So how do you take advantage of the power of the Internet to make your mark? The facts are unavoidable. I’ve compile a bunch of stats that drive it all home. If you are involved in a home-based, direct-selling or network marketing business, you simply can’t ignore the fact that online is where it’s happening!
The beauty of it all is that it’s available to you at little or no cost. Take a look:
Email
While not the newest channel, email can still be a provocative, effective way to reach out to prospects, customers and colleagues. It’s an excellent way to engage your audience, nurture leads and promote interaction. Email allows you to target more efficiently.
According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 92% of adult U.S. Internet users send or read email. Two-thirds of them do so as a part of their typical day.
Email continues to be just another “arrow in your quiver” when it comes to a powerful online strategy.
And a Pew Research Center study on the Internet & American Life Project reports that 65% of adults on the Internet use a social networking site. Anybody who markets themselves should take heed. Social media connects people like nothing before in the history of commerce. The big daddy in this arena is Facebook. Add to that Twitter and Google+ and you have a robust community that awaits you!
According to the Nielsen Social Media Report Q32011, nearly four out of five active Internet users are visiting social network sites and blogs. Americans are spending more time on Facebook than they do any other U.S. website.
And according to the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, 28% of all American adults use mobile or social location-based services of some kind. This continued growth and popularity of social media in 2011 has a direct impact on how businesses and individuals communicate and expand their influence.
An interesting note: The Performics 2011 Social Shopping Study reports that men more frequently check out product info, reviews, discover product availability and get store information using social networks and shopping sites. Women, on the other hand, are on top when it comes to deals, coupons and specials.
Online Video
Video has arrived and growing! According to the comScore Video Matrix, more than 184 million U.S. Internet users have viewed online video content in October of 2011. They logged in an average of 21.1 hours per viewer. That’s amazing!
No surprise, according to the report, in October of 2011, YouTube ranked as the top online video content source with nearly 21 billion (with a capital B) videos viewed. Included in that stat is 161 million unique viewers. Facebook came in second with nearly 60 million viewer. All told, that’s more than 42 billion videos viewed, with an average viewer watching more that 21 hours of video! Also amazing.
The other trend in online video is personalization. It’s not just creating a single video and broadcasting it to thousands. Using a single template, create videos targeting individuals… include a unique, personal message that will resonate deeply.
So where to from here?
The facts are clear. Explore, dig in and incorporate the many online tools and services available to you to help build and expand your business! I welcome your comments and suggestions.
Relax. Nobody died—except for traditional demographics. Categories such as Baby Boomer, Gen-X, Gen-Y or Gen-Whatever are definitely on life support. For decades, companies, marketers and advertisers have targeted age, gender, education, race and income as a means of identifying a market. They essentially assume that all people within those categories all think alike and are motivated by the same things. I guess that kind of groupthink makes marketers’ jobs easier when pitching products or services on a mass scale. But its accuracy may be suspect.
I certainly don’t think like, act like or are interested in the same things as everybody else in my so-called demographic category. Let’s say I’m 34 (which I wish I was!). That puts me in the ubiquitous 18-34 age group. Does that mean that I have the exact same interests as an 18-year-old? I sincerely doubt it. And what happens when I turn 35? Hmmm.
The social media blender
Online Meccas like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube are totally blurring the rigid lines that old-school demographics have drawn. People are interacting, connecting and sharing based on their interests, values and beliefs. Smart marketers are picking up on this and are adjusting their advertising and marketing efforts accordingly. Done properly, they can potentially target consumers more precisely, efficiently and effectively. And that means their outreach dollars go a lot further.
I think that this information is equally applicable to those in network marketing. After all, you spend a great deal of time reaching out to prospects and nurturing relationships with existing customers. If you are better able to focus your efforts on developing networks of like-minded people who share specific interests, you’ll have much more success than if you just targeted “young people,” “upper-income people” or “boomers.”
Here are a few articles I found that signal where the future of marketing and advertising is headed:
Think in terms of action and interest, not artificially created age groups
Rohit states that media is purchased “based on presumed age ranges of audiences in the hopes that this bit of demographic information would help us reach the right people. In fact, this is one of the most time-honored traditions of marketing planning. It is also one of the dumbest.”
He lists 5 reasons why old-school thinking is a waste of time:
People are age shifting and not living lives based on traditional stereotypes for their ages
The top end of a demographic (34) usually has almost nothing in common with the low end (18)
Age demos leave out influencers, gift buyers, and others for whom a message may be relevant, but don’t fit the age requirements because they aren’t the ultimate recipient of the product
Focusing on age can take you away from emotional or relevant benefits
People lie about their age all the time
Marketers are literally guessing at relevance within a demographic category. However in today’s social media world, consumers as individuals can be plucked out of the crowd and identified for their uniqueness. Via social media, they are literally broadcasting on a daily basis what interests them.
Rohit Bhargava is SVP of Digital Strategy at Ogilvy PR and author of the award-winning book Personality Not Included, a guide for brands to be more authentic.
The Canadian Marketing Association posted a great article on their blog page by Dawn Marchand that posits that Gen-X, Gen-Y and Baby Boomers should be redistributed and categorized as Generation-E. The “E” stands for “Everyone.” By doing that, the restrictive “Gen” categories makes the effort moot. She says:
Brands that speak to and, more importantly, connect with people who share a common interest—regardless of their demographic or generation—will be the most successful. Sustaining a brand is much more about engaging consumers and connecting emotionally and less about straight-up advertising.
Jamie makes a great point about how poorly demographics have defined generations for more than half a century. Online social networks have turned the marketing world on its ear. “To convince consumers that an advertising message was relevant to them, consumers had to buy the idea that they were just like everyone else.”
Traditional thinking tosses 78 million people into a single bucket and labels it “Baby Boomers.” But it just ain’t so. I’m a Boomer and my interests vary greatly.
Social data can be used to fine-tune a target audience. Jamie offers a few examples:
Are customers who kayak more likely to buy water shoes than those who canoe?
Who is more likely to spend over $100 on an order: Seattle Seahawks fans or Seattle Mariners fans?
Are your customers more likely to purchase when they move across the state or across the country?
He makes a powerful point at the close of his article:
Build a deep understanding of your customer, or risk irrelevance.
I believe he’s right on target.
Jamie Beckland is a Digital and Social Media Strategist at Janrain where he helps Fortune 1000 companies integrate social media technologies into their websites to improve user acquisition and engagement. He has built online communities since 2004. He tweets as @Beckland.
Am I really that predictable?
Social Media and the End of Gender
By Johanna Blakey
This is a terrific video by Johanna Blakey. She gives a very informative talk about how social media is turning the tables on how target markets are identified. She makes the case that marketers claim that if you fall within a certain demographic category, you are predictable. It supposedly defines your tastes, identifies the things you like and clarifies what interests you. The result? Our culture has been delineated and cultivated via advertising, entertainment and the media by these generalities and gross presumptions.
Blakey states that people “don’t aggregate around age, gender and income. They aggregate around the things they love, the things that they like. And if you think about it, shared interests and values are a far more powerful aggregator of human beings than demographic categories.”
So social media has changed all that. It is effectively revealing those things that drive people’s interests and shape their values. She cautions those who market to consumers:
If you want to understand the global village, it’s probably a good idea that you figure out what they’re passionate about, what amuses them, what they choose to do with their free time.
Spend a few minutes and watch this video. It’s worth every second.
Johanna Blakey is the Deputy Director of the Normal Lear Center, a media-focused think tank at the University of Southern California. She spends much of her time exploring how our entertainment interacts with our political, commercial and social habits.
It’s our future. Make it happen!
How we are defined as individuals is a very important subject. I actually resent the fact that the powers that be plop us into random categories for the sake of selling their goods. I think those who ignore the social media trends do so at their peril.
I welcome your comments and insight. Let me know what’s on your mind.
Just read a terrific post by Marcus Sheridan, an online marketing blogger and proprietor of The Sales Lion, an online marketing consulting company.
We’re so deeply concerned about how many Facebook “Likes” and Twitter “Followers” we may or may not have accumulated through our social marketing efforts. But Marcus makes a powerful point that we might just be missing the real issue: What does that really mean in terms of actual readership? And more importantly, how does it translate to bottom-line sales?
“…all the content and blog posts in the world don’t mean squat unless they are leading to more trust, leads, and ultimately paying customers.”
He further states that first impressions in social media don’t mean much. He compares the “Likes” and “Follows” with one of his clients to actual readership and sales performance. The difference between the Facebook/Twitter/Google+ activity and actual tracked sales was remarkable. There were only 22 total social media “hits” related to his 8 posted articles. One would think that his online marketing effort was a bust.
Bankable results
But check out the actual “rubber-meets-the-road” results:
210,762 page views
2,471 inbound links
$2 million in sales directly attributed to those 8 articles
That’s just insane!
Makes you step back and reassess just how you go about your online marketing, doesn’t it?
Social media as a marketing tool can be über powerful when used the right way. There are billions of users on the Big Three – Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. In fact, Facebook claims 800 million all by themselves! But as with any tool, you have to know how to use it properly. It wouldn’t be cool to give a 4-year-old a nail gun. Not only would the project never get done, it would have disastrous consequences.
Here are ten things to avoid when launching your social media strategy:
#1 Confuse your audience
Consistency is king when it comes to establishing and maintaining a brand. Toe the line. Avoid tangential messaging. Make sure you’re sticking to the core of what you and your products/services are all about. If you constantly switch your value proposition from message to message, you confuse everyone. Including yourself. So when you post to Facebook or tweet on Twitter, make sure your message always honors and supports what makes you unique.
#2 Sell! sell! sell!
I know it’s irresistible, but don’t use social media to pitch your products or services. You run the risk of turning your audience off in a major way. The social universe is totally unique from traditional advertising and marketing. People are looking for help, not a sales pitch. And if you can be helpful in that process, you come off looking pretty darn good. Give them useful information that covertly supports your brand. Trigger conversations around your expertise and knowledge.
#3 Share frivolous information
Nobody cares what you had for dinner last night, what you think about the latest movie or your busy travel itinerary. Remember, stay on track! Promote what you and your brand is all about. That way you will enjoy a following of folks who share like interests and will come back for more.
#4 Don’t listen
We’ve all been at a party and met someone who only talked about themselves. You tune out in seconds. Don’t be that person online. Listen to others. Strike up conversations. Engage. Ask questions. Comment. Respond. You get the point.
#5 Ignore your audience
This relates to #4. If you think you’re in this all by yourself, you surely will be! You need followers that share your interests. So dig in, find out what’s out there and respond to it. If you don’t, your audience will be ignoring you – big time.
#6 Avoid negative comments
Not all comments will be endearing. But the last thing you want to do is avoid or delete them. Address issues straight up. Social media is all about transparency and authenticity. If their concerns are legit, absorb them and perhaps even change something to make things better. Don’t hide. Your audience will forgive you if you take their comments seriously, apologize and act upon them.
#7 Keep your passion in check
If you exhibit excitement and passion about your brand, your audience will too. It sort of rubs off through osmosis. Think of it this way: If the CEO of a company shows no passion for the company, neither will his employees. No forward motion.
#8 Expect instant results
Unless you’re offering a free Ferrari to everybody who “Likes” your Facebook page, social media is a slow, steady build. You need to know that going in. Stay the course. Steady as she goes. And you will slowly start to realize a robust following.
#9 Ignore your competition
To be a player, you must keep an ear to the ground. See what others are doing and learn from it. That doesn’t mean you slam your competition. Just know what they’re up to so you can make critical course corrections.
#10 Pretend to be who you aren’t
Speak to subjects you know and actually have something useful (and genuine) to offer. I’ve been in many situations where someone is spouting off the top of their head. It’s very easy to spot and I quickly label them as phony.
So there you have it. These are rules to live by in the social media universe. Avoid them at all costs and you’ll be rewarded with mucho success.
