Is Social Media for Real?

A good number of our clients have been rolling out social media initiatives over the last year or are in the process of doing so.  These initiatives include blogs, podcasts and social networking.

We also hear regularly from clients who are considering initiatives but are still unsure about the effectiveness and staying power of this particular marketing channel.  One of the most frequent questions we hear:  Is this social media thing for real and should be deploying our resources to leverage it?  To answer this question I will direct you to some stats that were sent to us by a friend of ours, who herself is a savvy marketer. Check it out here: http://socialnomics.net/2009/08/11/statistics-show-social-media-is-bigger-than-you-think/

New Web & Social Media Marketing Guidlines created by the CBA

The Canadian Bar Association has issued new guidelines on Web & Social Media Marketing.  These were created in response to an influx of questions from lawyers looking to ensure their marketing initiatives were onside with existing regulations.

Read Robert Todd’s article in the Law Times, where AR Communications’  Michael Rabinovici is quoted here, or go to http://www.lawtimesnews.com/200910195631/Headline-News/CBA-offers-tips-on-legal-Tweeting.

How to get action on your calls to action

As entertaining as some marketing communications are, what it all comes down to is whether or not they compel the reader, viewer, or listener to take action.

People take action as a way of meeting their most basic emotional needs. People decide with their feelings and then rationalize their decisions with the facts. If you can match your offer with their needs, you’ll get better results. For example:

People want to belong – Show them that other people, just like them, have taken the same action that you’re asking them to take. Use testimonials, case studies, or stories.

People want to escape pain – Put them in touch with the pain that will continue and worsen if they fail to take action.

People want to experience pleasure – Paint a colourful picture of the benefits and positive feelings waiting for them once they take action.

People want to feel financially secure – Offer a financial incentive to act now, such as a time-limited discount or bonus offer.

Depending on your product or service, you may also want to align your message with people’s needs for fame and fortune, increased wealth, or health and happiness. The inducement will differ with each offer you present, but the result should always be the same: Measurable response with every communication.

ANSWERING THE CALLS

Invitations to Hawaii solicited…

Following AR Communications Inc.’s successful presentation for Toronto’s Legal Marketing Association, Michael Rabinovici, our Senior VP, Strategic Initiatives, was invited to Banff to speak about social media. Due to prior commitments to several critical stakeholders (i.e. his children), he was required to travel to California instead. But did that deter our intrepid international spokesperson? Of course not. On a sunny morning in San Diego, Michael hooked up to a live feed and delivered his Banff social media presentation using some of the very technology he touts. Next stop? Hawaii. At least in our dreams. Invitations received will be gratefully accepted…

Click here to listen or download an audio of the presentation to  GlobaLaw

Don’t fade away – the most common blogging pitfall

“Blog fade” is an expression used to describe the fading enthusiasm for a blog; posts become less and less frequent until the blog is finally left sitting idle collecting pixel dust.

It’s happened to the best of us. We start out of the gate with a plan to blog twice a week, weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly. The blog was so easy to set up, we launch right in.

And it’s precisely because blogging is so immediate and accessible that we sometimes push it back in favour of more pressing tasks like, oh, I don’t know, taking care of clients! We figure we can always jump in there and put up a blog post; we’ll get to it later.

As part of a broader marketing communications strategy, well-written blog posts will improve your search engine rankings, attract traffic to your website, and reinforce your credibility as an expert. You may also use them to get a conversation going with your clients, prospects, team, employees, vendors, suppliers or other stakeholders.

When you don’t post regularly, you’re losing out on all of those benefits. But not only that – you’re also sending a subtle message that you’re not around anymore. People surfing the Web are hungry for information. They want more and they want it now. As brilliant as it was, the post you wrote last month is ancient history.

Have you ever heard the expression, “How you do anything is how you do everything?” When people look through your blog and don’t see any recent updates, they may start to wonder if you’ll “fade away” in other areas of your business as well.

Welcome to the Attention Age

Over the last few years, the Internet has created a profound transformation in the world of marketing. I’m not talking about Google, Technorati, YouTube, FaceBook or even the industry’s latest darling – Twitter. I’m referring to something much more fundamental, and far more precious to marketers: the diminished attention span of our prospects and customers.

Here’s the thesis. Just five years ago, Web surfers still enjoyed engaging in extensive online research before making their purchasing decisions. Now, those days are gone. Most of us feel so overwhelmed by the vast amount of information we have access to, and the ever-increasing directions it comes from, that we’ve basically stopped processing that data. This is information overload at its zenith. Customers and prospects have so little time to make informed purchasing decisions that they are simply opting out of making any decisions at all.

For marketers, this creates one heck of an objection to overcome. If our prospects feel uncomfortable making intelligent decisions, it’s high time we introduced a new way to engage them in the decision-making process. We call it the “Easy Button”, and our experience with it is showing some incredible results in practice. More on this in my next post.
Welcome to the Attention Age.

The Power of Podcasting

Podcasts (Web and mp3based audios) are becoming an ever more effective tool in the marketer’s arsenal.  There are a number of reasons for this phenomenon:

  • A significant percentage of consumers prefer to consume audio as opposed to written information.
  • Podcasts are more flexible – in other words, you can’t read a case study or a product info sheet in the car or while you’re going for a run.  I mean, you could try, but it is really not recommended.
  • Podcasts cater to our multi-tasking lifestyles. I can pick up email and listen to a podcast in the background and retain a surprising amount of information.

We have been using podcasts as marketing tools for our clients for the last 12 months, and now recommend that they become standard tools for both product and service marketing. The easier you make it for your prospective customers to give you their attention, the greater the chances they will make the transition from a prospect to a customer.

Speaking ofattention, in the next few blog posts I will address a paradigm shift that is taking place in the marketing world in general and on the Web in particular. We began to notice this trend from our work with clients and speaking with some of the leading experts in the field.  Appreciating this seismic shift will forever change how you look at marketing.  Stay tuned.

It’s 2009. What Are You Doing Online?

You may be surprised to hear it, but apparently economic conditions aren’t so great right now. That may explain the questions we’re receiving about ways to get more out of your marketing dollars. Today, one of the best methods for realizing the most bang for your budget is through online marketing tactics, including blogging, podcasts, and search engine optimization (SEO).

The most important success factor when deploying online marketing tactics is to make sure they’re optimized to meet your business objectives. To do that, you need to employ industry best practices. It was in search of these best practices that we recently went to California to complete one of the online world’s leading certification programs, put on by the renowned team at Marketing Experiments (www.marketingexperiments.com).

Guess what? We passed! That means we’re now certified to help you increase the conversions related to the full range of your Web tactics and translate that into measurable response (whether you’re trying to fill your prospecting pipeline, expand your online lists, or make sales).

To get a flavour of the depth of research available through Marketing Experiments, and the leading brands they work with, we suggest you visit their site at www.marketingexperiments.com. We know budgets are tight right now, but you’d be surprised at how cost-effective these tactics are. Consider this: the New York Times used the Marketing Experiments methodology to increase sale conversion by 1,052%. Seriously.