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The Art of the Free Sample - Content Survival Tips

Every month our investment club meets to review our portfolio, make stock purchase decisions and, hopefully, learn a little. This month our meeting was held at Whole Foods on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio. Previously, this was a Wild Oats, and it was the first time I'd visited the store since it was renamed and re-branded as a Whole Foods.

The difference was notable as soon as we walked in.  I have two words for you - Free Samples.  There was a worker at the door giving out samples of organic peaches and mango. There was another stand set up next to our meeting room area that was giving away complimentary organic coffee. It made quite an impression.  I plan on stopping back and picking up some more of those mango.

Giving away free samples to consumers has been an age-old marketing practice. The idea is to let prospects try it. If they like it, they'll come back for more. From Crest toothpaste to the new Frosted Flakes Gold, consumer marketers with smaller-ticket items use free samples to drive their businesses.

Business-to-business marketers and high-ticket consumer marketers have a bit more difficulty giving away free samples.  "Yes sir, please try out our new forklift, no questions asked." "Yes maam, we'll send over your new Pontiac Vibe today.  Keep it as long as you like." Just doesn't work.

So what to do?

Your content is your free sample. Give your customers and prospects a taste of your brand by delivering great information to them on a consistent basis. Instead of giving them that forklift, how about a video series on green shipping practices? Instead of delivering the Pontiac, how about a custom magazine showing Pontiac owners how they can get the most out of their car and their lifestyle?

This is not rocket science, it's survival. Interruption marketing is near-death. Consumers are tuning out more and more marketing messages. To survive, you have to be relevant. You have to provide constant value in order for your customers to pay attention...even just a bit.

There is no social media strategy without content

I was talking with a marketing consultant today, and we chatted about simplifying the idea of social media. Look at it this way. You are having a one-on-one conversation with your customer. If you are only talking about how wonderful your products and services are, how long do you think they will pay attention to you?

Social media works the same way.  You won't be allowed into the conversation without coming to the party with something of value. This is the golden rule on social media sites, as well as your own website. How long do you think your customers will stay on your site that includes only information about your products? What would you do if you were in their shoes? Would you stay more than five seconds?

Get to know your customers informational needs. Then, provide content that solves those needs. It's that simple. This strategy is not just something nice to do, it's communication survival 101. Go out and create great content.

What's your free sample?

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5 Important, Yet Often Overlooked, Content and Conversation Marketing Questions

In working with our clients, as well as dealing with our own content and custom publishing practices, here are some key questions that businesses need to continually remind themselves of in order to grow.  Often, these are overlooked, but are extremely important.

1. Are you and your executives easily reachable by phone or email? Many businesses make it extremely difficult for their executives to be contacted directly. Consumers now expect that they can reach anyone at any time. This is the new reality we live in. Make sure that your contact information is current and that your employees can be easily contacted by customers and prospective buyers. Email addresses and direct contact information is a must.
2. Are you keeping your content promises? If you deliver consistent information to your customers via email or print, are you staying on schedule? You have made a commitment as an organization and a business partner to keep set dates, whether daily, weekly or monthly. Be sure to adhere to your editorial calendars. By missing dates, you fall off the radar screen, which makes it difficult to continue long-term relationships.
3. Are you honest with yourself about your content expertise? Most businesses are set up to create and distribute products and services, not consistent, valuable and relevant content. Most marketing departments are not equipped with the journalistic talent to make sure that the content you are creating is as good or better than anything else out there. Is your content first rate? If not, look into hiring a journalist or content team to manage your content projects (which is why we created Junta42 Match).
4. Are you expecting the media companies in your industry to keep your customers and prospects educated on the information that is important to your business? If you are, don't rely on outside sources. Shouldn't you be providing this type of information? Shouldn't you be the expert resource that your customer and prospects turn to?
5. Are you on the cutting edge of your customers' behavioral patterns? How are they making their decisions? What information are they using to make those decisions? Are they starting with the web first, as most seem to be (IBM notes that 95% of buying decisions in their sectors start on the web)? To find this out, you need to be talking with your customers on a consistent basis (talk to them, don't just sell them). What are their challenges and pain points? How can you solve their problems, not just with services, but the content and information you create on a consistent basis?

By answering and continually monitoring these questions, you WILL grow and be successful. Simple, yet complicated, at the same time. The information you create and distribute as a corporation is what fosters the customer conversation. If you don't consistently create valuable, relevant and compelling content, why would anyone want to have a conversation with you?

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The Future of B2B Marketing - From Ed Abrams at IBM

I had the pleasure of sitting through a presentation by Ed Abrams, VP of Marketing for IBM, at American Business Media's Spring Meeting a few weeks back.  Here are some of the high points.

The Customers Are In Control
Abrams was adamant about the notion that corporations have lost message control as part of the marketing process. Consumers choose what conversations they want to be involved in. The role of marketing is to work to get involved in those conversations that matter.

Research Shows that Non-Traditional Communications Have Impact (and are growing)
Abrams pointed to a number of research findings that state consumers get more and more of their information through such tools as blogs, wikis and more.  In the pictured chart to the right, 31% of IT professionals engage in IT blogs and wikis when searching for new product information. Critical Point: Abrams suggested that IBM looks for this number to double in the next year, theoretically making blogs/wikis the most powerful informational source for IT professionals behind only search engines.

IBM Making Impact in Social Networking
According to Abrams, IBM has the single largest community in LinkedIn at 175,000 members. They also have approximately 5,000 different communities on Facebook. IBM believes that, to be successful, they need to be a part of these conversations on an ongoing basis.

Online Influences Most!
According to Enquiro Research as presented by Abrams, the three leading influencers for IT decision-makers are Vendor websites, search engines, and industry informational websites (in that order), followed closely by Word-of-mouth peer and Word-of-mouth friend.

Content-based websites are key for IBM. Abrams believes that IBM must provide ongoing, consistent information about what is happening in the industry to be successful.

Abrams' Top IBM Takeaways for Online
Abrams shared a number of key points that are essential to IBM's long-term strategy for growing their business. Here are the ones that made the most impact.

1. User-Generated Content. This is critical to IBM's success. IT professionals trust in this information, and IBM has to know how to become part of those conversations.
2. Trust in the Audience. IBM has to trust in their social audiences to be self-policing. IBM knows they cannot control the audience.
3. Peer-to-Peer Communications. IBM must facilitate this type of behavior in any way they can.
4. Transparency. In all online situations, IBM must be transparent and open. Consumers can "smell BS" a mile away. If something is broken, IBM must admit that it's broken and address it immediately.
5. Low Barriers to Enter Conversation. Must make it easy for decision-makers to get involved in the conversation.
6. Facilitate Collaboration. Must be willing to work with others and promote others' ideas and concepts.
7. Connect People to Information. Get decision-makers to the information they need quickly and easily.
8. People first, money later. IBM believes that attracting the right people is the key...making money off of those people will happen later if all these points are followed.

In Summary

• Power is with customers, who can now connect with each other
• Two-way dialogue is more valued than marketing messages
• A lot can be gained by ceding control – viral marketing, market intelligence, etc.
• Marketing has an opportunity to operate faster, be more flexible and more responsive

From my perspective, IBM has transformed themselves from a "command and control" company to one that may have one of the best understandings of the "new marketing environment". Over this time, they have also adjusted their product mix to be more service-centric than product-centric.

Related Articles

• Content Marketing at Four Companies: IBM, Siemens, CIT and Information Builders
• Microsite Scorecard: Citi, Fidelity, IBM
• IBM's "The End of Advertising as We Know It"

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The Big Idea Won't Fix Your Marketing...think Small and Frequent

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The December 3rd issue of BusinessWeek featured an article about Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Kevin Roberts, and the company's struggles to significantly grow revenue. More than anything, this article discusses the transformation that Saatchi and other large agencies are undergoing to stay relevant.

Times have clearly changed, and agencies, as well as traditional media companies, are struggling to find their way. The article states:

"For most of the 20th century the so-called creatives ruled the industry. They didn't worry about where or how an ad ran. They didn't analyze market niches. They were about Big Ideas that would connect a brand, emotionally, with millions of consumers. Today, you might say, the Small Idea is ascendant. Ads are targeted at individuals or communities of consumers. That's because the media universe is so fragmented--into blogs, social networks, television, magazines, and so on--that finding the right medium is fast becoming more important than the message itself. "

Couple of takeaways here. First, most agencies and creatives I know still search and believe in the big idea. I believe all humans do, to some extent. We believe and have faith that all our problems (and in this case, communication challenges) have one great and almighty solution. Sometimes, they do. But in media and marketing, this very rarely happens. Today, it's never just one big idea.

Look at it this way. If a heart attack victim survives and is on the road to recovery, it's not one thing that brings her back to health. It's many little things, accomplished and executed over many days, weeks and months. It's eating better, exercising regularly, maintaining a more positive outlook on life, smiling more...and so on and so forth. If you did just one of these, it would be ineffective. If you did all of them, just once, that's no good either. No "big idea" fix.

Now look at today's marketing. If you have a customer communication challenge, is one big idea going to fix that? Not in the least. It won't be fixed by a glam-packed 30-second spot, or print campaign or even the integrated strategy itself.

Here's the solution for 99% of the businesses out there: It's not one big idea but a series of small, ongoing conversations with your customers, distributed through the media your customers use. This requires intimate knowledge of your customer, and a determination to leave your customer, on each occasion, in better shape than you originally found them. Instead of one big bang, it's one brick per day that over the course of weeks, months and years builds a house, a true brand relationship with your customer.

This is done by communicating great content to your customer that helps them become, not necessarily emotionally tied to you, but intellectually tied to your brand. Educating your customers is probably the single greatest gift you could give them.

Second point, specific to this quote: "...finding the right medium is fast becoming more important than the message itself." I'm not sure anyone really has the answer for this, but I'd position that it's neither. The most important is finding the right customer. The customer dictates both the medium and the message. Without the perfect concoction of both, the communication effort will fail.

To some extent we are all suckers for the big fix. Who really wants to create ongoing, educational content for customers anyhow? It's too much work. Yes, it may be too much work, but it sure does work.

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Book Excerpt: Larry Weber's "Marketing to the Social Web"

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I caught this book excerpt from Larry Weber's new book entitled "Marketing to the Social Web" on BrandWeek. This is definitely something I want to pick up.  Specifically, though, I want to point out a couple of Larry's key points in the excerpt.

"Clear your mind of all those one-way, one-sided communication techniques, all those ways of spouting only your side of the story. Marketing to the Social Web is not about you getting your story out, it's about your customers. It's about being more transparent, earning trust, building credibility. It's about nurturing relationships and dialogue among customers, prospects, your company and whoever else is active in the community."

Amen Larry. Any marketing communications that we spill out of our organizations must be 1) all about the customer and 2) extremely valuable to them. The days of traditional marketing/sales collateral are over. Thinking about producing that corporate brochure? You might want to kill it and create a piece that's truly valuable.

"Segmenting by behavior, attitudes and interests doesn't depend on faceless numbers (how old customers are or how wealthy they are, for instance). Instead, it groups people by what's important to them, as indicated by what they do, think, like, and dislike. Once you know what moves your customers, you can target them with marketing activities that are meaningful to them. (It's all about them, after all.)"

Through research, listening posts and ongoing feedback from customers you can determine what is ultimately important to them. So many companies communicate what is important to the company, not the customer. Be sure your content litmus test includes a BS factor for your corporate communications.

"Communication is less about creating contained and controlled messages (as in the old marketing) and more about creating compelling environments to which people are attracted. Remember, the marketer's primary job is to be the aggregator of customers and potential customers. The marketer's secondary job now and in the future is to create compelling environments that attract people."

I agree and disagree with this. I believe that creating the proper environment for customers includes a combination of controlled and consumer messaging. Creating ongoing and consistent information is important for your business's credibility. This controlled information can then be distributed through a variety of uncontrolled mechanisms that create a truly valuable customer environment.

"Let me point out, at the risk of sounding profound in a clichéd way, that everybody has become media. So as you get into the Social Web, you are media. Individuals are media, organizations are media. They are writers, editors and publishers, sorting, prioritizing and presenting compelling content in an interesting way makes it important."

So true Larry. Every business should consider themselves a publisher. The communications we send out today as businesses should resemble more the editorial-based content we read in the trades or traditional media vehicles, not as sales collateral. Some of the biggest publishers in the world are not traditional publishers (Oracle, Microsoft).

On Viral Marketing: "Yet silly virality, for all its popularity, is not really word-of-mouth. The concept we should be talking about is content-based virality. How do companies get solid viral content, something that does more than simply attract attention to itself? In healthcare, the content could be about lowering cholesterol or improving quality of life. People talking to other people about these topics will create a viral dialogue with content."

So many businesses are interesting in viral marketing for the sake of it. True viral marketing revolves around the great content a company can create that hits the deepest issues for the targeted buyer. The best viral marketing educates about a truly important customer issue.

"The new marketing will be collateral-free, with material that is more compelling, customized, visual and up-to-date. Information can be a powerful customer relationship tool, but it doesn't have to be printed in an ad or booklet."

I'm not sure how far Larry will take this in his book, but I'm a big believer in print for the right reasons. Printed custom newsletters and custom magazines can still be some of the best customer-relationship vehicles...if the content if focused on the customer. That's one of the reasons why customer printed magazines still have some of the highest growth rates in the custom publishing/content marketing industry.


Overall, this looks like an extremely interesting read. For information on buying the book, click here.

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• Key Questions When Launching a Content Marketing Initiative
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The Conversational Marketing/Content Marketing Link

The more I read about conversational marketing, the more it fits within the content marketing framework. Take this blog post by Dan Farber about "Finding Conversational Marketing's Heartbeat." In it Dan discusses a new conversational marketing report, which includes a "Conversational Advertising Code of Conduct".
"Among the “codes” are the four areas where transparency is required: Use of a publisher’s content, the editorial process, attributing advertising and influencing content creators."

Sound familiar?  It should. This is discussed often in content marketing and custom publishing circles. (For example, take Rex Hammock's view of transparency.)

Also, let's breakdown the "rules" or the definition of conversational marketing:

• "The purpose of conversation is to create and improve understanding, not for one party to “deliver messages” to the other. That would be rude."
  
  Yes, one of the Pillars of Content Marketing.  The communication must be valuable and relevant information.

• "People in productive conversation don’t repeat what they’re saying over and over. They learn from each other and move topics forward."
  
  Yes, we do constant research on the target audience so that we clearly understand their needs and their wants (see key questions). Also, repetitious communication without value is NOT content marketing.

• "Conversational marketing is carried out by human beings, writing and speaking in their own voices, for themselves—not just for their employers."
  
  This is a challenging one. Some content marketing may fall outside of this, depending on how you look at it. But overall, the goal of a content marketing, custom publishing piece is to communicate in a manner that makes complete sense to the reader/user. The goal should be to create a dialogue, a relationship with the reader...not to spout business rhetoric (as you may think some custom publications do).

• "Conversational marketing’s heartbeat is the human one, not some media schedule. Brands need to work incessantly to be understood within the context of the market conversation and to earn and keep the respect of their conversational partners."
  
  I believe that this relates more to online content marketing where communication is ever-changing and conversations are ongoing; unlike print publications that are very scheduled, and more challenging to create an ongoing dialogue with.

I'll be looking forward to the report mentioned in this blog, and will share it with you once I receive it.

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Related Articles:

• Key Questions When Launching a Content Marketing Initiative
• Why Most Custom Publications Aren't Measured
• Content is King, But What Is It Really?
• Stop Shouting Features: 5 Tips To Create a Knowledge Marketing Program
• Want Customer Loyalty? Create Customer Wins With Content

>>If you liked this article, try Junta42 for more.