We love our customers, but it doesn’t mean that we need to always get a one night stand when we first meet.
In your marketing and sales process, it is often getting qualified leads and customers that tends to be the most costly or difficult within your processes (your funnel). Once you have achieved that, you want to build a relationship with your customers, and nurture that. Instead of making the mistake of making it only about a pitch.
So lets take a look a a few things you should remember:
This is why you don’t want to simply have a one night stand. This means simply trying to “close the deal” with pitches without building a relationship by providing value and show them what you stand for in the market place. You want to increase the lifetime value of your customers and prospects, and have them come back to you again and again now that you have filled their need.
Your customers are a valuable commodity, to be treated with respect. You don’t want to simply continuously blast them with offers if you want them to be responsive. Yet, the truth is I see many markters doing exactly this. Provide them value, then once every few messages provide the pitch.
If you are the face of your brand, you need to be sure that it gets in front of your customers and see that there is a personal touch. Provide them ongoing value, and they will keep coming back to you within your marketplace. If not, it is still key that your brand still has a clear message to your customers, and continues to provide value. Remember the old rule of thumb that it takes 7-12 contacts with a prospect to close a sale.
If you are interacting with your prospects and customers on Facebook, know that your fans want to interact with you, not be marketed to. The moral of No one night stands is particularly important in social media. Remember it is “social media,” you wouldn’t run into a party and start trying to sell everyone, and you must take a similar approach when interacting in social media, think first about what they can learn about you to make a good decision, or interact with you, so they WANT to take further action with you.
Know why your prospect come, and why customers buy your brands product or service. This means you need to know the real full resason that your customers make that buying decision and what is the complete need you are filling. It is very easy for people to make assumptions about their customers, but lets dig a bit deeper and you will discover a lot more profit potential by indetifing your market. Just because a person decides to participate in a fat loss program doesn’t simply mean that they think they are fat. Why are they doing this? It may be that the want to FEEL healther, be more appealing to the opposite sex/spouse, or feel more confident with friends perceptions of them. This is a simple example, but whatever you provide, knowing the specifics of the need you are really filling will put you far ahead of your competion.
Understand that perception often become reality when it comes to marketing and what people think of your brand. If they have a bad experience they are likely to continue to have a bad perception, if they have a good opinion, then it is likely that it will perceive their contact with you as more positive. So be sure you have control and know what perception you are creating within your marketspace, is it a good perception or a bad one? Truth is that within marketing, how they perceive you will have a big effect on the conversion of your product or service.
No more one night stands. Start thinking about the long term relationship with your customers. Keep these things in mind, remember that you want to increase the lifetime value of your prospects, and get them coming back to you again and again now that you have them, because THEY know that you can best fill their need within your marketplace.
Filed under Brand Building, CRM, Copywriting, Editorial, Internet Marketing by on Jan 26th, 2012. Comment. 
So you have been trying to blow up your company or brand on Facebook, but maybe you are unclear of the results because you have focused on driving sales on Facebook itself, and it has not achieved the results you expected. Repeated marketing studies have shown that Facebook storefronts have not been a leading source of e-commerce transactions, despite the platform’s huge user reach.
According to a study released by ThreatMetrix in partnership with the Ponemon Institute, Only 20% have purchased something directly within Facebook, despite ongoing direct exposure to products through Facebook. That this is do in large part to the social nature of Facebook. Consumers are glad to learn about, share opinions, or even be rewarded for interactions with brands they like, however studies indicate that many consumers feel that Facebook is the wrong place to be urged to complete transactions due to its more “social” environment nature, and more likely to distrust motives of brands that do.
In practical terms you could liken it to someone showing up at a gathering of friends and urge everyone to immediately buy a sweater from them, like the cool one they are wearing. Maybe the sweater is cool, and people may want to learn about it in casual discussion, to later make a buying decision. It is not the time, however, to be hawking the actual product.
A separate study, by Oracle, found that whooping 34% of American and Canadian consumers said they would never purchase products via a Facebook page, while only 10% said that they had done so. There is also concerns of security with Facebook stores as a ThreatMetrix /Ponemon Institute study show that 53% of consumers fear that Facebook stores are less secure in protecting them against fraud than typical internet storefronts. Clearly there is a perception issue here.
So does this mean that Facebook order pages and storefronts should be avoided? Certainly not, and there may be special considerations for some direct marketers as well. While Facebook stores may not be best for many brands and companies, it appears to come down to approach. Studies show that the businesses successful with Facebook storefronts are high touch businesses where customers have close relationships with the brand and commonly deal with all customer contacts on a highly personal level and have a one-on-one–relationship, which lends itself to trust. Custom services, personal/consultant type services, and “luxury” type brands are key examples of those that come out on top in studies.
So what does this mean for your business? It means that if you have intentions of selling directly to customers on Facebook, examine your business and the level of relationship with your customers and decide if it is right for you. You must first build a strong relationship, and be able to build higher than usual levels of trust where your brand has a high level of personal touch with your customers and prospects, then you can extend your relationship with direct sales on Facebook in your advertising and marketing campaigns.
Filed under Advertising, Brand Building, Internet Business, Media Buying, Social Media by on Jan 10th, 2012. Comment.
…but understanding how is key
This is what I mean, Ok we are all here online, we “know” about FB and social media is all the buzz,with the topic of return on investment with social media participation seeming to polarize many marketing, advertising, and PR folks, but in the end what we need to do is have our brands connect with consumers with needs we can fill.
But are we really doing this and doing it properly?
I was going over some work in my own mind when I came across a review that really crystallizes this well and brings up some things I wanted to point out.
This is what we need to be looking at when bring people to your brand or product on FB:
It’s about the customers.- You want to have contact with them and be able to form relationships with them, social media, gives you clear avenues to do this. It’s about the connections you make with customers, far more than having an outright ROI machine. These connections make customers instead in referrals and advocates for your products/services
-It’s about relationships. You you want to get to know your customers and form relationships with them, not be a one night stand. The value companies can get from investment in social media is directly tied to the relationships they build with customers and a relevant community.
-ROI is also about cost savings. Using the RIGHT and INTEGRATED social media, using the right processes to create efficiencies, often translate into better, faster, and more useful information for customers that result in cost savings (they get you now)or even more sales (easier/high conversions)
Measure what matters-the better connections your prospects have with your product or brand, the more likely those consumers will be positively inclined to buy this is how you increase end ROI
-It’s about inspiration and influence-remember in the end you want to both inspire and influence your prospects so that you have motivated them to make the right decision. This will get prospect to take faster, more decisive action, and who doesn’t want to sell more products, more often, and more quickly?
Don’t believe it? Take a look at some real life examples:
USA Today – Coca-Cola Facebook fans are two times as likely to consume product and 10 times more likely to purchase than non-fans, according to Wendy Clark, senior vice president of integrated marketing.
see http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/talkingtech/story/2011-11-08/coca-cola-social-media/51127040/1
Yahoo – Brands who sponsored content with social features increased purchase intent by 13 percent.
see http://advertising.yahoo.com/article/the-impact-of-social-features.html
eMarketer – Over 50 percent of Twitter followers are more likely to purchase from brands they follow.
see http://bit.ly/sx1dJr
Filed under Advertising, Brand Building, Internet Business, Internet Marketing, Social Media by on Dec 15th, 2011. Comment.
There is a trend that you may have noticed growing more and more in marketing, where companies are featuring real people and employees in ads promoting products. It is worth taking a notice, as a recent IBR survey indicates that buyers are responding. It showed that 69% of end consumers were more likely to buy a product or have a positive impression of the brand after watching, compared to only 21% after watching similar traditional ads.
There are some heavy hitters that are testing this move besides the well known Microsoft Windows 7 campaign that uses real consumers saying “Windows 7 Was My Idea”. This includes tech powerhouses Intel and IBM, Best Buy, pizza giant Domino’s, who has not always had luck with media and employees, and conglomerate GE. All who have used actual team members, and in many cases actual customers, to evangelize their products and tell a compelling story in major advertising campaigns.
Since this marketing tactic seems to be gaining momentum, and receiving positive response, the question becomes how can your business get in on the action.
There are 2 sides of this, first in house evangelists that believe in their company, brand, product or service. Second is the powerful voice of customers or clients within the online community. Social media greatly enhances your customers ability to talk about your products and company online. Besides popular social media sites like facebook and twitter there are countless forums, and product review sites to talk about buyer experiences, both consumer and B2B. This can work either to your advantage or disadvantage.
What you want to be able to do is take control of the conversation by being the one to start it, or at least point it in the direction you desire.
Here is how:
Know what makes your company special and why you are the only solution to your customers needs? This is a great way to spread the word so that others can find out too.
Filed under Advertising, Brand Building, CRM, Internet Marketing, Social Media by on Dec 13th, 2011. Comment.
Undoubtedly, behavioral marketing has become a staple in many a savvy company’s online marketing plans. The question becomes whether it is being used properly to achieve higher ROI, or simply increases ad costs with unclear or lackluster results.
The projected US ad spend alone for 2010 is 27 billion, and 61 billion globally, in US dollars. That is a growth of 16% from 2009. Also note, less than half is from paid search ads, indicating a growing success with banner ads and similar mediums for some businesses.
The vast majority of those ads now claim some form of behavioral targeting. Marketers embrace the concept, question is: does it just increase costs, or is it really increasing ROI in your campaigns? A very cost effective form of behavioral advertising that is becoming increasingly popular is re-targeting.
It is so profitable because re-targeting serves ads to those who have specifically already seen your website and/or performed a specific action, but not purchased. Lets face it, what percentage of your visitors buy on their first visit? The more that someone sees your product, the more likely it is that they will buy it. Traditional wisdom has told us that a prospect needs to see your product 7 times before making a buying decision.
You can regain many of these visitors as future customers, as their likely hood to buy is much higher than cold prospects. Internet consumers investigate before they make a purchase. Even if they want and like your product, they are likely to think about it, shop around, or investigate the product before you can close the sale.
By developing a re-targeting strategy you can expose that same consumer or business to specific ads designed for previous visitors, as they surf the web. Also, for products with a longer purchase cycle, re-targeting is effect because it leverages sequential advertising to reinforce your message, as the consumer goes through the process prior to completing a purchase.
You can build a large base of potential buyers to retarget, by combining re-targeting with traffic-driving solutions. For example, if you run a search campaign, re-targeting would be an excellent complementary solution to drive sales, for those that visited your site, but did not make a buying decision.
A growing number of ad networks support re-targeting as its power has become more apparent. Ad networks can make re-targeting quite effective, because they enable you to retarget visitors of countless sites across the net, rather than just one. You can also provide a custom message depending on the action the prospect took on your site, such as cart abandonment.
Re-targeted ads can be extremely successful in comparison with the an average online ad campaign targeted demographically. One study showed 10 times the number of sales conversions, and 21 times the number of info requests over an array of products.
With a lot of noise online about behavioral targeting of ads, re-targeting is one method that can clearly drive a lot of sales through your site, and improve your bottom line.
Filed under Advertising, Brand Building, Internet Marketing by on Dec 10th, 2011. Comment.
