The Flipside by Alternative Strategies

Marketing into 2009

Sometimes it’s hard to believe we are ringing in another New Year. It feels like just yesterday it was all about the Y2Kaos and what would endure subsequent to the aftermath. Well, nothing really changed right then, but the New Millennium has seen ever increasing changes in marketing, which have only been picking up speed since. With the innovations in telecommunications and the evolution of technology, you can communicate to your market with increased authenticity and transparency. With the economic conditions, effective value-driven operational means are a standard. Every day people are now becoming involved with your brand image. Hopefully you have solidified your 2009 marketing plans and, ideally, those plans have touched base on one or several of the following issues to will take you well into the next decade.

1)    Social Media
You can directly communicate to your customers, on an authentic, genuine level and gain their insight, trust and loyalty. They, in turn, can become brand advocates and marketing vehicles via word of mouth (aka “word of mouse”).

Most people equate Social media with Facebook, YouTube, twitter, etc., but as with everything online, there is a plethora of choices to interact with. It is immensely beneficial to get involved in this movement, on some level. I recommend that everyone have a blog, which is the basic building block of social media. It can serve as a hub to interact with other individual social sites, and will be there long after the Facebooks and twitters have faded into the history books. Just like in the early 90’s when everyone was rushing to create a static informational website, now blogs are the standard “dynamic websites” to involve your social media outreach.  Let us create your blog and social media strategy and get you in on the conversations.

2)    Value Driven
With the given state of the economy, everyone is looking for value. And value does not equate the lowest price, but the purchase that is going to give consumers the most bang for their buck. Consumers want to know that the product or service is going deliver on the promise and is around to last. That, in turn, is what your Brand Image should be focused on.  Consumers are willing to pay a premium for your products or services knowing that they will live up to the promise of your branding. Being in business yourself, you should be looking for values to get the most bang for your buck. We offer an unprecedented guaranteed Public Relations Program that guarantees to deliver what we say we can do for you. Now, how can you guarantee to appease your customers and create value around your brand ?

3)    Social Responsibility
Most companies now embrace transparency of their operations. This can tie into the above two mentions, in that Social media now offers a platform to showcase your social good doings. This creates a (moral) value for your consumers. Those consumers want to know that their purchase is doing well for the whole of humanity, not just themselves. By implementing social responsibilities into your manufacturing processes, employee and vendor relations, community outreach and involvement, green strategies etc., your brand will stand out that much more from your competitors. You will find consumer loyalties among those who want to make a difference with the products or services they choose to spend the hard earned money on.

Each of the preceding matters are gaining momentum as marketing trends, and you will greatly benefit to incorporate just a few these practices into your company's marketing strategies for 2009.  We always practice what we preach and can be found working these principles into our own operations and our clients'.

Here’s to a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. Cheers!

Social Media Explained

Social Media Explained

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Wild West Social Marketing

Wild West Social Media

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Social Media and Some Change

Change is all around us and the old adage rings true; you can MAKE things Happen, You can WATCH things happen, or you can ask WHAT happened? I am ecstatic to become involved in making things happen. How can YOU make things happen? Easy, It’s called web 2.0. What is web 2.0? Not so easy. Web 2.0 supports  Social Media, which is predominantly user influenced and created. Since it is constantly evolving and taking new forms, it’s hard to put a finger on it. We can classify it as Web 2.0 by simply asking were the pages, videos, pictures, videos, comments, etc.. user created?

Well, what is Social Media? Web 2.0 ? User created content? Co-creation? Still confused?

It is hard to give a clear concise explanation for all the latest changes happening in our virtual societies. I won’t bore you with my lengthy interpretation. I will however give you just a teaser about what it is becoming and what it has the powers to do:

Social Networks more popular than porn!
Not only should this get your attention from the mention of porn, but that statement alone is pretty shocking once it seeks in. We all know the dark side of the internet, and the billions of dollars this industry culminates. When people are lured away from the dark side to become actively engaged in social interaction, well that is a change in the right direction.

Bill Tancer, author of Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters, and GM of the web tracking company, Hitwise, has analyzed information from more than 10 million web users and determined that social networking is more popular than porn.

- The results show that less people are interested in porn than ten years ago.

- 10% percent of current searches involve porn, as opposed to 20% a decade  ago.

- Internet traffic to porn sites has decreased, whereas the traffic to network sites like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter has exploded.

- 18 and 24 years old now spend more time on social media sites and therefore have less time to visit adult sites.

The Power to Change a Nation
President Elect Barack Obama's success was largely attributed to his active social media outreach capturing the attention of a young demographic and getting a record number of first time voters to the polls who discovered that they had to the power to “Change”. Yes they can. While social media political campaigning is not new, and Jon McCain also actively pursued social media outreach, it was however only successful to a small  degree of Obama’s success. Some areas of Obama’s social outreach include:

- 13,000,000 have viewed the post of the Black Eyed Pea’s Yes We Can Video

- 300 to 1500 comments per post were averaged for The Obama/Biden blog

- Flicker account was probably the most social centric of his campaigning, here he posted few photos of himself but yet pictures of real people. His staff. Those in the field, supporting him. Idealist Americans. People wanting change.

-Facebook where he hosted fan pages, groups and of course a “Supporter Page" of 3,350,888 supporters. Many applications were created for his campaign by private citizens, such as passing around virtual campaigning buttons. Groups, discussions, rallies etc.. Viral expansion as friends can see what other friends did via notifications, feeds, invites, etc..

-Youtube with over 1800 videos posted saying more than a thousand words. Each video has at least 50,000 views and most are around 100,000 on up.

-Twitter  Posting updates daily utilizing this exploding micro blogging platform,. Lots of posts sharing links to live videos and blog updates. For a good portion of his campaigning he was the most followed person on twitter.

Being in line with Web 2.0 these facets are constantly evolving and continually resurfacing. These posts, videos, pictures, tweets,  etc are still being viewed and creating impressions well after the fact.

Social media has amazing reach and power. It is authentic and genuine. These are just an example of the power and reach of social networking. Companies and brands also have the opportunity to get involved for relatively free.  Now more than ever, is the time to reach out and connect to one another.

Social Media Metrics

    Marketing efforts, either offline or online, need to be evaluated in order to maintain or grow. This provides the opportunity to assess marketing performance and utilize the information to maintain the campaign as is; to improve on it or, if the campaign is ineffective, to find out why, and modify it. As with most things, objectivity provides a pure, unbiased perception of what’s going on in a marketing effort. This translates into an actual numerical evaluation. In marketing, this objectivity is called metrics. Metrics are, “measures that determine the effectiveness of a marketing effort” It is a way to evaluate and present a campaign in a scientific and quantifiable manner. 

Unlike traditional media which, on its own provides challenges, online media,
particularly Social Media, and the communities it harbors, provides even bigger challenges due to the newness and continuous evolution of the medium. In addition, the nature of social media (community based, chaotic, spontaneous, emotional, human, conversational) presents a great obstacle: How do we measure online human interaction and how can we relate that to Our marketing goal?

Social Media has become an extremely powerful marketing tool because of two key components: 
Influence and  Engagement.
(1)    Influence: One of the biggest contributing factors in a person’s decision-making process is how others feel and what they say relating to the decision in question. That is, a person is more likely to make a decision based on (a). What decision others around them make and (b) what others say about their decisions or about the product/service in question.
(2)    Engagement: Many experts have had difficulty defining “engagement” in specific terms. However, a major feature present is interaction. Erik Peterson, a 10-year veteran in web analytics, defines Engagement as an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly defined set of goals.
    Social media metrics involve the classic online metrics such as time; page views etc. as well as how all these metrics relate to a specific effort (website, blog, banner) and how these relate the targeted online users. Most importantly, it involves measuring the interaction of your market and if that interaction contributes to your desired intended action (ultimate marketing goal).

Basic Online Metrics Include:
- Number of Unique visitors
- How many Page Views per visitor
- Time spent on a page
- Frequency of visits
- Depth of Visits (How many pages, how much time spent, etc.)
- Conversions (Actual desired action) E.g. The goal of a website is to get people to sign up for a newsletter and people actually sign up for a newsletter.
However, social media requires a bit more insight because of its nature as a more complex communicating medium.

Social Media Metrics
In addition to the basic online metrics components, social media requires a few more to effectively yield the results we need. Some of these are:
- Content Consumption   +  Content Contribution  = Engagement
- Pass-On Factor (Bookmarking, tagging etc) = Influence

Here’s an example of a how social media metrics can be useful.
Bob the Restaurant Guy has a new Southern California Cuisine Restaurant and he is trying to market his restaurant online. Bob starts a SoCal cooking blog with different recipes and cooking tips each week. Bob’s marketing goal is to (a). Generate visitors to his blog (b). Increase awareness of his restaurant through this blog and (c). Develop Word-of-Mouth buzz about his Restaurant (to encourage actual restaurant visits) through social media outlets.
Bob the Restaurant Guy is successful in generating visitors to his blog on SoCal cooking. He is also successful in generating buzz about his blog. But his marketing efforts are not effective in generating buzz about his Restaurant or increasing awareness of his restaurant with the ultimate goal of encouraging restaurant visits. A quick look at the activity surrounding the blog would portray a successful marketing effort. However, a closer study of the content would show that the marketing effort was not successful because two out of three goals were not met. If Bob the restaurant guy thinks his efforts are successful, then he won’t do anything to change them and then won’t understand why people aren’t coming to his restaurant. But if he knows where his campaign is failing, he would make the necessary changes which would give his restaurant a much better chance at succeeding. That’s the beauty of metrics.

Social Media in Plain English