Visa gets it – that the marketing world has changed significantly, and even the big players need to change along with it.  In fact, Visa’s head of marketing, Antonio Lucia, reported that Visa has increased their digital media investment from about 11% to at least 36%.

But Visa not just putting their money into digital media, they are also changing their approach to marketing.  Lucia said last month in his keynote at ad:tech San Francisco that Visa is now guided by three principles of social media, with one of them being “recommendations are the new advertising.”

I couldn’t agree more!  Consumers are overwhelmed by ads, and even if a brand does manage to get consumers’ attention by traditional advertising, they have a huge trust hurdle to jump.  So consumers are turning now to recommendations (Earned Media) as their trusted information source.

When someone wants to know what service provider to use, or which brand provides the most consistently-performing product at a price that meets their budget, where do they turn?  Social media. They ask their friends, relatives, and colleagues… and even people they don’t know, but still trust simply because they are part of their extended social network.  The key being that another individual – not a brand promising perfection via one of its ads — recommended a service or product.

Some marketers might see this shift away from traditional advertising as a negative shift, but I see it as a huge opportunity for marketers.   Recommendations are more likely to lead to action (a purchase or passing on the recommendation, for example) due to their interpersonal nature, and also because recommendations are often requested with the intent to purchase.

Our job as marketers then needs to shift from creating the most eye-catching advertisement ever to facilitating and nurturing relationships that lead to these powerful recommendations. It’s these relationships that create Brand Advocates – those people who are so delighted by our product/service/brand that they can’t wait to tell their friends and their whole social networks about their experience.

We need to make it EASY for Brand Advocates to make these brand-reinforcing recommendations. Give them the tools to interact with your brand so they can hear your consistent message, ask their questions, give you feedback, and then pass your message on to their network.  Those recommendations will catch fire in ways that traditional advertising simply will not.

Take a look at your marketing strategy – how many times does the word “recommendations” or “Brand Advocates” show up?  I bet there is room for more!

-Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist

In the past three years, social media has gone from being a novelty, to test and try out, to being serious business.  Companies are now coming on board and showing their new opinion of the true business value of social media by opening their budgets and allocating resources to social media use.

So the social media budget is there — which is great news — but now what?  Many companies will just add social media as another self-contained “bucket” in the product life cycle, but it needs to be so much more than that.  It is time to spill the social media bucket so it crosses all aspects of the organization.

Research: use social media for gathering customer preferences, behaviors and expectations… and let this information guide your innovations.  Your budget (and stakeholders!) will appreciate the financial savings from fewer wrong innovation turns.

Legal: consider the implications of social media use and make sure your entire organization knows what is legally appropriate.

Production: use social media to perform due diligence on your current and potential vendors and manufacturers.  Listen to their public customer conversations.  Look for their Brand Advocates (they don’t have many?  That should be a danger signal to you!).

Customer Service: Use social media for instant and ongoing engagement with your customers.  Pay attention to them and address their needs early, often, and publicly.

Marketing: use social media to engage with customers, build relationships, and increase brand visibility – low cost, high return!

etc.: use social media as internal communication and collaboration tools. Everything social media can do for your customers, it can (and should) do for your organization!  Use social media to build relationships, to share information, to make announcements, gather data, and expedite innovation.

There’s also a nice side effect to weaving social media use through all aspects of your organization:  it gives you clearer ways to measure your ROI (and ROR!)… and the more useful and accurate measurements you can provide to the C-suite, the more willing they will be to continue including social media in the budget.

Don’t take for granted inclusion of social media funds in the budget.  It is up to you to prove the continued value of social media for your organization, so start now with implementing a 360-degree approach that crosses every silo and every platform. Go spill your social media bucket and start the integration work!

-Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist

I recently wrote about the dangers of disparity between the customer experience in the social media channel and the customer experience in the traditional channel … and the importance of INTEGRATING your brand messages across all channels.

We also need to make sure that we integrate our brand messages across platforms – both face-to-face and online.

Real-life example:  I have been involved with my bank for years – I’m an Advocate, and I go to this bank all the time.  This week after visiting my bank in their physical location, I walked out realizing that more often than not, I leave their “store” not feeling good.

This bank is giving me a huge mixed message: they have branches on almost every corner so they obviously value the face-to-face customer experience… but when they get me in front of them, with the best opportunity to make me feel good, they drop the ball.  Their online presence promises a high-touch, personalized, efficient experience but the actual face-to-face experience is highly disappointing with long slow lines and employees standing around not doing anything while I wait.  It’s not quick, it’s not efficient, and it’s nothing like what they promised in their online and traditional messaging.

I expect by now you are building valuable relationships with your customers online, then identifying, mobilizing, and energizing Brand Advocates and tracking their reach.  That is great and important, but what about the real world?  That is an INCREDIBLE chance to build and enhance advocacy… or unfortunately, to break it down!

Banks are not the only businesses guilty of dropping the ball with their face-to-face customer experience.  It happens at car dealerships, home improvement warehouses, and a variety of other businesses where you walk into the location and a handful of reps are talking among themselves happily ignoring you or simply not being “nice” when they do finally pay attention… no “how can I be of service?,” no smiles, and negative body language.  There is no “customer” or “service” in that scenario, and the powerful message sent is “you don’t matter to us.”

You need to make sure that when focusing on the online customer experience, that your face-to-face customer experience carries the ball, and actually advances it… DO NOT waste that valuable opportunity!   Unite your brand messages by taking the online experience to the real world and vice versa.   Brand Advocates exist in both venues – make sure your best customer service is always in both venues to meet them.

-Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist

Social media marketing to most in the C-suite is still a campaign-based tactic, viewed and managed separately, but it really should be integrated.  Social media marketing needs to be woven into the fabric of all marketing channels and strategically managed from a 360-degree perspective.

This integration is especially important around Customer Service, where the disparity between the customer experience in the social media channel and the customer experience in the traditional channel is a dangerous chasm.   The result is a mixed message around Customer Service – an area where none of us can afford to be unclear or inconsistent!

Think of it from the customer perspective (as you always should):  they get a quick response and dedicated attention in the social media channel, and then are subjected to the “same-old, same-old” via traditional customer service channel.  Long waits (phone or in person) and inattention in one channel will immediately cancel out any gains from your social media marketing channel.

As you can see, social media marketing desperately needs to be integrated into ALL marketing channels!

This integration of course takes time, but you can start the integration immediately with absolutely no technical changes.  Simply be diligent in your social media channel about setting your customers’ expectations.   If the reality of your traditional Customer Service channel includes a 7-10 day response (refunds or backorder fulfillment, for example), then use your social media channel to respond immediately… and TELL THEM about the 7-10 day reality.  Then go fix that timeline, and when it is fixed… tell that too.

Think of it this way:  broken promises and mixed messages are a quick way to send your customers away.  Kept promises and integrated messages, systems, and management are a quick way to create Brand Advocates… the heart of your social media marketing channel.

The biggest marketing weakness today is the mixed message around Customer Service.  It’s up to your company to make integration a priority and give your brand a chance.

-Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist

As a tech blogger for VentureBeat, Anthony Ha is always an Advocate for something. Currently, his obsession is the online travel service Hipmunk. “It’s the only tolerable way to book travel,” said Ha. He likes the way Hipmunk searches, sorts, and displays his travel options.

Beyond writing about Hipmunk in VentureBeat, Ha will occasionally tweet about Hipmunk, but that’s usually out of frustration when he can’t find the flight he wants and is forced to go to another “lesser” service.

-David Spark, Social Media Journalist and Producer, Spark Media Solutions

In the physical world, when our trusted and valued friends come to visit our house, we often welcome them by saying, “Come in…make yourselves at home!”   In the virtual world, do you do the same thing?  When customers and prospects visit your online site, do they feel at home there?

Think about retailers that offer snacks, coffee, samples, valuable information, and sometimes even entertainment in their shops.  They create a welcoming atmosphere for their customers because they know it will encourage them to stay around the shop, browsing the products and learning more about the brand…and greatly increasing the chances of a sale.

Your online site needs to do the same thing.  What do you do to make your current and prospective customers feel comfortable?   What are you doing to add value to their day?  What experience are you giving them? In other words, how are you inspiring them to stick around now and return later…with their friends?

• If you are selling clothes, maybe give your customers and prospects the latest fashion news.
• If you are selling food, how about information on nutrition specialists or a free 1-minute video clip by a nutrition specialist?
• Maybe get creative about sample give-aways by trying social sampling.
• Invite them to do something:  respond to a poll, watch a video, play a game
• Give them the “social” of “social media” with easy ways to connect to your brand through various social networks and to share those connections with their friends.
• And most importantly, make sure they can reach a human being with their questions!

Why bother?  Because when your prospective and current customers feel at home at your site, they will feel at home with your brand in a way that builds trust –  a cornerstone for building relationships.  And the success of social media marketing really is all about relationships.

They say home is where your heart is — make your site that place for your customers!

-Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategiest

Kleenex made waves with its recent “Softness Worth Sharing campaign,” which encouraged people to have FREE Kleenex sample packs sent to friends and family.  Earlier this month, a reported 1 million Kleenex packs had been sent on behalf of Kleenex consumers!

What made this innovative campaign so successful?  Kleenex gave consumers the chance to not only interact with their product, but to also easily give their friends/family the same experience. In other words, Kleenex identified Advocates, who in turn sent more samples and encouraged their networks to do the same… they were energized and mobilized.  Social sampling at its best!

One important part of this campaign was providing a way for people to track the campaign online – including their own “chain of sharing,”  where a consumer can see if their sample-sending inspired someone else to send sample(s).  When consumers can see the impact of their action, it can easily inspire them to act again and spread the word to their friends about this “cool thing you have to check out!”  Again, it energizes and mobilizes Advocates.

We know how important it is to give our Brand Advocates the tools to market our products for us, and now Kleenex has taken this concept one step further by giving consumers the tools AND THE PRODUCT (samples) to share with their networks.  They have made it easy and fun for Advocates to create a buzz around a specific product and to share the experience of the product.

Successful social sampling campaigns rely on consumer-to-consumer connection, and your Advocates are the most powerful way to create those ties.

-Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist

One of the most valuable returns of the social media proliferation is the renewed fervor around Brand Advocacy. The truly remarkable thing about Brand Advocates is that they proactively recommend brands and products without getting paid…but if they are not getting paid, then what is their motivator for advocacy?

The #1 reason Brand Advocates recommend brands and products is that they want to help others (source: “Engaging Advocates Through Search and Social Media,” comScore, Yahoo!, Dec. 2006).   In other words, there is an emotional component to their advocacy.  The emotional component is not just important for Brand Advocates and their social graph, it is also key to the marketer and brand relationship with their Brand Advocates. If you can make an emotional connection with your consumer, that will go far in building long-term advocacy.

Empathize with your consumers’ frustrations, celebrate their successes, and give them memorable experiences when they interact with or around your brand.  Show you’re human by sharing, caring, and interacting.  Ask your Advocates questions, then respond to their answers and respond every time and listen, then ask them more questions and respond again.  If you want to see what that looks like in action, follow me on twitter (@TedRubin).

There is a catch.  You actually need to CARE about your consumers, or all of the actions I just listed will yield very little, if any, emotional connection. Even though you don’t actually know or interact with many of your consumers as individuals, you still need to treat them as though you already have an emotional connection with them.  That perspective is what will encourage you, as a brand/marketer, to be even more attentive and responsive… and your consumers WILL notice and WILL love you for it.

Add the emotional connection… it will enhance your relationship and insure long-term advocacy.

-Ted Rubin, Social Media Strategist

It is true that Brand Advocates have value in part due to the reach of their relationships within and across their social networks.  When they encourage their friends and colleagues to buy our products, our brand’s buying power increases exponentially, and it simply makes good business sense to leverage those opportunities.

The risk here is that we can become so focused on our Brand Advocates’ social reach that we see them only as a means to an end (sales) and stop seeing them as people.  We might get greedy and start looking right past them to market directly to their networks, ignoring our Advocates themselves.  While that marketing method can still be somewhat effective, it costs more, it is more difficult to implement and maintain, and it is dangerous to our brand.  We cannot de-value our Advocates and expect our brands to thrive!

No matter how great a buying power their networks provide us, we still need to value our direct 1-1 relationships with our Advocates.

Research shows that Brand Advocates are more likely to repurchase after recommending brands and products:

76% percent of Brand Advocates said they were more likely to repurchase after recommending a brand or product to someone else, and 79% said they would be more likely to repurchase in the future. (source: the Harris Poll, June 2009).

In other words, with our Brand Advocates, the ROR (Return on Relationship) is high.  A strong relationship with a Brand Advocate is likely to not only increase the Word of Mouth impact, but also to increase their own likelihood of repeat purchase.   And if we continue to delight our Advocates with each of their own purchase experiences, they have even more reason to recommend our products and services to others.

Don’t get greedy and interact with your Brand Advocates just to “mobilize” them for the buying power of their networks.   They are valuable in and of themselves. Treat them that way!

Remember the old small business customer service mentality?  Where pleasing the customer came FIRST, and the need to delight them was “a given” not an option?   Great news – it’s back (or at least on its way back)!

The democratizing nature of social media has returned power to the customer, making Brand Advocates one of our strongest marketing assets.  If we want to share their power (not take it!), we need to adopt customer service as the new way of marketing – or “unmarketing,” a term mentioned by Brian Solis in the introduction to his book Engage, and Scott Stratten details extensively in his blog and book UnMarketing.

Considering this power shift, the #1 question we should be asking our Brand Advocates is “How may I serve you?” Ask early and ask often.

This “How may I serve you?” question shows our Advocates that we are back on the customer service bandwagon, and just as importantly, it keeps us in check.   If you aren’t ready to make “How may I serve you?” your priority question, consider these implications for use:

1. It flattens the traditional hierarchy of “push” messaging, giving even more power to our Advocates.  The more power our Advocates have, the more power our brand has.
2. It reminds us to arm our Advocates with tools for evangelizing in their own way. Side benefit: those tools are also of great value internally in our organizations!
3. It reminds us of the necessary two-way street of communication between us and our Brand Advocates.  The era of mutually beneficial brand-Advocate relationships is here – let it work for you, your brand and your Advocates!
4. It reminds us that our egos need to turn the spotlight over to our Brand Advocates. The success and impact of our product or service is not about how much we love it, but about how it “serves” our customer.
5. It gives us direction for innovation. When we know what our Brand Advocates want more of (or less of), we have a blueprint for change.  We have unprecedented access to the needs and desires of our market – why would we even consider not tapping into that??

So here’s your new 4-word marketing strategy for 2011:  Guess Less, Ask More… and always start with “How can I serve you?”