Online Marketing
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 04th, 2007
Over the last few years the Internet has brought great change for marketers. There are many new tools available that give us the opportunity to reach a wider audiences, establish and enhance brand awareness, improve customer service and retention as well as understand our customers better. Perhaps the biggest attraction of these “new media” technologies is that they offer all these benefits at a much lower price point than traditional direct marketing vehicles.
In a series of upcoming posts, Id like highlight these new innovations and help you understand how they could be used by your organisation by showing you examples of other organisations using these to their advantage. Today I am going to look at Corporate Blogging and Podcasting – watch out for future posts on using wikis, v-logs and virtual worlds to your marketing advantage.
Corporate Blogging – perhaps the best know corporate blog here in Vancouver is the Vancity blog. Vancity is a local Credit Union known for its leading edge approaches to establishing its brand. The change everything site is aimed at growing a community of like minded people looking “to change themselves, their communities or their world and it contains information on environmental issues, local community and charity events alongside financial tips. Anyone can register and contribute valid blog articles. Vancity doesnt use the site to sell or promote but to identify itself as a corporation that cares and by doing so it is making this community aware of its brand and further establishing loyalty.
Corporate Podcasting – Podcasting tends to be associated with traditional media organisations extending their reach. My favorite and one of the pioneers of podcasting is the BBC which makes many of its radio shows and TV programme highlights (including last years Queens speech!) available for download anywhere in the world via podcast. But podcasting is not limited to news providers. Other corporations are recognising that this forum offers them a real opportunity to provide a better standard of service for its customers and community. One of the best known is First Direct - a subsidiary of HSBC in the UK that uses podcasting as a way to keep customers up to date with changes to their services and with developments in the finance.
I mentioned earlier one of the main benefits of new technologies like podcasting and corporate blogging is their cost effectiveness but another huge advantage of these is the relative ease with which you can start using them in your marketing arsenal. That, together with the growing use of these technologies in the mainstream makes them very attractive vehicles that you can use to further your marketing efforts.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, April 03rd, 2007
Marketing is all about understanding the needs of your customer so that you can position your offering to meet these effectively. I am a marketer, its my job, its what I do and yet people regularly ask me why I am always ranting about poor customer service? Its because customer service is all about meeting the needs of customer – its an integral part of any company’s marketing approach – and it can be quite a challenge.
The other day, I went into my local baker (again!). The person behind the counter was very chipper and friendly and was interacting in a non threatening way with customers. When she had put together someone’s order, she would ask people “are you treating yourself to anything today?” which lead customers to buy more but not feel forced into it. When it came my turn, I resisted the chocolate chip scone I had been eyeing but she insisted they were great and would I like to try one on the house. Off course I took the sample and felt good about my buying experience. HOWEVER, the gentleman in front of me obviously was very uncomfortable with her amicable approach. He seemed agitated when he came in the store and avoided eye contact with the server despite her friendly manner. He was obviously relieved to get out with his loaf.
My point here…. The server should have taken one look at the customer, noticed he had a sour face and changed her approach accordingly.
Every customer is individual and on on any given day attitudes can be change. Taking a little time and care to assess each customer individually and to adapt your service approach to that individual will in turn help you provide a more appropriate service. This will increase your customer loyalty and have a positive effect on the bottom line.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 30th, 2007
I realised recently that customer service seems to be a thing of the past despite all the hype in the last decade about CRM and managing relationships more effectively. Good, reliably, friendly service is the exception not the norm.
Twice in the last week I have been charged full price for sale items and when I pointed out the error I was treated with resentment verging on hostility by the cashier. I have stood in line at both a major coffee house and a national music store while a gaggle of servers a) joked about Angelina’s lips and b) discussed their hangovers rather than address the growing queue. And the problem doesn’t end with retail organisations. A mortgage advisor recently suggested that I was “threatening” her because I was going to get quotes from other banks. How strange is that?
My mortgage is now held at another institution, I make my own latte and I buy music online. See a pattern here?
Companies are loosing valuable clients because they don’t understand how to provide the kind of service their customers want. All it takes is a little thought, care and attention to customer needs.
In search of a strawberry pie, I stopped at a small independent baker I hadn’t tried before. They only had one pie left and the juice had marred the top so they gave it to me for free. I didn’t even ask (in-fact, I would have happily paid full price). Now that is customer service. And guess what? I stop and buy from that store every time I am in the area and I’ve told all my friends to try them out.
Perhaps larger companies could take a leaf out of the book of my baker and increase customer satisfaction rather than cow towing to shareholder expectations. A happy customer will buy more, more often and companies wouldn’t have to spend wadges of cash trying to attract customers back so shareholders may even be happy too.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 29th, 2007
I don’t know about you but sometimes I find getting out there and talking to people the hardest part of developing my business. I recently came upon “5 Rules for Building a Network for Success” a blog article by Fiona Walsh of FM Walsh and Associates that gives 5 great ideas to help you successfully get out there and develop a solid network of trusted contacts to grow your business. Many of these are applicable to your online networking too!
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 26th, 2007
At a time when mass media consumption is in general decline, I was interested to read a Toronto Star that the number of newspaper readers in Canada is actually increasing (well over 50% of adults regularly read the news). Granted, the increase across the 34 Canadian markets studied is marginal (only 2% since 2002) but given that people are turning off their TVs in droves and arent exactly flocking to the box office its interesting to see an old media stalwart that is resisting the long tail trend.
So why is the news industry managing to hold its own? In my view, the industrys relative success compared to other old established media outlets is a result of 2 important factors:
The first of these is the fact that newspapers were quick to adapt to the Internet. The NADbank study in question included a question regarding the time spent reading online newspapers: 17% of Canadians read online papers – a number that has been growing steadily since it started being surveyed. Rather than fighting new media like the TV and music behemoths are still doing (witness YouTube being sued by Viacom for infringement and the constant stream of litigation against peer to peer music download sites), newspapers, in contrast, were quick to adopt new media as an alternative distribution channel. As a result, newspapers are managing to evolve and withstand the new media storm more effectively than their counterparts.
The second reason that the newspaper industry is managing to keep its head above water is because we are becoming a society addicted to information. The Internet has made information on every subject available to everyone, everywhere. Weve been exposed to this mine of information and we want more regardless of the form it takes (a trend validated by the fact that book sales are also increasing). Which is good news for society as a whole.
Only time will tell if newspapers will continue to maintain their readership levels through online channels but when considering how new media will effect markets in the future, their lesson is important to any company – adapt and grow or resist and risk being left behind.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 23rd, 2007
There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what Web 2.0 really is. Is it a tool or is it a result? Read the article I wrote for the BlueLime Media blog for clarification.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 19th, 2007
The Outsmart blog is no longer a pipe dream. Its up and running. I have something insightful and valuable to say. Its time to spread the word! But how?
Id like to use this forum to share with you my own experiences garnered from the trial and error and research I have done in order to determine the most appropriate next steps to promoting the Outsmart blog. I hope these help you in turn to spread the word.
Evidently, there are many ways to publicise your blog: some are common sense and some more involved.
I consider connections to be vital to establishing your blog: connections both on-line and the physical world. The more connections you have the more people will see your blog, the more you will build awareness of your organisation and what you do.
Start with the easy stuff – make it easy for people to connect with you and make them aware that youre blogging – add the url of your blog to your e-mail signature: some software such as Plaxo will let you customise unique e-mail signatures (check out the Plaxo Blog), business cards and promotional materials
Connect with your network – tell people you meet about your web log (include friends, family, business associates, partners and clients and anyone else who will listen) – ask them to check it out and tell them their feedback is invaluable. This will all generate traffic to your web page and help establish your blog.
Links – if youve done your research, you already know of many appropriate web logs that talk about your industry or area of expertise so start placing meaningful and appropriate comments on articles that are relevant to your business. This will begin to establish your page (not to mention your credibility) by linking with other revered blogs.
Christine at Bluelime Media had some great advice: if someone comments on your blog then e-mail them back to establish a connection with them. Check out the Bluelime Media weblog for some very relevant posts about blogging.
Make sure to connect your blog with the main Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN) so that people find your posts on the Internet. I found the following “Top 10 Search Engines in the United States (The Majors) by Rank” article invaluable when I did this and had little or no difficulty registering with most of the major search engines.
Next connect with the main blog engines so that readers can locate your pieces. There are numerous blog engines (I found over 50) but the main ones seem to be Technorati, Ice Rocket and the major search engine’s all have blog readers. I found some of these easier to manoeuvre my way around than others but once you find the right place on the web sites you can often set up them up to update your listing automatically so that your new articles are listed as they are posted.
By promoting your blog, you will bring more traffic to your site and help establish your expertise. I am learning as I go here so this is by no means a conclusive list of ways to promote your corporate blog. Its a great start though and it has kept me busy this week… I would love to add to this any innovative ideas, tactics and promotional vehicles that you use and that I may have overlooked so please add your comments.
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 14th, 2007
I’ve been talking here about the reasons corporations should blog and wanted to share with you a post I came upon by Mario Sundar “Marketing Nirvana”Top Ten CEO Blogs . It lists the top 10 CEO blogs in the US and Mario was kind enough to provide me with a list of the top Canadian CEO bloggers (so make sure to read the comments and go check out the blogs!).
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 12th, 2007
It seems to me that there is a buyer/seller discord like never before. The Internet has made all kinds of product and service information available to the buyer at a click reducing their reliance on sales people whilst at the same time sales people are recognizing that the only way for them to differentiate themselves is through developing relationships with buyers. Companies are exploring new and innovative ways to develop relationships with their prospects in order to boost sales.
Last week I talked about using blogging as a means of enhancing relationships but there are other new media innovations that could change the way we do business in the future. One very interesting development is the potential use of virtual worlds to conduct sales and marketing interactions and to develop buyer seller relationships.
There are many virtual worlds out there catering to a variety of interests. These on line environments are set up to allow interaction between individuals in a simulated “real” world situation. Users have their own identities or avatars that they create and use to interact with other avatars in the community. The most popular of these communities in North America appear to be: Second Life; The Sims Online, There and Entropia.
The idea of conducting real life relationships in a simulated on line world was pioneered by educators as means to enhance teacher student communication. Its an idea that is now being paid more than service by some major organisations.
One Canadian example of the virtual world approach is Telus (the Canadian telecommunications company). The corporation launched a store front on the Second Life virtual world last year. Telus avatar “Sparkle Dale” develops relationships with Second Life inhabitants with a view to selling replica cell phones and virtual services.
Other big corporations involved in avatar based sales, marketing and advertising in Second Life include American Eagle, Dell, IBM, Toyota and Coca Cola.
It is too early to tell if the addition of a Second Life presence is having any impact on the bottom lines of these global organisations but with over 4.5 million residents registered and almost 9 million transactions taking place in February alone, Second Life presents an opportunity thats growing at a much faster rate than opportunities in traditional sales channels.
Now, I am not suggesting that you go out and fire your sales force in favour of a simulated sales force tomorrow but virtual worlds can help to bridge the buyer sales discord by meeting the perceived need of buyers to automate the sales cycle whilst at the same time enhancing the sales relationship in a non threatening environment. If your company targets the cyber demographic then setting up a presence in the virtual world is definitely something you should, at the very least, consider.
http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, March 07th, 2007
Ive been wracking my brains trying to come up with an appropriate theme for my very first Outsmart blog and then it came to me. What better way to start a blog than to tell people why anyone would want to blog anyway – from a sales and marketing perspective of course!
First of all, for the uninitiated (and there aren’t many out there these days) according to Wikipedia, a blog is “a user generated website where entries are made in journal style and displayed in a reverse chronological”. These on line logs are: updated often; usually informal; tend to be unregulated and have unique or interesting content.
Many people associate blogging with personal web pages where people spout about their lives and experiences. Its true – it seems that there’s a blog out there on any subject you care to mention but blogging is by no means limited to narcissists among us. There are some very attractive benefits to be reaped for companies that blog wisely.
The benefits of blogging from a company’s standpoint are intangible and therefore its difficult to apply a dollar amount to them but they can be measured in terms of:
Increased brand awareness - the more people that read your blog the more people become aware of your offering and the more established your brand becomes.
Enhanced customer service – a blog is the perfect media to communicate messages to your customers and partners. But remember, citizens of the blogosphere don’t like to be sold to so make sure your blog adds value by giving product updates or soliciting for suggestions on how to improve your offering.
Visibility a blog is a great way to present your companies unique offering and to spread the word that you’re out there and open for business.
Open Communication Channels - a blog is a 2 way thing, its a relationship between you and the outside world. Readers and commentators can include not only your clients, customers and employees but also your competition. Its the perfect forum to measure market trends and attitudes and to communicate with key players in your industry.
Enhanced Search Engine Positioning – Internet search engines like web pages that are updated regularly so by adding a blog to your web site, your page will go up in the ratings and your site will attract more traffic to your site.
Networking- by publishing a blog you are presenting yourself as an expert in the field you chose to blog on. If your blog is insightful it will help you establish yourself within your peer group building trust within a community and in turn giving you trusted contacts that will help you build your business
As I discovered myself, getting up and running with a blog is easy; it doesn’t need to cost that much and anyone can do it (given a little time and effort). With some blogging software and a server you can be off to the races in no time.
All sounds too good to be true? Well, the number of people writing blogs online is forecast (by Forrester) to reach 100,000 people this year with another 200 million former bloggers out there. So the challenge becomes how to get yourself heard above all of the dotsam and netsam out there. Doing so will be the subject of subsequent blogs on this site.
In the meantime, you may want to check out some successful corporate blogs:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/
http://van-housing.blogspot.com/
http://blogsouthwest.com/
Technorati Profile
