theBUZZ101 by Maria Elena Duron (Maria Duron)

Content Means Everything for Good Word of Mouth

2013-05-24T06:00:00.000-05:00

Quality content for good word of mouth marketing

Your content says a lot about your brand, demonstrating knowledge, awareness, and integrity. Through these characteristics, your audience develops a profile of your brand which they will share with others in their own networks.

This means that in order for you to attain good word of mouth marketing, your content has to be able to demonstrate powerful qualities. Some of them are read, some are shown, and there are those that are interpreted and perceived by the audience themselves.

The value of your content

The content you share should offer every quality of your brand, not just information about who you are and what you do.

The fact is that your content needs to offer valuable information to improve customer response. The audience doesn’t just want to hear about what you have to offer, they want to know what it is going to do for them. What has it done for others? Can they rely on peer testimonials?

Then there is the act of sharing the right material in the correct medium. In the online world, there are several digital platforms, each with their own unique purpose. Vlogs and blogs are for sharing informational content that has value, while other content needs to be share-friendly and exciting for social networks.

Another consideration is content that search engines will rank highly, such as the inclusion of keywords, updated content, and trending topics. These are often for visibility and awareness purposes, and while needed in order to bring the content to the audience’s attention, they shouldn’t be the purpose of your content. When content is developed around keywords, it can lose depth and authenticity, taking away some of its value. Develop your content so that it shares both value and visibility qualities.

Confidence in your content

Developing trust is the most important part of your content. And while the content itself is responsible for stating the bulk of your brand’s information, it is how you say it that can make a difference in earning the loyalty of your audience. It is the tone in which you deliver your message that the audience will either interpret and perceive as reliable or disregard as insubstantial.

This means that it’s up to your professional tone to build your brand’s image and authority in your field as an expert, and it is your ability to demonstrate the correct tone that will determine your brand’s strength and dependability. Tone initially demonstrates your authority in your professional field without actually saying a word at all. It is your composure and the trust you have within your own words that count.

Do you speak with confidence? Do you sound as though you’re sure that what you’re saying is true? Ultimately, you have to ask yourself if you sound as though you believe in yourself, because if you don’t have a confident tone, how can you expect your audience to trust your content?

However, it isn’t just about speaking with confidence. It is about earning trust by following through with your content. Are your promises reliable? Do your customers offer referrals and testimonials about your reliability? Are they authentic?

Trust relies greatly on your ability to not only speak with authority, but follow through. [tweet this]

Your own perspective

This brings us to the narrative of the content situation. It’s easy to speak about topics and generate content, but it may not actually have been from your perspective. The content was generated, but it wasn’t from your narrative. It wasn’t your story. It lacked the personality of your brand, and thus does not adequately represent your brand.

Ideal content is composed from the experience of your brand. What have you faced? What is your expertise? What are your views in your field? What is your story and how has it made your brand what it is today? The story of your brand is what sets you apart in the business world. Keep in mind that there are others competing within the same profession, each offering their own unique style and approach. This means that it’s up to you to be able to set yourself apart from them and earn a unique trust from your audience through your content’s unique perspective.

There are certain characteristics that all brand’s content should demonstrate. It’s easy to get caught up with delivering a message that informs, but doesn’t share the message of your brand. Your content must not only contain value for the audience, but contain the qualities of your brand itself. And when you speak with a tone of authority and experience, the audience will develop a loyal faith in you and the brand you represent.

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Why Pinterest Presents the Best Platform for Business Growth

2013-05-22T06:00:00.000-05:00

Pinterest as part of your social marketing strategy for business growth

The information technology evolution over the last decade has formed the baseline for current business communication, especially in the fields of marketing and creating communities for products loyalty. Social media sites have played a big role in these new marketing trends, with a site such as Pinterest being among the most favored by many businesses. Here, we take a look at some statistics about the site and why you should consider it for promoting your online business.

Current Pinterest Statistics

Pinterest has grown tremendously and now boasts over 12 million users in the United States alone. In the United Kingdom, the number of Pinterest users has reached 200,000. About 28.1 percent of all Pinterest users in the US are estimated to have an average income of at least $ 1,000,000. In the UK, 28 percent of the users come from the highest income earners’ bracket.

In terms of traffic, Pinterest takes third position as the most popular social media site in the US. The network platform retains and engages its users 2-3 times with inherent efficiency only comparable to Twitter. On average, Pinterest users spend about 98 minutes every month on the website. Currently, the major categories for product promotion by users is: Food and Drinks with about 11.9 percent; followed closely by the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and Crafts category at 9.2 percent; and Décor at 5.9 percent.

A Wonderful Business Tool for Your Business

The aforementioned statistics indicate that Pinterest could be just the tool that gives your business a chance to grow and reach greater levers. With over 25 percent of the entire Fortune Global 100 companies having Pinterest accounts, using the same platform places your business among the big leagues, where you have as much the same opportunity to impress and make a name.

Pinterest is simply one of the best business sites to promote your products and business. A good majority of the site’s members indicate that they use it in associating with brands and retailers. When you compare that with the 24 percent on other social networks such as Facebook that say the same, chances of growing your business on Pinterest are higher.

With close to half of all Pinterest’s visitors translating to business, the potential is great. [tweet this]

Pinterest is also the best place to find a product for customers, and the best place to look for clients as a business owner.

Make the Most of Pinterest

Make the best of Pinboards by creating those that are unique or specific to your brand; show case something different from others in your industry and do a great job in visually storytelling your brand story. Original and creative names will make you stand out from the rest. It is critical that the titles you use for the Pinboards have keywords relevant to your niche for easier searches. It does not pay to come up with pins that are not related to what you are offering.

Focus on your niche and do a great job in visually storytelling what makes you so uniquely you.

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Get to Know Your Target Market

2013-05-20T06:00:00.000-05:00

Reaching your target market through word of mouth

Word of mouth marketing is one of the cornerstones of building a loyal customer base for many businesses. Whether you're just starting up or growing an established brand, your reputation primarily depends on what other people say about you. So how do you create positive mouth-to-mouth buzz about your business? There are a few key ways to use word of mouth marketing techniques effectively in your online presence.

Be different

One of the best ways to encourage people to talk about your business is to do something that is unusual or atypical. If you can corner the market from another angle that customers are not used to, they will be interested in your business and chances are, they will tell their friends. If you're tired of being marginalized, become known for something. Figure out who your target audience is and find something unusual or unique about their needs. Then, determine how your business can fill those needs within its current framework. Share it online through your social media sites and with other groups. Other people will want to know how you did it and you'll grow exponentially in both customers and reputation.

Different in delivery or different in focus helps you stand out. [tweet this]

Show a personal side

Always make it personal. With so many companies using online sites to share information, it often feels as though there isn't a person on the other end. Follow up with people to make sure that you've addressed their needs. Be consistent with your customers and consider taking steps to ensure that they know you recognize them as a valued customer. Sending out personalized messages with their names or special offers designed just for them is a great way to show them that you care. A customer is much more likely to share a good experience, so make sure that you're giving them plenty of good ones.

Put your ear to the ground

Figure out what other people are saying about similar businesses. Follow businesses or companies that offer similar products or services. Determine what their customers don't like, or wish that they could change. This is one of the best ways to determine how you can fill their needs. When you identify something that's currently missing, offer it on your social media site and encourage people to share it. You'll find that it's much easier to corner the market and get people talking and sharing your pages when you offer something that they truly feel is absent.

Two’s company

Finally, team up with other companies. Don't just see them as competitors, but work with them in community and local events. Organize or sponsor events and work with those companies to make the event successful. You’ll build your reputation if you have a good experience with that company and they'll want to work with you again. Also, if you're a new company, they'll be much more willing to share their experiences and encourage others to seek you out.

What do people enjoy sharing about you?

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Build a Brand, the Harley Davidson Way

2013-05-17T06:00:00.000-05:00

Branding the Harley Davidson Way

Harley Davidson is an internationally renowned brand that is so loved by its customers that some take the “brand” literally – by having the company logo tattooed about their person! But the company’s success is built on far more than conventional brand marketing, as a case study in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Strategic Marketing explains.

Since its inception in 1905, Harley Davidson has maintained its status as the manufacturer of an iconic brand of American motorcycles. The bikes were used by the US military during the first and second world wars, and later became legends of the silver screen in movies such as Easy Rider, Pulp Fiction, and Terminator 2. But by the mid 1980s the company was under threat from Japanese competition, and an unsuccessful sale to American Machine and Foundry (AMF) didn’t help matters either. The company’s fortunes, however, were revived by a management buyout and the implementation of an innovative new “strategic fit” approach to marketing.

A New Marketing Approach

As Arpita Agnihotri of the ICFAI Business School (IBS) in Hyderabad, India, explains in the Journal of Strategic Marketing:

“… Harley wanted to sell lifestyle and not motorcycles to bike riders. …This required direct communication and interaction between employees and customers of Harley. The quality and nature of the interaction between employees and customers influences their perceptions about the firm’s products and services.”

The strategic fit approach, first identified in 1985 by Michael E. Porter, is a marketing model that fosters tight integration of value chain activities. Before implementation of the approach, Harley Davidson had a good reputation for quality and styling, with special emphasis on style. However, competitor companies offered other value propositions, such as price, durability, reliability, styling, quality, product features, customer preference, and warranties. Harley Davidson’s task, therefore, was to identify and integrate primary and secondary value chain activities – as set out in the strategic fit theory – in order to maintain its position in the marketplace and facilitate expansion into new markets.

Agnihotri’s article, “Turnaround of Harley Davidson – cult brand or strategic fit approach?” describes the key factors in Harley Davidson’s approach, including primary value chain activities such as the deliberate implementation of a demand–supply gap, active brand management such as the creation of the Harley Ownership Group (HOG), sponsored rallies, and other activities. But it is the secondary value chain activities that are more revealing of the all-pervading nature of the strategic fit approach.

For instance, by recognizing the importance of direct communications between employees and customers, the company embarked on a top-to-bottom restructuring of human resources; removing the vertical, multi-layered traditional management structure and replacing it with a horizontal, flat structure of “natural work groups”. Furthermore, in order to maximize external customer loyalty, Harley Davidson wanted to ensure that internal customers (that is employees) remained loyal to the company.

As Agnihotri explains:

“Amongst the friendly human resource policies implemented by Harley to ensure loyalty, the most important was the ‘no layoff’ policy. In the era of competition and the associated threats, where layoffs and downsizing are the first tactical actions that a firm takes to ensure efficiency, Harley, in order to reinforce its positioning of a cult brand with loyal customers, announced a ‘no layoff policy’.”

Applied in other sectors

The strategic fit approach was also applied to strategic financial management – including the company’s approach to the management of its capital and debt – and to a new corporate strategy of diversification that was so successful that by the year 2000 merchandising accounted for some 20 per cent of the company’s revenues, which in turn boosted the core business of selling motorbikes.

As well as describing Harley Davidson’s successful turnaround, Arpita Agnihotri’s article, which is free to download from the Journal’s website, provides the theoretical background to the “strategic fit” approach and ably demonstrates how the theory can be more informative in illuminating complex company turnarounds than a conventional analysis of “restructuring and repositioning.”

However, he does acknowledge the recent decline in the sales performance of Harley Davidson, as well as its poor performance in international markets. Nevertheless, Agnihotri concludes that the remarkable turnaround of the company is a powerful demonstration of the benefits of the strategic fit approach.

Article source: “Turnaround of Harley Davidson – cult brand or strategic fit approach?” by Arpita Agnihotri, Journal of Strategic Marketing, published by Taylor & Francis.

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Box Office Performance and Social Media

2013-05-15T06:00:00.000-05:00

Social media and how it affects box office performance

According to research led by a marketing professor at the University of Utah’s David Eccles School of Business, film studios might be better served with more targeted advertising that takes into account the movie-going habits of different communities, as well as how those communities respond to paid advertising and movie-review blogs.

Shyam Gopinath, an assistant professor at the David Eccles School of Business, worked with the University of Chicago’s Pradeep Chintagunta and the University of North Carolina’s Sriram Venkataraman on the study “Blogs, advertising, and local-market box-office performance” - which was recently accepted for publication in Management Science.

The research team looked at the box-office performance of 75 films - the top-grossing movies of 2004, representing more than 90 percent of the revenues generated by all movies that year - across 208 U.S. markets, measuring: the effects of pre- and post-release blog posts about the films; how many blogs were posted about a given film and whether those blog posts were positive or negative in tone; and the advertising spend studios allocated to promote those films.

The study’s noteworthy findings include:

• Different Responses across Demographics. Young consumers, Asians, and Hispanics were the demographics most affected by blogs in their decision-making on whether or not to see a film, while Caucasians were most affected by advertising.

• Most Responsive Markets. Markets can be classified based on whether they respond more to blogs or paid advertising, and larger markets like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Denver are highly responsive to blogs while having low responsiveness to advertising. Conversely, medium-sized markets like Salt Lake City and New Orleans respond more strongly to advertising than to blog volume.

• Key Drivers of Box Office Performance. Opening day box office returns are affected by how many blogs are written about a film, as well as advertising. 30 days later, what the blogs say about a film, rather than the number of blog posts, and advertising are the key drivers of box office performance.

• Inefficient Marketing by Studios. Studios can take better advantage of the markets’ demographics and attendance habits. The study found that on opening day, studios only released in 53 percent of the markets most responsive to paid advertising, and only 44 percent of the markets most responsive to blogs.

Film studios advertise their movies the same way from coast to coast, in cities large and small, hoping to draw huge audiences for opening day. Normally, around 90 percent of a movie’s revenue is generated on opening day and the following month.

“The results of this study show that studios are limiting the potential of their films’ box office success,” said Gopinath. “The inefficient, blanket approach in place at many studios fail to take into account the diverging media consumption preferences and diversity of audiences across the country. With a more targeted approach that tailors marketing and social media efforts to specific markets, studios can see greater return on investment from their nationwide outreach.”

About the David Eccles School of Business

From its beginnings in 1896 as part of the Economics and Sociology Department, what is now the David Eccles School of Business (http://www.business.utah.edu) educates nearly 3,500 students a year, and boasts more than 31,000 alumni. The students manage a university venture fund of $18.3 million, the largest of its kind in the nation. In January 2012, the school opened its new, $72 million Spencer F. Eccles Building, offering students a cutting-edge learning environment packed with state-of-the-art technology.

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