For smaller organizations and businesses, brand awareness can be one of the greatest marketing challenges. After all, increasing brand awareness has traditionally meant spending money on advertising. And buying media isn’t cheap.

Volume up

Originally uploaded by mikelao26

Of course, these days, with social media marketing, brand awareness can be achieved without spending money on advertising, though you may have to spend money on getting your social media content created and posted. However a blog post last infinitely-those magazine ads are good until the magazine lands in the trash can.

So, from my forthcoming online version of the Social Media Marketing Journey workshop, here are 5 social media tactics for increasing brand awareness:

1. Social Media Monitoring + Commenting - Find out where the conversations are online that are relevant to your product or service, and get involved.

2. Blogging + SEO - When you combine the power of Wordpress plugins such as the All-In-One SEO pack with the ability to literally “share” your expertise (with share widgets) while building relationships online, I think the blog is one of the best social media marketing tactics one can employ to increase brand awareness.

3. Crowdsourcing - While crowdsourcing generally begins with people who are already aware of your brand, it spreads if you mix it up with other tactics, like having a contest built around reader votes.

4. Branded widgets - Granted there might be some coding that has to happen to create your own widget, but create a widget that is unique and useful, and you can end up in all kinds of places online.

5. Blog trackbacks - While trackbacks can be a little tricky, they can be a great way to get some extra awareness out there regarding your blog, especially if pinging back to high traffic blogs.

These are just a few of the social media marketing tactics I’ll discuss in my online version of The Social Media Road Trip Workshop which I’m currently working on. Let me know if interested by leaving a message here.

Circuit City going out of business

Originally uploaded by F33

In my recent blog post, 5 Marketing Questions To Ask In A Recession, I discussed how October 2008 changed everything. Business is now more competitive than ever. As a result, most every business out there will have to re-think their marketing. Most will also have to improve their products and services. Because recessions like the one we’re looking at right now have a cruel way of thinning the herd.

We’re now seeing brands suffer that we never dreamed would. Most notable, the 3 major automobile manufacturers, who are now relying on the US government to bail them out. Circuit City has declared bankruptcy and is closing all of its 567 stores. Even Microsoft announced today that they’ll be laying off 5,000 employees, the first massive layoff in the company’s 34-year history. These are just a few examples.

While marketing isn’t the only reason some of our largest brands have suffered, I do believe in many cases it has played a role. Obviously business strategy has played a major role, as well.

But now, the playing field has changed for just about everyone. And competition is heating up.

All of this reminds me of a game we played in my copywriting course in college. The game was called “Knock-Knock.”

The way the game worked was, we all had to line up outside the classroom door. Then one by one, we’d knock on the door. Our professor would crack the door open. At that point, each student would have to say why the professor should open the door. And the professor wouldn’t let us in until we  came up with a good reason.

I now understand and appreciate that game more than ever. It was a very simple yet effective demonstration of how marketing really works.

Right now, you’re probably having more trouble getting into some doors. Or perhaps you’re already on the inside, but you feel the pressure of trying to stay there because you know others are now knocking to get in and take your place.

Your relationships with your clients and customers may have kept you where you are for some time now. But when times get tough, relationships will get sacrificed for the bottom line. As the saying goes, “Nothing personal, it’s just business.”

As I’ve said before, October 2008 changed everything.

Are you developing the right kind of marketing strategies and brand messages that will push your business to the other side of this recession? Are you implementing social media strategies to create digital word-of-mouth for your brand? Are you giving your audience a reason to open the door that is better than the reason you had last year?

If not, you might want to get serious about your plan for 2009. Because you can bet that someday soon there will be wolves knocking on your clients’ doors.

–Kevin McIntosh

The application rewarded anyone who dumped 10 Facebook friends with a free coupon for a BK Whopper. With 233,906 friends getting dumped, Facebook has in turn dumped the app.

One of the creatives at Crispin Porter+Bogusky gave me a heads up early in the week that the plug could get pulled. And sure enough, it’s happened.

Facebook sacrifices BK Whopper Promotion

According to a post published yesterday on Tech Crunch, Facebook said the application facilitated activity that ran counter to user privacy by notifying people when a user removes a friend.

My Crispin Porter+Bogusky contact has told me there are groups being formed to bring the app back.

According to a post in the LA Times Technology blog, 2 groups including  one called “Petition to Re-Enable Whopper Sacrifice,” have been formed on Facebook to bring the app back.

So who knows, if enough digital word-of-mouth persuades Facebook, we may see the BK Whopper Sacrifice app back again. In the meantime, you might want to hold off on dumping any friends until you know there’s a Whopper in it for you.

–Kevin McIntosh

Originally uploaded by Gaetan Lee

Last night while lying in bed trying to fall asleep, for some reason I started thinking about branding and why it works. This led me to start thinking about how the human brain works in general.

If you think about it, the branding process is simply about applying shortcuts to the decision-making process. Which is exactly how we like to process information anyway.

This is why we gravitate to metaphors and analogies when trying to process new information. Techniques such as these rely on familiarity. And familiarity is comfortable. It gives us a feeling of security. Which is why these literary techniques have been embraced by everyone from Jesus to Elvis.

You might say we’re all kind of lazy when it comes to thinking, and when it’s time to make a decision, we like to rely on shortcuts to help us get there.

The Brain Searches Brands Like Google Searches Websites

Fortunately, I have some recent research that backs up what I’m saying here.

A recent study conducted by the international brand consultancy, THEY, compares the process a brain goes through in brand selection to Google.

According to Tjaco Walvis, who led the one-and-a-half-year study, brand choice is largely unconscious.

“But in that process, the brain behaves much like Google. It seems to use a set of rules called an algorithm to pick the brand from our memory that best and most reliably fits our functional and emotional needs at that particular moment. It behaves rationally, but in an unconscious way,” says Walvis.

Based on the study, Mr. Walvis concludes that the brain’s “algorithm” for brand choice has three elements:

Firstly, the brain selects the brand it has learned is best able to satisfy our biological and cultural goals. We unconsciously select the brand that is the most uniquely rewarding, based on its associations with our goals and the brain’s reward centers (e.g. the dopamine system).

Secondly, the brain selects the brand that has shown most frequently in the past that it is able to fulfill these needs. Coherent brands that repeat their promise are more likely to be chosen. Volvo, Coca-Cola and Disney are examples of coherent brands.

Thirdly, the brain selects the brand it has interacted with most intensely in the past. Brand participation creates numerous new connections in our brain, facilitating that brand’s retrieval. Nike Plus is an example of strong participation concept.

But in all three cases, the brain is working with past information to make decisions. Again, it’s the power of familiarity.

Now I’m just waiting on a brain study that reveals why a single guy like me is lying awake thinking about branding instead of thinking about swimsuit models.

–Kevin McIntosh

Originally uploaded by emdot

What is a customer worth to you? I ask that question, because until you understand the lifetime value of a customer, you’ll always have trouble justifying spending money on marketing.

This is how companies like Coca-Cola and Proctor & Gamble can justify spending billions each year to sell products that cost as little as 99 cents. They aren’t advertising to capture a one-time sale. They’re advertising to capture customers for a lifetime. They’re advertising to develop brand loyalty. Their annual sales don’t simply reflect the marketing expenditures they’ve made over the year. Those sales reflect the cumulative impact of advertising over several years.

For example, let’s assume a restaurant owner runs an advertising promotion that brings in 150 new customers in a week who spend an average of $14.95 per customer. That represents $2,242.50 in revenue. Next, assume the restaurant has done its job in creating a dining experience that makes customers want to come back, and that these customers come back 2 times a month for the next 5 years, spending an average of $14.95. Each customer then is worth $358.80 per year, which in five years represents $1,794 in sales per customer. That single promotion then has earned the owner $269,100 in sales over a 5 year period ($1,794 x 150 customers). That doesn’t even begin to take into account the people who they may start to invite to the restaurant for dinner, who then become regular customers as well.

A few months ago, I had a client who told me a single customer could be worth as much as $50,000 in profit to his business. Yet this client had trouble understanding why he should spend a few hundred dollars to write and distribute a press release.

If a bank announced an investment product that could yield $50,000 in a short period of time for an investment of $500, there would be people lined up for miles to purchase it.

Marketing/branding is an investment. It’s an investment in attracting and retaining customers who could possibly generate revenue for you far in excess of your investment. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the extra revenues those customers could generate for you through word-of-mouth marketing.

So when it’s time to budget for your marketing projects, don’t just think about the immediate return on investment. Think about the lifetime value of a new customer gained.

–Kevin McIntosh