Remember that idea you’ve been sitting on?

I’m here with the swift kick in the pants.

While you’re waiting for the absolute right time to launch that business of yours, someone else is coming up with the same exact idea.

Except they are implementing on it.

Ideas are like water, folks. Really. My first startup, U Sphere, was really not anything new — a portal for college-bound students to connect with colleges.

In my case, the right time presented itself and I launched and didn’t look back.

It wasn’t wildly successful, but that’s okay — I learned a ton. Including what not to do next time. How to test and learn. What type of people to avoid working with — and who to gravitate toward.

Groupon? Nothing new, right? People buy stuff at a discount. One deal a day. Part Woot, part coupon site.

Oh yeah, and they probably hit a couple bumps in the road when they launched. But they were — are — first to market. HUGE advantage. Category killer — even though, again, not really a completely original idea. Beside the point.

You. Have. An. Idea.

Implement. Execute.

Perfect is good. Done is better.

Isn’t it interesting how some things stick out in your mind – and others, well, you either can’t (or don’t) remember?

This can be true with marketing. I’m talking all kinds of marketing: ad campaigns, direct mail pieces, social media marketing, outreach, events…gosh, the list goes on.

So…

How do you make your marketing “memorable?”

Here are five tips:

1. Have a point. This may seem trite, but so many people forget it with their marketing. For example, I was just on the website of a company that a friend of a friend suggested I check out. The most annoying thing about this site could have been its flash graphics (always a bad idea, IMHO). Or maybe the crappy color scheme. (They did that.) Bad design. (An overall valueless website.)

These were not the biggest failings — the biggest failing was the lack of a point. I read and re-read what it was they do and it had the feel of a website that was built by committee. With no point.

2. Distill your messages down to the WIIFM. To that end, every piece of marketing MUST be written as if you’re the target audience asking “What’s in it for me?” This gets back to benefit vs. feature. Feature: what the executives decide management should care about when launching the product.

Benefit: what the buyer will want to get FROM BUYING THE PRODUCT. How will I benefit? What’s in it for me?

3. Ask “why should I care?” Search has a mastermind person named Avinash Kaushik – @avinashkaushik — and he talks about the “3 layers of So What?” I love this because it takes the above “Benefit vs. Feature” question, the WIIFM concept, and ratchets it up big time.

To paraphrase Avinas: keep asking “so what?”

For example…”I’m launching a new service that delivers cufflinks to your door within 24 hours?” So What? “The cufflinks are handmade in Africa?” So What? “Every time you buy a pair for $35 we buy a cow for the villagers who made the cufflinks and they get 25% of every sale in cash.”

Editor’s note — this service, as far as I know, doesn’t exist yet.

4. Look for the niche within the niche. Fellow savvy marketer Jim Alexander and I have been working on a book whose code name is “Nichification.” This is a lot of work — interviews with people who have launched products and services and successfully sold and marketed them in various niche businesses.

One emerging theme in this book is the niche within the niche.

Put simply, take a subset of the population that would buy your niche product (if you use the above, try “cufflinks enthusiasts”). Then, take a subset of THAT population and cater your marketing to them. 75% of those who wear cufflinks are rich guys. The other 25% might be those who want to know that every cufflinks purchase helps support the global economy.

Write for those people.

5. Cut out unnecessary words and puffery. I find myself increasingly annoyed with marketing that is memorably BAD for its over-blown, long-winded, crap-o-rama.

We’ve all seen the web pages that go on and on and on, where you have to keep scrolling down to find out what they’re selling and how much it sells for.

I love Mark Twain’s line: “I am sorry I am writing a long letter, I didn’t have the time to write a short one.”

Get to the point with your words, marketers. We’ll thank you…

So, now that you’re ready to be memorable with your marketing…what tips do YOU have to share?

What’s it like to build a brand in this modern age?

Ford Logos

I often hearken back to days of old — when I was in an operating company of a large financial services conglomerate*. Often, we’d hear something from the field: “hey, we’ve created this product, we need to sell it” or “this is a service that we need to roll out.” All of this needed to happen within the confines of a large, prescribed, and sometimes unwieldy brand architecture.

But it became a lot simpler when we’d ask the following two questions for context:

Are talking about BRAND or MODEL?

Are we discussing BENEFITS or FEATURES?

Let’s start with Brand vs. Model. “Ford” is the brand. (One that happens to be kicking some major bottom these days — probably for going against the grain.) You can see from the above photo that brand, obviously, is more than just a logo. The cars and their features change over time, sometimes mistakes are made along the way, sometimes there are breakthrough successes.

But each MODEL must support the overall Ford BRAND. Ford might mean “All-American” to some, could be “economical” or “reliable” to others, or “supercharged sports car” to others.

Gonna launch the Ford Edge? Or the Fiesta? Those are MODELS — the guess here is that the team behind the Edge said “what could we build that says ‘crossover’ but still embodies the Ford BRAND?” (Can you tell that, with each passing day, I want a Ford Edge more and more?)

So, if you’re building a BRAND, are your MODELS supporting the overall BRAND? Is each one of your PRODUCTS or SERVICES a MODEL, underneath an overall BRAND ARCHITECTURE?

Note: these questions work well, VERY WELL, for on- and off-line brands. Trust me.

What about the “Benefits vs. Features” question? Thanks, again, to Ford for hitting us upside the head with the BENEFITS vs. FEATURES on the Ford Edge Official Site. Screenshot, please…

Thanks, Ford

Did you notice something? While Ford could have hit you over the head with MPGs, with government ratings on fuel efficiency, scores on 0-to-60, etc., they didn’t. They put themselves in your shoes (as a driver, consumer, future buyer) and said, simply “Drive Past Gas Stations Faster.”

That’s putting BENEFITS before FEATURES. That’s asking the question “How will the reader/prospect/future buyer BENEFIT from buying our product/reading our copy/visiting our site?”

People of Earth, I’ve been guilty of not asking these questions, too. Feature: my site can do x, y and z. Benefit: visit my site and you’ll end up happier, more refreshed. Whatever.

There’s a little bit of empathy marketing here. There’s a little bit of agile marketing here.

But there’s a ton to learn from Ford here, too.

And from the Financial Services concern I worked for, where we actually would get pushback on BRAND vs. MODEL. And on BENEFITS vs. FEATURES.

It was great pushback, made us all stronger.

Try pushing back yourselves.

[*That large financial services conglomerate should be pretty obvious if you've Googled me.]

We like how Google has marketed (or NOT marketed) its Nexus One Phone. Lots of buzz, a good product, etc.: all that’s well and good; but having a certain level of mystery-meets-Google to it is also a fun marketing approach.

Then we saw this video and we thought, to paraphrase Guinness Beer’s pitchmen: “Brilliant!”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_ETSvTAo4A

Take a look and tell us what you think about these Ninjas — oh, and whether you think the Ninja term is, well, overdone.

Hi-ya!

Lesson We Learned: Explaining Art + Science of Social Media…

Area 224 returns for not one but TWO repeat engagements of 3 Weeks to Social Media Success.

Up there on our site you’ll see it say “3 Weeks is Back!” That’s because we did this program in December and, well, we had quite a few people ask us if we’d do it again. So here we are.

PLUS – this is more laser-focused, less sessions, and some one-on-one time and group time and…we’re really excited.

Add to cart

BUT…what about Real Estate? Don’t you guys have something for that, too?

YES…our Real SMM product has 3 Weeks to Real Estate Social Media Success. Real Estate people – agents, brokers, investors, title company, mortgage people…etc., they can all learn from the experts (we’ve been doing webinars like these ALL through 2009).

Add to cart

So, if you ARE in Real Estate, check out the Real SMM site and sign up there. If you aren’t, see more info on our 3 Weeks program right here.

Cheers!

Item: Groupon saves its visitors some serious cash.

Watch as we uncover from their own website what happened IN ONE DAY…

First, December 17, in the morning — as I know because Area 224 was hosting a webinar and we wanted to zero in on metrics. We used this graphic from the Groupon web page:

Next, lets’ show you what we just uncovered, from their site, a mere 30 hours later, as of about 5:30 Central Time on Friday the 18th.

In one day, they sold 27,286 “Groupons” and saved customers $4,997,629. ($183 in savings per Groupon sold.)

OR, looking at it this way — just today’s deal alone — a Brite Smile spa treatment thing — has sold 828 times, at $185 per. Generating $153,180 in revenues. Split between the companies, I’m sure.

Am I questioning their numbers? NO. I’m in awe of them.

You?

It’s officially out of control. All of it. Fanhood. Convergence. Brand ubiquity. Time to make sense of it all, somehow, someway.

First, a slap on the wrist and 100 lashes with a wet noodle for us here at Area 224. We are guilty of the Fan thing on a couple of levels. We paid for fans for our Real SMM site. We are even doing a random, no cash value, Slurpee Coin thing for Area 224. It’s not sanctioned by 7-Eleven. Maybe it could be and we’d get some buzz, but maybe that would cause more problems than it’s worth.

But if you feel the quest for Social Media Meaning and Enlightenment, like we often do, it’s about to get much much more confusing. And potentially out of control. Why?

1. The Federal Trade Commission. The picture of the girl above (ain’t she cute?) wearing the hat (from Steak N Shake, a Midwestern USA restaurant chain) should be disclosed, right? Since it’s on a blog, and was given to the girl by the restaurant, and the girl’s parent decided to use it on a blog — after December 1, that’s technically an endorsement.
2. Those symbols up in the headline. Seen them a few places? Like in the Grand Slam of Social Media — Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube? Posts and cross-posting and mass confusion aplenty. Even here — where we track this stuff. The LinkedIn stream for yours truly now seems to be a wacky combination of letters and numbers. (We’re reminded of the classic Jerry Seinfeld line “Amal and the symbol for Boron.“) Why are we mixing all of these sites — especially the ones that shouldn’t be mixing? Facebook is oil, LinkedIn is water. Twitter is gasoline. YouTube is probably air.
3. Failure to answer the question: “Why are you here in the first place?” That should be your first question before diving into Social, Social Networking, Social Media, Social Media Marketing. And it’s something a lot of businesses and a lot of people seem to forget. LinkedIn is not a tool for Realtors to sell houses on — yet so many actually post every single listing of theirs on LinkedIn. Huh? [Disclosure: we can help those clueless real estate marketers.]

People, one man’s Facebook time suck is another person’s entree into Farmville or MafiaWars. One person’s Twitter addiction is another person’s question about why all those “@” signs and “#” signs that aren’t even called “pound signs.”

Is there a cure to all this? No, but here are just a few guidelines worth thinking about:

1. Take all fandom with a grain of salt. Facebook fans can be bought, same way that brands can use Google Adwords to make their way up the search chain. I’m fanning things right and left — sometimes it’s research, sometimes it’s a competitor, sometimes it’s a quid pro quo.
2. Try to use LinkedIn to make meaningful business connections with people. Nothing more. You’ll need to turn on your filter and get past all of the pound signs.
3. Get out there and actually shake a few hands this week. Really, all of this social stuff is turning us into a world of introverts.

If you liked this blog post, please consider becoming a fan of a book, your kids, a nice hot cup of tea. Whatever. Thanks.

This post is virtually guaranteed to cause an uproar. It’s intended mostly for public companies – those who might find themselves stuck in the old ways of doing things.

Okay, so we said it out loud. Your VP of Social Media Marketing (SMM) is vital; and we’re about to share five reasons why it’s more important than Public Relations or Investor Relations.

If you are the CMO at a public company — especially one that deals in the direct-to-consumer space — this is your most important hire. Here goes:

Why SMM is more vital to the growing organization than PR?

1. It’s Not About Press Releases. It’s About Selling Stuff.

Back in the olden days — say 2004, when this reporter was actually VP of Global PR at a Fortune 500 company — we were fighting a losing battle against one thing: irrelevance. That’s right, PR wasn’t trackable where we were. The best we could do was a two-pronged strategy involving (1) keeping us out of bad news and (2) getting people on the same page globally.

Couldn’t track it. Didn’t need it. Expendable.

Flash forward to 2010 and envision a similar organization taking a look at where leads are coming from, whether or not the widget division is driving traffic to the stores. Try doing that with a traditional PR campaign.

Oh, and the press release? Not irrelevant anymore — thanks to folks like PitchEngine. But, if the PR team is seen as the press release production shop, that’s Big Trouble. With a Capital T.

2. Ye Olde News Media Have Been Replaced.

Much ado about the death of the newspaper — in fact, so much ado that we’re not going to talk about it here. Rather, let’s discuss something like Zynga and TechCrunch.

Michael Arrington is more than just a guy with a popular blog. He’s a thought leader who uncovers things — like questionable business practices — and writes about them. He’s done so for years and he’s pretty good at it. His coverage of Zynga’s questionable business practices led to a change in the way they do business.

Rarely do reporters outside of the really big enterprises have the time, wherewithal AND malleable publication schedule and format to be able to break news like he did.

In this case, story after story, video back-and-forth, conference discussions — all around one theme: getting Zynga to admit that they need to change business practices. Which they did.

Granted, he’s reporter, editor, and owner of the medium — his blog.

Why SMM is more important than IR.

3. It’s Not About Analysts, It’s About Selling Stuff. Main Street hates Wall Street. See cover of Time Magazine. SO, if given the choice as CMO, should you (a) hire the guy or gal who can manage through analyst meetings, talk about growing top-line revenue, fun stuff like that or (b) hire the guy or gal who can put together the social media marketing program that sells product.

4. You Don’t Have Time For Earnings Releases – Real-Time Results with SMM Trump a Nickel-a-share.

Are we advocating the elimination of your Investor Relations Department? NO. We’d never do such a thing.

Are we advocating going private and ignoring the whims of the markets? MAYBE, but that’s another discussion for another blog.

Are we saying that you’re going to be able to A/B test, track, measure, quantify with SMM? And engage your customers, prospects, the general public at the same time?

ABSOLUTELY.

Reason 5 is going to be the most controversial one yet. Here goes:

5. The talent is much, much less expensive.

Upon graduation from college in 1992, this reporter learned that the going rate for a television sports reporter in a small market was $12,000 a year. 8 years later, from friends in the media, he was told that the going rate for a television news reporter in a small market was $10,000 a year.

Social Media Marketing, at the early career level, is just as “sexy” as television journalism used to be. Thus, pay rates — while not $12,000 a year — will tend to be lower.

Think about other sexy fields. Sports Marketing, for instance. Inexpensive labor pools there because, if one recent grad doesn’t want to work for next-to-nothing in a backwoods outpost, someone else will.

Reason 5 sucks. But it’s life.

Marketing Executives can use reason five alone to their great advantage.

So, after you’ve heard all five reasons, what do you think? VP of SMM — important? Vital? Or do you vehemently disagree?

[Editor's Note: Awhile back we interviewed David Teicher, a rather clever Social Media Strategist person, who is paid to do such things (be clever and strategize about social media). We were waiting for the right time to post and this seemed like as good a time as any.]

Q: First of all, apologies for this question — but I flunked mythology: who was Aerocles?

A: Aerocles is fictional persona I inadvertently created. I had been doing some Mythology & Philosophy reading when I first learned of and joined the ranks of twitter – so it just kind of seeped in. I didn’t know what twitter really was at the time or how much I would use it or how helpful it would be, professionally.  I branded myself, accidentally, and rather than restart the process of building up trust and relationships, I’ve embraced the name and the brand.

Q: Interestingly, you appear to have been talking about “the death of email” for the longest time; but awhile back The Wall Street Journal declared it officially dead. What’s next for communicators? Mass marketing?

A: Well, first of all, I did read The Wall Street Journal article – but also read numerous rebuttals – for instance see this eConsultancy report: http://econsultancy.com/blog/4792-email-is-alive-and-well-and-helping-your-social-media-campaign or this WSJ Article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125565110691488935.html

My personal take is that email marketing, as a whole, is dying and being replaced by proper utilization of social media and platforms. However, There are still plenty of luddite-lead organizations, many that don’t understand how to effectively employ social media or what it can offer, holding us back. On top of that, even those businesses that DO get it can’t always embrace the new offerings if their target audience still relies on email. So it’s not ALL about the companies. That Said – it’s still dying. Maybe certain industries like Luxury Fashion/Retail and Automotive whose consumers are for the most part older, will see a slower change, but certainly any organization attempting to reach and appeal to younger or wider demographics need to accept that everything email marketing gives you can be done with social media, and can be done better.

Instead of being broadcast messages from brands that I delete without opening – Facebook and Twitter allow me to choose which brands I’m interested in and when to peruse their promotions and information – you get the same messaging but now it’s up to the consumer to take control of the interaction. It’s a scary premise for many but in the end the consumers will appreciate it and will feel empowered and validated by the brand, because of it.

Moreover, It also allows for more targeted messaging – what I want from a brand and what you want from the same brand may be very different – email marketing is relies heavily on one uniform message disseminated to anyone and everyone in hopes that those who open it and read it will find something useful that will drive them to make a purchase for further engage the brand. Effective employment of social media can afford brands the capability of custom tailoring messages to the specific interests and needs of their consumers, based on previous interactions, data in their profiles, or simply by segregating & indexing the information they want to convey and making it available to consumers in discrete, categorized, bit-sized packages.

It’s not going to happen tomorrow – that all brands follow this general outline – but those that do will see better results over time, especially as younger consumers become bigger spenders and influence more purchasing/spending decisions.

A: Well, I’m not sure why you thought it sucked, but I’m happy to explain why I liked it.  First of all – I understand that not everyone would find it to be “in great taste,” but I don’t think that was the point. Their target audience – the people to whom beer is typically marketed, are no doubt more likely to find it funny and clever, as I did. That said, what they really achieved in this ad was the creation of CONTENT as opposed to a MESSAGE (the traditional goal of marketing and advertising). What we generally consider ‘Content’ – TV Shows, Music, Books, Articles – is often supported by advertising and are, in our minds, separate entities. But just as we’re striving to add “Social” elements or extensions to traditional advertising campaigns, we must also rethink and reconstruct the fundamental aspects of any creative ideas or strategy to be more ‘social,’ for lack of a better word. Meaning, advertisers need to focus on creating content that people want to share instead of creating messages that accompanies the content people want to share.

The Bud Lime In A Can Ad was a great example of that, as are the Hulu Spots with Seth MacFarlane and Alec Baldwin and the Huggies “Inside The Diaper” Commercials. Anything Dubbed an Ad or Commercial that I actually WANT to watch and want to SHARE – That’s a HUGE Success, as I typically can’t stand them, along with most Americans, and have tolerated their existence until my DVR has rescued me and allowed me to fast forward right through them.

But if an ad is funny, interesting, and innovative to such a degree that I stop my DVR, rewind, watch the whole spot, pause my DVR, find the AD on Youtube, and then post it to Twitter, Facebook and Write a Blog Post about it – You’ve got think the creative minds behind that ad are celebrating somewhere.

Q: I don’t like it when people RT themselves and close every tweet with LOL. What really annoys you about how some people tweet?

A: There are no ground rules or established “Twitter Etiquette” – despite people trying to perpetuate such norms, myself included, so I can’t go bashing people for using twitter in a way that I disapprove of or that I find distasteful. In light of that, I can’t stand when people retweet other people content and claim in as their own. Also I can’t stand when people pimp out their websites, content, companies, clients, etc. without disclosing their affiliation. I constantly see people claiming “Loving This Blog Post” or “Great New Website!” only to find that it’s their blog or their website. It’s one thing to try to drive traffic – I do that. But I don’t Tweet “WOW, Really Interesting Post…” I’ll write “Hey Guys, I Just Posted….” It’s a big difference in my mind and the former ruins any chance of trust.

Q: Who’s gonna win the SMM turf war: ad agencies or PR agencies?

A: If only I knew…a few months ago I posted an article discussing why PR Pros are better suited to handle social media as they have much better understanding of the space, how it operates, what people want, best practices…etc. But that’s a skill set and an understanding that can be learned.  I happen to have a PR background but I’m putting it to use at an Ad Agency. I think any individual shop that wants to be known as having a grasp on social media needs to make use of people with different backgrounds and professional experiences. If I were to put together a team of social media pros – I’d pick a few marketers, a few advertisers, a few public relations professionals, and even people with customer service experience. Each of those fields brings something else to the table – and each is a facet that comes into play in social media – it’s not about one industry or another – it’s about a new industry that amalgamates it’s predecessors. On top of that I’d include Tech minded people – those who can develop apps, widgets, websites, who can code and program and build. Too many firms outsource that type of work when it should be done in-house. Instead of ideating and strategizing and bringing your plan to developers and asking, “is this possible?” you want understanding in the thought process from the very beginning.

Q: Brands that do social media marketing well — who stands out in your mind? Why?

A: There are the obvious examples – Starbucks, Coke, Zappos but I’ve honestly never been that impressed by them – something I can’t really shout because they clearly HAVE done a good job and have the results to prove it. I like to look for brands that excel in certain areas. For example – For reasons I don’t understand, many retail brands are struggling to actualize the concept of social shopping. If you look at these brands’ Facebook pages, most have a products tabs – but anything more than a click or two in the tab takes you to their website. Bad Move. 1-800 Flowers’ Facebook Page Is, IMHO, the epitome of successful ecommerce on a social platform. Take a look – you can browse their options and place an order without ever leaving Facebook – removing as many obstacles as possible for consumers – maximizing the potential for purchasing

Q: Any final thoughts?

A: Yes.

David Teicher

Social Media Manager & Strategist: McCann Erickson New York

Twitter:  @Aerocles

Url: Http://Aerocles.WordPress.Com