With over 160 million users per day, Facebook is the de facto social media, advertising and marketing platform. In comparison, Twitter has only 20 million unique visitors each month (source: comScore) — despite it being the source for news as it happens.

According to comScore’s report, The Power of Like: How Brands Reach and Influence Fans Through Social Media Marketing, “Facebook represents the vast majority of U.S. social networking activity, accounting for 90% of all time spent on social networking sites in the U.S.” Wow!

So it makes sense that big name brands from Axe to Starbucks use Facebook to stay in touch with their audiences. And thanks to this ability to communicate directly with brands, consumers are now able to vote, not just with their pocketbooks but with their very visible feedback, too.

Witness Netflix’s debacle when it doubled its fee AND tried to separate its streaming and DVD services (and change the DVD-by-mail service name to Qwikster, too). Fans on Facebook howled. Netflix backed off on the name/business change, but kept the higher fee structure.

Of course, you don’t have to be a big business to have a Facebook page. Many small and mid-size companies have a Facebook presence, too.

Until recently, the focus has been on garnering fans; the more fans you have, the greater your reach. Due to comScore’s research, however, Facebook is now emphasizing the importance of how well you engage your fans.

According to the comScore report, the largest portion of users’ time — 27% — is spent on the individual’s home page, which features the Newsfeed. Research showed that people spend very little time on branded fan pages.

Even more important, the comScore report noted, “the Facebook Newsfeed uses an algorithm to rank content based upon the likely interest to a user so, unlike in other social media settings, only the content determined [by Facebook] to be most relevant to a user is delivered at a specific time.”

New Page Insights Emphasize “Engaging Content”

Hence, Facebook’s revamping of its page metrics. With the new Page Insights, you now have data on how fans are interacting with your content. As with your Web analytics, you can now use Page Insights to help drive your Facebook campaign decisions. Facebook’s Insights include:

External referrers — This data point tells you how people found your page from outside of Facebook. Now you can instantly see if people are clicking through from your website or blog, from a website where you placed an article, or if they found you through a search engine. One question to ask your marketing team: Of these unique visitors, how many converted into Likes?

How you reached people — This Insight is particularly cool because it tells you how many fans saw your page versus how many of their friends saw it through Likes, comments, sharing, etc. This is where Facebook is emphasizing engaging content — the more people Like, comment and share your content, the more “viral” (and relevant) it becomes.

How People are Talking About Your Page — Facebook now gives you data by story type, including mentions, Likes and photos. You can use this data to determine which story types drive engagement.

Even better, you can now see comprehensive data for each individual post in one screen on the main Insights page, making it much easier to determine which topics drive reach, “talking” and virality.

Data Is Good. Putting It to Use Is Better.

To increase content relevancy and engagement, consider the following tips.

1. Listen, don’t sell — Although Facebook is a powerful advertising medium, using traditional mass marketing practices will backfire, causing people to Unlike you. Instead of pushing out content that talks about your products, focus instead on content that encourages your fans to talk to you.

2. Test, test, test — Test various types of content (e.g., surveys/polls, photos and video, offers, events, and links to trending topics, etc.), times of day and days of the week to see when your audience is online and most engaged.

3. Create a brand “story” — Facebook is a social network where people expect to be entertained. Use this freedom to create a story or personality for your brand — one that resonates with your audience. Then, don’t be afraid to have some fun.

Creating content that’s relevant will go far in engaging your fans, ensuring your content appears in their Newsfeeds — and over time, building your fan base. Do you have examples that you’ve used to engage your Facebook fans? Feel free to post them below.

Integration gets a lot of lip service. Most companies claim to have adopted an integrated approach to their marketing, but few understand what it really entails or know how to do it well. The usual definition of integration — multi-channel message distribution — is only one part of the equation. Although marketers are often most concerned with getting the right “media mix,” that aspect of an integrated strategy is arguably the least important.

The most effective and successful integration strategies consider three layers of influence: internal, external, and tactical.

Internal: Team Accord

Agreement and collaboration between team members creates a strong foundation for integration. The internal team can include leadership and management, sales and marketing, internal resources, and external partners. In the same way that maturing digital channels are converging with more traditional media, the various players on your marketing team need to come together around key messages and marketing goals. The objectives are to ensure everyone is on the same page about big picture plans and to provide context for individual campaign elements.

It’s important to remember that your customers do not view your brand as a series of individual pieces: sales vs. marketing vs. PR vs. social media. They are not interested in which “arm” of your marketing team is winning the most leads or making the biggest splash in the marketplace. Although some amount of inter-departmental competition is natural and even healthy, the most effective way to improve results across the board is to encourage open and coordinated development of ideas, campaigns, and measurement methods.

Benefit: Efficient momentum. When your whole team is aligned, you realize greater efficiency by reducing redundancies and pooling resources. In addition, the combined efforts of your team feed off each other, building momentum toward shared goals.

External: Customer-Centric Focus

An outside-in approach is the second critical element of true integration. This is about integrating your marketing with your customer’s wants, needs, and behaviors. Creating a customer-centric focus goes beyond the typical branding exercise of knowing who your customer is. True customer-centricity takes a holistic look at all the ways in which prospects and customers interact with your brand, including how you:

• Solve their problems
• Make your brand relevant
• Initiate and nurture relationships
• Create a need-based engagement path

In this mindset, your customers are not “targets.” They are your most valuable asset and as such drive all your marketing decisions.

Benefit: Greater affinity and loyalty. Marketing that is closely integrated with the needs and behaviors of your primary audience demonstrates that you understand their problems and know how to solve them.

Tactical: Multi-Channel Message Distribution

Lastly, we come to the tactical piece. Diversity and coordination are crucial elements of an effective media mix. You want to offer your prospects and customers a variety of ways to engage with and learn about your brand — a dynamic website, an informative and entertaining blog, conversational social media, and appropriate print and other traditional media. Different people prefer different types of content. Some people prefer text-based materials like blogs, white papers, and e-books; others would rather listen to a podcast or watch a webinar. Once you’ve decided on your mix, you can work on weaving the individual pieces together into an experience that offers continuity and consistency — guiding the prospect or customer smoothly through a series of touch points that ultimately lead to conversion.

Benefit: Delivering your message via a variety of platforms and media extends your reach through increased exposure (because you’re reaching more people) and more consistent engagement (because you’re giving them more options around how to interact with your brand). Ultimately, the additional exposure and engagement translate into higher response rates and conversions.

Team accord, a customer-centric philosophy, and a diversified and coordinated marketing mix — these are the three key elements to truly effective integrated marketing. Is your team hitting the mark in all three areas? Are you stronger in some areas than in others? How do you think a more comprehensive integrated strategy might strengthen your brand and your business?

AXE Keeps Its Core Demographic in Focus When Selecting Marketing Channels

In Part One of this article series, “Choosing the Right Medium for Your B2C Audience,” I wrote about choosing and integrating the right mediums to reach your target audience.

One consumer brand that has mastered the selection and integration of marketing mediums is AXE. If you’re the parent of a teenage or young adult male, you may already be familiar with AXE body products, shampoos and antiperspirants.

AXE’s racy ads have their share of critics. Nonetheless, Unilever, the company that makes AXE, has done a great job integrating traditional advertising with cutting edge technology to target its core demographic: socially connected and technologically savvy 18-24-year-old males.

Traditional marketing: TV and magazines

AXE’s marketers heavily promote the brand across various mediums, both old and new. But all AXE media buys and placements are carefully chosen: They only put their money where young males hang out. And young males still watch TV and read magazines.

In his article, “AXE vs. Old Spice: Whose Media Plan Came Up Smelling Best?,” writer Antony Young reports that in 2010 the brand “slam dunked the media with a high reaching and comprehensive TV and magazine program.” AXE put a whopping 40% of its TV buy into syndicated cable re-runs where young males flock: Family Guy, South Park and King of the Hill.

In addition to cable TV shows, the brand also runs print ads in magazines targeting its demographic, including Playboy, GQ, Men’s Fitness and Maxim.

Entertainment via cutting-edge technology

AXE also recognizes that its target market expects more from advertising than simple busty images. In his Mobile Marketer article, “Unilever Breaks Largest US Multichannel Ad Program Using Mobile Bar Codes,” Dan Butcher states, “In order for Axe to stay relevant to the brand’s target guy, it needs to constantly innovate and find new ways and channels to entertain him where he works, lives and plays.”

AXE has risen to the challenge. For example, the company incorporates Jagtag 2D bar codes into product samples, in-theater posters and on-campus materials. With this technology, AXE’s consumer base (who are heavy text users) can use any type of phone to “request and immediately receive multimedia content — video, audio, pictures, coupons and text — via MMS.”

In another visually stimulating and, let’s face it, very, very cool product promotion, Unilever incorporated augmented reality for its “When Angels Fall” campaign.

For this campaign, AXE marketers placed a “Look Up” decal on the floor of London’s Victoria subway station. By standing on the decal, commuters could see themselves on a large video screen – along with a holographic female angel who magically appears at their side. View the video below for a behind-the-scenes look at this spectacular use of technology.

Social media also key for reaching audience

Not surprising, Unilever also utilizes online and social media marketing to reach its “always on,” socially connected target audience. It has successfully integrated the brand’s website with Facebook, Twitter, and banner ads.

The over 1.8 million fans of AXE’s Facebook page can access the brand’s videos, post on the brand’s Facebook wall and, if they’re fast enough, grab one of the 2,000 coupons the company doles out each week. This promotion is so popular that it sometimes shuts down the company’s server.

AXE’s social media success is due in part to the fact that it responds to all mentions and call-outs on Twitter (and Facebook, too). You can tell from its tweets that Unilever employs someone who speaks the language of its demographic, which keeps the brand fresh, hip, relevant and on-target.

Banner ads run across multiple online properties and direct AXE’s target audience to click through to special campaigns, such as its YouTube “Clean Your Balls” fake infomercial, which received over 1.5 million views with minimal promotion.

What can you learn from AXE?

Know your target audience. AXE’s audience expects to be entertained. Understanding this expectation focuses the brand’s marketing campaigns — while allowing it to take risks.

Know where your audience hangs out online and off. AXE puts it marketing budget where its demographic lives, including TV and magazines. They continue to do this even when “experts” say that print and TV are dead. As I stated in Part One of this article, if you have an older demographic, it does pay to advertise in newspapers as this demographic continues to read newspapers.

Stay with a simple message. AXE’s message is as old as advertising itself: You’re more desirable if you use our product. Whether it’s promoting through traditional mediums (such as print ads) or new mediums (such as fake YouTube infomercials), AXE never deviates from this core message.

Do you follow a brand that successfully integrates various marketing channels? Feel free to leave your comments below.

In today’s economy, business owners and marketers need to get the most from their marketing dollars. In an era of shrinking budgets, marketers are putting more dollars into online marketing. Online marketing is less expensive than traditional marketing, and it can be targeted to specific groups. It’s also easy to measure; there are many tools available to report on almost every aspect of your online marketing efforts (unlike traditional marketing where you place an ad in the paper and hope for the best). Does that mean you should put your entire budget into online tactics? No, it means you should do some research, get the right mix of traditional and online mediums, and integrate your message across them all.

In Part One of this article, I’ll cover how to choose and integrate the right mediums. In Part Two, I’ll present a specific case study of a consumer brand that markets across many channels.

Do some research when developing your campaigns

It’s easy to say that traditional marketing methods are dead and focus solely on online (especially social media), yet according to research, many “maligned” marketing channels, including newspapers and TV, are still quite viable — with marketers increasing spend for 2011.

Even though newspaper readership is declining, it’s still relatively high for the age 50+ crowd, according to the Pew Research Center, with 38 percent of 50-to-65-year-olds reading the news and 47 percent of those over age 65 doing so.

Television advertising had a strong year in 2010, with spending jumping 10.3 percent over 2009. According to the Hollywood Reporter:

Spot TV ad spending got a 24.2 percent boost in 2010, making it the biggest percentage gainer, while network TV rose 5.3 percent, and cable TV recorded a 9.8 percent gain, according to Kantar Media.

And, although direct mail saw a decrease in spend in 2009, “Bruce Biegel, managing director of the Winterberry Group, told the Direct Marketing Club of New York on January 13, 2011, that . . . direct mail spending will grow 5.8% to $47.8 billion this year, driven by acquisition mail increases.” (Source: Direct Marketing News)

According to Biegel, “Direct mail still really works well for acquisition [marketing] because it’s easier to target [than other channels] . . . and because digital as an acquisition tool is still finding its way, direct mail will be an important tool for direct marketers.”

Integrate your selected mediums

Once you’ve identified which mediums you’ll use in your campaign, you’ll want to develop a strategy to make sure your customers can move seamlessly from medium to medium. To make this happen, you need to have consistent “creative” and cross-medium information:

Creative — A coupon delivered via email needs to look good on both a smartphone and a desktop computer Internet browser. This same coupon — along with its message — may need to be modified if delivered through Facebook and modified yet again if you distribute hardcopy versions in-store.

Cross-medium information — Every medium you use should contain information about where to find you in other mediums. If you have an in-store coupon display, for example, you’ll want to include your Facebook URL (and not just the icon!) in the creative — and maybe even give an immediate incentive for “Liking” your page. When you “Like” Naked Pizza’s page, for example, you’re sent a discount coupon that can be used at any of its stores.

Finally, before adopting any medium, be sure to get permission from your customers to contact them via that medium. Do they want email and text messages from you? A younger audience may appreciate the immediacy of your SMS messages; older demographics may get annoyed, especially if they have limited texting plans. Don’t assume — ask!

Even though your marketing resources are limited, you can maximize the impact of every dollar by spending a little time researching which mediums are best for you and then integrating them.

Do you have some great (or not-so-great) examples of integrated marketing campaigns — your own or others? Post them below.

According to an oft-quoted statistic by the American Marketing Association, B2B salespeople spend 30 hours a month searching for and creating their own selling materials. Even more astounding, 90% of marketing deliverables aren’t used by sales.

In a newsletter by the ITMSA, a researched-based organization that helps B2B companies market and sell more effectively, a member told the following story:

His company had developed a one-page PDF sales sheet but few salespeople used it. Why? The document contained an 800 number that didn’t allow sales reps to get quota credit. As soon as the company figured this out, they created dynamic PDFs that let salespeople customize the sheets with their own phone numbers and local information. Adoption went through the roof.

To increase sales, it pays to help salespeople do their jobs better — with collateral that helps them sell.

Ask Salespeople What They Need

According to IDC data, 30% of sales people say that the collateral they get from marketing requires customization. Likewise, Nigel Edelshain, in a guest post on The Pipeline blog, states that he created his own PowerPoint presentation customized for the industry he was targeting (banks) because his marketing department “produced some nice looking stuff [that had] mostly nothing to do with what [he] needed to close deals.”

You can solve this problem very easily by soliciting feedback from sales on how you, the marketer, can better serve them — simply send out an email asking:

• What objections do you hear during sales calls?

• What types of problems do you encounter during the sales process?

• What messages do you need to communicate to prospects about our products?

• What types of collateral would help make your job easier?

Simple Is Better

Developing marketing campaigns and producing beautifully designed collateral and online content is all good and necessary. When creating tools for salespeople, however, think simple. Salespeople love tools that get the point across fast. Consider the following:

Comparison sheets — Research how your products/services match up with the competition, and then give sales this information all on one page (it doesn’t have to be fancy to be effective). When a prospect says the competition is offering the same product at less cost, your sales rep can show that the products are actually quite different and why.

Objection-handling sheets — Often the same question or problem arises across many sales calls, e.g., the price is too high, installation is difficult, etc. You can help sales by crafting messages that overcome objections and that answer people’s questions.

Testimonials and case studies — Salespeople need these to show prospects that your company is solving challenges for other companies. Get in the habit of asking customers for testimonials as soon as a project or installation is complete. Case studies can be a little tricky because sometimes a company doesn’t want their name used. You can get around this by creating “mini” case studies in a problem — solution — result format without using any names.

To make things even easier, create an online portal just for sales where they can find this marketing collateral and quickly download it before sales calls.

Tell Sales How to Use Collateral

In the IDC article mentioned above, 41% of salespeople said they don’t know which collateral to use, how to use it or when. One way to overcome this objection is to tell salespeople how to use new and existing collateral. In her post for the Content Marketing Institute, Jennifer Watson recommends providing a user’s guide for each piece, which identifies:

• The intended audience/buyer persona
• The stage of the sales cycle it’s designed to influence
• Key messages based on varying buyer personas and sales stages
• The call to action to be reinforced by the rep

You can also send out “newsy” emails each month that alert sales to any new collateral and content created and where to find it on the website. Be sure to let sales know about any new campaigns you’re developing, industry research you’ve uncovered and messages you’ll be using.

Do all of the above and sales will love you!

What have you done to make your sales reps’ jobs easier? Post your stories below.

As Greg Sterling said in his Search Engine Land article, “There’s been a boatload of survey data released in the past six months documenting the adoption of social media by small businesses (SMBs).” (See the rest of Sterling’s article, Report: 58% of SMBs on Social Media Sites, Most Have Only Limited Engagement.)

Unfortunately, this data doesn’t give a clear picture of how and how many SMBs are using social media — and in particular, Facebook.

Hiscox, a company that provides insurance to small businesses, surveyed small businesses and found that nearly 50% weren’t using social media at all and that of those who do use some form of social media, only 19% use Facebook.

Data from Palore’s research, however, paints a different picture: 54.2% of SMBs have a Facebook page, with 22.3% of SMBs having both a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

Jason Falls, social media expert and author of the forthcoming book, No Bullshit Social Media, on the other hand, states that only 27% of small businesses are using Facebook.

Although Facebook usage data may be unclear, these social media experts quoted agree on one thing: SMBs need to use social media to market their products and services.

But is this really the case? Maybe, maybe not. From Heinrich’s perspective and in working with small and mid-sized businesses, there is no universal answer; it really depends on your audience, budget, and business objectives.

Why you may not need a Facebook page

When our clients ask whether they should be on Facebook, we say, “It depends.” This is because social media is just one marketing channel, and Facebook is just one platform within that channel. Facebook should make sense within the context of the overall mix.

Although the Facebook “Like” button is ubiquitous, it doesn’t necessarily follow that a Facebook page is right for your business. When deciding whether to begin a Facebook campaign, it pays to look at a number of factors:

1. Your audience — The question to ask yourself is, “Will my customers engage with me on Facebook?” For many big-name consumer brands, a Facebook presence can be a must.

This isn’t always the case for local businesses, something Francine Hardaway points out in her article, “Most Small Business Facebook Page Fans Not Local” for the Business Insider blog.

According to the research data she cites, only 15% of “Likes” on the average small business page are local — the rest come from “fans” outside of the area. “From that,” states Hardaway, “you can extrapolate that the Facebook pages of most small businesses do them little or no good for targeted marketing efforts.”

Just because you can create a Facebook page doesn’t mean you have to or should, especially if your local customers would rather engage with you during the course of face-to-face transactions in your store.

2. Your budget — Common advice states that social media is “free” and therefore a cost-effective tactic for SMBs. Yes, opening a Facebook page or Twitter account is free. But maintaining these accounts requires a huge investment of time and resources to create fresh content on a regular basis, respond to people’s comments, and provide damage control to manage negative commentary about your business.

If you don’t have internal resources, you may have to hire an outside agency or consultant to maintain your presence for you.

3. Your business objectives — If your objective is to generate leads — for example, you’re a fencing company that needs to keep its installers busy — Facebook may help you build brand awareness but it won’t necessarily provide you with the leads that you need. In this case, your business objectives and marketing tactics don’t match, and while you may see some business lift from the additional awareness, it’s certainly a much more passive sales path to take.

Instead of using social media, you’ll want to consider an integrated lead generation campaign that rewards people for word-of-mouth and online referrals (reviews on your Google Places page), takes advantage of targeted direct mail, and includes pay-per-click and SEO.

Has your business developed a Facebook presence? Why or why not? Leave your comments below.

Article re-post from February 23, 2011.

“Innovate!” It’s a common rallying cry these days as an important pairing link to business survival and growth. No longer the sole responsibility of the product developers, engineers or technology teams — marketers can (and should) play an important role in driving innovation. And although most companies place a high value on innovation, finding the time to size up problems and develop creative solutions that will have an impact is quite a challenge. Especially when your workday is filled with nonstop meetings, solving a current crisis or even reacting to latest regulations within your industry.

To help unlock this challenge, we spoke with Lois Todd, senior partner of Denver-based Alchemy, a company that guides organizations through strategic business acceleration and innovative processes. She emphasizes why innovation is so important for organizations, especially today. “The benefits of innovation so clearly show up in the outcome of your project, campaign, product launch or organization change. Let’s just say you’re leading a team to roll out a new product positioning. The upside to innovation within the process is more efficiency, with more team support, better alignment, and a faster road to revenue.”

Here are three key questions to start with to help define — and inspire — innovation at your company.

1. Who are you innovating for?Customers. It sounds simple enough. But at many companies (maybe even yours), it’s a mantra that lacks a supporting strategy.

Companies use “Innovate!” to inspire employees. Too often, when the ideas roll in they never leave the building. Innovation experts agree. And Scott Anthony at Harvard Business Review adds, “Most organizations are designed to execute, not to innovate.” That’s a big barrier when you’re trying to push an idea into the world. But you’re not innovating if you’re only talking to yourself, or satisfying the fewest, most important people in the room. Innovation should speak to your audience — the customers.

2. Where and how do I find areas to innovate within my organization? Ignore common misconceptions about innovation, like it has to be unplanned, unexpected and unfettered by rules. You can take a more logical approach: Simply find a problem to solve, and create a new system that solves it.

Again, Scott Anthony at Harvard Business Review offers up some great suggestions to get you started:

• “Look beyond your best customers to those who face a constraint that inhibits their ability to solve the problems they face in their life.”
• “Look for a job-to-be-done, an important problem that is not adequately solved by current solutions.”

Innovation doesn’t have to be a grand, overreaching idea. If it helps your customers do something in a new, more efficient way, it succeeds.

3. Why should you make innovation a core competency? Do it to keep your company relevant and helpful to your customers.

Don’t innovate as a reaction to what others are doing. It’s a sure way to fall behind in your industry. MaryBeth Kemp at Forrester’s notices reactionary marketing has become an unfortunate trend.

“Through my discussions with marketers,” she explains, “I’ve noticed two things: 1) Most marketing organizations are reacting to, rather than driving, change, and 2) Marketers aren’t reaching far enough.”

When reactionary innovation takes hold of the corporate culture, new products don’t get made, only competing ones do. Your business becomes entrenched in a race, and when you’re running too fast, great ideas fly buy unnoticed. Your brand and your customers suffer.

How to get started

Lois Todd leads dozens of workshops with top organizations both nationally and internationally where she and her team at Alchemy focus on innovation as a key part of leadership development and organizational change. She often uses a five-step process to bring more innovation into any project:

1. Start from a vantage point of constant evaluation to improve and make things better.
2. Gather a team where you can discuss, plan and share — to look for the seeds of the idea. (Alchemy uses visual maps to record the process.)
3. Determine the resources you need to get your idea off the ground (online research, outside consultant or advisor, personnel, business partner).
4. Identify the stakeholders and your advocates, who will support you in building change.
5. “Be a good developer of follow-ship,” says Lois. “You need to be able to articulate your vision so that you can gain energy and support from others. And while it’s good to know your risk, don’t be afraid to fail.”

At the end of the day, “innovate” shouldn’t be a rallying cry — it should just be part of what your business does.
Email us to get started.

Article re-post from January 18, 2011.

What’s on your agenda for the new year? Popular goals we’ve heard include:

• Tackling a major new product launch
• Fostering more innovation from marketing staff or an agency partner
• Turning up the dial on productivity for your marketing efforts in light of the economic recovery
• Looking for a new career challenge that really drives your passion

The Heinrich Report’s “What We’re Reading” series is a great resource that can help focus your priorities and clarify your 2011 goals. Here’s a list of our top choices, ones that we think can help you dive into the New Year with confidence.

Books

1) Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork. Start the Work That Matters

by Michael Bungay Stanier

Why we like it: A quick read with helpful insights on how to jumpstart your passion for the work you already do — or hope to do.

2) Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters

by Bill Tancer

Why we like it: It’s a great big Internet out there, and it’s always in flux. This book helps you understand how people keep up, and how they harness the Web as a resource.

3) UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.

by Scott Stratten

Why we like it: Engagement has been a big theme for us the past year, and Stratten keeps us motivated.

4) Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

by Scott Belsky

Why we like it: It’s one thing to have a great idea. It’s quite another to make it a reality. And that’s something almost everyone can relate to.

5) Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip and Dan Heath

Why we like it: See #4!

Blogs

Harvard Business Review: http://blogs.hbr.org/

Insightful writing on current marketing happenings and trends.

Junta42: Joe Pulizzi’s Blog: http://blog.junta42.com/

Always a Heinrich favorite, Joe drives his points about content home over and over again, but makes it sounds fresh and exciting every time.

Convince and Convert: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/

For crystal-clear analysis about the impact of social media on businesses (and help making it work for yours), bookmark this website.

Personal Branding Blog: http://www.personalbrandingblog.com/

Because people are brands, too.

Forrester Blogs: http://blogs.forrester.com/

Data and smart analysis from research leaders.

The Financial Brand: http://thefinancialbrand.com/

Financial institutions face unique challenges when it comes to social media, content and brand identity, and this site gets it.

Mashable: http://mashable.com/

Find the most up-to-date digital and social news here.

Apps

Evernote: Tagline, “Remember Everything.” Enough said.

Chronicle: Everything you need to start a journal on your iPad.

Webster’s Dictionary: No more excuses. Correct spelling is in the palm of your hand.

Dragon Dictation: A real time-saver. It lets you “talk” a text message, and more.

Pandora: Background music for your life.

Some of our consumer clients ask whether they should make daily coupon deals, through companies such as Groupon, Google Offers and LivingSocial, as part of their marketing mix.

In these deals, your business offers a discount on food, services or products. If you’re a spa, for example, you can offer an all-day beauty package at a reduced price. A restaurant can offer dinner for two at a special rate and a bagel place can offer a free bagel with the purchase of a cup of coffee. A karate club can offer “trial” lessons.

You then contract your special offer with one of the daily deal companies. The company promotes your offer to their subscriber base. (Groupon, for example, has over 35 million registered users.) These deals also get passed around on social networks, such as Facebook.

Consumers can then purchase your deal. You get new customers in the door and everyone is happy. Right?

Not exactly.

Many businesses learn the hard way that daily coupon deals are expensive, both in terms of upfront and long-term costs. Smaller businesses can get slammed with the sheer number of people who come through the door. And, there’s no guarantee that these new customers will become repeat customers.

If you’re considering a daily deal for your business, it pays to do your homework first. With that in mind, we’ve compiled a list of best practices to help you get the most from daily deals and maximize repeat business – without losing your shirt.

1. Do the math first.

Let’s say you offer a spa package normally priced at $150 for $75 (50% off). Groupon and other daily deal companies generally require 50% of the revenue generated, so for every $75 spa package, you have to pay the brokering company $35. This means that for every daily deal spa package you sell, you gross $35.

In addition, you have to consider your “hidden” costs. Whether you charge $35 or $150, you still have to pay employees, taxes, utilities, supply costs, etc. If you sell more daily deal packages than you anticipated, you may have to pay employees overtime, order more stock, and incur other costs.

The bottom line? A daily deal may cost you much more money than you anticipate, so run your numbers first to ensure you can handle and afford the onslaught of new business.

2. Read the fine print – twice!

You can find many articles online that discuss how daily deals benefit the brokering company more than the merchant. One issue is the revenue model – you don’t receive your revenue right away. Another issue, as cited above, is that you pay a huge percentage to the deal company. As a result, you’re effectively offering your product or service as a loss leader.

If you decide to do a daily deal, read the contract carefully and ask questions, such as:

• Will you get the names and email addresses of the people who purchased your package? How will this information be delivered to you?
• When do you receive revenue payouts?
• How long do you have to honor a daily deal?
• Can you limit the number of daily deals sold?

3. Determine how you’ll manage the influx of new business.

We all love getting new business. However, too much new business too quickly can leave you scrambling. Before you sign up for a daily deal, work out how you’ll manage the new business, including extra hours for employees or more inventory.

Don’t forget “extras”: Will your spa need more towels, candles and laundry detergent (to wash all those extra towels!)? Will your karate club need extra uniforms for trial lessons?

4. Limit the number of deals honored and the redemption period.

Some businesses fail to ask if they can cap the number of deals sold. You can state in your contract if you want your offer stopped once you’ve sold a specific number of packages. Your contract and the deal copy should state how long you’ll honor redemptions – e.g., “This offer valid until [date].”

5. Determine how you’ll track daily deal buyers and their repeat business.

As stated in Tip #1 above, ask the daily deal company if you get customers’ names, email addresses and phone numbers. If you don’t (and you may not), you’ll need to devise a plan for collecting this information when daily deal customers walk in the door.

After all, what’s the point of going to all this effort if you can’t turn new business into repeat business? Some things to consider include:

• Contact information – How will you collect contact information and where will you store it?
• Coupon redemption – Which methods will you need to ensure people redeem coupons only once?
• Ongoing communication – Do you have an e-newsletter or Facebook page where people can receive ongoing messages from you?
• Repeat business – How will you track new business to see if it becomes long-term repeat business?

Daily deal sites can be a boon to consumer-based businesses. However, to make them work for you – and to turn new business into repeat business – it pays to do some homework and planning up front.

I’m not a gamer, but I can’t help noticing that games have become a big part of how marketers are engaging consumers with their brands; Foursquare, for example, is a game that rewards people for “checking in.” In fact, there’s an official name for games used in marketing: social game marketing.

Mashable ran an excellent post showcasing five brands that have incorporated social gaming into their marketing (Why 5 Big Brand Marketing Campaigns are Betting Big on Social Gaming, May 3, 2011).

According to stats cited by author Brian Anthony Hernandez, the social gaming population is expected to reach 68.7 million players by the end of 2012. Big brands haven’t ignored this fact, with many offering “branded virtual goods, integrated ads and offers as well as games that combine digital and real-world incentives.”

MasterCard is one company that’s using a social game to engage customers and prospects. In the You Play, We Give campaign, players shoot at colored balls on the brand’s Facebook page. For every minute someone plays, MasterCard donates 10 cents to Junior Achievement Hudson Valley. As of this writing, 36,000 people have “liked” the page and MasterCard has donated over $100,000 to the charity!

Pop star Lady Gaga last month partnered with FarmVille (another huge game played on Facebook) and began offering tracks from her “Born This Way” album on a new partner site — GagaVille. According to Entertainment Weekly, players can “undertake lightweight tasks to unlock tracks.”

Why games matter: they’re part of the human condition

In her 2010 TED talk, Gaming Can Make a Better World, Jane McGonigal gives an impassioned talk about how games can help us improve our society and our lives. Games, she says, offer the following benefits:

• Clear and compelling goals
• Challenges suited to our capabilities/skill level
• A chance to work hard to improve our skills
• Non-financial rewards and recognition
• The chance to become a hero by saving the world

We all like games, says McGonigal, because they make us feel good. Even more important, research has shown that we like people better after we play a game together, which is why brands like MasterCard and Lady Gaga are using games to connect with their audiences.

According to Aaron Dignan, author of Game Frame: Using Games As a Strategy for Success, people have turned to games because they’re bored — bored at school, at work in their lives — and games offer an escape. In fact, McGonigal cited a statistic that gamers spend 3 billion hours a week playing online games!

I find social game marketing fascinating, especially since many of the ideas being put forth by people like McGonigal and Dignan resonate with what I see in my own life.

Games, says Dignan, give gamers the motivation and internal drive to do something (e.g., get to the next level, meet a challenge, solve a problem, etc.), and they give players the necessary skills and tools to handle the challenges presented — something that’s often missing in real life. They also allow you to score an “epic win” — a positive outcome so extraordinary you can’t even imagine it, according to McGonigal.

While developing a game may not be something your company can implement right now, I highly recommend that you read Game Frame and watch McGonigal’s TED talk if only to gain insight into consumer behavior and how games affect us. Both Dignan and McGonigal are brilliant.

You can also follow how marketers are using games by subscribing to the Inside Social Games blog (scroll down and click the “Marketing” link under “Topics”).

Do you have examples of social game marketing that you like? Let me know in the comments section!