Stop Avoiding The Conversation (Engage Moms Marketing Blog)

Originally published on MediaPost.com Engage Moms Blog: by Stephanie Piche, Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 9:28 AM

News flash: Moms don’t want to have a relationship with their laundry detergent. What they do want is more time to engage with the segments that impact their busy lives, such as health care and financial services.

The Boston Consulting Croup published a book recently regarding the “female economy,” stating that Moms will drive $5 trillion in incremental global spending growth and advising marketers about they should do to capture this highly influential group. It goes into six profiles of different types of women and points out, specifically, the categories in which women are easily engaged, i.e., food, fitness, beauty and apparel. This is no surprise; it’s where we see most of the marketing focus from brands to Moms.

What we don’t see because it “frustrates” them, according to BCG, is financial and health care services marketing to Moms. One could also add real estate, automobiles and big box stores.

The financial and health care segments are missing a big opportunity. Moms are the game-changers today, leading the way online by creating a presence for themselves on social networking sites and blogs. According to the latest stats, women are ahead of men in the most popular social media destinations such as Facebook (57%), Del.icio.us (52%), Ning (59%), Twitter (57%), Ustream.TV (66%) and Flickr (55%).

Additionally, mobile use is up and dominated by women (55%), with the 35-54 age group leading the way for social networking, followed by the 25-34 age group. With more Moms controlling the conversation, having the power, information and resources to make their own decisions, brands are going to need to step up and learn to be transparent in their relationship with them.

Personally speaking, we don’t want to have a relationship with our laundry detergent. Moms do want to know that the household products we purchase work as advertised, are good for the environment, and have coupons and specials so we can make our dollars go further. However, it doesn’t mean that we’re not interested in the segments that “frustrate” us. Moms want more time, which means that we don’t have time to sit through a three-hour consultation with a financial planner or wait around for the on-call nurse to call back so we can schedule an appointment.

Moms seek out social engagements and, by doing so online, they look for portals and resources where they can find the information they seek from an authentic, trusted source. They do this while multi-tasking through their to-do lists and don’t appreciate having their time wasted. Isn’t it ridiculous that laundry detergent brands have a better “relationship” with Moms than health care and financial services providers do?

Moms care about sustaining and improving their families financially; they want to know how to manage daily and monthly finances. They worry about money every day. Creating solutions that make it easier for Moms to engage with financial services beyond the household budget would be a huge growth area.

Take the health care segment. Did you know that women spend 30-50% more money than men do for health care services? Why aren’t they paid more attention? Do health care providers think they’re going to come and keep spending money with them and not look elsewhere for a true engagement? No wonder these segments (along with auto, big box and real estate) are listed as areas that women find “frustrating” and ones that marketers avoid. The fact is, these marketing teams are not consumer-focused, not social, and not present.

Stop avoiding the conversation. Engage with Moms in ways that show you value their time and want to have a relationship with them. The best place to start is with a conversation. Ask questions, and find out what Moms want.

Teach Them Well (Engage Moms Marketing Blog)

Originally published on MediaPost.comEngage Moms Blog: Marketing by Stephanie Piche, Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Over the past 20 months or so, I’ve been helping Moms create video content, from vlogs to product reviews and live-streaming Web TV shows. It has been an interesting journey for me as someone who has engaged and encouraged women with interesting stories, personalities and passions to get in front of the camera.

One thing brands get right is that women like to talk about products they use; they like to share how they use it, what not to do with it, and how things work with it and so on.

However, one of the things brands fail to realize is that moms make buying decisions based on things they need, which means we’re not out buying gadgets, cosmetics, cookware, software and other non-essential items unless we need it or we believe we need it.

Just because we are not buying high-ticket items every day doesn’t mean we should not be marketed to or educated about your products. Brands are making a big mistake if they think we’re only interested in hearing about things we need to run our household such as groceries, paper goods, cleaning products and school supplies.

We don’t need to be “sold” on the necessities, but we do like to save money on them. We know the brands that we trust before we go to the grocery store; we don’t necessarily know the brands that are non-grocery/household related, which is a perfect place to connect with us.

Some months back I had a conversation with a company that sells webcams. Its representatives told me that sales were down because new computers were coming equipped with the cams, albeit inferior models. This posed a problem when one is trying to engage the brand as a site sponsor. However, we were able to successfully position their superior product and market their brand to the audience as the educator of “how to use” webcams.

One thing to remember is that a mom is not going to spend money on something that may be “better” if she doesn’t deem it to be necessary, i.e., webcam lens quality, but she will remember the brand in a favorable way if she learned something from it.

This proved to be true as each week the audience knew the brand was a site sponsor and would see ideas about “how to” use the webcam, from sharing video messages to creating vlogs with webcams and demonstrating it on their product.

We created a live brand engagement using story-streaming for on-demand interactions with the consumer even when they were not there to buy but to participate in a conversation. The most interesting outcome was that when moms brought up the topic about needing a webcam, they would hear a recommendation from another mom who offered not only the sponsor’s brand name but the model number as well.

If you’re a brand that wants to create these types of opportunities, you could think outside the box and look for ways to create conversations and content that moms are looking for by capturing these “story streams” on video and sharing it with other viewers.

Build Trust With Advocates, Ambassadors

Originally written for MediaPost.com Engage Moms Blog by Stephanie Piche 3/17/2009

Many brands are leery of the conversation that gets started when they open up the social media channel, especially with Twitter leveling the playing field. Who will speak for them now that there are numerous, real-time conversations being started with or without them? How do they listen and engage and successfully build trust with their consumer?

Brand Advocates

As a brand, it’s important to have reviews posted about your products on your site; it not only gives you feedback from buyers but helps convert new sales at the point of purchase. So, if you’re not asking the one question a 2003 Harvard Business Review study pointed to as the most important predictor of top-line growth, “Would you recommend this company/product to a friend?,” then you’re missing out on an opportunity to build brand advocates. Plus, if I’m buying something online I haven’t used before, I’ll look for those reviews to guide my decision about the product.

Brand Ambassadors

With more than 70% of bloggers posting product reviews and many of them now identifying themselves as a “brand ambassador” on their sites, one has to wonder what does this mean? How are they speaking for the brand? Are they a paid staffer? Can I ask them questions about products and get good answers?

Several times in the past, I’ve facilitated product reviews for brands by matching a blogger to a product. On a few occasions, the brand was not happy that the reviewer posted an honest opinion about the product, following a disclosure policy to remain uninfluenced and give an honest opinion.

Yet, some disclosure policies can leave serious doubt about the authentic voice coming from that reviewer, such as this one that states, “The blogger may receive compensation that can influence posts … and don’t always identify paid posts as such, and any claim on a product review should be verified with the manufacturer.” Why would a brand engage a “brand ambassador” when it has policies that are that ambiguous? For that matter, if the brand doesn’t want to listen to the reviewer’s true experience about its product and encourages positive or neutral posts, how long will it be a viable brand?

No wonder that, when digital moms are researching new products, they’re starting to look for user-generated video reviews so they can see the product in action before they decide to buy.

Today’s savvy moms want to know that brands have selected their spokespeople based on research done beyond page ranks, that they know what their disclosure policies are, have chosen them for their domain knowledge/expertise on a topic that aligns with the product/service and how their sphere of influence reaches beyond their site, Twitter presence and Facebook page and into their social circles off line (translation: they’re more than a reviewer; they’re a trusted voice). Most importantly, we want to know that brands will listen to what we’re saying about their products and take our feedback seriously.

Don’t short-change your brand in the area of building trusted advocates, ambassadors, and relationships. We’re looking for authentic voices to follow and engage with. If we don’t find them or don’t like what we’re finding, you’ll be in crisis management mode before you know it and be a case study of what not to do at the next social media conference.

Who’s Making Big-Ticket Buying Decisions?

Written for Engage Moms Blog on Media Post by Stephanie Piche, Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 10:21 AM

Savvy consumers are no longer passively watching commercials or looking at ads; they want brands to listen and understand what is important to them. These traditional marketing tactics are being replaced with “engagement marketing” strategies, creating a two-way, interactive exchange.

Recently, eMarketer published an article, “Facebook Moms Are Marketing-Savvy,” with a finding that moms are receptive to marketing when done on their terms and not through ads.

Many brands and industries are leading the way in listening and engaging with moms, yet there are some industries that still prefer to engage primarily with men. I think it’s easier for some industries to market to men as they don’t require the same level of social engagement as women do. However, in case you missed the memo, moms control over $4 billion in annual spend.

Case in point — the auto industry. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I think they’re trying to engage with the mom market by offering test drives to get “mom blogger” reviews as part of a marketing tactic; but how are cars really marketed? How are they sold? If you ask my neighbor, an auto mechanic and dad, he’ll tell you it’s to men but who makes the buying decision? As he’ll tell you, it’s his wife.

Recently, another mom told me about her car shopping adventure in Los Angeles. She was at a dealership and wanted some financial information about some cars, and the salesperson told her to “come back with her husband.” You’re not surprised are you? I’ve had this happen to me in the past. It’s no fun being a single (woman) mom, standing in a showroom filled with salespeople wanting to make deals with men but not with you. No wonder the auto industry needed a bailout.

As many brands have figured out, you need a strategy for brand-building, and understanding your target audience is part of it. People are talking in 140-character bites and igniting a flurry of engagements from support to condemnation. Many brands have even created high level “social media / marketing” positions, while others still look at it as a fad or a part-time gig they can outsource to a few people to blog or tweet about. You can’t improvise your social marketing strategy on the fly.

Engaging with moms requires a high level of social interaction to establish trust and loyalty, which means the art of listening is at the root of successfully reaching and keeping us engaged. Oh, and in the words of Aretha Franklin “R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me” — you gotta respect us. Having children did not take away our buying power, it only increased it.

Finally, if you’re a brand that is still sitting on the fence and not taking social marketing seriously, conversations are taking place without you. Good, bad or indifferent. Wouldn’t you rather be there for them?

Engaging Your Target Audience Requires Finding the Right Voice for Your Brand

As a sales and marketing professional with over 20 years experience (35 product launches including 3 iPhone apps and one social networking/video streaming community) I am energized to see the big push to engage with the customer by brands. No longer is the conversation one-sided. Well, that’s true for some and not so true for others, but the intent is there.

When I started doing sales / marketing in my early 20’s I read a lot of books, took lots of courses and then applied them to practical experiences – i.e. my job, emerging technologies and so on. I have always focused on the WIIFM process as a key “best” practice, of course, there are many acronyms that people use for many different methodologies, but what it comes down to as a consumer (B2B or B2C) – “What’s in it for ME?”

Today’s marketer has seen a rise in the effectiveness of using Web 2.0 Tools by up to 52% as shown in this graphic from a recent McKinsey Survey.

Then there are the objectives that marketers are seeking to gain from using Social Marketing / Web 2.0 Tools:

The biggest issue that I am seeing with the push to include Social Marketing / Web 2.0 is that brands are launching the use of these tools without building it into an overall plan. This is not just getting a Facebook page or a Twitter account or having a blogger review your product. There is no cookie cutter process – it’s finding the right voice for your brand and resonating that voice with your target audience to have an engaging conversation. “What’s in it for me???”

If you haven’t already registered and want to get some practical information on how to optimize finding your audience and engaging with them please register now and come join me tomorrow for my workshop. You’ll get some great insight into building your marketing program to take advantage of Mobile, Social Marketing, Video and more. (My version of Web 3.0…)

The Right Web 3.0 Marketing Mix Workshop w/Case Studies on Why You Need to Cover Your Bases

Brand engagement is in a big state of change right now, with the push to add SEO, social media, video and mobile to your outbound marketing; understanding how to get a ROI and what the right mix is can be challenging.

You’re invited to attend: The Right Web 3.0 Marketing Mix Workshop w/Case Studies on Why You Need to Cover Your Bases Workshop

Thursday, January 28th 2010 at 9 AM PST / Noon ET

We created this workshop to answer the most common questions that our clients are asking and give you practical “use cases” to help you determine what will work best for your brand.

During this 3 hour workshop will be examining each of the key elements you need to consider as you engage with Web 3.0 marketing tools and determine what the right mix should be for you to launch a brand, new product or expand your current reach. We will do this by taking several examples from different client case studies and discuss the importance of Video, SEO, Social Networking and community (yes, Twitter is part of it), and mobile as part of your marketing strategy and talk about how we helped each of these organizations from start to the end result.

We will also go through a recent case study for an online, LIVE streaming community was developed and created by Key Practices. This “social TV portal” broadcasts 90 weekly streaming video web chat shows and has a social networking community; and has grown to be one of the highest trafficked sites for the mom market in less than 6 months. We will also talk about several ways to use new media and social media in the right time and place to build buzz and brand engagement.

The key takeaways from this workshop will be how-to get your baseline set for understanding where your brand is online as well as how to hone in and engage with your target audience. We will cover the basics of SEO, Social Media, Mobile, Video and how it is important to tie these tools all together with your overall marketing plan.

We will also leave an hour open at the end to answer any questions submitted during the registration process as well as answer questions at the end of the session from what we covered during the workshop.

Several Case Studies Will Be Reviewed: Industry cases studies include: software, retail, business services and social networking.

Register Today: Thursday, January 28th 2010 at 9 AM PST / Noon ET

The cost of of this workshop is $74.95 and all workshop attendees will receive copies of all materials shared as well as a discount on any future services needed from Key Practices.

Do you have your bases covered for 2010 growth?

Usually we don’t take on new clients without doing a full “background” check on them. No, not the kind you’re thinking of, it’s our sanity check really. Like a doctor, it’s hard to prescribe a remedy without understanding what’s going on in your system.

We start out by running a series of reports from your website performance and optimization to who your competition is (top 5) in search. From there we do our “who’s your customer” analysis. There’s nothing worse than not understanding who your customer is and how they search for your services. Once we complete that we can start with the comparative analysis on strengths and weaknesses (SWOT Analysis, the strategic planning method used to evaluate Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats).

Brand engagement is in a big state of change right now, with the push to add social media and mobile to your marketing, understanding how to get your ROI and what the right mix is can be challenging.

If you’re a brand that has an agency that manages this for you, it’s time to look at them and see if they have really gotten it figured out. So often we see a disconnect on how to blend the right mix together it might take several campaigns to get it right and then again, how will you know?

There are over 300K social media “experts” on Twitter right now. Just because you have blogging, twitter and Facebook figured out – does not mean you know how to mix them together with traditional marketing, video, mobile, advertising – off and online and optimize search.

Want to get your 2010 marketing strategy bases covered? Even if it is just a sanity check to see what the options are for your brand? Engage with a full-service marketing group like Key Practices. Sometimes it’s as easy as changing one word on how you are marketing yourself to be found by those seeking your services.

Connect with us for our 2010 SWOT: Traditional Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Video and Web 3.0 analysis report.

User Content Creation Around the World

from eMarketer DECEMBER 28, 2009

Market maturity affects activities

Worldwide data from Trendstream and Lightspeed Researchsheds light on the user-generated content activities of Internet users around the world.

In the US, a mature Internet market, managing a social network profile was the top online user-generated content activity, participated in by 44.2% of Web users. This was followed closely by uploading photos. Uploading video, blogging and microblogging were significantly less popular.

Users in the UK and Canada had similar rates of social network use and photo-sharing, and also tapered off dramatically when it came to more advanced user-generated content activities.

Japan, another mature Internet market, has markedly different participation in user-generated content activities. Much lower percentages of Web users manage social network profiles or upload photos, for example. The “Global Web Index” report notes that this is actually a sign of advanced behavior: The survey measured only activities conducted on a PC, and in Japan, many such activities are now mobile-based. For example, 34% of users accessed social networks only via mobile during the month of the study.

Meanwhile, participation was generally high in China, where overall Internet penetration is only 29.6% according to eMarketer estimates. A majority of users uploaded photos, and nearly one-half had a blog. More than one-fifth used a microblogging service, far ahead of the more advanced economies.

Trendstream and Lightspeed noted that microblogging usage was fairly low across the board, despite the hype surrounding services such as Twitter. The 7% of US users participating in microblogging was somewhat lower than eMarketer’s estimate of 11.1% Twitter penetration this year.

Awesome Video Search Results Still Do Not Equal Engagement

I was reading Jeffbullas’s blog earlier about the 25.4 BILLION reasons why search engines want social media video and pulled this paragraph to comment on: “Comscore announced in August 2009 that over 25.4 Billion video views ocurred in the USA alone (Yes…. Billions not millions). This is up from 14.3 Billion In December 2008. This is a 78% increase in just 8 months. Google’s sites such as YouTube  had a 39% market share with the closest competitor being Microsoft sites with 2.2%. (Google owns YouTube by the way).”

For us, it’s great to see this validation by ways of numbers and the more articles like this that are shared helps in client meetings when we are proposing a mix that includes video.

One thing we know is that you can’t expect to post some videos to YouTube and make millions for your clients. An experienced, full-service marketer is always looking for the value of the product to solve the “consumer of the products” problem AKA “pain points”.

Blending traditional marketing with new media, mobile and social marketing require skills that some of the social/new media “consultants” don’t have expertise in. Our firm started providing video as part of a way to communicate to our clients “audience” in campaigns three years ago and now have rolled streaming into the mix.

There are so many components that can be used to create a successful campaign – but nothing is cookie cutter and you want to be able to show an ROI as adding video or any social media component makes the campaign a high-touch program that many clients don’t have time for or don’t want to pay for.

Remember, when you start engaging in conversations with your “audience” you need to be prepared to manage your reputation and build on that relationship. It does not work on autopilot. Consumers are smarter now and you need to know how to find your audience and engage WITH them.

Seven Predictions for 2010 from eMarketer’s CEO

Written by Geoff Ramsey—CEO, Co-Founder, eMarketer December 14, 2009

It’s that time of year again—the season for looking back, reflecting on what transpired over the course of the year, and simultaneously looking forward, to formulate thoughts, and perhaps some hope, for what the coming year will bring.

Like last year, I have seven predictions I’d like to share with our readers, many of which will get underway in 2010 but gather momentum and take on greater importance in subsequent years.

1. During 2010, as US ad budgets crack open just a little, look for an accelerated migration of ad dollars from traditional to digital media. According to Forrester Research, 59% of US marketers plan to increase their budgets for digital by pulling funds from traditional outlets. Other sources support this shift, including a recent survey among Association of National Advertisers members and a separate study from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Next year, while broadcast television, radio, newspaper and magazine spending continue to downsize, though more slowly than in 2009, online ad spending will enjoy a nice bump-up: eMarketer currently forecasts 5.5% growth. And the increase won’t all come from search—banner ads will grow 3.3%, and online video will jump by 40%.

Other researchers and investment banks are even more bullish on digital ad spending next year, with many predicting growth rates exceeding 10% (e.g., JPMorgan, ZenithOptimedia, Forrester, Collins Stewart, Citi Investment Research, Credit Suisse and Oppenheimer). Only one researcher, out of the 23 eMarketer is currently tracking in this area, is forecasting negative growth. The Yankee Group believes online ad spending will take another hit in 2010, dropping 1.5%.

2. Even post-recession, aggregate media dollars will fail to return to former levels. Looked at another way, while total US media spending will decrease by 14.6% this year, the $192 billion spent in 2008 will represent the absolute peak of media spending—at least for the next decade. I don’t believe we will ever return to that historic level, for these four reasons:

• The measurement and accountability mandate will intensify demand for lower-cost, more efficient media.
• Media fragmentation will force marketers to target their messages to ever smaller niche audiences.
• Digital technologies are creating new opportunities for firms to self-market, such as a company’s own Website, online videos, e-mail marketing to existing customers and so forth. These channels end up bypassing paid media such as yellow pages and direct mail.
• There will be a continued emphasis on “earned media,” such as on social networks and other consumer-generated community platforms. This will also siphon dollars away from paid media.

For decades, the entire multibillion-dollar media industry has been puffed up beyond its true value because of waste. Marketers paid huge sums to maximize reach, while knowing that thousands or millions of the people seeing their campaigns would never buy their products. Gradually, though, as the financial and housing markets are doing, media will shrink to match the true value it is delivering to marketers. That “true value” is being unearthed by better measurement systems, such as more efficient targeting.

For decades, the entire multibillion-dollar media industry has been puffed up beyond its true value because of waste.

3. While media dollars have imploded, media consumption will continue to explode. Due to increasingly empowered consumers and further advances in technology, look for media to become more:

• Distributed—the same content will pop up in multiple locations, formats and channels.
• Personalized—media will be tailored to reflect what consumers have watched, read, experienced and shared.
• Contextualized—when and where consumers get their information will dictate its content and format, and that, in turn, will shape how they interact with and share it.

Each of these trends will lead to more precise targeting, which will also reinforce trend No. 2, the stagnation of media spending.

4. Advertising will support less and less of the load for content and entertainment. Fueled by the low cost of digital distribution, combined with vast amounts of consumer-generated content in the form of blogs, social networks, photo- and video-sharing sites, and rampant Twitter activity, media choices have exploded. There is no way advertising can pay all the freight for this media tonnage. In addition, marketers are clamoring for more direct contact with consumers, especially to engage with them on social networks, and this will divert ad money and attention away from third-party publishers.

Advertising will by no means go away, but it will play a smaller role as paid content and hybrid models emerge.

5. Advertising on social networks will never attract a large share of marketers’ ad dollars. eMarketer estimates social network advertising will grow only 7% next year to $1.3 billion, accounting for a mere 5.5% of total online ad dollars. And while ad spending on these sites will never represent a significant share of total online ad dollars, spending on non-advertising forms of social marketing will rise significantly next year and beyond.

Marketers are more interested in genuine engagement with consumers on social platforms, and less in opportunities to flood them with banner ads.

Social marketing works best when it’s earned, not paid for.

The spending emphasis is on internal staffing, and building structures and systems for two-way, real-time communications with consumers—and not so much on deploying ads. Social marketing works best when it’s earned, not paid for. It’s a matter of leveraging the inherent trust consumers have in each other.

Eventually, online social activities and connections will be baked into every form of digital content on the Web, from brand Websites and shopping sites to search engines, traditional media sites and entertainment portals.

6. Marketers will be increasingly willing to trade off reach for deeper engagement. This goes right along with the drive toward improved targeting and increasingly efficient media buys.

Rather than try to reach every conceivable person who fits a particular demographic, marketers will be looking for technologies and ad solutions that allow them to reach only the people who—by their past surfing behavior, search queries, online purchases, social connections, Twitter posts and other digital footprints—indicate that they are likely prospects.

The analogy here is to search. The search advertising market has been so successful precisely because it captures consumers’ intentions. When a user types “hotels in Bermuda” into a Google search box, you can be pretty sure they have an intention to reserve a hotel at that destination, and they are therefore likely to click and convert. Marketers wanting to capture intentions higher up the purchase funnel will want to identify people who demonstrate a likely desire to interact with the marketer’s brand, possibly leading to a purchase.

If a marketer is successful at the above—zeroing in on a narrow group of likely prospects—then there is a much better opportunity to engage with those consumers on a deeper, more meaningful basis.

In effect, less is more.

7. The classic interruption/disruption model of advertising, whereby marketers insert unwanted, usually irrelevant ads as a price the consumer must pay to view desired content, will erode, if not fade away. Consumers in the digital age simply have too much control over their media environments these days for marketers to be pushing unwanted banners, buttons or videos. This raises the bar for marketers and their agencies to develop new forms of messages that are not even perceived as ads, but rather as welcome content. The challenge will be twofold:

1. To better identify likely prospects (as in prediction No. 6 above)
2. To create communications that are so compelling, entertaining, informative or useful that the consumer is not only happy to receive them, but also motivated to share them with others.

Advertising creative, as well as the targeting technologies needed to identify likely prospects, will have to step up to this challenge.

Whether or not the recession ends, 2010 will bring about monumental change. Are you prepared to capitalize on it?

Geoff Ramsey speaks about digital marketing topics and trends at major conferences and industry events around the globe.