What does the recent death of Osama bin Laden mean for social media marketing? It’s clear the news found it’s most powerful tool since the cellular phone. In our case, it’s doubtful the dissemination of this blog post via Twitter will grab 4,000 Tweets per second as was the case yesterday.
For many of my customers the same is true. However, some of our larger customers should take a lesson from yesterday’s events.
Congressional aides and a former US Attorney let the news slip an hour before the president’s address. While no where near comparable, the idea that a company secret, faux pas, or misstep be released unfiltered would tarnish the patina of even the most respected brands. The real challenge and the pot of gold we all strive to attain is the proactive use of a very powerful media that translates into higher share value.
Gaylord Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin held the first Earth Day in 1970. Here we are 41 years later and the movement seems to be losing steam. Is the brand losing ground despite the huge volume of media on the topic? General thinking is that we’ve collectively failed on the education front. How would you brand earth day to make it cool to the disinterested American teenager. Read more…
I recently stumbled upon a post by Paul Holmes endorsing Edelman’s decision to reposition itself as a communications agency instead of a public relations firm. That’s certainly a subtle move that will go unnoticed in most circles. Firms are evil. Lawyers have firms. You have to dig a little deeper to find an evil agency. Well, depending on your political leanings (e.g. CIA, NSA, ATSDR) you do. Anyway, thought I’d share.
Oh, what about us or any “interactive ad agency”? Do we keep our category or spruce it up a bit?
social engagement agency
intelligent technical communications agency
traditional marketing is stupid agency (although we think some old is good)
For some reason my Twitter accounts, both professional and private, are flooded with Tweets and posts about Customer-Vendor relationships. As an ad agency this topic hits us right between the eyes. Let me take five minutes of your time to give you the VLG take. Sales
Call it a first take or first encounter, but first impressions last for years. A customer might leave for three years and pop up unannounced looking for marketing help. What do they remember? Surprisingly, the majority remember the sales process. This presents both an opportunity and a problem. The opportunity to win back a customer is without a doubt the greatest feeling in the world, but here’s the problem. The world and our business evolved over the last three years. We’re a technology driven company, so failure to adapt to change, failure to innovate is not an option. It also means we’ve tweaked our business model, adjusted pricing, and improved the overall product we deliver. Returning customers have expectations that are no longer aligned. This ignores the pressure to oversell and over promise to win a customer back. It’s very tempting to exaggerate a bit. We’re proud of the work we’ve done, but we have to temper that with reality. What can we do to help our customers succeed?
Engagement
You’ve hired VLG. Now what? The business development team hands the relationship off, in part, to the account management team. Now it is time for us to meet expectations and exceed them whenever possible. Typically, our standards exceed those of our customers–to a fault in some cases. This is also were we define our relationship. Is it us versus them, or are “we” going to build something beautiful together? It really depends on the customer. We would love to be a “we,” but some customers prefer an arms length relationship. We built our business to accommodate both. However, common sense dictates that if “we” build a project together the result is likely better. If it turns into a polite us v. you relationship the end product doesn’t really satisfy the expectations–ours or our customers. I want a customer to trust us to the point were they’d order me a stack of business cards so I can run around town singing their praises. I want to be our customer’s biggest fan.
Steps
We run all clients through an important deep dive during the post-sales engagement. Keep in mind VLG is not focused on branding or identity creation. So, the easiest thing to nail down is the marketing message, the calls-to-action, the campaign objectives. Campaign success really boils down to the following.
1. How quickly and how well do we understand our customers’ personalities—the people, not the companies?
2. How quickly and how well do we know the target audience—yes, the company, but also the people?
3. How we do 1. and 2. separates our products and services from the competition and results in winning campaigns.
It turns out we have two audiences, you (the customer) and them (your customers). Hopefully we can work together to get them to buy. Agree? Disagree?
If you fear social media but know it has to be done, we have the answer. By visiting this blog you’re a part of our own VLG.me efforts. Twitter,Facebook, microsites, vlgadvertising.com, and more are all tied into our solution that defines VLG as a thought leader in the interactive lead generation space. We want to do that for our customers, too.
How do you find out if VLG.me is right for you?
1. Visit your corporate website.
2. Count how many clicks it takes a user to reach specific product information.
3. If it’s more than two clicks, you need VLG.me.
It’s been 35 days since our last blog post. Terrible…35 days? The impact of lazy blog activity and fewer tweets on our web traffic was amazing. Total traffic across all seven key marketing web “properties” is down between 0.66% and 65% (ouch!).
What has happened in the last 35 days?
Two employees had babies.
We launched a new product. VLG.me. (You can sign up to learn more by visiting this site.).
We launched our 2011 self-promotional campaign.
We inked 11 new customers.
There are 20 campaigns in the design/build phase.
We have another 15 live campaigns running, dropping mailers and generating new leads.
We partnered with a new technology vendor. (Sincerely Marketing).
We’re back. Good stuff in the works. Did you miss me while I was gone?
We are working feverishly to crack the social media nut for B2B marketers. Clearly, social media is a great vehicle for B2C marketing, but we’ve noticed a bit of confusion, angst and disappointment on this side of the fence. We did it. Now there is a solution that sheds the words “social media” to focus more on those that…
Wow, almost let the cat out of the bag. The point is business marketers do have a play online in the social media space, but it’s probably not what you think. Want to be among the first to get a demo of our new product line? Visit http://vlg.me to sign up. The more people you invite the quicker you’ll get an evaluation of your current online efforts and recommendations for improvement that may, or may not include using VLG.me at your company. Sign up today!
Did the company that brought collective bargaining to the masses really just do that? Is the backlash justified? Quick, name the last movie starring Timothy Hutton.*
Groupon has issued an official statement on the commercials via a blog on their site here is what they had to say:
“The gist of the concept is this: When groups of people act together to do something, it’s usually to help a cause. With Groupon, people act together to help themselves by getting great deals. So what if we did a parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial that you think is about some noble cause (such as “Save the Whales”), but then it’s revealed to actually be a passionate call to action to help yourself (as in “Save the Money”)?
“Since we grew out of a collective action and philanthropy site (ThePoint.com) and ended up selling coupons, we loved the idea of poking fun at ourselves by talking about discounts as a noble cause. So we bought the spots, hired mockumentary expert Christopher Guest to direct them, enlisted some celebrity faux-philanthropists, and plopped down three Groupon ads before, during, and after the biggest American football game in the world.
“You can view the already aired commercials, as well as new ones as we release them, at SaveTheMoney.org . And if you’ve saved enough money for yourself and feel like saving something else, you can donate to mission-driven organizations that are doing great work for the causes featured in our PSA parodies. If you guys pony up, Groupon will contribute matching donations of up to $100,000 for three featured charities – Rainforest Action Network, buildOn, and the Tibet Fund — and Groupon credit of up to $100,000 for contributions made to Greenpeace.“
The power of anticipation should never be underestimated. You might be the only person that hasn’t signed up for LaunchRock. You can follow these guys here: @getlaunchrockYou’re next.
Remember what Jerry Seinfeld says, “It’s really hard to be number one. Because, the minute you lose, you’re not number one anymore. But, being next is easy. If someone walks up to you in line and says, ‘Are you next?’ all you have to do is say, ‘Yes.’ If someone asks where the line is, you just tell them, ‘Behind me. I’m next.’ And it’s super easy to stay next. All you have to do is tell the person behind you to move in front of you. ‘Why don’t you go ahead of me. I’m next.’ You can do that all day long and always be next.”
We all want to be next. (If you can find a video clip of the Seinfield episode send it this way.)
Groupon has issued an official statement on the commercials via a blog on their site here is what they had to say:
“The gist of the concept is this: When groups of people act together to do something, it’s usually to help a cause. With Groupon, people act together to help themselves by getting great deals. So what if we did a parody of a celebrity-narrated, PSA-style commercial that you think is about some noble cause (such as “Save the Whales”), but then it’s revealed to actually be a passionate call to action to help yourself (as in “Save the Money”)?
“Since we grew out of a collective action and philanthropy site (ThePoint.com) and ended up selling coupons, we loved the idea of poking fun at ourselves by talking about discounts as a noble cause. So we bought the spots, hired mockumentary expert Christopher Guest to direct them, enlisted some celebrity faux-philanthropists, and plopped down three Groupon ads before, during, and after the biggest American football game in the world.
“You can view the already aired commercials, as well as new ones as we release them, at SaveTheMoney.org . And if you’ve saved enough money for yourself and feel like saving something else, you can donate to mission-driven organizations that are doing great work for the causes featured in our PSA parodies. If you guys pony up, Groupon will contribute matching donations of up to $100,000 for three featured charities – Rainforest Action Network, buildOn, and the Tibet Fund — and Groupon credit of up to $100,000 for contributions made to Greenpeace.“