Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales, Peter Weedfald, shares with Money Inc. how elements in everyday marketing are hyper-changing our ability to invest, promulgate and amplify products and brands.
Our attention and transactional DNA have evolved. Our personal and business engagements have hyper-morphed into a multitude of varying directions.
We keep a glowing mobile device at our sides 24 hours a day shuttling across the globe and back in mere nano-seconds. Ever-changing product and app-life cycles along with mammoth content digestion is causing for some assiduous disruption, competitive danger, unyielding emotional confusion as well as for informed risk takers, new shiny and fruitful local and global opportunities.
We in business are orientated by facts not emotions, while consumers in so many social settings are orientated by emotions not always by the facts. Confusion prevails, opportunity abounds, social strategies can aggressively influence product and brand determination, brand infatuation, brand admiration… and sadly in some cases brand evaporation.
Social empowerment offered, given, transacted and yielded through sunny and cloudy skies can cause the largest museum of failed products and brands. Can also indeed catalyst products and brands into power houses able to make or take a market.
We know there is always opportunity in confusion and disruption, but first we find opportunity in reconciliation: Ability to command the fast paced social networking world we troll through.
As I said three years ago, we know that “the very best opportunities in business lie in danger. Welcome to the danger of missing the opportunity of social networking.”
The gambit of competition through social change, through social networking is already here: is already working hard for social centric brands.
Opportunity itself is why we conduct brand discourse indispensable to maintaining constant and frequent social connections amongst our most important consumers.
All for the purpose of more substantial brand communion in the future; for the purpose of ensuring competitive advantage through a precision toolbox of smart social marketing.
Savvy social network actualizing is designed to ensure your brand reaches and engages with your very best, most relevant consumers to gain highly valuable brand relationships, brand communion, brand affinity, product feedback, brand sense: more brand cents than your competition. To be very clear, all B2C and B2-ME opportunities will be advantaged through social networking with:
- More relevant and consumer-centric understanding of your target audience needs, preferences, interests and loyalties.
- A second by second, global and local understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of your brand, products, price points and juxtaposed competitive business value allowing for fast course corrections and or stepping up the opportunity fuel.
- Faster, more efficient consumer service, guidance, support and feedback.
- Consistency and frequency with core evangelizing consumers, with your competitors customers designed to build interest, preference, life time value; profitable advantage.
- Asking and receiving critical feedback, recommendations and guidance to accelerate your brand and corresponding product affinity, equity and profit.
- A formidable social army of loyal brand fans who will reward you back with their voices, engagements, networking, and pocketbooks.
- A CRM and SCRM data-lake dashboard for your most enthused and self-identified brand fans: watch for your next “relevant to me” communication, product and or engagement.
- Setting up a social networking “war room” in your building. The room should contain up to 10 monitor displays each fixated and tuned to your most important and volume based social initiatives such as a Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube display, including a display for your own web site, a retail and or distributor site display with fast bookmarks.
- Fighting for a consumers’ short and long term attention, interest and conviction is not a solitary art form, especially in the world of social networking. There is competition behind you, in front of you, around you and even hidden from you as your brand marches into the future of your expected more than fair share of opportunities.
The following social marketing realities call for brave re-focus to energize, engage and promulgate your entire company to ensure your brand growth, brand security:
Reality #1: Brands have discovered the sales and marketing power of social networking and are hiring subject matter experts to capitalize on this highly competitive, less expensive leverage.
Reality #2: The internet is accelerating, and naturally evolving its core one-to-one relevant intelligence creating smart and efficient profit pools book ended between creativity and actionable stimulations, defining and motivating a profitable pylon for any brands potential growth.
Reality #3: ComScore’s four year trend research depicts 82 percent of our world population is touched by social networking sites, with 20 percent of online time tied to social engagements: this data changes the value proposition of email marketing, of building your brand.
Reality #4: Social networking is not just for the young. Those with generally the largest household incomes, those over the age of 55 globally are highly internet social as depicted within a recent ComScore research chart. This socially engaged demographic represents high value brand building targets for smart marketers.
Reality #5: As much as I consistently view Facebook as a multi-modal window to social engagements, it is also the dominant vista into global opportunity. In point of fact, every brand builder should have a keen and highly motivated strategy to harness and benefit from this social powerhouse.
Reality #6: Social networking is rapidly exploding globally opening a new window to opportunity in every country, cutting through cultural and geographic boundaries. The USA leads with a 98 percent penetration followed by Australia and China.
Reality #7: “Tweet, tweet, blog, blog, YouTube, YouTube!” Consider that every minute 35 hours of video are up loaded to YouTube placing consumers in control as publishers, as music and video artists. In addition 126 million blogs are available on the internet according to Blog Pulse. And of course mighty Twitter. Each of these publishing models offer vast vistas of brand engagements, if created and executed in the relevant language of user and consumer valued expectations.
Reality #8: Social networking is highly efficient and more profitable than conventional mediums, if, when and where harvested and implemented correctly.
Reality #9: Ambient marketing is mono marketing if not fully engaged in relevant social sites, social opportunities with competitive rhythm impact.
Reality #10: Harness your entire organization from the CEO across and down your hallways regarding the competitive value of the new social networking landscape. Social networking cannot be effective nor protracted without internal support.
To read the entire piece visit Moneyinc.com
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