Marketing: Are you telling a viral story?

I recently had the privilege of watching a personal interview with Bob Allen, president of the I.D.E.A.S firm. His unique firm is responsible for creating various forms of communication pieces that deliver what some would describe as the top three values to storytelling in the new media world. These three values are: entertainment, learning and marketing.

Storytelling is how we as marketers communicate a message we wish to convey to an audience. As Bob described, audience sizes have changed; however, the process of storytelling is still centered around these three top values. The form of distribution is simply the channels the story will ultimately travel. As we are all discovering, today’s interactive world is fertile ground for the story to travel vastly via the social channels. So the question posed is: How does one ensure the story’s success?


His success formula has tremendous depth, yet made up of some very simple principles. The story must be authentic, show social proof and ultimately convey the story we want people to share. By knitting these values together with his prescribed formula, it’s easy to see how balanced his approach is to good storytelling. It’s also easy to see why his stories would then become viral. He’s simply meeting the needs of the audience.

Who is the audience? That was the next topic he addressed. The audience has taken various forms over the past few decades. What once was broad and general has evolved into niche and now even the audience of “one”. What does this mean for marketers? Simply put, we must take into consideration that the story we are sharing speaks to an audience of one. This is now a priority to storytelling because of the interactivity element.

Technology now offers the audience of one a platform for his voice to be heard and for others to share his perspective. That means the story must hold its integrity throughout its travels through the various media channels. Marketers today must focus on the story’s integrity value. This means marketers must be involved throughout the journey of the story, listening, watching and integrating opinions of the audience regularly. In summery, it is indeed a “living” story we as marketers must groom on a daily basis.

Thoughts?

Social Media Revolution Clip

I can’t even begin to tell you how excited I am to take this next class. This month we’re auditing the 7 different types of Internet business models. I’ll post my finds along the way, but first a reference that’s so powerful, I just needed to blog it out of my system.

Socialnomics! [spin, spin…happy dance]. Okay you Millennial Boomers out there….are you going to make a joyful noise and learn it with me? Hope so. Nothing to be afraid of, just a project or two (I’ll do all the work). The trade off is that when I share the precious finds, I expect you to take our new found knowledge and RUN with it!

Now take a deep breath, sit back, enjoy and then share your thoughts!

Sorry Folks: Go Social or Go Home

This is very much a topic that has been top of the mind with all types of industries lately, no wonder the Internet Consumer Behavior professor asked us to write about it this week. In a nutshell, I wrote that I believe marketers of these industries are learning a whole new approach to getting brand awareness out. Those that know how to do it, are killing it! Those that tinker a little...well...not so much. To summarize it, today's marketers have the task of strategic persuasion. I talk about this with my Boomer clients all the time. The goal is now to get the public to ‘pull’ their marketing message down into the trenches vs. the prior ‘pushing’ of one’s message from 5,000 ft. What does this mean in regards to control over that message? A lot of getting comfortable with 'losing control'...fingers crossed. Basically if the word that gets around throughout ground zero trenches where the people eat, sleep and live does not have the power of persuasion, that company’s marketing message has just failed. And the days of throwing a little bit of money at it no longer exist. Even search engines are subscribing to the fever that social media is creating. Basically, if it’s not viral, it’s dead.

I especially enjoy this climate of strategy...maybe it's the little evil side of me rearing its face. It totally lends fair playing ground to all who wish to enter the race of brand awareness. Call it rooting for the underdogs or just plain competitive nature, I see it as a simple fundamental: All is fair in love and war. In the spirit of brand loyalty and killing the competition, my opinion is that marketing is both love and war. Earlier this year, I picked up a book called: Dirty little secrets of Buzz by David Seaman. The book is wittily written with lots of references about how to get the media to pay attention to one’s message; however, my favorite parts are especially in chapters four and five. If one is going to ever become a buzz whore, these two chapters are a must read. Not digressing I hope, just want to share some context as to where I’m going with all this. You see the name of this new game is to build it fast and dirty. The days of minding one’s p’s and q’s by romancing the press and worshiping the the budget gods are no longer necessary. If properly designed and executed, a marketing message can not only wipe out the largest contender, it can create world known fame out of thin air.

Social media has given the power back to the people. That means that no matter how high the building, plush the marble floors or padded the budget, if the people down on ground zero don’t like it, no one’s going to move that block of steel and metal. Even the precious news sources are losing leverage to the power of sophisticated village gossip. Brandrepublic.com just reported on March 10th that the most prestige news sources such as CNN and Fox are fiercely competing with news spreading across social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. People are sourcing social media outlets to learn what their sphere says before an unknown reporter breaks the news through the talking box. This alone creates a large shift for a marketer that has been accustomed to reporter attention in meeting their client’s pr needs.

The search engine game, one that was thought to be conquered and owned by the large budget conglomerates of the corporate world, is now turning a deaf ear to the high rise gods. Instead, search engines like Google and Yahoo are coming down to ground zero, observing and listening to the people. They are understanding that selling giant banner ads or key word placement is no longer the formula to maintaining interest, traffic or delivering relevant information. Instead, these popular search engines are developing added value intelligence that caters to user search patterns, offers side wikis where users can comment and discuss a website, brand, even an entire company's culture! Search engines pay special attention to the number of times a company or brand is linked, referenced and talked about. Specialized link sharing websites such as Furl.net and Propeller.com only feed the frenzy more. Search engines are all in the name of invigorating traffic and now creating more reason for social activity ‘on their turf’. They’re buying into this new format of marketing and for those that understand the power of it then use it, it’s working.


In conclusion, I’m not out to bash or reprimand traditional marketing practices. I’ve been in this industry long enough to have great respect for the way marketing/pr protocol was organized and followed. I’m just very much a change agent that understands that without change, there is simply no growth. Like the rest of participants in the circle of life, corporate entities will need to adhere to these new growth patterns, understand that the good ol days of ‘word of mouth’ advertising are alive and well and get a major strategy in place before their competition does. And in the name of this new game of love and war, competition might be as small as a stay-at-home mom with a cool idea and lots of time on her hands. You've been warned.

BALANCEWEALTH TALK RADIO - Internet Marketing Subject Expert Guest

This week I had the privilege of serving as a subject expert on the Balance Wealth Talk Radio Show with Coretta Fraser. Top of the mind topic was Internet marketing. Here are some highlights from the show:

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Coretta: Please share with the listeners why you've chosen this path. Why did you go into marketing?

Patty: When it comes to business, I’m very much about the practical strategies. Marketing is very much a creative process so I think it should also be fun. I favor easy to understand, easy to do marketing and the web is a place where a business owner can do these things, plus there’s nothing more cost effective to date. That’s the biggest reason I choose to specialize in this area of marketing.

Coretta: Why or is it important to have one's website ranked highly?

Patty: You know when I started in Internet marketing about a decade ago, the name of the game was all about the key word competition and the notorious banner ads! Internet marketing today is very different….key word bidding advantages no longer lie within the depth of a robust marketing budget. Search engines today favor relevant content and all of the places that it resides. Here’s what I mean by that:

An organization, we’ll call it “A” can have the best looking, high tech site with tons of functionality, perhaps they’ve vested in key word purchases to rank high in the engines. More than likely they’ll get some traffic…maybe even return on investment. The question is could they have done more with less?

Let’s take organization “B”, doesn’t have a super dynamic website, low to no marketing budget, but they’ve taken the time to develop great content for it for their site….lots of relevant information that buyers will find valuable. They’ve focused on meeting the people’s needs first, search engine key word algorithms second. By building social activity around your organization, the natural progression there is that the engines pick up on that activity and index that activity anyway. So Organization B could have made the same or more traction by building their Social media activity first.

Coretta: What means can one use to ensure high rankings? eg. social networking, PR, index, key words etc. website. Where do people go wrong in SEO?

Patty: That’s such a common question today Coretta. Let’s go back to Organization B. So they’ve done a good job of creating relevant content that they know is going to garner them attention, now where do they post it? In years past it was all about housing everything in the organization’s website. Today, relevant content needs to be just as viral as the people sharing it. For instance, if you write a blog entry, sure, post it on your website, but also post it for example in your MySpace blog area so your network of friends that are happily surfing MySpace can read it without being asked to leave that activity to go to your site. Also, once it’s posted, don’t forget to post a reference to it on the bulletin board and perhaps tweet about it. The search engines are powered very much like a living, breathing organism…quietly hanging out in the background. If you feed the web with your content regularly, the engines will soon have the resources to naturally do their jobs of indexing you.

The most common mistake made today Coretta is that many organizations are still holding on to the old principles of marketing online by believing that they ONLY need to bid on key words to rank highly. I always tell my clients that the best thing they can do for themselves is to hire a content writer to feed information to the web as often as possible.

The second best thing I tell my clients to do is to subscribe to the member of the online newswires. For only a couple hundred dollars, an organization can submit their white paper or press release to and international newswire. There it will not only be exposed to thousands of reporters, it will garner fantastic leverage in the search optimization game.

The third best practice I suggest to my clients is video. Video is quickly becoming the single most powerful marketing communication tool in history. It can be produced on the fly and does not need to be a Hollywood production. Buyers want relevant 'white paper' material delivered via video, illustrating case studies and practical knowledge they can use. This is what keeps them coming back for more and also encourages viral activity. Video also meets the three main learning methods: Visual, audio and interactive. A short video message is much more absorbable and retainable by today's busy web surfer.

Coretta: With so much competition for high ranking, how does one get listed in search engines now a days? What has produced the best results (for you and your business)?

Patty: Competition…now that’s a word that can mean lots of things in the world of Internet marketing. Competition for ranking can be a direct industry contender touting their brand superiority, or it can be as small as a single person talking about your product or service online. Either can pop up in an engine WAYYYY before the buyer actually sees your site. When it comes to Internet marketing, what I’ve found to be the most successful strategy today is to coach my clients through the process of taking their focus off their industry competitors and industry subject experts. Instead we work on creating a REAL relationship with the audience. With this approach, the game completely changes and the advantage is now in my client's court.

Coretta: How much should I be spending?

Patty: That’s a variable number. Many marketers go to the staple 10% of your gross profits after cost of goods. That's okay but Internet marketing goes deeper than traditional marketing department. Internet marketing today is very much an area of customer service….a whole different department. I encourage my clients to vest into knowledgabel customer service reps that can blog and meet SMO (social media) objectives first.

Coretta: What does the future hold in the area of Internet marketing? What should I know?

Patty:

1) Geomarketing – Location Logic Algorithms - Getting more popular everyday.

2) Mobile Marketing – Smart phone devices getting more integrated so we need to pay attention to the hand held devices and the way they integrate into our customer's daily life (eg. Reports showing that Gen Y is much more in touch with hand held devices as the medium and Facebook as the platform lately).

3) Video: This is becoming King in the world of marketing. Research firm comScore reported a record count of nearly 28 billion videos watched online in October 2009, with the average online user spending more than 10 hours watching streaming content per month. Consumers desire video supported messages now more than ever.

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What a treat it was to spend time with Coretta and her listeners online. Look for upcoming workshops on this topic in late March by checking the Events section of DartMarketing.com.

Cheers!

Internet Marketing Week 3 - A Strategic vs. Tactical Approach - Class Discussion

Wow, what a great discussion topic. This is definitely one that shows up in my life often. So many times the two are interchanged. I find that people very much only look at marketing as a tactical check list of the ‘to do’ items. In the area of internet marketing, I often get the shopping list of ‘places we want to be found’. Although I agree implementation is the act of marketing (using as a verb here) the question is: Implementing what? A tactical to do list?

If I’ve learned anything from this class and the years I have in the marketing world it’s that now more than ever it’s about hearing the voice of the consumer. No longer do we do business in a world where organizations ‘push’ their message down into the crowd by pattern interrupting their daily activities. We’re in a world where one must stop to analyze the behavioral patterns of the consumer in order to even have the first clue as to how that consumer will ‘pull’ a marketing message down into their world. That is all about internet marketing (the noun) strategy.

Call me bias but I’m much more in favor of referring to internet marketing as a noun rather than a verb. It is indeed the marketer that spent time learning about the consumer’s online behavioral patterns that will garner the most traction during that implementation stage.

1. The way I prioritize the elements of a client’s marketing campaign is to first understand the client, figure out if they will indeed ‘fit’ the strategy or if they might find themselves in a bind later on because they were not a fit. Example: Designing an internet marketing strategy around a client that has been DiSC assessed with a low ‘s’ (steady). It would be criminal to encourage that client to create constant content for his company on a media channel like Blogger.com. It would also not serve that client if I made the suggestion that he personally get on the LinkedIn.com groups’ discussion boards a few times a week to build a following.

2. The next thing I do is to learn all about the target market and their ‘new’ behavioral patterns. Just because they did business with my client in the past does not mean they will follow or endorse his brand in a viral capacity. Example: Just because I bought a L’Oreal lipstick does not mean I’m going to go online to talk about it. However, incorporate the brand into an online VR game http://bit.ly/8ZOOsa where I get points for finding the L’Oreal cosmetic, I’m sure telling my team mates online about it. Strategy is very much the first step that leads to a tactical internet marketing game plan.

3. Once I have the first two elements, I then build a plan based on the strategy elements that surfaced. We factor in budget, expected ROI and turnaround timelines and we're off to implement the tactical list.

Internet Marketing Week 1 - Negative Buzz

Things kicked off as the advisor said they would. Our first round of discussion was based on the results of negative buzz factor. How it affects business today to have so much of their brand exposed and managed by the consumer. The case studies were pretty amazing. Various posted about the Domino's Pizza employees goofing around on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhBmWxQpedI

Apparently this cost Domino's a ton on money, but the real question is what does it do for product buzz factor? Were there millions of people talking about Domino's Pizza overnight? Can executives turn this buzz factor around? My opinion: of course they can. I'm a strong believer that working with bad PR is easier than working with no PR. They key? Entertainment value. I've said it once, I'll say it again. If we as marketers can default to the entertainment value in a message, we're light years ahead of the competition. If Domino executives decided to spoof the act or better yet, get a skit going on SNL, people will not only be laughing about it...it would almost become a fear factor to order a pizza from there. Gen X darlings would have a field day with it.

Another great example was the 1.8M people that tuned into the Hewlett Packard is Racist YouTube video. It's relating to the new face tracking web cam on laptop models. Unfortunately, the web cam doesn't recognize faces with darker contrast. The clip is jovial and entertaining but sends a screaming message of "opps, we forgot our friendly ethnic consumer that spends a surplus of 1.9 billion on computers alone." This clip hit YouTube during the hub of the Christmas buying season and is thought to have caused a significant decline in sales.

Now, how does a company with that much market share get out of this mess? Well, after issued apologies on Twitter they may have given some acknowledgment to the socially frayed problem, but there's a greater objective and untapped opportunity. Now more than ever I believe the African American audience feels empowered and acknowledged for their skills, talent and capabilities. It is indeed refreshing to see ad execs making huge strides in casting more ethnic families to deliver their message. How about taking it to the next level and turning the apology over to some of our beloved comedians like Chris Rock or Wanda Sykes? The cost to hire this high level talent is sure to be less than the millions HP could incur...so why not? I can not even imagine the huge fun they could have with this and what better for HP than to laugh at themselves for such an oversight? Anywhoo, here's the clip, enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM

Preparing for Internet Marketing School

So I thought what better than to share the knowledge I'm gaining about internet marketing with the interested people of the world. Over the next 25 months, I'll be a full time student working towards my MBA in Internet Marketing. This is an ever evolving field, so every week I'll post my latest discoveries, tips and maybe even a report or two on my blog. Hopefully this will serve those who read it, but more importantly, I'll be required to always get my homework done.

Here's some of the courses I'll be taking:

Internet Consumer Behavior
IT Communications
Digital Storytelling
Internet Business Models
New Media Distribution Channels
Internet Law and Legal Issues
Search Engine Optimization I
Introduction to Web Interface and Usability
Viral Marketing
Intellectual Property
Information Systems and E-Commerce
Social Media Optimization
Affiliate Marketing
Email Marketing
Web Banner Advertising
Web Analytics and Reporting
Interpersonal Communications
Media and Society
Pay-Per-Click Campaign Development
Search Engine Optimization II
Internet Marketing Research Strategies
Global Internet Marketing Strategies
Cultural Studies and the Web

Class begins: 1/7/2010 Wish me luck!