Jun
28

What My Five-Year-Old Teaches Me About Customer Fidelity

baby crying
Sales 101 tells us that if we find the pain, we find the sale. Of course this is an over simplification and yes the underlying habits surrounding this concept evolve, but it’s still an essential best practice. The fundamental presumption is that if I can uncover my prospects needs and meet them as desired, I will win the sale. In short, when I act as the authentic advocate to my customers, they reward me by becoming advocates of my brand – loyalists, one might say. Do this well and you become what content marketing pioneers Chris Brogan and Julien Smith refer to as Trust Agents.

Personally, this is the only way I have found to reliably earn my customer’s fidelity and it costs far less than the control we so often desperately seek to maintain. Online retail giant, Zappos gets this right everyday and reaps the whirlwind subsequently. Any disingenuous attempts to align myself with my customer’s needs are met with failure. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Your actions speak so loudly, I can’t hear a word you’re saying.” The rules of social media marketing echo the profundity in Emerson’s words. With inbound marketing, the brand that advocates with sincerity is the brand that earns brand loyalty, brand fidelity.

Watch for them. Listen for them. The lessons are everywhere.

My wife and I record all of our son’s favorite shows onto our DVR. This way we can vet them before he sees them and of course because he hates commercials, we can also fast-forward through them using the remote control. On the days when evening appointments prevent us from all having dinner together, my wife and I take turns dining with our son at his tiny table and chairs. We’ll set it up in the living room, cue up a recorded episode of Kenny the Shark and enjoy our meal.

Two days ago, Finian and I did just this. As we settled in to enjoy dinner and a show, I noticed my tall glass of water shimmering in tight intervals like a Tyrannosaurus rex was closing in. “Fin’s feet,” I quickly concluded. He was gently tapping the table with his toes. I asked him to stop and he did – for about 60 seconds. I asked him again, “Fin please stop kicking the table, my water is going to spill.” Again he relented, but only for a moment.

“Finian William, you’re going to spill my water and the remote control is resting beside my glass. If the water spills on the remote, I will no longer be able to fast-forward through the commercials.”

My glass never moved again.

I showed him that what he was doing would ultimately hurt him. Yes, I wanted something too (i.e., the water NOT to spill, a new sale, some money), but that didn’t matter to Fin, my prospect, and it shouldn’t. So I uncovered what, in this case, would cause him pain and made it the topic of discussion. He went from being a person with no regard for what I wanted and again, why should he care, to a card-carrying member of Team Scott – the guy who’s sincerely campaigning for his needs.

The sales process isn’t about you and me. It’s about your prospects and customers. Make their needs your priority and you establish customer fidelity. Uncover their pain and solve their problem. Brand loyalty is the reward. You know how awesome you are, but they don’t and they will not simply take your word for it. Remember Emerson. I showed my son that his needs were top of mind and he rewarded me by doing what I thought served him best. He went from ambivalent shopper to faithful advocate.

I find it fascinating just how often a seemingly mundane ritual can unearth a pearl or two. So, how about you? I would love to hear how every day life has taught you to advocate for your customers.

photo credit: tatoruso

Scott P, Dailey is a technology consultant and avid social media evangelist. He is planning the launch of his new social media blog by the end of August and can currently be found on Twitter at @scottpdailey.

Jun
23

Data Explosion: What it Means for Bloggers

Data ExplosionWhether you write or read blogs (or both) you have probably noticed the massive increase in available data right at the click of the mouse. At this point it becomes hard to filter all this data down to only what you need.

Like most of you, every day I send and receive tons of emails, receive eNewsletters, tune into webinars, read through my Google Reader subscriptions, and read blogs that friends share on social media. Boy does that get exhausting after awhile!

I now find myself putting up strict filters in my mind when I am scanning for important data. I am constantly searching for new types of information to write or learn about, but it sometimes can get buried by other less relevant information, and search engines cannot filter this out for me at all times.

What I have found very effective to combat this overwhelming feeling is to write down a list of topics that you are truly interested in reading about so that you are not taken off track when scanning through blog articles.

You can also set up Google Alerts for particular keywords or phrases to receive targeted email results with links just to these topics. Personally, this helps out tremendously when I am about to write a blog post and need specific resources.

With more data being published on the Internet also comes repetitiveness. People may scan an article and say, “Oh I like that topic I’m going to cover that too!” However, when someone enters a keyword search term in Google and your article shows up among hundreds if not thousands of similar posts, you will easily get lost.

Instead of covering a topic that a hundred other bloggers have already done, why not do a twist on it or compile a unique set of data to give a completely new aspect on a subject?

For example, say you are interested in the social media explosion during the World Cup. While this is a hot topic (and Twitter trending topics can prove this) it is nothing new to write about. Instead, why not write about something else less prominent yet still fascinating that is going on during the World Cup. You could instead write about how South Africa’s businesses are fairing during this crowded time in their country. This is certainly a less frequently covered topic yet still relevant. You will still appear in search results and will stand out since you cover a different topic.

In general, if you want your link to be clicked on (and for the reader to stay on the page once there) write incredible and fresh content by immediately drawing them in via your title and subtitle, and then create a compelling story backed by interesting data.

Put yourself in your readers shoes. If you subscribe to several tech blogs and find that may are covering the same topics and events, you will hardly read all of them. Instead, wouldn’t you be interested in learning something new from your sources? The same goes for your audience. Give them something different and interesting aside from whatever else they read.

This will keep current readers interested (and hopefully subscribing to your blog) and will attract new visitors as well. You can easily track how effective this is for you by checking your site analytics on a weekly basis to see the percentage of new and returning visitors and what keywords they are coming in for.

Don’t let the data explosion bury your blog. Stand out from the rubble and scream to readers “I have the latest and most interesting news, read me!”

How have you differentiated your content to increase site traffic and loyalty? What have been some of your tactics? Tell me your examples in the comments section below.

Jun
21

10 Traits That Make a Successful Entrepreneur

You’re sitting in your college dorm and come up with a new way laundry can be done.

You’re at your office desk and come up with a brilliant way to increase productivity with a new tool.

You see a troubled child walking by you on the streets and think of a program to help children like him in your neighborhood.

These scenarios are not atypical of ideas that can be easily acted upon if there is ambition and integrity behind the idea. Unfortunately, most of these ideas quickly become forgotten because you’re “too busy” or don’t know how to raise money or don’t have the time or effort to put into it.

This is what sets an entrepreneur apart from others: they have the passion, desire, devotion and hard work to put into a new business idea. Entrepreneurs are paving the way to disrupt or enhance currently technologies to make today’s economy function more efficiently.

This is not to say that those who do not act on their ideas do not have any of the qualities above, it is to say that entrepreneurs are another breed of business owners who are willing to take a chance and risk on a whimsical idea.

Risk…

That is the big word in everyone’s mind when thinking of entrepreneurship. It is something that most are not brave enough or willing to act upon. Yes, it is a big commitment you take upon yourself when you say, “You know what? Yes, I am going to act on this idea and make it happen!”

I have had the privilege to speak with several entrepreneurs in the Boston area upon joining a recent start up. Most say that initially they deemed their ideas ‘stupid’, ‘miniscule’, ‘unprofitable’ etc, etc. However, they did not just drop the idea. They kept it in their mind, culling over ideas, discussing it with others, until they could convince themselves that this idea was valid and worth a shot.

So…

What are the top ten traits of a successful entrepreneur?

1. Persistence
2. Vision
3. Hard work
4. Social skills
5. Risk taker
6. Passion
7. Time
8. Supporters
9. Money management
10. Ability to admit mistakes

Give or take a few of these, most entrepreneurs have ingrained these values which have allowed them to be outside the box, not just step outside the box, and take a risk on an idea they believe in.

Do you have any traits to add to this list? Know a successful entrepreneur and want to share their story below? Leave your ideas in the comments section below.

Jun
15

Update on kdmedianow

For those of you who regularly follow my blog, you may have noticed the decline in posting quantity in the past month and a half. It is not that I have been neglecting this blog at all since it is the pride of my work. I have simply been overwhelmed with starting a career and having a big move to Boston (as well as my site getting hit by the Pharma attack two months ago that disabled parts of my site.)

To be fair to my readers, I wanted to let you all know what I have been up to while away from my blog. I am now the Marketing Analyst for Backupify, a cloud backup service for social media, email and more. I am in charge of all their social media accounts (Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn so far), blog, and all inbound leads which is a pretty heavy responsiblity. Aside from that, I am a freelancer for a Real Estate company in Arizona as well as write one blog post a week for BostInnovation. Phewf!

That said, I have had less bandwidth to keep up with posts on a regular basis than I did before. However, I have ensured that the posts I do put up (about two a week now) are of extreme value to all of you. In that case, I would truly value all of your continued support and readership of this blog, as you are the reason why I write on a regular basis. Also, if you have any blog post ideas in relation to marketing, new technologies, start ups or anything else fun, please leave a comment below!

P.S. I’ll have a great blog post up here by Thursday, I promise!

Thanks again everyone for your loyal readership :)

Jun
11

How Paid and Social Search Lead to Better Marketing Results

paid and social search campaignsCombining social and paid searches can create a compelling SEO plan for your company. Both are very important marketing channels, and combined, as with any marketing effort, leads to better results. Each search strategy is very different, but together they can be extremely effective.

Paid search involves keyword bids, conversions, click-through rates, measurements and analytics, and ROI, whereas social search is engagement-based, brand building and hard to measure.

It is important to realize that these both provide different results so you must focus on their strengths individually.

Many companies rush into their paid and search strategies and try to combine them. However, it is best to treat each as its own entity to optimize their benefits. For paid you need to focus on conversion rates and cost vs. ROI. For social you must build a brand community and create positive engagements within your market.

Don’t expect the strategy of paid search to work for social, and vice versa.

For example, if you set a goal of 100 conversions a week for your paid campaign, you can’t expect the same for social since social is based on building your brand on the Internet and increasing awareness. However, together they can produce great inbound marketing results. By creating a compelling social campaign where you drive consumers to your site via social media and engage with them, they will be more willing to look into what you offer.

Consider this: a friend walks up to you and asks you to help them achieve a goal. Five minutes later a complete stranger asks the same favor. Who will you be more willing to help out? Your friend, of course! The same goes for social conversions. If you engage with your community online and create meaninful relationships, they will be more willing to talk to you and look into your product. This can then drive up your conversion rates, assisting your paid campaign.

Many think that social campaigns cannot create ROI, but if done right with a paid campaign, it certainly can.

So how can you best leverage these two strategies to work together?

Make social campaigns search friendly. Optimize your social messages using tags and keywords. For example, if you tweet about a new blog article, include the keywords you are trying to rank for. Search engines are now much more social friendly and even pick up on tweets. This can then drive leads to your site.

Try new keyword tests on social media. Since social media is free (well, almost) it is much easier to do A-B keyword testing than on a paid search campaign. Test different messaging throughout a specific time period and see which message either created the most buzz or drove the most traffic to your site.

Study the social media-sphere for trending topics around which to revolve your paid campaigns. There are several tools that can help you find the buzz around your industry, including Radian 6. If you can track what people are saying about your industry, product/service category, or brand itself, you will make search keywords much easier to find.

By leveraging the benefits of both search and social campaigns together, you can create an extremely compelling inbound marketing strategy. Each can assist the other, but the strategies must be focused on individually to bring out each tactic’s strengths.

Does your company use both social and paid search campaigns? If so, have you noticed an increased response? Leave your comments below.

Jun
10

BostInnovation’s New Marketing Writer

Last week I was asked to be the newest contributing writer for BostInnovation, a Boston-based blog website discussing disrupting technologies, tech events, marketing, and other interesting innovations around the area.

I accepted with a beaming smile as I knew I would be joining a team of like-minded entrepreneurial people who love to write. I always love to surround myself with motivated people who want to make a difference, and this was one of those perfect opportunities. I am very eager to share with the blog’s readers my thoughts and observations on new marketing techniques in the industry.

This week I was featured in the new column, New Marketing, for my first blog post. As you may have heard, Hubspot ran an alternate reality game (ARG) experiment with their community last week which tested their trust with customers. In this post, I explored what happened, the community’s reaction, and Hubspot’s marketing takeaways. It was a very interesting case study that I have been enjoying following since it started.

Check out my first post and let me know your thoughts!

Jun
03

7th Annual MITX Awards Recap

Last night the 7th Annual MITX Awards were held at the Boston Copley Marriott Place. Between a great turnout, high energy and tons of well-qualified candidates, the event was a blast! Being on the younger side of people who were there (as I am a recent college grad) it was really inspiring to be in a room full of successful entrepreneurs in the tech industry.

It is evident that Massachusetts is becoming more and more innovative despite the condition of the economy. An indication was the large amount of people who entered to be considered for each category, the governor’s support of the Boston innovation hub, and the strong encouragement of the MA community as a whole for start-ups. Right now it is apparent that the Boston tech scene is thriving with continued innovation.

Boston played a large role in the start of the Internet itself and both Napster and Facebook were created here. This is a major epicenter of technology in the country today and the community allows it to thrive and succeed. As Bill Bulkely, Lifetime Achievement Award recipent and professional journalist stated, “Watching this space has never been more fun.” He entered the tech scene in Boston in 1978 and has seen it grow from tapes to iTunes and libraries to Google. He realized quickly that “no business model can survive by being flipped on its head”, having seen many businesses succeed and fail with the quick changing technology and the introduction of the Internet in the work place.

And what allows for a great company to succeed? As Matt Lauzon, founder of Gemvara (winner of the e-Commerce and Alternative Retail category) stated that it takes 1. Great advisors, 2. Great team, and 3. (well he forgot at first, but then tweeted that it was investors!) to succeed as an entrepreneur.

Across the board, award recipients last night stated that if it wasn’t for the undying support of the Boston community, they may not have survived. Jeremy Allaire, Innovation Hall of Fame Honoree at the event stated that Boston is considered the cradle of liberty because of its high rate of success for tech start ups. Most entrepreneurs also found that the fresh talent and great local resources also attributed to the great success.

Allaire went on to state five aspects that allow an entrepreneur to succeed:

1. Vision – a person must have a deep intution about a transformation in the economy. They must be able to see not only the larger picture but also the small incremental steps to get there.

2. Passion – they must have a deep conviction channeled into motivation to allow them to succeed.

3. Tenacity – they must be willing to do something disruptive and innovative. This is hard to do, but if they have passion, it is possible.

4. Patience – any company takes awhile to disrupt and innovate in the economy, so an entrepreneur must be ready to take a lot of time and effort in order for it to succeed.

5. Execution – many people have ideas and theories, but 90% of them fail. Execution, as Allaire stated, “is about surrounding yourself with incredible people who share your vision.” This allows the ideas to turn into actionable items.

The MITX Tech Awards were definitely a must-attend event this summer. It was a time to celebrate our peers’ achievements and those of ourselves and also an opportunity to find inspiration for our own business pursuits.

Jun
02

All Content is Not Naturally Viral

It is not content itself that is inherently viral, it is the people who are powering the social sharing of the content that allow it to become viral. As content creators, it is our job to create compelling information that is worthy of being shared on social networks to then become viral.

In the attention economy today, we don’t find information, it finds us. Those who are great at SEO and understand how users search can tailor their messages to us so we naturally find it either in search engine queries or through social media searches. If they target the SEO to the right users and they find the information relevant and interesting, it has a higher likelihood of becoming virally spread throughout the Internet world.

Many times people will ask their advertising or marketing agencies to create a ‘viral’ video or ‘viral’ blog post. However, you cannot just create something and call it viral, hoping it actually becomes viral. It is quite the opposite. You must not only create the content that is likely to spread, but make it easy for the right audience to find it and share it among their social graph.

If you are interacting on social networks to try to spread your ideas, then you should have at least a few good personal contacts on those sites. When you know someone personally, you are more likely to favor them and talk favorably about them to others. You can use this to your advantage by starting to share your content with people you know and they can begin the viral spread of the content.

Dan Zarella, a social media scientist, has defined several ways ideas can become contagious. In his research, Zarella has found that for ideas to spread, they must be novel. People will not keep sharing content that has been covered by hundreds of other sources and people before you. Find topics that are fresh, interesting, and even controversial since they will be new and interesting to your target audience.

While most content can go viral just by people liking it, you can also reward those that share. As Brian Solis pointed out in a recent blog post, social influence has a cascading effect. If you reward the people who share your ideas, they will feel encouraged to keep sharing. This will also motivate them to keep finding great, new information to share with their networks.

If a person has a plethora of followers or readers who are a significant part of your market and you can get them to pass along your content to them, they need to be rewarded. Your goal in viral marketing is to find those key influencers who know other key influencers and followers and get them to spread your word. Essentially, and in the words of Solis, “ideas are worthy of sharing, when there is incentive to do so.”

When we think of viral marketing today, the idea of it has changed. It is not about creating content that is deemed naturally viral, it is targeting great information to those who will be most interested in it and are social sharers. This is the same concept for any type of marketing, you must create targeted messages to the attentive market. As Solis stated in his post Redefining Viral Marketing, “Designing social objects based on the psychographics rather than demographics of those you wish to reach and inspire, proves critical in the viability of engendering personal connections – connections worthy of sharing.”

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