Marketing Today

2009: Will it look like Roosevelt's "River of Doubt"?

As I reflect on a turbulent 2008 and prepare for what will be an interesting 2009, it occurred to me that I've just finished reading the perfect book to prepare the year ahead.  I love anything that makes me think about things in a new way, and this story did that for me.

The tale begins in 1913, with a 55-year-old Teddy Roosevelt, who is used to big achievements, receives an invitation came to speak in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The former president had just suffered a humiliating election defeat.  Instead of sitting around the house depressed, the famous outdoors man jumped at the chance to do the speaking tour and to explore the mysterious Amazon River basin. 

What began as a physical challenge and an opportunity to discover unmapped territory, turned into a battle for survival that included starvation, Indian attacks, disease, and death for a few members of the party.  Roosevelt considered suicide before the trip was over, but his son and his comrades wouldn't let that happen.  In the end, he changed the map of the Western hemisphere forever and had a river named after him.  It was a feat so great that many explorers initially refused to believe it.

What can we learn from Roosevelt's experience and that can be applied to 2009?  Well, things aren't going to be the same as they were and they may never be the same again.  Taking the opportunity to assess who is important to us; what our skills and interests are; and using our intelligence and past experiences to adapt to new challenges will be very important.

Change for many people is often scary.  I just had coffee this morning with a fellow who is desperately holding onto the way things have been over the last decade and seriously struggling with the things he knows he needs to do to be successful in 2009.  The stress is actually causing him physical pain. 

Personally, I'm looking forward to what 2009 will bring.  To be honest, I like new challenges.  Adaptation is not going to be easy and it's not always going to be fun, but I believe that I'll come out the other side of 2009 as a better person for taking the initiative to try new things and to learn from them.

Oh, Twitter! What's A Marketer to Do?

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.  I use it primarily for fun while I've been trying to figure out how I'd use it as a component of a successful marketing campaign.  Probably the best examples I have are PickensPlan which is used by the marketers for T. Boone Pickens as he promotes his energy plan for America and David Meerman Scott who uses it to promote his books written about online marketing.

Like most things I've learned to do in the last 10 years - like golf or downhill skiing - I have been teaching myself social networking by just jumping in; playing around until I think I get the concept; and then going back to actually learn more about how it all works when I can ask more intelligent questions.  I've done this with this blog and with Twitter and I believe that the two complement each other when information is shared that your followers care about. 

Random thoughts spewed by people with ADD who have access to wireless devices can't be all that effective over time.  First of all, they clog up your Twitter page and FriendFeeds and make it hard to read the posts from folks you really want to hear from.  I generally quit following them as soon as I figure out that they've got nothing to say.  People or organizations who share information of interest and that make me laugh are my very favorites.

Hubspot has a great report out called The State of the Twittersphere which is quite interesting.  In it, they have found that:

• Twitter is dominated by newer users - 70% of Twitter users joined in 2008
• An estimated 5-10 thousand new accounts are opened per day
• 35% of Twitter users have 10 or fewer followers
• 9% of Twitter users follow no one at all
• There is a strong correlation between the number of followers you have and the number of people you follow

With Twitter growing at this amazing rate, it's time to figure out how best to harness it effectively rather than misuse it and turn followers off.  As we used to say just about 10 years ago when e-mail marketing became the rage, "it only takes one bad e-mail to turn off a loyal customer."

Even Santa's A Viral Marketer

Here's a really creative idea for not-for-profit fundraising from an organization that my neighbor works for that's incredibly effective.  1% for the Planet is an organization that exists to build and support an alliance of businesses financially committed to creating a healthy planet.  This holiday season they got MTV to produce a video for them of poor Santa having to remove his warm red suit because of the effects of global warming.  (Ok, he's pretty much doing a striptease!)

They did a great job creating an e-card that can be sent virally that quickly catches your attention; describes their mission; makes it easy for you to donate to their cause; and forward it to a friend when you're done.

The video posted on You Tube has risen to #76 most viewed for the non-profit sector as of this posting with 203 views in the four days since it has been posted.  It will probably go  a lot higher between now and Christmas and will serve to draw more attention to their cause and the other more serious videos that they have posted there.  It's a great use of online marketing for their cause.  Bravo!

Marketing to People Who Have Lost A Pet

This past week my cat had a tooth pulled and was pretty woozy from the surgery.  I thought she was curled up on the floor sleeping off the anesthesia, but while I was running up and down to the basement doing laundry, she wandered out and was missing for 24 hours.  I'm happy to say she's back safe and sound.  Boy did I learn a few things this week about what to do when your pet goes missing both offline and online.  I think I uncovered a few ways people are tailoring traditional direct marketing businesses to those anxious to have their pets back.

Things to do Offline

By typing "lost pets Boston" into Google, one of the first things I saw was the Lost & Found for the City of Boston.  This site give great tips on who to call and what to do right away.  Sadly, it says that many pets are never found by their owners because they don't make all the calls they should to shelters, vets, and animal control.  You'll also want to make your own posters so keep a digital picture of your pet handy just in case.

Beware of Some Online Services

Of everything I found online, the Boston lost & found area of Craig's List seemed to be the best as people seem to check it frequently.  I did notice that a direct marketing firm based in California was posting a service on Craig's List to print postcards with your lost pet's information on it and would create a direct mail list for you.  Frankly that seemed a little cheesy to be doing that in the lost & found section and didn't seem like it would be that effective.  It would be about a week before your postcards even showed up and by the time you got the mailing out who knows where your pet could be.

Another service that came up with the search engines was for a pet detective that offered online coaching on what to do and who took PayPal.  The strangest one to me was one from a telemarketing firm who for $125 offered to call 500 of your neighbors to see if they had seen your missing pet.  While this sort of made sense to do, I got to thinking about how many people I know on the "do not dial" list who don't take calls and I had to wonder how effective that could be.  I did give folks credit for adopting regular direct marketing tactics for the purpose of finding lost pets, but marketing to worried people just felt a little wrong.

Hopefully, Everyone Gets Their Pet Back

I was sure grateful when my cat came walking back in the door around midnight.  I think she had just didn't feel well and went off somewhere to sleep for a while.  In honor of all the nice people who took my calls and helped me out, I'll be making a donation to the Animal Rescue League where my cat came from in the first place this year.  And to my new e-friend, Stephanie on Beacon Hill, who reported her kitten missing on Craig's List this Friday and sent me a nice e-mail to see how I was doing, I hope you find your missing cat soon.

Social Networking - You've Got a Goal, Right?

As many people look at this economic environment, they're starting to think "Hey, maybe we should start some of this social networking stuff because it's free."  Yes, some of the tools are free, but that's not the reason to jump in.  You want to do it because you believe it will help you meet your goals.  Otherwise, it's just busy work.

A Real Life Example

I'm the marketing chairperson for a not-for-profit that I'm on the board of.  Recently, the office got an offer from a local university to create a multi-media DVD for us at no cost.  Sounds great, right?  Well, I started to explain to the staff, that we'd need to find speakers, work on a script, manage students, and all of the other work involved in creating an effective marketing piece, but instead, I simply asked "What's our main goal for 2009?"  The answer I got back was "Hit our fundraising target."  To which I asked, "How would a multimedia DVD help with that goal?"  The answer I got back was "I don't know."   When I suggested that perhaps the students could take the DVD that was done for us a few years ago and slice it up into YouTube movies that we could hang off of our website so that we could test the effectiveness, all I got was confused looks.  So, we passed on the offer. 

If Social Networking Doesn't Have a Goal, Don't Do It

If you are working with folks who don't understand the benefits of social networking or the target audience that you are trying to reach isn't tech savvy enough to participate in social networking, then maybe it shouldn't be a part of your marketing strategy at this point in time.  I've gone to blogs where no one has published anything for eight months and it shows me that they're not interested enough in building an audience to keep up with it or that they don't get the fact that you really need to post about twice a week to be effective online.  Facebook and LinkedIn groups that never have any communication with their membership just aren't interesting to be a part of.

Bottom line - if you want to learn more about social networking, jump in.  If you want to make it part of your 2009 plan, make sure that you've got a goal and that you're going to invest enough time and talent to make it a success.