Is social media right for you or your business
Hubba member Andrew Ballenthin on B2B marketing:
1) Meaningful content may not be enough to make people stop & go "WOW".
As an example; “Grow Your Customer Base At No Cost”
2) How targeted is the audience, really?
What stage of the buying cycle are they in?
3) What problem are we solving?
Learning about Social Media is great but what value is it; clients, contacts, image, revenues, etc
4) What is the credibility of the retailer?
If the masses don’t know you as purveyor of workshops it’s a lot tougher to get response because you don’t have a brand in that arena.
5) Most people need to see a message between 3-11 times before taking action.
6) How many people are you reaching?
Quality of buying relationships can trump quantity of contacts.
If you don’t have deep quality you working off pure percentage of those that need what you offer and your timing when the message goes out.
Can we reach 100,000 quality contacts several times?
7) What is the offer, the incentive/hook to come and try and take action now?
8) What is the proposition and how does this compare to other competitive options?
(buy a book, talk to a friend, etc)
9) What does the mousetrap look like?
What is the conversion process from the first message to registration?
10) Is the concept viral, does technology and/or offers incentivise people to invite others.
11) What str the timelines for the event?
For a new event, 6 weeks is the right time to talk it up.
60-80% register just before the event.
12) Is the message branded all the way through?
If it looks semi-branded it may work but it usually creates mistrust and a sharp decline in uptake.
In my humble opinion, social media doesn’t skip these steps.
However, Social media allows access to more people who may be in your target audience without the pricetag of traditional marketing (ie. buying lists and distribution costs).
Might knowledge-based businesses adapt "Long Tail" principles?
When the marginal cost of producing something tends to zero, the smart thing to do is to treat it as zero and get ahead of the competition and give it away for free in order to sell something else. You can build whole businesses around giving stuff away for free.
[Chris Anderson], editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and author of "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More", puts his money where his mouth is.
He's giving away the audio version of his upcoming book, "Free: the Economics of Giving Stuff Away".
In the publishing business, where the interests of the publisher and writer are at odds, might bloggers become the new "influencers" alongside traditional print reviewers?
Hubba member [Andrew Jenkins chats about how he has developed LinkedIn contacts into paying consulting assignments.
B2B evangelist Paul Dunay has helped BearingPint and now Avaya with SM strategies
- A view from [Paul Dunay], [B2b Buzz Marketing]] who is writing a Facebook for Dummies book: small businesses can replace their websites, he says
- Monetizing evangelism with publishers may be the easiest route at this point in the business adoption curve.
[Gartner on Market Quadrants]
- Gartner's quadrants [Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, Niche] players
How would you classify your business offering?
How would you classify your purchasers?