McIntosh Marketing Blog

It was just a matter of time before social networks became the subject of Hollywood film makers. But let’s admit it, Facebook and Hollywood are in the same business: communications. And so here comes the new movie: The Social Network.

In October of 2010, everyone will get to see what drove Facebook to not only the largest social network in the world, but what has become a paradigm shift is how we associate and discover new information and friends.

And what is more amazing is that Facebook has 500 million people that they can promote to for absolutely free. Do you think that Facebook will ever start a movie studio? Imagine the leveraging power that Facebook has become in its media impact, not just within the social networking universe. Fans could be converted into paying customers for all types of brand extensions.

Yes it sounds unbelievable but it is true…

There is one company that is going for broke with their marketing. They sold $1.1 BILLION DOLLARS in 3 days …just this week-end!

They are selling items that cost hundreds of dollars each and for the most part their products require that you sign up for  1 to 2 years of additional (costly) monthly services.

In the midst of a massive and stifling recession this company moves forward using every tool in the marketing handbook.  Tools that you can use right now with only minimal prep time.

This company has utilized every Online Marketing tool and strategy.  By the way, this was done at very little cost as well.

I did a search for their new product and here is what I found online:

42,900.000 Blogs with with content about their product
9,730,000 Pages online with content about their product
363,000 Images of their product
18,338 “likes” on their product Facebook page
10,800 videos with content about their product
2,140 News Items online with content about their product

Most people consider this company to be a technology company. After reviewing these figures I am solidly convinced that this company is a Marketing company.

It generates BUZZ like no one else and as a result it moves product.

These are the same tried and true proven methods of Online Marketing that we deliver for our clients day in and day out.

And they too are reaping the rewards from this amazingly effective marketing.

Who is this amazing Company?

It is Apple!

This week end they sold an estimated $1,139,000,000.00 worth of the new iphone 4g.

Yes they did this over the week-end. With a minimal cost to them too!

So the next time someone tells you “Online marketing doesn’t work!”

Remove that person from your circle of trusted advisors for they know not what they speak of !

Author: Carlos Gamez
Business Development, McIntosh Marketing
[email protected]

Image by:   Garret Albright

I recently read in Wired magazine about this term, “Word-of-Finger”.  They defined it as:

adj. Marketing communicated via the keystrokes of social media.  It attracts advertisers because, unlike traditional word of mouth, it can be monitored through Twitter and Facebook.

I love this phrase.  It communicates perfectly exactly what you should be doing in your business’ marketing efforts.  You want people to review your business on Yelp and Google Maps, you want people following you on Twitter and you want fans on your Facebook page.  The more people that are “typing” about you, the better it is for your business.

How do you get people to review you, or follow you?  The answer is simple: You have to be active in social media first.  When you are making your presence known on the internet and you are actively communicating with your fans and followers, people will “type” about you and your business.  People are more willing than ever to tell everyone they know about a good (or bad) experience with a business.  With a few quick keystrokes, they can make a post or a tweet or a review and get your business out to hundreds or thousands of like minded individuals.  And they are completely willing to (and will) do this once you have built up a relationship with them. Keep the communication flowing, be out there, make your presence known and you will succeed in the new world of social media.

If you’re not already, get out there and get busy in social media. The first fingers that should be talking about you are yours!

Best Buy http://www.bestbuy.com/is a major brand whose brand marketing most definitely includes social media marketing.

Brad Smith, Director, Interactive Marketing & Emerging Media from Best Buy opened things up talking about a “new marketing reality”. Customers are out there, but they’re bombarded with messages. Customers are not listening to us (marketers & advertisers) anymore. Social media is all about communicating.  Customers are listening to each other instead and tuning out marketing messages.

Each company’s journey in social media is different. If your social media consultant starts the meeting with suggestions about starting a Twitter account, leave the room. Treat social media like any other major undertaking with planning, understanding the marketplace, goals and objectives.

Tenets that support Best Buy Social Media Marketing:

• Deliver
• Blow you away
• Never leave you hanging
• Make a difference
• Make sure you know all we know

Brad makes the distinction of social media tools and the behaviors we seek to engage and influence. “I don’t use Facebook, I participate. It’s a two way thing.  You’re not half way into social media. When you’re in you’re in.”

Best Buy’s Social Media Marketing Mission:

To connect customers and employees with the Best Buy brand and each other through the right tools platforms and collaboration delivered when, where and how they want.

The focus is on the customer, not the company. “It’s not about what Best Buy wants customers to do, it’s about giving people the tools to connect with each other and employees whenever and however they want.”

Best Buy Social Media Guidelines:

• (Essentially don’t be stupid)
• Listen
• Be findable, think distributed
• It’s about people
• Enable creation
• Make it social
• Listen some more
• Be authentic
• Be transparent
• Keep it simple
• Make a commitment

Best Buy and Twitter – @Twelpforce
The thing that makes it work is that they didn’t start with a “Twitter strategy”. It was born of a customer need. Best Buy simply leveraged an asset they knew they had with a customer need. Customers needed advice and there are 150,000 Best Buy employees world wide that are already being helpful. Twitter proved to be an effective platform for that. 2,500 employees are signed up to work as part of @Twelpforce.

When Best Buy started their social journey with Facebook, Brad says they were overzealous and promoted commercial messages to the community. The community responded, “not to do that”. Customers want access to the brand, advice, tips exclusive access that others don’t get.

Best Buy Learnings From Their Social Media Experience:

• Listen first, talk second
• Its OK to fail
• The same social mores apply online as offline
• Customers don’t care about channels
• We have to be ready ro respond
• Customers will tell us and everyone else where our organization is broken. And expect a fix
• People are forgiving

Overall Best Buy is treating their social media experience as a journey. Best Buy has learned the importance of listening instead of pushing.  It’s an impressive example, not only of a very large brand finding value in a humble and transparent, customer focused social media effort, but one of true Minnesota ingenuity when it comes to new technology and marketplace innovation.

Here are three ways to use Facebook to advertise your business:

1. Attempt the direct sale – “Buy my product”
2. Practice the “Give and you will Get”
3. A little of both

“Buy My Product”

Most businesses coming from the offline world try and fail at the direct sale approach on Facebook. You can liken this technique to the offline world of telemarketing. Call and ask enough people to buy your painting and eventually someone will. Many others get upset by your phone call, but you rarely hear from them after you hang up.

Where this idea REALLY breaks down on Facebook is that now everyone you upset has a voice and a place to air their grievance. Ask enough people to buy your product in a way that upsets them, and you will find yourself spending more time dealing with the ill effects of your marketing than actually shipping products.

Give and You Will Get

A technique that has far reaching possibilities is the “give and you will get”.

In theory it goes like this: Find the public that likes your products. Give them information, love, care, a friendly face, images, whatever – something that they would like to have. There are any number of ideas for this – it just needs to be free, something that they would really like and spreads goodwill about you and your company, and gets them to tell others about you and your work.

Eventually, with the amount of buzz and eyeballs that you attract by “giving”, someone will buy a product of yours and you will “get” money.

Now, in reality, this varies greatly by industry and idea. If the products are only for teenagers in Boston, it may take longer than if your products are beloved by all Newsweek readers. But if you are giving them what they like, they are your correct public, and they are telling others about you – you WILL sell products.

A Sprinkle of Both

Once you have sowed goodwill amongst your public, and you continue to give them great content and help, remind them from time to time that you have products for sale.

You don’t even have to hit them over the head with it.  Simply putting a notification that you just got in a new product will remind them and will get sales.

But no matter what, you should at some point ask them to support you by buying your products in a way your public likes to be spoken to.  If your public are people that expect everything to be free and think “why pay when you can steal”, you may have to be a bit more clever by saying words like “donate” or “help support me so that I can keep giving all this free advise away…”.

A Real Life Example

A friend of mine is a fantastic painter and she wants to use social networks to help sell her painting. Her public could be moderate to wealthy people.

• So she goes on Facebook and invites everyone she knows. She tells other people that love art and support art to “like” her.
• She could give or make Christmas or Birthday cards for her fans to use. Heck, she could probably even customize some of them.
• Of course, she is super friendly, and she herself reciprocates and helps support and promote other artists.
• Maybe she holds a contests or allows people to vote on what subject she should paint next.
• Maybe she raffles off a painting or a custom drawing to her fans for exchange for telling others about her.
• When she finishes a new painting, she let’s everyone know about it, and makes sure everyone knows that there is only one, and first come, first serve.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head. In reality, this painter has used social networks to her advantage, and continues to. (She also works with us, so she understands all this already!)

You can Buy dreXel’s original paintings on etsy

Although there are a million ways to market your products incorrectly, the big mistake I see is to forget that your public are humans and fail to build relationships with them.

Making 5,000 “friends” on a social network like Twitter or Facebook is a good idea. But if all you do is send them bulk advertising messages, it’s not going to work.  You’re dealing with live people who have interests and ideas and opinions. The more you find out what is needed and wanted and deliver THAT, the better off you’ll be.

When someone receives a generic “Thank’s for following” plus a link to where they can go to give their hard-earned money to that Twitter member they just decided to follow, they are rarely appreciative. This is because the human element is missing.

The first thing you always do in a successful marketing campaign is research. You find out if your proposed business is in demand and by whom. Then your marketing plan will be geared toward that public. You get to know this public via various channels they use. Yes, Twitter and Facebook are fine channels, as long as your purpose is to GET TO KNOW YOUR PUBLIC THERE.  Then as your marketing campaign rolls out, feedback from your public will help you understand what they like and don’t like, what they’re looking for, etc. This will continue to streamline your campaign messages so that they are effective.

There are research tools you can buy and get for free online, keyword research tools, search features on social networks to see what topics are of interest to people currently, and various kinds of feedback forms and surveys you can create for your public, once you’ve identified who they are. Google’s Keyword Tool is a free and valuable keyword research tool, and a good place to start.

Just remember that your public are made up entirely of individual human people. And getting to know them, their interests, their needs and wants, is the only way you will succeed in any business venture.

The Big Three has meant for decades, “GM, Ford and Chrysler”. But with their problems comes the next evolution of that term, particularly when talking about web marketing, SEO and SEM.

The Big Three in the internet marketing world is Facebook, Google and YouTube. Make it big with these three media giants and you will make it big in business. Let’s be real. Facebook is social media, Google is how you find almost anything and YouTube is the new TV. Hopefully you are gearing your mind-set, your marketing budget and how you interface with the world’s newest Big Three.

I know what most are thinking right now, “A blog is not a web site.”

Yes it is. In fact, for small businesses and entrepreneurs a blog really is the most ideal format in which to have your web site. But more than that, a bog as your web site puts you in control of the most important battle in web marketing: Generating original and  relevant content.

Having spoken to hundreds of small business owners, entrepreneurs, Dr.’s and even those in direct marketing, I know that blogs are not fully understood as to what they are and their power. While most have heard the term and even read them from time to time, most have not really understood what they are and how they are in reality your most effective marketing and PR tool when utilized correctly.

A blog is a a web site, but with some added bonuses. Communicating often and with passion positions you as a thought leader, an authority in the field. Not only that, every time you blog you are casting more fishing lines into the sea of business opportunity. Maybe your next blog will not generate a sale directly, but it starts a conversation, opens the door to a potential referral, or even being quoted in a trade magazine. Blogs set you apart, and the more you do and the more articulate you become, you start to rise the above the others.And studies have shown that the more you do it, this builds a cumulative benefit in that search engines recognize an active blogger, and so you earn higher rankings.

The Blog is short for “Web Log.”  Blogs are independent journals that allows you to not only demonstrate your competence, but it also allows you to add pictures and videos. This is your single biggest opportunity to get your voice heard. In fact, it can be the very anvil in which you can shape public opinion about you, your service or product, or even trends within your industry. Why be a bystander, a mere spectator, when you can be an active contributor to the ideals opinions of what is being commented upon. Blogs allow you to do this better than anything else.

Blogs can be placed into your social media sites, such as Facebook. Versus making a comment, link from Face book right to your blog. This build credibility and drives traffic your web site and blog.

Probably the best place to start is WordPress.org. This allows you to start your blog on a free format that is highly SEO friendly.

Let blogging become a way of communicating, sharing your vision and thus garnering more attention and business.

Recently Facebook has changed the phrase “become a fan” to the single word, “like”. While this is not their only change, a comment must be made on their choice of words. Welcome to the world of semantics, or is said in the world of marketing, “hot buttons”.

If you spend some time on contemplating this seemingly innocent switcheroo, this change is a clue to the evolving world around us. Believe me, Facebook put a lot of time and thought into this before making this bold, simplistic move. Something so simple as a change of words is actually a comment on how we view things and how we interact.

A fan looks up to something, “like” is equal to, on the same level. It also means I am not obsessed, like some fans are. I enjoy your company and I am probably not fixated or blinded by a zealousness.

When you look up the word “like”, it has many meanings, all of which mean different things to different people, all suggesting various emotions and thoughts. Moreover, I am sure that in the day to day jargon of how we live, we use the word “like” much more often than “fan.”

When frozen yogurt went explosive as a business model a few years, some saw that it could go viral as well.

Luis Garcia, CEO of Frapy’s Frozen Yogurt in Mission Viejo, has embraced social media as a prime way to reach new customers, while keeping a personal feel with his ardent fans. He mainly uses Facebook and his web site, but tons of personal contact and customer service.

More than that, Luis has established a high-end model for frozen yogurt, insisting on high-end ingredients while staying competitive on price.  Additionally, he has dressed up the shop itself with a comfortable, European feel. Makes sense, as Luis was born in Madrid, Spain. This explains the European feel of live music, parties and hosting social events. Luis has blended a cafe feel with one of OC’s favorite treats.

His business model has been so successful, that Luis is now opening a second shop in Lake Forest, CA and has garnered a recent article in business section of the Orange County Register.  Luis’s approach to high-end quality and social media is the new business model that entrepreneurs will need to embrace to be successful.