Business in General Archives - Page 18 of 25 by Mark Murnahan

Social Media Tactics Without Social Media Strategy Fails

I look around the Internet and see a lot of social media tactics without any overall strategy. It often leaves me shaking my head when I see so-called social media marketers who offer nothing but setting up a couple of social media accounts then find a handful of people for their client to spout advertisements to. Maybe they even offer to do the spouting, but often without a real sound plan. It leaves little wonder why so many people are left to question the usefulness of social media in their business. It is a sad fact for many companies, but it can be fixed.

For the purpose of this article, let us look at the words tactic and strategy like the military does. A military tactic is an action that is implemented by a group of no larger than a division. A strategy addresses the planned outcome of the entire military operation. In social media terms, one way to look at a tactic is sending tweets on Twitter, while a strategy addresses how those tweets fit into the overall business plan and marketing objectives.

I suppose it should not be surprising that many people do not understand the difference between a social media tactic and a social media strategy. After all, most of the people implementing social media today are not marketers by trade, nor have a significant stake in the outcome. Many will say that they are marketers, but most really are not. They are technicians of marketing tools, but not practitioners of the trade. If this insults you, it shouldn’t. It is not saying that the receptionist who was put in charge of tweeting is any less important, or that the guy in accounting who created the last ad campaign is any less valuable as an accountant. We all have our own skill sets, and just because it is popular, you can still be cool if you are not a marketer.

Social Media Tactics Examples

I witness many social media consultants who promote setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts, fancying up the profile pages, and helping customers to find followers or fans. Sadly, this is about as useful as a hammer without a carpenter. These tactics are just creating tools, and without a strategy … an actual understanding of what to do next and why, companies are often left to receive terrible results and disappointment. A tactic without any function or objective in place is only useful on a very short term basis, and that is if they have luck on their side.

A common tactic I see is the social media consultant who tries very hard to reach a lot of people with entertaining messages like a funny video, a joke, or inspirational quote. They tell their clients to be fun, interesting, and engaging. They promote making a lot of friends by being themselves and making it personal. This is all just fine and dandy, but it is only a tactic. In the end, you may have a lot of people who like you but still lose a lot of time and money. The overall strategy of this social media tactic is that if you have a bunch of friends and they like you, it will be easier to sneak in your advertisement now and then and get your friends to help you spread it to the world. The problem is, these are only tactics, and there is really not a sound strategy. Friends are great, and we can all benefit from having more friends. I love the friends I meet via social media. I met my wife back in 2000 using social media. All the friends are fantastic, but those friends alone are not likely to come running make your mortgage payments. You need more to your strategy than this.

In an upcoming article I will show actual statistics which I have compiled regarding the effectiveness of tactics in contrast to strategy, but for now I want you to think about strategy more in terms of short and long-term objectives, and how you can improve yours.

Social Media Strategy: A Plan for Success

Let’s just say that you have a bunch of people following you on Twitter and a squillion fans on your Facebook Page. What are you going to do with that? Will you provide something that nobody else is doing? Do you have a strategy that is sustainable beyond the next Facebook update?

Let us use a restaurant as an example. If you have a restaurant, will you blast out your specials every day and hope people come to see you, then perhaps just keep lowering your sale price until this tactic begins to work? I hope that you don’t think that is a useful strategy. Try to think of strategy more like this: Create a contest among waiters to see which one will have more customers tag your restaurant in a Facebook photo or upload a picture of their good time with your awesome waiter on TwitPic and send it to you as a reply on Twitter. Create a special inauguration party for your latest “Mayor” on Foursquare. Integrate these tactics into an overall strategy to produce a sustainable marketing force of people who love what you do and love to tell their friends. Reward them with something fun, interesting, and preferably delicious. These are things people will remember, and ways to have other people interested, rather than just wasting time with basic advertising tactics.

Even Good Strategy Fails Without Implementation

A good strategy will still not benefit your company without implementation. If you find that you have a handful of tactics without a really solid and productive strategy, stop and take another look. It is not too late to start doing things better, but each day that slips by will mean more money down the drain.

Here is one more example of a strategy. My strategy is to provide something useful. I want to give you something you did not get elsewhere. I want to give you something valuable that you can use today and receive benefit. Using this strategy, a small portion of my readers contact me when they are ready to create and implement a strategy using tactics that work.

What Do People Want and Where Do You Fit In?

Knowing what people want is an important part of effective marketing. Knowing where you fit into the customer’s plan is critical to success. It is not a simple one-answer question and it requires a close look at what people want, why they want it, and how you can help them get more of those things they want. Knowing where you are in this big picture is often difficult, because you are on the inside and trying to find a view from the outside. I want to offer you some help.

Note that this is not a matter of fitting your product or service into what you think people want, but what they actually want.

Humans Are Highly Evolved and Sophisticated Creatures

We humans are highly evolved. We think differently than most animals. We think differently enough that we have sometimes even become arrogant about it. We think we can fight what is in our nature, and that we are totally in control. We even came up with a word to make instinct seem more evolved, and we called it “emotion”. Emotion is what drives us to many of the choices we make, whether we like it or not. Emotions bring us closer to our friends, emotions cause us to argue with our friends, and emotions help us to find the right mate. Wait, but couldn’t the same things be said of instinct? Instincts drive us to be with others like us, instincts cause us to compete and fight within our packs, instincts are what make this mate or that mate right for us, and instincts are what drive us to buy things. Seriously, emotions are synonymous with instincts, and I make this point because we cannot fight our instincts. If I tell you that you cannot fight your emotions, I may reach some of you, but when I put it in terms of the lion with the biggest mane, it is because I want you guys to hear me, too.

Let us just consider, for a moment, that we are each hunters and gatherers. Like it or not, that’s where I am going with this. If I am a better hunter and gatherer, I will be rewarded. OK lions, that means I will have the best den, the best mate, and the best and most delicious gazelle. If you do not believe me on this, take a look at statistics on divorce. When a lion has a broken ankle, (not providing well) the mate (male or female … because ladies, you really are the ones who rock my blog) is far more likely to kick you out of the den or at very least to the other side of the den until you can show them the gazelle. I hope we are clear on this, because I want to tell you a little more about instincts and why some things sell so much better than others.

We have all heard that “sex sells”, but have you really looked deeper into why sex sells?

Why Does Sex Sell? Because People Instinctively Want Sex!

There are very basic non-sexy reasons that sex sells, and the sooner you realize it, the better. Aside from finding something to eat, there is not a single more instinct-driven action in our world than to pass along our genetics and keep our species alive. Without sex, nobody would be here and reading my blog. Yes, like it or not, your mother and father had sex … probably a lot.

People beat around the bush about the topic, and it is taboo for some people which makes it even more desirable. We avoid talking to grandmother about it, but let’s face it: sex sells. It sells news, it sells products, and it sells hope … in numbers that nothing else can compete with … not even close! There is no need for you to be shy when I tell you that sex sells, because grandmother is not watching. Even if grandmother was watching, she could probably tell you a good thing or two about sex. I know, it seems impossible, right?

In case you have any doubts on this topic, let us consider how you feel about the words mastectomy, castration, hormone disorder, or erectile dysfunction. I don’t mean just clinically, but how they affect people. These are some of the most frightening things that can happen to a human being. Castration is often considered one of the most cruel and unusual punishments possible, and in case you have not noticed, plastic surgery (namely fake boobs) is a pretty profitable field. On top of that, “erectile dysfunction” could easily be the overriding view of our life and time if we were dug up by anthropologists in a couple thousand years.

When a company embraces a market directive of not only the fact that sex sells, but how they can position themselves such that others are instinctively driven to their product, they win! They have the biggest profit margins and they have the biggest market, and all because they give us what we want. Just look at Calvin Klein as an example of this. Have you ever purchased one of their products or had sex with somebody who did? They offer jeans to make butts look better, scents to make people smell sexier, but really, above all, they market to instincts. They are not conning you, but rather simply understand what people want and they know how to deliver it.

So you may ask “what of other markets”. Instinct holds answers there, too. If you are a successful plumber, instincts tell us that backed up sewage is not healthy and that we should call you. If you are a successful restaurant, instincts tell us that your food will make us more satisfied than the others. If you are a successful car dealer, instincts tell us that you have a better way for us to go out to hunt and gather. As crazy as it may seem to you, even the seemingly least desirable or ridiculous things you may ever purchase are there because somebody had a better way to appeal to your instincts (emotions).

How Can I Harness Instincts?

Since you read this far, you are probably wondering just how you can harness instincts to explain how very valuable and useful your products or services are. The good news is that it is not as ugly or difficult as you have probably imagined. It takes a careful look at what you do and how it really fits into things that people want and need. Knowing where you are in this big picture is usually pretty hard, because you are on the inside and seeking a view from the outside.

My tip is to realize where and what you are. Be aware of yourself and why you do the things you do. It is a huge step to understanding where you fit in the pack and how you can help the rest of the pack survive stronger than without you. When the pack is stronger because of what you do, you become a success.

From my standpoint, I realized a long time ago that I do things because I am a lion with huge claws and teeth, and I know why I do things. There are instinctual reasons that I ride a motorcycle that is ten feet long and why I purchase amazing items. In my case, I want sex … just like nearly everybody else.

How this works into the pack and makes my pack stronger is that I help them to do the same. I help people to earn more money, which helps them to have more of the things that they want. I help people to find where they fit into the pack. I hope that I have helped you. If you need more help and want to grow your pack, just ask me.

Will Exposure to Thousands More People Help Your Business?

The answer to this question is not always yes. Here is an even better question for you to consider. Will presenting an appealing message to thousands more of the right people who are interested in your products or services be beneficial to your business? Maybe your answer is “no”, but I really doubt that.

There are a lot of questions to be answered about reaching a targeted audience that is important to your business. There is a lot of fear of failure and loss. Sometimes I think the people who doubt potential for increasing business using the Internet the most are often convinced that it only happens for the lucky ones. I have good news for you. You have the luck of the Irish on your side today, and they don’t call me “Murnahan” for being French.

Tough Marketing Questions for Many People

Marketing is a scary thing to a lot of people. I mean, it all seems so speculative, right? Maybe you think it seems like a bunch of guesswork, and some people just get lucky.

Marketing is not so speculative at all. This is not like rolling dice on a craps table and gambling with your company’s money, except for the newcomers to the marketing industry who are trying to earn as they learn. There is a lot of math and science at work. Doing it right sometimes just means making proper calculations. On the other hand, the message you deliver requires marketing creativity, but even creativity is not as speculative as you may imagine. There really are a lot of safeguards in proper marketing, and it does not need to be risky.

The truth is that there are a lot of people who just don’t hit the mark. They don’t get the marketing right the first time, and that opens a floodgate of fears and apprehension. It begs some tough marketing questions for many people. Some of the hardest questions running through people’s minds are as follows:

“Is it really likely that I can reach thousands more people interested in what I offer”
“How much will it really help my business?”
“How much it will cost?”

These are troubling questions that hold a lot of people back from the much more important considerations of what happens if you do nothing, or keep doing the things that do not work. I will offer you some answers to each of these. Please pay attention.

Now Seriously, Would Exposure to Thousands More People Help Your Business?

When you hear something like this it is really easy to assume that it is just hype, or that it will not be worth the expense, right? Often, it truly is just hype, but it is true that there really are thousands of potential customers out there. If you have the right message, at the right time, and deliver it properly, those can be your customers. This is not a myth, and it is not a unicorn hunting expedition. It takes some well crafted effort to achieve, but it really is not all that hard to gain huge amounts of new business with proper Internet marketing.

Is it really likely that I can reach thousands more people interested in what I offer?

Are there really thousands more people out there on the Internet who are interested in what you have to offer? Yes, people have actually even been successful selling dog poop online! Is it likely to reach the right audience with a proper marketing plan? Yes, but a weak plan with little effort will just disappoint you, again.

You can rest assured that there are not very many of the tens of thousands of readers that come to my blog each month who are seeking tips for knitting pajamas. They come because they want ideas, and they want to know what I know about SEO, social media, and other Internet marketing topics. Now what percentage of Internet users do you think are really interested in marketing? Seriously, this isn’t the most fun you ever had. Most people try to ignore marketing until the competition destroys their business. Don’t you think some people will be interested in what you have to offer, too?

How much will it really help my business?

Here is one of those easy questions to answer with math. You know how much each customer is worth to your business, right? You know how much you spend to acquire each customer, right? With this information and other vital data, it is pretty easy to calculate the actual gain to your business. If you do not have solid numbers, you really need marketing help more than you realize.

I understand that you hear all of the talk about the Internet being like the big California Gold Rush of 1848. You are surely hit by hundreds of Internet marketers trying to sell you SEO snake oil or proposing that you will make millions of dollars using nothing but Twitter or Facebook. Yes, most of these offers are crap, and easy to see through.

Now let’s stop being silly and answer this serious question. If it is true that you can realistically reach a targeted audience of thousands more people with an interest in what you offer, wouldn’t it be absolutely absurd to ignore it? Here is the answer: Yes, it would be absolutely absurd, and the scary cost is that your competitor will probably reach the people you missed. Question answered? Yes, I think so.

How much will it cost?

If you see marketing as a net loss, you are really not getting the point of it at all. Perhaps you have just tried all the wrong things and you are tired of trying.

If you think of Internet marketing as an investment in your business, you are on the right track. Like an investment, you must consider how much you want to gain. The consideration of a well thought out and effective marketing plan should be more along the lines of how much money you can get your hands on to do the one thing that will grow your business more than anything else. When people ask me the question of cost before any considerations of the objectives and directives involved, I tell them “You had better bring your lunch money.” This is for two reasons. First, because the more you put into marketing, the more you get out of it. Second, because I have a whole lot to teach this person about how marketing really works.

I have written many articles on the topic of Internet marketing and development cost. Here are a couple of them that you may find interesting:

One More Question!

Oh yes, I already asked you this one, but now it is time for your answer. Will presenting an appealing message to thousands more of the right people who are interested in your products or services be beneficial to your business? I ask this, because it is what makes my telephones ring. It is what I do for my clients. This is not a rhetorical question. Find me here if you want more answers.

Have you ever asked yourself what it will take to double your business? Adjust this question to your business however you like, but you should always be able to answer the question. If you operate very small or new business, doubling it is a pretty easy task. If you have been around a while and have a significant market share in your industry, this may be a pretty lofty goal. If you want to be “realistic” (by the way, realism is very subjective), maybe you want to increase your business by 15 percent, 25 percent, or 35 percent. Whatever the number, ask yourself what it will take to achieve it, and set a course to do it. Make a goal and treat it like an egg. Keep it warm, keep it safe from harm, and nurture it every day.

Treat Your Business How You Want it to Hatch

Successful business people ask what it will take to grow their market. Successful companies, even the small ones, treat their business like it is a big one, and like it will eventually hatch into a huge one. This is a pretty important principle that drives many companies to massive success.

Lately it seems that many companies have given up on the hope of growth and just beg to keep the market they have. A shocking truth I often find is that many businesses have a lot more means to grow than they give themselves credit. Many of them are too backed up in bureaucracy and indecision to actually make the efforts it will take to achieve growth. Executives are so afraid of losing their jobs for making a bad decision that they make the worst decision of all, which is indecision.

Don’t Lose your Business in the Marketing Omelette

There is often a simple answer to increase your business, but finding that answer is the tricky part. A truth about businesses today is that as the economy changed quickly in the past couple years, marketing changed even faster. Marketing became more confusing, and companies have to be a lot more creative to reach those elusive customers. It seems insane to me that as competition is stronger, a lot of companies have either tried really hard at doing all the wrong things or just gave up to take a “wait and see” attitude toward their market. They gave up on their egg and are letting the competition come and peck away at it. They ran out of ideas, and stopped seeking that simple but elusive answer of how to keep growing.

Business Growth Requires Defined Efforts

Flight does not happen by accident, and if you ever want that egg to hatch and fly, you must take good care of it. Achieving business growth requires defined efforts and careful attention. Here is that question for you, again. What will it take to double your business? If you cannot answer this with a clearly defined plan for success, there are people who can help. It is my job to make companies successful. Ring me up at *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE* (*REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*) and I will be happy to help you in the right direction. If I am not the guy to help you, rest assured that I know people who will be delighted to work with you. I am always happy to pass along a referral. Most importantly, don’t give up on your egg and do something to nurture it every day. Success is likely a whole lot more achievable than you give yourself credit.

Fear Affects Success in Marketing More Than Logic

I want to offer a lesson in how and why fear drives your market, and how to better address that fear. It is not only fear, but emotions … many emotions that drive your market. The biggest one to overcome is fear. I will give you examples, but first, I want you to look at your own business motivations. If you look at your own motivations, you will better understand what motivates others. Here are some easy questions to help illustrate the point and get your thoughts moving in a good direction.

Question One: When you think of your marketing, do you think of having your name everywhere so that people will buy more of what you offer, or do you think of how nice it will feel to have a more secure business? (NOTE: They may go hand in hand, but the result is what you are after … not the cause.)

Question Two: Do you think of the money you earn, or do you think about the great neighborhood you live in, or hope to live in one day? (NOTE: Money alone is not a good result … What you do with it is another story.)

Question Three: Do you think of the fancy possessions and the great fortune you will amass, or do you think of the feelings those things will give you? (NOTE: Wanting something without a reason is no better than not wanting it at all.)

Question Four: Do you think of the things you want, or do you think of why you want them and how it will give you opportunities that you do not have today? (NOTE: I suspect there is a hint of what you really want in this question.)

Question Five: Do you really think you have a good idea of why people do business with you, or do you project your own opinions onto them in hopes it will work? (NOTE: If there is some doubt, you may want to consider what happens if you are wrong.)

There will be two categories of answers here, and one creates success, while the other will leave you disappointed. One is visionary, addresses emotions, and overcomes fears. The other will keep you where you are, with what you’ve got. It may shock you to find that you often use logic to override your own good decisions because of fear. The way logic and emotion relate in your life will have a lot to do with success or failure in how you see your business and it is reflected in your marketing.

I see it all the time that scared people do not make successful decisions in their business and in their marketing. On the other side, I find that the people with balls the size of Volkswagens and who can overcome their fear are taking success to a whole new plane. This is reflected in USA, where there was a 16 percent increase in the number of millionaires in 2009 (yes, during recession) and a 17 percent growth in households with a net worth of $5 million or more. This came following a major decline in 2008, and is a high-level look at how recession separated the fearful from the courageous.

I wrote about this on December 24th 2008 in an article titled “Recession Marketing: Choosing Logic Over Emotion” which discusses overcoming fear by using logic to divert bad decisions.

Do You Want Steak or Do you Want Sizzle?

In sales and marketing, the topic of emotion vs. logic has often been referred to as selling the sizzle and not the steak. The steak is an object. The steak represents the simple logic that people must eat to stay alive. The sizzle is an exciting representation of how that steak smells, tastes, and how satisfying it will be to sink your teeth in and enjoy.

If you want steak and the logic it represents, you are seeking the wrong thing. If you find that you want sizzle, and the things that come along with that steak, you are on a lot better path to getting things right, and getting what you want.

The list of questions and analogies can go on forever. Whatever your answers, I can tell you that success in marketing is strongly based in emotion and not logic. People do not choose their careers with an emphasis on logic, and when they do, they often end up making a career change when they realize it does not make them happy. People do not make purchasing decisions based solely on logic, either. They try very hard, but if there is an awkward feeling along with the purchase, they are gone and not coming back.

Logic Fails in Motivating a Market … Yes, Your Market!

Logic can help people to be creative with overcoming their own fears of buying what you offer, but the logic alone is only a tool. Logic is a tool to help people make good decisions, but it actually ranks pretty low in decision making when compared to emotions … namely fear.

Do you remember the last time you went to buy a car? This is something that drives fear through the roof for a lot of people. Cars cost a lot of money, and something has to help you overcome the fear of loss. You replace the fear of loss with the huge gains you receive by driving that new car. You replace the fear of loss with the fear of not getting what you want.

You may try to use the logic that you “need” a new car, or that it will “save” you money by not breaking down as often. That is bologna and we all know it. You want that car, and the sooner you overcome the fear of all that money you lose, the sooner you can sport around in that nice smelling head-turning new car. Won’t it feel good to show it to all of your friends and family? It will be so nice that everything works just right and it is nice and clean. Wow … This new car will be great!

Just believe me for a moment when I say that emotion is what drives these decisions. Sure, you may like to deny it, but go look at your car while you think about this. Just don’t get too emotional or you may end up visiting a car salesman today!

A Drive Down Logic Street

As I drove down my street on the way home from visiting a friend this weekend, I saw a lot of interesting answers all around me. I was thinking, as I often do, about my work in the field of marketing. I thought of all those lovely homes, nice cars, and best-dressed people. I thought of what motivates them. I thought of what it means to them that they drive this or that, that their postal code is this or that, how they got there, and how emotion is what made it all possible. Emotion is what drove their decisions, and emotion is what drove the decisions of the people who helped them get there.

I arrived home and looked at my blog’s visitor statistics. It shows me that many people search the Internet seeking logic to make decisions. They search (and find me) for things like SEO hourly rates, rates for web developers, and a squillion other terms that reflect fears. This reminded me how many people get the questions all wrong. Let me put it to you this way: You cannot get the right answers if the questions are wrong!

These readers in my statistics logs are not really looking for success, but rather seeking something logical to magically tell them how to achieve success. It reminded me that the majority of people get this totally backward by trying to find logical ways to get over their fear. After all, the logic may tell them that less money involved will mean less risk. This is their fear speaking to them, and they miss the elephants walking by while they are looking at all the ants around them. Their fears are telling them to seek something that completely diverts them from what will actually give them the success they want. This is a common fear mechanism that kicks in and keeps them from seeking the scary truth of what will bring them success.

Seeking what seems safe should be what really scares people. Most people want safety, which means that most people are doing the same things. This leaves little room for anything spectacular … just average. Average does not make it very far in a competitive market.

The reality is that overcoming fear of loss by replacing it with another fear such as “what if I get this wrong”, is what will deliver you that sizzling steak. You can probably find instances of this in your own life, but I can provide logic to support this if it alleviates some fear for you.

Begging for Logic in Marketing

People come to me every day hoping to find the perfect logic that will help them to make good decisions. I often point out logic in my work, and I can quantify everything from A to Z. Read my blog for about an hour or so and you will have enough logic about marketing to last you a century. Marketing is a very mathematical and logic-oriented field, but that logic and math is only a tool. I am an uncanny good marketing guy with a lot of facts and figures to prove it. My clients want that logic to help them overcome their fears. The truth of the matter is that what they really want is the sizzle, but they are still hung up on the fears that hold them back.

Proof of Emotion in Marketing

In a recent article titled “Polarize Your Audience and Stop Making Everybody Happy“, I explained that a word I made up went kind of crazy online. The word had ZERO representation in a Google search on February 23rd. Today, just a few weeks later, the word “dubeshag” returns nearly 14,000 results (click it if you need some logical proof).

This did not happen because of logic. It happened because of emotion. I wrote something funny and people became attached to it in some small way. They passed it around, they told others, and they linked to the article.

Here is a little more proof of emotion in marketing. In the photo you see above, there is about a half million dollars worth of toys. I purchased every last one of these vehicles (and more) within about one year, but I never bought one with logic in mind. I wanted the sizzle! The same is true of the clients who afforded me the ability to buy them. They wanted the sizzle, too! Fortunately for them, and me, they discovered their real motivations and overcame their fears enough to pick up the phone and call me (at toll free *REDACTED DUE TO AGING WEBSITE*).

The question it begs is this: What fears will stand between you and the sizzle you want?