Web Business by Ken Burbary

The Lost Art of Common Sense in Digital Marketing

When did we, marketers & brands, lose touch with humanity and thus reality?

When did we stop stop putting the needs and concerns of our customers first?

When did we throw common sense out the window?

Perhaps some never have put customers needs first, or maybe they did at one point but lost their way. A lot of the marketing that I see now is still centered around what the company wants consumers to think about, feel, or do/take action on. That worked for a long time (before social technologies leveled the playing field) but just doesn’t cut it anymore. This isn’t news to many marketers (in theory), and yet there are still so many brands and companies that haven’t yet begun to embrace helping customers and prospects instead of trying to get them to listen to the brand message. Your brand message should be:

I’m here to help make it easier for you to work with my brand

I recently presented on this topic at the Midwest Digital Conference because I believe there has never been a better time for brands to change their approach, and realign their efforts with customers expectations. The interuptive messaging of advertising continues to be less effective. Yet so many brands continue to sit on the sidelines, bury their head in the sand, and ignore the alternatives available to them. News Flash:

The problem isn’t going away because you are ignoring it

We’re in a new era. The social marketing era. An era of new expectations for brands, new rules for interacting, and new methods/techniques for reaching customers. One of the best things about this new era is that you don’t have to guess anymore about what your business should focus on. Why not? Listen to your customers and they will tell you what is wrong, what they need yet aren’t getting from you, and what direction to focus on moving forward. A well planned, ongoing listening program will unearth this info for you. No more guessing. No more well-planned focus group projects. The internet is your on-demand focus group, providing real time feedback every day. All you need to do is harness the tools available and be open to hearing what people are saying. Make no mistake about it, customers are talking!

Taking the next step

Once the needs are identified, deciding what to do next is easy. Solve customer problems! Build a product they are asking for. If you’re a service provider, then use common sense and be helpful! Social marketing offers a tremendous way to do this. With it, big companies can get smaller, by offering individualized, helpful interactions. Small companies can get bigger, enabling them to increase their reach beyond their physical and/or geographic limits.

If you’re planning a strategy to reach consumers online, consider these tips:

1. Offer value - Use common sense, provide customers and prospects with value, not messages.
2. Feelings matter – People remember how you made them feel, not what you said. Plan accordingly.
3. Think holistically - Focus on every touch point a consumer has with your brand. Consumers interact and form opinions of your brand on web sites, social networks like Facebook & Twitter, communities, support forums and video sharing sites. Every individual counts. Everyone is an influencer.
4. Be sincere – You need to genuinely care about helping your customers and prospects. Fake it, do it half heartedly, and they will notice. Don’t dilute your interaction by taking their loyalty for granted. Wake up each day assuming today is the day you will earn that customer’s loyalty. Difficult to gain, easy to lose. As @Garyvee would say, HUSTLE!
5. Ask questions – Once you have identified the problems, objectives and established relationships, ask questions. Lots of questions. Relentlessly inquire about what your customers think. And constantly remind them you want their input and involvement. You will be rewarded with ideas and suggestions the internal product development team can’t produce on their own.

Is any of this groundbreaking? No. In fact, it’s common sense (or should be). Common sense is often one of the trickiest things. My colleague Len Kendall reminded me today how difficult this all can be, with this quote  “We know our common sense is right, most of the time we just find it hard to prove it”

Hopefully the path to proving it got a little bit easier with this reminder.

Five in the Morning

For those who aren’t regular readers of StickyFigure (if you’re not, you should be. Check it out), Steve Woodruff has been consistently churning out great discoveies with his Five in the Morning series. Five in the Morning is basically a blog post that highlights 5 of the most interesting and well written posts throughout the blogosphere.

Lately Steve has been inviting guests to add some new perspective and fresh content to the mix. When he approached me about being a guest author, I immediately said yes! So without any further ado, here is your daily dose of Five in the Morning:

Digital media continues to blur our online and offline lives. Spruce up your presentations and educate your colleagues with this fantastic list of 49 Amazing Social Media, Web 2.0 and Internet Stats, compiled by Adam Singer on the FutureBuzz blog.

Learn how to use a often overlooked feature of Twitter, “favorites”. Darren Rowse and Ari Herzog put together an excellent post on the Twitip blog that reveals how to use favorites, why you should use favorites, and illustrates how other people are using them.

It’s early, but one of the themes of 2009 seems to be “stop talking. start doing”. Shiv Singh, of Avenue A Razorfish, reminds brands of this and says Brands Must Do! Start doing by listening to consumers. It’s not done enough.

The ultimate do-it-yourselfer Marshall Kirkpatrick has outlined how to Build the Ultimate Social Media Cheat Sheet. Use it to get you up to speed on the social media activity in your market.

And finally, take these tips from The Difficult Art of Cold Pitching by Jon Burg, and apply them to avoid any mistakes when reaching out with a request to a community of people you have a weak relationship with. Chris Brogan even chimes in with his take.

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The future of advertising

I found this excellent presentation, put together by Paul Isakson, on slideshare.com. It does a fantastic job of painting a picture of what advertisers and marketers should be thinking and doing NOW to engage with consumers. I won’t do it justice by trying to write a thoughtful explanation, just view the slides below. Enough said.

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