The idea that Facebook ‘Likes’ are good for your business is, quite frankly, delusional. Further to that, digital agencies are being irresponsible by peddling this snake oil to marketers struggling to come to terms with social marketing.

In my last post we looked at the idea of how to manage people who like your Facebook page and how you can engage them. While researching that post I spoke to Jonathan Houston, Online Marketing Manager at Talooma -  the content of this podcast.

The questions we look at in this podcast include:

• Are “Likes” on Facebook actually valuable?
• Is the Fan Page the best place to market on Facebook?
• What types of content work best for sharing?
• What is needed for an effective Facebook marketing strategy?
• How do you measure social engagement on Facebook and online?
• Is it “safe” to develop a Facebook strategy?

Enjoy …

[South Africa is unfortunately cursed with a backward company called Telkom, so there are one or two patchy parts to this podcast.]

The links that you can add further value to:

• Digital Sharecropping: The Most Dangerous Threat to Your Online Marketing Efforts
• Facebook deletes hacked Pages, destroying years of work

Connect With Jonathan …

If you want to connect with Jonathan you can find him on:

• Linkedin
• Twitter

Dear Volvo,

‘None’ is not good enough. My name is Michael. Yes, it has been for the last 42 years of my life (that’s what it says on my birth certificate). And yes, with three brothers and the potential for confusion as to who gets what, my parents were quite specific about my name. (see attached letter from you.)

So no, to refer to me as ‘None’ is not good enough. I personally feel that I do count, and I have a place in this world.

I’m sure you would not like me to refer to your beautiful cars as ‘None’. I am sure that would upset your marketing department and the billions that they have spent to-date (which they now seem to be wasting on really bad email campaigns).

And no, you may not have my permission to spam me. I specifically told your sales rep that when I bought the car. I haven’t changed my mind … promise.

And no, your implied reason that the new Consumer Protection Act means I MUST give you my info is not good enough.

And no, your implied reason that I MUST give you my email address so you can properly “manage and administer” my service is, well to put it bluntly… pure horseshit.

And all this reminds me – please will you send me my vehicle registration papers as I have requested in my last 5 phones calls to your sales rep. My wife is still nagging at me months later (you guys are clearly all partnerless…?).

Apart from that, love the car.

Regards,

MICHAEL Cowen

Marketers are having to adapt very quickly to the dizzying rate of change in the environment. Not only do you have to  learn about and adapt to all the new platforms (mobile, online, social media etc), but we also need to take account of changes in the way that consumers now make their buying decisions.

The real challenge is to keep up with the pace of change, and to ensure that your Marketing Plan is optimal, relevant and achieves maximum growth for the business.

Your Marketing Plan needs to result in the business growing as quickly as possible by attracting new customers and retaining existing valuable customers.

With that said, here’s a question for you. When did you include a Word of Mouth Marketing strategy in your Marketing Plan? You haven’t? That makes your Plan incomplete, and you’re not going to be nearly as effective as you could be. I’ll explain why.

The way consumers make buying decisions has changed. Consumers no longer listen to marketers, and instead choose to get the opinions of people they know – friends, colleagues, family. They even trust the opinions of people they don’t know (more than they trust marketers). So word of mouth is absolutely critical to your success as a marketer. But how do you plan for it, influence it?

Word of Mouth Marketing is C-to-C marketing – when a consumer tells a consumer about you.

Word of Mouth Marketing is B-to-C-to-C – when you influence the word of mouth conversations that happen around your brand, making it a marketing strategy.

Perhaps you thought you had no control over these conversations, that they occurred on their own, and could not be influenced. That’s absolutely wrong. You’re in control. You can influence word of mouth, and you can make it happen by including a Word of Mouth Marketing strategy in your overall Marketing Plan.

How important is Word Of Mouth to your financial results?

The fastest growing and most successful companies in the world all have one thing in common.

Most of their customers love them and rave about them

Do most of your customers love you and rave about you? If not, then the good news is that there’s plenty of room for massive and unrestricted revenue growth in your business.

In our world, we call these customers Promoters, and we can’t emphasize enough how important they are to your business.

Promoters are valuable and will fuel your growth

Lets look at the top 5 economic benefits of Promoters:

1. Word of mouth: Consider the number of customers that became customers because they were referred to your company by a referrer. Think of the customer acquisition costs you saved by acquiring these customers by not having to advertise to them.
2. Retention rate: promoters are unlikely to defect.  Loyal customers become more valuable the longer they stay customers of your company. And we know that it’s more costly to acquire customers than it is to retain them.
3. Margins: Promoters spend more money with your company and are less price-sensitive because they feel they’re getting good value.
4. Annual spend: Promoters quickly increase their spend as they consolidate their expenditure on suppliers they support and favour. Your share of wallet increases as promoters upgrade to higher priced products and respond to cross-selling promotions.
5. Cost-efficiencies: Promoters are easy to support. They complain less and take up less of your support infrastructure. Promoters also tend to support others by getting involved, answering questions etc, resulting in lower support costs.

By contrast, your Detractor customers impede your growth, through:

1. negative word of mouth
2. cost to service
3. defection to competitors

It stands to reason that if your company is to be more successful and grow quickly you need a high proportion of Promoters in relation to Detractors.

(Actually, we score it by subtracting your percentage of Detractors from your percentage of Promoters, leaving you with a net Promoter score. We call this the Referral Number as its a measure of your referrability).

So how do you go about creating better word of mouth, more referrability?

Three easy steps:

1. measure your referrability
2. include a Word of Mouth Marketing strategy (this blog site tells you how to do this; alternatively, contact us to find out how) in your Marketing Plan; implement it
3. continually measure your referrability, ensuring it grows consistently

In summary

Word of Mouth has always been around, however, its become more important and relevant than ever before because people make their buying decisions based on other people’s opinions. By including a Word of Mouth Marketing strategy in your overall Marketing Plan you will leverage people as your channel, resulting in massive and unrestricted growth of your business.

Our objective as marketers is to get a real return on our marketing spend. We want to get people to buy more, for more, for longer and to tell their friends about our company. This translates to positive ROI.

Sadly our marketing spend doesn’t always generate a positive return, and often the social media gurus are the worst culprits.

Lets look at the concept of Facebook Likes/Fans. What’s the value of a Facebook Like?

The Customer Economics of Facebook Likes

What is the ROI on each of your Facebook Likes? All you need to do is work out the cost of every Like you’ve generated and divide that by the return you receive on every Like. Great! There’s one catch though. Don’t assume that you’ll get a return on every Like! Why?

A Like is not a Love.

Lets look at this for a moment. How did you attract your Fans? Normally, I would hazard a guess, through one or more of the following means:

• you asked them to Like your advert
• you offered them the chance to WIN something in your competition
• you gave them access to a promotional offer IF they Liked your page

So the reality is that the Fans on your Facebook page will be a mixture of people that are either loyal to your brand, or neutral, or disloyal and only wanting the specials and/or freebies you’re offering.

Should you not be finding out more about your Fans’ loyalty to your company?

How To Turn Like into Love

The Net Promoter classifies your customers into three categories. These categories are defined by asking your customer the question: “Would you recommend product or brand to your friends or colleagues”.

Using this question the Net Promoter classifies your customers as:

• Promoters - loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying and refer others, fuelling growth
• Passives - satisfied but unenthusiastic people who are vulnerable to competitive offerings
• Detractors - unhappy customers who impede your growth and damage your brand through negative word of mouth and other means

The Net Promoter Score is calculated by subtracting the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. Using this formula, it is very easy to have a negative or only marginally positive score. Highly effective, referrable companies have scores of 60-80%. What’s your score? Does it matter? Lets take a look.

Promoters are valuable and will fuel your growth

The 5 main benefits of customers who are promoters of your company:

1. Retention rate: detractor customers have higher defection rates, so their period of loyalty is much shorter than that of supporters.  And we know that it’s more costly to acquire customers than it is to retain them.
2. Margins: Supporters spend more money with your company and are less price-sensitive because they feel they’re getting good value. By contrast, detractors are more price-sensitive and yield lower margins.
3. Annual spend: Promoters quickly increase their spend as they consolidate their expenditure on suppliers they support and favour. Your share of wallet increases as promoters upgrade to higher priced products and respond to cross-selling promotions.
4. Cost-efficiencies: Your detractors complain more often, consuming more customer support resources. Customer acquisition costs are also lower for supporters due to the longer duration of tenure and higher referrals. Promoters also tend to support others by getting involved, answering questions etc, resulting in lower support costs
5. Word of mouth: Consider the number of customers that became customers because they were referred to your company by a referrer. Think of the customer acquisition costs you saved by acquiring these customers by not having to advertise to them.

Detractors impede your growth, through:

1. negative word of mouth
2. cost to service
3. defection to competitors

So, back to the question:

What’s your Referral Score? It matters.

The Net Promoter is very popular in the US, with many of the Fortune 500 companies on it, including Nokia, eBay, Hertz, Lego, Charles Schwab, Nike, Google, Apple, Adobe, Verizon, Dell and American Express and many others.

It’s popular because there is a proven strong correlation between the customer referability and the growth experienced by the company.

At Brandsocial we’ve developed the Referral Number, which is effectively a ‘social’ Referral Score. Consumers (your customers) are engaged through the Rate Your Brand Facebook app to give their opinion on different brands. We’ve measured the Referral Number of 400+ major brands in South Africa.

Summary – Gear for Growth

Don’t assume your Likes are Loves. Measure their loyalty to your company. Find out if they’re Promoters, Passives, or Detractors. From that point you can more accurately calculate the ROI on your investment in your Facebook page.

More importantly, you can experience massive growth through measurement of your company’s referrability (measured by tracking your Referral Number). Increase this metric consistently and you will experience massive growth and power past your competitors.

There is traditional word of mouth and then there is new word of mouth. This is an idea I have seen online in a various places. The logic is simple: social media equals new word of mouth.

I cannot fault the logic but I think this idea is misleading and detracts from what is really important for any marketer: How people make buying decisions and how we as marketers influence this process. Lets look at how someone typically makes a buying decision today.

Step One: need is indentified. You identify something you need, or you need to replace something that you already have. Let’s say it’s a car and you want to replace your old one.

Step Two: You go online and do a search to get an apples-for-apples comparison. You identify what cars you may want to buy. This is typically achieved by reviewing car sites, blog posts, expert reviews, and so on.

Step Three: You validate your choices through other people’s experiences. You get hold of people that you know that have that same car, and you ask them what their experience is. Most often this is done face to face, so you can chat about this, share ideas and ask questions that you may not previously have thought about. (This could also happen via social media). Of course this may be an extenstion of step two where the info you got online was insufficient. The fact is that most info sharing happens face to face.

Step four: You make up your mind which car to buy. The fact is however that your mind is made up in large part by other people’s opinions – their opinions had a significant influence on your final decision.

There are two criteria that will shift this equation around and may increase or decrease the amount of effort put into each stage:

1. Risk: The more risk there is attached to your decision the more information gathering will happen. Buying a new type of chocolate bar a lot less risky than buying a new car, so you’re more willing to take a chance or make a quick or rash decision as there is relative absence of risk.
2. Easy: This is about convenience, simplicity and your ability to buy without making your life more difficult. Again the more complex the choice, the more inconvenience you are willing to suffer.

So what is the net result for word of mouth:

• There is no online / offline word of mouth. There is no traditional / new word of mouth. There is just your ability to influence people’s opnions through a compelling experience
• Make sure there is enough credible, trustworthy information online. People will review this. Don’t hide it. Make it available – and seriously, so what if your competition copies it? This just means they are following you and lacking in originality.
• Get involved with people via social media, blogs, forums and any other online platform, as this will influence people’s attitudes and decisions
• Make your offering easy to choose and remove as as many barriers to buying decisions as possible
• Bake in something that is unique and different. This must be relevant to your target market.

Our marketing advice: Forget the percentages. Understand the decision making process and do everything you can to make that work. The rest will take care of itself.

With the growing economic challenges, marketing ROI will be a bigger consideration for many brands, with the focus on getting more for less. Many brands will already have experienced a cut-back on budgets.

So What’s The Real Cost Of Advertising?

Many digital marketers are securing their budgets by naively claiming that traditional media is dead. And while there is some truth to their claim, traditional marketing needs to become a more integrated and engaged process to generate the required returns.

Lets look at some numbers …

While doing my research I came across Graham Brown, who is director of Youth Research Partners in London. He offers really keen insights into the young minds of the future, and he recently shared some really scary stats:

• an 18-year-old will receive 800,000 marketing messages in his/her life
• they now tune out 95% of all traditional advertising
• about 70% of adverting messages are not trusted [I've seen stats ranging here from 30-70%]

The numbers themselves are scary, and seem to bear out the digital marketers’ claim that traditional media has run past it’s sell-by date.

But to put this into context and to try and understand the impact lets step back and put our marketing into context.

The Brand Equation

As marketers we’re taught a very simple equation for a brand strategy:

Brand = Product + Identity + Mass Media Broadcast

As an example, Colgate toothpaste took fluoride toothpaste, essentially a commodity, and created the idea of Fresh Breath Confidence. This idea has been pushed out through every single communication medium available to Colgate.

It’s quite clear when we look at the brand value of Colgate toothpaste that this approach has worked very well up until now. The brand is worth billions of dollars.

But Not To 18-Year-Olds …

Colgate can spend all they want to buy an 18 year-old’s attention, but 95% will ignore them. There just isn’t the trust or belief in what the brand says anymore.

If we look at the big four South African banks they’re in exactly the same position. Their brand equation looks like this:

Standard Bank = Bank + Moving Forward
ABSA = Bank + Today, Tomorrow, Together
Nedbank= Bank + Make Things Happen
FNB = Bank + How Can We Help You?

There really is nothing that differentiates these four banks, and certainly nothing that is going make an 18 year-old choose one over the other.

When you look at the options that are available, one may perhaps resonate more than the others, however this has nothing to do with the bank’s advertising, or anything to do with the brand idea.

Most people don’t believe these ideas when they’re broadcast through traditional media. I don’t, and I’m quite sure you don’t either.

But Wait … It’s About Social Media … Dummy!

You would think so, when your target market is an 18 year-old. But it’s not, and it’s the mistake that most marketers are making when it comes to the new media platforms like online and mobile.

Let’s go back to the banks and look at the different media platforms they’re using. They are not shy, and are using every media available to them… ticking all the boxes:

- Above The Line
- Below The Line
- PR
- Online
- SEO
- Social Media
- Internal Communication
- Sponsorship
- Mobile

Why Broadcasting Through Social Media Will Not Work

The adverting agency is approaching these new technologies using the same traditional media approach:

Broadcast (or propaganda)

The bank’s communication approach is to take their big idea and push it through every single media they can find.

Their approach to Twitter is exactly the same as their approach to TV. They believe that they can capture people’s attention, and that people will believe what they say. Not so anymore.

Today there is a different marketing reality, where:

What your customer says about your brand is far more important than what you say about it.

So Let’s Check Your ROI

If we take Graham Brown’s figures and apply them to the four banks, it is clear that this approach is not the way to go. Here’s the return you will get on your investment:

100 000 customers
5% hear you = 5 000
30% believe you = 1 500

Four banks targeting 1 500 customers? Spending how much? With the maximum potential return of 1.5%. Ouch!!!!

So, what do we do?

Forget Technology. It Is How Your Customer Thinks That’s Changed.

It is quite clear that marketing has evolved. People make buying decisions based on other people’s opinions. Think about it this way:

How does an 18 year-old choose a bank today?  Chances are really good they will ask their father, or someone who they see as a trustworthy, credible financial person. It really is that simple. Maybe this is why Seth Godin suggests that you:

“Don’t waste your energies selling to the unconverted. Find the 10% already sold on your brand and sell to them. They will take care of the rest.”

How To Generate A Positive Marketing ROI

Find your fans. What we call Fansourcing. Engage with them.
Give them a reason to talk about you.
Create a series of small, sticky ideas that they love.
Do the unexpected and blow their socks off with small surprises.
Support this reason through every media channel you have.
Track your referral number to make sure its growing.

These are some ideas but …

Where Does This Leave Traditional Media

Traditional media is still relevant. It is now a question of focus and engagement. It means that you need to stop making TV, print and radio the hero of your marketing strategy and move them to a support role. It means that you have to break the big idea down into small size idea that keeps growing your brand story. It means that the relationship is now more important than the message and awareness.

Maybe this means that marketing has just got a whole lot more focused, and a whole lot more exciting.

You have had a boring conversation. I know you have. And I bet all you could say about it was that it was boring. There was nothing else that was interesting to say about it.

The truth is that most brands are nothing more than boring conversations. Granted, they try to cut through the clutter, attract attention and stand out. Yet most are seriously boring. Yawn.

We don’t like boring conversations. We’ll do everything in our power to avoid them. We love interesting, exciting, stimulating conversations. And for this reason alone, we as marketers need to become ‘unboring‘ – if you’ll excuse the term.

So what do you do when your brand lacks an interesting personality? Here are three things you can try:

1.      Say Something Interesting

Sometimes the biggest ass in the room gets the most attention. Why? They are standing out and doing something interesting. Sure, it may not be pretty, but they are being noticeable. Just say something interesting. Tip: look at something that blows your socks off in another industry and rework it to suit your industry.

2.      Do Something Interesting

It’s the small things that count. Too often we focus on the big things – like big budget advertising, and we get nowhere. Yuppiechef.com sends a handwritten postcard with every single online order. This is not a big idea, or even that creative, but it sure as hell is personal. It hits a cord with customers. Tip: look at something that blows your socks off in another industry and rework it to suit your industry.

3.      Be Something Interesting

Get a personality. It’s really that simple. If you try and be the same as everyone else you are just… well, vanilla. This is the problem with over analysing your competition and trying to compete by being the same. And no, this is always easy. But hit the mother load and your bank account will always be happy. Tip: Focus on something unique to you and run it consistently.

Branding has not changed

The old truth of branding will always be the same: Be different and be relevant. Difference makes you stand out. Relevance keeps you focused on your target market. It makes you stick with those that count, those that will build loyalty and those that are profitable to your bottom line.

This is what word of mouth is all about. Stand out and be talkable. Not hard, but sometimes it takes…umm… well, balls.

This post was originally published in 2009 as part of the Making Mobile Media Work and The Mobile Consumer Series. While things are moving and changing really fast it it still is relevant today as it was then.  

The traditional media eco-system is going through a major metamorphosis. At first glance it would seem that this is largely driven by the changes of an evolving internet platform and mobile media — something that I think many marketers are taking huge strain over – just to manage the effects its having on their brand and media strategies.

Changing Consumer Behaviour

Personally, I think this strain is more about the change in how consumers are making decisions today. And I think this is the hurdle that most media strategies – including digital marketing – are tripping over.

There is no doubt that there is a symbiotic relationship between the evolving multimedia platforms and consumer behaviour. How consumers make decisions and what influences these decisions has  radically evolved from the first TV commercial and the marketer’s ability to refine the advertising process.

Today, TV commercials are not as as sticky as they used to be. As consumers, we no longer dogmatically believe what a brand says about itself to be true. Now we believe what other consumers say and we have the ability to find information in different ways and validate what we want through a peer review system.

How Billions of Dollars Are Being Flushed Down The Toilet

Today, all I have to do is go online and validate if I am making the right choice about a product I want. Lets say it’s a new printer that I am about to buy in-store. It looks like a good product and it has a good brand name.

What happens when I use my smartphone, click through to Amazon, and see that there are 10 negative reviews on that printer? You guessed it, I change my mind, and instead go for the printer that got 20 great reviews!

For the brand, that could mean millions of dollars of advertising investment and years of brand building down the tube. Ouch! And if your consumer believes that you are not being upfront and honest you will pay a severe price.

The Fragmented Media Eco-System

Given this shift in how consumers make buying decisions and the role that Internet and cell phone technology plays in our media, the  traditional media eco-system has changed. We have to include these when we look at our communication strategies as the time will come when they may play a larger role than TV.

In the diagram below I’ve outlined a simple, traditional structure, and how disconnected the mobile and internet platforms are to the traditional structure. And yes, this is evolving rapidly.

Why a Disconnected Internet?

As marketers, we have a degree of understanding of what the Internet can do for our communication, but I don’t think most marketers have a full grasp of the extent of this tool. Many still see it as a simple communication device and do not see it as a relationship building tool.

After all, it is a key driver in shifting how we as consumers make buying decisions today. And you cannot apply traditional, above the line media strategies to this tool.

Mobile marketing is moving into this picture fast. Yet many brands and media agencies are still trying to figure it out. For me this was highlighted when I saw one of the Big Four banks in South Africa advertising on an adult content site – and I really do not think it was deliberate .

The internet and mobile media offer us remarkable communication opportunities, yet how do we leverage this?

Dispelling Some New Media Myths

To leverage these tools we first have to dispel three myths that I think are confusing how we apply them:

1. The idea of emerging media:

There is no ‘emerging’ going on here. It’s evolved well beyond this, and even the phrase “new marketing” is misleading.

Facebook, with its 700+ million subscribers, is not an emerging media – nor is Twitter. The reality of mobile media is that there will be more smart phone sales than PCs and notebooks by the year 2013. This is not emerging, or new.

The idea of the Internet and Mobile media is emerging as a misconception. They have evolved into serious contenders in the competition for advertising spend. As marketers, we need to understand these mediums. This is a non-negotiable – we just have to catch up.

2. Traditional media is dead:

No, in fact quite the opposite. Advertising in the traditional way through TV, print and radio is not nearly as effective as it used to be, but this does not mean it is dead. There is still a huge opportunity of integrating the traditional platforms with mobile media, the Internet and how consumer decision making has evolved.

3. Fragmented platforms:

A key part of Google’s strategy is the idea of device agnosticism. It won’t matter if you’re on a cell phone, smart phone, iPad, net book, notebook or PC. The platform will become “generic” and the experience will be the same irrespective of how you connect. Its just a matter of time…

One Platform To Rule Them All

For me, the key part of understanding this evolving media platform is to understand how consumers make decisions today. After all, this really is our key objective as marketers. We are trying to get consumers to make a decision that is favorable towards our brand.

There are six issues that I think we, as marketers and media planners, need to get on top of:

1. The speed of change

When TV was introduced to South Africa in 1973 it was really easy to get our heads around it. It was a static media. Not so for mobile media or the Internet. Blogs were game changing. Facebook was game changing. Twitter was game changing. What’s next? Who Knows?

As marketers we have to look and see what’s influencing our customers’ decision making process.

2. The experience is everything

90% of the decisions we make are irrational. They are driven by how we feel, and the environments we grew up in. When we make a decision – it defines us as a person. We are going to make decisions that reflect who we are and that will give us the best experience.

The key objective for any marketer is to create a very powerful experience. This has to be the end result of the communication strategy. This makes marketing a far more complicated process than it ever was before, for three reasons.

• We have to make sure that, what we communicate and the underlying brand promise – ties up with the actual experience
• The experience is now a fundamental part of the communication ecosystem
• We can no longer control the flow of information, and who says what about our brands

This is why change management and marketing are becoming far more integrated than ever before. It’s also why customer service is really a change management process. And it has an impact on what is communicated.

Yes, our role as marketers is changing, rapidly.

3. Live needs replaces implied or explicit needs

In the traditional model, we identify what we presume are the customers implied and explicit needs are, and then market to these needs.

Yet, the pace of change and the increased complexity that has become the norm of our lives makes us short-circuiting to what is familiar. When we find something that is familiar to us, our decision-making process is a lot quicker and a lot more decisive. There are less risks – even if the payoff is a bit more discomfort.

We also know that as our customers move through their experience with us, their needs evolve and change based on what they require at a specific point in time. What drives a pre-purchasing decision is very different to our post-purchasing decision.

The communication strategy needs to start understanding this and building in the ability to communicate to a person’s live needs changes.

4. Paid versus earned media

In the traditional model we paid for our communication. This has changed. In 2004 Dell’s word-of-mouth was the equivalent of $220 million worth of advertising. (Imagine what it is now in 2011).

This is advertising that they earned. They did not pay for it or ask for it. But they did create it through the experience that they created for their customers.

Your communication strategy cannot ignore this component with the Internet and mobile media. These are the key drivers of word-of-mouth today and both have to be built into your strategy [remember the printer and Amazon review example above].

5. Measurement

Half your advertising is wasted …  you just don’t know which half. Yet, today I think this is probably closer to 75%. You just don’t which 75%. We have systems and tools that give us a guideline, but now we have an added complexity.

How we measure traditional media and these new media platforms is different.

As marketers, we haven’t got our heads around this and it’s something that we need to understand in a more comprehensive way. And it will evolve over time as some very clever people spend more time working on it.

6. Language

Mobile media is still very much in a techie phase and not too many traditional marketers have mastered this platform. This may seem like a non issue but there needs to be a common language around mobile media and techie speak with what we as marketers understand.

These are two different languages, and this is an evolutionary process of understanding the different platforms as they become more integrated. It’s really easy to be confused.

The Map Towards Media Integration

In the diagram below I have taken the original traditional media ecosystem and integrate mobile and online into it.

What is really different here is the “pull factor” that is created by the customer experience and their ability to talk to each other. As marketers, we have to build this process into our strategy so that our customers live needs become more relevant to us and our ability to deliver what they’re looking for.

I see three real big challenges in getting this right:

1. Creating the Experience: The first is getting your entire organisation on board to create this experience. Our staff need to understand the customer journey and their role in influencing the key drivers of each of the major touch points. I’m quite sure some people be astounded by the idea that customer journey process is so integrated in the communication strategy, but I just do not see any other way. (Of course, this is also a matter of degrees, and how far you want to take your communication strategy to make it really effective).
2. The “Pull Factor”: The “pull” impact that your customer experience has on your strategy and your ability to integrate the experience into your marketing strategy. This is not going to be easy, and it is something that is starting to take off in the marketing field.
3. The “Push Factor”: The marketer’s ability to change how they think about the traditional media platforms, and the impact that their “push” strategies have on the experience.

In Conclusion

While I may have created two rather simple “pictures”, it will take a while for most marketers to re-educate themselves and create strategies that take into account all the different communication channels available. It’s certainly something that I will be writing more about on this blog.

Also, the idea that our customers can potentially be our greatest communication asset is a really exciting prospect. And to close off with I have included this video of a Heineken campaign in Italy that I think is just superb marketing, and part of the process of integrating the different mediums.

And in case you thought TV was dead, watch this ad …

This is not a go-do post. It’s a go and think about it post. Here are three Ted Talks I originally saw on Mashable and convey an important message for your customer strategy and how you create earned media:

It is how we socialise and not technology that we need to focus on.

What makes us human is the ability to reason, to think. Information and knowledge is the raw material of this process.

The internet makes this available in abundance. It has empowered individuals like never before. We have moved from passive consumers of information to become active producers of knowledge. Just think Wikipedia and Google’s quest to bring you the most relevant, high quality information it can and how you go about your customer strategy.

• Clay Shirkey argues that information is now created on mass, is ubiquitous, cheap and global. Citizens are real time journalists that have social power and the real connections are between individuals rather than companies and brands.
• Stefana Broadben argues that the internet has made us more personal and that we can now become more connected.
• Seth Godin argues in his presentation below that one person with an idea and enough passion can change the world, can create a movement. It’s the tribe that matters now.

And given that the internet is becoming more mobile, more device agnostic and more accessible, this will have greater implications for how we live – and how you set up your customer strategy in the future. Something to think about .

You can find the original article on Mashable.

2004 Dell had 8 million customers. Those 8 million customers passed on 40 million positive comments, creating 1 million new customers through word of mouth.*

The numbers don’t lie.

Word of Mouth is the most effective form of marketing.

Today you can expect between 1 – 5% ROI on your traditional above the line media spend. Given Dell’s numbers you just cannot compare the value of word of mouth to traditional media — even digital media — as up to 90% of word of mouth happens off line.

So why do people talk and how can you leverage it?

There are five primary reasons why people talk to each other about brands and products. Each has a different focus and there are different ways you can leverage it — which in some cases just requires some creative thinking as opposed to a structured approach:

1. Survival.

This is the most basic reason. Human beings need to talk in order to survive. Whether its to warn your fellow human that a dinosaur is about to come charging around the corner or if its to talk about the safety of a car, we have an innate need to share and talk.

This survival mechanism is built into our lizard brain and we need to share and have others share with us. It is hardwired into us and just as we share we expect a reciprocal action.

2. Alliances

Man is a political beast. We all have an agenda to some degree, some good and some bad. We volunteer information to develop those alliances. We find individuals who can help us along our path to achieving our goals and we share. We expect that goodwill to be returned.

3. Express Ourselves

We all want to be liked, to be heard and respected.  We want our opinions to be noticed and we want to be respected for them. Hence we share, sometimes a bit to much .

4. Connect and Bonding

We have all been to the office party, the cocktail drinks or some occasion and we make light chit chat. We connect about talking about the weather, the wonderful day we had in some shopping mall (ja right) and so on.

Women have book clubs where they niter natter about kids, school, husbands and so on. Men have golf days where they brag about work, their perfect golf swing and their latest gadget, toy or car.

This is what makes us human and moves us out of the survival conversation to creating emotional connections.

5. Self Identity and Confidence

We all have an image of how we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. These mental images form part of conversion, they define what we talk about, how we express ourselves and ultimately define how we feel about ourselves.

What if no one is talking about me, my brand or my business

Its all very well and good knowing that there are different reasons why we talk but what if no-one is talking about my brand.

Research shows that the average American talks about 700 brand per week – or on average ten times a day. These are what we call natural organic which crop up in the normal day to day conversations that take place daily. These five reasons define the type of conversation we have.

To trigger these conversation you need to:

• Understand who your customer is as a person based on the five reasons
• Find the passion conversation
• Create an experience that will stimulate the conversation

*Fred Reichheld, author of the Ultimate Question