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.

By Kevin McIntosh

Looks like Social Media is getting closer and closer to Santa in terms of having some influence around the holidays.

ComScore Research in Virginia released a report from a survey earlier in December that revealed holiday shoppers were relying more on social media for recommendations on holiday purchases in 2009.

According to the report, 28 percent of those who had begun their holiday shopping this season indicated that social media had influenced their purchases.

Consumer-generated product reviews were the most common form of social media influence (13 percent), followed by an expert product review (11 percent).

Facebook fan pages attracted seven percent of respondents who said they’d followed brands on Facebook to take advantage of special offers and deals. Another 6 percent said they have been influenced by a friend’s Facebook status update referring to a particular product.

Five percent of respondents indicated they had followed a company on Twitter to take advantage of special offers and deals, while 3 percent said that a friend’s “tweet” about a product influenced their purchase behavior.

Who knows, maybe next year kids will just tweet their wish lists to Santa.

Photo originally uploaded by SOCIALisBETTER

Is there a formula that tells you if it’s time for your brand to engage in social media marketing?

By Kevin McIntosh

If you know your audience is online and you’re wondering if social media marketing is for you, here are 10 questions you might ask yourself to see if you’re ready for the social media marketing journey.

1. Am I ready to participate in conversations with my audience even if the conversations aren’t aimed at driving an immediate sale?

Social media marketing differs in traditional marketing in that it’s less about “selling” and more about building relationships through online conversations and sharing of information. You’ll need to accept this truth if you want to increase your chances for success with social media marketing. The good news is, building relationships means building trust. And building trust with customers is more important than ever.

2. Am I ready to to let my audience have more and more control of my brand?

Once your brand is out there, you give up control. People can comment on it, and dice and slice your content anyway they want. However, that can be a good thing. In the process, what you learn can help you push your brand where it needs to go to be more successful. And the truth is, it’s already out of your control. People may be doing all of the above already. It’s just that with social media marketing, you’ll be aware of it.

3. Am I ready to listen to the opinions and ideas of my audience to truly learn from them and in that process, actually let their ideas impact my product / service?

Related to question number 2. If you’re learning from your audience, are you willing to implement what you learn into your marketing or operations to make improvements that better fit audience trends? The ultimate result is that you’ll create brand advocates who become your virtual marketing and PR team, telling others about your brand.

4. Can I see value in any other metrics other than actual sales, as long as the metrics indicate a trend of people moving closer to the sale?

For example, can  you see the ROI in changing an influencer’s sentiment about your brand? As stated in question 1, conversations in social media shouldn’t be aimed at making an immediate sale. So your metrics reports may show encouraging data that indicates that more and more people are moving closer to the sale, but just haven’t fully converted. Depending on what you’re selling, the process can take time. But with social media monitoring and other tools, you can measure results to see what impact your efforts are making before the sale and to see if you’re moving closer to that objective.

5. Am I OK with making mistakes and learning from them?

A while back, I was watching an online presentation by Charlotte Li of Forrester Research and author of the social media book, Groundswell. She made it clear that in social media marketing, you will make mistakes. I’ll add that the truth is, mistakes are made in all forms of marketing. But what makes social media marketing different is that your audience can easily remind you and others of your mistakes. In other words, if you posted some of your promotional materials online for viewers to comment on, you’d likely hear the truth that your promotional ideas may not be all that great. Still, when you use social media marketing to let your audience guide your marketing, the mistakes can still be minimal.

6. Am I ready to devote resources (i.e. employees, time and money) to a continual social media marketing program for at least an extended trial period?

Done correctly, social media marketing can be time intensive. However, advantages like no costs for media and the value of leveraging online word-of-mouth to your advantage can be well worth the time required. 

7. Am I ready to think about social media strategically, versus simply looking at all the cool, shiny tools?

If you simply focus on something like, “Setting up a Facebook page” or posting a YouTube video, you’ll likely be disappointed with the results. Social media is a strategic process that uses tools to accomplish specific objectives. The good thing though, is that there is a method to the madness.

8. Do I appreciate the value of identifying and engaging with a single person who can influence dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people in their purchase and brand behavior?

Because of the exponential power of influence, 10 pairs of eyeballs looking at your content in a social media context can have a lot more impact than 100 pairs of eyeballs looking at your content in other marketing channels.

9. Do I appreciate the value of being able to change attitudes and beliefs about my brand?

Sometimes, simply changing the attitudes and beliefs of an audience can be the biggest hurdle in converting them into customers. Social media marketing can be a great way to do that simply because you can often pinpoint those with the wrong attitudes and beliefs and with social media, you can engage with them before they spread their false ideas to others.

10. Do I believe that the cost of NOT participating in social media is greater than the cost of participating in social media?

Or to put it another way, is the cost of letting people say whatever they want about your brand online greater than the cost of defending your brand? Is the cost of learning what it would take to get people to spread the word about your brand greater than the cost of continuing to use traditional paid media?

Those are some of the more important questions I think marketers should consider when trying to decide if they’re ready for social media marketing. Any other questions you can think of?

-Kevin McIntosh

Kevin McIntosh lives in Nashville and has worked on the marketing campaigns of over a dozen Fortune 500 brands. His workshop, “The Social Media Marketing Journey” shows companies how to use social media marketing to accomplish a wide range of objectives.

Photo by kevindooley

Summary:

Business Is More Competitive Than Ever

Customers Are Spending More Time With Social Media

64% Of Best In Class Companies Plan To Spend More On Social Media Marketing In 2009 Than In 2008

To Compete, Businesses Must Take A Fresh Look At Their Marketing Strategies And Channels

Today I was in the small town where I grew up. I come here about once every 6 weeks or so. For some reason, the only place I wanted to visit today was the city park where all the baseball fields are located.

I first stopped at the park on the hill. That’s where it all started. Farm League. I played on that diamond from ages 6 until about age 10. It seemed so big back then. Today, it just seemed like a small yard.

Down the hill from that is the town’s Little League diamond. That’s where I played until age 13. It’s a bigger park of course.

And then right across from that is the big park. The Pony League and Colt League field. That’s where I played until I retired from baseball at the ripe old age of 16.

As I thought about the three parks being so close together, what amazed me was the differences in the level of play from one field to the next. The level of competition kept getting tougher and tougher each year.

As boys, we were all getting more skilled at the game. We were developing our hand-eye coordination as well as our abilities to focus on the game. We were getting stronger each year.

By Pony League and Colt League, we were starting to develop our muscles and strength, so we were hitting balls 3 times the distance that we could hit them in Farm League. And the pitches were coming at us about 3 to 6 times faster, I’d guess.

So the bats we swung were bigger and heavier. Even the basic design in some of the aluminum bats was changing.

Business: It’s A Whole New Ball Game

Those 3 baseball fields remind me of business and marketing. It’s more competitive now than ever. The competition is getting stronger. And the speed at which things happen is faster than ever.

And just like it would have been naive for me to have used the same equipment in Colt League or to have relied on the same basic strategies that I had relied on in Farm League, I think it’s just as naive for businesses today to simply rely on the same marketing tools and strategies that they’ve relied on in the past. Sooner or later, you have to roll out some new equipment and strategies.

The world is changing. That world includes the people who are your customers and your competitors.

Your customers and your competition are relying more and more on different types of media than they were even 2 years ago. In particular, they’re spending more time with social media.

According to a recent study titled, “The ROI On Social Media Marketing” by The Aberdeen Group, 63% of best-in-class companies plan to increase their spending on social media marketing in 2009. Those are businesses that realize the game is changing.

Twitter for example was just launched in the spring of 2007. Today, it’s growing by leaps and bounds. Businesses are starting to realize the importance of Twitter as a marketing channel. With a 600% growth rate in 2008, Twitter now has around 4M-5M users, 70% of whom joined in 2008. And an estimated 5-10 thousand new Twitter accounts are opened per day

Facebook just added its 200th million user. Mind you, Facebook has been around only since it began as a college project back in 2003. And the world is gaining Internet access at a fast pace, as well, a 342 percent increase from 2000-2008, as over 1.6 billion people now have Internet access.

Please don’t make the mistake of assuming that everyone on Facebook or Twitter is in their twenties or younger. 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older. You’ll now find everyone from engineers to doctors on both of these social networks.

What are people doing on these networks? They’re having conversations related to brands, business and much more. As you may have seen, they’re having a lot of trivial conversations. But they’re also having a lot of meaningful conversations. They’re sharing ideas and information. They’re asking others for product and service recommendations.

Businesses that want to compete realize that when the game changes, they have to change with it. That doesn’t mean waiting for the economy to get to a point where the same old strategies and marketing channels will work like they used to. But rather, going where the conversations are taking place, listening, engaging and connecting. Now.

It’s a whole new game. The question is, are you willing to step up to the plate and think differently about your marketing?

-Kevin McIntosh

Kevin McIntosh has 20 years experience in marketing and branding. He has worked on the marketing campaigns of over a hundred brands including over a dozen Fortune 500 brands. He shows businesses how to differentiate from their competition through a combination of traditional and new media channels.

Will It Blend?

In late 2006, Utah-based Blendtec spent around $50 to launch a series of videos in which the company CEO, Tom Dickson, does a simple product demonstration of the Blendtec brand home and commercial blenders. He uses their blenders to grind everyday household objects including golf balls, soft drink cans, a Hannah Montana doll and an iPhone.

Within 5 days, over 6 million visitors had landed on the company’s website.

“Lately, I’ve been feeling a need to get back to my manly roots,” Dickson says in the opening of one of the videos at the WillItBlend.com micro-site for Blendtec. “So I decided to build myself a man cave to relax and unwind,” he adds.

Next, Dickson takes a collection of objects that just don’t fit in a man cave and tosses them into the 1500 watt blender. Moments later, he has blended a mixture of a lava lamp, a Hannah Montana doll, a raspberry wine cooler bottle and a serving of quiche.

It’s a stunt that would make Ron Popeil jealous and Tim “The Tool Man” Taylor proud.

The short, quirky videos are entertaining and fun. And also a powerful demonstration of the product. In fact, the videos have contributed to a 6x increase in sales as of August 2008, thanks mostly to millions of viewings at YouTube.

In addition to gaining pop-culture celebrity status over the Internet, Dickson has even appeared as a guest on The Today Show and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

While my suspicions are that the man cave video segment may have required some special editing to actually blend all of the ingredients, it is apparent from some of the other videos that these are heavy duty blenders. In other words, if a Blendtec blender can’t blend it, you’d don’t need to drink it

To promote the DQ Sweet Deals, the fast food chain recently offered free $5 gift cards to the first 250 bloggers who would “Write a blog post (or leave a comment) about what deal you’d make with us to try our Sweet Deals for free.”

Sure enough, they got their 250 bloggers in just a matter of days.

In fact, they got a whole lot more blogging conversation from bloggers simply blogging about the promotion. Many other news outlets picked up the story as well.

Dairy Queen also got a fair amount of buzz also on Twitter and in other social media communities.

As for the comments and blog posts from DQ fans telling what they’d do for the sweet deals, here are a couple of my fav’s:

“I would read every page of the stimulus package. Sweet!” – Kelly

“I would jump up on a table in the biggest Dairy Queen center around, and woot like a gorilla while pointing at my mouth like i’m hungry!!” – Julia Stowe

So what happened here? DQ got at least 250 people to comment/blog about the brand. And that likely started hundreds more conversations, i.e. people telling their friends about how they just tried to win the DQ promo.

It also started several conversations among bloggers on Twitter who blog about social media (myself included). Although a twitter search for DQ does also yield a lot of results for the acronym for “disqualified.”

Someone has questioned if the marketers’ paid-for posts could result in Google slapping Dairy Queen for some kind of link scam. DQ’s a no-follow tag so as not to fool the Google spider that crawls the blogs for ranking purposes.

However, Adam Singer Digital Strategist for Pierson Grant Public Relations (the PR agency of record for DQ) made a good defense for the practice saying that bloggers were free to use a no-follow and that the links were simply there to track buzz and share stories. No Google rules broken.

All in all, I think this DQ blogging promo was very progressive in terms of leveraging so much digital word-of-mouth among DQ fans and the social media community in general.

–Kevin McIntosh

Kevin McIntosh has 20 years experience in marketing and branding. He has worked on the marketing campaigns of over a hundred brands including over a dozen Fortune 500 brands. He shows businesses how to differentiate from their competition through a combination of traditional and new media channels.

The quick answer to that is, “Any online media that allows users to interact with one another (i.e. socialize).”

Perhaps a better way to explain social media (also referred to as Web 2.0) is to outline some different types of of social media applications.

Social networking – Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, Ning

Social networking sites allow users to add friends, send messages and share content. People on social networking sites group in communities of like-minded interest. IMPORTANT: 1) The other types of social media outlined here also allow for networking, though they’re typically more focused on content sharing. 2) Don’t assume your audience isn’t participating in social networking. The growth of Facebook for example is phenomenal. The rate at which it is growing with men and women in their 60’s even is staggering.

Social bookmarking – Digg, Delicious

Social bookmarking applications allow users to share their favorite online content with one another while also creating online bookmarks that the user can refer to in the same way he would a bookmark created offline in his web browser.

Blogs – Wordpress, TypePad, Blogger as well as non-branded blogging platforms

Blogs are online journals where the author can write (blog) about any interest he wants. The blogger can also use the blog to share content picked up from other social media sites (YouTube, Issuu) by taking advantage of the simple embed codes offered by those content hosts.

Wikis - Wikipedia

A wiki refers to content created online as a result of multiple users working on the same content, but at different times and from different places.

Photosharing - Flickr, Photobucket

Photosharing sites are where people can upload photos to share either privately with only selected other users or publicly. Creative Commons licensing rights can grant permissions for others to use the photos by simply embedding the codes in their blogs. That is how I get most of the photos on my blog.

Video Sharing - YouTube, iMemories

Similar to photosharing. Users upload video content to a site for sharing either privately or public.

Presentation Sharing - Slideshare.net, Scribd, Issuu

Files can be uploaded as PDF’s and they are then converted to work with the online presentation applications. You’ll notice these presentation tools include embed codes and email options as well, making it easy for the content to be shared online.

This is just some of the info included in my Social Media Road Trip Workshop online video series.

There are tons of social media sites online. Choosing the right social media for your brand comes down to knowing where your customers are online.

–Kevin McIntosh

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

recession lane

Originally uploaded by ZenTraveler

October 2008 changed everything. It changed credit availability for businesses and consumers. It wiped out consumer confidence. And it must change the way businesses market.

Why? Because business is now more competitive than ever.

Since October, you’ve likely experienced at least one of the following:
1. Current clients/customers have cut back spending.
2. Current clients/customers have totally stopped spending.
3. Prospective clients/customers have put planned expenditures on hold.

Furthermore, your current clients/customers may be getting more attention from your competitors who are trying to make up for their lost business as well.

If you thought business was competitive before, you haven’t seen anything yet. Recessions are the business world’s way of thinning the herd.

It’s now survival of the fittest. It’s the businesses who innovate and offer the best perceived value to their clients that will thrive in a recession.

So to keep on your competitive toes, here are 5 marketing-related questions business owners need to ask:
1. Is our marketing message as relevant today as it was before October?
Your marketing message may have worked for years. But an economic shake-up can change things real fast. What’s important to people when making purchasing decisions can change. Your marketing message may have to change, too.

2. If not, what should our new marketing message be?
Maybe it’s a value message. Maybe it’s a message that says your business is solid and is here for the long haul. Or it could be a message that reflects how your business is changing with the times to reflect the new economic environment. Look at what’s going on in your industry right now and ask how your marketing message can be adjusted to better reflect the times.

3. What new opportunities does the recession present for our business?
Are there new markets that have opened up for you? Perhaps larger clients would be more attracted to working with you than before for cost-savings reasons. Perhaps the service your business offers will now be attractive to companies who are now outsourcing for the first time due to employee cutbacks. Remember, just because some of your regular opportunities have dried up, doesn’t mean new ones can’t be created.

4. What can we do to provide greater value to our clients?
In a recession, everything becomes more value-driven than ever. Take a good honest look at your service and/or product to see what you can do to offer greater value. And make sure you communicate it in your marketing.

5. Is it time to explore new ways of getting our marketing message out there?
Some of the ways you’ve marketed over the past years may not be as effective now. That trade show that you’ve always spent much of your annual marketing budget on may not have a big turnout this year, as companies cut back on travel expenses. Perhaps this year, to get the ROI you need on marketing, you’ll need to start to leverage social media and public relations to your advantage to create digital word-of-mouth.

October 2008 changed everything. As a result, you are going to feel the competition breathing down your neck in the next year like never before.

If you want to survive this recession, the way you market will have to change.

–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