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How to avoid the social media storm

December 26, 2018

Previously, we dug into the details of two very different but very visible social media storms and how the brands (Crock-Pot and Old Navy) dealt with the unexpected spotlight.

Don’t think for a minute that your local business is immune to the same sort of trouble. The good and the bad of social media is that it is an equalizer. If the story is good, bad or salacious enough – it can quickly get national or international attention.

The web is filled with examples of how small, local companies are hit with an unfavorable review, Facebook post or photo and suddenly the world knows about the dishonest mechanic, lousy pumpkin pie or whatever the complaint is about.

Whether you work for a Fortune 500 company or own a small retail shop, you need to be ready to handle the unexpected, the unwanted, and sometimes the unwarranted wrath of social media.

Here are some best practices for protecting yourself and handling any social media crisis so that you come out on top.

Listen: There is not a business on the planet that can afford to ignore what is being said about them online today. At the very least, set up a Google Alert for your business name and the names of anyone in an ownership or leadership position. If you want to elevate above Google Alerts, there are a plethora of tools available. Be sure you are also monitoring ratings and review sites.

Have a plan in place: You won’t have time to put together a comprehensive plan once the crisis is in motion. You need to know how you’re going to react long before you have to react. If you own the organization or are their CMO – this is not just a plan for you. Your entire team needs to understand the plan and be trained to react quickly and appropriately.

Be human: Before you rebut, correct, sympathize or deflect – take a minute and try to understand the emotion behind the attack. That was Old Navy’s biggest mistake. There was no empathy. No heartfelt apology. Just corporate speak. On the flip side, Crock-Pot’s condolences for Jack were perfect. It didn’t matter that he is a fictional character. What mattered was that people were hurting and Crock-Pot acknowledged that.

Decide – online or off: Just because someone says something to you or about you online, does not mean you have to deal with it in that same environment. In some cases, if you deal with sensitive customer data or privacy concerns, you have no choice – you have to take it offline. But even if you don’t have that restriction, you can acknowledge the complaint, show your humanity around being sorry that they are disappointed (or whatever emotion they’re expressing) and then invite the attacker to reach you by phone, email or in person so you can have a detailed conversation and resolve their issue.

Keep your emotions in check: They’re going to say things that you find insulting, inflammatory and in many cases, inaccurate. It’s human nature to defend your honor and intentions. Don’t. In many cases, it’s a good idea to have someone by your side that is not as emotionally invested. Have them read your responses before you hit send and their job is to make sure you come off as caring, competent and in control.

Whether it’s a little local flare up on Facebook or under the nation’s microscope, every organization needs to be ready to deal with a crisis before it arrives at your front door.

The good news is that the audience’s attention span is short. The bad news is that Google forgets nothing so how you handle that moment in time can last a lifetime.

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Old Navy gets it wrong

December 19, 2018

Previously, we took a look at how Crock-Pot dealt with the untimely death of a beloved TV character due to a faulty Crock-Pot cord and the social media backlash that erupted from that pretend but apparently emotional death.  A situation that could have gone very wrong but Crock-Pot got it right. They didn’t get defensive or remind the people leading the outcry that Jack didn’t really die. In fact, they sympathized with the grieving audience and then used the incident to talk about their actual safety features.

The actor who plays Jack, Milo Ventimiglia, went on tour telling the world that he loves his Crock-Pot and wants to encourage other people to get one too. Can you imagine what it would have cost Crock-Pot to hire the star of the season’s biggest hit to be their spokesperson?

On the flip side, Old Navy did not handle their social media storm nearly as well. An Old Navy store near Jordan Creek Town Center in suburban Des Moines, Iowa created a national incident when an employee racially profiled a customer and accused him of stealing a jacket that he actually got for Christmas and entered the store wearing.

After the man was forced to prove he owned the jacket, a post on Facebook alleged that a central Iowa man was racially profiled while shopping Tuesday at an Old Navy store at Jordan Creek Town Center by the clothing store’s employees.

After the incident, the man posted pictures and videos of the incident on his personal Facebook page and it went viral. The post had more than 150,000 shares and thousands of interactions.  Old Navy’s reaction is a textbook example of how not to manage a social media crisis.

The post went live on Tuesday, January 30th and Old Navy’s solution was to close the store on Wednesday. The store and Old Navy corporate didn’t announce or explain the closure, which set the story on fire. The store re-opened on Thursday, also without any explanation. A spokeswoman for Old Navy emailed an official statement that said Gap and all of its brands maintain a “zero means zero” policy and that an investigation of the incident is underway.

The email went on to say “we are a company made up of diverse people — from all backgrounds and cultures. We encourage diversity in thought, celebrate diversity in each other and demand tolerance and inclusion, always.”

On the same day, Old Navy’s Twitter and Facebook feeds had a statement that explained what happened and that the incident was under review. Two days later, on both social networks, the company announced that the customer was treated in a way that violated their policies and values. They also announced the firing of the three employees involved in the incident.

Underneath those official announcements was a huge outcry on Twitter and the Old Navy Facebook page. Angry consumers took it upon themselves to tell similar stories, complain about the product and in general, kick Old Navy while they were down.

The next stumble on Old Navy’s part was that they went a little overboard in trying to prove that they weren’t racially insensitive. Suddenly, all of the models on their social media feed promotions and ads were African American. You can imagine the public’s reaction to that shift.

The good news for Old Navy is that as quickly as the firestorm started, it seemed to die down. But they could have turned the situation into a win rather than, at best, a draw. They missed some key best practices that could have saved the day.

Stay tuned as next we will explore how brands should respond to going viral when they don’t want to be in the spotlight.

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A tale of two reactions

December 12, 2018

Social media is a powerful tool, but it can also hand a brand some serious problems that need to be dealt with immediately. Your reaction can make all the difference.  When you respond in real time, you can do it well, or you can stumble and fall. When a brand doesn’t deal with the ember or spark or handles it badly, it can quickly grow into a raging inferno.

We watched the good and bad play out over the past year, and I’d like to dig a little deeper into each situation and then talk about some safety nets we all need to have in place in case our company finds itself in an unexpected spotlight.

First off, let’s look at the good.

The very popular show “This Is Us” killed off a beloved character this past season. The culprit? A house fire started by a crockpot’s faulty switch. People rushed to social media to mourn the death of this character and true to human nature, they were looking for someone to blame and the poor crockpot took the brunt of it.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but the build-up to how Jack died had been in the making for over two years. This is a show that pokes at the most sensitive emotions of its viewers, and so their hearts were definitely on their sleeve already, as they watched the tragedy unfold.

As the TV show ended and the fans scrambled to social media to give Crock-Pot a piece of their mind, the company found themselves in a very bizarre and unexpected position. They were being accused of causing the death of a pretend person. People were vowing to throw away their crockpots.

Crock-Pot had three choices. They could respond to the overwhelming wave of communication by reminding everyone that Jack is pretend, they could ignore the whole thing and let it blow over, or they could play along and use the opportunity to build their brand.

Their first tweet was:

We’re heartbroken over last night’s episode, too! But don’t worry, you can still make your favorite meals in your #CrockPot with confidence. We want to assure all consumers we rigorously test our products for safety. PM us and we’d be happy to tell you more about our safety standards.

Think this is absurd? It gets worse. The story of the killer Crock-Pot was also picked up on Colbert, Marketplace, and even Popular Science and Self Magazines!

Crock-Pot took to Facebook as well, with this message:

‘THIS IS US’ SPOILER ALERT. We’re still trying to mend our broken heart after watching ‘This Is Us’ on Tuesday night. America’s favorite dad and husband deserved a better exit and Crock-Pot® shares in your devastation. Don’t further add to this tragedy by throwing your Crock-Pot Slow Cooker away. It’s hard to pass something down from generation to generation if you throw it away (grandma won’t be too happy). Spending time with his family while enjoying comfort food from his Crock-Pot was one of his favorite things to do. Let’s all do our part and honor his legacy in the kitchen with Crock-Pot®. XOXO, Crock-Pot® Forever in Your Heart & Forever in Your Home

It’s bad enough when your company makes an actual mistake or deserves the heat of social media, but this example is a good reminder that we’re all vulnerable, even when it’s not of your creation.

Next, we’re going to take a look at a situation that was of their creation – the Old Navy racial profiling story that went viral and caused the store to close their doors temporarily.

After we have studied both the good and the bad, I’ll outline the best practices we need to keep in mind as we do business in this 24/7 connected world.

 

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A twist on old school tactics

December 5, 2018

In this era of all things digital, I thought it would be a nice change of pace to go old school and talk about some very simple marketing tactics that are often undervalued and underutilized. Best of all, neither of these ideas will dent your marketing budget.

Thank you notes: When I was growing up, my mom was a stickler for thank notes. On December 26th there would be a stack of thank you cards and a list of recipients on the kitchen table. The importance of that act has stuck with me my entire life, and I still write a ton of thank you notes.

Most of us don’t get a lot of traditional mail anymore, and when we do, we sort it over the wastebasket because there’s not a lot of value in what we receive. So we notice personal mail, and we remember who sent it to us.

When a client places a new order or makes a referral, don’t just shoot them a quick email. When a prospect makes time to learn about your business, be memorable. Their inbox is already bloated. Take five minutes and do what most people don’t do — write a thank you note.

Tech twist: When I’m on the road I don’t want to carry a bunch of thank you notes in my suitcase, so I use an app called Bond Black. It allows me to send a handwritten thank you note with my actual signature from anywhere in the world without trying to track down stamps or cards.

Make connections: We all have people in our lives that seem to know everyone and can quickly make valuable introductions that create new partnerships, client relationships, and peer connections. You need to be one of those people.

The good news is that you don’t need to know a certain number of people or have a certain level of influence. All you have to do is be intentional. The Zig Ziglar quote, “You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want” is spot on. What Zig didn’t say but I think is implied is that your desire to help them get what they want has to be genuine. You can’t fake it just so they’re helpful to you in return.

Here’s a great way to start. Make a list of ten people who genuinely have helped your business. Now, think of someone you know that would benefit them in some way. They might be a potential client or vendor. Or they might serve the same customer base but in a non-competitive way and there could be the possibility of them partnering together on a promotion or joint offering. Make an introduction, explaining why you think they should get to know each other. It’s that simple.

Tech twist: Use Linkedin as your connection hub. Leave recommendations for people who have been influential in helping your business. Go a step beyond that and send a message to two people you want to connect and make an introduction. They’ll be able to meet each other and make a LinkedIn connection, which opens their networks to each other.

While both of these tactics may seem rudimentary, we don’t do either often enough.

Selfishly, they pay huge dividends. But even more important than that – they remind us to be the kind of business leader we should all aspire to be. Giving, gracious and grateful. I know those are the kinds of business people who have helped me learn, grow and build my business for the past 25+ years and I want to return the favor.

 

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Silence is not golden to your customers

November 28, 2018

I stopped by Walgreens to pick up a prescription the other day. When I gave the pharmacy tech my name, she went to the bin marked M, flipped through the prescription box and came up empty. She didn’t say a word but just walked into the back of the pharmacy. A minute later, she came back out and then disappeared into another nook. Again, no communication.

While she was actively trying to fulfill my order, here’s what was going on in my head:

• I wonder if there was a problem with the insurance?
• Was this the right Walgreens or did I send it to the other one in my neighborhood?
• Maybe they didn’t have time to fill it yet since I just submitted it a couple of hours ago
• Maybe they didn’t have it in stock and are waiting to get some from another Walgreens

All of those thoughts ran through my head in the few minutes it took her to find my prescription and bring it back to the counter. This was just a routine refill. I was in no danger if I had to wait a couple of days. But still, I had all of those momentary thoughts and worries.

I’m sure for the pharmacy tech; it was just a routine “I can’t find it but the computer says that we filled it, so it’s around here somewhere” moment. But that’s not how I experienced it.

No matter what you sell or who you sell it to, there are moments in the process that are routine to you. But that doesn’t mean they’re routine to your customer. You might be waiting for some internal paperwork. Or the order could be in process and already on its way to the customer’s office. For you, it’s business as usual. Everything is on track. You’re not worried because you understand the entire workflow and know that everything is exactly where it should be. But your client doesn’t have that same insight.

All your customer hears is the silence. And in the silence, worry often appears.

We are often blind to those silent spots in our own processes. We think we’re hard at work, serving our clients, and instead, we’re accidentally making them anxious.

The pharmacy tech could have prevented all of my random thoughts and worries by recognizing that silent spot and over communicating with me. Immediately after realizing my prescription was not in the bin, she could have let me know that they had filled it and she just needed to find it.

No matter what product or service you sell, there are some common moments that might be ripe for creating worry for your clients.

Immediately after your discovery meeting: In many businesses we invest a significant amount of time on the front end of the engagement, learning as much as we can about our client’s challenges. And then we go back and have to assimilate all of that insight to diagnose the problem and decide on a solution. We’re deeply engaged on our end, but that kind of thinking takes time.

Inter-departmental handoffs: If there are different departments within your business that all play a role in a client’s project, there’s usually a slight lull as the new department gets up to speed.

When outside vendors are involved: Once you’ve relinquished the work to your partner, you’re comfortable waiting for them to complete their work. But that’s because you know them and have confidence in them.

Walk through your entire process and note where moments of comfortable silence for you have the potential of being an uncomfortable worry for your customers. Then, build additional communication into those moments to give your clients comfort and reassurance in those necessary bits of silence.

 

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Who already trusts you?

November 21, 2018

If there is a cardinal sin of marketing, it’s ignoring the people who already know you, appreciate you and give you money. For most organizations, 60-75% of your net new revenue should come from your existing customer base.

Despite that metric, most businesses spend the majority of their marketing dollars and efforts chasing after new clients and invest very little in wooing the customers they have already earned. You’ve already cleared the highest hurdle – earning their trust. And yet, we often walk right past them on our way to talk to strangers.

One of the biggest values of marketing to your current clients is that they’re the ones who are most likely to tell others about you. It’s logical to think that the more they know about you, the more they can share with someone else who might be in the market for what you sell.

Another lost opportunity, if you don’t actively connect with your customers, is that they develop a narrowed view of who you are and what you do. Odds are good that even your best clients don’t utilize every product or service you offer. If you don’t keep reminding them of all of the other ways you can help them – they begin to pigeonhole you as the “fill in the blank” company that is purely defined by what they currently buy.

We’ve certainly had that happen at MMG. If we developed a brand and the support materials (logo, tagline, etc.) for a client, they begin to see us as a brand shop. If we don’t keep talking about other aspects of marketing strategy and execution, we can quickly be JUST a brand shop.

In all of our work with financial institutions, we knew that if someone had 3+ accounts or 4+ ACH/direct deposits going in and out of their checking account, they were far less likely to change institutions. The marketing expression for this reality is “setting more hooks” and it’s as true for your business as it is for a bank or credit union.

Of course, the trick is how do you introduce yourself to someone who already knows you? Marketing to your existing customer base is all about demonstrating that you recognize who they are and what matters to them. There’s no need to focus on helping them get to know you or trust you. You’re already there. It’s looking for ways to enhance what you already do for them.

Make a list of the customers who make up the top tier of your sales. Ask yourself these questions:

• What could we do (not sell) to make their experience with us something they couldn’t help but talk about?
• What product or service would significantly enhance the effectiveness/usefulness of what they already buy from us?
• How can we bring that to them immediately, either through something else we offer or from a strategic partner?
• How do we genuinely demonstrate that we appreciate their loyalty and business?
• Who, from my figurative Rolodex, needs to know about this person/company and how can I make those referrals?
• Have we invited this client to provide a testimonial, case study or to leave us a review?
• How can we institutionalize these kinds of requests so we get them from all of our best, happiest customers?
• What else do they need that we don’t currently provide that we could develop and deliver with excellence?

If you want to set more hooks and bring even more value to your best clients, you’ll need to spend some time finding the answers to these questions and then be ready to invest some time, talent and budget to bring those strategies to life.

 

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The marketing plan recipe

November 14, 2018

If you’ve been with us lately, you’ll remember that we’ve been hyper-focused on the channels you should be considering as you design your marketing plan for 2019 but I’d like to step back and take a look at the bigger picture.

In my imagination, your New Year’s Resolution is going to go something like this: “In 2019 we are going to be 110% consistent in our marketing so that we attract the best customers, repel the wrong customers and reassure the customers we already have that they made the right buying decision.”

To make that happen, you need a marketing plan. While there’s no doubt your goals will vary, my goal is to give you a list of ingredients that you can use to build out a plan that you and your team could realistically execute with excellence.

Ingredients:

3-5 SMART goals: There’s no reason to market if you don’t know what you are trying to accomplish. Get them written down and track against them every quarter.

2-3 customer personas: The more specifically you can define your best potential customers, the more effective your marketing will be. Trying to sell to everyone is expensive and inefficient.

1-2 points of differentiation: Why should someone choose you over your competitors? Clearly define what makes you unique. You might need some outside perspective here. It’s challenging to see the label when you’re inside the bottle.

2-3 core messages: Once you know who you’re talking to and how you’re different, tell the story of what makes you unique in a way that will resonate with those personas. No matter how many times you’ve told the story – keep telling it. Find new angles or aspects of the story, but keep emphasizing the key points.

1-2 current customer specific efforts: Before you spend any time or money chasing after a new client – be sure you retain the customers you already have. How do you remind them of the value you provide? How do you show your appreciation for their ongoing business? For most businesses, more than 50% of your net new revenue should come from existing clients, so don’t let them feel forgotten.

4-7 channels that are heavily trafficked by your personas: There’s no reason to invest a lot of time or energy into a channel that doesn’t attract your core audience. Be sure you blend online and offline channels unless your business exists solely online.

2-3 tactics for each channel: Don’t just stop at defining the channels. You need to decide how you’re going to engage in that channel. Let’s say that one of the key channels for one of your personas is a specific trade magazine. That’s the channel. Now, what will you do on that channel? You could pitch a story so they might write about your organization. You could place an ad. You could also buy a booth at their annual trade show or invite the publisher to be on your podcast. Any of those would be a smart tactic for that particular channel.

12 months of calendared items: Odds are good that if you don’t write it all down and plan it out on a calendar, it will not happen. Map out the entire year. Of course, it’s going to change. But far better to edit a marketing calendar than not having one at all because you know it won’t be 100% right. Mapping it out will also help you be sure that you’re going to connect with each persona every week.

Is it as simple as this? No, but even this would be a very good start. Doing this level of planning will put you ahead of most of your competitors. Start here and see what happens. You can always add complexity after you have this down pat.

 

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Using call to action triggers to drive conversion

November 7, 2018

A while back, we reviewed some of the general best practices if you’re going to run Facebook ads. I want to drill down a little deeper into one of the most critical tools you have to increase conversions – the call to action (CTA) trigger.

Bottom line – if your audience does not interact with your ad, you can’t convert them. You absolutely can and should use call to action buttons if that makes sense with your message. As you’re building your Facebook ad, the ad manager will give you pre-set buttons with a variety of options from contact us to download, learn more, sign up or request time.

I know it seems obvious but choose your CTA carefully. Match the offer with the button label, so people know exactly what’s at the other end of the click.

Don’t forget about calls to action that don’t require an actual call to action button. Your ad copy might invite the audience to click on the ad itself to take an action (give us your feedback, sign up for free product, vote for a favorite, etc.) or to answer a question that you pose either in your graphic or text.

Another element of a successful Facebook ad campaign is social proof. Social proof is public social engagement that other users can see. This includes likes or other reactions, comments, and shares of your ad. When someone sees your ad, they’ll also see who among their Facebook connections already interacted with the ad. These small interactions can matter just as much, if not more, than the ad copy when it comes to gaining more conversions.

For most of us, if we see a Facebook ad with ten positive comments and a couple dozen likes, we’re much more likely to pay attention to the ad than if it had no reactions showing at all.

The power of consumer-generated reviews and reactions carry over to this channel as well. That’s why, according to a study by KISSmetrics, Facebook ads with some sort of social proof had 300% more conversions, and 50% lower clicks per actions and cost per clicks.

In addition, social proof has an additional, less obvious, benefit. Social engagement boosts your relevance score, which gives you a higher priority in the ad bidding system. It’s a great way to lower your ad costs.

Once the campaign is launched, the best way you can improve the performance of the campaign is to keep an eye on the metrics. One of the most under-utilized is the relevance score.

The Relevance Score is a calculated metric that monitors how your audience is reacting to a particular ad. The scores can go from 1 to 10, depending on the positive and negative feedback your ads receive. If your score is below a 5, you should do some testing to see if it’s your audience, the message or the visual that is causing the disconnect.

Choosing when your ads appear (based on your audience’s time zone) is another way to increase success. By watching which times of day perform the best, you can adjust your campaign to increase conversions and reduce your cost per lead.

If you’re running ads to build brand awareness or some other top of the funnel activity, then you aren’t measuring success by conversions, and this may be less important to your campaign.

But in most cases, you’re running Facebook ads because you’re trying to drive an action of some kind. You want to give yourself every advantage you can and how you entice the audience to click on your ad is the most important step.

 

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Digital engagement

October 31, 2018

It’s hard to imagine there is an active business today that doesn’t have some level of digital connection and engagement. But the truth is that how business leaders define engagement and the level in which they invest (time, money, staff, etc.) in that engagement is an incredibly wide range.

Deloitte did a study for Connected Small Business US, which was commissioned by Google to explore the levels of digital engagement among small businesses (250 or fewer employees) and the impact of each level.

The study determined that there were general levels:

• Basic (no website/no social media presence)
• Intermediate (simple website/basic digital marketing)
• High (advanced, mobile-ready website/multiple social channels)
• Advanced (use of data analytics/mobile apps)

As the researchers reviewed the activity level and the outcomes that aligned with each of the four levels of engagement, they came to some very interesting conclusions.

Digital engagement increases revenue. Seventy-seven percent of businesses in the advanced category reported expecting revenue growth over the next year—almost double the percentage of businesses in the most basic engagement level. The reason the advanced level businesses were confident in the potential of growth is because forty-five percent of them had already experienced revenue growth over the past year, compared to only twelve percent of businesses identified as having a basic digital engagement. Thirty-two percent of the organizations in the high category reported revenue growth.

Digital engagement increases employment needs. When a business experienced increased revenue, it only makes sense that they’d need a larger workforce. So no surprise, the category of companies that reported larger percentages of revenue growth (high and advanced) also reported an increase in employment growth. The research also pointed out that people employed by a digitally savvy company “tend to be relatively more productive, with the average revenue per employee at digitally advanced businesses being two times as high as small businesses with a basic level of engagement.”

Digital engagement creates new products and services. Over the past twelve months, businesses at the basic level had less than a ten percent chance of introducing a new product or service. On the flip side, almost seventy percent of the most digitally advanced companies reported did. New channels mean new opportunities, and if you’re not there, you can’t take advantage of them.

So what does this mean for your business? It means that maintaining just the “table stakes” level of digital engagement is costing you opportunity, market share, and money. If you are at that level, which was defined as just having a simple website and not really using effective email marketing, social media or exploring the data that these tools can give you, you need to recognize the consequences. This should not come as a surprise to you but perhaps the outcomes that this study points to can serve as the wake-up call to drive you to explore how your business can step further into the digital realm.

This study emphasizes what common sense has told us for some time. The way we do business has changed. The expectations that the marketplace has for us have changed. We may be the only element that hasn’t yet changed.

For every business, whether you only serve a local audience or an international customer base, embracing digital strategies is a business must. Tools like marketing automation, social media, mobile readiness, and letting the data help you determine what your prospects are interested in and what you can offer to encourage trial and conversion is more business survival than anything else.

Today, as the research clearly demonstrates, businesses that ignore that truth are simply behind in revenue, growth, and innovation. But pretty soon, without making some changes, they may just not exist anymore.

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