Tip of the week…

Everyone wants to innovate, but creating the environment that encourages it can be a challenge. A report from Forrester indicates that the most innovative businesses have a customer-oriented culture. Forrester: Want Marketing Innovation? Change Your Corporate Culture—via CMS Wire

Stat of the week…

Marketing B2Cs is quite different than marketing B2Bs. For the proof, look no further than which social networks they use. Of B2Cs, 67 percent are primarily active on Facebook. Twitter (10 percent) is the next network of choice. For B2Bs, the primary networks are LinkedIn and Facebook (29 percent each). What Social Marketing Strategies Do B2Bs Use?—via Brafton

List of the week…

From the Discovery Channel’s use of Vimeo to Miami Ad School’s Underground Library, 83 great examples of top social media marketing are broken down into 24 categories. Need social media marketing inspiration? Learn from the best. 83 Incredible Examples of Social Media Marketing—via Memeburn

Stroke of genius of the week…

Domino’s message: What goes better than pizza and a movie?

If you’re in Rio de Janeiro, you might get a craving for pizza after watching a movie. Domino’s of Brazil created special labels for popular DVDs that transform as the player heats them. When you eject the disc, not only has the cover changed into a pizza, but it smells like one, too. Domino’s Turns DVDs into Pizza with Thermal Ink—via OCWeekly

And finally…

Even though Chanel doesn’t have an active Pinterest account, it still ranked first among luxury fashion brands on the platform. Chanel earned an average of 400 pins and more than 3,600 repins per day. Chanel Leads Luxury Fashion Brands on Pinterest—via Mashable

Reaching customers in a local area requires a combination of marketing channels ranging from social media to PR and content marketing. One crucial but often overlooked channel is local listings sites.

Yelp: don’t overlook this key local marketing channel

Recommendation and discovery sites like Foursquare can really benefit local businesses, says W2O group‘s Aaron Strout. “You can use tips, fun offers or even experiential offers to create loyalty and keep people coming back.

“For example, if a user sees a tip on checking in that mentioning a code to the manager will expedite their order or give them a free dessert, that is something they’re going to share with their network. You can have offers on Foursquare for the first time someone checks in, the 5th, the 10th, or you can set different offers to show at different times of the day.”

There are elements of gamification here – the use of game mechanics like badges to improve user (or customer) engagement. Strout reports that some businesses have invited customers who check in often to have lunch with senior management to provide feedback on the business, or to a wine or beer tasting with other regular customers to create a club-like atmosphere. It doesn’t have to be a food service business. Everyone loves to have a drink, socialize and be treated well.

Sites like Yelp and Google Places (now part of Google+) are key for any location-based business. It is important to “claim” your location.

“Make sure you own the rights to control your business’ entry,” says Strout. “Then, make sure it is in the right location on the site’s map. Even having a map pin show a few stores away can cause customer confusion. If you’re getting reviews, being the verified owner of an entry means you can control or respond to them. Reviews are critical for any local business, and how you respond to them can influence future business.”

Need better local marketing? Download our free guide for great results with local listings, social media and more!

This trend towards local review sites, like Yelp, affecting business is seen in a 2011 Harvard research study, which found that over a six-year period, a one-star increase in Yelp rating 
leads to a 5-9 percent 
increase in revenue.

The effect is
 more pronounced for independent
 restaurants. A 2012 study published
  by University of California, Berkeley 
 in The Economic Journal shows that a half-star jump in ratings
 on Yelp enables restaurants to fill primetime reservations 49% more often. This result was also more pronounced for lesser-known restaurants with fewer reviews.

The reviews of these independents even eat into the market share of chain restaurants. Meatheads, a 10-restaurant chain in Illinois, answers every Yelp and other online review it can find within 24 hours. Says Marketing Manager Joe Sanders, “I know our conversion rate on Yelp. The score and rating is where it’s at.”

For more local listings help, click here. 

How did he pile up the Likes as fast and furiously as he did? Even Facebook wanted to know, so they invited him to headquarters, prompting Vin to joke that the company owed him billions for his intel.

To celebrate the sixth installment of the Fast and the Furious series coming out May 24^th, here are six tips for how to do Facebook like Vin Diesel:

Engage your fans by saying thank you.

1. Show fans you’re thankful

“Thanks for the love.” That simple message that Vin posted on May 7^th earned 1.2 million Likes. It’s posts like that, Vin says, that have made his Facebook page so popular.

By sharing your appreciation with fans and followers, you will create goodwill and attract more people. Thank people for positive reviews and feedback. Offer to assist customers who may have had a bad experience.

2. Develop a relationship with your fans

“I never let anyone post for me in the last four years,” Vin says. “My audience knows me so well on the page that if my producing partner’s in the room when I post, they’ll know somebody was around me.”

Creating that connection with your fans takes work and openness. After all, your fans aren’t visit your social media pages if they didn’t want to see some personality.

Share a laugh with chronicles of ridiculous moments. Or share a personal moment that meant a lot to you. A picture of Vin holding his niece racked up nearly a million likes.

Whether attaching a photo to a post or using a cover photo, Vin’s Facebook page is covered in images.

3. Use more than text

Scroll through Vin’s profile and nary a post that doesn’t have a picture will be found. Adding multimedia to your profile is a proven way to increase engagement with your fans.

Once you choose an image or a video to post, give some thought to creating a caption that complements it.

4. Post regularly, but not too often

Some days Vin will post twice. Occasionally, he goes silent for a week. Most of the time, he posts every couple of days.

Having a consistent, but not overbearing posting schedule, is key to finding success on Facebook. When brands post twice instead of once per day, the Likes per post drop 43 percent.

These days, big data is the buzzword that’s on everyone’s mind. A number of marketing experts, including Greg Verdino from our last xPotomac post, encourage the use of big data to discover useful information about prospects and customers in order to grow your brand or business. However, Andrew Keen takes a different stance on the matter.

Here are the top three takeaways from Andrew’s discussion:

1. We’ve fallen in love with ourselves. The digital age has given way to digital narcissism. Photos are the dominant medium of most social networking sites, and most of these photos are of ourselves. “We are essentially humiliating ourselves by broadcasting ourselves so audaciously, so uncritically, so ubiquitously,” says Andrew.

2. We need to teach the Internet how to forget. There is too much of an emphasis on preserving and cataloging every single moment of our lives. People are expressing themselves so openly on the Internet that there’s too much transparency and not enough mystery.

3. We need to learn how to manage ourselves. Social networks have risen in a time when we need to sell ourselves. There is a growing trend towards self-employment and being your own brand. Essentially, we are all brands in the digital age, and we need to learn how to manage and sell ourselves – especially our online personas.

The great irony of social media is that it’s theoretically supposed to bring people together via collaboration and sharing, yet it seems that community is becoming more shattered and individuals more fragmented. Andrew leaves us with this question: “Why in an age of increasingly fragmented, isolated, radical individualism do we create an abstract idea of social?”

For more marketing insight from our xPotomac video series, click here.

In 2012, Google announced that it now handles 100 billion searches per month. A large proportion of those are local, especially on smartphones, where one in three searches on mobile devices now has a local intent..

Great content gets your business found in local search

Effective content marketing helps you capitalize on these local searches.

Content marketing includes a wide range of tactics, from blogging to videos and infographics or guides for customers to view and download.

According to a BusinessBolts.com survey reported by eMarketer, 74 percent of US small businesses already use some form of content marketing. Articles and blog posts were the most popular types of content.

“More than half of respondents cited articles, social media content, blog posts and video as likely to play a larger role in 2013,” eMarketer reports.

Riverside Marketing Strategies president Heidi Cohen states, “Effective content and social media marketing requires amazing content that provides value for your customers. From a marketing perspective, this means answering your customers’ questions.

“Marcus Sheridan of The Sales Lion calls this the ‘Secret Sauce.’ Instead of thinking about what you do on each platform, consider what your target audience is looking for holistically and develop content to meet their needs.”

1. Answer customer questions about your product. Devote one blog post to each question.

2. Provide how-tos and other fun learning. Create short videos that are shared via YouTube and your blog.

3. Give prospects information they need to use your product. Create recipes, patterns and research distributed via your blog, Pinterest, ebooks and SlideShare.

This post is from Where It’s At, our new local marketing guide. Download it free here!

Have the conversation at your house

A blog provides a 24/7 owned media entity that supplies ongoing content, is a social media outpost and supports search optimization.

Need better local marketing? Download our free guide for great results with social, local listings, search and more!

A recent New York Times article about Marcus Sheridan’s previous business, River Pools and Spas, an installer of in-ground fiberglass pools in Virginia and Maryland, describes the company’s use of informational blog posts and videos to recover from challenges during the downturn and exceed its peak pre-2007 revenues.

Marcus gave the Times an example of how he succeeded with local content marketing: “In most industries, there comes a time in the sale process where the customer turns to you and says, ‘Okay: I like you, but who are some other good companies that do this?’

“Half the time it’s a test; people know who our competitors are because they can find them in 0.5 seconds online. Most contractors avoid the question. They say, ‘Oh, we don’t really have competition.’

“But because I was asked that question so often, I decided to answer it. I wrote a blog post about the best swimming pool builders in Richmond, Va., one of our main service areas.”

Sheridan listed the best local pool builders but didn’t include his own firm’s name because he felt it would reduce his credibility. However, if a prospect interested in installing a pool at their Virginia home makes a local search for one of Marcus’ competitors, the results include his website.

“You vet all my competitors, now I’m showing up for all their keywords,” Marcus says. “If you really want to understand the power of inbound marketing, it comes down to this idea: I want to have the conversation at my house.”

For some more expert content marketing advice, click here.

I was a delegate this week at a fascinating one-day workshop entitled “Finding your Mojo” that was held at Henley Business School part of Reading University in the UK.

A bunch of music industry types were discussing the best ways to manage the creative process from a business perspective. The fact that such creative types were taking time out to discuss this subject was illuminating in its own right. There’s more to creativity than you may have thought!

So what can the music industry teach marketers, you may ask. Well, quite a lot, actually.

It may not be obvious, but the world of rock ‘n’ roll knows a lot more about how to connect with consumers in a powerful way than many multi-national companies with multi-million budgets to match.

And I don’t mean by connecting with consumers through iTunes and the mobile internet, although of course that’s a proven way of reaching music fans. What I want to talk about is about ‘rendering authenticity’ in order to connect with the next generation of consumers and fans.

The term was conceived by James H Gilmore and Joseph Pine, two US academics that at the turn of the 21^st century who wrote about how the global economy would move from service to experience. It will be a world in which consumers pay for goods and services that make them feel happy, contented and satisfied.

In other words – things that help them find their ‘mojo’.

Abraham Maslow called this a state of ‘self-actualisation’ where our deeper psychological needs are what really count, having successfully satisfied our more physical needs for eating, heating and shelter.

And there’s a very good reason for this.

Consumers today see the world in terms of phoney and real and want something genuine and authentic from someone that reflects their own attitudes, values, beliefs, perceptions and behaviours.

If brand owners come up short, such as a utility company that provides a miserable customer experience when things go wrong, then that makes us unhappy and won’t translate into customer loyalty.

On the other hand, a brand owner that’s into collaborating with us such as allowing us to have our say in the content and delivery of a service will find many more happy customers queuing at its door to be served. It’s one of the reasons why the British online bank First Direct was so phenomenally successful when it was launched in 1989.

Fast forward to today and we’re living in a world of 24/7 reality TV that isn’t real; where our on-line personas allow us to think we can say anything we like without being held accountable and as a result of spending far too much time on the web we appear to be suffering from some form of split personality and identity crisis.

It’s then no surprise that as consumers we hunger for something else, don’t we?

And that’s authenticity.

For example, there’s something very authentic in hearing a piece of music for the first time as I did when I listened to Bowie’s new album The Next Day which blew me away.

But there’s a dilemma here at the quest for authenticity.

If brand owners try too hard to create authentic experiences with creative marketing, they could end up looking fake.

Music legend and successful entrepreneur Carlos Santana has a unique and powerful take on this dilemma as well as a solution for it.

“Collaboration, partnership [and] friendship all take trust and willingness to allow willingness. When I collaborate on a song or on stage, I’m here to complement, not compete. If I’m playing with [Luciano] Pavarotti, Eric Clapton or Juanes [Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez], a true collaboration only works when you complement what the other person is saying and inspire one another to go further. For me onstage and in business, this is essential,” he says.

He’s applied these principles not only in the recording studio and on tour but also in his other interests that include Casa Noble Tequila and a range of ladies shoes and handbags that carry his trademark.

“With the success of “Supernatural” [1999 platinum selling album] we began looking for new ways to help fuel my families’ philanthropic efforts through The Milagro Foundation. The Carlos by Carlos Santana line of women’s shoes and handbags are born from this seed. I learned very early in life that if the females are happy, then everyone is happy. We get incredible positive feedback through my shoe and handbag lines and in turn we’re able to help educate, feed and give health services to children all over the world. There’s no greater joy for me than to know I’m making a difference in a child’s life.”

What makes Carlos Santana and his various philanthropic activities authentic is that they’re all genuine and stay true to their core values and their heritage.

The workshop reached a simple and powerful conclusion as to why all businesses should in fact have more not less creative talent and for me it boils down to this:

“Talent hits a target that no one else can hit. But creative talent hits a target that no one else can see.”

It’s time to get creative!

Ardi Kolah is the best-selling author of The Art of Influencing and Selling (£19.99), published by Kogan Page. For more marketing and PR advice from Ardi, click here.

Communications expert Shel Holtz calls smartphpones “Swiss Army Knives for life” with good reason. People now use their mobile devices 24/7 to make calls, check email and – increasingly – to find and research things like local businesses.

Smartphones: is your local marketing ready for them?

Yelp and TripAdvisor , for example, are fast replacing printed guidebooks for shoppers and travelers.

According to a Nielsen report, 73 percent of US smartphone owners now use their device to locate stores, with 45 percent of  owners using them to read reviews of businesses.

All of this means that local search marketing is becoming more and more important. Is your business ready?

1. Optimize for mobile

As well as maximizing your business’s visibility online on mobile review sites and search engines, ensuring your website’s suitability for  mobile devices is key.

This post is from Where It’s At, our new local marketing guide. Download it free here! 

“Whether it’s a contest, an app download or simply a call-to-action to click on a link, the goal should be to make it easy for users to accomplish the action,” says eMarketer’s Social Media Marketing on Mobile Devices. “Sending users to a webpage that is not mobile-optimized is a recipe for irritation.”

Measure traffic to your existing properties and make intelligent decisions based on the volume of mobile traffic to decide when to create mobile-optimized content, websites and more.

2. Target customers by location

Consider when to add location data to your marketing mix. When will targeting ads based on the consumer’s location become critical? It is tough to say.

“So far, the number of marketers using location data as part of their mobile marketing is fairly small,” eMarketer reports. “According to research by Forrester Consulting and Velti, 66 percent of mobile marketers surveyed in October 2012 were using mobile social media advertising, but only 37 percent were doing mobile location-targeted advertising.”

Need better local marketing? Download our free guide for great results with social, local listings, search and more!

Mobile location-targeted advertising is advertising where a user’s location will trigger an offer, or software on his or her phone will sense an offer by proximity.

3. Don’t forget Facebook

One big firm yet to make a huge dent in local mobile is Facebook.

However, says W2O group‘s Aaron Strout, Facebook’s new “Nearby” functionality will let it “out-Foursquare Foursquare” and crack “the code on mobile by leveraging the nearly always-on state of the app/mobile website, combined with the power of 1.2 billion global users who spend a heck of a lot of time feeding structured and unstructured data into the mix.”

As consumers and businesspeople get used to the idea of Facebook as an additional place to search for businesses and products, the “Nearby” functionality will tell them what their friends and networks think about these businesses using ratings, check-ins and likes.

Since people trust the recommendations of their friends and networks over ads, this makes having a complete Facebook profiles with accessible information a high priority going forward.

For more smartphone-friendly marketing tips, click here.

The problem is that these modes of communication don’t work like they once did.

Why? One reason is because of color. And not the Crayola type. Let me explain:

Just as you can add color to a space to instantly change the mood, colorful content can liven up your message and provide context when used right. It seems simple but this is often overlooked.

Businesses who use irrelevant pop up ads that push their message onto their customers are missing the point. Sure, paid ads may increase awareness for their brand. But is it done in a meaningful way to the customers? Or is it more meaningful to the business that’s running it? Hint: it’s almost always the latter.

High-quality content is one way to offer meaning on both sides of the equation. And it can be a cost-effective way to spruce up your digital walls. Customers are more apt to notice the beautiful, bright blue walls that are painted mindfully. And they’re more than likely to turn away from the dizzying wallpaper that was carelessly hung. Why?

The wallpaper may make noise. But it doesn’t make you want to listen, or spend any time in that room.

It doesn’t matter how much effort you put into better SEO, or unique content that entertains. If your visitors can’t see the beauty of your brand written on the wall, the spaghetti won’t stick.

Here are three easy ways to inject your content with color:

• Use breaking news in your industry and offer your perspective. Sharing your insights on an issue helps your true voice to come out. For example, when Alicia Keys became the Global Director of Blackberry, boy did I have an opinion. So I wrote about it. It was relevant and useful news for my clients (who are into tech and gadgets). And I had the chance to rant in an informative way. It’s a win-win.

• Use movie references or well-known songs. If your blog post is too meaningful, or your insights go a bit too deep, why not lighten up the mood with a good ole’ fashioned YouTube clip? You know you’ve always wanted to find a way to work “watcha talkin bout Willis?” into a blog post. Now’s your chance.

• Not sure how to inject color in a tasteful way? Hire someone who knows how to do it right. Content-based marketing is an art and a science. The experts who do it know how to measure. And more importantly, they get results.

How do you inject color into your content? Please comment below.

For more content marketing knowhow from Jessica Ann, click here.

Image: ishutterthethought (Creative Commons)

Today’s “connection economy” doesn’t respond well to industrialized, scalable, impersonal approaches, Seth explained. Marketing success now demands a completely different approach:  personal,  vulnerable and  open.

In this post, Seth kindly answers some of the audience questions we didn’t have time for on the day.

To listen to a recording of No Secrets, No Shortcuts, click here.

Q: Does marketing have to be entertaining today?

No, but since all media is voluntary, your outbound efforts better be interesting, urgent (to me), or humble enough to earn my attention, as opposed to demand it.

Q: I will be a professor at a teaching college in the fall. Any advice?

Marketing is best done, not lectured. Give your students a chance to build something and fail doing it.

Q: Do you see marketing as something that should be integrated with product development?

Product development IS marketing.

Q: Can big corporations apply the same scenario “creating special niche products and only target to specific demographics”?

Well, they need to or they won’t continue to be big. The future doesn’t necessarily belong to the biggest.

Q: Your books are all focused on a pretty mass market – marketers – yet what you say is all about niche marketing, isn’t there a contradiction there?

Hardly. First, it’s likely I’m a hypocrite, we all are, but marketers are a mass market? Not at all. Fewer than one in 300 Americans is both a book buyer and a professional marketer. Fewer still are actually innovative enough to take action–my niche. Part of my contribution is helping people understand that in fact, many of us are marketers… even if our title doesn’t say that.

Q: What do I tell my boss who thinks we should/need to be mentioned in Inc, Forbes, Entrepreneur, etc.

I think it’s a worthwhile exercise to have the team make a list of what a ‘mention’ is worth, and it what it costs (not just in effort but in bent priorities) to get those mentions. It’s an investment, and you should know what you’re buying.

Q: Any tips on how marketing staff and executive leadership can work together?

Switch. Literally switch jobs for a day or a week. Most important: the CEO should answer emails and the phone for an entire day.

Q: What do you think the next revolution will be?

This is your revolution. Don’t worry so much about what’s next, what matters is what’s now.

Seth, you’re an inspiration. The small # of users who have signed-up for my tiny start-up say that they love it. But there is little incentive to share it and there is little/no viral aspect to the biz. What can I do to get users to share with others?

Change the model. Build those elements in. You can’t bolt it on.

That sounds easy for social topics, but many people are in pure business, pure profit plays. How does this work when you are in an industry that doesn’t have some compassionate social component?

Aha, you’re busted. It doesn’t. If you’re selfish, creating a commodity, churning and burning, playing for the short haul, I have no help and no hope for you. No shortcuts, anyway. Good thing, too.

For more marketing takeaways from Seth’s Vocus webinar, click here.

The view on the ground is grim. Local newspapers are floundering and closing. Customers are ignoring classified advertising. Free business directories lie bleached and moldering on a million suburban lawns from California to Connecticut.

Click to register and get your guide!

Online, however, it’s a different story.

Online, customers are doing more than paying attention; they’re actively looking for local businesses. Let’s look at the figures:

• 50 percent of mobile searches are now local, says Google.

• 51 percent of adults  look online for information about restaurants, bars and clubs, says Pew.

• 73% of smartphone owners use them to locate stores, says Nielsen.

The challenge isn’t the customers. The challenge is that local businesses are struggling to connect with customers.

Our new, free local marketing guide, Where It’s At, aims to change that.

It helps businesses of all sizes connect with customers through an integrated set of the most important local marketing channels: social media, email marketing, local listings, search engines, PR and content marketing.

Download the guide (short form) for all the knowhow you need to get found in your town, including:

• Effective strategies and tactics for connecting with local customers looking for your product or service.

• Tips and advice from online marketing experts including Brian Carter, Ric Dragon, Heidi Cohen and Aaron Strout.

• Case studies of two local marketing success stories: restaurant chain Meatheads and architectural firm Baskervill.

Whatever your business, your local marketing can benefit from Where It’s At. Click here to download the guide today.