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What’s your Social Media Strategy?

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Preetha

What’s your Social Media strategy?

HINT (and the good news): It doesn’t have to be complicated!

It doesn’t matter what industry analysis or media report you read these days, it’s quite obvious that the time that people are spending on social media is growing.  And growing…

*According to a new Nielsen report, social media’s growth connects people with just about everything they watch and buy.

Yet, many businesses have yet to venture into this new territory with their presence.  Many have ventured in, but with what I would call a cursory approach.  They may have a Facebook page and a Twitter account but these just continue to languish.   However, a few brave souls have done a lot more.  I can virtually guarantee that these businesses are reaping solid returns as a result, and that this is just the beginning of good things for them.

One reason that businesses hesitate is because they just don’t know what needs to be done. So, I thought I would piece together some ideas for your consumption and thought process so that you can potentially arrive at a strategy and plan for your business or financial institution.

Let’s begin with a basic premise –

Sooner or later, you have to create a presence on social networks.

If you disagree with this, you should probably stop reading now.

Now, I’m going to pretend that I am speaking to someone in the marketing department of a financial institution.  Important message to you:

Social media marketing is a journey, not an event.

You have to:

  1. Connect
  2. Engage
  3. Communicate
  4. Keep the Connection Alive

Here are some steps I would recommend that you take in order to begin to establish your social media presence.

There are numerous social networks available today for consideration. Your plan and strategy can start with one and then evolve.

So, let’s start with Facebook.

  • Why? Because they have 750 million users today and counting.
  • And you have to start somewhere….

So, here are steps you can take to create and establish your presence on Facebook:

  1. Create a compelling Facebook page (think of it as your website on Facebook)
  2. Attract Facebook users to your page
    • Use other marketing channels and Facebook sponsored ads to drive your customers there
    • Use interesting games and apps to draw and keep them
    • Get them to “like” you (games and apps help!)
    • Get them to share your page with their friends (leads!)
    • Get them to keep coming back (hint: Use games, offers, prizes)
  3. Use targeted marketing to create compelling offers
  4. Watch your leads and income grow!

There, that was not so complicated was it?  Of course, it was just an overview and the devil’s absolutely in the detail.

But the good news is that there are marketing agencies and consultants that offer all of the above services – no matter what size business you are, there will be one that fits your size, need, scope and scale.  Therefore, it would be beneficial for you to start looking into them.

BOTTOMLINE: It’s a huge missed opportunity if you are not investing in your social media presence now.

 

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Marketing in the New Decade

Posted on January 12, 2011 by Preetha

2011 AheadIs there a marketer among us who is not thinking of change?  I think not.   And if someone is not, my advice to you is: don’t admit it.

The world around us is changing and moving forward at an incredible pace, so how can we remain with the same old, tired marketing strategies and tactics – even if they are tried and true ones?  We can’t.

I’d like to call your attention to this recent post about Marketers’ top issues for 2011.    This will give you an idea of the challenges we face in marketing, not just for 2011 (that’s the tip of the iceberg) but for more than just a few years ahead.  So, in no particular order, I offer my predictions for the new marketing we will see in the decade ahead.

  • Using multiple digital channels will become the norm.
  • Mobile marketing will emerge as a winning medium – with innovative use of location information.
  • Spending on traditional marketing methods will continue to decrease at a fast pace.
  • Social media will be used to build relationships with customers and will become a fundamental part of your marketing mix and branding strategies.  This will also be the medium to receive feedback and to make adjustments to your messaging or tactics.
  • It will be just as important to listen as it is to talk.
  • Marketing will be more than about generating new leads; loyalty programs and targeted cross-selling to existing customers will be a prime way to generate new revenue.
  • Marketing professionals will need to become conversant with new technologies, data and databases – this will be a hard requirement, not just a nice-to-have.  The best will combine their skills in creativity and technology to create winning programs.
  • Measurement, ROI and accountability will rule.
  • Businesses will spend money to show value and draw customers to them (their website, their blog, their brick & mortar store) – this means education, useful information, specially targeted discounts and other benefits to prospects, customers and loyalists.
  • Marketing will become used to more two-way communication between you and your target audience then ever before.

There’s really not anything groundbreaking in any of the above points, especially if you have been closely following developments in marketing.   But, taken together, you can see why there is a tangible transformation that is taking place. This is indeed a time of change and an exciting one at that.

A decade is a long time.   But, it has already begun.  So, your time is now.   As you think ahead, not just about your business, but about your personal future in marketing, there’s no time like the present to begin to plan and make changes that will result in your marketing success.

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Happy Thanksgiving and Hello Black Friday!

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Preetha

For those of you who not are into consumerism and consumption, or don’t know anyone who is…you may not be aware of what Black Friday is.   The term is said to have originated in the mid-1960s and always refers to the Friday after Thanksgiving – this year it falls on November 26, 2010.  It used to be the start of the Christmas shopping season (as you know, this starts much earlier now) and has always been one of the most busy shopping days of the year in the United States. You can be sure that someone you know will be heading to those shops very early – since many stores plan to open at 5 and 6 am!

But, there is another underlying meaning that has since developed for this term – it is the day when retailers would no longer have losses (“be in the red”) and would begin to turn profits (“the black”).   

I thought I would use this opportunity to discuss the power of e-marketing to create your own Black Friday – for your venture or business or product.

  • First, let’s start with the premise that Marketing has changed (“evolved” is too mild a word!). 
  • The other premise (cliched though it may be) is that the internet has changed everything.
  • Given these two premises, it is fair to say that we have new, transformative ways of reaching prospects and customers. 
  • The cost of marketing and advertising was all about “green”.  If you think of the traditional way of advertising, all of their costs were from fairly-to-very heavy.
  • The new cost of marketing has more to do with data than with cash.   Because we have these new ways of reaching our market, it is important that we do this in a way that is different from mass messaging.   It is also less about immediacy and more about the long-term relationship you have with your “market”.
  •  This means knowing and learning about the individuals that you are speaking with, and actually creating a relationship.  Out of this, will be crafted the messages that will go to them.
  • Does this sound like a lot of work?   Well, it is, if you were to do all of this manually.  But, isn’t technology wonderful?  Sometimes?  
  •  The good news is that today you have marketing platforms and media that can help you with all of this -
    • Collecting and mining the data about your prospects
    • Sifting through the differences and generating different offers for different behaviors – making sure you are relevant to them
    • A number of e-marketing platforms – email, online, mobile and social media that you can use to convey your message
    • The ability to market using multiple channels so that you can be sure that your messages are indeed delivered and read
    • The ability to offer two-way communication…i.e. that you also spend time listening to the “market”, and being responsive and receptive to the messages that you receive.
    • Plus, best of all, there are a vast number of resources available to you, for free, from marketing experts, gurus and practitioners.  They are in the form of newsletters, blogs, ebooks, videos, podcasts and more. What you need then is the motivation and time to absorb these (selected) wonderful resources to become a contemporary marketer.

So, what are you waiting for?    Get unstuck from the old ways and board the bus.  It’s moving fast.  And it’s heading towards “black”.

P.S. Interestingly, with that cliche again, the internet changed everything, a new phenomenon that has appeared following Black Friday is Cyber Monday.   Guess what that is?

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Blah words to define something so important!

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Preetha

The blah words in question are “Market Segmentation”.  The definition of market segmentation that you can find on wikipedia is informative and worth a quick look or two.  Obviously, there are reams of information sources to define this for you, but right now, a quick refresher is all you may need.

Why write about something that has been around since…well, marketing?  Today, the difference is the availability of so many new forms of electronic communication, connection and performance monitoring.  Therefore,  as a marketer, one should be taking advantage of deep and deeper market segmentation in every campaign that is executed (I’m assuming here that most of your campaigns are e-campaigns, even though I realize that reality differs from my wish). 

Not that there was much of an excuse before either.  But, now?  If you want to communicate or connect with your prospect, customer, reader, user, or fan realize that they are not all made equal nor do they think alike.  This base and audience is made up of a number of individuals who are quite diverse.  

On the one hand, they are not one mass.  On the other hand, they are diverse individuals that can number in the 100s or 1000s or 10,000s or more.   Somewhere between mass and individual is a logical step. 

This is where market segmentation comes in.   It is the ability to group individuals into logical subsets based on their demographics (age, marital status, household income, location), product likes or dislikes, past purchases, derived needs, feedback history and so on.  Or some combination of these.  When you have thus homogenized the mass into logical groups, you are able to apply more relevance to any communication.  With more relevance, it follows that you get better results – whatever way you define “better”.

A fundamental tenet then of market segmentation is to know something about individuals.  Something other than their name and contact information.  This is the foundation of market segmentation.   It is amazing how many businesses – of various sizes: small, medium and large – have still not arrived at this conclusion or started doing something about it.   Those who are contemporary marketers and modern market practitioners may not choose to believe this, but for some of us who are on the ground dealing with people and businesses every day, let me tell you, there are many out there who are still at ground zero with respect to e-marketing.

However, it is also great to see how many businesses are truly making strides in this area by making the right technology investments – in CRM, marketing automation systems, various e-marketing initiatives such as email and online marketing.  They are guaranteeing the increased success of their marketing and impacting the future of their business.  

Are you one of them?    Yes?  My hearty congratulations to you and your business!

P.S.  While market segmentation is a key factor that should be driving e-marketing, it is also true that segmentation – at least in my opinion – should follow only after you have built “permission” from those you are connecting with.  It means that your audience has giving you permission to be reached.  More about this in another blog posting at another time.  The best source of information on this topic though is Seth Godin.  While your at it, why don’t you read what he says about permission marketing?

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Getting It Right

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Preetha

More and more, marketing is about sending the right message to the right person at the right time.  We are in a world inundated by information and interruptions, so more often than not, we are forced to ignore everything that does not matter or resonate.  There is a good reason, therefore, why “relevance” has become a new buzzword in marketing. 

So, as marketers, how do we get it right?

  • Always start with the objective – your business, personal, professional or marketing objective.  What is it you wish to communicate?  What action do you wish your message recipient to take?  Once you get this right (and refined), you can move on to the “How”.
  • Based on a good understanding of your objective, you can now move to understand the audience.  You need to determine carefully what the characteristics are of the person(s) that would or should be interested in your message (and objective – i.e. product, service or other resource). 
  • Once you know the characteristics, determine whether you have the right tools to segment your entire contact database to identify these specific individuals in order to create your target list or pool.
  • Now that you have clearly determined your objectives and the person(s) that you will be communicating to, it’s time to focus on the message and medium/media of choice for your communication.
  • Here’s the key to the message getting read or received – it needs to resonate.  How do you make it resonate?   First, consciously, put yourself in the shoes of one or more recipients.  Clear your mind of you!  You don’t matter.  Only the individual who is about to receive your message.  Now, write down some key points that will matter to the recipient.   What are ”your” pain points?  What will motivate or provide incentives to “you” to act?  Make a list of 5 to 7 points.
  • Now, you have the meat – the primary content of the message.   Prioritize those points from most to least significant.   Try to use the most important point as your subject line, headline or title to get the attention of the recipient.  You have the raw material to begin crafting your message.   Based on the medium of communication [hint: the more ways you communicate the message (provided you are not overdoing it!), the more likely your message will receive the attention you think it deserves], your entire message may be a couple of lines (e.g. on a targeted display banner ad) or a couple of paragraphs (e.g. a targeted email message).
  • A few hints about your message – brevity wins over length, bullets work well to make a point, a couple of graphics or pictures catch attention and the headline/title/subject line merits time and effort.
  • If you can, create your own small focus group – colleagues, employees, friends, family, loyal customers and test out the messages.   You are testing for two key aspects – relevance and resonance.   Did they work?
  • By now, you should have the message(s), the targeted list(s) or recipients and the media.  The last thing you need to determine is when and how often you want to communicate the message(s) through one medium or many.  This too needs to be a deliberate decision by you.  Put yourself in their shoes once again.  Timing wise, what seems optimimum, how many messages would irritate you, how many would be too few to take action.  Did that help?  Now, you are ready to go!

Some of you may be thinking - boy, that’s a lot of work to create a message.   But, think of the end objective.   What do you want to accomplish?  Who do you want to reach?   What do you want them to do once they receive your message?  The only way to success in this new world of over-abundance of everything, especially information, is to take the time to do it right upfront, so you spend less time wondering why nothing happened later.

Good e-marketing to you and hope you “get it right” always!

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When Email Marketing Won’t Work

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Preetha

Email marketing is a wonderful communication and marketing tool.  Email marketing can also be abused and overused.  Make sure that you focus on your email marketing being the former rather than the latter.  There are numerous resources available that you can tap on how to become a successful email marketer.  Search online.  Pick a random set of 5 or 10.  You will get more than a few great tips on how to do the right thing.

For a change, I thought I would cover the things that don’t and won’t work with email marketing.  Keep these in mind to as you discover and optimize this powerful communication medium.  Or count on it to go from being powerful to powerless -

  1. Don’t send email to mass lists (typically purchased)
  2. Careful not to use mis-used/abused words and symbols in the subject line so you don’t get marked as spam – e.g. FREE (especially in all caps) or !!!!
  3. Never send an email that does not include an Unsubscribe link
  4. Does your content really matter?  Is it interesting?  Don’t send email without first putting yourself in the place of the recipient and assessing its impact.  Do not send irrelevant, mass e-blasts!
  5. Don’t send email too often (use your judgement on what this may be – again, put yourself on the receiving end!).
  6. Never send email without some tests to ensure that links are working and that images look as they should – at least in the most popular email clients.  Here are some of the top ones – Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo!Mail, Gmail, Apple Mail and now a slew of Smartphones as well.
  7. Finally, perhaps most important but often overlooked, don’t forget this - have a CLEAR OBJECTIVE for your email.  This will help you determine the recipient list (this may be a subset of all your contacts), the content, the subject line and a clear call to action.

More power to you!

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Facebook to take over the world

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Preetha

This headline takes off on what I just read in UK’s The Guardian publication - How Facebook will take over the World.

In spite of complaints about it’s speed, searchability, and other features, Facebook is doing something right.  Whither thou goest MySpace?  And now Orkut may be facing the same challenges in India and Brazil.

So, Facebook is almost up to 500 million active users and expects to be at 1 billion users shortly.   500 million is equal to 22% of all internet users. Globally.   That’s beyond amazing.

Not just individuals, but businesses should be using Facebook fan pages to connect and communicate with their customers and prospects.

To give you an idea of what else is going on in the e-world, here are some awesome statistics compiled by Hubspot:

  • There are 1.67+ billion internet users worldwide
  • 90 trillion emails were sent on the internet in 2009
  • There are 126 million blogs today
  • 10+ billion tweets sent since 2006
  • 2 billion videos are streamed on YouTube EVERY DAY!

So, there you go.  Any doubts that you should be spending more energy, focus, resources on e-Marketing….where your customers and prospects are?

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Rev up your Reg E Opt-Ins

Posted on July 8, 2010 by Preetha

In spring, we introduced a turnkey solution for Reg E Opt-Ins that capitalizes on our e-marketing technology and addresses Reg E compliance for financial institutions in a highly automated (and thus cost-effective) way.  Several have taken advantage of it and have received good results in return.

Recently, some of our customers asked us for recommendations on what they could do to further increase the rate of opt-ins or in some cases where initial results were very good but a perceptible slow-down was occuring, what else they could do.   Here are some of the recommendations for revving up the rate of opt-ins at your financial institution.

  1. Disable ALL other display banners on your website except the Reg E banners for a period of time.  That way only the Reg E banners are showing during a period of time.
  2. Add display banners for Reg E to your online banking , if not already there.  (Some of your members might have your login page saved as a favorite or bookmark, and thus those members never see the main website).
  3. An initial Reg E email provides a boost when sent. We are starting to see our other customers start to send follow-up e-blasts to re-inforce the message.
  4. Last but not least, Inform and Educate - it will help to have an announcement on your site and a page dedicated to explaining what Reg E is and why members need to/should/will benefit from opting-in, perhaps in the form of a FAQ.  The opt-in form explains some of that, but a more integrated and accessible page could go a long way to encourage members to click to opt-in.  Plus you could include a button or link on that page, separate from the banner giving members another way to get to the opt-in form.

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Latest Trends: Online Ad Spending

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Preetha

Again, according to eMarketer’s most recent data, online ad spending will reach a whopping $25.1 billion this year, a healthy year over year increase of 10.8%.  Inspite of continuing economic woes, this is a health gain and one senior analyst attributes this to more careful and prudent ad spending – a focus on what is measureable rather than using the traditional advertising channels.  There is no question that at least some of this gain is at the expense of traditional media spending.

The numbers suggest that online ad spending will add another $11 billion over the next four years and climb to 20% of total ad spending by 2014.  The 2010 spending is 15% of the total spent in advertising.  So, the percentage and actual gains are impressive.

These projections are supported by the following:

1. Strong Search Spending

2. Fast Growing Online Video Advertising

3. Steady Spending on Banners

Be sure to check this write-up from eMarketer for more information.

Image Courtesy: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=721
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A Powerful Word: Efficiency

Posted on June 17, 2010 by Preetha

Our friends at CUTS Performance Marketing  called our attention to a recent study commissioned by CUNA focused on efficiency of community credit unions.   The study is available for anyone to access and review, and it’s worth doing, even if one is not affiliated to a community credit union.  The reason is this: the recommendations provided to improve efficiency of such credit unions do not necessarily have to be limited to them.  Any financial institution can take advantage of them.   For after all, is there really something that can be classified as too efficient?  Here are some very interesting statements from this study:

  • The Web provides a powerful vehicle to improve the efficiency of marketing and cross selling. Compare this “free” internet channel to expensive radio and print advertisements.
  • Most credit unions have barely tapped into this web channel to engage their members

To better leverage the Internet as a marketing vehicle, credit unions must:

  • Improve matrix marketing at the point of log-in by presenting targeted messages based on individual account holder’s profile and usage of products and services.
  • Develop engaging content linked to product solutions – moving past brochure-ware.  This means educational and informational content that helps individuals manage their finances.
  • Personalize their web experience

I encourage you, whether you are a community credit union or not, whether you are a credit union or not, to review this study and get some useful pieces of insight and advice that you can put to work in your financial institution.  The entire study can be accessed here.

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