“What Women Want.” That’s how Ford did it.

Getting bloggers involved. Prominent, well-known women bloggers. And get instant buzz in the process. It’s focus groups at work in the new social media space. There’s nothing wrong with it and it’s not a new trend. Pepsi did it in their Pepsi rebranding campaign. The Air Force is doing it in their Air Force social media push. And you remember 3M’s Post-It Note Carjacks? Now Ford is doing it with refined social media skills. But really, bloggers watch out, you may be part of a bigger PR machine without realizing it.

Check out any of these Ford YouTube videos. Here are some samples of blogger reviews.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PU-A6kCnbTA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDC1sBQY038

Ford describes the event in an article titled “Ford Wants to Know: What do Woman [sic] Really Want?” which included breakfast with a Ford executive, a day packed with hands-on tours, test drives and roundtable discussions, and I’m sure schwags. By the way, the event was conducted during the 5th Annual BlogHer ’09 Conference, July 23-25, 2009. Quite timely and convenient.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always advocated that businesses need to get more into social network marketing and develop strong new media strategies. But there’s a grey area that both companies and bloggers need to be careful not to cross. In this case, to me anyway, if Ford really wants to get women’s input to help design future cars, the company probably won’t get them just from this narrow group of women demographic. But they will get a lot of free blog posts and discussions out of it, that’s for sure.

The final score: thumbs up for Ford marketing, a “huh, what were you thinking?” for the bloggers.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Ford Gets Bloggers Involved in “What Women Want” for Instant Buzz

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Could it be that communication itself is a hindrance to corporations in adopting social media and blogs? Sounds counterintuitive but definitely possible. Consider the following.

What are some characteristics of getting involved in social media or maintaining a corporate blog? Is it being honest with your message? Is it being involved in the conversation regularly? Is it allowing comments, feedback and critiques to come back to you whether or not you want them? Is it having to take risks that you may lose trade secrets, private information, etc.? or is it all of the above?

Yes it’s communication itself. It’s the fear of getting or receiving something back unexpectedly – good is OK but what if it’s bad? It’s the fear of the unknown that’s outside of the normal outbound marketing, which marketers have control over. It’s the fear of the unknown and the what-ifs. It’s the fear of inbound marketing.

Admittedly, getting involved in corporate social media and blogs does require attention to the details mentioned above. These are in addition to the POST Method that I blogged about last November – People, Objectives, Strategy and Technology. But the reality is, if you have to take time thinking about each and every message or structuring and molding every communication piece before relating to your customers, then you may not understand your company, company culture, and value propositions as well as you should. Of course there are important and proper communication channels for corporate announcements, press releases and the like, but day-to-day relationship with your customers and prospects should be a tactical strategy in the same vein as public relations (PR). It should be constant.

So what ‘s the solution? Maybe start with the following:

• Understand that social media and blogs can be valuable corporate tools.
• Create clear and flexible policies that foster more intimate communication with customers and prospects while minimizing risks to the company.
• Empower the right individual(s) to carry out social media and blogs, working closely with every other departments within the organization.
• Constantly monitor results (quantitatively and qualitatively) and be nimble to change direction as needed.

So what’s your experience? What have you found working successfully at your organization? Share with us in the comments.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Reason Companies Fear Social Media and Blogs: Maybe It’s Communication Itself

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Back in August 2008, Peter Kim blogged about “How to set an ego trap” on his beingpeterkim.com site. He received lots of feedbacks from both regular readers and the “influentials”, as Guy Kawasaki calls them.

Mr. Kim wrote, “In a nutshell, social technologies use game mechanics to get users hooked on participation.  People often get addicted to ego-stroking system feedback, until they can temper their usage (addiction?)” He gave a few examples to illustrate how well-known bloggers have used social networking for viral marketing and promotion, for both products and services. These can be read on his blog so I won’t repeat them here. For each example Mr. Kim observed some simple yet important characteristics. In one, he noted, “So why did it work?  The offer was simple.  It was personalized.” In other, “So why did it work?  The offer was limited.  It was relevant to the bloggers and their readers.” And in the third example, “Why did it work?  Game mechanics – competition and a somewhat objective comparison scale…” Mr. Kim ended the blog with the some suggestions on how to set an effective “ego trap” with your own offer:

• Keep it simple.
• Make it scarce.
• Personalize it.
• Use numbers.
• Appeal to the head…and the heart.

So now you may ask, “Ego trap or just human nature?” I would say probably both. It’s all about feeling good and important. We’re all humans, and many would agree that feeling good and important are two of human’s strongest straits – they’ve helped build empires and cause wars in our history. It’s all about self-importance. That’s why face-to-face networking works. That’s also why social networking works.

It’s no surprise we’ll use social media and networking to our benefits, and we’ll be glad to be used by the medium. So here’s a question: We’ve done face-to-face networking in older times. We’re now doing social networking in the Internet age. How do you suppose we’ll network next? Let your imagination flows.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Getting Used by Social Media Marketing?

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So HubSpot gave us another very easy to understand and easy to explain term: Inbound Marketing. It wraps everything about Web 2.0 into a neat little package. According to the article “Inbound Marketing & the Next Phase of Marketing on the Web“, the current recession is pushing the next wave of marketing on the Internet. And it’s a good thing. Evolution is good.

Marketers are seeing the value of Inbound Marketing. While we can’t totally do away with traditional marketing, or Outbound Marketing, marketers can certainly step up their Inbound Marketing with little to no additional costs. Considering these 3 key components that make a successful Inbound Marketing, one can see why it’s so powerful.

1. Content – Content is the substance of any Inbound Marketing campaign. It is the information or tool that attracts potential customers to your site or your business. Content is king.
2. Search Engine Optimization – SEO makes it easier for potential customers to find your content. It is the practice of building your site and inbound links to your site to maximize your ranking in search engines, where most of your customers begin their buying process.
3. Social Media – Social media amplifies the impact of your content. When your content is distributed across and discussed on networks of personal relationships, it becomes more authentic and nuanced, and is more likely to draw qualified customers to your site.

The beauty of it is anyone can successfully put them to use at very low costs. You don’t have a budget for this? Or your budget has just been scaled down? No worry, you can still run an effective marketing campaign. Here’s a graphic comparing Outbound and Inbound Marketing, courtesy of HubSpot. If you work up a marketing budget for each side of the table, it’s not hard to see the budget needed to do the left side is going to overwhelm the one on the right.

Print ads, TV ads, cold calling, trade shows, email blasts will continue to cost a bundle to do. On the other hand, blogs, eboks, viral videos, SEO, webinars and RSS are all very affordable to start or even expand in activities. To be fair, Inbound Marketing does require specialized knowledge and skills, and this is a good thing. It forces marketers to move with the time. It will weed out strong marketers from the weak ones. It’s the natural law of survival in the business jungle.

Pounding your message out to the customers? Not too effective anymore and too costly. Attracting customers coming to find you? Now everybody wins.

So consider these. Inbound Marketing costs much less than traditional marketing. It has better targeting with self-qualifying customers. And it is an investment with  word-of-mouth and viral effectiveness.

If it’s not already in your marketing game plan, then you may as well make Inbound Marketing your new year’s business resolution. But don’t wait. Start today. Remember, you don’t need a budget to do this.

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Who Doesn’t Want Inbound Marketing?

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Thank you for visiting Marketing Autopsy Blog.

Marketing Autopsy Blog is a place to collect, share and discuss the good and bad marketing ideas, with special attention on enterprise social networking, new media, inbound marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. It’s also a place to collect new thoughts, tools and trends about the ever changing marketing world.

It is undeniable that in marketing it is critical to keep up with techniques, ideas and tools that are continually developed and made available. Learning must be unrelenting so that we can effectively serve our clients/employers in any business climate. There’s nothing like a great marketing campaign executed efficiently, with innovation and creativity, on time and budget, with measurable results and buzz, all while achieving established goals and our client reaps the benefits.

Today online marketing strategy is even more critical as inbound, social network and viral marketing give a whole new set of challenges and opportunities. In this environment, it is important to understand what to do as much as what not to do in inbound marketing and SEO marketing.

Critiques, suggestions and ideas are always welcome. Please subscribe to Marketing Autopsy Blog if you haven’t done so already. Also follow me on Twitter @cuonghuynh.

Cuong Huynh

Post from: Marketing Autopsy Blog
© 2009 Marketing Autopsy Blog.

About Marketing Autopsy

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