Conversational Media Marketing

Before I delve into this post, I should mention that, in my previous post I used the term "social media advertising," when, in actuality, it is better stated "social network advertising." Thus, I refer to it here in that manner.

If you're a fan of advertising, raise your hand. Come on, raise em high. Anyone?

I gave a talk today at the Sales and Marketing Executives meeting in Baton Rouge on the topic of using the web to maximize your marketing dollar and presented some cost-effective strategies to market through the recession.

At the conclusion of the meeting an attendee, , asked if I had blogged this information. I responded with no, but will before the day is over. So, Kent, here it is.

I started out by talking briefly about two current trends...

Marketing budgets are tightening. That's news to no one. Bizzuka CEO told me several weeks ago, "Paul, you are our marketing budget." I'm sure companies much larger than ours are scaling back. That's what all the emails I get from various sources indicate.

Money is moving from offline to online. Newspapers are losing revenue hand over fist. To a lesser degree, the same is true for radio/TV/print media. The single winner in all of this is online media, and that's not growing as fast now as hoped.

Given the current economic climate, there is a need, particularly for small businesses, to maximize their marketing dollars and I'm here to trumpet the Internet as the place to do so. Here are the five ways I suggested.

1. Put yourself in the "findability" business

At the New Marketing Summit last October Todd Defren, Principal of Shift Communications, said, "You are no longer the marketing department. You are now the 'findability' department. What I think he meant was that Google is the new yellow pages and if your business can't be found there, for many people you don't exist. PPC/SEO are two ways to get there. My second point elucidated another.

2. Think of yourself as publisher and your Web site as a media property

What I'm referring to here is content, content and more content. Content is STILL king!

David Meerman Scott said companies should consider hiring people with the skills of a journalist to churn out content, which can come in many forms: video, photos, podcasts, blog posts, articles, press releases, etc. And they don't have to all live on your own site. It's good for link love and Google Juice purposes to have them on third-party sites as well.

It doesn't have to be expensive either. At Bizzuka, we use every one of those tools. With the exception of press releases syndicated via PRWeb, everyone one of them is free. If we can do it, you can too!

And it's given us a lot of presence on Google. A reveals returns from , , , PRWeb, , Blog Talk Radio, blogs and on and on.

An added benefit is ubiquity. You're everywhere! That's something I think carries with it social capital and credibility.

3. Participate in social networks

Social networking via (your business suit), (business casual) and (the networking cocktail party) are places you should have profiles established and where you should, to the degree time will allow, be actively participating. It will pay off over time. We're seeing the fruits of it here. Again, if we can do it, you can too.

4. Get closer to your customer

Marketing strategist John Moore says there are three ways companies can increase revenues:

• Raise prices
• Get new customers
• Sell more stuff to the customers you already have

In a recession, raising prices is out of the question. It costs more to get new customers than to keep the ones you already have. Therefore, getting closer to your customers and upselling them on new products/services is the preferred route.

While nothing beats an in-person, real life connection, via your Web site, blog, email, social networks and online communities the Web can serve up a digital handshake to help keep you top-of-mind with customers.

5. Start a tribe

Seth Godin's latest book, Tribes, talks about how people form communities around leaders, brands, products and services. These are often self-forming groups in which the brand may be a non-participant.

I often use the idea of "getting a seat at someone else's table" to describe how brands should find communities of interest wherever they may exist and join as co-participants. I also suggest it's not a bad idea to "set a table of your own" and start such communities.

A great example is Vertical Response, the small business email marketing software company. They built a customer community, VR Marketing Lounge, using low-cost social network platform Ning that numbers several thousand members.

While that may be only a fraction of their total customer-base, it's still significant. Just think of the feedback that group can provide and the potential for word-of-mouth growth that can come as a result of increased tribal affiliation.

So, there it is -- five ways to maximize your marketing dollar via the Web. If you found the post helpful, let know. It was his suggestion... and a good one it was.

A newly released survey done by Marketing Executives Networking Group of top marketing trends of 2009 indicates that "twice as many marketers are 'sick' of hearing about Web 2.0 and related buzzwords such as 'blogs' and 'social networking' compared to last year’s survey."

The survey goes on to say that "marketers still admit they don’t know enough about it" and that " 67% of executive marketers consider themselves beginners when it comes to using social media for marketing purposes."

This represents real opportunity for true social media marketing consultants, so long as they can make this stuff palatable and speak in layman's terms.

One person who does this very, very well is , a veteran marketer who recently started her own agency, Harte Marketing and Communications. Beth has the good sense to see where social media fits into the overall marketing spectrum, and I believe her's is a well-reasoned, studied approach. (Doesn't hurt she's an adjunct professor at a local university.)

In a recent post, Beth asks, "Is social media the same as marketing?" To which she answers...

As you can tell, Beth has some strong opinions on the subject and I highly recommend you read the post referenced above. Whether you agree with Beth or not, it will spur some critical thinking.

Another thing you should consider doing is joining us tomorrow, Friday, January 9, for User Friendly Thinking Radio, where Beth will be our guest. We're going to discuss this and other issues of importance to marketers today. The show airs at noon central and lasts for 30-45 minutes.

Which is true?

Consumers trust company blogs less than any other channel.

or

Blogs have long had an avid following, but corporations are finding that blogs can be a secret sauce to building solid relationships with their customers.

Depends on who you ask, Forrester or eMarketer.

The first statement comes from a hotly-contested Forrester survey on corporate blogging. The other from an eMarketer article which based its conclusion on studies done by BuzzLogic and Jupiter Research.

The Forrester survey goes on to say that, "Not only do blogs rank below newspapers and portals, they rank below wikis, direct mail, company email, and message board posts" and "only 16% of online consumers who read corporate blogs say they trust them."

Conversely, eMarketer states "[B]logs have more impact on purchasing decisions than social networks. One-quarter of readers said they trust ads on a blog, as opposed to 19% who trust ads on social networks."

If you've yet to read Joe Pulizzi's you should because it contains some eye-opening predictions from leading marketing professionals.

While, as you might expect, there is a wide range and divergence of opinion, some themes emerge.

1. Advertising will gradually be replaced by information.
2. Content and conversational marketing strategies will converge.
3. Social media marketing will continue to gain acceptance

Let's take these one at a time.

Back in June, I was interviewed by MarketingSherpa reporter Natalie Myers for a report she was writing dealing with real estate online marketing strategies.  The report is now available as the second of two-parts: Online Strategies from Real Estate Marketers – Try Blogs, SEO, Social Media

I regard MarketingSherpa with the same esteem as MarketingProfs. For years, CEO Anne Holland and her crew have been creating high-quality content to benefit marketing professionals and I'm honored to have the privilege of participating in this report.

I was reviewing the notes I took during New Marketing Summit in my trusty Moleskine and decided to pass a few of the gems along to you.

What is new marketing? (Michael Lewis, President, Business Marketing Association of Boston)

• New viral, internet-based marketing
• Mix of old and new to reach more elusive, empowered customers
• More than technology
• Listening and dialog, not broadcasting - Listening is the new marketing
• Better to measure the right things than everything
• Extends beyond the marketing department
• Goals of marketing have not changed

The World Wide Rave (David Meerman Scott, author of New Rules of Marketing and PR and his new book, World Wide Rave)

• You must unlearn what have learned
• Old rules pre-web: Buy your way in with advertising; beg your way in with PR
• New rules: Publish your way in directly!
• Think like a publisher, not a marketer
• On the web, you are what you publish

(David also gave me some excellent, sagely advice on getting my book published. Thanks David!)

Paul Gillin, author of The New Influencers and his brand new book Secrets of Social Media Marketing really got down to brass tacks in terms of providing more how-to information. And he made reference to how small businesses can and are using these tools.

Brian Halligan, President, Hubspot (talked about SEO as it relates to social media marketing)

• Brian was high on SEO, less so on PPC
• Think like a publisher he said. Content is vital!
• Next new hire in the marketing department should be a journalist/writer, not marketer
• Be ubiquitous (I like that word; use it alot) - Use blogs, video, podcasts, photos, PRWeb, forums, directories, etc. to spread your message

Last week I, along with Bizzuka CEO John Munsell and SVP of Sales Charles Lauller attended the New Marketing Summit up in "Bahston." Bizzuka was a sponsor and exhibitor.

The experience brought with it a number of key takeaways, but the one that sticks with me the most is the impression I get that "new" marketing (i.e., social media marketing) is "becoming mainstreamed."

Note, I did not say "has become mainstream" or even "becoming mainstream." Social media marketing tactics and tools are coming into more popular use to be sure, but I think full integration is still at least a couple of years away if not longer.

For example, when you consider that only 15 percent of Fortune 500 companies incorporate blogs into their marketing/PR mix, that's telling.

That's in spite of the eMarketer article which, based on report, suggested that " the lines between blogging and the mainstream media have disappeared." (You should read Read Write Web's assessment, which outlines in detail why blogging is yet to be mainstream.)

What I learned from the New Marketing Summit is that social media is coming alongside other, more traditional marketing channels to serve as an adjunct, not a replacement.

I believe the summit was designed to not only generate awareness of the need for and benefits of using social media, but to help formulate an understanding of how it fits into the overall marketing mix. And speaking of mix, MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer, being held later this week in Scottsdale, will likely echo that same refrain.

Bottom line: The evolution taking place in the marketing world is not that new media is strictly a disruptive force, but that it is maturing to the point of becoming both accepted and expected. As I said, "becoming mainstreamed."

What's your assessment? Do you agree?

I may be playing with a lit stick of dynamite here, but I'd like to know what you think of using online communities (whether of interest or practice) for lead generation? Does that amount to little more than prostitution?

Having come from the "purist" days of business blogging, I really don't want to use online communities for such "prurient" motives as driving marketing and sales agendas. Yet, I can't help but believe there can be a healthy balance between community and commerce, especially when it's possible the reason the community exists is for the sake of commerce.

I've started writing a post or two per week over at WordFrame.com. My first post is Vertical social networks for business, a table of their own, which reports on the new eMarketer study about businesses entering the social network space.

(BTW, WordFrame is an awesome B2B social networking platform. If your company has an interest in creating a socnet for either internal or external use, I recommend it highly. It's affordable, highly scalable and has all the features you'd want or need.)