catalyst

At the Heart of Today’s Game-Changing Marketing Strategies

Ask a dozen professionals from a variety of endeavors to define marketing and you will likely receive variations on two or three different themes. Retailers, B-to-B enterprises, service providers, Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurial start-ups – and everything in between — often view, plan and budget for marketing from unique perspectives.

But all of us, unique perspectives notwithstanding, count on our marketing investments to do one thing: contribute to a change – in awareness, in behavior, in loyalty, in habits or routines.

You may not think of or define marketing as an agent of change, but consider it. Regardless of the deliverable, from a single effort to an entire campaign, marketing is designed to instigate some type of change in the status quo. It may be about transforming a target into a client, expanding a customer’s use of your product/service line, creating awareness, or deepening loyalty to a brand. But effective marketing is, at its core, an agent of change.

Enter “Social Media”

I don’t believe any single solution is the holy grail of marketing; but the so-called “social media” options present marketers a new level of access to a critical dynamic of change – the oft overlooked (or ignored) element of dialogue.

Simply put, dialogue is the life-blood of enduring change. One-off decisions and temporary digressions can be precipitated by an event, an incentive or a compelling message. Dynamic campaigns can certainly win customers. But lasting change – the kind that lies at the heart of repeat business and customer loyalty – is the byproduct of feedback, conversations and the dialogue attendant to shared experiences. And “Social” provides a platform for numerous approaches to each of these activities.

We have long recognized the potential impact of “word-of-mouth” marketing. Get satisfied clients/customers talking about their experience with your product or service, and the marketing game changes. No longer is it the voice of the company extolling benefits; customer-originated messages have authenticity. Shared experiences resonate.

Add the element of actual real-time feedback, and you’ve tapped into the real marketing potential of social media; now you’re building relationships. And relationships trump everything. Relationship is the context for trust. Conversations that allow for questions and answers, musings, what-ifs, and even the airing of a problem – this kind of dialogue is the DNA of relationships that grow and thrive.

So when you wonder about the role of social media in a marketing strategy…or how to introduce the idea to leaders in your company…or what the best practices might be with respect to Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, remember the seed that eventually gives rise to the most pervasive and enduring change your market will ever know – dialogue. Today’s game-changing marketing plans create shared experiences, encourage on-going dialogue, and build communities with clients and prospects.

Eric Fletcher

Is Social Media the Cure for Apathy?

I’m not sure exactly when it happened, but somewhere over the last 50 years the majority of people in the world lost their mojo when it came to fighting for change. Didn’t matter whether the issue was big or small, even bad customer service and poor quality flourished because of the divide and conquer realities of slow one to one and the high cost of mass communication.

People grew tired and weak from being browbeaten into submission to the point where apathy set in when it came to believing in, mobilizing and exercising their power as an individual within society.

The ability for people to communicate, organize and take action around an issue or idea had become very slow, difficult and costly. Even more significantly, the poor results often seen by those who actually made the effort led many to accept “Is it really worth the bother?”

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Smashing the Silos with Social Media

Smashing Silos

Our world is made up of silos.

People seem to instinctively create barriers around what they feel is their territory and so a silo is formed. Many people also feel the need to classify everyone and everything mentally tossing it into the bucket or silo where they think the person, thing or idea belongs.

Whether due to demonstrating personal power or simply for mental convenience, our instinctive urge to build a silo, or pop everything and everyone into one, inhibits both communication and performance.

And both of these actions divide us.

Silos inside companies, between companies, silos of nation, of class, of race, of religion, of politics and of sex have led us to today’s uneasy stalemate of apathy and inertia.

Living among these silos and allowing them to instantaneously limit our thoughts and actions as well as our perceived ability to create any change has in itself become a self fulfilling prophecy.

By so suppressing our urge to speak and the belief that anyone is listening, these silos have also effectively taken away our voice.

Social media gives us back our voice.

As employees, consumers and citizens the first thing we must do with this emerging communications ability is break down the silos.

Smashing the silos inside and between companies and interacting dynamically with employees, customers and suppliers with a single focus on goals through social media will determine which companies will thrive in the future verus those that will die along with the siloized past.

Effective communication mobilized into action is the key capability that has gone missing in our world and this competence can now be restored utilizing social media as the catalyst for change.

Jeff Ashcroft