It’s been busy around these parts the past few weeks as we had several clients exhibiting at marquee trade shows, and our own Francis Moran attended these shows to support our clients and get a finger on the pulse of our clients’ industries. If his Tweet, upon experiencing Retail’s BIG Show, the annual conference and exhibition of the National Retail Foundation (NRF) is any indication, 2011 is off to a good start: “Mood at NRF, the major retail trade show, is very upbeat. Quote from a veteran CES attendee equally applies here: ‘Woohoo, America’s back.'”
When I saw this, I was curious to know if this positivity denoted an upward trend across the conference and trade show universe, as, with so many marketing activities, investment in trade shows and conferences had waned in recent years for a variety of reasons – lack of budget, increased focus on no-travel events, virtual tradeshows and webcasts, podcasts and other reasonable excuses to put dollars elsewhere.
But as with all things, the pendulum swings and we’re seeing at least what seems to be a renewed investment in attending trade shows and events. Gone, however, are the days when participation in any and all industry events in your sector is a given part of your marketing strategy and budget, as seemed to be the case prior to the dot-com bubble bursting.
It’s a busy few weeks for inmedia, as our managing partner, Francis Moran, and several clients attend various conferences and trade shows. I expect Francis will write a blog post about his adventures at these events upon his return.
I plan to write next week about whether the tradeshow, a marketing program element that has taken a hit in the past few years due to both the increased adoption of technology and the struggling economy, is back. Just anecdotally, important events never fell completely from the agendas of the technology companies we work with, but it does seem that there’s an appreciable uptick in the number of events we’re seeing clients participate in in the past six months or so. Stay tuned for my post next week that looks at the actual facts and figures.
Meanwhile, here are the comings and goings of several inmedia clients over the next week:
That title alone is probably enough to put me in the crosshairs of many a critic of Time Magazine‘s selection of Facebook’s inventor and leader as its person of the year for 2010. But personally, I think that the selection is merited and that the vitrioldetractors have spewed in light of his naming reflects more sour grapes than anything else.
Here’s why I agree with this recognition:
1. Zuckerberg’s creation is an influential force in more than a 12th of the world’s population’s daily lives. He’s responsible for changing the modern communications paradigm. Period.
The scope of his achievement is truly unparalleled. According to the Time profile, Facebook recently signed up its “550 millionth member. One out of every dozen people on the planet has a Facebook account. They speak 75 languages and collectively lavish more than 700 billion minutes on Facebook every month. Last month the site accounted for one out of four American page views. Its membership is currently growing at a rate of about 700,000 people a day.”
It’s clear that the increased adoption of social media in recent years has had a tremendous, we think positive, impact on customer service. The fact is that online communications can act as a logical extension of effective customer service programs, but can also fail miserably if the organization doesn’t have a solid strategy in place as well as the systems to support that strategy, the people to run it and a commitment to ongoing success in this area.
Am I a customer service expert? No, but I am a life-long consumer, and an adept marketer of technology products and services. These two things combined give me a well-rounded perspective on how online communications, including social media, can be the lynchpin or the undoing of your reputation with customers, prospects and the industry in which you operate.
Let’s first examine the systems that drive your customer relations efforts.
Over the years, through various clients and prospects, we’ve been exposed to a variety of technologies that make the back-end of customer service systems more effective and efficient. Knowing that technologically there is a better way than the impersonal, automated, aggravating methods that many companies deploy, and suffering through these inferior systems is especially painful. We’ve all had the phone ring, only to pick it up and hear dead air while the predictive dialer connects you with an agent. We’ve all started a customer service session on one channel – phone, email, Twitter, chat, etc. – to then move to a different channel and have to reiterate all of the basic information all over again, as though the first part of the session never took place.
I know for a fact that there are effective technologies you can adopt that will make support sessions run smoothly. It’s a rare case when a customer calls your support center to report that everything is on track; rather, it’s usually when there’s a problem that they reach out. Why ruffle feathers further with ineffective systems that just add to the aggravation? In a word, don’t.
The fact that in our media-centric world the consumer is empowered to share their thoughts on a product or service, instantly, without barriers, over social media, is both exciting and terrifying, isn’t it? If someone has a great experience, they broadcast it and everyone knows it. If someone has a terrible experience, the same is also true. How you respond to customers – those with kudos and those with complaints alike – is what will determine your reputation at large.
So, you’ve got the right customer support technology in place. The next piece of the puzzle is people. This is a critical part of the equation, especially in this citizen-journalist climate where everyone has multiple broadcast channels of their own, be it YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook or the like.
You need to have sufficient team members monitoring these channels for mentions of your brand, good and bad. With a cohesive strategy in place, your team is empowered to respond to brand mentions and engage in reparations where appropriate.
These comments may reside on your own communications channels – forums on your website, comments on your YouTube channel, posts on your Facebook wall, Tweets to your handle, etc. On owned channels, monitoring of the discussion should be an obvious task that’s already taking place. There should be clear customer support mechanisms on your online properties. Don’t make it difficult for your market to interact with you. Obscurity is a fraud to hide nothing.
Savvy companies know that negative feedback is nothing to shy away from. If your customers are not shouting in your ear, they’re shouting in someone else’s about how crappy you are. Better that you know what’s being said about you so can make steps to fix whatever is wrong.
There have been some great posts written about this topic, that I would highly recommend reading if this topic is of interest to you, and it should be, regardless of if you’re in B2B, B2C or a consumer.
The latest missive from Gawker Media’s Nick Denton has brought all kinds of potential blog post topics to the front of my mind, which I’ll attempt to cover in one post. In his long piece about the hows and whys of the changes coming to the company’s online properties in 2011, he touches on the following topics: scoops still matter, the role of modern media as an aggregator, the importance of being well-rounded, the rise of video, constraints and benefits of editorial calendars, and real estate lessons that online properties are adopting from their older brother, television.
It’s a fascinating read and speaks not only to Gawker’s response to the ever-shifting realities of media production and consumption, but also to some larger issues that should be compelling to B2B marketers as they search for ways to create and leave an impression in today’s fast-paced media marketplace.
Scoops matter
This is true in the publishing world, in terms of being the first to broadcast a breaking story, and also for marketers looking to edge out the competition in being first to market with a new product. One of our clients, Touch Bionics, was first to market a fully articulating bionic hand with its i-LIMB Hand in 2007, conscious of the fact that its competition was also planning a launch and that being number two was not a viable option. So successful was the i-LIMB Hand media launch that Touch Bionics’ competitor cancelled its plans.
The role of modern media as an aggregator
There was a brilliantly funny Tweet a few months ago (from whom I sadly cannot recall or I would reference them here) that said Huffington Post planned on starting a print edition that would consist of clippings from other newspapers taped together. While cheeky, this does raise a point about the media outlet as content aggregator, a model that many publishers are increasingly adopting based on the mercurial success of Huffington Post, deemed to have the 38th highest traffic volume of all US-based sites. Marketers can tap into this shift by building out effective social media programs and also by offering well-rounded content to the media.
The importance of being well-rounded
In a world where social media is wildly popular, the news cycle is infinitely shorter than it was even a year ago. That’s where the media’s role as an aggregator comes into play most effectively; rather than spending time crafting their own take on every story they want to cover, savvy outlets have an editorial mix that contains both brief, perhaps rebroadcast, news from disparate sources alongside more in-depth, exclusive content generated by the outlet itself.
If marketers want to tap into the myriad media opportunities that exist with target outlets, they need to provide the media with the proper materials in order to cover them. This means not only effective background materials, but also photos, videos, links to your owned online media properties, your social media coordinates, and a steady stream of content – bylined articles, customer case studies, surveys, and other outbound news that ranges in size and scope – so that the media can cover you when and where appropriate.
The rise of video
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving picture in today’s multimedia media climate is surely worth much more.
Here are some great examples of how our clients Xsilva and Touch Bionics are using video assets to their great advantage:
LightSpeed Mobile – Meet Your Customer
ProDigits: the world’s first bionic finger
Constraints and benefits of editorial calendars
Forward planning was essential and easy to stick to with print-only properties in years gone by. With online media, it’s less important and more difficult to stick to a planned coverage agenda. One of the primary advantages that modern media has over its predecessors is its ability to react immediately, to publish news instantly without having to wait for ink to dry on paper. This immediacy has made the news cycle almost non-existent, but intelligent outlets recognize the need to develop a brand for themselves defined by the scope and depth of their coverage, the topics that they cover, the journalistic integrity of the editorial team, and other choices that outlets make.
Advertisers can rely on these plans to ensure that their paid space is complemented by editorial that’s covering the same topic areas. Media relations consultants can pitch editors on coverage that fits within the target outlet’s editorial plans. Because you have many arrows in your marketing quiver, the effective practitioner can provide the right materials in the right format at the right time, regardless of if it’s paid or earned.
Real estate lessons
There is almost infinite real estate online, which subsequently lowers the value of the space. As Denton said on the matter, “There is no future in low-end web advertising, at least not for a media company with any aspirations.”
Marketers need to carve out effective real estate on the marketing channels of their choosing. This may mean owned channels, product placement, sponsorship programs, or other marketing vehicles that are new to your marketing mix. Are these activities impacting your bottom line? There’s only one way to tell: measure them.
Now more than ever, it’s integral that marketing programs are reaching the right eyeballs. With endless analytics mechanisms for online media, marketers can effectively measure and evaluate the elements of their programs. Benchmark before you begin, and evaluate regularly to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your marketing investment.
By Linda Forrest
