Posts Tagged ‘social media marketing’
Question: What’s the one advertising technique that is almost 100% guaranteed to sell your product?
Surprisingly, it’s not hiring Jennifer Lopez to pose next to your car, or spending millions on a Super Bowl commercial.
No. In fact, it’s simply one person recommending a product to another person.
That, my friends, is called Word of Mouth.
Over the past decade, the Internet and social media have completely changed how Word of Mouth works.
And in one quick update called “Search, Plus Your World”, Google made Word of Mouth and social media marketing 100 times more essential.
But before we get to that, let’s take a walk back in time, to one hundred years ago, when we all lived on farms.
Frank, a local farmer, recently purchased a new rifle. Ted, his neighbor, stops by to admire the rifle.
“How’s the new rifle?” Ted asks Frank.
“Probably the best there is,” Frank replies. “I’ve had 20 rifles in my life, and this by far is the best.”
Ted’s been thinking about buying a new rifle, but couldn’t decide which to get. But because of Frank’s recommendation, Ted buys that rifle.
Word of Mouth advertising.
Flash forward to 2010. Beth and Sarah are high school friends. They’ve moved to opposite sides of the country to attend college, but kept in touch through Facebook.
Beth will be spending Spring Break in a beautiful hotel in New York City. She wants to show her friends where she’ll be staying, so she goes to the hotel’s Facebook page and shares some of the photos on her own Facebook page. “Look where I’ll be staying!” she exclaims in the photo captions.
Ashley wants to visit New York as well, but hadn’t decided where to stay. She spots the pictures Beth shared and visits the hotel’s website. She loves the look and decides to make a reservation.
Now here’s the magic of social media that differs from what it was 100 years ago: not only did Ashley see Beth’s post, but so did Beth’s 700 other friends.
Instead of a one to one recommendation, it’s now one to 700.
Word of Mouth advertising and Social Media Marketing.
And finally, let’s flash forward to the present day, with Google’s latest update: Search, Plus Your World. Now, when you search on Google, you will not only see the search results you’re used to seeing, but you will also see what YOUR friends have said and shared about what you are searching for.
Let’s look at an example:
Mary is looking for information on a dish detergent. So she does a search on Google.
As always, she sees a bunch of search results for dish detergents. But mixed in there are stories from her friends: one friend has posted before and after pictures of clothing she used a new detergent on. Another wrote a quick post saying how happy she was with that same detergent.
And finally, a third friend has shared something special: a coupon that the same dish detergent company posted on it’s profile.
Mary trusts her friends’ recommendations. She downloads the coupon and goes to the store to purchase the dish detergent.
Word of Mouth advertising and social media marketing, revolutionized.
Top companies are now engaging in social media marketing as a way to spur Word of Mouth advertising through social networks. And not surprising, it’s been working.
But now, with Google’s new update, social media marketing MUST be an ESSENTIAL part of your overall marketing and advertising plan.
Because if you’re not doing it, your competitors will be…and they’ll be stealing your sales.
Image Credit: 
Some rights reserved by Sean MacEntee
Have you heard about the Mercedes-Benz USA Tweet Race? Four teams of two drivers were chosen from special Facebook and Twitter event pages, which added 75,000 new Mercedes-Benz fans and followers in a matter of weeks.
On Feb. 2, the four Tweet Race teams will leave New York, L.A., Chicago and Tampa in specially outfitted Mercedes-Benz vehicles, and head to Superbowl XLV in Dallas. They’ll be directed and fueled by people’s tweets along with help from team coaches who have large numbers of Twitter followers. Fellow tweeters are invited to join a team and help tweet to them with race clues and tips. V.I.P. trips for two to numerous MB sponsored events can be won by these tweet helpers, along with other prizes. Winning is more than just getting there first. It’s also the largest number of active Twitter helpers and a few other social media measurements. Oh, and the winning team? They each get a 2012 C-Class Coupe.
The team coaches aren’t just people with a large number of Twitter followers either, they’re celebrities from various industries. Musicians, athletes and TV stars. If their team wins, $25k goes to their favorite charity.
So, while the main media platforms (Twitter and Facebook) are free, let’s add up what this whole campaign will probably cost MB USA. Celebrity involvement, an easy $400k. Putting four MB’s into the race, at least $200k. Two winning C-Class coupes, $80k. Winning coaches charity of choice donation, $25k. Cost of coming up with the idea, developing and managing the entire campaign, probably $1 million. Paid online advertising banners to help promote the campaign, around $500k. Total cost of this FREE Media campaign that will probably involve 8 million active participants for 7 days, about $2.25 Million. Will it ultimately do better for Mercedes-Benz than their $6 million dollar Super Bowl ad planned for 4th quarter of this year’s game that has an anticipated 150 million viewers? Time will tell, but that’s not the point of this post.
The point is that marketers should start thinking differently about how they will be paying for online campaigns in this new world of free media. Historically, an ad campaign followed its own 80/20 rule. 80% of the campaign costs would go toward buying the media (TV, radio, print, outdoor, etc) and 20% would go toward developing and producing the creative. Although that 20% could be more or less, depending on the agency and the production value, the idea is that the majority of the expense would pay for the media.
In the new world of social media, that 80% is either substantially lower or gone completely. It’s obvious how advantageous this can be for smart marketers, but the challenge of creating a campaign using social media that draws interest and interaction takes a whole new level of brain power and creativity, a skill that a lot of agencies today don’t have, be they digital or traditional. Brain power and creativity that can succeed in taking a non-intrusive form of communication and make the right people want to view it, hear it and get involved with it is the greatest challenge in this new day. And that has a few Clio award-winning creatives asking for early retirement.
Although this post is not meant to be a self-promotion for Brandtailers, it is interesting to understand why we have more easily adapted and succeeded in this new world. Over our twenty plus years in business we’ve had more clients with small budgets than not. We’ve rarely had the luxury of letting the media weight do the job. For us, it’s always been the need to flex our creative idea muscles to help make something come alive and work without a lot of media support. It’s kind of like we’ve been training for the Olympics for a long time and it’s finally here.
But back to the purpose of this post: Let’s all help each other understand the new opportunities as well as the realities of what is truly needed in today’s marketing. Big media budgets may still be around for the recovering 10% of advertisers, but the other 90% is demanding success without major media dollars. Is it possible? We think so. We’ve been doing it for a long time. Our mantra has always been, “It’s the idea, stupid.” Feel free to use it.
I recently revisited the question of what makes me want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work. The answer for me these days is simple – Social Media, simply because I see it as the new communication icon for truth, trust and transparency. Most of us know that truth sells better than anything else, but unfortunately that’s not what the ad biz has always been known for. I always hoped that, if I stayed in it long enough, truth would win out. And it has.
How well do you think this Winston cigarette commercial using Fred Flinstone and Barney Rubble would go over today?
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Yup. It ran. And no one balked (or at least they couldn’t be heard balking). Today’s equivalent of a concept like this wouldn’t even make it past the first focus group. But if it did, and it went all the way to TV or YouTube, the response might just be strong enough to put Winston cigarettes out of business. Ask Domino’s Pizza or United Airlines if they think it’s possible.
So, to those in the advertising industry still wishing the Mad Men days would come back, your time is up. Truth won out after all. And that’s job security for agencies like mine. Take that in your pipe and smoke it.
