Sep 12
7
Marketers have bombarded consumers with messages since the advent of advertising. Today, communication channels added daily to the mix create an unprecedented, daunting din for marketers to break through.
Most consumers engage multiple media at a time, yet they don’t truly multitask. Our brains aren’t capable of that. We focus on texting, TV and surfing not all at once, but in rapid succession (and not very well at that). What we typically refer to as multitasking is really mere flitting.
Therein lies the marketer’s opportunity. If you can grab attention when an audience flits to your message, you might just sell something.
To grab a consumer mid-flit, you’ll need to be good a few things:
• You’ll need to be good at getting flitted to. This means showing up in the same place where your customer happens to flit. Of course the print-broadcast-direct mail-only model is obsolete, and it’s no longer enough simply to add “the Internet” to the mix. “The Internet” isn’t a single channel. It’s a growing array, from Google to Pinterest to Foursquare to more being spawned as I write. The list keeps growing, so you can never rest. On the positive side, more channels mean more opportunities to connect.
• You’ll need to be good at not getting flitted from. It’s one thing to get passersby to look when you yell “Look here!” It’s quite another to be so engaging that they won’t abandon you for the next marketer who yells “Look here!”
• You’ll need to move customers to action. Anyone can make a distracting noise, but not just anyone can make a sale. That’s why not just anyone is a marketer, notwithstanding your neighbor who has “a great idea for a commercial.”
• You’ll need to be an adept two-way communicator. Today’s media allow for full interaction with customers, and customers can tell—and they reward—marketers who listen well and respond well.
Finally …
• … You’ll need to try lots of things in lots of channels—continually—while tracking results. That way, over time, you can learn what works, what doesn’t, and hopefully do more of the former and less of the latter.
A good starting point might be to emulate an Eddie Bauer, Cabela’s, or Omaha Steaks. None is just a catalog marker, retail chain, or e-merchant, but is all of the above and more. Each channel carries its weight in sales, branding and profitability.
Marketers who find the new and growing multichannel world daunting might consider its pluses before leaping in despair and to a less challenging career. One study suggests that customers of multichannel companies spend 30% more. Moreover, today’s shoppers use multiple channels to do homework before buying. Thus you can use each channel to build your brand, reinforce key messages, and promote the other channels. Assuming your brand is consistent across channels—if not, it’s a weak brand—there are economies of scale, since branding elements need only be invented once.
Besides, multichannel marketing is fun! Pity our marketing forbears. Once they mastered print, broadcast and direct mail, they were done. How boring is that?
Here’s something you never want to have to post on your blog: “Busted. Nailed. Snagged. As many of you have figured out … Peter isn’t a real hip-hop maven and this site was actually developed by Sony.”
That’s what Sony ended up posting after a badly bungled attempt at creating the illusion of a third party blogger who was posting raves about PlayStation®Portable. The above post roughly translates to: “We tried to dupe you. We underestimated your intelligence, and you caught us. Oops, and sorry.”
Direct marketers have long known that testimonials are persuasive. That’s why most direct response print ads, infomercials and long-format TV spots pile on testimonials from “satisfied customers” and resort to (admittedly fallacious) arguments like, “Millions of happy customers can’t be wrong.”
It is a common practice for marketers to write testimonials for and on behalf of satisfied customers, with customers agreeing after the fact to have “said” what was written. You may or may not agree that the practice is ethical or harmless.
Taking the practice a step further, some advertisers pen fictional quotes from fictional customers. A fake blog, or flog, is arguably the inevitable if not natural next step.
I’ll leave it to you to judge the morality of creating a flog to promote products. But if you decide to proceed, do it well. Sony did not. For one thing, Sony’s ad agency Zipatoni didn’t bother hiding the fact that they owned the URL. I’d love to tell you that that was an act of openness and integrity on Zipatoni’s part, but alas, it appears to have been an oversight. Else, why would the supposed writer post one vociferous denial after another in response to commenters who, clearly onto the ruse, repeatedly challenged the flog’s authenticity? Moreover, the wannabe hip-hop rhetoric came up short in the authenticity department, insulting readers’ intelligence and making Sony look all the more out of touch.
Even Sony’s apology was a bit presumptuous: “Guess we were trying to be just a little too clever. From this point forward, we will just stick to making cool products, and use this site to give you nothing but the facts on the PSP.” Note to Sony: An apology wrapped around a boast smacks less of an apology and more of, well, a boast.
Aug 12
8
Running a successful marketing campaign historically involves time-honored strategies, such as cold-calling, running newspaper advertisements and hosting networking events. In today’s technology-driven business culture, the rules of the game have changed. Companies, retailers and financial institutions are now including more social media services in their marketing campaigns as a way to reach a broader demographic of consumers and lower their costs.
The power to connect with millions of consumers through social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, gives companies more control over their information and how they want to frame their marketing campaigns. However, this power can also open the doorway to common mistakes that can hinder, rather than enhance, a company’s message. A recent Forbes article highlighted to the most frequent mistakes companies make in their social marketing campaigns, the first of which is treating social media like a one-way street.
The entire point of social media is to engage with potential and current customers. Through these mediums, companies can gain feedback about their products and services, announce new products, campaigns and events, respond to customer inquiries and gauge consumer sentiment. Companies that avoid the opportunity to speak with their consumers and invite them to participate in the company’s growth run the risk of alienating their most loyal customers and potential shoppers.
Another common mistake companies make is introducing their presence on social media and then being inconsistent about growing an audience. Some institutions may get dismayed if they have a limited number of Facebook “likes” or only a handful of Twitter followers. Building up a large audience does not happen overnight and businesses that neglect their social media pages will eventually turn more individuals away. Instead, businesses should focus on building up their pages, asking customers to check out their Facebook pages and even offering incentives to consumers who agree to write reviews, take surveys or post messages about their experiences with a company.
Lastly, businesses should make sure they know their audience before launching a social marketing campaign. Most organizations conduct market research and analyze the demographics they are targeting to design a more effective campaign. The same rules should be followed when launching a social marketing campaign in order to appeal to the right groups and avoid wasting time and energy trying to connect with the wrong individuals.
Jul 12
20
More financial institutions and consumers alike are choosing to ‘go paperless’ and focus on digital platforms to send correspondence, manage financial accounts and engage in financial transactions. The benefit for banks is lower costs for drafting and mailing bank statements and notifications. Many consumers are going paperless as a way to reduce their carbon footprint and avoid the clutter of several statements and bills that they can view online.
A new survey released by Javelin Strategy and Research shows that the banks that continue to facilitate consumers’ “digital financial lifestyle” are more likely to boost customer loyalty and achieve their paperless initiatives. However, in order to accomplish these goals, banks cannot simply displace paper, but must create something better than paper, Bank Systems and Technology reports.
The Javelin study highlighted seven core areas that banks will need to improve on in order to fully realize their paperless initiatives. According to the study, banks must recognize that 1) customers are always “on,” or have full access to their accounts, 2) interactions will be in real time, 3) there will be transparency, 4) the customer decides how they want to receive information, 5) information will be integrated, 6) interaction will be secure and 7) the relationship with the bank will help fulfill the customer’s goals, BankTech reports.
Javelin senior analyst Mark Schwanhausser says that while banks have made significant strides in achieving some of these factors, they have yet to fully realize each aspect of this plan, BankTech reports. However, once banks are able to hit these seven points, they may be in a position to build a stronger relationship with consumers as not only a service provider, but as an advisor.