Janet Lee Johnson | The Art of Marketing

As a marketer and ‘educator,’ (teaching people to fish, rather than fishing for them is my new bliss) I’ve been spending a good amount of time helping businesses understand the basics of search engine marketing and how to safely negotiate new media influencers (bloggers) and leverage the power of social networks.

All are brand building exercises.

The positive impact of a brand presence online in both search and in social spaces can be accurately measured in both leads and brand value for B2B and B2C brands when campaigns are constructed well.

And the best campaigns - just as in real life - are best constructed when considering people’s intentions, activities and behaviors online.

Building Brand at the Height of Engagement - Search:

Gavin O’Malley, in today’s Online Media Daily wrote of Google’s new report “The Brand Value of Search.” Granted, we must consider the source - Google makes a ton of money serving search advertisements - but there’s measurable value of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) to a brand.

Google discovered (in surveying 2400 people, showing them generic ads followed with a brand recall questionnaire):

“As a branding vehicle, paid search strives for top-of-mind awareness for clients’ brand, and negatively impacts awareness for their competitive set, while impressions provide “free” brand lift, without the CPC investment.“

A well-written, compelling search advertisement can, in a mere 130 characters:

• Solve a searcher’s intrinsic desire to find relevant information
• Engage, educate and (even) entertain prospects and future buyers
• Generate brand awareness

…And (according to Paul Kedrosky, brilliant renaissance guy, in his 2007 presentation to Angel Oregon) at an average customer acquisition cost of about $8.20, search is the most cost-effective means to capture customers for some channels.

Building Brand at the Height of Meaning - Social Media

In a classic case of understanding the motivations of people as they engage online; an article in February’s Search Engine Watch dissed advertising as a marketing tactic to increase brand value where social networks are concerned.

“Remember that your brand influencers are online to connect with people who care about the things they care about. They are there to make meaning, not to be broadcast to. They are there to participate and create, not to be advertised to. The more your brand can assist people in connecting with others online to create or share something new, the more favorably you will be received in these new and influential social circles.”

Brands will add value to the consumers congregating in social network spaces by:

• Providing fun (via engaging content, video, games)
• Delivering useful tools (widgets, applets, etc.)
• Providing shortcuts to information (using widgets, extending users’ access to mobile devices, etc.)
• Conversing transparently (which means admitting errors, mistakes and omissions) with their engaged customers and prospects - and
• Listening to what people have to say

Socially connected consumers, interacting with a brand via tools, gadgets and content will easily extend brand awareness (therefore adding tremendous value to a brand) as they share information with others while connecting socially online.

Linking Search and Social Networks

In their book Groundswell, Forrester analysts Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff talk about how social networks naturally connect people with the groups they care about. When people flock together for common good, brand associations are especially strong.

(Think about this. If brand awareness is raised in the act of searching, imagine the strength of a brand impression when engaging in meaningful social activities!)

In the groundswell, every online transaction has the opportunity to be rated and reviewed. What is your consumer’s experience with your brand during the transaction process? Are you measuring it like they are?

In the groundswell, “tags,” which are keywords supplied by ordinary people, are reorganizing the way we find things.

1. People type keywords into search engines
2. Search engines deliver results in the form of advertisements and links to naturally relevant content (most often socially generated content will rise to the top of search results) and
3. Consumers “vote” on the relevancy of the results with each click

In any case, positive brand associations generated along the way; whether you pay per click or pay to play.

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Charlene Li (the woman who, if she were a technology, would be RSS) is leaving Forrester on July 18. In her blog post “Why I’m leaving Forrester”, she explains she’s leaving after nine years because she’s needing more control over how she spends her time - especially with her family. Good for her.

I only hope she’ll keep her promise that she’ll stay involved in this space. I’m not at all ready for her to go.

She’s leaving a whole team of people in their San Francisco office - and I expect Jeremiah Owyang (whom I met years ago at an early Web 2.0 conference and have enjoyed watching him grow) will carry the torch well for her.

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I blogged very briefly awhile back about the way shipping company Wallem embraced Enterprise RSS. At the recent Enterprise 2.0 conference, Scott from Attensa was in the audience when Patrick Slesinger, CIO of Wallem, spoke of his simple implementation and integration with the K2 business intelligence platform. Scott published the presentation Patrick gave over on the Attensa blog.

Patrick’s key motivations for deploying the platform are fascinating to me. His four big challenges in developing an IT infrastructure for their floating contingent of vessels and personnel around the globe were:

• Making processes mobile
• Moving process away from terrestrial email
• Pushing information anywhere
• Measuring the real value of information

All are summed up by the notion of “getting the right information to the right people at the right time.”

But the most stunning revelation of the presentation, now that I can see it, is the savings passed along to Wallem’s customers as a result of better information tools leading to improved fleet management…

RSS and Black Gold

In two extremely important and obvious areas of expense, Wallem was able to deliver an 8% fuel oil savings for each of its 329 ships under management. That 8% translated to $394,800,000 annual savings. And they were able to save 6% of each ship’s annual lube oil expenditures - generating another $11,844,000 in savings annually.

How?

The managed enterprise RSS system from Attensa, the Blackpearl BI system from K2 and Microsoft’s SharePoint portal combined to deliver these benefits:

• Increased visibility into systems and resources
• Mobile connected process and feedback loops
• Alignment of information and process, creating knowledge and value
• Better understanding of information required by: Who, What, When, Where and Why…

Imagine the relative ease of deployment, associated benefits and savings that one might discover by connecting any global (or even regional) enterprise’s people and systems through enterprise RSS - without having to rig it up for a floating, constantly moving fleet and personnel.

Mike Gotta, analyst at the Burton Group, and RSS and social media expert moderated the session and summed it up nicely:

“This is not the typical RSS application. That was great. I think it’s stunning how simple things can work so well.”

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In an article called “How Three Brands Got Smart About Social Media” over on the ClickZ network, author Anna Maria Virzi wrote a perfect setup in her beginning paragraphs:

“A cacophony of voices are chanting: Put on a good face for Facebook, chirp on Twitter, tap dance for YouTube — all without looking stupid, appearing phony, breaking the law, alienating customers, or busting the budget.

No wonder some marketing executives are paralyzed.”

The article goes on to describe some interesting implementations of social media marketing, and some nice ideas for measuring success - positive comments, number of downloads, increased sales, increased customer satisfaction…

Paralysis Analysis (sorry, I couldn’t resist)

The feeling of paralysis is real when it comes to entering into the different areas of conversation online (which is all social media really is, in my opinion).

At the root of the issue for most businesses is one simple thing - control.

I used to think fear was the underlying issue, but I’m beyond that now. Fear simply describes the emotion around loss of control.

“What if someone says something bad about us?”

The most oft-heard (and generally first) question I hear from businesses when asking how to safely enter online conversations…

My answer? They’re probably already talking about you anyway. Don’t you want to know what they’re saying? (It may not all be bad - unless your business has prompted bad feelings.) And regardless of the tone of the conversation, don’t you want a voice at the party to respond?

These days, it’s OK to be human - even if you’re a brand.

A brand is (ideally) how your market feels about you, after all… And I know of no human in the world who’s always in control. To be human means to be:

• Delighted when things go well. (For most of us, that’s - what? - 10%-20% of the time?)
• Vulnerable when things don’t go well. (Another 10%-20% of the time?)
• Unsure, irritated, bored, smug, beseeching, aggressive, threatened… when things are just going along (the majority of the time).

Most of the time, we just make stuff up to move us to one state of feeling or another…

Why, then, does your business need to consistently appear superior to the general human condition? That’s a very 1.0 point of view.

Until businesses are made up of robots, we’re full of people. Which means we’re stuck with having forces beyond our control affect us - whether they be people, the rising/falling dollar, the agility of our partners or the resilience of our natural resources.

The first step in building resiliency to the forces beyond our control is to admit we’re not superior; and we’re interested in being part of the solution.

“What if I don’t know the answer?”

In another excellent article, this time on Online Spin, Max Kalehoff wrote, “Acknowledge What You Don’t Know.“In it, Max writes:

“…acknowledging what you don’t know implicitly means you’re open to alternative viewpoints and solutions. Allowing others into your realm enables choice and optimization, and greatly improves problem-solving likelihood….

…The fact is that people want to help. Being open identifies yourself, makes you visible and encourages others to contribute positive thinking and support to help you succeed.”

That’s the value to businesses in social media. There are thousands of examples every day of people offering their advice, opinions and experiences with brands online.

Smart businesses are listening (1.5), and even smarter businesses (2.0) are engaging in those conversations online.

And then there are those businesses (1.0) who simply have their heads stuck in the sand.

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Okay - here’s how it went. I decided to check in on the Twitter chatter from the Community 2.0 conference going on in Vegas tonight.

1. Checked my Twitter feed.
2. Found a Tweet by @MarshallK about Summize - which allows you to search Twitter for memes.
3. Tested it by Tweeting about Attensa blog post - Attensa didn’t show up in Summize.
4. Was able to post my test results directly to Twitter from Summize - very cool.
5. My second Tweet about Attensa blog post did show up in Summize - okay, I’ll use it.
6. Did a search on #C20 (the Community 2.0 meme) in Summize, found some new folks to follow.
7. Saw a Tweet about @NancyWhite’s beautiful drawings, was curious….
8. Followed one of her links to Flickr to view the drawings
9. Was absolutely blown away.
10. Had to blog about it to share… Sometimes “cocktail party” Twitter is too fleeting…
11. Checked the Creative Commons license to be sure, and can publish a photo here - set for slide show mode and enjoy!

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