Day: September 15, 2010

In Real Life & Social Media Perception is Reality!

I have the great privilege of working with many different people inside a variety of diverse organizations. In doing such work, it has become clear to me that these organizations and the people that work there- share one thing in common. Perception is Reality.

You see… whatever their PERCEPTION of something is– IS their REALITY of something.

What does this mean? Are you lost?

Ok—here goes…

Whatever a person “perceives” to be true in the world around them (their perception) is completely true to them (their reality).

All people take in information and then make decisions about the information in different ways. So no matter how a person goes about the process of making a decision– the end result is the same! So think about it from a marketing point of view… the other person now has a “perception” of you in their mind and this perception is their reality.

So the learning lesson we must ponder as we communicate with OR market to others is this:

It is not what “we say we are all about” but it is what “others say we are about.”

Do others perceive you the way you hope that they do? This is a question we MUST all ask ourselves.

The best marketing and communications individuals are those that are able to purposefully and intentionally make the “perception they seek” closely match how they are ultimately perceived by others.

Do you ever think about how you/your organization seeks to be perceived and whether or not this is the reality of how others actually perceive it? Do you realize that the superb new tools available to all of us through Social Media—give us a great way to impact how we market ourselves and control perception and reality?

How do you perceive this post? I hope it matches the reality I was seeking to achieve.

Ryan T. Sauers

Encouraging Executive Participation in Social Media #MMchat with @ScottMonty

For our seventh MarketerMonday Chat #MMchat our SPECIAL guest was @ScottMonty who is the Global Digital & Multimedia Communications Manager at Ford and also the man who coined the term “tweetup” and our topic for the evening was Encouraging Executive Participation in Social Media!

This is only the seventh #MMchat we’ve held and see #MMchat for more details on MarketerMonday Chat our previous SPECIAL guests, transcripts and our upcoming schedule.

Thanks again to Scott as well as all of you AWESOME #MMchat tweeps who joined us and participated in this interesting and very interactive chat!

Check out the full transcript of tonite’s chat at http://bit.ly/Scott_Monty and please join us next week as @JeffTheSensei joins us! Jeff Wilson is Head Mountaineer at Sensei Integrated and a member of the @TheSocialCMO Crew and will be joining us September 20th at 8:00 pm EST to discuss Online Demand Generation!

Cheers

Jeff Ashcroft

@TheSocialCMO

B2B marketing without creative has no punch

The purpose of this post isn’t to argue the merits of inbound marketing with creative content. I believe that any B2B marketing professional still debating against that is probably not open to the points I want to make.
Since I speak as senior creative director, you may be surprised at how broadly I apply the word “creative” to B2B marketing. I think every part of the process, from assessment of an opportunity or problem, to the formulation of a strategy and budget, to the creative development of messaging and imagery, to the way your story is told all benefit from being more creative.

Fight for your right to be more creative.

Quite a few years ago, I was introduced to an assistant general manager of a client’s field office by one of their marketing directors. She mentioned I was a creative from the ad agency and, as we shook hands, he said,“Oh yeah, you guys are the ones that do all our fluffy stuff!”

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In Love with Loyalty?

Everything we do – as people, as companies – is about creating relationships, engaging the audience, shaping and creating true loyalty. We’ve made it our business, at least in buzz words, to focus on the emotional bonds between humans and brands. And, don’t fool yourself those emotional bonds are very real. In fact, I give you Dove.

So, if these emotional bonds are real, then why do so many loyalty programs lack a balance in considering rational decisions that humans make, as well as those emotional triggers which are by far much stronger, much more engaging, and can be the foundation of true loyalty. In the book “Switch” (by Chip & Dan Heath), the Heath brothers explain to us that the rational side of our brain is comparable to a rider and the emotional side, to an elephant. Think about that for a moment: if the rider knows where he is going, then he can easily guide the elephant there, right? But, what if the elephant decides he’d much rather get that jar of peanuts; you know the one that is 12 miles off course. Who wins – rider or elephant?

So, what does this have to do with loyalty? In early indications of an upcoming Maritz Canada Inc. research*, over half of the respondents say that the company brand influences their decision to join the loyalty program in the first place and also agree that the loyalty program becomes an important part of their relationship with the brand. Not only that, but they also say that they actually modify their shopping habits based on where they can earn loyalty points.

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