Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much!
Social reach and frequency are tangential to good marketing, as long as your content is relevant to your market. How many times does a potential customer or partner need to see your message before they convert? You might as well ask how many licks it takes to get to the centre of a Tootsie Pop (remember that old TV commercial?). Some will bite after a dozen licks; for others, it’s three—depends on where your audience is in a given moment when they see your message.
You’ve been wronged. The service was terrible. You went unseen, disrespected and abused. You didn’t get your money’s worth. The software is sloppy, the people were rude, the entire experience was lousy.
A letter to the organization is called for. At the very least, you’ll get an apology, some free samples, and maybe, just maybe, they’ll fix the problem for everyone who comes after you. How generous of you to dig in and share the vitriol.
Better put a sharp point on it, personalize it and make it sting.
Before social media, before modern digital marketing and before DCX and digital transformation, I spent much of the late 90s and early 2000s studying and experimenting with online influence. In February of 1999, I opened a lab to test and learn and in the process, was one of the many contributors to shape the future of digital marketing and customer engagement. Shortly after joining Altimeter Group in 2012, I shared all of the research I had collected and more and published the findings in a comprehensive report, “The Rise of Digital Influence.” In fact, that report is still considered the standard in understanding how people influence the impressions and actions of others online.
Ted Rubin is a leading social marketing strategist, acting CMO of Brand Innovators, and co-founder of the recently launched Prevailing Path.
The person who came up with the concept of “social listening” probably didn’t intend for the name to be ironic, but here we are. So many brands treat social listening as little more than another item on the analytics checklist. They look at the numbers, check out the latest social marketing content, come up with an idea, and then work backward to make it fit their own audience. If they’re really ambitious, they might take a spin through the mentions on the company’s branded social pages (before promptly going back to ignoring them).
If you want to be heard above the growing social media “noise,” you need to first listen to your consumers so when you do speak, you get it right. What are they saying, what are they feeling, what are their pain points, what solutions do they need?
If you make something easy to do, people are more likely to do it. They’re also more likely to come back to you in the future when they need a similar product or service. Nothing complicated about that, but it’s a point that many brands and service providers miss at a time when technology should be making things more convenient, not the other way around.
Let’s face it… shoppers don’t become advocates and influence others in order to champion brands out of the goodness of their hearts, or because of a brilliantly-designed logo or a couple coupons they can download from the internet.
Is it any surprise that Amazon Payments has become a success story? Well, sort of. Despite Amazon’s well-earned reputation for developing efficient eCommerce solutions, going toe-to-toe with PayPal is no small task. The truth is that both services work quite well, and each has carved out its own (very large) niche in addition to the places where the two overlap. I’ve been seeing Amazon Payments pop up quite often in my day-to-day life as a consumer lately, and simple, safe, efficient payment options are always en vogue from a business perspective.