Social Media | Charlie Moger's ADmissions

Paid vs. earned: secrets of better advertising ROI

Social media solutions are peddled the same way as quick weight loss programs. And, we buy into both for the same reason: we want to believe there’s a quick, instant, easy way to get a better return on our advertising investment. Sure you can. Just like you can get buff without workouts and responsible eating. As one who’s been (and still going) through the fitness mill, I find it particularly satisfying to see a universal truth of the gym proven in advertising: you gotta workout to work it off.

Social media’s Kool-Aid sweet treat is seductive. Who wouldn’t want the viral impact of the Coke Zero-Mentos campaign, or sex appeal of Old Spice’s shower guy ads. But, is it really more cost-effective to earn exposure instead of just paying for it?

While social media’s viral engagement may occasionally generate miraculous results, experience proves it can’t predictably deliver the round-house reach punch of paid media. Evidence is mounting that earned media’s cost-efficiency is best realized as a compliment to paid media; paid drives the eyeballs, social earns engagement.

Co-created engagement

Ray-Ban, Levis, Activision, and Nike are some of the examples used in this discussion where even the largest social media efforts still require paid support to initiate the wave of earned distribution. What does this have to do with your advertising? Invest time to watch this round table on the topic.

Push with paid, pull with earned

You don’t have to be Activision or Nike to apply these same principles. But, you do have to think ahead to synchronize your advertising and social media messaging. Here are five ways you can leverage better results from both:

Synchronize messaging. Populate your blog with content tied to your advertising message: when putting specific products on sale, create authentic consumer-centric stories about them on your blog. Speak to your customers’ WHY.
Be engaged. Customers will give you their spark, you must provide the fuel. Monitor comments on your blog to isolate points of interest and pour gas on the fire: join the conversation, add information. You will be communicate with greater connectedness and cement a deeper relationship.
Take a stand. Shamelessly take a stand for what you believe. Yes, you will hack off some people. But, you will define yourself clearly to those who agree. Being liked is nice. Being loved is better. My partner Tom Wanek illustrates this point brilliantly in his book Currencies that buy Credibility. Read the chapter about Patagonia. Where do you draw the line?
Invite participation. This one is tricky. New Coke is a cautionary tale of what happens when customers are asked what they would like in a new product. Don’t go there. Customers only know about what they already know. Instead, ask how they use your product in unexpected ways, how it has made their life better, why they gladly pay for it. “What do you like about….” If you have done the first three things listed here, you will get answers.
Expose yourself. Put a face on your company. Whether you use pictures, Flip videos, or professionally produced videos, bring customers behind the curtain to see who you are. People do business with people. Be personable. Be real. Be available.

Please pass on the Kool-aid

There’s no denying the benefits of earned media. But, it’s only part of the equation. Paid and earned media is like diet and exercise. You build muscle with exercise. You shape up with diet. Paid media is the exercise. Social media is the diet. The work best when you work them together. Just another one of those pesky universal truths.

By the way, the difficult truth about universal truths is, they’re universal. Which brings us to another one: you get what you pay for. How much do you suppose this cost?

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Rock your marketing and advertising like Warren Buffett

Differentiating your brand could be tricky work if your marketing and advertising involves one of the world’s richest men—unless that man is Warren Buffett.

“We thought, What’s the most ridiculous getup we could think up for Warren — and thought, Nah, we can’t do that,” says Phil Ovuka, director of creative media services at Geico.

Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett has become a staple of the Geico employee-created videos used to kick off their annual team meeting. Over the past four years, Buffett has appeared as a hobo and a DJ. This year, his tattooed Axl Rose send-up stole the show and netted thousands of viral impressions.

What can Warren Buffett teach your brand?

Suppose an employee brought you a marketing and advertising idea so off-the-charts outlandish you couldn’t contain your laughter. What would you do? Dismiss that idea and you lose three ways: employees lose trust in sharing ideas, your brand loses fresh thinking, and you lose an edge that can differentiate you from competitors.

“Differentiate until you want to cry,” says Jon Spoelstra, author of Marketing Outrageously: How to Increase Your Revenue by Staggering Amounts! Otherwise, you’re just like everyone else.

Spoelstra’s track record of creating marketing and advertising success stories in basketball and arena football are legendary. The way to start, Spoelstra teaches, is “by making new a way of life.”

Step into each day looking at things from new and unexpected perspectives. Slaughter the sacred cows and bring in fresh thinking. Doing so will make your people happy, your brand strong, and you rich. Ask Warren Buffett about that.

The bigger the response, the better the idea

Ideas everyone agrees on are safe, bland, vanilla. They’re dreck. It’s the thinking that produces ad-speak-laden messages: “family owned with a commitment for quality and your satisfaction.” Gag me.

Marketing and advertising ideas worth exploring are the ones that double over half the room in laughter, while revolting others. Strong reactions tell you that idea carries a charge that will light up a brand. Nurture such thinking in people and you’ll create an unexpected employee benefit: opportunity.

By stepping into his Guns N Roses persona, Warren Buffett tells everyone, Geico is alive with opportunity. The boss is on the team, not in the watchtower. His appearances in those videos is a clarion call to every Geico employee: your ideas are welcome at the top. It’s a marketing and advertising message that resonates with customers too, earning Buffett and company over 327,00 plays on YouTube as of the moment this was written.

Employees created the video, wrote the lyrics, delivered the message. It works because it’s an authentic sentiment delivered by people who believe. This kind of thing only happens when you create a safe space for outrageous ideas.

How welcome are outrageous ideas at the top of your company?

Jon Spoelstra is our brand of crazy. That’s why you’ll find him teaching a class called How To Make Big Things Happen Fast at Wizard Academy. I spent two days attending his first workshop and highly recommend it–especially if you want to find the way to your envelope’s edge. Click here to learn more.

My iphone app: portable advertising & marketing advice

A whole computer that fits in one room. When I was a kid, it was hard to believe computers could get that small. My kids can’t believe they were ever that big. Today, mobile computing is taking things a giant leap smaller.

Remember when having a fax was a big deal? How about email? Your next step: a own mobile app of your own. I created the adMISSIONs iPhone app on my own in less than 15 minutes using about that many clicks. Why does it matter? It’s all about service and credibility.

The mobile battlefield

The mobile screen is a growing battleground for your customer. Already there are applications to scan the bar code or take a picture of a product in your store and compare its price at stores nearby and on the web. If you expect me to buy it from you, there better be a reason beyond price.

Gone are the days of Name That Tune in my family. My son and I reach for our iPhones and Shazam tells us the name of the song, the artist, album and where we can buy it right now. Last weekend I heard a perfectly restored recording of Edith Piaf singing La vie en rose. It was on my iPhone before the song was over.

What an app really gives you

While having the adMISSIONs iPhone app in the app store gives me a chuckle, having one of your own gives your brand something important: parity. There are God only knows how many apps in the iPhone App store. Your app stands shoulder-to-shoulder with every one of them. And, you stand shoulder-to-shoulder in customer perception too. According to AdAge, major magazine publishers see apps as a way of drawing eyes back to their magazines. So, why shouldn’t they draw them to you?

REI, a customer service hero of mine, has two iPhone apps. Pizza Hut and Starbucks have apps for ordering from your phone. Southwest Airlines has one that pings every time there’s a ticket deal. CNN pushes alerts for breaking news. ESPN will alert me if the Astros win the pennant. (I’m taking their word for it on that one in lieu of demonstrable team performance.)

In their hand or out of mind

The point is, a mobile app puts your service promise and product knowledge in the hands of customers anywhere they go. Since getting your app set up is so easy, what’s stopping you? I created mine with AppMaker. Or, if you want to create an app for multiple mobile platforms, check you MotherApp. Follow the link and stake your turf on the technological frontier of customer service.

Housekeeping note: The Wednesday Weekly Reader is moving. It is now the Friday Reader. Gathering a week’s stories and providing them as a summary at the end of your week makes more sense than doing so in the middle.

Thanks for reading adMISSIONs.

Marketing Scott Brown: social media lessons to help you win

His January 19th win shocked the political world, but Scott Brown’s victory came as little surprise to marketing experts tracking social media numbers. Scott Brown’s historic success demonstrates how social media’s underlying principles of human behavior can help you win customers.

What social media reveals quickly

Traditional polls were all over the map in the Massachusetts campaign’s final days. But, social media numbers tabulated by the Wordstream Internet Marketing blog turned out to be the most accurate in predicting the election’s outcome. What if you had this kind of advantage in your business?

Scott Brown’s social advantage over Martha Coakley

10:1 advantage in web traffic
10:1 advantage in YouTube viewership
3:1 advantage in twitter followers
4:1 advantage in Facebook followers

Democrats had dominated the web since Howard Dean made revolutionary use of it during his presidential run. But, the technical edge is narrowing. Last month, for example, Republican congressmen sent out 529% more tweets than their Democrat counterparts. Recently, 500 conservatives gathered with Newt Gingrich for workshops on effective use of social media. Here’s the catch: it takes more than a flurry of activity to drive success in politics or business.

Mark Senak, a Democrat, theorizes in his report “Twongress: The Power of Twitter in Congress,” that Democrats are paying less attention to resources that proved critical to Obama’s win even as Republicans make significant gains. Nothing creates results like sustained effort. In social media, competency in doingness is often mistaken for mastery of beingness. True success is less about what you do than who you are; social media just exposes the truth more quickly.

How do you campaign for customers?

Scott Brown’s win had less to do with social media than how he connected with something deep in the hearts of voters: they wanted to be heard. He looked them in the eye and said, “you’re not just another brick in the wall.”

As my partner Roy H. Williams says, he “spoke to the dog in the language of the dog about what’s in the heart of the dog.”

That’s connecting with a true felt need. Comparing how Brown and Coakley were able to “speak dog” offers clues for how you can better connect with your customers.

Be different where it counts

While both candidates reached out via traditional and social media, Scott Brown did it better. Compare their websites. Brown’s social media elements jump out, as do ways to get involved. Coakley’s links are lost in a traffic jam of graphics.

Other subtle differences: Brown’s blue is deeper, more pure. Coakley’s blue seems pale by comparison. Pure is strong. Pale is weak.

Brown’s photo is an action shot taken from a low angle; you look up at him. He seems bigger than life. Coakley’s is a posed portrait shot from a high angle; you look down at her. She is diminished. Up is good. Down is bad.

Brown’s video shows him campaigning. Coakley’s video is Obama campaigning. Brown is engaged. Coakley’s along for the ride.

Doing little things right gets big results

While such distinctions seem small, they send a message to customers. Your marketing, especially your social media, will be successful only to the degree you’re willing to authentically connect with your customer’s felt need.

Saying you’re connected and demonstrating it are different matters. Being real demands sustained effort to create trust and credibility.Voters and customers can smell a fake even over dial-up. Twittering once every week or so is worse than not doing it at all. Ditto with intermittent blog and Facebook posts.

Social Media opens a door; what you do with it determines if anyone comes in. Whether they stick around is a reflection of how real you’re perceived as being.

Whether it’s social media, traditional media, or person-to-person interaction, since time began, all people want is connectedness, recognition, and appreciation. Scott Brown was able to provide that. Martha Coakley didn’t.

Which campaign trail seems a better path for you?

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