Marketing to one through millions.

I was recently looking at several ads on social networking sites.  If you have never placed an ad on a site you may not know how targeted they are.  Not only can you select an audience by gender or age, you can further define your audience by any information used in a profile:

• Political party
• Education
• Location (City, State, Country, Network)
• Groups they are listed in association with
• Favorite books, movies, music

As you can imagine this allows an ad to specifically target an individual out of millions of readers or users.    This is not unique to social marketing, many web sites now require you to create a profile and a user name.  All of this information that is requested allows the information shared to be targeted to a direct individual.  With the addition of a few cookies on your system the site will even remember where you last visited when on the site and what you were looking for or purchased. 

Gone are the days when marketers had to wait months to get feedback on a product or promotion.  Most market savvy companies can make changes in the afternoon based on feedback from the morning.  Traffic is the number one driver on any site, but targeted traffic that delivers specific information on a customer is priceless.  Consumers demand more personalized information and have come to expect that sites can deliver targeted answers and will make purchasing decisions accordingly.

Looking to increase your web traffic or online purchasing decisions?  Consider these hints:

• When selling online allow users to create a profile and specify what information they want from you (this also cuts down on SPAM).
• Do not try to send the same message to every user.  Tailor the messages based on the information your customer provided.
• Review new profiles once a week and send a quick “welcome” or “thank you” email to your customers.  Avoid using a generic auto responder as those are often ignored.

Targeted, tailored, timely messages and interaction take your site from being just another web address to a personal business.

The fifth “P” of marketing.

Many years ago, Faberge Organic shampoos launched a commercial with the tagline “I told my friends and they told two friends, and so on and so on…” The idea being the product was so fantastic that it was being sold by word of mouth.

Today, many people may not remember Faberge but they do remember the tagline. If you are still wondering how important social networking is to your business, you need only to understand that the Internet is how friends tell friends about the things that excite them. And those messages get passed along over and over and over and over again.

Social networking brings in the fifth “P” of marketing. You already know product, price, placement and promotion, but none of that matters without people. Many businesses continue to operate under the assumption that a simple Website, a basic product offering and great fliers can bring profits and revenue to their bank accounts.

Unfortunately this is not so. Even an amazing promotion of “free products” cannot drive customers to you in today’s market if you do not have the right blend of offerings for people.

Consider adding these people-friendly applications to your business:

• A company blog. Blogs allow you to communicate in an informal environment. It also allows you to set your company as the expert in your field.
• YouTube videos. Everyone wants to put a face with the product or services. YouTube gives you an inexpensive outlet to share your humorous or serious side. An easy link from your site to the video will drive additional people-friendly interactions.
• A Facebook fan page: More than 200 million users are on Facebook. Your customers are already there and many users want to share what businesses they are fans of and include their comments and pictures. Worried about what your customers may post? You are in complete control and can delete information as easily as it is added. Although if you had negative postings it is time for you to take a look at why.

Nothing will ever replace the old fashioned hand shake, a lunch or even that phone call to just check in. Keeping your customers – the people – in the front of your business strategy planning will always return high profits and revenue than a strategy built around products customers don’t want.

Who’s watching your online reputation?

There has been a lot of discussion about how businesses and individuals need to participate in social networks to get their messages out, but there is little discussion related to managing online reputation.

Vehicles such as Angie’s List, Facebook and YouTube are prime locations for your customers to share their positive or negative experiences related to your company. There are also thousands of blogs that are sharing information with customers every day on what they liked or disliked about their experiences with businesses.

If you are still not convinced that your online presence is important consider that women are nearly twice as likely to use blogs than social networking sites as a source of information (64 percent), advice and recommendations (43 percent) and opinion-sharing (55 percent), according to a recent 2009 Women and Social Media study.

From somScore, the data figures for video views from November 2008 finds more and more people are watching videos—about 146 million or 77 percent of the U.S. Internet audience. This is up over one-third year over year.

Your customers are online and not just looking at your Web site and Facebook page for information about your company. What took you years to develop in local reputation can be brought down in a day with negative commentary. Therefore, it pays to protect your brand where ever consumers are offered a degree of interaction.

It’s important that either you have an employee who conducts comprehensive online reputation management to ensure that your brand attributes are protected across all social channels. Another option is to hire an outside company to regularly monitor for negative commentary and, if any is found, combat it by researching the situation, discerning if any action is required, and then engage the problem.

A good response will provide facts and ask for corrections if required. This is where your company blog or those of your employees and customers can be invaluable. Opening the conversation to as many sides as possible and broadening the discussion.

Some key areas to consider when dealing with your online reputation management:

Do not get defensive: Even if your customer is not correct in what they wrote, you cannot criticize them. You need to reach out, listen, try to understand their perspective and then work to resolve their concerns. How you handle a situation is often more important that the actions that caused or resolved the situation. In the social networking world, style counts.

The best defense is a well executed offense: You do not wait for a virus to attack your network, so why would you wait for negative postings to protect your online reputation? Begin with your customer service. It is always easier to work with a happy customer than it is to negate and unhappy one. Proactive postings on a regular basis through blogs, Twitter, and other social mediums can go a long way. Don’t forget to share good news as it happens as well. When appropriate a shared press release between you and a customer goes a long way to bolstering your reputation in the marketplace.

Hire an objective source: It is hard to be objective when it comes to your own brand and reputation. Just as it is difficult to evaluate your own work, it is challenging at best to understand outside perceptions of your business. Many outside companies assist with keeping your business top of mind with existing and potential customers.

You do not need to invest millions, or even thousands of dollars in your online reputation management, but you do need to pay attention to what is being said about your business. An investment of just a few thousand dollars can go a long way to building and protecting your brand and business.

This is not rocket science.

I read an interesting MarketWatch commentary by John Dvorak today titled “Social Networking: No Sale”.  In this article Mr. Dvorak explains that the majority of the interaction on social networking sites is about being social and not about selling.  He further breaks down the results of click throughs on his Twitter follower list, which were less than stellar.

There are hundreds of very intelligent individuals that share in Mr. Dvorak’s opinion.  And he is correct:  these people will have limited ability to sell through social networks.  They will not drive followers for any other reason than people want to say they are connected to this writer or that one.  These are the same individuals who have never understood the millions of dollars that are generated through networking marketing opportunities.  They believe that only four things sell a product: price, product, promotion and placement.  And they miss the most important P of all:  people.

I do not care who you are or what you buy, you have emotions.  Unless you are an auto responder or a robot, there is always a reason behind your choice to purchase, invest, spend or sell.  As the consumers we sell to have become increasingly savvy to the tried and true ticks of the marketing trade it takes more to capture the attention of the same audience that three years ago could be influenced through a  Super Bowl ad.

How many times have you been at a soccer game and while standing around with the other parents you talk about this product or that service?  People do business with people and not with companies.  I like Macy’s as a store, they have a good selection and I can find what I want in a hurry.  I do not shop there just for that reason – I go there because I have come to know many of the sales people and prefer the service.  I use a specific pharmacy for the same reason. 

And when it came to looking recently for a virtual assistant, I asked for recommendations on Twitter and Facebook.  The response was positive and made my search much easier.  What I challenge those who believe there is no selling happening with social networks to understand is that a “following” of 55,000 individuals is nothing if you are not listening.  People do not want to be broadcast to and you must ask for input and conversation, not just blast information and expect a response.

I can name 100 of my “friends” on Facebook and a good 225 “friends” on Twitter who are very successful due to their participation with both traditional marketing and new media.  I think the figures speak for themselves:

• 200,000,000 active users on Facebook.
• You can select or target your message by: age, location, keywords, gender, education, workplace, language and relationship status.
• Facebook is no longer about your kids:  as of March 2009 in the US alone, there are now 6 million users 13-17, 19.5 million 18-25, 13.4 million 26-34, 9.7 million 35-44, 4.6 million 45-54, and 2.8 million over 55. In other words, there are more Facebook users 26-44 than 18-25 today.

There are some basic rules to marketing that social networking has learned from and taken to the next level: 

• You can monitor easily what your competition is doing and how their customers are reacting to them
• It is easier than ever before to target your customers, listen to them and adjust on a dime
• Social networking is about customer driven products and sales.  There is no longer a “build it and they will come” option.
• New opportunities are presented everyday.  There is no reason to not know what the “next big thing is” unless of course you are not participating in social networking for business.
• Social networking is by design all about brands and communications.  Each user is their own brand and they want to associate with brands they like or want to be know for liking.

Smart companies already have social networking evangelist keeping up with the hundreds of feeds, friends and followers.  They are able to take in more customer data in an hour than research groups used to take months and hundreds of thousands of dollars to collect.  Like it or not, social networking is here for business and it is “the next thing”.  It is just a matter of how you want your business to profit from it.