Pick ONE social media lead vehicle. Don’t try to do everything.

Brand Managers heard the term “social media is free” and thought it was a media buffet so they got a crappy website, then got on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter and had no clue what to do next. With no strategy or though, brand leaders went out and built very bad websites that talked about how to cleanse a wound, how to pick the right color of a dishwasher or a basic list of all the sizes and flavors you offer. You spent money on a viral video and put it on your website. Then, brand leaders created a Facebook page (with 173 likes), a Twitter account (with 97 followers) and thought about creating an Instagram account but not quite sure what you’d put on. And so now, you’re making the most of this free media?  Last year, I was driving leisurely along a country road on a Saturday afternoon and I saw a rock quarry with a sign out front that said “Like us on Facebook”. My first thought was, why would I want to like a gravel pit on Facebook? I thought what kind of updates would they be giving? Would my friends see that I liked a page with 37 likes?  Maybe that gravel pit should have used their sign for better use like “We’ve got Quartz at $9 a pound” The lesson here is that not every brand should be using Social Media, just because it’s free. And like any tactical tool, it should be well thought out and fit with your brand strategy. Don’t just go on there because you think you have to be, go on because you see that it will help grow your brand.

The role of Advertising is to create a bond with consumers, establish your brand’s positioning and drive a change in your consumers behavior that leads to higher sales, share and profit. For brands, media is an investment at touch points where consumers are most willing to engage in the story. Media has to be used to create a bond with consumers, establish your brand’s positioning, learn about your consumers and influence a change in your consumers behavior (think, act or feel) that leads to higher sales, share and profit. Since we still think social media is “free”, you have to realize that social media takes “effort” which means employees and time. You need a strategy, guidelines, interesting content, continuous feeds, engagement mechanisms. You need smart, strategic, fully engaged, creative people. So let’s look at it from an ROE point of view (return on effort).

Return on Effort (ROE) is a great tool for focusing your activity

Doing a laundry list of activity spreads your resources so thin that everything you do is “ok” and nothing is “great”. And in a crowded and fast economy, “ok” never breaks through enough to get the early win and find that tipping point to open up the gateway to even bigger success. Here are the benefits to the Brand by focusing your efforts:

• Better Return on Investment (ROI): With all the resources against one strategy, one target, one message, you’ll be able to move consumers enough to drive sales or push other key performance indicators in the right direction.
• Better Return on Effort (ROE):It’s about getting more back than you put into the effort. Working smart helps make the most out of your people resources.
• Stronger Reputation:When you only do one thing, you naturally start to become associated with that one thing—externally and even internally.  Reputation is a power you can push to find deeper wins.
• More Competitive:As your reputation grows, you begin to own that one thing and you can better defend that positioning territory. You can expose the weakness of your competitors, attract new consumers as well as push internally (R&D, service, sales) to rally behind the newly created reputation.
• Bigger and Better P&L:As the focused effort drives results, it opens up the P&L with higher sales and profits. People with money invest where they see return.

 

New school thinking for media planning

Brand Leaders have to recognize the change in the marketing model. For generations, they talked AT the consumer, but now they have to talk WITH the consumer. In the old school, Brand Leaders were trained to try to INTERRUPT the consumer in a busy part of their day and then YELL at them over and over again. It was all about driving AWARENESS-PURCHASE-LOYALTY where you use advertising to build Awareness which leads to conversion and then Purchase which then the brand experience leads to Loyalty. The new school of marketing is all about LOYALTY-AWARENESS-PURCHASE where you cater the most to your most loyal users, who will be the ones driving Awareness and the influence of the conversion to purchase. It’s no longer about yelling at strangers on TV.  Instead, you have to engage your most loyal consumers, and they become the medium for reaching new users as they WHISPER advice to their friends. In the last few years, I’m noticing more and more queries of Facebook where people will put “I’m going to Boston, does anyone know a good restaurant?” or “I’m buying a new phone, anyone have a recommendation?” as they trust and rely on their friends. It will be those people within their network that will carry more influence than any marketing you can provide. So if one of those is a motivated loyal user of your brand, they’ll speak with passion and conviction, carrying a great influence in that purchase decision.

 

The modern Brand Leader gets the power of being a loved brand. When your brand is loved, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings and thinking is replaced by feeling.  Consumers become outspoken fans ready to speak out and battle competitive users. This connection between beloved brands and their consumer becomes a source of power for that brand to use.  In today’s world of Brands, the most Loved are the most powerful.  Brands like Starbucks, Google and Whole Foods aren’t using TV advertising, but instead they are taking their brand experience to social media and influencing their most loyal brand lovers to spread the word. People post a picture of their Pumpkin Latte on Facebook and now 137 people now want one. Equally, if they complain about their phone, it evokes similar negative feelings or doubt in us about the same phone.

The old school thinking is what gets measured gets done. Old School media has always been about efficiency and the ROI (Return on Investment).  But New School media is about Impact and ROE (Return on Effort). The influence of social media is like the new “invisible hand” that you know is there, but can’t always measure. Yes, TV is and always will be the most efficient medium. It’s easy to stick with what you know and has a whole system of measurements.  But TV is an announcement medium, not an influence medium.TV is best used for broad awareness and new news. But it’s not as good at influencing as social media.There are loved brands who still spend 95% of their ad budget on TV. Yet, their TV ads tell us nothing new and fail to move the brand forward. The better spend would be take all that stored energy within their most loyal users and get them to influence their network of friends. Your most loyal consumers become the medium for attracting new users.  

It’s not just demographics but emotional-graphics

As a consumer, I use many of social media tools available, but it seems my mood changes when I switch from one tool to another. Not thinking about it, but I have different emotional expectations from each social media tool I use. When I’m on Linked In, I am hoping to advance my career–I seek out knowledge, leads on jobs or see connections who may help me get ahead. But on a second’s notice I switch over to Facebook looking for an escape where I can connect with old friends, post photos of my recent trip to Hawaii or comment on some issue that my friends are talking about. I click over to Twitter and I retweet a funny meme that makes me laugh or Tweet about something crazy I saw on the way to work. I switch over to the Weather Network to see if my Golf Game on Saturday will be free of rain, and click on a Huffington Post article about something stupid Bieber did last night. Then I go back to work. I may not realize it, but I have satisfied many of my emotional needs–thirst for knowledge (Linked In), need for control (weather), wanting to be liked and noticed (Facebook) as well as wanting to be free (Twitter) and finally a little of being myself (Huffington Post).

At Beloved Brands, we believe that passion matters, both with the consumer and brands. The more emotional connection that brands can create with consumers, the more powerful that brand will be. Brand Leaders tend to get stuck when trying to figure out the emotional benefits. It seems that not only do consumers have a hard time expressing their emotions about a brand, but so do Brand Managers. Companies like Hotspex Research have mapped out all the emotional zones for consumers. I’m not a researcher, but if you’re interested in this method contact Hotspex at http://www.hotspex.biz  Leverage this type of research and build your story around the emotions that best fit your consumer needs. Leveraging the Hotspex work, we’ve mapped out 8 zones in a simple way below in what we call our “Emotional Cheat Sheet” for Brands:

Within each of the zones, you can find emotional words that closely align to the need state of your consumer and begin building the emotional benefits within your Customer Value Proposition. How it works is you have to figure out which emotional zone your brand can own through research or using instincts. And just like a rational position, you can’t try to own them all. Force yourself to stay within a zone that may include 1 or 2 of the emotional need states.  If we think of the world’s leading car companies, Volkswagen’s quirkiness allows you to be comfortable with being yourself, Volvo’s safety features makes you feel knowledgeable and in control, yet a Mini Cooper’s spunky styles gets you noticed or be liked and the power of the Dodge Charger allows you to feel free and feel optimistic on the road.

Match up your Brand’s emotional zone to social media site’s emotional zone

Once you figure out what emotional zone your brand can own, we recommend that your lead social media vehicle should play in that same emotional zone. The Dodge Charger might be better off showcasing their brand on Youtube and having an outspoken voice on Twitter. Volvo better own every safe word on Google, make sure their Wikipedia page accurately reflects their brand’s record. Volkswagen could use a provocative voice on the Huffington Post or own Trip Advisor. Using our “Emotional Cheat Sheet, we’ve mapped out where some of the leading social media and digital sites fall.

For Brand Leaders to get it, they should be living in the space of social media. It’s a great chance for Brand Leaders to get in the shoes of your consumer, see how they live, hear what’s important to them, use their rich language and feel what they think about your brand. Be active and be engaged. You’d better hurry though, because pretty soon what we see in front of us as new school media will be old pretty soon. And then you’ll be completely out of it.

Use social media to take a walk in the shoes of your consumers