Visual Buzz and Interactive Marketing

I read articles regularly whenever I find time. While reading an article on promomagazine I came across some interesting insights which I thought of sharing them with you all.

1 – I’m not sure in Sri Lanka how many firms measure the word of mouth for their brand. Measuring the online buzz is easy but identifying and measuring offline buzz is not an easy job. But remember 90% of the buzz goes offline.I observed that the trend now prevails is not about mouth to mouth conversation but  it is all about visual. Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz says Word of Mouth isn’t always Spoken, but sometimes its Visual. The objects and visual can create visual buzz.. It is not just the word…Because buzz is not just telling others but more and more it move towards showing.

The simple idea behind this is, by making the brand more observant and visible to the people, the brands can increase the likelihood of people conveying the message about it and enhance the sale.

The above example actually happened to me as well. I usually visit my friend’s place, who has a Dell Laptop. I saw a small poster hanged on his wall regarding this brand.   But we never spoke about this laptop. Whenever I go there I always noticed that poster and Dell became one of my well observed brands. This created an interest in me and I purchased a Dell Laptop for my usage.

So what Sri Lankan brands should do with these? Marketing communication, product quality , good relationship management will create a positive buzz. But according to Emanuel Rosen, he says the brands should make sure where ever the customers go the brand should be visual to them. It can be a calendar, desk diary, well framed brand photo, pens, stationeries, wall clocks, and other observable stuffs.

2 – Make the business crystal clear. In an article written by Rob BonDurant, he says brands need to be transparent the way they do the business. All the business activities should be well communicated. The best example for this is Patagonia, where their production is totally environmentally sustainable business. In the web site they clearly mention what they do to sustain the environment in production. Still most of the organization in Sri Lanka practice CSR and Environmental business practices. I have not come across any organization like Patagonia in Sri Lanka.

If you want to create a sustainable word of mouth recommendation then BonDurant recommends that business practice is storytelling than marketing.

I have noticed a similar sort of strategy used by Brandix.  A well dedicated page which shows this sort of activities and their commitment towards environment and the business practice storytelling.

In  the end it is all about interactive marketing

In this year and coming decade two way communications with the targeted and existing customers going to be replaced by one way marketing methods.  It is going to be all about interactive marketing. Businesses need to closely interact with the customers to know their exact need and wants. It is not about doing a marketing research but closely building a relationship with people, even though they are not your customers.

Given below are some methods, but some of these may not be suitable for Sri Lanka but some might. The mobile and internet have already created platforms for firms to interact with the customers.

According to emarketer, in the year 2009, there was a growth of 18.1% and 9.2%  in mobile and internet respectively. On the other hand, advertising through TV declined by -10.1%, newspapers by -18.7% and radio by -11.7%.

Hence the firms have to concentrate on the following:

Social Media Marketing, mobile marketing and loyalty marketing are known concept for everyone. But it is time for firms to further focus on Neuromarketing. Because for every business it is important to know what their target audience and customers really perceive about their business. Doing research will not make any sense in genuine opinion of the customers. But using neuro marketing firms can study the customers/ consumers sensorimotor, cognitive, and affective response to marketing stimuli. Anyway this is related with research but the research use more advanced technologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalograph.

The other important one is behavioral marketing. Firms should stop bombarding the customers with irrelevant advertisements. Even in Sri Lanka we come across many advertisements which make no sense. But it time for Sri Lankan marketers to think about the relevancy in the marketing campaign they do. Now customers are modernized and they seek for new things, new experiences, new things to try etc…Firms need to be more creative in their communication. Bombarding them with the same ads repeatedly is not worth. Creative approach stimulating the customer sensitive is a must these days. The ads and other communications should be relevant to their life style choices. This will be more effective to do….

Social Media in 2009

Marketing on the social web is basically a word of mouth advertising. Customers are going to buy your product not from advertisements, but through recommendations. The companies that understand the social web and know how to listen to customers , react and participatein the conversation are the ones who are going to be successful with their marketing initiatives and activities in 2009, and beyond.

Companies such as Dell, Comcast and even Ford have realized this, and are effectively using social media to benefit their brands.. These companies realize that the traditional marketing methods of one-way, one- sided communication simply do not work when applied to social media. But my main worry is still firms in Sri Lanka are not implementing these strategy.

The basic foundation and core aspect social media is, consists of the five C’s.

1. Conversation

2. community

3. commenting

4. collaboration

5. contribution

These are the five fundamentals that companies and marketers must understand to be able to successfully market on the social media web. Most of the companies situated globally understood this and they adapted to a very strong social media strategy.

Social media marketing is the next logical step in a spiraling downward economy.

The world economy is operating worst. The housing market has gone very up, the unemployment rate continue to go like a sky rocket, Companies are cutting costs because of recession, and marketing budgets are the fi rst to be cut . So companies are looking for a best alternative cost effective method of advertising. The costly traditional and increasingly ineffective means of old school advertising are becoming outdated.

So the good news is the cost barrier is low for marketing in social media. It will not be an option for companies, but now a requirement to stake their claim in social media. In 2009 we will see a substantial amount of companies getting involved with social media marketing initiatives compared to the past year not only in other countries but also in Sri Lanka(Hope so) as well.

Simply having a static website is not going to cut it anymore in 2009.

These days companies are starting to tear the brick walls down and showing people that they are indeed human. Real people are telling real stories about the products.

This is expedited with what we can call the social add-ons of a website. User generated content ( Customer videos, Photos, product reviews, testimonials), implementing a real blog with a voice behind it ( probably your customer service representative), consumer forums, Discussion boards( allow conversation between customers) and most importantly going where their consumer base is, Facebook, Twitter and so forth But I think Sri Lankan firms operates online are focused more on Twitter and Facebook. All these arel about establishing and earning trust among customers. Brand credibility will also build in the process which will lead to a brand loyalty. The companies that understand their consumer’s behaviors online are ultimately the ones who will thrive in 2009 and they are the ones who will establish and maintain a competitive advantage.

The tools are only facilitators of the message. This will become quite clear in 2009 if it has not already.

Marketers and companies those who understand this concept will get the benefits of those. Most of the corporates have already established an online presence on twitter and other major social networks, but have not taken the time to use those correctly and effectively. They use thgis tools as a one way communication method, and completely no body wanted this. These tools need to be armed with the driving force behind people not the robots.

Social Media marketing is always a two way communication, using those tools effectively means the following aspects

1. participating in the discussions,

2. leading them, and reacting when necessary, and always

3. showing your human side in the process. If your sole purpose is using these tools for list building

All these tools should be used to build meaningful relationship.

Those who get it will start to realize and understand the VOI (Value of investment).

The main thing is that Social Media is about conversation. Measuring the return on your social media marketing is not a perfect way to track. If you are using social media with themain purpose of making money, chances are you will fail. The main currency in Social Media is valued based on the created content and the relationship. The VOI is measuring value of the conversations. How many comments were left? How much buzz is happening on Twitter? How many back-links were generated in search engines? What blogs are talking about us? Etc

So it is time for us to develop the online presence through social media marketing. I’m not sure whether it will work in Sri Lanka because the familiarity of social media is growing but the opportunity lies with only Facebook.