I have become reinvigorated with the fields of sociology, branding, advertising and something called behavioural economics. Though I believe far too many companies are over invested in advertising and under invested in actually investing in initiatives that drive revenue, I don’t think it is Advertising’s fault we have just forgotten why we turned to advertising in the first place.

Advertising is about increasing brand equity to help differentiation products and increase awareness of the product so that if we find ourselves at the counter we just might choose that brand. Advertising is not about reach and the CPM. Just because you can shout louder doesn’t mean more people are listening.

What I want to do is reach the right people at the right time, communicate more than just a set of brand attributes and provide value.

We need to rethink our preconceived and indoctrinated notions of marketing, advertising and get back to realising consumers are people with needs not numbers.

At the same time we can’t throw out the world of metrics. If anything there is an opportunity to start quantifying the previously immeasureable value of interactions between people previously coined as customer service which is becoming the responsibility of every part of the organisation.

This is by no means a comprehension post, merely a rant to update the world on what I am thinking and working on.

I am working on something big, a project that will attempt to bridge the gap between social capital and advertising but more on that later.

In the meantime, I recommend you pick up the Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz, Predictabilty Irrational by Dan Ariely and watch the video below.

I often get the question posed by businesses of many different sizes about whether a blog should be a part of their business strategy.

Blogs have been hyped up for many years as everything from the doom bringer of traditional media to a lead generation tool for small business, however in recent years they have been downplayed in favour of the fresh buzz surrounding newer tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

Now that the dust is settling I think we can really take a clear look at what role each tool can contribute to the overall marketing and brand strategy.

From my experience with managers of businesses large and small with a plethora of different target audiences I have noticed two prevalent issues.

This is not necessarily a bad sign but rather a sign of the lack of knowledge of a still relatively new and misunderstood tool for business.

Let’s be real here, a blog is not mystery bottle of social media magic, it is a part of the web and often would be indistinguishable from what we know as a ‘website’ to the average internet user. Blogs can take on many different forms and functions and it is misleading to group them as tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

In fact a blog can be an important way of satiating Google’s indexing algorithms need for frequently updated content raising the traction of the rest of the website.

The way I typically explain the differences between blogs and a corporate website are:

Your website is the front door, your blog is the board room table

The most common differences are

A blog allows businesses to frequently update visitors on new developments, articles, tips and even new products or services as often as they need to with little to no marginal cost and limited knowledge of the technology. For small businesses they can effectively become their own publishers.

The role of the website is often a destination where visitors can quickly learn about the products, people and services behind a company however that only serves to answer the ‘Who and What’ of the marketing mix. The blog is where people go when they ask “Yes, I can read your marketing copy but what you guys really do?”

A blog is an important part of the marketing mix where businesses have the most creative control of the medium to really flesh out their brand identity. Business can use it to leverage media mentions, interview members of their community and share their expertise of their product and industry.

The expertise, tips and updates, branding and open door invitation conveyed through a corporate blog are not isolated solely to blogs. If implemented appropriately, it is just quality content displayed on a different medium however the majority of users will not look for a blog, they will look for good content.

The question is not, should my business have a blog?

The question is – does our business have knowledge to share or a story to tell and would our clients appreciate our expertise?
If the answer is yes, then a blog can be a viable solution to reach out to more customers, increase traffic to your online presence, retain relationships with your customers and increase brand awareness.

Photo credit Industry is Virtue

Have you ever tried a product where you have thought “They couldn’t give it away if it was free”. Though it has been commonly associated with products of a substandard quality, we are starting to see that in any given product category companies are competing with newcomers who offer a similar even superior product for free.

However unless you work for a government agency or a university, you can’t just create or sustain an initiative just on an whim of an ideal.

Businesses do not give away their products for free, there are bills to pay, mouths to feed and accountability to shareholders. The evolution of *free does not throw the pursuit of revenue out the window, it merely is shift in where the revenue comes from.

Free is not a radical new business model but a tried and true marketing strategy that has been pivotal in the adoption of iconic brands for over a century.

Companies package free into every single product we buy. Banks, governments, retailers, television shopping channels and manufacturers have all been using free as a marketing strategy long before the seemingly insane Google bundled unlimited video, email and office applications away for free.

RBC recently gave away a free netbook with a new account, governments give subsidies to farmers, retailers offer complimentary gift wrap, tv shopping channels bundle away deals till exhaustion and manufacturers sell electronics at close to cost.

The reason is that banks make their money back ten fold on rates and loans, governments on tax revenues, retailers on the gifts themselves, TV shopping channels on the shipping and electronics retailers on the accessories and set up.

Google has been criticized for seemingly bizarre investments in Google Voice, Google 411, Gmail, and most recently Youtube. Youtube which they paid $1.6 billion amount for and supposedly loses them 415 million a year despite being one of the top 10 visited websites in the world.

So how does Google sustain this?

Well they happen to be quite good at what they do, to the tune of 22 billion dollars last year. You see Google has a very simple business model.

People use the internet and they sell advertising on internet. The more people use the internet the more advertising Google to sell.

So if their goal is to maximise their advertising revenue, they need people to use the internet more. If someone uses Gmail instead of outlook, Google Docs instead of Office and Youtube instead of America’s Funniest Home videos – Google can slap more advertising on it. For Google, if investment leads to more business we call it marketing.

So how does this apply in the REAL world?

Would a conveince store charge you a dollar for a plastic bag to carry a two dollar carton of milk? Sure they could make a great margin up selling the plastic bags but it would reduce the volume of customers buying groceries from their store.

Is a buying music with a t-shirt (as rapper Mos Def most recently tried) any more ridiculous than buying it with a plastic disc?

The question you have to ask is are you selling milk or the plastic bag?

Photo credit,

Some of the best implementation of social media strategy I have seen comes from local small businesses that have taken advantage of their connection and passion for their product, customers and local community to roll out a social media strategy that delivers real business results.

After hearing several recommendations from friends in the community such as Satish Kanwar, Verne Ho and Aidan Nulman I decided to pull together a list to see how these small businesses approach their social media strategy.

Freshii

Freshii, formerly known as the Lettuce Eatery, is a North American franchise with a location in Toronto can be found on Spadina and Richmond. They specialise in fresh, fast and custom meals and snacks served with an emphasis on healthy, fresh and creating a waste free environment. Their menu consists of salads, soups, bowls, burritos, wraps and even breakfast. They aren’t just on this list for their social media presence; they have really developed a great brand experience which has created many passionate lunch time fans that pack their Spadina location daily.

They can be found on Twitter under @freshii and they use it as a great tool to speak directly from the kitchen. They frequently surprise customers with free food, promote exclusive Twitter only deals and tips on healthy living from CEO and founder Matthew Corrin.

Freshii uses social media as a part of their strategy of reaching out to their customers by extending the experience past the 30 min lunch hour, getting them involved and retaining and leveraging relationships with existing customers.

Pusateri Fruit Market

This one was suggested by Aidan Nulman and is actually run by one of our glorious staff at Orange Rhino Media, Antonino Cerminara.

Pusateri’s is a grocery and fruit market on Church and Wellesley and has been around since the 1960s and is run by Tony Cerminara and Frank Mangione. They personally stop by the market every morning to pick up the best fresh produce and are frequently featured as one of the top fresh fruit markets in Toronto.

They use twitter as a way of sharing their knowledge and love of food, to connect and promote others in the food and grocery community, updates on upcoming promotions in the store and reaching out to their community.

Darkhorse Cafe

The Darkhorse has only been around for a few months but have already embraced Twitter and the community around them in the beautiful Robertson Building including the Centre for Social Innovation above them.

The the Darkhorse is an espresso bar near Spadina and Queen in the heart of Toronto’s creative district that specialises in rich espresso, fresh roasted coffees and delicious baked goods. The first thing you notice when walking in is the community feel of the large shared tables in the beautiful building and they try to facilitate the same atmosphere online.

Donnie Claudino of Techsoup Canada, who is a resident of the Centre for Social Innovation, encouraged them to join Twitter after showing the owner a log of all the conversation and meetups in and around their cafe already taking place online.

The first thing that stands out is that they really bring out the passion of their craft and their community. They use twitter to notify their followers of any fresh baked goods, new shipments of coffee and events in the community happening in and around their neighbourhood.

Best Practices

Local

An important consideration even with social media is to keep it relevant and pertinent to the people in your community. As a small local business you don’t need to connect with the world wide community rather use it as a tool to map out the conversations happening in and around your community.

A great tool for finding people in and around you is Twitter Local

Passion

The main reason why I selected these three businesses over many others was that I felt they communicated what I believe to be the key aspect of small businesses, the passion and craft of the entrepreneurs.

Social media for small business is not just about driving sales. The reason customers buy from their local coffee shop over a Starbucks is the quality and culture, social media is a great way of sharing that expertise that might not be revealed in a early morning or lunch time rush lineup.

Online networking tools such as Twitter can be a great customer relationship tool to retain communications with that customer that drops by once for the first time, the person that picks up their signature order every morning at 8 am without fail or the person that had their order mixed up. When used as a communication tool in conjuction with on premise strategy, small businesses can extend that few minute daily face-to-face time to build relationships and reach out to more loyal customers.

Action

As great as chatting with customers all day on Twitter might be for large brands that can hire a whole social media divison, for a small business, if they are going to invest their time on anything that deviates from face-time with their clients it better bring in the revenue.

The key success measure of social media campaigns is the conversion from online to offline. Whether it is inviting your customers with an alert of fresh baked brownies, a daily twitter only deal or in store promotions, action, is an essential part of creating the value proposition for customers to follow you and to deliver a return on the investment.

What is your social media strategy in your business and what local small businesses do you look up to?

Thanks to Donnie Claudino, Verne Ho, Satish Kanwar, Antonino Cerminara and Aidan Nulman.

Photo credits, Blog TO, Freshii, Matthew Burpee

Social media has become a hot word in the world of marketing and is both exciting and presents interesting opportunities however it does not mean we have to throw out measures of accountability and success.

I have been working with social media as a marketing tool for several years but I didn’t get involved because it was cool buzzword but because I had a business need to connect more intimately with customers across the country.

In my current work at Orange Rhino Media I have seen great enthusiasm for social media campaigns stemming from pressure from upper executives, media buzz or a seminar they heard. Enthusiasm is great but unless you have a plan, established goals and measures or benchmarks for success and buy in from the stakeholders, that enthusiasm can quickly dissipate when they don’t know how to measure the success.

Before making the entry to social media there are several questions marketing managers need to ask, especially in a space where they don’t know what to ask for, how to pay for it and are unsure what results they can expect.

The most important question to ask is why you are getting involved in social media?

Are your goals to..

• Learn more and understand what your customers are saying about your brand and your competitors?

• Engage the conversation about your brand and products?
• Connect with your customers and build a community?
• Increase and drive online traffic or sales?

Social media should not be adopted by corporations large or small for its own sake and that is why it is so important to lay out the strategic objectives from the onset.

Sound strategy can only be implemented if the desired results are established from the beginning.

Why are you getting your brand involved in social media?

Photo credit, Jeephead

We have all heard of the perils of the ’social media expert’. They have signed up to twitter and posts pictures of their kids on Facebook and all of a sudden they have become a self-professed expert.

Most recently however I have found myself drawing straws with yet another beast – the web designer-come-social media agency.

Now before I get barraged in the comments and offend many of the most qualified people that have earned my respect and serve as my mentors, I must reiterate that many if not most of the leaders in the field of social media are coders or designers that have an adept grasp for both the technology and effective strategy. However parallel to the marketing people that claim to be ’social media experts’, there is a class of old school web designers that claim to be able to ‘build social media’.

There is a lot that can be done in crafting an interactive platform however the problem with this approach is that it gives clients a false impression that a funky looking Facebook Page IS a social media campaign.

Social media facilitates community interaction, it doesn’t create it.

Any one that claims that technology will buy you a community or social media presence is misguided.

Unilever’s Chief Marketing Officer says it best:

This internet thing is much bigger and more interesting than just finding successors to TV advertising… brands are now becoming conversation factors and the conversation is no longer one way or 30 seconds.

The tools are free and can be set up in a couple minutes but that is not where the expertise lies. Brands need to understand that engaging in social media does not require an investment of financial resources but rather an investment in knowledge and their customers. It is about valuing and engaging the conversations about your brand not just buying a product to satisfy a need.

Social media is not a plug-and-play, quick solution, it is an extension of the brand and how they interact with their customers

It is neither a radical new medium or product, it is an additional communication channel that should be integrated with sound marketing strategy.

It is not just a medium but an integral part of branding and how you interact with your customers.

Customers, community and brand can’t be bought but, when brands provide value and converse – not advertise, we can increase brand equity and make brands a little more human.

If you value the relationship and your customers, are you investing accordingly?

Photo credit, Boeke

Customer service should not be a sidenote in the operational structure of an organisation, it should be an integral part of the corporate culture and value proposition to customers.

As marketing budgets shrink, traditional media advertising dwindles in reach and the balance of influence shifts from that of media buyers to empowered consumers we have to rethink the role of marketing.

Far too many multinational brands will give millions to design agencies to tweak their ‘image’ or to change the hue of their ‘branding’ yet customer service is often little more than a complaints department.

Far too many brands resort to public relations services as a band aid solution to a problem that stems from a fundamental people and customer experience issue.

As we hear the voices of consumers become louder and empowered, the more important the fundamentals become. Marketing and a PR isn’t a band aid solution for bad product design and bad customer service.

Proactive customer service not only adds value to the end product but also incites word of mouth, long term loyalty and improves brand image. Word of mouth, long term customers and branding, how much would you pay your agency for those deliverables?

Get out from behind the mechanical corporate phone system labyrinths and say hi to your customers.

For one week, instead of burying your corporate contact numbers post them on your front page like Zappos what would do you think is the worst that could happen. Perhaps you would spend more time taking care of your customers than jesting with marketing copy.

How does a company like Zappos do it? Well their customers love them, in fact 75% of their business comes from return customers. The money they would have spent on marketing is rather spent on investing in their customers and ensuring nothing but the best service.

Who do your customers listen to? The advice, suggestions, praises or horror stories of their peers or your shiny advertising campaigns?

Who are you investing in?

Photo credit, Funky Bug

Customer service should not be a sidenote in the operational structure of an organisation, it should be an integral part of the corporate culture and value proposition to customers.

As marketing budgets shrink, traditional media advertising dwindles in reach and the balance of influence shifts from that of media buyers to empowered consumers we have to rethink the role of marketing.

Far too many multinational brands will give millions to design agencies to tweak their ‘image’ or to change the hue of their ‘branding’ yet customer service is often little more than a complaints department.

Far too many brands resort to public relations services as a band aid solution to a problem that stems from a fundamental people and customer experience issue.

As we hear the voices of consumers become louder and empowered, the more important the fundamentals become. Marketing and a PR isn’t a band aid solution for bad product design and bad customer service.

Proactive customer service not only adds value to the end product but also incites word of mouth, long term loyalty and improves brand image. Word of mouth, long term customers and branding, how much would you pay your agency for those deliverables?

Get out from behind the mechanical corporate phone system labyrinths and say hi to your customers.

For one week, instead of burying your corporate contact numbers post them on your front page like Zappos what would do you think is the worst that could happen. Perhaps you would spend more time taking care of your customers than jesting with marketing copy.

How does a company like Zappos do it? Well their customers love them, in fact 75% of their business comes from return customers. The money they would have spent on marketing is rather spent on investing in their customers and ensuring nothing but the best service.

Who do your customers listen to? The advice, suggestions, praises or horror stories of their peers or your shiny advertising campaigns?

Who are you investing in?

Photo credit, Funky Bug