Kiss Me! Keep It Simple, Silly Marketing Expert

July 31, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes 1 Comment

Let’s make our jobs a whole lot easier by being proprietors of the simple.

Stop the Twitter giveaway campaigns with three steps in different places to enter. Just let people tweet with their own creativity, and no, not every message is going to be perfect branding. I have one cold word for you with it if you want success: Deal. This is the nature of the social web.

As they well stated in 8 social media sins, there aren’t throngs of people lined up to make a video for you. It’s just too difficult, unless the prize is great enough (and tangible, like cash, and a lot of it).

Same with products. Selling complicated products or services online is at best an information support, public relations and/or customer service role (not bad things, but it’s important to know the limits).

The Winning Tickets Online

If, however, you have:

  • A simple, inexpensive product or service
  • An introductory product people can easily buy that then steps them up to the bigger item or..
  • An easy to understand monthly service

That’s a winning ticket.

Don’t Change Your Value Equation After People Have Made The Decision To Buy

Another pitfall we see commonly is pricing, or perceived to be misleading pricing. We recently ran across a site that says it’s $19.95 per month to join – with no mention of the fact they want 3 months up front until you’re in the cart. That’s a sure-fire way to abandonment – keep the barrier to entry low and even though it’s still $19.95 a month, consumers feel betrayed when they’re presented with something different because you’ve convinced them to spend around $20 at the time, not $60 (or $59.85, my beloved math nerds). You can exchange those numbers for almost anything, the same principle applies.

Changing that in-brain value proposition and asking for three times the amount basically obliterates your conversion percentages (you’ve turned a simple decision into a difficult one, because you’ve set an expectation, or trust level, in the consumer’s mind that you’ve already broken before they sign up – not good).  And if you have a digital product, there is no excuse for that behavior.  Your cost is almost free.

Ask Questions!

Which leads me to motivations for these crazy “strategies.” Decision makers have this propensity to live in a bubble – how THEY would buy it. What THEY think the market is.

Think about your customers – ask them. Ask those who aren’t your customers. Reach deep. Don’t think because that’s how you’d do something that’s how everyone would.. or that logical factors have something to do with a purchase. Remember, a large percentage of people don’t even know what a web browser is.

Some of the most successful businesspeople I have met are people who see market needs and fill them at the price the market is willing to pay. That’s it. No flashy business plans, no fancy venture capital money. Find a real need, meet it at the right price, and get paid.

Just keep it simple.

What are your tips for getting paid online? Things you’ve found that work – or don’t work?

Filed Under: Business, Love Your User, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Rant, Social Media, Tips

Intern Social Media PR: Russian Roulette With Your Company

July 27, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes 4 Comments

Dear Miscellaneous Misinformed Company,

Your company has a message in front of thousands, if not tens of thousands of prospects and clients a month.  People who are in-market for your service, or eyeballs you’ve paid for through your Pay-Per-Click, traditional advertising, or organic search efforts – and they visit your blog and site.

But, that biggest of direct customer and prospect touch points, your blog, your Twitter, your social media presence, is handled by someone who has a month or two of real experience and has the assignment because they have a Facebook page.  By doing this, you’ve decided that in a first meeting with your biggest potential client, you’re going to stick your intern in front of them.

Meanwhile, you’re spending thousands of dollars on professionals and professional services to write and distribute press releases that reporters increasingly ignore and customers simply don’t read or care about.  Journalist coverage is important – but more and more (upwards of 70%), journalists are turning to blogs for their information about companies, too.

You’re playing russian roulette with your company and brand by hiring an intern for such a customer- and media-facing task. Do you really want people who are just learning how to communicate doing so with your brand name?

Some Pitfalls Of Interns Being Your Company Face

Miscellaneous Misinformed Company Marketing Director, I like you. Enough to warn you.

  • Social media is about relationships and nurturing those -  there’s a good chance the intern will be gone in a few months.
  • Inexperience around what is appropriate to talk about to your audience (I’m sure you remember the mistakes you made at 21. I do. Wowsah).
  • Inability to use the tools properly, including having an understanding of Search Engine Optimization to help the site rank better
  • Lack of understanding of how to implement audience-appropriate, effective calls to action
  • Topics have lack of focus, no story arc or editorial calendar (we’ve found they need to be taught what one is)
  • Legal Liability (for instance, loose lips sink ships! You should share, but knowing the line between sharing and company secret is important).
  • Many times interns do not have adequate language skills, making the company look childish – especially if they’re not from a discipline that involves a lot of writing
  • Shows community how much you value them – and that’s not much, since you’re going to have someone who doesn’t even get paid deal with them
  • Lack of passion – although interns may be excited, it’s always better to have people who are truly passionate about the business, technology or topic blog, or even use an outsider’s perspective through a corporate reporter.

What do you think? Should companies trust their message to interns? Do you have additional pitfalls or benefits (other than cost?)

(Author’s Note: I was going to call out some companies. I decided against it, as professional courtesy, because I don’t want to do damage to them).
Filed Under: blogging, Business, Love Your User, Online Marketing Fundamentals, Rant, Social Media Tagged With: blogs, interns, PR, press releases, Social Media, twintern

How Twitter Will Die

July 20, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes 4 Comments

Reading Doug Meachem’s post on his experience with the Best Buy CMO, Chris Brogan’s reaction and Scott Monty’s commentary (in Doug’s blog post) on the actual stresses of being the “front and center person,” a thought hit me.

Twitter is going to die as it becomes the most important customer service tool since the phone. Not in that it’s going away, but this “instant access” to higher ups and ultra-personal touch is simply not scalable… therefore it’s current direct access and charm is going to fade away. The spirit of Twitter’s “authentic” two-way interactions will be replaced with 140 character versions of the help binders so many customer service folks work with today.  In short – it’ll be like email.  When email first came out, it was a nice note; a hug, something to look forward to.  Now, whole jobs and offices are devoted to handling email and it’s the scourge of many a worker who fear the next message that appears. If we get anything that feels remotely like a hug via, it’s much less common than it used to be.

It’s an insane expectation to have one person listening constantly and for them to be on point the whole time – the only thing that will make sense is a team devoted to it, 24-7 because social media works that way (unless you decide that you’re going to have customer service Twitter business hours, which I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened).  Some folks are devoting low cost interns to this, but that’s a strategy fraught with danger.

Listening to Buzz Out Loud the other day, they talked about the DISH network support team and the fact that it’s a side project handled by folks higher up on the escalation path – and the people want to do it because they find it interesting. They’re only handling a couple hundred cases a day – but what about when it grows to be on par with phone support (it could, you know).  Molly Wood and the Buzz Crew openly speculated that once everyone finds it, Twitter is going to lose it’s luster as being a “direct route” to help.  It will no longer then have it’s cache as a direct connection, but in my opinion by that time it will be so adopted by the masses it won’t matter.

This leads into another point – if it’s going to be a customer service tool, there’s a cost.

Having talked to various businesses, there’s severe trepidation for getting involved in social media and Twitter as a customer service tool because once you’re in, you have an even higher expectation set for involvement than if you’re absent.  Many companies’ lawyers are having conniptions at the idea of publicly viewable real-time chat where humans can make mistakes. It is, to many who social media is not a part of their lives, another cost with questionable return in their minds.

What are your thoughts on scaling? Do you think that there might be a Tweet center, like a call center is today, with cube farms powered by caffeine and chai tea – or will Twitter be able to retain it’s directly social nature? Why? Do you have some data on using Twitter as a customer service tool?

Filed Under: Business, Social Media Tagged With: best buy, chris brogan, customer service, Doug Meachem, Scott Monty, Twitter, Twitter will die

The Reports of Blogging’s Death Are Highly Exaggerated

July 12, 2009 By Jeremiah Staes Leave a Comment

Lately, another round of articles, blog posts and tweets have been circulating about that blogging is dead.

Not only is it not dead, but I think it’s going to be stronger than ever.

Why? As we continue to micro-blog more and more in whatever form (Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed – and I believe Facebook is going to win the micro-blog war), the wheat comes from the chaff – those serious about the art or the pursuit will continue on (and usually those who are actually GOOD at it) – and we’re going to lose the four-post long blogs and people who think it’s “too hard,” as well as a good cadre of cat-bloggers.

Amazingly, because of that perception shift, blogging is becoming more valuable as a tool because it’s starting to be perceived as more difficult to do than Twitter or other services.  And that’s the natural progression of things.  How so?

I’m reminded of when desktop publishing came about, and all of a sudden everyone with a copy of Microsoft Publisher became a graphic designer or layout artist. There was a time when the market was flooded and price-squeezed by crap; and eventually, once people realized it wasn’t just the tool but the time and ideas, it, too, faded away.  The great takeaway is that, for the most part, the pros got tools and some former amateurs were able to make a mark, stay pros and improve the industry once the fad faded away – as well as the perception it was “easy.”

For the first in years, I have had more than a few internet-savvy people come up to me, and ask something to the effect of: “You blog? That’s so much work! I have respect for bloggers – Twitter is hard enough.” and that’s a good sign for those of us who will continue to use it as a powerful medium to converse with our audiences.

What are your thoughts? Is blogging dead to you? Or is it becoming so mainstream that many people forget that it’s even a blog anymore?

Filed Under: blogging Tagged With: Blog, blogging, blogging as a tool, death, exaggeration, Graphic Design, perception shift