It's DigitalMarketing

“Oh no. Have you seen what this guy said about us on Twitter?”

Words to strike dread into any Marketer.

“Stop what you’re doing, we need to fix this. Now”

If you monitor social media mentions of your brand, you’ve probably experienced a variation of this scenario yourself. It’s not fun and depending on what’s happened it can be a small inconvenience or a major headache. Like any good social media-aware marketer this is why you monitor and you know how you need to respond.

You have a strategy for dealing with negative comments and feedback – that’s great, you definitely need one.

But what about your strategy for dealing with positive feedback?

Huh? Come again?

In his post ‘Social Media requires a different perspective on talent – developing a social workforce’, Felix Wetzel referenced a comment from Brian Halligan’s (Hubspot) presentation at Dreamforce:

‘No traditional marketing skills and background are required, instead “hire people who speak digital without an accent. Hire people that blog, have twitter followers and are on G+”’

I’m sure it’s a bold and contentious statement for many, but from where I’m sitting it has merit.

It was raining so I decided to take my son to watch a movie.

So we did a search online for our local cinemas, viewed the listings, checked the reviews and BBFC rating (for child friendly suitability), booked the tickets and checked Google Maps for the best place to park to avoid getting too wet.

Hang on, did I mention I hadn’t yet sat up in bed?

Which do you trust more – a brand and its advertising or the opinion of your friends?

Unless you hang round particularly unsavoury types then I’m guessing you answered your friends.

When you buy a product on Amazon do you check the reviews before you buy?

If you’re like me, you do. Why? Social proof. When in doubt, you’re not going to blindly believe in the spiel from the company trying to part you from your cash, you want to see what other people – like you – have to say about their purchase.

So you trust your immediate peers the most but you’d trust a stranger ‘like you’ before you trust a company. That says a lot.

It irritates me when I hear Twitter, Facebook et al, blamed for loss of productivity and foot in mouth faux pas by employees. That inevitably leads to the discussion regarding banning the networks from the workplace or the introduction of a lengthy social media policy within the business.

Stop blaming the tools – it’s the people using them.

What do you think would happen if you took 10% of your advertising budget and invested it in customer service?

Your immediate reaction might be to think that whilst it’s a nice idea, it’s too risky to cut an advertising budget that doesn’t quite go far enough already. No Marketer in their right mind would willingly give up some of their budget anyway, right?

I’ll be honest, I’d be a little nervous making that suggestion to my Finance Director too. But let’s just play out the thought process here

Sport is big business. The competition on the field is nothing compared to the competition off it for fandom, viewership and in this economic climate, the fan’s dollar / pound. Recognising its potential, Sports businesses are looking to social media to help them reinforce and develop their relationships with fans – and of course to broadcast their product in as many different channels as possible.

Global brands such as New Jersey Nets, Manchester City and multi-billion dollar entities such as the NFL (3.1 million Facebook fans and counting) are already forging ahead with engagement via social media, including foursquare check-in competitions, Commissioner Q & As and team and player fan pages. Would this work for other, smaller sports? What would this approach bring to leagues and clubs that are fighting to raise awareness and put bums on seats?

Is technology reducing the need to learn new skills? Do you think it undermines talent?

Recently I downloaded Instagram. Yeah, a bit late to that party, I know. It quickly became one of my favourite apps. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a simple app that enables you to take a photo on your iPhone and apply filters to produce images like the one above.

Not too long ago this kind of manipulation of images used to be limited to a talented, minority group of people who had worked to attain technical and creative skills, usually photographers and designers.

Today, I bypassed any study and produced the same results by clicking a button.

“Who owns the website?”

It’s a simple question, but one that is difficult to answer. I couldn’t say for sure, when I was asked it this week. If you asked the same question to people from different departments across your organisation, I expect you’d get many different answers. The majority of which would be along the lines of “I/we do”.

Perhaps the answers differ because each department has a different understanding of the question. IT builds and maintains the product/website, so they own it. Sales are selling the product, so they own it. Marketing are promoting and attracting the customers, so they own it.

So if it’s hard to answer the question at such a general level, how do you answer the second question:

Who owns conversion rate optimisation?

Picture this internal monologue in the mind of a prospective customer…

Argh, time to renew my home insurance again.

What was the TV ad I saw with the special deal if I switch to them? The one with the singing pig…

Bah, I’ll Google it…’l-o-w c-o-s-t h-o-m-e i-n-s-u-r-a-n-c-e’…

Hmmm, was it this one? [click]…that rings a bell…not sure though…

What about this one? [click]… No, don’t think so but it has kind of got the same deal…can’t be bothered to keep searching, I’ll give it a go…

What you were just privy to there, was the thought process of your potential customer as they walked out the [digital] door.

The galling thing was that it was your website they were looking at first. They looked but didn’t stop because they weren’t sure it was the one they were looking for. There was no reference to the deal, and no pig in sight. This happens every day, across all industries and products, no matter whether its ads on TV, print, radio, or outdoor media.

Why? What’s missing?