Anyone else lost in the B2B vs. B2C conversation?
Well, Jeff is here to break down the difference between the birds and bees!
Wait no, that’s not it. Maybe just watch the video…
For more videos like these check out our YouTube Page
A Collection of Contributions to the Internet since 2008
by Jeff Gibbard
Anyone else lost in the B2B vs. B2C conversation?
Well, Jeff is here to break down the difference between the birds and bees!
Wait no, that’s not it. Maybe just watch the video…
For more videos like these check out our YouTube Page
by Jeff Gibbard
Marketing and advertising are not synonymous terms. Advertising is a subset of techniques that fall under the category of marketing.
However in virtually all cases, marketing is synonymous with storytelling.
In some cases it is telling the story of a product or service, but in its best form, it’s telling the customer a story about themselves.
The following 3 reasons for storytelling are all rooted in the belief that good marketing, good storytelling, is about making your audience part of the story.
One of the most obvious reasons to use a story is to inspire a belief in something, mainly a belief in who we are. When you can unite people around a cause, a social object or any other movement, you create an opportunity for people to express their beliefs through their buying habits.
If you are the brand that gives back, it allows people to support you, because they believe themselves to be the type of person that gives back.
If you can get your audience to believe in something, you can influence their behavior.
Stories allow us to not only believe something about ourselves, but to identify with something so deeply that we continually support it, in spite of a superior product or service. Once a story captures our imaginations to such a degree that we begin to identify ourselves with phrases like “I only wear Puma,” or “I’m a Starbucks guy,” or “I’m proud to say I’m an Apple fanboy,” it becomes very difficult for another brand to capture that mindshare without an even more compelling story that causes the customer to rethink who they are.
The most successful brands continually reinforce the positioning by extending those stories through every customer touch point including customer service, advertising, and in-store experience.
Successful ad campaigns can often create belief and loyalty by creation tension between two options. A great example is the Samsung Galaxy commercials.
By poking fun at a competitor, it allows every person watching to choose their side. If you are an Apple fan, you are irritated by the suggestion that you are some sort of sheep, waiting in line for an “inferior product.” Meanwhile, if you are an Android fan, or better yet, Anti-Apple, you identify with the advertisers and choose to side emotionally with Samsung. This tension has been used for decades in advertising to create a scenario where the audience needs to pick sides.
It’s not enough to just copy another company. It’s not enough to copy-paste a tactic into the marketing mix.
To truly succeed in marketing, understand your audience, and figure out what they believe about themselves, create tension between your own company and a competitor, and work toward building loyalty through consistent storytelling at every interaction.
by Jeff Gibbard
It’s no secret that I don’t always like Facebook. A lesser known fact is that I’m not a huge fan of Mark Cuban either. He’s loud and abrasive, and I just generally find him to be an annoying person.
Recently, Cuban went to town on Facebook claiming that the company is intentionally messing with the News Feed to ensure that brands must pay to reach their fans. Since then, PageLever and several other companies have lept to Facebook’s defense, citing data to show that the EdgeRank changes have not made a negative impact on engagement metrics, even while page reach has decreased . This sort of data gives credence to the idea that Facebook’s EdgeRank algortihm is working and delivering more relevant posts to the news feed.
Before I get too deeply into this, I want to acknowledge a few things. Each side of this has a bias, Page Lever relies almost entirely on the Facebook newsfeed for their survival. Brands, especially BIG brands, moving away from Facebook would be a tragedy in their world. Cuban, lost a some money better on Facebook stock. I dislike Facebook for their shady behavior and a myriad of other reasons. [See other Facebook posts on this blog.]
Now that I’ve acknowledged the bias… [Read more…]
by Jeff Gibbard
Pinterest is the hot “new” thing. For a while I wasn’t sold on the idea because–for some strange unexplainable reason–I was loyal to Delicious. Once Delicious was purchased away from Yahoo, I thought the service would have new life. It did, for a while, and then they blew it. When Delicious relaunched it had a feature called Stacks, which was not all that different from a Pinterest board. Delicious Stacks were like Pinterest boards with the added organizational feature of tags. Sadly, Delicious discontinued Atacks and now I see little reason to use it over Pinterest.
While Delicious originally set the social world ablaze with a shared online bookmarking service, it wasn’t until Pinterest that the concept really gained mass appeal. While Delicious focused on organizing through data, Pinterest does it through images. The distinction seems insignificant enough on paper but in practice has opened up new avenues for retail sales, storytelling and marketing.
Both Pinterest and Delicious appeal to the Social Technographic profile of: Collector. Collectors are people who naturally like to gather groups of things and organize them and categorize them.
If you’d like to determine whether your target customer is right for Pinterest, I suggest using this tool from Forrester.
Pinterest can be used in a myriad of ways but here are just a few I’d like you to consider. I’m not giving away all of the ideas, just three to get you thinking.
Source: miniusa.com via Jeff on Pinterest
I use Pinterest to tell my story. I have an “About Me” board. I have a “Brand Loyalty” board. I have a board specifically for things I want, and my dream home, my dream office. All of these boards in aggregate, tell a story about me, about who I am and what I value and appreciate.
As a brand, you can use this same storytelling format to talk about the history of the company, the culture of the company, the people at the company, history of products and services…and much more.
Get creative.
Pinterest is a HUGE driver of retails sales. Why? Because the dominant demographic of Pinterest are women and the dominant topics are things we want to buy. I’m honestly not trying to be stereotypical or generalize, but women do tend to gravitate towards fashion, style and shopping than men. That being said, there are tons of gadgets, stylish flasks and style for men on Pinterest too. I even found the bracelet that Iron Man wears in The Avengers…WANT.
Source: geekshavelanded.com via Jeff on Pinterest
Pinterest is the online version of window shopping. Since each image is actually a link, you can link to individual product pages. If you add a price in the description of the Pin, you can even get listed in the “Gifts” section of Pinterest.
As a brand that sells products, think about how to organize and categorize your offering and make boards to guide people through the process of buying something. Do the work. Build the boards. And watch for 3 months. If you don’t see a bunch of traffic coming from Pinterest, something is wrong. Either your product isn’t right for Pinterest, you aren’t using good imagery, or the magnetic fields of the earth have shifted…because Pinterest is a retail beast!
Here’s the crazy one. Affiliate marketing allows you to link to a product or service with a unique URL and if someone clicks through and purchases something, you are entitled to a portion of the revenue. The key to using this effectively is two fold:
1. Don’t be shady. Disclose when you are using affiliate links. It’s actually the law.
2. Don’t simply be self-serving. Create value first.
Some ways that this works in practice. If you look at the Social Media Philanthropy Pinterest account (still under construction), you will notice that each board is targeted towards helping people do something. There’s a board for people who want to start a blog, a podcast or learn how to be a better public speaker. I populate these boards with a maximum of 15 links so that repinning the entire board becomes an easy option. Of the 15 links, the vast majority are resources BUT…the books are Amazon affiliate links, the software, services or products are typically affiliate links.
Source: bluehost.com via Social Media on Pinterest
The above link is an affiliate link.
To be clear though, my first goal is to make a valuable board for people looking to solve a problem. My way to get compensated for the curation of valuable resources, is to use affiliate links.
Think how this works for you.
Get creative.
by Jeff Gibbard
When is the last time you took a moment to reflect on your business? Is your marketing, lead generation and sales all a bunch of guess work?
I gave a speaking engagement several days ago at the Philadelphia Free Library in partnership with SCORE and Constant Contact. During this presentation I went over how to build a social media strategy. I didn’t provide many answers, but instead provided a variety of questions.
I’d like to use my own experience as an example in this post. I hope you find it helpful.
I spend a good portion of my time “giving away relevant information for free,” a phrase that a friend of mine Dave Yunghans of Constant Contact is quite fond of. It’s been part of my business strategy since before I had my own company, back when all I had was this blog where I was “generously donating my ideas and opinions…you’re welcome.”
I did this because people tend to want to do business with people that they like and trust, and there isn’t a much better way to be likable and trustworthy that giving away your product for free.
The truth of the matter is that these thoughts, perspectives and ideas are “my product.” However, when your “product” is knowledge–industry or technology specific insights–there is always more to learn, so no matter how much of your “product” you give away, some people will still likely hire you. As an example, someone could show me how to put up dry wall, I still never would, I’d hire it out.
MY pathway to closing sale is to showcase knowledge and expertise about Social Media either in-person or online, form the basis of a relationship through a conversation (either in-person or online), meet in-person, be likable, reinforce knowledge and–if it’s a good fit–send a proposal.
I know this, I have studied this, I have looked at how I make money. This is my process. I convert in-person, rather than from behind the computer screen, but my ability to convert is greatly supported by my online activities.
What is your process? How do YOU close business? Does your activity support the reality of how you make money?
For a while, I was really concerned with the Social Media “thought-leaders” liking my blog. I wanted the BIG names to follow me, to converse with me and to respect me. I wanted cred amongst my industry peers. While all of that is still somewhat important, it’s not what keeps the lights on. In fact, most would respect my blog much more for being honest about who my real targets are. The truth is, no Social Media Marketing big shot is going to hire me, and once I figured out that, along with my desire to work for myself, I realized who my audience actually is.
My audience expects me to speak to them, not at them. They want me to provide them with something useful, actionable and understandable. The newest, hottest trend in social, the geeky snippets of code, and the most recent subtle changes to Facebook or Twitter are too advanced for most and leave them feeling less empowered rather than more capable.
I bring this up because as I speak with small business owners and large companies alike, they are often focused on the wrong people and the wrong message. They don’t know who they are writing for or creating content for. They are often walking blindly, or being led around by their egos, instead of planning, listening and acting accordingly.
Who is your actual audience?
Sit down and think about your business. Make sure that what you are doing is a match for who your people are, what your resources are, who your customer are, etc.
All of these questions are good starting points. If nothing else, I want these questions to get you thinking. It’s often not what you do…it’s why you do it. Go back to basics and make sure that what you are doing is in line with why you are doing it. If why you are doing it is to make money, this is even more important.
How many times have you seen A Christmas Story? If your viewing habits around the holiday season were anything like my family’s you’ve seen the movie (in it’s entirety) about 20 times. My dad is that goofball who laughs at every silly joke on Christmas Eve…even after he’s already seen that the same scene earlier in the evening.
Aside from the main character Ralphie’s obsession with getting a Red Ryder BB gun, the youngster was very keen about a radio program called Little Orphan Annie. One of the ways the producers of the radio show were able to increase engagement was through a Secret Society Decoder Ring. This ring was mailed to children after they sent away using a sign-up form, found in tins of Ovaltine. In A Christmas Story, Ralphie opens the package with great anticipation, reading the welcome letter signed by Orphan Annie embracing him as their newest member. What a thrill for a fan!
We as humans like being ‘in the know’. I once joined a community called Local 83, an inside forum for updates on the latest John Mayer tour information. In 2008, I purchased tickets through the Local 83, getting first shot for the show in Camden, NJ. A few days later, I received an email from the Local 83, RE: Seating. ‘Awesome’, I thought, ‘they’re going to bump us back.’ Nope- they moved us up, all the way to row 5! When folks sign-up for these select groups, make sure to thank & treat them generously- they’ll never let you down.
In the radio show, the announcer relays a message to Ralphie that the secret code he now possesses is a very special one. Little Orphan Annie herself, the titular character, has entrusted this with him. When you empower your community in such a way, you’re instilling confidence within them. They’re now responsible with your message, so be sure it’s the right one!
Alas, when Ralphie finally does discover what the secret from Little Orphan Annie was, he’s disappointed. All the work, the excitement, the anticipation, all of it only lead to an advertisement. Anybody could ‘Drink Ovaltine’, but he thought they had something special just for his Secret Circle. There are a lot of awesome projects happening in the world. People place their money, time, and heart into these groups in the hope that something good will come of their efforts. If rewarded with corporate filler, they’re left with a bitter taste in their mouthes. Be careful- your most loyal supporters can become your most vocal detractors. Like Jeff wrote in The Prelude to Trust, these fans are trusting you. Handle with care.
What’s the coolest side narrative you’ve ever experienced? Did you send away for a secret membership a kid like Ralphie?
***
This post was authored by Jon Steiert, Storyteller and Social Media Swiss Army Knife for True Voice Media.
by Jeff Gibbard
I would argue that one of the main reasons that Social Media has been so widely adopted is that it gives us the ability to express our identity. With our own curation tools and megaphones, we’re given the ability to express, cultivate and, in some cases, find our identity.
Identity is the story we tell ourselves, about ourselves. It’s the story that we tell others to define who we perceive ourselves to be through years of intimate observation. By living through our own experiences, seeing through our own eyes, and hearing our own internal monologue throughout everything, we create something that we call, an identity.
This story not only defines how we see ourselves, but also how we relate to others and respond to circumstances.
People are very attached to who they are, their tendencies, the story that they tell about themselves. This impacts how they react online, how they react in business and how they react in their personal lives.
It’s worth noting that what we accept as everyday life, is really a series of interactions between unique identities and the synchronization or friction between the story people tell themselves, and the one others say about them. This paints the picture that all interactions are, in reality, a function of how we identify with the subjects in the interaction, namely ourselves and the other “characters.” Furthermore, friction often arises in circumstances where an outsider challenges someone to think outside of their own story or questions the legitimacy of the story itself. After all, “who are they to tell me who I am?!”
The truth is, identity actually matters more than you care to consider
More often than not, we take this layer of human behavior for granted. It just is.
The reason Myers-Briggs and other personality assessments are so popular is that they identify people’s tendencies making it easier to interact with them effectively. Most personality assessment tests are scored by the answers people give about how they react in certain scenarios which creates a scenario where a bias can arise out of the answer a person may innately know is the truth, versus how they want to be perceived. Who a person is, is as much as product of who they want to be, as it is of who they really are.
One of the reasons companies are successful in their marketing efforts, is that either knowingly or unknowingly, they are telling their customers the story about themselves; either who their customer really is, or who their customer wants to be. This is often what is lost in marketing and advertising.
As an example, look at the two primary competing smartphone platforms:
This is how the marketing of these devices is appealing to their audiences. Apple has been a shining example of selling the sizzle, not the steak, because their ideal customer wants sizzle. By contrast, many Android makers have appealed to their ideal customer by creating a differentiation from “the man” (Apple). But even in these two examples, this only touch a fraction of the overall customer base. Even in those two examples they share similarities yet are fundamentally different. But in both cases, the identity of each of those target customers plays very heavily into their choice of mobile device.
Rarely when companies begin building a Social Media strategy, a customer service strategy, a Marketing strategy–or any other strategy for that matter–does identity come into discussion.
Customers are often segmented by income, demographics and buying habits, but that is like frosting on a cake. What motivates those behaviors is a story that people are saying about themselves. It is a series of underlying factors that will define whether someone is interested in talking to someone from America on their customer service call or if the outsourced option is appropriate.
When a company is trying to initiate a technology change in a company, the biggest hurdle is often the people who say about themselves, that they aren’t particularly tech savvy, or that “it’s going to take me forever to learn all of this.” If they say it, it’s true. There is no way to convince someone that thinks they are bad with technology that they are good.
I don’t have this whole thing figured out yet, but it’s occurred to me over the last several weeks, during meetings with partners, prospects and clients, that my biggest hurdle is often overcoming or working within someone’s tendencies. I often will try to guess someone’s Myers-Briggs profile when I first meet them and normally with a fairly high accuracy. I do this because as a high energy, optimist that thrives in busy, fast paced environments filled with people, I can be far too overwhelming for a even-tempered introvert with significant doubts about things. As a creative dreamer-type, I’m often difficult to understand for the organized and grounded type. I do my best to assess the other person prior to getting into any serious discussion about how to work together. I also try to acknowledge that being a high energy optimist and a creative dreamer are part of how I identify myself and sometimes inhibit me from taking part in conversations that I shut myself out of.
In any event, I challenge you to bring IDENTITY into your conversations, no matter what you do. No matter what business you are in, there is someone on the other side, and their connection to what they think about themselves is often far more set in stone than anything you have to say to them. If you are trying to communicate with a market segment, get to understand them more deeply than you ever had in the past. Take the time to actually talk to some individuals in that group. Find out who they really are and what they value. I think you’ll be surprised by what you find.
by Jeff Gibbard
In the ongoing dialogue about Social Media you can find a number of recurring themes.
There is:
One of my favorites is trust.
Trust is a foundational element in successful social media marketing as well as sales, leadership, and teamwork. Trust is a prelude to loyalty. When someone trusts you, they are more willing to take your advice, buy from you, recommend you to others or come back for another visit.. Trust is something that gives people a warm, fuzzy, and comfortable feeling about decisions.
When we discuss trust in one-to-one personal relationships, it intuitively makes sense. Because it is something felt, it is very easy for an individual to listen to their gut and decide whether they find another person trustworthy. This feeling can rely on a number of things: body language, choice of words, reputation or just a feeling. Everyone comes into new relationships with some sort of “baggage” and therefore are more or less inclined to trust people. Some people are the type to start out distrusting and make people work to earn their trust. Others start out trusting and give people the opportunity to maintain that trust.
We can run polls to determine a sense of how people relate to a company, but that data is similar to a balance sheet, it only represents a moment in time. Trust is not a static feeling, unflinching and immovable. Trust is a constantly evolving, frequently tested sliding scale and therefore, generally speaking, trust is hard to quantify and hard to measure. However in spite of that, we get the sense that some brands are more “trusted” than others.
Why is that?
If trust is constantly evolving, then we can assume that it is influenced over a period of time. For instance, someone you’ve known for 1 week has a volatile sliding scale; one false move could plunge a person into the no-trust zone. By contrast, your best friend that you’ve known since grade school, that has never lied to you and has always had your back, will need to work much harder to lose your trust, they’ve built up years of it.
I have the pleasure of knowing someone that is, in all facet of his being, a leader. His name is Clint Westbrook and he is the Vice President of Strategic Solutions at Aramark. During one of our discussions about leadership we began talking about the nature of trust and he said something profound which I will paraphrase.
Confidence is the prelude to trust. Before someone trusts you, they have to have confidence in you.
I don’t know how you, the reader, are struck by this, but I actually asked him to stop talking so that I could really absorb what he said.
Think about those people that you trust, and whether or not you have confidence in them?
The answer is probably yes to most of those. Confidence, as it turns out, is a leading factor in the acquisition of trust. When you have earned someone’s confidence, you are on your way to earning their trust.
So now we can begin to look at this as a process. Work backwards: If you want trust, you need to earn confidence; if you want confidence, you need to…
Companies that follow this pattern earn our trust because we are confident that they will meet (or exceed) our expectations. On the flip side, companies that don’t do this will rarely ever earn our trust.
We are no longer solely influenced by an individual incident. What was once an individual experience is now a collective experience. When a brand betrays our trust and we take the Internet, we influence the perception of others which colors the lens. “Brand” is now defined as the aggregate of everyone’s voices. The importance of individual interactions is magnified. The imperative to consistently earn confidence is higher than ever. This is why Social Media can not fix a company’s brand issues, it can only magnify what already exists. It is not just the voice of the customer either, because employees have a voice too, and so do vendors.
Therefore if Social Media is going to be used to affect the way people relate to a brand, the company culture is the first thing that needs to be looked at. We can all agree that Social Media is simply something that now exists and is not going away anytime soon. We collectively participate in this new world of open dialogue and sharing. This is why the concept of Social Business is so important. A company that understands how this new world is changing the nature of business, will alter it’s business accordingly.
Trust is vital to the long term success of a company; confidence is the prelude to trust. If the doors and windows to your business were opened, if every customer were to relay their experience, if every employee were to contribute their input, would we have confidence in your business?
My girlfriend has been trying to get me to take her to the zoo for a long time. We went on Sunday, July 22 to the Philadelphia Zoo and enjoyed a great time. The another reason I personally wanted to go was that I have an excellent social media idea for zoos (and museums, other institutions of such nature).
The Philadelphia Zoo is already, in a way, executing my vision.
QR codes have “long been” a topic of great debate in social media circles. I am of the opinion that QR codes are quiet useful and smart when placed properly. Having giant QR codes on billboards of busy highways aren’t exactly dollars well spent (or safe). Having them in a place where your audience is engaged and ready to access media via a mobile device…is spot on.
In front of every animal exhibit there is a small sign with the creature’s picture, origin, and interesting factoid. For some of these animals there were avenues to access richer content through the use of a QR code.
Sometimes it was a for a video of the animals being introduced to their new homes or additional information on how to help preserve endangered species.
One thing the two of us noticed were the surprising number of young people (30 and under) exploring the zoo that day. Many of them did have little children en tow (creating a stroller slalom) but plenty of couples were there sans toddlers. If this demographic is there they should be invited to share zoo activities in ways they are already equipped to: smartphones!
Record audio of the newborn lion cubs that live on the property; film the penguins exploring their new habitat; upload a photo gallery of the birds from the Avian Center. Create content that is only available from within your institution’s campus- the trick is to generate compelling enough material that will attract plugged in animal lovers. Of course, once these files are on cellphones they will potentially be viewed and shared by those outside of a zoo, museum, etc, but that’s the best free Word of Mouth Marketing you can achieve these days.
I was very happy to see that our hometown zoo had taken to the wonders of smartphones. Still, I feel there room for growth. The Philadelphia Zoo does have an app that is advertised to all guests upon arrival: why not house all content within the app? What I mean by this is to have all additional copy, photos, videos, and audio built into the app so to increase speed and rate of consumption. People will view additional media if its provided in a fashion that is both compelling and concise.
‘Speed is king’, isn’t only applicable for the animal kingdom.
Have you been to a public institution that is implementing social media to it’s fullest ability? Are they making all their patrons aware of their efforts?
by Jeff Gibbard
When my wife and I go out to dinner with other couples, we talk about all manner of things. Sometimes the topic of Social Media comes up…maybe I bring it up?
When explaining the concept of Foursquare and Yelp to others, my wife often uses a visual metaphor: Social Media is a cloud that sits on top of the city; it’s always there.
Wherever you go in the city you can tap into this cloud of information to make more informed buying decisions, or learn about a landmark, restaurant or business. The majority of this information is provided by people like you and me, because not only can we tap into this cloud, we can contribute to it. It is people like you and me who have helped build the largest, most frequently updated, most frequently used knowledge-base this world has ever known, the Internet. Many of the data points in this giant, fluffy, virtual information cloud that sits on top of our world are comprised of 140 character or less statements such as “The pizza at Nick’s is disgusting #NotKidding” or Foursquare tips like “ask Donna to make your martini, she’s the best bartender in the city.”
All of this information is readily available to some or all of us depending on privacy settings. So what does this mean for businesses?
How do you, as a business, determine what your customers want or need?
How do you make decisions about products or services?
Do you know who are you best and worst employees?
Do you know who are your best and worst customers?
All of these questions, and more, can be answered simply by tapping into the web. The answers to all of these questions can be influenced by how you use the information you find.
The smart business determines where relevant conversations take place online. If you are a restaurant, you need to know about Yelp and Foursquare, and you should probably take notice of Twitter and Facebook. If you are a software company, you’ll want to find forums or blogs and certainly monitor Twitter. If you are a company that sells a retail product, you’ll want to find the online channels that sell your widget, and consult the reviews. The key is to actively seek out places where people share their ideas and opinions about your product or service. The information there is incredibly valuable and requires far less effort to gather than through other means…
I’ll never forget the Animaniacs sketch, Survey Ladies.
Whenever I hear the word “survey,” I can’t help but hear these women in my head saying “would you like to take a survey.” Surveys are a mechanism to find out information. Most companies do this poorly.
What incentive is there for people to be interrupted and give up time in their day simply to help your company improve? Surveys are useful–especially when kept brief, incentivized or used in the appropriate context–but people are more likely to turn to their social outlets and volunteer their ideas and opinions on their own terms.
Have you sat down to think about a process to collect and analyze information from the web. Are you tapping into that cloud?