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Marketing online has mainly to do with a few specific categories in various stages of engagement with your consumer.

• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• Paid Marketing
• Email Marketing
• Web 2.0 Marketing
• and of course… Social Media Marketing

There’s probably a few more that can be thrown in there – with the internet it seems like you can tack the word “marketing” on the ass of a word and it would make sense (bikini marketing? Maybe.)

The end goal of online marketing methods (particularly social media marketing) is obviously to drive traffic to a site and convert those visitors into something that resembles a broken cash machine spitting money at you.

When it comes to marketing online though I’m not talking about branding in any way – though that is relevant. This post is specifically pointing towards the four P’s – Product, Place, Pricing and Promotion

Your Product and your Price are pretty self-explanatory. The Place is the online POS (but can also include offline POS) and then there’s Promotion.

The guiding principles within social media marketing are fairly similar to other forms of marketing with the exception that the communities involved here ultimately form conversations and dialogue. Unlike other one-way marketing gimmicks, social media marketing is a two way street. The convo goes both ways.

Your common and popular social networks are the core tools involved in social media marketing, as they’re used to facilitate the messages that go between the individual and the organization. It’s through these tools that businesses and marketers are able to build communities, reinforce brands, promote products and services and draft an identity that was never quite possible before. Ultimately, they are machines for driving sales.

Those brands that have successfully churned out valuable content and had a community rally behind them for their personality, image and efforts are the ones that truly understand social media marketing and they’re reaping the rewards that come from proper use of the four P’s

That content has a huge impact on the success of a brand through social media marketing. When that content is replicated and shared by the visitors within your community, then you become the beneficiary of priceless word of mouth marketing through social media. That’s the viral buzz that a lot of companies aim for but fall short of.

Unfortunately their focus, in those cases where they stumble, is on the buzz. They’re less focused on the content which will show itself through that content. You have to focus on delivering true value within your social media marketing and the content you provide or your stage dive becomes a face plant. Noone is going to carry you.

Create a message that will get people talking and rest assured that it will take off like a wildfire.

When marketing your content within social media and working toward your brand improvement, always remember that you do not control the environment. You do not control your brand image. You also do not control the conversation. You are a contributor, and the visitor is in control. Start your conversation from that standpoint, and the visitors will be able to sense your respect and appreciation for their presence.

Commenting is a popular method of engaging within a specific marketing and doing a little branding for an individual or business.  It’s a great way to introduce yourself and carry on a dialogue with someone in hopes of reaching out and creating awareness for your own products and services.

The problem with commenting is that it’s rather tough to do without coming off as promotional in any way.  So what’s the best way to make comments as part of your online marketing strategy  without directly promoting?

Obviously the root of the questions points to a company’s desire to avoid being spammy in any way and the simple fact that I’ve heard this enter into discussions more than once excites me to no end, because it’s good to hear that any company is trying to positively improve their brand online without annoying the hell out of people.

To answer the question - the best way to incorporate commenting into an online marketing strategy without seeming like you’re promoting your products or services is to comment on sites without promoting your product or service.

That probably sounds a little flippant but I assure you that I’m serious.  Consider it from a literal point of view and not one of sarcasm.

The best thing you can do is to aim for structuring your comments in a way that sounds helpful.  Honestly, it’s impossible to be helpful and to sell something at the same time.  If you’re selling then your goal is to make money and you’re not really trying to help the consumer (even if you’re giving off that perception).  If your aim is to help someone, then you’re focused on helping them and your goal is not to close a sale.  One may lead to another and vice versa, but they don’t occupy the same space.

Example:

If someone is talking about an issue with a price on their new iPhone contract, and your comment is to correct an error about the price of a phone you would say something like:

“Hey I work for Apple, I wanted to clarify for you that the price was listed wrong in your post.  The iPhone retails for $X with a contract if you order online, not the price you listed.  If you saw it somewhere for a different price let us know and we can have that matter fixed.  Thanks for mention the product!”

You would not say:

“Hey I work for Apple, the best company in the universe and our iPhone is now $X with a two year contractor but only if you order online.  You can also get this great deal on accessories this weekend only in any of our Apple stores to go with that new phone you just picked up.  Hurry to your nearest Apple store because they’re limiting the supplies on hand.  This new iPhone is going to mow over the other smart phones, this new design rocks”

I think that seems pretty straightforward.

When people land on your site, they’re more than likely looking for guidance and some kind of understanding as to how they can interact with you.  They want to know who you are, what you’re about, how you can help them, etc.

That’s what your tagline is all about.  There’s just as much marketing oomf in a website tagline as there is in an entire article that talks up your business.  That tagline is a statement from the go that delivers the promise of bigger, better things.  It paints the big picture for visitors.

It also needs to hit it’s mark in a matter of seconds.

“1,000 songs in your pocket.”

That sounds like a good idea.  The concept is great, and that tells a big story in just a few words.  It doesn’t matter if you recognize the origin of the tagline, because you know exactly what you’re getting when you read it.  You’re getting a thousands songs in your pocket.  How they get there isn’t relevant, and you really don’t care the whither to’s and why for’s.  You just know at a glance that you’re going to get a ton of music in a small package that goes with you.

That’s a smart tagline that works.  Apple thought so, that’s why they used it for a marketing campaign that put them on a fast track to success with the ipod.

Unfortunately not all companies make the most of the tagline and they leave a big gaping hole where potential just kind of leaks out and drips all over the floor in a very anti-climactic fashion.  Take a look around and you’ll see a lot of tag lines like this:

“Innovative solutions for tomorrow”

That doesn’t really inspire a lot when you read it.  Yeah, you know you’re getting innovative solutions, but what are the solutions?   …and what makes them innovative?  I imagine the solutions are solving a problem but… what problem?  Do I have this problem?  Does this even relate to me?

Most people wouldn’t be able to establish relevancy with this kind of message so they do what everyone else does - they move on and find someone that they can connect with.  Hell, most of us don’t see anything wrong with our future, what we need is an innovative solution right now - not later.

Like a thousands songs in my pocket, because I’m going to the Gym today and need some music.

If you aren’t able to deliver a powerful and meaningful message in a handful of words to your target audience then you certainly aren’t going to pull it off in your site content or within your content marketing off-site.  You’re just going to miss the target.  You can’t just depend on curiosity alone.  You need to make it clear to people what you can do for them, from your content marketing clear through the sales funnel all the way to the end - that includes your tag line.

You have to avoid being “full of yourself”.  Not in an egotistical sense, but in the sense that your customers may not know anything about you.  It’s easy to forget that someone coming to your site knows nothing about who you are.  Business owners often market themselves with content and taglines that seem perfect for them because they understand it.  Those same taglines come off as really vague to someone who knows nothing about your company.

Think from the shoes of the customer who knows nothing.  Present them with clear concise information that instantly lets them know what they’re getting themselves into.  Try to tease them with some clever mystery in hopes of generating interest from curiosity and they will leave.

They have problems and they want solutions now.  Not tomorrow.

I have the perfect new employee for your company.

This employee is adept at sitting around, sifting through all the latest news and gossip. They understand your company pretty well, and will work diligently to learn the ins and outs so that they can directly engage your customers.

There’s just a few things you should know.

This new employee won’t be doing any direct sales but they will make a lot of your customers pretty happy.  There’s a good chance they’ll annoy quite a few of them as well. They also won’t work by any real schedule that you have, and your dress code is unacceptable – they’ll be working in whatever they feel like wearing. They also don’t have a college degree and will be spending more than 80% of their time on Facebook and Twitter, along with a number of other social sites.

Did I mention that they want to work from home? Do you have an opening?

10 years ago we would have laughed together at the request, but not anymore. You and just about every other company out there should consider whether or not having this kind of position is viable.

I (and many others) have mentioned before that it’s no longer a question of whether or not you should get involved in social media, it’s just a matter of how and when. That leads to this query: Do you hire someone, or do you outsource?

The answer really depends on your business and how much direct control you want over the individual or group handling your social media presence. Hiring direct is a good idea for a firm capable of providing a decent regular wage along with benefits for a full time employee or a group of part time employees. Having the group or individual in house means you have immediate control over your social media presence and those employees can attending training, meetings, conferences and more within the organization to ensure that they are up on all the current company information relevant to their content and social media marketing.

Should you op to outsource, there is still plenty of control to be had however you need to ensure that those agencies or individuals stay current on company info. The benefit to outsourcing is that you can often get the services at a lower rate that won’t fluctuate under contract agreements as opposed to living, breathing employees that demand raises lest they handcuff themselves to the water cooler.

If you’re hiring an individual or several people to fill an in-house team, keep in mind that there’s no college degree for social media marketing.  Not quite yet, it’s getting there. The old rules of marketing don’t even really apply here, so a Harvard grad with a background in marketing is about as charming as a shaved cat to your social following. An outsourced firm or individual will likely have a bit more experience than an individual as they’ve already been in place working with other companies and clients to manage social media presence.

The whole beast is still relatively new, so there’s a learning curve as we all move along. The important thing is that businesses need to do something to solidify their social media marketing presence.

One thing you should not do is manage your social media presence on your own. Your focus should be your business, and social media (and marketing in general) can quickly become a huge time suck – especially if you become popular among those who follow you. Before you get sucked into something you can’t walk away from (because leaving followers suddenly hanging is bad) it’s best to get someone in place before you’re overwhelmed and burn out hits.

I’ll leave you with this article from Marketing Sherpa regarding the future of social media marketing and the way businesses are changing their position.

When you’re setting up content marketing campaigns and working to engage your consumers through social media, the primary focus is persuasion.  You want to persuade and influence your target audience to remain within your sales funnel and follow your content to a point where you can magnify that influence.  At a certain point down the road, conversion takes place.  It all starts with the right kind of persuasion.

The art & science of persuasive content marketing is generally discussed as though it’s as simple as changing the mind of a person with the right argument, the right tactic or a tone of voice.  True, effective influence (and thus persuasion) isn’t just about body language, pattering on, or other sneaky tactics.  It’s about understanding what motivates people so that you can leverage there position.

When you’re dealing with persuasion, there are 6 common techniques of influence that tend to find their way into most campaigns - these are generally quite effective at tapping into the goals of the visitor.

Liking:

It’s a lot easier to influence people that actually like you.  A person with strong persuasion or powerful influence will often flatter or uncover similarities in order to build the right amount of attraction.  That attraction builds a fair amount of trust in the influencer.

Social Proof:

Take a look around the web and social media, you’ll quickly see proof that people love to follow one another to make sure that they are attached to the next most interesting thing.  Influencers imply that the herd is moving in a specific direction, and people are often baited to follow.

Consistency:

People like to keep their word, no one likes to go back on something that they’ve promised because it doesn’t usually sit well.  If someone makes a commitment, especially if it’s been made known or it’s in writing, they’re more likely to keep it.  Influences often gain some kind of verbal or written commitment.

Scarcity:

Influencing interest can be done easily when there is a perceived sense of scarcity.  This is often done by marketers and agencies around products that - while companies still have warehouses full - is announced that there are limited offers due to low production or high demand.  Past events surrounding video-game launches and consoles shows that people get crazed for something they can’t have.  This works extremely well in content marketing where some people might feel like they’re getting the exclusive.

Authority:

This is why thought leadership works so well.  People are strongly and often easily influenced by experts.  A successful influencer can take a position on a given subject and give off an air of expertise.

Reciprocity:

Influencers do well to understand the “give and take” way of persuasion.  When you give something, you can get something.  If people feel like they are indebted to you, they’re more likely to listen, follow and agree with what you ask or want.  This feeling can come from something like a compliment given or free content that is extremely valuable.

There are certainly far more techniques, but these alone are the most commonly used in various content marketing and other marketing campaigns.  For each to work though, it’s important to engage the user and understand their motivations and needs.  Otherwise, it’s difficult to lead the user if you’re not sure how they react to the type of rope you’re carrying.

I was picking up some lunch at Subway, inspired by Jared, when the exchange between the customer and employee in front of me caught my attention. It was proof of a listening issue – Get this:

Customer: “…club with no ham, lettuce and tomato”

Employee: *Starts putting ham on sandwich*

Customer: “no… no ham.”

Employee: *correct the ham, moves down* “Do you want lettuce?”

This issue with an employee who isn’t really listening is a lot more common than individuals and organizations care to admit when they’re marketing online – especially within social media. What’s worse is that consumers are so used to this kind of behavior that they barely flinch. It’s becoming social accepted. “Accepted” in the sense that we often walk away annoyed but tend to forget about the incident.

But what about other situations that we may find ourselves in while marketing. We might actually be listening, but are we REALLY listening? Are we hanging on the words of the customer to the point that – if polled like a teacher asking a daydreaming student for an answer – we can snap to attention and provide a relevant solution?

Like the exchange in Pulp Fiction between Travolta and Thurman:

Mia to Vincent: “Do you listen…. Or do you just wait to talk?”

You’d be surprised just how many businesses feel that their listening is up to par, but what they’re actually doing is waiting for a chance to talk; an opportunity to break into the conversation with a hook, solution or pre-sell. A way to build credibility by leveraging the current topic. They’re listening enough to find a way to flip the topic in their favor.

Very few people are actually good listeners. Dale Carnegie writes about one in his killer book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”:

He said:

“It struck me so forcibly that I shall never forget him. He had qualities which I had never seen in any other man. Never had I seen such concentrated attention. There was none of that piercing ‘soul penetrating gaze’ business. His eyes were mild and genial. His voice was low and kind. His gestures were few. But the attention he gave me, his appreciation of what I said, even when I said it badly, was extraordinary. You’ve no idea what it meant to be listened to like that.”

So, when you’re out there beating the virtual streets with your social media marketing – are you listening, or just waiting to talk?

It’s relatively easy to put up a Facebook “like” page for a business. Just about everyone can do it. The same amount of effort is required whether you’re a major brand or a local business. However few of the brands that actually do so are pulling off their social media marketing effectively.

Marketing to individuals isn’t an easy thing to do for anyone because you have to understand what messages will stand out. Conversational marketing to real people, where full engagement is required, is even harder – especially on the individual level.

So how do you break down your social media marketing so it’s not as broad and far more targeted to the individual?

Showcase Personality:

Not just any personality mind you, but a compelling personality that people can relate to. A good speaker can make most (if not all) of the people in a room feel as if they’re being spoken to directly, as individuals. A good campaign concept should take the same form and be delivered in a voice that people can relate to.

Invest In That Voice:

The last thing you need at the forefront of your social media marketing is just another talking head. The person handling that conversations and engagement should be a guru or a master conversationalist. Conversation = engagement and interactivity. Those are ingredients that can’t be bargained away or neglected.

Broaden Your Voice:

If possible add voices to broaden the individuality of the company voice. You don’t need to have a sole individual acting like a talking head. Develop community managers and support reps that can engage the community. A call center doesn’t operate with one person tackling all the issues and queries, your social media marketing efforts shouldn’t either.

Inspire Evangelism:

Your fans have a stronger voice than your own, encourage them to speak out regardless of how much they like or dislike you. Recognize who they are and showcase their interactions and efforts. You should thank them for what they do and inspire them to continue their engagement.

Invest In Technology:

No gadget is going to inspire the same feelings as direct human interaction, even on the web. What it can do however is inspire a deeper and more enjoyable experience for the customer. Apps, graphs, supplemental media, etc all make the marketing process more appealing as they inspire the interactivity that fans crave on the web.

While there are no set ways to market your company, as techniques and what works will obviously differ from market to market and person to person, companies need to bring their marketing down to a more personal level.

With companies like Papa John’s, Toys R Us, Starbucks and Casual MaleXL directly engaging their followers in deeper conversation there’s no excuse for any other brand to cop out and continue with broad, impersonal marketing.

These are not kid gloves. This is not your sister’s tea party. This is a situation that every person and organization with an ear for marketing should have foreseen. With the way technology advances, it’s no surprise that we’ve come into a new age where things absolutely have to change.

Technology demands it. People demand it.

We should all have expected that what worked in the past just won’t work anymore, and social media is proving to be a rubix cube for many. If you want to survive here, you need to stop doing, and start knowing what to do.

You’re playing follow the leader, but the leader is only doing what they’re doing because they saw someone else doing it. At some point, someone inadvertently started a “copy movement”.

When technology and people demand that you change and do something new, you don’t look around and choose what someone else is doing and say “there, I’m doing something new”. Do you want to thrive? Do you want to change and actually do something new?

Then create value. Not just regular value but thick value. That kind that sticks to the roof of your mouth.

Spark intelligent growth. Growth for a reason, with a clear direction. Not fungal growth “just because”.

Start with a social strategy that is more than a mash-up of your most pressing goals with a few tools. You can’t “get there” with a half tank of gas, a 6 pack and tight pants. It takes more greasy charm.

Ignite awesomeness, because it’s cool to be awesome in the eyes of your customers and it’s awesome to be this cool. People like awesome, so why aren’t you? For the record, if you every think or admit that you ARE awesome, then you’re not. Your job is not to be awesome, your job is to provide a solution. The trick is to have other people decide for you that you’re awesome while you’re attempting to innovate.

Stop trying to be just a thought leader. Go for Buildership. You can be a leader and lead people to no particular destination but if you’re a builder then you create something functional that you can lead people to, in and around.

Be a force for good. As cool as Vader is, and as much as we love the Fett, the personality of the dark side doesn’t lend itself to achievable goals that inspire joy joy feelings in most customers and clients. While there are many occasions that business owners would love to Force-choke a partner, vendor and even a customer… it pays to serve cookies and beer instead.

Get constructive and do something. Productivity and action with clear thought leads to outcomes that are typically positive in nature. Sit there like a slug wishing things were better and that your marketing efforts we’re churning better results and that’s what you won’t get. Because you’re too busy wasting your time NOT being constructive.

Gain wisdom – you can do that by taking to heart everything I just said. Then go find some way to put it to practical application in your own social media marketing strategy

We’ve read it all over the place, and plenty of us have gotten the spam emails from numerous companies – Search Engine Optimization techniques will boost your site rank within the search engines and Search Engine Marketing will bring you top-end traffic that is laser targeted. I never see anyone peddling the important of content though. At least not among the spam I receive.

Fact is a load of quality content that provides a lot of value, information and entertainment can accomplish all of those things and puts you in a great position for the future of search – contextual search and Skynet reading you bedtime stories.

There are also the ancillary benefits of putting together a really strong content marketing strategy. You can snag some amazing perks with quality content that you just can’t get with the truncated, garbage PLR that gets peddled around the world.

-Higher conversion rates

-Elevated sales

-Brand advancement

-Consumer education

-Thought leadership

There’s more, plenty more in fact, that comes from using the RIGHT kind of content in your campaign. You can pay all your want to have a link building campaign run and you can fork over thousands of dollars for SEO and SEM but the fact remains that without quality content you’ve gone fishing without bait and tackle. You’re dangling a blank line in the water and it’s just chilling on the surface.

You might know where the perfect fish are, and you might even have a great method for keeping the fish swimming madly around your boat, but without that quality content (that hook) what are the odds that you’re going to catch anything?

Take a cue from music, in any form, but especially pop and rock. The turn of phrase in a song is the hook, driving into the chorus. A good example is the popular song Boom Boom Pow from the Black Eyed Peas’. The hook in those songs is what pulls you in and persuades you through. It really isn’t important how many people hear the tune once and forget about it – what’s really important is the people who stick to it and spread the word about the song, sharing it with friends.

Content marketing has very little difference. Your content should resonate with your visitors and thereby draw them in. That hook will ensure that they share it, and by making it easy to share your content you’ll be pushing a big link building campaign from your content alone.

General SEO by itself attempts to mimic this process by creating a picture or painting a false portrait to the search engines and users a like. This can carry your for a short amount of time, and even boost site rank but when you have all form and no content you’re creating a very intriguing doorway for people to pass through that goes absolutely no where. That make it easy for visitors to hit the back button and go somewhere else.

Quality content will help position a website for future changes in search, especially as the web moves more toward contextual search. We already saw some of that change with the May Day update by Google. As these changes continue to occur, it will be increasingly important to have an established presence online with quality content – and PLR (even spun PLR) is not quality content.

Anyone that has grown in up some kind of rural community (which surprisingly tends to be a lot of the marketers I meet) will understand that farmers are probably the most direct kind of competition you could get in a local community. At the same time, they don’t really see themselves as being competitors despite the fact that they market similar and even identical products.

The amazing thing about a farmer is that time and again, if one of the farmers in a community fall under hard times such as broken equipment, a hit to their livestock counts, failing crop, pressing deadlines for planting or harvesting, etc they can pretty much always look to fellow farmers around them. I’ve seen it in some Amish communities, and I’ve seen it in areas heavily populated with red-blooded American farmers.

I think that’s a sense of community that could really be used in the world of marketing. Everyone in those communities knows that if they fell into the same situation that they would likely need some outside support in order to keep their chin above the water line – thus they give a hand willingly and hope that someday if they end up on the other side of the fence that they’ll be the one getting the assistance.

The economic downturn has been repulsively difficult for many small business to the point of crippling many in the long term and downright burying more. I wonder what things would have been like had small business owners treated one another during the economic woes as farmers typically do.

Is it something we’re even capable of? To consider offering a helping hand to competition?

We know what happens when there is no competition – there’s no control on pricing. Competition keeps price wars rolling and the consumer makes out like a bandit. Is it healthy for us to contribute to one another in business to ensure that there is no monopoly?

This probably makes some people quirk a brow and argues directly against common competitive wisdom and the competitive nature of many businesses but I think that outreach to the community is a kind of marketing that is more powerful in the eyes of consumers than any direct mail discount offer or freebie sale.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that you start offering to chip into competitors invoices or offer to repaint their storefront but it goes a long way for a company to position itself in the community in order to make clear statements about what is truly important.

We make long speeches and podcasts about the importance of business behaviors and about the concept of social media networks and communities but I wonder if we’re starting to lose sense of what a community really is over the years.