Making Gossip Work for You

from John Mehrmann

Are you harnessing the power of gossip, communities, and social networking to promote your brand? Whether your brand is a product, a service, or yourself, this is the era of connectivity and belonging. The Internet has become a powerful medium for connecting people with more than information access. It is creating communities and relationships by making it easier to find individuals with similar interests and preferences. Tapping into this communication is the new face of marketing, and it has a new set of rules to go along with it.

The benefits of word-of-mouth endorsements have always been difficult to calculate. However, a study by Koen Pauwels of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College quantified social networking as 20 times more effective than traditional marketing efforts like print and television. The study concluded that social networking and communities are at least 30 times more effective than media events.

LinkedIn, Face-book, and MySpace provide powerful opportunities for social media and groups of online communities to share opinions and meet users with similar interests. "You can track how many invitations are being sent out, how many users responded, and when," said Pauwels. "Quantifying word-of-mouth like this couldn't be done before."

Can word-of-mouth create a contagious appetite? In 2007, the estimated number of legal online music downloads exceeded 1,700,000,000. That is up 53% from the year before, 2006. The online music industry reached the $3 Billion mark. Artists are finding new ways to release songs, by marketing ringtones, video downloads that can be shared and forwarded to friends, or mobile tracks on the web. Of the 115 products that sold for 19 million units worldwide for Justin Timberlake, less than 20% was sold on CD.

Social Networking enables individuals to communicate and connect with one another. Community marketing engages audiences in non-intrusive conversations, activities, and benefits. Community marketing turns customers into advocates. Blogs, Wikis, Forums, and other online tools empower communication within the community of socially networked users.

One of the fundamental commandments of marketing in communities and social networking is to avoid marketing. Yes, that's right, you must avoid marketing slogans, ploys, or tricks to market effectively to your advocates. Customers trust and respect other customers of similar opinions and tastes. Therefore, to market effectively, you must provide your advocates with information, facts, and a forum to exchange useful tips with one another. Mavens and Gurus will rise from among the ranks to espouse your products, your services, or yourself, if the facts are accurate and worthy of the support. The target market is always better at communicating your message and benefits than you are, so empower them and enable them to do so, then get out of the way.

It is estimated that by 2010, more than 60% of Fortune 1000 companies will have some form of online community for relationship marketing. Unfortunately, many of these companies may miss the mark by merely building and monitoring a forum for remarks. Many companies are wary of blogs, and the connotations of uncontrolled ranting and raving that has become synonymous with disgruntled employees creating blogs on the Internet. As the awareness of relationship marketing in social media and communities continues to increase, so the tools for connecting users must also evolve.

In the meantime, while we wait for online communities to evolve, there are opportunities for businesses and individuals to leverage a combination of tools available today. Create and maintain a web site as a means to communicate and share information. Sharing meaningful information is a good way to give something to your audience. Quoting endorsements, testimonials, and comments on your web site is a great way to demonstrate your awareness, acceptance, and appreciation for the community feedback. Your web site does not enable social interaction, but you can contribute to it, and demonstrate your support of it, by the information and feedback that you post.

In addition, leverage existing tools that enable users to post comments and interact with one another. You can keep these utilities completely separate from your web site. Blogs are a forum for users to communicate with direct and exposed feedback. Rather than avoid such unencumbered communication, you should cultivate it, even if at a distance. Monitoring the feedback on blogs may help you to determine the effectiveness of the communication on your hosted web site. You can measure the positive or negative unsolicited feedback, and use this insight to modify your messaging and strategy accordingly. This is much more effective than paying for expensive print advertising, and finding the results long after the investment is spent. Blogs can create some risk by the very nature of the open forum, so keeping a relatively safe distance may be appropriate to avoid some inappropriate or controversial topics or conversations.

LinkedIn, Face-book, and MySpace offer opportunities for controlled messaging, groups, communities, and communications for businesses and individuals. These utilities offer independent controls to mitigate the risk of inappropriate or controversial communications interfering with the user community experience. The reduced risk also reduces some of the flexibility for open communications, but that may be a small sacrifice in exchange for the structured environment, ease of use, and wide spread acceptance.

You may be promoting a brand, a product, a company, a service, or promoting yourself for another career. Whatever the purpose of your promotion, you will be more effective if you promote your advocates, and allow them to be the ones to promote you. Quote your advocates, build the credibility and awareness for your advocates, and support their success. It is by promoting, sustaining, and empowering your advocates as experts, that their opinions and support for you becomes even more credible and valuable. You will be 20 - 30 times more effective and successful by promoting your advocates, than you would be promoting yourself. Let your advocates do the communicating for you.

Remember to thank your advocates and let them know that they are appreciated. After all, they are the keepers of your reputation, your relationships, and your community.

Marcia Yudkin's Get-Clients-Next-Week Formula

From Marcia Yudkin:

"During last week's Q&A session on getting media coverage,
several people wanted to know how to get clients in today's
slower economy. Since that wasn't my announced topic, I
put them off... until today. Here's the winning formula.

1. Select a problem urgently felt by people or companies
you know how to find. Sample problem: High gas prices
have tripled the no-show rate at high-profile restaurants.

2. Create a specific offer that solves the problem for a
low cost and that serves as a logical lead-in to your usual
product or service. For instance: "For $295, I'll suggest
five creative and publicity-worthy incentives not being used
in your marketplace."

3. Give the offer a name, such as "The No More Skittery
Customers Solution."

4. Add scarcity - you have space in your schedule for just
three new clients or the offer is valid only through Labor
Day.

5. Put the offer in front of potential customers by calling
them, sending a postcard or emailing them.

Because desperation repels, take these steps with confidence
and a positive attitude." more

Lemonade Stand Marketing

Nowhere is it more clear about what EVERY business must do to compete than in the microcosm of a lemonade stand. Do you see your own business in these tips and ideas?

from Wikihow.com:

How to Compete with Other
Lemonade Stands

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Lemons, sugar, water, ice: lemonade is a pretty humble beverage, but when the dog days of summer hit, an ice-cold cup hits the spot like nothing else. It’s no wonder the lemonade stand is a favorite choice of young entrepreneurs. And since the experience of running a stand teaches kids about business and money management, parents can get excited about lemonade, too. Here's how to do your best in the sometimes highly-competitive lemonade market.

Steps

1. Perform market research. Before big businesses start selling a new product or open a new store, they try to find out what customers want and when and where they want it. There is a chance you don’t have the time or money to do a lot of research, but even a little bit helps. If you’ve seen other lemonade stands around your town, talk to the kids who run them and find out how much they sell their lemonade for and what kind of lemonade seems to sell the best. You don’t have to run your stand just like other stands—in fact, you want to make your stand a little different than others to give customers a reason to come to yours—but you’ll have a better chance of success if you know a bit about the business.
   
2. Choose the best location. People don’t look up lemonade stands in the phone book, so you have to make sure they can see you. If your house is on a busy street or if you live in a neighborhood with a lot of people, you can set up your stand right at home. Similarly, if you live in an apartment, you may be able to set up right outside the main entrance to your building. Find a place with a lot of traffic, especially foot traffic. If your house isn’t in a good place, ask your parents if they’ll let you set up somewhere else, such as outside a shopping center, on a busy corner near your house, or outside one of your parents’ workplaces.
   
3. Set the right price. The price you set for a cup of lemonade should depend on three things: the cost of your supplies, the amount people are willing to pay, and the prices offered by competing lemonade stands. You can find out what people are willing to pay by experimenting with the price you charge for a cup of lemonade, but the easiest way to set your price is to see what other stands are charging, and then charge about the same or a little less (maybe even a little more if you offer something better than they do). If you can offer the same quality at a lower price, you’ll get more customers. That said, you want to make sure you’re making a profit. When your parents are buying the supplies, it’s easy to overlook the costs involved, but in the real world you won’t be in business for long if you don’t make a little money (over the cost of the lemonade, cups, ice, and other supplies) on each cup of lemonade you sell. If you can buy your supplies for less than your competition can, you can also sell your lemonade at a lower price. Look for sales and coupons in your local newspaper, and consider buying larger quantities of supplies to get the best deal.
   
4. Offer the customer a choice. You can entice more customers with different flavors of lemonade, such as pink lemonade or strawberry lemonade. Also consider offering a choice of sizes. If you’re making your own fresh-squeezed lemonade, you might even be able to sell large bottles of it to people. Encourage people to buy larger, more expensive sizes by pricing them so that they cost less per ounce than smaller sizes. You can also increase sales by diversifying your product offerings, either by offering foods, such as baked goods and other snacks, to complement your lemonade sales, or by offering alternatives to lemonade, such as soda or iced tea. If you offer several products, make sure your customers know about them, and if somebody buys a cup of lemonade ask them if they’d like a cookie as well.
   
5. Find your niche. So you’ve got the best lemonade in town, but what if other stands have lemonade that’s just as tasty? Set your stand apart from the crowd by providing something a little different. Do you have a special talent, like juggling or telling jokes? Use your talents to make a name for yourself, and customers will buy from you just to see "the kid who juggles the lemons" or "the girl who tells a joke with each cup of lemonade." You might also donate a portion of your profits to charity. Not only is this a nice thing to do, but customers may also be impressed with your generosity (or, as big businesses call it, "social responsibility").
   
6. Set up an attractive shop. Your stand will probably rely almost entirely on people who stop in while driving or walking by, so you want your stand to look as clean and attractive as possible or they won’t stop. You can buy pre-made stands now, but people may probably still like it better if you make your own, as long as it looks good. Use a new-looking table, or use a clean tablecloth on an older table. Letter your signs neatly and in large letters, and clearly and attractively display all the items you have for sale (if you’re selling more than just lemonade) and their prices. Add some color to your stand with helium balloons or other decorations, and be creative. Most importantly, keep your stand and the area around it neat and sparkling clean.
   
7. Advertise your stand. Write up signs to stick to trees or posts in your neighborhood, especially if your stand is just off a main road. You can also ask a friend to stick a couple brightly colored signs on himself or herself and have him or her ride a bicycle around the neighborhood, advertising your lemonade stand. Be sure to have a big, neatly written sign in front of your stand. Don’t spend a lot of time or money on signs away from your stand. Your best advertising will be your location and word-of-mouth from satisfied customers.
   
8. Provide exceptional customer service. Repeat customers (those who come back over and over again) will probably be your stands main source of income, especially if you set up shop in a residential neighborhood (at or near your house). You can get people to come back to your stand by treating them right:
   
   • Be pleasant. Greet customers with a smile when they come to your stand, chat with them while they’re there (if they want to chat), and thank them for their business. Make it a point to remember repeat customers’ names, and greet them by name or title (Mr., Ms., Dr., etc.) when they show up, and offer them a free cup of lemonade or some other bonus every once in a while.
     
   • Be professional. No matter how badly your day may be going, you always want to look like you love selling lemonade and that the lemonade business is booming. Customers don’t want to hear about your problems, they want lemonade. And your customers are busy people, too. They don’t want to have to wait for their refreshing beverage, so always have enough lemonade and other supplies ready, and make sure you can quickly and accurately make change for customers. If business is good, and you have a line of customers, apologize for the wait and show that you’re working hard to serve people. Finally, you don’t have to wear a suit, but keep your appearance neat and clean.
     
   • Be accommodating. If a customer doesn’t like the lemonade for some reason, listen to them to find out why, apologize, fix the problem, and offer them a free cup or refund. Unsatisfied customers may become your best customers if you impress them with your desire to "make things right."
     
   
   
9. Pay attention to quality. If you make great lemonade, people will come back for it and choose your stand over others. If you want to make your own lemonade, you can ask your parents how, or you can find tons of recipes on the Internet. Whether you make your own or buy from the store, ask friends and family to try your lemonade before you start selling it, and listen to your customers’ comments or complaints once you start selling. Make sure you give people enough ice to keep the lemonade cold, and don’t serve lemonade that’s been sitting out for too long or that has dirt or—yuck!—bugs in it.
   
10. Keep track of your sales and experiment a bit. You can learn a lot from running a lemonade stand, and the more you learn the more money your stand will make. If you’re not selling much lemonade, figure out why. Some factors, such as the weather, you can’t change, but others, such as price and type of lemonade, you can. Use some trial-and-error to make your stand the best it can be, and learn from your mistakes—when life gives you lemons make lemonade. more
    

Article provided by wikiHow, a collaborative writing project to build the world's largest, highest quality how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Compete with Other Lemonade Stands. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

At Last a Post that Involves Foodies AND Marketing!

Got an email blast from Wine Marketer.com that features an article by Philip James, CEO - Snooth Inc. about the value of "branding" in the wine industry. This sage advice can carry over into ANY industry that utilizes the web for marketing (and who doesn't?). He has this to say about building links on the web (I could not have said it better myself!):

"What you want is a snowball. You go and seed your site with accurate, original and interesting data, make it easy for both search engines and people to access and leverage your data. Then, as the snowball picks up momentum, your supporters can be your brand ambassadors, spreading the word about what you do. Pretty soon, mentions of your wines will be popping up all over the web, on sites youd never heard of. That sounds scary, but every time this happens its like a tiny little beam of light pointing back to your solitary lighthouse, you get enough of those, and pretty soon the sky doesnt look so dark any more."

How to succeed in Forums

I love sharing information from my favorite marketer, Stephen Pierce. This what he says about forums: "To succeed in today’s marketing environment you have to boost your interactions with your market, which can then boost your transactions and thus your profits.

To do that however, you must FIRST know WHO is talking about WHAT and WHERE are they talking about it.

So the issue is this: WHO is talking about WHAT and WHERE are they talking? Solution: An overlooked free forum marketing research tool uncovered and revealed to you right now.

In today’s Make More Money Monday DTAlpha TalkBack, I’m going to share with you a free tool that will allow you to point-and-click your way to targeting conversations to can jump in and start marketing and making money from.

Using this free tool, you can search over 58 MILLION forum threads in over 37,000 different forums in just seconds to accelerate your forum marketing efforts.

Are you ready for this 11 minutes and 52 seconds of pure actionable content?

It’s another amazing marketing tool that I’m sure will become part of your secret weapon marketing tool chest.

So let’s begin." Click here to hear Stephen's audio blog.