It’s a whole new year – literally and figuratively.
Social media is quickly changing the way we need to think about our brands and marketing. We can no longer expect to be successful if we just focus our marketing efforts on telling our target market how great our own brand is. What we – the brand – say about ourselves is no longer what matters. It’s what OTHER people say about our brand and their experience of our brand.
Brands have a challenge having effective external conversations with consumers and then truly activating them as Advocates unless they evolve internally into a socially-focused organization.
Advocates are your goldmine! They are the people who go out there and “sell” your product simply because they want to — by passing links around, posting product reviews, getting the word out through all of their social media channels.
A quick way to become invisible as a brand (or worse yet, highly visible for negative reasons) is to keep your organization internally-focused. You can work 24×7 talking within your marketing group about what makes your product so fantastic … and then creating all those ads and marketing materials to try to convince everyone else the same… but unless people outside your organization are talking up your product, your work (and time!) is wasted.
In this age of social media, it’s relationships that matter: your brand’s relationship with its customers, friends and colleagues, and with the entire social network of anyone who believes in your brand.
Why? Because good relationships naturally lead to people wanting to share their excitement about great products with their friends and the rest of their network. Good relationships – those built on trust, transparency, and honesty – create your Brand Advocates.
And conversely, bad relationships (or nonexistent relationships) naturally lead to people wanting to share their frustration about poor products. Be careful!
If your organization doesn’t evolve with the marketplace into a socially-focused organization, you will be left behind (if you haven’t been already).
Evolve. Your brand depends on it.
Ted Rubin
Ted has a deep online background beginning in 1997 with Seth Godin, as CMO of e.l.f. Cosmetics, & recently as Chief Social Marketing Officer, Open Sky
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Great post!
This is a great post Ted and right on topic. I like to always remind people that their Brand is “not what they say it is” but what others say it is. We all must evolve and use the powerful tools available to us to grow our Brand in 2011 and beyond. Thanks for a great post here and you are right on the mark. Ryan Sauers http://www.ryansauersblog.com
You summed it up, Ted. Relationships Matter. VERY well put and exactly what brands — and invidivuals need to hear right now!
This has been so true from my own experience working with brands on the consulting side and then from the blogging side. I love how you strike right at the truth with a knife Ted.
Brands need to start requiring everyone in the company to say the two lines below ten times a day:
“What we – the brand – say about ourselves is no longer what matters. It’s what OTHER people say about our brand and their experience of our brand.”
Hopefully by chanting those lines enough it will cause a shift in culture and relationships with customers.
Ted, what you are trying to teach is an important message, in fact, it always has been, but with the customer able to transmit his/her sentiment toward a brand to many more people then they ever could using the internet/twitter/facebook, brands must be much more cognizant of those transmissions.
We have constantly used this approach in our business. We seek out trusted retailers/trendsetters and tastemakers to do the work for us. There is nothing more powerful than someone buying on recommendation. If the customer believes in the store/brand/person recommending the product, you will ring in way more sales.
It is also important that your products are first rate. Nothing worse than selling something you know is not up to quality. You will be punished for it. All it takes is a negative tweet/FB post for it to go viral.
Great article, Ted. I couldn’t agree with you more. Crystal is a “grass roots” or “niche” brand. We don’t have the luxury of big budgets for massive TV or radio campaigns. Social Media was MADE for brands like ours: developing and maintaining meaningful, personal connections with our customers even if it means doing so one customer at a time. Those customers who bother to engage our brand with praise, criticism or curiosity obviously care enough to let us know. If we can inform and empower one passionate customer to tell her family and friends about us, we’ve done our job.
Earlier this week, a colleague showed me a statistic: Only 11 percent of executives believe social media has measurably helped their business.
What do you say to that?
I say they are not measuring the correct things and they are unaware of the value of how an enhanced relationship with their target market helps their business grow. This is a problem with perception rather than actual results.
Five reasons corporations are not using Social Media effectively… 1. They don’t talk about anything broader than their own products, 2. They listen to customers but don’t take any action (which means they aren’t really hearing), 3. Companies can’t expect to have a strong social media presence when social sites are blocked internally to employees, 4. There is a fear that exists about jumping in, but while there have certainly been some hiccups and miscues along the way, social media has yet to be the undoing of any company, 5. When employees are more concerned with what’s in or out of their job description than doing the right thing to help the customer, that’s not a culture that’s likely to build trust and advocacy for a brand and there is no way social media efforts can be effective.
That’s a solid answer, Ted, thanks.
About #1 (they don’t talk about anything broader than their own products), you do, however, advocate sticking to their areas of expertise, yes?
Some companies also advocate a “company voice.” “We” instead of “I” so the individuals can be interchangeable. They want it to be about the company’s perspectives, not what the individual thinks.
What do you think of that?
Yes… sticking to your area of expertise is important, but what I am referring to is opening a dialog and mentioning things that will be of interest to your audience other than just your products, coupons, offers, etc.
The company should have a voice and personality, but that does not mean a host of employees can’t speak from their own perspective.
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Its like you read my mind! You seem to know a lot about this, like you wrote the book in it or something. I think that you could do with a few pics to drive the message home a little bit, but other than that, this is fantastic blog. An excellent read. I’ll definitely be back.