More and more of the world’s leaders are taking to the social media digital landscape to garner support from their followers by engaging them where they are. Did you know that as of February 2013, there is at least one influential, political leader from a country in each of the six “power” continents (every continent bar Antarctica) who uses social media in some form? Some of these leaders are even circumventing their government’s own firewall in an effort to bond with their people.
You may not be such a hot shot in your industry yet, but if you can see the value of connecting with your audience on one extra medium, then that’s one way that you are establishing a relationship with them that your competitors are not doing. This article will run through a specialised strategy you could use to firstly grow your influence in your chosen industry and then secondarily, how to capitalise on that influence by turning your followers into advocates.
1. Appear As A Guest On Important Media In Your Industry
This is unfortunately the hardest part. However, if you do this part well, then this is going to pay off extremely well when it comes time to utilising social media to make it all work.
You’ve got to make an effort to “get yourself out there”. People have to respect your opinion and what that means is that you have to say some strategically divisive things. If you don’t stand up for anything, you stand don’t stand out at all.
The Justin Bieber Effect
A great example of this is the Canadian pop star, Justin Bieber. In 2011, to mark his 17th birthday, started a campaign on mycharitywater.org to raise $17,000 USD to help those in need who needed fresh drinking water. He raised the amount within hours and smashed his goal, raising $47,148 all together, with people still cramming through the website four months afterwards to donate money.
Now, it’s safe to say that he isn’t everyone’s favourite vocalist, but with every delirious fan, there is at least one to two haters. He has had bottles thrown at him while being on stage. Granted you don’t have to have bodyguards protecting you from people who want to slice off your fingers joint by joint, but you can’t have intensely loyal fans without having people at the opposite end of the spectrum as well.
2. Align Your Values With Your Fans
Mr Bieber did this well. Any well-meaning person wants to think that they are a decent, charitable individual, so when there is an opportunity to directly align themselves with their most favourite pop idol, they jumped at the chance.
Many businesses do not use charities well enough to springboard their business into the hearts of their customers and loyal followers. Major companies do this under the umbrella of Corporate Social Responsibility. If the big guys do it, why shouldn’t you?
3. Blend In With Commercial Initiatives
This is where you can start bringing in your own goods and services. This is contrarian, but it’s why it works so well. So many companies are rushing to try and promote themselves first that consumers are tuning them out before their first tweet. Earn the trust of your customers, fans and followers first and they will proudly beat your brand’s drum for you.
Even when you do start doing this, be careful that you do balance out value-based social media communications with commercial interests. It’s better to err on the safe side and use social media more to connect with your followers instead of blatant promotion.
If you would like some direction in helping you strike the perfect balance between values-based, engaging content and commercially effective social media communications, visit the CLIPSED social media campaign to see our approach.
Apple has nearly twice the brand penetration as the next most common products in Hollywood – Dell, Chevy and Ford. And the latest Mission: Impossible movie has over eight minutes of screen time for Apple worth $23 million. Yet – Apple says they have never paid for product placement. Instead, it’s a combination of Apple’s ‘cool factor’ and the fact they hand out a lot of free merchandise on set.
With Apple products appearing in more than 890 TV shows in 2011, and 40% of box-office hits – the power of a ‘cool brand’ and free merchandise is undeniable.
Adam Hodge, strategy director for entertainment specialist Octagon, argues that while product placement infiltrating James Bond draws criticism (Heineken footing nearly 1/3rd of the total production cost of Skyfall) - the placement makes 007 more relatable. Apparently the product placement humanises Bond while generating brand awareness.
Apple blogger Steven Sande argues that “When the products are included as part of the scenery of even as part of the story, viewers tend to talk about them on social networking sites, which in turn influences purchasing decisions.” But your brand can save the millions of dollars required for product placement by being seen on the most popular screens of all - Facebook and Twitter feeds on phones, tablets and computers. By providing social networkers with an incentive to share your brand with their friends - you will learn that when a consumer sees your product associated with a friend - they are four times more likely to buy it. Even if that friend isn’t James Bond. Click here for a demo of the social media campaigns CLIPSED is running for leading brands.
Sources:
https://mail-attachment.googleusercontent.com/attachment/u/0/?ui=2&ik=148ff9d02b&view=att&th=13b204695484d6f7&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_h9roud490&safe=1&zw&saduie=AG9B_P9Fr_C6Jc5-zAymw_Ihwv4_&sadet=1355204141844&sads=4YwRmYC4E13cVCwwmcofswcxJ18
http://www.tuaw.com/2012/05/14/apple-increasingly-using-product-placement-as-advertising/
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-10/apple-the-other-cult-in-hollywood
http://mumbrella.com.au/brands-the-supporting-cast-of-skyfall-129285
Ask any marketing manager and they’ll tell you that the greatest source of additional business for them is their current database of customers. If you were to attach a real, monetary value to all the different tangible and intangible assets of your business, your existing and past customer database would be at the very top, in most cases even ahead of your brand equity.
Why? Because current and past customers are proven sources of income and revenue. You’ve spent the time and money to acquire them. They have already overcome the trust barrier and assuming you don’t do anything silly to jeopardise the client relationship, you will have a relationship that can actually allow you to build your business and increase your revenue quite cost effectively.
If you run some sort of online or e-commerce business and a lot of your customers come through the Internet, there are ways that you can leverage them and turn them into your evangelists that will go out and spread the word about your business. You need to be able to answer these three questions first though before you can do it.
Q1. Do you have a well-cultivated customer database with your current customers’ emails, as well as inactive customers’ emails?
This is crucial. Not only is sending emails to people who aren’t your existing customers spam (if they didn’t ask for direct mail), it’s unprofessional as well. However, if they are your current customers, this isn’t an issue.
What you have to do is create an offer that is attractive to the market, something that hasn’t been seen before and send it out to your current customers. Assuming that this offer resonates with them and that you have limited the offer to increase its perceived value, people will buy into this new offering of yours.
This is the first step. The second step is that instead of having them buy or subscribe now as a call to action, you actually ask them to share the offer. The more they share, the greater chance they get of winning something, say. Track who shares the most and they win.
Q2. Do you have software you can use to monitor and track who is responding best to these offerings?
This is one of the most important things and is especially true if you have a business with a database in the thousands. You can’t go around asking which customer has been referring the most.
A software that can track who has been referring the most will not find who is the eventual winner, but to find who you should reward the most for their evangelical behaviour. There is no better client than a referral from an existing, happy client, which is why you’ve got to track who is referring you the most.
Q3. Do you have the resources to handle the sudden increase in leads, enquiries and customers?
If you ever have to turn away customers because you can’t accommodate them, then you’ve got a problem on your hands. You want to make sure that you can capture all data (especially the data of new customers) and keep marketing towards them. If you can’t, you are shooting yourself in the foot and making it harder for yourself to gain new customers in the future.
If you can answer all three of these questions, you are in a prime position to turn your existing customers into referrers who can bring you extra business. This is how you market on a tight budget and turn online customers into evangelists.
CLIPSED can help you turn your current customers into loyal referrers. To view one of our sample campaigns, click here.
Business models that revolve around having monthly members are some of the most stable in any industry. You can accurately predict what your revenue, profit and expense figures are going to be by simply having a look at whom you’ve got signed up and how long they are going to be members for. From there, you’ve got a monthly marketing budget to work with, as well as goals you can set that adjusts with volume.
A strategy that a lot of these membership businesses within these industries are not aware of is that the idea of upselling and cross-selling for additional profits. The beautiful thing about memberships is that they are a great qualifying tool that is used to find people who have the capacity to spend and then from there, there are heaps of ways you can use that idea to increase your overall profitability. I will focus on one way, which is using them to find more monthly members cost-effectively.
One of the best examples of the monthly membership model that works is a gym membership. They usually lock you in for a certain number of months and regardless of whether you go or not, you pay. That’s why I’ll be using a gym for my example. Note that you can apply this strategy to any other industry, as long as it has a monthly membership structure.
1. Have A Decent Offer You Can Create To Get New Members To Join
If you want people to join, you’ve got to offer them value. With a gym, a lot of people need gym gear. The first step would be to send them a promotion for discounted gym gear if they get in before a particular time. With clothes as well, sizes are limited so the faster you respond the better.
2. Send Out An Email To Your Current Customers
Most gyms now have a card that has all their data on file, including email and maybe address as well. This promotion should be coded and sent out to these current customers with the instructions that it should be forwarded to their friends. Of course, there’s got to be incentive for them to do this, so make sure you have some sort of software that will allow you to track all this.
3. Monitor Which Emails Get Scanned The Most
From here on, it’s just a matter of looking at which pocket of customers is doing the most referring and to reward them with the best prize. While there may be an upfront cost of the reward, if you factor that into the cost per qualified referral who actually signs up, assuming you’ve done this correctly, should be quite reasonable.
So there you have it. It’s very easy to increase your monthly membership base by 25% within a fortnight if you craft a good offer that can attract new customers that will be spread around by your current customers after they have been incentivised.
If you’re interested in building your monthly membership, check out the current CLIPSED campaign to learn more about how we can help you do this.
There are hundreds, if not thousands of charities out there. Many of them are quite well known, with volunteers coming out in droves to raise awareness. In Melbourne, we are exposed to a variety of initiatives every year online, in person Daffodil Day, World’s Greatest Shave, Jane McGrath Day, Movember… the list goes on.
These all have massive media exposure and when it comes time to donate, the exponents of these charities will be out in full force. But what about if you want to raise awareness for a cause that’s close to your heart that you’re passionate about that is not well-known?
Social media is a great tool to do this. There are several seemingly insignificant or minor causes that had virtually no exposure that blew up in a matter of days due to some key principles that you can use in your charitable causes.
1. Outrage
It’s no secret that when we receive terrible customer service, we tell more people than if we receive good customer service. This principle becomes magnified when you’re talking about a personal value of yours that gets violated.
Kony was a great example of this in 2012. The warlord in Africa was using child orphans as soldiers and sending them off to their deaths in his mad terrorist attacks.
When knowledge of this made it to Facebook, there was a tidal wave of outrage and news about Kony and how he must be stopped spread like wildfire all over the Internet.
If there is a story as powerful as this one, it should be used in your social media campaigns. It’s an edgy strategy and if done correctly, it can propel your cause to unprecedented heights.
2. The Enemy/Villian
This is related to the Outrage Principle in the sense that people are spurred on more by negative energy than something positive. Social media has empowered many people by giving them a mask that they can hide behind to rile against an enemy.
The “hacktivist” group Anonymous, characterised by individuals wearing Guy Fawkes masks, does this extremely well, hacking into organisations whom they deem to be an enemy to society that should be targeted.
While targeting a person may not be the best possible scenario, a great technique is to personify a concept and turn it into an enemy. For example, with the recent flooding going on in Queensland, campaigns to raise funds to help our fellow Australians could highlight the enemy of mother nature.
A follow on technique to make this work even better is to show the end result of the enemy and the pain it causes. As humans, we are programmed to empathise and if the pain is real enough, people will respond.
3. The Hero
This concept is the final piece of the puzzle that fits in with the above two ideas. When there is an enemy, we want to defeat him. Social Media allows us to band together against a common evil. This concept has been utilised by plenty of websites in different formats.
Change.org is a site that utilises an online petition format whereby people simply put down their full name and other details if required by the organisation that started the petition to turn regular civilians into heroes (at least in their minds). If they can see the end result of their support, that gives them more incentive to help out again next time.
A similar website is IndieGoGo.com, a crowdfunding website. This website allows people to raise money for their causes and have a page up within hours. To appeal to people who want to contribute different levels of support.
If you can create a situation that makes people feel outraged, define an enemy and turn your prospects into heroes in some way, it’s a very easy method to make your charitable cause grow virally.
CLIPSED is a social media marketing agency that has helped charities generate more followers and likes on their Facebook profiles. To see how we can help build your charity’s awareness, call us on 1300 885 772.
Why Facebook Sharing Supports Traditional Word-Of-Mouth?
Word-Of-Mouth Marketing has been around for centuries and is one of, if not the oldest forms of marketing. It’s worked well for a long time and continues to be a highly effective way to build businesses. Why does it work so well?
The only problem is that there are so many marketing messages out there now that word-of-mouth gets lost in the noise.
Then along comes social media with Facebook and Twitter. Word-of-mouth marketing isn’t superseded by social media, it’s actually boosted by it. If your marketing message is already razor sharp, it will be a diamond-tipped blade with the power of social media referrals. Here are three reasons why.
1.The Trust Barrier Is Higher Than Ever
As was alluded in the first paragraph, it’s getting harder and harder to find a new customer due to the high level of competition. It has been said that it can be up to 8 times more expensive to acquire a new customer than it is to market to an existing one.
Trust is the scarcest resource now in this day and age. If you don’t have some sort of marketing strategy that utilises your existing customers to act as evangelists for your brand, then it’s going to be a steeper uphill slog than it is already.
2. Online Virality
The whole reason that people were so excited about social media in the first place was because it acts as an enzyme to speed up the how fast your marketing message spreads. With the simple click of a mouse, something you like or support can be shown to your hundreds of friends.
Compare this with meeting up with friends and telling them about this, or calling them up. People are not going to pick up the phone to call people any more really unless something is really urgent. Online sharing is easier and it’s not the trend, it’s already the norm.
3. It Defines People
If you’re into anthropology or psychology, then Facebook must be fascinating to you for reasons other than looking at cat pictures. It’s a constantly evolving social experiment. Some people seemingly can’t live without it and are literally logged in 24/7.
One of these reasons is that people are narcissists and love to define themselves and show this off to everyone else. By sharing stuff that they like, they are letting people know what sort of person they are and want to be. Your brand should strive to help people reach a higher level. That’s when they’ll be more than happy to share your brand on Facebook.
If you have the marketing message that you think will be shared liked crazy, CLIPSED can help you out. See our sample campaign here. We specialise in social media marketing and running and managing Facebook competitions. Call us on 1300 885 772 to see how we can help you.
One of the most important things to do is to hold on to your current customers. Cost of Google clicks is increasing, there is more clutter in general and people just aren’t paying any attention to marketing messages any more.
What this means for you is that there are more and more chances for your money to be lost when you don’t offer more ways for your own clients to make money.
If there is anything keeping you up at night, it’s this. That’s why you’ve got to have your finger on the pulse to find out new ways to keep bringing customers in for your clients.
Social media is one of those things that has been trumpeted as the next best thing since sliced bread but let’s face it: we all know that there is more hype than substance in that fact.
It’s typically very hard to sell this sort of service to your existing clients. They’ve got to be presold on the benefits of using the service, otherwise it’s like pushing a concrete slab up a hill.
One of the things that make social media so hard to sell is that it’s hard to equate a “like” or a “share” with real monetary value. Unlike a Google click or impression which actually costs you something.
If the “like” or “share” actually leads to a sale, then that’s another story. You won’t be able to stop the client from paying you money out of sheer gratefulness.
Of course, this is easier said than done, but it is possible to turn a Facebook Like or Twitter tweet into actual monetary value. This is one strategy to do that.
Step #1: Use Social Media As The Start Of The Sales Funnel
One of the best things about social media is anyone can be social on it. There are a lot of people who may not be so open and need a bit of “massaging” before they’ll even be comfortable to talk with you.
You’ve got to go back to Marketing 101 for this. The first step is to create a strong marketing offer, something that really resonates with them, is irresistible and is unique from any other offering that’s currently out there.
In exchange for this, you request some basic information. At the very least, you should get the prospect’s first name and primary email, but the secret sauce here is completely in the offer. If your offer has the “wow” factor, then they would be more than willing to part with more details. This is crucial if you work in B2B and want to gain access to data like how many employees are in their firm, descriptions of their projects, etc.
One other great way that your offer can ooze with persuasiveness is to limit it in some way, shape or form. For example, if you use time to limit it, quantity or the number of people who can actually fill in their details (and make it believable), then you’re going to get a lot more subscriptions as well.
Step #2: Familiarise Yourself To The Prospect
The next part of this process is to make yourself familiar to the prospect. Drip-feed them with a collection of articles, case studies, videos, white papers and anything else that supports your case.
The idea here is that little by little, they see that there is a compelling case for how you can solve their problem. In each piece that you publish, it’s important that you put a Call To Action that encourages people to actually reach out and contact you. Done correctly and this can allow you to have people calling you up for assistance, feeling like you’re significantly more approachable.
Step #3: Initiate Contact (If You’re Not Contacted First)
Of course, for the majority of businesses, you have to be the one who initiates contact first. Your salespeople will be adequately more equipped to dealing with these leads for the reason that they now have something to refer to: all the detailed information that you’ve been sending them!
There are going to be those companies where the mail gets lost and you’re basically back at square 1, but that can’t be helped. The fact of the matter is, it’s going to be a lot easier to build a connection with people when you’ve established a no-pressure connection with them first by providing high value information to them.
As you can see, social media doesn’t simply work by itself. It’s a tool that initiates the process but allows for more traditional marketing mediums to function more effectively. Done correctly, you can find that the leads you find through social media channels that start off as “likes” may actually end up being worth $1 or more.
At CLIPSED we run Facebook Campaigns see our sample campaign over here CLIPSED Sample Competition or please give us a call on 1300 885 772 to see how we can help you build your social media sales funnel entrance today.
It’s not enough for food brands on social media to feed information to users (pardon the pun). Food brands need to have an authentic relationship with diners via social sharing, and no cuisine is more suited to bonding than the Mexican dining craze hitting Australia.
Mexican restaurant chain Guzman y Gomez (GYG) are asking diners to take a photo of themselves and an ‘amigo’ eating at one of their restaurants before uploading it to Facebook to be voted on. Prizes up for grabs in the Re-Gifted competition include GYG’s newly-introduced gift cards, electric scooters and promo packs. Founder Steven Marks said: “In Mexican culture, enjoying food is a social and shared experience and GYG has always had that same philosophy. We therefore felt that the concepts of giving and re-gifting were a great way to engage our market to promote the introduction of our gift cards.”
Also hopping on the social-media bandwagon, or truck – is Taco Truck. They’re sharing tacos throughout Melbourne by leading followers to a new location every day via Facebook and Twitter:
Taco Truck’s website reveals little, instead the brand is relying on Melbournians to check Facebook and Twitter to find out where their next feed is coming from. And because they need to check it at least once a day, Taco Truck is keeping their social-media audience constantly engaged.
Fonda Mexican in Richmond are taking feedback (sorry), to an easy and accessible platform with an app on their Facebook page for those taking their quesadillas home. The survey’s questions range from how long your meal took to whether you prefer Prince Harry or Kate Middleton, and gaging how worthwhile a smartphone app would be for the restaurant to launch.
With social media engagement being embraced by Mexican restaurants (and trucks), there’s no need to munch on Mexican alone. CLIPSED can help any cuisine or brand have a conversation with users on social media to keep them coming back for more. Then again you could just upload a filtered snap of that lonely burrito to Instagram…
Social media is taking the mystery out of Christmas shopping by harnessing popular opinion to guide present buying this season.
A Consumersearch.com survey reveals Christmas shopping isn’t slowing down – just changing. Eighty percent of respondents to the survey will spend the same or more on Christmas gifts this year, and more prefer to research and shop for presents online than in stores. And whilst online shopping is nothing new – making it social to allow consumers to share ideas and wish lists is gaining momentum.
From Instagram to InstaKringle, PayPal are curing the indecisive office Secret-Santa ritual by partnering with online stores including eBay, Kogan and the charity Unicef. You can even print your own wrapping paper – meaning you don’t even have to leave the office (unless you really want to).
Once you’ve told the gift selector who you’re buying for, it narrows down your choices and of course lets you share your gift idea on social media.
Shoppers who hopped onto eBay in London over the weekend were greeted with what the nation really wants this Christmas by detecting trending product recommendations from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The smartphone technology offered consumers product demonstrations and virtual personal shoppers. Head of Buyer Experience Carrie Bienkowski explains that “By pairing views of social communities with eBay’s own vast selection of top Christmas gifts and mobile expertise we hope to give shoppers lots of inspiration and put a little bit of fun into Christmas shopping…Consumers now carry a global showroom in their pocket and are increasingly as inclined to seek recommendations online and shop mobile as visit the high street.”
eBay’s Tweet Barometer proves Bieber, Apple and clothing are the most sought-after gifts this season.
Bricks-and-mortar businesses needn’t feel left out of online marketing with the City of Melbourne decorating the city with giant Christmas presents. Each Christmas present contains a QR code, when the code is scanned the shopper is shown the top five shopping offers relevant to the consumer’s location.
So don’t leave your Christmas shopping at the last-minute mercy of whatever is left in store – listen to your friends and give gifts that have the collective suggestion of social media behind them. And contact CLIPSED to give your online store maximum exposure all-year round.
Sources:
http://www.sitepronews.com/2012/11/19/social-media-sites-great-for-christmas-shopping-ideas-survey/
https://www.paypal.com.au/pages/instakringle/index.html
http://internetretailing.net/2012/11/ebay-launches-a-mobile-social-shopping-experience-as-it-predicts-the-busiest-online-shopping-day-on-sunday-2-december/
http://tamebay.com/2012/11/visit-ebays-social-shopping-this-weekend.html
http://www.melbournebusinessprecincts.org.au/christmas-campaign-get-involved/
http://techau.tv/blog/images/f236feb7897c_12E48/QR-Code-Xmas-cards.jpg
Move beyond word-of-mouth to word-of-mo with the marketing acumen behind Movember
With Australians counting down the days until summer – just as many are eagerly anticipating the end of itchy Movember. Or are they?
Movember was founded to start conversations – conversations about mustaches, prostate cancer and men’s health. Co-founder and CEO Adam Garone explains that back in ’03, Movember relied heavily on word-of-mouth – but with the rise of social media “the personal amplification these guys have is just accelerated exponentially”.
Since its inception, Movember has raised more than $300 million and had nearly 2 million registrants from around the world. It should come as no surprise that the founders of Movember come from marketing backgrounds with a keen interest in user engagement. The competitions tab on the Movember website reveals no less than 18 competitions to engage purveyors of mustaches.
This weekend men all over the world will be deciding whether to, as Nivea for Men phrase it – Shave it or Save it. With an iPad up for grabs, Nivea are inviting users to upload photos of their facial hair to let the public make that choice. There are also hampers being given away for those who are just happy to vote on their fellow man’s facial hair.
Nick Charles from Gibe Digital offers this advice before marketing your brand alongside a charity, “Choose to get involved because you believe in the cause, not just because you think it will bring good exposure, and then be prepared to push the message to your communities like never before in order to get maximum traction.”
Cool Ridge have been donating 5c for every bottle of water sold during Movember, with the brand offering consumers a tailored barbershop quartet tune to help them raise money from their friends via social media.
Google Chrome have been engaging users via gamifying with online face-tracking mustache games to keep participants motivated during Movmber.
Partnering skincare, water and a search engine with Movember to raise awareness for men’s health is a conversation all good marketers should be having. Click here to find out how CLIPSED helped Movember partner beyondblue raise awareness using the power of social media.
Sources:
http://www.brandingpersonality.com/movember-and-the-social-media-mustache/