Influential Marketing Blog

Ok, so you’ve decided to start using the Internet to promote your business more actively and most people you talk to who know about the web tell you the same thing … you need to redesign your website. The problem for many small businesses is that getting to the point when you actually have the budget or manage to get the right help to do it may take some time.

In the short term, this leaves you with an interesting challenge that there just isn’t much advice for – the moment when you realize that you still need to promote your business despite having a website that you hate and which you know is less than ideal. Can it really be possible to use the Internet effectively for marketing without a good website?  Yes, definitely.  Here are a few ideas on how to do just that.

1. Announce a non-existent redesign. The first thing you need to do with a subpar website is to give customers the impression you are working to improve it (which hopefully you are). The only thing worse than a bad website is one that seems like it will be bad forever. So put a note on your homepage in some way sharing that your redesign is “coming soon.” If you think about it, this is exactly what retail destinations do when they hang those signs saying “please pardon our progress.” Progress takes time, but the first important lesson is that your customers need to know that it is coming ... even if you have no idea when. Just by putting that sign up, you may also find that it helps motivate you to get that redesign done sooner.
2. Create other homepages. The nice thing about the web today is that you can get up and running on a host of other sites to create a branded presence for your business in less than an hour. What this means is that your website doesn’t need to be the only place that you share information about your business.  Need a page telling people where you are located? Populate that information into Google Maps and use that link. Want to tell people about your business and share some images? Create a Facebook fan page for your business. There are lots of sites out there where you can share information about your business without needing to just point people to your site.
3. Fix your homepage first. The homepage of your site is the gateway to your business and the first impression someone is likely to have. While a full redesign may be some time away, getting some help to recreate your homepage can be a good investment to start people with a positive experience of your site and then potentially drive them to other homepages as mentioned in #3.
4. Use more direct communications. When you can’t rely on your website to reach your customers, you may want to consider a more direct model. Email marketing certainly fits into this category – but starting a Twitter account and sharing updates directly can also be a way of offering a more consistent stream of content or information without relying on your website to do it.
5. Leverage your other materials. I have seen more than a few small businesses struggle to create a quality website while at the VERY SAME TIME they have an expanse of good printed materials such as brochures and other collateral they use in the real world to promote their business. If you have these kinds of materials, work with someone (or buy a relatively inexpensive scanner yourself) to digitize some of the best of your content. Then you can upload to your site or post it online in another location to make it available for customers and prospective customers.

NOTE: This post is part of Small Business Friday (SBF) - a weekly feature to share marketing ideas for small businesses and was originally published on the Amex Open Forum site.

Every year in March I make my annual trek to Austin to be part of the South By Southwest Interactive show, one of the biggest gatherings of people working in all aspects of the web in the world. For those who have been, they might describe the event as a simultaneous assault of information, networking and back to back parties. It has become the Everest of social media events, and in my fourth year of attending I realized that there are techniques for surviving a large event that I have been using and adding to each year. Here's my list of the top 5 lessons that I would share to help anyone survive SXSW or any other large conference they may find themselves attending:

1. High-res Photo Note Taking - One of the tough things about a big event (aside from choosing which sessions to attend) is how to best take notes to bring information back to your internal colleagues who didn't attend the event, or publish your own take on the sessions. A technique I have started using is taking high-res photos of key slides from presenters. It takes just a second, and it's the easiest form of note taking as the slide becomes a reminder of a key point to write about later. To augment, sometimes I will also think of taking notes in terms of Twitter posts (140 character max). That format forces you to just focus on the key points of a session instead of just trying to capture everything a speaker says.
2. Brochure Collecting - At an event like SXSW, there are lots of sites and new innovations that are interesting and worth looking at ... but time is limited at the event. Instead of trying to write down every URL, I collect their brochures or postcards and save them. That way I have a visual reminder to check out a particular site later when I am back in the office and have a free moment. Last year after SXSW, it took me a few months to get through looking at all the sites I found interesting - but I had a constant reminder of those sites through the stack of postcards and brochures and it helped me to stay organized.
3. Plan B Sessions - Your time is valuable and at a large conference usually you will be drawn in multiple directions. At SXSW a common complaint is that for every timeslot there are several sessions that you might be interested in seeing. Ultimately, you need to pick one, but my long time advice for attendees of a conference like this has been that if you find a session is not useful after the first 10 or 15 minutes, you should feel empowered to leave and go to your "plan B session." For every time you go to a session, you should always have a second option - just in case. That way you can maximize your time and what you learn from the event, and be flexible enough to correct a mistake without wasting an entire hour (or more).
4. Influencer Tracking - When you are not necessarily connected to every event or happening at an event, it can be tough to know what you might be missing. One useful way to track the events that you may want to be part of is by creating your own short list of people who you know will be attending all the best events. If they are active social media users (as they tend to be at an event like SXSW), you can see where they are headed and mirror some of your own choices of where to go based on this information. Even if they are not active with social media, this technique can work by talking to them or others to see where they will going.
5. Eating Left Handed - As promised in the title of this post, the last tip is about eating left handed. Chances are, you just spent a good part of the day shaking people's hands and accumulating some kind of unwanted germs (no offense to the people you met, but facts are facts). We should all get more diligent about using that hand sanitizing stuff - but if you are like me and usually forget to do it, a good technique to teach yourself is to always eat left handed (ie - with your "non-shaking hand").

For those big event or SXSW veterans, feel free to suggest some other tips to help someone survive at a large conference in the comments ... they might help me survive the last day of SXSW too!

When SXSW, one of the largest gatherings of minds and enthusiasts in the digital world, didn’t feature more than a handful of panels on the intersection between health and social media - an “unconference” event called SXSH sprung up to fill the void. Yesterday that event came together in Austin and included speakers and pioneers in using social media to communicate for health issues in regional hospitals, government agencies, health insurers, nonprofits, epatients and pharma companies. Just about every part of the healthcare world had some sort of voice in the discussion as everyone gathered to share ideas on how the industry as a whole might use social media more effectively by building greater trust.

The day long discussion featured many highlights, starting with a talk from Doug Ulman, CEO of Livestrong about the power of health based communities online and how important real time information is to improving healthcare and the patient experience. Greg Matthews from Humana shared how a health insurer can innovate internally and use that to improve patient relationships and Jenn Texada from MD Anderson shared how she and her communications team use social media tools to interact directly with patients for customer service. David Hale from the National Library of Medicine presented an innovative new database to help identify unknown pills called Pillbox and Fabio Gratton shared how to build a movement through a case study of the success of the #FDASM movement in November of last year around the FDA hearings. In the “unconference” part of the day, companies such as ReachMD and WEGO Health talked about their communities and content and how they help bridge the gaps between patients, doctors and healthcare providers.

In the final session of the day, I tackled the question of trust. A central issue in healthcare communications, the session posed the question: why don’t people trust us? Or more specifically, what creates the culture of distrust online that so often causes negativity towards some companies in healthcare and what could we as an industry do to combat this? Our aim in the session was to brainstorm ways that healthcare organizations could overcome these barriers and build more trust and credibility. The entire room then selected what they felt the strongest ideas were and I promised to compile the results into a single blog post - which you’ll find below. In the spirit of the unconference, all of us who managed to be part of the great discussion would love to hear your thoughts on any other ideas that we could add to this list too …

1. Listen to and implement ideas from the community. Being part of a community or interacting with individuals is a great first step, but the real trust that can be built from this comes when people see some sort of action come as a result of the participation in a community. It is not the act of listening, but the impact of that listening which makes it real.
2. Have shared values on good health. Often the distrust in healthcare organizations stems from a belief that priorities are mismatched. Our priority as a patient is to get healthy, and their priority seems to be offering more medication or delivering care in a more “efficient” way. In order to build trust, it is crucial that people feel our ultimate goals are aligned toward making them healthier. We need to focus on prevention instead of promotion.
3. Answer your patient’s or customer’s concerns directly. With social media tools, people have the ability to broadcast their thoughts and desires. Often they are doing so because they are seeking a response. Having a smart listening program that can help you find these queries and a strategy for responding goes a long way towards demonstrating that you care and truly want to help.
4. Aggregate or curate useful information. Sometimes the problem isn’t a lack of information online, but a dearth of it. When information is scattered all over, it can become very confusing about what is credibile and which things to trust. One of the simplest roles for any healthcare organization to take is that of a curator of great content. By doing this, you can create resources for people that will be useful and demonstrate your commitment to their needs.
5. Serve as a resource or guide for the community. One of the things that many organizations neglect is actively using the experts that you may have internally. When it comes to marketing and communications, part of the role should be to unlock the best voices from within an organization (many of whom may not necessarily be in the marketing or PR departments). By bringing these voices out and encouraging them to share information, you can connect patients and customers to the individuals who can truly bring insight and deliver thoughtful and useful information.
6. Set expectations on what you do and why. Lack of trust can be based on a misunderstanding of motivations. There are times when people may assume that a policy or practice is done simply for financial reasons or because of legal motives when actually there are other concerns they don’t know. Being as transparent as possible about your decision process and thinking can go a long way to remove this misunderstanding.
7. Focus on setting a clear mission for employees. The most trustworthy organizations often are the ones that have a very specific and defined vision that everyone is working to implement. When the message coming from employees is consistent, it goes a long way towards establishing a belief in the organization from outsiders because they know what the group stands for.
8. Communicate results and outcomes. Large organizations in particular are often good about communicating outcomes or results in financial terms on a quarterly basis or some kind of cost related metric, but not as good about communicating impact of their efforts in human terms. To inspire belief, it is often the results in human terms that people respond to far more than the financial ones - so refocusing on how that story is told becomes vital.
9. Recognize both sides of the issue or data. Many people inherently believe that data and reports presented by many healthcare groups (and pharma in particular) is delivered with a strong bias towards whatever is most self serving for the group. When information is not presented in a more balanced way, the likelihood that people will not believe it is entirely credible goes up.
10. Build trusted long term relationships. Beyond all the other suggestions, the one thing that establishes a foundation for everything you do are the trusted relationships with influencers and individuals that you build online. You need a group of people who know enough about what you do and the real philosophy and thinking behind your actions that they can serve as vocal advocates for your brand if needed.

Note: This article and recap was originally posted on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog. For more pharma and healthcare related posts, check out our Healthcare featured archive on the Ogilvy site.

Several months ago I read a piece of research in the Journal of Marketing that I found both surprising and believable at the same time. In fact, the conclusion of this research made such an impression, I clipped a report of it and put it on the board beside my desk as a reminder of one important difference when marketing to women versus men that many small businesses completely ignore or forget about.  The research explored the idea of customer loyalty, and uncovered that (on average) men were far more loyal to an organization or group than any single individual within it – and for women this finding was the opposite.

What this means is that for businesses such as a hair salon or barber shop – men are more likely to be loyal to the establishment itself, while women would be more likely to follow the individual stylist from salon to salon. As the research notes, “Women tend to view themselves as being connected with and dependent on a few specific individual others. In contrast, men tend to view themselves as being connected with and dependent on larger groups of people and organizations. Because individual relationships are more important to women, they are more likely to develop loyal customer relationships with individual service providers.”

If you believe in this research, then it has obvious implications for your small business no matter what industry you are in. Here are a few practical tips and advice that you may want to consider to take advantage of this knowledge of the gender difference in loyalty:

1. Rotate your employees – If you can make it work for your business, there may be a large value in rotating the employees that your best customers deal with on a daily or weekly basis. For men, this may be easier – but in either case having a range of employees working with any customer (male or female) can help insulate you against one employee leaving, and taking your customers with them.
2. Establish two methods for referrals – Knowing that referrals are often the lifeblood of many small businesses … this study also offers a clue to how you might want to slightly modify how you pursue getting referrals from a client based on their gender. For female customers you may want to encourage the main employee who works with them to ask for referrals – whereas for male customers, you might ask more on behalf of your company.
3. Balance your recommendations – When online reviews or ratings are a part of your business, you may find that they go in one direction or the other in relation to talking about your people versus your business as a whole. To get a better balance, try to illicit these reviews from a more even spit of male and female customers and you can add more balance to the reviews and ratings about your business that are appearing online.

NOTE: This post is part of Small Business Friday (SBF) - a weekly feature to share marketing ideas for small businesses and was originally published on the Amex Open Forum site.

This post is part of Make A Referral Week - an innovative project from John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing to generate 1000 referred leads to 1000 deserving small businesses.

If I were to ask you what the secret was to getting someone to recommend and refer your business, what would you say? Perhaps you might focus on the experience that you provide. Or you might believe that this is a behaviour that you should focus on illiciting from only your best customers. Now what if I told you that the single biggest reason someone chooses whether or not to refer your business has very little to do with their experience with you? That seems counter intuitive. Yet if this were false, then everyone who had a positive experience would share it with someone else. And everyone who had a negative one would do the same.

The point is, people don’t inherently share positive or negative experiences – they need an incentive to do it. The main problem is that anger or frustration IS an incentive. That’s why you hear the often repeated adage that it is much easier to get a customer to post a negative review than it is to post a positive one. Satisfaction, apparently, is not as powerful of a motivator as dissatisfaction. Yet despite this behaviour, there are ways to stack the odds in your favor. You probably already know that online opinions make a difference for your business. So the question you need to ask yourself (especially for Referral Week) is how you can make YOUR business easier for someone to share with a friend, family member or colleague. In other words, you need to be easier to recommend!

Here are 5 tips you should consider to help you achieve that:

1. Ask at the right moment. There is one moment when your customer is likely to be happiest of all, and that is the moment right after they buy something. The decision has been made, and anticipation is likely to follow. Why not ask them to share their experience with a friend right in that moment? Use a post-purchase survey online or encourage your customer to write a review or even take some extra business cards with them as they walk out of your retail location. The more you can do to get someone to recommend your business right after purchase, the more referrals you can generate.
2. Create different levels. It is tempting to think of recommendations and referrals in strict terms. Say online review, and your mind probably goes straight to the sort of review you might find on Amazon or TripAdvisor. In reality, there are many different levels of engagement when it comes to online reviews, and hand written experiences are the most extreme. A much simpler style is what you may have seen on Facebook … the simple thumbs up or thumbs down. Star ratings are another easy method. The lesson is simple … to create more likely situations where people will share their opinion, try to accommodate for different levels of effort and complexity.
3. Let them save your details. The magnet for your fridge that your real estate agent always gives you is the prime example of this idea. The opposing idea to #1, the philosophy behind letting your customers save your details easily is that you want to be there in the moment when they do get asked by someone to refer a business or service. Aside from fridge magnets, for the growing digital savvy customer, another way you may be able to stand out is to always include important keywords in your email communications (and always send email receipts). Then your customer can search their email account and even if they don’t remember your business name or have your card handy, you’re just a simple email search away.
4. Have a personality. The basic fact is that people don’t generally remember businesses, they remember other people. For this reason, having a personality is of paramount importance. When you can foster a personal connections with your business, you give them a reason to remember and recommend you to others. This is the power of word of mouth referrals, that we will remember working with someone who we respected and will be more likely to actively recommend that person and their business in any relevant situation.
5. Admit failure. This last tip will seem like an odd addition to the list. After all, we are generally taught to hide (or at least never admit) our failures for fear that it may make us or our businesses appear vulnerable. The surprising fact is that admitting a mistake can be one of the unintentionally best ways to humanize your business. We all make mistakes, but how you deal with them is the real question. Nothing can endear your business more to a customer than making a mistake an going overboard to correct it (and not making the same mistake again, of course). So the next time you or one of your employees makes a mistake, own up to it and actively fix it. You may find that in the process you converted an unhappy customer into a brand evangelist for life.

NOTE: This post was originally published on the AMEX Open Forum website, where I write a weekly piece on marketing advice for small business owners.

Whether you believe in karma or not, using social media successfully for your small business often has a lot to do with a series of seemingly disconnected events.  Every comment you post online, every person you contact and every piece of content you upload adds to the sum total of your efforts in the blogosphere.  Building relationships is important in any industry, but social media karma is the idea that what you do and how you behave will ultimately have an effect on you directly or indirectly. 

Social media karma is not often written about, but very often spoken about by bloggers, especially successful ones.  Here are 10 ways you can improve your social media karma:  

1. Be real.  This is the first and foremost principle of furthering your social media karma that I could think of.  Being real involves not lying, being transparent about who you are and what you believe, and sharing an honest voice.  People trust others that have an authentic voice, and are more likely to refer them to others or help when asked. 
2. Respond to emails. This is tough when you have a high volume of unsolicited emails, but the idea that someone took time to write directly to you should make it enough of a priority to respond.  Obviously, this applies to personally written messages, and not to email blasts of press releases.  Those are rarely worth a response.
3. Offer exclusives.  Maybe you aren't breaking "news" online, but the idea of exclusives is not limited to that.  If you are going to write about or post something interesting, whether related to your business or not, offer a preview to others in your network.  Share ideas as they happen and offer the chance for others to say it first.  Exclusives are gold in the blogosphere ... everyone wants them.
4. Make connections. In social settings, the gold standard for making connections is introducing two people to one another who later get married.  Social media is no different.  If you can be the person making these connections between individuals that may not have met otherwise, you will be remembered by both for your efforts.
5. Join networks.  This is not just about publishing networks, but about social networks of people who are interested in the same things you are.  Joining groups like this, and actively participating adds value to the group.  As a member, it probably won't be long before you take something useful from the group – and hopefully add something useful as well.
6. Avoid snark. Snarkiness is the enemy of good karma.  Being rude, uselessly opinionated or arrogant are all rising behaviours from people in social media that add to the sea of needless commentary online.  The price for this may not be apparent, as unfortunately, snarkiness does sometimes result in conversation sometimes (who can't avoid watching a car crash?) -- but eventually the snark will catch up to you.
7. Forgive mistakes. Most bloggers or others in social media are not journalists and don't have the time or necessity for checking every fact or argument before making it.  This does result in mistakes, and people do screw up.  Correcting them without holding a grudge is a big deal.  Mistakes are made, people are sorry.  If they fixed the error, then get over it.
8. Post to contact. Email is not the only way to get in touch with someone.  Posting about something they have written and linking to their blog offers an indirect route to contact, as most bloggers pay attention to who is linking to them.  Writing about one of my posts is still the best way to get onto my radar, and I suspect most bloggers are the same way.  Communicating in this way avoids the email filter and starts the dialogue.
9. Comment and participate.  This may be part of earlier suggestions, however the idea that you need to be a participant online rather than just an observer is key to this belief.  If you expect others to communicate and add comments to your blog, you need to be online doing the same for others.  Without participation, it is difficult to belong to a community online or build relationships with others.
10. Show gratitude. Often mentioned as an important factor in connecting with users, showing gratitude for someone interacting with some content you have posted or a comment you have shared, linking to you, or offering some other effort on your behalf is vital.  Appreciation makes someone more likely to believe that you think their efforts are significant and as a result, connect more strongly with you and your blog.

NOTE: This post is part of Small Business Friday (SBF) - a weekly feature to share marketing ideas for small businesses and was originally published on the Amex Open Forum site.

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I used to hate slideshows. Not Powerpoint as many people call slideshows today, but the old style of slideshow. The one where you set up a carousel projector to show lots of little negatives encased in small cardboard frames to unwilling family and friends. If you are under a certain age, you probably won't know what I'm talking about - but that moment of having to sit through someone's vacation photos with the narration of "and this is us in front of the <insert random place name here>" is unfortunately familiar. The problem isn't that the trip itself was boring, or that you're a cold unfeeling person because you struggle to sit through the shared holiday experience of someone you usually care about. The real problem is that the way the story was told left much to be desired. A trip is something no one cares about except the people who took it.

A journey, on the other hand is more significant. It is something that invites you to take part. Something that has a destination or vision in mind for where someone is headed or what they are trying to do. A journey is a story that matters. This was my thought when I came across Monisha and Harald's journey. They are travelling across India on 80 trains in 3 months and are in the midst of their journey right now. As their site describes,the chaotically efficient Indian railway system is "the largest civilian employer in the world, featuring luxury trains, toy trains, a hospital on wheels, the steepest, the slowest, and the second longest train journeys in the world." Chances are, you're already intrigued by their journey as I was when I first read about it. 

Yet, I don't actually know Monisha or Harald. They aren't personal contacts of mine, and though I might hear back from them if they read this - it is not necessarily about having a personal connection. You might watch a slide show from a family member who you love and find it difficult to get involved in their story, yet reading Monish and Harald's journey is interesting. You can follow them in real time on Twitter at @80trains and share it with others. That is the power of having a journey - it lets others get involved. How many travel brands could inspire this kind of content? Or what about small businesses sharing the story of the evolution of their business? When someone cares about the outcome of any story, they are more likely to try to help and be part of it. So what journey are you taking?

Credit: Thanks to Arun Rajagopal for sharing this link to the 80 Trains Project.

I used to hate slideshows. Not Powerpoint as many people call slideshows today, but the old style of slideshow. The one where you set up a carousel projector to show lots of little negatives encased in small cardboard frames to... Rohit

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Bangalore for a Brand Summit event that featured many marketers, communicators and even a Bollywood star talking about the future of marketing in India as country goes through what the conference... Rohit

Last week I had the opportunity to travel to Bangalore for a Brand Summit event that featured many marketers, communicators and even a Bollywood star talking about the future of marketing in India as country goes through what the conference termed as the "era of discontinuity." With a ballooning population, growing Internet penetration, arguably the largest mobile phone market on earth and an entrepreneurial culture - India is at once a bewildering and maturing market for all things social. On the streets of India, word of mouth marketing and old school lessons are actively driving commerce. In businesses, the hot topics are similar to what they are in the US or elsewhere ... how can your brand reach consumers who are increasingly placing their attention elsewhere and getting progressively better at ignoring you.

On answer that has risen to some level of prominence in India is the use of celebrities in marketing. You could argue that celebrities are popular everywhere in the world, but in a country that release more films in an average week than most countries do in an entire year, the rules are slightly different. In India it is not uncommon to see a Bollywood star's face on everything from facial tissues to pens. Celebrity is used to connote trust, and in a culture with many different socio-economic classes (they even have names), the only way that marketers can often reach across these levels is with celebrities that many people recognize.

In an illuminating panel filled with journalists, filmmakers, marketers, creative directors and one celebrity (Bollywood Actor Vivek Oberoi) the conversation turned to a in-depth discussion of the role of celebrity in marketing in India and whether it was indeed a necessity, or whether it has become a "crutch" for the lazy marketer who doesn't want to do any real work so they just hire a celebrity and consider their marketing efforts complete. Here were some of the biggest takeaways that the conversation raised for me:

1. Understand the difference between talent and celebrity. When you hire an actor to play a part in an ad, you are hiring them as "talent." When you get a celebrity, you are hiring them to bring their personal brand to your product or service and serve as a spokesperson of sorts. The first key is to know the difference and not confuse the two.
2. Start with an idea, not a celebrity. Often a marketing strategy starts by selecting the celebrity the team will work with and then an idea is built around that choice. This method is backwards and results in marketing that lacks strategic vision and often fails to resonate. To do better, you need to have a strong creative idea ... then find the celebrity that best fits that idea.
3. Build on a celebrities' personal brand. Vivek Oberoi raised many intelligent points about the celebrity point of view when it comes to marketing (something we don't often hear). He understands his personal brand and what resonates positively or negatively with it. As a result, he chooses personally not to do tobacco or alcohol related advertising. Many other celebrities lack those same principles and simply go where the biggest dollars tempt them. The best marketing will be something builds on the personal brand that a celebrity has built, instead of ignoring or countering it.
4. Use real people too. Thankfully, the point did emerge from the panel that there may be times where you don't NEED a celebrity. There is a power of real people to connect with one another that can be missing with celebrity focused campaigns and for a growing number of brands in India taking this real approach is working well and shouldn't be discounted.

Note: This post was originally published on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog.

Perhaps you've managed to catch some coverage of the Winter Olympic sport of Curling over the last two weeks during the Vancouver Games? The sport has been covered almost nonstop on CNBC here in the US and been enough of... Rohit

Perhaps you've managed to catch some coverage of the Winter Olympic sport of Curling over the last two weeks during the Vancouver Games? The sport has been covered almost nonstop on CNBC here in the US and been enough of a sensation to even have an entire episode of The Simpsons (arguably America's most popular TV show) dedicated entirely to it. Even more impressive is that the sport has managed to accumulate all this attention in spite of three relatively big strikes against it:

1. It's not intrinsically exciting.
2. America has no hope of a medal.
3. No one you know plays it (and you probably haven't either).

This is quite a mystery if you were to consider it in marketing terms (which, of course, I can't help doing). A sport that no one has grown up playing, with little inherent tension or excitement and a national team that is lacking (at current count, they have played 9 games and lost 7 of them) still manages to be among the most popular Winter Olympic sports in the US. Why?

The answer, I believe, comes from an interesting phenomenon that was profiled in another popular American television show - Seinfeld. In one episode, the character George Costanza talked about his ability to be initially annoying and irritating, but to grow on you until eventually you can't stop thinking about him. A similar phenomenon accounts for that moment we have all had where we can't get that awful song out of our heads, but eventually start singing it and even (on some level) liking it.

Your first reaction to curling was probably one of misunderstanding, or ridicule. Let's face it, it's an easy sport to make fun of. But as you see those guys (or girls) furiously sweeping the ice in front of that granite stone - you can't help watching. Yes, sweeping is actually an Olympic sport and as the ratings will show, it's one of our favourites here in the US. The marketing lesson here is simple: Sometimes being sillier than anything else can actually make you the most memorable (and successful). Need more proof? Just look at the success of the Snuggy.

NOTE: This post was originally published on the AMEX Open Forum website, where I write a weekly piece on marketing advice for small business owners. Whether you believe in karma or not, using social media successfully for your small business... Rohit

Social media is not a robot. In fact, there could hardly be a more opposing idea to social media than that of robotic automation. I start this post by sharing that because the idea that any job could be "replaced"... Rohit

Social media is not a robot. In fact, there could hardly be a more opposing idea to social media than that of robotic automation. I start this post by sharing that because the idea that any job could be "replaced" by social media is contentious idea. There are plenty of market forces displacing people from jobs ... do we really need to add social media to the list? Actually, the truth is that social media is already supplanting many jobs. Marketers, politicians, government officials, athletes and librarians are all using social media to varying levels to add context to what they do every day. Social media is a part of their new roles and will continue to be moving forward.

There are a smaller number of jobs, however, that I believe will very shortly REQUIRE SOCIAL MEDIA in order to be done effectively. These are not jobs where logging in online can help to add dimension or offer a useful outlet. In this category of social media enabled jobs, the people doing those jobs who are NOT using social media will find themselves falling behind. Here are a few of these types of jobs that come to mind for me:

1. Customer Service Representative: It is already a part of many customer service groups to allow people to interact with a company by email. More and more, social networks and social media tools are offering a chance for companies to offer proactive customer service. In some cases, like Comcast, there is an entire channel of customer service professionals who are responding to customers. In others, a company may be using a social media community through a service such as Get Satisfaction to offer this type of service. People are talking about their experiences online, and increasingly they will expect companies to be listening to them there. We are at the beginning of a large trend that in the next few years may become as ordinary and expected as being able to call a phone number to receive customer service.

2. Concierge. The sad fact of many hotels (even 5 star properties) is that the individuals they have sitting behind the concierge desk are little more than glorified order takers and bellman (or women). Think I'm being unfair? Unfortunately, my consistent travel schedule (more than 100 days a year) has led me to the truth that a good concierge who actually is an expert at knowing their own city and how to get just about anything done is few and far between. There are, of course, those concierges still available on occasion and nothing can replace their expertise. But for 95% of hotels in America (and perhaps even that percentage is too low), social media can offer the one thing that those concierges alone cannot. Through social media, you can have instant access to real restaurant reviews, shopping recommendations, direct connections with small businesses and more. All the things that a great concierge would spend years learning are now available through social media to the savvy web user.

Any other jobs come to mind that should make this list?

Posted via email from rohitbhargava's posterous

If you are not Indian, chances are when I say Chacha you will think of a type of latin dance. Although it is technically called the "cha-cha-cha" it's the more widespread meaning. If you WERE Indian, however, you would know... Rohit

If you are not Indian, chances are when I say Chacha you will think of a type of latin dance. Although it is technically called the "cha-cha-cha" it's the more widespread meaning. If you WERE Indian, however, you would know that Chacha means Uncle. Actually, it means a lot more than Uncle. When I call someone Chacha, anyone who heard me would know not only that that person was my Uncle, but that my relation to him was on my father's side, and that he was younger than my father. All that information is transferred in a single word. Tau or Tauji is similar, but used as the word for what to call the same Uncle if he is older than my father.  Similar names exist on the mother's side and for the older generation of grandparents. Even siblings use the words "bhaiyya" (for older brother) and "didi" (for older sister).

Sound like a foreign and confusing system? Consider that the next time you walk into a Starbucks and order a Grande instead of a medium or a Venti instead of a small. Starbucks is one retail outlet that has their own lingo. Sit down at any Waffle House in a Southern US state and you can order your hash browns "scattered, smothered, and covered." If you've been there, you'll know what that means. 

The point is, there is a power in creating your own language that relates deeply to having your own culture. Countries and cultures have their own words that exist as a part their cultural identity. They signify a shared knowledge and basis for communication. Starbucks, on a smaller scale, has created the same thing.  What types of words does your company use that are unique to it? More importantly, are those used as a part of your company's culture internally or are they used to share an insider's language with your customers as well? Only brands with loyal and passionate customers come close to having their own language. What are you doing to create yours?

Posted via email from rohitbhargava's posterous

For many marketers, considering mobile marketing year after year is the same story. The year starts off with lots of hype about it finally being the "year of mobile marketing" ... and after a month or two, the excitement dies... Rohit

For many marketers, considering mobile marketing year after year is the same story. The year starts off with lots of hype about it finally being the "year of mobile marketing" ... and after a month or two, the excitement dies down and reality hits. Most teams realize that they lack the experience or knowledge on what type of messages people will actually engage with and bow to the fear that only a fraction of the people they care about will respond to advertising or marketing in a mobile environment. Predictably, their attention turns elsewhere and mobile marketing initiatives stall. Is this year really going to be any different?

It's hard to predict, but I can say that this year does represent a unique moment where all the different aspects of mobile marketing that have long been preached by believers as signifying a cultural shift that matters to marketers are coming together. There are five concepts in particular that signify this evolution in my mind, and paying attention to their rise is the strongest indicator that mobile marketing may be reaching a new stage of reality:

1. The Shortcode - Similar to the URL system that has allowed brands to have specific destinations online, the shortcode is giving brands a way to allow direct messaging from their consumers in an easily memorable way. Simply send a single word or a message to a five digit code from your mobile phone and you will get something in return. The simplicity of this format is an important prerequisite to make it truly likely that people will actually use it as it offers a memorable syntax that enables an actionable message to be memorable enough to stick in the minds of consumers on the go.
2. LBS (Location Based Services) - One of the biggest new abilities that new phones are offering is the ability for your phone to know specifically where in the world you are. The potential of a personal GPS in your pocket, so to speak, ofers up all sorts of localized marketing possiblities. Of course, the potential for location based advertising could certainly backfire if people start to get inundated, but used right LBS can be a boon - and offer an important basic capability that enables all sorts of innovation in mobile device tools and marketing.
3. APP(lications) - By now you have probably formed an opinion about Apps, and whether or not you feel like they will save the world, there is no denying that letting someone download a branded tool to enhance their experience of your brand offers great potential for engagement, lead generation and even direct sales. The App revolution, more than anything else, is fueled by a new level of utility in content for mobile devices. The popular tagline "there's an app for that" is based on this ubiquitous utility. When you can find an app to enhance just about anything you are doing, the net effect becomes transformative. Marketing can now do that too.
4. AR (Augmented Reality) - You see a lot of hype about the potential for augmented reality these days, as it finally evolves beyond the realm of science fiction. Whether it is a service like Yelp's Monocle or more practical computer-based effort from USPS that I blogged about some time ago and referred to as "holocam marketing" at the time. Through your mobile device, you can now add a new layer to your interactions that offers more knowledge, more opinions and more suggestions - all live.
5. DMPs (Direct MobilePayments) - Underpinning all these advances is the simple question of how people will be able to move money around. The potential for micropayments has always vastly outsized the reality. The only environment that has ever come close is Apple with iTunes, where you have a linked account and can easily click a button on a device to trigger a micropayment from your own account without having to re-enter or re-confirm credit card details. As the recent text-to-donate campaign for Haiti from the Red Cross showed the world, trying these payments to user's phone bills may offer another solution. If the behaviour of using these direct micropayments can be extended for consumers beyond donations, it would fuel many other marketing efforts.

Photo Credit: Mobile Marketing Watch

If you believe some pundits and fanboys, the coming of the iPad and the new market for Tablet PCs that it is expected to open up will revolutionize how I use a computer. It will change the way I browse the Internet, do email and make coffee in the mornings. Here are a few choice marketing promises from the Apple website about the iPad:

"See and touch your email in ways you never could before."
"Lets you see web pages as they were meant to be seen."
"Feel completely immersed in whatever you’re watching."

Now take a deep breath and let's take a look at reality. The iPad is not a mobile device, it's too large for that. And it's not meant to be used at a desk (ie - at work for most people) since it would be too awkward for that (or you could get the external keyboard and mouse, but then it's just a glorified monitor). So if it's not good on the go and not good in the office, what does that leave? Two places: the couch and the bed.

What does this mean for how the iPad and tablets may change the way we use the computer then? Actually, not much - but that's not to say they won't matter or have an impact. Ironically, I believe that it will be "mainstream" media that realizes the biggest transformation. Here are three of the biggest shifts in media that I believe the iPad and Tablet PCs will bring as they hit the market in the next several months:

1. Digital Magazines - For years now magazines have struggled to create digital versions and hardly any have found a profitable model to charge people to access them. Premium content, archived articles, or niche content are all micropayment models that have been tried, but it's just not a powerful enough reason for someone to pay extra. With the full interactive touch screen tablet PC, you can finally create an immersive magazine experience that duplicates the quality and design of the magazine layout. Full page images, unique text layout and most importantly ... you can even go beyond by incorporating video or interactivity right into the story. If the story mentions a YouTube video, you can embed it right there and let someone watch it. Chris Anderson shared the vision for Wired's new iPad version of the magazine last week at the TED conference and it demonstrates the vast potential of this new type of device for magazines.
2. Interactive Television - One of the behaviours that we know is growing is the idea that people are multitasking while watching TV. When ads come on, they go to the laptop sitting on their lap to do something else. The iPad and other tablet PCs have the potential to completely transform your TV watching experience. Now you can add complete interactivity to any program. Everything from live voting on a reality show to managing your Fantasy Football team, to interacting with an ad as it is being shown on screen, to watching extended bonus scenes during or after the show. There are limitless possiblities for how you could enhance programming through delivering extended content onto a device that is in your watcher's hands while they are watching TV. More than that, you could build in the programming controls so the tablet would also become your remote control. You could argue that some of this is already possible with a laptop, but the intuitive nature of a touch screen will make it far easier for programmers and advertisers to make the tablet experience part of the live experience of watching a program.
3. eBooks & Social Reading - The one prediction I have heard that I do agree with is how the tablet could change the way that we read books. Everything from integrated links and images to live notetaking, to sharing notes with others in your community are all major shifts in behaviour when it comes to reading books. For students, the other major benefit (in time) could be that finally you don't need to lug tons and tons of books around with you for any class, you can just load them up on a tablet or iPad device. Even more importantly, the ease of sharing notes around a particular book will make reading and studying much more informed and perhaps lead to a next generation version of Cliffs Notes where you can get the context of a certain piece by how others have described it.