting others in order to promote ourselves, I thought it would be interesting to get the Humongo take on it. So I took the opportunity before they interviewed me, to interview their president, Darryl Ohrt, and find out how he approaches this different flavor of self-promotion.

Luxury and eCommerce

The subject of luxury brands embracing e-commerce sparked a lot of discussion this week. On The BeanCast itself, via Twitter and on the blog comments of the show notes there was vigorous debate about the ultimate effect of such a move.

While the guests on the show largely sided toward it being a good move, some listeners disagreed, feeling that ultimately a luxury brand demands personal touch and in-store experience to drive sales. There was also concern that e-commerce diminishes the brand value and distracts online searchers who are researching more than shopping.

My own thoughts tend to side more toward the opinions of my guests. Here's why.

Creating The Real Brand Experience
One of the points during the show was that these luxury brands are often at the mercy of the stores they are displayed in. Merchandising efforts aside, a snide salesperson can kill a brand experience. 

Until e-commerce there was very little a brand could do to create a buying experience that they would like the customer to have. The could affect image and value, but not that moment when money is exchanged. And that moment is a key thing that a consumer remembers.

Having an online store gives the brand that kind of opportunity. Even if the customers prefer to go into a store to purchase, having a presentation of what buying a product should be like helps a customer differentiate between the product brand and the store brand. So when the store clerk sneers down her nose, the customer is less likely to hold that against the brand. 

Never Hamper Intent to Buy
A key concern expressed this week was that since luxury brands demand more consideration, an e-commerce effort might be short-circuiting the true experience and lead to more dissatisfaction and returns. But I would suggest that online shoppers of luxury products are either discount searchers (looking for closeouts or last year's merchandise and don't want to be bothered by department store attitudes) or loyalists who know what they want from the brand and want it now. So in either case, not having a store hampers intent to buy. It's just silly not to have a digital storefront.

I would agree, however, that from a consideration standpoint the online store will most likely not move much product. Which is why a luxury brand initiating an e-commerce effort should be clear about their strategy. We can't assume that an online luxury brand store is only about purchase. So the research and content portion of the effort cannot be short-changed. 

Even though there is opportunity to buy immediately, the store should also be heavily moving customers in the direction of physical stores. This is not just to keep department store partners happy, but may also be an acknowledgment to customer preference.

Vision For The Future
The biggest road block for luxury e-commerce is, of course, department store partners. Going into competition with your partners is usually not a good idea. However, given what I said above, it's highly unlikely that an online luxury store will significantly reduce sales through physical stores. If done right, it may even grow sales with an online presentation that offers a focus on buying rather than just consideration.

But all that aside, e-commerce sometimes leads to even bigger and better things. Apple launched an e-commerce effort right about the time Steve Jobs returned and there was much consternation among partners. Entire catalog businesses and retail partnerships had been built and were now in jeopardy. 

Yet the move actually helped focus the brand experience and led to Apple realizing they needed the department store relationships less than they needed control of the customer. This led to elimination of most retail partnerships and opening of Apple stores. And no one could claim this was a bad move for them.

Such drastic moves may not be right for every high-end brand, but ignoring possibilities is the sure path to mediocrity.

So thanks to all the listeners that weighed in this week. I appreciate the debate.

Disclosure Overload

This morning, Len Kendall, past guest on The BeanCast and co-founder of the3six5 project, posed a question on Posterous: Should the need for disclosure also extend to when you discuss a client's competitor?

Len proposed a tag similar to what is currently adopted for clients. When someone posts a positive statement about a client we use the tag #client. So maybe when talking about a competitor we should use a similar tag like #competitor.

It's a great point. But then Matt Ridings, of Social Fresh fame, pointed me toward a post he wrote about how even the basic disclosure is still overlooked. His point is that we need to be more proactive about self-policing all our tweets to be disclosing clients.

That's when it hit me that all of this is madness.

To be clear, I agree in heart with both of these men and I respect them greatly. I also need to state adamantly that active deception is unacceptable. (Matt's example of running both sides of a brand conversation with a fake customer is particular reprehensible.) But are we really responsible for disclosing each and every tweet that comes out?

The guidance from many lawyers is that the safe thing to do is disclose everything. But for me the heart of the issue is whether we should consider Twitter, Facebook or other social venues as a series of independent statements, or a conversation that is being archived on a Web site?

Twitter, even in its own promotional tagline, says, "Join the Conversation." So if this is a conversation, is it enough to disclose once during a conversation or are we responsible for each individual, potentially retweetable statement that we make? 

In almost any other media, one disclosure in the course of a conversation would be enough. For instance, on a blog we wouldn't need to disclose our client affiliation in every comment on a blog post that already disclosed the relationship. Or in a TV interview we wouldn't need to do more that state our affiliation up front, at the end of the conversation or just have a lower-third graphic that appears for a few seconds. There is a tacit acceptance in all other media that a conversation is taken as a whole, and a single disclosure per conversation is all that is needed. So why should we treat Twitter or Facebook any differently.

Obviously this is a simplification of a very complex issues. For instance, I wouldn't go so far as to say that one disclosure on your Twitter account is enough, forever and ever, amen. But shouldn't one disclosure per active conversation with another Twitter user be enough? 

The current understanding of the FTC's nebulous guidance is troubling and demands some active challenges. To me it's a clear example of a government body misunderstanding the context of what it's regulating, and advertisers being fearful of running afoul of regulations they don't understand. 

What are your thoughts on the issue? I'd love to keep this debate going.

An Interview With Kevin Briody

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The social space is littered with big personalities. Plenty of folks have gotten in early, built up huge followings and are now leveraging their popularity as a launching pad for clients to get the same buzz. For them, popularity has become the calling card for credibility in the social space.

And yet there are so many folks whom you may have never heard of, actively working behind the scenes on social marketing campaigns, delivering tangible results for clients. Are they any less of an expert than their more visible counterparts?

Kevin Briody, Strategic Partnership Director at Ignite Social Media, doesn't think so. Over lunch he shared some compelling thoughts about why a person doesn't need to be a popular blogger or have 40,000 Twitter followers in order to be a strong asset to a client in the social space. Further, he posits that the two approaches are vastly different in terms of what the client gets from each — one often being closer to a media buy, as opposed to getting targeted strategic help.

So click on the AudioBoo I recorded on the subject at the top of this page. I hope you get as much from this as I did.

Don't Forget The Icon

We can pump thousands of dollars in man-hours and development time for a promotional application for a mobile platform. We may even try to make it a good app, with a solid user-interface, really cool functionality and a problem-solving focus. So why do so many apps cheap out on the icon?

This question arose recently as I contemplated the HootSuite icon for iPhone. Maybe it's just me, but that icon is so darn cute, is so beautifully created in composition and pops so brilliantly with an obviously upgraded resolution for the iPhone 4, that it is impossible to ignore on the screen. I have to press it. I sometimes don't even want to check Twitter and I still find myself pressing that icon.

Which led to the realization that many app developers are leaving a huge opportunity on the table.

Think about it: The app button is no different than a subject line of an email, a graphic element in a print ad or a sentence in a Johnson Box (that little block of text next to the address block on a direct mail letter). We spend hours crafting just the right picture or sentence to entice the consumer to delve a little deeper and discover what's inside. So an app should be doing the same.

Yet most apps seem to think of their icon as an afterthought. I mean sure, it's not much space and you can't message like crazy, but this is still the first thing the consumer sees. This is what they will repeatedly see on the screen. So why not make it irresistible to press?

Branded apps are particularly guilty of this. I'm not saying the Target app or the WalMart app or even the Chipotle app icons on the iPhone are ugly. They aren't. What I am saying is that
as a billboard to entice me into clicking, they are severely lacking. They don't achieve anything except a brand impression, and a poor one at that. They certainly don't compel me to find out what lies behind that picture.

We are simple animals at heart, we humans. We are attracted to things like symmetry, color, resolution and composition. It doesn't really take that much to catch our eye. But we know the minimum when we see it. And all that money you've spent on the guts of your app will be wasted if your icon says nothing more than the minimum it promises.

Looking Beyond Our Mentions

I'm exploring HootSuite right now as as replacement for TweetDeck. (For those of you who think I'm suddenly taking up bird watching, these are two different applications for managing your Twitter feeds and searches.) The differences are gratifying and at the same time difficult to manage. But there's one aspect of HootSuite that has poignantly reminded me why we need to stop focusing exclusively on our mentions and start focusing on our audience.

In both programs you can easily create pared-down lists of people to follow. But in TweetDeck the lists you create are private. So while I've frequently rotated individuals from the main stream in and out of pared-down lists, no one has really known that I was paying attention unless I specifically addressed one of their tweets. 

In HootSuite, however, the list function is directly tied to Twitter's own list API. This can be private as well, of course, but what's the point of that? So as I ramped up on my HootSuite test I started recreating my "tweetastic" list publicly for the first time. And the resulting appreciation totally floored me.

I've been a frequent critic of Twitter's list function, since following a list didn't result in any change to your stream. But with the way HootSuite implemented the API, suddenly I can follow lists and the lists I create have become useful to others.

But more importantly, the experience highlighted for me how important it is to let the people you follow know that you are paying attention. 

It's very easy in either HootSuite or TweetDeck to create enough columns that you push the general conversation of your follows out of sight. Many folks comment how they like the wider columns of HootSuite, but I immediately became aware that after just four columns my "Home Feed" — or the list with all the people I follow — was pushed completely off the screen of my computer. And in doing this, I became more focused on what people were saying about me or my brand. 

I think a lot of brands fall victim to this. Searching for brand mentions and responding isn't socializing. It's troll behavior. It's a defensive position, not active participation. And in many ways it negates the point of incorporating a social network into your marketing in the first place. 

From all I've learned about using social media in marketing efforts, it always comes back to cultivating relationships and advocacy. And responding with a thank you for a mention or a lame attempt at customer service after a problem is just scratching the surface of what relationship building is all about.

There's a reason I joke with folks on random topics and comment on cute pictures and support their own business efforts. It's because I actually care about people. And for brands to care, they need to stop thinking of Twitter, Facebook and the like as tactics and start realizing the real strategy is to embrace individuals with attention by whatever means necessary.

So whichever Twitter program I end up choosing, I will remember the lesson HootSuite has taught me: Customers (or in my case, listeners) want to be more than customers. So it's time to listen to everything they are saying.

Communicating At The Level Of Interaction

I'm a huge critic of cut and paste thank you letters and emails. They have to be done, I suppose, and it's good practice to thank your customers. But they rarely get read unless you're making some kind of offer (which really isn't a thank you letter at all, but a solicitation) and most of them are intolerably impersonal.

Then I got this email today:

Dear Our Most Valued Guest,

On behalf of our Team Hampton, we want to personally thank you for Recent stay with us at the Hampton Inn by Prime Outlet Mall , Ohio. We want All of our guests to be truly satisfied and have a comfortable stay. We strive to make all things right for our guest. We hope you will consider staying with us in the future. We appreciate your business Here at the Hampton Inn. We are working harder than ever to deliver Quality service to our guests. Thanks to Guest like you we know that we are on the right track.

Outstanding Team Hampton, By Prime Outlet Mall
740-948-9499

So alright, they lose points for that horrible salutation and the email came in a unreadable script font and yes, it's a stilted form letter. But all together it felt kind of good to me. This wasn't a faceless, corporate response to my credit card being processed across their books. This was a letter from the actual people I dealt with during my stay at a Hampton Inn.

Why did it affect me, when other emails from Hampton Inn regularly get ignored? For me, the answer was immediately obvious: The communication was at the level of my interaction with the company.

Too often big companies try to aggregate their communications for efficiencies in cost and management. But in doing so we lose touch with what the communication was intended to achieve. A thank you letter is something that people write to people, not what companies write to customers. So for a thank you letter to have optimal effectiveness, it needs to push down the chain and come from the sales associate, not the Vice President of Retail Operations. 

Thinking back to episode 108 of The BeanCast, this is why Edward Boches was so excited about Nordstrom. It wasn't because he was receiving communications from corporate, but rather because he was receiving personal tweets from a sales associate who was letting him know when new shirts arrived. Communications that are at the level of our interaction with a brand simply mean more. And the bigger a company is, the more important this becomes. It gives a face to the facelessness of big operations.

Yes, it's more complicated and yes you may have to give up a bit of centralized control. But in the end this unbranded, hacked together communication from a local manager is the only email from Hampton Inn (and I've received dozens because of my recent travels) that I haven't deleted immediately. There's some food for thought.

Sometimes They Just Want Toasters

Listener Marcus Fox brought up an interesting point in the BeanCast forum last week. 

After hearing our discussion about loyalty in episode 108 of The BeanCast, he reflected upon his father. He told a story about how his dad would drive out of his way to buy petrol from a certain brand, just because he could earn a set of drinking glasses for frequent purchasing. I invite you to read it for yourself.

Now the jury is out as to whether such behavior is "loyalty" or just "incentivized purchasing." But it did remind me of a story from my own marketing past.

It Was All A Joke

A bank my agency was helping back in the 90s (yes, I'm old) wanted what every bank wants: new checking customers. DDAs (demand deposit accounts) are the holy grail of banking. A checking customer is the most locked-in type of client. We switch banks for loans or credit cards without thinking, but moving our checking account is a hassle we rarely attempt unless we are moving to a new state where our bank doesn't do business. And that mythical place, my friends, becomes more rare with each bank merger. So when I say a bank wants a checking customer, it's kind of like a 15 year old with unfiltered Internet. Need I explain?

As is usual when a bank pursues new checking customers, this particular bank was willing to pony up some significant cash to sweeten the deal. A $50 bounty even back in the 90's was not a rare thing, so that's what we were given as an offer. We felt good about it, of course. It was competitive. It was desirable. And we felt like we could secure a fairly good response.

In fact, we felt so good about this offer that we felt compelled to poke a little fun at offers from the past. So the mail piece that was developed featured a choice of either a toaster (the ubiquitous joke of banking offers) or the cash. It was all tongue-in-cheek and designed to show just how much we wanted the customer, contrasting this lousy offer with the real one to make it look that much better.

Then the toaster orders started coming in. Not just one or two. Hundreds. 10 to 1 in favor of the toaster.

Mind you, this was a joke offer. We didn't even have more than a couple toasters on hand, purely to fulfill the inevitable pranksters. But the toaster offer clearly won the day. So off we went to the discount stores to secure as many toasters as we could get our hands on.

The Importance of Gifts

I've often wondered about this incident. I certainly still believe that the cash offer was solid and would pull better in most situations. But why did the toaster do well in this case? My only answer is that giving away an item is more than an incentive — it's like receiving a gift. And people like getting gifts. It makes them feel special. It makes them feel known. 

I think it all comes back to why you don't hand your wife cash for her birthday. (At least not in healthy marriages.) It may satisfy the minimum requirement of gift exchange, but it doesn't show that you care. And that's the real difference a "gift" offer can make.

Zappos could just spend lots of money on incentivizing purchases with discounts and promotions. But it means more when they send a free pair of shoes or refund on an item they don't even carry. It says more about their character than a sale ever could. It says they care.

It's why Gevalia still gives out coffee makers instead of discounts. A good coffee maker is the last mile for selling a lifetime of coffee through the mail, and it enhances the value of the real offer. It says, "We understand that what you really want from us is a good cup of coffee."

What "Free" Really Means

We talk about how "free" is the most powerful word in marketing and yet we forget why it works. It's not because people don't like to pay. It works because we take time to figure out what the customer really needs in that specific instance and we fulfill that need. It works because giving the right gift builds relationship. And if done right, it builds brand experience.

I think we've lost sight of this basic truth. We don't think of the word "free" as meaning a gift anymore. We now use the word to mean "give away the product" or use it describe a crippled demo version of our application. None of that is free. It's just another way of giving away $50 to incent the customer into spending money with us. It's another way of saying "discount."

We've exchanged "free," the most powerful word in marketing, for "cheap." Why? The answer is simple. It's easier.

When you discount you can still make your numbers for the quarter and drive sales. You can still create repeat purchase. And you don't have to waste time figuring out who your customer really is. All it takes is the knowledge that everybody wants to spend less. You don't need focus groups and research to know this. It's a given.

Some might argue that's enough. After all, response is all you need to justify a program. But I fear it's also a dangerous shortcut when overused. It's the road to commodity and reduced margins. And it doesn't build a brand identity or customer relationship. 

So why do toasters work better sometimes and cash offers work better at other times? Every customer audience is different. But it's worth answering the question for your own audience. Because even though we've become very sophisticated at capturing the sale, most of us are still terrible at capturing the heart. So maybe it's time to throw in your own version of a toaster offer and see what happens?