Think Basis It's Good For Business

Facebook tells the world who you are. Twitter broadcasts to the world what you are doing. Foursquare, the location-based social networking service, allows users to let friends and family know just where they are, with special benefits included.

Foursquare is, at its core, a game. Users check-in at locations where they are, shout a few words to their friends and fight over mayorships, badges and special offers. Unlike Facebook, which took some time to find a true revenue source, and Twitter, which has yet to outline a stable business model, relevance in Foursquare will prove instant value to any local institution.

Foursquare takes word-of-mouth marketing to a whole new level. Receiving a ‘ping’ from a friend checking into 416-Florist.com and shouting, “Just picked up birthday flowers for Susan” will have a far greater affect on you than a bland advertisement on a billboard. As well, advertisers can find great use in Foursquare to collect data on customers checking-in and participating in certain promotions. Soon enough, the hot shots on Madison ave. will be able to pinpoint a message to meet your demands exactly. Although that may seem scary to some, the pros do exceed the cons. Like this story about Miss Shirley’s in Baltimore (via aboutfoursquare.com):

The Sunday brunch line at Miss Shirley’s Café’s two locations in Baltimore often stretches to two hours or more. Since April, they’ve offered to let their foursquare mayor jump to the head of the line.

The competition for that coveted honor has been fierce. According to Ryan Goff of agency MGH, Miss Shirley’s has seen a 427% increase in foursquare checkins since the special launched. They’ve heard several anecdotal reports of people visiting more often just to try to earn the mayorship.

In Toronto, I recently got a friend request from the nationally distributed newspaper, the National Post. I didn’t see any reason to ignore the request and so I accepted, wondering where this paper would be checking into. A little later on in the day, I checked into Hemingway’s Restaurant for a nice lunch with a friend. Only a few seconds after checking-in I received a recommendation from the National Post’s food critic about a particular sandwich. I figured I would give it a shot, and it paid off! The meal was delicious and it was because I put trust in this particular recommendation.  Local businesses can tap into this and gain new customers just by setting up their profile on the city grid. “Special offers nearby” always attract visitors and to be “Trending Right Now” is a sign of immediate success.

Foursquare, and its growing partnerships around the globe, is here to stay. Although there is considerable competition in the market from Gowalla, Foursquare is winning the people over in droves. With connections in Facebook and Twitter, updates may eventually come solely through third-party apps and with Foursquare’s fun and easy to use location-based service, it only makes sense that in time all your tweets will come through the Foursquare platform.

Still don’t get it? Watch the video below. You’ll be hooked after your first checkin.

Social media marketing is the next hot topic at every SEO related conference lately. Those of you that have been involved in marketing for a while might call it Viral Marketing with a twist.

Social media is the art and science of communicating with your customers on the grass roots level: being interwoven with their work and private lives in addition to the traditional relationship of client/vendor that is achieved through traditional advertising and marketing.

So what are the benefits of social media?

It really all boils down to top of mind awareness. Numerous studies have shown that the human mind can typically only spontaneously recall 4 things at a time on any give subject. Referred to as Working Memory, this ability to recall only 4 brands at any one time is crucial for referrals and word of mouth business growth. All brands strive to maintain one of these 4 spots in the clients mind. That’s where social media comes in to level the playing field for small businesses.

Play with the big boys

Being top of mind against huge brands and huge budgets is tough for small to medium sized businesses. But luckily, you don’t need much to compete with social trends. A keen imagination and small marketing budget is enough to get you going.

Put your best Facebook forward

Setting up a Facebook page for your business is free. If you understand your customers and their interests, you’re only limited by your imagination. Come up with the right idea and connect with your audience and there is little that even a huge brand can do to compete.

Some ideas could include:
• News and gossip
• Top 10 lists
• Humorous photos or illustrations
• Short videos
• Tips and information
• How-To articles and videos

Don’t expect to succeed off the start

Yes it is okay to fail. Even the experts don’t bat a thousand. The most important thing for your social media marketing campaign is to keep trying. Learn from your failures and your successes alike. Test, test, and then test again. The only way to truly find out what resonates is to keep posting and keep inventing new ideas. See what others are doing. Copy some aspects and then reinvent to succeed. Stamina is a huge part of any business strategy and you should plan to be in the game for the long haul. Don’t give up and don’t worry about falling down. Eventually you will discover the right formula for your niche and your business will be better off for it. Firsthand experience is the kind of invaluable knowledge that you can’t buy.

Know when to call in the big guns

Even the best viral marketing idea may not see the light of day if it’s not promoted properly. And I’m not talking about SEO. Some sites often need an article promoted by someone who is already established within the community. Think of it like a kick start for your campaign. If you feel that your ideas are sound but you just can’t get traction, consider hiring a social media marketing company to help troubleshoot your campaign and give it that initial boost that it needs. Once you go viral, it can be a lot easier to push further content to your audience by leveraging the following you build up. As long as your ideas stay fresh and you remember that your customers are your audience of course. Stay on message and give people a reason to pass your links around and you will reap the benefits of fanatical customer loyalty.

Leave the conversion rates to the bean counters

Social media marketing is not about conversions. The bulk of your web traffic will not spend a single dime on the day you run your campaign. Focusing on conversion rates misses the point of top of mind awareness and brand building. Your goal is to stay ahead of your competition and be there when your prospect needs to think up a brand to recommend or make a purchase from. As web marketers, it’s easy to become slaves to analytics and conversion rates while scoffing at brand development and social marketing. Don’t make that mistake. Brands like Nike, Apple and IBM cannot charge a premium because of their conversion rates. They charge a premium because of the emotive qualities of their brand and the ability to stay top of mind in their industry. Plan for a 12 month sustained effort and then evaluate your overall sales as a measure of success. Social media is not about the short run or quick success. It’s all about building a foundation for long-term growth.

Focus on your ability to entertain and communicate with your audience on personal level and your business will enjoy the long term benefits of brand development and dialogue through social media marketing.

There are a number of things businesses do that aren’t in the best interest of the consumer. A lot of them are unavoidable offshoots of wanting to maximize profit, but some of them can be shortsighted, lazy, or even dangerous. While I’d never say some of these practices can’t be extremely successful, I would certainly argue there’s a good chance you’re sacrificing long term equity for immediate gain.

1) Trying to Prey on Fear

Plenty of companies thrive on using a consumer’s fear of missing out on the product they’re after by using a manufactured scarcity to push people over the buying threshold. Suddenly the car that’s been sitting on the lot for six months has “several other potential buyers” as soon as you express some interest. Similarly, Gamestop insists you pre-order your games despite the fact that they’ll have dozens of additional copies laying around the store, and has even gone as far as refusing to sell these extras to customers in an effort to instill the value of pre-ordering.

While this strategy might be successful in the short term, it commoditizes the sale and reduces or eliminates customer loyalty. By manufacturing scarcity you encourage your customers to snatch up the product they want as soon as they find it, and it’s likely your competitors will be the beneficiaries.

I was recently in the market for a new bike, and as such, completely expected a certain amount of “used car type sales tactics” that would eventually culminate in someone asking me, “What can I do to get you on this bike today?” Shockingly, I was met with the total opposite, and the sales force practically bent over backwards to prevent me from making a hasty decision. They made some recommendations, helped me narrow it down to two, and then said they’d hold both of them for me so I could come back when it was sunny out and take them both on a “proper ride.” No pressure, no mention of possibly selling the bike I wanted while I was mulling over my decision. The end result is I now have a stronger allegiance to that particular retailer than I probably should…and a sweet new bike.

2) The Perpetual “Ending Soon” Sale

Every city seems to have a furniture store that has been going out of business for the past three years. The commercial shouts about how you better “hurry in this weekend, because everything must go!” The logic is sound enough. Everyone loves a good deal, so if you make people think you’re having an incredible sale for a “limited time only” they will come running. The only problem is, after two-plus-years of the same ploy the sale means absolutely nothing. Not only that, it has now devalued everything in the store to the point where if it’s not on sale, there is no reason anyone would want to buy it.

Allposters.com is a prime example of the perpetual sale. Here’s the last six months worth of sales offers I’ve received:

While the constant barrage of emails have (arguably) kept them “top of mind,” the offers are pretty meaningless and eventually just turn into noise.

Contrast this with Active.com’s considerably more intermittent–and product specific–offers that still maintain some “top of mind” value but don’t give me the expectation that anything I purchase through them should always be at a discounted price.

Granted, the immediate response to any individual offer will probably be less for the second example. However, the long term results will be more items sold at full retail and higher conversions during times when there is no sale being offered.

3) Arbitrary Product Release Dates

Small tech companies seem to be the biggest offender of this particular consumer letdown. Although premiering your latest product at a conference or having a usable demo ready for a board meeting is good in theory, it’s still useful to remember there’s a lot of truth in the whole “one chance at a first impression” philosophy. Ask cuil. Although balancing the strains of needing to drive profits with the need to deliver a quality product is always going to be a challenge, it’s hard to recover from an underwhelming product launch or an application that was hurried into production and doesn’t deliver on the vision you promised.

At a previous company I witnessed firsthand an incredibly disappointing product launch resulting from decisions to start selling something that simply wasn’t ready for consumers. Without going into too much detail, I will say the decision to rush to market had a lot to do with VC funding and a desire to show dramatic revenue growth over the previous year. However, after watching the product devolve from its original scope into a neutered version that could “be ready by January,” it became abundantly clear that none of this was for the benefit of customers.

The end result of this major product launch was an underwhelming amount of sales, a continued retooling of the product that resulting in halting all sales efforts for a one month period, and a number of dissatisfied customers that had been sold a product failing to live up to its initial value proposition.

Obviously it’s ridiculous to think you can keep moving something back indefinitely while you fine tune it to perfection (unless you’re Blizzard). However, if you’re honest about the reasons for your “drop-dead” release date, it might just be better to cope with some internal disappointment upfront to avoid a public disappointment when you launch.

4) Strict Adherence to “Corporate Policy”

While having policies and best practices in place is always a sound idea, failing to allow for some old-fashioned common sense and good judgment can be a huge mistake. Sure, it can be easier to hide behind a generic policy, but when it’s taken too far you’re left with instances like Jo-Ann Fabrics’ refusal to let a customer use the bathroom, or Bed Bath and Beyond not letting a customer use a phone to dial 9-1-1.

This seems like a head smackingly obvious statement, but by filling your organization with quality employees who are empowered to sidestep “company policy” when all common sense and human decency is telling them to do so, you’re sending a much stronger signal to your customers.

Like I said earlier, there are plenty of successful businesses that do some (or all) of these things, and I’m not saying these can’t be profitable (the first three at least). However, as a long-term strategy, and in an increasingly competitive environment, taking a step back every once in a while and making sure your customers’ best interests are aligned with your own isn’t a bad way to do business.

Of all of the reasons for unimaginative and uninspiring work, none is more deplorable than the focus group. There is a right and wrong
way to conduct a focus group.

Some would argue that incompetence, taste, or budget lead to mediocre work, but all of these can be excused.

Incompetence is easily identified and corrected if the individual has the will to improve. Even those with no natural talent can achieve a
high standard through perseverance and dedication.

As the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste. This is truly a matter of personal preference and what may seem hideous to
one person is beautiful to another. This is one point that has been argued about far too long. In order to achieve appropriate solutions, simply focus design on the target audience rather than basing it on personal aesthetics.

Budget is another bane. Often times one has to do too much with too little. This, however, is just a reality of life; good designers often shine when faced with this challenge. No, these cannot be considered the cradle of mediocrity.

But the focus group? A novel idea! Unfortunatetly, it has been perverted and twisted into the mallet of cowardice with which to pummel courage and creativity.

Let us for a moment examine what a focus group is in most people’s minds. It is essentially a gathering of individuals which is meant to represent a cross section of the target audience. These individuals are then often gathered into a room and asked to give their opinions on subjects of which, most likely, they know little to nothing about.

This method of market surveying is usually employed when a brand manager or project decision maker needs to cover their, um, assets. All training, education, gut instinct and expertise is thrown out the window, not only on the part of the designer, but chiefly on the part of the brand manager. One has to wonder about the logic of going to school, hiring a professional firm and then handing the final decisions over to a group of unqualified individuals.

Would you go to the doctor, get the diagnostic, begin the procedure and then invite a team of people to tell the doctor how to operate? The very notion borders on absurdity, yet this is the most common method of using the focus group in today’s business culture.

Many focus groups fail due to something called the Hawthorne Effect. The Hawthorne Effect is simply described as “…the alteration of
behaviour by the subjects of a study due to their awareness of being observed.” The term was first used in the 1960s and comes from Hawthorne, the name of one of Western Electric Company’s plants in Chicago, where the phenomenon was first observed in the 1920s.

The premise is really quite simple. When a person is being watched, he or she behaves differently than when they are alone. If one were
to apply this to the focus group, it is simple to see how the resulting data is automatically skewed. Add to this the nature of group dynamics, where you begin to get a natural pack structure and mild mob mentality. All of a sudden, you end up with something that can hardly be seen as a precise diagnostic tool.

So why do so many business leaders rely on focus groups?

Because they are a sure fire way to protect a decision; and chiefly because on the surface they appear to work. When a branding or design
firm puts forth a set of three solutions, all are usually good but only one is the most appropriate. So it stands to argue that no matter which solution is chosen, there is a good chance for success.

Despite the fact that the solution is not the most innovative or the most appropriate is not taken into consideration because the others will never be tested beyond the focus group. When a decision fails to deliver, the person in charge just shrugs their shoulders and points to the fact that the focus group indicated it would work. Talk about a great scapegoat.

There are many ways to gauge human opinion and behaviour. User interaction can be monitored for web interface design. Trial products can be tested outside a focus group environment. Human behaviour can be observed individually or in groups rather than surveyed. The myriad is truly endless, however with the exception of some of the leading corporations in brand management, these techniques can hardly be considered commonplace.

The next time the opportunity comes around to conduct a focus group, stop. Pick up some books on psychology and group behaviour, cross reference them with your marketing and design books. See it as an opportunity for creativity. The chance to go beyond the usual. The rewards will be great indeed.

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The kernel is the core of brands. It is the beating heart that imbues them with life and it is the source with which all marketing efforts should fundamentally begin.

Brands are as complex and varied as people. They have a personality: a face they show to the world and a charm that attracts people to their camp. Just like people, there is also an intangible aspect about them that makes them tick. Some sort of overriding passion at the core of their existence. Their raison d’etre.

Let’s take for example a well known brand like Nike. Its kernel is clear to all of its customers. It stands for unadulterated performance. The human need to excel. The drive behind all great achievements in sports.

Not all brands are this clearly defined. Not every company knows what to tell its customers. But every company, no matter its size, was started for a reason.

Has one thing it does best and has a destination it wants to reach. That is where branding experts begin. First lay the foundation and then build towards the sky.

In order to be successful, designers, creative directors, and brand managers all have to agree on the kernel. They must begin their efforts from the same starting line and face in the same direction.

Tangible attributes such as taste, colour, feel, touch and smell are great for use in marketing collateral but it is the emotive kernel that great brands are built on.