Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
Last year I wrote a story about The Most Misleading Packaging Design I Have Ever Seen. The inspiration for my article came from a text message my wife had sent me while at our kids’ school.
The text message include a picture and, as I wrote originally “What I thought was one thing turned out to be something completely different entirely and made me want to openly question the motives behind brand packaging design.”
Successful social media marketing is all about relationships, with the highest ROR (Return on Relationship) coming from relationships with your Brand Advocates — those people who are so delighted by your product/service/brand that they can’t wait to tell their friends and their whole social networks about their experience. Here are 12 ways to build your Brand Advocates to increase your ROR:
1. Focus on the relationship first.
Consumers don’t fall in love with your brand and become Brand Advocates by being pushed into sales; they fall in love with your high quality product, excellent customer service, and a consistently enjoyable experience – all natural byproducts of strong relationships.
Moments of Truth are well-known concepts in the marketing world, from research (Zero Moment of Truth)… to shopping (First Moment of Truth) … to owning/using a product (Second Moment of Truth).
Now, in a recent blog post, David Berkowitz introduces one more: the Infinite Moment of Truth (IMOT), which is all about sharing the experience of any (or all) of the other Moments of Truth. Berkowitz suggests the IMOT is infinite in three ways:
Each of the Moments of Truth provide their own marketing opportunities, but the Infinite Moment of Truth is the one that can harness the full power of social media and start the “moment of truth cycle” again by influencing the choice a consumer makes at the Zero moment of truth.
The consumer purchases a product, uses it, loves it, and shares this experience with their networks… and someone in their network gets to the Zero Moment of Truth and says “I will purchase.”
Google+ is here — what do you need to change about your brand message to leverage this new tool?
Nothing!
Now more than ever, your brand message needs to remain strong and consistent, and your focus needs to stay on building relationships. Don’t let new tools (like Google+) distract you from your brand message! As I continue to say, successful social media marketing is all about relationships, and the tools simply facilitate those relationships. Without the people and connections, the tools are meaningless.
Since social media makes it so simple (quick and easy) to post your message (content) in numerous social networks, it can be tempting to spray your message around the cybersphere as far and wide as possible. However, that method keeps you at a surface level of connection… which gets you little more than a glance. To go deeper and have ongoing consumer relationships that result in sales, you need to be relevant and stay relevant to your audience.
This might sound like Marketing 101, but with the introduction of social media and the exponentially increased capacity for one-too-many messaging, it bears repeating: no matter how perfectly or brilliantly worded your message is, it will not make an impact if the content itself doesn’t matter to (isn’t relevant to) your audience.
There are no true experts or gurus in this social media space – we are ALL still trying to figure this out. When I said that at the 140 Character’s Conference: New York City (#140conf) the audience applauded… because we all assume that someone else has all the answers to social media marketing success.
The truth is that social media is still too new as a serious business tool for any one of us to know all the best social media marketing tactics or even understand best how to leverage every platform.
So why am I (@TedRubin) the #1 followed CMO on Twitter (and been so for close to two years) with over 54,000 followers? Because I don’t assume I know everything about social media marketing, so I focus my time on building relationships. Because I pay attention, respond to, and interact with my followers… and I am not afraid to experiment publicly to see what topics are most relevant to my network(s), and what content is most useful to them.
Marketers are starting to realize that Brand Advocates are important enough to be part of our marketing strategies… but in my view, we need to take this beyond our Advocates just being “a part” of what we do. We need to value our Advocates enough to promote them – in both meanings of the word: to bring visibility to, and to raise up.
More and more, I like the word “appeal” and its implications for marketing and facilitating the building of relationships.
The definition of “appeal” (according to the World English Dictionary) is “the power to attract, please, stimulate, or interest.” So, if we apply that to marketing, it means thatbrands that think in terms of “appeal” are more likely to try to attract, please, stimulate, and provide interest for the consumer — all behaviors of engagement, which is the foundation of relationships.
“It’s not authentic if everyone loves you.” – Stephen Strong (Alberto Culver) at theChicago Brand Advocacy Series.
That is a message that every marketer needs to hear loud and clear, especially as the focus on social media gets stronger and recommendations carry more purchasing weight than ever before! The term “authenticity” gets used a lot now, but how many brands actually subscribe to being authentic, not just saying they are?
True authenticity in marketing requires brands to change their public filters. It used to be that a whitewashed image was the way to get consumers’ notice and buy-in (literally)…but now, if brands filter out any and all slight imperfections, consumers quickly get wary. If the only product/service reviews you allow the public to hear are about how amazing your product/service is, you quickly lose authenticity points.
Brand identification is changing right along with the other shifts social media has brought about. It is no longer as much about the company logo, the colors or whether we use our middle initial in visual materials or not; it is now about “Social I.D.” – our voice and the way we socially present ourselves online.
What is your Social I.D.? What identifies your brand (personal or corporate) throughout your social media interactions and offerings? If your answer includes the colors of your website, you need to think very carefully about where you are focusing your brand identity efforts. I am not suggesting that colors and logos and graphical elements are not important, but I am suggesting that the way you interact with others online is the identification that will catch the most attention… and hold it the longest.