By Software Advice Market Analyst Ashley Furness
Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts recently declared marketing dead, telling a group of business leaders “the further up in a company you go the stupider you become. And the further away from new things.”
While I agree with his latter sentiment, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics expects marketing payrolls to swell by at least 13 percent between 2010 and 2020. So where's the disconnect? What Roberts likely meant was the old days of marketing are over.
If you want to see the future of marketing, just talk to a recruiter. The dramatic shift in highly-desired skills - from direct marketing to SEO and social media, for example - says a lot about where the industry is going.
Recently, I interviewed more than 30 marketing and recruiting specialists to find out how what new job titles they expect to appear in the next decade. Here is what they had to say:
1. Crowdsourcing Specialist: This role has two parts: listening and promoting. First, this specialist would monitor conversations happening on the Web about the brand and develop messaging that responds to customers’ voiced expectations. At the same time, they would strategize calls to action for branding purposes via social media –such as inviting customers to compete to create the best video about the brand, and perhaps tying the theme to something trending on Twitter.
2. Content Marketing Czar: This position would plan decide what content vehicles - such as websites, blogs, videos, infographics, webinars, social media and others - should be leveraged and how. At the same time, the content marketing leader would look for externally-created content about the company on the Web and find ways to leverage it for SEO and other marketing purposes.
3. Marketing Integration Planner: This position would identify ways to deliver a single marketing message, campaign or branding effort across multiple digital channels. For example, using a pay-per-click advertising campaign to promote a viral video, or using SEO keyword analysis to help craft a press release.The goal would be to find out where their customers are already interacting with the brand, and emulate their nonlinear, multi-screen purchase behavior.
4. Vice President of Marketing Data Analytics: This role would decide when, why and how marketing data should be tracked. This includes data collected through marketing automation, website analytics, social media, email campaigns, mobile, SEO, content marketing, PPC and other channels. This information would be shared with brand and campaign strategists who design promotions.
5. ROI and Marketing Budget Officer: Marketing budgets are shifting from quarterly allotments for print, direct mail and media advertising to constantly-shifting spending from one channel to another. Return on Investment (ROI) data is often instantly available–from PPC, for example–so marketing can be more nimble with resource allocation.
It’s doubtful every marketing department will need all of these positions. The point here is to show the future of marketing through the most highly-desired skills and emerging job titles.
“All the top-down, brand-driven marketing disciplines aren't dead, they just must be balanced now with the consumer-centric disciplines that require brands to ‘let go of the steering wheel and let the consumers drive,’" Protagonist Principal Tom Cotton.
Research for this article was provided by softwareadvice.com/crm.
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
How to Create Real Relationships With Social Marketing
If you want to continue to reach your market in the social media age, the marketing focus needs to be on building relationships, and metrics need to expand beyond ROI. In fact, ROI is simple dollars and cents. But a return on relationship is the value — both perceived and real — that will accrue over time through connection, loyalty, recommendations, and sharing. That’s what any marketer actually wants, and here’s how to do it.
Don’t Just Act Authentic
This might seem obvious, but authenticity is on the verge of becoming just another buzz word in social media marketing. True authenticity — not just using that word often in your tweets and posts — will set your brand (product or personal) apart in today’s highly competitive market. Followers and advocates can and will sniff out a fake in a heartbeat.
The only way to be authentic is to be authentic. For example, don’t filter out your brand’s negative feedback. No one believes 100% positive claims on a website or social pages anyway. Make all feedback public. Then honestly address any claims around the negative feedback, and give your followers the tools to tell their truth about you and your brand because that is what people trust, and what they trust they will buy.
Be Real to Create Trust
We are hearing so much now about social media creating a shift from ‘the wisdom of crowds’’ to ‘the wisdom of friends’’, but what does that really mean for brand advocacy? A lot. It’s this ‘wisdom of friends’ that brings a new social power to brand advocacy. The payoff is a long-term and personal relationship that creates brand advocates and an emotional connection that drives influence. Brand advocates are those people who are so delighted by your product/service/brand that they can’t wait to tell their friends and their whole social networks about the experience. To achieve such an enriching relationship, communication must be relevant and have a distinct and authentic personality.
Take Care of Your Advocates
Successful social media marketing is all about relationships, with the highest return coming from relationships with your brand advocates. Friends trust friends who are advocates. They will purchase a recommended product and, if that experience is everything they hoped for, a new advocate is born and the cycle continues. Advocates are an incredible asset now more than ever. Treat them as such.
Be an Actual Friend
The way you engage with people makes an impression no matter what tool you are using. Look at your own behaviors and ask yourself, “Would I want to be my friend?” Are you noticing and affirming the value of individuals and groups in your network? Are you genuinely interested and paying attention to the people behind the texts and words on a screen? Are you going out of your way to be of service to others in your network? That’s the kind of friend I would want to have and to be.
For example, it is unbelievable how many people never bother to connect after an event, or even fail to add who they met into their contacts file. What a complete and utter waste of time. So be the one who does. Add people to your contact file, and connect with them via LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Make a note with every entry where you met (name of event and date), and anything else you remember or had the presence of mind to write on the card. Then, when and if you have an email exchange, cut and paste that email in the notes section so you will always have a point of reference when connecting again in the future.
Forget the adage Win/Win and make a commitment to Learn/Learn. Win/Win is good, but implies an end. Once you win, then what? Learn/Learn creates a paradigm of ongoing value. This creates a Learn/Learn situation. I learn about you and you learn about me. And we learn from each other.
Thursday, 14 June 2012
Is Google+ Worth Marketers’ Time?
According to RJMetrics, the 170 million Google+ population would rather spend their time elsewhere – probably Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.
After analyzing info from the public timelines of 40,000 randomly selected users, RJMetrics found that 30 percent of first-time Google+ public posters don’t publish on the network again. Even after making five public posts, there is a 15 percent chance users will abandon their efforts. What’s more, when there is a publicly-viewable post, the lag time is about 12 days between each post, with very little response or re-sharing.
So, it appears that for many, Google+ is about as interesting as watching your socks dry. Even the new social lingo –such as “hangouts” (video chat with up to nine people), “circles” (give and get updates) and “+1” buttons (public stamp of approval) –hasn’t really caught on, and now some are claiming Google+ is only growing because Google is forcing membership when using its other products.
What’s a marketer to do?
Well, before you abandon the Google+ ship for smoother sailing on seemingly more productive social media waters, know that the key to success on Google+ may be for you to start thinking about it in a new way. Google+ is its own unique category of social networks, and as such, you simply can’t think of Google+ only in terms of customer engagement; you have to consider SEO, as well.
To help better explain my take, here are the three main pluses –and the three main minuses –I find with Google+:
Pluses:
1. Increased search visibility. Google+ provides Google with crucial user data for search, allowing it to collect votes about what people like –and that can help tremendously in the search ranking process. Google+ status updates and a +1 thumbs up can now appear in organic search engine results. So, if you add a +1 button to your content or actively publish content to Google+, you’ll improve your chances of dominating search results.
2. Facebook Rival. Google+ started out as an innovative amalgamation of Facebook and Twitter, and with its recent user interface revamp focused on social widgets, it has become even more so. But, don’t get me wrong. One of the benefits of Google+ is that it’s not Facebook. On Google+, the little guys (aka small brands with small pocketbooks) have lots of opportunity, since there’s less worry about competition from premium ads or ranking algorithms like EdgeRank. With the combination of other Google products (docs, hangouts, etc.), Google+ is a social layer that offers interaction – and many more than Twitter’s 140 characters to follow discussions.
3. Circle This. Google+ enables marketers to better target content, and as we all know, content targeting to a specific audience leads to higher click-through rates and a more engaged social following. The Circle functionality on Google + allows you to let your followers identify the topics they’re passionate about, so rather than blasting updates to your entire following, you can use Google+ Circles to tailor content to specific audiences. Then, you can monitor how your content spreads and who the top influencers are with the help of cool information from Google+ Ripples. Knowing how content spreads socially allows a more focused social media effort.
Minuses
1. Google+, huh? Unfortunately, Google+ can be confusing and difficult to navigate. Since understanding the intricacies of how Google+ works can be challenging and time consuming, many people abandon the network before they’ve given it much of a chance. Of course, that could mean that you just lost your target audience.
2. Google What? What are the differentiating factors for Google+? What’s the value proposition? The answers to these questions aren’t clear, which may be why users are only spending a few minutes a month on the site. As a marketer, do you want to spend time on a social network that’s visited so infrequently?
3. Pin, Not +1. Google+ is being pinned by Pinterest, ranking a distant fourth in a recent analysis of social networks. You’re more likely to see a “pin it” button alongside Facebook, Twitter and email buttons than a +1 button. So, even newcomer Pinterest is sticking pins into Google+.
Those are my three pluses and three minuses. Now, let’s pause and look at the final equation. Every network –whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Google+, or the newer one that’s bound to be announced in the not-too-distant future –has its own pluses and minuses, and each deserves its own approach. Done right, Google+ can add tremendous value to both SEO and social media. But, one thing is for sure: with its long-term SEO potential, Google+ needs a thorough and thoughtful social media plan, one that is integrated into a comprehensive marketing strategy.
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