Does anyone still need more proof….?

I doubt it, after analyzing the results of the study Consumers Use Social Media to Vent about Customer Service reported in MarketingVOX. Key comment:

“These most savvy and sought-after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles. This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve.”

What’s also important is the following:

Search engines are the most valuable online tools for this research. Those rated of no value include micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Pownce (39%), YouTube (27%) and social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (22%).

Reputations are made at any customer touch-point with your brand but are amplified exponentially online with the tools available to consumers today and the behavior they clearly exhibit. Ignore them at your own peril!
Technorati Tags: eMarketer, marketing, social media, social networks

 

Take aways from SXSW

the latest edition of Bulldog Solutions Marketing Watchdog Journal has a great section titled “SXSW 2008 What we learned” with impressions by their staff of this recent edition of the annual idea fest. Of particular interest is a session on “10 Easy Ways to Piss Off a Blogger” with these 10 tips that I’m sure will get wide coverage in the PR community, or so we hope!

 

12 Future Apps For Your iPhone

Great post on ReadWriteWeb giving a glimpse of what’s to come in mobile applications. Here’s one related to finance:

8. Credit Card and Biometrics as Software

The business world is also going to benefit from mobile innovation. Soon credit cards will become software. You will walk into a store and to pay, you simply choose a credit card button. The iPhone will communicate securely with the cash register in the store, via Blue Tooth or Wi-Fi. The safety of the transaction will be ensured via biometrics. For example, a clerk in the store might ask you to place a randomly selected finger onto the screen of your iPhone to verify that the phone belongs to you (assuming that all phones are securely initiated in the store and may not be reset).

Lots of very exciting stuff and, of course, 12 more reasons for getting yourself an iPhone…..!

 

Super Bowl Advertisers Fumble Search, Social Media; Gain Elsewhere

this report in MarketingVOX makes the example of how E*Trade used their commercial in social media, which I posted on yesterday even more noteworthy.

Of course, network TV advertising is still used by and large for branding by companies with the necessary marketing budgets and cross media integration is the exception rather than the norm.

The article, however, seems to indicate a pretty strong shift to include paid search in the equation.

Good news for Google, it seems!

 

Great example of integrated web marketing

The E*Trade commercials, here’s the one on banking:

were some of the best that ran on an otherwise pretty lackluster slate during the Super Bowl.

What’s even more impressive than the creative, and certainly very effective, is how the company is leveraging this strong TV presence across the web by using YouTube, where they have their own channel featuring all their latest TV spots, their own home page and Google search results.

The entire integration is explained in detail with screenshots in this post on NetBanker.

Certainly credit unions don’t have marketing budgets allowing for Super Bowl commercials but the use of all the other tools mentioned here is open to anyone and do not require a substantial budget to run. Combined with an effective, dynamic website that can convert the interest and the qualified leads generated through web based marketing, this kind of integrated campaign should be a fixed part of any CU marketing program.

 

Are you a Meatball Sundae?

For any business planning to start using web 2.0 tools, including blogging, I recommend a visit to Seth Godin or read his latest book “Meatball Sundae”. Seth is one of the most experienced marketers who has worked with the web since the earliest days and a guy who knows what he’s talking about.

Here’s a short excerpt from the introduction:

What’s a meatball sundae?

Maybe this is familiar. It is to me, anyway:

You go to a marketing meeting. There’s a presentation from the new Internet marketing guy. He’s brought a fancy (and expensive) blogging consultant with him. She starts talking about how blogs and the ‘Web 2.0 social media infrastructure’ are just waiting for your company to dive in. ‘Try this stuff,’ she seems to be saying, ‘and the rest of your competitive/structural/profit issues will disappear.’”

Just grafting these new tools onto your organization is a recipe for disaster. The risk of cognitive dissonance by your customers is great. .

This is not really new, the same was true when websites first appeared on the scene about over a decade ago and most executives - after first ignoring the web - thought that having a site would be a panacea for all their marketing problems. After huge amounts wasted, we now know how wrong that assumption was.

The corporate culture and the brand have to be consistent to be believable and communications need to be consistent across all channels and touchpoints to be credible. There are no shortcuts to success.

 

THE EXPECTATION ECONOMY

reports Trendwatching in their latest newsletter is an umbrella trend that neatly captures the zeitgeist for mature (and rapidly maturing) consumer societies, while also incorporating and explaining many other subtrends. Yes, it will keep you busy. It’s a rather long read, but as always contains a lot of food for thought for any marketer in any industry.

“The EXPECTATION ECONOMY is an economy inhabited by experienced, well-informed consumers from Canada to South Korea who have a long list of high expectations that they apply to each and every good, service and experience on offer.

Their expectations are based on years of self-training in hyperconsumption, and on the biblical flood of new-style, readily available information sources, curators and BS filters. Which all help them track down and expect not just basic standards of quality, but the ‘best of the best’.”

And here are just some of the those many sources that people have at their disposal in their permanent search for information to support their decision making.

 

75% of Journalists Get Story Ideas from Blogs

This report covered recently in Marketing Pilgrim contains some interesting facts that support the idea of maintaining a corporate blog, combined with a website, as an effective business tool.

Not only will it increase your visibility in Google but there are a number of side effects that might well get you wider attention beyond just the immediate blog readership. Definitely worth consideration.

 

‘Decade of Data’ Study

reported in MarketingVOX

reveals a number of shifts in consumer behavior over the past ten years at a macro-level in media consumption, purchasing habits.

A PDF of the full report is available at Vertis Inc.

 

Our best wishes to everyone!

Have a wonderful Holiday Season!