Posts Tagged ‘Social Media’

Marking Myths. Social Media Hype. Bogus Business Beliefs.

It all adds up to one thing – preconceived notions that can take you for a ride going the wrong way.

As marketers, we know that repeat messaging can make its mark. But what we can often miss is the fact it can make its mark on us! So when we repeatedly hear things like “You have to do this” or “Everyone has X,” you simply start to believe it. The worst part is, the decision to believe it is not often made-its just a gradual process that slowly invades your consciousness and starts driving your actions.  Sometimes something happens that challenges those beliefs and you realized you’ve been carrying this weight around without your knowledge.

But we recommend you try to take  a more proactive approach:

1. Pay attention to when you feel yourself shifting into autopilot and pull out your inner 3 year old; ask “why? why? why?” until you get to the answer you want.
2. Listen when others question your beliefs. You may not agree with what that person has to say, but you may learn something along the way.
3. And most importantly, open yourself to learning something new-and try to do it without making an immediate judgement. Read new resources. Attend unusual seminars. Debate an issue with someone outside your field.

We guarantee as you shake loose old beliefs, you will establish conscious, well-informed ones.

Chances are, if you have been in business a while, you can easily spout details about your specific target market. You probably know if more women than men buy your product, average age range, family status and more. Some of this may have been through careful cultivation and others through just general observation.

But perhaps the time has come to identify a new target market. You need to grow your customer base or you have a new product on the market. If you need a refresher on how to identify the “perfect” customer, think about the following:

1. Sex – Male or female? Think through the ideal client who will purchase your goods or services. How do you envision them?
2. Age range – Are you targeting youth, 30′s or boomers? What you choose determines your media and communication usage. Make sure you can narrow down the range!
3. Level of education – Is your ideal customer highly educated? Or do they have a high school diploma?
4. Family status – Married? Children? Partners? Family status often drives purchasing decisions on a variety of levels.
5. Income level – Income level affects spending. So think about your price point and if the item you are selling is perceived as “necessity” or “luxury.”
6. Psychographics – Buying power and interest doesn’t just stem from the who and what – it stems from the “why.” Look at buying habits of different groups – hipsters, boomers, or special interest groups, such as crafters.  It’s amazing the insight that can be gained from observing the “why.”

Not sure how to determine this information? Conduct focus groups and tests. Depending on your budget, you can use a formalized focus group company. But if financing is a challenge, get smart about resources at hand. Look at trends on the internet. Listen to what your customers are saying (“My mother would love that!”). Pay attention to what’s “hot” around you and identify where there are opportunities. Put others on the search. Talk to your local librarian about how to research some of this. Essentially – pay attention and think about how opportunities apply to your product or service!

We’ve had a lot of conversations with clients recently about what I like to call “Taming the Time Suck.” Like a lion on the loose, social media can be a fascinating thing to observe. Or play around in. Regardless of whether you do it for business or pleasure, social media can eat a ton of time if you don’t manage your efforts effectively.

While each day can be different – as well as each opportunity you may capitalize on – it’s important to designate the right time for the right projects.

5 Ways to Tame the Time Suck

1. Designate time to work on your social media projects. – This is especially important when developing or revamping your materials. Setting up, tweaking, etc., can be quite the time suck,  so make sure you plan for your social media activities. Go as far as to close your browser if you have to get other work done and then just open it up with you have time to monitor and manage.

2. Designate time each day to work on your accounts. – You will need time to manage and monitor your accounts. And you should adjust that time if you know your posts and activities relate to a prime media story, a seasonal promotion, or something equally as important to capitalize on.

3. Prioritize - Not everything has to be done each day or in every way. Are most of your customers YouTube watchers? Then spend more time there rather than on LinkedIn. Move things to the back burner as needed, but make sure you don’t embrace the empty storefront scenario – you still need to keep things active!

4. Be effective - It’s tempting to goof off: looking at fun links, playing games, or responding to friends’ posts. But treat your job like a job, and you’ll minimize the amount of time you are supposedly spending on social media for work.

5. Prepare – If you need assistance from other departments (such as graphic design work, customer service, etc.), make sure you are communicating with them in advance or as needed in order to handle your campaigns efficiently and effectively. Preparing properly can make a world of difference!

Have other tips for taming the time suck? Please post below!

“For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.” ~Author Unknown

And never is that more true than when preparing for a marketing launch of any type! You already know proper traditional and social marketing is key, but this week we want to delve more into the crucial element of timing to make this happen!

3 Savvy Tips for Timing an Effective Launch

1. Give yourself time – and then add time to that! –  Why? Because nothing ever goes as planned. But you can combat that by building in a cushion to your production schedule at each major milestone. So the next time your designer is out sick, your IT person is battling a virus, or Twitter is showing the fail whale for days on end, you are still in good shape!

2. Pick Your Launch Day with Care – While all issues can’t be anticipated, there are some good rules of thumb to follow – carefully plan around holidays and  avoid major tech or political announcements. You’d hate to lose your limelight to something you could have avoided, so check your calendars!

3. Know Your Customers – Most people know their customers well enough to know when they think about your company. Perhaps it’s a Monday in the afternoon, or as they prep for the weekend plans on Thursday after work.  Make sure your launch date resonates with your goals, your customer usage, and has real impact!

Of course, not all things can be anticipated. But with a little planning and consideration for your launch, you should be in pretty good shape!

Want some help launching your marketing strategy or campaign? Let us know! info@thecollectivesavvy.com

July is all about launching your social media and traditional marketing efforts.

Much like a rocket launch, there are many things that have to occur before you blast off your integrated traditional and social media efforts. Everything should be properly prepared, fully synchronized, and perfectly executed; otherwise you can be stuck with a visible mess!

5 Savvy Tips for Pre-Launch Activities:

1. Set aside some time – Don’t launch in a rush because mistakes and missed opportunities are more likely to happen. Designate time prior to your launch to get all of your ducks in a row!

2. Review opportunities – Things change. So make sure you are familiar with all existing opportunities for exposure and launching of integration. And don’t forget to look at upcoming opportunities! You’d hate to miss out by not paying attention.

3.  Lay out a plan - Put your pen to paper – or at least your fingers to your keyboard. You are more likely to stick to your plan if you write it out!

4. Gather the team – Integration and a proper launch are more likely to happen if you have the support and input of your team. They see things you don’t, so use those great minds to launch it right!

5. Prep – Preparation is important. Rarely can you launch an integrated effort without getting a few pre-launch projects done.

Launching an integrated marketing and social media marketing effort can save you a ton of time and resources, but you need to do it right to make it effective. The above tips are just a few of the ways to prepare for a fabulous launch! Have more tips? Leave a comment!

Do you need some help with your integration efforts? Contact The Collective Savvy – we’re happy to help! info@thecollectivesavvy.com.

One of the places many marketers fall down on the job is missing the chance to leverage current opportunities in preparation for future connections. We advocate that smart seasonal promotions should actually build your sales all year long. Integration of your marketing efforts – and collection of contact information – is essential to make this happen!

3 Savvy Ways to Collect Contact Information

1. Run a contest – Have people drop their business card into a unique bowl in the store for a chance to win or run an online contest through your website. Whatever you do, make sure that each of your marketing outlets (especially social media!) promotes this contest. The more interest, the more registrants. The more registrants, the more contact information you collect. The more you collect, the more opportunity you have to promote yourself moving forward for future promotions!

2. Ask for story or photo submittals – Pick a seasonal topic or a theme and then invite people to submit! Have them complete a form and then reward them with a coupon or special promotion related to your seasonal campaign. You do just a little work for potentially big results!

3. Ask people to opt in – Have a newsletter? Tell people. Run a Facebook page? Ask them to “like” it. Host a Twitter account? Invite them to follow. Make sure they know the opportunity is there by letting them know it’s there.

Once the seasonal campaign is over, follow up!

1. Thank people – Thank them for coming in, participating, etc. Do this quickly after the season is over, as customers often have short memories.

2. Referrals - If your system is sophisticated enough, make suggestions for future purchases based on past activity. If you don’t have an automated way to do that, use the past campaign as a springboard!

3. Reach out - Connect regularly to the folks who opted to receive your information. Easy rules of thumb:

- Twitter – At least once a day

- Facebook – At least 3 times a week

- Email newsletters – varies, from weekly to quarterly

- Blog posts – 1 time a month, at a minimum

Not sure where to get started? Drop us an email at info@thecollectivesavvy.com.

Seasonal marketing is often tied to a cause marketing effort. We recently defined seasonal marketing, but cause marketing hasn’t been heavily discussed in this blog. Essentially cause marketing is the combined effort of a for-profit business and a non-profit cause to raise mutual awareness, brand affiliation, and money. I suspect you see where this is going now…

Taking integration to the “next” step, a savvy marketer will often marry their seasonal promotion activities to a cause to tug on people’s heart strings (and purse strings!). This cause may be one that the company has supported over an extended period of time – such as Wendy’s support of the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption, or it may be a cause that ties well to the season, such as companies that support Toys for Tots over the holidays.

3 Savvy Ways Companies Can Blend Seasonal + Cause Marketing

1. Percentage of Sales Donations – Pick a seasonal marketing timeframe. Then pick a percentage of proceeds from your seasonal sales to go to your charity of choice. For example, seasonal Back to School promotions may work with charities such as your local PTA or  Back to School Clothing Drive.

2. In-Kind Donations – Cash donations are great and often appreciated, but sometimes a company is able to garner more support and resources around an in-kind donation. In-kind donations vary from charity to charity, but examples include fans for Project Cool in San Antonio, where fans are collected and distributed to the elderly in order to handle the intense summer heat. Your company may give these gifts outright and tie it to a seasonal promotion;  it may make the amount donated dependent on sales during a seasonal promotion; or it may serve as a collection site.

3. Time – Sometimes a company may offer a donation of time – either by bringing employees in for a project or recruiting volunteers for a project to help their pet cause.  Ever see Extreme Home Makeover? Look at the companies that donate time to the building of homes on that show – often showing up in force!

One thing we recommend companies keep in mind is that don’t lose focus on the fact that cause involvement is still ultimately an element of your business plan. Its great to do it, but you couldn’t do it if your business wasn’t in place. So make sure you are vocal about it.  It will have multiple levels of impact – on your company, your cause, and the way people perceive both.  So don’t leave the information out of your seasonal marketing efforts – imagine the impact you could have if others take up your cause as well!

This month we’ve been talking about integration and in today’s post I want to talk about simple integration tactics that often get skipped. These may sound too basic to be effective, but remember the last time you needed a company’s contact info and struggled to put your hands on it? It happens all the time! So here’s a quick checklist of things to get you going:

Savvy Integration Basics:

1. Signature lines -  Signature lines are pre-set deals. So put in ALL of your contact info in your signature line. I love being able to look at an email and find the phone, address, website, Facebook page, LinkedIn link, and more. I actually hate it when I get an email from a Blackberry or some other “business” phone and that info is not included.  So if you think it will help people connect with your business, list it all! After all,  you aren’t paying for it. Consider it free advertising space…

2. Business Cards - Same deal here. There is typically a lot of unused space on business cards. Put your contact info, your website, AND your social media accounts on there. You never know what appeals to the person who gets your card!

3. Print Collateral - Have you ever picked up a flyer and realized it didn’t have anything but a website listed, but you need to call the company? Or only a phone number is available, but no website? Or maybe all of the info is so buried in the document, you had trouble finding it at all? Think like a consumer! As you design your print material, what information would you want if you were your own customer? After all, you WANT people to contact you, right? Isn’t that how you make a sale?

4. Signage - There are a few key things I want to mention here. Make sure your content is large enough to read, in a font that is readable, and in a color that is visible! And always, always, always include one key way for your company to be contacted. Remember – keep it simple! Signage is typically viewed on the fly, so it needs to stand out and be memorable.

5. Cross Reference Your Sites – I have mentioned this in passing in a previous post, but it bears repeating. If you have multiple sites online, cross-reference them! Just because a customer comes across your website doesn’t mean that’s the way they prefer to receive their information. Make it easy for them to connect with you on their online touchpoint of choice! It helps them, which means it helps you. It’s worth the investment of time to make that happen.

These tactics are easy to implement and can make a world of difference in making your company appear accessible to your customers!

Have practical implementation questions? Like The Savvy Girls at www.facebook.com/thesavvygirls or follow on Twitter at www.twitter.com/thesavvygirls!

Need help implementing these tactics? We’re happy to help!

Facebook. The wonder of social media wonders.

The company bent on taking Google down a peg or two.

The place you play Farmville, Mafia Wars, or some such game, and share random comments with friends.

Or, your next social media marketing platform!

Seriously. Many folks under-appreciate what Facebook can do for a marketing plan. So often we hear “I built a company Facebook page…Now what?” That’s because most folks are so close to the things they HAVE to get done, they forget to plan for the things they WANT to get done. So here are some simple strategies to integrate your Facebook marketing efforts….

8 Savvy Steps to Integrating Your Facebook Marketing

1. Gather all the materials you will need for developing your Facebook page. Get your profile image and any custom tab graphics completed in advance. (Not sure where to go to do that? The Collective Savvy can help you out! (info@thecollectivesavvy.com)

2. Take the Time to Set Up your Page - We recommend setting the bulk of your page up at once. It is simply easier to finish that way because you can go through the steps methodically. Make sure to chose the proper page type (i.e. read the options Facebook gives you!) and think through the sub-options – are you a restaurant, a brick and mortar store, a service, etc.?

3. Make sure you take advantage of the Facebook page template - Incorporate your other online sites in a way that is easily visible to folks visiting your pages. Post photos related to your brand to liven things up. Pictures of staff, materials, etc., can really personalize the brand to your customers.  Maximize the template the best way you know how!

4. Set up your customized tabs - Static FBML is a great thing and allows you to do some customization to your tabs – videos, links, etc.  Figure out what you want to expose folks to that may be complimentary to your other marketing efforts and reinforce a call to action.

5. Connect to your other social media sites - There are tons of apps out there that allow you to link to other sites. Maximize, maximize, maximize! This can’t be stressed enough because it will save you so much time and energy while reaching a variety of folks in the manner in which they prefer to receive it. Link to Twitter, YouTube, etc.

6. Post your site links on your traditional marketing materials – Posters, brochures, signage, advertising, etc., are all great places to note that you have social media accounts that customers can access. Then on your social media sites be sure to refer to your print materials. Remember, don’t post the same thing everywhere, but post things that compliment one another!

7. Use Facebook advertising – Facebook offers affordable and highly targeted advertising. Pick a great graphic that goes with your look, come up with a brief and effective message, determine where you want folks to go if they click on your ad, set your daily limit, and there you go!

8. Plan  your posts - You can be like me and wing it. Or you can be like one of our clients and pre-plan your posts to coincide with in-store events, advertising, etc.  Really the choice is yours. But make sure you think it through!

Want to learn more about Facebook in general for your marketing efforts? Check out:

• www.facebook.com/facebook
• www.facebook.com/advertising
• www.facebook.com/facebookpages

Got questions about Facebook or other social media activities?

Ask The Savvy Girls your marketing or social media questions! Those savvy ladies can be found at www.facebook.com/thesavvygirls or www.twitter.com/thesavvygirls.

Graphic design work is an essential part of the marketing process. Not sure about that? Think about websites, printed materials, or e-newsletters you’ve seen in the past. You know what “looked good” and what “didn’t” – right?

You know what I am talking about – websites that are so “old” that you forgot sites could even look that way. E-newsletters that are nothing but text and tiring on the eyes. Or printed materials that look like they were created in an old Word Doc template!

Part of planning for strong marketing integration is ensuring you have a great graphic design team in place. And almost equally as important, that you can provide direction on the design work. After all, contrary to popular belief, graphic designers are not mind readers!

Here are some things to think about when getting your graphic design planning in place:

1. What will be your process for getting graphic design work done in a timely and satisfactory fashion?

Do you have a designer on staff? Or on call? Or on contract? Or do you even have access to one at all?

Try to work with the same person/team on an ongoing basis. This allows for branding integration, image consistency, and allows you to develop a “system” that works for you!

2. How will idea sharing occur?

You have to provide direction to your graphic designer(s). This means you need to articulate your vision. How will you do this? Through a creative brief? Fill out a form? Have a meet-and-debate kind of approach?

Figure out a system to work with at the start of the process. This will ensure things are likely to go a bit more smoothly through the graphic design process if everyone understands how it will happen!

3. Have you thought about your integration process?

Clearly consistent, integrated branding must carry through all aspects of your marketing designs. That  is a no-brainer (or at least it should be!). But have you discussed with your designer what things may need to actually be designed?

Flyers, business cards, stationery – those are pretty standard. But what about profile images, twitter backgrounds, or Facebook Ads? Make sure your designer knows what the expectations are so that planning for sizes, looks, etc. can happen well in advance.

4. What is the review process?

The review process can be greatly reduced if your homework is done up front. But regardless, designs notoriously go through a variety of revisions depending on how well the vision is articulated, how the vision is “heard” and the variety of options produced by the designer.  Either way, everyone has to establish a review process.

Do you need to run designs past an approval team? Does the designer need a week or more lead time on changes? How are revision comments shared? These are all things that should be discussed well in advance.

5. Handle your designers with care!

Designers work hard. They often pick up the slack when projects are running behind. They have to put a visual to an idea. The images they produce help build your brand in the mind of your consumers.

So give them some love. And at a minimum, a huge thank you! Go ahead – they deserve it!