PATRICIA REDSICKER

4 Quick Tips to Get Your Social Media Team Started

Social media teams are becoming more common according to Exact Target’s State of Marketing 2014 Report.

Out of 2,500 marketers surveyed for their study, 57% of respondents said they have a dedicated team to strategize, execute and steward social media initiatives.

Most brands understand that having a dedicated team is key to social marketing success. It’s also clear from the report that “one-person social media teams” are the most common (probably due to small budgets or lack of buy-in from upper management).

Of course, having a social media team of more than one person would be great. But don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the budget to make it happen. There are always things you can do to create social media success. However, you also have to adjust your expectations to match the level of investment in your budget and team. Whether your team is comprised of one person or more, here are 4 quick tips to get them started:

#1. Begin with a strategy

Know what you want to accomplish from social media and choose your social networks wisely. Hint: You don’t have to have a presence on ALL social networks just because that’s what everyone is doing. However you do have to be where your customers and your target audience are.

#2. Create a workflow process

Schedule some time each day for routine social media activities (e.g., listening and monitoring, posting updates, networking and so on). The more you repeat these tasks, the better you’ll get at them.

#3. Develop quality content

You’ll need to create original content on a regular basis (e.g., blog posts, images, videos, graphics, etc.). Even with a small budget, you can get other people to create high-quality content for you by using a service like Fiverr. You can also get free images from Flickr, Photopin, or Wikimedia Commons.

#4. Get the word out

Let your co-workers and customers know that you have a Facebook page or a Twitter profile. Encourage them to engage with the company on these channels.

It’s also a good idea to join an online community where you can tactfully get the word out to others (without spamming them). The more value you add to their conversations, the more receptive they will be to discovering and engaging with your online brand.

What did I miss? What other tips can you share with social media teams that are just starting out?

The Ultimate Guide to Using Twitter For Your Dermatology Practice

Are you interested in learning how to promote your dermatology practice on Twitter?

Compared to other social networks, Twitter is one of the simplest and most straightforward platforms you could ever use. The interface is simple and there are no privacy settings or new changes to deal with every few months.

In fact Twitter is perceived by physicians to be a more relevant platform for medical conversations than say, Facebook. Even with a limitation of 140 characters per tweet, Twitter is a great place for dermatologists to amplify your voice, accrue more influence, and extend your reach simply by leveraging this platform a few minutes each day. Here’s how to get started on Twitter.

Planning Phase

Define your Goals – Decide what you are trying to achieve with Twitter. Your objectives should be specific, timely and measurable e.g. to grow your email list by 10% each month.
Define your target audience – Apart from mere demographics you should have an in-depth understanding of your prospective patients’ health needs, challenges, frustrations, life-style goals and even their content preferences. This knowledge (gained through research) will help you to develop interesting content that draws them to you as a trusted source of relevant content.
Understand how Hashtags work – A hashtag is a word or phrase prefixed by the pound symbol (#) e.g. #melanoma or #acne. It is a form of metadata tag used to group Twitter conversations into specific categories. Hashtags are becoming increasingly popular on Twitter as evidenced by the creation of the Healthcare Hashtag Project.

Create Your Account

Create a Twitter account using the name of your business domain e.g. if your domain is skindoctor.com, your Twitter profile should be @skindoctor.
Write up a short bio or description of your profile using keywords that are both ‘Google-friendly’ and consistent with your practice e.g. skin care, etc.
Include your location
Add a link to your website
Upload a logo or photo that is consistent with the branding of your practice
Include an appealing Twitter background that complements your branding

Develop Your Tactics

Follow selectively – focus on people and brands that add value to your business. Use tools such as Twellow or Tweepi to help you find relevant followers on Twitter.
Use Twitter lists – A twitter list is a curated group of Twitter users that is based on specific characteristics. You may create your own list or subscribe to lists created by others. Here’s a step-by-step guide for using Twitter lists.
Use time saving tools – Tools such as Hootsuite and Buffer are complementary to Twitter because they help you manage your account and save time.
Budget your time – allocate about 30 minutes each day to Twitter marketing. Within that time use your favorite tool (see #3) to schedule tweets, monitor conversations and ‘listen’ to what others are saying about you.
Stay on-topic – It’s easy to get distracted on Twitter if you’re not focused. Stay on topic and ignore any conversations that are irrelevant to your practice. Lists and hashtags are effective in helping you stay on topic.
Engage in conversations with others by asking or answering questions, recognizing and thanking people who share your content and so on.
Add “Follow me on Twitter” buttons in the top-right corner of your website, newsletter, email signature lines and all other digital marketing properties.
Create great content that engages your target audience. And don’t forget to share other people’s content too, particularly when it is consistent with your own brand’s messaging.

Monitor your Progress

Regularly check your mentions (@mentions) to see what people are saying about you
Use Google analytics to see how much traffic is coming to your website from Twitter.
Learn, Adjust, Repeat – be prepared to experiment with new tactics to learn what works for your practice and what doesn’t. If something isn’t working, be prepared to let it go, modify your strategy and keep testing for new opportunities.

What do you think? Twitter has become quite an impressive platform for promoting healthcare and medical brands. As a dermatologist what has been your experience so far?

6 Content Curation Tips for Delivering Maximum Value to Your Audience

Do you curate content from other sites on your own blog?

If so, you’re probably doing it one of two ways. Either you’re just posting excerpts (not the whole thing!) of other people’s articles and including a link back to the original source (this is actually called content aggregation).

Or you’re posting excerpts of other people’s articles and adding your own commentary to provide additional insights and context to the article (true content curation).

The first method offers some value to your audience in the sense that you’re doing a lot of the heavy lifting on their behalf thus giving them a quick resource for keeping up to date with relevant content. In exchange they rely on you to point them in the right direction for content on a particular topic(s). See Alltop.com as an example.

The second method offers even more value (to your audience and to you!) because adding your voice and unique perspective to the curated article tells people why the topic is important and also positions you as a trusted thought leader and expert in that area.

If you’re curating content on your website, here are 6 best practices to ensure that you’re delivering maximum value to your audience:

Make sure the excerpt from the original source is not too long
Include your own commentary to give insight and guidance to your audience
Turn off your ‘no-follows’ – the no follow attribute on hyperlinks tells search engines not to give SEO credit to the site you have linked to. Don’t use no-follows on links to the original publisher.
Make your commentary longer than the excerpt because it reduces the amount of duplicated content and is thus better for SEO value.
Re-title the article so that you’re not competing for the same title on search engines.
Share only the thumbnail size of the original image unless you have permission to share the full-size image

For more content curation tips check out Curata’s blog.

Freepik Promo Code – The Best Way To Use Beneficial Services

The services provided by freepik are really useful for many people, they are one of the best to give you the best vectors, PSDs, Icons, and photos. There are also many premium things available with them, but if you think that this is out of your budget then your problem is almost solved because of the freepik promo code offers that offer premium discounts whenever you pay for anything. We will tell all about these promo codes such as why they are offered to you, how to use them and how does it work?

What Is Freepik?

Freepik is a platform where you easily find vector images, PSDs and other graphic resources. They offer premium services as well as free services. But it is good to go and buy their premium graphics. They are considered if not best, one of the best for providing these services. Their services are truly worth buying, they have graphic designs in four main categories which are vectors, PSDs, icons, and stock. Their graphic designs are also sub categorized so that you can easily find the one you are looking for.

Why The Promo Codes Are Offered

You might be thinking about what is the reasons behind giving you services at cheaper prices when they could have charged the same amount. But there are so many reasons like every business,

To get more consumers, many consumers hesitate to buy products because of a little higher price thus company as promotional offers to give premium discounts on the use of promo codes. This attracts a lot of new consumers. as the price becomes cheaper the demand gets higher.
Fighting competition, some time for promotions many competitors offers their services at the cheaper prices thus to face the competition this promo code is offered to you.
To maintain consumer’s interest, every business wants to retain its consumers and so does the freepik, it offers the premium offers on this promo codes to encourage more purchases from the people who have already done it once.
A beneficial promotion, the promo code is a type of promotion that is beneficial for both consumers and sellers as the consumer gets premium benefits and the seller gets sales.
Helps to target a specific group of consumers, promo code offers can only be used by those consumers who are eligible for that. Thus it helps in giving these premium offers only to the people, the company wants to target.

Promo code offers are really beneficial for the sellers in the sense of getting more people to buy the services.

How Does Promo Code Offers Work

These offers help you to have the premium offers when you apply the promo codes while making payment for any service that you want to use. For example, if you want to buy some premium graphic designs from the freepik you can buy things on a benefit if you are eligible for the promo code offer. You just need to enter the promo code when asked while making payment and if you are eligible for that offer then you can easily get the discount or any other benefit while making a payment. The question that comes in mind is how someone becomes eligible for a promo code offer. You can easily check whether you are eligible or not, the promo code offers also mentions the requirement. For example, if a promo code mentions that it can be used over the first payment with a business, then you become eligible for promo code if you are making the payment for the first time.

How Do We Get To Know What Are Promo codes?

You can find the promo codes that you can use over the website of the seller. This is a promotion whose objective is to increase the sales of their product so they would clearly want more consumers to know what promo codes they can use so that the consumer proceeds to make payment. Maximum sales automatically cover the cost and even earns a profit despite the low price charged for the service. Promo codes like freepik promo code offer reduce the price for services to the targetted consumers so if you are eligible for that offer then you will also know about these offers.

Sum up

Promo codes are really a beneficial way to buy any services that are offered by companies like freepik. It also helps in generating more consumers for the company so it’s a win-win deal for both of the parties. You can easily earn the promo code benefits if you are eligible and businesses can earn you as their consumer. So if you are being offered one of this promo code offers and you really need the services then you should consider using these offers for making the purchase.

6 Tips for Using Content Marketing & Social Media for Any Doctor

Are you a doctor who’s interested in learning how content and social media marketing can help grow your practice?

For decades doctors were able to get away without investing too much money in advertising or marketing. Then when the Internet changed everything, many of you started to use (and are still using) costly methods of online advertising to market your practices e.g. banner ads.

The problem is patients have completely tuned out to some these tactics and developed chronic cases such as banner blindness.

According to Pew Research, today’s patients are increasingly turning towards the Internet to find information (not advertisements) about symptoms, treatment and support. That means if you want patients to find you when they go online, you need to be involved in content marketing and social media.

And in case you’re wondering how social media and content marketing are related here’s what you should know…

Both are about educating people, answering their questions, and sharing interesting news about your practice. When you do this primarily on your blog it is content marketing

But there’s more.

Social media promotion is critical to online content marketing success. Because there are millions of users on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social sites, it is very likely that people who need your medical expertise (yet don’t know that your blog exists!) are hanging out there.

The best way to reach them is by taking the stories that you’ve posted on your blog and placing them in these sites.

It’s that easy?

Well, yes and no. Yes, because once you have all your content ready, all you have to do is promote it on your social media networks. But preparation is key.

Social media is a very active space. There are a lot of interesting conversations taking place at the same time and since your target audience has a short attention span, they can get distracted very easily.

The challenge for you as a doctor using social media, is that you have to be more interesting and more creative than the other people or brands in your target audience’s network!

How do you that?

Here are 6 content marketing and social media success tips for your medical practice.

#1. Blog Regularly

If you don’t already have one, develop an editorial calendar to help you blog regularly and consistently. Remember too that social media content benefits from planning and regular updating.

You need to plan for the interesting stories that you will share on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Pinterest. Of course many of these stories will be inspired from your blog, but once in a while you may also need to add other content (photos, video, podcasts etc.) to engage audiences within those specific networks.

#2. Tell Awesome Stories

Use your blog to tell stories about your industry, practice, people and events. Each story should be unique and interesting enough to create appeal and draw new audiences on Facebook, Twitter and other social sites that you use.

Human-interest stories are very popular on social media. As a doctor, you have no shortage of such stories although you have to be careful not to violate patient privacy. Patient stories help to illustrate how your practice is impacting people’s lives, and thus generates more interest from other online audiences.

#3. Execute well

Even though 99% of patient stories are interesting by default, how you execute them on social media is very important.

For example on Facebook and Pinterest, posting visually appealing and well-edited photos will go much farther than posting links to your blog. On Twitter you will need different executions skills such as how to craft a compelling tweet with 140 characters, or how to use relevant hashtags to make it easy for people to find your content.

Every social media platform is different. It’s important for you to learn those environments and leverage their unique features to reach a wider audience with your message.

#4. Include location

One of your primary marketing goals is to attract more patients to your practice. So start by creating or updating your Facebook page, Twitter profile and Pinterest account and adding your physical location and your contact information.

When patients come in for their appointment, encourage them to ‘check-in’ to your location using Facebook Places.

Checking-in on Facebook has the same effect as word-of-mouth marketing. When a Facebook user sees (on her Newsfeed) that her friend (your patient) has checked into your location, she’ll be curious to learn more about your practice and will probably click through to your Facebook Page for more information.

#5. Work on your ‘About’ section

The ‘About’ section of your Facebook page should be optimized with keyword rich names, categories and descriptions. The words you use to describe your practice should reflect the natural conversational language that your audience uses. This will increase the likelihood of appearing on Facebook’s Graph Search results.

Similarly, the ‘About’ page of your website should not just focus on keywords that match the medical conditions you treat, but also on answering questions that typical patients would ask. Think about some of the common questions that your patients have asked in the past and update your About page with content that provides those answers.

#6. Consider contests, promotions & giveaways

Contests, promotions and giveaways are very effective ways of acquiring new clients via social media. Because contests can produce outstanding results, it’s important that you make yours stand out by offering a prize that will create excitement and enthusiasm among your audience. Giving away a free iPad has nothing to do with your practice, so don’t bother.

You can give away a relevant product with a ‘limited time only’ message to create a sense of urgency and interest. Avoid giving away free services as this might encourage people not to buy until they find out if they’ve won. To ensure high participation encourage Facebook fans to submit photos of themselves, or share stories for a chance to win.

Your Turn:

Which of these content and social media tips have you used to market your medical practice? Please share your experience in the comment box below.

Social Listening: Consumers Don’t Like It and What Your Brand Should Do About It

It’s common for companies to listen to conversations on social media. This way, they can understand consumer opinion about brands, products, and services.

The problem is consumers don’t like it.

A 2012 study by JD Power and NetBase shows that 40% of consumers think social listening intrudes on privacy, even though this is “social media.”

False Expectations?

The question is should users even expect to have online privacy in the first place?

Last summer Google basically told a federal court that people who care about privacy should not use their service and as Molly Wood, executive editor at CNET subsequently pointed out:

“Google reads your e-mail, knows what’s in your calendar, looks at your photos, and knows who your friends are, and that’s just via its in-house services. When you include the breadth of its search, Google knows everything about you that’s public information, from your address to all your online profiles, to your marital status and much, much more.”

I think part of the misunderstanding between consumers and marketers is that they look at privacy differently. Marketers spend a lot of time online – researching, studying and trying to understand how vast amounts of online data can be used to improve services.

But consumers aren’t as informed (no disrespect) about online data and how it’s used. Most of the time, they’re just afraid that their personal information is being used for something “covert” and they don’t like it.

But I want to have my cake and eat it too!

What’s interesting is that consumers want it both ways. They don’t necessarily want brands listening to their conversations, but they definitely expect them [brands] to respond if a consumer has a complaint!

There is no magic formula to help brands figure out what to do. What’s clear though is that marketers have to act in such a way that consumers are persuaded about the benefits of social listening.

What’s a brand to do…?

At the end of the day it’s all about respecting the customer, always getting their permission and going out of your way to explain why you need specific personal information from them. Here’s what social listening should look like:

Don’t just listen; understand the full picture before you respond.
Consider the context of online updates and conversations – your response should always satisfy consumers’ expectations.
Engage with the intention of delivering mutual value i.e. better experience and incredible customer service.
Demonstrate how listening builds relationships, rather than simply ‘intruding’ on consumers’ conversations.

The benefits that come from social listening end up flowing through to consumers as well. Marketers should therefore be bold about educating their customers and explaining how online conversations are used. This not only builds consumer trust, it also alleviates fears based on lack of knowledge.

What do you think? How should marketers behave in order to leverage the benefits of social listening? Please leave your feedback in the comment box below.

The Key to Success with Sponsored Content

The use of sponsored content (also known as native advertising**) is on the rise, though not many brands understand exactly what it is, how it works, or who is currently using it.

Sponsored content is content (e.g. blog posts, articles, Facebook posts, videos, tweets and Infographics) written (or co-written) by a brand (say SAP) and published on a publisher’s domain (say Forbes.com) for the purpose of acquiring new audiences.

Sponsored content is interesting, engaging, quality content NOT a marketing message. It should add value to the user’s experience (i.e. entertain, educate, enhance communication etc.), and always, always line up with the reader’s expectations on the publisher’s site.

It should also be labeled clearly as originating from the brand or sponsor and not the editorial team of the publisher. Here’s a great example of sponsored content on Forbes.

Why use Sponsored Content – The challenge

In recent years consumers have developed a severe case of “banner blindness.” The banner ads we’re used to seeing alongside regular website content are suffering from consumer suspicion, doubt and even contempt.

Hence marketers have been forced to reconsider the way they advertise since they’re not reaching the audiences they want to.

The opportunity

Sponsored content is more aligned with the media that today’s consumers are used to. It provides brands with an opportunity to engage with consumers using a more relevant message and without losing credibility.

According to the State of Native Advertising 2014 report authored by Hexagram and Spada, the most popular reasons why brands and marketers use sponsored content are:

To provide a more relevant message to audiences (67%);
To increase consumer engagement (63%);
To generate awareness or buzz (62%);
To create word of mouth advertising (48%);
To combat “banner blindness” (43%).

Who uses Sponsored Content?

The Hexagram report indicates that 62% of publishers offer sponsored content opportunities to advertisers; 41% of brands use sponsored content, and 34% of agencies work on sponsored content campaigns.

Done right sponsored content can benefit both the publisher and the brand. However there’s one rule that should be followed to ensure an effective campaign.

The Rule

Brands must put the needs of their audience first and avoid pitching at all costs.

This forces them to think of creative ways of relaying a brand message without resorting to old advertising tactics that consumers hate and don’t interact with anyway.

When sponsored content is done right it tells a fluent story that is highly appropriate and useful to consumers. Somewhere within the story, a brand message is “tucked in” so tactfully that the reader’s experience is not disrupted with a pitch – like this IBM article published on Forbes.

If this can be achieved then consumers will receive and engage with relevant messages, and brands will invest more with publishers.

Some Final thoughts…

Some brands are not comfortable with the concept of sponsored content – they worry about blurring the lines between editorial and paid content, which could jeopardize consumer trust. This is understandable.

But at the end of the day, as long as readers are getting the kind of content they want and not complaining like in this case, and as long as there’s transparency about the origin of content (e.g. ‘Sponsored Content’ or ‘Brought to you by…” or something similar) then brands have nothing to worry about.

What do you think? I’m interested to hear your views or experiences (both good and bad) about sponsored content.

Any Business Blogging is Micromarketing

Shel Israel, co-author of naked conversations had this to say after giving a talk to the Seattle chamber of commerce: What inspired me the most, a little to my surprise, were the folks at the Chamber of Commerce. These were folks, as Robert puts it, who were hungry to learn. I met a wedding planner who blogs, and an architect and carpet cleaner, among others, who plan to soon follow suit. This is heartening for me. The day has finally come where small businesses can use technology tools to elevate and differentiate themselves and it is heartening to find so many in one room plunging into the blogosphere.

Many forward thinking businesses, big and small, are discovering blogs as a tool to connect with customers, and give customers a way to connect with the business. IMHO any business blogging is engaging in a form of Micromarketing, a way to connect with customers using alternative media. I use the term micromarketing as a way to differentiate from mass marketing, because blogs enable companies to literally connect with one customer/prospect at a time, in a conversation and not a sales pitch.

Just remember:

Micromarketing is not selling
Micromarketing is conversational – if you have comments and trackback turned off it’s not a conversation
Micromarketing is about being open and informal – tell readers something they wouldn’t get from a press release
Micromarketing is talking about shareing experiences and telling stories

Video Games Aiming For The “Massive Market”

“Brain Age” is here, and yes it’s a video game, but it’s not aiming for what would normally be considered the mass market of boys 18-30 or “gamers”, it’s going for the “massive market” of people who want to “train their brain”. With tag lines like:

For decades Nintendo has been exercising your thumbs. Now they’re going to exercise your mind.

and

Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day

Nintendo is essentially turning market perception on it’s head, positioning the video game as positive “mental exercise”, as opposed to the common perception of it being a pointless, mind numbing activity. Not only does the game act as a diagnostic tool, by testing your “brain age”, but as a training tool to help lower your brain age, the idea being that a younger brain age is better for your mental health.

As was mentioned in the excellent escapist article the gaming community treated the Nintendo DS (dual screen with a stylus) as a bit of a joke, the graphics were sub par to competing systems, and the interface was kind of clunky and the two screens…. well it didn’t fit the handheld gaming mold. But with a game like Brain Age suddenly the Nintendo DS could become a household name with baby boomers that might not have even heard of Nintendo before. Talk about Word of Mouth, if it starts to gain traction in the 50+ market as a way to stave off something as awful as alzeimers people like me are going to be buying Nintendo DS’s for my parents.

(I’m not super keen on the “do you remember what you had for dinner 2 nights ago” line on their Web site, for me it just smacks of the “i’ve fallen and I can’t get up” approach to marketing, but that’s just my gut feeling.)

In a flyer I read today about Brain Age, mention was made of a game called “Big Brain Academy” which could be aimed at the parents of young children (originally called Brain Flex I think, but the addition of the word “academy” sure aims to create position this tool as making you or your kids “smarter”). Another switch, parents trying to get their kids to play more video games.

Update: If anyone thinks this is hyperbole take a look at the top-ten selling video games in Japan on “any” system:

The ten bestselling games in Japan for the week ending April 16:

Brain Age 2 (Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju Kanshuu: Motto Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS) [DS]
Brain Age: Train your Brain in Minutes a Day (Kahashima Ryuuta Kyouju no Nouo Kitaeru Otona DS Training) [DS]
Animal Crossing: Wild World [DS]
Legend of Starfy 4 [DS]
Guilty Gear XX Slash [PS2]
DS English Training [DS]
Pokémon Ranger [DS]
Final Fantasy XII [PS2]
Pro Yakyu Netsu Star 2006 [PS2]
Pro Yakyu Spirit 3 [PS2]

Marketing vs. Micromarketing – Moving from mass market to the “massive market”

Isn’t micromarketing just marketing but smaller and targeting fewer people? Short answer no, and let me just preface by saying, there is so much to say on this topic that i feel like a general going into battle, you’re not all going to make it. So in the spirit of writing upside down for the web I put a table together with some preliminary ideas on how micromarketing is distinct from marketing.

Activity	Marketing	Micromarketing
Overarching metaphor	Hunting, targeting (shotgun/rifle)	Farming, Cultivating, Growing
Budget	big bang spending after a tonne of planning, big spike and steady drop off until the next big bang. Media and content lose value over time ready for the next big bang	Small budget, media and content get more valuable over time through continued updates and customer participation
Finding Customers	Finding/Identifying targeting demographics	Customers identify themselves, part of a ‘network’ of prospects and customers
Talking to Customers	Tightly controlled messages broadcast 1 way to mass of people who may or may not be prospects or customers. Only authorized agents create and disperse messages from ad companies to PR agencies.	Messages, ideas, and news spread through network of employees, customers & prospects
Listening to Customers	Fragmented, filtered through numerous channels, for various purposes. Focus groups, customer research, customer service. The result, a fragmented view of the customer and their relationship with your products and services	Built into the process of talking to customers, the advantage of a dialogue, listening is built into the communication medium
Delivering Value	One way value chain through the company – outputs value for cash	A value network that co-creates value with the customers that want to contribute

Marketing – Sacred Cow or Not?

Marketing is a young discipline, you can argue that marketing has been around as long as trade, but modern marketing is a result of the ability to mass produce ie. the ability for production capabilities to outstrip basic demand. It was only after the industrial revolution that marketing became a necessity and replaced accounting as the discipline to lead business. In fact modern advertising came about after world war II as businesses tried to combat societies “post war frugality”, and the fact that companies were trying to do that at the same time as television was becoming a dominant medium was how modern advertising was born. What i’m trying to say is that marketing and advertising are very young disciplines (relatively) and should not be mistaken for some kind of ’science’ with thousands of years of history.

The Irony of the Mass Marketing is a Mass of Individuals

I call it irony because mass marketing treats the market as a mass of individuals that are not connected. Why is this important? Because mass marketing and mass advertising relies on the kind of embellishment and hyperbole that relies on your customers not getting together and comparing notes, that may expose fibs and exaggerated promise. Why is advertising becoming less effective, because you can only get away with the “new and improved” story so many times before the market gets wise. Don’t get me wrong i actually “love” advertising and think it’s an incredibly creative medium, telling a story in 30 seconds is a beautiful creative constraint, but lets say it’s like me “loving” email, despite the spam.

The mass market is dead, long live the massive market

The mass market concept of some kind of homogenious group of for instance adult males 18-35, is if not totally dead, a bit of a red herring. Instead of trying to find and group customers like that it should be about customers self selecting, identifying themselves and recruiting other customers. No longer is it about the mass-market, now it’s about the massive market, the billions of interconnected customers that are just waiting to self select to be your prospect, customer, partner, evangelist. Phew, i’m tingling just writing that, but it’s happening right now. How did 37signals get to half a million users in a year or two with no advertising? Great product that was worth talking about, and a connection into the blogosphere of web developers that were just waiting to talk about a great new tool.

Micromarketing is the opposite approach to marketing

Traditional advertising involves lots of planning, then a big bang, followed by an immediate spike in activity, followed by a steep decline until the next campaign, this is why I really like the hunting metaphor of targeting and firing some kind of weapon. Lots of marketers like to talk about shotguns and rifles, picking off customers, but in the end once the bullets fired it will eventually lose power and plough into the ground. Micromarketing takes totally the opposite approach, and is certainly more akin to farming where you are essentially seeding ideas onto fertile ground, that will be more valuable and be generating more interest in a years time. A blog is the perfect example of this, I mean a blog has essentially no value when you launch it, it’s like a savings account with $1 in it, but over the year every post you make, every comment that a customer makes, every link that comes from another blog is like a deposit of a couple of dollars, and what you end up with in a year is a blog full of ideas and content that is appreciating with compound interest. This is why the whole ROI conversation on blogs is a total red herring until you do something.

Change is Scary

Clearly this kind of sea change is a terrifying prospect for many traditional marketers, but the good news is all this stuff is going to make your jobs easier. C’mon take a look at these points here and then go read a blog:

Customers identify themselves
Customers transmit your marketing messages
Your marketing tools will become more valuable over time
You don’t need to talk to the 90% of people that don’t care about or need your product
Product development and market development is built in
Talking to and listening to customers will no longer require separate channels